Guild Wars 2

[IMPORTANT] Before we start, those of you that don’t know what rev skills do please take some time to look through them on this site: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vlAQBAA

I will discuss the majority of the stuff I tested( Sorry anyone looking for Venatri stuff here, didn’t have time since work). Also I didn’t test this in pve. The majority of the time spent testing was in wvw group fights, solo roaming in wvw, unranked, ranked pvp matches, and duels. I would also like to add I did not have enough time to fully test out condition Mallyx. I will do another nolife test next beta weekend for Ventari/Mallyx builds and pve stuff as a Revenant too.

Legendary Stances:

Shiro
You basically have to make every utility count and can’t make many mistakes. The closest thing I can compare it to is an S/D thief because of the mobility and evades. If you use the utilities wrongfully or spam Riposting Shadows and Phase Traversal then you can be killed very easily since your energy bar will die.

Enchanted Daggers- You have to stick to your target while using this to grab the healing or it can be negated very easily.

Phase Traversal- If you spam it to get to someone you will have to switch legends otherwise you will get destroyed since zero energy. Good to catch low health runners for a finish. Energy cost is fair for what we get and it will punish spammers heavily.

Jade Winds- A lot of revs could not use this skill effectively because to use elites on rev, you are required to have a good sense of energy management. If you miss this then you are forced to switch legends or waste your dodges. Very balanced for the trade offs.

Jalis
The costs of Jalis are high to prevent spamming and made me feel very uncomfortable. The buff to Vengeful Hammers was needed and they are in a great spot now. Jalis gives us access to a condi removal and stab along with % dmg decreases. It would be nice if Forced Engagement was 40 energy instead of 50 because 50 seems a bit too high for what it does. I really had to think hard before using it because you give up too much for what you’re getting.

Mallyx
Our big answer to condis. If you aren’t running Mallyx then you are going to have a very tough time dealing with conditions. Out of Mallyx we have one condition removal on the Jalis heal, one in traits, and one on staff 4. We lack condition removal really badly and it really reminds me of warrior 2012(war had laughable condi removal and wasn’t used at all for a good time period after release). Mallyx also has no stun breakers so you have to be really careful with your positioning. You have no answers to being stun spammed unless you have the stun breaker trait on legend switch.

Unyielding Anguish- A lot of people that I fought were astonished to find out that this skill doesn’t care for stability. I think it’s fine how it is because 35 energy is a big hit to the energy. You can still be hit and damaged really harshly by ranged pressure if you try to use it as a ’’safe’’ area.

Glint
The very needed stance to give Rev a fighting chance. Sure you can become a walking banner but your energy regen takes huge hits and limits you to thinking very very carefully on how you use your weapon skills.

Infuse Light- This skill needs a bigger activation animation. Nothing over the top but something good enough to give the enemy a valid tell so they don’t fully heal you since its an instant cast.

Facet of Darkness/Gaze of Darkness- Great skill but I think it’s cooldown should be moved to 25 seconds. The active is a stunbreaker/reveal/and a blind so it should honestly have a 25 second cooldown time to keep it in line.

Facet of Elements- Good skill idea and will be tough to add in to rotations when people realize what it does. A lot of players stood in it without knowing what it does and it can hurt. Also I received a lot of reports from people I fought that visual of the skill made them lag. Im not sure if its a real issue or the people were playing on potatoes but it should be looked into, just in case.

Facet of Strength/Burst of Strength- A fine skill that you have to be patient with for the might to get stacking. The active part is hard to hit but the payoff is worth it. Does some nice damage as well.

Facet of Chaos/Chaotic Release- The passive upkeep is nice but you give up energy regen so have to be really careful when to keep it running. The active has a very obvious skill animation and a long cast time. I only used this to knock someone away from ressing a player or the downed player themselves. Using it in a fight requires a bit of finesse. Also made many of the players I fought against experience lag so you could really ’’chill’’ them. Should be looked into if any issues that cause it to drop peoples fps.

Traits/Specializations
There are a lot of stale and bad grand master traits. A good number of the traits need to be moved around. The lines I didn’t discuss seemed fine to me. (Again sorry Ventari players I didn’t have time to test the spec line either)

Devastation- Assassin’s presence should be switched to master tier like every other party buff trait. Dismantle Fortifications seems a bit weak. We don’t have much CC, unless we give up things for it. So it should be changed up a bit. I don’t have many ideas for this other than removing it and replacing it with something better altogether so let me know your ideas.

