How to make Herald viable in PvE again

[Aninika.6819]

This is an open post. Please add your suggestions.

Off the top of my head without considering implications, here's what I'd like to see:

Herald's boons be shared among 10 players

Allow Rev to share all its might stacks

Revert staff damage (PvE only)

Figure out something different with Naturalistic Resonance since boon duration isn't necessarily needed anymore

Other ideas?

[Jack Skywalker.5674]

Mix with Ventari, never assume the role of dps ever again as a Herald (or until Arena net no longer needs to make elite specs to sell their game).Druid is getting enough nerfs that Ventari Herald can start competing for heals and protection application.

[Justine.6351]

Viable or bis?

[otto.5684]

AA is always an easy target to buff cuz it has limited impact in PvP, but dramatic impact in PvE.

Increase impossible odds damage from 10% to 15% PvE only. Reduce its cost from 10 to 9 energy.

Off hand sword 5 cold use a buff in all game modes.

Might stacking to all allies. We can be a might bot ?. Boring but works.

Natuelastic renasomce, instead or on top of what it does increases might stacking from 25 to 30 stacks for 5 allies.

[Arkaile.5604]

The following criticism is coming from the assumption that we're talking about end-game pve content, where dps and other contributions actually matter.

@otto.5684 said:Increase impossible odds damage from 10% to 15% PvE only. Reduce its cost from 10 to 9 energy.

The problem here is that Jalis hammers would still be a better choice for dps because they don't eat up 10 (or 9) energy per second while still doing a reasonable amount of dps. Assuming the rev already has permanent quickness, the damage modifier on Impossible Odds is the only thing which matters and would have to be increased to the point that in 3-4 seconds, or 5-6 with charged mists, it will at least match the damage from using hammers for 10 seconds. Making Impossible Odds into something which can compete with hammers will need more than just another +5% damage buff or small decrease in energy cost, and that's not even getting into what it would take to make a power herald relevant.

@otto.5684 said:Naturalistic Resonance, instead or on top of what it does increases might stacking from 25 to 30 stacks for 5 allies.

A bad idea and the exact thing the balance team needs to step away from. No one class/build should be able to get an entire party or squad's sub-group to 25 stacks of might so easily. Ideally, this should be something which several people contribute towards instead of one class/build having a monopoly on that role. One person built for support could give the bulk of the might (15-20 stacks at most) with others making smaller contributions, but permanent 25 might for 5-10 people from just one person is nonsense.

[ArthurDent.9538]

Power rev dps needs to go up by about 25% to be in range of other LOW TIER dps builds. This is kind of a huge number so the changes need to be fairly dramatic which could potentially break pvp (not that rev is even meta there). The way to get there is to replace or give alternative options to damage boosting sources that are made redundant in group scenarios yet can be quite strong in pvp such as quickness, might, and vulnerability. One obvious place to start getting this increased damage is to get rid of the quickness on impossible odds and replace it with a unique damage boosting affect that is not made redundant and useless by external quickness sources. https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Impossible_OddsReferencing the GW1 version of impossible odds, making it do double strikes instead of quickness would be more befitting the original skill, and could dramatically increase dps in a raid scenario since it would stack with external quickness while not bringing the damage to broken levels in pvp. If necessary the damage of the secondary strikes could be reduced to do original strikes to put it in-line with original pvp damage.

Next glint needs damage boosts so that it can beat out Jalis as the secondary damage legend because we really don't want the legend rotation to be purely rotating between the 2 highest dps upkeeps continuously which would be Impossible Odds and Vengeful Hammers (maybe some people want that). Extra glint damage can be added to Elemental Blast and Burst of Strength. I would add an extra pulse to the end of elemental blast which doesn't have a condition but hits 50% harder than the other pulses. For burst of strength get rid of the vulnerability application (or reduce to 1-2 stacks to maintain the now needed trait synergy :/ ) and just turn it into a damage temporary personal damage boost like the new https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Peak_Performance. Like the quickness on impossible odds the vulnerability on burst of strength is made redundant too easily and rev needs to get its raid dps up dramatically.

