Guild Wars 2

Copying this comment from another post here. Granted they probably aren’t THE absolute best solution but I think they’re at least looking in the right direction.

A note on the first one I should have added. Revenant weapon skills aren’t like Thief skills where each one is rather niche to a specific circumstance. This has lead to the current situation where the meta is basically “just auto attack, maybe hit 2 sometimes”. The energy mechanic is further restricting your play, unlike with Thieves where Initiative effectively lets your weapon skills share a CD so it’s okay to have ‘dead’ weapon skills in certain situations.

Core Revenant ‘Needs’ 3 things:

Removal of Energy cost from Weapons
The core concept behind the Revenant is that their 6-0 skills are a bit more restrictive in options, but that they have more flexibility in their usage by having two sets of them at a time and their use being restricted to your relatively faster filling Energy Bar instead of CDs. So having your healing or clutch elite or utility skills restricted by your weapon skill usage is contrary to that. Let Energy represent your ability to channel the power of legends, not to swing a hammer.

A Unique “Favor” Passive for Each Stance
This was suggested years ago to make the Legends more than just button that refers to a set of pigeonholed utility, heal, and elite skills. They finally added it, but for some reason chose to make it an additional new mechanic for Renegade instead of applying it across the board.

Each Legend needs to provide a passive effect whenever a certain action occurs while they are invoked. For example, Shiro could provide a stacking crit damage increase self buff triggered when you land a critical attack. However, similar to how Renegade works, by specializing in a Legend’s path the minor abilities should provide a few additional methods of gaining the buff even while not invoking them. To use the Shiro example, add to one of the minor traits, “Attacking a target with vulnerability has a % chance per stack of granting you Shiro’s Favor.”

Add a little bit of Utility (7-9) slot versatility
Add an additional utility skill per legend. In addition, add a set of 4 Glyph skills that can be included in any Legend bar (but not more than once), the idea being that they provide some niche utility options to help customize builds slightly, such as the ability to include a condi-cleanse skill without having to make major build changes.

The Glyph skills should have a specialization trait in the Invocation line and each skill’s effect is somewhat modified by the current Legendary stance, for example – in Centaur stance the Glyphs effects might involve the tablet.

Given the nature of Glyphs I can’t believe this wasn’t done already… they’re kinda perfect for the Revenant. Though, I’m pretty sure I suggested all of this going on two years ago now… sooo yea.

Anyhow, whether anyone even likes my suggestion, the profession is still lackluster and incomplete when it has sooo much potential to be amazing. Hell, it’s so incomplete that they decided to give it a second weapon set (originally they had one) in the 11th hour as an ‘easy’ way of adding some much needed versatility.

Xenon.4537:

Yeah… I wanted this over 2 years ago, but no one seemed to care at the time…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/revenant/Energy-2-0/first

Many of us wanted the profession to be fleshed out a bit more, but unfortunately the Devs have turned a deaf ear towards the concept that the profession’s mechanics are simplistic and restrictive. When you post something here you’ll inevitably end up feeling defeated as the fanboys rush in to defend with anecdotal examples of awesomeness regardless of glaring design flaws.

Core Revenant ‘Needs’ 3 things:

Removal of Energy cost from Weapons
The core concept behind the Revenant is that their 6-0 skills are a bit more restrictive in options, but that they have more flexibility in their usage by having two sets of them at a time and their use being restricted to your relatively faster filling Energy Bar instead of CDs. So having your healing or clutch elite or utility skills restricted by your weapon skill usage is contrary to that. Let Energy represent your ability to channel the power of legends, not to swing a hammer.

A Unique “Favor” Passive for Each Stance
This was suggested years ago to make the Legends more than just button that refers to a set of pigeonholed utility, heal, and elite skills. They finally added it, but for some reason chose to make it an additional new mechanic for Renegade instead of applying it across the board.

Each Legend needs to provide a passive effect whenever a certain action occurs while they are invoked. For example, Shiro could provide a stacking crit damage increase self buff triggered when you land a critical attack. However, similar to how Renegade works, by specializing in a Legend’s path the minor abilities should provide a few additional methods of gaining the buff even while not invoking them. To use the Shiro example, add to one of the minor traits, “Attacking a target with vulnerability has a % chance per stack of granting you Shiro’s Favor.”

Add a little bit of Utility (7-9) slot versatility
Add an additional utility skill per legend. In addition, add a set of 4 Glyph skills that can be included in any Legend bar (but not more than once), the idea being that they provide some niche utility options to help customize builds slightly, such as the ability to include a condi-cleanse skill without having to make major build changes.

The Glyph skills should have a specialization trait in the Invocation line and each skill’s effect is somewhat modified by the current Legendary stance, for example – in Centaur stance the Glyphs effects might involve the tablet.

Given the nature of Glyphs I can’t believe this wasn’t done already… they’re kinda perfect for the Revenant. Though, I’m pretty sure I suggested all of this going on two years ago now… sooo yea.

Anyhow, whether anyone even likes my suggestion, the profession is still lackluster and incomplete when it has sooo much potential to be amazing. Hell, it’s so incomplete that they decided to give it a second weapon set (originally they had one) in the 11th hour as an ‘easy’ way of adding some much needed versatility.

