Guild Wars 2

It’s been said but I’m sorta okay with Revenants not having racial skills. There’s this strong implication that whatever happened to them in the Mists, it changed them profoundly. Rytlock used to be a model charr despite being a bit of a maverick, but he seemingly has intense spite for the Legions now.

You guys are forgetting the best part — inevitably some (possibly color blind) player is going to take those spikes and either use bright garish primary color dyes on everything, use starter dyes on everything, or just use abyss or celestial dyes on everything.

If I was an artist at ANet making these garish and overdesigned armor sets, I’d sigh internally every time I’d see a player bedecked in what I can only describe as road warrior clown car colors.

PaladinVII.1647:

Overall:
The story and dialogue is top notch. Me and my guild were dying of laughter in TS during Canach’s dialogue. Continue with what you are doing, it is in the right direction.

Constructive Criticism:
1. Having cutscenes that ignore that the player would interject – such as Caucticus shooting Demi take some of the realism out of the narrative and feels like forced storytelling. I feel that the story team can do better.

2. I feel that the story is heading in a direction where Dragon’s Watch falls apart. The “Friendship saves the day” ending has been used in both the Personal Story and HoT, it should not be used again. I recommend the commander, despite being outnumbered and alone, abandoned by his/her friends in Dragon’s Watch, still fights the dragons, but suffers terrible losses because of it. Then, members of Dragon’s Watch realize that they need to group together to win the fight against future dragons and go to rejoin. When they do, Taimi berates them, perhaps to the effect of how she was the only one who stayed with the commander.
I STRONGLY SUGGEST YOU DO NOT HAVE DRAGON’S WATCH COME BACK TOGETHER AT THE LAST SECOND AND SAVE THE DAY AS FRIENDS, IT HAS BEEN OVERDONE.

I have to second much of this criticism. Guild Wars nowadays often feels like the plot of a 90’s cartoon in presentation and arc. This isn’t what you want if your product is a sense of another world. Then again, maybe the cartoonish feel is intentional and it’s just part of GW2’s whole style.
All I’m going to add is that please don’t overcorrect and make everything dark/edgy/grimdark in an attempt to balance it. The late 90’s also did that and it also wasn’t fun or interesting.

Personally I like meta maps WHEN the enemy is engaging and inspiring to fight. I could care less about fighting mordrem in a sand-blasted wasteland and balling up into zergs to do it if I don’t want to be killed.
However, Lake Doric was my sweet spot — a strong meta that really gives the flavor of a shifting battlefield but still more than playable solo. And it’s against a bad guy I’m definitely invested in punching, ever since they were my enemy in GW1.

(this is why FPS games for a long time were set in WW2, a good villain goes a long way)

Actually, I’d like to second this. A lot of GW2’s armor feels garish or over-designed a lot of the time. Simplicity and elegance like this ironically stands out a lot more than just nailing as much shiny stuff as possible to one’s clothes.

The final boss fight of this patch actually made me physically ill. Mostly due to the very confined space causing camera hiccups, the spinning walls and being constantly launched by the boss and enemies (Jade armors seem to be the culprit). I also had an incredibly hard time soloing the final encounter because I would sometimes enter, be launched three times in a row and sent through enough AoEs to be immediately defeated. It was very demoralizing and took away from the (eventual) triumph of victory. It did need at least one repair canister before my armor started breaking.

Also either counter-magic doesn’t always seem to work, or the window of time needed for me to move my hand off the mouse to push the “-” button is too short.

Thanks for getting this fixed. I really was about to quit the game for a while, but the fix rolled out almost just in the nick of time.

I actually quit the game again because of this bug. It and the lack of communication made ArenaNet look incredibly sloppy, and XCOM 2 is out, so…

I’ll come back next living world update I guess. But my faith in this game’s future has been shaken.

They can’t afford to ignore this for too long.

A brand new player who would LOVE GW2->
starts a sylvari, tentatively playing ->
gets progress stuck in the most obnoxious glitch possible ->
decides game is a buggy unprofessional mess ->
quits forever ->
ArenaNet loses the first 800 gems they buy ->
ArenaNet loses the second 800 gems they’d buy ->
ArenaNet loses the HoT sale ->
ArenaNet loses the next 1200 gems they’d buy because they’d love it by now ->
ArenaNet loses the LW chapter sales ->
ArenaNet loses… etc. for however long this player would’ve played GW2->
??? ->
Obviously not profit

This is potentially an exponential financial loss, and ArenaNet should be prioritizing fixing things like this.

