Guild Wars 2

Hello!

Is Revenant/Herald really that bad as they say here in the forums? I’ve been wanting to create a human heavy armor wearing toon for the most awesome racial tier 1 armor they have, but I’m not sure what to make.

I already have a different race warrior, so the choice falls between Guardian and Revenant. Rev. however seems to be the underdog of the two, with people calling the gameplay “clunky” and the profession itself “unfinished”.

If this helps, I mostly play pve, but I dabble in pvp.

Is this true?

I’d say you can play it without a problem.

It has it’s downsides but which class hasn’t.
If there is no problem with it on your timetable try it out, then decide.

Rev is in a pretty bad spot at the moment. That said you can clear pretty much any content with a Revenant. The only issue will be if you want to start raiding, since Rev is pretty bad in raids at the moment.

Rev is not wanted in Raids right now, sadly

Otherwise in fractals, pvp, and wvw you should have pretty good success. PvP and WvW are definitely hard though. The nerfs to Surge of the Mists and Sword 2 are pretty noticeable and Shiro is only a shell of its former glory.

saloja.7920:

If this helps, I mostly play pve, but I dabble in pvp.

Is this true?

The class has still tons of bugs and feels unfinished, in both lore and skills, and definetively seems rushed and demands more skill than other ones. But in the other hand once you deal with the skill ceiling is one of the most satisfaying classes to play around: is fast at moving (and gathering), does massive mele damage, has a insane access to AoE cc and if your timming and reflexes are good your sustain will be phenomenal. Has clear weak points and is hard to master, but also rewarding.

Truth be told this quite disheartening news. What especially irks me is the “flavor of the month” class mentality in raid roster profession picks.

Oh well, better give it some time then or go with the guardian. The double edgedness here is that you won’t really know what a profession is like till you hit max level, but then you might have a max level char that you don’t enjoy.

saloja.7920:

The double edgedness here is that you won’t really know what a profession is like till you hit max level, but then you might have a max level char that you don’t enjoy.

You can enter en PvP as soon as your toon is level 2 or so, and try every skill and weapon and trait in the PvP hall and matches to see how any class performs. Then you can delete your level 2 toon and repeat the proccess to get your own conclusions.

Despite that, I’ll warn you that a player doesn’t really apreciates all the nuances from a class until you had time with several builds in various game modes. In example: when I did start to play in the game with Warrior and Guardian my leveling was using gratsword + rifle + signets and greatsword + hammer + spirit weapons respectively; such builds were bad and didn’t reflect how properly play a War or Guard, neither then or now. The same happens with the Revenant: you must play a lot of hours at PvE, PvP and WvW with different builds and weapons to truly apperciate if the class fits you or not.

Buran.3796:

one of the most satisfaying classes to play around: is fast at moving (and gathering)

I never thought i would see rev as gathering bot in my life.

Rev is high risk low reward. Its unfinished cause he has tons of bugs, lots of horrible/poor traits and desing choices in general. Due to ridiculous “balance” from Anet one class can be broken in 1 patch and be useless in next one.

If you like playing rev despite mentioned flaws feel free to make one. If i was to return to gw i wouldnt play rev personally, its been a year and anet still havent fixed major bugs and core issues with rev like lack of ranged condi wep or torment being kitten in pve. Dont even get me started on Jalis. Better go for guardian, they always been solid.

Play what’s the most fun for you
You can always find groups and if you want to raid do. the same like I and search a guild:) EZ

Burtnik.5218:

I never thought i would see rev as gathering bot in my life.

Rev is high risk low reward. Its unfinished cause he has tons of bugs, lots of horrible/poor traits and desing choices in general. Due to ridiculous “balance” from Anet one class can be broken in 1 patch and be useless in next one.

If you like playing rev despite mentioned flaws feel free to make one. If i was to return to gw i wouldnt play rev personally, its been a year and anet still havent fixed major bugs and core issues with rev like lack of ranged condi wep or torment being kitten in pve. Dont even get me started on Jalis. Better go for guardian, they always been solid.

