Guild Wars 2

So, I want to level a Soldier profession. It’s a toss up between Guardian or waiting for the Revenant. I’m not an altaholic, so I only like committing to two classes max. The thought of doing map completion more than twice just makes me >.<.

To those that have played the beta (or stress test), do you think the Revenant is worth the wait or should I go ahead and level a Guardian?

The revenant isn’t complete or finished, it could severely change by the time it’s released, no one can answer your question the way you want it to be answered.

It could, but I highly doubt they would completely redesign the class this late in the game. Aside tweaks to numbers and such. Maybe I should rephrase my question.

As of right now, how would you say the Revenant holds up against the other Soldier professions?

Depends on where and how you play.

Are you PvE? PvP? Wuv?

What’s your other profession? How do you run it? Do you do a lot of group content or are you a solo artist? Do you dungeon?

I could compare the two-fifths of the Revenant we know about now to the Guardian, but first of all that’s comparing two-fifths of the Rev to the entire Guardian, and I’m also only really able to do that from a PvE standpoint so if you don’t PvE then I’m useless to you. Need more context before you can get the answers you want, man.

There’s also the fact that there will be Specializations available to each and we do not know what those will be. Since a spec will be something you can freely toggle in and out of (when not in combat), it could be that the added flavor of the spec will be the deciding factor.

DevilLordLaser

I’m a PvE’er. I do solo, group content, and dungeons. Right now my main is a Necro (don’t laugh at me). I run a few builds on my Necro depending on what I’m doing. Even though I’m not as useful as other classes in dungeons, I try lol. But anyway, that’s my aim. All around PvE content.

Here’s the honest truth.

Revenant. Its a very simple psychological reason. Revenant will be new enough to make the leveling process as fresh as possible, and if you wait or ignore the opportunity, you won’t gain the same satisfaction as playing a class you have very little knowledge about. Its sort of the “new game” effect. If you want it to be really enjoyable, just level the revenant. Better yet, maybe even don’t try to learn TOO much about the class before you play it.

That said, if you can’t handle frequent updates or you just really like to play it safe, play a guardian, but the satisfaction will not match because chances are it’s too “common” to you at this point.

Just my thoughts on it. Good luck either way! d(‘-’d)

Final little note: There will be a lot of revenants, if you’re one of those that can’t stand playing what everyone else is playing… Maybe not revenant, though there are a lot of guardians now, too.

Watch a few videos on how the Revenant looks and try to get a feel for it’s playstyle. Then make a guardian and take it to sPvP and play it in competitive arenas to get a feel for it’s playstyle. If you like the guardian, stick with it. If you like both, well you will likely get another character slot when you buy the expansion.

I have 5 guardians on my account (two 80s) and I don’t regret it one bit .

The revenant is conceptually cool, has appealing FX, and its class lead is the same guy who defended the somewhat noticeably over performing Warrior class from the rest of the Balance Team for years, so you can expect Revenants will be the new “golden child”/“just a bit too strong and get away with it” profession.

Honestly I’d wait to decide until we know more about what they are doing to update (all) the old profession with the new tech they’ve developed and learn what the specializations actually do. Then pick a class to commit to deeply.

There’s just not enough cards showing yet to make that important of a decision in haste.

Guards are fun, though slow. The revenant, first off there is no release date on that yet, second, its a completely different idea than guard. While its melee its ranged melee.

Given the revenants abilities though, Im thinking that specializations are going to bring a whole new idea to the game that will bring other classes up to it.

We have no where near the info we need to say anything about it. We know only some of the Revenant abilities and nothing about the Guardian or Revenant specializations. Any info we give right now is based on personal biases and not actual solid information.

In it’s current state with Revenant being unfinished and not knowing the Guardian changes and specialization, Guardian still offers a lot more defensive utility and support. Revenants seem more like a dealing damage and supporting to sustain your own damage kind of thing. Revenants have some powerful and unique supportive quirks but it’s not the same class and one can’t replace the other. Guardian still seems much stronger in terms of defensive group support. However I’m expecting Revenants to be more offensive oriented once finished. Bit of a mix between Guardian and Warrior if anything, a little bit of both but not able to replace either.

Thanks for the replies guys, I’ll take a look at a few videos on youtube but you’re all right. Would be best to just wait a bit for more info. Which, by the way, do any of you know when the next info dump will be?

I’ve read your previous posts and I know how you feel about this, but the best advice I can give you is just starting a Guardian and playing it for a bit. There is nothing to lose and you can always start a Revenant when it’s released.

After looking at videos and reading up on the skills Guardian always seemed really boring to me. Then I started one in-game as a joke and ended up playing it exclusively for several months. You won’t know whether you’ll like it or not unless you try it.

A “soldier” type? Why not just warrior, then?

From what I saw so far revenant is horrible profession and should be nuked from orbit but we only saw half of it so maybe other half is better.

By the way even if you are not altaholic i would recommend using all your character slots if you still not doing it. Extra bag slots and node miners are always useful.

Play whatever you want. Thing with revenant is that he can switch between 2 playstyles in combat and has no cd on utilities which means adapting to x situation at will as long you control your energy properly.

Jalis = Guard, direct dmg tank
Mallyx = Necro, condi dmg tank
Shiro = Thief, burst
Glint and Ventari no idea.

I think there are a few things that we can say will be distinct:

First, revenants will have less build choices than other professions. This comes from only having one weapon set and all of the back half of your bar being set by your legend. You’ll be able to tweak a little through traits (and even that seems like it might be more restrictive, as traitlines may require having a certain legend available to use: screenshots have suggested that revs might only get access to three at once) but basically most of your build will be set by three decisions: weaponset, legend 1, legend 2. Depending on just how many weaponsets and legends revenants get, I could see this feeling very restrictive if you like tinkering with builds.

On the other hand, with skills being energy-based, you’ll have a bit more choice in combat – instead of being restricted by cooldowns, you can choose to fire off a particular skill multiple times and another skill never, and thus you have more scope for two people with essentially the same build to still play in very different ways.

Another consideration is that revenants probably will play very different to everything else, again because of the energy mechanic. Lets face it, guardians can feel a bit like a kind of hybrid warrior/mesmer/ele – not saying this is a bad thing, as it’s a feel you’re not going to get from any of those professions individually and the guardian lacks features that are integrally linked to mesmers and elementalists, but there are times when playing a guardian and playing some other profession can feel like you’re doing much the same thing. That’s probably not going to happen with the revenant – the only thing that’s even close to the energy mechanic is the thief, and I highly doubt that the revenant is going to feel much like one of those.

And as Bovan says, it’s hard to tell if you’ll enjoy something until you try it. I was pretty much uninterested in thief until, well, I tried it, and then it climbed quite a bit higher on my list of preferences than things I expected to enjoy more.

(Incidentally, ronpierce: The impression I get is that the OP hasn’t played all the professions, and thus any profession they haven’t played will be just as new to them as the revenant, apart from as noted in my third point above.)