Guild Wars 2

Swagger.1459:

The Revenant (and some of the other professions such as Elementalist and Thief to name a couple) has too many different design and performance mechanics.

Wholeheartedly disagree.

Swagger.1459:

I understand the intent was/is to make professions interesting, but I personally feel these different profession mechanics are off putting to many players.

Players have different play preferences. Some, like myself, LOATHE cooldown driven combat. Thieves, and now revenants, are GW2’s option for those players.

Completely appreciate that you’d prefer yet another cooldown driven profession because that’s what you like. But, ugggggh. You’ll get SEVEN new cooldown driven specs. One attached to each of the existing SEVEN cooldown driven professions. And they’ll each potentially get MORE cooldown driven specs in the future.

It’s not the end of the world if there’s a few professions you don’t love, especially if it leaves room for players with different tastes to also find enjoyment in the game.

Squee.7829:

The people of skyrim are terrible conversationalists.

It’s remarkable going straight from one to the other. I resubbed for a month back when it started to look like they were going B2P, to pin down a few names. So many aspects of GW2’s design is specifically to encourage players helping each other that, whether they are or not, the community feels SO much friendlier.

I was only ever an on and off player until recently so still have much to do myself but for your sake I hope there’s new stuff between now and then. Though they did say the expansion story picked up right where season 2 living story ended. So…

Community projects? Fan site? Help a random cough noob?

Lucky Shot.7650:

Am I the only one that couldn’t care less about revenant and instead is very interested about specializations? We couldn’t even get a glimpse about them and this makes me really sad.

I was really excited about specialisations – especially druid – and came back to level my ranger to 80 (got bored with him in his 40s). But then they dropped the revenant bomb and now I’m barely interested in specs. Just a personal taste thing. I’m not a fan of GW2 cooldown driven combat so the revenant is right up my proverbial alley.

As for specs I’m expecting a similar media pattern to pre-launch. They’ll dribble them out one at a time, more or less evenly spaced until expansion release.

Muchacho.2390:

You find it odd that the weapon skills have energy costs and cooldowns while the legend skills only have energy costs and no cooldowns (apart from the healing skills and the road skill)?

Yes. Taking cooldowns almost entirely off utilities is a big departure from the GW2 norm (IMO a really good one). It’s a completely different style of play. Thieves aside, GW2’s combat is often a matter of playing cooldown-whack-a-mole. You don’t necessarily execute abilities because it makes sense to. You execute them because they’re off cooldown and wasted if you don’t.

There are a lot of players who prefer one or the other. By keeping cds on weapon abilities they’ve got a foot firmly in both camps and not in a good way. It’s not the-sky-is-falling territory but I can see a lot of players being disappointed by it.

xDudisx.5914:

It is easier to balance the class with weapons having fixed cooldowns.

Like I said in the OP, thieves have this already. It’s done in games like ESO. It can be done. Just increase the energy cost.

Shiki.7148:

As for the theif-comment, you DO KNOW that the Thief-utilities have cooldowns, yes? So the “Thiefs do it” argument is invalid. Both classes have 5 Skills with CD and 5 without.

Reading comprehension failure on your part.

Caeledh.5437:

Why have cooldowns on weapon attacks at all? Thieves don’t. So it’s not like that’s impossible / terrible / unthinkable etc.

I specifically referred to weapon abilities. I’m perfectly aware thief utilities have cooldowns, though given the amount of utility in their weapon abilities, they can just signet up and kiss goodbye to cooldowns except on healing and elite.

Scoobaniec.9561:

Without cd you be able be to spam hammer 5 to death with current energy cost. You want to remove cd’s on wep skills but in this case energy cost has to be raised by a lot to not make it op, rendering utilities being useless as you wont have energy to cast them. Think about it really.

I did – that’s why I mentioned thieves. They have a good mix of damage and utility abilities on their weapons. Without this problem. It takes two things. Good ability design and good ability cost-benefit balance.

By good ability design I mean unique abilities which aren’t just meant to be spammed in a mindless rotation. They do different and specific things. Thief abilities are good that way and IMO so far the revenant weapon abilities look pretty good.