I agree with your description of the Rev flaws; the thing is: I have a broad experience with heavy plate armor classes in this game, and I’m more or less bored with both Warrior and Guardian. In PvP I hated to play the old bunker Guardian, or the WvW frontliner, so I didn’t start to truly enjoy Guardian until the mediguard became a thing (a bit before HoT). But if you look at the “meta” for Guard/DH in PvE and WvW, He still runs pretty much the same builds as years ago.

I don’t bother too much with PvE, but when I do I enjoy playing the Rev with (almost) the same builds I use in PvP and roaming, either condi or power. At the start I hated the lack of consistency in condi cleansing, stability, or the absence of a ranged condi weapon. That was also a concern in roaming, and the nerfs in Riposting Shadows, Phase Traversal or the Retribution traitline hurt me the most. I hated entering in a PvP skirmish and being toyed by cc as a ragdoll being powerless. But the more I play the less “forced errors” I make and the better I perform. I’m playing my Rev as a “glass cannon” and I found it more enjoyable than the glass canon versions of Warrior and Guardian.

Plus, the class is so neutered and bugged that from here can only improve…

Burtnik.5218:

Plus, the class is so neutered and bugged that from here can only improve…

Don’t underestimate ANet.^^
Like Burtnik one year ago, i was there during the “beta” tests of both HOT and the all new and shiny Revenant. We didn’t need more than a few hours to see all the flaws Revenant had, and we had only 3 legends back then.
The energy system is half done. They wanted to do a system like GW1, but GW1 and 2 do not share the same combat nor the same pace.

We proposed many ways to change it, be it removing energy from weapon skills and adjusting CDs accordingly while keeping the energy for legend skills only, or removing CDs from everything but adjusting energy costs.
We disccussed it for like a week until the release and after, and we had just 0 answers on any proposals we did, not even reason that would explain why ideas were good or bad, nothing.

The legends are poorly designed.
Jalis was supposed to be the “tanky” legend, the taunt is useless, the road has been nerfed so hard it’s not usefull in any way, Hammers are still bugged after more than a year, they could keep the visual of the hammers and make it a pulsating AoE to avoid the collision but….well, you know…..
RotgD is impossible to use because of the long casting animation and super high energy cost.
Mallyx was completely destroyed between the beta and the release. They removed all the displacement effects, and the concept of beeing the target of condis to make yourself stronger was impossible in practise because of the AoE dispells of allies.
Shiro was too mobile and got nerfed super hard because of PvP and WvW, making it a mere shadow of itself in PvE, adding to that you can’t have superspeed with Facet of nature active making one skill almost useless (even more if you have a chronomancer)
Ventari’s tablet is clunky as hell and super hard to use for mediocre results, making you a sitting duck in the process.

The addition at the last moment of weapon swap (wich was impossible before for Rev) did completely change the core philosophy of having 2 legends allowing adaptability mid fights. and pushing even more toward hard nerfing instead of gameplay shifts.

Weapons were supposed to be all rounder when legends were our specialised skills (like weapon swap is for other classes and element attunment for Elementalists), instead we can have weapons that are almost never usefull.
Sword MH : push 1 and……that’s all, everything else is a DPS loss, skill 2 was supposed to allow the Rev to keep his target in range, and it has become a dps only if the 3 hits the same target, sword 3 is bugged as hell, it still has its uses thanks to the invulnerability frames but that’s all. And be happy, it’s our best dps weapon. xD
I could analyse every weapon set but it’s been already done so much time it’s a waste of time to do it again for nothing.

And add to that the fact the Revenant was designed WITH his Elite specialisation in mind wich was not the case of core professions, making the “base” Revenant irrelevant (at least in PvE).

The Revenant was made only to appeal to old GW1 players that were losing faith in the game and in that it succeded…..for a while ^^

ita not wanted in raids,still solid and strong everywhere else

Amaranthe.3578:

ita not wanted in raids,still solid and strong everywhere else

It is ok everywhere else, but they are well below Guardians and Warriors in general.