This is probably pretty minor compared to the rest, but I would like to see a Downed Ambush skill added. Just have our #2 skill give us Mirage cloak as well to trigger it(The skill is called deception after all), that also gives us a way to activate ambush on clones while downed.

Axe seemed a bit weak for being a melee weapon, though I do like the fast recharge on the #2 skill.

Axe Ambush isnt great. Change the spectral axes so that they spin around the Mesmer (or clone) and can be built up. Exceeding the max (i.e. 3) causes one to fly off at a nearby target like the current effect.

The GS Ambush is lame. Have each beam split again to 2-3 more targets after the first hit. That would make it a good AoE against small groups.

The Sword ambush is honestly best when you’re not in combat for the mobility.

Scepter Ambush is nice, but the rapid swing thing is annoying and already overdone. Have it just send out a volley of missiles all at once (aka old school D&D magic missile).

Hot Boy.7138:

I don’t think they said dodge when downed, but you can dodge when you are disabled, like stunned or knocked down. I could be wrong tho.

Yea I was going off of Dulfy’s notes. Sounds like they meant while disabled.

Not giving us a downed ambush attack would be a missed opportunity though.

From what they said it sounds like you will be able to dodge even while downed – that’s huge defensively (especially in PvP) and also means we probably get a downed Ambush skill like Rogues do.

I’d also be surprised if Phantasms did ambush attacks. Them being skill 1 attacks and clones using skill one is a logical flow given how Anet tends the program their skills. Clones actually have the skill 1 attack so giving them mirage cloak logically should flip the skill to the Ambush version. They might do it, and the utility may even act differently, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up.

I wonder if we’ll get a Downed ambush skill like Rogues get. They’d have to change one of the downed skills (prob 2) to give you Mirage Cloak too or something though.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

Anet if you’re listening, more burns please!

Okay.

https://youtu.be/uBHPmYIxaiI

I see a lot of references to creating a mirage (i.e. axe 2) but haven’t seen that mechanic listed anywhere – though I may have missed it. Is it just sort of a graphical artifact of you that converts in to a clone? Are they different than mirage mirrors?

Mantras are never going to be good if charging them is a mechanic their power is based on instead of just an optional way to refill them when empty. Losing the ability to dodge or attack for such a long time just isn’t worth it, especially if you’re bringing several.

Why not just have recharging a Mantra lock down your 6-10 skill usage (or maybe 7-10h) while a recharge animation plays? It gives the feeling that you’re focusing on charging it, allows for some counterplay, but allows you to still attack, dodge, and shatter.

I would have rather they of done the more obvious thing and just given Revenants two things:

1) Some passive effect to each legendary ‘stance’ so that being in it is more than a set of hard/coded skills.
2) A set of non-Legend restricted skills that can be equipped in any Legend. For example, Glyphs would have been the blatantly obvious method.

A mechanic that’s more than some voice clips and pigeonholed skill set-ups? A set of utility skills with modular variation based on your currently invoked Legend to add build variety? A design that isn’t so ham handed that it can’t even use racial skills? Madness! Let’s just half-ass our first new profession and let it limp along for a year or so…

It’s entirely possible that Mesmer will get Main and OH Axes – but we already have a lot of OHs so at the very least a new MH will be welcome to mix things up between Sword or Scepter.

Though, I’ll point out that last xpac when leaks hinted at Elementalists getting swords there were a lot of miffed Eles who farmed Bolt only to end up with Warhorn. So hold off until you’re certain unless you just know you want it.

Silverkey.2078:

If you haven’t noticed, mesmer got all the “we did not want plain CD reduction” or “buff that stack but you can’t really stack them” while other classes are just fine. Examples:

• “Imagined Burden”: would you really stack clones for the might instead of… I don’t know… phantasms? And all of that for 5s might?
• “Fencer’s Finesse” as OP said, though it can work in PvE where you usually camp sword
• “Harmonious Mantras”: almost impossible to reach full stack for a decent amount of time
• “Chaotic Dampening”: beautiful CD recharge…
• “The Pledge”: another one of those

The issue is that their profession designers clearly aren’t all on the same page. The concept of making CD reduction based on something for a risk vs reward type structure isn’t bad – but if you don’t apply it across the board then it’s going to fail.

There are other examples too. Some profession designers realized the relative weakness of the ‘on downed’ traits and so merged them with other effects, while some professions (Mesmers) kept them as is.

Similarly, most professions received a trait in their Mastery line which affected their new weapon set. Mesmers did not.

Sorry Foste – the Mesmer community can be a bit venomous at nerf suggestions. The fact is – Shield is potent. It has our only Phantasm skill that also is a potent skill in and of itself (the block) never mind the potential refresh. I’d really like to see them carry that concept on to other Phantasm skills.

Odds are it may see some tuning – my only hope is that they maintain the potential block up time. I don’t personally think that your suggestion is a good one since it’s not very intuitive.

I’m been using basically the same build for PvE all along – with alterations based on the situation. It’s what I originally coined the Rewinder because of all of the CD reduction.

