Guild Wars 2

Just split the game modes already, you will in the end limit both pve and pvp/wvw builds by keeping trait effects and skill effects the same throughout game modes, that way you can add stronger party support in PvE for classes that need it (Thief, Necro) and buff the PvP classes that are weak and not make them absurdly easy for PvE (Warrior). Edit: seems that Revenant is pigeonholed to a single build for all 3 game modes

The “changes” for both Mesmer and Revenant will hurt PvE builds way much more than PvP builds, the state of the game as a whole in terms of balance in PvP at least it’s a mess and that’s because the balance team refuses to separate game modes for balancing, if it wasn’t for that the game wouldn’t be in that war of attrition of “x class is usesless” as it always is, as far as Revenant goes you’ve just pigeonholed all of the builds to Shiro/Herald Power specs, the more time the game modes remain under the same effects the balancing will be harder, specially because you add a lot of traits and skills that are pretty weak in comparison to others.

I usually run just a zealot’s staff, the only problems I find on healing is because players expect the druid to heal them all when half the raid is scattered all around, the offensive buffs are insane, a friend that runs daredevil was frustrated because he could just hit 34k vaults, with the GotL,Glyph, Spotter, 25 vuln, 25 might, banners and food he achieved 43k vaults. I feel that if I ever need more healing then Ill just run zealot shoulders and gloves, IMO healing shouldn’t be a problem in raids given that the group is coordinated and know the fight mechanics, most of the problems people have in raids are that they don’t use cc fast enough on break bars and mechanics are played wrong or way too slow.
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAsXWn0rCtqgFsC2sCEtil9ADOueX3rL3uAwojZgFwGBp8swMVE-TxRBABWcKAua/R53paCwTPAAPBAKV/xMlgkCwv9WA-e

I also might add that Valk Druid eats Viper Revenants alive, let’s not start with Marauder revenants

I guess since this is a Feedback thread and I don’t really have much time to write an extensive review of the expansion I’ll leave my overall feedback here.

First off I’d like to say the expansion did surpass my expectatives however I still think it is not enough content to justify the price tag.

The good:
• Maps are great, a ton of stuff can be done I like the way they’re set up, and some WP’s near big events are sorely needed, still I think that 2 or 3 extra WPS per map wouldn’t hurt
• Gliding is quite responsive, so far gliding and bouncing mushrooms have been really helpful
• Mobs have slightly better UI
• Bosses are not as easy as they were before
• Meta events are everywhere in the open world PvE
• Borderlands seem interesting
• Stronghold is something I really liked because it reminds me of GW GvG/FA/JQ maps
• While I really don’t enjoy scavenger hunt the collections seem nice
• Changes to Fractals were nice
• Personal Story Missions are neat
The bad:
• Masteries take longer than I expected to unlock, especially because you’re depend and on meta events (to unlock adventures, challenges)
• The 400 Hero points on Elite Specialization IMO is an overkill, especially for Revenant since Glint is the most useful out of all the trait lines, and let’s not go into the alts.
• The Dungeon reward nerf IMO was unnecessary
• Anet says they don’t want deserted maps: so far the better source for meta events and adventures seems to be Auric Basin.
• New stats are rather unnecessary, we already had 26 different stat combinations in armor, at most 6 of those are actually viable and 2 are extensively used (Sinister and Zerker), why add more when there’s room to change existing ones?
• Meta event activation time is slow, experience is kind of low and maps seem empty.
• The PvP Hero unlocks and amulets are quite expensive, especially for people who just do PvP
• The mobs in the jungle DO NOT need nerfs, people need to get better in personal skill and coordination, however after even 3 years the playerbase hasn’t got the idea that the game is action based, not passive stat based and that’s why the predominant meta is in damage gear with the current changes to conditions… you have enough defenses with coordination, animation tellatels, boss effects/phases AND boons – conditions – control YOU REALLY NEED TO MAKE THIS SHOW AND LEARNT IN BATTLES IN A MUCH CLEARER WAY. And a dev’sclaim on gutting the berserker meta didn’t help a tiny bit on this, the proof is that fractals 100 was cleared with DPS gear, the Vale Guardian was cleared with 8/10 full DPS gear 1 Support role with support stat gear and 1 dps with defense combos.
• Fractal instabilities from 60-100 feel rather disappointing and annoying and unnecesary, you have like 20 leves with removing boons on dodge and everything blowing up.
• Ascended armor crafting got harder because of materials needed, and it’s price has risen between 60-100g.
• The Legendary precursor crafting still is a raw total of 600-800 gold per precursor so it’s not changed that much really excepting that you now don’t rely on RNG
• The 2 blues 1 green is still annoying, Magic find still feels like a god kitten ed placebo and RNG is still bad. The rewards vs. time spent on activities still feels absurdly low (see dungeon reward nerf and Maguuma metaevent rewards).
The personal opinions
• I find map completion, scavenger hunts and exploring rather boring and I know people that share this thought will do so too, which will broaden the number of people that support this kind of format
• I find the whole do whatever you want philosophy stronger here and it reminds me of GW and was a huge aspect I liked about the game, props for keeping it this way it at least makes people think for themselves
• I find the utterly large number of stat variations unnecessary, I’d rather have the Anet team work in 12 solid stat combos varying into the 3 roles (4 solid stat choices per role) quality>quantity
• People do not want a trinity yet they ask for roles, make encounters show said roles in a decent way. The kitten started by someone against the current/previous? Meta is actually just not helping, I’ve seen people say that the content is hard and that they need defensive gear, while I using a balls out DPS build still can farer more than well in the jungle, excepting in some big meta events.
• The whole e-spec thing is the thing that bothers me most, if I want to play in say 3-4 alts I NEED to complete the whole mag map and Dragon’s stand isn’t that easy with pugs, LFG and map zergs, it seems like an unnecessary chore and I’d rather sit on a main than spend ridiculous ammounts of time trying to grind just for an e-spec, more so when gold will be more scarce and its overall value will rise.
• A ton of players like the difficulty of the content, however they do not like the time investment vs. reward and that’s been a problem from Anets side, since GW-
• Anet constantly tries to be innovative and that’s good, however you try too hard to innovate that it forces things that will eventually get dropped out because of your decisions: think of the next expansions, will this masteries be useful? Can this masteries be trained in the new maps? What will happen if they’re not? Will the new players be able to complete HoT content if the maps do not have some parties running around? It’s not that you’re not in touch with the player base I think that you try to overdo stuff without thinking on the long term impact for the playerbase, you follow the gut instinct that “oh this is cool and awesome” and then boom 6 months later that’s just not working.
• Raids still missing and some stuff still missing but I really feel the expansion is solid as is, great work with the content so far
Suggestions for changes:
• Make e-specs account wide unlocks, so that if someone wants a new alt with the same profession it’s not investing all that time for just those traits once again. Or just Cut the E-spec cost from 400 to 200, or just make the core tyria HP give 3 points instead of 1, what will we do when the maps get emptier (they will) and there’s not enough people so we can unlock all that with alts?.
• Remove all the unused gear stats by using some of your metrics ® I’d rather have more focused roles than stats all over the place, the only armors I ever used were the ones I could chose stats from IMO, all the other stuff I used to lv I had to buy since most drops weren’t even stats I was using and that dates back to 2 years ago.
• Either make masteries take 3/4ths time to lv per mastery or make the rewards give more xp per tier
• Meta events need to trigger faster and end faster, the difficulty is GREAT as it is, please do not change this, I hate the mindless run and bash 1 and F while following a tag and that’s one of the reasons I do not like open world PvE
• Make rewards feel rewarding, it really bothers me how I can drop my time in a game that even after 2-3 hours of grinding will give me 99% trash, and that’s a common complaint for everyone that doesn’t spend 6-8 hours on SW or that could (RIP) at least 6-8 dungeon paths per day plus some random stuff.
• Try to keep Maguuma live for the players that join later, maps currently are full due to people wanting to unlock the masteries, but what will happen to the players that join let’s say in 1 year from now?
• PvP needs still more gold and rewards than it has available now, it’s around 100g to unlock the new amulets, runes, sigils, etc.

Just logged in, old UI was there, couldn’t form a 10 person squad, then I tried to map and got a network error tried to log with my beta character 4 times, couldn’t do it, deleted it and tried to create a new one, can’t even do that so I can’t beta test anything, any fix coming soon?

Step out of the Ring of Fire and don’t waste your condition cleanses too early, if you’re running marauder and rampage pressure them until their first water rotation, afterwards pop up healing signet and then rampage, burst them down before they go back to water, if you’re running conditions or shoutbow it’s trickier because it’s a long stalemate, it’s not worth it if you’re not defending a cap for your team, also beware if you see back up for the ele just disengage ASAP and get to a teamfight before you get rekt.

Use warhorn and make a guard camp Hammer, and make the thief or ele (or something with blind) blind enemies on important stuff, that’s more than you need, if you sacrifice damage (less crit chance) for thoughness eventually the boss will catch up and kill you either way.

Fast Hands Baseline, A trait that makes all the crits give might instead of just GS so you can actually use another weapon if you’re running PS, actually useful physical skills and not some extra weak one trick ponies that either are used for just skipping or as a long CD set up for a HB in PvP.