Energy cost is obvious. Bump up the energy cost of hammer 5 and there’s no problem. There’s no damage number listed for it in the wiki but let’s assume the damage is low relative to pure damage abilities. Spam an aoe stun a few times until you’re out of power and you’re only left with the free 1 attack.

That would generally (eg. solo pve or pvp) be completely ineffective. You would only ever do it in a group and only if the situation called for sustained aoe (max 5) crowd control.

FYI there are other forms of spam deterrent.

One already exists in GW2 – can-only-have-1-at-a-time eg. engineer turrets (1 of each type, not total obviously), necro marks, thief and ranger traps. With a 3 second duration and 3 second cooldown, revenant mace 2 (searing fissure) is effectively of this type. The only difference removing the cooldown would make is it would allow you to drop a new one somewhere else earlier (eg. if mobs move off the first one).

Soft cooldowns are another. ESO is almost completely cooldown free. From memory there’s just two shield abilities they couldn’t balance with energy cost alone so they have a 4 or 5 second soft cooldown during which you can recast it but at double the normal cost. Occasionally worth doing but very punishing on resources. Revenant hammer 4 (projectile blocking shield) could be a good candidate for something like that. Increase the energy cost from 10 to 15 and that makes the cost 30 on immediate recast which is exactly how much energy you’d regenerate in the 6 seconds the shield is active. Possible to spam but would leave you unable to do much else.

Levetty.1279:

A strawman is where instead of arguing against somebodies argument you create a superficially similar argument to argue against because its easier to do. The only use of a strawman in this thread is your first response to me.

Don’t go muddying the water with facts. That’s unfair! :P

Muchacho.2390:

In gw1 most skills also had cooldowns and they were rather short just like the revenants. So in some sense they go all the way with it.

You seem to have mistaken this for a thread about GW1 replication. It’s not. Otherwise you would have seen me begging for 4 of the races to be removed and the game converted into a lobby co-op instead of MMO. Plus all sorts of other reversions.

The issue in relation to revenants is it seems to be a half measure. They almost entirely get rid of cooldowns on one side of the hotbar (1 known ability with a cd and it’s 5 sec) but leave us with cds on the other side (plus energy cost). It’s odd.

Ominous.7583:

Now im sure I can use it on my gaurdian and all but what im asking is if rev’s get there own class armor will the old class’s also get a set of there own specific armor which I think would be a good addition to the game.

I can say with some confidence, no. Why?

Because once upon a time each profession had 3 or 4 armour skins unique to them and it was only through a quirk / bug that other professions could use them. Then they were all changed to be just like normal armour skins.

It seems very unlikely to me they’d reverse this and take it even further like you suggest.

There’s also the not insignificant issue of ascended armour being account bound. If they introduced profession specific armour skins and you applied them to ascended armour then it couldn’t be used by alts of other professions. We already have this problem with racial armours.

Ascended armour is not easy, quick or cheap to make. Few players would apply skins to it which make it unusable for their alts.

The only way I could see this working would be as a single outfit which has a different appearance based on your profession – like how the cook’s outfit looks completely different on a Sylvari.

Knighthonor.4061:

Because the class resource system is a simulation to the Warrior’s build up system with hybrid of the Thief’s resource system which starts full and regens on its own.

In the devs own words, it’s going back to a more basic mana style system like in GW.

Even if it were as you described, that still wouldn’t be any reason to not go all the way with it.

Sarif.1827:

How in the nine bloody hells of Balthazar are people coming to the conclusion that Rev will be OP?

The logic is simple.

A – I don’t want to play a revenant.

therefore

B – I should take to the forums and complain about revenants being OP so they are nerfed and easier for me to kill.

Happens all the time. Hell, in Fallen Earth before they’d even commenced alpha testing the community wailed for one particular kind of skill to be nerfed into oblivion and the developers gormlessly obliged. More difficult to acquire than other skill lines. Same skill point cost. But total crap.

Game bombed. Developer went bankrupt. Go figure!