Most of the deal with Tybalt doesn’t appl(e)y to Sieran or Forgal. As what’s been pointed out, he’s an atypical charr, somewhat awkward but well-meaning and he’s an eccentric. That kind of speaks to the nerd in us all. It also really helped the world feel a bit warmer and more alive. Also that mesmer transformation sequence is a complete riot .

I’m saying all this as someone who also really likes Sieran and Forgal. Sieran feels like an overly eager big sister which is endearing in a more subtle way. Forgal? Well, he’s kinda bland admittedly. Until you imagine him saying “You got a PSG1? You can use that against Sniper Wolf! Hurry up and save Meryl!”. Then you realize that the old norn is actually the reborn form of another old military man who has to atone for his sins.

But Tybalt? In a class of his own, sorry. Between this and the secret areas only OoW-accessible, hard not to feel like one of the orders got all the love.

It’s absolutely true that non-fractal non-raid PvE is still perfectly accessible for the Rev and indeed isn’t much of a strain for any of the professions. Still, that’s kinda all I need to be happy ultimately. Some of the MMOs I played back in the day regularly broke normal everyday faceroll soloing PvE play without apology or ceremony, such as vanilla WoW. I just want to stop and appreciate that ArenaNet doesn’t do this, even if our MMO standard-of-living has finally increased to the point of this seeming like I’m also appreciating them for not boiling puppies alive.

I’m not disagreeing with any points, mind you. I absolutely think you’re all right about what you’re saying. I’m just saying that casual players like me exist as well and we’re not as affected, which is probably related to why the Rev’s current busted place isn’t considered a prioritized emergency for ANet.

(That said, they absolutely cannot afford to leave this alone. Today’s casuals are tomorrow’s hardcores. I definitely will start feeling it if I try to march my faceroll builds into hardcore content and git gud enough that the busted elements start really making themselves known. In that sense, the Rev is a longterm emergency. But for now I’m okay.)

Cyninja.2954:

Sure isn’t, but you do lose out on all that time your character had towards the next birthday gift. Longterm, it has an even more sever effect reward wise.

Super true. Getting instant ownership of the most expensive dyes in the game just absolutely made me happy, as a filthy casual who cares about collecting stuff like that.

Though specifically in the OP’s case, they at most lost a few months since HoT’s release.

Deleting a level 80 char in this game is not anywhere near as bold as it used to be deleting level 50-60 char in vanilla Everquest or World of Warcraft.

One scroll + a bunch of tomes + a quick shopping trip = you’re back

Don’t even need ascended gear, just slap on a bunch of orange 80’s and you’re golden for a long while. Unless you were a doofus and deleted some valuable account bound stuff in the process, but if you did that you have no one to blame but yourself.

tl;dr — deleting your max level character is not a statement in this game.

I do want to say that solo PvE, I’ve not had any problems with my Rev personally. I run a Mallyx/Glint hybrid build that’s mostly Power but with very generous helpings of Tough+Vit so I can condi down enemies w/ Embrace the Darkness and AA. Since I like to use the sword (probably not ideal for Mallyx but w/e, I like applying vuln to make up for sacrificed power) the nerfs did actually sting pretty hard for me. But not too much since I’ve been mostly using sword AA + EtD and a lot of my damage is coming from the latter pulsing.

Underwater, funny enough I find the Revenant to be a bit OP despite being otherwise completely busted. Maybe not to the degree engineer grenades used to be there but it feels like a lot of underwater mobs were definitely not balanced for Impossible Odds + Spear AA. Which is kinda awesome on the player side, but it also feels like it’s the only really valid way to play Rev underwater regardless whether or not you’re a Shiro build.

I guess that actually drives to the heart of the matter: the Revenant is a busted character class not because we lack options, but that 80% of those options are terrible . For instance, I don’t know about any of you, but I hardly ever use my weapon skills because it rarely gives me the same bang for my buck for Energy cost as things like EtD.

All that said, I still love the class and the way I found myself playing it is perfectly functional for my own ends. I’ll even go as far as to say that Revenant is my dream profession for GW2, possessing in theory a class that can emulate almost every traditional MMO playstyle.
But it did take a hell of a lot of trial and error on my part to get to that place and with unilateral nerf waves like these it feels like my grip is pretty tenuous at best.

