Guild Wars 2

Hello fellow players (and hopefully curious developers!) I wanted to share some constructive feedback after creating and playing with a new Mallyx/Glint Mace/Axe condition damage build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vlAQRApX5sn3geNSuQvJRboHlsP0kS4I6SJ4EtrkFNFqdBBoBpdIElwegJshA-TBSFQBA4kAkgnAgIVC2QlItT/Q/U/pD7PQMlXkCYRlVA-e

Generally, the theme of the build is very fun, and far more active in combat compared to the Revenant’s power Shiro/Glint counterpart. However, it runs into a few problem when it comes to how it stacks up compared to other profession’s condition damage builds. I wanted to list some key problems I think Mallyx Revenants face, and offer some solutions to those issues that I mulled over.

DPS. Let’s address probably the biggest elephant in the room; comparing Revenant objectively to other classes, it falls short of just about every condi build in the game, barely managing dps above 20k in near perfect conditions.

Some ways I believe Revenant could be buffed is in some traits in the Corruption line, and a small tweak to mace skill two. The T3 minor trait, Yearning Empowerment, could be buffed to bring some sort of damage buff to the Revenant’s torment application, much like how the Guardian receives a damage buff to their burning condition. What this percent should be, I’m no mathematician, but it’s clear the tech is there to tweak the damage of specific conditions on professions, so it could be applied here to buff what is, in most situations, a fairly weak condition in terms of damage potential, albeit being the one of the signature conditions the profession applies.

Another small suggestion is to buff the application amount of the major trait Venom Enhancement to two or three stacks. Perhaps another specific buff to Revenant’s damage specifically with the poison condition is applicable?

Finally, another small way that could help buff condition damage would be to look at the mace main-hand skill, Searing Fissure. A key issue with this skill is the fact that the fire field is stationary, and acts fairly wonky sometimes with the terrain. Sure, an enemy sitting still will take a fairly respectable amount of burning damage, but we all understand how active Guild Wars 2’s combat is (one major reason I play this lovely MMO!) We understand that movement is as key to combat as using skills are, and it’s unrealistic to expect monsters to be standing still long enough for the condition to really show potential for the revenant.

To help tweak Searing Fissure into a more formidable skill, perhaps you could consider reducing the duration of the burning condition applied, but increasing the applications to two or three in such a fashion that is a net dps gain and is careful not to overpower the skill. Or, perhaps you could frontload the applications of burning on the initial strike, increasing it to two or three stacks of burning, slowly simmering down over it’s duration and applying fewer stacks of burning as it dissipates.

Another area that could help Revenant’s AoE damage would be by tweaking Unyielding Anguish. As it stands, it is one of Revenant’s few reliable ways to really commit to some AoE condition application, yet it applies few stacks of torment and, for the energy it costs to use, it feels fairly under-tuned. Would it be an acceptable tweak to increase the stacks of torment it applies to two?

Another thought comes to mind when considering Unyielding Anguish; it could be transformed into a control ability, (something lacking within the Mallyx kit.) I don’t know which developer decided that red-scaled reptiles should be able to pull me in and apply nasty, deadly amounts of confusion to my character, but let him or her know that they can chalk a few of my deaths in-game to those sunscale kitten-munchers.

Now, stay with me, what if Unyielding Anguish’s initial damage was a pull to the center of impact? This has amazing synergy with mace/axe playstyle, allowing the Revenant to neatly pull his prey into a tightly knit group to unleash his Searing Fissure’s upon. It also gives Mallyx a way to finally assist in breaking defiant bars beyond a 15 second cooldown in axe off-hand’s skill four, Temporal Rift.

These are just some initial thoughts I had. I really do enjoy this build, and I plan on playing it, even if it is a little bit below the herd in damage, but I would love to see the developers reiterate on some of the designs so that the play style can bloom into something even more enjoyable and contributes better to the party as a whole.

I look forward to comments, ideas and criticism both, and further discussion on bettering a gem of a specialisation, stance, and gameplay.

The only change to mallyx I would like to see atm is,

Unyielding Anguish:
*Evade
*Stunbreak
*Stability
*Immobilize Removal

Any of those things in some combination. But that’s from a wvw perspective.

I have to say I dislike the idea of hyper-specialization (having to pick, say, condi DPS in your skills, your legend, your trait, your stats, your sigils and your runes – why even have 6 areas of choice if they have to be aligned anyhow?).

