Guild Wars 2

Keadron.9570:

Diamond skin was changed January 26 2016. Reaper was available. Your post said at the time diamond skin got changed so assumed that was when you meant

Jan. 26 was the nerf.
The original change I meant was the specialization update, which allowed Eles to take Diamond Skin without sacrificing too much. My bad for not specifying.

Keadron.9570:

Malchior.5732:

Keadron.9570:

Has anyone said DS shouldn’t be toned down no, but making it both on hit and icd was too much.

Actually, a lot of Ele mains at the time did say it didn’t need to be toned down. They said it was perfectly fine that condi builds couldn’t touch them at all.
I vaguely remember a few individuals actually wanted it buffed so other builds could make better use of it, but I might be wrong.

Everyone knew it should be toned down, though I honestly didn’t want it changed for fear of what they would do to it. When they first previewed it it had the icd which was fine, then when the update went live it had been turned into an on hit trait. why anyone would think that was a good idea is beyond me.

Keadron.9570:

It made water almost mandantory which hurt all offensive builds. Ele has a tiny hp pool making condi especially deadly.

Didn’t they run water anyway? I saw only a handful of DS “offensive” builds.
Also, I think a single trait destroying one of Ele’s biggest counters, which was prone to getting bogged down by groups due to very little mobility and few active defenses at the time, is kinda wrong.

Actually that was a choice of preference. Earth for damage reduction or water for healing. Then air or fire and tempest. Water wasn’t mandantory. DS didn’t destroy ele counter. It only worked when above 90% health. Anyone who ran up and dumped condi right off the bat deserved to die. I also ran Necro part of the time (still do) and killed quite a few ele just from knowing when to bomb and when not. Then as a Necro I tended to stick to team fights back then

Then I suppose we aren’t necros who can be tanky without sacrificing dps and dish out heals at the same time so that makes it ok right?

I don’t play pvp anymore, but at the time when Diamond Skin got changed, being a Necro with high damage was the only reason to play it. If you got caught out of position all you had was Flesh Wurm to save you IF you pre-cast it in a good spot.
It’s also a bit funny to say that considering that Ele was pretty tanky and could out-sustain pretty much anything when Celestial amulet was the most popular thing to use. It was so bad that people were running 3+ Eles in tournaments.

I think you missed my point as I was referring to Current state not past. Actually the whole post was about the nerfs effect on current Ele. Such as when DS was changed was also when the removal of defensive amulets started, like cele, and more boon corruption was added. Defensive amulets are gone and water is still mandantory

Just out of curiosity why were you running flesh worm at that time? Reaper was out then…. if I recall correctly I was running a hybrid mm reaper build with condi, increased def, and lifesteal at that time. Unless you were really ganked there was no reason to run. Reaper was insane at that time 1v1 1v2 1v3

The point was to explain the perspective of the nerfs. Reaper did not exist at the time. Diamond Skin was added in like 2013 and the specialization update was months before HoT.

My post wasn’t about current Ele, it was about when Diamond Skin was nerfed. I don’t really care about pvp or wvw anymore.

Keadron.9570:

Has anyone said DS shouldn’t be toned down no, but making it both on hit and icd was too much.

Actually, a lot of Ele mains at the time did say it didn’t need to be toned down. They said it was perfectly fine that condi builds couldn’t touch them at all.
I vaguely remember a few individuals actually wanted it buffed so other builds could make better use of it, but I might be wrong.

Keadron.9570:

It made water almost mandantory which hurt all offensive builds. Ele has a tiny hp pool making condi especially deadly.

Didn’t they run water anyway? I saw only a handful of DS “offensive” builds.
Also, I think a single trait destroying one of Ele’s biggest counters, which was prone to getting bogged down by groups due to very little mobility and few active defenses at the time, is kinda wrong.

Keadron.9570:

Then I suppose we aren’t necros who can be tanky without sacrificing dps and dish out heals at the same time so that makes it ok right?

I don’t play pvp anymore, but at the time when Diamond Skin got changed, being a Necro with high damage was the only reason to play it. If you got caught out of position all you had was Flesh Wurm to save you IF you pre-cast it in a good spot.
It’s also a bit funny to say that considering that Ele was pretty tanky and could out-sustain pretty much anything when Celestial amulet was the most popular thing to use. It was so bad that people were running 3+ Eles in tournaments.

Feanor.2358:

The fact remains that only recently I started having trouble finding a group to do daily fractals. 4N1D has existed since before, but before it was fast and easy to assemble a proper group. Now it isn’t. At the very least, it proves a problem now exist which didn’t before.

I also doubt very much that the people who did 10k on staff pre-patch would ever hit 28k on Sc/W.

Then don’t do 4N1D?
That comp is just for braindead Fractal clears because it’s so stupidly hard to screw up, but it’s hardly the most efficient comp.

I can fill up a t4 group super quick because I don’t really even need a specific comp. T4s aren’t hard enough to require that. I just need 4 other people to help out a bit and in most cases they’re sufficiently skilled to do it (assuming I pug; if I ask guildies we can knock out all t4s stupidly fast).

lucadiro.4519:

Lol on large hitboxes is way more Easy both to Land Phoenix and wildfire.

The problem was never with landing Phoenix and Wildfire. It’s that you lose a lot of damage by not placing them pixel perfect to maximize hits.
Phoenix can drop from 13 hits all the way to 9 or worse while Wildfire needs to hit twice to do top DPS. Both are not necessarily realistic to pull off consistently in raids.

On a large golem it’s about 10.5% of 38k DPS or about 3990 DPS from Phoenix (and Wildfire is 11%).
I can see it causing you to drop to D/Wh levels of damage if your Phoenixes are pretty bad on top of Wildfires not being perfect (that’s just naturally gonna happen on a lot of the bosses).

I think D/Wh is just safer overall. It’s ~1.4k less DPS, but doesn’t require as much precision or speed. It’s also slightly better or about equal on small targets anyway.

Regardless, it’s nice that all the main hand weapons are close to each other in DPS.
I wish Staff was a bit stronger than it is now, but I still use it on some bosses anyway.

lucadiro.4519:

Malchior.5732:

lucadiro.4519:

TkMan.9638:

The scepter wh rotation is cancer. It kills all fun i have. I do basically the same rotation on d/wh and get 30k dps (which i would love for it to be higher) the only difference is the placement of phoenix and the filler with auto attacks. I’ve been practicing this crap and burning my buttons to get 27-29k dps from scepter wh. . . and this is on a golem, god forbid i do this on a raid boss.

You should try to play engie lol

He might be saying that due to Phoenix needing to be stupidly precise otherwise you easily lose 10k+ damage.

In my experience, I generally out-dps scepter/wh eles in raids by 4k+ when I use d/wh or even Staff.
I don’t know if they’re bad, screwed up, or if the Phoenixes really need to be THAT precise to compete with the other weapons, to the point where it’s basically worthless.

Loosing 10k DPS (if DPS was what you meant since you wrote damage) seems to me more a rotation problem than a bad Phoenix placement.
The fact is that people had forgot how to use scepter, because since when phalanx strengh trait from Warrior came out people Just stopped to play scepter.
Scepter rotation Need very fast fingers and very good muscles Memory.
Phoenix is the last of the problems… I mean I know that sometime It doesnt hit 12times because of mechanics of the encounter you place It bad, or It still has some rng… But LOOSING 10K DPS can not coming from a bad Phoenix placement.
You all have to take in Mind that S/Wh IS A NEW ROTATION that you have to learn better, and practise it to get used.
It’s not like you are used to play D/Wh or staff that you are istantly good a scepter.

