Guild Wars 2

If you’re unhappy with how the revenant was designed, or are just bored and want to make up some crazy ideas, this is your thread. You can start from scratch, fix the current problems, or whatever, go wild.

So, just for fun, how would you redesign the revenant?

Few personal ideas to start the thread:

Idea 1 – Simplification

I think one of the biggest problems of the revenant is that it’s too complicated, with no rewards for playing it right, which makes said complication pointless. This idea takes the current revenant, and simplifies it as much as possible:

• Remove Ventari’s Tablet, and replace it with “seeds” you throw where you choose to, with area effects. Ventari’s Tablet can return later with an elite specialization and independent controls. Possible idea for that elite spec here.
• Remove the energy mechanic altogether, using cooldowns instead, and encouraging legend swapping. Heralds get a new resource, similar to thief initiative, for facet upkeep. Heralds also get new unique facet-like F2 skills for every legend, and Facet of Nature is now exclusive to Glint.
• More weapons, and a 5th legend for core, based on ritualist spirits, to improve variety problems.

Idea 2 – Mirror revenant

This idea takes the concept of the legends further, and splits the revenant in two different characters at once:

• Revenants now have two health bars, tied to each of the two active legends. Life, boons, and conditions in each legend are now independent. When you switch out, the state of that legend is frozen in time, and everything is preserved until you switch back to it. When you die, if the other legend has no cooldown you’re switched to it by force, and the dead legend gets a 60s cooldown. If you die and you can’t switch to the other legend, you get downed.
• Some slot skills would allow you to affect the status of the inactive legend. For example, Mallyx’s Pain Absorption would absorb the conditions of your other legend as well. Jalis’ Soothing Stone would cleanse the conditions of the inactive legend. Your skills that affect allies would affect your other legend as well.

Idea 3 – One mechanic per legend

Moved below to make space for links

Idea 4 – Legend-specific weapon skills

Moved below to make space for links

Just some random ideas to begin the thread. Waiting for yours!

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Full list of redesign threads:

Elementalist – Mesmer – Necromancer

Engineer – Ranger – Thief

Guardian – Revenant – Warrior

O no, not this. You should know necros have been asking for a redesign since the game was created so revenants have no chance.

Revevant doessnt need a redesign it is not as bad as that. A stun break here, a better heal there, toss in a couple cleanses and fix some bugs then the class should be fine.

Except Ventari, Roy’s original design is really good. Of all the classes this makes the most sense balance wise tbh

Personally, I’d just delete the profession and divide up all its parts to the other professions, altering where necessary.

Lahmia.2193:

Personally, I’d just delete the profession and divide up all its parts to the other professions, altering where necessary.

Thieves rubbing hands in wait for Assassin’s Presence and Ferocious Strikes

But for real it seems like Anet scoured the Class Sub forums took the ideas for those classes and smashed them into Revenant. They could use a few tweaks and minor redesigns on some traits /skills and would be fine. Like a stunbreak and Condi clear in all Legends.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Lahmia.2193:

Personally, I’d just delete the profession and divide up all its parts to the other professions, altering where necessary.

Thieves rubbing hands in wait for Assassin’s Presence and Ferocious Strikes

But for real it seems like Anet scoured the Class Sub forums took the ideas for those classes and smashed them into Revenant. They could use a few tweaks and minor redesigns on some traits /skills and would be fine. Like a stunbreak and Condi clear in all Legends.

I main necro, but your second statement is very true. It felt less of a new profession and more of a conglomeration of good ideas for other professions.
edit: though I’d happily take Focused Siphoning, and Pain Absorption, off their hands.

Lahmia.2193:

Personally, I’d just delete the profession and divide up all its parts to the other professions, altering where necessary.

Well, a part of me feels like yeah, the existing legends would have felt better as just elite specializations for the other professions:

• Ventari for ranger (Shaman)
• Jalis for warrior (Runemaster)
• Mallyx for mesmer (Warlock)
• Shiro for thief (Assassin)

Not to say that the concept of legends felt forced from the very beginning, and a pretty poor nostalgia carrot on a stick that didn’t even work to begin with.

An alternative could be to scrap the entire profession, and remake it focusing on dark magic that can’t be normally available to other professions, like Flame Legion magic, or demonic/margonite magic implying it doesn’t go to the mesmer.

Lahmia.2193:

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Lahmia.2193:

Personally, I’d just delete the profession and divide up all its parts to the other professions, altering where necessary.

Thieves rubbing hands in wait for Assassin’s Presence and Ferocious Strikes

But for real it seems like Anet scoured the Class Sub forums took the ideas for those classes and smashed them into Revenant. They could use a few tweaks and minor redesigns on some traits /skills and would be fine. Like a stunbreak and Condi clear in all Legends.

I main necro, but your second statement is very true. It felt less of a new profession and more of a conglomeration of good ideas for other professions.
edit: though I’d happily take Focused Siphoning, and Pain Absorption, off their hands.

Have any specific examples? Would love to see a list of these.

