Guild Wars 2

TheGrimm.5624:

Have built HOPE and am working on the shinning blade. I enjoy the journey in HOPE more than the the time sync involved in the new legendaries. We have traded the time it takes for the journey into a mat collection. I can see a benefit in the mass mat removal for the economy and legenadaries shouldn’t be built in a day but to give you a sense of materials in the new ones:

HOPE
https://gw2efficiency.com/crafting/calculator/72713-HOPE

The Shinning Blade
https://gw2efficiency.com/crafting/calculator/81957-The-Shining-Blade

All said, still happy with HOPE and felt like completing it was an accomplishment so it was worth the time. Hope that when you get done you feel the same. Good gaming to you!

I am currently ready to craft The Shining Blade but I have purposefully stayed away from the early HoT legendaries which required a collection. I primarily play PvP and WvW, so the collection part isn’t something I would enjoy, especially if some collections would send me to dungeons or fractals. I will say, though, that the later HoT legendaries still have pretty extensive requirements and will generally not be built in a day. I had to finish up the HoT masteries, grind a lot of HoT currencies, and even go back into central Tyria and finish up some masteries, and all of this took many, many hours. On top of, of course, the 3k gold for all the mats. I’m not de-valuing your experience, just pointing out that it seems both pre- and post-collection HoT legendary crafting methods can appeal to different players.

To the OP: I agree it sucks to sink a bunch of money into a legendary only later to discover that it would cost much more time and money than you originally thought. I have done this several times not with money but with time. I started on the legendary PvP backpack and a few legendary weapons only to later decide that I didn’t want to put in the time commitment to finish them. I would encourage you to evaluate your need for a legendary. It really is all about the skin. The selectable stats are nice, but you’ll save way more money and time just making a few ascended weapons with the stats you want. The aesthetics are nice too, but there are plenty of other very cool weapon skins that legendary owners probably don’t even get to use because then they couldn’t display their legendary at the same time. I don’t own a single legendary weapon yet (though I’ve crafted a couple pre-HoT ones and sold on TP). I am getting ready to craft one HoT and one vanilla legendary now, but only because I found that I was relatively close to having everything I needed (or the gold to get it). If I looked at the requirements and found I would have to play content I didn’t enjoy for 6 months straight, I would never own a legendary.
TLDR: If the journey isn’t enjoyable, I would recommend not going for a legendary

Daerian.6523:

Why aren’t there Heat mechanics effects for base profession weapons and kits? This is seriously bad.

I think probably the simplest fix would be to change Laser’s Edge so that it also provides 10% damage buff when you’re not in Photon Forge but still have more than 50% heat. So you’d get 15% damage buff in Photon Forge and 10% buff when not using Forge, as long as heat is > 50%.

The GM traits seem really build-defining. I’ve been playing a bit with Vent Exhaust, which seems to be usable with high endurance-recovery builds to keep you in almost perma-forge and you can do a lot of damage by dodging. I tried it with a burn build, but a Minesweeper build might work too.

Next I tried Enhanced Storage Capacity with direct damage, trying to stay above 100% heat most of the time. This really buffs the sword. I tried it with static discharge, rifle turret, and photon wall (which has a 7-8 second toolbelt instant-cast projectile to trigger static discharge). With two sub- ten second toolbelt projectiles available now, static discharge can get pretty crazy.

Krag.6210:

It’s lacking visual feedback, the screen border should slowly go from blue to red, or some art around the skill bar to show how high your heat is, the tiny bar under your toolbelt is hard to see, especially in desert areas.

Your character also changes color, from blue at low heat to yellow at medium heat to red near maximum heat (when Photon Forge is activated).

It also does not break stuns. From my experience, this means that if you are brought to less than 25% health while you are stunned or otherwise disabled, Soothing Bastion will not trigger. Someone please correct me if I am wrong.

I agree with Rising Dusk, once it triggers, you can’t move or dodge to cancel it.

Caeledh.5437:

fluidmonolith.3584:

Rapid Flow: This now gives swiftness when it triggers. This is a pretty significant change that I’m surprised that no one has mentioned on the forums.

Probably because no-one cares. They stuck this in the least attractive specialization.

One of the main selling points of the revenant profession is it being energy rather than cooldown driven. You know, you playing your character rather than your character playing you – courtesy of predefined optimal rotations.

Invocation favours swapping legends…. which is on a cooldown.

Even if you don’t mind manically swapping legends every 10 seconds, different legends tend to favour different stats so legend swapping might give you 50 free energy but you’re then stuck with a legend less suited to your stats.

Invocation has a few potentially useful GM traits – like boosting outgoing healing or crit chance with fury – but otherwise is very easy to pass on. Even with this change.

fluidmonolith.3584:

Rev now has access to a permanent runspeed boost outside of Glint! Yes, this trait triggers while out of combat.

Rev has always had this.

Inspiring reinforcement creates a lightning field. Blast finisher (which rev has on several weapons) on a lightning field gives 10s of aoe swiftness.

More tedious than glint but still perma-able.

This method was highly build dependent, however, It requires running Jalis. It also requires either mace or staff. If using staff # 4 as the blast finisher you would need +50% boon duration (or swiftness duration) for perma-swiftness, or you would need Shiro as your second legend to use Impossible Odds to fill in the gaps. Hammer #3 blast finisher would not be very effective since it roots you in place while you cast it.

This method was so build-limited that I wouldn’t really count it as a reliable method for perma-swiftness in most circumstances.

While Rapid Flow might not be very exciting for perma-swiftness right now, I imagine it may be more appreciated when the next expansion comes out and people stop running Herald. Of course, I still recommend the changes to Rapid Flow that I described above to make it less cumbersome to use.

messiah.1908:

with invocation new trait you can achieve 25 might stack easy with fury – maybe dragon wont be needed.. i manage to do so without dragone stance but with herlad.
so now you can go full offensive yolo build. shiro/x or even hybrid sage amulet shiro/mallyx hit and run play style with condi and direct dmg with 17% more direct dmg and 7% more condi dmg and 20% more torment dmg and with rune of chill with 7% more dmg to chilling foes and sigil 5% so total direct dmg increase by 29% and condi dmg (torment 27%)

will test it later on

I just took a closer look in Heart of the Mists and the new Invo trait (Incensed Response) does not trigger out of combat, so you won’t be able to use it to pre-stack might before getting into combat. The highest I could get my might stacks with 100% boon duration is 14 out of combat (Glint + Incensed Response + Shared Empowerment). You could push it up by 1-2 stacks on average by using One with Nature on cooldown, which I did not do.

Now, once I got into combat I could maintain 23-25 stacks because Incensed Response would trigger. I was still using Glint though. I didn’t test without Glint but with other fury-granting skills/traits such as Fierce Infusion or Invoker’s Rage, since most of the time using a heal skill or swapping legends is done situationally and not just to grant more might through Incensed Response.

How did you get 25 might stacks without Glint?

Corruption Traits

Venom Enhancement: The icd on this skill was reduced from 20 seconds to 10. This is a good change. Demonic Defiance is a really strong option, and Venom Enhancement now provides a little bit more difficulty in deciding between sustain (Demonic Defiance) and damage (Venom Enhancement).

Opportune Extraction: This trait has been nerfed in that now your target needs to have 4 stacks of torment to remove a boon. However now the boon is stolen rather than removed. I’m not sure why this change was made. Each specialization should be useful within some variety of builds. Now that torment is required to trigger opportune extraction, the Corruption specialization is pretty much saying “only use this specialization in Mace/X condi damage builds, and use it in every Mace/X condi build.” Does Corruption really need to be that specialized?

Yearning Empowerment: This now increases torment damage by 20% but only increases duration by 20% instead of 33%. This is a good change, IMO, since individual torment ticks were often somewhat weak. It is a little harder now to reach the 100% duration cap though.