Corruption- Replenishing Despair in the adept trait line seems very weak and the healing power scaling is slim. Pulsating Pestilence’s trigger chance is very low. I think it should be 20-25% at a 20 second cooldown.

Invocation- Has access to a condition removal which is very hard to come by as a Revenant. Also gain access to a stun breaker on legend switch which is another big weakness of Revenant. A very versatile specialization line that can be put into multiple builds which is really great.

Herald- The adept traits seem pretty bland unless you go for a support build(Which is why Herald was made, I know). I basically see Herald as a much needed line to ’’support’’ your other legend because it gives you access to Glint. Enhanced Bulwark seems pretty underwhelming for a grand master trait. It should either be reworked or removed because it only works with one trait line/legend that gives us access to our only stability on the class. Stability access from other players still make the ability seem weak for a grand master.

Weapons
Our weapon pool seems very small but its not too bad. Just hard to put together different builds.

Hammer- The evade gave the hammer a much needed missing component. It’s a great ranged weapon but as soon as the enemy closes the gap you either have to use a lot of energy to kite or switch weapons entirely. Drop the hammer seems to be bugged because it shows an extra animation of the hammer dropping right after the first. Coalescence of Ruin should be increased to 3 or 4 seconds because it can hit really hard at max range and each impact can hit 5 players separately if spread out enough.

(Elevation bug out Coalescence of Ruin very easily and a steeper elevation can cause Phase Smash to bug out as well)

Staff- Is in a pretty decent place but could be better if changes are made to the 2 and 4 skill. Punishing sweep’s cast time is really slow and the Debilitating slam is even slower. It’s really hard to interrupt any skill with the daze because of the 1 second cast time. Renewing wave needs an animation change to the banner 3 skill for warrior. As of now if you use renewing wave within a fight you can take brutal damage. It doesn’t give you what you give up by using it at the moment. Should really be able to use it on the move.

Sword- Precision strike is very hard to land. I’m not sure if its the weird animation or the projectile but it misses a lot. Duelist’s prepartion/Shackling Wave costs 20 energy all together if both parts are used which is fine but the issue is the shackling wave is very hard to land since 300 range. Grasping Shadow needs a little jump to help it land better because it can be missed pretty easily. Grasping Shadow also bugged out a lot and did not pull my target with to me.

Unrelenting Assault- is great now but I think the cooldown should be increased to 15 seconds so it can’t be used too often. It’s damage dies if you hit more than one player with it but you can use it defensively/to build up might. It can be countered really easily because if you use it on a thief or a mesmer then they can take you with them to their team. So you have to be really careful when using it. It can also be dodged while its being casted to avoid a lot of the damage. It can be interrupted and stopped very easily because of the 3/4 cast time.

(Can still randomly teleport you around if used near a wall or gate in WvW. Not sure of pvp)

Shield- Envoy is pretty good with nice healing and protection. Crystal Hibernation is pretty neat but bugged as many have said. One cripple and you get stunned. Also I think the tooltip should let you know that you will be stunned if the defiance bar is taken out(to help new players)

Axe- Frigid Blitz hits pretty hard and shadow steps you. Helps out a lot to stick to targets if you aren’t running Shiro. It’s cooldown should be increased to 15 seconds because of its utility. Temporal Rift is a bit hard to land because the big red rift is very obvious so it could use a little bigger pull width or a smaller pause before pulling.

Mace- Has 3 different conditions and 2 sources of torment on its own. Echoing Eruption is a bit hard to hit because of that leap forward before the attack is applied. It mostly seems to be just used to stack the might or hit a target that cant move. Can miss really easily at range.

[Class Issues]
It felt a bit underwhelming at some points playing as a Revenant. Our intended issue that we can’t deal with too well(conditions) is pretty evil to fight against. Our access to condi removal is very spread out and we have to use either sigil of generosity, purity, or cleansing. I was running Shiro/Glint and was using staff along with shield. You can manage some what with conditions with that but outside of mallyx you will have a tough time. Shiro has 0 access to condi removal unless you give up options(food/runes/sigil/invocation trait).

We also don’t handle CC spam outside of the retribution spec line or Jalis. Do note however you have access to stun breakers on Shiro, Jalis, and Glint but use very carefully and manage energy efficiently or you can get trained really easily.