Both me and a my friend have the opposite experience for example… Could bè because we both are very used to play scepter in pvp (It help a lot) but is very rare to get out dpssed from other classes/build in bosses encounter that we are very confident (VG/gorseval/sabetha/slothasor)
The only time I was 10k behind another ele was in keep construct when I tried S/Wh without impact sigil

No, I meant 10k+ damage.
I was hitting the golem for ~5k per Phoenix hit on full ascended armor with all buffs on and using an exotic berserker Scepter with no sigils.
With 11 hits, that equates to around 55k damage per Phoenix (more, since I would very often get one hit that would do 13k+).
If you mess up your phoenix placement even a little you will get 9 hits, which is about 45k damage.
That’s a pretty big difference.

This is why the rotation is hard (also landing Wildfires so they hit twice on top of that) I think.
Speed is generally a problem for people, but Sc/Wh brings positioning and placement into the mix and it seems like it’s pretty finicky.

I don’t have any concrete evidence and I don’t really play Sc/Wh when I raid (I don’t even have a proper scepter ready…), but again, in my experience, I out-DPS Scepter Tempests by a considerable margin, most notably on bosses where mechanics don’t really get in the way of DPS if everything goes well (KC, Gors No Updraft).

I will practice my Scepter/Warhorn rotations soon and take it into raids and compare results later on (much later, since I have exams and projects to finish up), but I have a hunch that Sc/Wh’s rotation is too specific to reliably pull off in a real raid compared to D/Wh or Staff. Maybe someone with more experience can shed some light. It’s entirely possible that the Scepter Tempests I’ve seen messed up or were bad or some other reason.

lucadiro.4519:

TkMan.9638:

The scepter wh rotation is cancer. It kills all fun i have. I do basically the same rotation on d/wh and get 30k dps (which i would love for it to be higher) the only difference is the placement of phoenix and the filler with auto attacks. I’ve been practicing this crap and burning my buttons to get 27-29k dps from scepter wh. . . and this is on a golem, god forbid i do this on a raid boss.

You should try to play engie lol

He might be saying that due to Phoenix needing to be stupidly precise otherwise you easily lose 10k+ damage.

In my experience, I generally out-dps scepter/wh eles in raids by 4k+ when I use d/wh or even Staff.
I don’t know if they’re bad, screwed up, or if the Phoenixes really need to be THAT precise to compete with the other weapons, to the point where it’s basically worthless.

Clownmug.8357:

Isn’t Diabolic Inferno just a weaker, more costly version of Ring of Fire? Even if you focused on burning, it seems to me like even elementalist and guardian have stronger condi builds.

They do.

Aury.1367:

xBlack.4897:

The real question is, why are you using a condition build for pve in first place ?

Maybe a Viper build is viable, but people then should know that PvE is all about dmg, so you go for dem burns.

From what I remember, Condi Rev is among one of the worst condi builds in the game for PvE.

Condi PS Warr has better support than Revenant as a whole and higher DPS.
Condi Engi/Ranger both have way higher DPS.
Even Condi Reaper has quite a lot more DPS, even ignoring chill fields.

Pulsating Pestilence assumes you have conditions on you to copy over which can be rare or you might not have the right conditions on you while Diabolic Inferno just needs you to use an elite and Mallyx’s happens to be one you want to be in for extra damage in PvE.

So, for PvE, take Diabolic Inferno (also, it has a 10s ICD, not 20s).

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.

I’m sorry, but get informed first.

“What unique buff does Warrior provide exactly? Condi Rev can spew out might via #2 and #3.”

Dude, seriously?
Condi PS Warr has Banner of Strength, Banner of Discipline, and Empower Allies and generates 20+ Might super easily and doesn’t rely so much on combo fields which can be overwritten.

What does your Rev bring? Assassin’s Presence. Pretty much the same DPS increase as Empower Allies, but the Warrior brings so much more, with better consistency AND higher DPS.

Don’t even talk about Condi Rev like it’s good. Show me a DPS rotation that is even comparable to any other DPS spec and I’ll retract my statement, but I really doubt you can.

You’re not helping anyone like this by essentially overselling the Rev on everything. You’re just spreading misinformation.

If a new player wants the truth:

Revenant is NOT wanted in raids. You will be more successful and invited into many more groups if you DO NOT play a Revenant.

You also clearly don’t understand what I meant by Rev being a detriment.
Lets say group A is a normal raid group and group B is exactly the same but uses a Revenant. Neither group is that good; they’re just trying to kill the boss.
Now lets say that group A takes 7 minutes and 30 seconds to kill a boss and group B takes 8 minutes and hits the enrage timer, greatly risking a wipe.
Which group would you prefer to be in? It’s only a 30 second difference after all.
When there’s a clearly superior option readily available, why pick the lesser one?
You are hurting your team.

Maybe your group is good enough that it doesn’t matter, but I personally think everyone should be bringing their best unless they’re just going in with different stuff for fun with their guildies.

With that said, I’m not going to respond to Its Nerfing Time again. It’s more like a waste of time…

Its Nerfing Time.1495:

Burden of proof, you have to prove yourself right rather than us you wrong. So far, you haven’t done that. So far all you’ve done is show the “meta must do as I say” style.

Oh god, dude. I’m not saying you have to run meta, I’m saying that if you want to contribute as much as you can and want your best chances of beating the raids, you will NOT end up with a Revenant in most cases. Also, you’re the one trying to “debunk” the popular opinion on Revenant, so the burden of proof is on you.

Its Nerfing Time.1495:

PS Warrior – Warrior can focus less on Banners with a Rev and more on DPS. CC Rev has better CC with Staff, Elite and Hammer, and can raise crit via Assassins Presence

You can’t do that though. You still want banners even if there’s a Rev around.
In fact, it’s better now than it was before to run 2x PS Warrior because they can both just bring 1 banner each and take a different utility skill.
Not to mention that a Condi PS already out-classes Revenant DPS, but also brings more Might to the team (and the unique buffs that overshadow Rev’s by a landslide).
Also, Rev swapping to Staff is a considerable DPS loss. It’s not like Headbutt is bad CC either and with the Banner change they can swap in Wild Blow if they need more CC (about 600 break bar damage total without losing much DPS).

Its Nerfing Time.1495:

Fury can be stacked by multiple classes, but Rev can allow for others to not have to worry about it and again, focus on DPS

Druid doesn’t lose much by taking Tiger and a Chrono is already going to spread it around. Fury is already crazy easy to keep up without a Revenant.

Its Nerfing Time.1495:

Protection and healing – Rev can handle it in one, rather than splitting it out into two classes (Guardian and Druid) and for a bonus now provide Alacrity (it’s not great and I honestly thought that was a pretty dumb decision, but hey Anets ability to balance properly leaves much to be desired)

The Druids already give decent Protection uptime and already heal while providing other unique buffs.
If you want more and also don’t want the Druid to run Stone Spirit, a Hammer DH has better DPS and also gives permanent Protection.
I will say that a healing Rev pumping out perma-Protection with huge heals is pretty nice, but I’ll mention that it’s mostly not necessary.

Its Nerfing Time.1495:

Power and Condi – Rev can deal good damage on both, and you absolutely should not write off the condi of a Rev. Burning and Torment can work nice together, very nice. You’d be surprised how fast it can rip through things when properly built, like anything else in the game.

Power Rev gets out-damaged by literally every class except Necro.
Condi Rev relies mostly on Torment which is awful in most cases and still unreliable in the bosses that move around the most.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Condi Rev even come close to rivaling any other condi DPS build.

Its Nerfing Time.1495:

The Rev does nothing badly, it does multiple things well – provided you know what you’re doing. It certainly is not a detriment ever to any content, which if you are unable to prove (which you currently aren’t) then your claim is bunk. If you base this solely on “what’s meta” then I’ll stop you right there – the meta is simply speed clearing, and speed clearing is not 100% bible. Game is not built around speed clears and meta builds. The meta also changes over time.

It does all of those jobs worse than other classes. If there were only 5 slots in raids, I might agree with you, but there are 10. There’s enough space to cover everything without the mediocre DPS the Revenant brings.
You are, by definition, a detriment to the team when you pick a Revenant in most cases because in those cases, your team was almost always better off with something else (i.e. you specifically took something that was a worse option; it harmed your run more than it helped).