Abyssal Chill: This is a great change. The original trait (Frigid Precision) was very weak and flavorless. Abyssal Chill opens up specific synergies that didn’t exist before, adding lots of condi damage to Unyielding Anguish and Precision Strike, and increasing the value of chill-based rune sets. I’ve heard that players now actively try not to stand in Rev’s “purple pizza”, and this is a good thing. One difficulty is that Unyielding Anguish and Embrace the Darkness before the patch were pretty similar in effect and energy cost. With the addition of Abyssal Chill, however, Unyielding Anguish completely overshadows Embrace the Darkness to the extent that it’s now pretty much useless to ever use the Mallyx elite (outside of triggering Diabolic Inferno). I would like to see Embrace the Darkness changed to have a more utility-based effect (e.g. pulsing condi copy to enemies) so that it can still be useful. Buffing its damage to keep up with Unyielding Anguish would be too much power creep and wouldn’t solve the problem of both skills filling the same role.

Maniacal Persistence: This is a weird change. This skill now triggers a Maniacal Pulse that torments enemies around you when you gain resistance. It also applies self-torment. Firstly, this trait competes with Diabolic Inferno, and both are point blank AoE condition damage dealers, so in that regard this seems redundant. Secondly, this can mostly just trigger from Mallyx skills (and only from Pain Absorption if you don’t take Demonic Defiance). Banish Enchantment is a 600 range boon removal that you will often be out Maniacal Pulse range of your target when using. Pain Absorption and Empowering Misery are used defensively, so you also may not be in range of a desired target when using them. It seems optimally designed to function with Unyielding Anguish, since Maniacal Pulse triggers once you land. So you now have two Corruption GM traits which both deal decent AoE condi damage, one of which comes from using any elite, and the other most optimally comes from Unyielding Anguish. The new Maniacal Persistence seems to have an unnecessarily narrow focus IMO. The self-torment is unusual and could seem to have some synergy with a few things like Empowering Misery. It also synergizes with Replenishing Despair, but you’d never take that trait because you’d have to give up Demonic Defiance, without which Maniacal Persistence is almost useless. The self-torment can also synergize with Pulsating Pestilence, except you can’t take that and Maniacal Persistence at the same time. I’m not sure what the redesign of this trait is intended to accomplish, unless the idea is simply that Corruption vomit out as much torment as possible…?

I haven’t played with Ventari yet, so I won’t comment on the changes to Energy Expulsion.

EDIT: Diabolic Inferno: It was pointed out on Reddit that this will now auto-trigger while you are upkeeping Embrace the Darkness, and the icd has been reduced to 8 seconds. That’s pretty cool. If the next expansion’s elite spec features a lot of burning, then I could see value in the two competing condi damage Corruption GM traits.

After getting a little bit of time to play around with the new Revenant changes, I wanted to document my thoughts here. Note that I will discuss the changes from a PvP and WvW perspective – I do not play enough endgame PvE to give valuable commentary on it. Overall, my impression of these changes is favorable. Condition damage of the Revenant has been increased substantially. Attacks that were ignored by other players (like Echoing Eruption and Unyielding Anguish) are now taken seriously, and this is a good thing. Some of Rev’s weaknesses in condition builds (e.g. easily kited, susceptibility to focus fire) still exist, but with increased damage you can build around them a bit more. Overall I think the changes may have done a lot to make condi Rev more viable without making it OP, though a few of the redesigns are unusual and perhaps a step backwards.

Weapon Skills

Mace auto-attack: The condition damage of all sequences of the mace auto-attack have been increased. This is a good change, since the auto-attack was previously a bit weak.

Echoing Eruption: The damage of Echoing Eruption has been increased A LOT. I am okay with this. It’s kind of hard to hit, and the condition is long-lasting (10-20 seconds depending on expertise) which renders it vulnerable to cleansing. The change to the targeting method does make it a little harder to hit, and I’m not sure why it was changed. I view this skill as being similar now to Warrior’s Eviscerate. It should be hard to hit, enemies should be able to see it coming, and if you do hit, you are rewarded generously. Finally, increasing the damage on the mace main hand weapon skills permits more freedom to choose an offhand weapon. Previously the bulk of condi damage you could deal was on Axe #5, meaning that you would always use Mace/Axe. Now that Mace#3 potentially out-damages Axe#5, you have more freedom to pick other offhand weapons without losing as much damage.

Frigid Blitz: Revenant was originally supposed to be all about short weapon cooldowns, and this is the first time in a while that a weapon skill cooldown has been decreased rather than increased. I applaud this change. They also added a slow effect, which provides great utility as well.

Temporal Rift: This now applies confusion when it interrupts. I am not sure this change was needed. Temporal Rift was already a good CC skill and did decent (condi) damage. As I said above, moving most of the condi damage from Mace/X onto the Mace is a good move IMO, so boosting Temporal Rift’s damage runs counter to that idea. The delay on the rift is also too long to really use it as an intentional interrupt, so triggering the extra damage is more RNG than skill-based.

Invocation Traits

Ferocious Aggression: This now increases condition damage and direct damage when you have fury. This is a good change. Invocation should not be just about direct damage, since it’s a sort of utility specialization that should be able to fit within any type of build. Critical chance already benefits condi damage through the first Corruption minor trait (torment on crit), so adding condi damage when you have fury here makes sense.

Incensed Response: This now grants might when you get fury. The previous version of this trait was very situational, now it might be more universally applicable. Still, it’s strong with Glint and a mediocre without, which does limit it a bit. I’m not sure this change is better or worse than the previous version.

Fierce Infusion: The icd and fury duration granted by this trait have been reduced. I have no problem with this change.

Rapid Flow: This now gives swiftness when it triggers. This is a pretty significant change that I’m surprised that no one has mentioned on the forums. Rev now has access to a permanent runspeed boost outside of Glint! Yes, this trait triggers while out of combat.Yes, it’s a little clunky to use, since you need to refresh it every 5 seconds. In the future it could perhaps be revised, just as Engineer’s Speedy Kits trait was historically, to have a longer duration and cooldown to improve QoL. I would recommend changing Rapid Flow to: When you use a skill that costs energy, you gain swiftness (20s) and Regeneration (8s). ICD = 20 seconds. But overall, this is a great addition that has been overlooked.

Justine.6351:

Make it pierce and also grant buff of 1 block (5sec) per each target struck. Use the skill’s icon on the buff bar with a number counter to keep track of remaining blocks.

I think the piercing alone would make the skill much better. Since it doesn’t pierce yet has 1200 range, anything else like a minion. mesmer clone, or just another unintended enemy that’s in the way will stop you from hitting your target.

RoseofGilead.8907:

As a socially shy gamer who only groups up with other players when I absolutely have to, I’d welcome Heroes/Henchmen in GW2. It’d be nice for things such as Migraine, which is hard to find a group for these days, or even less-popular dungeons. I think it should be kept out of raids, though, at least for a good, long while.

This is also the reason that I don’t like doing content like raids, fractals, and dungeons, which are admittedly cool content. I generally only do open world PvE and pug / solo WvW, where communication is not a big requirement.

I certainly think that ‘challenging content’ should not be limited to 5-man or 10-man parties, and should include soloable content. The application of heroes would permit challenging soloable content that could be completed by any profession, whereas without the heroes / NPCs, some professions may outperform others drastically.

I think heroes could be great if added as an option for certain content, such as dungeons and maybe fractals. However, the most challenging of group content (e.g. raids, maybe high level fractals) should still, IMO, be available only for groups. If it becomes possible to do the most prestigious / rewarding of challenges either solo or in a group, most people would probably choose solo. Alternatively, the most challenging content could have reduced rewards if played solo.