FlawlezZ.3178:

Nimarrodd.7823:

If Might-stacking is the only thing you consider as viable support, you should be a comedian.

?

supreme group support (banners, might, boons, power trait etc)

How does nec, thief, etc. come close? Blind (or vuln) is hardly relevant. Invis neither…

Stopped reading there, vuln and blind not relevant? you do realize that if you blind a target when an mportant attack animation starts makes it miss and thus mitigates damage for the whole party?, you do realize that stacking might is irrelevant if you do not keep an eye on also stacking vuln?, also if the pug breaks out of refugee or doesn’t blast smoke fields then they have a ton of things from the combat mechanics still.

Also if anything, I’d rather have harder PvE content than “nerfing a class because it’s troo stronk plz nerf” this games needs less zerging and 1 spamming in order to make people learn the combat mechanics, but I guess it’s just too much to ask, some encounters have been nerfed to oblivion because people argue that the content it’s too hard.

stambogalizi.8356:

Actual dps tierlist ( not including exploits like icebow or using whirl against a wall for higher dmg)
1)Hybrid Necro
2)Normal Power necro
3)Executioner necro(coming soon)
4)Healing guard
5)Warrior that doesn’t drop banners
6)Warrior that drops banners
7)Other classes are irrelevant cuz things like stealth and reflects are exploits

10/10 laughed hard would read again.

Vennyhedgie.5369:

Rygg.6237:

Hammer and Axe are by far the worst Revenant weapons

Speak for yourself, hammer never leaves my bar, I find it the best of revenant weapons actually (when it’s not bugged by the terrain that is).

And you proved my point, I never said Hammer and Axe were bad, I said they’re the worst options amongst Revenant’s weaponsets and that’s just to say they’re not as great as other options, Revenant weaponskills are great in their current state even with the downsides they might have.

Kidel.2057:

If the new trait increases Torment base damage (not the one while moving) then it’s an amazing condi for pve. But Mallyx would be even more dependand on Corruption.

IMO Malyx always was dependant on Corruption, but the traits need a ton of rework since a lot of them were designed with the previous mechanics of the stance.

draxynnic.3719:

Morfedel.4165:

Griffith.7238:

Why does everyone think you can’t beat condi builds without Mallyx. This is so far from true I can’t even believe it. I didn’t use Mallyx a single time in BWE2 and had great success in PvP. Shiro/Glint is excellent the fact that you all think you can’t win against a condi player without Mallyx is just ludicrous.

And Jalis as well. Jalis’ heal washes off all conditions, and his hammer skill lowers all incoming damage, including from conditions, by 20%.

I think part of Griffith’s point is that Shiro/Glint is probably the weakest to conditions: Riposting Shadows will strip Immobilise, Cripple and Chill, but apart from that, unless you give up Devastation for Salvation all you’re likely to have is the condition cleanse on legend swap from Invocation. Other combinations will have more tools overall to deal with conditions.

(For the record, though, Soothing Stone only strips 3 conditions. That’s often enough, but if you’ve just been condition-bombed it might not be. On the other hand, in my experience, with a full condi-bombing removing the conditions just means at least half of them will be back on again within seconds, so it probably doesn’t make a huge difference either way. In other circumstances, condi removal on weaponswap, plus being able to remove Immobilise with a rollback, probably does cover for a lot.)

Killyox.3950:

So is it like 2 stacks of torment every 1 second? That’s what I get from it seeing as it was 1 every 1 sec before with self applied torment.

Previously, copied conditions from EtD lasted 3 seconds, so the Torment from EtD could generate up to 3 stacks. With an 8s duration this could ramp up to 8 stacks, but it’d be harder to hit the max, so a typical result of generating roughly double the Torment of the original version is probably accurate.

if traited you get 5 poison, 5-7 torment and 4 burning on demand the real problem is now you don’t have covers for those, so they get cleansed easily, the thing is you can get them up with around 30-40% of your energy in like 5-6 seconds again, condition bunker might be as viable if not more viable than marauder spec now, as I’ve said in a ton of posts Mallyx lost all the synergy in between the previous effects vs current effects on corruption traits, and that you’re more forced than before to run mace/axe for best torment uptime plus now we have 5/12 traits that are not worth taking in a single traitline.

It can sponge a ton of direct damage with some stability at high costs, and a subpar option for taunt. If you manage to get weakness and protection up in there you can sit idle for their durations and lose like 10% of your health at most, couple it with shield and you have the shield tank a lot of Rpers and tank players have been asking for, without even needing Thoughness gear.

Artaz.3819:

Warriors will always be wanted for no other thing than banners are yet another offensive “boon” that no other class can touch. And they are very powerful.

That being said, one Warrior versus several in every party is a needed change for the dungeon PvE meta. It has nothing to do with just Revenant. Think about new Mesmer/Chrono too.

Honestly though, #1 fix to do is Ele and Frost Bow and that’s where the focus needs to go.

The whole culprit is not frostbow itself, but how the damage absurdly skyrockets on large hitboxes or by using unintended linecasting to compress them, also making deep freeze such a strong CC option is sort of a culprit too, even without frostbow Ele will be picked because of how strong Staff Ele is, how good it is to have water fields on demand, the absurdly good support to damage range glyph of storms has and the fury uptime persisting flame brings, ele won’t be leaving the dungeon meta anytime soon. If anything the 2nd ele will be replaced by a similarly strong DPS spec, and that’s it and no e-spec has yet to offer said options, the only spec that brings something close is condition engineer, other ele or revenant. As for Warrior a single PS warrior can cap without problem might for the whole party.

Also IMO fractals will substitute dungeons, and I hope the revamp to rewards, the masteries, the cap increase will make sure of that, and also I hope they release new maps for fractals, at least lets say 3 or 4 in the next 1-2 years span, plus raids, Nike and the guys from not only DnT but those interested in hardcore PvE content suggested making party wide buffing affect 10 people instead of 5 and that would actually make a decent change, specially for raid content, some people said it would unbalance WvW but honestly, GWEN will reign forever supreme even with e-specs so it wouldn’t really change much there, if anything it would make room in zergs for other roles that have yet to be discovered or have been dropped off in favor of the dominant playstyle that is tied to the 5 man buffing.

For Revenant it really will just fit whatever function your party is missing, raw DPS? camp Shiro/Malyx upkeep while sipping up coffee, need might? Herald up and mightbot like a boss, no Guard? Upkeep protection and Block nasty projectiles with ventari, Need more crits? Upkeep fury. Need conditions for Wurm? Malyx and Herald say Hello… Versatility is top on Revenant, it does great in a lot of aspects and it has come a long way from it’s first iteration, it certainly is not the best in something, but it’s just as good as engi in every aspect or game mode, excepting maybe in a condition damage build.

Coolguy.8702:

Can you PLEASE make it so that hammer 3 doesnt return you back? Itd be nice to see some monility with hammer

Gap closers on Hammer are not the way to go, if anything it needs to be a bit faster and that change is not really needed, Hammer and Axe are by far the worst Revenant weapons and Revenant has a ton of useful stuff in their Weaponsets, everything is useful in different situations, by far it’s one of the few professions with almost flawless weapon choices and effects.

Kidel.2057:

I’m honestly tired of this Mallyx whine. I had decided to basically never use Mallyx outside PvP and roaming, but now I’m probably going to use Mallyx/Glint over Glint/Shiro.

UA was a nerf, ok, but a needed one.

Everithing else is simply better. It may have lost SOME flavour, but before Mallyx was a PvP-only legend. No group content (or even pvp teamfight) was fit for Mallyx. Only solo play or roaming.
PvE mobs don’t put enough conditions on you and every group contant with a Guardian or an Elementalist basically screws your whole strategy, clearing all the condis on you.

Mallyx is still pretty unique, with strong torment (that will be almost like a burning with the upcoming trait) and lots of resistance. It’s the only thing in the game that is not made to deal with conditions by clearing them, but resisting them.

If the condi output is low, just give feedback and it will be increased. Maybe.

You nailed it, IMO condi output it’s not really a problem, the problem is that Confusion and torment are useless in about 70% of PvE situations, mostly because mobs don’t kite your attacks, don’t move often and they don’t spam autoattack as players do, the main problem with Malyx is that it lost synergy with half of the traitline that is meant to enhance it because of the change to the legend mechanics, it also is basically an all purpose bunker now, the problem is that it’s not gonna hit as hard as d/d ele, but it won’t be as weak as bunker guard, it might be about Shoutbow durability or even sturdier but with no insta res for your team.

FLiP.7680:

Why can’t you dodge if you know they will be “unloading everything” on you?

I like the change, it just sucks we’ll get rekt by necros with wh #4 and staff #5. The endure pain effect was better than block IMO.

Could be achieved by having a crystal hybernation effect instead of blocks too y’know, then again devs are tight on time and they’re more than likely working on gears to get the expansion ready for the release date, so the easier and faster the fix the better.

