Guild Wars 2

General impressions:

I’ve been playing the Revenant most of this beta weekend and i think it’s a very fun profession with lots of potential but there are some issues. I’ve written this thing up after having played ONLY as a shiro/sword/DPS based Revenant. This write-up is purely my own opinion and vision of this profession, I may have misunderstood the mechanics and uses of some skills and some of the proposed changes may be unfair so please be constructive about them and propose your own ideas if you think they are better.

As a dps build you lacks sustain, has virtually no cleanses aside from the dwarf heal and some of the Ventari skills. But you’d have to dedicate yourself to being a tanky healer if you want those. I also don’t get why our weaponskills cost energy. Sometimes you completely run out of energy and you’re locked out of all your weapon skills aside from your autoattack. I thought it would make alot more sense if certain skills, when landed, rewarded you with energy. This is probably a balance thing, but I feel like, in it’s current form, needs to be able to always have access to all of their weapon skills.

Weapons:

Staff:
Does good damage imo, staff is your bread and butter atm, all the skills are really good.

Sword MH:
The autoattack does pretty good damage, the animation however is very very… weird? I hope the animation is just a placeholder. The #2 skill (Precision Strike) is pretty good, people think it isn’t but I think it is. It’s a ranged 1second chill on a 4second CD. Not to mention if you hit this on top of a single target, it can hit THREE times. It crits for 1.5k on marauder, so that x3 and you have burst.
Relentless Assault (sword 3) whilst doing good dmg and being a nice gap closer, it locks you inside a pretty long animation that you cannot cancel. And because you cannot cancel it you gotta be prepared to receive 30 stacks of burning from a ring of fire or purging flames. Not to mention its very susceptible to counter pressure. A warrior was able to land almost a full a 100blade channel whilst doing relentless pursuit, even tho the skill looks like it was intended to port/hit the target at a variety of angles (side, back, front etc). And because you cannot cancel the animation, unless you weapon swap, (which obviously isnt always up) you will probably die. Basically, the risk is alot higher than the potential reward.
Perhaps add some evade frames for this skill?

Sword OH:
The block is good, the CD is fair imo and the immob reactionary is also pretty good since it applies it to everyone in an aoe cone. Not so sure about the #5 (Grapsing shadow) skill, it seems to be abit buggy, sometimes doesn’t even shadowstep you away from your target, the damage is also very low (1.3k crit with marauder) and the cooldown too long. Either increase the dmg, or lower the CD.

Axe:
I really like both the skills. #4 (Frigid Blitz) skill does amazing dmg and is a great gapcloser, 900 range and on a 12 second cooldown and UNBLOCKABLE. It even
applies chill! great skill. The #5 (Temporal Rift) skill is also really nice. The cooldown is just right and the width of the pull is good. the dmg isn’t too high but for a 15second cooldown. This was also my OH of choice together with sword.

Mace:
Good condi weapon, hits very fast and thus stacks alot of torment. The burn field is very fair, doesn’t apply alot of burning because the field isn’t that large but the CD is low so you can consistently drop it. the #3 skill is nice aswell, if you aim it just right it can stack a good amount of torment and the blast finisher is nice too.

Hammer:
Our only ranged weapon, i think the skills look good, but because a dps revenant lacks sustain, i think it’s hard to use. When targets are kept at range i think it does decent pressure, mainly through the #2 (Coalescence of Ruin) skill and autos. But the moment people get near you is when hammer gets clunky. You’ll be forced out of hammer until you can somehow get the aggro off of you. Perhaps it requires a form of disengage? Also similar to the sword #3, the hammer #3(Phase Smash) skill, you are stuck in the animation and people can still hit you during the skill. Even worse is when theres fire fields. Be prepared for burn stacks. The damage/range and CD is good tho. Just like sword #3, give it some evade? You are leaping “through” the mists afterall. Or maybe reverse the way this skill works. Instead of leaping towards someone, hit the ground and leap backwards? That way hammer will have some sort of disengage.

On to the Legendary Stances themselves:

Shiro Legend points:

Shiro heal (enchanted daggers) could potentially be good, right now its not really a heal, you use it offensively which is an interesting mechanic. if there wasn’t an internal cooldown on the life leech then it would be a very good healing skill and you can burst with it aswell which is very cool. If the ICD were to be removed i’d propose a higher initial heal, and lowering the life leech dmg. That way people can’t get insta
5k bursted by life leech. I actually haven’t tested if the leech itself can be blocked or dodged, thus wasting a leech charge though.

overall the shiro legend utilities are pretty good imo.

Malyx Legend Points:

Malyx displacement field (Unyielding Anguish) is a very good skills with some very interesting usability. You can “port” thieves out of their shadow’s refuge, you can save people with it whilst rezzing and you can use it as a last ditch effort at leaping away out of the fray. 1 thing i cannot understand tho is that the displacement field “ports people” to the direction you are facing. Perhaps this was part of balancing the skill but what happens is when i try to kite away with it, I actually port the people chasing me right infront of me. So it actually helps them close the gap, which is COMPLETELY counter intuitive. I’d like it if it ported away from you rather than the direction
your character is facing or it being truly random, so it becomes a high risk/high reward skill.

overall the malyx legends utilities are very good.

Dwarf Legend Points:

The heal is probably one of the worst heals in the game. I thought i’d seen it with warrior’s Mending, but this heal is even worse. I understand that the revenant can potentially use 2 heals after eachother, but i think the cooldown on this dwarf legend is just too long. Basically a shiro+dwarf combo is impossible cause you have 0 sustain. This is an issue with the revenant by itself aswell as the shiro heal being underpar atm purely as a heal though. The brick road skill (Inspiring Reinforcement) is what saves the legend imo, its really really good. The taunt skills energy cost is i think abit too high and will probably never be used in pvp honestly. Vengeful Hammers does alright dmg, I also don’t think it has much uses though because energy management is very important. You’ll just drain through your energy fast if you have that up + using weapon skills. The Elite dwarf forms effects are pretty good, but the cast time is SOOOOOOOOOO LOOOOONG. basically begging people to interrupt you.

Centaur Legend Points:

I like the idea of it being a skill based legend. If you are very good at using it, the rewards could be immense. It probably has the most healing out of all the professions currently in gw2. The thing is, it’s clunky. The tablets travel time is still too slow. You might think its fast. but it isn’t. In practical uses you’ll find out that it either requires an immense amount of coordination with your team or you’ll just simply miss the pass through of the tabelt. Either increase the travel speed, or remove the 1/4th cast time. Maybe even both honestly. Other than that the utilities look good.

These are all the things I thought needed attention. Thanks for reading and add whatever you think needs to be added in this thread.

Really nice write-up, I agree with most things.

I think the energy costs on alot of the skills are too high, especially when you factor in that the weaponskills themselves actually also take energy. It really restricts the revenant from using all of their available utilities, but it might have been part of the revs design that he only uses specific utilties per legend based on the situation. I do think the sword #2 skill is still pretty bad compared to other skills.

The 3 hits that you are thinking of only happens when there are 2 other targets in the area. So in a straight up 1v1, it’ll only hit 1.5k at best.