Guild Wars 2

bwe2 is over now and total matches on revenant: 96

during the past few days and today aswell i was playing the herald in conquest with a celestial sword/shield staff setup and i was really impressed how much fun it is to play. it is kind of a mix between a thief and a guardian with some attunement-like mechanics.

the herald is in a very good spot, let me tell you this and with a few tweaks and QoL updates i would even be willing to switch from my main ele to a revenant

(one big problem is the legend swap. it takes too long. i had situations where i died because i swapped legends but skills were not ready to use yet because it takes like 1s until the skills flipped over :/ – resolved)

the herald is strong, that’s not true for the revenant in general. i had the impression that the normal revenant was not that impressive and i have seen 2 persons play with jalis and a couple more with mallyx. there was nobody who played ventari in the ~50 matches i played during this bwe2. this should not be the focus of this thread though. what i will cover here is the playstyle ofd what i played.

now let’s start with my review:

overall the herald is quite complex compared to existing professions or even other elite specialisations and the possibilities are almost endless.

the herald (with celestial amulet) is very squishy even though i had 2700 armor and 21k health but you also get a couple of damage avoiding skills like unrelenting assault, crystal hybernation and so on. if you’re timing your skills right you can be “tanky” but if you fail at that you can get more or less oneshot by mesmers.

i had some issues and bugs and i will list them below with some suggestions:

sword mainhand

overall in a very good spot. i would not change anything on this one. auto attack is fine although the 2nd hit could be turned into a “non projectile” because the attack will not work on projectile destroyer/reflection skills and you’re kinda stuck on the 2nd hit then.

unrelenting assault is a very nice skill, offensively aswell as defensively. it is a bit bugged though. it will stop working when you’re close to a wall and if you use it on a mesmer that goes through a portal you will teleport with him across the whole map.

shield
overall the shield needs a better healing power scaling.

shield, by concept, is a very nice weapon but needs some minor tweaks for both of its skills.

envoy of exuberance
as i mentioned above, revenant is a bit squishy and i was not that keen on using this skill against marauder builds because during the time that it takes to cast and to heal, you will have been hit for more damage than it actually heals. a simple fix would be an aoe blind at the target location.

crystal hibernation
this skill is more or less a “panic button”. it is very gimmicky at the moment and you can get insta interrupted if an engi uses the chill grenades on you which is a bit stupid. a smoke field works in a similar way. what i suggest is that only hard CCs work on it, not soft cc like chill blind immob and so on. it would be fair if the enemy had to use 4-5 stuns on you to get you out of this skill.

staff

the auto attack is fine, obviously it is a bit lower than sword so that’s the only point that could be buffed a tiny little bit, like 10%.

punishing sweep
the vulnerability could be increased to 4-5 seconds. 3s is a bit low.
i never really used the daze, still need to find the right situation for it. it would be better if the toggle would flip over when you hit somebody, hitting them when they use a skill is a bit.. meh. does the skill toggle when you hit somebody who is resureccting somebody?

warding rift
perfect

renewing wave
the healing needs to be increased a bit. it is again a risky skill to use for a revenant so if it healed around 2200 it would be better. i also had the impression that this skill bugged out sometimes and didn’t remove any conditions. maybe this has something to do with blinds? or idk, it was a bit strange when it happened. i think i had burning and blind and it didn’t remove any conditions.

surge of the mists
perfect

shiro
shiro is an amazing legend

enchanted daggers
works well for more tanky builds as it isn’t really a burst heal and is best used with either burst skills like unrelenting assault and surge of the mists or warding rift.
overall a solid heal skill.

riposting shadows
hm.. this is a difficult one. i saw people complain about it because it gives you 50 endurance on use. i’m gonna be honest here, yes it is strong. BUT. as i mentioned before, revenant is quite squishy so he needs all he can get, and for the time being i would leave the endurance at 50 because the skill also costs quite a bit of energy. the maximum you can get out of it is 2x dodges and 2x evade from the skill usage in normal situations. something i noticed is if you get hit by the reaper’s shroud 5 your stunbreaks have a 1 s cooldown before you can use them to break the stun. is this intended?

phase traversal
i love this skill. it lets you be that crazy player that hunts down escaping target or lets you get to sneaky thieves that try to decap your point. amazing for revenant as a side node holder.