Thief+warrior=revenant. Neither thief, nor warrrior.

saloja.7920:

Truth be told this quite disheartening news. What especially irks me is the “flavor of the month” class mentality in raid roster profession picks.

Oh well, better give it some time then or go with the guardian. The double edgedness here is that you won’t really know what a profession is like till you hit max level, but then you might have a max level char that you don’t enjoy.

The thing is, as far as PvE goes, Guardan is in the same boat as Rev… It’s fine, but if you wanna PUG raids, you’re going to have a tough time except for one or two boss encounters.

It takes some work to get good results from but the Revenant is gradually evolving into a decently interesting class. That said there’s plenty of room for improvement.

The most robust stances (imho) at this point are Shiro & Mallyx, the most interesting weapons being staff and hammer, and the strongest trait lines being Devastation, Invocation and Herald. The sequences, combos and synergies of that lot are very interesting, not quite as complex as the engineer but certainly moderate and with a lot to discover.

The main powers the Herald class has over others is the god-tier cc, condi draw, boon strip and access to resistance. It feels like a fighting priest, if that makes sense. Like a dark magic themed Guardian, it can perform a lot of damage mitigation through skills and combos like blasted area blind.

I mained a warrior and thief when HoT launched, I took the warrior through the HoT zones and got the story / zone events done, then built a Rev and levelled her up with my huge collection of tomes.

Right off the bat, it didn’t feel great. Until I got Glint unlocked, I felt extremely… Unable, to adapt to things happening in a fight. My warrior could quickly go on the defensive when needed, and felt powerful (or at least, worthwhile) even when backed away a little to recharge hp or wait on defensive cooldowns. Not so with the Rev, who I found to be basically buggered when caught in a stance that had run out of defensive options.

Now that I have a finished build, with experience playing the Rev and, crucially, Glint, the class is a lot of fun to play. So much so, that it is now my main. I am not sure however, if I would recommend it. The learning curve is certainly there, but I feel that the difficulty is a wee bit tilted toward the class not being quite there in terms of workable builds, than L2P.

If you don’t mind power/zerk/glint/shiro for life though, giv’er!

Revenant is viable but not optimal due to the string of PvP-based nerfs to the class that also affected it in PvE.

Amaranthe.3578:

ita not wanted in raids,still solid and strong everywhere else

Workable in other areas? Sure. Solid and strong? Not really.

You can use a Revenant in non-raiding content sure. But that’s not because it’s a good class worth taking. That’s just because the content is easy enough that having a handicap of having a Revenant on your team isn’t really a big issue.

saloja.7920:

I already have a different race warrior, so the choice falls between Guardian and Revenant. Rev. however seems to be the underdog of the two, with people calling the gameplay “clunky” and the profession itself “unfinished”.

If this helps, I mostly play pve, but I dabble in pvp.

Is this true?

It’s true. Clunky and unfinished are apt descriptions of the Revenant. That said, they are playable.

Clunky….

ANet made a bizarre decision to half- kitten their energy mechanic in that weapon abilities use both energy and cooldowns. The Glint legend is also crammed full of CDs. So a profession which theoretically could have appealed to players who don’t like the CD driven nature of combat for most of the other professions – all except thief – instead appeals to very few.

People tend to prefer either the predictable 1112123 of CD driven combat. Or they prefer the freedom and flexibility of no CDs and energy. As they are, Revenants split the difference and neither crowd loves the abomination of a result.

Unfinished….

Underwater combat is probably the main impetus for the unfinished label. Only two legends are usable and I think many people reasonably expected more would come, but they never did.

And the rest would come the clunkiness – because there’s a solid foundation for a very decent profession but it needs work. Whether it’s ever done is anyone’s guess though.

Go to any profession forum, and they’ll scream about how they’ve been overnerfed to the point of not being viable. But yeah, Revenant is in a bad state at the moment.