Your redesignes get a little overbord, but keep it simple sounds kinda good.
I would do it this way. Weapon skills have CD and utilities use energy but have no cd, heals and elites have no cd either but use a lot of energy, utilities use less energy depending on skill similar like cd works.
Facet of Nature changes with legends.
Passives:
Instead if giving boon duration:
Jallis: Dmg reduction 10%
Shiro: Dmg increase 10%
Mallyx: Condi duration 33% (basically the anti-glint)
Ventari: Healing received 20%

Active:
Similar as before: Give upkeep to you and all allies → which means all allies gets either hammers, impossible odds, projectile reflect, or embrace the darkness.
About kitten duration more or less would be nice.

This way herald doesnt force you to use glint but still has its uses.

Missing skill effects on legends:
Jallis: Block
Mallyx: Condicleanse
Ventari: Stunbreak
Shiro: Life leech for more survability

Glint is fine, i would personally change the fire breath similar to the drake vreath skill of ele but this would limit AoE capabbilities

I’d go back to removing weapon swap and allow the weapons more utility as well as futher defining roles. OH Axe, for example, would be the pure mobility weapon. Mace for condi aoe, MH Sword for burst and OH Sword for personal defense over Shield’s party support. Hammer would stay the premier ranged power weapon, and staff stays melee support. Weapons would be role specific but have a lot of depth in their use. Players can then choose the weapons that give them the tools they want. Chill on OH Axe both allows you to close gaps and open them. Torment punishes kiting and chasing. Both in combination is good design. I want to expand and accentuate that.

After that, I’d want to smooth Revenant over a bit. Ventari needs to be able to move the tablet more often, many skills’ costs or cooldowns can afford to be lowered (not both). Each of the legends also need a little bit more utility. I often feel like I don’t have all the tools I need, or at least that I can get from other classes. I usually don’t want to play any of my currently 3 Revenants because of that. I want to bridge the gaps between each of the legends while accenting their strenghts a bit more than current.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Thieves rubbing hands in wait for Assassin’s Presence and Ferocious Strikes

tfw it goes to Guardian instead

@Lonami Your thoughts on Idea #1 totally conflicts with what you’ve done with all the other ideas. Revenants biggest problem is over-complexity and then you proceed to make it even more complex? Contradictory to say the least.

I do have some ideas for improving Revenant. I want to focus on the underperforming legends but there are some global changes as well.

Global changes:
-Reduce the cost of non-Elite Spec upkeep skills by 2. Yes, even IO. Currently clicking IO at the wrong time is way too punishing, and the rest are just not worth their current upkeep cost.
-Healing skills no longer cost energy. Instead they refund it. Glint Heal retains the upkeep cost though but the flip skill will refund some energy.

LEGEND CHANGES:

Ventari
-Project Tranquility: Will now follow the revenant instead of being stationary, and will appear upon swapping to the legend instead of a separate skill. Can no longer be moved by will. Ventari’s Will base self-healing increased by 600%, out of which 25% will be projected to allies. Cooldown increased to 30s.
-Purifying Essence: Energy cost reduced from 30 to 20. Now also breaks stuns.
-Natural Harmony: Healing to allies increased by 50%. Does not affect the casting player.
-Protective Solace: Added an initial energy cost of 10.

Jalis
-Inspiring Reinforcement: Is no longer targeted, will instead be summoned before you not unlike Searing Fissure. Difference is the road will start it’s summoning from 50 distance behind you.
-Forced Engagement: No longer Taunts untraited, instead Immobilizing targets. Also grants Aegis(8s). Energy cost reduced from 35 to 25.
-Vengeful Hammers: No longer gives Vengeful Hammers buff, instead pulsing Protection(1s) every second.
-Rite of the Great Dwarf: Energy cost reduced to 40 from 50. Duration increased to 6s from 5s. Reduced casting time from 1 1/4s to 1/2s. Added a 20s cooldown.

Mallyx
-Empowering Misery: Will now consume conditions up to a maximum of 5. Healing gained per condition reduced by 50%.
-Pain Absorption: Now breaks stuns. Initial Resistance gained increased from 2s to 3s.
-Unyielding Anguish: Energy cost reduced from 30 to 20. Removed the rooting aftercast effect.
-Embrace the Darkness: Removed stat buff. Initial energy cost increased to 10 from 5.

I’ll start thinking on traits later, have other stuff to do for now. When you read specific changes, think on how the global changes affect them.

First, I think Revenant design is fairly good in general. However, it is certainly not perfect and some improvements could be made. I would further push Revenant towards energy management rather than cooldown management. I would try to improve build versatility by revising poor traits and increasing utility skill options. I won’t give specific examples of changes here since it would be too lengthy, but my general idea is:

More utilities for each legend – I would give each base legend (e.g. not Glint or other elite spec legends) 5 utility skills, of which players could choose to equip 3. Among these, each legend would have access to atleast one stunbreak.

Rebalance weapons to reward smart energy management – I would remove weapon swap and add dual auto-attack functions to each main-hand and two-hand weapon (like on Revenant underwater Spear). I would significantly reduce weapon skill cooldowns across the board, and increase energy costs of a few key weapon skills which would otherwise be spammable without consequence. Weapon skills would then be regulated heavily by energy rather than cooldown timers, which rewards skillful energy management.

