Guild Wars 2

The following review is only focussed on the PvE aspects of a revenant.

Weapons

Hammer
I actually really like this weapon. More a utility-supportive weapon, where positioning is most important, making it feel like a nice good play – good reward kind of weapon.
- Hammer Bolt
Really like the mechanic that it basically pierces towards your enemy (and hits 5 enemies max balance wise). Nice quirky mechanic.
- Coalescence of Ruin
Damage is on the low end, and unless there’s hoards of enemies you might as well auto attack. Feels way too weak to the point where often you shouldn’t even use it.
- Phase Smash
Really love this skill, feels nice and powerful in a healthy way.
- Field of the Mist
Really would’ve liked if you could keep auto attacking while creating the field. Aside from that, a nice new mechanic again. Really don’t like that the field is not blocking face blank projectiles. Would’ve loved a triangle shaped field in front of you.
- Drop the Hammer
Really would’ve liked if you could keep auto attacking while summoning the massive hammer. Aside from that, I feel the skill is in a nice place.

Mace
I’ll keep it simple. Damage numbers (both physical and conditional) are too low right now. Searing Fissure and Echoing Eruption don’t synergise well with eachother sadly.
Torment has the same issue as confusion that it really doesn’t have a nice place in PvE right now.

Axe
- Frigid Blitz
Nice utility skill. Pass through damage way too low. A little low on the final damage, but it has definite merits and I don’t think it actually needs more damage there.
- Temporal Rift
Works nicely mechanically, damage is on the low end. Not sure it actually needs more damage as the utlity aspect is quite nice. It does feel kind of out of place in the current state of the game, as using Line of Sight will often be more superior.

Staff
- Auto attack
Really like it, low damage is slightly compensated with the heal.
- Punishing Sweep
Too low reward for using it correctly. Feels way too weak.
- Warding Rift
Tooltip is really weird, but aside from that it works nicely.
- Renewing Wave
Nice strong utility, but would’ve liked some more healing if you remove conditions.
- Surge of the Mists
You currently don’t need enemy displacement in the current state of the game. Other than that it feels nice.

Weapon Summary
Lackluster damage wise on the damage skills. Everything taken in consideration, they still feel too weak (utility doesn’t outway the low damage… and the damage skills don’t actually do meaningful damage).

Legendary Stances Prologue
Currently the biggest issue is that all of the options are very niche in the current state of the game. This leaves them very lackluster as you’re stuck with no real options. I would’ve really liked to see 2 options per utility slot (so first utility, you have option A or B, for second utility you have option C or D, for third utility you have opion E or F).
I’ll go into more detail under here. Also, there is absolutely no swiftness or speedboost anywhere yet… Really expected that on either staff or centaur stance.

Legendary Dwarf Stance
- Soothing Stone
Heal is on the low end with a high cooldown (sort of on a 15s cooldown, but considering it’s tied to two drawbacks I consider that high for a ~4.5k heal), retaliation & condi removal doesn’t make up for those making it feel weak. Would’ve liked added regen after use, or maybe protection.
- Stone Road
Doesn’t pulse when you lay it down, making it super slow to respond to stuff. You can use it nicely when you expect stuff, but it still has a fairly long cast + build up time.
This leads to another issue, that it’s initially only one stack which often isn’t enough and you actually need that build up. Also, right now there’s no real need for an AoE layered stability. You want it on your team, instead of having it available for pick up on the floor. Compare it with med kits on an engineer, you pick those up when you need them. It doesn’t really work like that with stability right now.
It has a lot of drawbacks and I feel they outway the positives too much (postives are that you can stack them up as the duration of the stability is decent, and you can keep it active in an area ‘cause of the short cooldown).
- Forced Engagement
Too niche in the current PvE itteration, kind of hard to predict if it’ll be strong in HoT.
- Vengeful Hammers
Damage utility on a defensive legendary stance feels out of place. Would’ve liked some defensive rewards for hitting enemies with it.
- Rite of the Great Dwarf
Feels really clunky and because you don’t really have any significant damage reduction it still feels lackluster (traits feel too weak as relevant reduction, I’ll go over that later).

Legendary Mallyx Stance
- Empowering Misery
Feels bad using it when you don’t have conditions. I feel the balance is a bit too powerful if you’ve got many conditions and weak if you have little. The cast time also feels too high when it’s based on conditions on you (as there’s often short duration conditions on you). Also, you don’t really have a nice way to proc conditions on yourself for a significant duration as it doesn’t seem to take the self-weakness in consideration.
- Banish Enchantment
Confusion still feels very weak in the current PvE, even though the last update helped make the damage more reliable. There simply aren’t enough fast attacking enemies to make it worthwhile. And then the passive damage isn’t enough to compensate it.
On top of that, the 3 condition threshold feels too high.
It currently doesn’t fit into the game, but that might change with HoT.
- Pain Absorption
Biggest issue I have is that the blind duration really feels out of place here. While you have resistance, you can’t proc the blind to go away. I feel resistance should remove the blind as you hit an enemy through it. There’s no counter play to the blind, as the duration of it is very high, you’d have to transfer 6 or more conditions to render the blind countered by the resistance.
Aside from that, it currently feels too niche for the game.
- Unyielding Anguish
Can get a little bit too spammy, might be nice to have a ~5s cooldown.
Feels out of place in the current PvE as you don’t need denial of an area to enemies.
Threshold feels too high.
- Embrace the Darkness
Copies conditions, but doesn’t take any stacks in consideration. On top of that, the duration of the stacks is only 3 seconds. Feels really weak for it depleting all of your energy rapidly.

Legendary Centaur Stance
I can keep this quick, as it is really hard to give any meaningful opinion on this. It doesn’t fit in the current state of PvE. Bosses more often than not have high 1-2 shot attacks and the heal sustain doesn’t make up for that.
The only criticism I have is that the tablet really doesn’t feel smooth to use. Mostly coming from Ventari’s Will, it has a giant aftercast on top of a 1/2 cast time + 2 second cooldown… it really feels more like it takes a good 6 seconds to move it from one side to another.

Legendary Stances Summary
They don’t fit the current PvE game. They mostly feel too weak. The elites aren’t satisfying enough to use. They don’t synergise well with the current weapons / specializations.

Specializations

Corruption
I actually quite like this line. I do think it should have some bigger / better numbers. Either higher condition output or more/higher modifiers would be good.
Really just misses something that scales up your condition damage (opposed to dutation).

Retribution
Really feels out of place in the current state of the game and therefor is hard to judge. I personally really don’t like ‘when struck’ kind of traits as it doesn’t synergise with dodging well. Doesn’t feel rewarding enough to use any of it in the current state. Lackluster numbers.

Salvation
The numbers feel right, but just like the centaur stance it doesn’t fit in the current game too well (as you want to avoid damage, not try and endure it).

Invocation
The numbers feel too low, no real options, and overall lackluster. Again no damage modifiers, too high ICD’s, with only a couple of really strong picks (looking at you Equilibrium & Roiling Mists).

Specializations Summary
In it’s current state they feel extremely lackluster. No hard choises, and often bad choises all together. Doesn’t fit in the current game much either.
On top of that, I really dislike that (for the revenant especially) there’s weapon related traits in there. Feels too limitive.