I’d rather have Mallyx itself come with significant modifiers, so that even in a non-condi setup I could swap to it to temporarily become “not bad” at conditions, and in a condi-centric setup, swap to say, Shiro, to become not bad at direct damage while I’m in the presence.

Something like:

Mallyx – Legendary Demon Stance
Invoke the power of Mallyx, gaining access to powerful condition-related abilities. While you channel Mallyx through you, your conditions last longer, are stronger and your weapon skills have a chance to bleed your foes.
Condition duration improved: 25%
Condition damage increased: 300 (maybe more, not sure)
Chance to apply Bleeding: 25% (applies to all hits, but scales down with procchance on multi-hits and AE attacks)

In essence, this would be something all these legends have, some form of massively enhancing their primary area of expertise. So that you can (sort-of) be a “hybrid”.

Justine.6351:

The only change to mallyx I would like to see atm is,

Unyielding Anguish:
*Evade
*Stunbreak
*Stability
*Immobilize Removal

Any of those things in some combination. But that’s from a wvw perspective.

I think it could be interesting to see it ignore immobilization! I honestly don’t play much WvW ^^’’, but I am getting more interest in the game mode.

Carighan.6758:

I have to say I dislike the idea of hyper-specialization (having to pick, say, condi DPS in your skills, your legend, your trait, your stats, your sigils and your runes – why even have 6 areas of choice if they have to be aligned anyhow?).

I’d rather have Mallyx itself come with significant modifiers, so that even in a non-condi setup I could swap to it to temporarily become “not bad” at conditions, and in a condi-centric setup, swap to say, Shiro, to become not bad at direct damage while I’m in the presence.

Something like:

Mallyx – Legendary Demon Stance
Invoke the power of Mallyx, gaining access to powerful condition-related abilities. While you channel Mallyx through you, your conditions last longer, are stronger and your weapon skills have a chance to bleed your foes.
Condition duration improved: 25%
Condition damage increased: 300 (maybe more, not sure)
Chance to apply Bleeding: 25% (applies to all hits, but scales down with procchance on multi-hits and AE attacks)

In essence, this would be something all these legends have, some form of massively enhancing their primary area of expertise. So that you can (sort-of) be a “hybrid”.

I’ve always been a fan of having legends give some basic stats to help the revenant succeed better at being a “jack-of-all-trades.” My only concern with this idea is how much work the developers will have to do to implement such a change. Sounds a lot like an expansion update, rather than a quarterly one.

Because of that concern, that’s the main reason I tried focusing on small tweaks that seem plausible because I want to see this profession fixed in both short and long term.

I’d like to see pain absorpion take in more condies in one go or get an energy cost reduction to stack more condies on onself without running on empty after 3 condi transfers and that’s in optimal conditions. If that thing pulled 2 condies in one go, or had 20 energy cost, that’d be acceptable.

I also feel his poison play is far too limited. We get 50% poison duration..for what? The one single stack from trait every bleeping 20s! Plus once ever 3rd aa stack.

Generally mallyx rev should be far stronger imho. You see condi classes whipping out 30k+ on golem, even the necro. Rev? yyyy….
I wanna see some non-glint action kicking ass in raids!

• Remove energy cost of weapon skills.
• Corruption needs to merge the torment duration / torment application on crit minor traits and have another new minor trait to help the trait line out more.
• Diabolic Inferno needs to have no ICD and Embrace the Darkness needs to be given a 2 second cooldown on activate/deactivate.
• Unyielding Anguish needs evade frames on it.
• Venom Enhancement shouldn’t have an ICD and should have its poison application’s duration reduced slightly to compensate.
• Other legends need to have better support for condition application; Glint really does very little for it outside of Elemental Blast. A good way to do this would be to put bleeds on Shiro skills.
• Revenant really needs a secondary condition application weapon set outside of Mace/Axe. Hopefully a future elite spec helps out here.

I mean this kinda goes back to the “incompleteness” of the class. As in, in its original iteration Mallyx was a full on condi manipulator. Similar to Necro, Mallyx had utility skills that self inflicted conditions and whose skill effects would scale (to an extent) depending on how many conditions you had on you at the time of casting the skill. On top of that you would steal condi’s from your allies. At that point you’re a ticking time bomb of condi’s hiding behind a thin wall of resistance. Then you toss in the Elite that would cause “mini epidemics” every 3 seconds to nearby enemies.

Keeping all that in mind, it made total sense to limit how many conditions a Mallyx rev could inflict since he would be more about manipulating them than generating them.

Buuuuuut, that all got scrapped, and it just looks like there wasn’t a proper rebalance pushed out in time to really compensate for the loss of the “manipulator role”.

