First off just want to say I am of the general consensus that Revenant is in a much better position this BWE than it was in BWE1. However, with that said I still have some major concerns on a few topics which I will address below. This feedback is written from the perspective of an experienced WvW roamer playing a power based setup.
For reference, I played both Shiro/Jalis and Shiro/Glint with Sword/Axe and Staff.
I want to talk about an issue that kept arising which I feel to be a major problem with the current incarnation of the Revenant – condition removal. Roaming WvW, you often encounter condition damage-focused enemy players and for other classes you can slot adequate condition control to suit your build. However with the Revenant I found that unless I took the Mallyx stance I would be in trouble against condition-heavy enemies. I understand the presumable idea behind the lack of condition removal on legend stance skills being that you would want a legend that can combo well with Mallyx and make use of conditions rather than removing them. This however causes a severe weakness to conditions in builds that do not use Mallyx.
I preferred the Jalis legend over Glint purely because of the heal skill which was a little bit sad because overall I feel the Jalis legend is a bit underwhelming and Glint is better, but I desperately needed the condition removal from the Jalis heal skill. I like the idea that each legendary stance has a particular style and that those styles don’t overlap too much:
- Shiro: Power based damage
- Mallyx: Condition based damage
- Jalis: Tanky, Control
- Ventari: Healing
- Glint: Support via boons
These ‘styles’ will reflect a bit in my suggestions below, so lets get to the weapons, skills and traits:
Sword
The auto-attack chain and Unrelenting Assault are in a good place. I feel like both of these skills deal good damage. Unrelenting Assault has a slight cast delay when using the skill which feels a little awkward.
- Precision Strike feels a bit weak. I think the range is a little short on this skill to be good for gap closing so its uses are a bit limited.
Axe
Overall in a good place. Frigid Blitz is a very good skill but camera angles are a little bit weird when using and shadowstepping.
- Temporal Rift is a little bit under-tuned. It is very easy to avoid the pull and I think it needs a small rework. My suggestion would be that it works more like the guardian greatsword skill ‘Binding Blade’. On cast it should tag the enemies hit by the rift and those enemies would then be pulled in, rather than the rift pulling in enemies that are close when it triggers.
Staff
Very fun weapon to use but has some issues mainly with energy costs and cooldowns.
- Punishing Sweep > Debilitating Slam combo is too energy-costly. The 5 energy cost on Punishing Sweep is fine but the follow up cost of 15 on the second skill is too much. I would suggest lowering Debilitating Slam to 10 energy or refund the 5 energy from Punishing Sweep if the player hits an enemy using a skill thus gaining access to the secondary skill.
- Surge of the Mists is a powerful skill but the cooldown is a little bit high at 20 seconds, especially considering we cannot trait for lower cd. I would suggest an 18 second cooldown.
Jalis Stance
This stance feels incredibly underwhelming overall. Almost all of the skills seem under-tuned and feel weak in most scenarios. Soothing Stone is in a perfect place, and is seemingly the main or only reason to slot Jalis.
- Inspiring Reinforcement has a great concept but feels very weak. The main problem with this skill is that it does not synergize well with movement, but in WvW and PvP if you don’t move you are toast. I suggest removing the ground targeting and instead have it so the road always assembles in a straight line in the direction the player is facing with the player in the middle of the road. The road would then be fixed on the player and follow them. With this change I think the duration should be reduced to 4 seconds and energy cost reduced to 25.
- Force Engagement has huge potential but unfortunately is very underwhelming. Aside from being single target, the energy cost on this skill is absurdly high for what the skill actually does. I would suggest adding a bounce effect to the chain so that it can hit up to three targets including the first. The bounce AoE should be much smaller that the initial range on the skill but large enough to work in scenarios(something like 400). With this change, reduce the Taunt and Slow duration’s to 1.75s. Since Inspiring Reinforcement has a cooldown, I see no problem with this skill having one either, so add a cooldown with the above changes: 15-20 seconds seems reasonable. Lastly, reduce the energy cost to make this skill viable to use: I think an energy cost of 30 is more suitable.