Illusions: 212 (possibly Phantasmal Haste if you prefer)
Inspiration: 321
Chronomancer: 333

Lots of alacrity, reduced cd illusions and shatters, shattering Phantasms respawns them and reduces your Phantasm CDs (which includes your Shield Block).

Sword/Shield then whatever other weapon set you prefer. I use GS for ranged tagging if doing solo PvE but with a group you’d prob prefer Sword/Sword or Sword/Focus and switch the second inspiration trait to #1.

Gear I run with zerkers/assassins (your defenses are all active). Utilities I was running full Wells (Precog PvP, Recall PvE) but in groups run Signet of Ether, WoAction, WoRecall, Mimic, and Time Warp (the basic PvE meta utilities). though with this setup you need to decide whether to stick with Insp and boost your Time Warp or go Dom and boost your Signet.

The Mesmer with high active defenses is finally starting to get the intention some of the Mesmer community have been trying to point at it :P

Arutha.9874:

The changing second effect thing is interesting Dastion, however your points on artwork don’t make sense because the new art is holding a shield and that is not a baked in aspect of the elite spec either.

True. But that is at least part of the elite spec silhouette – like how a Bow is for the Dragon Hunter.

The voice-overs are race based. There are a few profession specific voice-overs – but the only ones Mesmers get are for Mantra charging (and those don’t even play consistently).

I remember when I played my Sylvari Mesmer and he said, “I make a pretty good team”. I thought it was the most brilliant Mesmer specific voice-over ever (since you’re literally a team of yourself). I was disappointed to find out all Sylvari say it.

I’m actually kinda hoping it was done for the right reasons.

Being Herald should be about being a Herald of the Legends. Not a “Herald of Glint”.

When ANet designed the Herald they sorta forgot that the extra utilities from an Elite spec are meant to be optional – so implying that Glint is a baked in aspect of the Elite spec rather than a thematic option included with the spec is wrong. Glint is no more a required part of Herald than Shouts are for Reapers and Tempests.

If I had my way I’d have them change Facet of Nature into something more generic like “Heraldic Aura” or “Heraldic Presence” then have the second effect depend on what Legend you have invoked currently.

Rytlock captured an alien made of the Mists and now all prospective Revenants just siphon power from it. No wait – sorry – that’s Blood Elf Paladins in wow :P

I really wish they had expanded on this more. My guess is that it’s based on the old ritualist Magic (which was mist-based and separate from the other magic types). Personally I’m hoping Razah was involved somehow.

It has to do with skill use expectations remaining intuitive. The old method was that clone or phantasm if you had three summoning either destroyed the oldest clone or Phantasm. Even in that method using a skill that created an Illusion always generated that illusion (assuming the skill didn’t miss – but that’s another intuitive mechanic).

The quality of life change that was made maintained this intuitiveness. They changed it so that a clone will be replaced before a Phantasm is replaced – if there are no clones then the oldest Phantasm gets replaced. This is still rather intuitive and maintains expectations since what is occurring is rather passive (the game deciding what to replace). It may not be ideal if you want to use Mirror Blade but it maintains the intuitive expectations of the player.

Changing it so that Clone skills stop working when you have three Phantasms up is not intuitive to players. When you meet all of the conditions outlined for a skill and use iLeap or Decoy then you should produce an illusion. Adding an additional “won’t work if you have three Phantasms” tool-tip to each Clone skill becomes convoluted and less intuitive to players.

Either way you slice it you would end up with players debating either side – the side that wins will be the one who maintains the approach-ability and intuitiveness of the profession – not the one that wants to ignore the Shatter mechanic and increase their Passive DPS. Odds are if you have three Phantasms up then you likely have at least one Phantasm skill off CD or very close anyhow.

Eh? Are the clock hands gone?

Heimdallr.7021:

Also skill #2 of spear is a joke, no cooldown, no energy cost, just spam hit an build 25 stacks of vulnerability in no time.

The Revenant was originally designed with a single weapon set. From what they said at first, your #1 skill would alter from melee to ranged based on your distance but they seemed to have scrapped that. Instead they gave us a spammable ranged attack (#1) and a spammable melee attack (#2).

Kodiak.3281:

Adine.2184:

Also like i said in my previous post you could see some sort of effect in the game 100 times and the 101st it can make you trip, that might sound odd to you but its true .

That doesn’t really negate the point. The guy with brittle bones could play Football and never break a bone on 100 plays and on the 101st shatter every bone in an arm. In either example if you know something can trigger you then you probably shouldn’t be partaking in it or accept the consequences from poor decisions. Again, not a laughing or dismissive tone here just a pragmatic one.

I didn’t comment on it earlier – but this really is a bad example. This is a situation of coping and being careful, not insisting on doing something that is obviously dangerous to yourself.

You can’t really make a physical sport not physical. However, you CAN change how things are rendered in a game and in fact most games, cartoons, etc. make an effort to avoid potential triggers.

A better example is someone with an allergy eating out. You can tell them “Well just don’t eat out if you risk getting sick.” When in fact it’s quite possible to do so and many restaurants make efforts to provide options and keep others aware of potential allergens.

