Guild Wars 2

So I agree with most posts here about the Revenant really feels underwhelming and weak.
I have only been doing sPvP with it, where I tried make a condition dmg build work without succes. The key problem here seems to be how insane lackluster duration all of the conditions the revenant can apply are, and in very low amount:
Mace got a slow AA that apply one stack of torment for 4 sec and on the third you get 6 secs of posion but it rarely hits.
Mace 2 apply 1 burning stack for 2 seconds, in an AoE fire field lasting 3 seconds, and while the uptime of the skill is great, it really ain’t doing much dmg with the burn changes because it never get’s to more then 2 stacks, and that’s if people stand still in it. Great for stacking might tho.
Mace 3. got no condi.
Axe 4 gives chilled, which is nice, and awesome mobility, tho low dmg
Axe 5 gives 3 stacks torment lasting onl 4 seconds again.

Then you got Mally’s Banish Enhancment which can be 4 stacks of confusion for 6 seconds, which ain’t really doing a lot dmg either.
Unyielding Anguish is the only one that can do some potenial condi dmg, but not really, with it’s 6 torment for 5 seconds.
Rampant vex is a joke with it’s 3 second lasting torment on a 33% chance on crit.

With all the condition removal going about it’s a nightmare to try do any solid dmg!
I have had some really mixed Succes with Embrace Darkness, where the 240 radius just seems to low to apply the conditions back to most of the kiting condition classes!

I’m honestly not sure how to fix it, but cover conditions and longer durations would be a start

The biggest problem I see with the revenant is the inability to weapon swap during combat. If it is true that legends and weapons are tied together, then it would be foolish to switch one without the other. If I can only weapon swap or switch legends then I would rather have the ability to swap weapons. At least that gives me a choice between ranged and melee combat. If I am currently running a hammer and Jalis build why would I ever want to switch to the demon legend? My hammer skills have a range of 1200 but my utility and elite skills will only have a range from 600-240 (which makes more sense if you are using a mace and axe).

Roxanne.6140:

please do something about revenant’s mobility

Don’t you have you have a lightning field and a blast finisher on hammer / Jarlis? That’s more than some classes.

after finally experiencing the revenant, I am impressed but was left feeling underwhelmed. it got some potential to be a great unique class, but just misses the mark compared to other classes.

now other classes feel a little more flexible than current revenant build. in the class trying to be unique and different with energy meters, none swappable but changeable utility’s and a good selection of role orientated weapons and trait lines.
that uniqueness is its downfall in some cases.

when I first heard the rev would be channelling legends for great power and unique styles of play it sounded like you would really feel that change as you swapped legends but I just don’t feel that sense of being imbued with power more like the two legends are sitting in the mists having a nice sit down with a cuppa and I am just inconveniently asking for their power and they just half heartily throw me a bit of it to shut me up.

a lot of the mechanics don’t mix well together everything feels a bit separated with the trait and weapon picks ( on a positive side note the new animations and cool skill effects and mechanics are wonderful very great visual class)
their three ways to fix the feeling of disjointed trait lines and weapon skills that don’t compliment each other well .

1st would be to allow a weapon swap so you can match a weapon to each legend at least. ( not what I would go for as it seems it would be an easy compromise)

2nd would be to infuse the first 3 if not all weapon skill slots with the power of current legend like elementalist making it heavily customisable and adaptable and making up for no swappable utility’s ( this would be amazing but a complete balancing nightmare and might be worse since the class was not made this way. also a lot of dev work)

3rd would be a simple f3 key that transfers current legend energy into your weapon for a set duration (15 secs maybe) locking you out of legend swap but providing unique effects from the weapon

example
staff with mallyx infused weapon (2 bonus per legend and 1 weapon pick bonus for legend)
:condition damage increase for duration
:10% chance on hit to inflict a random control effect on enemy (fear,slow,taunt,daze,stun)
:unique weapon bonus (staff) 360 purple aura around character that drains health from enemies within per pulse (scale with healing power)
:unique weapon bonus (hammer) blast finishers transfer up to 3 conditions to nearby enemies 360 radius
(just examples)

this would turn a healing orientated staff into a more mallyx style weapon for a short time before going on cool down allowing someone who focused on making a healing character and picked staff be able to benefit from a complete flip to health draining for health giving or having hammer can help with condi remove and condi pressure from their blasts.

something needs doing with rev before release as it very restrictive and even when it gets its last two legends it will still suffer from that issue of weapons fitting legends and trait lines better than other stuff what limits class diversity and interesting builds as it already restrictive with no swappable utility’s and 2 legend swaps what not bad just then your pick of weapon becomes one dimensional with it use.

ethier way I will still run rev with staff even if I want a mallyx and glint (guessing it elite spec) combo for condi pressure because I love the staff animations and skills.

Hey A-Net, I’m very happy to have gotten the chance to play with the revenant, I’ve mainly tested the revenant in wvw, for roaming/pvp purposes, And i must say, that’t it’s got quite an interesting way of fighting, feels as if i’m playing with a necromancer, warrior, engineer,elementalist and mesmer at the same time^^.

Well let’s get started. with the good points eh?

First of all the revenant definately brings something new to the table. Rather then it bieng a simple warrior who’s damage comes from direct damage with either your auto attacks. No instead it’s main amount of damage comes from the corruption trait line and legendary demon stance which just as a necro focuses on self harm through the use of conditions,hold them, and then apply bonus condition damage to your enemies or transfer them over. Sure you have the legendary dwarf stance but considering you have one healing skill that grants retalation and heals conditions, an utility that grants stability, one that applies taunt, a direct damage skill and an elite skill that gives more toughness. this dwarf stance is more akin to a guardian then to a warrior. However it sure as hell is a stance for sustaining damage in my opinion. I must say i like the ventari tablet stance one of the most interesting ways of healing damage. It’s like a mobile healing turret allowing you to focus on healing yourself and others. i Always wished for the engineer to have mobile turrets. well it happend. bieng able to switch forms in battle apply different playstyles with attributes from nearly all classes is pretty kitten interesting.

I espically like the cool animations and voices the revenants abilities apply. it gives a very mystic feeling. teleporting around, displacing space, and summoning heroes from the past is pretty kitten awsome, the feel of mysticsim is emphasized alot. very good job on that part.

Well here are the bad parts. Well how must i say it in short? The revenant feels like an incredibly hard puzzle u need to piece together to make it viable. But hey I guess that’s what the beta is for.

Well first things first. I think most people have called this out but the revenant in terms of raw dps is quite subpar. the relatively slow telegraphed attacks and distinct lack of CC make anybody who prefers a dps type of build not very viable.

I suggest having a legend that Focuses on DPS and most importantly CC. Like seriously, there was little to no CC to lock the enemies down. It’s definately needed considering the slowish telegraphed attacks of the hammer, in compairsion to guards who have hammer skill numbers 2, 3 and 5 to lock down an opponents respectively even if it’s attacks are telegraphed very slowly, the hammer skill 1 grants aoe damage and grants protection to compensate for it’s relatively slow attack speed, hammer skill 3 immobilizes and hammer skill 5 can keep an enemy confined in a small symbol. As for warrior, do I even need to start with that xD? the mesmer gs skill tree to wich the hammer bears more resemblance too. has an ample amount of cc and crippling inducing attacks such as gs skill 5 and 4 to keep your enemies at bay. So in short if you want to make dps viable. allow more cc. and change the hammer skills to allow more cc for example. give hammer skill 2 a knockdown with an 8 sec CD. Give hammer skill 3 cripple and or immobilized with an 10 as a base. eventual traits that reduced cd by 15 or 20 percent can still be applied and it would still be perfectly reasonable to fight against sec CD. the 5th skill should remain unchanged. there isn’t an excessive amount of cc here. And the still slow telegraphed attacks don’t make the hammer another cc monster like the warrior. it’s still perfectly dodgeable.

Developer if you intended to add more weapons with CC. Then atleast arm the hammer with atleast a couple of movement reducing skills such as chilled, immobilize and cripple.

The second problem is an distinct lack of stunbreaks and stability. U cannot have a revenant with just 2 stunbreaks the 2 of them bieng only activated when you change stances, which are also temporarily due to most of it’s moves bieng energy based. On top of that u cannot immeadatily switch back so you are forced to use the other stance skills to just stay alive. It brings the player in a very unfair situation. Sure there is a trait that gives u 2 seconds of stability, when u roll, but at the same there is a lack of skills and or traits that give u vigor to make it even viable in first place. Maby you the developers intend for the class to move to earn it’s stability, which is fine but then provide the class with traits and skills that support more mobility.for example considering the corruption traitline seems similar to that of a necromancer. create an utility similar to guardians medidation skill that converts conditions into boons. and give vigor a priortity. Make vigor: always recieve. this is what i mean with the revenant bieng akin to a broken puzzle they are certain traits skills and abilities that do not fit well, they do not compliment one and another. Also allow for example an utility in the legendary dwarf stance considering it seems to be closer to a guardian. for example an utility gives us stability without us bieng forced
to run over said road. if we have to move to get stability then make it so that it’s within a certain radius like a concescration. And discourage people from entering our area. apply burn or other powerfull condition. This can also be placed on the stance of the legendary demon. Also back to the roll to get stability subject. increase the duration to 4 or 5 seconds considering you are encouraged to actually run through your stamina for some stability.

On top of having little to no stunbreaks and or stability and a relatively slow moveset. I feel that the stances themselves are fundamentally not working properly.

