Guild Wars 2

I understand everything’s still a work in process and the exact mechanics haven’t been ‘set in stone’, including the total legend pool, but from what we’ve seen of the Revenant so far there’s a problematic potential of extreme staleness.

• Your weapon determines your playstyle significantly more so than your utilities. Engi and Ele are balanced by a plethora of utility through kits, conjures and attunements providing a whole new skill-set per one. As a revenant you will be forced into melee or ranged. Whilst this may help balance for PvP it takes out both flexibility and customisation.

• Legends and their skills will always have a meta for game modes. Jalis for example is probably staple for sustain and Mallyx for condition play in PvP. For dungeons/fracs the most effective DPS and support ones will be meta. Unless the legend pool ends up being vast with interesting alternatives for each type of encounter this will stagnate. It would in my opinion be much easier to just allow use weapon swap, rather than create legends that try to make up for being forced into one weapon play style.

• Without an alternative weapon set you lose a lot of synergy a long with the customisation to your play style. Ele and Engi are great examples of this as they can stack a lot of might, vulnerability and burst by using combos and swapping between what they have. Without having alternative choices via kits/conjures/attunements there’s huge pressure to make a single set be as viable as what other classes have. I’m all for asymmetry but that’s what the class mechanics are for and it doesn’t make sense to forsake one of GW2’s best mechanics. If the legends affected how your weapon plays too then I can see it working, however not in the current state we’ve seen.

Notes: I’m aware it’s still fairly early and many things are subject to change, I just wanted to give my opinion on what turns me off the Revenant and what would make me interested. I like the energy and legend mechanic for example, but I don’t think sacrificing a whole weapon set just because the other 2 armour tiers have a profession with this feature translates well to it.

Why not wait until seeing the complete class before making such a suggestion?

By the way I’m seeing, Revs won’t be as stale as you are imagining.

Look at it this way, we’ll have at least 4 Legends to pick (I’m assuming 1 legend per trait line and the 5th trait line will be a generic one) and besides the 3 weapons we’ve seen we know they also have sword main hand and staff and very likely dagger off hand.

Resuming revs will have at least 13 Legends combinations (4 legends x 3 possible 2nd legend in your bar) so it will also be 13 sets of 5 utility skills besides a good range of weapon combinations.

Look at the current class builds, sure there are more combinations among most of the classes, but also there are tons of semi-useless skills that no one uses so in the end it all evens out.

but the difference is that utilities of revenant don’t have cooldown as other utilities have, so you can’t judge them the same way… also if you don’t like the concept, just don’t play the class, I’m sure there will be many players who like it

Tanky Legend
Condition Legend
Support Legend
Range Legend
Melee DPS legend

5 legends to come

Knighthonor.4061:

5 legends to come

Source?

Knighthonor.4061:

Tanky Legend
Condition Legend
Support Legend
Range Legend
Melee DPS legend

5 legends to come

I suspect it will actually be someting like:

Condition legend (weapons: mace/axe, trait stats: precision + condition damage)
Tank legend (weapon: hammer, trait stats: toughness + healing power)
Support legend (weapon: staff, trait stats: vitality + boon duration)
Damage legend (weapons: sword/dagger, trait stats: power + condition duration)

Diovid.9506:

I suspect it will actually be someting like:

Condition legend (weapons: mace/axe, trait stats: precision + condition damage)
Tank legend (weapon: hammer, trait stats: toughness + healing power)
Support legend (weapon: staff, trait stats: vitality + boon duration)
Damage legend (weapons: sword/dagger, trait stats: power + condition duration)

I also think this will be the case, not really sure about the traits, but legend and weapon yes.

Probably some variations may exist and be good, like a sword/axe Damage/Condition build.

you will also pick 2 legends, so the weapon choice wont be that strict imo as you will always be a “dual-spec”

Belzebu.3912:

I also think this will be the case, not really sure about the traits, but legend and weapon yes.

Well, since we already know the stats that correspond to the ‘tanky’ trait line and the ‘condition’ trait line, it was a matter of looking at which stats were left.