Over All
The Class is super super SUPER FUN! Besides its issues and bugs the class is really active and rewards you very well if you can manage your energy. The combo potential Revenant has make it very entertaining. I really enjoyed keeping a track of my cooldowns and energy. I really love the super active aspect of the class because the momentum it keeps is all in your control. You have to think a lot and use every skill wisely. Fighting against players that knew what the Revenant was capable of was a lot of fun(aside of some of the negatives that affect certain areas of the class)

Thank you Roy for the amazing experience. I truly hope the class doesn’t get butchered because its something really fresh for Gw2 and has made the game very interesting. Its equally fun to fight against one as any one of the previous classes.

Nice write up, revenant seems like a pretty interesting class to play.

I agree with pretty much everything here. I am unsure about if Revenant needs more condi removal. It could use a little more, perhaps in the Ventari line to make it more worthwhile to build with. Also if Ventari utilities were easier to use, and required less micromanagement there could be more condi cleanse potential. Overall though I like that there is a big weakness a Revenant needs to consider when fighting.

For Jalis legend I think that the elite should provide stability for the duration. And instead of pulsing stability on Inspiring Reinforcement, it should provide immunity to incoming movement impairing conditions (immob/chill/cripple).

Nice write up! I disagree on a few points though, primarily being I don’t think we need ANY increase in recharge timers if weapons are to continue costing Energy. The Energy costs ARE what balance out their otherwise generously low cooldowns. For example, there were MANY times I felt the staff 5’s cool down was artificially too high given its Energy cost, and it messed up the flow of my combat significantly.

Additionally, I’d really love to explore some changes with the upkeep of Facet of Chaos. I never once found a situation in which I could justify keeping it going for just the Protection, in any of my builds. I think reducing it to -4 upkeep OR adding a small 2 seconds of Resistance per pulse and keeping it -5 could certainly make it a very valuable upkeep, particularly to give our allies some repreive from conditions even if we cannot cure them.

This would be AMAZING for support Ventari/Glint Heralds, as you could shelter your allies from conditions long enough to switch to Ventari to get your cleanses working.

I feel this would be a great compromise for keeping Revenant’s highly restricted on their condi management, as maintaining -5 upkeep with Chaos would be a huuuuuge opportunity cost to temporally ignore conditions.

I’ve discussed this before in my GM trait discussion thread and I disagree with you about Pulsating pestilence. It should only trigger at a condition threshold of 3 or more conditions and then have a 100% chance to trigger at or above that threshold. It’s cooldown can be slightly raised accordingly to 20 seconds or so, but that’s the only way to make this trait GM worthy and reliable. Right now it triggers when you have none or few conditions on you, rendering it a tad useless.

For dismantle fortifications I think it should let one CC ability go through all stacks of stability (but wouldn’t strip the stability) every 45 seconds. That way it’d be useful against skills like armor of earth where you really won’t be able to spend 5 CCs to go through 10 stacks in the span of 5 seconds.

UA is our main burst skill for pve. It should NOT have an increased cd, it should not be nerfed in damage and it needs the evade. There were plenty of suggestions in the other thread on how to change it so people can dodge it once and those suggestions do not affect pve.

And hammer 2? That animation is so obvious I find it hard to believe people are actually getting hit by this. Though I would be ok with a small increase to the cd.

Swiftwynd.1685:

Nice write up! I disagree on a few points though, primarily being I don’t think we need ANY increase in recharge timers if weapons are to continue costing Energy. The Energy costs ARE what balance out their otherwise generously low cooldowns. For example, there were MANY times I felt the staff 5’s cool down was artificially too high given its Energy cost, and it messed up the flow of my combat significantly.

Additionally, I’d really love to explore some changes with the upkeep of Facet of Chaos. I never once found a situation in which I could justify keeping it going for just the Protection, in any of my builds. I think reducing it to -4 upkeep OR adding a small 2 seconds of Resistance per pulse and keeping it -5 could certainly make it a very valuable upkeep, particularly to give our allies some repreive from conditions even if we cannot cure them.

This would be AMAZING for support Ventari/Glint Heralds, as you could shelter your allies from conditions long enough to switch to Ventari to get your cleanses working.

I feel this would be a great compromise for keeping Revenant’s highly restricted on their condi management, as maintaining -5 upkeep with Chaos would be a huuuuuge opportunity cost to temporally ignore conditions.