Balance the rewards for pooling energy in one legend vs. swapping legends frequently to maximize energy regeneration – Currently, it is often beneficial to swap legends every 10 seconds to generate up to 50 energy. I would give options for players to also make builds which favored pooling energy. This could be done, for example, by providing traits which trigger at high energy, or by changing utility or weapons skills to have increased effect at > 50 energy. Ideally, players could make some builds that favor rapid legend swapping for energy gain while other builds would favor pooling energy with less frequent legend swapping.

Another idea could be giving the revenant a normal set of utilities, half the number of what the other professions have. Then you select the 5 you want, like any other profession, but then, swapping affects the selected skills, just like elementalist attunements affect weapon skills, or glyphs.

Or let you have two customizable slot skill bars, one per legend slot, with any skills you want to choose from, and remove legend-specific slot skills. Then focus legend themes on weapons instead or something.

Yannir.4132:

@Lonami Your thoughts on Idea #1 totally conflicts with what you’ve done with all the other ideas. Revenants biggest problem is over-complexity and then you proceed to make it even more complex? Contradictory to say the least.

That’s the point, they’re different ideas. One even suggests removing the resource, and another making them legend-specific.

My favorite idea is simplification, followed by mirror revenant. Adding some secondary mechanic to make the core profession unique, like relic pets, could be nice too, replacing energy management with management of other elements instead.

I think that the OP’s goals are a little too far of a redesign. I agree that the scale of the suggested changes would be to large. I don’t think it would be fair either to remove the class and spread its various mechanics and skills to other classes either. I totally agree with fluidmonolith’s direction and ideas.

Revenant has some really good elements and some really poor ones. I think with a soft rework, the class could very well work and be flexible with loads of interesting choices like elementalist has. Revenant biggest issues are: Bugs, energy consumption balance, Lack of mechanics, and meaningful traits.

• Bugs are simple, they need to be squashed. They havent been. We still have skills targeting the environment(UA PS), or completely whiffing on ground target skills if terrain is uneven (CoR, SF, EB TR etc), or movement skills casting in wrong/random direction (RS). I cannot believe after a year, these bugs are still present since launch and that the bug tracker only showes its working on one of them.

• Energy consumption is very problematic. Most of our skills legend wise cost all your resources. Weapon skills also consume a hefty amount. Almost all of the impactful skills can only be used once in a legend. Were forced to play this furious legend swap and then use the tools at hand. Because of the current way energy is managed you cannot use the skills you need to when you need to. Two simple fixes is to remove weapon skill costs to allow us to use energy for the legend skills exclusively or have auto chains generate energy to offset some of the costs. Glint goes against the rest of revenant by having active components cost nothing. There is currently almost 0 reasons not to pick glint because it costs nothing to use.

• Lacking mechanics. Our two most used legends are the only ones with reliable stunbreaks. Jalis could be a solid legend but RotGD is prohibitively expensive, and the road is unreliable at best. All of the legends except Jalis lack condi clear. Both ventari and mallyx lack a stunbreak or means to deal with CC. Mallyx ironically fails at being able to deal with conditions without having a group of party members to help generate resistance. While ventari lacks any kind of personal movement or offensive pressure (other than the knockback). I do have to say I like a lot of the mechanics the legends them selves have. However, each legend feels like it has giant holes in them rather than a weakness to play around due to lacking essential mechanics.

• Revenant’s biggest problem with it’s traits is that majority of the lines do not cooperate in any meaningful way. A good example of meaningful cooperation is: ranger has the wilderness survival line that has a trait gives furry on a survival skills use, while marksman has a trait that allows furry application to proc another mechanic. There are a few exceptions such as glint and retribution increasing stability on dodge, or the ability to augment heal to apply boons on something like ventari tablet (blinds, furry & protection). The majority of revenant traits don’t go down this route and only attempt to augment a legend, rather then the class as a whole. On any other class I can look at traits that between lines that work together augment the class. On rev when you attempt to do this you end up with an unusable Frankenstein because the legends are so different and have conflicting interests or can’t function due to energy consumption.

If the above issues were solved Rev would be in a really enjoyable place. Here is to hoping anet reads this thread.

Another idea:

What if we could use all legends? So, our mechanic bar would look like that of the elementalist, with one button for each legend. F1, F2, F3, F4; and F5 with an elite specialization.

The key here would be that slot skills would have a shared cooldown across the legends, so if you use Shiro’s heal, the other heals get a cooldown as well, though shorter than Shiro’s, to encourage swapping.

Alternatively, slot skills could have no cooldown, consuming energy instead, kinda like how thief initiative affects weapon skills.

Skill numbers shouldn’t be a problem, for the elementalist and the engineer have a ton of them too, and they work just fine.

If you’re picky the numbers could be reduced to 3 or 4 maximum active legends.

I don’t know if the class needs a redesign, it just needs more skills. If each legend had double the skills, it’d feel a lot less limiting.

