Zaret.1450

im happy then, you should look through the key configuration options too, theres plenty things there too that can be helpfull

mmm first shortbow on engi is new we just got its skills shown for the first time and it doesnt change any other shortbow skill, secondly i agree that they should nerf the projectile blocks/reflects , but it doesnt mean they cant add a weapon with aoe skills, meaning, ground target skills come in diferent ways, guardian staff has the 2 and 3 that are a mark and a blast , ground targeted but you still need to "aim" to where the enemy is or will be, necro staff on the other side is more of a trap , you leave the traps in the way the enemy will take or you can put them at their feet and it works just fine, i can understand you disliking virtuoso change , i didnt read much into it but i think it was a change they did for a reason, of course youre in your right to dislike it but i think it was a matter of performance (if you can clarify for me id be gratefull^^) Now for what we have seen there are several things id like to point out of shortbow on engi, first would be that unlike necro all the skills have sinergy, meaning if you spread them wisely or stack them they will amplify and detonate each other, they also have the suport component wich seems to be the main point of it, also they have kind of a "timer" in wich they detonate alone even if untouched and you can also detonate at will, while leaving an aoe on the floor might not seem interesting nor high iq play think about the positioning of the arrows the sequence of detonating , and that being also a suport this kind of gameplay is at the very least more engaging and strategic than mantra spamming or other more simple aoe heals/buffs, they also introduced other long range weapons like pistols that will probably suffer from reflects/blocks. Finaly we have 3 game modes in the game, and even if i for one never play pvp, i can understand that there are people that like it and if they are given a weapon that shines there, while maybe not awesome on pve or wvw , well i might not like it but i wont hate it, so far, except maybe ele pistol , i think most of the new weapons are interesting , lets just wait a couple of weeks and see .

the problem is , it is not because you adapt badly or anything, its just that just firebrands have 2 great projectile reflects, while also having shield 5 for projectile block, then tempest have magnetic aura, and thats just 2 classes of the 9 there are in the game, with just those 2 you can have perma projectile inmunity in any good scuad, also there is no real problem in a new weapon being like this shortbow, some will like it , some not, it will have its uses if its not awfull and its different enought from necros staff, whether you like it or not the weapon looks promising and timing things sounds entertaining for some.

that option is at the same time good and not so good, if the target moves youre leaving your skills behind him when you vould leave them in their paths , also those options have been there for quite some time so...XD

The answer is simple in fact, in pve it doesnt make much of a difference but for wvw where projectile blocks and reflects are abundant, ground targeted aoe skills like necro staff or the new engi shortbow means you can play with them without being bothered by those block/reflects. Think that in a wvw scuad with 4-5 guardians (moreso if theyre suport firebrands) were talking about an almost permanent projectile block where only necro staff, wells and other grould targeted aoe skills can actualy be usefull , either that or a melee train.

The biggest problem of rev mecanic is that it works only as a limit, you can play around it, optimize and do great, but it is not rewarding, necro shroud transforms you in a literal beast, an oh kitten run away till hes out of it, warrior charges adrenaline and then makes a huge blow, you can fail but its not that punishing, as for thief its cd initiative split gives it sooo much freedom, you can drain your initiative for dmg and still have skills of your choosing, or be out of cd but still manage to fight with your weapons. rev instead is locked on energy management, plus weapon management, and legend management, wich means many limits and no real reward for it, in jalis/shiro combo, jalis can tank and heal, even do a bit of dmg, but wont be able to flee or burst someone, and if you swap youre again on 50 energy on shiro, with skills that drsin from 25 to 50 , an awfull heal and you can flee or do dmg but youre out of energy in 2 seconds and cant swap for another 5 , energy needs a more rewarding sistem i think.

Ok my take in this would be that weapon skills are cd based, and then energy is used for legend skills, why? theres a couple reasons. As we are now with cd and energy mixed it might be okay, usable, but this way means problems with both playing and balancing, revenant should be one of the classes with more skills abaliable, with more tools for each ocasion, but in reality most utility skills are usually locked behind the legend swap and the huge energy costs, of course this is probably meant for strategic playing and thinking, but in the end it penalizes more than it helps , compared to other classes managing energy is much more tiring and punishing, and swaping legends doesnt mean youre better as your other legend might be a bad kit for the moment, of course weapons do not consume that much energy, but as you use it on every skill it becomes a constant drain of energy that being serious is completely unnecesary, 5-10 energy drain is just like a mosquitoe, incredibly bothersome , moreso in bad moments . Also having both mecanics fused together means balancing is also worse, if we have a skill too strong you can increase the drain, but then that added to the cd means now its too weak for the use it has. Instead having weapons on cd and legends on energy is better in my opinion, of course you could have cd on skills like jalis road for example, that are very good, but most leyend skills already have a cost of 20-40 energy and we start at 50, even at top we wouldnt be able to spam and if we could just putting a 2 sec cd or increasing that skill energy cost would sufice. Also if the devs were to get crazy they could implement another mecanic to drain energy , like using an f3 button to overcharge mist energy on one weapon skill/leyend skill more drain but interesting effects or altogether create a mist manipulation skillset wich we can substitute any legend skill with, meaning we could have 2 mist skills, and 3 leyend skills, and the swap only affects the leyend slots, its maybe too close to any other classes but its just ideas. In the end the mecanic must be both a limit and a reward to the class, and energy as of now isnt enought rewarding and too limiting with cd combined, dividing them would be a good first step to a better energy mecanic sistem.