Herald

Herald is in a pretty good spot right now. I have only made a few changed. I focus on (1) support and defensive boons, (2) aggressive boons, (3) ‘dragon’ effects

Minor Traits – unchanged
Major Adept
(1) Hardening Persistence – unchanged
(2) Harmonize Continuity – moved to Adept
(3) Radiant Revival – unchanged
Major Master
(1) Bolster Fortifications – unchanged
(2) Shared Empowerment – unchanged
(3) Swift Gale – Gain superspeed (3 sec) and stability (1 stack, 3 sec) when you successfully break a stun. Swift Gale was not a very popular trait, and Enhanced Bulwark was only useful in a handful of builds due to low stability access on Revenant. Adding stability to Swift Gale increases synergy here.
Major Grandmaster
(1) Soothing Bastion – no longer auto-triggers at low health. You gain protection (1 seconds) and stability (1 stack, 1 second) each pulse while you channel Crystal Hibernation. Since Crystal Hibernation doesn’t break stuns, it won’t trigger at low health while you are stunned, making it unreliable. It also immobilizes you and can’t be canceled, so you are very vulnerable to unblockable attacks while channeling. To address these problems, I just removed the auto-proc at low health and made the block skill better.
(2) Elder’s Force – unchanged
(3) Enhanced Bulwark – unchanged

Corruption

Corruption has a few weak traits (e.g. Frigid Precision) and some traits that don’t fit well with the generally functionality of the specialization (e.g. Maniacal Persistence). Corruption and Mallyx have both been fairly gutted since HoT betas in which there was a greater focus on boon and condition manipulation. I wanted to bring some of this unique flavor back to corruption and improve weak traits. I focus on (1) benefiting from conditions on self, (2) condition damage, (3) boon removal and soft CC conditions.

Minor Traits
Rampant Vex – unchanged
Opportune Extraction – replaced with (New) – Increases critical hit chance against tormented foes (10%).
Yearning Empowerment – unchanged
Major Adept
(1) (New) – Increases your crit chance for every unique condition on you (2%)
(2) Venom Enhancement – Reduced icd to 10 seconds.
(3) (New) – Deal extra damage and condition damage to chilled foes (5%). Chill you apply lasts longer (33%)
Major Master
(1) Demonic Defiance – moved to Master. Effect unchanged.
(2) (New) – Increase torment damage to unmoving foes by 50%.This will buff torment against stationary foes to do 75% of the damage it does against moving foes. This is generally intended for PvE.
(3) Frigid Precision. Added feature "When you apply chill you also apply weakness (2s) no icd. This trait synergizes with Retribution traits to remove conditions (Dwarven battle training).
Major Grandmaster
(1) Pulsating Pestilence – ‘Embrace the Darkness’ will also pulse poison (1 sec) and cripple (1 sec) to nearby opponents for each unique condition on you.
(2) Diabolic Inferno – unchanged
(3) Malevolent Extraction (New) – When you strike a foe above the boon threshold, you cast Banish Enchantment on them (15s icd). Banish Enchantment removes one extra boon.

Invocation

Invocation is a strong specialization right now, but it suffers from a confused identity and a few weak traits. It has a few traits which focus on energy management and legend swapping, but these traits are relatively few and simple. I focus Invocation more on managing legends and energy here. Specifically, it provides (1) fury, (2) effects for spending energy or achieving low or high energy, (3) effects for swapping legends

Minor Traits
Invoker’s Rage – unchanged
Ferocious Aggression – now increases damage and condition damage (5%)
Empty Vessel – unchanged
Major Adept
(1) Fierce Infusion – unchanged
(2) Invigorating Flow – moved to Adept. Changed to ’Gain regeneration (3 seconds) when you use a skill that costs more than 15 energy (5 seconds icd).
(3) Cleansing Channel – unchanged
Major Master
(1) Incensed Response – unchanged
(2) (New) – Shrouding Mists – Moved to Master and revised – When your energy drops below 15, you gain protection (3s) and vigor (5s) (20 seconds icd). Combat only.
(3) Equilibrium – increased base healing and heal scaling by 50%
Major Grandmaster
(1) Roiling Mists – unchanged
(2) (New) – Overpowering Energy – When your energy goes above 70, you gain might (5 stacks, 8 seconds), and your next attack inflicts vulnerability (5 stacks, 8 seconds) and weakness (4 seconds) (15 seconds icd). This trait is up for debate. I want it to be triggered deliberately (e.g. by pooling energy for 4 seconds after legend swapping) and be fairly powerful when it does. However, the energy threshold can be adjusted. For example, with a lower energy threshold it could trigger more often, in which case I would argue it should have weaker effects when it does trigger. The combination of Shrouding Mists and Overpowering Energy will reward Revenants who deliberately manage energy to proc these defensive and offensive effects.
(3) (New) – When you invoke a legend, you give nearby allies regeneration (3 seconds), and outgoing healing is increased for a short time (25%, 10 seconds).

Retribution

Retribution had some very weak traits as well as an almost universal focus on self sustain, which limited its applicability to different builds. There were also a few traits that focused on specific effects (taunt, retaliation) that the Revenant had poor access to. I am increasing synergy between different specializations and focusing on: (1) damage reduction, (2) taunt / soft CC control, and (3) bruiser (sustained damage)

Minor Traits – unchanged
Major Adept
(1) Steadfast Rejuvenation – moved to Adept.
(2) Improved Aggression – When you taunt a foe, you also apply weakness (4 seconds). Taunt has an increased duration when applied to nonplayer characters. This was modified slightly so that it would be more useful in WvW / PvP where the decreased damage for 2 seconds against a slowed, auto-attacking foe might not be too worthwhile.
(3) Retaliatory evasion – moved to Adept.
Major Master
(1) Planar Protection – Moved to Master. Added effect of Close Quarters. Fall damage traits are generally underwhelming and should be combined with other effects to be worthwhile.
(2) Dwarven Battle Training – When you swap legends in combat, your next attack applies weakness (4s). When you strike a foe that has weakness, you lose one condition (10s icd). The self anti-weakness feature was cool but really niche, so I removed it. I wanted to focus here on improving weakness output by the Revenant, since Rev has a lot of weakness application.
(3) Eye for an Eye – removed taunt effect, added 4 second retaliation on incoming CC. Reduced protection to 4 seconds. Reduced icd to 30 seconds. The taunt was removed because passively applied CCs are not cool. Also, I focus on taunt and other CC in trait line #2.
Major Grandmaster
(1) Versed in Stone (unchanged)
(2) (New) Vanguard – When you use an elite skill, gain protection (3 seconds) and taunt nearby foes (1.5 seconds, icd = 10 seconds). Radius = 240. I know that Momentary Pacification was changed from a daze on elite use to a delayed immobilize due to the redundancy of the daze with CC on some elites (Shiro’s, Glint’s). I am adding a CC to the elites again here because it does still help remove stability stacks, and it will also proc other useful things here (e.g. weakness and condition removal if Dwarven Battle Training and Improved Aggression are taken).
(3) (New) Empowering Vengeance – Gain retaliation while under the effect of Vengeful Hammers (duration 1.5 seconds, application rate 3 seconds). Gain might when struck while under the effect of retaliation ( (8 seconds, 1 second icd).

Salvation

Salvation was a very narrow-focused specialization that was almost useless outside of Ventari healing builds. I wanted to greatly increase the versatility of the specialization and my proposed change would allow Salvation to function to (1) improve outgoing heals, (2) improve utility / sustain, and (3) disabling opponents.

(New adept) – Increases the healing of Regeneration that you apply by 20%
(New major) – Hardened Foundation – increased conversion rate to 10%
Serene Rejuvenation – unchanged
Major Adept
(1) Nourishing Roots – unchanged
(2) (New) – When you block an attack, you apply regeneration to nearby allies (3 sec, 10 sec icd, radius 240).
(3) Blinding Truths – unchanged
Major Master
(1) (New) – Increased outgoing healing to allies that have regeneration (20%).
(2) Eluding Nullification – now removes 2 conditions
(3) Tranquil Bendiction – healing orbs from staff now only grant regen, not swiftness. Renewing Wave now also knocks back opponents (radius 300, distance 300)
Major Grandmaster
(1) Selfless Amplification – unchanged
(2) Natural Abundance – unchanged
(3) Momentary Pacification – When you interrupt a foe, you also apply blind (5 seconds, no icd). When you invoke a legend, daze nearby foes (radius 240, daze duration 1/2 second).

