Guild Wars 2

Since he used a lvl 80 booster I guess he’s talking about PvE.
I’ll only talk about DPS because I don’t have experience with the support builds.

In this game, if you want to maximize your damage you should choose between Power damage or Condition damage.
There is some hybrid build that works, though (Revenant is much more hybrid than other classes, for example).

This choice determinates your weapon and your traitlines.
Right now, for both Condition Damage and Power damage the best builds use the Devastation and Invocation trait lines and the Jalis legend.
Power has Herald as the 3rd trait line and Glint as the second legend, Condition has Corruption as the 3rd trait line and Mallyx as the second legend.

Now, as weapons you’ve got:
- Mace, main hand: top choice for condition damage (it has burn and torment application)
- Sword, main hand: top choice for power damage and, with the Abyssal Chill trait in the Corruption line and its skill #2, somehow works as a condi weapon (but it’s weaker than mace)
- Axe, offhand: the best damage choice for an offhand weapon for both types of damage
- Sword, offhand: it gives you a block and a pull that grants you Fury. Axe helps with the DPS but it’s not that big of a difference, it’s ok if you like sword more I guess

As for the second set of weapons, it’s really your choice.
Staff it’s good for a defensive and a CC build, Hammer it’s the only ranged weapon we have until the next expansion hits.

So yeah, there is some correlation between weapons and traitlines.
The one between legends and weapons/traitline is not that strong, usually (Mallyx, Glint and Ventari being the exceptions)

Only this trait.

I didn’t know what to expect, but I have to say that I’m kinda optimistic about Renegade.
Shortbow give us bleed, burn and torment which is good (depending on numbers, obviously).
I totally didn’t expect the summons and we still don’t have any detail so I’ll suspend my judgment on that for now. From what I got we’ll have an AoE heal, a buffing one (I suppose AoE too), a melee damage (cleave) one and a ranged one (single target, may be the elite). We’ll see.
The F skills seemed ok, really not many information other than, I think, the F3 is another source of burn…?

I don’t know, it’s still too early to judge, but we know for sure that it’s condi ranged with bleed, burn and torment. If trait-wise it’s gonne work well enough with the Corruption line I will be satisfied.
But I’ve always liked condi Rev more than power, so I see how someone who whised for a solid power spec would be way less interested.

PS: I didn’t see skills which may bug too easily, yay!

Obtena.7952:

A little off topic … Glint in condition damage is a thing to begin with?. I suspect this elite spec, if it supplies a condi shortbow … will suspect it supports a condi and/or shortbow build in the first place. At least much better than Glint ever did.

Glint has a burn, a good heal and might + fury are never bad. But even then it’s not the best choice in a condi build.
So no, Renegade will not miss Glint.

While I agree with you on some things (at least one more utility for each Legend, or a little pool of generic non legend utilities would have done wonders for the class), I think most of the problem is in not trying to play Rev as you play other classes.
Rev has its own way to be played and when it finally clicks, at least for me, it’s hard to go back.
Energy is part of the deal and I see how it can be annoying to have yet another thing to look at. But you’ll get used to it, and it’s the thing that let Rev have this peculiar gameplay.
You really feel like you have 20 skill at your disposal, 10 at each time and grouped by 5. This give us 4 different combinations and the unique ability to have 100% different skills by switching legend and weapon. Almost a soft build change.
And utilities are not “utilities” but part of the skill you actively use, continuously.
This lead to more interesting tactical choices, but in real time.

For example, using Mallyx, Embrace the darkness can give me torment, more damage and burn. Do I use it or it’s better to use Unyielding Anguish for the chill, faster torment application and combo field? How much energy do I have left? It’s the enemy stationary? Which weapon am I using? Should I switch weapon? Am I taking too much damage? Do I need a stun break? Can I use Pain Absorption or shoud I switch to Jalis?

I can go on forever. But the point is that for me the ability to constantly adapt to the situation makes me feel like the outcome of the fight is more tied to my real time choices than any other class. I find it more rewarding.

PS: This doesn’t mean in any way that the class doesn’t have problems and that can’t be made better.

Dev/Inv/Herald is the standard power build template and it’s the one the works the best.

But as long as you’re in open world you can do what you want.
Maybe taking out Invocation for Retribution can help you with feeling harder to kill when you’re playing without paying too much attention, but I really don’t recomend it outside some fun experimentation because it’s not needed.
Learning to play better will yield the best result and give you more freedom of choice in the long run.
A well timed Glint heal is almost always enough to survive on its own, and you also have Jalis for a backup.

On a side note, at the moment Vengeful hammers is bugged and will only heal you for like 2 hp instead of 56. I haven’t checked the numbers but the damage reduction should be working as expeted.

As for me, I get easily bored so I like to try almost every combination. I also have kitteneless condi staff somewhere :P

But, when I want to be serious Dev/Inv/Herald for power and usually Dev/Cor with Herald or Invocation based on the situation for condi.