Trait wise, invocation master could easily fit in another damage modifier where one would have to drop the crazy might stacking incensed response gives to use it in pvp. Herald adept and master tiers also lack any traits that boost damage at all which would be good places to add some more damage.

Lastly Facet of Nature needs to go to 10 target. It is a nice buff but only a few builds benefit at all from the boon duration and they are always split between the subgroups so you can never get it reliably to everyone that wants it and it isn't good enough to only have it for maybe two allies.

[Burtnik.5218]

@ArthurDent.9538 said:Power rev dps needs to go up by about 25% to be in range of other LOW TIER dps builds. This is kind of a huge number so the changes need to be fairly dramatic which could potentially break pvp (not that rev is even meta there).

With the way how weak rev is to condi he should hardcounter all power builds like before tbh. Otherwise theres no point to keep him.. weak to everything.

[Genesis.5169]

Herald not viable for pve?When did this happen i was doing 100 cm last night on my herald.

Did i miss the news?

[Aninika.6819]

You're comment is irrelevant. Herald is great in pugs where it can provide boons that are lacking from other party members, however, in a meta setting, it lacks the dps and buffs to keep it relevant other than as a healer (which arguably Renegade is better at) and a hand kiter in raids. Yes, you can do all content with Herald, but making it desirable is more what I wanted this to be about. Sorry that I didn't make that message clear, I just assumed readers would grasp that intention. I love Herald--it is my main--and I too play it in all game types and instances, however, it has major issues across the board, so while I realize that this is an open post, and you all can respond however you like, constructive criticism would be helpful rather than "don't play it" and "it's fine." Herald is not fine outside of pug groups and open world in pve.

[narcx.3570]

Power Herald doesn't really have what it takes to be useful in the raid scene outside of bringing support in the form of cc, boons, AP, and boon duration (if for whatever reason you're building your composition around having NR... Like, I dunno, you have a friend/guildy that refuses to play anything else so you figure you might as well gear yourself to take advantage of it or something.)

The biggest problem with Power Herald is that it's built for consistent damage and lacks any real burst. The power specs you see viable for meta raiding (DH, Weaver, Holo) all have huge burst capability, which is what makes them so good for the encounters that have invulnerability or other dps-stopping phases. In order to make Herald viable, they would either need to increase their steady dps to be on par with the average dps of those burst classes--which would be an absolutely game breaking thing to do--or to rework the entire class to have high damage, high cooldown based dps output--which is also something that they are probably not going to do.

We likely won't see any changes to the game/class that would make Herald a top pick for raid DPS... Especially since they rolled out Kalla with that sole purpose obviously in mind. If anything, we could possibly see changes to their buffing (or nerfs to other classes' buffing abilities) that would encourage a lot more Herald Support play as a tank/healer.

[Aninika.6819]

I love the fact that Herald has consistent dps, and I understand that it would make it a game breaker if it got a dps increase, which is why we consistently saw nerfs to dps. However, with its weakness to condi, it needs to be buffed somewhere else. Herald is a class that really needs a pve/PvP split for its power because increasing its dps across the board makes it OP in competitive, but will put it on par in PvE.

[Zlater.6789]

hmm I feel like in pvp the damage is fine, like it is already a high damage spec and unlike other specs like holo, it has much more group presence and many more tools for dealing with different encounters. However, in pvp, it does need a couple of buffs to its survivability or disengage, these are the things I see it lacking the most.

I would be careful to buff any of its burst damage, however, its undebatable that in pve it desperately needs moar dps. One good way to do this is just to simply buff the auto attacks of sword, or heck they could just make a new stat combo that was Power+Ferocity major and Precision minor - that'll probs be enough to make both herald and power reaper good.

[Aninika.6819]

I really think that the other skills on sword need to be brought in line with the auto attack since Rev sword has one of the highest auto attacks in the game, it really doesn't need to be higher.

