Guild Wars 2

Especially Sword #3 skill. Correct me if I’m wrong, but probably that’s the only AOE skill in game where damage output is divided by number of targets. I’ts almost useless when you attack Ranger and his pet or Necromancer with minions. This skill should simply lock on single target, or be redesigned, for example to appear 3 times in 3 different places, leap towards the same target and each time attack everything on it’s way. Anyway I’m sure there’s plenty of potential sollutions.
Also sword #5 is ridiculously hard to land (short range), and even if you do it’s totally worthless. You may CC somebody for 0.5 sec, but in the same time you can’t perform any action, cause you’re evading back. It can’t be compared to ranger’s GS 5 which is far more easier to land (cause your characters steps foward) and has longer effect, or even guardian’s GS 5 when you get additional damage over time and can pull enemies to your trap, which in this case IS usefull.

There’s one more thing I noticed – very often after changing legend i can’t swap weapons or use utilities (before they all appear on screen?) for ~0,5 sec. This is another unnecessary difficulity with this class, like there wasn’t enough micro yet.

Sword 5 fails to pull the mob even when you’re hugging their face half the time.

Sword 3 fails half the time as welkl due to terrain. Basically most revenant skills that involve teleporting around bug pretty badly.

There is also the problem that in order to do good DPS with sword you just press auto-attack. Making the revenant the most boring class in any game I’ve played. Yes, you can use Precise Strike once in a while but only if you are in a good position and if there aren’t any targets anywhere but in front of you so all 3 bolts hit the same target.

This is just a stupid design, auto-attack and anything else is dps loss/almost useless. Only the block on off-hand sword can be good but even with that, it’s not much. Same for off-hand sword for warriors. Unrelenting Assault was so good before, it was strong yes, but it needed to be against a lone single target or the damage would be splitted too much to be efficient. Because of PvP they nerfed this skill to oblivion, instead of separating the effects in both game modes. Now, it’s mostly used for the evade and that’s it, not much use for it. Until they fix the “auto-attack is better” design, I’ll just play some other games that are more fun and have better gameplay than that.

However when you look at how dead the revenant forum is, just as the class, I feel it’s just hopeless. Maybe in 5 years, since we get about 3-4 real balance updates in a year.

Most profession’s swords followed a similar ‘autoattack is best DPS’ philosophy, although buffs made since HoT release (such as adding a symbol to guardian sword and increasing the Blurred Frenzy damage in PvE) have shifted that balance. Instead, skills 2 and 3 are typically used for various utility effects. Personally, it’s a design I like: instead of having a strict rotation for max DPS, you can just let your character handle that while you interrupt the rotation for tactical reasons when needed.

However, I think there is something about the revenant design that makes it less interesting than the others:

First, because the revenant has lost some of the tactical options it once had. Precision Strike got changed from a counter-kiting skill to a ‘press to deal more damage, but only in ideal conditions that rarely occur in PvE unless soloing a boss’ skill: as a counter-kiting skill, I think it now inflicts less chill if you do hit the one target with all three daggers than it used to do on a single dagger. Unrelenting Assualt has, likewise, had its usefulness as a gap-closer or an evade substantially nerfed in order to repurpose it as a ‘press to deal more damage… but again, only in ideal conditions’ skill. So they’re left in a bit of a limbo where in many cases they’re not useful for increasing your DPS, but they’re not really giving you any other tactical options either.

Personally, I think the idea of the revenant sword as a single-target weapon has shown distinct flaws, and probably should be refocused as a cleaving weapon. Turn Precision Strike into an PBAOE with a chill attached. Give Unrelenting Assault a cleave, so it punishes clumping.

The second aspect is that the offhands don’t feel as interesting as those of some other professions, so where for some professions an autoattack-focused main weapon could be offset by skills on the offhand, that it’s really the case for the rev. Shield is 100% defensive. Offhand sword is a block and a control skill that generally isn’t much use except for breaking bars. Axe is the closest thing to a DPS offhand, but it’s mostly mobility and control.