This might work for usage during embrace the darkness, and it can work like the warrior’s berserker power or or signet mastery, you could add something to pulsating pestilence like
1) Gain a Stack of Pulsating pestilence each time you apply torment to a foe, stacks up to 5 times, deal 2% extra damage per Pulsating Pestilence Stack for 30s, ends if you fail to torment your foe the problem is you’re gonna permanently have the buff if you run mace
2) Gain a stack of pulsating pestilence each time a condition is applied to yourself stacks 5 times, when you activate embrace the darkness, pulse for 15s poison nd deal 2% extra damage per stack to foes suffering from torment.
3) Each time you apply torment to a foe grant yourself a stack of pulsating pestilence (3 seconds), apply random damaging conditions on critical hit, ends when you fail to land a critical hit, no synergy if you’re not running precision or crit chance traits.
4) Grant attonement to foes each time you critically hit (or use) while on legendary demon stance, making conditions from all sources more effective on them, increases incoming condition duration by 20% and increases condition damage 10% (too strong for PvP/WvW.

There’s really no much room to make it feel “unique” as you cannot copy conditions on you anymore and it’s not that effective since the net effect of copying conditions was covering your torment and burning so they removed stuff that wasn’t as dangerous, now you just are a moving torment bot, think of bleeds ranger but with torment.

Solori.6025:

lighter.2708:

uhohhotdog.3598:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Much to your dismay, Revenant’s do need a weakness.

So what’s elementalist’s weakness?

an ele’s weakness is having lowest armor and lowest HP which means you can be groupbursted down if you don’t pay attention, but that is being covered by runes of vamperism

…….Celestial ele makes lowest armor and lowest HP a non-issue. Then it has the sustain and healing to deal with pretty much everything else.
Right now, there is only one class that can stand toe to toe with an ele and even then it’s not a 100% guaranteed counter.
Ele has one weakness. Focus fire from multiple people, because that’s required.
And it shouldn’t be ( or wont be much longer)

The real counter is waiting on them to waste their waterfields to unleash all your DPS, which is hard 1v1 but not impossible, it gets harder the better the Ele your playing against.

On topic, Revenant can manage quite well with conditions, especially now with the changes to malyx, if you run Malyx/Glint, with Corruption/Invocation/Herald, you can effectively ignore damaging conditions while also ingoring weakness, blind, cripple, immob and everything excepting knockdown and knock back, while also having access to shield blocks and not losing on staff greatness, this is as durable as a Jalis/Glint or Jalis/Malyx build, excepting you lose some more damage because you don’t have the damage multipliers from Devastation if you decide to be more durable, currently the strongest PvP/WvW builds are Marauder Herald and Celestial/Rabid (stat mix for WvW Sinister+Carrion/Rabid Trinkets), the only real problem to the changes to Malyx is that most master and grandmaster traits have no synergy with the current legend effects.

Also some of them are way much useful in certain situations if you make the right legend pick and right micromanagement, if you expect to be a succesful revenant and just toggle Impossible Odds and then Embrace the Darkness then you’re missing out on a ton of options that the profession has to offer, it’s a hack of all trades master of none, glint is quite dynamic and adds a ton to the play and strategy of Revenant, the same goes for every stance, not as much as Glint but yeah you need to actually know the important stuff to make the most out of Rev, which I like a lot.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

A few more things:

• I reduced the after-cast of unyielding anguish by 260ms so it should help the responsiveness when you land.
• Embrace the Darkness: Lowered the cast time and after-cast by 400ms and reduced it’s upkeep cost by 1 so it’s at a 7 upkeep cast right now.

The problem isn’t the activation times and cast times, the problem lies in that the previous functions of the stance were based in the theme of stacking conditions on you and then spreading them in fights, so you effectively had enough conditions to cover your damage sources (burning, torment, confusion and to a much lesser extent poison).

Now specificly sepaking of each skill:

Unyielding Anguish: served as a gap closer, source of torment and a defenisve skill too, all 3 in 1, with the changes now it’s just a low CD high cost source of torment with a basic and easily removable snare, sure if used in the right time it can increase the CD of a specific skill but by far it’s just not as strong as it was before, the thing is you can’t make this skill go lower on the energy cost because it’ll be trigger friendly, suggestion? bring the cost back to the previous one and add a knock down on top of chill, keep the dark field as it’s useful 1v1 (PvE wise dark fields are just not as useful) and if you consider the knock down far too powerful then just keep the original CD.

Embrace the Darkness previously you used Malyx when conditions were on you then you used an extra utility plus EtD to spread havok, now you’re just a torment bot, and the stance was mainly usable in WvW and PvP, it has whatsoever no viable use in PvE because the only 2 conditions that are a reliable source of damage for Revenant are poison (permanent 2-3 stacks which is the threshold to start doing some damage) and burning (3-6 stacks, not too strong but not too weak), if you run Malyx the best option you have is to run Corruption along with it since it gives you extra torment and some options to spread conditions, however right now there’s no synergy in between Corruption traits, Demon Stance and stat options required to effectively use said combos with the profession, and without the self applying conditions and the condition transfer on EtD you’re somewhere in between condition warrior and condition guardian, they’re fun in PvE for sure but they sacrifice too much party support to be effective and they have a really big difference in comparison to Revenant: for PvE Guard can keep up 8-12 stacks of burning while still keeping decent power, Warrior has access to both burning and decent ammounts of bleeding plus, some torment uptime those are constant and reliable condition damage sources, torment and confusion, which are the most on demand stuff revenant has access to isn’t, sure you can have burn uptime and a bit of poison lot too but it’s just not as strong to be a solid base, PvP/WvW The problem relies in both torment and confusion being strong with enough covers and that was a lot of the potention the previous iteration of Malyx had access to thanks to the effects on the elite, of course it meant you needed enough conditions on you but it was fair enough since to play effectively you needed to stapple run Demonic Defiance, now the smartest choice is running demonic defiance as you’ll just laugh on the face of condition users for as long as you sit on malyx, then you can switch out to glint and heal if needed while you wait on the resistance on the other stance effectively tanking condition sources on demand, the real problem is that you won’t have enough damage output to make up for the change, Mace hits like a wet noodle and making revenant have 2 or 3 more conditions with a low cost, high availability will make it too hard to balance.

Now on another side note Revenant Damage is too reliant on critical chance and critical damage, 3 trait lines are heavily focused on passive increases to crit chance and ferocity, with no damage modifiers whatsoever to condition damage or power outside of Devastation GM and Herald GM, sure Staff and Sword are great damage dealers, but if you’re running a condition spec you’re forced to pair in at least one set Mace/Axe just for the availability of torment and burn, and the posion on autoattack is just used for covering the important condis, burning and blasting might to have a decent damage output. still the mace for itself it’s quite weak if you don’t have access to might and crit chance, otherwise it’s perfectly fine and that just pigeonholes you into either running a Corruption, Invocation, Herald Hybrid or Condi spec, or a Corruption, Invocation, Retribution spec for a bit of more sustain, with Carrion, Rabid or in the case of WvW Sinister (quite strong).

So far it doesn’t sound so bad, but the problem is: it’s decent for PvP modes but you just lose a ton of synergy with traits with the changes you made which, previously traits were more effective now they’re just either pointless or not synergistic.

PvE wise the conditions availeable for Revenant are not reliable source of damage HOWEVER the good thing about this is that you’re stapple legend is Glint, so you can run with still some party support, at the price of sacrificing Assassin’s Pressence, which is a 5-7% DPS loss for the party yet it’s one of the only viable condition specs which has access to decent party support via Herald, to fix this the Condition Revenant would have to match it’s current direct damage DPS potential (10-13k DPS at optimal situations) or even go above it to make it worthwhile to sacrifice team support vs. personal DPS, for soloing? sure it’s quite decent but lets face it, so are the other condition builds, and to do that you need at least add and mantain1-2 extra poison stacks, and at least 10-15 bleeds, now adding bleeds to the repertoire of revenant at that ammount of stacks would make condition revenant too hard to counterplay in PvP/WvW because of the torment, bleed and burn uptime would be unmatched even by engineers, no profession would be able to cleanse fast enough to mitigate damage and then Revenant would be too stronk plz nerf that we would go back to ground zero with a condition spec.

Solution: tune down the torment stacks to 4-5, add some bleeds to balance out, keep damage reliable for PvE and not too over the top for PvP, bear in mind clenases can and will cancel effectively condition builds if there’s not enough condition uptime or condition covers and fields are easily counterplayed by not stepping in them.

Corruption
As for traits, there’s still a lot of stuff that I think it’s redundant on Salvation, but I’m more concerned about Corruption since we’re talking condition builds and Demon Stance, as I’ve said Bolstered Anguish has gone from reliable damage modifier to situational at best and lost most synergy with the Demon Stance already. Again Here are some suggestions for traits.

Minors
Rampant Vex might add a damage modifier to enemies that have torment 3-5%, but it might be overdoing it since you’ll probably want fury and precision gear to proc this.
Oportune Extraction No comments on this good trait since the beginning
Yearning Empowerment Again Demon Stance is based on torment so the trait is good

Adepts
Demonic Defiance Was needed before, now it’s not but it’s a no brainer to pick it as it makes the Revenant compete with cleansing ire management for conditions.
Venom Enhancement We’ll have to see how strong this gets, you’ll have around 5-6 stacks of poison, if you constantly spam autoattack, you get to 7 stacks with doom and this trait easily which is nothing to sneeze at, good for DPS and since the self applying conditions are not a thing anymore it’s an option if you want some extra damage.
Replenishing DespairToo weak compared to the other two options, yes you can mitigate some condition pressure but why do that when you can just ignore it with resistance or add damage for faster killing?