Another little thing that you may not know yet: when you don’t want to run with herald, you can use Rapid Flow from the Invocation line to obtain perma swiftness.
You only have to use an upkeep skill and switch it off asap to get 5 secs of switftness.
They have almost no cooldown so you can do it again at the end of the 5 secs to refresh the boon.
It’s a little annoying to do it so often, but it works.

Yeah, totally. Adjusting an healing value shouldn’t take too much effort.
Thing is, I’m not sure they’re aware of the problem…

Herald is viable for both power and condi builds.
Sword/Axe or Sword/Sword (if you want the block) are both good for power.
The second set is really a matter of preference.
If you have Glint, the elite skill is good for breakbars and you have a pull in both offhand sword and axe.
Hammer too has its CC skill and if you’re using Shiro you have Jade Winds too, so unless you’re in a situation where you really need a lot of CC I’d say staff is not mandatory.

For a power build the best choice of legends is Glint/Jalis.
Jalis can also help you when you’re feeling squishy (good heal and Vengeful Hammers heal + damage reduction)

Always remember to make a good use of your double healing skill, and hammer #4 field to lifesteal with AA.

We also have some damage reduction and lifesteal traits that can help (sometimes they’re not the optimal choice for DPS, though).

Hammers disappear when they hit something they can’t pass through, like a wall.
IIRC they’re projectiles, so they behave as such.
Unrelenting Assault has a similar problem, when the skill stops because the enemy is too close to a wall.

I think enough time has passed since HoT beta to say that they don’t have the tech to fix it right now.

On a side note, since we’re talking about hammer bugs, we have a “good” one too:
If you time it right you can have them up while downed, wich can help not dying (damage reduction + healing).

While I too had the first impression of Balthazar impling the other gods as “they”, the whole Rytlock/charrs accusing him and the gods listening to them seems off to me.
Gods never showed any kind of impartiality towards races, they’re always on the humans’ side.
Also, when Balthazar was guiding humans to the conquest of Tyria the other gods agreed (even if they would have wished for another thing).
When a god goes against the agreed position of the others they never showed the intention to simply “leave him alone” (as with Abaddon).
It would be really silly for them to just blame him hundreds of years later.

Rytlock is hiding something about is little trip though, and the timing for the two (Rytlock and Balthazar) is indeed suspicious.
I don’t think he is the cause of it all, but I think he may know more than us.

If Lazarus will want something from the player character is probably going to be assistance in fighting an Elder Dragon, at first.

I can only think of 2 things he may want (in the end):
- Somehow ressurrect others of his race
- Become a “god”

Kryta is useless in this regard, so he doesn’t care about it.

Anyway, back on topic, any magitech in an ascension process would be a great disappointment.

serj.8214:

Calling some a boy when you sit on another side of PC is so brave and cool XD And we have a disscus here so i dont see any probs to say dat mace is ok as it is and Staff #2 is cool interrupt on spvp)

I intended “Wow boy” as a matter of speech, not an insult. Sorry if it passed along in the wrong way. English is not my first tongue so I may have given the wrong idea.
Not sure why you thought it should have been “brave and cool” anyway, but that’s off topic.

Back to the rev, I didn’t say mace isn’t ok (it probably the weapon I have the most fun with atm).
I said that the profession could have been better off with a mid range condition weapon to make the most out of:
1- Torment
2- Having a single condi weapon

Staff #2…Well, I think it would be a better interrupt with the second skill only, dazing only if used while the enemy is using a skill.
What I meant with clunky is that you have to use the skill twice to get the interrupt, which is not ideal.

I’ll say it again, we don’t have to agree

serj.8214:

Temihal.8651:

I think the priority should obviuosly be bug fixing.
After that we should have some kind of rework of underused legends/traitlines.

Then weapons.
Eg:
Mace should have been a mid range weapon (makes more sense given how we use torment as the primary condition, we want the enemy to move but we don’t have the skills to stay glued to them). It’s also our only condi weapon so make it also work on range should be a given.
Staff #2 is clunky, and so on.

When we have actually fixed bugs and design, then we can work on numbers.

Mace is nice as it is) and staff #2 if cant use it properly its ur problem not of the weapon.

Wow boy, I’m sorry you need so much someone to take out your frustrations on. Hope things get better soon for you. /s

It was just my opinion, you have yours and that’s fine.
Try to be a little more constructive and explain your point next time.
Stating things are ok good/bad just because won’t help anyone.

I think the priority should obviuosly be bug fixing.
After that we should have some kind of rework of underused legends/traitlines.

Then weapons.
Eg:
Mace should have been a mid range weapon (makes more sense given how we use torment as the primary condition, we want the enemy to move but we don’t have the skills to stay glued to them). It’s also our only condi weapon so make it also work on range should be a given.
Staff #2 is clunky, and so on.