I’m curious and hoping a dev might answer this question.

Why not go all the way with revenant’s energy resource? Why have cooldowns on weapon attacks at all? Thieves don’t. So it’s not like that’s impossible / terrible / unthinkable etc.

It’s fantastic that revenants have more control over their abilities in combat, rather than just being driven by cooldowns. Truly. But why not take it all the way?

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I wonder why, when items are sent out en masse (to some select sub-group), we always find threads on the forums from those that are ‘missed’. Somehow, that ‘no risk’ seems to change into ‘some risk’ every single time.

Sure. Every single time. Been keeping a record have you?

Even if it were true – which it’s not – it’s still silly to compare a simple internal database operation involving financial records to by the sounds of it, mass emails?

Kentrey.3251:

There are amazing Housing in a lot of MMOs (wildstar) and Gw2 is the perfect platform for it and is something we should see (or hear about) sometime soon

I actually rather like the idea of more sophisticated housing. I’d enjoy that. But it’s not something you see in many MMOs and putting my personal preferences aside I don’t think it’s a big deal for most people.

Wildstar is an excellent case in point. It has amazing housing and the game was a huge flop. Other things are more important and they got some of those terribly wrong.

Rift is another, with even better housing. They had quite a successful launch (without housing). They added it later after they’d started losing players and its addition didn’t seem to help much.

GW2 was not a huge flop but there is definitely room for improvement in some respects and I think those would be a priority for ANet. I wouldn’t expect to see more done with housing until those have been dealt with.

Gandalf.3516:

Saying we shouldn’t compare because they have differences makes no sense.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but who has actually said, in this thread, that you shouldn’t compare them? You’re putting words into other people’s mouths.

Someone should be able to say, it’s pointless to compare them (which it is) without your saying they’re trying to tell you what not to do. They’re just disagreeing with you – which they’re perfectly entitled to do.

lordkrall.7241:

Of course. That doesn’t make it less of a time-consuming and annoying thing though. And there are always a risk that someone is missed.

You know, if it weren’t for the fact this was on online forum I’d have to ask if you’ve ever heard of computers? Sales records are digital. They’re stored in a database. Maybe you’ve no idea how easy it is to perform alterations en masse in a database?

If an ANet exec said “refund the gem cost of all living story purchases to everyone who buys HoT”, that could be done in a matter of minutes. Literally. More time would almost certainly be allowed for testing and checking (just good practice), but actually writing and executing the script to do it would take minutes.

Nor would there – short of major flaws in their systems – be any risk of missing anyone.

Vayne.8563:

Even Anet says Guild Wars 1 isn’t an MMRPG. The idea of an MMORPG is to have a persistent world. Not a lobby game where you go into areas with 8 people. They’re different games. According to Anet Guild Wars 1 was a CORPG. If you want to argue it, argue with them.

Yeah GW so wasn’t an MMO and that was one of the main reasons I didn’t play.

Gandalf.3516:

You’re comparing them again…while telling people not to compare them.

Really isn’t much point to it. GW and GW2 are fundamentally different games. They share lore, setting and business model. That’s it. Everything else is completely different.

It’s no more meaningful to compare GW2 to GW than it is to any other random game you’d care to name.

Honestly, I’m amazed they’re not already in the game. Even just in regular boring old PvE it can be a challenge to juggle stuff around.

I took a whopping five seconds to switch weapons in preparation for a particular boss and copped attitude from one player for the rest of the dungeon. I imagine his poor little head would have exploded if I’d taken the time to optimally re-trait as well.

Not that would be a dreadful shame if his actually did explode but I’m sure someone would miss him.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I believe by “passive perks” they meant things like “in Mallyx, conditions last for 10% longer” and “in Jallis, you gain bonus Toughness”.

That could be it. Like the stat bonuses on ele conjured weapons. So their (quite reasonable) fear might have been players entering the legend stance with berserker stats and never, ever, ever leaving it.

I’m with all those who see the games as totally different.

I bought but didn’t play the original much. It wasn’t really an MMO. It was more lobby’ish and there were a few other things I didn’t like.

