Hey everyone,
Some of the regulars here might remember me from the posts I have consistently been putting out after beta weekends.
I will be writing in depth feedback on the revenant again so prepare yourself for another wall of text.
If you just want to watch the video: here it is: https://youtu.be/N17A9qzvgyw
I spent quite a lot of time on the revenant this time, and this time it felt quite similar to what it was in the previous beta weekend, apart from the condition and celestial build, but more about that later.
I’ll start by systematically going through each legend, traits included, followed by the assorted weapon(s).
Starting off with Mallyx. Mallyx used to be my favorite legend since the first testing weekend.
The corruption line seems to still be in a good place, as it offers an interesting mix of traits, and this hasn’t changed that much since the first beta weekend.
Mallyx used to be one of the most thematically fitting legends with a distinctive high risk reward principle, but the recent changes made Mallyx feel like something way more bland and way less unique as a class to play. The healing skill used to be able to heal for 10k if you played aggressively, but now they just increased to base heal and decreased the additional healing for each condition on you, it was made less interesting to play with. Don’t get me wrong though, the changes to the displacement of Unyielding Anguish were needed, because the displace mechanic messed up a lot of stuff, and the mechanic was quite broken, but when they changed this skill, they nerfed it in its torment application too. It used to be able to apply 6 stacks of torment in the first hit (if you had 3 conditions on you) but now, even if someone stands in it for the entire duration, they’ll only have 5 torment, that’s not how it’s supposed to work, is it? Banish enchantment had its confusion application normalized, which made it feel like there is even less play to it, and this weakens your burst skill. The changes to the elite are sad, using a 7 energy upkeep skill to pulse torment is just not worth it, the only reason you would activate it would be to proc on elite traits and runes, or to get it for the stat increase, which is more important for power builds. The elite was what made Mallyx this iconic, and it’s sad to see it in its current state.
Mace and axe feel quite good, but while all weapons got access to new evades during their mist skills, mace and axe feel a bit left out as they get no evades or anything, but this might not be a bad thing as they’re certainly not weak in their current state. The removal of the significant defensive part on Unyielding Anguish made you a vulnerable target that has no way to escape focus, or to stall, which is also an issue now when playing Mallyx.
Let’s look at Jalis now: Jalis feels like it’s in the spot it should be in, the legend offers good party wide damage mitigation through the Elite, and the taunt is a bit more spammable now. The Jalis legend feels like a solid choice, but it gets outshined by other legends that are more vital in many builds, in short, glint feels like a better version of Jalis, offering aoe protection uptime, aoe swiftness, aoe boon duration and even some might for damage. . If you can however make good use of the party wide damage reduction, I can see this getting picked up by lots of people in raids for example.
The trait line is extremely strong, giving access to lots of damage reduction, healing, stability, extra endurance and even protection. This trait line makes you feel quite tanky even if you’re running berserker builds, and this is what makes revenant feel too strong in my opinion, combined with the protection and heal overload in Glint, in some instances in my video I manage to survive against 4+ people running a zerker build, this feels wrong. The grandmasters are a bit weak, but the other traits are extremely strong.
On to hammer: I’m loving the hammer, although the damage is quite easily avoided in theory, you’ll find that the low cooldowns make it impossible for enemies to avoid everything, it even offers good evade uptime with the Phase Smash. Staff might compete with hammer if you’re aiming for 1v1’s, but if you’re planning on doing outnumbered stuff in WvW, the hammer feels like the superior pick. The damage is top notch and might be a bit too high on the coalescence of ruin (hammer 2 skill), whereas the other feel way weaker in terms of raw damage.
Let’s discuss Ventari now. I have tried to run a cleric’s revenant again in some instances, and the healing was quite but you ran out of energy really quick, offering heals in short bursts when you had energy again, or offering no heals if you wanted to upkeep the projectile deflect, but you were quite vulnerable while you were in Ventari, as you didn’t have any stunbreaks or a reliable way to avoid taking damage, you also don’t really get a second heal like the other legends would offer, but your second heal just becomes summoning a tablet which made Ventari feel not useful enough if people found out you were actually quite vulnerable while healing others.
The trait line that accompanies Ventari is in a healthy place, offering lots of modifiers you really need, but this line is only worth taking if you’re running a healing oriented build, it doesn’t feel like this trait line can be used without picking up the actual legend or weapons like the other trait lines can. which is rather sad, but at least it’s not bad at doing what it’s supposed to do.
The staff is a good weapon and it feels like it’s a great swap, because of the great damage on the fifth skill, and the reliable block, the autoattacks felt a bit weak compared to hammer and sword, but the rest of the skillset makes up for that. The block is great, the heal and condi cleanse is very helpful as revenant is very weak to conditions (if you decide not to be immune against them by speccing Mallyx)
A solid option as a weapon swap, a weapon to pick up as your secondary weapon.
To Be Continued