Maybe lower cds and raise energy costs. I’d love it if there were no cds and instead it was entirely energy management. They’d obviously have to tweak some numbers, but I think the class would be more interesting. Maybe I’m wrong though.

I would undo every single nerfs they did including the ones on Beta Testing.

RedDeadFred.1256:

I don’t know if the class needs a redesign, it just needs more skills. If each legend had double the skills, it’d feel a lot less limiting.

Maybe lower cds and raise energy costs. I’d love it if there were no cds and instead it was entirely energy management. They’d obviously have to tweak some numbers, but I think the class would be more interesting. Maybe I’m wrong though.

There is an easy way to add more skills…. make it so that for each stance there is an option to choose stancform i.e. Taking dragon or centaur form and having 5 formspecific weaponskills… just making the forms f1 and f2 and double clicking on them activating this…. in this way it would allow more skills…

lordbachus.6091:

RedDeadFred.1256:

I don’t know if the class needs a redesign, it just needs more skills. If each legend had double the skills, it’d feel a lot less limiting.

Maybe lower cds and raise energy costs. I’d love it if there were no cds and instead it was entirely energy management. They’d obviously have to tweak some numbers, but I think the class would be more interesting. Maybe I’m wrong though.

There is an easy way to add more skills…. make it so that for each stance there is an option to choose stancform i.e. Taking dragon or centaur form and having 5 formspecific weaponskills… just making the forms f1 and f2 and double clicking on them activating this…. in this way it would allow more skills…

I am not sure I understand what you are proposing. Could you please elaborate?

Another option for more skills could be to make ‘mists-themed’ utility skills which can be used in any stance. Weapon skills already include many ‘mists’ influences and text tooltips, such as sword #3, mace #2, staff #3, hammer #3, etc.

Mists-themed utility skills could include things such as stunbreaks, condi removal, or mobility, which are lacking in some legends. I expect these skills would probably need a higher cooldown than is typically seen in other Rev utility skills (e.g, greater than 5-10 seconds), or higher energy costs. Probably higher cooldowns since you could slot the same ‘mists’ skill on both of your legends, then use that skill multiple times in quick succession by legend swapping to reset energy to 50.

fluidmonolith.3584:

lordbachus.6091:

RedDeadFred.1256:

I don’t know if the class needs a redesign, it just needs more skills. If each legend had double the skills, it’d feel a lot less limiting.

Maybe lower cds and raise energy costs. I’d love it if there were no cds and instead it was entirely energy management. They’d obviously have to tweak some numbers, but I think the class would be more interesting. Maybe I’m wrong though.

There is an easy way to add more skills…. make it so that for each stance there is an option to choose stancform i.e. Taking dragon or centaur form and having 5 formspecific weaponskills… just making the forms f1 and f2 and double clicking on them activating this…. in this way it would allow more skills…

I am not sure I understand what you are proposing. Could you please elaborate?

Another option for more skills could be to make ‘mists-themed’ utility skills which can be used in any stance. Weapon skills already include many ‘mists’ influences and text tooltips, such as sword #3, mace #2, staff #3, hammer #3, etc.

Mists-themed utility skills could include things such as stunbreaks, condi removal, or mobility, which are lacking in some legends. I expect these skills would probably need a higher cooldown than is typically seen in other Rev utility skills (e.g, greater than 5-10 seconds), or higher energy costs. Probably higher cooldowns since you could slot the same ‘mists’ skill on both of your legends, then use that skill multiple times in quick succession by legend swapping to reset energy to 50.

I think he’s saying weapon skills should change depending on the legend too. Sounds like common sense, but then, we’re going to keep getting more new legends in the future, so it becomes kinda nonviable in the long term.

A possible solution to this approach could be to remove weapon swap, and add kits to each legend, to solve it the engineer way, but then we get into weapon skin variety problems.

Another alternative is creating a base revenant, say, around the ritualist, and make legends be kits on themselves. So, when you equip a legend, you get a weapon kit, and also the legend’s utilities. Think of this revenant as a shapeshifter druid, only that with legends, and no actual transformations. So when you use Shiro you get two jade swords with new skills.

My ideal solution (technical nightmare maybe) is making weapon skills change with each legend, but modify the hero panel (or make a new panel using the ranger pet panel) so that you can only equip some weapons with each legend. This way you don’t need to make new skills for each weapon when you release new legends. I described something similar above, in Idea 4 – Legend-specific weapon skills. Maybe just remove weapon swap, and make you equip the legend next to each weapon set in the hero panel.

I’ve though about having weapon skill variations based on legends. It’ll still end up being intense on the technical end, but it would allow for more usability.

For example. Mace is and should stay the condition weapon. Its main mechanics shouldn’t change. However, when in Shiro perhaps it scales a bit better with Power. Maybe Jalis adds a short duration aegis on Mace 3. Ventari could give a nominal heal for every blast finisher on Mace 2. Maybe Hammer could apply some Torment when in Mallyx, and heal allies that pass through the hammer bolts.

The key is that the main mechanics of the skills don’t change, they only get nominal benefits from whatever legend you’re currently using. That way you aren’t sol when big chunks of build concept aren’t supported yet.

