Guild Wars 2

I had to be blunt right with the title. Salvation is not a good or well-designed trait line. It needs work.

Why?

• It doesn’t work well with the rest of the Revenant’s design. It is only useful with Staff/Ventari healing.

• Its minor traits are easily among the worst in the game.

• It is perhaps the only healing line in the game that does not significantly aid in the player’s survival.

So, for starters, let’s talk minor traits.

Disarming Riposte
This is a poor man’s Blinding Ashes. A bad version of a bad grandmaster that is somehow excusable because it’s an adept minor. A random blind on a 20 second cooldown does nothing for the Revenant’s support or survivability.

• Needs a complete rework.

Hardened Foundation
Really? Just…. really? Stat conversion traits are typically viewed as poor in and of themselves, but this trait takes the cake. It converts a stat with a low realistic total (as Healing Power has no base amount), uses a low % conversion ratio on this low number, and then converts it to toughness, a stat that itself suffers from a need to be stacked in large amounts to be effective, only to hit a diminishing return later on.

• Rework this trait completely. Have it give the Revenant Protection or % damage reduction.

Serene Rejuvenation
The only minor trait with any decent use. The problem is that, while Elementalist, the other class with a 15% benevolence minor, has healing as a core part of their bar, the Revenant has to specialize in Staff and/or Ventari (or any future healing Elite spec weapon/legend) to see any use out of this.

• Personally, I’d recommend scrapping this and buffing Selfless Amplification.

Major Traits

Nourishing Roots
This trait is underpowered all around. Regeneration is such an easily-stacked throwaway boon that a low-radius 2/3rds uptime Regeneration just doesn’t cut it, nor serve any role that isn’t already covered by the party five times over. Until regeneration is reworked to stack intensity, this has little place. And if Regeneration is never reworked to stack intensity, then…..

• This should do a pulsing mini-heal instead.

Tranquil Benediction
This should really help the Revenant use skills more in some way, shape or form. Staff has both the highest energy costs and the highest cooldowns of any Revenant weapon set.

• Personal suggestion, add an effect that EITHER reduces the cooldown of Revenant skills by 1% or restores 1% energy when an ally (including the Revenant) picks up an orb.

Selfless Amplification
You know what the problem with this trait is…. it takes 1000 healing power just to break even with Serene Rejuvenation, a minor trait from the same line. That’s pretty bad.

• Remove Serene Rejuvenation. Buff the ratio on this to 2% per 100 healing power. Add in a new grandmaster minor trait.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Disarming Riposte
This is a poor man’s Blinding Ashes. A bad version of a bad grandmaster that is somehow excusable because it’s an adept minor. A random blind on a 20 second cooldown does nothing for the Revenant’s support or survivability.

• Needs a complete rework.

This trait is absurdly strong with the tablet out. The command to move the tablet triggers this trait and it has no internal cooldown. It is possible to blind extremely frequently.

I don’t disagree with the fact that the trait line needs work, but this trait isn’t complete garbage as you are claiming.

Knox.8962:

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Disarming Riposte
This is a poor man’s Blinding Ashes. A bad version of a bad grandmaster that is somehow excusable because it’s an adept minor. A random blind on a 20 second cooldown does nothing for the Revenant’s support or survivability.

• Needs a complete rework.

This trait is absurdly strong with the tablet out. The command to move the tablet triggers this trait and it has no internal cooldown. It is possible to blind extremely frequently.

I don’t disagree with the fact that the trait line needs work, but this trait isn’t complete garbage as you are claiming.

So, it has a use because of something that could be considered an oversight but is near useless in nearly every other scenario. Meanwhile, you have an adept major in the same line that is actually designed to do this.

I’m not going to pretend that I understand what the intent of this line is supposed to be other than “Heal and heal some more, and while you’re at it do some more healing” but I wouldn’t want to speculate about whether the interaction with the tablet is intentional or not.

Don’t forget Momentary Pacification. It’s useless with most elites. The effect occurs at the end of the cast, making it too slow to use with long cast skills like Rite of the Great Dwarf. Jade Wind stuns anyways, so the daze is useless. Energy Expulsion knocks back anyways, so the daze is less useful. And it’s on a long cast time anyways. It’s good with Mallyx I guess, but 1 out of 4 is not very reasonable.

fluidmonolith.3584:

Don’t forget Momentary Pacification. It’s useless with most elites. The effect occurs at the end of the cast, making it too slow to use with long cast skills like Rite of the Great Dwarf. Jade Wind stuns anyways, so the daze is useless. Energy Expulsion knocks back anyways, so the daze is less useful. And it’s on a long cast time anyways. It’s good with Mallyx I guess, but 1 out of 4 is not very reasonable.

It’s so funny because you’d think this would be an amazing trait. On pretty much any other profession, this could be very strong, and Revenant’s can trigger it more often than anyone. But it’s just ridiculously redundant on most elites.

I think that maybe, just maybe, if it triggered at the beginning of a cast, it would be usable. It would provide a way to reduce damage and interrupts while using Jalis’s craptastic elite, if nothing else. You’d run into the issue of the trait being cancel-“abused,” but that would cost Revenant players 50 energy per cast, and energy management is difficult enough as is.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

fluidmonolith.3584:

Don’t forget Momentary Pacification. It’s useless with most elites. The effect occurs at the end of the cast, making it too slow to use with long cast skills like Rite of the Great Dwarf. Jade Wind stuns anyways, so the daze is useless. Energy Expulsion knocks back anyways, so the daze is less useful. And it’s on a long cast time anyways. It’s good with Mallyx I guess, but 1 out of 4 is not very reasonable.

It’s so funny because you’d think this would be an amazing trait. On pretty much any other profession, this could be very strong, and Revenant’s can trigger it more often than anyone. But it’s just ridiculously redundant on most elites.

I think that maybe, just maybe, if it triggered at the beginning of a cast, it would be usable. It would provide a way to reduce damage and interrupts while using Jalis’s craptastic elite, if nothing else. You’d run into the issue of the trait being cancel-“abused,” but that would cost Revenant players 50 energy per cast, and energy management is difficult enough as is.

This is a great idea (trigger at beginning of cast). That would make Jalis elite more usable (in case ANet is just really against decreasing the cast time), and it would also help somewhat with Energy Expulsion and Jade Winds.

The trait has a 10 sec cd, so it wouldn’t be too abusable. Perhaps with Shiro, where you could start to cast Jade Winds and then cancel for a free AoE daze. But even then it’s not really free because you still have to spec into Salvation to get it…