While we could go into the details, I think the fundamental problem is that the revenant has less build options than other professions. At first glance this might seem to make it easier to balance, but in practice it means that players have less options to adjust to balance changes and shifts in the meta, which makes the revenant more sensitive to ArenaNet’s balance decisions.

Part of this is because having so few options means that the revenant has less ability to react to one thing being overnerfed by switching to something else that does something similar. Revenant has only one ranged weapon, so when that weapon got nerfed into not being viable due to WvW reasons, revenants were essentially pushed into going full melee in sPvP. For most professions, if a given skill – a heal skill, say – is underperforming, they can swap that particular skill out for something more efficient without impacting the rest of their build. Revenants, however, cannot make this adjustment without effectively changing their whole build.

Similarly, revenants cannot adjust to shifts in the meta. Most professions, by switching out skills individually, can adjust to account for changes in the meta or even expectations about what the enemy team might have when they see what professions are on the enemy team: swapping in an additional condi clear if they expect to face a lot of conditions, for instance. Revenants don’t have that option: it’s swap out the entire legend or change nothing. They do still have the trait system, but if anything, the current trait setup for the revenant appears to offer less opportunity to adjust to a meta than other professions.

Exacerbating these structural issues is that most of the revenant’s balancing has been based on its performance at the ESL level. First, this means that the revenant has become a profession with a very high skill floor: it’s comparable to thieves in that good players can be very scary in the right conditions, but learners will be a handicap to their teams even if they’re experienced in PvP on other professions. Second, at the ESL level, players are able to construct teams which allow the revenant to play to its strengths by coupling it with other professions that cover for its weaknesses (coupling a Shiro/Glint rev, normally vulnerable to conditions due to a lack of cleanses, with a profession with party cleansing such as a support Elementalist, for example). When you’re not playing with full 5v5 premade teams, however, you need a self-sufficiency that revenants just don’t have.

We also haven’t seen an ESL tournament since the last round of rev nerfs. The ESL players were apparently saying it was still a good profession after that, but when put to the test it might have proven to be overnerfed even in that environment.

And, to be honest, even from a casual PvE viewpoint, I found that over time all of the build options start to get a bit dreary once the novelty wears off. YMMV, though: ‘dreary’ is an entirely subjective viewpoint, and I might well change my mind if I shift to condi-oriented equipment that can make better use of the condition-oriented weapons and legend.

draxynnic.3719:

And, to be honest, even from a casual PvE viewpoint, I found that over time all of the build options start to get a bit dreary once the novelty wears off. YMMV, though: ‘dreary’ is an entirely subjective viewpoint, and I might well change my mind if I shift to condi-oriented equipment that can make better use of the condition-oriented weapons and legend.

And from a less casual PvE viewpoint, there’s no good reason to bring a Revenant to any content(given the option between it and another class) because there’s nothing they excel at.

In theory, a Herald is a good addition because of Perma Protection and giving the Druid/Chrono/PS Warr a little leeway when making mistakes in raids.
In reality, good teams don’t need them and bad teams will never admit to needing them.

You can play a Condi build, but it’s mostly just for fun because it has one of the lowest DPS of any condi build in the game. Some people are advocating for a Revenant to kite one of the new raid bosses, so maybe that will be Rev’s new PvE home for a bit, but we’ll see.

Malchior.5732:

In reality, good teams don’t need them and bad teams will never admit to needing them.

Truer words have never been typed.

Malchior.5732:

Some people are advocating for a Revenant to kite one of the new raid bosses, so maybe that will be Rev’s new PvE home for a bit, but we’ll see.

Actually, you can kite the first and the forth.

I guess kiting two bosses in a very healtank way its not what we expected revenant to do, but if those niche builds are good enough to people to acknowledge them, maybe the “rev is ded” meme fiesta stops.

Yes, rev is really that bad

I find because of the power requirement to run weapon and legend abilities that combat feels “clunky”.

For instance if I run the swiftness buff Impossible Odds from Shiro – it uses so much “energy” that I seldom have anything left over to use anything else.