Masters
There’s a lot of problems here that stemmed from removing the control+spread mechanics on the stance and it’s my main concern.
Bolstered Anguish This has no longer synergy as you’re just not gonna have as many conditions on you as before, this should change to 2-3% damage per condition on your foe, otherwise it’s just not as strong as it was, it might go as low as 1% because in teamfights you’ll just get around 10+% damage just from this and having it go lower than 5% is just not worth it if you have a better defensive option.
Frigid Precision You have chill on Sword and Unyielding anguish, this trait is just redundant now, why bother picking it if I have chill on demand with UA?, this needs an extra effect, such as applying chill to foes also stuns them for 1-2 second(s) and make the stun share the 10s ICD with the chill on crit.
Spontaneous Destruction This is strong as it is and IMO it’s the most useful trait in this tier, if the other 2 don’t get fixed everyone will end up picking this.

Grandmasters:
Diabolic Inferno this was sort of weak before, as it just triggers when entering EtD and at 10s ICD it just wasn’t worth sacrificing better options for a single stack of burn, either make it grant fire aura, make you a walking fire field like warrior’s torch, make EtD pulse Burning(then EtD could stay at a higher energy upkeep cost, won’t like this as you’ll just pick on Demonic Defiance and toggle on EtD and watch things melt) or change it to Legendary Demon Stance skills also apply burning, or burn on crit, play around with the theme of giving 1-2 extra stacks of burning each 15 seconds.
Maniacal Persistence Nice if you run no Precision, useless if you do, specially if you pick Herald and Invocation, needs no change, staple pick if the other 2 traits don’t get changes
Pulsating Pestilence reduce the ICD to 7-10 seconds and make it 10% chance, as the copied condition just lasts 3 seconds and EtD doesn’t have the copy effect anymore, or change it to apply 2 random conditions when struck each 15 seconds, chance up to 50%, or just altogether make it a sort of pulse 1 condition on demon stance skill usage, and/or make EtD pulse 1 condition (poison, torment, burn or confusion) each second, play with the old EtD effect here so the players that liked that playstyle still have room for it. Edit: found a thread which suggests making a trait akin to Singet Mastery tons of ideas there: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/revenant/Alternate-fix-for-Mallyx/first#post5495933

As side notes I don’t think adding more conditions on demand is a good fix, it’s just gonna make the condition Revenant too strong in PvP/WvW, the main concern to me is that traits in thhe master tier have no synergy with the stance and don’t have valuable tools asides an extra Banish Enchantment which is quite nice but it’s just situational and the grandmaster traits just feel weak in comparison to adepts.

Also making torment damage 75% while not moving would work a bit for PvE, but still it’s not enough to be competitive with the direct damage build in terms of damage while sacrificing needed team support, if you could make lets say rampant vex or yearning empowerment make torment 100% all the time PvE only and fix the Master traits it would make Condition Revenant as viable as direct damage.

choovanski.5462:

I prefer hammer sw/sh for clerics shouts, but always good to see shouts in the wild.

Don’t understimate the fire field from bow, specially while running geo/doom.

NikeEU.7690:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3ibc07/yes_we_want_challenging_group_content_but/cuf61as

A guy is arguing with me that people in full exotics should be able to beat “challenging group content.” I argue that what kind of challenge could it be if people can beat it with a 15% stat handicap. “there are other kinds of challenges.” Sure dude. You can have teamwork, interrupt, synergy, individual responsibility requirements and those are all challenging. But they are mechanical. Mechanics get memorized after enough repetitions. What keeps challenging content challenging AFTER you mastered the mechanics is the give and take between “we brought too much DPS, now we die from lack of sustain” vs “we brought too much sustain so we can’t kill before the enrage timer.” Properly tuned content will stress ALL systems and I cannot see how you can have content that is beatable with a 15% handicap that will present a sustained challenge for groups without it.

Also, wtf? This is the “ultimate challenge.” this is the “end game challenging group content.” Why would anyone even think for a second they are ready for that when they can’t bother to gear their main in best in slot gear?

A lot of people are deluded by the fact they want something to fit their train of thought too thightly with no reasoning or evidence to sustain said thought and thus fail to learn the faults of their arguments, that applies to every aspect of life, and that applies everywhere from gaming to daily work, and that’s the challenge in this game, the combat system taxes a lot of your decision making, choices and course of action, what happened is that the accesibility of the game prompted by the developers “casual friendly” and “trinity breaking” philosohpy and the “casual” players supporting it has made everything that came near to be challenging to a rambling rant about “oh this is too hard” “oh I don’t understand this so it must be easier so I can get it” and so everything near to being hard got tuned down because a lot of people just didn’t bother to learn the game mechanics as a whole, in the end the content got ridiculously accessible to everyone and it will go on even with raid content being hard and for sure if it’s hard enough so just the top 5 PvE guilds make it the Anet team in charge of raids will start to tune it down in order to not lose clients, take a look at wildstar it went too far in the hard content direction and everyone stopped playing because they stuck up with the game’s faults just because they wanted to see the raids in there.

Since there’s like 7-10 guilds dedicated to truly being hardcore and breaking dungeon records and so on I do really think that raids will probably be harder than current lv 50 fractals, however I don’t see them being ultra challenging, and sadly that’ll translate to a lot of guys who want this kind of stuff for the game will look for it elsewhere, be it PvE, PvP or RvR.

NikeEU.7690:

Photinous.4628:

Shiro/Mallyx has the biggest DPS output, I believe this will be the PvE meta. Herald is only useful if your group lacks a PS warrior and ele/ranger, in my opinion, but you’re giving up a lot of damage by staying in glint.

Nope, Glint/Shiro will be the default in PvE with Glint/Ventari for times you need the projectile bubble. Glint has some very interesting PvE interactions that you’ll just have to wait for our guide to come out to hear more about. =)

IMO That’s not only in PvE but also PvP and even WvW builds do get a ton of benefits out of running herald, even condition builds get a total utility and damage advantage out of running glint, the Heal just makes the weakness to conditions sort of trivial, as if you get bursted down and then just pop the heal the whole damage gets you up also the Shield is by far supperior at least in PvP to offhand sword, and that’s what really nothers me why make Herald the Elite Specialization if it’s the greatest asset Revenant has access to.

Rym.1469:

Function =/= are meta viable.

I’m not trying to say that Corruptions are super amazing and everyone should run them, but their basic concept revolving around transferring conditions you get on yourself for more damage or healing off conditions you apply to yourself is there – that whole play can be cleansed and negated by your allies, too. And yet nobody changes this concept, but suddenly it’s a problem on Mallyx.

Take a look at the current Necro builds, neither of them use corruptions, and that was because of the change they made to corruptions which added a lot of condition pressure on the necro which has limited cleanse not because “your team cleansing your conditions interfered with that kind of play”, previously Consume conditions was strong due to it being a viable heal and condi removal option, so you just used it to counter condition pressure and not only a heal, now it’s weaker in comparison to other options because your self applied conditions will cover the important stuff you needed to cleanse forcin you to use dagger offhand 4 and staff 4 to cleanse and still you’d explode on heavy condition pressure if you made a simple mistake, and this will always be the case, the best in slot options will always take over even if people don’t know how to properly use it. Self applied conditions were troublesome in Malyx because you were forced to use a trait that still was weak vs. condition builds most of the Malyx gameplay comes from WvW players and casual PvP players that like to stream, sure it’s good but marauder herald revenant is far superior since it has both sustain and burst, Malyx will just melt vs. a good team or a good condition build played right and that hasn’t changed.

Vennyhedgie.5369:

Rygg.6237:

Vennyhedgie.5369:

Oh I’m not saying spamming the same skill over and over is the way to go, not at all. I’m just saying it’s a possibility, and considering UA now pulses chill as well, it helps you land subsequent attacks.
I get that the 10% increase is strong in hybrid or even celestial builds, but that was already there before anyway.

Basically you hit the rights spot, Malyx will be better off in Hybrid or bunker builds… which aren’t as good as the power variation on PvP, and WvW roaming it seems sort of strong since you have more stat customability options plus food the problem is I don’t dig WvW that much to invest time on those kind of gear options, still it’s a hit for survivability and versatility for the ones who like the Malyx gameplay and you guys should make extensive video footage to support whatever changes you think it’ll need, what made the changes to displacement I think were the ton of mocking videos about the displacement being bad.

Many people seem to forget something important. EtD also copied control conditions like weakness, cripple, chill, etc. In my time with revenant I was running a full zerker build (or as full zerker as they allowed with the gear) in wvw, marauder in pvp, and I WAS using mallyx with it with great results. It’s not just all about power damage wise, it’s also about all that control we’re losing.

That being said, as I’ve pointed out before, I have no problems with displacement being gone. It was unique and fun, but I have to agree it was too potentially gamebreaking in all modes.
Unfortunately I play on a laptop so I couldn’t possibly play and record footage at the same time (I can barely get 20fps normally lol) but I would’ve loved to show off how Mallyx can be put to good use.

