In general I feel like the base Revenant can use a lot more polish while the Herald is in a great place already (maybe even too great?). I think by bringing up the base lines we could reduce the dependancy on Herald this class currently has.
A major aspect of this class is energy management which feels great for Herald but pretty bad for most other Legendaries.
I’ll also assume that the underwater aspect is not finished yet (where are my skills?), so I won’t go into detail about that.
Weapons
While weapon skills costing energy is generally a good way to prevent mindless spaming of off-cooldown skills it also means that a lot of skills will see little to no use if they don’t excell at their purpose. Here are a few skills that I think could use a little more polish:
- Sword 2
The Revenant has no movement skills on their melee weapons, this is by design and instead on thier sword they have a snare to keep enemies from disengaging once they are in range. However the Chill applied by this skill has only a 50% uptime in the best case scenario and since movement abilities are no longer affected by snares the Revenant still has a hard time keeping up with other players trying to disengage. Maybe a longer duration Cripple instead of a short duration Chill would help this skill.
- Sword 3
This skill is pretty strong, but it has problems with enemies near walls where it can cancel early or do no damage at all (even though you still spent the energy and cooldown).
- Sword 5
This skill also tries to fix the disengaging problem, but I havn’t found a good use for it yet. It’s a pull but you have to get close before you can try to pull an enemy. If the enemy dodges or the pull fails for any other reason you only manage to created a gap between you and them putting you into a worse situation than you were in before using this skill. I suggest increasing this skills range to 600 and removing the dodge backwards part.
- Hammer 2
It’s a really strong skill, but the animation does not line up with the actual hitbox. Please fix either the animation or the hitbox.
- Hammer 5
The cast time is way to long to justify using this skill for its damage, and slo way to long to try to stun anyone with it. I think this skill would benefit from a “Dragons Tooth” mechanic where you have a short cast time and then are free to use other skills, while the actual effect is still delayed and thus counter-playable.
- Axe 4
Decent skill but the dash always overshoots the target. This is pretty disorienting, especially in Action Combat mode.
- Axe 5
It’s really hard to estimate the pull range, please add some range indicator on the ground.
- Staff 1
A bit on the weak side, I get that ist supposed to be a support weapon but the only support it does is create some really short lived, weak and annoying to pick up healing orbs.
- Staff 4
The only decent direct support on this support-weapon. There is no problem with this skill, but if you would move it to Staff 2 (with an appropriate CD) the support aspect of the Staff would be much better.
- Staff 5
Is it supposed to destroy Break Bars like this? I’d rather see this one get toned down and the rest of the Staff brought up, than for the Staff to become a 1-trick-pony in PvE.
Utilities / Legends
Jalis
- Soothing Stone (Heal)
The 2 seconds of Retaliation seem kind of pointless, but otherwise it’s a decent healing skill but the cast time somewhat kills it. A cast time reduction to 3/4 seconds would benefit it greatly.
- Inspiring Reinforcement (Paving the Road)
This skill is way too slow. By the time it finished building you actually ran past its area of effect. Please increase the build time (double it?).
- Forced Engagement (Taunt Chain)
This one’s a bit too expensive to use considering al the other expensive skills Jalis has to offer. Maybe reduce its cost or increase its effect. Taunt in general seems a bit underwhelming in PvE maybe there could be a different, global solution? (e.g. Taunt in PvE lasting two or even three times as long, and partially working on enemies with a break bar so they still focus the Taunt-user, but get to keep all of their skills)
- Vengefull (Whirling) Hammers
A really nice skill in its current iteration, but again with all the other energy dumps on Jalis its a bit cost prohibitive. Maybe reduce its upkeep to 5 so it will stunt your energy recovery while active but can still be maintained without draining energy for other skills. Also these Hammers are a bit buggy and despawn on collision with objects and can fall down when walking on a narrow pathway.
- Rite of the Great Dwarf
The long cast time, huge energy cost, short duration, and uselesness against conditions unless traited are killing this skill. Please adress one or more of these issues, to make this skill worth using.
Mallyx in general
I havn’t spent a lot of time on condition Revenant, but Mallyx seems to have the same problem as Jalis, in that there are too many skills with a high energy cost. Please consider reducing a few of the skill costs and also consider reducing the elite-upkeep skill to 5, so that you can chose to maintain this skill at the cost of stunting your energy regeneration.
Ventari
- Ventari’s (sic!) Will / Project Tranquility (Summon / Move)
The most expensive heal skill to use (10 to summon 10 to move) and also the most difficult one as well ( he cast time on Project Tranquility really hurts the overall fluidity of this Legendary). Energy costs should be reduced for these skills and the cast time on the move-skill need to be removed.