Back to the whole traits and skills not complimenting one another. there is a fundamental problem with the amount of energy each move uses and a lack of recharge. So the lack of stability, and stunbreaks, the high energy consumption, lack of CC and moves that keep the enemies at bay, Make soloing a camp incredibly hard. U are forced to constantly switch your skills incredibly early in battle and burn through your energy, you have hardly any cc or stunbreaks, which makes it incredibly easily to get chained by an incredibly long combo, and just when you have to heal, it turns out you can’t because you already waisted your skills on just trying to deal some damage. Soloing a camp is incredibly hard and strenous to do so. heck a single fight against a veteran npc takes quite some time. just using a few moves restricts u to your elite or you are forced to change. Once again going back to the whole stunbreak upon switching upon stance thing, so again u are missing another chance to use your appearant stunbreak. I suggest traits that recharge energy for example when u take condition damage. maby 3 percent per condition applied to yourself. that way u can actually fight. Also upon changing stance, there should be a trait possible that heals upon change. Considering the certain stance moves aren’t immeadatly available or u need a certain amount of time to ready your attack for example the ventari tablet, would require you to actually summon the tablet first and then get the skills open. if this is to OP. only apply this to the ventari tablet or any other stance that support healing. heck infact give every stance a certain boon or benefit upon switching as compensation for the energy based skills.

I must say that besides all of this I managed to make a revenant that can kinda hold is own against high ranked wvw players and solo camps but it’s incredibly, and I mean incredibly hard to do so. sometimes even stressfull. well i guess it isn’t called a beta for nothing xD.

I think for the rest everything the revenant is definately a good class to play with. Just pay more attention on having skills and traits complement another.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/revenant

To keep threads together otherwise feedback will be lost

I didn’t really know where to post this, nor did I want to make a whole new thread, but I hope my feedback on the Rev can be of some use here.

Feedback:

The Revenant is really fun to play, to a point. It requires a bit more attention and management, which makes it more interesting and engaging, but there are some key holes in its design which detract from that. The main thing, to me, is that the legends have too little of an effect on the class and the traits actually work against the legends to an extent. For example, if you want to run a condition damage build, you’re pretty much useless when not using Mallyx. As soon as you switch to another legend, you’re “jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none”.

Also the Revenant straight up feels weak. I honestly don’t know why, it might just be traits, but I dissolved in PvP against any other class. Dungeons were loads of fun, but I went down a lot more than I do on any other class I play, even with full Zerker.

Proposals:

I think for every Legend while the weapons should have the same base damage and animation, but the additional effects (healing/condi/boons) should be different for each legend.

For example, when you use Mallyx, the weapons do condition damage, whilst when you use Ventari, the conditions in the attack change to healing/protection.

The same for traits, for example if a trait gives +10 Power when playing as Mallyx/Shiro, it should give +10 healing power when playing Ventari, or +10 toughness when playing Jallis. I wouldn’t do this for all traits, but have the selectable (square) traits each have a per-legend bonus. The balance wouldn’t be that simple I know, but it would make the legends way more useful in the game.

This may be a big ask, I don’t know, my programming knowledge is limited, but I think this would really make the revenant something special and interesting to play, rather than just being able to faceroll like you can with a few professions, especially in PvE.

As for the weakness, I think just a few (simple?) buffs here and there should be able to get it up to scratch with the other classes, but I appreciate it will take a while to get that right, and I don’t really mind if that’s after release, I mean, hell we’re still getting tweaks to all the other classes on the fly.

First of all, I just wanna start with I don’t normally post here, but I just wanted to say thank you to ArenaNet, and whoever designed the Revenant (Roy I believe?). I’ve played the Revenant for about 4 hours now, all in WvW, and I’ve had the most fun that I’ve had in the last 5+ months I’ve played GW2. The mechanics behind the Revenant seemed clunky at first, and I thought that all my hype was for nothing, but after playing it a bit more, I’ve gotten the hang of it, and have come to the decision that I will shed many tears once this weekend is over. I know a lot of people that I have talked to say that they don’t like it, but it’s for sure the thing that will bring my love back into GW2 and WvW (WvW is all that I do). After 6.4k hours in GW2 95% of which are leading a Guild in WvW or GvG, 3.1k of which are on one character, I am really looking forward to playing the Revenant more.

Thanks again ArenaNet, hurry up and launch HoT!

P.S. It would be really cool if you let me play my Revenant after this weekend, even if I can’t keep all the loot. ;D

-Gismor

Cardica.1853:

Proposals:

I think for every Legend while the weapons should have the same base damage and animation, but the additional effects (healing/condi/boons).

For example, when you use Mallyx, the weapons do condition damage, whilst when you use Ventari, the conditions in the attack change to healing/protection.

The same for traits, for example if a trait gives +10 Power when playing as Mallyx/Shiro, it should give +10 healing power when playing Ventari, or +10 toughness when playing Jallis. I wouldn’t do this for all traits, but have the selectable (square) traits each have a per-legend bonus. The balance wouldn’t be that simple I know, but it would make the legends way more useful in the game.

This may be a big ask, I don’t know, my programming knowledge is limited, but I think this would really make the revenant something special and interesting to play, rather than just being able to faceroll like you can with a few professions, especially in PvE.

As for the weakness, I think just a few (simple?) buffs here and there should be able to get it up to scratch with the other classes, but I appreciate it will take a while to get that right, and I don’t really mind if that’s after release, I mean, hell we’re still getting tweaks to all the other classes on the fly.

It’s not very simple issue. Simply giving the weapons a base effect, and some additional trait to tie them to legends would probably not be enough. To choose a legend, is to choose a playstyle. No other class has that kind of hard, definitive choice.

If you want to build a condi thief, you do it by pieces through gear, specialisations, utility skills – and yes, weapon selection. If you want to swap into spike damage or support, you change everything. You don’t keep the same gear, same specialisation picks, same weapons – and just try to swap your utility skills.. and boom, condi thief became spike thief.

That’s the kind of effect revenant is trying to achieve, and it just goes against the basic mechanics of the whole game. The suggestion of trying to add switching effects to weapons and traits, it’s not going to help. Those ‘effects’ won’t equal playstyle. Traits for example do a lot more than just add a flat bonus to condi damage versus healing power. To make them interesting, they have to go deeper and alter the way the class itself behaves, to customize it to specific playstyle, or overall build goal.

Without having a closer look at the class (no pay, no beta), my guess would be the revenant probably tries to achieve this by close ties between legends and traitlines. Make each traitline specific to one legend, while having little effect to others. Try to build the whole customizing into single traitline instead of three. Then make the final one (invocation) so generic it can give some overall bonus and utility to the class – like the stun break that keeps popping up.

This might not be the ideal solution, but it’s probably closest, within reason. The ‘perfect’ solution would probably be to build every legend into complete – if simple – ‘class’ within itself, full with skills, traits, weapons and gear.. and let two of them be defined active at time. That however would be unreasonable amount of work for a single class.

Right now it seems the class is attempting to do this within the confines of the game mechanics. It splits the available traitlines between the ‘subclasses’, it splits the weapon types between them, and splits the skills between them. You can’t really split the armor and jewelry in the current system though (the best you can do is celestial gear) – and for the life of me I can’t wrap my mind around why the weapon sets were not ‘split’ between the ‘subclasses’ – but instead only one being made available.

To a point every class has similar kind of split built in. Some trait lines and options, some weapon types, some skills cater to different play styles. When making a build, you are picking the ones that best suit what you have in mind. The revenant tries to essentially cram two builds worth of those options into one set, and switch the ‘build’ by just switching the utility skills between two premade sets.

So I’m throwing this up in its own thread for the ten minutes before ArenaNet merges it into some other oversized thread nobody actually reads…but hey! They said this was a beta weekend and they wanted feedback, so here it is, from me and my guild both.

So me and most of my guild spent a good portion of last night on beta Revenants, trying them out, seeing how they worked, seeing what we all thought. As they feel (rightly, as it turns out) that this place is a horrible degenerate snake pit full of angry shouty people, the task has fallen to the one guy in the guild salty enough not to immediately pickle upon stepping foot in here.

ANYWAYS.

We did some general PvE, some Silverwastes-ing, and managed to scrape up an all-Rev dungeon run, putting the new class through its paces on the PvE side, and the general consensus was disappointment. The Revenant dealt pants for damage even in the verymost glassy of cannon-gear – I personally tried Mace/Axe in Rampager, in lieu of Sinister, and Hammer in Berserker, and both felt anemic and lacking. Now, this is somewhat mitigated by the fact that you guys haven’t given us Shiro yet so we don’t have our rawrdeeps weapons/Legend yet…but the fact that Mallyx felt somewhat lacking is something of a sore point. As well, both Jalis and Ventari are still going to have to put people down at some point. Think I’m going to leave feedback here piece by piece. Mostly my own, but also pertinent points I heard from my guildmates while Rev-ing with them. As follows:

Hammer – I spent most of my time on the Rev with the hammer, with a good trial of mace/axe and a handful of very frustrating minutes on staff. The hammer is interesting, but the general Rev nodeeps issue is felt most keenly here. I spent ninety percent of my time on the hammer Swing-Swing-Coalescing, trying to find the exceptionally fine sweet spot where I could tag my enemies with the backmost pair of blasts from Coalescence…and wondering what my other three skills did. Phase Smash is awesome to watch but very difficult to hit with – a 1200-unit leap has just a wee little bit of a windup time, meaning either you lead your targets to nigh-psychic levels or you use it on stationary threats, and Drop the Hammer…!