GW2 is generally much better in my books. Though it also never really hooked me. One thing I preferred about the original was combat design. I don’t like cooldown driven combat. I wish they’d stuck with an energy style resource like thieves and now revenants (hooray) have.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Well, yeah, but is that any different than any other profession? Traits give benefits, some of which are better for some builds than others. It really can’t be any different unless the Revenant simply didn’t have traits.

As it is, by no means do you have to go into the Retribution line to equip and use Jalis well.

I think we’re going in circles. Let’s bring it back to the beginning which was the mmorpg.com article.

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/feature/9418/Guild-Wars-2-An-Exclusive-Preview-of-the-Revenants-Skills.html

“The team also tried to add passive perks to each Legend, but it just didn’t work and could tend to bog people down into using just one legend. They want the Revenant to focus on switching during combat, as that’s where the feel the most interesting strategies and tactics come from.”

That a) makes it sound like there aren’t any traits which support a specific legend and b) we wouldn’t really have the choice to focus on a single legend – in the same way that eles can trait and gear up to focus on a single element.

Going by the trait info that has been since been released and what Roy said (thanks for stopping in btw) it sounds like the mmorpg.com article just got it wrong. Unless “passive perks” didn’t refer to traits and was in fact referring to something we’ve never seen in GW2 before. Though in my experience that particular author is a bit of a twit.

My only remaining concern is the 50% refill on legend swap. I hope that there’ll be a trait which eg. loses that but boosts base energy regen a little. I really would not want to be flipping between legends as often as possible to maximise energy efficiency. I hate that style of build / play for eles and don’t touch it.

Perfectly happy to accept some players may enjoy it and have the option there but would like there to be others.

Maxzero.4032:

I feel the same way. The extra limitations out of combat and the extra in combat options is what attracts me to the Revenant.

We have 8 classes that play like Wizards surely we can have one that plays like a Sorceror?

I’m obviously on board. I have a name reserved so if by launch revenants still appeal to me I’ll play one. And I’ll stockpile ascended crafting mats but won’t craft anything for them yet.

Because ANet may yet cave to the cooldown/build/meta-lovers and rework revenants to be less dynamic and more like most existing professions. That sort of thing has happened in so many MMOs.

Worst case scenario, that other MMO will soon drop its subscription and their combat, at least, is more to my tastes.

lordkrall.7241:

Caeledh.5437:

Plus they’d consider the PR value of such generosity.

And they would also create quite a bit of rage from people that have paid in order to unlock the chapters. Which I am rather sure they are also taking into consideration.

You didn’t read all of that post which began with…..

Caeledh.5437:

Not a bad idea IMO – and I say that having unlocked them all already by logging in while they live.

The only issue would be players who might have already paid for them. but they could offer a gem refund to those people if they buy HoT.

BammBamm.6719:

but i wonder what they will do with another class not connected to the mists when people are so narrow minded with chronology. by the way a chronology where everybody is leader of the pact and killed zaithan multiple times is not worth the thinking about it.

The difference is we’re all really well accustomed to suspending disbelief on that score thanks to eg. WOW and so many other MMOs where we kill 10 rats, become the Grand Hero of Nowheresville then watch half a dozen players come up and do the exactly the same thing 5 seconds later.

Same goes for a little timeline wobbliness. They’ve become so normal that we don’t even think about them.

The distinguishing feature here is a new profession which explicitly only came into existence after these specific story events. That’s a bit outside the norm.

I agree with you that the simplest solution is to not have revenant players experience those story events directly but rather re-live them through the mists and made that same suggestion. Be such an easy way for ANet to address this.

Kal Spiro.9745:

I think you’re missing what my point was, assuming you read it at all. Right now we only know of one elite for two legends. Based on how the legends work, though, it is reasonable to think that, if nothing else is, elites will be static to their legend because in each case the elite has been to channel the legend itself. In both cases the elite power was a toggle, not a big effect like you seem to be expecting. It changes how your character functions while gradually draining your energy. So of course you will use it often, and turn it off as well.

