Guild Wars 2

So this is my thoughts over Glint and the shield after a day of playing the second BWE.

Glint:
Facet of Nature – This was bugged for most of yesterday, but when we did get it back up, I found I was using the facet whenever I switched legends to Shiro or Ventari or Jalis depending on what I was doing to get the boons to last longer then would terminate it once I was in Glint again because it consumed too much energy with the other facets active.

Facet of Light – Soooo much fun to play with this heal skill. It is a challenging one to us making it hard to stay up with Shiro as your second legend, but I adore the challenge. I found during the wyvren fight I would have the facet active, but low on health and use it before running into the fire fields. The moment I was in one I was back up to max health and could dodge out or even just run out after I got the timing down. Or I could use the heal and stand where I knew an enemy would hit me to get back up to max health instead of being one shot. The timing is kitten this so I did end up going down a lot, but I liked that a lot about the heal so would rather not see it changed.

Facet of Darkness – The Gaze of Darkness I find okayish, but I use more just to cut the fury short than anything else and without runes of rage it’s harder to test what I was most excited about this facet with. But it does do what was promised and it is interesting to use to try and get blindness on the enemy targets. 74% crit with valkyrie armor without food. Pretty good and the reason to just leave the facet active when running around in PvE

Facet of Elements – Swiftness, I managed to get the swiftness to stack to 44s once without trying too hard. I love having some speed buff on the slow toon and this has improved the rev (herald) a lot. Element Blast, oh my god, I love this aoe. I’ve not tried in a condi build mainly because I have no more armor sets I can use for one, but the raw damage out put is amazing by itself even in Valkyrie armor! I love just throwing the blast down when I enter combat then using skill 3 on the sword. So much fun to see all those numbers flying up.

Facet of Strength – It is funny when you have more than one herald with this facet on. 25 stacks of might easy in open world content without grouping up just because of the outgoing boon share. With runes of strength this is even more amazing (which i was running in place of rage runes). I found because of how easy it was to keep might on my toon I would activate it to get the might then when I hit around 20 stacks I would hit Burst of Strength for the damage and vulnerability. Damage is all right on the facet and it is nice to have it with Elemental Burst.

Facet of Chaos – painful to use this facet. It drains energy too quickly and has more use as just staying active in tanky build along with the Facet of Light (which together causes negative energy drain). I was using it more for Chaotic Release which needs a little boost to the damage for the energy cost and cool down for just activating the facet, but that might just be me. Comparing it to Jade Winds, it’s not as good cc wise but it does have a higher damage base that I wasn’t feeling at all when I moved between Glint and Shiro.

Shield:
Envoy of Exuberance – Love the heal on this especially when running a Ventari/ Glint heal spec. The only problem I had with it was hitting targets because people kept running away from me during events when they were really low on health… which defeated the purpose of playing a heal spec in the first place. I was chasing them around more than I was participating in the event. But that’s not a problem with the skill just people XD

Crystal Hibernation – Err, yeah, this skill needs something done to it. It hurts a lot more than helps even in PvE content. I avoided using the skill after the first few attempts resulted in death to near death. It’s not worth it to use the skill and means that I also avoid taking the trait in the trait line which places you into the stance.

I haven’t tested to see if the traits are activating yet, but I do know Hardening Persistence works. And think that Shared Empowerment is well which is why I kept getting more and more might on me even without the Facet of Strength active. I’ve not checked Elder’s Force yet. Bolster Fortifications was working fine from what I could tell when playing the heal spec.

Hopes:
Ventari/ Glint will have use in raids at this point. It’s useless in open world content if it means I spend more time chasing people than to heal them than helping in the event and end up with a silver in every event because of it. It was the most dissatisfying experience I’ve had so far. I want to play this spec. As someone who mained a healer in both WoW and TOR, I find I enjoy seeing the massive green numbers over the damage numbers more than anything else. I like sharing boons and bolstering my allies and to know I get hurt more because I want to play this way makes me shy away from it to play dps again.

Thoughts:
Glint/ Jalis – You can still deal a lot of damage running these two as your legends simply because of the output on Glint alone. Jalis’s Vengeful Hammers still deal dps and when I was having a hard time staying alive I would switch out Shiro for Jalis simply because Vengeful Hammers had more overall and longer sustained damage than the burst damage on Jade Winds. Coupled with Soothing Stone it was easier to deal that damage and heal up then switch back to Glint for more more damage. I was bursting down enemies faster than if I went into Shiro: used Jade Winds, Enchanted Daggers, and then hit Unrelenting Assault for the burst dps that gave all without dying because of the heal on Jalis as well as having access to Rite of the Great Dwarf… Only deterrent from running it this way for damage right now is One with Nature gets cut short unless you are paying very close attention to energy.

Anyway, that’s my thoughts over everything I’ve tested so far. The event has been a blast to run

Underwater combat for the revenant seems to be missing quite a bit for the , dragon stance, ventari stance, and the dwarf stance. All the utility skills, elite skill, and heal skill seem to be all there for the assassin stance and demon stance, well except for one utility skill which is a ground target skill.
I am also not sure if downed skills have been added yet or been forgotten, all I could do was swim to the surface and bandage myself or attempt to.
Underwater combat for the revenant seems to be very, very limited right now and I hope it will be addressed for next beta because not being able to heal myself or have all my utility and elite skills locked out is frustrating.