I know it’s normal for class forums to be extremely indignant when getting completely paddled by nerfs, but it hurts pretty hard when it’s a class that still lacks a lot of basic functionality and the one minor “buff” on the notes actually breaks the functionality of the skill it was trying to improve. A completely lackluster skill that they were trying to get people to include in their rotations, but in practice turned out to be more like that time when your mom forced you to invite the emotionally disturbed kid from your class to your birthday party.

This is working as intended as far as we can tell. Pulsing isn’t an attack so you can’t evade it. This is true of various PvE mobs with damaging auras as well. You can argue until you’re blue in the face about whether that’s good game design, but that is seemingly the intent here. Dodging isn’t thusly guaranteed invincibility in this game. It’s up to you decide for yourself whether you think this is a confusing rule and doesn’t offer interesting counterplay. I honestly don’t find PvP in MMOs to offer that in the first place though, not compared to games and genres built from the ground up with competition in mind.

Of course, for all I know you could be right. This could be a busted, not well thought-out part of the Revenant’s mechanics. And if you feel that some part of the Rev is busted or doesn’t quite feel right, this is the forum for it. This is true. You definitely should voice that here, let the devs know this class isn’t finished and it’s inconveniencing you.

But also? Take a number. It’ll be a long wait.

And no, we don’t have any soft chairs. Rusty metal folding chairs and standing room only. And occasionally tortured souls shouting out “Roy! Roy! Roooooooy!” as if attempting to channel a legend long forgotten from Tyria lore. The water cooler is over there. I hope you brought something to read.

Would it be fairly accurate to say that it’s not so much the across-the-board nerfs in itself that has Revenant players up in arms, but that they’re being applied to a class that’s still only half-functional?

It’s like we were bleeding out on the sidewalk and the much-anticipated ambulance stopped, the paramedics got out and just kicked us in the head before climbing back in and driving off.

Whether the nerfs were justified or not (I’m mostly too casual to accurately assess) I honestly can’t blame the rev community for feeling more than a bit salty about this.

Having the same problem. Taking screenshot and uploading it too.

Knighthonor.4061:

no Energy system was a mistake! lets get to the root of the problem not the branches of it..

Energy system is ultimately necessary, otherwise trying to play Rev would be like playing piano. That might be fine for some, but they’d need to balanced for it and the prof would very high effort for what would feel like a greatly diminished reward.

As it is, I do like that Energy forces me to think about what skills I’m using even in PvE instead of facerolling everything as soon as it comes off cooldown. We also tend to have lower cooldowns so our skills actually feel like a toolset.

News programs would absolutely insist that this isn’t the result of human magic use. And if it is, it’s not a big deal. And we had Elder Dragons before in history. In fact, we’re going through a period of ANTI-Elder Dragons right now, why is anyone worried?

Don’t listen to those alarmists and their (numerous, unusually extensive and cross-confirming) Durmand Priory studies. The one Consortium scientist our network interviewed says it’s nothing to worry about.

Now, in Keg Brawl news…

The point of the shared slot is not necessarily to have a shared inventory between all your characters. That reduces how meaningful even having individual inventories is. It’s one of those immersion things you won’t know you missed until it’s gone. What players really want (or even demand) isn’t always what is best for their experience. See also: how flying ruined World of Warcraft.

The single shared slot I think is best used for items that are super useful for all your characters. Stuff like the airship pass, or salvage-o-matic, or silly things like the bobblehead lab. It’s not meant to be like a portable bank slot.

Man, people have been predicting doom for Guild Wars since Prophecies original release back in 2005. It just seemed too good to be true back then. And I won’t lie, in some ways GW2 feels too good to be true right now.

It’s not. It’s here. It was then, it’s here now and it’s probably going to be here tomorrow. Enjoy it and love it like it’ll be here forever and just maybe it will be.

I don’t think ANet not offering more SAB is malice. I think they recently had to redo much of the physics and jumping engine in light of gliding that adding it back to the game right now would be a lot of work.

The best thing you can do is keep this thread alive, and make your love of this feature known.

Arena Net: I can promise SAB can entice new players. Being able to say “My MMO’s fantasy world has a playable video game in it” makes people sit up and pay attention. It’s not just about the game itself, which isn’t anything too amazing by itself (but still great!) but rather the novelty of a high fantasy setting where people enjoy video games like I do. You can bet your butt that I’d be invested in protecting the people of Divinity’s Reach long enough to for them to buy the in-universe cash grab Consortium-produced sequel.