I don’t care if you want to go against the meta; use whatever, but don’t claim that Revenant is wanted and don’t claim that it’s unwanted because people are bad. The class is just overshadowed in almost every aspect.

Its Nerfing Time.1495:

Being “that guy who is less useful because Rev” means they don’t know what they’re doing on Rev.

I see people act like this in a lot of games. Just because you use a worse option doesn’t mean you know better or that others just don’t know what they’re doing. It generally means it’s simply a worse option that you enjoy using, but can’t accept. It simply MUST be that everyone else sucks, right?

Its Nerfing Time.1495:

So other than the above, what reason can you come up with why you think Rev shouldn’t be in the group?

Simple.

Want Might? Take a PS Warrior. It has better DPS, better Might, it has Banners, Empower Allies, and it still has good CC.

Want Fury? Druid covers it alongside Mesmer.

Want Protection? Druid can bring some and Hammer Guard is higher DPS with perma-protection.

Want Healing? You don’t really need the extra healing that Ventari brings, but the buffs that a Druid brings are ridiculously good.

Want Alacrity? Don’t even bother with Ventari; just take a Chrono that also supplies Quickness.

Want Power Damage? Every other class aside from Necro deals more.

Want Condi damage? Don’t even bother with Revenant.

Next you’ll say that Revenant does a lot of things so therefore it’s good, but I’ll argue that there’s literally no reason for it because I’d rather have a class that does its job well instead of one class that does a lot of jobs badly.

In essence, you ARE a detriment to your team in most cases. Why take that Rev over anything else? There’s no reason. You’re almost always better off just taking the class the Rev is trying to replace anyway. This isn’t even about “speed run” tactics, it’s just about completing it. If my goal is to complete the raid (let alone get into the raid as most people wont accept a Revenant to begin with), I have better chances with something that’s proven to work very well than something that has proven to be sub-par at almost every job.

Tell me, why should you take a Revenant over anything else? Aside from kiting the hands on Deimos, I don’t see much of a reason except that you just want to have fun.
Can Revenant complete it? Of course, but you can also 4-man Gorseval. That doesn’t mean it’s the optimal strategy. Do I need to be optimal? Technically not, but I don’t want to be “that guy” that is being less useful that I can be just so I can use a Revenant.

Also, you guys haven’t really proven me wrong. Revenant IS unwanted. I never said it’s unviable.

Its Nerfing Time.1495:

Malchior.5732:

Dinsy.2491:

Been mainly Rev since HoT came out, played warrior/guardian and ele before but can’t go back to them for long. I don’t pvp so idk how it is there but rev is fine everywhere else. There’s a lot of room for improvement but all this drama recently like the “deleted rev today” thread all seems blown well out of proportion.

Rev is not fine everywhere else. It’s almost completely unwanted in raids.

Just because a class is “almost completely unwanted” in raids does not mean it’s not fine. To correct your statement, it’s “almost completely unwanted when running 100% QT bible meta runs”. Revs can do perfectly well in raids (I’ve used mine with 0 issues) if your party isn’t looking to be meta and speedclear.

I’d agree with the first guy, it’s definitely blown out of proportion.

To correct your statement, it’s almost completely unnecessary to ever use a Revenant in raids. Using one is usually a detriment to the group. Can you complete it? Sure, but you’re almost assuredly gimping the group. You’re also making it harder on yourself to get into a squad as most people don’t even want them.

That’s not fine at all. Revenant doesn’t bring anything to the table that isn’t covered better by other classes.

Dinsy.2491:

Been mainly Rev since HoT came out, played warrior/guardian and ele before but can’t go back to them for long. I don’t pvp so idk how it is there but rev is fine everywhere else. There’s a lot of room for improvement but all this drama recently like the “deleted rev today” thread all seems blown well out of proportion.

Rev is not fine everywhere else. It’s almost completely unwanted in raids.

Mace/Axe
Mace is actually a pretty good weapon and most of its issues could be solved if other issues were resolved first.
Of those, Axe is one of them. It simply is not good as a condition weapon. It’s just good for utility. One change I think would help is to make it so Axe 5 leaves behind a field that pulses extra Torment, making it a little better at applying conditions.

Mallyx
I’m quite sad about the current state of this stance. It was the stance that originally made me love the Revenant so much, but it doesn’t feel very good to play anymore in my opinion.
I would love to see Mallyx reworked, but I admit that I don’t know what would be the best solution. Here’s one idea I’ve had, however:

Now, your “main” damage source for damage in Mallyx is the elite. The other skills are mostly for utility.
Empowering Misery, Pain Absorption, and Banish Enchantment stay the same.
Unyielding Anguish competes too much with Embrace the Darkness, so I believe it should be changed into a CC where it will work as it does now, but it will pull all enemies in a 450 radius and then pulse some Chills with no Torment, but it would pulse decent power damage; turning this into the main Power damage skill in the stance. This gives Mallyx an extra CC skill and some added reach/mob control and gives you more of a reason to take the stance in non-condi builds.

This also helps out EtD, which will now become the main damage portion of the stance. One idea was for it to apply an additional stack of a condition you apply (the Torment pulse would be reduced, however).
This would be extremely strong if it just let you double-up on all your conditions, so they would have a much smaller duration, but it would drastically increase your condi burst while EtD was active.

Another idea was to have it apply a “demon” stack whenever you apply Torment (and it also pulses Torment), which would be sorta like the Reaper’s original Deathly Chill.
It shouldn’t be that insanely strong per stack, but would be a good chunk of extra damage.

The important part is that Mallyx should be a DPS increase!

Corruption
This line…is a mess.
Lets just start with basics and say that top line should be about sustain and defense, middle line should be power, and bottom line should be conditions.

Replenishing Despair is now a trait that makes it so Mallyx skills that do power damage will also siphon some health.
Venom Enhancement will have its ICD halved.

Bolstered Anguish will make it so you take reduced damage from conditions and their duration is reduced by a small amount.
Frigid Precision will make Critical hits apply Chill as it does, but will also increase your Precision by a small amount on targets with Torment.
Yearning Empowerment will now make it so that targets that stand still take extra damage from Torment (maybe not full, but quite a bit more).

Maniacal Persistence is now the top trait and makes it so conditions on you have reduced duration and you ignore movement-impairing conditions while EtD is active.
Diabolic Inferno remains the same.
Pulsating Pestilence will make it so EtD also pulses some Poison.

Well, those are ideas so far. I will write up the rest tomorrow maybe. Tell me what you think. Some stuff may seem overpowered or underpowered (many of these changes will require damage to be shaved from other areas, for example), but I think the most important thing is this:

tl;dr Shiro and Mallyx should be the DPS legends. If you want damage, you take them. Ideally, in my opinion, if you want max damage and barely any group support, you go Shiro/Mallyx.
From there, you could go Shiro or Mallyx/Glint for extra boon support at the cost of DPS if the team needs it or you could go Jalis over Glint if the team needs more CC and extra survivability or you go Ventari for a healing focus with some defensive utility.
What I want is for Revenant to be able to actually “swap roles” when needed.
For that to work, it needs a solid core to work from, I believe. Anyway, give me your thoughts.

So let me start this off by saying that I’m kinda just tired, a little bored even, and I’m also kinda sad with the current state of Revenant. I really love the idea of the class, but the execution has just left me no choice but no turn my beloved Revenant into a bank/farm character. I just find no fun in the class anymore.

However, I’m not going to endlessly whine about the class (I already do that enough in my guild’s chat), instead I’m going to just drop off some suggestions that I think would help the class tremendously. I wont necessarily type in “do this exactly this way”, but just some general fixes or ideas that I believe would be overall beneficial. I fully expect this to be ignored by the developers and even be buried in the forums, but I just want to type ideas, mostly for my own enjoyment. I’ll also mention that my changes are PvE focused. Sorry to the PvPers and WvW players, but I’m simply not informed enough into the current metas to make any suggestions for those modes.