Using the Revenant elite is not like using the elite in any other class. It isn’t like a human necromancer summoning hounds of Balthazar, then swapping into Death Shroud and hitting Lich (as if that were a thing that could happen anyway.)

The Revenant can turn it on and off as much as it wants for as long as it can keep it up.

Have to admit I was skimming and replied prematurely. I should have replied with more detail for you. As has been pointed out we know that Jallis’ elite isn’t a toggle.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rite_of_the_Great_Dwarf

Dragon as a legend hasn’t been confirmed yet but the wiki people seem confident enough that they’ve labelled the dragon summoning pic as the Glint elite. Doesn’t look like a toggle either.

Elias.4028:

I’m not talking about rotation, I’m talking about build diversity. It seems that the biggest way to distinguish one Revenant from another will be the choice of legends you pick. And once you pick those two legends pick a weapon set and that’s it. Not a very deep customizable system. Revenants can’t do something like Guardian Mace/focus + scepter/shield with two concentrations and a shout with tome of vengeance, or the same build with different utility skills or slightly different weapon combinations.
You are set with what the legend gives you.

That’s the thing though – the legend does not set precisely how you play. It gives you 5 skills and you decide how to use them, energy permitting (though healing has standard cooldown). Maybe you’ll gear yourself to favour a few of those skills and lean heavily on those. Effectively you’ve got yourself a ‘build’ there. But you’ll still have the freedom to use the other abilities if you want.

As for distinguishing between revenants, that won’t just be a matter of pre-determined builds. It will be about players. Make smart choices on how to spend your energy and you’ll be distinguished as a smart revenant.

Elias.4028:

I believe Revenants are going to be one of the most inflexible and static professions when it comes to diversity. Once a legend combo will be deemed the most powerful, or “meta”, unless the develops change the games mechanics, that will probably stay that way consistently.

Revenants are going to be the most flexible and dynamic profession in the game. It’s the primary reason I’d play one. On paper there may be fewer total arrangements of abilities but in play you have so much more freedom with what to do them. On balance they come out on top.

Bottom line, I think what we’re talking about here is a matter of personal taste. I strongly prefer having more control over my character in combat. Cooldowns are an obstacle to that. I’ve never liked GW2 for its combat design (except for thief). You, and others, do. That’s fair enough. People are different.

Revenant may not be a profession suited to GW2’s existing build/meta-ophiles. It may be for players like me – expanding the breadth of players the game can appeal to.

Kal Spiro.9745:

This is a thing you could do. It would be silly and pointless, but you could do it.

Maybe, maybe not.

You could be enjoying a brief lull where your enemies are almost dead so there’s no point in wasting energy on big attacks to finish them off and more enemies are inbound. In that case you might allow your energy to build up and then immediately drop three elites on your fresh foes.

I doubt it would be something you’d do often. It’s an extreme. I picked the extreme to illustrate my point which is that taking cooldowns out of the equation means you can’t judge the potentially small pool of utilities, possibly with no choice in them, the same way you do other professions.

Not a bad idea IMO – and I say that having unlocked them all already by logging in while they live.

The only issue would be players who might have already paid for them. but they could offer a gem refund to those people if they buy HoT.

Siphaed.9235:

There is no business benefit to giving away the LS S2 with the expansion over instead including the last part cut scenes. None.

Nonsense.

The bottom line is ALWAYS revenue. Sometimes you make more money by being more generous – case in point GW2 NOT having a subscription and NOT having a stinky pay-to-win cash shop —> enormous profits.

Question is would offering this content for free again (as they did when it was live) as part of HoT cause enough people to buy the expansion who otherwise might not have? It is a potential sale barrier. Want to jump into an expansion…. but you’re missing half the story so that effectively increases the cost of the expansion by $20ish.

Plus they’d consider the PR value of such generosity.

Mar.4839:

Replying to point 3 only: Racial story achievements end after the level 30 arc so you just need to level them up to 30, not 80.