Just like with allergens, when it comes to epilepsy you could find something that triggers a reaction (be it seizure or allergies) in every day parts of life. So completely blocking yourself off isn’t feasible or even overly effective given the precautions already in place. Whereas the odds of someone having a rough physical interaction with you tend to be small so long as you’re not in a sport.

The design of the blinking utilities is fine. It’s meant to tell you that you have an available utility slot you haven’t put anything in yet. Once you slot something you can’t empty that slot again (you just swap). So the idea is that they’re supposed to be these eye catching blinking slots because they’re temporary.

The issue is that they designed a profession whose skill options are so rigid that it doesn’t mesh with the normal unlock system. Everyone else will at the very least have Racials they can throw in those slots and they have to unlock other skills before starting an elite – so even though they may only have their Elite heal unlocked they can still have a full build load-out.

However, when it comes to the Revenant they focused on thematic hype rather than continuity and practical implementation that meshes with core game design – and then apparently all took vacations rather than handling the backlash when players finally got their hands on the profession and began to realize the shortcomings.

On the subject of epilepsy: it wouldn’t shock me if the OP was making that up to draw attention to the subject. But the fact is that it’s something that can be and should be addressed. Epilepsy or no, it’s kitten ed annoying.

I love Shiro’s dodge back for The Auric meta mushrooms and vine spray. Drop off the mushroom or finish spraying then double dodge + 3x Shiro dodge right down the middle instead of having to carefully run around the edges like everyone else.

You can even dodge through all of it while holding the spray. Whereas other people who try to use portals/blinks auto-drop it.

It saying you still need Itzel Poison lore is a bug. Once you leave the story instance where your quest shows that it updates to the next step.

I personally would have preferred if they had made the bar regenerate to 100% and not had it reset to 50% between Legend swaps – the just adjusted Energy Costs to suit.

However, the Revenant was originally designed without Weapon swap. So having to juggle your Legends in order to maintain Energy was how they intended to give the profession the same dynamics as normal weapon swap (or Attunements/Kits).

The Block skill on Shield is usable again if you attack them during it. Load them with conditions then let them eat them while shielding.

Also – you can make use of unblockable skills while they are shield spamming:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Unblockable

My biggest gripe is that since I haven’t fully unlocked Herald I feel like I’m being inefficient by using Legendary Dragon.

Being level 80 and only having two skills on my bar isn’t very appealing. The fact that the empty spots insist on flashing at me every few seconds makes it that much easier for me to ignore the skills for now – it’s annoying.

Xecil.2798:

Does it make sense lore-wise? Yep
Do you get six utilities, two heals, and two elites? Yep

Perhaps what you mean to complain about are:

Do major traits have decent cooldowns? Nope
Are Jalis and Ventari allergic to water? Yup
How are you all enjoying that sweet ranged condition weapon? …

How is there a lore reason for not having a small set of utilities to choose from per Legend? Asking a question to prove a point and saying “Yup” after it doesn’t prove that point.

Everything else is just symptoms of the same issue. They didn’t make more skills than they absolutely had to due to design time constraints. That’s the same reason they:

-Abandoned the initial 1 weapon set design in favor of a “quick fix” of adding weapon swap. It’s easier to add weapon swap than redesign Legends to include some sort of kit or form to allow you some flexibility to your weapon skills like Attunements/Conjures/Kits do for Ele/Engi.

-Despite adding weapon swap, left you with a single 1h weapon. If they’ve got to let something slide then underwater combat is it.

-Can’t use certain Legends under water? See above.

These are all issues and all could use a Dev response letting people know it’s a priority for them. Instead? Roy half heartedly responded to only the good posts, won some acclaim by adding in a dodge roll graphic that was suggested, and otherwise ignored posts such as this. And now that more and more posts are like this – ANet’s baby of a profession has been abandoned at the wayside because it’s making too much noise while the adults try to celebrate their expansion launch.

Extremely well said Midnight Tea. I have no issue with the concept, just the implementation. Limited choice is different than no choice. A single extra utility per Legend and a handful of neutral Utilities would make the profession shine while changing nothing about the actual ‘mechanic’.

No any given meta there may only be a select few options that are considered viable, but those options evolve and shift. The set of 3 utilities that are the “only good choice” shifts from patch to patch. Having those extra options allows the meta to shift – which means the Revenant has no wriggle room.

It also means they’re setting themselves up so that any time they want to add new skills to the profession they have to add a whole new pre-baked Legend. It just doesn’t mesh with the more modular nature of the game in the long run.

I just wish ANet would comment on this. I can deal with players who are unwilling to see the big picture, and I could deal with a Dev who disagrees. But Devs that won’t even comment on issues like this? That’s disheartening.

gannondorf.7628:

It really seems to hit a minority of people here. Most of people don’t complain about it or are quite happy with it. I admit i don’t understand. I having absolutly no problem with the lack of personnalisation, it was stated since the reveal of revenant’s concept. I just don’t know why people can’t be ok with that… Revenant was designed like elementalist, it’s kinda normal that he have not personnalisation on utility.
If it gain choice of utilities i want weapon swap on elementalist. After all, why not? I want to choose the abilities myself.