I am a Revenant main since HoT, and I’ve previously put forth a few ideas for revisions to improve the quality of life, versatility, and effectiveness of the Revenant.
Weapons revision – https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/revenant/Two-auto-attacks-on-all-our-weapons/first#post6301317
Utility skills revision – https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/revenant/More-utilities-per-legend-suggestions/first#post6325936
Now I am listing a proposal for traits revision. Trait revision is necessary because:

1) Many of Revenant’s existing traits are weak, unimpactful, or have anti-synergy with other traits or skills. Synergy between traits and skills / other traits is also arguably weaker than in other professions.

2) Many Revenant specializations are so focused that they are only useful within a single, narrow build or role. This means, for example, that Salvation is useless outside of healing role, or Corruption is useless outside of a condition damage role. This trait revision will broaden the versatility of each specialization to align with the HoT specialization rework, in which each trait line provided three specific roles or themes.

This trait revision is not intended to balance weapon or utility skills or address bugs in any areas other than in traits. This revision is meant to promote greater build versatility and meaningful trait choice. I will list my proposed major and minor traits as well as the three general themes that I propose for each specialization.

Devastation

Devastation is already a decent specialization in my opinion, and only needs a few tweaks. Primarily, I am removing a few redundant traits and increasing synergy with other specializations. Devastation will now focus on three primary areas, (1) direct damage, (2) dueling, and (3) crowd control

Minor Traits – unchanged
Major Adept
(1) Ferocious Strikes- changed to “Gain ferocity based on your power (7%)”. This trait previously competed with Vicious Lacerations for the same effect (increase direct damage). Vicious Lacerations was removed and Ferocious Strikes modified to be more universally applicable.
(2) Nefarious Momentum – moved to Adept; added ability “Increases movement speed by 25% while in Shiro stance”. A movement speed buff is a much-needed quality of life boost for Revenants and this gives them one more opportunity outside of Glint.
(3) Dismantle Fortifications – moved to Adept. I like this trait, but it is fairly weak and should not be a GM.
Major Master
(1) Assassin’s Presence – unchanged
(2) Malicious Reprisal – moved to Master. Changed to “After activating Impossible Odds, your next two attacks are unblockable (15 second icd).” Revised this trait to be more predictable (and useful against aegis).
(3) Jade Echo – icd reduced to 60 seconds. Removed downed damage boost and added a function: “You gain a Jade Shard when you strike a disabled foe (taunt, stun, daze, knockdown, fear) (10 seconds icd)”. The Jade Shard is similar to one gained from Shiro’s healing skill. Traits that only affect the downstate are generally very underwhelming and unpopular, so I added a function here that would apply outside of the downed state.
Major Grandmaster
(1) Swift Termination – unchanged
(2) Assassin’s Annihilation – unchanged
(3) (New) Rend Defenses – when you remove a stack of stability or aegis from a foe, you inflict vulnerability (5 stacks, 5 seconds) and gain might (3 stacks, 5 seconds). I like Dismantle Fortifications, but it is generally not popular. However, this new GM trait would proc twice when removing two stability stacks with Dismantle Fortifications, increasing its value. This trait also synergizes with boon removal in Mallyx / Corruption, and extra CC on elite swap from my new Retribution elite (Vanguard) and Salvation elite (Momentary Pacification).

I think this sounds like a good idea, and it would really address Revenant’s poor versatility. However, there are some questions that need to be answered first:

1) Can you slot only regular utility skills into F3, or can you also slot healing and elite skills? I know you mention elite skills in your example, but is it best to allow elites too, or just regular utilities? What about healing skills?

2) Do skills in the F3 slot trigger ‘on heal’ (if slotting a heal skill) or ‘when using an elite’ (if using an elite skill) effects from traits and runes?

I was worried about how Ventari would work with this, but your solution sounds pretty reasonable. I’m not sure that I agree with unlocking the F3 through a Grandmaster trait though…I’d rather see it built in by default and available regardless of what specializations and traits you choose. I think making it trait-dependent would limit a lot of the build diversity this system would otherwise create. For example, if I want an F3 ability in both legends when I use a Jalis / Ventari build, then I would require to specialize in both Salvation and Retribution … I think that would be a bit limiting.

Finally, some careful balancing would probably be needed with the introduction of this system. There are some very potent utilities that could produce very powerful builds if they’re always available, even after legend swap (e.g. Phase Traversal or Riposting Shadows in PvP, perhaps the Glint facets, etc).

Cheshire.2465:

It can be tedious to try and work around the low fury up-time, so switched out my armor runes with Runes of Rage and went with a Diviner’s Amulet for 100% Boon Duration on Fury as well as an additional source of fury.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vlAQNAsXinvNWNS6JrJRVl/ksrygSYW5QJYscrkFNFpdRgIslT3Wd2ufA-TJBFQB2Y/BDWGoAnCAA8EAAA

It does lower critical chance down to 80% but gives a much higher fury up time to benefit from Runes of Rage 5% damage bonus and the 7% from Ferocious Aggression minor trait.

It feels like it has a lower initial burst but it does a better in longer situations.

That’s cool, you get 100% fury uptime just from the runes, when you have 100% boon duration (assuming you don’t get boon stripped).

That said, it’s still far easier to have 100% fury uptime just by swapping out Jalis for Glint, and you’ll also get that really nice heal, and decent damage from Elemental Blast.
I’m still skeptical about swapping Glint for Jalis, even though Jalis has some cool skills (mechanically).

I’ve tried out Jalis a bit more. I really like the hammers, and your combo (shiro heal > swap to Jalis, hammers > sword 3 > sword 2) is working pretty well for me as well. I find that sustain is lacking without Glint, and once my health gets low it’s hard to heal up and get back into the fight. I’m using Herald instead of Invocation and I use Sword/Shield + Staff for better sustain (previously I had tried Sword/Sword, but sustain was poor), but certainly I don’t get really high crit chance doing this since I sacrifice Roiling Mists.

Cheshire.2465:

I’ve actually been messing around with Jalis (mainly for the Hammers and the Heal skill it has) and I’ve found a build I actually really like in PvP and PvE.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vlAQNAsXinvNWNS6JrJRVl/ksrygSYW5QJYscrkFNFpdRgIqz2Fktc62A-TJBFwAAeCAk2foaZABnCAA

For the most opening burst damage you use the Shiro Healing skill granting you fury (giving you about 90+% crit chance) and the six dagger shards, then switch to Jalis and activate the Hammer skill and then open up with your Sword 3, followed by your Sword 2. That usually procs enemy Invulnerable passives unless they are outright bunker build and then you can start actually fighting.

I’m not sure how exactly the 3 works to be honest, but I guess it considers you behind the person while using it because it usually procs Assassin’s Annihilation from the Dagger shards/Hammers/ and Sword 3.

This in an interesting idea, I hadn’t considered a glassy / aggressive build using Jalis. And it’s even a core Rev build (no Herald).

I tried a somewhat similar build a little bit tonight using Demolisher amulet to try to push up the Vengeful Hammers contribution as much as possible. It gets pumped up by Assassin’s Annihilation, Focused Siphoning, Mutilate Defenses, and Hardening Persistence. Inspiring Reinforcement was still useful for stomping (and not much else), and Forced Engagement can be very useful in the rare moments when your foe isn’t blocking, invuln, evading, or body blocked by someone else.

I’ll keep trying it, but I’m still not convinced yet that Jalis can ever be more useful in sPvP than Glint. For example, in your build you take Invocation instead of Herald, so you get Roiling Mists, but your only sources of fury come from Invoker’s Rage and Fierce Infusion. If you time your heals well to take advantage of this it could work, but otherwise you may have a low fury uptime. I would argue fury uptime is better with Herald (One with Nature)? Then, of course, there’s the Enhanced Bulwark synergy with Retribution that is pretty nice that you’re missing out on.

Xenon.4537:

Turk.5460:

Sure, sounds good.

But no more resetting mist energy to 50% on legend swap. Feel free to add your own version of a trade-off. If this happened and we still retained mist energy reset, it would be ridiculously overpowered.