So it really restricts me on how to play the Rev.

It’s like use one power and wait for regen to use another.

Well where’s the smoothness in play in that?

I hate global cool downs; and although it’s not quite the same, it feels the same way in what I would prefer which is fluid gameplay.

The only reason I am sticking with the class is because I hear with Glint the class does get a little bit better.

Crosses fingers

Balance Patch upcoming on Feb 22 !!

Let there be hope.

or not.

draxynnic.3719:

Go to any profession forum, and they’ll scream about how they’ve been overnerfed to the point of not being viable. But yeah, Revenant is in a bad state at the moment.

While we could go into the details, I think the fundamental problem is that the revenant has less build options than other professions. At first glance this might seem to make it easier to balance, but in practice it means that players have less options to adjust to balance changes and shifts in the meta, which makes the revenant more sensitive to ArenaNet’s balance decisions.

Part of this is because having so few options means that the revenant has less ability to react to one thing being overnerfed by switching to something else that does something similar. Revenant has only one ranged weapon, so when that weapon got nerfed into not being viable due to WvW reasons, revenants were essentially pushed into going full melee in sPvP. For most professions, if a given skill – a heal skill, say – is underperforming, they can swap that particular skill out for something more efficient without impacting the rest of their build. Revenants, however, cannot make this adjustment without effectively changing their whole build.

Similarly, revenants cannot adjust to shifts in the meta. Most professions, by switching out skills individually, can adjust to account for changes in the meta or even expectations about what the enemy team might have when they see what professions are on the enemy team: swapping in an additional condi clear if they expect to face a lot of conditions, for instance. Revenants don’t have that option: it’s swap out the entire legend or change nothing. They do still have the trait system, but if anything, the current trait setup for the revenant appears to offer less opportunity to adjust to a meta than other professions.

Exacerbating these structural issues is that most of the revenant’s balancing has been based on its performance at the ESL level. First, this means that the revenant has become a profession with a very high skill floor: it’s comparable to thieves in that good players can be very scary in the right conditions, but learners will be a handicap to their teams even if they’re experienced in PvP on other professions. Second, at the ESL level, players are able to construct teams which allow the revenant to play to its strengths by coupling it with other professions that cover for its weaknesses (coupling a Shiro/Glint rev, normally vulnerable to conditions due to a lack of cleanses, with a profession with party cleansing such as a support Elementalist, for example). When you’re not playing with full 5v5 premade teams, however, you need a self-sufficiency that revenants just don’t have.

We also haven’t seen an ESL tournament since the last round of rev nerfs. The ESL players were apparently saying it was still a good profession after that, but when put to the test it might have proven to be overnerfed even in that environment.

And, to be honest, even from a casual PvE viewpoint, I found that over time all of the build options start to get a bit dreary once the novelty wears off. YMMV, though: ‘dreary’ is an entirely subjective viewpoint, and I might well change my mind if I shift to condi-oriented equipment that can make better use of the condition-oriented weapons and legend.

That’s a good post I can agree with.

Over the last two years following Revenant development it became obvious that Revenant, as most aspects of HoT, was rushed. It took a year of constant nerfs to end up in the current state. All builds besides one were sacraficed in attempt to balance the class. I highly doubt that at this point Revenant will receive any changes worth mentioning up untill balance pass for second expansion when ArenaNet will – hopefully – try to update the pre-specialization traits, fix bugs and generally bring the class to some standards.

I just hope that the alarming rework of Momentary Pacification trait was a late April Fool’s joke from the Balance Team and does not preview the quality of changes. Because it was honestly the worst rework of a talent or trait I’ve seen in any MMO for a very long time.

Eros.6801:

Balance Patch upcoming on Feb 22 !!

Let there be hope.

or not.

You hope for a buffs? Ahaha wot? Nerfnant needs nerf every patch, he needs to remain his unique status. A patch without nerfnant getting a nerf is not a balance patch.