impossible odds
a crazy skill… very dangerous for your foes but also for yourself. it needs to be used with caution as it can backfire and you will be left with no energy.

jade winds
this one can either be a game winner or your certain death because it costs that much energy. balanced imo but could use lower energy cost for a cooldown.

glinth

facet of nature
pretty happy with both upkeep and active.

face of light
both upkeep and active find. saw people complaining that there is no tell to the active so an aura-like visual effect could help, if it’s really necessary… the heal needs to stay insta cast though as it is your counter to burst damage. if this skill gets a casting time it will be ruined.

facet of darkness
what i noticed from the active is that the reveal is not instant. if a thief goes into shadow refuge and i use the reveal it takes 2-3s until he is revealed. a bit annoying and most likely a bug.

facet of elements
both upkeep and active good

facet of strength
the active needs more damage. it hits for ~1k twice. would be nice if it was buffed to 1,5k-2k

facet of chaos
the upkeep is too expensive and needs to be lowered to -3. the active is good against downed bodies, easy to dodge normally :/ casting time could go down to 1s instead of 1.25

herald traits

tbh the adept traits are all kinda mehish.. they’re not bad but they’re not good either.
the other traits are okay and i feel like most of them are not nobrain picks but matter of tastes.

bolster fortification (master)
first the protection is not long enough. should be 5s. and second this kind of works against the glinth heal because it lowers the heal you get from the damage :/

good work so far roy, i’m happy with the herald keep the good work up

btw any chance we can get 2 condis cleansed on legend swap with the invocation trait :P?

Jekkt.6045:

one big problem is the legend swap. it takes too long. i had situations where i died because i swapped legends but skills were not ready to use yet because it takes like 1s until the skills flipped over :/

But even though there is a flashy animation of the skills flipping from one legend to another, they are actually available right as you activate the legend. I do it all the time when going from shiro to glint, instantly hiting swiftness and might facets, and they get into their upkeep state while the animation is in progress. It’s only a little bit confusing at first.

ty that’s good to know then

I’m personally concerned by how little condition damage you have in your cele build. You should ideally be running offhand axe (our only truly hybrid weapon), as well as Mallyx to have good condi pressure and sustain versus conditions.

Personally I’m not convinced that celestial works as well on revenant as many people think, so I’ve adopted a carrion herald build that provides a condi bruiser playstyle. I don’t think celestial works very well because many aspects of revenant are specialized to the extreme, so building a true hybrid is more difficult than one might expect.

i have enough burning on elemental blast, it ticks for 1k/s lol.

mallyx is bad compared to shiro and glinth and axe is also inferior to shield right now. you won’t have enough sustain without it and i actually beat a mallyx shiro revenant without any problems.

Jekkt.6045:

i have enough burning on elemental blast, it ticks for 1k/s lol.

mallyx is bad compared to shiro and glinth and axe is also inferior to shield right now. you won’t have enough sustain without it and i actually beat a mallyx shiro revenant without any problems.

I don’t think elemental blast is enough to be effective condi pressure when it’s relatively easy to avoid. But since we can actually test everything I’ll give your build a try, just to be sure. Could you please give me the exact traits, runes, and sigils?

Also, besides offhand axes difficulty working with terrain, it is our best offhand by far. I’ll run your build with axe over shield, because until shield gets addressed, it’s just not good. I do agree with you suggestions for shield 4 though, I merely believe that AoE aegis instead of blind would be a bit better.

I also worry about being eaten by condis without Mallyx. It’s a powerful stance, it just needs a stunbreak really badly.

i dont have problems with conditions most of the time. staff 4, legend swap and generosity usually do the job.

hoelbrak runes
sword + shield with generosity/strength
staff with energy blood

devstation 223
(vicious lacerations can be swapped for aoe ferocity but i prefer the higher damage on sword)

invocation 221

herald 121

adept and grandmaster can be swapped but for myself i prefer those. the res can be useful with an actual team but i don’t bother with that in soloQ.

you want to have staff in glinth because of energy management and sword in shiro for the auto attacks and quickness but weaponswaps but that’s not set in stone so i adapt to the situation i’m in.

you start with nature + swiftness and might for prestacking on staff.

you switch to sword for unrelenting assault and then you switch to shiro to have 50% energy. shield 4 for the sustain, shield 5 if you don’t want to dodge or for heals. if you can afford using impossible odds then do it.

in shiro i use the active of nature to get prot and fury.

when im back in glinth i activate fury and might and i put the active of elemental on point.