With all that out of the way, lets begin with Shiro, the Devastation line, and Swords.

Sword/Sword
Now, a big problem with Sword is that it has no damage rotation really. Part of the dilemma is how the Revenant weapons work and how the off-hands are purely for utility and how the weapons also share energy.
So, for this part and the rest of my post(s), I will assume that weapons no longer consume energy, but have higher cooldowns and all utilities (except heals) have no cooldowns, but higher energy costs.

How can Sword be fixed up, assuming the changes mentioned?
For starters, make it so Sword 2 is actually reliable damage. Change it back to a single projectile and increase the damage times three. The current iteration is frustrating to use and loses damage by things that are difficult to control.

Second change is to Sword 3. Aside from making it an actual DPS increase, make it so it can focus a single target. It loses too much damage when multiple enemies appear. The entire theme for Sword should be “singling out targets”.

Sword 4 is fine. Sword 5 is technically not bad, but I personally don’t like its current iteration. Here’s my suggestion: make it a very quick dagger throw attack with decent damage, enough to be considered a small DPS increase, then if that attack lands you can activate a second skill which shadowsteps you towards the target and proceeds to activate the current Sword 5. Essentially, you will do some damage and then teleport to your target and pull them to your original location if you so wish.

Shiro Utilities
Overall, I don’t think Shiro utilities are in a bad spot. The biggest issue is the fact that Impossible Odds is worthless whenever you have a half-decent Chronomancer in your party.
What should be the Power DPS legend suddenly loses all merit. One simple way to “fix” this is by making it so IO also increases your damage by a certain amount, enough to justify its use alongside a Chronomancer.

Devastation
I’m mostly okay with the traits in this line. They do what you’d expect. There’s a lack of mobility in the line despite it being advertised, but I think damage is a more important focus.
I think the only changes I would like is for Vicious Lacerations, Nefarious Momentum, and Dismantle Fortifications getting a Condition focus for synergy with the Corruption trait line. Vicious Lacerations could make it so your auto-attacks have a chance to apply Bleeds, Nefarious Momentum could make it so Shiro utilities increase your Condition damage for a few seconds, and Dismantle Fortifications could increase condition damage done to enemies with a certain vulnerability threshold or something.
Just some ideas.

Cont. in next post.

Pay gold to get carried? That’s one of the worst positions for a class to be in lol.
Also, in NA, I frequently see 200g+ per boss which is crazy expensive.

Buran.3796:

@Malchior: when you say “PvE” you really mean “PvE raids” which are a niche mostly played by a minority (as PvP) and in which most of the matches are inside PvE guilds, which have no problems lining almost any team composition, because they are crushing raids playing 9, playing 8, 7… playing all exotics and carrying hard any hobo from their guild with 0 problems.

If a player has hard time entering in public raids as a Rev due the crapiness of the class He can easily fix it entering in a guild, because most of them are prone to help their own members no matter the class and race your main is.

Uhh, raids are actually pugged quite often and I can only think of a few guilds that are actually good enough to low-man them.

It’s also not “just simply join any raid guild” to play your garbage Rev. The average guild will expect 100% meta compositions and they might let you run Rev after you prove yourself, but you’re directly harming the group’s time in most cases when you do that.
Assuming you can join a guild that will even let you play non-meta in raids in the first place. Yes, some will help you, but not so you can stay on your trash class or so you can use your bad build, it’s so you can learn to play meta and actually contribute.

Have you tried to raid on a Revenant yourself? It’s not easy.
If you don’t raid with a guild, then you’re just gonna have to suck it up and basically never use it because most groups will just deny you or ask you to swap.

In PvP, you frequently see people getting to the higher ranks with Revenant at the very least and I hear that some organized groups do well with them.
Compare in PvE, where Revenant literally has no desired role except arguably on a single boss. It’s almost completely unwanted in the end-game.

Buran.3796:

Its Nerfing Time.1495:

It is a little tiring to constantly see comments like this from people who think that Herald is just good for a mule or “low level content”. I have all of the weapons, regularly use staff and see no DPS issues at all (I absolutely love the breakbar destruction #5 can do).

Most of the criticism about the current state of the Rev turns around how performs in PvP, not PvE.

In PvE you can solo most of the contest with any class, and if the class is a Rev you can soloing using sword #1 ~90% of the time (that includes a few champions).

There’s still certain problems in PvE (i.e.: conditions, due condi Rev is mainly a mele fighter with torment as main source of damage, which means that you must either stay close to the target to stack condis and do half of damage or fight at range which means no condition stacks at all). But PvE isn’t problematic because as was said PvE is easy, “facerrolling your keyboard” content.

Actually no, most of Revenant’s problems are in PvE. It’s completely outclassed in every single role in raids except MAYBE kiting the last boss in wing 4.

Zenith.7301:

Burtnik.5218:

Zenith.7301:

Malchior.5732:

Zenith.7301:

Revenant’s problems are in PvE and spvp, not WvW.

Yea, okay, I don’t really play WvW so I’ll take your word for it I mean you must know what you’re talking about…

Zenith.7301:

If you’re using hammer for roaming you’re doing it wrong anyways. And revenant shouldn’t be roaming after the nerfs made shiro and rev heals all but useless.

But you said Revenant was strong in WvW!
I think roaming is a part of that, no? Arguably the only fun part for a lot of people.

I know what you meant, but if Revenant is only good in blob vs blob, then I think the class does suffer in WvW to some extent.

Roaming in WvW is about as important as duels are in spvp. Fun for some people, but not the objective of the game format.

The match ups are won by zergs taking up and defending objectives. Roamers have a marginal impact on that on any highly populated and active server.

Blob vs blob is just <yawns>. Pretty much anything can be viable there. Grab guardian with lootstick and enjoy your loot.I actually played ranger in blobs and the only useless thing i had going for me there was pets who died right of the bat. Lb is stll useful due to its insane range and solid dps from far range, trait for pierce and there ya go. Also dem sweet mauls.

..Then again if you wanna talk about ranged weapons dragonhunter says hi with his bow that provides far more than rev will ever do in current state.

My point is simple – ranger longbow has amazing synergy within it kit, only 5 feels out of place. What kind of synergy hammer has going on apart from being a cor bot? Its just a bunch of random skills tossed on one weapon.

And roamers are far more important than you think. While your blob is busy at w/e you do, a group of 5 roamers is taking your t3 tower. You also needs camps to upgrade stuff, get supplies and what not, going to camp with whole blob is a waste of time. If anything you only show the problem with rev – hes worthless outside of zerg open pve zones/wvw blobs and that is definitely not acceptable state.

If i was all about blob stuff i would roll necro/ele.

Dragonhunters don’t use bow in zergs lol, because the zerg guardian build doesn’t even use dragonhunter specialization.

And if you think you only run a single blob in a map, you aren’t playing on a high tier server. There are more than enough blobs to cover several objectives in a map.

He didn’t say DH uses LB in zergs, he said DH LB is better than Revenant Hammer and I agree.
The former is useful in way more content than the latter.

And the high-tier server stuff is a big problem with WvW. You can’t even say that Revenant is amazing in WvW because it depends on how active your server is, which for a lot of them, they’re not even remotely competitive enough to matter.

So if Revenant is bad at roaming and is only good in zergs, but having actually meaningful zerg v zerg fights depends on servers then that limits Revenant’s usefulness even more IMO.

So, in conclusion, Revenant is:
- Extremely niche in PvE (it can help bad groups out, but bad groups will never admit to being bad and needing the Revenant and good groups don’t need it at all)
- Usable in sPvP, needs a lot of extra work to be good
- Bad at roaming in WvW
- Very good in Zerg vs Zerg

So, OP should just go with Ranger unless they find Revenant fun somehow.

Zenith.7301:

Revenant’s problems are in PvE and spvp, not WvW.

