Guild Wars 2

A lot of people have mentioned weapon-swapping for the Revenant, and while I think that could be neat, I think it would be even cooler if the different weapons had different weapon skills depending on your equipped legend. I understand this would take more time to develop and test, but I think it would go a long way to making each legend feel more distinct as a playstyle, and wouldn’t require players to swap between legends and weapons at the same time whenever they want a complete swap.

Take Hammer for example. Maybe for one legend it uses ranged attacks and ranged AOE (like it does now), but for, say, Jalis, it turns into a melee bruiser weapon with lots of blocks or CC. For Staff, it keeps its defensive/support skills for Ventari, but turns into a condi-based weapon for Mallyx. That kind of thing.

If that’s too difficult to implement (since we’re talking about 30+ new skills), perhaps just a few skills for each weapon could change. Maybe 1-3 stays the same, but 4-5 changes. Or perhaps 3-5 stays the same, and 1-2 changes. Or maybe even just the autoattack changes based on your current legend.

I think that would be a great way to add some additional distinction to each legend without requiring Revenants to have access to weapon swap.

It’s not difficult if every weapon just has 2 modes.

example:
Hammer + Jalis/Ventari: ranged, like now
Hammer + Shiro/Mallyx: melee+cleave

or vice versa.

Well, we have to keep in mind that even adding 5 new skills probably requires several weeks worth of development and testing. So even adding one second “mode” per weapon is a lot of work. Saying “it’s not difficult” is like casually dismissing the insane amount of work that goes into animations and graphics.

But, I think it would be worth it for the class as a whole. Plus, it would be super cool to watch all 10 skills on your hotbar change at the same time when you switch legends.

Feonix.4790:

Well, we have to keep in mind that even adding 5 new skills probably requires several weeks worth of development and testing. So even adding one second “mode” per weapon is a lot of work. Saying “it’s not difficult” is like casually dismissing the insane amount of work that goes into animations and graphics.

But, I think it would be worth it for the class as a whole. Plus, it would be super cool to watch all 10 skills on your hotbar change at the same time when you switch legends.

A classic example of “easier said than done”

But at the same time, it definitely needs something, maybe a lot of something.
And I agree with you, each Legend should (absolutely needs to) feel more distinct.
Plus each legend really only fits a certain weapon, right now, which leaves you with a legend that’s half worthless (imo) when you switch to it.
One of the common suggestions has been to allow equiping of a weapon to each legend, so that when you legend swap it weapon swaps as well.

So Hammer/Jalis swaps to MaceAxe/Malyx, etc

Alternatively, as you suggest each legend could have a separate skillset per weapon, and you’re locked to that weapon.

Either way though that means swapping legends swaps all 10 skills.

I myself would like to be able to run mace/axe/malyx and staff or hammer/ventari and swap between those, so whatever makes that work.

I have already suggested this but I think the best way would be that each legend brings with it a set of 1-5 skills not linked to the weapon. So in total, we would have 5 weapon skills, 5 legend1 skills, 5 legend2 skills and 5 utilities for each legend so 25 skills. That would become a highly versatile class, on par with elementalist for number of skills available during a fight, but with still less total skills available (and thus less skills to develop). For example, adding a weapon + 5 utilities (for each new elite specialization) mean 25 more skills for elementalist while it would be “only” 15 more skills for a revenant.

Having entirely different moves for each Legend/weapon combo would be cool, but as you say it would take a lot of work on their part. If they can do it, that’s great, but otherwise, I’d settle for the different weapons to have slightly different bonus effects based on Legend, so that each is more viable in all specs, for example Staff 1 generates heal orbs in Ventari mode, but maybe Caltrops in Mallyx, or Protection orbs in Jalis. Same animations, mostly same effect visuals, same core effects, but they would synergize better with every Legend.

Neeja.4579:

It’s not difficult if every weapon just has 2 modes.

example:
Hammer + Jalis/Ventari: ranged, like now
Hammer + Shiro/Mallyx: melee+cleave

or vice versa.

