Chaos.7614

A trait to benefit greatswords would be great to have, in addition to these new balance changes.

I don't see any way they could make a vindicator one dodge work - the entire game is balanced around players having active mitigation ready at a moment's notice with two dodges. It's even more poor design that they force us to use it for DPS (Leviathan Strength, Death Drop) when the damage could've been baked into other things instead. They ought to just have 0.75s death drops to replace our dodges at 50 endurance each and give us our regular endurance bar.

Yes, the problem with the jump is that there's only 1 and it's being used for DPS instead of active damage mitigation. If you read the rest of my post, you'd see that those changes I outlined would give the vindicator two dodge damage jumps with no incentive to jump purely for a DPS increase - it'd just be a cherry on top of regular dodging.

TLDR: Make Vindicator more offensive. Ditch the two-for-the-price-of-one Alliance Skills and make them one. Remove the 1 dodge mechanic and stop introducing problems that you create with it. Overall, the Vindicator feels unrefined with a mix of ideas that don't work. Anet, stop trying to shoehorn support into a profession that's had two specs more than capable of supporting in group content! It feels like almost no feedback except the legend skill swap on use was received and integrated. If it were up to me, I'd completely ditch two sets of legend skills and work on combining the Luxon/Kurzick legend skills with a selfish focus. Starting in order: Profession Mechanic: Energy Meld should be instant cast. Cost and endurance regained is fine. It breaks the flow of a rotation to use it. Alliance Tactics should be removed (see changes below as to why). The endurance bar should be reverted to a two-dodge bar costing 50 endurance each. The normal dodge would be replaced by the same drop animation we have (but faster/instant) and deal damage. Giving two dodges ensures that we can still use them for defense and not just boosting DPS. Weapon skills: 1 - Fine. 2 - Change the animation please. Maybe make it cast a bit faster, but not too much wrong here. 3 - Fine, but change the tooltip or update the range to match the tooltip. 4 - Fine. 5 - Change the animation please. Legend Skills: Going to combine them all here and leave out any exact numbers since the concept is more important. Remove Selfish Spirit/Selfless Spirit and replace with Twin Spirit Healing: Heal yourself and heal yourself based on a percentage of damage dealt to enemies (similar to Litany of Wrath). Remove Nomad's Advance/Battle Dance and replace with Archemorus's Rage (-6 upkeep): Store energy until you release this skill and deal damage for every interval (0.5s) you stored. Gain +20% damage while active. Instant cast. Remove Scavenger Burst/Tree Song and replace with St. Viktor's Blessing: Gain protection, regeneration, and vigor. Short duration channel. Remove Reaver's Rage/Awakening and replace with Battle Meditation: Break stun and grant yourself stability and aegis. Instant cast. Remove Spear of Archemorus/Urn of Saint Viktor and replace with Empowered Legendary Spear: Aim your cursor to throw a spear in a line. Enemies struck are inflicted with vulnerability and dealt massive damage. The trail of the spear leaves behind a trail that grants might and fury to yourself and allies. Short cast time, piercing. Traits: If it's fine, no change. Greatsword Proficiency: Fine. Tenacious Ruin: Fine, but as said before it needs to be changed back to 50 endurance dodges for a total of two. Leviathan Strength: Gain +100 power and an extra +15% damage while a greatsword is equipped. Amnesty of Shing Jea: Fine. Redemptor's Sermon: Change to only heal yourself but more healing. Balance in Discord: Energy Meld now grants health when used. Reaver's Curse: Dodges now leave behind a damage over time AoE. Angsiyan's Trust: Increased effect of vigor on yourself. Song of Arboreum: Dodges now leave behind a healing AoE. Empire Divided --> Empire United: Gain an extra +150 stat boost based on your other legend when the Legendary Alliance stance is also selected (ferocity for Shiro, boon duration for Ventari, power for Mallyx, and vitality for Jalis). Forerunner of Death: Damage dealt by dodges is increased massively. Remove damage buff for dodging. Vassals of the Empire: Dodging inflicts slightly increased damage and extends boon duration on yourself. Saint of zu Heltzer: Dodging deals less damage and heals yourself. Gain vigor, aegis, and protection on dodge. These changes should give the Vindicator the extra DPS it needs to be competitive with other top content power DPS, remove the awful situation of wasting dodges for DPS increase, and provide more options for the player to choose from.

One second, let me just call up ArenaNet so I can get the release date moved to accommodate your preferences. You want me to have them give you all 16 sets of the new gen 3 legendaries while I'm at it?