Probably some variations may exist and be good, like a sword/axe Damage/Condition build.

Oh yes I surely hope so. I hope builds won’t be as restricted as x weapon = x legend = x trait line but that we have good reasons to mix and match weapons, legends and traits.

Diovid.9506:

Knighthonor.4061:

Tanky Legend
Condition Legend
Support Legend
Range Legend
Melee DPS legend

5 legends to come

I suspect it will actually be someting like:

Condition legend (weapons: mace/axe, trait stats: precision + condition damage)
Tank legend (weapon: hammer, trait stats: toughness + healing power)
Support legend (weapon: staff, trait stats: vitality + boon duration)
Damage legend (weapons: sword/dagger, trait stats: power + condition duration)

i suspect 4 legends myself too, since everyone has 4 heals atm, 20 utilities and 3 elites,
i guess 1 heal 5 utils 1 elite each legend (it would require 1 extra elite for each other class to balance that out tho)

ihmo the spec will introduce another legend and/or tweak around the legend mechanic

i repeat, is my opinion but is solid common sense

Diovid.9506:

Knighthonor.4061:

Tanky Legend
Condition Legend
Support Legend
Range Legend
Melee DPS legend

5 legends to come

I suspect it will actually be someting like:

Condition legend (weapons: mace/axe, trait stats: precision + condition damage)
Tank legend (weapon: hammer, trait stats: toughness + healing power)
Support legend (weapon: staff, trait stats: vitality + boon duration)
Damage legend (weapons: sword/dagger, trait stats: power + condition duration)

Axe is more of a utility weapon, and while it offers a chill and torment on pull it also has a nice power damage on 4. Cele/Siniter going to be strong with that one

Hammer has nothing to do with being a tanky weapon, it seems to be really a hard hitting dps weapon, like ranger lb but aoe focused.

There wont be such thing as support legend either cause if we take a look at Mallyx and Jalis both offers teamgroup support actually;

Jalis;
-group damage reduction, aoe stunbreak <?
-group stability
-taunt to hold aggro for a moment (pvp thing)
-and they also talked in one of the interviews about one to call rune from the sky to create a safe zone for allies that they dindt showed us in demo. No idea what that" safe zone" supposed to mean as it can be basically anything.

Mallyx;
-group condition cleaning
-boonstrip

We might as well call Jalis as support legend based on that. But even then he still has offensive ability with hammers spinning around you and again – taunt, a cc. Which leads to the point that every legend will have some sort of support and dps.

Example of Jalis also proves that each legend will have access to 4 utilities which means 5 legends 4 utility per legend = 20 utility skills. Also every class has 5 different utility types with 4 skills so it fits

And personally i dont like swap mechanic and i hope revenant wont have access to it – at this point they also have to make stronger weapon skills to compensate for lack of wep swap and both hammer and mace seems to actually doing that. I wont be surpised if hammer become first or second stronger ranged weapon in the game.

sign – want them to swap weapons.

many times in this game you have to face a foe from the distance and sometimes melee so you should be able to choose an switch while in combat.

raubvogel.5071:

sign – want them to swap weapons.

many times in this game you have to face a foe from the distance and sometimes melee so you should be able to choose an switch while in combat.

Its depends on profession. Guard can stay melee all day long. Also considering the high damage of hammer i doubt he will need to swap. Just carry weapons and based on encounter change them accordingly

I can not speak for engineers, but when talking about range versus melee, an elementalist has to make a choice there when selecting a weapon for an encounter. On a specific weapon, all attunements have skills at similar range. The only utility that really allows mixing melee and range up is lightning hammer, that allows an elementalist using a long-ranged weapon like scepter or staff to switch to melee. When running dagger mainhand, there is little you can do without entering melee range, although dagger melee has more reach than most other melee weapons on other classes., ranged utilities alone will not suffice. In the end, you will have to learn to play the class to the point that you can deal with most situations using all weapons, or at least which weapons is versatile enough to carry when you don’t know what you will be facing.
All in all, given these drawback I do not feel I am missing out on my elementalist, so I feel Anet is capable of giving a class enough options when it lacks a weapon swap.