Wow. Next best thing to a 2-second build-up, and what I get is a moderate-damage AoE hit with a brief knockdown. I’m sorry ArenaNet, but when I spend half an eternity summoning a spectral hammer bigger than my car to smash the ground, I’m expecting freaking mushroom clouds, not…poot. The weight and visceral feedback of the skill feels right – the big bass boom of the impact, the visual of that monstrous Mistbreaker, that stuff was baller as hell. The actual effects…less so. Hammer as a whole just felt rather vanilla, with not a ton of incentive to mix up its skills or do anything other than Swing-Swing-Coalesce, especially when the ’Hammer’s’ close-range option is switching on Vengeful Hammers. VH is fun, and the hammer-on-hit trait helps too, but it does mean I basically get to discard everything but my autoattack when an enemy presses me on the hammer.

On the positive end: the guaranteed projectile finisher on the AA led to some interesting strategies. Frequently I’d find myself dropping roads on my enemies as much to AA through them for extra Vuln stacks, and I swiftly learned that the Mistwall skill was a surprisingly useful emergency band-aid due to being able to combo Lifesteal projectiles through it. The hammer seems like it’s going to be potentially quite fun to work with combo setters with. The weapon also picked up nicely when fighting multiple enemies – if I could get the positioning right, Coalescence’s wide linear AoE and the AA’s surprisingly chunky projectile managed to deal quite a dang bit of AoE damage, almost making up for the Rev’s somewhat laughable single-target damage. I felt like this was a potentially pretty useful fire support weapon – but ‘fire support’ isn’t something that works well in GW2, and all the delicious combo fields the Rev’s AA likes to work with are at the other end where the forward guys are, making it hard to both maximize Coalesce and also see what my team was up to. That, and…let’s face it. I was Bearbowing without the bear. Much shame.

Mace/Axe – Mace/Axe feels like it’s potentially one of the most brutal weapon sets in the game, and it’s also an amazing spectacle. Blasty explosions, glowing burning rifts in the ground, glowing burning rifts in midair, leaps, shadowsteps…there’s a lot going on with this set. It felt like Mace/Axe had all the fun interactions and useful tools that Hammer was lacking, and the set also worked surprisingly well with Jalis’ legend skills. I expect this to be the breakout hit when the Rev finally ships, unless Shiro’s swords are as insanely potent as Shiro himself was. But for some reason, and this is quite possibly on me rather than the Rev, I could not click with the set. Part of that is doubtlessly me never seeing it before in my life, but I did end up back on Hammer for our dungeon run. I will say, however, that the widened linear paths on M/A were quite nice. Piercing arrow/rifle traits/skills are generally no good because the projectile is so narrow you need the stars to align (tee hee hee…) to tag more than one threat…but the M/A set, and the Hammer as well to some extent, rewarded positioning and proper enemy herding without needing such an intense degree of such that it felt unobtainable and not worth the time.

I didn’t put enough time into Staff to leave proper feedback for it. It was a pretty much instantaneous turn-off, that’s about all I can really say. So incredibly depressed that you guys dropped rifle Thieves for this thing… Anyways. Moving on to legends.

Jalis – After a time experimenting in general PvE, Jalis was the only legend I used whatsoever in our dungeon run night’s finale. Jalis seems to be set up pretty well – it has an absolute gobsmackton of stability, with enough energy to drop roads pretty much on cooldown so long as you leave the rest of your util bar alone. As well, the animations for Jalis’ skills are amazeballs – I never got tired of pointing at enemies and saying “ROAD!”. The chain was interesting and a great visual tell, though I must mention that the actual Taunt portion of the skill seems to be nonfunctional. I never saw an enemy’s behavior change when I taunted them, and I had the Jalis trait giving me a 4s taunt so plenty of time to observe. Not once did an enemy stop attacking my allies and charge at me in a lather. Disappoint. Anyways. The road was excellent, and I swiftly learned that Vengeful Hammers was my weapon swap for when things decided to try and come eat my face, but the chain felt like it was overcosted to me. It costs as much to fire the chain as it does to perform the Rite of the great Dwarf – one of those is a mass AoE damage reduction, and one of them is a single-target 2s slow and nonfunctional taunt. I get that the chain can be traited and RotGD can’t, but still. I would advise maybe seeing how the chain feels at 35e? Something?

Ventari – For a legend so focused on peace, kindness, community and generosity, Ventari is selfish as kittenes. You cannot use Ventari as an off-legend – either Ventari is your primary legend and the thing you’re centering your build on, or he’s useless. You cannot switch to Ventari for a quick-fire situational skill – you have to switch, set up the Tablet which takes a year and a half, then position the tablet which takes another year and a half, and then you can use your stuff. It’s an interesting idea, and it does present very unique gameplay that will doubtlessly light some people’s fires, but I’m a Thief player with a side of Warrior. I have maybe one character of my ten regular cast who doesn’t have some sort of passive speed, and I pretty much never stop moving – even on Hammer I tended to jitter from side to side just because standing still equates to death in all too many cases. I played Ventari for perhaps a minute and a half before saying, out loud, “yeah, screw the everlovin’ blue-eyed hell out of this”, and switched back to Mallyx. And…proceeded to more or less camp Jalis for the rest of the night.

His traitline also blows. Hard. If you’re not using Ventari-the-legend? There are no grandmaster traits in Salvation worth bothering with. Selfless Amplification is bogus, Natural Abundance is nonfunctional without the Tablet, which leaves the astoundingly lackluster Momentary Pacification. AoE cleanse on dodge is about the only reason to acknowledge this traitline exists if you’re not hip-deep in Ventari and his teachings.

This was actually a pretty major concern shared across most of my guildmates I managed to talk to – the entirety of the Revenant’s trait selections felt scattered, weird, and lackluster. There were no Phalanx Strengths, no Prismatic Understandings, no Invigorating Precisions – nothing that made someone sit up and go “wow, that’s awesome! That gives me an idea…” There were some neat things here and there, but Dall spent twenty minutes looking at Rev traits prior to our dungeon run trying to figure out something vaguely resembling a build before eventually just giving up in disgust and assigning things at semi-random. For a class that has no weapon swap to play with, and also zero flexibility in its selections of utility skills, this seems an almost unforgivable lapse. Traits are the one and only place on the Rev where we get some actual character customization, some small chance to put our own stamp on the class, and at current? Rev traits are almost universally either boring, bad, or both.

So…we skipped Mallyx, but that’s okay. I didn’t really get much out of Mallyx. He didn’t seem actively detrimental like Ventari did, but whenever I swapped over to him I found I couldn’t remember what his skills did. I mostly just fired a util skill at semi-random when I wanted some Resistance. I’d have to work with it more, but as compared to Jalis, which I took an immediate and powerful liking to, and Ventari, which I took an immediate and even more powerful disliking to, Mallyx was just…there. Yeah.

Overall, in a nutshell:
-Rev damage is pitiful and literally everyone in my guild (who I could wrangle into Mumble or a party and thus actually communicate with >_>) noticed it straightaway.
-Mace/Axe is good. Flashy, fun, engaging, and potentially extremely dangerous if tweaked up.
-Hammer is okay. Potentially good, but currently somewhat boring to play for long periods of time.
-Staff got intensely mixed reviews. Some folks liked it, some hated it, a couple thought it was okay.
-Jalis-the-legend is great. Inspiring Reinforcement is possibly my favorite utility skill amongst the entire game.
-Mallyx-the-legend is forgettable and makes little impact. This is decidedly weird for a nigh-unkillable demonic demigod.
-Ventari-the-legend is bad and also intensely selfish, does not work even remotely well with any other legend.
-Rev traits are boring, bland, and unimpactful, and it super dragged down opinions of the class across everyone I spoke to. Psyckos, in fact, said the following: “Well, now that I’ve experienced the Rev, I’m going to put it back down for the rest of the weekend.” He honestly regretted spending as much time as he did on the Rev, not earning pay on his live account. Playing the same stuff he’s played for three years now and earning a few hours’ extra munny for it was a better use of his time than this first crack at a brand-new profession. That does not speak well for the profession’s ability to grab a player’s attention and make them want to run it.
-The Rev’s Mistward armor is unbelievably awesome. Everybody loves it. Everybody wants it. If it’s a gemstore item you may end up with a revolt on your hands. Please make equivalent medium and light armors at some point because the aesthetic and design of the Mistward armor, and the accompanying Mistbreaker hammer, are super pants-tighteningly fantabulous.
-Nash found The Hunter on her beta Rev. I believe MLRX found a precursor, too. They are sad. ArenaNet, you guys should be bros and let people who found precursors on their beta Revs send in screenshots or something to get those precursors live. These folks left off earning their usual rewards and playing their live accounts to help you guys get beta feedback on the Rev, it’s kinna dooky that they can’t keep something as awesome and as vanishingly rare as a precursor drop.

So that’s my beta feedback report for the Revenant Trial Bonanza weekend. Hope it helps at least a little bit, and thanks for the crack at the character.

I pretty much agree with all of this, except the Ventari legend bit … sort of.