Yea, okay, I don’t really play WvW so I’ll take your word for it I mean you must know what you’re talking about…

Zenith.7301:

If you’re using hammer for roaming you’re doing it wrong anyways. And revenant shouldn’t be roaming after the nerfs made shiro and rev heals all but useless.

But you said Revenant was strong in WvW!
I think roaming is a part of that, no? Arguably the only fun part for a lot of people.

I know what you meant, but if Revenant is only good in blob vs blob, then I think the class does suffer in WvW to some extent.

Rangerdeity.5847:

Zenith.7301:

Rangerdeity.5847:

Justine.6351:

I came from druid to Herald because hammer damage is hilarious in comparison to rangers longbow. But maybe that isn’t your cup of tea?

https://youtu.be/iCd3jw2ovI4

well this is a problem with rangers long bow it has been nerfed into the ground. i mean honestly its big nasty almighty 5 is an aoe cripple with kitten tier damage. i mean it should be a weaker version of meteor storm but nah its just an aoe cripple with a long cast time and moderate to long CD.

You also forgot the part where the ranger loses half his HP to retaliation from Barrage while the people he cast Barrage on barely lose 20% of their health at best.

Shhhhhh ranger is amazing what are you talking about their signature weapons are amazing and undeniable. now put that axe away you kitten.

tfw you realize warriors guardians and thief all have better bow skills than ranger.

- Ranger:
a member of a body of armed men, in particular.

Seems fine to me. The bow is a classic, but it’s not really what defines a ranger if we use the definition.
Also, Ranger has the most wanted healer build and one of the best condi builds in the game right now (with a really easy rotation). I think it’s fine that they don’t have the best ranged weapon in terms of DPS even if it’s iconic.

maddoctor.2738:

Malchior.5732:

That’s with all buffs and utilizing combo fields.

condi Rangers also require tons of combo fields to do their dps. Their group support is nearly non-existent too.

I’m not saying it’s the best dps but it’s not garbage as some people say it is.

Condi rangers have better DPS, so why take a necro then? You either have good DPS or group support (like condi PS Warrior only pushing like 26k but bringing 20+ Might for five people).

maddoctor.2738:

Necro dps 30.6k DPS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xGFf92ZzS0

It’s not so bad.

That’s with all buffs and utilizing combo fields.
It’s going to be considerably lower in a real fight and it will offer pretty low group support.

Problem is that necro has meh dps and doesn’t help the team out very much. It does have some niches with transfusion for groups that aren’t so good and it has epidemic for trash mobs during certain fights.

Revenant can be fun to play around with IMO. It was some problems with build diversity and some trait lines can feel either too focused or too unfocused. There’s also very clear weaknesses to conditions, crowd control and/or ranged enemies.
It also seems very forced into the elite spec.

On the PvE side of things, it’s kinda middle of the road. It doesn’t excel at anything so it’s not really asked for much content, but it’s also pretty versatile.
It has decent DPS, it can heal, it can tank, it can support, but doesn’t do any job better than any other class.

BlooDyliCious.5824:

What’s wrong with 100% alacrity uptime on a ventari rev? You lose tons of damage using it, so instead you will turn in a healer like a druid, but instead of GotL you have alacrity. I can’t see any problem with it really, instead of 2 chrono and 2 druids, you can remove 1 chrono and 1 druid and instead take a ventari rev. Opens up a spot for another class.

It doesn’t in actuality though.
Dropping 1 chrono also drops quickness uptime.
Dropping 1 Druid drops the amount of GotL stacks you’ll have (you need 2 to maintain 5 on the entire squad), and you also lose Spotter and Spirits for 5 people.

You could run a Rev instead of those classes, but for the average team, it’s probably not worth it , let alone pugs with all the awful chronos and druids (maybe not even for the optimal teams either).

The one to Rule.2593:

It won’t be used over a Mesmer in high end content. Ever. People will stick to mirror comp it seems…sigh…

It was never going to replace Mesmer; Quickness is too good.
It will never replace Druid either because GotL, Spotter, and Spirits are too good.

Ventari Revenant is kinda in the middle.

BrotherBelial.3094:

Malchior.5732:

BrotherBelial.3094:

Lol. If you need a DPS meter to play GW2, then you are doing something wrong. Anyone who needs this “tool” to raid should probably just unintelligible the game if they need a program to tell them they are doing a good job.

DPS meters will be abused. People will come to the forum crying because they got kicked from a group because someone said they where not doing enough DPS.

This will not end well. But then I don’t raid or do T4’s so I’ll never have this problem.

So if you don’t raid or do T4s, why even join a conversation that’s heavily correlated to raiding? I personally like to know if I’m falling behind on DPS and I need to try harder on the next run. It’s also interesting to know how much your DPS drops when doing mechanics versus when you practice on the test golem.

aceboogie.4031:

a group should be given a chance, dps should be where it be so long as people know the mechanics, and know the mechanics very well. a dps tool will show who is inexperienced. and people shouldn’t take offense to that, they should ask for help. 90% of us vets will help if someone JUST ASKS.

Just yesterday during a Sabetha run, our commander notices that our DH was doing just a little poorly on DPS despite not doing cannons. He told him that he’s a bit low and to watch a quick rotation video while we looked for a new PS Warrior. The DH didn’t get offended, he just did exactly that, changed up his build a little and tried the rotation and did about 5k more DPS on the boss.

Nobody should be hating on DPS meters just because some people are toxic with them; the same people that are arguably toxic with anything else (they’re just looking for excuses to cover themselves or are angry and feel the need to blame someone).

I’ll say it again: the problem is not DPS meters, it’s pugs.
Furthermore, I don’t see a problem with a group requiring DPS meters.
If you’re raiding often, it’s nothing but a benefit to you if you care at all about improving. If you don’t want to run a DPS meter for whatever reason, then don’t. There are plenty of groups that don’t ask for them.
It’s the same thing with LI or anything else in the LFG (and it was the same with AP for dungeons way back…) ; some groups ask for them and some don’t.

It’s simple why I’m talking about this. If you can’t tell you’ve messed up your rotation, then you are not paying attention. This is not Wow where you can have over 20 skills to think about using. You have 10. That’s it. 10 skills to use at the right order and remember to dodge. Why on gods green earth do you need a 3rd party program to know you messed up? You don’t really. People want DPS meters to point fingers. That’s all they are good for in GW2. Once you know your class and know the rotations, nothing changes. As long as your constant with your skill activations you can’t go wrong.

If for what ever reason you do mess up. You will know it. You really don’t need a DPS meter to tell you that unless you like to lie to your self.

Ok, I can see that you don’t truly understand how easy it is to mess up your rotation.

10 skills, huh? Tell that to Elementalist (at least 13 unique skills in the standard Staff rotation that need to be used precisely, and many more situational skills).

Now, practice your rotation hard until you no longer mess up, don’t stay in one element for a second longer than you need to, don’t miss any AoEs because you’re rushing yourself, don’t use the wrong skills, and never stop moving so you don’t lose Seaweed Salad buff.

Now do it during an actual fight and while handling mechanics.
Then, realize what all your other skills can do and learn when it’s correct to apply them during encounters and when it’s not.

Done? Now practice FA Staff rotation and D/W rotation and when it’s appropriate to use them.

There are simpler classes, but even one as simple as Staff Daredevil can be infuriatingly difficult to do in a real fight (with only Auto-attack, Staff 2, Dodge attack, and a single utility…).

The reality is that I didn’t know how bad I actually was until I got the DPS meter and saw for myself. I’m still not perfect, but I try way harder BECAUSE I know I need to improve. Yea, it’s easy to know to mess up if you just start dropping AoEs in the wrong spot. It’s not easy to know you messed up because you swapped a second later than you were supposed to and missed 10% damage on several hits (this is especially important on DPS checks like Gorseval No Updraft, because you can’t slack off due to pugs that might not know their own rotations).

