Guild Wars 2

Didn’t frost gun get nerfed?

Simple answer: If its fun, play it.

Full set of trailblazers already equipped.

Xolas.9781:

Utilities

Icerazor- literally has Ice in his name, shoots blue, icy looking projectiles and yet he deals vuln and cripple and not chill. What is this garbage Anet. The one time that Theme > Functionality would actually work in Rev’s favor you decide to screw theme and give us the two weakest conditions in the game. If this dealt chill it would actually have synergy with the Mallyx line.
The only positive is that it (when not bugged) stacks with Soucleave and can deal decent damage to one target if they stand still for over 6 seconds and you have 100 energy to start with. Which is never.

I have a feeling this originally was a chill, but this skill hits 20 times? If traited, and if they all hit, that’s 20 stacks of torment? that would be OP for sure.

I do feel like there was a lost opportunity for synergy with the torment on chill trait. 5 pulses on 5 enemies wouldn’t have been too terribly bad.

Kodiak.3281:

BlazeQ.1095:

Would group comps not help support the role as condi DPS?

Okay so when you’re looking at group comps you gotta look at what that person also brings to the group. In the case of the Renegade, that’s unfortunately very little. You’re going to need to be brought into a dual Guardian group (for stab). But lets break down what Kalla can do for a team:

1. Share Might stacks (Citadel Order). Herald already did this, but also provided a lot of other boons as well. More importantly, since you gotta be in a Dual Guardian group anyways chances are extremely likely they will be running dual staff for might stacks before an engage anyways.

2. Provides Alacrity (Citadel Order). This isn’t a bad add, and with the right Trait you’re looking at a 6s of Alacrity every 20s which isn’t bad at all. This is arguably one of the better uses for Kalla’s trait line.

That’s it (unique to Kalla).

Now before you protest, understand most of the wells are useless. Almost all the benefits of Wells will be negated by hard bombs (which will kill the spirits, already tested) or by the high mobility WvW requires (you’re out of their wells/effects). So any benefits those could add in a group fight are pretty much negated by the fact they can die and be CC’d which also negate their effects.

So this means you wouldn’t take wells and you wouldn’t take shortbow even if you want to do Condi. At that point the trait line and Citadel Orders directly compete with Herald trait line and Natural Resonance and all things considered Herald is just vastly superior for WvW. It gives the Revenant additional stability, shares might stacks with allies, and adds to boon durations which boons kinda make the WvW world go ’round.

For PvE this is an entirely other matter and Renegade has a clear seat at the table as a viable Herald alternative for a PvE condition focused Revenant rocking Corruption, Kalla and Destruction/Invocation. Wells being obliterated is less of a concern and they have seemingly good set of uses.

Ran it myself this weekend in a mid-line/back-line DPS group Burn guard, 2 Necro’s, Ele, Renegade. Wells worked much better than I expected. However Placement is key. All skills were situational. Darkrazor’s Daring seemed to be one of the better skills with the AOE Interrupts. Certain sigils worked very with with this skill. Others were very lack luster and offered little to no support to our zerg group.

Roaming/small group performance was interesting, but the Bleed Damage from the bow was very poor IMO. Did not provide and kind of real pressure at all, and I seemed to be focused last in our group as I was not a real threat at range. Loved how the bow skills an animations worked, but cast times were way to slow, and bleed ticks even with 100% bleed duration’s were very weak.

Noticed tonight that while I had protection my crit chance would drop to almost nothing. Any time i would apply fury, and protection to myself (with a heal skill) my crit chance would spike for half a second, drop to normal, then drop to almost nothing.

Kodiak.3281:

Regenade is without a doubt a PvE focused specialization, basically the other half of Mallyx Condition Revenant. For PvE I see a lot of synergy with a Corruption, Kalla, and Devastation/Invocation mix.

In WvW it’s just straight up awful:

Shortbow – In large scale it’s just straight up worse than Hammer in every way imaginable. There’s just too many 3/4 cast times on the weapon to make it really viable and it makes it very vulnerable to any kind of counter CC/interrupt. There’s no mobility on the weapon what so ever meaning if you get caught out of position you’re just done for. This also makes it poor for smaller groups as no leaps, mobility just leaves you at the mercy of other classes with mobility as trying to deal with thieves/mesmers (very common small scale) or anyone else is just annoying since they can blip around all over and you’re stuck there with basically no mobility.