The defining word of the profession is “lacklustre” the dps is low (yes I know we don’t have the dps legend yet but the others need something), and the ability to take a punch is similarly disappointing (I ran two sets, Carrion and Clerics, and even in Jalis felt like I was made of wet tissue paper in both) I’m not saying that revenants should be able to face-tank wearing zerker gear but honestly they feel far more fragile than other professions in similar gear. This may be because they are in fights for so much longer than any of my other characters … even my support Guardian finishes fights quicker … I wish I were joking.

I did like Ventari, though it took a while to set up so if I was using it I really had to be using it from the outset of a fight. However in a fight using the hammer it felt pretty satisfying (possibly even a bit OP but I’d need to test it some more to check that). I didn’t use the staff because of it’s utter uselessness in solo play and the inability of the profession to weapon swap … a “feature” that feels tacked-on to fall in line with Engineer and Elementalist rather than because there’s any meaningful mechanic to support it.

Anyway, yeah “lacklustre” and without the ability to talk to others in my guild it was lacklustre and isolating … not an experience I’m eager to revisit.

As I tested, I couldn’t help but feel this class is not so much about switching stances, (agreed, I would rather we had weapon swapping.) as it was picking a single role to play within a group. Jalis was all about the tank and as a tank, there isn’t suppose to be high dps. That is not what a tank’s job is. Ventari is about support healing. Throw that tablet down on top of your tank and and he’s going to tank all day. Malyx I can see useful in heart of thorns where a lot of conditions are applied. Perhaps in concert with a conditions/curse Necro who applies the conditions, then the Rev pulls them off to bolster the team?

No where in my testing did I see this as a “solo” profession. If we see Shiro, and the dps is as high as I’m suspecting it may be, we might see Rev “teams.”

Could we be reverting back to GW1 and the holy trinity? This profession feels like that too me.

I don’t think it’s a full reversion to trinity so much as letting each profession freely spec more deeply into a choice of dps/bunker/support roles. Being anything other than pure dps has been a matter for mockery for a good long while and I believe ANet wants players to have more variety of play options while still not requiring a particular set of roles to accomplish anything.

I wouldn’t worry about merging so much as being moved to the Revenant subforum that is now in the Professions forum category, btw

i try to play it in pvp

condi mace/axe – on paper seems good but in reality very bad.
couldnt stack much torment up to 7 stacks (if confusion is for mesmer , torment should be for revenant.
burning is too low up to 2-3 stacks with short short duration

the punish/gain buff when you got conditions on you is hardly any gain. should be if there are more than 2-3 conditions on you your weapons do doable the stacking

energy management – didnt get it . thief got initiative with no cd. we got both energy and cd on our skills. some of which seem to energy costing and hardly beneficiary

legend seem weak as they dont do much dmg or conditions or any defense ability. some push enemy back or taunt but if you being targeted with no ability to defend like block, protection, blind or punish with condi burst you are screw

the same goes for power with hammer. although the AA is nice 1-2k dmg all other attack slow and weak.

also what is the concept of the revenant as i didnt get it by the skills he got.

if it to control conditions than he hardly does it (mostly killed by it)

so far it seems like a weak warrior

…of course they finally put that up when I wasn’t looking. WELL FINE THEN. Heh, whatevs. As long as they get it. I put up my findings, it’s on them to read it or not as they desire.

Feedback based mostly on testing in PvP lobby and Conquest aswell as Stronghold (Mostly Stronghold)

Specializations:
Invocation:
-Master trait Equilibrium damage and healing doesn’t show in combat log.

-Minor trait Replenishing Globe is small and hard to notice, maybe make them a bit bigger or give you a self buff to see how many active you have.

Corruption:
-Grandmaster trait Pulsating Pestilence should have a number of self condi to trigger imo. Feels unsatisfying to get one bleed on you and waste 15 sec icd for later in a fight where it matters more.

-Adept trait Venom Enhancement doesn’t update (#1 Mace)Manifest Toxin poison skill tooltip with the blue color. It does change the number but it doesn’t let you know.

Weapon and Utility Skills:
-Mace/Axe Useing (#5 Axe)Temporal Rift and casting (#2 Mace)Searing Fissure right after each other fast doesn’t queue up the #2 skill. So you have to spam the #2 skill hotkey. You have to wait like 1 sec to get the combo. (Same thing with Grenade Barrage and Jump Shot on Engineer doesn’t queue up aswell.)

-Axe Useing (#4 Axe)Frigid Blitz only does the animation where you get behind them and catch your axe, if you recently attacked them or they have one of your conditions on them. May be intended.

-Legnendary Dwarf Stance – Vengeful Hammers and Rite of the Great Dwarf could use a 50% reduction in cast time. Because you already attack slowly with any weapon combo, you really don’t want to spend to long casting utilitys.

-Legendary Demon Stance Unyielding Anguish skill seems to teleport them behind me if I backpaddle from the center where I land towards the edge behind me. This should probably be infront of me instead. If I move forward from center they get teleportet infront of me, if I move to the sides, they get teleportet to the sides which is fine, just the behind me thing i bad.

-Legendary Demon Stance The trait Demonic Defiance doesn’t work work correctly with Pain Absorption. The extra Resistance doesn’t apply. (This is tested out of combat without accounting for the self resistance pr condition currently on me)

-Legendary Demon Stance the skill Banish Enchantment can be used on a target behind you or directly to your left or right. Dont know if this is entended or not.

-Legendary Centaur Stance – Ventari’s Will this needs to be instant. Its so annoying to have to stop attacking for half a second to move it.

General:
-The resistance applied by any Legendary Demon Stance skill when traited with Demonic Defiance applys really late after skill usage.

-Many of the utility and weapon skills feels really slow.

-Condition damage feels a bit weak aswell as raw damage.

Ok guys, gals, imps and goblins lets get this started about what we would like to see added or changed about the Revenant. Please lets keep this less trollish and more positive feedback so Anet will actually take some of the ideas under consideration. Ok so far the DPS is lackluster. I do enjoy the staff, it adds a different playing style and support but I would like to see a blast finisher on it. I think the #4 skill on staff would be a good blast finisher with the animation. The Ventari Heal Tablet TBH is very tiring in WVW and SPVP when u are spending a lot of your time micro managing that little thing by moving it. Maybe change it to move with you give it a simple AI or something. I am looking forward to seeing what other peoples thoughts are.

Lots of threads already got started! Both here and in
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/revenant

Feel free to join in

messiah.1908:

i try to play it in pvp

condi mace/axe – on paper seems good but in reality very bad.
couldnt stack much torment up to 7 stacks (if confusion is for mesmer , torment should be for revenant.
burning is too low up to 2-3 stacks with short short duration

I was able to consistently stack ~15 torment or about 11 torment and 3 burning.
with sigil of torment.

…and that’s only so low because the foes melt with that much condition dmg on them.

When a Revenant struggles to defeat a Crimson Moa or a Lashtail Devourer one-on-one, you know DPS is severely lacking and needs to be addressed. I was so excited to take the revenant into Silverwaste for a testspin until I found basic mob fights took too long and I lost too much health when within melee range. Being so underpowered gave me the impression that the revenant class is going to require a constant activation and rotation of skills just for basic survival versus using a specific skill when a certain situation arises. I am not a fan of the Clicker Heroes games, nor having to focus my attention on micromanaging my skills. Lastly, the stances I tried felt very similar; nothing to really differentiate and to define them.

I realize this is a beta, but one expects a heavy armor-wearing class to be capable of dealing decent damage. The DPS of the revenant needs a major increase. As it stands now, all a revenant has to offer is team support because they certainly aren’t effective at soloing PvE content.

I suppose I could give my feedback pretty succinctly:

With full zerk, the physical damage ratios across all the weapons was pathetic. No Shiro yet, I know, but I am talking ratios on the weapons themselves. Plus, traits no longer give stats, just modifiers. It all felt like a wet noodle, regardless of the weapons used.

With full condi, the condition damage still felt anemic. It just wasn’t putting out conditions fast enough or hard enough to feel worthwhile, and made the loss of direct damage all the more hard felt.

In both cases, it felt like, with no healing power at all, the passive healing amount was too high.

In addition, the cast times on the Axe/Mace skills felt excessively long for skills 2 and 4, which made chaining them together on a moving enemy … ineffective at best. Just too clunky to allow for effective – or satisfying – combos.

I also have a problem with how extreme each Specialization line focuses on a given weapon. What if you like the play style of Staff but have no desire to put any points in Salvation, or, even worse, put points in other, more directly damaging trait lines like the Mallyx one but don’t want to use Axe/Mace? It is extremely limiting on a class that is already going to be limited with unswappable weapons and only two legends available at any time.

From my experiences so far I am having a pretty fun time with the Revenant. I havent tested everything yet and want to get a feel for what I do and dont use with what im currently playing with.

I see a bunch of people suggesting that the legends should be played with certain legends. While I feel this is true with conditions, I dont really feel it with ranged and melee damage. I have been having an absolute blast with Staff and Jalis/Ventari while staying in the dwarf stance the majority of the time.

I dont use the staff number 2 much at all mostly because its a little awkward, not in its use but in its purpose. I would think that the staff number 2 first use should have a block mechanic or something if you are able to time it properly and the second use, since you get a block on the first, should be buffed in damage slightly and take the weakness off, or change the second portion of the skill. Its a cool concept that works I just dont think it hits the mark.

Everything else about the staff is pretty good. Once all the damage starts rolling in from all the hammers, being in close range, able to basically carry someone with Surge of the Mists its pretty devastating.