When we have actually fixed bugs and design, then we can work on numbers.

In absence of Viper, I’d go with Sinister.
And you’ll always be an hybrid anyway, so I’d use berserker for the remaining things.
Berserker runes for armor, I think.
And something for condition damage/duration on weapons.

I’m using something similar for fun in open PvE and works just fine.
Weapons: mace/sword and hammer.
Trait lines, devastation, corruption and herald.
You coud end up a little low on precision while using Mallyx, so trait accordingly

Hi fellow revs!

I’ll start saying this is an idea I came up with randomly, and I know it requires far too much work to actaully implement it. But still, I wish the revenant class could work like this.
So don’t take it as an actual proposal, it’s just for fun.

That being said, I’ll try to be concise.

I think rev should have been a fighter with his own skills, adding the power of the legends to his own.
To be more pratical (6a and 6b are exclusive alternatives):

1. An energy bar like we have now is fine, with regeneration pipes
2. Skills with normal cd and no energy cost
3. A normal pool of utilities (maybe we could tie the elite with the attuned legend? don’t know)
4. Legends becomes toggles (2 equipable at once like we have now is fine)
5. Activating a legend stop energy regeneration and removes cd on skills, adding an energy cost (only utilities if this is op)
6a. Activating a legend adds a secondary effect the rev skills (only utilities is this is op too)
6b. Activating a legend replace the current utilities with a legend premade set (the ones we have now)
7. Maybe a special f3 skill that change based off the current active legend?
8. When the energy bar is empty, the legend is off until it’s activated again

This would make reventants more diverse, and I think it would add depth to the legends choice (because it’s combined with the utilities choice too).

Now, why this is impratical:
1. Utiliies have to be created
2. Every new legend would need new effects for all the skills (or at least utilities), and this requires work to think them and a lot more work to balance them
3. Is a change so big that it would demand to balance everything from scratches

We could use current utilities and modify them to make the point 1 easier, or we could replace the equipped utilities with the legend sets (as we have them now) when the legend is toggled to resolve point 2. (point 6b)

But still, it’s too much work for it to be done.

But this is for fun so… What do you think?

Demon in Guild Wars universe has a specific meaning, it doesn’t have anything to do with real life religion.
Just like djinn, tengu, etc.

Me too, my maps always fail.
Maybe the weekend will help.

We still have +7% dmg under fury, though.
So fury uptime should be considered as well.

Hi fellow revs, let’s discuss about Mace!

While it feels quite good using it in a condi setup with Mallyx, I still felt like the build was missing a secondary set (both weapon and legend) to complement it well.
We all know we miss a second condi weapon (ranged?), but the time frame until release is probably too short to implement a new weapon to add to rev’s kitten nal.

So, let’s discuss about fiesible solutions.

I’ll write down my 2 cents.
Since we don’t have neither another legend nor another weapon to help us spreading conditions, I guess the easiest solution is to make mace an hybrid weapon and create some good condi traits in other lines. This would make the hybrid setup competitive.
Mallyx it’s kind of hybrid on his own thanks to its elite and the fact that we don’t have a second condi legend.

Sure, I still don’t like how we would be privated of a pure condi setup that way.
But we kinda don’t have it already…

What do you guys think?

Agroman.7190:

Kormir wasn’t “using the bad guy powers”. Abaddons powers weren’t bad or evil to begin with. He made them that way and Kormir took the raw power and cleansed it. So that’s no argument for the gods being okay with the Revenant channelling Mallyx or Shiro. Especially Shiro, btw., who stole magic gifted by Dwayna to wreak havoc in Cantha.

Where did I say that Kormir used Abaddon power…?

Anyway, I can see Dwayna not liking Shiro that much but it’s not like anyone is bringing him back to life. Revenants are only using him (and other legends), why should the gods even care?

I could understand the conflict if the gods where some kind of good and pure beings , but they’re definitely not.

Ironically, the most suited god for a revenant would probably have been Abaddon with his pratical-oriented philosophy:
“Act with magic, act within reason, act without mercy”.

As for the actual gods, using an ancient type of magic (somehow akin to ritualists’) to get power diretly from the Mists still give me the Kormir’s knowledge vibe more than anything else.
Nightfall history also helps Kormir in the “using the bad guy power” department.
After all to beat Abaddon they used Joko who has always been, and after more than two centuries still is, an enemy.
The 5 gods themselves didn’t seem to mind it as long as Abaddon was defeated, so I don’t see how they would care about using Shiro or Mallyx power in the present time to fight elder dragons.

The gods are not good guys, except maybe Melandru.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Just had a few questions about the Revenants staff, if yall wouldn’t mind taking the time out to educate me a bit…

• Can the staff be used effectively in an offensive build? Is it better for power or condition?

• Is it really pure melee? How does it feel to use compared to Greatsword or Hammer?

• Do you see staff being a popular weapon?