Also, be careful with your comparisons of revenants with elementalists and engineers. These may sometimes have access to more skills, but remember the revenant has very low cooldowns (as opposed to elementalists’ individual skills), instead relying on the energy mechanic to present users with a system based on opportunity cost.
I think synergy between traits and builds will have a lot to do with the class mechanics, as they do in most other classes.

All in all, I think it is too early to fear, I believe the potential for an interesting class is there even without weapon swap. It just depends on how the class turns out in the end.

thefantasticg.3984:

Why not wait until seeing the complete class before making such a suggestion?

This.

OP, you are telling the developers, who have designed and built this class from the ground up, what you think might be a problem with it. Do you really think they haven’t thought of this?

Don’t forget Revenants will also be getting a specialization in the same manner the existing ones will. So, it may very well involve the ability to weapon swap in the specialization as it seems that it may be changing up the class mechanic on at least some of (if not all) the professions.

The way I see it in the gameplay, you have 2 Legends you can swap from in battle(probably out of a pool of maybe 20 legends.) that swaps your utilities and your elite skill, which in fact don’t have a cool down, basically works like energy or initiative. And from the weapon set we were given in the gameplay, they were melee weapons that had half ranged skills, half melee skills. And the trailer also shows staff being used for melee. I think we are all set with this class not having weapon swap.

For normal professions, yes. Weapons determine your playstyle moreso than utilities, because utilities are often on a long(er) cooldown timer. Well, except for kit Engineer, they can sometimes get by without ever using their normal weapon at all.

For Revenant, with their energy-based skill use over a cooldown system, I’m not sure that’ll be the case at all. Weapons will still be important, but there’s a very real possibility that there be a much higher focus on utilities and legend swapping compared to any other class (other than, again Kit Engineer). Revenants may actually be able to spam certain utilities, energy cost permitting.

The combination of a weapon swap and 8 utilities (between both legends) which can be used much more often than your average class may very well be too powerful, to the point where they’ve decided to remove the weapon swap in order to allow that greater focus on legends and utilities without making it broken.

There’s also the fact that Revenants can ALSO spam their weapon skills more often than normal classes as well (again due to the energy and lower / no cooldown mechanic), so there’s less need for a weapon swap from that standpoint as well. Where many professions besides Thief need to be constantly weapon swapping for maximum damage due to long cooldowns on high-damage skills, Revenant will be able to use their high damage skills on their single weapon without worrying about that.

Yes, its going to be somewhat restrictive in situations where you’re in an encounter and find that you need a melee weapon but are using a ranged one at the time or vice versa. But no more restrictive than other professions which already have to deal with that, like Elementalist and Engineer.

I’m really hoping for eight legends. Two per trait line, so we can have some real customization. At that level I don’t even care about the limits on utilities, there should be plenty to choose from. Then you just have to come us with reasonable combinations with your weapons.

raubvogel.5071:

sign – want them to swap weapons.

many times in this game you have to face a foe from the distance and sometimes melee so you should be able to choose an switch while in combat.

Like elementalists can? Oh wait..

I’m really hoping for eight legends. Two per trait line, so we can have some real customization. At that level I don’t even care about the limits on utilities, there should be plenty to choose from. Then you just have to come us with reasonable combinations with your weapons.

Not going to happen. A dev said that the amount of healing skills, utility skills and elite skills of current professions gives an indication of the number of legends. So 4 or 5 seems to be the ‘realistic’ estimate.

Revenant’s utility skills feel like what you’d usually expect from weapon skills (AKA, much more interesting and playful than other profession’s utility skills). So I’d say the Revenant uses about 3 weapon sets, instead of the common 2 weapon sets + 1 filler, high cooldown set.

Aretak.3826:

Engi and Ele are balanced by…

Engi and Ele are what now?

The Engi had no builds for the entire first year and a half the game was out, until the developers just handed them one after another on a silver platter. And now every build they have is a binary overpowered or underpowered depending on their situation and opponent. And the Ele has been in two states since launch, either having one completely dominant build that tears the game balance a new one, or having no builds whatsoever.