what i meant is that it is too bothersome for everything it has, unleashing and leashing for dmg, cc and to manage the dmg/defense boons is good, but mixing the mirage ambush and a shroud together just makes it bothersome, and the only excuse for ambushes is hammer identity, we could do without the timed ambushes, just making them permanent with the traits being the ones with cd, its just less bothersome to keep track and manage and you still need to be as skilled to leash unleash and fit the cc and dmg rotation

For me the biggest problem is that unleashed works both as a kind of holoforge/shroud and as a replacer for mirage dodge, on one side internal cooldowns, buffs and hammer skills look similar to how a shrowd work, on the other ambushes, that are temporary skills, wich have their own traits icd etc, that makes it very bothersome to manage, not realy extra dificult but bothersome, because you need to unleash for dmg, but maybe for boon strip too, or now for quickness, but maybe you need to defend so you leash or leash for cc and then you just end spamming the button going crazy, for me id get rid of ambushes, i know anet doesnt want to for keeping "hammer identity" but seriously that identity is just messing things up, moreso now that all weapons will be usable, that is also gonna be one hell of a mess, but back to untamed, just make the 2 skill of ecah weapon set an unleashed skill, you unleash you have it, permanent, like hammer, then tie the boon rip and quickness traits to them with an icd and quickness with a weapon swap reset as it has now, now we just need to unleash once and we have the strip, dmg and quickness in an accesible button that wont go anywere, and we can manage better going in doing our neede stuff, going out, or swaping weapons for the quick, and the skill isnt lost, we can just see its cd and manage that. for hammer? just add it to hammer 2 and were good, you still have to manage things to go in and out unleash but its not a perma spam with unreliable ambushes. Also PETS please make pets share boons with the untamed as a pasive or get a 5% buff in all stats whilr unleashed or something, those skills are far from usefull in wvw where pets are just dead bodies moving around, and in pve pets should be more helpfull too for a dps option, for pvp just make it a 2% increase and ready

or they could just make ambushes unleashed skills, like hammer, one leashed version and when unleashed your weapon set 2 skill changes to the ambush permanently, with a decent cooldown, taking into acount that this skills have boon rip/corrupt, plus the unleashed dmg buff and a bigger aoe on most cases you can make them hit a bit less on single target and it would still be worth, the actual ambushes are too clunky and bothersome to manage

Untamed could work with a couple of changes. First its ambushes, i suppose everyone knows that it can be traited to boonrip, if instead of being awfull ambush shills they were actually well done they would work better, just replace skill2 of the weapon, excluding hammer, with the ambush skill, all ambushes have a decently better aoe compared to most skill2 of the weapons, they can be a bit weaker and the unleash bonus + boon rip would balance it out, will it be better than reaper, mesmer or spellbreaker? probably not but at least it would be a stable source of boon rip because now its quite bothersome. Make pets better, look they dont need to be a nuke, but make wvw pets have more health pool, on zerg fights they get deleted, and on 1v1 or small scale youre not gonna be focusing the pet and let the ranger make you a porcupine, more health, and unleashed pet getting a 5% incoming dmg reduction, with that pets become less useless, now make pets share your boons AND stealth with a trait in beastmastery, a passive in some skill or something, that way you make pets dont bother the zerg. With just that untamed could work, boon rip, pets that are actualy usable for bubbles, corrupts and arent a huge hindrance, and ranger actualy has decent dmg on melee, hammer and gs are good there, and lb5 is allwais good for sieges, meta? nope, but usable yes.

another option would be to leave the trait as is now, 3 seconds in all game modes would be a good option. But as you said ranger lacks a bit on things to make use of the trait out of spirits and dps rotations. For me traps could be reworked a bit, changing them a bit would help if you wanted to make a build similar to dh, ambush attacks are great, but need more consistency making them replace the 2 weapon skill, with the option of reducing its cd with ff, we could get a reliable boon corrupt, this small changes could make ff be more appealing no?

Gs3 it has good dmg but unless you are in range for the teleport the movement skill only goes half way, also it is a lost oportunity of giving vindicator an aoe pull wich would work well with its skill set and give some needed cc. Jade wind is a pretty bad elite skill for what rev could be, it recently got a dmg increase but there are better ways of changing/implementing the skill, at least making it become a ground targeted ranged skill, even with short range, could make it more worth that much energy drain. On shiro both movement skills, theyre good, but if you look at willbender now.... theyre like the beta version of willbender skills, maybe some tipe of follow up or fusing them and getting a new skill would be good. Out of that i dont know what id change

ccan solo them and, to tell the truth, i think many people find drm boring, the archievements of doing them a ton made many people, me included, get burnt out with them

Man you went from possibly the most complex overall class, to one of the most braindead elite specs in the game, the robot does 50% of your job in any build and while kits at first are a bit messy its possible to work with them fairly easy when you have the bot around, mesmer on the other side... chrono and time split, mirage with dodges, ufff, virtu is easyer i still see it more complex than mec by a big margin