Re: Dash update!
The original reason we had removed the extra distance on Dash was that we lacked the tech. Since that post, it’s been resolved. Thus, the distance of Dash is back, with a fervor. Now you’ll travel a full 450, up from the 360 previous (~300 base dodge), while moving at a faster-than-running speed. Swiftness duration increased to 10 seconds, up from the 8 we talked about originally.
This thing’s about solid movement, so we’re going to push it in that direction for this BWE. Please check it out and let us know how you feel about it. The animation’s going to remain as your character’s run for now.
We are aware that this new distance will cause some de-sync in synergy with Shadow Refuge, but feel that the open-field movement capability for daredevil needs to take precedence over this abliity. note: You can still dodge from edge-to-edge and remain inside the field, but it’s pretty tricky.
This is what many have been waiting. Ignore the nay-sayers because there is less synergy with SR. There are 2 other dodges to use there. Variety is what’s needed and this new dash is great step forward and a good step in making the meta more varied. Shadowstep, SR and speed boost being pretty much mandatory really sucks. Dash can now efficiently free up slot where speed boost was (hello swiftness!) and shadowstep, cause dash will hopefully be close to mobility shadowstep provides.
I just hope this gets properly balanced so we don’t get stuck in animation after the evade is gone. Distance traveled needs to happen in the time when evading is active like on regular dodge, and if that’s the case then you’ve nailed it
Please note: Our studio — and that means our entire development team — is located in the United States, in the Pacific Time Zone. We work very hard to synchronize as many things as possible, but beta weekend events are best organized around the times that our development team will be able to devote as many hours as possible to testing, in-game observations, forum tracking, feedback reviews, and even possible on-the-fly changes. (The latter is not likely, but it has been known to happen.)
In no way do we want anyone to feel distanced by the hours chosen, and we do apologize if the hours are somewhat inconvenient for someone (although with a test that runs for a couple of days, surely not all hours will prove to be inaccessible ). For practical purposes, the hours selected are the best possible for the team developing this game for you, and we ask for your understanding of that fact.
This is not a preview, early start, or sneak peek. It’s a test. <— said in my Admiral Akbar voice, and if you get the reference, kudos to you! 
(edited by Gaile Gray.6029)
(edited by Gaile Gray.6029)
While I do understand why A.net is actively trying to capture new players, giving existing players a character slot as a “loyalty bonus” seems near insulting. Even if they just gave us $10 worth of gems it’d be far far better. Just my two copper of course.
Well, keep in mind that it took a full scale player riot picked up be the media to make ANet give away 1 character slot with the expansion.
Now, sending gems to everyone updating to HoT might affect gems-to-gold market too much, but …
what would be nice is if ANet give all the current players a special currency we could exchange for some of the things new players receive with a brand new gw2 package. I’m not asking for the full value of 5 char slots, bank slot and material slot, but at least something equivalent to 40-80% of that.
For example, when an existing account upgrades to HoT, the player receives Loyalty Tokens (LT) that can be spent to get
- 2-4 new character slots, or
- 3-6 bag slot expansions, or
- 3-5 bank expansions, or
- 2-4 material storage expanders, or
- an exclusive mini of Colin Johanson or Gaile Gray, or
- a combination of the above, then spend the remaining LT to buy
- transmutation charges, or
- spirit charges, or
- some other useful stuff to make sure LTs aren’t wasted
This way the players would be in control of what they get, and I’m sure, 95% of the players will be totally extatic about the deal, praise ANet on their generosity, and HoT pre-purchase will go way up right away.
The idea is that if ANet wants to be fair to what they sell with HoT to new players as well as old ones, they’d have to make it
- totally fair: give veteran players an equivalent of $40 in virtual goods
- understandable to get more profit: give a $30 equivalent
- totally greedy: give a $20 equivalent
- insulting: $10 equivalent
- cause a riot: give nothing, a $0 equivalent
What really happened is ANet started with giving $0 extra value for upgrade, got a riot on their hands, then made a community address and promised to give everyone who pre-purchased HoT a char slot. Apparently, the most vocal players on the forums were Ok with that deal. Some players are still unhappy, but at least there is not that many active rebels here
No. That there is entitlement. It’s disappointing that it’s now expected that companies have to provide free bonuses with any of their products otherwise they’re labeled as greedy or out of touch.
now for the weapons
generally i would either remove all energy costs from weapons because i don’t like that you have to decide to either use a utility or a weapon skill because of energy management or leave the cost but remove the cooldown of the skills, having both energy cost and cooldown is unnecessary.
Staff
Auto Attack: i like the AA of staff a lot, great animation and visuals. the damage needs to be higher though, a lot.
#2: my least favourite skill on staff by far, i avoid using this as much as i can. low damage for the casting time, waste of energy, hard to use, 2nd skill another long casting time and only 3s weakness.
what i suggest: make this skill a 1x block (like ranger gs 4) and if you block an attack you smack the enemy to cause weakness.
#3: best revenant skill. cooldown reduction to 8s :P?
#4: needs to be castable while moving and with a lower casting time, 3/4s i’d say.
#5: good skill, can be hard to use sometimes. why not add some evade frames? would fit the mist animation.
Hammer
my least favourite weapon, too slow and too clunky, no kiting potential for a ranged weapon.
Auto: needs to have a 3/4s casting time. i know it’s a 100% finisher but still.