• What offset best compliments staff?

• What kind of build would you recommend for someone who wants to maximize the effectiveness of this weapon?

• Which legends best compliment the staff?

You asked about offensive builds so I’m gonna answer keeping that in mind.

1) It’s 100% power based. More on its use later.

2) It’s pure melee.
It feels more like an hammer than a gs. One block, one slam, a knockdown, slower than a gs but still faster than a normal melee hammer.

3) I totally love to use it, but it’s not the top dog in anything.
It can’t beat sw/a, so it’s gonna fight for the second weapon spot with hammer probably.

4) Ideally hammer for a ranged option, or sw/sh in a defensive build.
I tried it a lot with sw/a but it ends up being underused.

5 – 6) PvE or PvP? I haven’t played with it enough time in PvP, so I’ll talk about PvE.
Like the hammer, it’s great with Shiro thanks to Impossible Odds. The second legend it’s more of a personal preference (I found Glint to work the best with it).
The second weapon set could be easly filled with sw/a for a 100% melee build or hammer if you need range.
As for traits, I don’t think anyone it’s gonna do something different than Devastation/Invocation/Herald in any offensive PvE build.

In PvP I guess it can work in a less fragile build.
I’d use Shiro anyway. The staff can heal a little bit and remove some conditions (not so much). But more than anything it has a knockdown which could be useful with the Jade Winds’ stun to lock down someone.
In this case I’d think about an hammer and Jalis to complete the build.
But it’s pure speculation on my part, I haven’t tested it.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Is there a way I can do damage and still provide meaningful healing?

The only way a rev can provide meaningful healing is with Ventari and that’s kinda indipendent from the weapon choice.

Really, the only time I recall we heard something against necromancers as a whole was in Factions during the ritualist’s missions.
And even that was quite bland.

People usually have problems with a single necromancer, and that can happen with any other profession.

I had a Ritualist main in GW, so I waited a long time for something thematically similar.
I’ll try to main rev for sure, but I can’t say it’s final until I played him long enough.

We know for sure that both the Great Destroyer and Drakkar fell asleep too.
It’s fair enough to think that all dragon champions go to sleep with their masters or shortly after.
They’re useless awake on their own (preparation for the next cycle excluded).
It’s also hard to think that the races that survived the ED until then would need to hide from the minions left alive.

Glint sayed awake only because she was freed, I guess.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

To quote from EoD: “At first, for centuries, I defended my master. But I could hear his thoughts, too, and I knew that if he rose again, all good things would come to an end.”

This is interisting.
Was Glint able to hear the ED’s thoughts while hiding her’s from him?

Ok, I’m going totally crazy here, but if we assume that Glint was that powerful and that we don’t actually know what she really wanted, this can come out:

Glint was never a good dragon (even after she was freed) and she used the races of Tyria in her own fight against Kralkatorrik. “Hiding” the races was just keeping them close.
If the dragon would have attacked, she would have used them for fighting back and kill him, taking his place as an Elder Dragon.

Same thing she try to do with the help of DE.

The only difference is that Kralkattorik was actually aware of the races presence in the last cycle, so he didn’t dare to attack her.
In the present cycle he didn’t think Glint would have poweful allies, so he decided to attack.

And now we have a Glint’s egg, and we can guess she wanted to use her on child to take the place of Mordremoth.
With that she could have controlled the whole world.

We don’t know if being an elder dragon force you to go to sleep, but we know that Glint (while she’ve been a dragon champion) somehow managed to stay awake.

Can we really be sure she and her progeny always had and always will have good intentions?

I’m not happy at all about racials, but it’s kinda easy to see where this decision comes from.
Sure, they could give them greater CDs or make them weaker to balance the double utility bar but that wouldn’t work that great.

If we could come up with a feasible solution all together I’m sure Roy and the crew would take that in consideration. They did for a lot of things, after all.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Glint hid the races from the Elder Dragons. This means that she was both given free will and betrayed Kralkatorrik before it went to sleep.

So by logic, Kralkatorrik should have left a different dragon champion around to wake him up on time.

Most likely scenario is that Kralk did just that, but Glint killed said champion at some point, leaving him without a champion to wake him up.

I found this hypothesis interesting.
Why didn’t Kralkatorrik kill Glint after her betrayal?
Was Glint simply very good at hiding or could she have been powerful enough (with the races she hid helping her) to make Kralkatorrik think twice about fighting her?
After all she almost got him with DE too.
In this case why even bother creating a champion too weak to survive Glint?

From what we know she could be simply trying to shoulder everything herself, probabily thinking to be more efficent that way.
Still wrong, but I feel like it’s not impossible to forgive someone you know (how much depends on the PC race) for trying to do something good in a selfish way.

Let’s put this all into prospective.
GW2 came from GW which have something like 1300+ skills to balance, and secondary professions don’t help. It has 8 skill slot to fill with whatever you want, no weapon skills, no mandatory heal, etc.
That was a balance nightmare for devs.

