Guild Wars 2

Right, it’s the end of another beta weekend and time to dump our feedback again. I’ve got a list of issues that I had previously brought up from the second weekend, but seem to have not been resolved, or really even responded to, so this time I’d hope to get a little more feedback, as I believe that some of this stuff is really important.

First off i’ll run down the weapon skills-

-Shield 4 ‘Envoy of Exuberance’ is a skill that deals no damage to enemies, it simply moves to an area, heals, then comes back and grants protection. I do not know if it intended however that the projectile that the skill fires is able to strip Aegis off a player. Furthermore if the projectile is blocked by the player using Aegis, the projectile is destroyed and will not return to the Revenant. This doesn’t seem right as the skill is totally passive from a damage standpoint.

-Hammer 5 ‘Drop The Hammer’ is still playing its animation twice, not much to say here other than it being somewhat entertaining that enemies will sometimes waste a dodge getting out of the way of a fake skill. Still needs fixed though.

-Staff 5 ‘Surge of the Mists’ is able to strip an ungodly amount of stability off of players or nearly remove a breakbar in one use. I realize that the skill will hit multiple times but as mentioned in a few feedback threads from the Raids, being able to remove 75% of a boss breakbar with one skill is a tad overkill and needs looked at.

-Sword 3 ‘Unrelenting Assault’ the changes that have been made to this skill overall since the first time I used it are definitely for the better. I like the completely unique mechanic of what it does, ensuring that you can always stay with your target, and the damage it deals is still less than that of a Warrior Hundred Blades in PvE, and yet still generates might. Whilst there is a lot of debate over whether or not the skill needs toned down, I believe it is in a good place. Furthermore I was unable to replicate the issue of dealing no damage to enemies close to walls that some people have mentioned, so I can’t really comment on it.

-Sword 1 Auto Attack chain. This is where I think some numbers need tweaked, and maybe a little bit of work done to the skills overall. Initially I really liked how hard the auto attack hits, and it’s a welcomed surprise compared to the DPS output of other heavy plate classes. But considering the self generated might output that the Revenant can achieve I think the power coefficients are a little too high. I was able to quite easily auto attack multiple elites to death on my own in Crucible of Eternity at much the same speed that it would take the other 4 people in my group to kill. Seeing 5 target aoe numbers upwards of 6,000 damage per hit is definitely on the high side considering how fast the Revenant can hit when using Shiro with his pulsing quickness. Additionally the second swing of the auto attack was very finicky for me, as it was for many others during this weekend. I believe this is due to the fact that the second attack is a projectile and if used while not targeting an enemy the projectile will simply shoot into the ground and not chain the auto attack at all.

-Utility skill ‘Impossible Odds’; while I think that this is an incredibly strong skill I don’t think much can be done to change it in a meaningful way. I also don’t think that it is the root of the problems with how high Revenant DPS is. The 10 energy per second drain is hefty, and making it any higher would discourage players from using the skill altogether, which is obviously a bad thing. Refer to my comments above about the sword auto attack for what I think about balancing the DPS.

That’s really all I’ve got for the weapon and utility skills, otherwise I think they all work well for what they do, and most of them have been pretty good since BWE 2 when we saw a lot of weapon changes.

As for traits there are only two that I feel need discussed from the testing I was able to do this weekend. The details of what I explain below are a continuation of testing that I performed during BWE 2. At that point I knew something was wrong with these traits but didn’t really have enough time to figure out what it was. At this point in time I believe that I know what is going on and have some suggestions to fix it.

-Momentary Pacification is located in the Salvation trait line as a Grand Master trait. The trait is supposed to apply daze to up to 5 enemies around you in a 360 radius when using an elite skill. Which it does, kind of.

Originally my testing from BWE 2 let me come to the conclusion that the Daze effect from this trait was overwriting any heavy CC that your actual elite skill may produce. After testing this under some more controlled circumstances I was able to figure out that the daze from this trait does not originate from the elite skill itself, but from the Revenant casting the skill. This mechanic has some funny effects on some of the elite skills:

Jade Winds works fine, it will apply both its unique stun named “Jade” and the daze to a target.

Rite of the Great Dwarf works as intended.

Embrace the Darkness works as intended.

Energy Expulsion does not apply the daze at all depending on where you detonate your tablet. This is because the daze will originate from the Revenant. Unless you detonate your tablet in such a way that it knocks the enemy towards you, it will not daze them.

Facet of Chaos will only apply the daze if used within a certain range of the enemy. The trait has a radius of 360, but Facet of Chaos has a range of 450. This means that when used up close the knockback from your Facet will be cancelled by the daze applied from Momentary Pacification, but if used from almost max distance, Facet of Chaos will not apply the daze at all. This is particularly frustrating because it means that running this specific trait will break your Facet by cancelling its own CC effect, or simply be a wasted trait.

I reached out to Roy through twitter for an answer to this about two weeks ago, he replied to me explaining that the player will be under the effect of whatever CC is applied to them last. As a suggestion to fix the interaction between the trait and Facet of Chaos I think that applying the daze much earlier into the cast for the Facet would allow for both to work as intended. As the timing currently sits the daze is applied after the knockback, making the hard CC from the Facet itself completely useless.

-Diabolic Inferno is a grandmaster trait in the Corruption trait line. It works similarly to Momentary Pacification, this means that the burn applied originates from the Revenant. I am listing this as more of a warning to people using the trait than as a bug, because I don’t believe there is anything wrong with the trait itself. Much like the daze, burning will not be applied to any enemies who are knocked back by Energy Expulsion from Ventari’s Tablet, unless they are knocked directly towards you. The same applies to Facet of Chaos, since the range of the Facet knockback is longer than that of the trait, the burning will only be applied if the enemy is close to you when you trigger the skill.

That will mostly end my feedback for the Revenant from BWE 3. I am really looking forward to playing the class when Heart of Thorns releases on the 23rd, and I feel a little bad for my Warrior since he’ll likely be replaced as my main. Thanks for reading if you go this far, I realize it was a wall of text, I apologize.