Playing with the spear was a fun experience and can’t wait for the revenant to be fine tuned when expansion hits

I didn’t touch underwater because they only gave use those two stances and no downed state. I tried it once, but the review is over what I have done the most with the rev this weekend. I am thinking that underwater is still incomplete. I am hoping it gets finished before BWE3 but we’ll see what happens. We might even get a second underwater weapon (here’s to hoping). Still underwater is very much incomplete thus if I do review it, it will be over what we do have. Like I said only tried it once and found it hampering because I was forced to stay in assassin stance so I didn’t have to keep switch legends out above water…

With Infuse Light…..who says running into the fire is a bad thing

leftyboy.9358:

With Infuse Light…..who says running into the fire is a bad thing

The best part is popping infused light, getting 8+ stacks, then swapping to mallyx in PvP n_n

It would be sweet if we could get an AoE Ring for the “Facet of Elements” active skill, otherwise I am happy with the Revenant as it is, haven´t found any working build for Ventari yet though.

after spending some time testing new and “old” stuff at pve and some fractals i’d say revenant looks finally on a got spot, but still need some changes.

dps seems competiteve now whitout deeper researches, maybe someone got some math to proove.

glint is maybe a bit too “must have”, also the might buff is too low as a party support.
for yourself its ok due you got other might acces, but as support its still to way behind ps-wars. I’d like to see it give 2 stacks of might with unchanged length.
finally the elite facet is too expensive. when you want to use your weapon active, you cant realy use more than this facet before next legend swap. I’d say reduce it to 3sec, so with facet of nature you end up at +-0 energy. (other classes can provide 100%protection too, so i dont see why to make it that expensive, maybe if it provides quickness or alcatry^^).

max number facets /other exclusions
dunno if its a bug, but even if you want to spent all you energy for a short all boon-buff, you cant.
Also facet of nature disables skills like impossible odds. Yes, 50% more quickness is maybe a bit to nice to have, but stopping one of you best support skills for 10 sec burst/what ever you want else, is a bit to hard. Also odds will cont more energy, due to facet costs…
min change i’d like to see here would be, that casting odds, would auto-cast fon’,s active to stop it… this extra delay just feels crippling…

ventari
tablet at pve is ok, but when going to fractals, where position and movement are important as well as projectile-protection, it is just to slow and for that too expensive…
first when setting up tablet it should have ground targeting. waiting 3 sec to set it up and move(additional energy cost) untill you can use it is jsut to slow.
The movement together with shield is to expensive. It just destroys projectiles, it dont reflect, so it should have some more uptime. Also it’s way to slow, i noticed at grawl fractal, where you need to reposition due to op firestorms^^. Either make it have a larger range or fast and “free” movement.

Energy
There is still a kind of imbalance in there. You can use your utility, or weapon skills most of the time(even with legend switch on cd).
Maybe auto-attacks should restore some energy and weapon skills costs should be lowered in a way, that you can spent you 50 energy on utility and with one aa chain you got enough energy to use one or two other weapon skill or one more utility / .5sec longer consuming skills.
Or just seperate them, so you got attack and support energy.

How some of you guys have energy problems? With glint it’s pretty easy to manage energy, more than shiro/mally, mallyx,jailis, shiro/jailis. The decrease points really help to manage energy, i just’ve out of energy 3 times in more than 10h. But it’s clear than, when i’m running mallyx, the utilities are very expensive. Moreover energy is an energy ressource for managing, you can’t really spam with revenant and i love that, you can be out of energy if you don’t manage and be forced to autoattack or legend swapping. I really love that. Otherwise i found glint is really a much have (maybe a little too but it’s the case of all elite specs after all), for combat or pve in general (facet of elements i love you) or pvp for manage your energy, you really can adapt for support or offensive and that’s why i love herald when i’m hating support or healing profession in general.

Edit: Really, revenant steal my heart. I’ve been three years switching mains, switching classes but i just can’t found a class that i really love. Revenant is this class long awaited. My ritualist luxon can be back!

i “prestack” speed/fury+facet of nature, for running parts, and switch to might+nature when i reach 1min. at fight i stack might+nature+fury if needed, use unwielming assault for extra might, having ~40 energy left with no reg to use, which so far is ok, i can even mix in additional facets. next is swap to shiro, activate one with nature to be able to use impossible odds. the next 8 sec i can only wait for legend cd and then start using facets again for 10 sec. here got bout 40 energy to spend like before. Then going back to shiro use odds.
facets can be switched defensive or offensive mode(protection or might+fury)
odds can be switched for~ one utility and 2 weapon skills
i use shiro impossible odds, and maybe one sword/staff attack.

other legend combos more or less follow the same pattern. utilities are to good to not use, but then you cant realy use your weopons or other war round…

so in case you face a new or hard enemy, where you wanna have some evade/dodge rdy, you need to lack your utility, which just feels strange and wrong.

its not about spamming, its about being able to use what makes sense, but it dont make sense to not use all you possible support because maybe the enemy does a hard hitting attack the next second and you need do drop 50% of your support/dps to be prepared…