#2: needs increased damage. to add kiting potential: adds a pushback (not a knockback) the closer the enemy is to you so that it’s also worth using this skill at close range and to gain some space between them and you. pushback is not a cc but just a displacement, you push them away from you, the closer they are the more they get pushed back. i wonder if that’s possible with the current engine.
#3: i like this skill, could be a bit faster, 1s instead of 1.25 making it evade or invulnerable while using it would certainly help as you eat all the damage when you pass through stuff :/
#4: the skill is fine, as usual, to make the weapon not so clunky, casting time to 3/4
#5: casting time is way too long, you can just walk out of it, the animation is also big enough that a 1s or 1.25s casting are justified, i mean pin down on warrior is less visible and with 3/4s casting time and is 100% dodgeable. i understand that this is an aoe but 1.75s is way too long.
Mace
mace in general is fine but needs some tweaking and QoL improvements.
Auto: needs more direct damage, around 30% increase.
#2: this one is difficult.. either make it wider, it’s too narrow or increase the burning duration so that it’s actually punishing to stand in it. increase the burning to 5s instead of 2s. casting time 1.25s? this needs to be 0.5s and not 1.25s.
#3 very inconsistent skill. to hit a double blast it is required to turn up the camera, possible with all leaps, to shorten the leap but with this skill it happens way too often that the character just leaps in a random direction. also needs 30% damage increase.
Axe
the concept of the axe is very cool. imo this is a hybrid weapon, usable by both condition and dd but the damage numbers need tweaking and the axe is in need of QoL.
#4 idk if i’m doing something wrong but when i throw this skill at a target i never get the final damage hit but only the pass through damage. the pass through damage needs to be higher so that it’s actually worth throwing through as many enemies as possible. what also needs to happen is, make it a “noscope” skill. i wanna use this without having to click on a target, like so many other skills in the game
casting time from 0.5s to 0.25s
#5 nice skill and awesome animation, higher damage please i’d say around 50% more direct damage.
(edited by Jekkt.6045)
during the 3 days of the revenant i tested the class with different builds in all PvP modes, in 1v1 fights and in actual matches. I am a longterm PvP player from eu with close to 7k PvP matches and i found the idea of the revenant very interesting but sadly the class didn’t turn out as good as i hoped it would. i will review the class in PvP and add my personal comments and suggestions for the devs, and hopefully they will read them
the builds i used had different roles, some more serious and some more trolly:
1. marauder hammer backliner, jalis/mallyx
this one definitely packs the highest single attack damage numbers but is essentially the worst build/weapon for pvp.
this build/weapon is more or less designed to stay at range and freecast on enemy players with auto attacks and skill 2, for a burst you dive in with skill 3 and on impact you switch legend for the explosion above 50% energy.
this works okayish if the enemy team lets you freecast. the damage is mediocre and the weapon is slow and clunky.
as soon as the enemy starts to come at you, be it thief or whatever comes your way, it’s over. you don’t have any survivability nor disengages. hammer 5 is way too slow and the animation way too big to serve as a disengage and even then you have no gap closers or swiftness if you don’t land your hammer 5 into your lightning field first which will definitely take too long for a disengage. kiting is practically nonexistent here, something that is essential on everything that is ranged.
2. Celestial mace/axe frontline jalis/mallyx
on paper this build is very strong. on tests against golems i managed to stack 22-25 might stacks with double blasts and battle sigil.
the damage, although i had that many might stacks, was also just mediocre, the poison (usually 3 stacks) was ticking for 150-200, the torment for 350 (5 stacks) without moving, and the burn (2 stacks) for 650. the auto attack crits on it were around 500-1k depending on the skill and mace #3 was hitting for about 1.5k crits.
now you might think that’s not too bad right? the problem is that actual enemies don’t stand still, interrupt you or just don’t stand in your fire field.
the build can be kited very easily and will deal clost to no damage anymore. even if you taunt them it does not make things better especially because the taunt costs 50% energy which is way too much.
the survivability, thanks to vit/heal/toughness components of the celestial amulet, was a bit better but still subpar. celestial builds usually bring loads of sustain, shoutbow ele and engi are very hard to take down but that’s not the case for revenant.
the only time this build is good is when you have a condition opponent whose condis you can copy and if he doesn’t bring any condi cleanse.
again, a very slow build with no disengages and a weakness to cc which is very bad.
3. cleric staff ventari/jalis support
with monk runes and some ventari traits you can get close to 50% outgoing healing which is nice and allowes you to heal allies for 3k+ at the cost of 25% energy.
the problem here is that you yourself are not tanky at all and if they focus you it’s over in an instant. you can maybe stay alive in a 1v1 but of more than 1 players focus you it won’t end well for you.
the main problem for this is, you are constantly using your energy for allies to support them so most of the time you won’t be sitting at 100%. if the enemy lands a big burst on you you can heal yourself for maybe 4-5k at best and then your energy is depleted leaving you with nothing. you lack a real heal like for example shelter from guardian which is awesome to negate damage and heal yourself. if you get cced you don’t have a stunbreak in ventari so you need to switch to jalis, a stance that won’t support allies really that much. what you do in this stance is more or less heal you with your healing skill, kite a bit if possible and block stuff for 2s.
if you’re not dead by then you try to get back into ventari to repeat the whole process. usually you are dead though because your only defensive skill is a 2s block on 10s cooldown, no cc appart from the tablet explosion which even has a casting time so you can’t even move it to you while it explodes.
(edited by Jekkt.6045)