Than came GW2, with devs obviously determined not to repeat the same errors.
This is why we have weapons skills in GW2 or the mandatory elite slot, for example.
This greatly reduce the chances of unexpected combinations and give the devs an easier time balancing the game.
Limiting new weapons and utilities to only being used with the respective specialization equipped is another mechanism that helps keeping balance easier.

What you’re asking for, on the other end, is basically to keep increasing the number of skills available with every new specialization, which will lead to the same problems they had with the first GW.
They based GW2 on not being like that (with other things, of course), so that’s why what you’re asking for is simply impraticable.

DKShang.8792:

Kidel.2057:

I already have a lv1 character with that name taken (just in case), so I’ll just delete it before making the Revenant.

LOL, did this too after the first beta weekend.

Me too! I did it as soon as I started playing the portal beta.
Poor lvl1 guardian.

I’ll try to be concise (I don’t have much time now), I’m sure someone will write down all the details later (and correct what I got wrong).

1) We’re not too sure if they’re the same species or not, actually.
In case they are, the main differences are obviously in age and power.
It is hinted that other dragons can become an elder dragons in place of an old one, but we don’t know more than that.

2) We don’t know for sure not knowing what happened in Cantha and Elona.
But we can be pretty sure that we have 6 Elder Dragons (Primordus, Jormag, Zhaitan (Dead), Deep sea dragon, Kralkatorrik, Mordremoth)

3)No, they just live somewhere. Obviously their presence change the environment around them, anyway.

4) All but Zhaitan

5) Tequatl was strong to begin with being a dragon champion. He became stronger after Zhaitan demise, probably absorbing some of the magical power going loose after the orrian dragon death.

6) We don’t really know.
The only thing we know for sure is that they need to absorb magic to stay awake.
How they do it could be different, though.

Yeah, someone still find necromancy creepy. It’s normal, they use dead bodies or part of them…
But I see the Order thing more as a regulation of magic in general.
The bad guy that time happened to be a necro, but it wuold have been the same if he was a mesmser, elementalist or monk.

Necromancy had a worse reputation in Cantha than Tyria(usually beetween ritualists), though.

Edited the OP with a sad but predictable news.

I try following the rule “every alt for himself” when possible, so I’ll try to get most things for my rev while playing him.
Still, I already reserved enough damask for an eventual ascended armor (and some runes).

Kodiak.3281:

Just to clarify you can swap Utilities around, but not new utilities in. So for example I prefer Inspiring Reinforcements on my first Utility slot, I am able to swap it there.

Didn’t know that, thanks!
Edited the OP accordingly.

Fade.1743:

Okay, so these two stuck out for me.

First one, there are two possible explanations, but it’s based around one fact: Rytlock is the first revenant. This leaves us with two possibilities: 1) Revenants in our timeline do not exist before Rytlock returned or 2) they did exist in OUR timeline, but wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey.

1) This technique was done in GW1 where Canthan and Elonian heroes were able to go back to previous campaigns (in the timeline of GW1) and were told that it happened in the past. Basically a way for all players to experience the content even if their characters cannot. In roleplay terms, it’s an out of character explanation…or in simpler terms gameplay mechanics != lore.

2) This is the one I hope is canon. Moreso because it adds some depth and mystery to the Mists. Now then, to put it bluntly, the Mists exists outside the very concept of space-time…and is the bridge between worlds and universes. So, Rytlock can still be the first Revenant in HIS timeline, but in the timeline of Tyria, he doesn’t show up until the attack against Mordremoth fails. And to teach “new” Revenants, well…they have to commune with the mists to get their powers. So, Rytlock could teach them in the past…still making him the first Revenant.

Not really the place to discuss things (we have a lot of topics around and we should keep this topic clean).
I’ll just say I’m hoping we get a retcon on that fact.
Anyway, until we get a red post (or a blog) we don’t know any better.

Fade.1743:

Second one.

Yes, yes we do. The elite specs unlock like the base ones. Through the accumulation of hero points. How many? We don’t know. Current datamining has said we’d need 170 to unlock all the skills and traits (and still have a few cosmetic rewards). I’d hope this isn’t the case because then we’d run into issues in future elite spec additions where you can’t unlock all the traits and skills due to not having enough hero points in the game. (Unless they become drops from things)

We still don’t know if we need to do something before being able to buy Herald skills and traits with hero points. For now we can only guess.
Informed guess (thanks to datamine) it’s still a guess.

Hi all,
given that we’re 40 days from HoT and probably 2-3 week from the third (last?) BWE, I thought it would be good to have a single place for all common Q&A.
And it would be great if Roy could clarify (if he can) when it’s needed.
I’ll start writing off what comes to my mind, with everybody help we can hopefully have a complete list.
Also, if I missed somthing be sure to tell me.