Okay, I’ll try a few games with it,and I’ll give you my earnest opinion.

My question is you guys with shield, how are you gap closing without axe 4? I can’t get into the shield thing. Since 5 is broken, how are you closing the gap ?

Okay, so here’s the breakdown.

I didn’t like it. It felt worse than celestial engineer in its current, hopelessly bad state. Now don’t get me wrong, it does power based damage pretty well, but thats it. The burning from elemental burst is not enough condi pressure at all, while in general, the build is way too easy to lock down and kill.

However, I did feel as though your build got some things right, and overall the condition weakness wasn’t as bad as I had anticipated. I still wouldn’t 1v1 a condi build with it, but in teamfights, I felt like the invocation cleansing and generosity sigils was enough for incidental condis. If I got condi bombed though, it was all over, as it would be on most builds in this game.

So I decided to tweak things. I put on a soldier’s amulet and replaced sword/shield with hammer, and overall it ended up working much better. I felt like the kind of bruiser a celestial build usually is. I might also try replacing devastation with retribution for the protection injection rip-off trait to help with sustain a bit more, but overall I think this soldier’s build that uses shiro/glint as a basis is pretty good.

I still beleieve that my glint/mallyx carrion build is better though, but we’ll have to see.

gap closing with shiro.

and idk if it’s you or if it’s me but i’m more or less destroying everything with it. the only difficult matchup is burn guard and opponents with a lot of random ccs, hello there taunt.

atm i have a win ratio of more than 60% with it in 70 games :P

Jekkt.6045:

gap closing with shiro.

and idk if it’s you or if it’s me but i’m more or less destroying everything with it. the only difficult matchup is burn guard and opponents with a lot of random ccs, hello there taunt.

I’ll spend some more time with it tonight/tomorrow. See if I can get into the swing of shield.

Jekkt.6045:

gap closing with shiro.

and idk if it’s you or if it’s me but i’m more or less destroying everything with it. the only difficult matchup is burn guard and opponents with a lot of random ccs, hello there taunt.

Its just the focus fire struggles that make it difficult, and the lack of condi pressure. I mean celestial only works on elementalist because they can heal through half of their health, while doing high physical damage and burning in AoE. Part of it is because bonuses to burn, mightstacking, and physical DPS are all in one traitline, so they can afford to use their other traitlines for full out sustain. For necromancer celestial only works because of braindead easy and effective mightstacking and raw tankiness alone with death shroud and weakness spam.

With revenant, I don’t think this is the case. There isn’t a traitiline that gives might, physical, and condi dps all at once. 3 stacks of burn on a 15 second cooldown is great, but its not good enough. Its essentially as much burn uptime as incendiary poweder gives in its current state. The heals don’t scale well with healing power (since we get two). I just don’t think celestial works on revenant in its current state. If you go mallyx for more condition pressure, stacking might without either glint or shiro becomes much harder.

Unlike D/D ele, you really can’t have it all in one build.

i dont need all in one build as i’m already killing d/d eles without much trouble. the reason you pick celestial on my build is not for the condi damage but for the mix of stats. you profit from everything except condi damage (well you have the burn). it’s a bit of a more tanky berserker and i’m usually sitting on 25 might in shiro with sword and the damage is very stronk :P

Jekkt.6045:

i dont need all in one build as i’m already killing d/d eles without much trouble. the reason you pick celestial on my build is not for the condi damage but for the mix of stats. you profit from everything except condi damage (well you have the burn). it’s a bit of a more tanky berserker and i’m usually sitting on 25 might in shiro with sword and the damage is very stronk :P

Well then usually its best to run something that isn’t condition damage. Crusader would be perfect if the toughness was split with vitality, but a crusader build, or valkyrie even with rolling mists with this trait spread would probably be a bit more optimized.

Yeah, in fact I think you should give it a try with valkyrie and see how that works.

valk gives me no precision and is too squishy. 70% crit chance on celestial is insane damage.