The visuals of the healing orbs from the AA is a little harder to see, i would increase the size of the orb visually as well as the orb that orbits around you from the trait Swirling Mists.

The hammer number 3 I think could possibly use a second active. If you activate it while in the air you travel to the location instead of porting back and make it so you have a longer cd if activated like the guardian staff orb. This way you have some sort of reliable escape and not just a knockdown which has a pretty long cast time. This would give a little more decision because making the right decision is a good thing.

The animations are really good, and the gameplay is fun to me. A few little tweaks and number adjustments would in my opinion round out the class.

Oh yeah, on the topic of visuals, could you guys fix the leg of the human female? While standing idle the foot goes outwards while the leg goes in. Its very noticable with pretty much all boot skins. Now would be the perfect time to fix it since there is a new expansion.

Malyx is a PvP Legend. It pretty much clears a point with the last skill and has a great anti-condition utility for a team.

Kitsune.1902:

It’s not very simple issue. Simply giving the weapons a base effect, and some additional trait to tie them to legends would probably not be enough. To choose a legend, is to choose a playstyle. No other class has that kind of hard, definitive choice.

If you want to build a condi thief, you do it by pieces through gear, specialisations, utility skills – and yes, weapon selection. If you want to swap into spike damage or support, you change everything. You don’t keep the same gear, same specialisation picks, same weapons – and just try to swap your utility skills.. and boom, condi thief became spike thief.

That’s the kind of effect revenant is trying to achieve, and it just goes against the basic mechanics of the whole game. The suggestion of trying to add switching effects to weapons and traits, it’s not going to help. Those ‘effects’ won’t equal playstyle. Traits for example do a lot more than just add a flat bonus to condi damage versus healing power. To make them interesting, they have to go deeper and alter the way the class itself behaves, to customize it to specific playstyle, or overall build goal.

Without having a closer look at the class (no pay, no beta), my guess would be the revenant probably tries to achieve this by close ties between legends and traitlines. Make each traitline specific to one legend, while having little effect to others. Try to build the whole customizing into single traitline instead of three. Then make the final one (invocation) so generic it can give some overall bonus and utility to the class – like the stun break that keeps popping up.

This might not be the ideal solution, but it’s probably closest, within reason. The ‘perfect’ solution would probably be to build every legend into complete – if simple – ‘class’ within itself, full with skills, traits, weapons and gear.. and let two of them be defined active at time. That however would be unreasonable amount of work for a single class.

Right now it seems the class is attempting to do this within the confines of the game mechanics. It splits the available traitlines between the ‘subclasses’, it splits the weapon types between them, and splits the skills between them. You can’t really split the armor and jewelry in the current system though (the best you can do is celestial gear) – and for the life of me I can’t wrap my mind around why the weapon sets were not ‘split’ between the ‘subclasses’ – but instead only one being made available.

To a point every class has similar kind of split built in. Some trait lines and options, some weapon types, some skills cater to different play styles. When making a build, you are picking the ones that best suit what you have in mind. The revenant tries to essentially cram two builds worth of those options into one set, and switch the ‘build’ by just switching the utility skills between two premade sets.

I absolutely get what you’re saying, and what I’ve said is indeed not enough to cover all of the problems that the revenant has.

The point of my idea is more that some of the parts of each attack change. I absolutely agree that having a “class-within-a-class” for each legend of the revenant would be ideal, but I think flat out changing every skill on the bar would take away from the unique skills of the class. I think that would make it a class near identical to the Elementalist in terms of the way you have to play it. My idea is trying to make the Revenant unique by changing some of the components, so there is always a distinct way that the revenant plays.

By maintaining the same weapon mechanics for each legend, it means that no legend is at a major advantage or disadvantage with each weapon. Then by changing some of the effects of the weapon for each legend means that the revenant can switch dynamically to suit the situation that they’re in without losing out if they’re on the ‘wrong’ weapon for that legend. As I said, I agree this idea is an over-simplification of the problem, but I think it would go a long way to making this class more fun to play without just making it a heavy-armour clone of the abilities that several other classes already have.

Cardica.1853:

Kitsune.1902:

(cut for length)

I absolutely get what you’re saying, and what I’ve said is indeed not enough to cover all of the problems that the revenant has.

The point of my idea is more that some of the parts of each attack change. I absolutely agree that having a “class-within-a-class” for each legend of the revenant would be ideal, but I think flat out changing every skill on the bar would take away from the unique skills of the class. I think that would make it a class near identical to the Elementalist in terms of the way you have to play it. My idea is trying to make the Revenant unique by changing some of the components, so there is always a distinct way that the revenant plays.

By maintaining the same weapon mechanics for each legend, it means that no legend is at a major advantage or disadvantage with each weapon. Then by changing some of the effects of the weapon for each legend means that the revenant can switch dynamically to suit the situation that they’re in without losing out if they’re on the ‘wrong’ weapon for that legend. As I said, I agree this idea is an over-simplification of the problem, but I think it would go a long way to making this class more fun to play without just making it a heavy-armour clone of the abilities that several other classes already have.

I think this is probably the best idea on how to fix the weapon issue for revenants tbqh. Not to mention the fact that it’s somewhat in keeping with the theme of drawing on certain ritualist ideas from GW1.

Anyone who has played GW1 will remember the ritualist’s weapon spells (http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Weapon_spell) that applied certain attributes to weapons for yourself, your party or both. While that idea probably wouldn’t work on Revenants at this point in development, it might be nice if the Legend currently being used had a more passive but similar effect, like condition removal for yourself and allies after every few hits on Ventari, or an unblockable attack every ten seconds on Jallis. It doesn’t even need to be something that specific, but something to make each weapon set more streamlined with Legend switching.

Idris.9351:

I think this is probably the best idea on how to fix the weapon issue for revenants tbqh. Not to mention the fact that it’s somewhat in keeping with the theme of drawing on certain ritualist ideas from GW1.

Anyone who has played GW1 will remember the ritualist’s weapon spells (http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Weapon_spell) that applied certain attributes to weapons for yourself, your party or both. While that idea probably wouldn’t work on Revenants at this point in development, it might be nice if the Legend currently being used had a more passive but similar effect, like condition removal for yourself and allies after every few hits on Ventari, or an unblockable attack every ten seconds on Jallis. It doesn’t even need to be something that specific, but something to make each weapon set more streamlined with Legend switching.

That’s good to hear. I haven’t actually played Ritualist in GW1, but having just read a bit more about it I think that actually makes a lot of sense and ties into my idea well. I really love the idea of having specific combo finishers like you suggested for each legend too, and I feel like that would be a lot of fun to tie into the lore of GW1, such as, for example, having Shiro’s combo finisher for swords be based on the kill move he does on the group in Factions campaign just before you meet Ventari (forgive me if I’m mixing up my lore, I’ve only ever read it on the wiki :P). That being said, that would be a lot of work and I’d rather that they fix the class before making any additions like that to it.

Funball.3482:

I can only speak from spvp point of view but this feels like one of those classes right now that doesn’t do anything that another class can’t do better (i know its only in testing).
If you go condition side of damage then you need to be up close and personal… you die so fast idk why they are just so squishy no matter what build you do. I also feel like the cast time animations are quite long on most of their skills.
im yet to play a pure damage one after finding out how squishy they are.

Couldn’t agree more! I don’t do a whole heap of PvP, so I may not be the best person to comment on the Revenants ability there, however… I did find that it didn’t matter how I spec’ed the class, it never excelled at what I was trying to get it to do.

Where as with the Ele and the Engi (which I feel are the direct comparisons to this classes setup/style), I always feel I have something to answer for the situation I’m in.

DaikonSamurai.6714:

So I’m going to add my thoughts here since this thread’s title is the most direct. Just tried rev and in my first event encounter I fought a veteran mini boss and just spammed my abilities. I used legendary demon ability 9 (Unyielding Anguish) and a player got mad because he couldn’t hit the teleporting enemy and stood to the side hoping to see the boss kill me.

I wasn’t trying to troll him and after killing the boss I explained myself and I think I’m on good terms with the guy now, but I can see this being a major issue to the overall “you should be happy to see other players” mentality GW2 is known for.

Think Longbow ranger knock-backing foes out of your AoE is annoying? Revenant is going to bring a whole new level of rage on that front. Especially for melee players.

I also found this same frustration with that ability! I think I see the angle ANET are coming from with this one, that you stack up torment, then pop skill 9, so you’re always keeping the enemy moving and thus getting the higher torment tic, but in practice… it just annoys other people assisting you and I found it annoying for myself, Trying to judge where to run next to continuing attacking with the melee weapons I had on at the time.

Kirani.2690:

The biggest problem I see with the revenant is the inability to weapon swap during combat. If it is true that legends and weapons are tied together, then it would be foolish to switch one without the other. If I can only weapon swap or switch legends then I would rather have the ability to swap weapons. At least that gives me a choice between ranged and melee combat. If I am currently running a hammer and Jalis build why would I ever want to switch to the demon legend? My hammer skills have a range of 1200 but my utility and elite skills will only have a range from 600-240 (which makes more sense if you are using a mace and axe).

You raise the valid point of range and then melee combat that I didn’t cover in my original post! Thank you!

Ele and Engi both have options to switch from melee, to range depending on the situation. Every class in the game has this option… I think the Revenant is the only one that doesn’t!

After playing around with the Revenant for a few hours in all game modes I’v come up a short list of things that I personally feel need addressing; i’ll get to the suggested changed later.