Citadel Orders – These are probably one of the better parts to Renegade. Heroic is nice if you need to keep Fervor up and it’s about to go down, but the might generated is pretty lackluster compared to Herald. Bombardment I wasn’t impressed with the 900 range or 40 energy cost but after trying it out I see why and it made the cost pretty worth it. I was condi focused and saw a lot of high burns was very impressive. Above’s Alacrity was very impressive and welcome.

Breakrazor Bastion – Right off the bat I saw everything wrong with these “wells” or “spirits” when I summoned her and she got immediately feared and started running away for a few seconds before resuming her aura. Complete and total garbage for WvW. Stun break on heal is interesting, a 3/4th cast time (more…) is not. The reduction in Condis is nice but over all this heal isn’t functionally useful in a fight since the spirit can just get CC’d and the effects all stop.

Icerazor’s Ire – Not much to say here, Chill/Vuln field. Damage feels low. The 600 range doesn’t help. Would probably be more interesting with Chill to provide additional Torment from Corruption line than Cripple.

Darkrazor’s Daring – 1/4th Daze on 1 pulses is neat but as fast as people move it didn’t really stop anything. Might be decent as a stab remover but that’s about it.

Razorclaw’s Rage – Probably the only well I liked because he Bleed it does is attributed to the Revenant not the player who does the attack. That means it scales with my condi damage even if a power player is doing the procs. Was super cool to buff up the allies and add Bleeds to their attacks while I sat back unable to fight in a 1200 vs 1200 fight.

Soulcleave Summit – This was again a neat thing to buff up allies, but I didn’t see much use out of it lacking the sustain to really stick in a fight. Only chance I got to really use it myself in a fight was in a 1v1 and it didn’t really hurt but I don’t feel like it gave me the fight either. Probably better as a free damage add in PvE.

Renegade Traits – Biggest issue I see with basing things off Fury is Herald is our most consistent source of Fury when we’re solo. The small amount of disables and evasions (I mean, basically dodge roll) we get make the other two Adept traits questionable as well. Stunbreak CC sounds nice in theory, but again we have very few stun breaks as a class making Heart Piercer the default go to in Master level (as even without a Short Bow the increased Bleed damage would benefit Geomancy Sigils). Good Grandmaster traits as each have good benefits to them, was hard choice, but probably going with lazy convenience of Improved Fervor.

Basically Revenant has very few ways to deal with conditions. Many other classes can go with an offensive weapon, offensive trait setup, and still slot defensive Utilities which the Revenant just can’t do. This makes having a new Legend lacking stun breaks (I mean, to the heal? Really?) and ways to deal with conditions on you (reducing damage by 33% is great and all but 3k burn stacks are real). This makes Kalla a really squishy option that just has no place in SPvP or WvW especially when it’s directly competing against the utility Juggernaut of Herald. This makes Kalla basically fit perfectly into a PvE condition role because now Revs can be condition focused without wholly giving up their offensive support role. But SPvP and WvW both wholly rely on defenses considering the immense levels of damage, conditions, etc out there and Kalla adds nothing there and the base Revenant options (Jalis, Retribution Traits, etc) aren’t enough to carry it.

Would group comps not help support the role as condi DPS?

Jthug.9506:

I can already tell you that Icerazor’s Ire should apply chill. If for no other reason than that there is no way to apply chill with the shortbow or any of the renegade abilities and that it’s called ICErazor’s Ire. Plus it would be nice to have at least one option for synergy with Abyssal Chill for kittens sake!

Might be worth more to take Spontaneous Destruction for the boon strip/confusion. Now that Confusion changed along with Torment.

Vennyhedgie.5369:

Absconditus.6804:

I’m a bit worried when I see that the Elite actually puts you at ONE health. That practically means you can never use it in PvP, and it’s going to be incredibly dangerous to use in PvE. Not a fan. That just seems like a recipe for the downed state every time you use it. In PvP it’s like a “I surrender” button I guess. People can laugh at Revenant even more as they just give up. The enemy can see when it is summoned. The enemy can learn how long it takes before the 1 health state triggers. Not to forget that conditions exist. That sure feels like an Elite.. what are they thinking? I’m almost worried it does that to your allies too. Renegade will quickly be the most hated class in the game if that’s the case. Unless this is some sort of thing that can affect enemies as well (which would be equally as broken) by standing in the AoE circle and only trigger from that, then.. regardless, that Elite just seems stupid.

That was just Karl using Dev cheats to drop his health so you could see how much it heals, that’s not going to happen ingame.