The thing is that Malyx isn’t as strong as other specs and that’s precisely my point, people will always use the better options and shelf the weaker ones, that’s how metagames are born and sustained. I ran Shiro/Glint and had no problems with CC or conditions whatsoever while dealing heavy direct damage, all of those are for sure availeable if you run Malyx but the results aren’t the same.

Vennyhedgie.5369:

Oh I’m not saying spamming the same skill over and over is the way to go, not at all. I’m just saying it’s a possibility, and considering UA now pulses chill as well, it helps you land subsequent attacks.
I get that the 10% increase is strong in hybrid or even celestial builds, but that was already there before anyway.
[/quote]
Basically you hit the rights spot, Malyx will be better off in Hybrid or bunker builds… which aren’t as good as the power variation on PvP, and WvW roaming it seems sort of strong since you have more stat customability options plus food the problem is I don’t dig WvW that much to invest time on those kind of gear options, still it’s a hit for survivability and versatility for the ones who like the Malyx gameplay and you guys should make extensive video footage to support whatever changes you think it’ll need, what made the changes to displacement I think were the ton of mocking videos about the displacement being bad.

What bothers me the most is that 2 legends will be shelved, build diversity is still not as good as it could be… it’s not like it’s a big deal those builds are reserved for PvE usage and you basically run anything and still manage to do good on PvE

The change is nice but IMO I’d cut the healing 50% for not being rooted, counterplay to blocks is basically waiting out on them with autoattacks and then using your important skills afterwards, yes it can soften a burst, but the effect on outnumbered situations will basically be the same as it was when the break bar mechanic was on the skill.

Vennyhedgie.5369:

Pretty sure Roy mentioned UA is not meant to have a CD anymore, and having it pulse 5 torment stacks instead of 4, and reduced the energy to 30. This means you could chain it 3 times in a row if full on energy. That’s a lot of torment, and a lot more bursty than burning 100 energy on an upkeep.

Still spamming UA just for the Torment is situational and not optimal, burning 100 energy on just chill and torment if a player knows what he’s doing he’s just gonna wait to cleanse at around 50% HP and you won’t have enough energy to counterplay, it can be used offensively and defensively since you can use the mace to blind your foes on certain attacks given they’re in the field think of it as a condition version (a really weak version) of combustive shot with defensive capabilities, also I’d rather blast the fire field on mace than just blinding a foe unless it’s 100% needed for survival. EtD increases all stats by 10% which isn’t nothing to sneeze at and gives you just about the same torment for the same energy cost with a bit more of duration.

Basically this just made a PvP Marauder build much more versatile and stronger than the condition build and WvW revolve around Jalis/Glint or Jalis/x, you could just say that Ventari and Malyx will be shelved for a while until they get the traits fixed and effects polished which will require extensive use after launch and I doubt they’ll be meaningful until raids and that will sorely depend on the difficulty of the content, if raids are as hard as fractals 50 then Ventari isn’t needed, and Malyx won’t be needed as there are professions that are just way better with condition builds mostly because torment and confusion are too weak on PvE.

Griffith.7238:

Vennyhedgie.5369:

It just hit me, if Unyielding Anguish doesn’t have a CD, then this skill is directly conflicting with the nerfed EtD. They both do the exact same thing, pulsing torment in area, just in a different way. Kinda like stability and break bars, they’re essentially duplicate functionalities, UA probably being the winner cost-effective wise. Even more reason not to change EtD!

Your posts literally blow my mind. You seem to be the most unreasonable person in this entire forum. I get that you are upset that Mallyx lost a lot of flavor I am too ,but some of the things you say are just completely void of logic. There are plenty of reasons to use EtD. Reason 1 EtD will be vastly superior to UA on any target that is moving period. You can move out of UA as long as the Rev is near you you cannot move out of EtD. EtD also provides a 10% stat increase where as UA provides chill. They both have their uses and EtD is definitely still deserving of being called an Elite. Please control your rage and use logic when you type.

Both of you are right and wrong, you need to be on a certain area radius for EtD to be effective, if your enemy opens a gap you’ll need to close said gap you have 2 options: use Frigid Blitz or Unyielding Anguish.
FB will be almost always much more energy effiencet than UA, because if you want to keep decent condition uptime you need to run mace/axe.
UA it’s more situational, as you’re gonna be out of energy to manage to have high condition uptime. Now it’s 40 energy for 5 seconds of EtD and that’s just 5 stacks of torment for 6 seconds, UA it’s a total of 4 stacks of torment for 4 seconds and some chill to cover up so torment can’t be removed, sure it’s a blind combofield and all that but if nothing changes it’s on a 10s CD and at 35 energy you will be using the skills on different situations, and setting up a condition burst? sure you’ll be at 0 energy and have 2 choices swap legends or die.

Basically Malyx just changed the playstyle from managing energy and copying conditions to a more straight forward condi spam build. You also have to keep in mind that gaining access to the ammount of conditions needed to have decent damage requires you to foricbly run Mace/Axe, Malyx and Corruption as a base staple for the build which pigeonholes you a lot more than it should.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

I just wanted to stop in and say I’m definitely closely reading all the feedback about these changes and while I know some of you will miss some old functionality we feel it will be the right choice for the health of the game and profession for the long term. That being said I’m open to feedback and suggestions to make sure everything is awesome.

Though, I will say for mallyx most of the skills were brought into the middle-ground of meeting the condition threshold. As an example Banish Enchantment applies 3 stacks of confusion, it used to apply 2 if you didn’t meet the threshold or 4 if you did.

Also while it may be hard to see it on paper, some areas got improved such as torment application actually went up significantly. I can stack up an incredible amount internally, which is a bit scary, but we’ll have to see how it plays. It should help with making it much more of a condition damage viable build though.

Some things to note:

• Unrelenting Assault did have some bug fixes to it which should help with issues like using it and having it fail being stuck in place as it animated should no longer be a thing. It’ll just fail without playing the whole animation.
• Condition removal or resistance application has not changed, so the Revenant should have the same way to deal with taking conditions on themselves.
• The recharge for unyielding anguish was a remnant of an old change and wasn’t supposed to be there. This skill shouldn’t have a recharge and I’m thinking about lowering the energy cost from 35 to 30 to make it more usable as mobility and condition application. It also should be applying 5 seconds of torment instead of 4.
• Embrace the Darkness now applies a lot of torment in an area, twice as much as before. I’m looking at adjusting the cast time or upkeep cost for it to make it a bit more in line with the new functionality.
• Since corruption and mallyx is all about being the master of torment and being pushed more that route, I’m playing around with an idea I wanted to run by all of you. Torment is less valued in stationary fights due to the way torment functions. Since torment is the main damaging condition for Revenant, I’ve been thinking about adding functionality to a trait or maybe changing the minor 2 in corruption to increase the base damage torment does while not moving while not increasing the while moving damage to help it become more of a viable option in all areas of the game. What do you all think?

I’ll keep reading and I’ll be open to suggestions and feedback. Just try to remember it may look more devastating on paper than it actually is in game. Some areas of this build actually got stronger.

I’ll try to get it as close as possible before the next beta, but there is still time to address feedback after BWE3 before launch. Just remember playing something usually tends to give different impressions rather then just reading it. Balance is an ongoing thing though and we’ll continue to adjust as necessary even after launch. Balance is never-ending.

Depending on the team support condition builds can be really BAD and can unbalance the game too much. That’s why they’re relegated in a game mode but strong in others.

Currently in PvE outside of condition engineer most builds are just used for casual play or soloing, the resons? doing competitive damage compared to Power DPS builds while keeping party support in a balanced way can’t be achieved, and they can get absurdly STRONG in PvP/WvW, if you want to make decent PvE condition builds they CRAVE not only condition stacking but also a ton of condition diversity availeable and most builds need to sacrifice all of the team support for the damage they can get with the exception of condition Engineer as a lot of it’s support comes from the combo fields it can give to the party and the skill diversity it has access to, currently condition engineer in a best case scenario can do 14k DPS, that’s around 2 k more than a condition Ranger and around 3-4k less than a condition warrior, all the other PvE Condition builds sit around 7-9k DPS with a ramp uptime of 12-15 seconds, and best case scenario situations: food, sinister ascended gear and perfect skill rotations, if you run Malyx you would be forced to run Corruption and to run party support you need Herald (otherwise you’re locked to pure DPS with no party support unless you run Ventari active Healing is not as good as having blind, protection and weakness uptime, you can just ask your ele to put up some water fields and blast them on demand) and you’re sacrificing either Invocation or Devastation, devastation is a great loss due to Assassin’s Pressence being a great party support skill specially because you can generate permanent fury uptime, prescinding of Invocation leaves out a decent ammount of crit chance for yourself which translates into a net loss of personal damage, and since now conditions are affected by critical damage this can be anything from 5 to 20% damage which is quite significant.

PvP and WvW wise those kind of builds can get out of control and absurdly overpowered if not balanced in the right way mostly because there’s just so much access to condition cleanse and a lot of conditions are spam friendly and getting as high as 2.5k DPS is more than enough to kill a player rapidly if said player has no condition clear (see burn guard and the current state of certain hybrid builds in PvP).

