I held off against making any revenant posts in the previous preview because much of the revenant wasn’t available yet. Since the core of the class has been revealed entirely and I don’t have much time to play for the rest of the weekend and Monday, I thought I’d share my thoughts. I’m primarily a PvE player so everything is in terms of PvE having spent over 8 hours in Verdant Brink:
Legends
Jalis: Somewhat tanky, the healing skill is the only skill that I know of that removes damage conditions, so for me, I felt compelled to run with Jalis purely for the healing skill. The elite skill takes too long to cast, I understand why (50% damage reduction is no joke), but I disagree that, in PvE, it should take that long to cast and believe there are more balanced alternatives.
Utility thoughts:
- Inspiring Reinforcement is too slow and should have it’s ramp up time (the time it takes for the road to fully extend) reduced by 1/3 or even 1/2.
- Forced Engagement is incredibly high cost, I get that taunt and slow is really powerful, but wow is it a high cost.
- Vengeful Hammers should be named to “Randomly Disappearing Hammers” because that’s what they frequently would do during combat. They would randomly turn themselves off leaving me scratching my head and wondering where they went. To be a bit more serious, I say that this is a great skill for melee revenants.
Mallyx: With the crazy amount of conditions I saw flying around in certain areas, I would say that Mallyx helped out a bit. I’m not a fan of Mallyx but I am ashamed that I didn’t spend more time playing a condi revenant to see how Mallyx shines.
Ventari: I’m not a fan of the low healing from the tablet, but I get that you need to really spec for it via armor and weapons to gain a semblance of a noticeable effect. Personally, I think that for a stance that is supposed to be support oriented with healing, the healing is relatively low. Like Mallyx, I think I’m going to spend much more time in the next BWE with it to have a more thorough opinion.
Shiro: Now we’re sort of getting somewhere—I think. Shiro is about combat mobility which is fine. Shiro having any sort of survivability via his healing skill, however, is not fine. It’s not fine if you have to perform 6 seconds worth of attacking to get the full heal effect while enemies target you with 5+ swarms of bees and snipers are rapid firing at you. Having said that, I think the healing skill needs to either have the ICD reduced in half or removed entirely but with a reduced “life siphon damage” (healing per attack can stay as is).
Shiro’s Jade Winds skill is incredible and though it’s a stun and not an actual freeze like the frostbow’s Deep Freeze (#5) skill or a petrify like the thief’s Basilisk Venom, I think it serves its purpose.
Utility thoughts:
- Phase Traversal is a great way to open up a combat encounter, but it’s very expensive when you’re at 50% energy.
- Riposting Shadows is a great escape skill though it is expensive, it acts as a dodge that restores stamina and removes debilitating conditions so it’s almost worth the price. I say almost because I wouldn’t mind seeing weakness included in that list as I’d say weakness is certainly debilitating. (I suppose that’s arguing semantics?)
- Impossible Odds is great, but I certainly would have loved to be able to transfer damage conditions with each hit much like GW1 Shiro’s original skill or even on critical hits. However, I suppose that would cause too much overlap with Mallyx and be incredibly overpowered at the same time. It does its job just fine but as a GW1 vet, it leaves me a bit wanting for that condition transfer on Shiro.