Guild Wars 2

I posted the majority of this in another thread, but I thought it deserved its own thread.

From a design standpoint the theme of each trait line is very clear (This is good) and lets people know what to expect from the line, and how to put together a build to accomplish whatever in-game goals they are attempting to do.

The problem is that the lines are so focused on the Legend and weaponset that have been earmarked for that purpose that they allow very minimal flexibility for build options.

The most obvious example of this is the Salvation tree, which is all about the staff and the Ventari Legend. There is very little stuff in the tree that would see any use outside of those two situations.

The Salvation Minor Traits

• Striking a foe who is using a skill blinds them
• Healing Power to Toughness Conversion
• Increase healing to allies

Here, the first one is useful to everyone, the second converts Healing Power, which only works for a build that stacks healing power in the first place, which is essentially a de facto Ventari or Staff build, and the last one only works for Ventari/Staff again since those are the only outgoing healing sources.

The Adept Major trait choices are:

• Blind on heal
• Regen around the Tablet
• Outgoing healing increase

The last two of those only apply to Ventari/Staff since there isn’t any other source of outgoing healing for Revs at this point, and they end up having a similar bottom line effect. And while the blind on heal is theoretically useful for non-Ventari setups, it is very weak if you have a 30+s heal cooldown. (It works almost too well with the Ventari tablet move command).

The Master Major traits are:

• Dodge Rolls remove conditions
• Healing done to allies is increased for a short duration after invoking a legend.
• The healing orbs from staff grant swiftness and regeneration

Again, the first one is generic and supports basically any loadout, but the other two only work for Ventari/Staff setups and again have a similar net effect.

The GM traits:

• Daze nearby foes when using an elite skill
• Energy fragments around the tablet when you use a tablet skill
• Increased outgoing healing

So you have 1 generic trait, and 2 that only work with Ventari or Staff and both of those are different ways to do additional healing.

Out of the twelve traits available in that line, you have 3.5 traits the work for something other than Ventari or Staff. 7 out of the 12 traits directly increase healing done in one way or another.

If you look at similar lines for other classes they have ways to help out other builds that tie in with the theme of the line. A few examples:

Honor for Guardians is focused on party support, but it supplies Empowering Might and Writ of Persistence, which both add damage to several guardian builds. Additionally, most of the traits that are in the line tied more specifically to the Group Support/Sustain role are generic and work for any setup (Vigor on crit, Dodge heals, Endurance regen, Aegis Heals etc.)

Inspiration for Mesmers has 1 trait tied to Focus, 1 trait married to Mantras, and 1 trait tied to Glamours, but the rest of the line would work with basically any setup you could put together for the class if you wanted to do some group supporty healing stuff.

Overall, I think all of the Revenant lines need to have more broadly applicable traits that help to accomplish the goal of the spec, without being so closely tied to the specific legends and weapons.

Corruption
The corruption line is slightly better looking on paper until you look at the real world uses of the traits.

The only real way to make use of the majority of the line is with either Mace or Mallyx, although there are a few exceptions:

• Bolstered Anguish – The %damage bonus would be useful in an environment where conditions get applied to you regularly
• Replenishing Despair – This is marginally useful in the same scenarios as Bolstered Anguish
• Opportune Extraction – useful for boon removal when needed
• Frigid Precision – useful primarily in sPvP or WvW Roaming

The rest of the line basically requires a condi setup to be useful, which doesn’t “require” Mace MH, Mallyx or condition damage gear to be useful, but those things will only be effective for Mace/Mallyx builds.

Retribution
The Retribution line is a much better example of how the rest of the lines should look. The whole line does “Jalis type things” but doesn’t implicitly require you to use Jalis. There is nothing in the line that requires a hammer to work either, so you have much more flexibility to work this line in to any build if you want some self defensive traits. The only thing that really points to Jalis is the Taunt stuff on Improved Aggression.

Shiro
There isn’t enough information known about the Shiro stuff at this point to tell us much. I fully expect the Shiro trait line will have some sword specific traits and some Shiro specific traits, but hopefully there are options at each tier that are universally useful as well.

Got no problem with traits focused on a legend. That’s the whole point of specializing into something.

Kidel.2057:

Got no problem with traits focused on a legend. That’s the whole point of specializing into something.

This seems to be the general theme to Revenant. In the end, though, we are going to be seeing a lot of very similar Revenants as we will be unable to personalize our builds much without gimping ourselves.