- Vengeful Hammers is a really odd skill. It feels like what the skill does is a weird missmatch of things randomly thrown together and seems to have limited uses due to its high upkeep cost. This is where I come back to my issue with conditions from earlier, as well as the legendary stances having particular styles. I like the idea of this skill granting 20% less damage from direct and condition sources, but it does not synergize too well with the hammers. This is also where a suggestion of the Protection boon comes in, which so many people have been saying should be on Jalis as it makes the most sense. First of all I would suggest removing the 20% damage reduction feature. With this change I think the hammers should grant positive effects to the player when they hit enemies: upon hit, remove a condition and provide a short duration Protection boon. If the condition removal is too strong it could grant Resistance instead, which makes a lot of sense with Jalis being the tanky option. I think 2-3 seconds duration of each boon seems suitable.
- Rite of the Great Dwarf is much better than last BWE. It still feels awkward to use this skill and when to use it, and the stun break seems out of place. I think this skill would work better with a shorter duration, but faster cast time – this way the skill is a great counter to quick bursts. I suggest lowering the cast time to 0.5 seconds and lowering the duration to 3.5 seconds.
Shiro
I feel like this stance is in a perfect place. It offers a lot of aggressive potential and I like the idea that Enchanted Daggers does not heal a flat amount and instead needs you to keep up the offense. Overall a good legend with a direct purpose, only a few small energy issues.
- Riposting Shadows just seems to be a little costly energy-wise. Perhaps 25 energy cost would be a bit more suitable.
- Impossible Odds is in the same boat, the upkeep on this skill just seems a bit high where you can only realistically use it when you have well over 50 energy so you can sustain weapon costs too. I would suggest adding a small initial cost for activating the skill: around 5 energy, then lower the upkeep to -8.
Glint
Overall I think this stance is a little bit too strong. I also think some incentive is lost from the F2 ability because the pulsing boons from each skill already have no downtime while the upkeep is maintained. Overall suggestion for the stance: increase the pulse interval to 4 seconds while keeping the boon duration at 3 seconds. This will bring much more incentive to use Facet of Nature for its 50% boon duration upkeep bonus. This will also incentivize particular boon duration gear and food buffs etc.
Traits
I tried two main builds for traits, one largely offensive and one a little more reserved. The offensive variant used Devastation, Invocation and Retribution. The defensive variant used Invocation, Retribution and Herald.
- Devastation is a perfect trait line to match Shiro. I love the fact this line goes for full offense and again feels very purposeful. I would suggest Assassin’s Presence be swapped with Ferocious Strikes, as the former trait is stronger and is currently on a adept slot as oppose to the latter which is on a master slot(150 unconditional Ferocity vs 150 Ferocity while dual wielding).
- Retribution feels like a good line to compliment a tanky-centric stance. However the Grandmaster traits, like the Jalis stance itself, are very underwhelming. Improved Aggression feels a bit weird that it only increases duration on non-player enemies. I would suggest this trait to give a percentage based increase to all taunts – 10-15% seems reasonable, and would give an option to go for a taunt based build to combo off with Eye for an Eye and Force Engagement. As for the Grandmaster traits, I find Reflexive Summon almost useless with such a high cooldown and Steadfast Rejuvenation a bit under-tuned. I would suggest drastically lowering the cooldown of Reflexive Summon to 15 seconds. For Steadfast Rejuvenation I think the ‘chance’ should be increased from 50 to 100% and the healing to ~ 500 baseline.
- Invocation overall is a solid traitline. The only problem I have is Shrouding Mists: for a Grandmaster I feel like this trait is partially underwhelming when you consider some builds will not make use of the healing half of this skill. I believe this is where we can further solve the problem of conditions as mentioned above. My suggestion is to remove the outgoing healing increase and instead: whenever your energy bar reaches 50(or goes above) it will remove a condition. This would also have a cooldown; something like 5 seconds.
- Herald is another good trait line with great focus on the Glint stance style of party or group support, overall very solid.
As a side note I did briefly try the shield but was very disappointed at how small the defiance bar was on #5. Also, skill #4 seems fairly useless aside from coordinated group play.
Thanks for reading!