Ghotistyx.6942:

I’ve though about having weapon skill variations based on legends. It’ll still end up being intense on the technical end, but it would allow for more usability.

For example. Mace is and should stay the condition weapon. Its main mechanics shouldn’t change. However, when in Shiro perhaps it scales a bit better with Power. Maybe Jalis adds a short duration aegis on Mace 3. Ventari could give a nominal heal for every blast finisher on Mace 2. Maybe Hammer could apply some Torment when in Mallyx, and heal allies that pass through the hammer bolts.

The key is that the main mechanics of the skills don’t change, they only get nominal benefits from whatever legend you’re currently using. That way you aren’t sol when big chunks of build concept aren’t supported yet.

That’s an interesting concept.

So, instead of changing with every legend, weapons would have “normal state skills”, and then “enhanced state”, preferably available only with specific legends.

So, using the sword with Ventari, you get the normal skills. But if you switch to Shiro, they are enhanced and become different skills, like with elementalist attunements, or just get small buffs.

With this in mind… I could see an attunement-like system working, but instead of using legends, using roles instead.

Every weapon would have three variations, with legends assigned to them:

• Power: Jalis and Shiro.
• Conditions: Mallyx.
• Support: Ventari and Glint.

This would solve the long term problems of updating every weapon for the new legends, while adding enough uniqueness to each legend. As a final touch, weapons should use different colors depending on the active legend, instead of the ugly red/black they have now.

I think this could be the best solution for weapon skill variety problems, and make every weapon viable with every legend.

Even better, every legend would have an enhanced state according to that legend. Normal state would be if you were ever legend-less. It would be a way for Sword, Hammer, and Staff to stay relevant in a Mallyx build, while Mace could still fit in Power. It would also help provide more defense in Jalis, healing in Ventari, and support in Glint. Likewise, it would be able to scale to new weapons and legends. Hypothetically we get Pyre and Longbow next xpac. Now every weapon has a Pyre version of themselves, and longbow as a version for Mallyx, Ventari, Shiro, and Jalis. The base mechanics and philosophy stay the same, but each legend can make small changes that reflects the legend’s playstyle.

Too complicated? Really? I thought it was overly simple. To the point where it feels like they’re holding my hand telling me exactly how to build my character. Its so limited in its focus that complicated isn’t a word I’d ever in a million years use to describe the profession.

Few new ideas, partially inspired by the first idea in the first post:

Core revenant

• Revenants can now equip 3 legends. Each legend has now its own skill button: F1, F2, and F3. This should help alleviate slot skill variety problems without breaking the theme of the profession.
• Energy management is gone, replaced exclusively by cooldowns. Skills that consumed energy over time, like Vengeful Hammers and Impossible Odds, now have a fixed duration, and have no benefits for ending early.
• New core legend, ritualist. Signet skills inspired by GW1 spirits, which work like turrets, with support in mind. The healing skill summons the spirits to your position, healing for each active spirit, and the other four skills summon a series of spirits with different abilities.
• Ventari’s Tablet mechanic is gone, to return later in a pet-based elite specialization. Now Ventari uses player-casted ground-targeted skills. Instead of ordering the table to move, you now throw tiny carved bones, seeds, and runestones. Their effects are the same or similar as those of the original skills.
• Mallyx’s Embrace the Darkness now additionally slowly spreads conditions to nearby enemies when activated, providing additional condition cleansing to the revenant.
• New weapons at the core profession are desirable, but not mandatory in the short term.

Herald

• Since we no longer have neither energy nor upkeep, and it’s not worth adding back for just the facets, we need a new system.
• A possible solution is letting heralds activate any of the facets they want whenever they want, even the six simultaneously. The downside would be that the more facets you activate, the slower you spread boons, so having the six up isn’t really worth it.
• Face of Nature is now exclusive to Glint. The other legends have each new different skills, all of them working like facets, including themed aesthetic marks in the ground.

I think this solution could really work out, and it doesn’t require as many changes as other ones around. Yeah, still requires work, but it’s doable and leaves a solid foundation for future elite specializations.

Lonami.2987:

Few new ideas, partially inspired by the first idea in the first post:

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Core revenant

• Revenants can now equip 3 legends. Each legend has now its own skill button: F1, F2, and F3. This should help alleviate slot skill variety problems without breaking the theme of the profession.
• Energy management is gone, replaced exclusively by cooldowns. Skills that consumed energy over time, like Vengeful Hammers and Impossible Odds, now have a fixed duration, and have no benefits for ending early.
• New core legend, ritualist. Signet skills inspired by GW1 spirits, which work like turrets, with support in mind. The healing skill summons the spirits to your position, healing for each active spirit, and the other four skills summon a series of spirits with different abilities.
• Ventari’s Tablet mechanic is gone, to return later in a pet-based elite specialization. Now Ventari uses player-casted ground-targeted skills. Instead of ordering the table to move, you now throw tiny carved bones, seeds, and runestones. Their effects are the same or similar as those of the original skills.
• Mallyx’s Embrace the Darkness now additionally slowly spreads conditions to nearby enemies when activated, providing additional condition cleansing to the revenant.
• New weapons at the core profession are desirable, but not mandatory in the short term.