If you want to make a condition based Revenant it just needs more condition diversity, specially because torment and confusion both suck in PvE, however given the right circumstance they can get absrudly strong in PvP/WvW specially if you have 1-2 conditions to spam to cover either torment or confusion while keeping high burn uptime, you need to be careful and keep all of this in mind to keep the profession balanced as much as possible.

With the long wall of text up you could do something about corruption traits like this:

Rampant Vex Critical hits have a chance to cause torment, you have a 5% increased critical hit chance to foes suffering from Torment
Venom Enhancement The chance to apply poison when you apply torment ICD down to 15 instead of 20
Bolstered Anguish won’t even be as effective since your skills do not generate conditions anymore, change that to increased damage per condition on your foe if that’s too overpowered then just change it to a global 7-10% damage to foes suffering from torment
Frigid Precision Weakest trait on corruption whatsoever, as you now have on demand chill in Unyielding Anguish specially if you remove the CD on the skill, change it to something else, maybe whenever you apply Chill you also Weaken your foe or, Chill you apply lasts longer and you apply bleeding 2 stacks whenever you critically hit ICD 5-8 seconds.
Yearning Empowerment feels a bit redundant as you can spam freely torment making duration sort of trivial, you could play around with the effect if the increase in torment duration isn’t needed.
Pulsating Pestilence 15 second ICD feels weak as there’s no other source of copying conditions now and your skills do not self apply conditions anymore, reduce it to 10 seconds or revamp the trait around enhancing Embrace the Darkness.

Altogether I don’t see Malyx being bad for conditions, but just lacking in comparison to direct damage builds and this stems from the cost vs. effect of the elite skill, overall having damage modifiers to foes with Torment will be a better effect for personal DPS but adds nothing to the party for PvE and playing around with conditions is hard as you mess with specs that can get quite strong if played well in PvP/WvW.

My last words on this for now will be that a lot of the discontent with the changes to Embrace the Darkness come from a couple things: 1) Demonic Defiance was almost mandatory due to the self apply of condis on skills, now it’s just too good to not pick since you can run Malyx/Jalis and face tank stuff if you run Corruption/Devastation/Invocation while still doing decent damage which is quite decent in PvP. 2) It added a ton of counterplay to condition heavy builds that wasn’t availeable elsewhere, if you reverted the changes to Embrace the Darkness the reaction to the change wouldn’t have been as negative IMO, 3) Running the Corruption line you’re forced to pick Malyx since it adds a ton of condition uptime that you can’t attain without it and that isn’t a problem stemmed from the changes, it’s tied to the Demon Legend mechanics and effects, Also forgot to say: you can’t stack enough torment without Axe offhand, Unyielding Anguish and Embrace the Darkness, so that ties you to Mace/Axe, Malyx AND Corruption for a Condition build, otherwise the reliability of your condition output is just not quite where it needs to be.

Misguided.5139:

Can you provide any updates on these bugs/issues:
• vengeful hammers being destroyed near terrain (bridges/walls/cliffs)
• issues with Hammer skills not hitting targets above/below you
• unyielding assault failing to teleport to foe across uneven terrain

Grasping Shadow and Frigid Blitz also have problems in uneven terrain, you hit but the displacement effect doesn’t trigger all the times

The change to the skill makes it just purely situational, but removing the self applying conditions was good, EtD it still is useful as it is, but it’s just weaker in the sense that it adds nothing to condition pressure itself but it does help with damage output and mitigation because of the stat change, practically if you want to run Malyx you either need to run Herald and make a celestial hybrid, or run rampager or carrion, depending on stat choice the trait lines, runes and sigils will change, but it’s more than likely that one weaponset will have geo/doom as stapple and you’re gonna be using condition on skill usage runes such as krait or balthazar, it’s not a condition manipulation stance now, it’s more like condition management with an option to tank if you run Jalis+Retribution or Glint+Herald, or just condi burst if you run Shiro+Malyx but that leaves you with suboptimal survival options whatsoever. Also this makes condition Revenant literally useless in PvE as the only 2 conditions with reliable damage output Revenants have are Poison and Burning, Confusion and Torment are crap for PvE

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Shield

• Crystal Hibernation: Removed the defiance bar. This skill will now block attacks for the duration while regenerating health. Lowered recharge from 30 seconds to 20 seconds.

Legendary Assassin Stance

Legendary Centaur Stance
Here I made some changes to the cast time. Now all utility skills are instant, only the heal and the elite have a cast time. The elite has also been lowered in cast time as well as decreased energy cost.

• Naturalistic Harmony. Decreased the energy cost from 25 to 20.
• Purifying Essence: This skill is now instant cast. Decreased the energy cost from 35 to 30 and added a 5 second recharge.
• Energy Expulsion: This skill is now a blast finisher and reduced the cast time from 2 seconds to 1 second. Decreased the energy cost from 50 to 35.

Legendary Demon Stance

• Unyielding Anguish: This skill has been re-worked. This skill will now leap to the target location creating a dark field which chills for 1 second and torments for 4 seconds per pulse. The field lasts for 4 seconds and pulses every 1 second. Added a 10 second recharge.
• Embrace the Darkness: Removed the self-applied torment. This skill no longer copies conditions to nearby foes. This skill will increase stats by 10% while active and pulse 6 seconds of torment every 1 second to nearby foes.

Legendary Dwarf Stance
A lot of you thought Forced Engagement was too high of a cost for a single target control skill, and I agree! But, I can’t allow you to use it back to back or else it creates bad chain controlling situations so there is an added recharge as well.

• Forced Engagement: Increased the recharge from 3 seconds to 5 seconds and lowered the energy cost from 50 to 35.

Retribution
In the master tier for this line there were two traits based around incoming control effects, which made little sense and ended up fighting with each other. I went ahead and merged these two traits together creating room for a new trait which I added as the master tier needed a trait to help support the tank feel of retribution.

• Eye for an Eye: The Redeeming Protection trait has been merged with this one. When Eye for an Eye triggers, you will also gain protection for 5 seconds.
• Redeeming Protection: This trait has been merged with Eye for an Eye.
• Dwarven Battle Training: This is a new master tier trait replacing redeeming protection. This trait provides a 25% chance on hit to weaken foes for 4 seconds with a 10 second recharge and decreases weakness’s effectiveness on you by 50%.

I quoted this because I think those are either too impactful or they won’t change or have that much of a Positive effect.

Legendary Centaur Stance First off a lot of the players got a feel okittenwardness and slowness on the healing on the LCS not because of the cast times themselves, but because of the tablet mechanics: willing the tablet, moving it around while managing to click other skills at the same time in the right time, this could be fixed by instantly willing the tablet, making the tablet follow you automatically or the nearest target it has been willed to and just fragmenting the tablet and making it disappear for 5 seconds after using the elite, then resetting it to your position. I do not think that making the skills instant cast will have that much of an impact on the clunkyness feel however it will make the skills much faster and the support healing will be better overall, positioning the tablet does play a great role in that and you need a lot more micromanagement than lets say launching granades with engi and even top engineer players miss targets a lot of the times.

Legendary Demon Stance For Unyielding Anguish the changes to displacement were needed mostly because the random placement wasn’t working like you expected to but this skill was useful in some situations, specially in wider On Point Fights in PvP as you could decap and use it defensively, now it just feels like a costy gap closer with spammable conditions it will have some uses as it will of course make disengaging easier but I liked the older version better. Embrace the Darkness is just not worth using now in PvP and WvW, the cost vs. effect is not that stronger now, sure if you trait it you spam a bit of burning and torment, sure the 10% bonus to stats is nice, but you still can get knocked back, knocked down and forced out of EtD with polymorph moa and CC if this is to be viable it CRAVES AND NEEDS Demonic Defiance, overall both skills either need a buff, or reduce/remove the ICD on Pulsating Pestilence and leave the chance on hit to copy condis at 25% sure condition revenant is still viable but it will never be as good as the power/crit builds, as still, the only on demand conditions revenat has access too are torment, confusion, poison (too a low extent) and burning, sure burning is strong atm, but confusion and torment are way too weak in PvE, and there’s so much you can do by just spamming 3 moderately strong and 1 strong conditions in PvP/WvW that just works in unsuspected players, and/or inexperienced players.

Legendary Dwarf Stance Forced Engagement had a nice change, now the only thing the stance needs is that the hammers need to stay even after hitting walls, Inspiring Reinforcements still needs a duration increase as the stability it gives can get washed away pretty easily, and IMO this synergizes way way better with Herald, the new trait seems nice, the problem is that having a character this tanky isn’t suited yet for any instance in the game, excepting maybe for raiding and we’re yet to see if that’s really the case, for PvP/WvW the real problem lies in how Vengeful Hammers stay and the usability of the stability on IR.

The dodge roll effect is neato as it gets, I’m looking forward to having my Revenants live (yes I will make 1 revenant of each race).

As a side note, what can the Revenant specialize in the future? currently there are 3 jack of all trades master of none professions, and there’s only 1 of them that truly shines in all game modes to the extent every meta team runs with that profession (D/D Cele, GWEN, and PvE, you know what profession I’m talking about) as I see it Revenant it’s decent and well rounded for sure and it’s far better than a lot of professions, but it just doesn’t have something that makes you say “oh we’re gonna really need to get a Revenant”, also bear in mind that Herald is quite mandatory now for every build, even condition does get benefit from the boons and effects on LDS too much to ignore or avoid picking it.