The third aspect is that the revenant doesn’t really have more interesting weapons to take instead. If you want an alternative power weapon your only other option is staff, and that has its own issues. Hammer… also has issues that mean that in practice it isn’t exactly the most exciting weapon in the game. Mace has interesting potential, but is also pulling you towards a different gear set, which can be a significant investment for some players. So if you are maining a revenant, it’s easy for the weapons to get stale because they all have aspects that can contribute to the staleness feeling.

I would swap precise strike with sword 5 and would add bigger range to sword 5, something like throwing the sword and pulling your enemy backwards.
with this you can sepreate enemies/mobs and finish them off with sword 3.
Precise strike could something be like daggerstorm from thief with a shorter duration.
It would improve AoE dmg cappabbilities.

I chose my first character to be a Revenant, and I like the idea of a sword and shield or dual wield sword the best, but after seeing what skills sword provides I was greatly disappointed.
I personally dislike axes, and maces skills seemed ok but I heard from other Revenants that they are pretty useless endgame.
I would love to see some changes to the swords, what ever they might be.

I agree with a lot of what draxynnic said.

The offhand weapons don’t help sword be interesting
Precision Strike should absolutely be a PBAoE
And yes, the other weapon options are… limiting

I’d actually put forward that Unrelenting Assault should be changed to be a dash akin to staff 5 for a brief gap closer and evade which deals an initial hit which, and then have the rest of the damage portion work as an AoE centered on the target that rapidly deals the rest of the hits.

That would free the revenant to keep doing DPS during UA’s duration, and make a little more synergy with sword 5 or something so that you can CC while it’s going off to isolate a target so they eat the full effect solo.

I think that would be nicer anyway

Honestly, being “different” isn’t a bad thing. In fact I’d argue it’s great. Classes should be differ more at very underlying levels, not be close enough together to be interchangeable.

And a teleporting AE is fine, perfectly so. It gives the skill specialization, better against lone targets. Countered by having lots of pets or other players around, removing the burst.

Only problem is ofc, ANet never balances a skill to be actually strong anywhere. In other words, for this design to work the skill needs to be very strong if used on a lonesome target without pets. But the devs seem morbidly afraid of having any skill be “strong”. Everything is a wet noodle and only becomes strong as a component in the constant spam of things we throw at each other.

That is the truly damaging part of ability-design, and which by proxy makes skills such as this so annoying to use.

Nobody mentioned that Sword auto attack animation? man that bugs the crap out of me.

Anet dropped the ball on the very small number of weapons that Rev could choose from. Otherwise, the weapon ‘funness’ wouldn’t be a problem. Prehaps sword has quirks and is an extreme example, but it’s not really all that different from the way most weapons on other classes work. If Revs get a few more weapons, and they will, not an issue. It’s expected in a way as well; this class hasn’t had 5 years of play and tweaking the others have.

Obtena.7952:

Anet dropped the ball on the very small number of weapons that Rev could choose from. Otherwise, the weapon ‘funness’ wouldn’t be a problem. Prehaps sword has quirks and is an extreme example, but it’s not really all that different from the way most weapons on other classes work. If Revs get a few more weapons, and they will, not an issue. It’s expected in a way as well; this class hasn’t had 5 years of play and tweaking the others have.

You mean they had 5yr experience and they wouldnt do stupid desing decisions like rev has? Yeah.. and its not like other classes are in better shape or smth. I would consider ele/war to bee a rework from the ground cus theres no middle ground for them to be balanced. Espesially warrior who rely a lot on numbers and results as either up or op.

I mean the Rev suffers because of a lack of weapon choices and being a new class. I don’t see what that has to do with other classes as how those classes are developed have absolutely nothing to do with Rev or it’s development. Other classes would have the exact same problems if they were less than two years old and had a total of 4 weapons to choose from too. In fact, it’s only recently that I would consider most classes to be well suited … 5 years after release. So yeah, you can expect at least another 2 years before Rev has the same level of development and finish that other classes have right now and frankly, that part of what is wrong with Revs isn’t all that unexpected … at least if one is reasonable.

I’m not sure it’s simply a matter of ‘not many weapons’.

Not considering elite specialisations, revenant has 2 mainhand, 2 two-handed and 2 offhand weapons. That’s a lot less than guardians and warriors, but it’s on a similar level to mesmer (2 mainhand, 2 two-handed and 4 offhand), necromancer (3 mainhand, 1 two-handed and 3 offhand) and thief (3 mainhand, 1 two-handed and 2 offhand).

