Guild Wars 2

This is my feedback/rework on the revenant based on BWE 2.0. My main focus will be on sPvP and WvW as I’m not so experienced with PvE. Throughout the whole beta I’ve been playing around 15h of revenant and especially with the recent changes, gameplay has been really fun. Though of course it’s still a new class that needs balancing and a lot of skills but also traits need to be in-line with all others so you don’t pick a certain legend for one specific skill. I will go across the Legends first and after that I’ll discuss some minor problems with the weapons and traits.

The main spec I have played during the beta is:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vlAQNAW8nn3guNSuQ7JRboVlsP0rS4IaWJ4EdsklNFSNG5oHtBoAPwOgHchA-TZBGABeXGAhHAAAHBgDuIAps/AA

Though I have also tested a condition spec which also worked out nicely in certain situations.

I’ll start off with one of the biggest issues I currently have and that is the legend Jalis:
King jalis has one of the, if not the, best healing of the class. Combined with a very nice damage reduction upkeep skill, which also heals and works perfectly with Devastation trait line, it just doesn’t really add much besides that.

• Inspiring Reinforcement, aka ‘’the road’‘, was decent, but I couldn’t believe what I saw in the BWE1 patch notes. While I found this skill was pretty terrible due the fact that it’s very slow with applying stability, it also made you very static that way. The only reason for using it was to stomp people. Now I do agree the duration of 6 seconds is a bit off the limit, while 1 second is just way too bad. My suggestion is to apply instant stability the moment you use the skill and have constant pulsing of short durations. Up the stability stacks to 3 seconds each instead of 1 and the skill should be good to go.

• Forced Engagement: Well.. What can I say? A skill that requires as much energy as the elite and also has a fairly high chance of missing? No. thank. you. This skill is so basic it just needs a few adjustments. From what I was thinking, they made it cost so much because else people would spam it. So why not just increase the cooldown to 10 seconds, decrease the energy cost to 25 and voila, you got yourself a single target stun. (something revenants don’t got a lot of.)
  By the way, if you disagree with this: Think about how strong jade winds is and compare that to this skill.

I have no comments on vengeful hammers as I like how it is currently

• Rite of the Great Dwarf: Honestly.. It’s just not that great. While -50% damage reduction is nice for your whole party, 5 seconds is just fairly short. Then again it’s also pretty easy to spot someone with the buff, the casting time is long and the stunbreak could probably be either transfered to ‘’the road’’ or ‘’the hammers’’ with such long casting time. Either make it a stun break and make it instant cast, or keep the 1.25 sec CS and add stability to the skill. This way revenant have some non-static way to apply stability, while sacrificing quite a lot energy for it. Obviously the stability should last around 5 seconds and apply at least 3-5 stacks.

I’m going to ontinue with my favorite legend: Shiro:

• Enchanted Daggers: Shiro is very offensive and also has a great healing. Though this healing has some cons, as it doesnt have a big base heal. While this is totally fine, the damage part is where it is a bit too strong. The mass complaints about ‘’Unrelenting Assault’’ is probably caused by the fact that most revenants used this skill in combination with the shiro healing.
  This is also why I think the healing should be increased slightly with the base healing, while slightly reducing the damage done and healing done per stack of dagger.

• Riposting Shadows: This skill is very nice but the energy cost feels slightly too high. 25 would be perfect.
• Phase Traversal: How many times this skill saved me, but also made me possible to +1 fights very fast is impossible to count. This skill is so strong for it’s cost. The only problem I have is that it bugs out sometimes and that it still cost you energy. I do, though, think this skill deserves a slight nerf. My change would be: There should be no energy loss upon failing the skill, however: There should be a small cooldown of around 5 seconds so you can’t spam it like crazy. I’ve been able to port across maps faster than anyone is possible which seems pretty wierd for a heavy armor class. The skill should need some counterplay and not just let you faceroll to the other side of the map once you got a target. A small cd can easily solve this problem. (3 seconds could also do the job maybe already?)

• Impossible Odds: Energy cost is so freaking high. Sure it gives 2 of the best buffs in the game, but -10 upkeep is gone in seconds. I’d suggest lowering this to -8.