Mist energy reset is stupid imo… mist energy should be regained from active play such as successfully evading or blocking or pulling off some kind of combo.

I have occasionally heard arguments that auto-attacks should regenerate energy, but this seems very passive and not much different than just increasing the base energy regen rate (or decreasing the energy cost of skills).

I can come up with a couple of interesting active options for increasing energy regen as an alternative to legend swapping:

1) A new F-skill which is channeled to increase energy. This can also have different additional effects based on your active legend, or have traits to influence it. E.g. when in Ventari stance, the channel can heal you while recovering energy. While in Shiro stance, it can recover endurance and energy at the same time. In Jalis stance, it can recover energy while decreasing the damage that you take. There could be an Invocation trait that causes it to regen energy a little bit faster, for example.

2) A new F-skill which can be toggled on and off. When it’s on, auto-attacks recover additional energy, but your outgoing damage, condition damage, and healing is reduced.

3) Energy regeneration could be added to the heal skills. For example, heal skills with 30 second cooldown could recover 50 energy. Ventari heal skill could recover 5 energy (or simply cost no energy). This would force decision-making in using heal skills in that you could choose to use them to recover your health or to boost your energy. Ultimately this would lead to a net loss of energy compared to the current system where we burn energy down to near zero then swap legends every 10 seconds. This could be corrected by decreasing the heal skill cooldowns (.g. to 20 seconds) and nerfing the heals a little bit, or by decreasing the energy cost of skills.

I have been experimenting for a while with the idea of a Revenant bunker build for PvP but haven’t been successful yet. Outside of the Ventari bunker build, but that’s more of a healer build, IMO, so I’m not considering it to be a bunker.

I’ve tried using Jalis in a bunker build but have come up with the following shortcomings:
-highly susceptible to conditions
-despite stacking damage reductions (Vengeful Hammers, RotGD), can still be killed really fast except around 3500 armor (e.g. Knight’s or Cavalier’s amulets)
-lacks sustain if paired with Shiro
-super vulnerable to immobilize if paired with Glint
-poor capacity to deal with stuns, and high energy costs if paired with Mallyx
-Forced Aggression is very mediocre, often blocked, and slow projectile
-Vengeful Hammers give okay sustain when surrounded by lots of enemies, but low damage and sustain when 1v1 (even when coupled with Focused Siphoning in Devastation)
-Inspiring Reinforcement is generally useless and very expensive, can be used to secure stomps however

In general, I’ve gotten better sustain from Glint (through the heal skill alone) or Ventari, despite that fact that Jalis seems to be built around tankiness.

Has anyone had success with Jalis in PvP, and if so, how do you use him?

Good video, thanks for sharing. I’m just now trying out Ventari Rev in PvP and so far it’s pretty interesting.

FYI, your second video was blocked due to copyright issues, so I can’t watch it.

jihm.2315:

Apolo.5942:

The game needs to slow down. Reality is, THIS IS NOT MOBA, the player base does not want a game where you from 100% to 0% in 3 seconds flat.

That and class balance is and always has been, atrocious due to the lack of commitment on class build archetypes.

i would trade some balance for a new beginning with slower combat

I’m not opposed to smaller swings in health (e.g. you don’t go from 100% to 0% in just a few seconds, but you also can’t heal from 1% to 100% in a few seconds either). But it would have to be very carefully done, otherwise bunkers or even bruiser builds would be immortal, and that’s not fun either.

Also, if ‘slower combat’ means less mobility and dodging, then I also disagree. The action-oriented combat is one of the best features of GW2 IMO, and the primary reason that I play it over other MMOs.

However, I think it could be valuable to reduce burst and sustained damage if burst and sustained healing were also reduced.

Bart.5296:

As for weapon I think what we need most is second ranged weapon – and unlike slow hard hitting hammer – it should be fast and incorporating some mobility (maybe in exchange of far rage for mid rage). Best scenario is combination of power/condi, which would be a synergy that mace so much lacks currently. Thus shortbow would be great… As for legend/elite spec theme – it should be something what fits overall profession feel, i guess “dark ranger”/“rift/mist hunter” theme would blend perfectly. I don’t really buy ideas for “pet” elite spec as revenant is in general dark warrior or mystic warrior archetype… It’s made around theme of otherwordly magics, creating rifts, shadow stepping and been a solider/heavy armor class at the same time. Basically want i want is Dragonhunter’s dark counterpart – with more mobility/evades in exchange of blocks, condi or combination of power/condi instead of DH’s power character… I want to feel like an dark prowler with my revenant…. ^^

I agree that a ranged hybrid or condi weapon is most needed for Rev, and I like your shortbow suggestion. For a new elite, I think we need something that is different than Glint. Glint is a heavy team-support boon-spamming legend, so we could potentially use a more ‘selfish’ legend. I also really like mobility so your ‘dark prowler’ theme sounds interesting. I think it would need to be differentiated from Shiro though, which already provides lots of mobility and single-target dueling capacity. There’s a few areas I think ANet could go with this to provide Rev with a new playstyle:

-Offensive mid range – fast ranged attacks with defensive mobility (e.g. move away from target rather than towards target)
-Supportive role by controlling enemies, using CC, soft-CC conditions, or boon removal
-Offensive AoE long range -ranged area damage (e.g. staff ele), focusing on either conditions or hybrid damage
-Defensive melee-range (bunker / tank) role with high mobility. E.g. off-tank for gathering up smaller enemies. Could be paired with Jalis for extra defenses or Shiro for extra mobility, for example.

On a side note, if anyone has played Rift, my favorite class in any MMO by far was found in this game – the Rift Stalker, a defensive mobility-based tank with a lot of teleports and shields. This playstyle would be awesome and could fit the Revenant very well.

I played BDO for a little while and the capacity to use skills on cooldown (with reduced effect) was really cool.

But those skills also had a secondary resource cost (MP / WP / SP). Without a cost at all, I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t work in GW2.

Dimerius.1397:

Our problem is not to deal with condis’ at all or at least it is not my problem. The main problem you are probably facing to is that you are not a revenant main. I play only revenant(currently 1600-1700 rating), yes that means I have only revenants on my account. And it took me +-800 ranked games to figure out how to play this class. I can see the real difference at the battlefield when ppl are trying to play revenant as a guardian/warrior and it is so bad aproach. On the other hand you will see good revenants, who just appear on battlefield and somebody is just melted down within 1-3seconds. That means positioning, energy managment(for equilibrium), combos, overall knowledge about enemy’s def tools, timing and the most important practicing are the tools to success as a revenant.
That is the reason why this class is the hardest one in PvP. Please do not tell me Thief is the hardest one, because it is not.

Summary: Best way to deal with condis? -> Do not let enemies stack them up. Use your mobility to move around battlefield even to run away and crush people down and most important -> Do not execute your full burst combo with weakness on you.

I can agree with this (though my account has more than just Revenants on it!). I don’t really think conditions are that prolific in PvP right now. The primary condition users are some Warriors, Necromancers, and Mesmers. There is the occasional condi Engi, but they are very vulnerable and can’t avoid much of your damage. There is also the occasional burn Guardian, and they give me more trouble, but I don’t run into them often. Most condi warriors should not be hitting you too much. Skull Grinder can be anticipated and evaded pretty regularly. With Shiro, Glint, and Invocation, Rev is not lacking for stun breaks, so a Warrior combo into Skull Grinder from Headbutt or Mace #3 should be avoidable most of the time. I will admit I don’t have a good answer for condi Necros or Mesmers, other than choosing not to engage them 1v1. They are both slow so they won’t be chasing you down if you choose to disengage.

If you still have problems with condis, you can try using sigils of Purity and Generosity on your weapons too.

saerni.2584:

What makes the rev hard to master?

It is energy management? I’m still learning about energy and how it works, exactly.

Conversely, what about rev makes it strong? As in, what advantages does/can revenant have going into certain matchups?

In my opinion, the difficulty in playing Revenant is due to a fundamental difference in resources compared to other classes. Revenant has a resource (energy) which is shared by all skills – offensive and defensive skills, CC and burst, etc.