[narcx.3570]

@Aninika.6819 said:I love the fact that Herald has consistent dps, and I understand that it would make it a game breaker if it got a dps increase, which is why we consistently saw nerfs to dps. However, with its weakness to condi, it needs to be buffed somewhere else. Herald is a class that really needs a pve/PvP split for its power because increasing its dps across the board makes it OP in competitive, but will put it on par in PvE.

The only problem with just flat increasing it's dps to be on the level of weaver/dh/holo without changing the play style is that it would become a complete joke profession... And, arguably, it would give people little reason to play anything else. I mean, not that DH, Holo, or even Weaver's rotations are particularly difficult, but there's certainly a lot more to them (and room enough to separate the good players from the bad) than turning on your channeled ability, and auto attacking while pressing 2 off cooldown. Like if you thought people made fun of staff d/d or power bomb engi for being braindead, holy crap would power rev be a next level of easy mode.

I mean, you gotta hit a certain point where maybe you SHOULDN'T be able to be top dps by just auto attacking. If they really want to do some PvP/PvE balance splitting to make Power Rev viable in raids, I think it'd need to come from Sword OH skills and the utilities in Jalis/Glint/Shiro that never get used because they basically do nothing. Just some sort of change to make it into a real dps rotation that justifies being able to do 30k+. They started looking at this path a little when they buffed the dmg on Burst of Strength a while back, but I think they just sort of gave up/abandoned it to focus on PoF development.

[Dadnir.5038]

Herald specifically?

• Mechanism: Make F2 periodically grant alacrity instead of boon duration and increase it's upkeep to 3 - 5.
• Trait: Change hardening persistence to empowering persistence: grant power instead of toughness.
• Weapon: Change envoy of exuberance to apply it's effect around you instead of being a targeted area skill.

This would probably be more than enough to put herald back in PvE.

[ReaverKane.7598]

I'd say Herald is very viable, just far away from being BiS.I'd say that adding a bit more support on F2, while reducing the energy cost so it doesn't make you have to almost stand still to keep it up.In general i'd say Revenant needs weapon skills that give energy regeneration, be it the third hit on auto-attack or others.

[Vulf.3098]

I have given up on Herald being Revs viable power build without some sort of major rework. Viable as in competing with at least DH and Holo.

Even as a boon bot it is still worse than Chrono and Druid is way better at giving 25 might by a lot while also giving a lot of other things. The only way it will ever compete with chrono is if it gets high up time on both quickness and alacrity added to the build.

[LucianTheAngelic.7054]

@narcx.3570 said:

@Aninika.6819 said:I love the fact that Herald has consistent dps, and I understand that it would make it a game breaker if it got a dps increase, which is why we consistently saw nerfs to dps. However, with its weakness to condi, it needs to be buffed somewhere else. Herald is a class that really needs a pve/PvP split for its power because increasing its dps across the board makes it OP in competitive, but will put it on par in PvE.

The only problem with just flat increasing it's dps to be on the level of weaver/dh/holo without changing the play style is that it would become a complete joke profession... And, arguably, it would give people little reason to play anything else. I mean, not that DH, Holo, or even Weaver's rotations are particularly difficult, but there's certainly a lot more to them (and room enough to separate the good players from the bad) than turning on your channeled ability, and auto attacking while pressing 2 off cooldown. Like if you thought people made fun of staff d/d or power bomb engi for being braindead, holy crap would power rev be a next level of easy mode.

I mean, you gotta hit a certain point where maybe you SHOULDN'T be able to be top dps by just auto attacking. If they really want to do some PvP/PvE balance splitting to make Power Rev viable in raids, I think it'd need to come from Sword OH skills and the utilities in Jalis/Glint/Shiro that never get used because they basically do nothing. Just some sort of change to make it into a real dps rotation that justifies being able to do 30k+. They started looking at this path a little when they buffed the dmg on Burst of Strength a while back, but I think they just sort of gave up/abandoned it to focus on PoF development.