• What changes are we to expect?
  Roy said we’re gonna have a lot of polish and some Mallyx and Ventari changes. We’re getting details soon.

• Will Revenant have a custom personal story?
  No. Devs confirmed Revenant won’t get any special personal story step.

• How can Revenants exists before Rytlock came back?
  Your guess is as good as any, we still don’t have any answer on this.

• How will Revenants unlock Herald?
  As for any other elite spec, we still don’t have any info.

• Will Revenant be able to access racial skills?
  No.
  Fore more info, here.

• Will Revenant be able to switch utilities?
  We don’t have a final answer, but each legend will probably only have 3 utilities.
  It’s only possible to change their order on the skill bar.

• Will Revenant get a new weapon before release?
  99% not, but we have no official response.

• What PvP title will Revenant have?
  We don’t know yet, but we are asking to vote!

• Are legend swapping and weapon swapping related?
  No, Revenants can freely swap legends and weapons independently.

• Can I use shield and/or Facet of Nature without Glint?
  Equipping the Herald trait line gives access to both shield and Facet of Nature.
  It’s not mandatory to equip the Glint legend to use them, you only need the Herald trait line.

• Sometimes I can’t activate upkeep skills, why?
  Upkeep is capped at -10.
  This means, for example, that you can’t activate a skill with a -3 upkeep if you already have a -8 upkeep active.

• Will pre-order users have an early access to Revenant?
  We never got an official reply on this but given how the realease date is coming closer, chances are getting slimmer.

As I said in a similar topic, there is currently no problem with a revenant PC.
The profession doesn’t came out nowhere, not more than any other class do anyway.

Ritualist magic is old (at least) as humans, so it’s not that strange to find an individual with that kind of skills.
When you create a new revenant, you place him in the same time as any other new char.
The only thing changed after Rytlock return (so after the revenant PC has gone through the personal story and LS1&2) is that we learn that those abilities can be quite common, so we give a name to people who use them.

The only problem is the “Rytlock is the first revenant” quote anet used to promote the new profession.
But we were being told that in-game lore always win against interviews and the like.
A revenant PC talking to a still warrior Rytlock will be in game 100%, and that is in-game lore telling us that Rytlock wasn’t the first revenant.
So until we don’t have that quote in game we don’t need anything else to explain revenants.

tl;dr: Until nothing in the game says that Rytlock is the first revenant, a revenant PC can exists as any other profession PC, without any lore problem. It’s simply another take on old ritualist magic.

The only problem I see is the “Rytlock is the first revenant” quote, that as far as we know is not (yet?) in game.
Rox words can be interpreted as “Rytlock is a warrior, why he is using new abilities?”, so that “new magic” is meant as new for Rytlock, not for the world.
Or, if we’re really that desperate (and the commander still hasn’t unlocked herald), she could talk about glint elite skill.

Before that everyone could have simply thought that the commander was gifted with special skills, no need to name a profession for a single person.
After Rytlock come back the fact that others can learn those skills become common knowledge, so the revenant as an “official” profession is born.

No need for misty-time travel and the like…

We have to forget about that “Rytlock is the first” or think it was a mistake, though.
And given that it’s not a quote from the game itself, I guess it’s ok doing so.

Back on rev…

I understand the need to avoid the potential spike.
But right now the skill is best used pre casting it even with a lower spike damage (the fury on heal trait helps too).
So we end up with a skill used in the “wrong way” (if from a design pov we want to avoid the pre casting) and that’s also weak at that (because it wasn’t thought like that).

Having an ICD means we want to spread the spike over a longer duration, to somehow mitigate it. I’m ok with this too.

We should also not ignore the main problem the skill have right now: low amount of healing.
To make things worse, we need to attack to heal, making us vulnerable to more damage this skill won’t be able to mitigate.
And the ICD makes it harder for us to CC someone or using a mistake on their part to heal (example: even if we found an enemy immobilised for 3 sec we can’t get a full heal out of them before they can start getting away).

TL;DR

To put it all together, we need to prevent excessive spike while doing one of the following three:
- Heal more
- Heal faster
- Mitigate damage while healing

I’m going to try and come out with some possible solutions:

1) We could do something like double the daggers giving them half the damage but keeping the healing as it is, but I think it’s not good to have a 12 parts buff from a design standpoint.
And the healing would be too much with 12, so something like 8-10 (giving them proportional damage) would be better.
But I still don’t like it.

2) Stronger initial heal, keeping the rest as it is.

3) Some sort of evade, invulnerability or at least stability/protection for 4-6 sec after the initial heal. That would give us time to actually heal a little bit.

We can talk about numbers, but I guess my pick would be #3.
With that the heal would gain that OMG button feel it totally lacks while keeping the need to stay aggressive (the low initial heal is useless alone).
The ICD stays, so we don’t have too much spike damage and we still need to think about when using it (the buff duration wouldn’t cover the time we need to use all 6 daggers).
As a plus, it’s hard to give up a buff like that to use it as a pre-casted opener.