As cooldowns on most professions have been getting shorter and shorter over time, many classes can favorably adopt a ‘spammy’ playstyle in which skills can be used on cooldown with relatively little consequence. They may be able to ‘spam’ offensive skills while saving defensive skills for an emergency.

While Revenant weapon skills have similar cooldowns and relatively low energy costs, utility skills (with the exception of Glint) cost more energy. Players accustomed to other classes must learn not to ‘spam’ Revenant utility skills, or they will risk running out of energy and becoming vulnerable. A Revenant who uses energy aggressively for offense will have none left for defense.

Burtnik.5218:

fluidmonolith.3584:

3) In order to balance Rev around having no energy cost on weapon skills, ANet would probably increase cooldowns even more.

I dont really care for the rest of you said but.. what? Have you compared cds to other classes and what they bring? Other classes have the same or even shorter cd’s with no extra cost behing them and in my cases they bring far more utility as well. Just compare war shield to rev shield, it some sad joke.

Rev wep skills were not only nerfed in cd’s, they were also directly nerfed in damage damage etc to stop please cus right now they arent even strong. Just compare s/s rev to scrapper hammer. Its like day n night.

I am not disagreeing with you about weapon cooldowns on Revenant skills being similar to those of other professions. I am simply stating that I think ANet would increase Rev’s weapon skill cooldowns if they removed the energy cost. I just don’t think they would remove the energy cost without compensating somewhere else.

There are plenty of games where skills have dual resource cost. Guild Wars 1, for example… Though this topic comes up a lot, I will still claim that removing energy cost from weapon skills will make Revenant very shallow to play and would not be beneficial. Here are my reasons:

1) I argue that many Revenant legend skill energy costs (though not necessarily effects or cooldowns) are well balanced right now: Shiro’s, Glint’s, Mallyx’s, and Ventari’s skills, primarily. Jalis’ skills are still a bit expensive, IMO, but that is probably because they’re just bad skills rather than that they cost too much. In other words, I think most Revenant builds right now do not need more energy, so removing energy costs from weapon skills (giving them more energy) would make them OP.

2) Removing energy costs from weapon skills would break Glint. Glint would be ridiculously OP, and playing Glint would be exceptionally boring.

3) In order to balance Rev around having no energy cost on weapon skills, ANet would probably increase cooldowns even more.

I still think the best solution for Revenant is the opposite of what is proposed here. Shorten the cooldowns on weapon skills and increase the energy cost on some of those weapon skills.

Ideally, a player would make a consideration about energy cost before using any weapon skill. I do not feel compelled to consider energy cost when I use Coalescence of Ruin. I only consider cooldown. Same for Unrelenting Assault, Precision Strike, and some others. I think the balance for weapon skills needs to be pushed more towards energy and less on cooldowns. To balance the increased energy demand, some utility skills costs could be reduced a bit (e.g. Phase Traversal, most of Jalis’ skills, Unyielding Anguish, etc.).

I know it would seem theoretically beneficial to have a wide range of skills with a wide range of energy costs, e.g. from 5 to 50 energy per skill. But in my experience with Rev, there’s really more of a narrow range, let’s say from 10-15 to 35-40 energy instead. Energy skills costing less than 5-10 basically feel free (we do not consider energy cost when debating whether or not to use them). Energy skills costing more 35-40 or more feel prohibitively expensive much of the time. Increasing weapon energy costs (while reducing cd’s) and decreasing utility skill costs will push more skills into this ideal cost range.

Good question. Revenant (like other professions) has a lot of underperforming traits. Here are the ones I can identify:

Devastation
Ferocious Strikes – this competes directly with Vicious Lacerations, except that Vicious Lacerations is numerically better. Until Rev has a second main hand power weapon, there will be no reason to take this trait.

Corruption
Replenishing Despair – The hp gain from this trait is pretty low. In a prior iteration of the trait, it healed around 50 hp per condition but had no icd. This allowed it to benefit from being hit with conditions rapidly and gave the user some synergy with Pain Absorption. The addition of the icd killed this trait, IMO.

Frigid Precision – There is nothing wrong with this trait, it is just weak. It should also give some benefit to chill. E.g. when you apply chill you also apply weakness or vulnerability. Or, for example, chill you apply lasts longer.

Maniacal Persistence – I do actually use this trait on rare occasion. However, in most builds it is underwhelming. It performs poorly with fast / weak attacks (e.g. sword or staff), and it is much weaker than another trait with a similar effect – Roiling Mists. As a result, the number of situations where Manical Persistence is useful is generally very small.

Invocation
Charged Mists – This trait is very weak for a GM. It only procs when you go from > 50 energy to < 50 energy by spending energy. Roiling Mists is generally a much more potent source of damage.

Retribution
Improved Aggression – Since I only play WvW, PvP, and solo/casual PvE, this trait is worthless to me.

Retaliatory Evasion – This is not necessarily a bad trait, but it’s competitors are generally better options.

Empowering Vengeance – Revenant has few sources of retaliation, therefore this trait is generally weak.

Steadfast Rejuvenation – This trait is weak for a Grand Master. The healing should be significantly increased, or alternatively the effect of the trait should be completely changed.

Salvation
Tranquil Benediction – This trait does buff healing orbs significantly, but in PvP and WvW (which I play primarily), it is often detrimental to try to pick up the orbs during intense combat. The problem here is the mechanic of the orbs themselves rather than this trait.

Momentary Pacification – The icd on this trait is way too long for me to consider taking it.

Herald
None! All traits here have some use, IMO.

I still haven’t tested Ventari, but bunker/ bruiser Jalis, hybrid mace/sword haven’t been working out well enough for me to try in S6. I think I will be sticking with standard power Shiro again. If anyone tries any different builds in S6, such as Ventari bunker / support, please make sure to let us know how it works out.

Thanks for the input. I am still testing Jalis in PvP and have found one bunker-ish build that seems okay, though in reality is is likely not good enough to compete. I am trying to decide what to do for the upcoming Season 6. I will still play Revenant, but I am deciding between:
-standard Power Shiro
-hybrid mace/sword build I have had reasonable success with
-Jalis bunker (most interested in this, but it’s probably not good enough)
-I am not interested in Ventari healer for now

What is everyone else doing for S6? Shelving your Rev? If you’re sticking with Rev, what build(s) are you playing?

Since the update patch, I’ve been trying out Jalis in PvP to see if it’s viable. Although most of the changes were for Ventari, Jalis had a couple of things:

1) Vengeful Hammers base damage increased by 100% (or about 50% total damage increase in a power build)
2) Forced Engagement energy cost reduced from 35 to 25 and cooldown increased from 5 to 10 seconds.
3) Rite of the Great Dwarf reduced from 50 to 40 energy (PvP only).

Briefly, I have not really found the damage increase on vengeful hammers noticeable, but I do like the skill. The reduced energy cost on Forced Engagement is very helpful, while simultaneously the increased cooldown does cause problems. I still rarely use RotGD due to the cost, but the reduced energy cost does help a bit.

Overall though, I still am struggling to find a place for Jalis in PvP. I have seen that some players use the new Ventari as a reasonable bunker, but it seems like Jalis really should be the ideal bunker legend, whereas Ventari should be for team support. Furthermore, Ventari works best with healing power while I would argue Jalis works best with toughness – there are no amulets that provide both, so you can only build effectively for one legend.

After the patch, Jalis is very vulnerable to conditions despite the condition damage reduction on hammers and RotGD, and energy costs are pretty high. Damage is also pretty mediocre (though this is to be expected). Although Jalis can be quite tanky, I don’t find it to be tanky enough to sit on point and eat AoEs, though it seems like it wants to do this. Conversely, Glint’s heal makes it the ultimate bunker (for 3 seconds every 30 seconds).

Has anyone else tried out Jalis in PvP recently? What are your thoughts, suggestions, or complaints?

Rudedawg.1876:

fluidmonolith.3584:

With Glint instead, you’ll probably have better damage and sustain, but you’ll also be really slow so you might get kited a lot.