This is one giant logical fallacy – or several different a I suppose.

1) A ‘minority’ (which is arbitrary) voicing an opinion or making an observation does not invalidate that opinion. By your logic we’d all still be going around thinking the world was flat and the sun rotated around the earth.

2) ANet has never stated that the design of the Revenant was intended to have locked in skill bars. You can argue that it is obviously the design because that’s what we got, by you can’t say that ANet has told us all along what to expect since that have refused to comment on any post regarding the matter of whether or not Revenants would eventually receive more than the set 5 skills per Legend.

3) Elementalists and Weapon Swap is a straw man argument. Elementalists are similar in that their mechanic swaps part of their bar – but the comparison ends there. They trade one decisions point (their second weapon set) for twice the resulting options (20 weapon skills instead of 10). They lose some versatility in exchange for more options. Meanwhile Revenants trade 3 decision points (choosing 2 Legends instead of 5 skills) in exchange for twice the options. Revenants trade three times what Eles do in exchange for the same output – and then have all of their skills restricted by a resource in addition. These things do not equate.

Furthermore, to put this in a bit more perspective of how flawed this argument is, since the Ele mechanic is weapon skill based it means they trade 8 combinations of 10 skills for 5 combinations of 20 skills. That’s NOT a bad trade. Meanwhile Revenants trade over 40,000 combinations of 5 skills for 6 combinations of 10 skills AND get their entire skillset restricted by the Energy mechanic.

Ele’s end up with the most weapon skills in the game. Revenants end up with the fewest utility skills in the game. How are these comparable?

Neutral Abilities

To clear something up, there is no stated design around Revenants being “more part of the mist than their race”, etc. Roy specifically stated that the reason Racials weren’t allowed is because they didn’t mesh with the energy mechanic. I see that as a design and continuity flaw since it puts limitations on Revenants that other professions won’t have. It also means that, so long as this design remains, similar neutral skills will be blocked from the Revenant. Neutral(racial,faction,story, etc.) skills usable in PvE but not PvP have been part of Guildwars since the original game, but the Revenant isn’t allowed to use them because they want every skill except auto-attack to be limited by Energy. This also means they don’t get the *Mist*wolf Elite people paid for – try to explain that one with Lore and design concepts why don’t you.

Mechanic Changes vs. Design Flaws

There is difference between saying the mechanic needs to change and that the mechanic has design flaws or is poorly implemented.

For example, I’m not personally a fan of the current Energy system that requires constant swapping to get the most benefit. It’s grown on me a bit, but overall I’d rather they had honored the original Energy system this represents and made it more like a mana pool. I’d also rather their weapons weren’t linked to the pool and they used the normal CD system. Saying the profession sucked unless they changed those things would be an example of not liking the mechanic and wanting it changed. But that’s not the case here.

Rather – the issue being brought up here isn’t with the actual mechanic. The issue is with options, nuance, and customization designed along with that mechanic. These are things that are intrinsic to the health and wellbeing of the overall game and not the specific mechanic. The relatively limited skills based on a Legend and Energy mechanics can stay as they are. All people is the ability to actually use the build system that’s intrinsic to the game. If they’d at least add a 4th utility per Legend that would go a long way towards making a healthier profession who can be better iterated on.

If they’d go a step further and add a neutral set of Utilities (i.e. Glyphs so that they stick with the Legend theme and linked to the Invocation specialization) that would help with the design issues inherent in having very limited options per bar. For example, when you’re level 80 and unlock Glint and suddenly only have a Heal skill available like you’re back at level 1 that is bad design. The mechanic is fine, the design is flawed. By designing the mechanic such that you had these neutral Glyphs the Revenant would be able to slot those in place of their unattained elite skills and still be able to run a full build rather than ignoring the stance until it’s mostly filled. It might even be okay to run the bar with only 2-3 skills on it unlocked if not for the fact that the empty spots distractingly flash at you every few seconds – another example of poor design.

Revenant “Utility”
First off. What does your mechanic give you? An extra bar 6-0 bar. That’s exactly what the Engineer’s toolbelt gives him just in a different way. They could put your second Legends skills on the F1-F5 bar and it would be pretty much same. On top of that, the Engineer is designed such that any or all of their main utility skills can replace their weapon bar. Meanwhile, the Revenant mechanic – with its set in stone utilities – serves to limit your options and then further restrict all but your auto-attack with a limited resource. Don’t get me wrong, the resource is good in that it helps make up for not having a lot of utility options since so long as you’re spending your Energy on another utility it’s good (it’s the same concept Thieve’s Initiative runs off of) – but restricting your weapon skills just adds insult to injury – but we’re not discussing that.

The 6-0 skill load out for the Revenant is a grand total of SIX combinations (someone earlier said 8, but that’s not how numbers work guys). If you’re a Herald you have a whopping TEN options. This is also assuming all options are viable – which they certainly are not.