1. Many of the Legend Skills are on too long a cast time for the effect they give; a 2sec taunt on a 1sec cast time or almost 3sec cast time for 5 sec of stone Armour.

2. I feel malyix was lacking on the resilience boon; but this might have been more due to my lack of experience with the skills.

3. The Tablet needs a few helping hands, we defiantly need the tablet to spawn on entering the stance as it makes you not want to change into the stance due to the 1-2 sec downtime it takes to summon it

3.2 the second point is that i feel the heal (moving the tablet around) could do with a change; instead of having the heals first part been to summon the tablet and the second to move it to a location, we could have the first part move the tablet and the second return it to you.
This would help with keeping track of where your tablet has run off to and give it a way to keep it near at hand when needed.

3.5 The Movement speed of the tablet could do with been doubled, I was finding it very difficult to heal specific member of my party during WvW and increasing the speed it moves would help out with that.

4. Jalis’s trait have a lot a synergy with retaliation but has very little access to the boon in question; 0-6 sec on a 30sec heal and 2 sec on dodge so I think that it needs to get more from somewhere.

ok almost done now

5. The staff is a brilliant weapon but its still not quite there yet, and yes its you skill #2 I’m looking at you! I’m not sure exactly what to change it into; give it a mini daze, knockdown? I don’t know but I do know that low dmg and short duration weakness isn’t really worth the two 1 sec cast time hits it takes to do it.

Ok onto suggestions; i hope your still reading this.

The big one I’m thinking about is giving each legend not 3 utilities but 4 or even 5. I feel that this would fix a few things. firstly if would give the revenant an equal (OK rev would have 1 more elite skill but close enough) amount of Utility skills with the other professions, it would also give the rev more options as far as build customization goes and finally it would make facing a rev less predictable; at the moment if you see a rev with the jarlis buff and hammer you know exactly what his moves are.

I think that’s about it, I wont go on suggesting what these new utilities could be, i’ll leave them to the professionals.

and thank you for reading.

Very interesting topic. Not sure that any developper is going to read this, but i might have an idea concerning the “this legend is best suited to this weapon”. Instead of a weapon swap per se, i believe that switching to a specific legend should tailor the weapon’s effects to itself.

Allow me to explain with a crude example with the hammer skills.

Let’s say you’re using Jalis:
Hammer Bolt works as intended now
Phase Smash doesn’t have chilled effect, but provide with a 1 sec knockdown

And now, you switch to Mallyx:
Hammer Bolt now has a purple color and inflicts 1 stack of torment, but has less damage.
Phase Smash chills the enemy as intended now

Then switch to Ventari:
Hammer Bolt inflicts medium damage and 1 stack of vulnerability
Phase Smash is less powerful, but heals AoE at target (so it can be used as offensive or help allies, especially meleers)

This would help differentiate playstyles and most of all increase diversity while not making the revenant unreadable by other players, and make multiple legends more viable because as OP mentioned, right now weapons feels connected too much to specific legends.

It may look a tad more elementalist, but toned down (same attack animations, just slightly different effects) so you still feel like you have to choose your weapon wisely.

First post since i have the game, hope you guys can add to the idea and make the revenant a worthy adversary.

BordeL.1283:

Very interesting topic. Not sure that any developper is going to read this, but i might have an idea concerning the “this legend is best suited to this weapon”. Instead of a weapon swap per se, i believe that switching to a specific legend should tailor the weapon’s effects to itself.

Allow me to explain with a crude example with the hammer skills.

Let’s say you’re using Jalis:
Hammer Bolt works as intended now
Phase Smash doesn’t have chilled effect, but provide with a 1 sec knockdown

And now, you switch to Mallyx:
Hammer Bolt now has a purple color and inflicts 1 stack of torment, but has less damage.
Phase Smash chills the enemy as intended now

Then switch to Ventari:
Hammer Bolt inflicts medium damage and 1 stack of vulnerability
Phase Smash is less powerful, but heals AoE at target (so it can be used as offensive or help allies, especially meleers)

This would help differentiate playstyles and most of all increase diversity while not making the revenant unreadable by other players, and make multiple legends more viable because as OP mentioned, right now weapons feels connected too much to specific legends.

It may look a tad more elementalist, but toned down (same attack animations, just slightly different effects) so you still feel like you have to choose your weapon wisely.

First post since i have the game, hope you guys can add to the idea and make the revenant a worthy adversary.

This is a really neat idea! Definitely would be a unique to the Revenant!

It still begs the question on the Range to Melee switch issue that the class suffers from at the moment. Maybe, there is the potential with this system, that upon swapping legend, the weapon turns to ranged, instead of melee (Obviously, this wouldn’t work in all cases… ranged swords might look a bit odd haha).

I feel the community is coming up with some good solutions to the issues the class is currently facing and for the most part they’re all in line with one another. I’m just wondering what path ANET will go down, if any (which is a scary thought if that’s the case, as the class definitely needs to see some work).

I’m also wondering how many of these forum threads ANET go through, given how many there are, hopefully these good ideas don’t fall through the cracks and forgotten!

I’m pretty sure my points have already been made – but I’m not going to sift through 300+ comments to see. Plus more feedback is always a good thing right?
My Revenant had a life span of about 24 hours. We had good times and bad. Overall, I enjoyed the class, the skills and the “idea”. Here it comes….
HOWEVER…no run skills? Low damage. Prot skills with too much sacrifice. Heal skills that don’t help much (6k with 23k hp isn’t much to speak of). And energy management – a new concept to GW2. A bit different from energy management in GW1.
I played WvW testing this little gem (because that’s where i live in my GW life). I felt like a nooby little level up. I tried a couple different builds – condi with axe/mace (my fave I love condi damage) and power with hammer, also a hybrid power/condi so I could easily weapon swap. Nothing seemed to matter much. I was no help to the groups I ran with and melted usually within 3 seconds after confronting a zerg…being unable to run away has definite repercussions. And trying to chase down someone to finish them – well I just waved as they sped off in to the sunset…
I know this was a beta – and certainly hope there will be some boosts in the areas of damage output, protection, SPEED, and foods. (An energy food would be nice.) As a person who runs a condi necro as well as a meta build ele, the damage was severely disappointing. I don’t want another glass cannon. And I certainly don’t want some bad kitten heavy build who whomps out a big 516 bleed on my enemy :P
Again, overall, the class was cool. But it was nothing short of a hindrance in WvW.
Looking forward to next Beta! Cheers!

1) SLoooow very very slooow. Slow revenant as in moving & slow skills use. Hammer 3 & 5 skills – in wvw cannot use because sloooow.
2) NO DPS!
3)No swiftnes
4) like mesmer have no condition removers
5)Forced Engagement – not working graphics. tested in EB.

1) Hammer is indeed very slow. Staff is Medium-Slow. Mace/Axe is pretty darn fast though.

2) Nope. Hopefully Shiro Legend will fix this.

3) Perma-Swiftness OoC by Blasting Lightning Field (Jalis Stance #7) with Hammer 3 and 5.

4) Staff #4 (2 Condis), Jalis #6 (3 Condis), Ventari #9 (2 Condis), Salvation Trait 5

5) Can’t comment, though Taunt doesn’t seem to make enemies run towards you instantaneously.

TheSwede.9512:

3) Perma-Swiftness OoC by Blasting Lightning Field (Jalis Stance #7) with Hammer 3 and 5.

tnx for than. i didn’t now that

TheSwede.9512:

4) Staff #4 (2 Condis), Jalis #6 (3 Condis), Ventari #9 (2 Condis), Salvation Trait 5

for staff ok. but i think general weapon for wvw will be a hammer & hammer no condiremovers. maybe for now….

The damage output on staff and hammer is currently much, MUCH too low right now.

Hey Guys ! o/ I wonder what’s your opinion so far about the revenant ? Do you like it ?Or not? Do you enjoy to play the class?Or do you think its garbage ?What are you play experience with this class ?

Also for the other ones , who doesn’t have a revenant.What do you think about the revenant as a team mate ?What are your opinion about the revenant ?Do you think he is a nice teammate or not ?

Also for all of you guys.What do you think about the future of revenant ?

Well my opinion is , that it’s a cool looking armor class and some really nice skills animations .Also i really like that overlay and those stances , they make a lot of fun, but i dont get the point with the tablet so far im not that much interested in it,but still it’s a nice class to play.

Also he have some handy stuff like the teleportation field to keep your teammates save ,but ppls abuse it more to troll around and even if you want to help with it.YOU cannot controll it.So … teammates would be more annoyed ,instead of being thankfull to you.Also the perma fire field is nice for stacking burning or for keeping it up and to stack might aswell.Also the tablet can be handy sometimes , but well yeah …. the guardian do still a better job in it,except the reflection part,because of less cd or well im still tempting to say guardian is a bit more usefull,because of all his signets and support skills.
Also to reduce the incoming dmg , which you can spam over and over almost is nice and usefull sometimes,which could be a nice support skill,also the stabi field , which also weakens the enemy , but only sometimes and i dont think that it will help all the time for stabi , maybe to weaken the boss , but thats all.
So yeah some support skills are there , but ATM some support skills are not , that usefull sometimes or are barely helpfull.