Overall, much better than beta 2 when we were first able to play the vindicator. My thoughts are PvE-oriented (endgame content) just before I give my 2 cents. Greatsword: People have already commented on the visuals, which is minor IMO. It'd be nice to patch them up if possible but a lower priority. Change GS2 to have a quicker cast time to get into a better rotation please. Please also fix the hitbox for GS1/GS2 and the range for GS3, which was mentioned earlier in the thread. New dodge: Actually not bad now. However, I think tying it to a damage increase through a trait is a poor decision. Will expand on it below. Spec mechanic: Thanks for separating energy meld from alliance tactics. I think these can be improved further by having no cast time and by having alliance tactics TEMPORARILY swap the utility skills while on the alliance legend. The grandmaster traits should determine which side of alliance is the default and alliance tactics should allow for a temporary swap to the other side to use their skills, and it'd swap back to the default after a certain time (5 seconds or so?). Can adjust numbers on cast time/energy accordingly to make this mechanic smoother, since this would allow players to play the way they want to while also allowing use of the other legend when needed. Utilities: I'd really like to have an upkeep on Archemorus to help with energy management or integrate into the rotation since every other legend has one. The Archemorus elite should have an upkeep and deal damage proportionate to the time it's been activated (release upkeep to cast, either manually or on legend swap). Remove the torment from Archemorus elite and increase the base damage/scaling as needed with this upkeep change too. No comment on the Viktor side of things since I see this spec as more a pDPS, and that's how I plan on playing it since Renegade and Herald are both supportive. Traits: Masters are too weak or trying to fix a problem introduced by the reduction of two dodges to one. Grandmasters should be re-tuned a bit. Overall, power DPS should be taking 1-1-1, support players should be taking 3-3-3, and those who are going for utility in some form will be taking the 2nd trait in any of the lines. Tenacious Ruin: No change. Leviathan Strength: Moved this to Balance in Discord. Change it to "grant +7% damage while under the effects of vigor". Amnesty of Shing Jea: No change Redemptor's Sermon: Never used this since it's Kurzick and not my cup of tea, but no change I suppose. Does seem weak. Balance in Discord: Too weak, change to "deal 10% increased damage while your endurance is full AND take 10% reduced damage while your endurance is not full". Reaver's Curse: Change to "gain 5 endurance for each target hit by your auto attacks". Angisyan's Trust: Change to the old Song of Arboreum ("Grant vigor to yourself and nearby allies after dodging. Vigor has an increased effect on you."). Song of Arboreum: Change to "improve healing power by 10% while under the effects of vigor". Only changed this because the old Song of Arboreum is more of a utility trait. Empire Divided: Move the stat bonus to the major grandmasters. Rename it to "Empire United" and give it "Double the stat bonuses given by the major grandmaster trait for 10 seconds if you use both a Luxon and Kurzick skill within 5 seconds". Forerunner of Death: Same dodge mechanic. Changes default loadout to Luxon skills. Add +200 power. Vassals of the Empire: Same dodge mechanic. Default loadout is Luxon. Add +100 power/+100 healing power. Saint of zu Heltzer: Same dodge mechanic. Changes default loadout to Kurzick skills. Add +200 healing power. Overall, these changes should improve the QoL for vindicators and encourage specializing into one of the two Alliance skill loadouts for primary use but also swapping for the stat bonus increase and depending on the situation. Numbers can change of course.

Any chance we could get the Vermilion Blaze Greatsword back into the BL statuette rotation before EoD releases? Planning on using it on my Vindicator!

They're talking about armor instead of runes, but this isn't a very good idea imo because scholar runes exist; the damage bonus would have to be even less than 5% since it's easier to be >50% HP than >90%.

What mode? It's going to be situational regardless - wait until tomorrow and even until release to see what the damage numbers are and if they do any tweaks for CC.

It's at least playable now. These changes are a step in the right direction, and they still have about 3 months until launch to polish up after this beta and adjust numbers.

If they rework the class to remove the support aspect and go all in on pDPS as it really needs to be: 1. Power 2. Ferocity 3. Power 4. Ferocity 5. Power 6. 10% increased power; deal 10% increased damage after swapping legends.

Lots of good discussion already here but here's a few bullets that concisely explain what I think would make Vindicator better from a PvE perspective: o Make Alliance Tactics an F3 to manually switch between Archemorus/Viktor and remove the swap over skills on use. o Remove cast time on Alliance Tactics, Energy Meld, and rebalance or remove the energy cost for Energy Meld. o Fix bugs with gs skills, improve the damage, and general polish. o Allow players to press V again to complete the dodge early. o Remove most of the support from Viktor and remake those skills to more of a self-enhancement (e.g. upkeep skill with increased damage). Both Viktor and Archemorus should be power DPS oriented, with Archemorus being more of an outward manifestation (like the spear elite doing damage) and Viktor with self-buffs. If we wanted to play support, we can always play Herald or Renegade. o Improve the numbers on underperforming skills like Archemorus elite. o Rework traits to focus less on dodging and more on power damage. I hope most of these at least make it through with a rebalance of the other specs. Vindicator should be our power DPS, Renegade our condition DPS/alacrity provider, and Herald our general support. Benching barely 30k with Jalis/Shiro is disappointing.

Probably not, but I think the issue is more the damage modifiers in the traitline. There's a lot more emphasis on dodging augmentation than increasing damage. At least one trait with a +% damage while under the effects of vigor/not full endurance would be nice. Balance in Discord seems very weak, even for a minor. No idea what the coefficients are on the dodge attack but it needs to be decent to offset the downtime.

Togo/scepter/rit fanboys on suicide watch

Why would they want to buff pDPS for the clear support-oriented spec when they can make a pure pDPS spec that rev mains have been asking for after the release of renegade? Seems clear to me that if they acknowledge that renegade has no power option for harder PvE content that they're releasing a pDPS spec for EoD.