Guild Wars 2

I found the revenant very disappointing. In short, it feels constrained, gimmicky, and inflexible. Unfortunately I think the issues are fundamental to the class and not something that’s fixable with some tuning or new legends.

The legend stance design locks us out of diversity in the abilities. This is exacerbated by only having one weapon. It feels like I really only have 3 options for half my bar, and only 3 options for the other half. Only each weapon was designed for a specific stance (staff – centaur, hammer – dwarf, macaxe – demon). So instead of having what seems like 6 combinations, I really only have 3, where I have a primary stance that matches the weapon and a secondary stance for some utility.

Stances are designed for different gearsets too.
Demon, conditions, Dwarf tankiness/power?, Centaur healing. If I want a condition build, I’m really stuck with demon and macaxe, with Dwarf or Centaur for support abilities. Both of those cure conditions which sorta defeats the gimmick of the demon stance, so welp. That feels extremely limited. It’s not like I can be a condition dealer, then swap and now I’m good at healing. If I was full celestial maybe I’d be half-kittening each one and kinda sorta making that work.

As if that wasn’t enough, the energy mechanic makes all of my abilities share a common resource, with cooldowns on top of that, which just feels like complexity for the sake of complexity. I get how the energy is necessary to make the whole utility swap thing work but it ends up making the utilities feel watered down the weapon and utilies competing for energy. At the least the weapons shouldn’t have energy costs, that just feels over the top. At least then I could use my weapons abilities on cooldown and the energy is for managing the different utilities and between the stances.

The cherry on top is that it’s also very heavily reliant on teammates to be useful and effective. centaur stance is pretty worthless unless you have other people to heal, and very gimmicky even if you do. Same with demon stance – you really need to have other people around you to take conditions otherwise the ability to copy conditions and deal more confusion and torment damage is kittened. No conditions and it’s just meh.

I don’t think I’ll ever enjoy this class, and that’s OK, I don’t have to like every class. But I’m disappointed because it feels like an over-engineered bad concept, not a class that’s just not my style.

It’s probably too far along to really fundamentally change the class to something that isn’t flawed from the get-go, but here’s some ideas that might help make it passable.

1) Get rid of energy cost on weapons. Just make it a utilities thing. The double cost of cooldown and energy is unnecessary. Timers on the utilities may be useful if you want to make some of the utilities more powerful, since energy alone seems to regenerate too fast to be a strong constraint.

2) Consider a second weapon set. It’s bad enough we’re locked into predefined sets of utilities, heals, and elites, but at least allow some options with the weapons, as limited as they are.

3) Have the stances do stat conversions, or just have flat out bonuses. This is really the one that I think might help the most. When I go into Centaur stance, have 20% of condition damage, 10% power, and 10% of toughness get converted into healing power. And by conversion I mean literal conversion – lower the other stats by that amount and give them to the stat that the stance is supposed to use the most. Same with any other legends. This might give us the ability to do more than one legend decently well without having to have a different gearset for each one or only be good in one while terrible in the others. It also makes gearset choices much more interesting since we have to factor in the conversions.

Maybe the above ideas can be developed or mangled into something that may make it fun and engaging. Thanks for reading!

I don’t mind the energy cost on weapons, though some (e.g. staff) are kind of expensive. I think GW2’s profession design has typically promoted spamming of skills on cooldown, so we may need to relearn to be effective with Rev, where we may be punished for doing this.

I do support the idea of weapon swap. Revenant just doesn’t seem to have the large toolbox that engi and ele do to support having only a single weapon.

I am not so sure about suggestion #3 (stat conversion), because it limits build diversity. If, for example, Mallyx stance reduced some stats and boosted condition damage, then it would be impossible to use a power build in a Mallyx stance. That means if I equip a power weapon (e.g. hammer), it will get weaker when I switch to Mallyx stance. And that means I won’t use hammer with Mallyx. Whether or not Mallyx is worth using at all in a power build is up for debate, but if this suggestion were implemented, the answer would be definitively no.

I agree on a few key points here. Ele and Engi don’t have weapon swap for good reason, they have plenty of options without it. Revenant does not feel the same way. It feels very limited on options. On Ele and Engi I am never forced to either melee or ranged combat. With Revenant I feel that I am forced to range with hammer and forced to melee with staff or mace/axe. There’s limited flexibility.

I also so far do not like both cooldowns and energy management. It feels very clunky. One or the other please. I understand this is (sort of) how it worked in GW1 but it doesn’t feel right in this game.

Damage is terrible but that’s okay as I’m assuming the high damage legend is Shiro and is not yet playable. I’m not judging that part of the Revenant yet.

Adamantium.3682:

Damage is terrible but that’s okay as I’m assuming the high damage legend is Shiro and is not yet playable. I’m not judging that part of the Revenant yet.

I would. With no trinity in this game you’re supposed to do decent DPS on top of being able to support.

Ventari has almost zero reason for being in the game so far. All the other classes have enough sustain to not care about a fully heal skilled legend.

Hardcore content could change that, but I still want to be able to do really good dps while channeling Ventari.

Adamantium.3682:

I agree on a few key points here. Ele and Engi don’t have weapon swap for good reason, they have plenty of options without it. Revenant does not feel the same way. It feels very limited on options. On Ele and Engi I am never forced to either melee or ranged combat. With Revenant I feel that I am forced to range with hammer and forced to melee with staff or mace/axe. There’s limited flexibility.