Jade Winds is totally fine, nice elite with good enough reaction time to dodge. Might just need it’s casting time reduced slightly

Next up: Herald:
Oh my, how wonderful is this legend… right? The healing is great, the boon stacking and support is amazing, the elite not only looks sick but also does an amazing job… but what’s wrong with the reveal on Gaze of Darkness? I’m not sure if this is intended, but shouldn’t ’’reveal’’ also actually reveal people that are in stealth? It just seems like you need to predict when someone goes into stealth, you have to literally be next to them and use the skill. Either keep the mechanic as it currently is, but increase the radius to 600, or make it so people in stealth will go out of stealth when they gain the reveal debuff.

Another thing I dislike is the speed of Burst of Strength. This skill feels so slow and so skillshot based (which is a good thing cause that adds lots of counterplay to the skill) that it’s not really worth using. If you wanna use it to cleave someone out fast, it’s more useful to just spam 1 than using this skill at first. My suggestion would be to decrease the casting time to 0,5 seconds.

Though many experience this legend as the strongest right now, I think this is mainly due that people have to adapt to the healing which adds a big chunk to the strength of the legend. Apart from that the skills aren’t that impressive. Of course it can stack huge amount of boons, but hey, that’s the whole point of the legend. Though I do think the boons could be reduced to 2.75 or maybe even 2.5 seconds per boon due that you already get 15% boon duration as base, which should add up to 3 seconds. Along with this the might duration should be decreased to 12 seconds. All in all this will result in a slight nerf in the massive boon-stacking for yourself, though it keeps the boon support for your allies which I think is much more the concept of the legend.

Healings.. healings… and more.. projectile blocks? Yep: Ventari:
This legend… One word: Static!. This tablet annoys me so much. It just feels like I have to rush to an appointment while still having to let the dogs out. You’re just trying to drag your dogs with you to speed up the walking cause they’re so slow at those times. This feeling is so annoying to experiene, especially in a game! The speed of the ventari tablet should be increased 1.5x of what it is currently and it’s cost should be reduced to 5 energy. With the constant spamming of the tablet I just feel like I can’t use any other skills.

* Protective Solace: I find this a very boring skill but honestly I don’t see what it else could become. I guess it could need a slight increase in radius? So many projectile blocks already for revenant, it’s just another one that costs a lot energy. Maybe the active could become something like ’’burst out a wave of healing based on the amount of projectiles absorbed. or: burst out a wave of healing based on the amount of seconds you kept up the skill. or Collapse the protective barrier, creating a water field for the duration you kept up the barier.

* Natural Harmony: Nice healing, wouldn’t change much about this besides maybe the energy cost to reduced to 20, but that would make it very strong when used with lots of healing power.

* Purifying Essence: Oh my… the energy cost is over the top. I can imagine it being 25, but 35 is insane. Give it a 3 seconds ICD, reduce the casting time to 0,5s and make it 25 energy cost. That way you wont be out of energy instantly after using this skill.

* Energy Expulsion: Reduce casting time to 1.25 seconds like with jalis. 2 seconds is way too long.

Ring of fire? Here, have your 12 stacks burning annoying eles! Mallyx time:
This is such nice legend. When played correctly you can make such big difference in team fights. While in 1v1 it isn’t the greatest it can still do nice on-point pressure with the ‘’o-so annoying ring’‘.
I don’t have many changes for this legend apart from a few:

• Pain Absorption could maybe get a slight energy reduction to 30 energy.
• Unyielding Anguish should remove 1 stack of stability every second instead of ignoring it.

Alright, that were the legends. Let’s move over to the weapons and traits:
Staff:

• Auto attack is fine
• #2: Both attacks are too slow. Casting time should be reduced by at least 1/2. A daze of 0,5 second which costs 1.75 sec to cast at least is just not worth.
• #3 is totally fine but could maybe be nerfed slightly to 1.5 sec block instead of 2 as the casting time is also 1.5?
• #4 seems bugged? At least it doesn’t always remove conditions from yourself, unless this is intended and only used to cleanse allies.
• #5 is amazing and totally gives a reason to use this weapon.