Jekkt.6045:

valk gives me no precision and is too squishy. 70% crit chance on celestial is insane damage.

I think you should try it before you knock it. 44% crit with fury should be enough considering it’s so much more power. Also with all that health and good access to protection, valk shouldn’t be squishy, I don’t feel squishy at all on carrion.

I prefer running Devastation MidMidBot, Retribution MidMidBot, and Herald BotMidBot. Dodging gives two stacks of Stab and some Retal, and if you can’t close a gap for some reason you take less dmg. This obviously doesn’t have condi remove on Legend swap – that’s the biggest issue, but I personally find legend swapping to condi remove unreliable. Choosing to swap legend is a pretty important decision to make, and not one I preferably would like to make to remove a single condi. The staff one is still strong, and I feel like swapping to staff is an easier decision to make to remove condi’s, plus some of the time you’ll just be using staff anyway and thus there’s no real consequence. You can also use Shield 5 to preemptively screw up someones condi burst, and the all the personal healing you have can do wonders to counter the effects of light but constant dmging condi’s. I’ve pretty much made up my mind to swap from Ele main to Rev main at this point. The playstyle Herald has really is amazing, and I think a LOT of people are excited at the idea of a shield being viable for regular play (if they can make that the reality, and I hope they can).

What nearlight said – and you can use Lyssa Runes over Hoelbrok… or even Pact for more fury uptime.

I found using Mallyx/Glint on cele to be most succesful, using mace+shield/sword+axe.
Using Devastation, Corruption and Herald.

There is no effort to keeping might at ~20 stacks.
Mace for condi pressure, might blasts and burn field spam.
Shield helps sustain.
Sword for dps, might and evade.
Axe as gap closer and interrupting.
F2+Pain Absorption=8s resistance+2s for every condi pulled. That alone keeps you alive for a long time against condi bursts and that’s just using 1 Mallyx utility.

My only gripe with this build is the vulnerability to CCs.

I’ve absolutely no idea why people love the shield. It’s protection is short, the heal small and its 5 a liability. Any other weapon set offers so much more.

Personally I run Herald/Shiro with sinister gear, Mace/Axe and Hammer or Staff. Works exceptionally well with ridiculous power and condition damage. It’s incredibly easy to maintain 20 might stacks with plenty of crit chance.

Rev is only squishy if you make him squishy.

Lewis Burnell.2493:

I’ve absolutely no idea why people love the shield. It’s protection is short, the heal small and its 5 a liability. Any other weapon set offers so much more.

Personally I run Herald/Shiro with sinister gear, Mace/Axe and Hammer or Staff. Works exceptionally well with ridiculous power and condition damage. It’s incredibly easy to maintain 20 might stacks with plenty of crit chance.

Depends. It did heal for me ~3400 on use in aoe with apothecary gear. So I defo liked #4. #5 was meh.

My guess shield is mostly intended for group use instead of for self use.

i’m taking shield for the extra sustain, it’s additional 7k heals. the shield overall needs a bit of love but if roy works on that then it’ll be fine

mallyx need buff and shield skills are fine, idk why you think shield 4 is bad, it gives protection on top of heal, that’s 33% damage reduction right there against zerkers.

Basically you can just chain invul (two shield 5 + heal) on top of dodge spam from shiro and weapon.
in fact i think herald abit too good, on top of what i said above, also on demand protection, on demand fury. others are ok tho.

no, shield 4 is not great. for the time it takes to complete you will already be hit for more than what it actually heals and the protection is 2s lol. as somebody said above, it needs aegis or at least a blind or weakness.

if anybody is interested, im streaming my build atm.

http://www.twitch.tv/inflambio

nearlight.3064:

Jekkt.6045:

valk gives me no precision and is too squishy. 70% crit chance on celestial is insane damage.

I think you should try it before you knock it. 44% crit with fury should be enough considering it’s so much more power. Also with all that health and good access to protection, valk shouldn’t be squishy, I don’t feel squishy at all on carrion.

I took your suggestion and have been trying Valkyrie amulet the last few games, and I am a fan so far. The constant fury application and fury buff compensates for the lack of precision, and the huge amount of vitality helps a lot with the lack of condi clears. Btw, I don’t run condi clear on legend swap, but the fury on heal trait. Not to mention the extra power from Valk helps make up for the lack of precision as well. I feel like I’m doing the same damage as before as long as I rotate correctly so I can keep fury up.