PVE REWARD TRACKS INITIATIVE
So when the reward track system was brought to PvP it has a lot of good and bad stuff with it, but overall you could say it gives a better sense to giving players a feeling of getting rewarded for their time invested on an activity.

The thing is make a reward track per dynamic event you design. Let’s make this event an example.

Mordrem Invasion reward track:
total tiers 10-12.
Getting a tier done needs 4-6 vine crawlers killed, each time you finish a tier you get champion loot bags.
Each 2 tiers gets you tokens that you can exchange for something, and 25-50s. (total for all tiers as bonus= around 1-2g besides the loot you get from mobs AND smaller chests from lesser tiers).
Finishing the track gives you a choice of: ascended crafting materials and for this I truly mean choice of recipe, choice of type of material needed (making each event a certain stat themed track i.e. one for zerk, one for sinister, one for rabid, one for valk, etc.), tomes of knowledge or runes/sigils.

This way a lot of new people could get a lot of options to get geared, keeping casual players in tune with hardcore ones, and hardcore players would feel way much rewarded.

As a whole here’s my take on the whole events/map activities on this game.

In spite of the claims of most of the Anet team (mostly Colin) say that GW2 is a game meant to be about exploring and being involved in a dynamic living world of events (which if I might say that the dynamic event system is great) and getting involved in dynamic combat fights (which is what has made me stick to GW2 in the first place) IMO it doesn’t feel like that, here’s what the current dynamic events feel like:
1) Follow a tag/tag up
2) tag mobs to get credit for a reward, mostly brainlessly facetanking stuff and just using autoattacks most of the time (optional but most of the players doing this do not even know or are familiar with the combat mechanics altogether)
3) Colin has explicitly said since the beta announcement that they do not want the game to have maps turned into wastelands, take a look at the game in it’s current form, most of the maps that are not profitable or do not have event chains that have a decent income are empty, take a look at the Mordrem Invasion event, most people are still there because of the selfless/thougthless potion and nothing else.

There are a ton of fixes, I do not like to do this events mainly because I find it boring to death just running in circles swinging my sword around hitting one while being unkillable (I’m looking at you GW2 manifesto), remember GW? remember the 55HP monk, SS Necro and, WaMos farming Aatxes in UW/Minotaurs/Hydras? that was grinding yes, but it required learning managing AND effectively using your skills to not die, not just running around hitting whatever keys you like and not understanding the game mechanics just to get gold and get generic skins (because most of the good stuff is absurdly expensive) if you want to look at it this way most of the “endgame” comes from grinding to get skins and it’s just a timegate, farm SW for 4 months with a dungeon here or there and you can just buy a legendary.

Suggestions:
1) add meaningful fights, be it solo or not but that actually require getting used to and using game mechanics to a minimum, Liadri was a good example of this, Queen’s Gauntlet, and even some Silverwastes fights, heck if all champions gave fights even like Shadow of the dragon the Dynamic Events would be much more meaningful
2) add some background story telling during the events, it wouldn’t hurt much and it would add much more live to them
3) make the reward system be actually rewarding, you were there the whole event? then give a fair enough ammount of tokens, just tagged some mobs to get a chest? give much less reward to those players, spent 60+ hours farming? give them decent rewards such as options to exchange tokens/trophies for ascended gear chests OR meaningful materials.
4) Encourage teamwork, but discourage mindless zerging, this game gets the best from optimized and good teamwork in all game modes I know that isn’t possible in unorganized groups but making them try to get organized is a good start and encourages socializing with your peers which is good for MMOs if done right. The big problem with GW2 is mindless zerging as it just doesn’t use the combat system as it could, the only zergs that actually make use of combo fields, CC and boons is the WvW community and some organized world boss runs.
5) Add overall good rewards in each map/zone that adds a lot to the whole thing about maps turning into wastelands, champion farming trains sort of made this possible but in the long run people will just run to the more bang for buck places, see Dry Top vs Silverwastes.

xarallei.4279:

Yup, I never bothered using it much because without the evade it was more likely to get you killed and its damage made it not worth using. Now it’s actually useful in pve and pvpers want it nerfed because of 1v1 pvp. It’s infuriating.

That’s what bothers me the most and in fact it affects the overall game. PvE content actually challenging ? (Teq, AC back in the Day, Arah back when Lupicus was way more challenging) OMG it’s too hard please make it easier I can’t bother with learning how to evade the important attacks and get better at something I like, a single skill istrong? OMG OP I don’t know how to counter it and I am too lazy to find a way to fight back, the game will always have stronger things than others, heck the problem with eles isn’t only burning, it’s that Ring of fire pairs well with burn stacking and blinding ashes, so it forces you to stay out of it until you can try a burst, get them too low? Vampirism procs and they heal, the counterplay comes from working around Ring of Fire and saving your bursts and interrupts until the Vampirism proc wears off, if you stall the game because you’re foolish enough to stay there and not help your team then you deserve to lose you it’s a matter of brains over brawn, but I guess most people can’t be bothered by that.

IMO that’s because of the active combat system, Shiro, Malyx and Glint give way to more adaptability in PvP, in PvE it’s not as noticed unless you do a lot of stuff solo and try to maximize your damage using Facets to gain boons and might, put conditions to up perosnal DPS, you can cap 25 might and fury for 10 seconds if you use all facets in a certain rotation, and 10-15 vuln but that leaves you with no boon uptime for around 10 seconds, Jalis feels not as good because it has good skills with high costs that have no apparent use or look like worse options because of that than what revenant has with other legends, Ventari feels slow and clunky because you need to move around the tablet and all those heals are redundant and the most valuable thing it has is the low cost low CD projectile destruction. Rework them to make them feel more fluid, also I’m guessing this has something to do with Rytlock using Herald skills, HoT being around searching glint’s egg and that maybe Revenant was created with Herald in mind beforehand.

As a last note, a lot of what glint and shiro brought for revenant is a feel of truly paying attention to what are your energy levels and managing active and passive play, which is what makes the profession unique and sets it apart from say warrior, guardian, thief, elementalist or even engineer and it was previously compared to all of those and paled in comparison in every departmnent, now it has it’s own unique way to contribute to parties and dps that is up there with ele and engi.

Renvolt.9107:

This is very true. Every class has a way to deal with this skill. And honestly the revenant has more scarier things up his sleeve then UA

The most scary weapon revenant has is staff, and really I will never stop saying it, it’s a truly masterpiece in regards of skill balance, it has everything on it, counterpressure, soft CC, healing, blast finisher and a block. If you get quickness autoattack it’s all you need to get slightly lower than Sword DPS. Sword is just strong because of the autoattack, UA is really used to annoy, most of my kills come from autoattacks really, if UA gets nerfed you still can dish out a ton of damage out of both mace and staff, you just compensate with burn and might spam at the cost of soft cc and an evade, what would really hurt Sword would be losing the evade, even if UA lost damage.

Odik.4587:

Never used jade winds in duels because its requier 50% energy and mesmer or some1 else probably have a breakstun so decision to use it would be fatal for you(unless u swap on another legend and gain 50% energy ) . Gap closer? 4 axe is free Phase traversal 20 energy its a joke paired with 1 slamming on sword because you do high amount of damage and can use right after that UA .
Blind block only first UA hit ,if thief would spam headshot he will lose all initiative and die to everything else youv got.
No ,seriously, why u defend this broken skill ? You havnt found celestial variation or never used hammer? Or you temped to use 1 skill to win ?

First off 1v1 can be easily won with certain builds that aren’t viable for group play, being good at 1v1’s doesn’t win games unless there’s a 1v1 mode and I’d rather win matches than win all 1v1’s I’m in and even before you mention it Jade Winds is great for party support and totally required in Stronghold for downing the lord’s break bar, second axe 5 sucks for pvp if you don’t dodge after the giant black rift pops up something’s wrong with your playstyle (same as using Glint’s Elite, if you don’t get off the big blue dragon something’s really wrong) the extra heal on shield is far better than a gap closer, even with all the easy counterplay to crystal hybernation, specially because you can use protection from shield and blind from staff for defense even the sword 4 block is better than a gap closer because it gives you needed survivability, heck the same build I’m talking about would be good enough even if they nerfed Unrelenting Assault Simply put let’s guess the damage gets nerfed to the ground (which doesn’t actually bother me as much as losing the evade), it really doesn’t matter for damage output because you could stack more might and add some extra burning in there with more ease with mace, and just get all of the damage from staff and then the rants and crying would be about mace or staff, simply put I find all this hassle about UA the same as counterplaying elementalists, it requires coordination and experience that’s all, take a look at ESL they restricted elementalists because the only players who knew how to cope with 4 of them were TCG and oRNG and most of the problem arised from vampirism runes not the elementalist stacking.

Go ahead suggest changes but if you’re gonna do that then at least find real solid arguments and solutions that can balance the skill in between all the game modes and don’t just base them around weak arguments like “lol too OP plz nerf ’cuz I no find decent player who can win against me” or “lol too OP I got killed cuz player used sword 3 after my gearshield and elixir s got used up stupid OP class need balance”.