Quite right of course, though come to think of it it’s not just story achievements. There are race-based achievements for unlocking cultural armours too. So that’d make it level 60?

BrunoBRS.5178:

actually it looked like the hammer projectile itself was generic, much like every “throw weapon” animation.

Aww nuts – I feel robbed, cheated, mugged… etc. All this fancy new tech and I can’t toss my hammer about?

Even so I can live with less flashy weapon animations. Maybe all the revenant’s flash is on the legend side of the skill bar. Like the demon transform and the dragon summon.

thewaterguy.4796:

i.e. Durvish (Dunno if I spelled that right XD)

Close – dervish.

BrunoBRS.5178:

if season 2 is anything to go by, season 3 will have its own maps, separate from anything related to the expansion.

That’s a good point and would be a good way to continue.

Conncept.7638:

Repeating yourself does not make you any less incorrect, it’s already been stated a half dozen times in this thread and many others that the developers have stated no such thing, in fact they’ve specifically stated that it isn’t true, though through future development it could be.

To be completely fair, it has been described in some articles exactly as he put it. If you look at the various revenant wiki entries now, what he said seems roughly accurate.

Knighthonor.4061:

Revenant’s Utilites/Heal/Elite is the equivalent of normal classes’ Weapon skills.
They get two sets of those 5 skills, and the rest of the 5 skills are fixed.

Only difference is which side of the bar the skills are fixed.

It’s not the only difference. Using energy instead of cooldowns makes revenants fundamentally different from every other profession except thieves. So reverse thief, maybe.

I’d also exclude healing from what you said because apart from having one for each legend (probably half strength compared to other profs) they seem pretty much the same as every other prof.

ITheNormalPerson.9275:

but maybe in the far future it would be nice to see more races

GW1 = 1 race.
GW2 = 5 races. (+4 or x5)
GW3 = 9 or 25 races!

Vayne.8563:

If it was done it would have to be obliquely because the owners of the copyright do go after commercial interests that reference their IP.

Not directing this at you specifically, but a lot of people don’t understand that copyright owners almost have no choice in this. They have to sue or risk losing control of their IP.

When judging these cases courts consider how aggressively an owner has protected the IP in the past. Failure to do so consistently can be interpreted as their not really caring about the IP and then it can be open season for everyone.

DiogoSilva.7089:

…the Revenant is simply swinging their hammer through the air…

I get to choose the hammer I throw. Happy with that. Most projectile attacks are set graphics.

Good incentive to get a cool looking hammer skin.

Tom Gore.4035:

Well that sounds almost too good to be true, so I’m afraid there might be a catch. But thanks for the info. I signed up for the mailing list to receive information about the supposedly “free” upgrade.

The catch might be it’s the most basic version which will drive you so insane with the things it won’t do that you’ll throw any amount of money at them to upgrade to a better version.

Or it could be a cost / benefit decision. The cost for them of maintaining older versions might outweigh the lost sales revenue for giving this away for free.

I’ve found the game to be much more crashy lately – getting disconnected a lot – which I assume is the result of increased player numbers since announcing HoT.

I hope it doesn’t get as bad as it was at launch. I couldn’t play the game at all back then. Like many players I couldn’t stay connected for more than a few minutes at a time.

Thorgal.1296:

I am not complaining about it since ill be there day zero but i was curious .

Ralanost.8913:

I’m curious, why do people ask this question? If you want to be a part of the game, you have to get the expansion. If you don’t…why are you playing? Do you just want to be a part of the current game and want time to stop for you?

Did you even read the OP?

They’re merely asking out of curiosity since it hasn’t been stated explicitly.

Three obvious reasons to avoid new races:

1) They’re entirely cosmetic. I love diversity of race choice and can completely understand why someone would want more. But a large proportion of the playerbase would find no added value in them.

2) They’re resource intensive. Each of the existing races has a capital and it’s own level 1-15 map. A new race would really have to have the same. I know they could half- kitten it and have them live in an existing race’s capital and use their starter area but those sorts of half measures pull down the overall quality of a game. Plus the story content, new combat animations for every ability, new graphics for every armour etc. etc.