Love this idea. It will never be done in game because game designers don’t like to take a step back. But still this would make reverent the most exciting class to play Imo

Ohoni.6057:

Having entirely different moves for each Legend/weapon combo would be cool, but as you say it would take a lot of work on their part. If they can do it, that’s great, but otherwise, I’d settle for the different weapons to have slightly different bonus effects based on Legend, so that each is more viable in all specs, for example Staff 1 generates heal orbs in Ventari mode, but maybe Caltrops in Mallyx, or Protection orbs in Jalis. Same animations, mostly same effect visuals, same core effects, but they would synergize better with every Legend.

This is actually a really cool idea. I think you could even take it a step further and give the abilities slightly different names (and tooltips obviously). That eliminates a lot of the animation/graphic work and puts most of the burden on development, but it’s a great way to give each legend a different “feel”, even with essentially the same kit. Here’s an example:

Staff on Ventari is just as it is now, focusing on healing and damage reduction:

Rapid Swipe -> Forceful Bash -> Rejuvenating Assault: 2 hits, then cleave foes around you with your staff, creating healing orbs for you and your allies.

Punishing Sweep ->Debilitating Slam: Gain access to Debilitating Slam if you interrupt. Imbue your staff with mist energy and slam it down, damaging and weakening nearby foes.

Warding Rift: Create a rift from the mists, warding you from attacks. While the rift is open projectiles will hit nearby foes, blinding them.

Renewing Wave: Send out a wave of mist energy that heals and removes conditions from allies.

Surge of the Mists: Charge forward, knocking back enemies that cross your path.

Staff on Mallyx, however, could be condi-focused, as such:

Rapid Swipe -> Forceful Bash -> Agonizing Assault: 2 hits, then cleave foes around you with your staff, creating orbs that torment foes who touch them.

Punishing Sweep ->Crippling Slam: Gain access to Debilitating Slam if you interrupt. Imbue your staff with mist energy and slam it down, damaging and crippling nearby foes.

Warding Rift: Create a rift from the mists, warding you from attacks. While the rift is open projectiles will hit nearby foes, confusing them.

Vile Wave: Send out a wave of mist energy that damages and poisons foes.

Surge of the Mists: Charge forward, knocking back enemies that cross your path (this one can stay the same, to be honest).

Just an example of how these skills can be changed from one legend to another, without making them completely new from scratch.

Well I really liked your idea about changing the weapon skills depending on your current legend
I immediately thought of a vice-versa elementalist with glyphs

I just see 2 problems:
1) This means every new legend will affect ALL weapons (like a new attunement would do for ele)
2) If you want to keep the skills quite the same you still have the problem between switching melee and ranged.

BUT like I said, I really really liked the idea…so I started to go on with my own ideas (took your Mallyx Staff ideas) Don’t think that a-net will do this but hey! it’s fun I didn’t came up with new names for the skills..because..well i’m lazy

Warning: I sometimes tend to make skills a liiitle bit OP^^

I tried to keep the mechanics of the weapons and often one distinct skill for all legends. On the other hand I tried to think of the legends as unique heroes.

Jalis: the tanky Dwarf from the frozen shiver peeks, who likes to fight in company but can stand a whole army on his own.

Mallyx: a demon who enjoys the pain of others. There’s nothing more pleasing than watching an enemy suffer till death.

Ventari: the pacifistic centaur who is more concerned about his allies. But don’t mess with him, he is a master of driving you crazy.

Shiro: a ruthless assassin who focuses on direct damage and benefits from the pain of his victims. He doesn’t even need any company to take down hordes of enemies.

Well… so much for dreaming my results are attached … please keep in mind it’s just fun

I also thought of the possibility to replace weapon swap with some kind of “stance swap” meelee vs ranged

This would allow you to change the skills of your current weapon without allowing you to swap weapons
If this is unfair you could tie the stance on the legend so you will have a melee legend (weapons are melee, utilities normal) and a ranged legend (weapons are ranged, utilities normal)
—> still one weapon set with specific “feeling” but allowing you to be more flexible in combat.
—> making the choice of legends more impactful (a Jalis-Mallyx-Rev isn’t the same as a Mallyx-Jalis-Rev)