Just my 2 cents^^

Yeah, with the harpoon we should have a complete revenant in the next BWE.
I would love to start leveling my rev shortly after that.
Open PvE only would be enough (I guess it wouldn’t be fair to let it access any ranked mode until it’s final).
Still, it won’t happen 99.99%.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

There are no plans to add skills or traits which affect energy gain, upkeep gain, or energy cost of skills for the Revenant. These traits very quickly become mandatory choices as it means you can use your skills more often and in the case of energy, it would apply to all your skills since they all use energy. This is a dramatic increase in power across the board.

These kind of traits makes for less interesting choices and cause many problems with balance, often forcing skills to be weaker to compensate for the possibility of a player having all these traits equipped meaning they can use skills much more often then a player without them. But of course there will be balance on on energy costs and recharges of skills to make sure everything feels good and balanced for what it does in the toolkit of the revenant.

I agree too.
No matter how you look at it, adjusting costs it’s always better than a “energy pool power creep”.
It may seems boring with no active energy gain, but in the long run it’s gonna keep us free to choose anything without having to spec for the mandatory traits.

xarallei.4279:

That’s exactly what I mean though about being forced to take things bad for dps. So instead of being able to take the fury heal trait I have to take the stupid condi cleanse on legend swap trait. -_- I’m not going to do that, so I guess I’ll have to go without condi cleanse.

With Facet of Darkness you probably won’t need more fury, but I get your point.

I’m a little concerned about the heal skill (usually passive heal effect entail weaker active) and the possibility of an energy cost on the burst skills.
Certainly the upkeep on the passive should help letting us get a stronger active.
Anyway, I’m sure it’ll turn out great.

Can’t wait to see it in action (and try it out, obviously).

Also even if I’d like to see energy management traits, I still think they would be better off in the Invocation line, leaving the Herald one free to focus on boons (maybe we could move some of the fury traits here to make space in Invocation).
I think it would be cleaner that way, with the class defining line focusing on our class mechanics and the “boon” line focusing on boons.

Staff
The buff helped, i love it. Seems our best option for melee AoE.

#1, AA Chain:
Feels good enough.

#2, Punishing Sweep:
It’s good.
But i think it needs to change in Debilitating Slam even if the enemy isn’t using a skill.
It may be ok in PvP, but some monster in PvE tend to attack with fast animation in a very low frequency. And, more importantly, often in a melee AoE we won’t be able to see enemies animations with particle effects and the like.

#3, Warding Rift:
The tooltip needs to be more clear.
It block all attacks? Only ranged?
Other than that it’s ok.

#4, Renewing Wave:
Maybe could use a little buff in healing and a slightly faster animation.

#5, Surge of the Mists:
I love it.
Sometimes some smaller enemy ends up a little behind of our char final position or get knocked on the side, don’t know if it’s intended.

Legends

Shiro
The heal it’s too weak and its internal cooldown make it even more difficult to use.
Utility #7 costs too much.
Utility #8 would be better of as a blink, giving us some mobility.
Utility #9 it’s tricky to adjust, could use some kind of condi removal to be more similar to its GW1 counterpart but I guess it’s ok.
The Elite is ok.

Jalis
I only use it for the heal and condition removal.
The other skills need a lot of work to be viable.

Mallyx
Embrace the Darkness gives a good boost, but that’s mostly it.

General impressions and Bugs

1) I’m going to be annoying, I know.
We have energy costs on skills and traits written as a simple number.
It doesn’t really make much sense (and could be potentially confusing) to have our energy pool written in percentual.
Like: I have 100% energy and this skills cost 50, how much energy % will I have left if I use it?
We all know it’s 50, but it could be confusing to someone (new players and the like).

2) Some skills like sword #3 or axe #4 sometimes make us end up giving our back to the enemy. The char stays there without attacking if I don’t use a skill, even if I was using the AA before.

3) The almost mandatory shiro camping needs to be looked at.
We only use sword AA to recover energy, then Impossible Odds until we can and back to AA. We don’t have anything as good. And often it feels like we don’t have anything else useful at all.

4) Generally speaking, we are in a awkward place right now. We don’t offer good enough DPS (I’m not a math guy so please tell me if it’s not like this) and we don’t offer any kind of unique support.
And the other kinds of support we have it’s done better by others.
I tried to give some ideas with ferocity and fury, we also have some projectile block and some damage mitigation.
Whatever we end up with, we need to be better at it.
I also feel a little too fragile, but I guess that’s amplified by the shiro heal problem.

5) Ooc mobility was said to be looked at (swiftness) so I won’t say anything about it.

6) We all seems to agree on what our most important problems are, and that makes me feel better.