Have you met any of Mesmers dps builds? I don't think it's too much to ask for 30k on our power build, considering it's arguably as complex or more so than mesmer which gets incredibly consistent high dps numbers even when played by not so great players.

[lunaeclipse.6843]

@Genesis.5169 said:Herald not viable for pve?When did this happen i was doing 100 cm last night on my herald.

Did i miss the news?When people talk about PvE viability, they're generally speaking from the a Raiding viewpoint. In terms of raiding, no herald is definitely, imo, not even viable since other classes do its job better, with much higher dps. Meaning that, by playing a power dps-Herald, people feel like they're carrying you since you can potentially being doing much more dps, with more useful utility on something different.

It is definitely viable in fractals and even in CM fractals since there aren't strict requirements like there are in raids (i'm aware this is subjective, but generally speaking raiding has a general higher level of difficulty and has actual dps requirements).

@LucianTheAngelic.7054 said:

@narcx.3570 said:

Have you met any of Mesmers dps builds? I don't think it's too much to ask for 30k on our power build, considering it's arguably as complex or more so than mesmer which gets incredibly consistent high dps numbers even when played by not so great players.

I don't exactly agree with the balancing of mirage. Getting 35k dps on a 4-button rotation is not ok imho for the reasons stated by the person you quoted.

[Akeno.4962]

@Vulf.3098 said:Even as a boon bot it is still worse than Chrono and Druid is way better at giving 25 might by a lot while also giving a lot of other things. The only way it will ever compete with chrono is if it gets high up time on both quickness and alacrity added to the build.

I think their idea was that a support renegade + support firebrand would replace druid + chrono at least in one group now that spirits are 10 people. The problem there is not the quickness or alacrity generation, is the lose in utility, damage buffs and maybe fury (can a support firebrand generate fury reliably? because a renegade can't). Support renegade doesn't have many ways to deal with mechanics druids are used to, and to keep alacrity in the group while you're out you must be spamming Natural Harmony. Meanwhile, support firebrand could do the job somehow by using hammer, but you'd lose quickness (the greatest party boon) and firebrand synergizes better with condi weapons.

The change to Inspiring Distortion is a step in the right direction if this is their goal, but it's definitely not enough.

[Vulf.3098]

@Akeno.4962 said:I think their idea was that a support renegade + support firebrand would replace druid + chrono at least in one group now that spirits are 10 people. The problem there is not the quickness or alacrity generation, is the lose in utility, damage buffs and maybe fury (can a support firebrand generate fury reliably? because a renegade can't). Support renegade doesn't have many ways to deal with mechanics druids are used to, and to keep alacrity in the group while you're out you must be spamming Natural Harmony. Meanwhile, support firebrand could do the job somehow by using hammer, but you'd lose quickness (the greatest party boon) and firebrand synergizes better with condi weapons.

The change to Inspiring Distortion is a step in the right direction if this is their goal, but it's definitely not enough.

We are talking about Herald not Renegade. A lot of what you said can be solved by making spirit boon not useless and Song of the Mist should get a minor rework and grant its effects to the sub group as well.

Herald has the potential to be a good tank in raids but currently there is no way it can compete with the buffs that chrono offers.

[narcx.3570]

@Vulf.3098 said:

Herald has the potential to be a good tank in raids but currently there is no way it can compete with the buffs that chrono offers.

If the Herald was the tank/healer and you had a Zerker/Harrier off Chrono for the Q/A, it'd probably be fine (you'd just be missing a second mobile healer for doing mechanics)... At least you wouldn't have to worry about your subgroup's Fury anymore, ha. Then again, Herald/Zerk Chrono certainly wouldn't be as much of a dps increase as having a tank/heal renegade and a quickness firebrand, so it kind of defeats the purpose of not just using double chrono/druid in the first place. But hey, working composition variety (sort of), yay, it's at least a good start.