There are no two classes, in any game I know of, which the developers have had a harder time balancing. The Engineer and Ele are likely the exact reason why the Revenant is not getting an extra five skills from weapon swap, they are avoiding the future headaches that come with them.

Aretak.3826:

I understand everything’s still a work in process and the exact mechanics haven’t been ‘set in stone’, including the total legend pool, but from what we’ve seen of the Revenant so far there’s a problematic potential of extreme staleness.

• Your weapon determines your playstyle significantly more so than your utilities. Engi and Ele are balanced by a plethora of utility through kits, conjures and attunements providing a whole new skill-set per one. As a revenant you will be forced into melee or ranged. Whilst this may help balance for PvP it takes out both flexibility and customisation.

• Legends and their skills will always have a meta for game modes. Jalis for example is probably staple for sustain and Mallyx for condition play in PvP. For dungeons/fracs the most effective DPS and support ones will be meta. Unless the legend pool ends up being vast with interesting alternatives for each type of encounter this will stagnate. It would in my opinion be much easier to just allow use weapon swap, rather than create legends that try to make up for being forced into one weapon play style.

• Without an alternative weapon set you lose a lot of synergy a long with the customisation to your play style. Ele and Engi are great examples of this as they can stack a lot of might, vulnerability and burst by using combos and swapping between what they have. Without having alternative choices via kits/conjures/attunements there’s huge pressure to make a single set be as viable as what other classes have. I’m all for asymmetry but that’s what the class mechanics are for and it doesn’t make sense to forsake one of GW2’s best mechanics. If the legends affected how your weapon plays too then I can see it working, however not in the current state we’ve seen.

Notes: I’m aware it’s still fairly early and many things are subject to change, I just wanted to give my opinion on what turns me off the Revenant and what would make me interested. I like the energy and legend mechanic for example, but I don’t think sacrificing a whole weapon set just because the other 2 armour tiers have a profession with this feature translates well to it.

I was gonna go ahead and give this a whole itemized reply, but really one size fits all in this case. “We don’t know that yet”
We have seen exactly two out of we have no idea how many legends, we don’t know how many utilities per legend or how many weapons and we’re missing about a third of the traits. Even then we don’t know what the other legends do, for all you know there could be one that gives you weapon swapping, or you could have a billion utilities spread across all your legends.
You are putting the cart before the horse making judgments before we’ve even seen the entire class. Btw, eles and engies don’t have weapon swap and all they get are conjured weapons and kits. Rev has utilities they can swap out at will (two legends at a time they can swap between as i understand it) and a set of utilities that cost resources as opposed to having a CD…. Hell i’d gladly trade in weapon swapping on my necro if, let’s say, well of suffering had no CD and costed life force or i could hop into lich form at will for a channeled lf cost…

Andred.1087:

thefantasticg.3984:

Why not wait until seeing the complete class before making such a suggestion?

This.

OP, you are telling the developers, who have designed and built this class from the ground up, what you think might be a problem with it. Do you really think they haven’t thought of this?

Isnt that the point of betas? So people can tell developers about things they may have missed or didnt think about?

Knighthonor.4061:

Andred.1087:

thefantasticg.3984:

Why not wait until seeing the complete class before making such a suggestion?

This.

OP, you are telling the developers, who have designed and built this class from the ground up, what you think might be a problem with it. Do you really think they haven’t thought of this?

Isnt that the point of betas? So people can tell developers about things they may have missed or didnt think about?

But we haven’t actually beta tested anything yet. At most, a few people have played a demo.

Once there has been a full beta and people have played with the class for a good period of time, and if it still seems overly restrictive after that, THEN you make a thread like this.

Nope if engis can’t have it neither can Revs.

Knighthonor.4061:

Andred.1087:

thefantasticg.3984:

Why not wait until seeing the complete class before making such a suggestion?

This.

OP, you are telling the developers, who have designed and built this class from the ground up, what you think might be a problem with it. Do you really think they haven’t thought of this?

Isnt that the point of betas? So people can tell developers about things they may have missed or didnt think about?

Yeah, but Beta isn’t out yet.