I want to pipe up and say I’d really love to replay it too. If ANet wants my opinion, they should just focus on building the core characters. Braham, Rox, Kasmeer, Marjory and Taimi. Create instances where we the player get to know them outside of being introduced via exposition by one NPC in Lion’s Arch.

I don’t think all of LWS1 needs to be remade. Just enough to learn about and become attached to those characters. It always frustrates me just a little to try and explain to people why I like Rox and Braham so much without having a chapter 1 of their story to refer to in-game.

Right now every class is kind of struggling. The problem has to do with that they can’t perform to efficiency because they’re being run through a powerful but inefficient computer attached to a primate. These primates may or may not be keeping up with their hygiene and general health, preventing most classes from performing to standard in PvP.

Future patches are likely to either eliminate the primates or give the game more control over them. Next expansion will likely come on a flesh-based USB that you can fit inside their ears which will optimize performance while whispering soothing silent sounds of the abyss to their primitive amygdala.

In a sense you are changing class. I think in this way the revenant is probably most comparable in some ways to, say, the druid in World of Warcraft. You’re probably best off specializing in a certain direction, but I’d recommend against overspecializing in one stat or another just to min/max, to allow some flexibility. Your weapon doesn’t matter as much if you’re making heavy use of your legend’s utilities, since your energy will mostly be spoken for so you’ll often be mostly auto-attacking anyway unless you have a certain strategy in mind w/ specific weapon skills. (most obvious example: Shiro + Unrelenting Assault)

Sadly, the Revenant is kinda unfinished feeling in a lot of ways. If you don’t know what your second legend slot should have, you really can’t go wrong with Glint in PvE most of the time. Her buffs are massively useful regardless of your spec. Keep an open mind and don’t be afraid to experiment with switching legends/traits out of combat, if you gave yourself enough wiggle-room w/ your own stats/sets to do so.

Think of your legend utilities as being more similar to weapon skills themselves than traditional utils (even our Elites have relatively very low cooldowns) and the class rhythm will make a lot more sense.

Other than that though, I’m still learning too. I think we all are. That this profession is brand new is still very evident, so don’t feel bad being one of the pioneers I say .

The devs did say that the player characters of each race are meant to be considered eccentrics by their own people. The sort who’d go on an adventure in the first place. This was their explanation for why every race could be every profession. I also ran into an NPC charr who held Althea in high regard, seeing her as an actual victim in the Searing hundreds of years ago.

This setting has never been lacking in unusual or interesting people regardless of their race or cultural background. In a way this makes Tyria for me one of the most welcome fantasy settings I’d ever experienced. And I felt that way before they added an NPC that speaks to my own personal struggles!

Raise new characters from level 1, get more loot from story quest completions from 1-80, LW and HoT. Funnel some of the rewards for doing this into setting up a nest egg for my next alt. Rinse, repeat, drowning in black lion chest keys. Send help.

I’m not advocating for or against weapon swap or whether it was a good idea. I do think it was technically necessary so Rev would have at least some ability to fight at a range besides melee, even if the hammer is not at all ideal as a ranged option.

But hey, this an interesting line of discussion. What do some of you think about an alternate future where the Rev didn’t have weapon swap and was pretty much forced into either hard-specializing into either close or long range? Do you think the prof would be in a better place than in this timeline? If so, why or why not?

I think this sort of thing is fun to talk about and I bet it’s good feedback besides.

Khisanth.2948:

There is also a slightly more complicated issue. It is not a very good idea to train people into thinking there will always be someone around to ress them. That is not always possible and sometimes it is a bad idea. Anyone who dies on the electric field at Golem MKII would be an example.

I’m pretty sure that ship has sailed in some ways. This is very much an MMO where being “good” in the open world isn’t as required if you’re in a zerg and your computer isn’t paralyzed by all the particle effects going off.

You do bring up a good point though — ignoring someone who is downed or defeated is still something you can usually do without getting vitriol from a spoiled player. “Usually” because awful, entitled people are always going to be a thing. If you have the ability to send a signal flag that you’re going to help them, you might experience more social pressure to do so.

So here’s another addendum: Maybe make this feature a future core mastery. Not everyone will have it thusly, so you technically have an “out” to not be using it all the time. With this feature being folded into the mastery system, you won’t have to worry as much about giving new players bad training too because newbie zones won’t likely have as many people w/ masteries running around.