Herald

• Since we no longer have neither energy nor upkeep, and it’s not worth adding back for just the facets, we need a new system.
• A possible solution is letting heralds activate any of the facets they want whenever they want, even the six simultaneously. The downside would be that the more facets you activate, the slower you spread boons, so having the six up isn’t really worth it.
• Face of Nature is now exclusive to Glint. The other legends have each new different skills, all of them working like facets, including themed aesthetic marks in the ground.

---

I think this solution could really work out, and it doesn’t require as many changes as other ones around. Yeah, still requires work, but it’s doable and leaves a solid foundation for future elite specializations.

I love the idea of tree legends! Would add variety and basically make us a utility version of Ele.

I would love if weapon skills were also tied to the legend (I.e. Jalis hammer could be ranged, shirk hammer melee, Centauri hammer heal focused, etc.). I would personally be okay losing weapon swap in exchange for 3 legends+changing weapon skills

I think that having both cool downs and energy to manage skills is obsessive. I feel a good way to do it is cool downs on 1-6 (weapon skills+heals) and an energy bar for the utilities. Have utilities maybe cost slightly more and this allows for facets to still be in play with the glint espec.

I think these are slighter changes that could realistically happen.

1) Make all legends available underwater

This wouldn’t be hard. At worst if there are some abilities which are problematic, disable those abilities underwater but not the whole legend.

eg. Ventari could work just by making the tablet stick to you and everything becomes pbaoe.

2) Remove all cooldowns

If certain abilities being spammed would be problematic from a balance perspective, either increase the base energy cost or implement soft CDs instead, i.e. if you use the ability again within x seconds the energy cost is doubled.

To fix Glint, I’d change Facet of Nature. Make it a toggle. If it’s off then your legend abilities are the active ones, eg. Gaze of Darkness and Elemental Blast and those would cost energy but have no cooldowns. If the toggle is on then your legend abilities are the buffs, eg. Facet of Darkness and Facet of Elements.

3) Change legend swapping and energy

Get rid of or allow us to change (eg. via traits) the energy system with legend swapping. I want to change legends because that makes sense to, not because there’s 50 free energy if I do.

Boost energy regen and have energy level stay the same on swapping legends. And of course, remove the legend swap cooldown.

4) Remove weapon swap cooldowns for all classes

Engineers can effectively swap weapons at will courtesy of kits. It doesn’t break the class or make them godly. But it’s one less cooldown to keep track of and means you’re not arbitrarily stuck with the weapon you swap to for 8-10 seconds.

Those changes would make GW2 so much more attractive to me because I loathe cooldown driven combat. Presently revenant isn’t much different from most other classes in this respect. And I’m not a fan of thief thematically or for it being lackluster in the support department.

Simple: Remove all Cooldowns on Rev.

Moved content from the main post to make space for links to the other redesign threads:

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Idea 3 – One mechanic per legend

Instead of the shared profession mechanic, energy, now we have one unique mechanic for each legend, partially inspired by the mechanics of the other professions. All of them use the same resource bar, but each legend uses and earns the resource in a different way:

• Jalis: Weapon-based mechanic skill, similar to warrior Burst skills. The resource only goes up when you suffer damage.
• Mallyx: Transformation, similar to necromancer Death Shroud, with new weapon skills. Based on Embrace the Darkness elite, which is replaced by something else. The resource only goes up when you suffer or deal condition damage.
• Shiro: Stance/Transformation, similar to warrior Berserk mode, based on Impossible Odds utility, which is replaced by something else. The resource only goes up when you deal critical damage.
• Ventari: The tablet now has pet controls, just like the ranger pets. The tablet itself is invulnerable, and spends the resource to use the skills. Resource grows when you heal yourself or allies.
• Glint: Original energy resource, with no direct resource consumption.

Idea 4 – Legend-specific weapon skills

In this idea weapon skills change depending on the active legend, but you have restrictions on which weapons you can use with each legend. New weapons are added to compensate.

• Now you need to select a legend in the hero panel before equipping any weapons. Each legend has one or two weapon slots, with their own restrictions. For example, Shiro has two slots, and can only use swords, staff, and shortbow. Ventari has one slot and can only use staff, main-hand scepter, and focus.
• Weapon skills change depending on the active legend, like elementalist attunements.
• Switching legend switches the main weapon, and enables weapon swap if the current legend has two slots. Equipping two legends with two weapon slots allow you to have four active weapon sets. Weapons still spend resource, helping with balance.

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Moved content ends here.

oscuro.9720:

I love the idea of tree legends! Would add variety and basically make us a utility version of Ele.

I would love if weapon skills were also tied to the legend (I.e. Jalis hammer could be ranged, shirk hammer melee, Centauri hammer heal focused, etc.). I would personally be okay losing weapon swap in exchange for 3 legends+changing weapon skills

I think that having both cool downs and energy to manage skills is obsessive. I feel a good way to do it is cool downs on 1-6 (weapon skills+heals) and an energy bar for the utilities. Have utilities maybe cost slightly more and this allows for facets to still be in play with the glint espec.