7) All in all we are a lot better than we were on the portal beta. The class in fun to play and I really like it.
I’m confident it’s gonna be even better in BWE2.

Hi all,
here’s my feedback on a power build rev in open world PvE only.

I went with full Assassin gear and sigil of percepton.
I felt better around 70% crit chance, with 100% under fury.

Traits

Devastation Line
Overall feels almost ok.
Switf Termination is the only GM worth taking and Malicious Reprisal seems completely useless, other than that it’s ok.
I like the focus on ferocity and I initially thought that it would a perfect kind of group support for an offensive revenant (+ferocity for all, and fury from the Invocation line maybe?).
But right now it’s too isolated and the 150 given by Assassin’s Presence alone it’s simply not enough. It needs some utility skill (shiro seems an obvious choice here) helping.

Invocation Line
This seems to be our fury and energy management line.
But right now neither of them are working like they should.
Fury
The GM trait is great and the fury duration on the other traits seems good too.
But they are too situational.
I’m seriously hoping not to be stunned every 10 seconds and also not to be healing every 20 sec.
Incensed Response would be good if made trigger of legend swap and the only way I see Fierce Infusion working as it is now it’s to lower the shiro heal cooldown to 20 sec (to be on par with the trait and be used on cooldown. Still doesn’t feel like an optimal solution).
It would be also great to have a trait to share our fury with others (600 radius?).
Energy Management
To me these traits seems to be intended to give us some bonus if we manage our energy with care and take action at the right time.
Want healing? Stay over 50 energy. Want damage? Stay below 50.
The problem it’s we don’t have that kind of control in combat. We either have +5 pipes, -5 pipes or -3 pipes. We don’t have a way to keep energy stable at one point.
The only thing we can do it’s to use only AA to stay over 50.
There are also only 3 traits like these and their bonus are too low to really care.
Wouldn’t it be better to give us some traits that lower the cost of upkeep skills or give us more max energy?

Corruption Line
I’m talking about this line in a power oriented build, so I’ll try to leave out the pure condition oriented traits.
What it’s left is some torment on crtis (it’s more “free” damage so it’s always good), boon removal or more damage under condition and Maniacal Persistece.
Seems good enough.

Retribution Line
Some help to survive a little longer, but doesn’t feels too much like an offensive line so I’ll leave it like that.

Weapons

Sword Main Hand
#1, AA chain:
Could use some more DPS (it’s our top DPS), but overall feels good.
#2, Precision Strike:
I’m a little lost here, I missed something.
What’s exactly the moment where this skill shine?
Low damage, a mere second of chill (the skill has a little aftercast too), low range on a melee set.
I simply never use it.
#3, Unrelenting Assault:
Everyone and their mother already said that this skill need an evade.
And I guess I would also like a 600 range instead of 450.
Range and might, seems intended as an opener to me.
Evade and 600 range would make it just right.

Sword Offhand
I’ll leave this out because I didn’t used it much (the bug on the block, its most useful skill, would give it an unfair valutation).

Axe
It felt like the sword perfect companion with its teleport and a CC.
I would be totally fine leaving it like this.

Hammer
The damage buff really made a difference. In the portal beta it felt sooo slow and weak.

#1, Hammer Bolt:
I think it’s ok like this.

#2, Coalescence of Riun:
Also good like this. Great after axe #5.

#3, Phase Smash:
Ok, but seriously, we need it to have an evade.
It doesn’t make sense to use it as a range skill only to be hit by melee damage and condition AoE anyway. It roots us too…

#4, Field of the Mist:
A second more in duration would help, but it’s ok anyway.
Also useful for a really small healing thanks to the dark field and projectiles.

#5, Drop the Hammer:
It’s really too slow, even in PvE. I feel like crying just thinking of using it PvP. :P

Many people think that the necro is going to be the 6 shout spec.
Marjory talking about Rox teaching her stances with the gs makes me wonder, though.
So yeah, engineer could get shouts.

Clones and phantasms generation is not that much of a problem in a long boss fight, even if they die often.
Sure, the dps is not optimal. But does it matter in that situation?

Ok, let’s start saying that I ‘m probably speculating too wildly, but I’d like to know what you guys think nevertheless.

A little bit of context.

What we know:
- Sylvari can be corrupted by Mordremoth
- The Pale Tree is supposed to be able to protect them from corruption
- Sylvari are getting corrupted only now that the dragon is awake
- They were born while the dragon was sleeping
- The Pale Tree was supposed to be Mordremoth general

Now, I guess we can define Sylvari as dragon general’s children.
As gw1 destroyers, with the difference that the Great Destroyer was still allied with his dragon.
The Pale Tree seems to be free from the dragon influence, as Glint was.

What I want to say is… Aren’t chances very high that Glint’s children will be easily corrupted by Kralkatorrik?

Sure, the dragons are very different and so are their generals.
But still, it’s a pretty big risk.

What do you think?

My mesmer, most days