Also let’s talk about the other skills he can use ,for example the skill from the demon stance , where you can stack confusion on your enemy , BUT stacking vulnerability on yourself ,which can be usefull for your heal skill,but also it makes you more glassy and i think confusion in pve ? Isn’t that great … i guess more for pvp , but well you would make yourself more vulnerable for the other team and you became more a free kill almost.
Also he can’t stack anything , that well except burning (max stack i manage so far was 10 stack of burning).I mean for example other classes can stack bleeding or vulnerability or other stuff really high over 10+ stack of course.The revenant so far only burning , which force him maybe to go condi (?)

And we shouldn’t forget , that his DPS atm isn’t that great so far , well i can go up to 13 k dmg easily , but not always also for me it feels like you are forced to play range , because of your hammer , which seems like to do the most dmg , if you dont like condis and he feels so glassy sometimes,but still you can deal some decent dmg,but it hard to do that.

And his traitsystem is kinda … weird ? Or well atleast we don’t know so far , how we should we get some benefits from this trait system so far or atleast just me,because some traits are useless in my eyes atm.Also he is lacking some other professions and some other stances , as far as i know.

But yeah all in all i like that class it’s fun to play.It got some pro’s and contra’s , but the contra’s or the lacking of being usefull so far seems to be overwhelming and he is still in the beta and can still being overworked.

Also i don’t think ,that this class is wellmade for pvp or wvw unless for support , but that’s all.I just played this class mostly in PvE

So i hope that A-net would make a nice class out of the revenant and i can’t wait for HoT , but im kinda worried , that they are tempting to maybe screw it up,because … yeah we know why.

Anyways ! Let’s hope for the best! And i want to hear YOUR opinion about that class !

Greetings Chazz

pitchBLACK.5479:

I also found this same frustration with that ability! I think I see the angle ANET are coming from with this one, that you stack up torment, then pop skill 9, so you’re always keeping the enemy moving and thus getting the higher torment tic, but in practice… it just annoys other people assisting you and I found it annoying for myself, Trying to judge where to run next to continuing attacking with the melee weapons I had on at the time.

Yeah it’s a really cool ability and I’d like to keep it, but not at the expense of it becoming the next tool of choice for trolls.

I thoroughly enjoyed the Revenant and will be my main. Has some play style similar to the Dervish in GW1. Sorry Guardian, you move to second place. We still haven’t seen the other two legends (I assume Glint and Shiro) and I’m stoked. For weapons, the mace/axe is condition heavy so it fits with the Mallyx legend but not Jarlis nor Ventari. For Jarlis, I used Hammer. For Ventari, I used staff. I rarely swapped legends because of it. Not saying anything is wrong with that, just not enough time to test if it would benefit the Rev to switch different legend types while using one weapon set which is clearly set for each legend—which leads to my issue…

My only issue is the “no-save progress” this weekend. I don’t mean character progress, I mean account progress. Whether I use my Mesmer, Necro, or Revenant, WvW progress is the same. It doesn’t make sense to not save progress that way. In 8 hours Friday, I lost 262 WvW player kills, 12 WvW levels, 7 gold, slew of bags, etc. When I saw that loss, time to quit beta testing the Revenant and get back on my normal toons.

This is the reason why I stopped playing Rev since Friday night. It is counter productive. I hardly see anyone playing the Rev this weekend because of it. I only saw 2 Saturday in WvW and 1 Sunday (it is still early) but he thought he was able to save account progress too. Once the map told him his beta account is just a copy and nothing is saved, he quit the Rev.

Anet, do what you have to do to make saving account progress happen whether it is not allowing bank access or whatever. It is unfortunate that the Rev did not see enough of this amazing game. A toast – “To the Revenant!”

So I couldn’t find a nice, big central topic for all the feedback so I’m just going to go ahead and make a new topic for my feedback specifically. Before I do so I want to give a small disclaimer. I am fully aware the class isn’t finished yet, bugs need fixing and that a lot of stuff needs to be optimized still. Despite being aware of it I will be giving feedback as if the class is at least mostly finished. The argument ‘’the next legend will fix it’’ or ‘’you cant say that because it’s not finished yet’’ many people give regarding to feedback and critique needs to end at some point. I also feel the sooner issues are pointed out the sooner positive changes can be made.

That aside I’ve already given feedback on Jalis, Mallyx, Mace, Axe and Hammer related things from a previous beta test before and I will be keeping points regarding those things to a minimum. The last time I got to test those things we were in the new HoT map in full celestial gear so I will only be discussing how it looks right now in new gear sets and current maps. I would also like to point out that this will be mostly from a instanced PvE perspective (dungeons/fractals) unless specifically mentioned otherwise.

First off the more general feel and state of the class. At the moment it feels like the Revenant has rather low direct damage and no unique group utility, buffs or support. It does however bring a very large amount of different things. Spammable debuffs like weakness, projectile absorption, blinds, group healing, group condition cleansing, defiance removal and crowd control and so forth. Unfortunately it doesn’t really excel in one point with the exception of maybe group healing which currently serves little purpose. This is both a blessing and a curse as it makes it so Revenants are able to fill all kinds of roles and are very flexible, but also means people would rather look or use a class that excels in whatever they need at that point. As it stands I would rather take a Guardian or Mesmer if projectiles are a problem, not a Revenant. Or a Thief if blinds are desired, not a Revenant. Even a Necromancer if debuffing or boon stripping is important, not a Revenant. This isn’t much of a problem but worth pointing out anyway.

Damage however is where it becomes an issue. It pains me to say this, but in our guild’s dungeon runs last night I finished 3 paths in Caudecus manor and half a path in Crucible of Eternity before logging off to a different class. I felt I wasn’t contributing enough with the utility or the damage and felt like a liability to the group. The moment I logged a different class (one that isn’t exactly know for high damage either) we’ve instantly saw a swing in effectiveness. What I played was a full berserker build (not counting gems because we couldn’t switch out the celestial gems) with a Mace/Axe and Staff combo. I’m aware the first set is a condition damage weapon set and the other is more support oriented, but I had little choice because I was testing the class in a berserker/power based environment. In this environment the class was lacking to say the least. In the open world it wasn’t all that bad with 25 bloodlust stacks but it is still below anything I could have done on one of my other 8 classes. This could of course be related to the class being new and me not understanding the class well enough but as someone who actively plays every class in the game I like to believe I’m able to adapt relatively quickly to new things.

Ventari

Ventari has to be one of the most unique things I’ve ever played in this entire game. I feared the tablet’s mechanics would be clunky as all hell, but it wasn’t bad at all. The thing that worried me the most was moving the tablet over and through terrain and it getting stuck behind every little pebble in the 9000 yards around you. I was pleasantly surprised seeing it float and move through and over gaps, ledges and terrain. There are a few minor things I would like to see changed to make gameplay a lot smoother and more fun to play. The first one is a little minor, the cast time on moving the tablet feels too long. Because the amount of healing Ventari’s Will does and because you have to drag the tablet with you every time you move it felt a little clunky having to constantly stop all my attacks and animations to cast the skill. I reckon instant activation without a cast time would be too strong in PvP but the half a second cast time it has now just makes the legend itself feel slow. Minor complaint but Ventari grunting when you move the tablet seems to happen a bit too often. After playing with Ventari for a long period of time I started getting really annoyed by it. Natural Harmony is a really cool idea that fits the legend, but to me it seems like you guys went half-way with it. In my opinion (purely an opinion) it should either be instantly activate or the delay should be upped to 3 seconds. 2 seconds was enough time to trigger it and move the tablet to make it go off in a different area but it’s close and it would sometimes go off before reaching my desired destination. Now here is a big complaint I have with the legend. Please, for the love of Colin, allow us to activate Protective Solace before we go in combat without being forced to either attack something or spend energy beforehand. I want to cast the dome and move it into position with the dome active. This works, but I’ve had moments where I wanted to block a projectile but couldn’t trigger the dome because it was greyed out due to not being in combat and at exactly 50 energy. I get it, you don’t want Revenants walking around towns with Embrace the Darkness or Vengefull Hammers active. For thoe two it’s fine, but please reconsider Protective Solace as it makes gameplay very frustrating. As for Energy Expulsion… eh. I’ve barely used the skill. The cast time is too long, it removes the tablet, I didn’t really need the knockback and the healing fragments I didn’t rely on. Not sure what else to say about it, I just used it so little that can’t give my feedback on it.

Salvation

Didn’t play too much with the traitline but everything seems quite solid for what the traitline is about. Just have a few small things I would share my thoughts on. For the first minor Disarming Riposte, the internal cooldown seems way too long. This is difficult to use to good effect in PvP and too unreliable in PvE for it’s cooldown (as in you would often double-up with a reliable blind meaning you waste the proc). The internal cooldown could be lower a little making it just a nice free extra blind every so often instead of a once in a blue moon, unreliable proc. Blinding Truths was said in a livestream to be replaced with something else. This is a big shame to me, because this is actually a trait I really like. Reliable blinds are fantastic to have. Tranquil Benedition is a trait I actually like. I just don’t get why the regeneration is on there since we can already trait for regeneration in a different tier. Would protection be too strong? I don’t know what other boon to suggest. I would love to see protection instead because that would be unique to the legend, traitline and even class and possibly worth speccing into the line for times where you want some damage mitigation.

Staff

Surprisingly I don’t have much to say about this weapon. Love that you have a block, you can apply weakness and blinds, Surge of the Mists feels good to use. Like the weapon. Damage is on the low side as mentioned before but I suppose the weapon is build that way. Two issues I have is that Debilitating Slam can be a little annoying to trigger. And more importantly, I wish Renewing Wave was a blast finisher. How cool would it be to make Energy Expulsion a water field, and blasting it for area healing with Renewing Wave? Or even just blasting the field of a different ally? For a support based weapon somewhat build for a support based legend it doesn’t feel like it has much play for teamwork and working with allies.