Rising Dusk.2408:

• Remove energy cost of weapon skills.
• Corruption needs to merge the torment duration / torment application on crit minor traits and have another new minor trait to help the trait line out more.
• Diabolic Inferno needs to have no ICD and Embrace the Darkness needs to be given a 2 second cooldown on activate/deactivate.
• Unyielding Anguish needs evade frames on it.
• Venom Enhancement shouldn’t have an ICD and should have its poison application’s duration reduced slightly to compensate.
• Other legends need to have better support for condition application; Glint really does very little for it outside of Elemental Blast. A good way to do this would be to put bleeds on Shiro skills.
• Revenant really needs a secondary condition application weapon set outside of Mace/Axe. Hopefully a future elite spec helps out here.

I like the majority of these ideas! It would be interesting to see perhaps Impossible Odds causing all attacks to bleed for, say, 5 seconds. I’m hoping we get a ranged condi weapon with the next elite specialisation.

Mace #1 should be applying poison on first two hits, burning on last.
Mace #2 should pulse torment stacks, 2 per second.
Mace #3 should have a small knockback and cripple added (to make enemy walk to you with all these torments, and keeping them in the #2). Torment stays as is.

Venom enchantment changed to 33% poison duration, apply torment when you poison an enemy (2s icd) 9s torment stack duration

As for 2s icd – idea is to keep torment strong with aa, while not going overboard. Since 3rd aa is not poison, but burning, trait will trigger once per aa chain.

Amiron.1067:

Hello fellow players (and hopefully curious developers!) I wanted to share some constructive feedback after creating and playing with a new Mallyx/Glint Mace/Axe condition damage build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vlAQJApnn3geNSuQvJRboHlsP0kS4I6SJ4EtrkFNFKtDjoEtLIANwegJshA-TBSFQBjUJYDV+1O9EA4BBkgTIgS2Hofq/ctFGCAcAsbdD6ubGf8xHf8xb3d3d3d3tUALqsC-e

Just a remark – you can use Balthazar runes instead of the Nightmare/Trapper combo. You still cap Burning, Torment and Poison durations, you come a little ahead on Condition Damage and it’s much cheaper.

Other than that, I’m having lots of fun with the exact same build. It is true its damage is subpar and Mallyx doesn’t really add much in terms of condi applications.

Carighan.6758:

I have to say I dislike the idea of hyper-specialization (having to pick, say, condi DPS in your skills, your legend, your trait, your stats, your sigils and your runes – why even have 6 areas of choice if they have to be aligned anyhow?).

I’d rather have Mallyx itself come with significant modifiers, so that even in a non-condi setup I could swap to it to temporarily become “not bad” at conditions, and in a condi-centric setup, swap to say, Shiro, to become not bad at direct damage while I’m in the presence.

Something like:

Mallyx – Legendary Demon Stance
Invoke the power of Mallyx, gaining access to powerful condition-related abilities. While you channel Mallyx through you, your conditions last longer, are stronger and your weapon skills have a chance to bleed your foes.
Condition duration improved: 25%
Condition damage increased: 300 (maybe more, not sure)
Chance to apply Bleeding: 25% (applies to all hits, but scales down with procchance on multi-hits and AE attacks)

In essence, this would be something all these legends have, some form of massively enhancing their primary area of expertise. So that you can (sort-of) be a “hybrid”.

I do like this idea of each legend having a few passive effects, tho perhaps not all of those at one time. Gotta save something for the trait lines.

Feanor.2358:

Amiron.1067:

Hello fellow players (and hopefully curious developers!) I wanted to share some constructive feedback after creating and playing with a new Mallyx/Glint Mace/Axe condition damage build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vlAQJApnn3geNSuQvJRboHlsP0kS4I6SJ4EtrkFNFKtDjoEtLIANwegJshA-TBSFQBjUJYDV+1O9EA4BBkgTIgS2Hofq/ctFGCAcAsbdD6ubGf8xHf8xb3d3d3d3tUALqsC-e

Just a remark – you can use Balthazar runes instead of the Nightmare/Trapper combo. You still cap Burning, Torment and Poison durations, you come a little ahead on Condition Damage and it’s much cheaper.

Other than that, I’m having lots of fun with the exact same build. It is true its damage is subpar and Mallyx doesn’t really add much in terms of condi applications.

I realized this after watching a qT video on their best build for pve damage XD Good call. And glad you’re liking the play style too! I’m going to update the original post with the right build.