I agree with you. I don’t think the cooldown of Coalescence of Ruin needs increased at all for sure. I found myself being restricted in its use use to the energy cost fairly often to keep me from over using it. Not counting the terrain issues with the attacking cutting off early, in PvP players would often step out of the attacks path at long range. So much so that I found myself wondering it I should aim it without a target more often when at extreme range. This skill as a skillshot ability could be rather fun. You would hear no complaints from me.

I would be rather sad if the cooldown on Coalescence of Ruin was increased though. It made for very fun game play and was my favorite thing about the Hammer, which was without a doubt, my favorite weapon of the Revenant. The balance of energy cost often restricting use with lower damage in close and slow travel speed with clear animations for avoidance at long range make for a amazingly balanced skill.

I feel like the Facet of Chaos is to expensive for what it does. In a group with another Herald I could see it getting some use but as is I feel it is not an option otherwise in most cases. I don’t think I really used it at all. Turning it on means using nothing else. Trying to stack it using facet of nature while attacking is just to much. A -3 cost with the current effect and it would see fairly regular use, -4 and it would at least leave you room to cast Coalescence of Ruin every 5 seconds or so without running dry in short order.

p.s. Thanks Roy and his team. The Revenant was more fun then I could of guessed. I see many happy hours in my future.

I played mostly glint, the only things I could really say need changing is the activation/consuming timing.

I thought it was instant cast, instant consume but it seemed a little sluggish when you go for the consume immediately after.

One problem that they have made better but still needs work is with sword #3 when the enemy is next to the wall or object. Before it would just cancel the skill, now it usually finishes, but still sometimes on single enemy it stops halfway and leaves you in next to the wall/corner, sometimes with a very awkward viewing angle.

I only tried it once but dwarf vengeful hammers still appears to auto cancel next walls or solid objects. I suspect its detecting a physical collision and cancels the skill to prevent it, much like how warrior greatsword throw disappears when its thrown into a wall. But this is a continuous effect skill, being only useable in open area’s seems very limiting.

@nearlight- I was just brainstorming but yours sounds better and actually seems like what a GM trait should be like. As for Dismantle Fortifications it could be ’’too’’ good to use with Jade Winds.

@xarallei- That suggestion was more for pvp than wvw/pve because in pvp you can use it too often. For pve its fine as is but I think it could use a dmg booster for pve ONLY. The hammer 2 suggestion was mostly for wvw because you can hit really kitten grouped up players. In PvP its fine as is since the area of fighting tends to be small and you can only use it at a select few spaces for the longest range damage.

@Saint Jabberwocky- I agree about Facet of Chaos. I rarely used it and only used that to activate Release. You have to give up your energy regen to keep it going which hinders Revenant very much. At -4 seems good because then you can regen some energy while still applying protection.

Also, I almost forgot how buggy Coalescence of Ruin is at an elevation and same with Phase Smash. You can’t use both of these if you are on a wall or a bit high set of stairs. So added those along the hammer feedback just to keep things organized >.>

I would be perfectly ok with them splitting the skill in pve and pvp and then tweaking it in pvp only….but I’m doubting they will do that. That is definitely one of the better choices, but I can’t help but think it’s the least likely to happen.

And also, Axe 4’s cooldown should stay the same becuase its a condi build’s only way to chase down fleeing targets and close gaps. Without its low cooldown, condi Revenants will be kited forever, which is noticeable since condi revenant is probably the most-melee centric condition spec in the game. It needs that gap close to use its tools effectively.

Yeah, I think having a higher CD on UA isn’t a good direction. I’d rather see no change to it now considering how that once it is learned is easy to counter/avoid/take advantage of, even with the evade on it.

If there had to be a change, than a damage redistribution to the last hit would be a better fix. Got to remember that Revenant is already weak on a couple things, such as conditions, and the evade on UA is very much needed.

@nearlight- Oh alright I guess I’m being too harsh on it because I didn’t get enough time to fully test it out with a full condition build.

@Lonewolf Kai- It’s mostly a pvp only type of fix since it can be used so often along with our other evade and our dodges. In wvw/pve it seems fine but in pvp its up way too often.
I think it needs some type of minor damage increase for hitting more targets. Like 1-3% for every new target hit for pve/wvw only.