Keep in mind DS isn’t static nor does it have to be. It can’t be soloed right now, no, but I think if the map became consistently empty in a way even megaservers couldn’t help — because of a new expansion or, Dwayna forbid, GW2 approaching death — I think ANet would probably change the map so soloing were possible or very close to it.

We saw something similar with the end of GW1’s lifecycle when they took the cap off how many heroes you could use.

Soloist and casual here. I definitely sympathize with the sentiments expressed throughout. I do want to add my feeling that I don’t think necessarily all the content can or should be available to me. To me, there is some excitement about having content that requires more effort and coordination than I’m willing to put forth to get. Something I’ll never quite be able to attain, not unless I get more serious about the game. That, to me, is not a bad thing. Just the promise of content I could eventually experience can be enticing. I feel HoT’s mastery system did an awesome job of building that sense of anticipation as well. I wasn’t bothered by the grind, either, because I wasn’t usually focused on doing the same maps on repeat. I think it’s a valid criticism of HoT’s maps (as well as Dry Top + Silverwaste) that they effectively encourage playing them well past the point the novelty and energy has well worn off.

I do want to say I love core Tyria and I loved exploring the many maps it offered. For me GW2 was the first MMO I ever found genuinely welcoming to play and I do have some faith that they’re not going back on their mission statement. But I won’t lie, when I first heard raids being announced, I was a bit concerned too. In the end, I’m okay with stuff being there for the hardcores too. I’m very glad to play alongside them and I hope they’ll accept my company as well.

To me the biggest sign that GW2 is on its way to being more welcoming to players like me rather than less is when they made Zhaitan killable w/o needing a party. You guys don’t want to know how long I had the “Victory or Death” green star on my HUD.

Just want to point out that not even H.P. Lovecraft had Eldritch abominations that never spoke. In particular, Nyarlathotep often took human form and he was a huge jerk with the antics he got up to when acting as avatar. It is possible Mordremoth considered us a threat where Zhaitan did not, but that doesn’t undermine him in my eyes — just the opposite. He’s intelligent enough to know what the Pact was capable of and enact a plan to thwart them.

I think the key isn’t how many or how little lines a “natural force” larger than life villain has. It’s that 100% of those lines have to be intimidating, consistent and well-written. The more lines you have, the more likely you’re going to eventually screw it up and inadvertently turn the monstrosity into a cackling 1980’s cartoon villain. Anyone else remember what a disappointment Yogg-Saron turned out to be in Wrath of the Lich King once he started opening his gaping mouth? All the build-up and intensity they had for the Old Gods vanished into thin air overnight. I probably shouldn’t have hoped for much considering what hams WoW villains always turn out to be, but still.

In general I was okay with Mordremoth. He came off as a monster who was smart enough to communicate with us, but lacking the desire to do so beyond breaking our morale and seizing the souls of weakminded sylvari. I’d criticize in general that dragons haven’t been scary or intimidating in general for literally decades so I think they accomplished what they set out to have for him.

Tarn.1374:

If you’re going to help perhaps your dot can appear on their map, showing where your character is in relation to them and whether you’re moving to or away from them. That would make it fairly simple to identify any griefers.

Oh, wow, I like that! Good addendum!

I do want to point out that what power creep was introduced I think was mostly intentional, like Wooden Potatoes has pointed out more than once. The Elite specs are not balanced against core, they’re ideally going to be balanced against future ones with the core classes w/ no Elite being very situational or specifically niche builds.

It would be nice to get a red post effectively confirming this though.

Is it okay if I agree with everyone? This game should never involve waiting and I don’t think playing an MMO should necessarily force socialization. I personally prefer to play them like a singleplayer game, but w/ the presence of many other people giving me a sense of place and purpose.

At the same time, the world shouldn’t feel like it’s made for you like in a singleplayer game. It should sometimes make you feel small and vulnerable if you don’t have help. You should be able to be a hero, but it’ll be a slowly losing fight w/o allies.

Anyways, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask that megaservers be better tuned so people aren’t running around in an empty map. I can’t seem to get much done in Auric Basin myself.

I want to add that I thought the fight with Mordremoth was actually surprisingly really kinda epic and awesome. Had a sort of manga-esque energy to it, where the protagonist pulls something the villain couldn’t have seen coming. Not gonna spoil it for anyone who hasn’t yet played, but I’m really loving what a character-driven story GW2 is slowly shaping up into.