I’ll finish off by saying this: the only people pointing fingers are the anti-meter people and the occasional pug who doesn’t even understand what their doing (i.e. random person who will always be toxic, whether with a meter or with LI/AP or anything else).

BrotherBelial.3094:

Lol. If you need a DPS meter to play GW2, then you are doing something wrong. Anyone who needs this “tool” to raid should probably just unintelligible the game if they need a program to tell them they are doing a good job.

DPS meters will be abused. People will come to the forum crying because they got kicked from a group because someone said they where not doing enough DPS.

This will not end well. But then I don’t raid or do T4’s so I’ll never have this problem.

So if you don’t raid or do T4s, why even join a conversation that’s heavily correlated to raiding? I personally like to know if I’m falling behind on DPS and I need to try harder on the next run. It’s also interesting to know how much your DPS drops when doing mechanics versus when you practice on the test golem.

aceboogie.4031:

a group should be given a chance, dps should be where it be so long as people know the mechanics, and know the mechanics very well. a dps tool will show who is inexperienced. and people shouldn’t take offense to that, they should ask for help. 90% of us vets will help if someone JUST ASKS.

Just yesterday during a Sabetha run, our commander notices that our DH was doing just a little poorly on DPS despite not doing cannons. He told him that he’s a bit low and to watch a quick rotation video while we looked for a new PS Warrior. The DH didn’t get offended, he just did exactly that, changed up his build a little and tried the rotation and did about 5k more DPS on the boss.

Nobody should be hating on DPS meters just because some people are toxic with them; the same people that are arguably toxic with anything else (they’re just looking for excuses to cover themselves or are angry and feel the need to blame someone).

I’ll say it again: the problem is not DPS meters, it’s pugs.
Furthermore, I don’t see a problem with a group requiring DPS meters.
If you’re raiding often, it’s nothing but a benefit to you if you care at all about improving. If you don’t want to run a DPS meter for whatever reason, then don’t. There are plenty of groups that don’t ask for them.
It’s the same thing with LI or anything else in the LFG (and it was the same with AP for dungeons way back…) ; some groups ask for them and some don’t.

Mitch.4781:

Actually I have seen it a few times. Moreover, it’s not necessarily a bad thing mainly because if you are relying on one team member to give you that information, you’re really relying on them to tell the truth. Also, pending on which meter you use, the figures can be wildly off. For example, the other night I was raiding on my PS. One guy started complaining that my dps was less than that of the chrono whereas another person disputed it and said I was actually 3rd highest dps in the group.

So sadly if you want the full truth and these meters are going to be used more and more, it is beneficial to use them yourself. You simply cannot rely on other people, especially in a pug, to give you the true data.

While I find dps meters useful, I knew there would be a big downside to using them and this happens in every mmo that allows them. I’m starting to think ANET is better off blanket banning them all.

I’ll argue that this kind of problem would happen regardless of the DPS meter. I’ve seen bad commanders that immediately blame the wrong person just because they were the last person to join or seem like the newest, even though it’s some other guy messing up constantly. There’s also the pug commanders that think they know the best rotations and strats, but end up giving bad info (for example, just a while ago, this guy gave me an awkward cannon rotation for Sabetha, different from the standard, which would cause issues with the debuff the further we went and just continuously blamed us all for missing cannons).

The problem isn’t DPS meters, it’s pugs.

draxynnic.3719:

And, to be honest, even from a casual PvE viewpoint, I found that over time all of the build options start to get a bit dreary once the novelty wears off. YMMV, though: ‘dreary’ is an entirely subjective viewpoint, and I might well change my mind if I shift to condi-oriented equipment that can make better use of the condition-oriented weapons and legend.

And from a less casual PvE viewpoint, there’s no good reason to bring a Revenant to any content(given the option between it and another class) because there’s nothing they excel at.

In theory, a Herald is a good addition because of Perma Protection and giving the Druid/Chrono/PS Warr a little leeway when making mistakes in raids.
In reality, good teams don’t need them and bad teams will never admit to needing them.

You can play a Condi build, but it’s mostly just for fun because it has one of the lowest DPS of any condi build in the game. Some people are advocating for a Revenant to kite one of the new raid bosses, so maybe that will be Rev’s new PvE home for a bit, but we’ll see.

Buran.3796:

In most of times using Precission Strike or Unrelenting Assault means losing dps.

But that’s also really sad, because most of your weapon skills go unused in PvE because of that DPS loss.

Stand The Wall.6987:

ye now this class is no longer faceroll and all the bads have to learn how to play it right instead of 1 brain dead rotation.

The class is straight-up not wanted in raids, has a pretty unusable condi build and has no build diversity.
How do we fix this? Can you show us how? I guess we are just bad

Kayte.5378:

Despite being completely irrelevant in all PVE content, and utter trash for end game, I still stick to it for one simple fact: It is far more fun than Power Shiro/Jalis/Glint.

And I still find it way less fun than the Beta version which I feel was way more flavorful. The current Mallyx feels like any other condi spam build, but weaker.

Sinchronia.3219:

I believe that ANet should re-think about condi Rev just because, until the last Rev nerf, power rev was amazing and noone cared about condi. After those nerf, I think that ANet should, at least, try to fix condi rev to give Rev players another way to play it.

I really don’t understand why I have a condi trait line and condi weapons/skills but I can’t play it because it isn’t good in every game mode.

IIRC, Condi Rev WAS meta in PvP for a while. It had permanent Stability with Retribution + Herald and could also have permanent or near-permanent Resistance with certain Runes. That was promptly nerfed of course, but Condi Rev didn’t really receive anything afterwards to help out the loss. A few changes here and there that ultimately didn’t do much (like Pulsating Pestilence, which used to only spread a SINGLE stack of Torment for months after the initial Mallyx elite change).

Anyway, yea, Anet should definitely rethink Condi Rev. Right now it’s pretty unusable in PvE and only a handful of people claim that it’s usable in PvP.
One idea would be to give Mallyx an entirely new system. Like taking a certain GM would give him “demon” stacks when using Mallyx skills which have a self-DoT, but you could spread them around with the elite which could transform each stack into a damaging condition when placed on enemies. I don’t know, something fun and in-theme while increasing the Condi DPS would be nice (if Mallyx Rev is going to self-harm and be pretty vulnerable, it should at least do a decent chunk of damage).

It’s been nearly a year, but I’ve finally come back to GW2 and now I need to join some guilds because I kinda got kicked out of the my old ones due to inactivity.
I’d like to join a raiding guild primarily. One that wont have a problem with a player that’s kinda still learning them (I beat VG and Gors before and got very close to beating Sabetha, but quit the game shortly after due to college and other things). In particular, the 2nd and 3rd wings, since I haven’t even touched them. I’ve seen videos so I know what to expect, but of course wont know every detail until I attempt them.

I have a lvl 80 Tempest, lvl 80 Herald, , lvl 80 Reaper, lvl 80 Daredevil and a lvl 80 Engi (not Scrapper). The Herald has full ascended gear, others have full exotics with ascended trinkets.
I barely play the Tempest so I’d have to learn a rotation, but I could do it if needed.
I would much rather play the daredevil if possible and I’m on my way to finishing up ascended gear for him too.

My friend is kinda in the same boat (he has a Reaper and a Chrono and has done the same amount of raiding as me), so it’d be cool if he could also join.

Buran.3796:

Malchior.5732:

Rev? Why Rev? I thought it started to be dropped from the raid meta? On top of that, I’ve already said why I’m moving away from Rev. The class barely gets anything other than nerfs, which many times were justified, but then like 60% of the class is still unusable or flavorless with very little build diversity.

Is true that lacks build diversity (condition Mallyx is arguably weaker than the power build, so you are almost forced to use Herald with Glint + Shiro) en even flexibility (no utilities to rearrange), and that currently is a high risk – low reward class, but what I’m starting to appreciate from Rev is how high the skill ceiling is.