This.

It all feels so “clunky”. This is one new profession and they’re like making a jack of all trades with everything turned up side down, and for what? What are they going to do with future expansions then?
I don’t know, but I have mixed feelings with this class and so far they aren’t many “I like it” mixed feelings.

But then again, let’s wait for the full expansion, when core classes will get other weapons to play with and such.

So far: It’s not not fun, it’s more “meh” for me.

I really agree with the OP.

The idea of stat conversion upon switching stances is really interesting, and I also think that a weapon swap would go a long long way.

But I think one incredibly helpful thing would be to add a choice of utility skills for each stance so that we can select which three we will use and not always have to have only the same ones regardless of how/what/where/with whom we’re playing. Give us some real choices to make!

Right now playing rev feels a bit like playing a pre-made deck of a ccg (think like Magic the Gathering or whatnot). Okay, so you have two pre-made decks and you can swap between one and the other for “variety,” but you aren’t getting to make any internal decisions about what is in each deck.

I don’t think it would require a whole load of new utilities, but give us like two more utility skills per stance to choose from or something? Please?

Perhaps this would also help to make up for what feel like very lackluster traits—regardless of what I have tried, nothing feels build defining, and nothing feels like it has interesting synergy across any two stances. It all just feels bland bland bland. But that might be another issue all together.

fluidmonolith.3584:

I am not so sure about suggestion #3 (stat conversion), because it limits build diversity. If, for example, Mallyx stance reduced some stats and boosted condition damage, then it would be impossible to use a power build in a Mallyx stance. That means if I equip a power weapon (e.g. hammer), it will get weaker when I switch to Mallyx stance. And that means I won’t use hammer with Mallyx. Whether or not Mallyx is worth using at all in a power build is up for debate, but if this suggestion were implemented, the answer would be definitively no.

One might be able to remedy this with an additional suggestion. Make the stat conversions be dependent on weapon. Like, if the legend says “Takes 40% of some of your stats and converts them to Condition Damage” there could be a set of 3 stats it uses for Mallyx (Vit, Power and Healing) and if you use a hammer, it would take 20% from healing and 10% from Power and Vit. Sure, 10% reduction to power is still a hit to damage but that’s only when you’re using Mallyx and it’s a tradeoff for increased conditions (if you have higher power, you’ll get more out of it). Now, if you use an Axe, it will take 20% Power and 10% Vit and Healing, etc etc.

Basically, I think the conversion could work and even though it will limit min/maxers, it still leaves decent enough flexibility if you’re not overwhelmingly concerned about min/max. I see it as more a way to be a generalist.

fluidmonolith.3584:

I don’t mind the energy cost on weapons, though some (e.g. staff) are kind of expensive. I think GW2’s profession design has typically promoted spamming of skills on cooldown, so we may need to relearn to be effective with Rev, where we may be punished for doing this.

I think you need to understand that, despite the hate towards the current meta, revs should be designed to compete with other classes at an acceptable level of playability. This means good support, good personal defense, good cc, and yes, good or very good dps. Atm it’s lacking in pretty much all aspects, both pve and pvp from what I’ve seen. But it’s a beta so ok, we’ll see.
Also, saying that other classes spam skills on cooldown is very far from the truth. The only skills you spam on cd are the weapon dps ones such as whirling wrath, but the others are used in a proper rotation or in a proactive combat situation. Do you see eles randomly going on water instead of swapping when needed? You see them spamming meteor while being hit and locked in place? You can not and should NOT judge the game’s combat and classes basing on unskilled or demential play. You need to keep your cds ready and manage your resources intelligently, both in situations such as pve solo and pvp.
Some builds are kinda gimmicky though, yeah <.<
I’d say the revenant is the epitome of one-trick pony at its current state.

I also don’t understand why it’s ok for this one class out of 9 to be “punished” for using skills. Why would you be punished with such a rigid playstyle forced into you with no solid and reliable weapon damage (I could only aa when under pressure and forced to spam utilities, it’s absurd!), no weapon swap, no customisable utility bar AND on top of that, a punishing resource management? what’s the point of putting no cd on a skill if you have no way of gaining energy and some skills cost 50? lol. At least necro and thieves have a way of generating it!
Seriously, it’s TOO much. Not even gw1 is so punishing, you have skills that cost no energy and ones that help you manage it, even if you’re a monk! And I’ll say it again, revvies have to compete with other gw2 classes; they can not base themselves solely on a “concept”.

Side note: sorry about that, but Ventari is the very definition of SPAMMING more than anything else I’ve seen ingame, utilities wise.

So yeah, it is very unfun because you can’t be proactive at all, only reactive. It’s awful compared to a guardian or any other class really. It should at least have weapon swap.
AT THE VERY LEAST.
Or ultra buffed legends, ’cause 4-5 legends are definitely not enough to adapt to situations when demanded.

Let me be real. Until they make the new content worthwhile, I may not even buy the new game. And revenant sucking at pvp is a huge incentive not to buy HoT.

I agree with the comments above, but I want to talk about the fun aspect of the revenant. I know this is subjective, but to me the only weapon that is fun is the staff (unfortunately it is underpowered). The mace and axe kill things faster than the other weapons but the skill animations are boring.