Honestly, the missing healing and toughness kinda sucks, but then again, this Revenant build has a lot of ways to avoid physical damage.

Sword 3
Shield 5
Staff 3
Staff 5
Glint heal
Shiro stun break/dodge

I’m gonna continue testing, but so far so good.

I’m now a convinced fan of the shield. I went with Jekt’s build and so far I’ve been very, very successful with it.

Jekkt.6045:

facet of chaos
the upkeep is too expensive and needs to be lowered to -3.

Really?

Protection is traditionally an expensive boon – most existing sources of protection tend to be short duration on high recharge (note that there certainly are counterexamples, guardian hammer coming to mind, but they tend to be one of the main draws of the build when perma-protection is available). Being able to cut the damage the other team does to your nearby teammates by a third strikes me as worth a high upkeep. The overall effect is similar to a Jalis revenant saving all their energy for Rite of the Great Dwarf (Rite offers a higher damage resistance while it’s up, but you don’t have the energy to keep it up indefinitely even if you do nothing else, and it requires casting while Facet of Chaos is simply sustained).

i never use the protection upkeep because it’s not worth the cost at all, that’s why i’m saying they need to lower it. it basically cripples you hard if you have -5 with only 1 upkeep so if you need others it will be even worse. shield 4 and nature active provide me with enough protection for my needs.

-rework shield 5
-add a break stun to Mallyx
-2 condi cleanse on cleansing channel
-Facet of chaos is a bit too expensive
-ua (mallyx) doesn’t need to go through stability
-fix reveal delay
-staff Energy cost is a bit too high
-reduce hammer 5 to 1 or 1-1/4 casting time
-Ventari needs some work
-many gm traits doen’t seem really good (there is a dedicated topic).

I spent a lot of time playing a zerker build with hammer + sword/axe, more or less playing like a LB ranger. Tried several combinations of legends and traitlines.

-Both weaponsets felt really good to use; sword and hammer have solid evades and high damage.

-Shiro is REALLY good, and should be the standard for the other legends in terms of impact. Mallyx comes close, but could use a stunbreak (maybe on Pain Absorption?). Mallyx elite uses a ton of energy and was usually a bad idea. Demonic Defiance feels kind of mandatory and might be the best trait in the whole line.

-Jalis and Ventari were probably not good fits for my build, but both felt very clunky. Especially ventari, where it felt like I rarely actually got off a skill during combat.

-Condition management is limited; consider improving it for Jalis. If Ventari also gets some improvements, then only a build with Shiro/Glint will have no solid condi-management utilities, which seems fine.

-Invocation is nice, but feels really reliant on Herald to get enough Fury uptime.

-Lots of GM traits are REALLY subpar, resulting in limited build choices. Retribution is really bad (needs more synergy with itself and with other lines)

-It feels weird that there aren’t any traits or utilities that interact with energy. Compare to thief, warrior, and necro- those classes all have traits and utilities to manipulate their unique resource. 50% energy every time you swap probably means rev doesn’t need these, particularly, but it seems weird that this whole design space was left out.

When to shiro?

I normally only shiro when I need to escape, never really think to use it offensively. I always feel like the moment I swap from Herald it’s because all of my cooldowns are used up and I’m trying to get the dagger heals or escape.

How are you using Shiro?

SoulstitchMMO.1396:

When to shiro?

I normally only shiro when I need to escape, never really think to use it offensively. I always feel like the moment I swap from Herald it’s because all of my cooldowns are used up and I’m trying to get the dagger heals or escape.

How are you using Shiro?

In general thats how I used my second legend at all. I only ever swapped if I had blown all my energy on glint, or I was getting pressured in a way that my second legend could help with (ie, being condi bombed, so switch to mallyx, or needing evades so switching to shiro). In general though I think its because the glint skills, both passive and active are too good when you’re not being pressured.

your main damage comes from shiro + sword so you want to do that as much as you can combined with quickness and your heal if you need it. shiro is basically burst and glinth sustained pressure.

i have some footage of me playing it, maybe it helps you figuring out when to use shiro

http://www.twitch.tv/inflambio/v/14878602