It worth mentioning that the elite is also an upkeep fire field, which doesn’t show up in the tooltip.

Mace is going to make that fire field nasty, especially if you can get off several blasts with 1 mace 3 hit.

Mine weren’t very visable. (Char home instance) They appeared behind the huts near the entrance. Took me 2 days to find them.

I enjoy the hell out if it. I think it probably needs a few fixes to prevent exploits, but I feel like it was well implemented. I would like to see mounts as well, maybe not at 50%+ speed like they have in PVE, but even at 25% speed would be nice. Being able to trait or use equipment that compliments your builds and not having to worry about swiftness would be a QOL thing for me.

I will be the idiot roaming on a Renegade w/ Travelers runes. (unless they give us mounts later on)

Lahmia.2193:

Like real war, numbers are one part of a larger equation:
Numbers
Builds/food
Organisation
Scouts and Havoc groups
Siege
Guild buffs

All of these and more add up.

This and more is correct. Coverage and Numbers play a very big part of WvW, but all of this adds up.

This was very annoying this weekend. I would rather have it not jump at all, and just use the blast finisher.

Ahh I miss-read the blog

Guess I wont be doing the beta this weekend after all…. Bah.

Anyone up to posting a SS of the traits for those of us at work?

Did I miss them somewhere in a video I might not have watched? or Have they not previewed the new traits?

Full set of Trailblazers, and full set of Celestial ready to go. I hope to see trait lines during the beta weekend. Not counting on the elites being unlocked though.

I will admit, Mounts in Desert BL sounds like a lot of fun. I can see my commander (who doesn’t play PVE at all) loosing his mind when a zerg of 50 raptors come charging at us.

lmaogg.7325:

Dragonfeu.4356:

I for one am very disappointed. Revenant has never been about condi.

Revenant, for me has been all about being in Shiro, with swords, whacking things, dodging around the place.

I lol-ed. This is some major bias tread right here. Anet gave every if not most class a power/condi/heal path to go. It’s just a matter of how meta move things along. Revenant not about conditions? You drunk on your own love for shiro? How about clicking your F1 tab and change it to mallyx and use a mace/axe for once.

I would rather run a Condi Rev than a Power Rev after the first round of nerfs we got. Mace/Axe has been a lot of fun with Glint/Malyx. I cannot wait to run it with the new spec.

I hear thieves screaming for Nerf already….

Not having seen trait lines, I expect to hear a lot of cries for nerfs already. Can’t wait to test it out while roaming in WvW. Will miss the mobility of Glint, and stability will still be a big problem, but this has a lot of potential.

Same Error, however its just after I enter my cc info.

Going to wait and to give judgment until after beta weekend. Have a feeling that the bow skills are a rip from Thief shortbow skills. Summoning npc’s sounded petty lame though.

I for one welcome a ranged condi or hybrid weapon. But I wonder about utility skills. What would you like to see?

Personally I would love to see shouts, however that may actually end up OP.

Be able to use utility skills/heals while wielding a banner such as “Dragon Banner”?

Sylvyn.4750:

Since there hasn’t been news of a patch to address the bug fix, I assume we’ll still be going with Glicko for today’s reset, which means it’s mostly based on ranking, but with a random element as well.

Ok ty.

Anyone have predictions for tonight? I’m not totally sure on how this will work.

Out-manned pip hunting has made my weekend mornings so much more enjoyable. Normally my server has a hard time getting people to play wvw outside of NA prime, but now that we can get 5 extra pips when out-manned people will actually come out to run havoc in the borderlands. Don’t get me wrong, I still don’t get max tickets unless I grind them out, but at least I have people to play with now.

I get that people want to get the items quickly, but I for one can be patient and get the pieces when I finally have enough tickets. I was playing the game mode primarily before, i will continue to do so. It’s nice now knowing that there are good rewards waiting for me without having to rely on RNG.

While I think its a nice trait, something doesn’t make sense to me. We have 1 weapons skill (Frigid Blitz) and 1 utility (Elemental blast) that applies chill. Nothing else, not even another trait that can trigger chill.

What other options are there that would benefit this trait? Or is this a prelude change for something to come in the next expansion?

Why doesn’t anyone ever think to tag up themselves and lead an army of med armor people behind the main tag?

I play a heavy class primarily, because that’s what I like to do. But nothing stopping you from following a commander with your own tag up.

First rule of WvW,
WvW isn’t fair.