I think these are slighter changes that could realistically happen.

I think a 3rd legend is the best way to fix most of the revenant’s problems, and also very easy to implement.

The problem with legend-based weapon skills is that we don’t have a limited amount of legends, like the elementalist attunements, so the work would grow exponentially as we go on. This would force us to limit specific weapons to each legend, which in theory should be fine, and be kinda cool, but in reality it could be too confusing and overcomplicated.

A possible solution would be what I wrote earlier, about giving each legend a “role”, existing 3 roles total, and make weapon skills change depending on that role. But really, I don’t feel like we would need to change weapon skills if we got 3 legends total, and I really prefer weapon swap to attunements.

Another option could be to make each weapon themed around a legend, like swords for Shiro, but then not worry about the active legend. Or maybe boost specific weapons only when wielded by a specific legend. So, swords would be the same for everyone, but with Shiro they change into something else. Not sure this would be too healthy for balance though.

A 5th, generalized core legend, buffs to Jalis/Ventari, and one or two additional weapons at base would go a long way in improving revenant. As an alternative to new weapons, they could remove weapon swap and have legends supplement weapons in some creative way.

I feel the problem has always been the locked heal utility and elite. On most every legend I like only maybe 1 or 2 of the 5 skills I get with that legend. Yet on every other class I get to pick from a wide range of heals utilities and elites to suit my playstyle/build.

I think it just needs several more choices of heals utilties and elites to pick from for each legend.

Chuck Zitto.2367:

I feel the problem has always been the locked heal utility and elite. On most every legend I like only maybe 1 or 2 of the 5 skills I get with that legend. Yet on every other class I get to pick from a wide range of heals utilities and elites to suit my playstyle/build.

I think it just needs several more choices of heals utilties and elites to pick from for each legend.

I agree with this. Many of revs issues could be solved by having baseline utility skills that could be thrown into any Legend. That way you would be able to specialize a legend further to deal with specific situations. Like having 2 stunbreaks in shiro, and 2 condi clears in dwarf, for example.

I think it has to be redesigned from the ground up. I have this belief that it was designed with it’s elite spec already in mind and because of that, glint is sorta mandatory in order to be effective. Dragon stance gives so much, while the others offer very little. Without it, every build seems very incomplete. Each of the other stances feel very incomplete and need glint. the stances decide how the class plays and the weapons offer very little. It’s a niche class that overs a mobile boon share and not much else besides a powerful AA with sword main hand.

We need more viable weapons. Sword main hand and staff are a must. Not because they are so good, but because every other weapon totally blows. Hammer would be cool if it was more of a threat, offered more utility, or just synergized with any of the stances, but it doesn’t. Every stance is more suited for close range.

Give us a ranged condition weapon. not with a new elite spec, but should just be added to the class. Our one condition build isn’t so hot, I like the mace and I like the axe but it just underperforms. I like the demon stance, but with one weapon set and one stance, it feels like half a build. Sure you can ult and add loads of torment, or spam banish enchantments, but there isn’t much else to work with.

Ventari. I don’t use this. Why would I. It’s a cool idea but it doesn’t work with highly mobile combat. And on top of that if you’re sitting in ventari, can’t switch out, you’re basically dead. It’s very clunky. I don’t even know what one would do to fix this, but I think some people mentions making the tablet float around the rev which would probably be way better than how it is now.

The class is just very incomplete. I love it, it’s gimmicks are fun, but there lacks depth. I feel like I just sit around spamming auto attacks and staff 5 to knock people away. That’s not a literally representation of how I play, but I guess I’m just saying rev lacks build diversity and a fun factor.

Hirasaki.6208:

I would undo every single nerfs they did including the ones on Beta Testing.

^ This.. so much this… I want my beta 1 Mayllx back.

Chuck Zitto.2367:

I feel the problem has always been the locked heal utility and elite. On most every legend I like only maybe 1 or 2 of the 5 skills I get with that legend. Yet on every other class I get to pick from a wide range of heals utilities and elites to suit my playstyle/build.

I think it just needs several more choices of heals utilties and elites to pick from for each legend.

I think the revenant’s worst problem is that they went too far with the cool factor. It’s good, and it’s important, but it should never clash with mechanics, and it’s pretty obvious it did with the revenant. They went too far with the “GW1 nostalgia” and didn’t build a robust core profession. And yes, it really feels like Glint and the facets were done first, with the others next.

I agree that losing so much slot skill customization hurts the profession a lot. Maybe the answer is to transform legends into kits, as in, not make them be the core thing. Let me elaborate:

• The revenant gets a full set of customizable slot skills, inspired by the ritualist. This includes the classic turret-like spirits, and other skills.
• Legends work like kits now. You can carry two legends at once, each on its own button, F1 and F2.
• When you equip a legend, slot skills change to what we have now. Just like engineer kits, except for the slot skill bar.
• Legend skills would need a rebalance and such.