Hammer

• Auto attack is still not worth using and instead you will just end up spamming 2 and 3. Damage across the weapon should be balanced more.
• #2 seemed to do way too much damage in WvW and could maybe use a damage reduction or cooldown increase
• #3 is still very slow and could use a casting time decrease
• #4 could also use a casting time decrease. I still don’t see the reason for a 0,75 seconds projectile block unless you fight a projectile-heavy spec. But that’s just rather preventing someone to use a skill, than landing the skill. aka it doesn’t promote skilled projectile blocking but rather just spamming it.
• #5 Blegh so slow. People that can’t dodge this are either already cc’ed or just very slow on their reaction… Reduce casting time to 1.25 please.

Sword:

• #1 auto attack is fine.
• #2 range could be increased to 600.
• #3 This skill should be increased in it’s speed honestly. 2 seconds evade is just adding up to the massive amount of evades and blocks revenant already has. If this skill is a bit faster it will deal a bit more damage over time, but at least the survivability will be reduced. Though damage could also be nerfed slightly, but I prefer not to as confusion and retaliation already are pretty good counters to this skill.
• #4 Just another block with a pretty clunky immobilize. Maybe increase range of immobilize to 450?
• #5 Still feels akward to use and damage doesn’t seem that amazing. Maybe decrease CD to 12 seconds to make it more in line with axe which is also a 15 seconds CD but aoe stun.

Mace:

• #1 auto attack is alright
• #2 still feels a bit akward sometimes but due it’s low cd it’s not that big of a deal to miss it. I still feel like the cd could need to be increased and the duration of the field so the punnish of missing, but also the reward for landing and ccing someone in it is bigger.
• #3 nice skill with many options to use.

Axe:
Amazing weapon wouldn’t change anything besides having the temporal Rift be more reliable across hills and such.

Shield:
Bleh not really such a fan of this weapon.

• #4 is decent but has a fairly long cooldown
• #5 is very easy to break, has a long cooldown, energy cost is pretty high and it feels to me it should remove 1 condition per pulse to be worth using.

Traits:

Herald:

• Bolster Fortifications doesn’t fit with the herald healing at all so I don’t see why this is in the herald line. It pretty much reduces the healing gain by 33%. It’s a nice trait with ventari, so this could need a change.

Salvation:

• Disarming Riposte seems pretty useless and needs some serious icd-reduction (10sec or so) to be noticeable.
• Nourishing Roots needs it’s regen duration be increased to 3 seconds base or just changed to a -10% damage reduction when being near the tablet to up to 5 allies.
• Tranquil Benediction is not worth picking and would need might of 3 seconds added to it or a 1second duration protection or fury added to be worth.
• Eluding Nullification’s ICD is way too long and should be around 2 seconds to prevent people from double dodging, but still having that nice condition removal on dodge with certainty. Currently 10 sec is just way too random.

Retribution:

• Improved Aggression: Pve Trait, might be useful with HoT content? Currently isn’t useful as far as I’m concerned anywhere.
• Steadfast Rejuvenation is a pretty boring grandmaster trait and totally not impressive. Should get a buff in my opinion. Maybe +5 energy added to it or the healing increased/ AoE.

Invocation:

• Charged Mist is too hard to use imo. Rather have it that it gives might when you use a skill above 50 energy and not just when it drops below 50.
• Cruel Repercussion is a bit of a wierd trait for the revenant as you dont really have a hard single hitting skill besides maybe something on hammer or staff 2. Though even if you notice a skill has been negated, you already used the buff due the fast attacking of the revenant. I would rather have the buff apply 3 times 25% and maybe even have a lower ICD.

Devastation:

• Malicious Reprisal is just horrible since the icd is way too long and (havent tested this but thought by logic) if it procs with aegis its useless.
• Nefarious Momentum is kinda unnoticeable since you dont and cant really use many shiro stance skills. the might stacks per skill could be increased but I highly doubt if that will increase the quality of the trait.
• Dismantle Fortifications is not worth it compared to the other grandmasters in devastation. The only skill that reslly benifits from this trait is Surge of the Mist which is fairly easy to dodge and hard to hit all 9 times. My addition to this trait would be to gain 1 stack of stability for 6 seconds when succesfully removing a stack of stability (5 sec icd). The current effect would still be without icd.