Sure, doesn’t allow a single mistake, and playing without stability, almost no condition cleanses and barely a few breakstuns turns Rev into a very hard class to master… But learning Him makes you a better player, and in the right hands is a beast, specially in duels/roaming/pvp. Plus, since the HoT release Rev had so many nerfs and still retains so many bugs that I think that probably can only go better…

I see your point, but, no offense, it boils down to: this class is legitimately broken in a bad way and takes a lot more work just to make it usable, hence it’s good to main. To me, it’s not worth the effort.

In PvP it might be more rewarding , but my focus is PvE and not only will I have trouble fitting into the average raid group, but I’m basically forced into a Power build with very little wiggle room and a terribly boring DPS rotation.
If I ever decide to play Condi, I would have to accept that I’d probably be outclassed by every other class in the game in terms of DPS, ignoring the issues I have with Mallyx having a rather boring design after BWE2.
I can forget about tanking or healing in any raid group.

Even when I tried theorycrafting builds before I quit, I ended up just going Power Glint/Shiro with Herald, Devastation, Invocation because it felt like the only build that worked.
Ventari was too clunky and way too specialized. Jalis was too costly and didn’t bring enough to justify using him outside of the elite. Mallyx lost his flavor and also has prohibitive energy costs.
Shiro kept getting nerfed. Glint was too good to drop in any build.

Unless I were to know that Revenant was going to receive some actual beneficial changes, I just wont be able to play it again. At least not for very long.

Buran.3796:

I would pick to stay with Rev from those, but between Guardian and Thief I would go Thief.

Thief is in a good place in terms of PvE damage and you can go either staff or dagger for fractals and raids; at the same time for WvW roaming is the class with better mobility and disengage tools, and you can chose to go either physical damage or conditions being equally succesfull.

I main a Guardian and the class pretty much demands a different set of gear in each department of the game, which makes it very expensive. From the heavy guys the Warrior is more easy to equip and more versatile in builds, imo.

Rev? Why Rev? I thought it started to be dropped from the raid meta? On top of that, I’ve already said why I’m moving away from Rev. The class barely gets anything other than nerfs, which many times were justified, but then like 60% of the class is still unusable or flavorless with very little build diversity.

Guardian being expensive is not an issue. I’ve been playing for years and I have several ways of gearing lvl 80s. Maybe not in ascended, but I can definitely do exotics very easily.

I don’t really find Warrior very interesting so I wont be picking that.

Thanks for the suggestions though.

So, I kinda stopped playing GW2 about the time when the 2nd legendary shortbow was announced due to some boredom and the fact that they announced that they weren’t going to finish up the missing legendaries until possibly much later.
I was a Revenant main and I guess that’s also part of the reason why I quit. The class felt very shoe-horned into Power/Boon Support and a lot of the flavor of the class was either changed drastically (Mallyx) or just wasn’t that usable/fun (Ventari/Dwarf).

Regardless, I feel like picking up the game again and I’m kinda glad to see that new maps and new fractals were added since then and the last raid wings released (I had a ton of fun doing the first wing; although I didn’t beat the last boss before I quit).
However, I still feel like Revenant isn’t the class that was sold to me and reading the recent patch notes kinda tells me that it wont change any time soon.

This makes me want to just pick a different main entirely and that’s where I want some help. I’m contemplating picking Thief or Guardian. I always found Thief’s Steal mechanic to be incredibly fun, but I don’t particularly like Staff as a weapon, so I’m kinda wondering what weapon sets/builds are the most used nowadays and if I could get by in PvE/WvW/Fractals/Raids without the Staff. I also need to add that my only legendary, the Incinerator, would be usable on Thief (I used to main Ele, but hated its direction and REALLY hated the Tempest release), so it’d be awesome to be able to use that again.

I’ve never actually played much Guardian, which is why I kinda wanted to pick it up, but I’m a bit afraid that it wont be as engaging as Thief. However, it’d be a fresher experience, I already have full Ascended Zojja’s made for it (from my Rev…RIP), aaand there’s that off-chance that a future Elite spec will focus on using Tomes (like the Elite skills that were removed way back) and I think that’d be really awesome.

tl;dr Basically, how are Thief/Guard currently? Are they suffering from any diversity issues? Are they wanted to Raids/Fractals? What roles can they do best or decently?
Which do you believe would be more engaging?

I also want to make clear: I don’t care about how good they are in PvP, nor do I care about anything they have being OP, broken, or anything of the sort. I’m more interested in fun factor and usability in PvE/Raids/etc. I will do some light roaming in WvW, but that will hardly be serious and mostly just to goof around.
Thanks for any help.

Azukas.1426:

Trepidation Lost.3469:

its ridiculous. thief can instantly get 6k distance using a few skills. but rev having a 1200 distance skill that didnt use 80% of the energy you start with was clearly too much for the ’legendary ’ assasin.

we are talking about burning 3 CDs of 60 secs, 30 secs, and 21 secs compared to a 1200 range 5 sec CD skill…..

Then again, using Phase Traversal (alongside almost any weapon skill) puts a pseudo-cooldown on ALL Revenant skills.

Also consider that Thief Shortbow 5 alone can cover 900 units several times with a single Initiative bar (which isn’t limited solely by time/swapping) and also has many more gap closers, like Steal, Heartseeker, Sword 2, etc.
Revenant can use Phase Traversal once upon swapping to Shiro and is then stuck.

Changes like these wouldn’t be so annoying if the rest of the class wasn’t so crippled.
Revenant is a little too good at its job in pvp, so apparently it’s fine to nerf and neuter it everywhere else and never fix any issues.

bigmonto.4215:

Malchior.5732:

bigmonto.4215:

Malchior.5732:

bigmonto.4215:

That I have to disagree. Right now PS takes skill to use. Yes vs Mes, Necro, or ranger is hard. But with the reduced range it’s possible to separate them (staff 5, or sword 5) from the adds to apply PS. I don’t want PS to be a no brainer button smasher.

I’ve been a long hiatus and will continue to not play GW2 for a long while, but I’m just coming here to say:

There is no skill in something you have such little control over. It’s not just “hard”, it’s literally impossible to separate targets sometimes. Sword 5 is unreliable and using it with Shiro’s Teleport just means you’re going to be out of energy quick. Staff 5 will only go so far (and also forcing Staff just to make your MH Sword skills usable in groups? Terrible design).

Sword CANNOT single-out targets. It just hopes there’s a single target and then can do good damage (in pvp). Notice, I’m not just talking about pets, clones, or minions, but also other players. You have very little control over this in a real fight, especially when you only have a rough estimate of its range.
By the way, does it still target random objects in the world? If so, that’s just one more thing that will randomly screw you over.

Dude you want everything !? Yes separating the targets is hard, but at a reduced range, it’s easier. Hence it is a buff in my book. But seriously even if you failed at separating the targets, what do you lose? You get at least 1 hit, skill going into a wapping 5 sec cooldown. That’s the end of the world for you? If you don’t even bother playing the game, stop complaining.

Did I say I wanted everything? No, of course not. I don’t think having a reliable skill is “wanting everything”.
What do you lose when you don’t separate targets? A BIG potential damage spike. We’re talking 2k – 4k damage here depending on your build. That can mean the difference between winning a team fight or getting overrun.

Second, I didn’t say it ruined the class or anything remotely close to “the end of the world”. It’s just a very big design flaw.

Third, even if I’m not currently playing, I think I’m allowed to complain about things like this that can severely affect a fight and can be out of a player’s control.
Yes, you can influence it, but there will be times where you just have to accept the loss of damage and these skills don’t do any kind of “singling out”. Again, they just hope the targets are already alone.

Lets take Thief, for example. Ignoring it’s current state in PvP or PvE or anything; I’m just talking purely about design: if a Thief wants to spike down a target at all costs, does he have to separate the Ranger’s pet (or other players or random objects) and make sure it’s exactly 45*1* units away from other targets before bursting him down? No, of course not, he just jumps in, backstabs, vault jumps or whatever he needs to do and gets out.