The expansion is also in general very fun to explore, more immersive than before and unusual for an MMO it rewards patience over impatience. Masteries definitely keep me playing without feeling like I’m missing out on something for lacking them.

EDIT: Also want to add that I completely fell in love with the Revenant. It was touch and go at first but when I started seeing certain similarities between it and my three favorite World of Warcraft classes (druid, death knight and warlock) I realized you guys put together something that couldn’t have better embodied what roles I love to play in an MMO.

Yalora Istairiea.6287:

midnight tea: I almost stopped reading at “GW2’s not really a game that attracts griefers in the first place” but giving you the benefit of the doubt. You see GW2 is the ‘Only’ MMO I have ever played so I don’t have a fair comparison to base it on. As far as I am concerned ‘One Griefer’ is one too many.

I can certainly sympathize and ideologically I agree with you in totality. I wish I could live in that world, sincerely. But speaking from experience with various MMOs in the last 20 years or so, GW2 is amazingly griefer-resistant as it is compared to the corpse camping and killstealing of games in eras past. Making a game totally grief-proof is practically impossible, though, because kittenholes are geniuses at finding ways of being kittenholes.
If there was actually a system design of some kind that was able to completely stop kittenholes from abusing or misusing good things and was easy to implement, forget just using it in an MMO. This is some course-of-humanity altering stuff. As it is GW2 already doesn’t get enough credit for what it accomplished, but I digress.

Yalora Istairiea.6287:

I agree that it “Comes down to whether it’s worth having anyway or how widespread the griefing would be versus its legitimate use.”
I am just putting it out there as something the Devs should think about if they would consider implementing this function.

I definitely understand where you’re coming from, I think. I’m willing to bet that they’ve already considered this idea in some form already earlier in development, but possibly decided to either implement it awesomely or not at all. Either way I’ve lost some people I wanted to pick up because they probably couldn’t see me gliding above them

Yalora Istairiea.6287:

Yes for the fine upstanding members of the community, this would be a nice addition.
However…
For all the Griefers in the game who click on you and say “I’m coming to help you!”, then run the other way giggling, knowing you are just sitting there waiting for them.

Yeah I thought of this, but GW2’s not really a game that attracts griefers in the first place. It’s not that our community is necessarily higher quality (though I personally think it is!) but moreso that what opportunities to grief aren’t likely as satisfying or meaty as with other games. Though who really knows what these chuckekittens get out of it in the first place anyway.

In this case, the “victim” might just as easily assume that whatever killed them might’ve gotten their would-be rescuer, so the harvest of lulz already has a large tax before it even gets off the ground. But yeah, I understand where you’re coming from. It’s just kind of inevitable that if you give humans any new means of interacting the worst of us will find ways to abuse it. Comes down to whether it’s worth having anyway or how widespread the griefing would be versus its legitimate use.

This might seem potentially like an oversight and it might, but at the same time people don’t seem to understand that rev utility skills are effectively weapon skills as well thanks to Energy. If we use a lot of utils, we’re stuck auto-attacking, so the choice to weapon swap or legend swap is effectively the same. The only real reason Rev needed weapon swap at all is because w/o it we have no serious range attack options, which the game isn’t balanced for.

If they removed sigils proccing from legend swap, I wouldn’t disagree with the change, but I think at the same time they’d also need to evaluate energy use and how often revs are even actually using their weapon skills.

Sometimes when I see someone downed or defeated in the open world, from a distance but close enough to click on them, I’d like some way to let them know I see them and that they don’t have to warp to a WP to revive — I’ll be right there to pick them up if they can hang tight for a second. Maybe it’d just send a message on their screen like “(player) is coming to help you!”. Would be useful in mass zergs too if you’re planning to pick someone up for strategical reasons.

Just seems like it’d be a nice thing to have. Helping complete strangers and making the experience of playing feel like a warm place is why GW2 is probably my favorite MMO will continue to be.

First choice? Pistol or rifle. I know people are going “but Revenants wouldn’t use that!”. Yeah? And Engineers didn’t use hammers. As someone who adores the march of progress in real life, I consider people who push industry and uplift the human condition to be legends in their own right. I would channel Alan Turing in RL if I could.