New player so excuse me for dumb question… I thought Glint has Facet of Elements?

I was referring to in-combat mobility. The swiftness will help in moving between points but, in my opinion, it is not sufficient to help prevent the Rev from being kited or to escape from another player.

I have made some reasonable attempts to play power Rev in sPvP with Mallyx/Corruption for a while but I haven’t been successful yet. So I wish you luck.

I have generally found these few problems:
-sustain is good, but not good enough to make up for the low damage
-damage goes down too far when under condi pressure since most energy is used for pain absorption at this time

I like your use of blood/leeching sigils, this will help with sustain. I have not tried Mallyx/Glint, instead I used Mallyx/Shiro. With Glint instead, you’ll probably have better damage and sustain, but you’ll also be really slow so you might get kited a lot.

I don’t like Maniacal Persistence when combined with Roiling Mists. Your crit chance will be 95% when you have fury, which will probably be most of the time with this build. So Maniacal Persistence will be almost useless. I would recommend one of two options:

a) swap Maniacal Persistence for Pulsating Pestilence
b) Swap Invocation for Devastation. With such low crit damage, the benefits of high crit are not that great on this build. Devastation will add some damage and decent sustain through Focused Siphoning and Assassin’s Annihilation. You will be more vulnerable to CCs though.

Though ele sort of swaps weapons a lot (attunements) and most engis use kits, which are sort of like weapon swaps. You may also consider Thief. While Thief can weapon swap, the fact that all weapon skills use a shared resource (initiative) means you may be be able to perform well with less frequent weapon swapping than other professions.

Haha, great video, thanks for linking it.

Yeah, I have liked Canach for a while, but he does seem to be getting more and more interesting. IMO, the same is true of Taimi. I think my interest in these characters is not necessarily in their personal development but in the slow amplification of qualities that people seem to like, in order to make them more enjoyable. Taimi has slowly turned into a more and more witty and megalomanical mad scientist, while Canach has become more and more blunt and sarcastic, all to hilarious effect.

Unfortunately I am not as interested in Marjory, Rox, Braham, or Kasmeer. Though we haven’t seem Kasmeer for a while.

Admittedly, I think they original Destiny’s Edge cast have done pretty well in terms of development. We saw severe effects of Mordremoth on Caithe, Logan, and Zojja and their difficulty recovery from these events. We saw a lot of their strains to reunite their guild help the player take on Mordremoth. I guess Rytlock hasn’t had much introspection, but he did change his profession…

I hope that in the future some of the other potential Dragon’s Watch members get this kind of attention or development (Rox, Marjory, Kasmeer, Braham), but I think we’re certainly at a point in the story where it will be very possible to do that in upcoming LS episodes.

Sister Saxifrage.7361:

THIS GAME has both story mode (in dungeons) and challenge switches. They just don’t use them all the time, and they absolutely could.

I agree completely. That ANet adjusted the final boss fight in LS3E4 was great, since I think everyone should be able to complete it and some people were having trouble. However, some people also enjoyed the challenge. In open world content it is not feasible to have difficulty settings, but personal story is the perfect place for it, and they already have the challenge mote system developed. I completely think it could be used much more often.

I would like to see every single personal story mission have optional challenge motes that make the content much more difficult and reward the player with achievement points and maybe in a few occasions, skins or titles.

I still enjoyed this fight (with the exception of a few points in my post above), though I appear to be in the minority, or those others who enjoyed it do not say so in the forums. I will attempt to compare this fight to conventional challenging PvE content design.

Conventional PvE content seems to be primarily centered around mechanics. Challenging fights will use mechanics that ruthlessly punish failure. However, learning those mechanics and responding perfectly to them can be reasonably accomplished. When one does so, there is relatively little risk of dying (until the mechanics change). What separates skilled players from less skilled players is the amount of dps uptime they can maintain while still responding to the mechanics. Frankly, I find this time of gameplay rather boring (but not necessarily easy!).

Conversely, in this boss fight, it was relatively difficult to respond perfectly to the mechanics. There was so much demanded of the player that avoiding all of the CCs and heavy hits is impractical. The requirement for success here is being able to avoid a sufficient percentage of the attacks that you can still sustain yourself. This fight felt more to me like WvW or team fights in PvP. Coincidentally, I generally run around in PvE using a build optimized for WvW (e.g. I equip multiple stun breaks and weapons with blocking skills). This may have also made the fight more survivable for me, and thus more enjoyable.

If others are having trouble with all of the CCs in this fight, I may recommend swapping some utilities or weapons for more stun breaks and blocks.

I enjoyed the final fight due to the challenge, but you make a good point. Unless a player can learn to do better, a challenge is not necessarily fun or rewarding. I didn’t mind the amount of CCs, damage, or AoE presented in the final fight, but I have two primary complaints:

1) small room with poor camera angles. Dying because you can’t see your surroundings is not fun.
2) Unblockable CCs. The volume of CC thrown at the player in this fight is so great that making some of them unblockable will strictly limit the ability of some builds and even some professions to complete it reasonably.

For reference, I played this fight using Revenant, and I died 2-3 of times. I spent most of the fight dodging around, blocking, and waiting on heals to come off of cooldown so I could recover. I’m okay with this (except the waiting on cooldowns part), but I understand this fight could be easier or harder for different professions. I used Shiro so I had plenty of access to dodges. I enjoyed the fight because many conflicts in solo PvE GW2 involve one of three boring things:
a) HP sponge mobs (usually champion) whose damage is easily avoided
b) weak mobs whose mechanics don’t matter
c) rote mechanics which once learned trivialize the fight, and before learning make the fight nearly impossible
I liked this fight because it pushed the player’s awareness and reaction speed, and there were no simple ‘tricks’ to learn to make it trivial.

Regardless, I think it’s very clear that GW2 sorely needs difficulty settings for personal story content. I can’t imagine playing this battle on Necromancer with poor access to dodges, blocks, or invulnerabilities. I don’t think ANet should make the professions so homogeneous that they all perform similarly, so I think difficulty settings are the next best option. If the build or profession I want to play excels at a particular mission, then I can turn up the difficulty for a challenge; if my profession is a poor fit, I can dial it down. And either way, the content will be challenging. For the interest of the lore, the Commander shouldn’t be hopelessly outlclassed, but neither should this final story boss be trivially weak. Multiple difficulty settings is perhaps the most effective way to allow this.

I would like to see Stonghold return to competitive PvP and more Stronghold maps. More Conquest maps in tournaments would be good too.

Regarding OPs points:

1. Yes, there are currently placement matches, but they seem very volatile, so I would recommend more placement matches. For example, 30 matches instead of 10. Even more, I would really like a minimum number of matches played for each division. E.g. everyone starts in bronze. You have to play atleast 10 matches to advance to silver (if your MMR is high enough), atleast 25 for gold, 50 for platinum, and 100 for legendary.

I also disagree with point 3. I don’t think we need more complex gear systems for PvP, but more amulet types could be added for diversity.

Kholem.6092:

Justine.6351:

Eval.2371:

Justine.6351:

Eval.2371:

Another thing a lot of people look over is hardening persistence. You get 240 armor + 7% dmg reduction out of vengeful hammers or embrace the darkness pumps you up 500 armor. Both of those increases in armor factor to either a 15 or 30 point increase in power or condition damage depending on the use of a tuning crystal or sharpening stone.

People overlook Hardening Persistence because Radiant Revival is 2X better.

Matter of opinion. I disagree. However, I tend to roam solo on condi rev.

It’s only a matter of opinion if you never intend to revive anyone, which makes a player average at best or I suppose a solo roamer. Either way that explains why alot of people overlook Hardening Persistence because not alot solo roam.

I do like Radiant Revival when small scale in WvW or duo-ing especially with someone glassy. Not a huge zerg player. That being said when roaming solo and trying to pick 1v1s (rare as those may be!) I tend to prefer Hardening Persistence due to its self reliance. Easy enough to switch out when grouping.