Meanwhile, a normal profession as approximately 40,480 different combinations of Heal, Utilities, and Elites (note: these are just combinations, not permutations. So the same utilities in a different order is not being counted again). That’s approximately 8,096 combinations of JUST the utilities. Even if you assume that only 1/4th of a profession’s utilities are ‘viable’ (which, though often true in the meta is still flawed in that it ignores the ability for the meta to shift to other utility skills – which the Rev can’t do) then that leaves the average profession with 20 combinations of Utilities – twice what the Revenant gets. However, the Revenant gets twice as many 6-0 skills right? That’s their mechanic after all. Okay, so let’s take their 10 combinations versus everyone else’s 20 and call it even.

Except, now that we’ve used rather biased and poor logic just to put the Revenant on par – I have to point out to you that we’ve taken the Revenant profession mechanic into account when we do this but not the mechanics of all the other professions. So all those extra passive and skills other professions get probably don’t really add much to their design, right?

So, to recap, so long as we ignore the profession mechanics of everyone else, assume all Revenant Legends will be meta viable and be able to keep up with an evolving meta, AND hope no one questions our logic too closely… we have a well-designed profession.

Or we can just admit that the profession has design flaws that will affect its long-term health and ask ANet to address it.

Nope. They’ve always stated how it affects your HP by resetting it. So long as you don’t get downed you’re effectively sorta “invulnerable” in that you’ll revert.

Distortion is still there for added invulnerability and there really isn’t much of a reason not to use it during CS since it’ll reset anyhow

SrebX.6498:

Dastion.3106:

SrebX.6498:

Masori.3528:

If you don’t like the limited choices… don’t play it.

pretty simple tbh..

This.
If you don’t like how the profession is built, why play it?

So, by your logic, we should expect no more profession changes for any profession because – if you don’t like it, don’t play it, right?

I’m sure that’s an excellent mind-set for ANet to epitomize and won’t hurt the game at all. /sarcasm

You’re probably aware of the fact that there’s a major difference between suggesting tweaks and improvements, and ranting about the core of the profession’s mechanic and how its fundamentally built.

Dont like illusions? Dont play mesmer
Hate shroud? Dont play necro
Discouraged by constantly switching attunements and love 2 weapon sets? Dont play ele
Hope I made my point

The fundamental aspect of the Revenant is the Energy system and ability to swap your 6-0 skills.

ArenaNet never advertised the profession as each Legend being locked into the same skill. If you look back you’ll find posts of people asking about that and not getting answers, of some people assuming there would be more because in one of the early interviews they talked about a Jalis “rune” skill that we didn’t see in beta.

Having limited options is not a mechanic. There is nothing about the mechanic that actually prevents adding more skills to each Legend. Simply put, we were given an incomplete prototype of a profession. It’s what you’d expect to see in a beta with set builds and limited options. But a single underwater weapon and zero nuance to builds? That’s incomplete.

If you enjoy it as is, that’s fine. Me asking for more options won’t hurt your experience.

For the record though, up until recently Mesmers had the same issue. Our “mechanic” had design flaws that made it too unreliable to use effectively. And it was balanced around potentially having access to a trait (Illusionary Persona) that basically fixed all of the flaws. Without the trait, Shattering didn’t do much. With it, it was suddenly awesome and reliable.

Two years ago I suggested illusionary persona be made baseline (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Illusionary-Persona-an-OP-Trait/first is an example of just one such post). Eventually ANet finally came around and did so. Now – suddenly – all Mesmers are Shatter Mesmers because the mechanic has more reliability built in. It wasn’t until after that that it occurred to people that despite “shattering” being the base mechanic of the Mesmer people only referred to it as a specialized build because it wasn’t used much without IP. It’s like thinking of a Necromancer who just doesn’t bother to use his Deathshroud or a Thief who doesn’t steal. Why wouldn’t they? Because they usually got something reliable out of their mechanic whereas Mesmers often flopped.

Mesmers still had good builds and overpowered builds and could be enjoyable to play. That doesn’t change the fact that the mechanic was flawed and needed addressed. Combined with the change to pet damage in PvE it’s breathed new life into the profession.

For Mesmers the issue was reliability, for Revenants it’s that your “utility” skills have no “utility”. Your special mechanic is a gimmick that limits you. I mean, what does it give you? An extra set of 6-0 skills? Guess what so does the Engineer toolbelt. Except your skills are locked in and gated by an energy resource more restrictive than Initiative. I’m glad you enjoy the profession, I still do too to a degree. But I don’t let enjoying thematics and a cool concept overshadow glaring design flaws.

Hopefully it doesn’t take ANet two years to address it – hell, I’d be happy if Roy or someone actually commented on the subject. As much as it’s been brought up you’d think they’d settle the matter once and for all. I wonder why they don’t? Probably because they know it’s an issue and saying “we don’t have time to develop more than a base kit and a single underwater weapon” is bad PR.

If we could just have the first two strikes of the auto attack I’d be happy. Though that third strike is pretty awesome.

Maybe it only cleanses certain conditions? I’m 99% certain that when I was escorting a crash survivor I used my staff 4 to remove its Cripple then double tapped Facet of Nature to give it swiftness to speed it along.