I think the issue is that all of the revenant’s weapons are based around adopting some unusual combat style with quirky mechanics, and they don’t really have a solid, versatile weapon that will serve them well in a variety of builds and circumstances.

Mind you, or better or worse, that seems to be revenant design in a nutshell. You don’t get a versatile build, but you do get 2-4 specialised skillsets based on your weapons and legends, from which you can try to put together something that can handle what you expect to go up against.

draxynnic.3719:

I’m not sure it’s simply a matter of ‘not many weapons’.

Not considering elite specialisations, revenant has 2 mainhand, 2 two-handed and 2 offhand weapons. That’s a lot less than guardians and warriors, but it’s on a similar level to mesmer (2 mainhand, 2 two-handed and 4 offhand), necromancer (3 mainhand, 1 two-handed and 3 offhand) and thief (3 mainhand, 1 two-handed and 2 offhand).

I think the issue is that all of the revenant’s weapons are based around adopting some unusual combat style with quirky mechanics, and they don’t really have a solid, versatile weapon that will serve them well in a variety of builds and circumstances.

Mind you, or better or worse, that seems to be revenant design in a nutshell. You don’t get a versatile build, but you do get 2-4 specialised skillsets based on your weapons and legends, from which you can try to put together something that can handle what you expect to go up against.

What i personally think of the weapons:
Hammer:
has good skills but its the only ranged weapon we have and its slow.
Staff:
Auto is rather weak. Second skill is strange amd should be just one skill. The second part of the staff chain is good. The block and tge fifth skill is good two IMHO. The condi cleanse is just plain to slow.
Mace: Should swap poison with torment stacks and vice versa. Rev has a ton of torment eitherway (increasing the poison trait would be an idea too). The explo chain should have 3 explo finishers that actually trigger.
Axe: Fine

Sword: The main problem weapon of this profession.
Auto does good dmg.
Second skill is dull as hell and just is used as a dmg increase.
Third skill is only strong against few enemies and weakens against multiple ones.
Forth: Block is good but the immob is weak and the activation is kinda clunky.
Fifth: Has no range whatsoever.

My proposal:
Sword MH: should be mainly single target burst weapon, but should not be punished against multiple foes.
Sword OH: Should be more focussed on controlling more than one enemy and be more CC oriented.

AA: Is good, i dont know though if all 3 skills have cleave if not add it to all of them.
#2: Put the 5th skill on its place. Increase the range of this skill to about 300.
#3: Targets can only be hit 3 times. Priority is your main target. You strike 9 times now.
#4: Change the block mechanic similar to guardians mace. Block 3 attacks and after that activate the former skill 2. Enemies hittet by this skill have mist chains on them and are slowed and chilled for the duration of the chains.
#5: Place shackling wave here. Add in addition to the immob a pushback.

This way sword MH has the goal to sepperate enemies to make the most dmg but still has cleave.
OH is mainly aimed to make it harder to use skills against the rev.
The old #2 skill is just plain blunt, now it is tied to the block and i gave it a more soft CC component to it, which cannot be cleansed because of the debuff that continuisly applies chill and slow.
The pushback is there to get enemies away of you so you can sepperate your next target with MH.

I’ve always used sword 3 defensively, it’s a nice evade and it builds might ready for a spite with sword 2. Sword 2 could do with a change, I’d like them to make it 1 hit per target but up to three so the dmg is always the same.

@Dinsy: So, revert sword 2 to what it was originally, then?

@InsaneQR: My thoughts on the weapons are basically:

Hammer: Solid but slow in ideal conditions. Skill 2, however, has an ‘achieves maximum damage only at long range’ effect, which means the weapon as a whole only achieves the best effect at long range – this makes it similar to ranger longbow and mesmer greatsword, but those professions have other options. Coalescence of Ruin can also be handicapped by rough ground. Skill 3 has the issue that it’s modeled as a leap and a teleport, which means at times it can have pathing issues, or subject the user to non-evadeable strikes.

Staff: It’s basically a defensive weapon, apart from skill 5, which is essentially a trickshot: very effective if you line it up well, but easily wasted if you don’t.