- Protective Solace (anti-ranged bubble)
Decent, could use a little energy cost reduction (maybe 7; 6 seems too strong, but might be justified if this Legendary doesn’t get much love on other skills)
- Natural Harmony (raw heal)
Needs a boost to the heal, also i can not stress enough how much this skill suffers because of the cast time on Project Tranquility.
- Purifying Essence (condi cleanse)
This one really needs some energy cost reduction, I’d even go as far and say half it.
- Energy Explosion (explode Tablet)
It’s ok I guess? Maybe give it some raw heal / condi clear as well? It really seems more like a “combat is over, I want to stow the Tablet” skill than anything else. Also the Healing Orbs are annoying to pick up.
Shiro
- Enchanted Daggers (Heal)
It’s some defense, it’s some offense, it fits the Shiro theme, overall its a good skill. My only gripe with it is the missed opportunity to call this one “Battle Scars” the name Shiros heal had in Guild Wars 1.
- Phase Traversal (Engage)
The nerf really put a dent into this skill and the Revenants overall mobility. Maybe consider easing the nerf by putting some swiftness on it.
- Riposting Shadows (Disengage)
Another really good skill, even though I don’t see much riposting going on.
- Impossible Odds (Quickness)
Im kind of torn about this skill. On one hand on-demand Quickness is great, on the other hand this skill is so expensive that you can’t really use any weapon skills in combination with it, because of the high maintenance cost. I don’t really have any idea how to balance around that though so I’ll have to pass on this one.
- Jade Winds (AoE stun)
Another skill in the category of too expensive to use for the Bar that it’s on. Don’t get me wrong it is a pretty nice skill, but there is not enough energy to use it. Maybe a reduction in energy cost but increase to the cooldown could fix this skill.
Glint
Glint feels so much more fun to play, since you have much more freedom with your energy management and are able to pick and choose the utilities best suited for the current situation.
- Facet of Light / Infuse Light (Heal)
I’ll be blunt: The ability to completely ignore this skill just to double-tap it mid-spike is too strong. However puting a cast time on the active would destroy this skill so it should be put on the Facet-part of the skill. Also it needs to be more visible for PvP (something like a big blue bubble around the Revenant maybe?)
- Facet of Darkness / Gaze of Darkness
Perfect the way it is (maybe even a bit too strong vs stealth?).
- Facet of Elements / Elemental Blast
Another really nice skill, no complaints.
- Facet of Strength / Burst of Strength
I don’t think the upkeep cost of 2 is justified on this skill when by itself it only gives 4 to 5 stacks of Might that need to ramp up, and the active is a so much stronger part of it.
- Facet of Chaos / Chaoic Release
It’s nice, but 5 energy upkeep nice? Not sure here.
- Facet of Nature / One with Nature
This skill has some insane synergy with other classes and I’d even go so far to say it’s over powered. If the Revenant becomes a problem to balance this is probably the first part I’d look at (30% party wide boon duration is still really nice).
Traitlines
I’ll be a bit more concise on traitlines
Corruption
Again, I havn’t played much mith conditions so I’m not really sure how to judge this line.
Retribution
I think the improved Taunt in PvE should be baseline for all Taunts (not just Revenant) and Taunts should work on Champions but only the aggro part (so Champions will focus the Taunt-user but can still use skills). Other than that 2 secons of Retaliation after a dodge seems pretty weak, and the Grandmaster traits all seem pretty weak.
This is supposed to be the tank-traitline but there isn’t too much tanking going on in there other than a few minor and very circumstantial 10% reductions.
Salvation
Heavy focus on the Ventari-Stance, but that Stance has no real use at the moment. Maybe if the Ventari skills get buffed this line will become more useful but right now its pretty much a dead line.
Also I don’t get cooldowns on on-dodge traits. These are already limited by your endurance bar.
Devastation
Pretty good line in general, but why is there such an insanely high cooldown on Jade Echo? It would have a hard time competing with Assassin’s (sic) Presence if it had no CD at all, right now there is not even a competition.
Invocation
It’s a pretty lackluster traitline, nearly all of the traits are boring and/or weak except for Ferocious Agression and Roiling Mists. You could literally remove all the other traits except for these two and nobody would notice or care.
Herald
Pretty nice line but the automatic self-root at 25% health is a bit stupid and can get you in trouble as easily as it could help you.
(edited by Rengaru.4730)