And yes I edited this because a marauder engineer complained about Revenant being OP after burning gear shield on autoattacks and elixir S on the glint elite, the thing is you can’t tell if something is truly overpowered or not until it settles in a metagame enviroment, how do you expect to counter something if you don’t know it’s full power and weakness?

Kharr.5746:

UA is too strong if you compare it to any other multi-hit skill.

1) It has a very low cooldown.
2) It does not require special positioning like 100b, blurred frenzy, pistol whip, etc, all of which can be easily avoided 100% by a SINGLE dodge.
3) It automatically tracks the target and cannot be avoided by hiding behind terrain, or using line of sight, like rapid fire.
4) it cannot be avoided using teleports (just tried it on a thief and it tracks shadow stepping away, lulz)
5)It cannot be interrupted mid-attack using daze/stun due to the evades.
6) it cannot be reflected.

Every other similar skill in the game has at least 2-3 hard counters that negate it 100%. Double dodging is NOT a counter. If your opponent wastes 2 dodges against a 10s cooldown ability, they have completely lost the fight.

Rapid Fire is on a 10 second cooldown and does not root the ranger in place, also it can be interrupted by stowing weapons, unlike UA, it requires two dodges or another form of active counterplay to avoid, Backstab is another skill with more burst potential than UA has, and it has little counterplay since it would require you to be able to tell where the thief is, a reaper can literally shred you with Death’s Charge, Infusing Terror, AA and Executioner’s Scythe if you don’t have stun breaks or condicleanse/resistance and there’s little counter play, heck if he pops Chilled to the Bone in said situation you’re dead, a Warrior can ditch you with HB after an f1 and and Immob it just requires you to not have evades, stunbreaks or cleanses at your disposal, all of those have the same counterplay as UA and no one’s saying they’re overpowered.

What bothers me it’s that it might be designed thinking of a mobile support role which sounds really nice if you think raids and wvw, while being in the thick of battle, it does heal quite a decent ammount even with full damage gear (Zerker in PvE and no healing power mods in PvP). In reality it feels underwhelming because summoning the tablet takes slightly more than a heal from water attunement in eles, what you achieve with Ventari’s Will and Natural Harmony can be done way faster with blasted water fields, the projectile blocking is nice, the elite is sort of meh since it really has it’s use in PvP and WvW, where knocking back foes might be of use, but casting Natural Harmony 2 times is better in PvE, overall you lose more than you win in PvP/WvW and it’s use in PvE it’s limited to the situation you’re in, it’s good for bosses with projectiles, but that’s it, you can give perma regen and perma protection with glint and have a decent ammount of blind and weakness with staff and facet of darkness for party support.

Odik.4587:

Rygg.6237:

You’re fighting the same way a light test dummy golem would fight then, if you’re using a mesmer you have it easy really… just interrupt the revenant, trust me I’ve lost to mesmers this way, they can make you waste energy like no other profession, they can get out of stun with staff 2 (including jade winds), and they can always daze UA if they run MoD, probably the hardest professions for revenant currently are MoD Chronomancers/Mesmers, S/P thief, stun double distance dodge DD well played power Rangers, and Valkyrie Celestial Signet Reapers and from all of those the latter is the hardest match up and even then Mesmers and Reapers have A TON (well mesmer actually has little room) of room to screw up while Revenants are dead if they take bad decisions with their utilities.

UA killed lots of thieves so far, not a problem , same as mesmer untill he ran mass invis ,torch ,decoy . Staff 2 BREAKSTUN ? Oh my how many years are gone and they still think its a breakstun…
Reapers havnt been problem because of free chill removal , havnt seen power rangers

Thieves can get off really easily if they use shadow shot, headshot and black powder so given they have enough initiative they can cancel UA just by blinds or daze, I also got caught during the initial animation with basilisk venom, the funny thing was it did go off after the effect went off.

Technically Phase Retreat isn’t a stunbreak but well, even if you’re still stunned for 3 seconds, how can you get there fast if you don’t have a gap closer? not everyone has a 1200 range attack for revenant it requires either using Hammer or Phase traversal which is 20 energy IMO I’d rather wait for the mesmer to try and mage a counter than wasting 20 energy I might need to survive, besides if you get off Jade Winds the Revenant more than likely won’t have enough energy to use Phase Traversal.

Things that need change:

a) Jalis: cost and effect of utilities, currently the only worthwhile skills are the heal and elite, either lower costs by at least 1/4 of their current or Jalis will be ditched, and I’d hate that it would have to be picked for raid content just for having to combo taunt with Crystal Hybernation, it just feels as a waste of energy if you have to give up on say Glint for this.

b) Ventari: problem is the tablet functionality, and this has nothing to do to getting used to the tablet, summoning the tablet and moving it around, even when it’s just for personal use requires much more time and clicks… really if you wanted some options for heals water fields are as effective, it gives a lot of needed utility? yes, but simply put what can be achieved with a coordinated water field blasts is way, waaaay faster than summoning tablet, moving it to the best suited place and then pressing 8 and 0. In PvP it’s kind of nice but literally you’re just sub optimal because of the slower reaction time that is involved in between summoning, willing, casting the tablet around. FIX: make the tablet summon on legend swap, make the tablet follow you around and just will it to desired location when you press 6 and return to you after the distance threshold that it previously disappeared to, when you use the elite, put all the tablet skills on CD for 3-5 seconds.

c) Vengeful Hammers, Frigid Blitz, Grasping Shadow: they have problems with uneven terrain, Grasping Shadow sometimes doesn’t get the enemy even when you’re next to it and the animation triggers.

d) Malyx is nice but needs another option outside of mace for conditions, kind of gets fixed with on crit and weaponswap sigils and conditions on x skill runes but you’re practically forced to hybrid setups.

Asides from that I loved the changes and the current state of revenant.

You’re fighting the same way a light test dummy golem would fight then, if you’re using a mesmer you have it easy really… just interrupt the revenant, trust me I’ve lost to mesmers this way, they can make you waste energy like no other profession, they can get out of stun with staff 2 (including jade winds), and they can always daze UA if they run MoD, probably the hardest professions for revenant currently are MoD Chronomancers/Mesmers, S/P thief, stun double distance dodge DD well played power Rangers, and Valkyrie Celestial Signet Reapers and from all of those the latter is the hardest match up and even then Mesmers and Reapers have A TON (well mesmer actually has little room) of room to screw up while Revenants are dead if they take bad decisions with their utilities.

Actually it feels weak because it is completely dodgeable, if you don’t dodge after seeing a huge blue dragon pop from an enemy you’re doing something wrong.

What weapons are you using? there are various combos to do this

1) Glint: use Facet of Chaos passive to get prot then active to knockback, switch to shiro and use Phase retreat, always face to the opossing side you want to go
2) Glint: use Facet of Darkness active onto Chaos
3) Glint: use Facet of Chaos knockback then dash out of danger with staff 5
4) Staff: block using skill 3 then dash out with skill 4
5) Shield and Glint+Shiro: use Envoy of Exhuberance for some prot, then Crystal Hybernation and pop Facet of nature’s active in case they burst the break bar, then switch to shiro and phase retreat or jade winds

The good thing about revenant it’s that it has a ton of passive and active gameplay even with the not so great legends, you just need to experiment yourself depending on the situation, heck I managed to withstand 3v1 and down a player (though got resed) with marauder gear just by using LoS, managing energy and using shield+blinds+soft cc+cc for like 2-3 minutes, that’s quite impressive the only professions that can do that in the current metagame are eles and engis. And just to clarify no, I did not win the 3v1, but I stalled the opposing team and that has nothing to do with Revenant gameplay, it was a bad play on the other team they eventually died but it was because their team mates were left alone 2v1 and then my team just rushed in and won 4v1, those kind of plays are what wins or loses games.

Kodama.6453:

Krysard.1364:

UA is fine, pls theres no need to nerf a prof when people still dont know how to play against it

14k damage with one skill with evade and without a chance to kite it because it will port you wherever the enemy runs in a 1 on 1 fight is fine? srsly? xD

Backstab does the same and a stunlock MoD mesmer does even better if it catches you with no stunbreaks, it’s only 14k if you stand still and do nothing, back in the day a Mace/Torch medi-guard could hit 21k with 4 skills and it was easily done in classes that didn’t have easy oh crap buttons, the thing is people learnt how to play against that, it’s been 2 days since the current iteration of revenant is out.

Also changes for just PvP on this skill would make it worthless in PvE, if anything is needed for better balance in this game is splitting skill and trait effects in between game modes altogether.

Misguided.5139:

Rym.1469:

Unrelenting Assault follows everywhere you go. For 2s, you’re basically tied to your chosen target. I managed to follow other Revenant spamming Phase Traversal on WvW with it, traveling about 4000 units in total from my initial position.

I had wondered about that. If that is true, why not give it a max range it can travel once the initial effect begins, like 1000 or something like that?

You can just use it around 3 times and you’re out of energy, you can choose to stick and move or die, also you’re stuck for around 3/4-1 second until the naimation of PT ends, which makes you interruptable, I’ve been stopped by mesmers this way just time the daze after the hit, PT is a very nice gap closer but if used carelessly it’s also suicidal.