I actually prefer Swift Gale when I’m solo roaming (though Radiant Revival is awesome in groups and in sPvP). The swiftness on stunbreak makes Rev’s stun breaks with cast times (e.g. RotGD, Pain Absorption) much ‘faster’. Of course it also works with stun break on legend swap from Invocation.

Rym.1469:

But Staff is not supposed to be a great DPS weapon…

Don’t use this thread as a bucket for tears.

Zenith.7301:

If the staff doesn’t offer DPS, it becomes a niche weapon that forces the revenant to choose between the ranged capabilities of the hammer or the mobility and DPS capabilities of the mainhand sword.

I think these points are both accurate.

We should, perhaps, differentiate between sustained dps and burst dps. IMO, burst dps should be reserved for very glassy, quick-kill oriented weapons. This is not the Revenant staff and I will generally not support ideas which turn the staff into a bursty weapon. One of the suggestions to staff #2 in this thread was to cause daze on the first hit and do double damage to targets using a skill when hit, while removing the flip-over skill. The daze on command would be nice, but the double damage portion of the skill would increase the burst damage and, in my opinion, be inappropriate for staff.

Conversely, a buff to auto-attack damage would improve sustained dps, and this would be very boring but appropriate. I would like to see the healing orbs on staff auto-attack removed (because they are generally ineffective), the auto-attack damage buffed slightly, and a defensive utility or light cc added to the 3rd auto-attack hit, such as weakness. I also do like the idea of removing the flip-over from #2 and adding daze on the first hit, but I do not agree with doing extra damage to targets which are using a skill.

This is a pretty cool idea. It would also open the staff as a bunker weapon. If you hit 5 targets with Tranquilizing Slam, they would heal you for 3500 when they attack (+ healing power contribution).

I agree with moving the daze to the first strike. I (and some others as well) have long advocated for a daze with the first strike since it’s impractical or impossible to use it as a targeted interrupt otherwise.

Thanks for the responses everyone.

I hadn’t considered Sinister… it looks like Sinister will give 5% more crit chance and 63 more condi damage than Vipers but will lose 61 power and 13.8% condi duration. I’m not sure if I’d be happy with that trade, though I do understand that long conditions will likely just get cleansed anyways. Comparatively, Celestial is of course more defensive with 207 more toughness, healing power, and vitality than the others … I won’t complain about the extra toughness / vit, but I’m not sure the healing power would be all that useful. I haven’t made a decision yet, but thanks everyone for the input.

I notice in the video Justine shared that Meridia sometimes uses a staff instead of Sword/X in a hybrid build … what does everyone think about this?

I am looking to use a hybrid build (Sword/X + Mace/Y) and want to build a set of ascended armor for it. I will primarily be playing WvW (roaming and zerging) with some solo PvE as well. I don’t have any plans to use this armor in raids or high level fractals.

But what stat set should I use? I am currently debating between Viper and Celestial, and I have the materials to build either one. I can pair either one with any jewelry to minimize weaknesses in stats (e.g. add Viper’s jewelry to Celestial armor to add more condi damage and expertise). While I am primarily going for a hybrid build for now, versatility of the armor is important too (what other builds can I use it for? Are the stats useful on other heavy armor classes?)

Celestial?
-versatile (I could pair it with tanky jewelry for a healing or bunkery build)
-higher total stat points

Viper?
-has expertise, which is very nice…
-can be used with condi jewelry for a pure condi build

Has anyone played hybrid Rev with either Viper or Celestial in WvW? Or what about other stat options that I may not have considered? Right now I am looking purely at hybrid stats (must have both power and condition damage) and not pure condi.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Rangerdeity.5847:

I agree you can pick the condi soul and mace axe but your second soul and second weapon are worthless in a condi damage build if you do. Honestly i want heavy access to torment.

Don’t forget, you can use Mace/X and Mace/Y for your two weapon sets. Mace cooldowns are short enough that this is completely feasible. No need to use sword, for example, if your condi build has no power in it. I’ve also made the point before that, as far as off-hands go, Shield and Sword are perfectly viable with a condi build. Sure, they don’t do condi damage…but they don’t really do power damage either. They are for support, sustain, or CC. I usually play power, but when I do condi, I use Mace/Shield and Mace/Sword or Axe.

Of course, I still agree that Rev is sorely lacking in weapon options, including a ranged condi option.

serj.8214:

All we need is some energy gain from our AutoAtacks thats all)

Why add energy gain from auto-attacks? This is hard to balance because-different weapons have different attack speeds. Different builds will prioritize auto-attacks over other builds, E.g. hammer can auto-attack all day, but mace can only do so when it is safe to be in melee range and when it can get into melee range in the first place. Support builds may also not auto-attack as much – but why should they have less access to energy than other builds?

If we want a specific action to cause energy regen, we should look at Thief and Initiative recovery as an example. From traits, these are the conditions under which the Thief can generate extra initiative:
-while in stealth
-when they evade an attack
-when they steal
-when they swap weapons
All of these actions require doing something (though arguably the energy regen on evade is kind of passive with Daredevils…). Adding energy regen on auto-attack provides little gameplay involvement from the Revenant to get that energy and is pretty much free energy. It could easily be replaced with a baseline increase in the energy regeneration rate for the same effect. Or, for that matter, for a decrease in energy cost of existing skills.

Caeledh.5437:

Kevin.5980:

I think instead of removing energy cost, they should increase energy cost and remove cd completely…

Definitely.

This one change would transform the class into what was originally promised – another thief style (i.e. energy cost but no cooldowns) class.

IMO they could do away with CDs entirely.

If there are certain weapon or legend abilities which they feel are too powerful and shouldn’t be spammed, put a soft CD on them. If players use them again within x seconds, double the energy cost.

This is a very interesting idea, and I would really like to see the Revenant head in this direction. Revenant needs to worry about both energy costs and cooldowns, and I think it is fine to need both. However, for weapon skills specifically, I feel currently the energy costs are generally pretty inconsequential while the cooldowns are the primary factor which regulates weapon skill use. I would like to see the balance tipped a little bit in the other direction.
I think it would be quite difficult to implement a complete removal of cooldowns on weapon skills though. Some weapon skills particularly would need to be heavily modified so that it wouldn’t break the game to pool energy and then spam them (e.g. Sword 3, Staff 5).

My personal suggestion is to remove weapon swap, add dual auto-attacks on weapons (like on the spear) and then shorten weapon cooldowns drastically. The reason they’re high in the first place is because powerful skills on two different weapon sets can be chained together.

I think placement matches are insufficient to do a good job of determining initial ranking. It is very possible to climb (or fall) to your true ranking after placement, but it could take a lot of games. I think for S6 they should require many more games for initial placement, or get rid of placement matches completely and start everyone with a ranking of zero.

I started off with a low placement around 850 with 3 wins, 7 losses. I have since climbed to around 1150 with 96 games and 55 wins (57% ratio). I am playing exclusively power Rev, which may not be the best choice this season…

Caeledh.5437:

Muy.3170:

Revenant needs more than 50% of it’s maximum for the other legends.

Personally what I’d like is no free 50 energy on legend swap, but slightly more energy regen and to keep existing energy level on legend swap. This could be achieved via a trait so players could have the existing scheme instead if they prefer.

Revenant is supposed to be another non-cooldown driven class (except for all the cooldowns on weapons, legend abilities and especially glint). The appeal of those is having control of your own character.

The existing scheme encourages swapping legends not because you want to or it makes sense to, but for the free energy. Facepalm….

I like the idea of removing energy reset on legend swap, but I would still like to keep the energy recovery rate at 5 per second. If it gets too fast it will start to feel very similar initiative on Thief. However, they could certainly reduce the energy cost of skills instead. They could also add a small amount of energy recovery on legend swap to a trait in Invocation (not so much to make it mandatory, though – perhaps 10 energy).

Per stack of conditions applied. E.g. if you get hit with 3 stacks of bleeding from one attack, it will only trigger once. It has a 1 second internal cooldown too. It is generally regarded as a poor trait choice.