(Again, I will be keeping stuff from previous betas to a minimum)

Jalis and Mallyx

Forced Engagement’s energy cost still seems too high even for PvP. Rite of the Great Dwarf’s channel time seems a bit on the long side even for how powerful the ability is. Can’t it be toned down and increased in energy instead? It was difficult to empower Mallyx’s abilities without outside ’’help’’ and for PvP it was rare to be in a situation where I didn’t have 3+ conditions on me. The self cripple from Unyielding Anguish lasts a bit too long in my opinion. Banish Enchantment feels too powerful in PvP, I could melt Elementalists and Guardians by just spamming this skill. Pain Absorbtion’s energy cost really is way too high. In neither PvP or PvE I could use this effectively because it was more effective to use my energy for other things. Embrace the Darkness only transfers every condition over to your foes with 1 stack. Vengeful Hammers keeps turning itself off when they hit a wall. The healing from Empowering Misery seems off. Would still like to see the base heal become a little higher with the healing per condition on you lowered.

Corruption and Retribution

Now burning stacks Diabolic Inferno seems a little underwhelming. Retaliatory Evasion is quite underwhelming. I know retaliation does more stuff in different traits, but the duration is so low to make use of it. Reflexive Summon’s hammer seems to apply weakness and isn’t mentioned on the tooltip. Steadfast Rejuvenation’s chance to trigger seems arbitrary. The healing and internal cooldown really aren’t that strong that it would require a chance to trigger.

Mace, Axe and Hammer

Searing Fissure’s cast time still feels too long and it’s not fun to deal with. Echoing Eruption’s blasts could be closer together to be able to land more blasts in a smaller area, and I dislike the leap when you don’t have a target. Give me the option to blasts fields outside of combat without being on a target without having to walk backwards first. The blasts vanishing when they hit an object doesn’t feel great either. Axe is fine as it is. Hammer’s auto-attack still feels too slow. I still think it’s a problem that Phase Smash doesn’t make you invulnerable during the animation. I’ve had moments where I was attacking some hard-hitting melee mobs, used phase Smash from a distance and they would hit or even kill me during the animation because I ’’leaped’’ into their face.

Invocation

Cruel Reprecussion is still a little unclear. I understand that Fiece Infussion needs an internal cooldown because of Ventari’s heal, but it seems a little arbitrary as well. Can’t it be removed and instead only trigger every 20 seconds when channeling Ventari?

All in all I haven’t lost any excitement for the class and seeing the direction it’s going with Ventari and Staff I’m still immensely looking forward to playing it. I’m not sure what the tone of my post will be since I’ve written it over several days in different moods and playing/testing different things, but I hope it doesn’t look negative because that wasn’t what I was going for. I’m also aware it’s a giant wall of text and it’ll probably get skipped over anyway, but better to be thorough instead of not providing enough information. Keep up the good work and I can’t wait to see Shiro the next legend!

The line Salvation with the minor trait “Disarming Riposte”: striking a foe while he is using a skill blinds him (20sec cd) should be changed with something more supportive imo, like grants 2sec protection/retaliation to allies nearby 15sec cd or so.

Also of all the available weapons mace/axe seems to be the better dps set even though it is clearly a condition set.

Hammer skill 3: “Phase Smash” it says that you teleport to your target area which doesn’t happen you are justs stuck in the animation and thats it.

The utlitly skill “Unyielding Anguish” from the legendary demon stance will be troublesome, especially for WorldversusWorld, it displaces your foes and that on a large scale fight will be laggy and annoying for most players to get randoml teleported around.

Like pointed out by others some of the animations/attacks in general are just too slow, except mace/axe, and in a pvp enviroment it will be a disadvantage. Also some of the cooldowns are too huge and there is no trait to reduce cooldowns.

Another point is even with going full berserker stats you barely get a better damage output. it is tanky alright, but the scaling seems to be buggy(?)

Here’s my Rev’s build:
(Numbers indicate selectable traits with 1 being the top and 3 being the bottom)
Corruption – 1 1 3
Retribution – 2 2 3
Invocation – 2 1 3

Armor is full Berserker’s with Superior Runes of Hoelbrak.
Accessories are Berserkers with the stock Exquisite Charged Jewels.
Main weapons are Berserker mace/axe with Superior Sigil of Bloodlust and Superior Sigil of Leeching.

Main Goal of this Beta Revenant:
To create something I’d actually play in-game assuming this is how the Revenant came.

Overall Opinion:
Underpowered base weapon 1-5 skills, strong utilities, and flippin’ tanky even in full Zerker. The mace/axe were the strongest weapons overall, which is why they became my main weaponset. The hammer was next in line in terms of strength. And the staff came in dead last. Its #5 skill did the most damage on it, but it’s clearly meant for a heal/support build, which I don’t run, so I stopped using it fairly quickly.

WvW Testing:
So that’s the build and weaponset I took into WvW, which is where I truly test out new builds for classes. If I can play the build/class in WvW well (I don’t have any set standards, but I expect to be able to fight 1-on-1, keep up with the zerg, and overall feel useful), it solidifies the build, and I often write it down to save it.

Revenant did not pass. The dps on even the mace/axe were too low, and the lack of weapon swapping and swiftness, or any sort of increased running speed, were detrimental. I spent most of my time trying to keep up with the zerg, often came late to claim towers, and in 1-on-1, even my tankiness and utilities couldn’t save me. It felt a lot like running a nub character.

What did work well was Jorin’s Inspiring Reinforcement (the stone road), and Forced Engagement (the chain). Even though I was slow and did little damage, in the midst of a thousand circles, Inspiring Reinforcement helped my allies push forward, and enemies that were running away were chained down by Forced Engagement so that my faster allies could finish them off. So even though I was slow, had low dps, and got downed frequently, I at least didn’t feel completely useless.

That said, I really, REALLY needed that weapon swap, especially when attacking things on walls, like oil. Mace/axe just doesn’t go that high. I suppose I COULD have manually swapped to hammer, but quite often, an enemy zerg would come upon us, and that would have spelled my immediate death as I didn’t have the time to ooc and get my mace/axe back. As Revenant is now, I just don’t have a viable WvW build for it.

(continued in following post)

(feedback continued)
Other Comments:
I compared it to my mesmer running gs, sword/focus on some marsh drakes in Bloodtide Coast just outside the Lion’s Arch warp. General observances were: it took 16-18 hits using #1 auto attack on Rev’s mace to kill a drake. On mesmer, it took 13-15. Rev hammer took ~17, and was slower between attacks, and staff was about the same as the hammer

I couldn’t imagine doing map completion this way; it’d take forever. I run too slow, and things don’t die quickly enough. Even using all 5 attacks with mace/axe didn’t match my mesmer’s dps, and she’s running about the same gear, ruby orbs instead of runes, not even full exotic accessories, and currently 1 ascended ring w/the amulet and other ring slot empty. The utilities on Rev helped quite a bit. I used Legendary Demon Stance to kill things faster. But EVEN THEN, it just didn’t even come close to the speed at which you can kill things on mesmer. Just drop the focus #5, then sword #2, and your creature is dead. On Rev, it took all 5 skills and utilities to get anywhere close to matching the speed my mesmer could kill stuff (still drakes, in this case).

But, despite all of this, I’ve still had a ton of fun playing Revenant this weekend. My first impression when I loaded in with my hammer was, “OMG, I LOVE THIS!!!” And I do. Even if they’re slow, I love the variety of the basic weapon skills. This class felt brand new, shiny, and the art and flashiness of the attacks made other classes look duller in comparison. I was surprised by the shadow step on axe, and quite pleased with the range on mace. Art-wise, the hammer had my favorite skills, so I was sad when I realized I couldn’t weapon swap, as I would have chosen it for my range. I do understand why there’s no weapon swap: you already get to swap between 2 sets of utilities, but as I explained above, having no long range really hurt in WvW play. If it remains without weaponswap, I’d either need some swiftness to make me a full-on melee brawler (the shadow step really hopes close that gap), or I’d need a more viable hammer build that lets me do good dps. As things are now, the mace/axe seems more likely and more usable.

I finally came to the conclusion that, if you’re not frequently using your utilities on your Rev, you’re not playing it right. In the end, it felt like this class came with 8 base attacks, and the only way to get results was to use your normal weapon attacks with utilities. If you just used your weapon, at least in WvW, you were gonna die. But on other classes, you can get away with just using your weapon, and calling upon your utilities only when you need them: to remove condis, go invisible, use a portal, etc. The Revenant brings a whole different perspective to utilities, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. It was a fresh, new way to play the game. I could spam the utilities, and not feel bad about it whereas I’m punished with long cool-downs on other classes. And if I needed different utilities for different situations, I could swap them out. I almost never couldn’t use a utility.

I know that was a SUPER long post, but I hope this helps with finishing the class. I’m really looking forward to making my own Revenant when it’s officially released. But now that you’ve given us such cool, flashy weapon skills, the other classes have some catching up to do in that regard. =P I’ve had a lot of fun trying this class out. I think it’s going to end up being one of my favorites. Oh, and I love the armor and hammer skin. <3 Thanks for letting us try it out!