But they did make a safe space for little butterflies. The Legendary Defenders will protect you.

Did not get SS, but the UI showed i was on the Wood box, however I was getting plat chest rewards, and pips were not progressing. Had a few friends who were on their last Diamond Chest prior to reset, and when they got the chest reward would get tickets. No tickets or progress for myself on my rewards, and I had just started the plat chest prior to reset.

Food doesn’t help with WXP directly, but does help you kill players which do award wxp.

Does the “Shared” buff from commanders count for WXP as well as Track rewards? If not could this be a thing for scouts that are given the shared buff from WvW commanders?

NSP had 2 maps queued 50+ and the other 2 were between 10 and 25. I don’t expect this kind of population tonight, and within 2 weeks guilds might even be able to switch maps again if they want to.

I think we may see some movement in world populations, but this will not be a long term balance solution. There is a huge grind on rewards and only those who end up enjoying the game mode like we do will stick around. De-linking the servers would be a mistake.

The more thought I put into it, the less opposed I am with the grind here. I was going to play WvW primarily anyway. Nothing wrong with having long term goals, and that’s what these pieces will be, long term goals. If I need an ascended weapon or armor piece quickly I can shell out some gold and craft them. If I want the skins, I can play the game mode I enjoy and in time, will earn them.

I played for about 3 hours last night. Think I got 4-5 ranks and about 30 tickets. The best thing I got though was a hell of a good time with constant fights that were reminiscent of a reset night on a Tuesday.

Anet gave some new life to the game mode I love and I thank them for it. They also gave me some long term goals that all I have to do to achieve is do what I would normally be doing anyway.

Patience is a virtue, Newbs will soon get rolled by skilled fight groups and many bags will be had. Many of us will have to wait out queues, but those will soon start to fade as the Newbs get frustrated and start going back to their pve safe spaces.

I have to agree, 2000 is a bit much, I expected it to be around 500 due tho the hours it takes just to get that far.

trixantea.1230:

I know this idea will be bashed in next post or be ignored by the devs but I was hoping that Anet would let us use tomes of knowledge to gain wvw ranks inside the mist war and remove the tomes from the rank up rewards.

The game gives too much tomes in both pve, pvp and wvw and a lot of veteran players do not need them, I already have like 1500 tomes and Idon’t know how to use them.

Tombs are needed in wvw. Have to have the shards from using the tomb to make superior siege.

Asur.9178:

zinkz.7045:

Don’t worry, once team Barbie have got their back piece your queue issues will disappear.

No, it won’t; not with that 2000 rank requirement for armour skins – who even came up with this?

2000 rank? holy crap Ive been playing for years and am >1400.. fml.

Red BL FTW. Always open space in the desert BL.

I don’t know if this has been brought up, But what about controlling the mismatched matchups? IE the T3 matchup with Maguma (rank 2) vs NSP (rank 11) vs (SBI rank 6)?

Currently this matchup? How will going into matchups like this affect pips for the servers who cannot win a single skirmish due to the imbalance?

Some people run Marauder’s gear and hammer in the backline. Pray you don’t get CC’d though.

Anyone got a link to the build? Also looking for variants for WvW.

I do play Ventari healer in WvW. Its very wonky to use if your trying to play front-line, however mid-line is a different thing. Being able to move it lets me react to healing both front-line and back-line very nicely. Takes time to get used to though.

Turk.5460:

BlazeQ.1095:

NSP has a pretty good population of “older” adult players. Many of them retired even. Most of my guild (PB) is 30+

I’d honestly rather have the 14-18 year old kids on my team than most of the players who seem to be 24-30. I find the younger players are mostly more respectful and helpful, where instead what seems like the mid-late 20’s and early 30’s are the saltiest whine-babies out there. You know the ones – the ones who have never seem to have lost because they have been outplayed, but rather “only lose because of cheese, or lag, or OP skill X” …

Which is why I prefer the 30+ group I run with. But I’m also an old man myself so it makes sense to want to be around people closer to your age/generation.

NSP has a pretty good population of “older” adult players. Many of them retired even. Most of my guild (PB) is 30+

From the wording it doesn’t look like allies have to be near the tablet, just near the caster. 10 second ICD for just 1 clear doesn’t seem like its that big of a bonus though. I don’t see the benefit over using Monk runes tbh. When I run my Heal rev in WvW I rarely switch out of Vent during combat.

I haven’t seen these runes yet, May have to try them on my WvW heal build. just for kittens and giggles.