Rym.1469:

I just hope that the alarming rework of Momentary Pacification trait was a late April Fool’s joke from the Balance Team and does not preview the quality of changes. Because it was honestly the worst rework of a talent or trait I’ve seen in any MMO for a very long time.

They had so many ideas from you.. me, from other forumers. Bunch that actually made sense and would make the trait viable. In the end they went for their own kitten as usual and.. we all see how it ended. Gw2 is dying and thats mostly due to the “balance” team which we had to deal up with for over 4 years already. Hopefully their recent low revenue will be a waking up call at Anet and they do something to address this “issue” with said balance team unless they want this game to die. Their choice really.

I do expect bug fixes, i.e.: Unrelenting Assault when used under confussion should only receive damage as one single skill x the total amount of confussion stacked, and not X5 as currently happens.

I don’t care a crap about buffs until the bugs that the class drags from 18+ months ago get fixed.

If ArenaNet after 6 fully months of doing NOTHING for the class isn’t at least able to fix basic bugs in the basic skill weapons and traits then that would be a unmistakable sign of disability to manage their own game, and a good point of start to leave the ship (the game, not the class) before it sinks.

With the poor state of rev I am actually optimistic for the balance patch. ANet created a new, unfinished and buggy profession that required purchase of HoT then nerfed it out of the meta. At this point it can’t really get much worse

In before precision strike Nerf as well as removing evade frames from unrelenting assault as well as might generated from the skill

seriously ppl are 2 use to power build shiro / herald….i’m seriously having great success with condi rev and especially rev tank/healer spec (i could bunk a pt all day long and provide imba amount of heal to my team)

The one to Rule.2593:

In before precision strike Nerf as well as removing evade frames from unrelenting assault as well as might generated from the skill

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Precision_Strike

Precision strike has seen more than enough nerfs.

Matt Stacey.7415:

With the poor state of rev I am actually optimistic for the balance patch. ANet created a new, unfinished and buggy profession that required purchase of HoT then nerfed it out of the meta. At this point it can’t really get much worse

You would be surprised mate. Anet is creative in terms of beating a dead horse. Why do you think rev is in current state? They dont understand rev, they dont know what to do with him and they definitely dont know when to stop. They do random changes without looking at the bigger picture hoping for the best. Just look at this post:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Upcoming-Changes-to-Skills/page/3#post6424659

“Precision Strike is another skill that we felt did too much damage on its own, particularly when all 3 projectiles hit one player. This is another case of a big reduction on a skill that does a ton of damage, resulting in a skill that still does a reasonable amount of damage.”

I mean.. ok? Here are 2 examples
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Electro-whirl – more damage, reflect, also 6cd, no energy cost, no projectiles (no split damage between targets..)
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vault – much more damage, gap closer/opener, spamable, hits like f, evade.

Like.. please? Shiro heal change already ruined rev but they kicked him even more. If anyone hope for some decent buffs then keep dreaming, rev is not supposed to be strong. Theres a reason why to this day after a year release he still doesnt have reliable healing, reliable stab, reliable condi clear and tons of bugs. All they left for him after nerfs was damage which also got gutted in s5 as well for whatever reason leaving him out of meta in all 3 gamemodes. Balance kappa

do understand all the nerf…i personally feel it as well…lots of bug instead of fixing they focus on nerfing rev. I play a warrior and nerco main and recently just switch to rev omfg to my horror its so tough to play. I follow the meta battles shiro/herald build which I got slaughter within 20s in a teamfight. Condi and ventri healing is quite good in spvp although its harder to play. Forget about the old shiro/herald build it does not exist anymore.

princode.2750:

seriously ppl are 2 use to power build shiro / herald….i’m seriously having great success with condi rev and especially rev tank/healer spec (i could bunk a pt all day long and provide imba amount of heal to my team)

Please provide your build – sounds awesome!

This is the one class I couldn’t stand in terms of playstyle so much that I couldn’t even stand to level it to 80; I didn’t even make it that far. It might be fine if your playstyle is different from mine, but I can’t recommend it. ;-;