Guild Wars 2

Hi all,
here’s my feedback on a power build rev in open world PvE only.

I went with full Assassin gear and sigil of percepton.
I felt better around 70% crit chance, with 100% under fury.

Traits

Devastation Line
Overall feels almost ok.
Switf Termination is the only GM worth taking and Malicious Reprisal seems completely useless, other than that it’s ok.
I like the focus on ferocity and I initially thought that it would a perfect kind of group support for an offensive revenant (+ferocity for all, and fury from the Invocation line maybe?).
But right now it’s too isolated and the 150 given by Assassin’s Presence alone it’s simply not enough. It needs some utility skill (shiro seems an obvious choice here) helping.

Invocation Line
This seems to be our fury and energy management line.
But right now neither of them are working like they should.
Fury
The GM trait is great and the fury duration on the other traits seems good too.
But they are too situational.
I’m seriously hoping not to be stunned every 10 seconds and also not to be healing every 20 sec.
Incensed Response would be good if made trigger of legend swap and the only way I see Fierce Infusion working as it is now it’s to lower the shiro heal cooldown to 20 sec (to be on par with the trait and be used on cooldown. Still doesn’t feel like an optimal solution).
It would be also great to have a trait to share our fury with others (600 radius?).
Energy Management
To me these traits seems to be intended to give us some bonus if we manage our energy with care and take action at the right time.
Want healing? Stay over 50 energy. Want damage? Stay below 50.
The problem it’s we don’t have that kind of control in combat. We either have +5 pipes, -5 pipes or -3 pipes. We don’t have a way to keep energy stable at one point.
The only thing we can do it’s to use only AA to stay over 50.
There are also only 3 traits like these and their bonus are too low to really care.
Wouldn’t it be better to give us some traits that lower the cost of upkeep skills or give us more max energy?

Corruption Line
I’m talking about this line in a power oriented build, so I’ll try to leave out the pure condition oriented traits.
What it’s left is some torment on crtis (it’s more “free” damage so it’s always good), boon removal or more damage under condition and Maniacal Persistece.
Seems good enough.

Retribution Line
Some help to survive a little longer, but doesn’t feels too much like an offensive line so I’ll leave it like that.

Weapons

Sword Main Hand
#1, AA chain:
Could use some more DPS (it’s our top DPS), but overall feels good.
#2, Precision Strike:
I’m a little lost here, I missed something.
What’s exactly the moment where this skill shine?
Low damage, a mere second of chill (the skill has a little aftercast too), low range on a melee set.
I simply never use it.
#3, Unrelenting Assault:
Everyone and their mother already said that this skill need an evade.
And I guess I would also like a 600 range instead of 450.
Range and might, seems intended as an opener to me.
Evade and 600 range would make it just right.

Sword Offhand
I’ll leave this out because I didn’t used it much (the bug on the block, its most useful skill, would give it an unfair valutation).

Axe
It felt like the sword perfect companion with its teleport and a CC.
I would be totally fine leaving it like this.

Hammer
The damage buff really made a difference. In the portal beta it felt sooo slow and weak.

#1, Hammer Bolt:
I think it’s ok like this.

#2, Coalescence of Riun:
Also good like this. Great after axe #5.

#3, Phase Smash:
Ok, but seriously, we need it to have an evade.
It doesn’t make sense to use it as a range skill only to be hit by melee damage and condition AoE anyway. It roots us too…

#4, Field of the Mist:
A second more in duration would help, but it’s ok anyway.
Also useful for a really small healing thanks to the dark field and projectiles.

#5, Drop the Hammer:
It’s really too slow, even in PvE. I feel like crying just thinking of using it PvP. :P

Staff
The buff helped, i love it. Seems our best option for melee AoE.

#1, AA Chain:
Feels good enough.

#2, Punishing Sweep:
It’s good.
But i think it needs to change in Debilitating Slam even if the enemy isn’t using a skill.
It may be ok in PvP, but some monster in PvE tend to attack with fast animation in a very low frequency. And, more importantly, often in a melee AoE we won’t be able to see enemies animations with particle effects and the like.

#3, Warding Rift:
The tooltip needs to be more clear.
It block all attacks? Only ranged?
Other than that it’s ok.

#4, Renewing Wave:
Maybe could use a little buff in healing and a slightly faster animation.

#5, Surge of the Mists:
I love it.
Sometimes some smaller enemy ends up a little behind of our char final position or get knocked on the side, don’t know if it’s intended.

Legends

Shiro
The heal it’s too weak and its internal cooldown make it even more difficult to use.
Utility #7 costs too much.
Utility #8 would be better of as a blink, giving us some mobility.
Utility #9 it’s tricky to adjust, could use some kind of condi removal to be more similar to its GW1 counterpart but I guess it’s ok.
The Elite is ok.

Jalis
I only use it for the heal and condition removal.
The other skills need a lot of work to be viable.

Mallyx
Embrace the Darkness gives a good boost, but that’s mostly it.

General impressions and Bugs

1) I’m going to be annoying, I know.
We have energy costs on skills and traits written as a simple number.
It doesn’t really make much sense (and could be potentially confusing) to have our energy pool written in percentual.
Like: I have 100% energy and this skills cost 50, how much energy % will I have left if I use it?
We all know it’s 50, but it could be confusing to someone (new players and the like).

2) Some skills like sword #3 or axe #4 sometimes make us end up giving our back to the enemy. The char stays there without attacking if I don’t use a skill, even if I was using the AA before.

3) The almost mandatory shiro camping needs to be looked at.
We only use sword AA to recover energy, then Impossible Odds until we can and back to AA. We don’t have anything as good. And often it feels like we don’t have anything else useful at all.

4) Generally speaking, we are in a awkward place right now. We don’t offer good enough DPS (I’m not a math guy so please tell me if it’s not like this) and we don’t offer any kind of unique support.
And the other kinds of support we have it’s done better by others.
I tried to give some ideas with ferocity and fury, we also have some projectile block and some damage mitigation.
Whatever we end up with, we need to be better at it.
I also feel a little too fragile, but I guess that’s amplified by the shiro heal problem.

5) Ooc mobility was said to be looked at (swiftness) so I won’t say anything about it.

6) We all seems to agree on what our most important problems are, and that makes me feel better.

7) All in all we are a lot better than we were on the portal beta. The class in fun to play and I really like it.
I’m confident it’s gonna be even better in BWE2.