I wouldn’t mind, thus, channeling whoever first invented pistols or rifles in this setting. I admit that some people might grumble about them inventing characters out of wholecloth for that end, but I’m personally always hungry for new lore.
I know Scarlet sounds unpalatable to some, hence why I’d instead prefer Ceara as a legend. But honestly, whatever brings Tara Strong’s voice talent back to the studio for a visit is A-OK with me!

If not a firearm though, I think it’d be neat if Revenants got a focus. Those ARE classic GW1 weapons and the number of skins focus GW2 has is really fun. I’d give said focus a 900 range auto attack. Yes, an off-hand weapon with an auto attack, first of its kind. Sort of like how Rev effectively has two attack types on one underwater weapon.

Electro.4173:

I’m sure it’d be easy enough to implement. Like you said, Elementalists already have it.

Personally, I love the glow being always-on. Gives a different feel to the class, one that represents the fact that there’s a duality to them and that Revenants channeling legends is something that isn’t easy or without inconvenience. Its something that they need to put up with all the time, not just during combat.

Totally agree with Electro here. The Revenant is meant to sorta be an uneasy presence, an outsider who can never really truly fit in with their original people again. It’s part of why I kinda like the idea they have no access to racial skills, though that’s just as likely an oversight. If it is intentional, it feels a bit like Rytlock Brimstone being their choice for the character who becomes one isn’t an accident. Charr as a culture are disdainful of mystical power, history that isn’t related to their own glory, and especially anything related to ghosts (understandably). It wouldn’t shock me if the next Living World has a segment w/ his own fellows no longer trusting him.

That said, I sympathize with the OP too and wouldn’t complain if they did add a setting. For me though it’s the same as how death knights have icy glowy eyes in WoW.

R O C.6574:

Does anyone think the fact that Rev has double the amount of Heals, Utilities, and Elites make it a little OP just for that fact?

I used to main thief. I wasn’t winning as much so i switched to Rev. Now it’s hard to lose a match in PVP.

This is a fair question, but in truth the Rev is so different from other profs that it’s kinda comparing apples and oranges. Rev doesn’t have a trump card level elite, they’re more attuned to very powerful 30-50 second cooldown utils. While double utilities sounds amazing on paper, energy constraints + cooldowns as well as necessarily rigid builds (due to having a non-customizable utility bar) make them highly predictable in PvP.

I’m not saying Rev isn’t OP necessarily, that’s highly subjective and it depends on the context and I don’t know nearly enough about PvP to make that call anyway. But the principle design isn’t the problem, at least.

Congrats on your winning streak though.

Hunter.4783:

Keep in mind, rev is forced into herald just as much as guardian, mesmer and EVERY OTHER CLASS is forced into their elite specs.

Now as fair as legend use is concerned, yes, ventari is institutional and dwarf is kinda bad. a lot of traits are kinda bad and half the elites are not worth using…BUT most other classes have the same problem (guardian is probably in a worse spot AND pushed further into trash tier)

This basically. The Elite specs are very likely intentional power creep. They were introduced with the idea that they’re the new baseline, to be balanced against future Elite specs. This is how they can keep adding more and more skills to the core classes without turning into the huge mess GW1’s skill pool eventually did.

The Herald absolutely is a must-have right now, in particular for PvE. Glint pretty much completely outshines Jalis in a lot of instances in PvE and even sometimes Ventari. Ideally the next Elite spec will be just as attractive and since you can’t have two Elite legends at once, Jalis will seem more viable as a companion.

Though at the same time, I think it can be reasonably debated about whether they succeeded in this design direction and whether Rev’s core class has the same depth and dimension as the core classes that were part of this game for years now. All I can say is that I’m willing to bet ArenaNet is very grateful to have you all discussing this.

@Dastion I wouldn’t worry too much about the Devs not seeing the scope of the design issue with the Revenant. Why? For one major reason — Glint is seen as more or less mandatory . Meaning that in the long run, you’ll almost never see a revenant who isn’t thusly also a herald. The huge skew of heralds has to show up on their radar somehow, even if just looking at metrics. If Glint is still considered “mandatory” a year or more from now to even meet a baseline in the meta, future elite specs are not going to see much adoption.

As you said, though, even one other utility option for each legend would go a long way to addressing this. I suspect we’ll be seeing that in the next few months, the Revenant still feels beta-y for lack of a better word and a lot of the real work had just begun. I also think they’re doing the right thing in going slowly with it — you can always add stuff to a class in a game, but taking stuff away can result in a huge player backlash and negative publicity.