SrebX.6498:

Masori.3528:

If you don’t like the limited choices… don’t play it.

pretty simple tbh..

This.
If you don’t like how the profession is built, why play it?

So, by your logic, we should expect no more profession changes for any profession because – if you don’t like it, don’t play it, right?

I’m sure that’s an excellent mind-set for ANet to epitomize and won’t hurt the game at all. /sarcasm

I love the Rev concept and I’m playing mine. But I’m in the process of unlocking the Glint Legend and doing so makes the design flaws glaringly obvious. Here I am at level 80 and I can’t even use my Legendary Dragon stance because it’s incomplete until I get 100 or so more HP. With my Mesmer I slotted a few Well’s and filled the rest with other skills – I had a full build no problem. But with my Revenant I’m forced to run an incomplete skill bar that constantly flashes as me demanding I select skills which I don’t have.

The Revenant design has no nuance and there is no saying that’s a good thing. Just because many players mindlessly conform to a meta on their professions (“the illusion of choice”) doesn’t mean it’s okay to shoehorn a profession in to that.

As another poster said, you do yourself no favors defending such design. There is literally no reason they couldn’t have had 4 utilities per Legend and a set of 4 neutral utilities.

The only explanation is lack of development time. Also – the proof is in the silence on the subject. This issue has been brought up several times before and all you’ll see is a select few Rev players blinded by the new profession hype disagreeing. Roy has outright refused to address the concern and it’s really saddening.

I’d be happy if Revs got some of the auto-attack animations that Thieves did. They came up with more martial looking animations after thieves complained but didn’t give any of them to Revs.

It’s not really a difficult thing to implement, so far as I can tell. Mechanically it would be:

-Activate Ventari Legend: Effects are all based around you.
-Activate skill #6: Heals you and conjures Ventari’s tablet. So long as the tablet is in the world skills instead are based around it. Reactivate the skill to move it, interact with the Tablet to “pick it back up”.

A relatively simple fix and it gets past the stupidity that is having to activate skill 6 before you can do anything with your Legend.

That’s easily one of the biggest failings of the Legend. ANet has always encouraged removing onerous steps/activities that remove from the fun. The way Ventari is currently designed epitomizes that. If you can’t use any utilities while invoking Ventari until you activate skill 6 then skill 6 should be auto-activated in some way.

It’s even very thematically fitting. You cast “Project Tranquility” to center your powers elsewhere rather than yourself.

I’m enjoying the Chronomancer Rune. It’s very helpful for getting off a Continuum Split Well bomb. Just activate CS while in mid-cast for a slower Well (i.e. not Eternity, Action works).

Note that the Rune appears to have a 2-3s ICD, so if you’re spamming 4-5 Wells during a CS you’ll only actually trigger it 2-3 times.

Gravity Well is fine, with the amount of AoE CC it dishes out, plus being a dark field, a bit of a damage nerf is the best we could hope for.

The Rewinder is the epitome of reducing cool downs. In addition, it mixes both a Shatter build and a Phantasm build – two things that would normally be mutually exclusive prior to HoT.

Below is the basic build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAseRncfCtfilfC+fCEgilnj6sACgDr+PT0FFdx+gHD

Gear
-Runes are Chronomancer Runes for lots of self quickness.
-I haven’t filled out the rest of the Gear section because really you could do a lot of things with it. I use Berserkers/Assassins in PvE because that’s what I had and it works well, but you could also go with tankier options depending on your needs (i.e. a Bunker)
-The Greatsword is optional. I use it because it allows me to get some Illusions going as I pull or close the distance, but in group PvE you’d probably be better suited with something else. You have a lot of phantasm production without the second weapon set, so something with a longer CD like Warden would probably be useful, or you could go for extra blocking via Scepter and/or OH Sword. Though you already have really high up time on active defenses.

PvE
So far the build has been very effective for soloing PvE. It looks like it would definitely have some potential for a tankier “raid tank” type build, but we still don’t know a lot about what to expect there. I’ve been primarily using it for soloing HoT content. For a party I’d swap out Gravity Well for Time Warp, but with Chrono Runes and Well of Action you don’t really need it when solo.

PvP
I’ve only tried the build a little bit in unranked PvP and it’s done decent so far, but all of your defenses are active so you have to be on your toes. You also lack mobility unless you swap a Well for Blink and a big part of the build is the damage you deal passively on-point from your wells while hiding behind your Phantasms and Active Defenses. (Note: I swap Recall for Precog in PvP). However, I primarily use this for PvE, I just thought I’d provide my experiences in PvP.

Traits Explanation
Illusions
Minors: 20% illusion CD reduction and Shatter CD reduction is very helpful.
Persistence of Memory: Combined with Chronophantasma a full Phantasm Shatter will reduce your Phantasm CDs by 12 seconds each (Avenger, Defender, and whatever your other weapon set is – Berserker for me in general PvE).
Phantasmal Haste: Not much else along this line that helps, you’re mainly in it for the minors and Persistence of Memory, but this one is fitting even if it doesn’t currently work on the Avenger.
Master of Fragmentation: For a more tanky build you might want ineptitude, but you’ll be shattering often so this is very useful.