Is the 450 range a buff? Depends how you look at it.
Technically it just makes a “ranged” skill much worse, but it technically makes it easier to land on a single person.

In the grand scheme of things, both Precision Strike and Unrelenting Assault are very poorly designed for their “intended” roles. They’re borderline RNG skills as you’re not always certain what might become a target (or if the latter is going to break on terrain or not) or they might just blow someone up.

I’d prefer a much more reliable and controlled skill that doesn’t vary so much and I really don’t see how that’s a lot to ask of the Devs.

Once again if you play the game you will know that at 450 range, you don’t have to specifically push out an opponent in order to land all hits. Just the fact that people moving around in battle, they will often be separated by their adds or teammates by 450 range. This means you actually have to have spatial awareness when to use sword 2, alternatively you can create that distance by using your own skills like sword 5 or staff 5. Just like Thief need to be behind their opponent to gain maximum effectiveness. IMO, this encourages skilled play, and not just press a button whenever it’s off of cooldown.

At 600 range, this is almost impossible single out a target. So a huge buff in my book. As a Rev I am not going to engage in a ranged battle with a sword. So decrease range is no issue for me.

I don’t see how this makes my criticism any less valid.

bigmonto.4215:

Malchior.5732:

bigmonto.4215:

That I have to disagree. Right now PS takes skill to use. Yes vs Mes, Necro, or ranger is hard. But with the reduced range it’s possible to separate them (staff 5, or sword 5) from the adds to apply PS. I don’t want PS to be a no brainer button smasher.

I’ve been a long hiatus and will continue to not play GW2 for a long while, but I’m just coming here to say:

There is no skill in something you have such little control over. It’s not just “hard”, it’s literally impossible to separate targets sometimes. Sword 5 is unreliable and using it with Shiro’s Teleport just means you’re going to be out of energy quick. Staff 5 will only go so far (and also forcing Staff just to make your MH Sword skills usable in groups? Terrible design).

Sword CANNOT single-out targets. It just hopes there’s a single target and then can do good damage (in pvp). Notice, I’m not just talking about pets, clones, or minions, but also other players. You have very little control over this in a real fight, especially when you only have a rough estimate of its range.
By the way, does it still target random objects in the world? If so, that’s just one more thing that will randomly screw you over.

Dude you want everything !? Yes separating the targets is hard, but at a reduced range, it’s easier. Hence it is a buff in my book. But seriously even if you failed at separating the targets, what do you lose? You get at least 1 hit, skill going into a wapping 5 sec cooldown. That’s the end of the world for you? If you don’t even bother playing the game, stop complaining.

Did I say I wanted everything? No, of course not. I don’t think having a reliable skill is “wanting everything”.
What do you lose when you don’t separate targets? A BIG potential damage spike. We’re talking 2k – 4k damage here depending on your build. That can mean the difference between winning a team fight or getting overrun.

Second, I didn’t say it ruined the class or anything remotely close to “the end of the world”. It’s just a very big design flaw.

Third, even if I’m not currently playing, I think I’m allowed to complain about things like this that can severely affect a fight and can be out of a player’s control.
Yes, you can influence it, but there will be times where you just have to accept the loss of damage and these skills don’t do any kind of “singling out”. Again, they just hope the targets are already alone.

Lets take Thief, for example. Ignoring it’s current state in PvP or PvE or anything; I’m just talking purely about design: if a Thief wants to spike down a target at all costs, does he have to separate the Ranger’s pet (or other players or random objects) and make sure it’s exactly 45*1* units away from other targets before bursting him down? No, of course not, he just jumps in, backstabs, vault jumps or whatever he needs to do and gets out.

Is the 450 range a buff? Depends how you look at it.
Technically it just makes a “ranged” skill much worse, but it technically makes it easier to land on a single person.

In the grand scheme of things, both Precision Strike and Unrelenting Assault are very poorly designed for their “intended” roles. They’re borderline RNG skills as you’re not always certain what might become a target (or if the latter is going to break on terrain or not) or they might just blow someone up.

I’d prefer a much more reliable and controlled skill that doesn’t vary so much and I really don’t see how that’s a lot to ask of the Devs.

bigmonto.4215:

That I have to disagree. Right now PS takes skill to use. Yes vs Mes, Necro, or ranger is hard. But with the reduced range it’s possible to separate them (staff 5, or sword 5) from the adds to apply PS. I don’t want PS to be a no brainer button smasher.

I’ve been a long hiatus and will continue to not play GW2 for a long while, but I’m just coming here to say:

There is no skill in something you have such little control over. It’s not just “hard”, it’s literally impossible to separate targets sometimes. Sword 5 is unreliable and using it with Shiro’s Teleport just means you’re going to be out of energy quick. Staff 5 will only go so far (and also forcing Staff just to make your MH Sword skills usable in groups? Terrible design).

Sword CANNOT single-out targets. It just hopes there’s a single target and then can do good damage (in pvp). Notice, I’m not just talking about pets, clones, or minions, but also other players. You have very little control over this in a real fight, especially when you only have a rough estimate of its range.
By the way, does it still target random objects in the world? If so, that’s just one more thing that will randomly screw you over.

Turk.5460:

Malchior.5732:

DHawk.2687:

Malchior.5732:

DHawk.2687:

Burtnik.5218:

I dont have to when you even know your own class, in quote

“if you see the blind field, walk into it, making his heartseaker hit you reavealing him”.

At this point you cannot be taken serious, amber. Bai.

Ps. i dont play gw anymore

just shows you don’t have a clue what I’m talking about
a thief will heartseaker through the field multiple times
first time if he hits you he will yes stealth, but even then oftenly reveal himself because of automatic auto attack that some ppl have
and yes they will HS 2 or 3 times

….I’m sure a lot of Thieves turn off auto-attack for that very reason. We shouldn’t consider revealing themselves as the default situation because most good Thieves wont let it happen at all.
Now, they don’t HAVE to HS 2 or 3 times. If they know it’ll get them revealed, a single combo is enough to make some distance and then do it again.

I’m questioning your knowledge of Thief.

what is was saying was in the context of how to counter a thiefs stealth, not the way i play, but the way most thieves play, and most thieves are bad
I was counting up several situations where and how you can counter stealth because some ppl still act like it’s the most op thing in the game
which it’s not
try reading what the discussion is about first

We don’t consider garbage players when discussing things.
Try again.

The person he is arguing with seems to think stealth makes one invulnerable. Something about stealth blocking attacks. Even mentioning SR only having /slight/ counterplay… …… ….. …….. There aren’t enough dots to express how hard my eyes are rolling.

It’s a pseudo-invulnerability.
It doesn’t directly stop you from taking damage, but it REALLY helps you avoid it.
A good thief was/is hard to pin down and kill if they’re not limited to a small area (like Conquest).

All that being said, even a decent Thief wont stupidly reveal themselves with an Auto-Attack, so considering that at all is worthless.

Whitefang.4968:

i am a wvwer and playing revenent. taking away weapon swap will affect in a highly negative way, during zergs i use hammer to attack from far and swap to sword shield after getting close. furthermore i do alot solo runs where i run to 2 people groups whereby to win in the fight i need to have alot mobility, which is why i have energy sigil on sword and hammer so each swap gives me endurance, it keeps me alive. this is one of the worst idea ever i seen on this forum yet. think of other game modes rather than the only one you play.

Ironically, having weapon swap affected Revenant in ALL game modes. Some good, some bad.
Also, you can still easily activate your Energy Sigil even without Weapon swap.

Agemnon.4608:

Burtnik.5218:

Gimme greataxe, kids. And change sword offhand to dagger…………

No way I like offhand sword. Two swords just looks so cool.

IIRC Herald’s Shield was supposed to be a Dagger originally so you could have had both in an alternate universe.
I personally prefer Sword + Parrying Dagger though.