If kits don’t feel engaging enough, or just too similar to engineer, another option is to use a new mechanic. I’ve used one in my hierophant elite spec idea which I call the “Relic”, which is pretty much an object-like pet. In that idea, I remove Ventari’s Tablet and adapt it for the relic system, but maybe it could be used for a core profession revamp instead. Elaborated:

• Revenant gets fully customizable slot skills, like any other profession. The pool of said slot skills could be smaller than that of other professions, including 3 families instead of 5 (18 skills instead of 30).
• Legends aren’t “states” now. Instead, each legend button summons a relic, an allied object, like Ventari’s Tablet, the Tome of the Rubicon, or the Apocrypha. Each legend has its own relic.
• Once summoned, the relic changes the slot skills of the user, which become a control panel for the relic, between other things. See Ventari’s Tablet again.
• Legend skills that don’t work well inside a relic would be adapted for outside-of-legend usage.
• Only one relic can be active at a time. Once summoned, they can be destroyed by the enemy, by using the elite skill, or by summoning the other relic.
• While the relic is active, the revenant gets a minor boost, and a visual upgrade, reflecting the current legend.
• Relics can be paused, letting you use your normal slot skills without destroying the relic. Passive benefits stay in paused mode.

Some ideas for the relics:

• Ventari – Ventari’s Tablet: Pretty much what we have now, with better movement controls, or maybe no movement at all, having teleports instead.
• Jalis – Tome of the Rubicon: Legendary dwarven book from GW1. Skills would be pretty much the same as of now.
• Mallyx – Apocrypha: Graven Monolith. You would be able to command it to change form, from a tablet to different types of minions which actively attack your enemies.
• Shiro – Shiro’s Blades: Two floating swords. You would be able to command them to dash or whirl around the battlefield.
• Glint – Flameseeker Prophecies: Depicted by a floating scroll. Placed facets would work as they do now, but consumed facets with aoe effects would spawn at the scrolls, except the elite which would work as it does now.

Some of Mallyx’s and Shiro’s slot skills would be moved to core revenant, but most of the current skills would remain inside legends.

This would provide a new unique gameplay for revenant, kinda reminiscent to ritualist ashes from the ritualist.

Two more ideas:

Idea 5 – Weapon centric layout

Every weapon would get new skills, designed around a legend. For example, swords would be themed around Shiro, with jade effects and such. Then, on top of that, your slot skills would be dependent on your active weapons, instead of a selected legend. The constant and “boring” black/red theme of revenant weapon skills would be gone, replaced by a unique theme based on each legend.

So you could say you now “unlock” or “harness” a legend by equipping specific weapons, instead of just equipping a legend manually.

Legend-swapping and weapon-swapping would be the same thing now, and the weapon skills of each legend would have a better synergy with their respective slot skills.

The legend and its slot skills would be determined by the equipped two-handed weapon, or the off-hand weapon. This means main-hand sword and main-hand mace would have different skills depending on the off-hand weapon and the active legend.

The legend unlocker weapons would be as follows:

• Jalis: Hammer
• Mallyx: Off-hand axe
• Shiro: Off-hand sword
• Ventari: Staff
• Glint: Shield

As stated above, main-hand sword and main-hand mace would change depending on the off-hand. Since revenants has some customization problems, I would give them main-hand axe and main-hand scepter too, for the core profession.

Equipping the same off-hand twice would lead to a repeated legend. In this case, swapping would reduce cooldowns. Playing as a single legend would be viable this way if you wish to.

If you want to take this last point further, each legend could be given an additional legend unlocker weapon, so for example, you can use scepter/focus as Ventari instead of staff all the time, but this could be a lot of work in the long run. Maybe limit this to just the two-hand users, to make things simpler. For example: Off-hand mace for Jalis, and focus for Ventari.

The final result would be something like this:

• Main-hand weapons: Axe, Mace, Scepter, Sword
• Jalis: Hammer, off-hand mace (5 total weapon combinations)
• Mallyx: Off-hand axe (4 total weapon combinations)
• Shiro: Off-hand sword (4 total weapon combinations)
• Ventari: Staff, focus (5 total weapon combinations)
• Glint: Shield (4 total weapon combinations)

It’s similar to the 4th idea, but much more limited. Customization could suffer a bit, but in exchange each legend’s gameplay would be much more robust. Axe, mace, scepter, and sword would get new skills with every new legend released through elite specializations.

Idea 6 – Legend boost

This is pretty similar to the previous 5th idea, except this time, the revenant has no legend by default.

In a normal situation, the revenant behaves like any other profession. Choose the weapons you want, swap between them whenever you want, and choose the slot skills you want, too.

The legend theme would be a temporary boost. Similar to warrior bursts, this unique skill would be determined by the equipped off-hand weapon (See 5th idea for details).

So, each legend would be a transformation, and who you can transform to would depend on the weapons you are using at the moment. Transforming would change both your weapon and slot skills. Transformed skills would be always the same no matter your selected weapons and slot skills, for adapting every possible combination would factor way too many variables in the long run, making it harder to balance and such.

This would reinforce the value of legends as a temporary boost to make a difference, but maybe leave the revenant too simple in a normal state.

Just some random ideas to refresh the thread!