Inspiration
Minors: These don’t do a lot for the build but add some nice support options.
Persisting Images: Not absolutely necessary, but you don’t get much out of the other two. Could be swapped for Medic’s Feedback for a more supportive option.
Restorative Illusions: This is your Condi removal and some decent self healing. Well of Eternity is also a potent condi cleanse with the Minor.
Mental Defense: Grants you a third Phantasm who helps keep you alive (very useful for me in berserker stats). You have numerous ways to trigger him. His CD is also very short when you take into account Illusionist’s Celerity, Persistence of Memory, and self Alacrity.

Chronomancer
Minors: This is pretty self explanatory. Shield, Continuum Split, Alacrity on Shatter and Time Marches on is just gravy.
All’s Well That Ends Well: This, combined with Shattering, guarantees your CDs will all be much shorter.
Improved Alacrity: Synergizes with shatter and well alacrity.
Chronophantasma: Lets you shatter your Phantasms twice, which, again, combined with all of the Alacrity and Persisting images means your Phantasm summon CDs will be short.

There you have it, a shatter build that allows you to pump out Phantasms at a high rate, maintain a high uptime on active defenses, and still provide your party with lots of Alacrity (the main thing we’ll be wanted for in PvE raiding). Damage wise there are probably better options, but the berserker stats with so many active defenses and AoE well damage is serving me very well in solo PvE and not getting totally smashed PvP queues (i’m only a soso PvPer).

With a triple phantasm double shatter my Echo of Memory (block) is approximately an 8-9s CD, Blurred Frenzy is similar. So that’s 7.5s of Evasion/Blocking on a less than 10s CD and those very skills are what summon your main 3 phantasms (2x Avenger + Defender). Besides that you still have Distortion, Dodges, and possibly Well of Precog to mix in as necessary – plus whatever you chose for your other weapon set. I basically just tank for my Phantasms and let them + Wells do their thing, though my Berserker stats mean I add in a bit of damage with blurred frenzy and auto-attacks.

Of course, your active defenses fall apart if you’re not being actively attacked (no Defender and no second Avenger) – which since I’m wearing Berserker gear is actually preferable to me. When that happens I just swap to my other weapon set (GS), get a few illusions going and work on setting up a Continuum Split Well Bomb.

What do you think? Any suggestions?

Amiron.1067:

I would hardly call adding weapon swapping a “lazy fix”. It was a simple and needed fix, and I’m very happy with the change.

If you set out to create a the Heavy armor answer to the Ele and Engineer (single weapon users who make up for it in other ways) and then players complain about lack of nuance or options to their builds and you go back on that design decision in an attempt to add some options rather than addressing the actual design flaws then – yes – that’s the “lazy fix”.

They could have done something like convert the existing Elites (which aren’t really ‘elites’ Impossible Odds is more an elite than Jade Winds is) into Utilities thereby providing options and make the Legendary Elite skills a thematic kit to change your main hand weapons then THAT would be maintaining your design. But they thought having two hard-coded immutable Legends would be enough, were wrong, and went with the easy option of giving you a second weapon set rather than addressing what is still an issue with the profession.

Flobings.7251:

Yep as a Mesmer for 3 years I have stopped using this skill. Not only does it hardly ever save your life but teleporting 5-10 feet away & still getting hit by the same stomp they started before you used the skill is the most infuriating thing I have found in this game.

You’re complaining about it in PvP? Mesmers have arguably among the best stomp interrupter for PvP. Just time it right and you shouldn’t have to worry about stomps since those fail if you’re stealth end, doesn’t matter if you move closer. Only Ele and Thief can compete with that; and Thief is counter able by a teleport skill (Blink, Stea, etc).

The issue is with it throwing you into a worse situation in PvE. It’s quite the gamble.

Revenant was originally designed to be the Heavy armor single weapon profession (like Ele and Engineer). However, players were underwhelmed by the profession since you made three flat choices (weapon set + 2 Legends) and had no way to change up your primary bar like Eles and Engineers can.

ANet went with a kinda lazy fix and just added a second weapon, but didn’t design a second underwater weapon. Just like how they didn’t design beyond the initial 3 utilities per Legend.

They had time constraints that prevented completely new development on skills but it’s bad PR to say such and Roy has avoided commenting on either fact (lack of additional utilities for build nuance or additional underwater weapons) and is unlikely to. What will happen is that a few months from now they’ll say “While the Revenant has been a rousing success we felt they could use more nuance to their builds! So we’re adding Trident as an under water weapon and an additional utility per Legend!”

Revenants don’t get near as many skills as every one else, but they pay the same for an entire “line”. So individual skills are more expensive.

It’s actually very harsh on Revenants since you get stuck with empty slots. At least other professions can slot something else there in the mean time.

I wish we didn’t have a second melee shield phantasm as well, but I’m not overly worried about it.

I kinda wish I would have been “Throw your shield, hitting and slowing up to X enemies before turning to you and granting alacrity to nearby allies”.

Thematically that is way cooler but the melee Phantasm works fine, he’s just too similar to the Defender.