Mace: It’s essentially a close-in area weapon like flamethrower and guardian staff, except that the auto requires you to be in melee with at least one enemy target. It really has one main problem: it’s a condi weapon and you don’t have another condi weapon to pair it with.

Sword: Sword at the moment is a bit schizophrenic. The autoattack incentivises cleaving, doing increased damage when you hit more targets. Skills 2 and 3, however, incentivise duelling. On release, skill 2 incentivised having three targets, just like the autoattack, but that got changed to the incentive being to isolate a single target.

Personally, I’d probably be inclined to rebalance it the other way. Revert skill 2. Your idea of making skill 3 only being able to strike the same target up to three times is a good one. I’ve been focusing on mainhands here, but turn Grasping Shadow into a conventional pull: the current mechanic was an interesting idea, but in practice it’s rarely used except as an interrupt or a breakbar killer. Revenant can then be balanced as a team player.

I think Unrelenting Assault is probably the most poorly designed skill in the game. It requires a target to use, it’s broken if the target enters stealth, but when it triggers you lose control and your character attacks whatever it feels like. Oh, and you take confusion damage on each hit for whatever reason. It’s almost as if someone copy and pasted a rush job script for an npc skill.

I’m all for sword’s auto attack being the strongest dps tool we have, it frees up energy to use on our game breaking, high-dps utility skills…! Oh.

I think that was exactly the original design intention.

Then they nerfed it, claiming that they didn’t think it was good design for the majority of the damage to be autoattack.

Then they massively buffed thief autoattacks, on the principle that thieves should be able to use their initiative for defence and mobility rather than for DPS.

Left hand, right hand…

draxynnic.3719:

I think that was exactly the original design intention.

Then they nerfed it, claiming that they didn’t think it was good design for the majority of the damage to be autoattack.

Then they massively buffed thief autoattacks, on the principle that thieves should be able to use their initiative for defence and mobility rather than for DPS.

Left hand, right hand…

In the same patch. They are totally not biased. They just wanted to gut the rev and now that job is done they can focus on other stuff. In the end sword auto is still best dps and the only reliable method rev has. Cute.

draxynnic.3719:

I think that was exactly the original design intention.

Then they nerfed it, claiming that they didn’t think it was good design for the majority of the damage to be autoattack.

Then they massively buffed thief autoattacks, on the principle that thieves should be able to use their initiative for defence and mobility rather than for DPS.

Left hand, right hand…

Yea, it’s super strange. I don’t know what they were thinking with that patch.
If they really wanted Revenants to have more of a damage rotation, then they need more actual attacks that are worth using on their weapons first (which they botched up completely with Sword 2 anyway since it’s so unreliable). Removing energy from them would help too.

As far as sword design goes I’ve felt the auto-chain attacks have been awkward for a while. Overall not a big deal, but why is the 2nd skill a 3/4 second strike while the 3rd (which does more damage + a “rift” gimmick) continue to remain 1/2second. In most classes the strongest strike, or those with gimmicks, or simply the final chained strike is the longest cast.

• 1 Preparation Thrust (1/2)
• 2 Brutal Blade (3/4)
• 3 Rift Slash (1/2)

It has been a long while since they patched the sword, but I believe this strange cast-time setup was just another “overlooked” thing from Anet back when they altered the “Rift”. As, if I can still remember, I believe it used to be on the second chain attack – now Brutal Blade which then was followed by the “fixes” to the Skill 2 + 3 Precision Strike & Unrelenting Assault.

For the sword, there doesn’t appear to be any such trend. Ranger sword chain 3 is longer than their other skills. For guardian, thief, and mesmer, the third strike is the same length as the others (1/2 second). For warrior, the third strike is the fastest.

I suspect part of the logic is that:
A) Increased power of the third strike is also taken into account by the increased length of the chain to get to it (I think revenant has the longest sword auto of any sword-using profession).
B) Thanks to the rift mechanic, a chunk of the damage is delayed anyway, and can be dodged by getting away from the rift – this might be seen as justifying making the attack relatively quick while balancing the chain as a whole by slowing it down on a different step.

The rift was always on chain skill 3. The change to chain skill 2 was that chain skill 2 used to generate a projectile, which gave sword revenants all sorts of problems when going up against projectile hate.