That being said, I will wait until I see the Shiro and Glint traitlines before I draw any solid conclusions.

Kidel.2057:

Got no problem with traits focused on a legend. That’s the whole point of specializing into something.

Yes, but at the same time you want trait lines to be broad and synergistic enough to encourage build diversity. If Revenant trait lines are hyper-focused into particular legends, playstyles, and weapons, then that will likely reduce the amount of build diversity.

That doesn’t seem the case however. To me the problem with Revenant traits is that they don’t do much.

Kidel.2057:

That doesn’t seem the case however. To me the problem with Revenant traits is that they don’t do much.

That too. I’m sure Roy has heard.

I’m just worried that builds will be mostly reduced to Shiro + Invocation + Other or Two Legends + Invocation. It would be nice to see a reason for people picking up three non-Invocation trait lines.

Well, dps build should be focused on dps legend.
They need to change the meta to change that. Not a Revenant issue.
Every class has a dps trait line that 90% of the builds are using.

Kidel.2057:

Well, dps build should be focused on dps legend.
They need to change the meta to change that. Not a Revenant issue.
Every class has a dps trait line that 90% of the builds are using.

Virtually every other class has a DPS build that works because it pulls all of the DPS traits available from multiple lines together to make a solid DPS build. In the current incarnation, Revenants don’t have the ability to do that because they have essentially 0 DPS traits in any line other than the theoretical Shiro line. So unless the Shiro line’s traits are “do 10% more damage”, “do 15% more damage”, and “do 20% more damage” the Rev won’t be able to compete.

If they do manage to cram 52% increased damage into a single trait tree, that basically means that Shiro will be required to do even respectable damage for every single Revenant build.

Kidel.2057:

Well, dps build should be focused on dps legend.
They need to change the meta to change that. Not a Revenant issue.
Every class has a dps trait line that 90% of the builds are using.

But those trait lines on their own don’t have the impact of 3 trait lines working in unison. Individually, Zeal is the weakest trait line the Guardian has. But combined with Honor, you compound on top of the stronger Writ of Persistence and Bulwark cool down to make your 2 Symbol generating weapons incredibly powerful.

Revanent Weapon choices, legends, and role combinations exist together in this odd vacuum where to be good at one job you give up the ability to be good at second one. Where as all other classes are automatically good at 2 jobs by virtue of their trait and weapon mixtures. At best, it seems like they have a Primary stance that synergizes with a weapon and traits, and supportive stance that currently has questionable functionality without its associated weapon.

I believe Knox’s analysis is correct. If you look at the Wiki entry under Retribution, for instance, you see, “Retribution is a core specialization for the Revenant that focuses on improving defense and the Legendary Dwarf Stance.” Since Jalis and Ventari are transparent attempts by ANet to introduce their version of tank and healer, this fact should not be surprising.

Of the 4 lines know, 3 of them are pretty obviously “intended” to go with a specific legend, leaving one with the “best” trait options being the two lines that feed your two legend choices, plus Invocation. Even if that is so, Revenant will be even more “on rails” than the other professions due to no weapon swap. This ties Rev to 5 weapon skills, and the flipping utilities do not offer much to compensate because they too are in a set (as far as we know).

The profession is ANet’s brainchild, and they can do what they want. However, Revenant is/was one of the major incentives to buy HoT. Given that, I wonder if stepping this far away from what flexibility the other professions offer is going to sour a lot of prospective customers.

I feel for anyone who was looking forward to kicking kitten with a melee staff. The damage numbers for staff while in full glass gear were so disappointing when I watched my friend try it. Maybe the Devastation line will offer ways for any Rev weapon to benefit. However, given what I see so far, I expect Devastation to focus as much on Shiro as Salvation does on Ventari.

Genesis.8572:

Kidel.2057:

That doesn’t seem the case however. To me the problem with Revenant traits is that they don’t do much.

That too. I’m sure Roy has heard.

I’m just worried that builds will be mostly reduced to Shiro + Invocation + Other or Two Legends + Invocation. It would be nice to see a reason for people picking up three non-Invocation trait lines.

At this rate, every PvE build will be Shiro + Invocation + Choice of: Mallyx or Glint.

Conquest pvp is going to be Jalis + Ventari + Invocation. Stand on point and tank all day.