Guild Wars 2

…no weapon swapping?

Obviously we’re still seeing an incomplete version of the class and nothing is really set in stone at this point, but based on the class as presented in this test, for the purpose of this test, we can still reasonably give feedback on our experiences.

I have my own feelings on the matter, but I’m curious to see what other people think, and what arguments you’ll come up with.

Also, is it too soon for us to have an actual Revenant board at this point?

It would be nice if Revenant could have is own board. Very…very nice. I tried mine and even with the few weapons i could use i enjoyed it without weapon swap. The two things we could use felt very nice(despite there not being alot of conditions to take advantage of Mallyx).

Besides ele and eng, all classes have 10 weapon skills and 5 utilities at any giving time, rev will have 5 weapon skills and 10 utilities, so I think it is justified.

I think so long as you can create a build to suit your weapon of choice it will be fine. At present I found hammer very weak when fighting mobs with Mordrem Menders in them. That said, I did have a lot of fun with it and it is capable in most situations. I think with the right gear (I do not think Celestial was right for hammer) I think it could be a good weapon.

The legend swapping provided you with enough options to compensate for no weapon swap imo, so I think it will be ok.

When I tried Revenant it had fun mechanics but I found the class itself boring. It is very restrictive with its utilities tied to the stances. It means that everybody who runs a revenant will eventually end up gravitating to the best stances and weapons and be exactly the same. There will be no ability to tweak utilities.

With that said they haven’t let us use every weapon available to the Revenant yet and haven’t really given us any of the good stances. We have a so-so condi stance which as we know isn’t good and a so-so support stance. Plus Revenants feel very underpowered right now because they are forcing celestial gear on us.

I haven’t been invited to beta, so I haven’t played Rev yet. Only having two legends also makes it hard to judge.

I can, say, though, that while I really enjoy my elementalist (the character on which I have the most world completion and play hours) there are times where I still wish I could weapon swap. While having 4 sets of skills for each weapon does create a nice toolbox, it ultimately doesn’t give me the opportunity to change up how I approach a fight in mid combat. While I can cycle through healing on water, defense in earth, damage and cc in air, and damage and might fields in fire, I’m ultimately locked down to a single play style until I can get out of combat.

No matter the element, with daggers I’m zooming around up close and personal, on staff I’m hanging back and dropping AoEs.

On every other profession, I have the option of building for versatility. Even on Engineer, kits make up for the lack of swap. I can skirmish with rifle, get in close dropping bombs, then fall way back to lob grenades and kite. It feels so much more dynamic.

So looking at Revenant without any experience, I keep thinking I’m going to feel locked down and wish I had weapon swap.

In addition, from what I’ve seen, weapons seem so tied in to a particular legend. So you can swap legends? But doesn’t that just mean that on one legend your weapon of choice is built with great synergy, and swapping to the other legend gives you new utilities and fresh cooldowns, but at the expense of being in the ‘wrong weapon’ for the legend?

Under the current state and after having my own gameplay experience with them from yesterdays Beta, I personally say:

Absolutely NO.
However, knowing, that the current thign that was playable yesaterday isn’t by far the whole thing, its obvious that under the current situation this owuld be the answer.
Once HoT is out and we will be able to play finalyl the full product in its final form and after having tseen the first few follow up class balance changes, which definetely will be required after addign the Revenants and the full bunch of E-Specs, then we will see further.

Chances are, that under the final product, it is alot more and better justified that this class will have no weapon swap.
We had so far only 2 out of 5 stances playable.
We had only for 1 single day the opportunity to test out just 2 weapon sets and by far not all their builds, nor had we the option to test out all of their Trait Options out under our own personal settings with out own chosen equipment stats, upgrades ect.
only 3 of 5 Core Specs are so far designed, 2 fully unkown ones with completely unknown Core Specs..

Then theres their own yet completely unknown E-Spec, which will change the whole gameplay of the Revs significantly somehow (by maybe removign the stances and givign it therefor weapon swaps, who knows)

Fact is just only, the Revenent so far is a way to unfinished classes to clearly say, if that decision of no weapon swaps is justified or not. Its just simply not justified, if Anet suddenly woudl try to sell us that current version as “final” product, what would be just laughable at this case then.

Honestly, if there isn’t some selection in utility skills for the Revenant (which I’m not saying there will or will not be, ANet last said it could still go either way), I don’t even think I’m going to even give the class a chance.

As things appear to be now, with an unalterable set of utilities, elite, and healing, one set of unalterable weapon skills, and each legend pertaining to a specific trait tree, that basically gives you a whopping four build choices concerning your skill bar.

Choices 1 and 2: You choose your two legends, which pretty much requires that you take the two trait trees that pertain to them since so many of the traits are shown to be locked to a ‘legendary stance’, as it is put in the trait tips themselves.
Choice 3: Choose your final trait tree
Choice 4: Choose your weapon or weapon set

And, excluding the minutia of trait choices, that is pretty much it, lets compare that to the standard classes.

Choice 1-5: Your utility, healing, and elite skills.
Choice 6 and 7: Your two weapon sets
Choice 8, 9, and 10: Your three trait trees, in which there are generally selections which are not locked to any particular weapon, utilities, or in the case of the revenant, stances.

Not even half the choices of the standard classes. The revenant class honestly looks like it is going to beat out the elementalist in low build diversity, and the elementalist has basically run nothing viable save variations on one sustain/amp bunker build for the last two and a half years. Having less build diversity than them is practically having none at all.