I just want to to anyone that if you’re happy with what you have or you play a rev alt casually anyway, that’s cool! I’m not saying you’re wrong to enjoy yourself. I just want the Revenant to be awesome and embody the vision I think ANet ultimately have for it

Dastion is more or less making the point I was trying to make, though unpacking it a lot more. I forgot about the Mistwolf elite, that would be weird for the Revenant to not have if anyone.

They may be using a lot of words and big numbers, but what they’re getting at is that the Revenant may be in serious trouble in the longterm PvP meta due to their pre-baked utility choices. Even assuming that the profession is 100% viable in the current meta (which would be a stretch based on initial impressions) the very nature of meta is that they change. Emergent gameplay comes and goes based on the current balance, counter play, counter-counter play, counter-counter-counter play, etc. are we on the same page here? It’s like how in nature the species who can most easily adapt to environment or diet changes is more likely to survive those changes.

If the Revenant is only ever stuck with ten pre-baked utility slots, their ability to respond to changes in the meta is inferior to any other profession. They might have a rough answer to any of those changes (such as the current necessity for Glint) but by design they’ll never be as efficient as their peers who can build around them.

I think what Dastion wants is to prevent the Revenant, in the longterm, from gaining a reputation as a non-viable “cute gimmick” profession that ArenaNet introduced enthusiastically and then put it on the ADD design shelf to gather dust next to WvW, Fractals, living world, etc. — and nipping that in the bud early before the reputation is even there might not be a bad idea.

That said, as I said, it still seems early to me. I’m waiting to hear what the pro PvP guilds are saying and whether the pro PvE guilds like having them on raids etc. ; but please understand that anyone criticizing Revenant as it currently is doesn’t necessarily dislike it or even fail to understand its flavor.
If anything, I’m only speaking for myself, but I love the concept of the profession. I even think the limitations that come with being restricted by legends instead of swapping utilities in and out from a huge pool is inherently interesting and it could be a defining asymmetry. The problem right now is that literally every legend pretty much does only one or two things and there’s no interesting choices to make except which two legends you use. If every legend had its own mini-pool of utilities to choose from, or if they had some wild-card neutral abilities to slot in, I’d probably dislike it a lot less. As it stands, it doesn’t feel good to literally make no skill choices and that lack of flexibility could kill the profession in the meta before it’s even had a chance to try.

I really question this game’s decision in sound design in general. The default mixing is really off and I don’t know who thought it would be a good idea to make the amateur voice acted NPCs repeat the same mawkish dialogue every two to three minutes.

My main concern about the Revenant is that the lack of control over skill choices will inherently limit its place in the longterm meta. Like if the meta shifts to favor one thing or another, the Revenant can’t easily build around or adjust to it. They’re stuck with whatever builds the developers came up with, as opposed to the playerbase. They’re basically the profession equivalent a gaming console in a PC gaming world. Awesome when it first comes out but quickly becomes outdated by even a moderate market PC.

I think it might eventually become a problem that the Revenant has no legend-agnostic utilities. Like imagine how nice it would be if we could sacrifice one utility slot for, say, some condi-cleanse but in exchange you can’t get around its cooldown. (i.e. even if you swap legends, you won’t get the slot back and thus effectively only have two legend-related skills besides the heal and elite)

That said, what I’m talking about is still in the future. We’re still sort of feeling out where exactly the Rev’s place is, so it’s a bit early still to be talking about solutions.

EDIT: I do agree the lack of racial skills is kind of depressing too. I’d just advise thinking of it in terms of you belonging to the Mists moreso than your original people. That is a norn and an asura revenant would have more in common with each other than they do members of their own respective races.

Honestly if you’re interested in the flavor of the weapons themselves, you’re really better off playing a warrior, ranger or possibly thief. Pretty much every other class uses weapons as a means of expressing their existing abilities. Sometimes that’s in really strange ways, such as mesmer GS.

OP if you have to ask, either the Revenant is incredibly enticing to you and you just want to confirm it vs the reality, or you’re only mildly interested in the rest of the expansion besides the Revenant.

If the former and the Revenant is calling to you, it’s absolutely your money’s worth. Sometimes impulse purchase can be great even if on the surface it doesn’t appear to be worth the asking price. Just go for it if you know you want it.

If the latter and HoT just isn’t lighting your fire, the Revenant in its current form definitely isn’t going to change that. It’s still too young and has birthing fluids still clinging to it that need to be sorted out.