3) There’s race-based story achievements. I’m guessing just about everyone inclined to play each race to 80 just for the story achievements has already done it. Add another race and suddenly many would feel like they’d have to level another character to 80 just for that.

That said, Tengu would have very been cool.

Elias.4028:

I am eagerly looking forward to playing Heart of Thorns, I will not be looking forward to playing the new Revenant profession because of the lack of diversity in the profession.

Totally wrong.

Revenants have access to twice the number of utilities as other professions PLUS most have no cooldowns. The only currently known exception has an extremely short 5 second cooldown.

What does this mean?

It means that energy permitting you can use or not whichever utilities and or elites that you like.

Build up your energy to 100 on one legend and you can drop your elite twice, switch to your other legend (50 energy refill on swap) and drop its elite. No other profession can do that.

The thing you have to wrap your head around is revenants are less about deciding ahead of time which utilities / elite you’ll use every fight and settling into a rotation you mindlessly execute ad nauseum. They’re more about deciding which utilities / elites they’ll use as the fight unfolds. Of course you’d still have to freedom to settle into a rotation with your revenant if that’s what floats your boat.

The only other GW2 profession which comes close to matching this freedom and diversity is thief.

Just stockpile crafting components. The act of crafting doesn’t take all that long.

Or if you must craft everything right this minute bet on berserker. It’s generally a safe bet. Hammer looks to be mostly direct damage. Mace has some condition mixed in there.

All of this info freely and easily available in the wiki. Take a look.

@ all the time travel junkies…

No thanks.

I love Dr Who, really, but time travel is just a massive can of wurms. Cos what you’re suggesting is Rytlock thought it worth going back in time to train a few people in how to channel legends, but not eg. warn anyone about all the bad kittens about to rain down on Tyria.

Not to mention the fact that he’d then no longer be the first revenant.

I think a more elegant solution would be one very minor story tweak – at some point an NPC tells revenant players that they’ll channel the powers of the mist to relive the events of the personal story line.

It never happened to revenant players. They just experience it mistically.

Spiritraven.8237:

I have a question about engineer “end game” that coincides with this topic. I am currently leveling an engineer (around level 60 now). Fully geared at 80 do we have any builds that have a ton of burst damage that are comparable to other professions? We seem to fill the support role from what I can tell. A demolistionist seems like it would give us the option to have burst damage.

As it happens my engineer is also level 60. But I don’t need to be level 80 to tell you they can dish out buttloads of damage.

Equip a bomb kit. I’ve not spent as much time with it but the tool kit is also good. As a general rule melee damage > ranged (to balance the associated risk of being hit back). Plus, I think the bomb kit gets a bit more damage because its effect is delayed, theoretically allowing your opponent to escape being damaged. Though in PvE mobs are too stupid to move so…. enjoy

And if you want to get tricky, take a look at the wiki for combo info. Engineers have lots of fields and finishers.

No profession is really a support profession. They’ve all got various weapon and utility skills which cater to that. They can all also focus just on damage.

Nephziel.6053:

You keep everything from a base class. Its more like furthering your class than changing it.

I’m fairly certain that’s wrong. Otherwise why would anyone ever play the base profession? What’s the point of being able to swap spec at any time outside of combat?

My understanding is the spec gets some new utilities and traits and lose some into the bargain.

Nephziel.6053:

They said in the future there will be more specializations. So I was wondering if we will be able to swap ’em. If I chose specialization now and better one comes will there be a reroll.

It’s not a specialisation like in other MMOs where you choose one and that’s it.

They’ve said for the first spec that we can change between that and the base profession at any time outside of combat. We’ve no reason to believe the same wouldn’t be true of future specs – they’ll all be available to us to play as we please. One at a time.

I’m not sure they’ve been entirely clear about that.

One thing they’ve said is that specialisations keep the skills of the base profession – presumably weapon ones – and we’ve seen a druid with an animal pet (just like ranger) in the promo video, so it doesn’t seem like that’s changing much if at all.

It seems like specs will get new weapon, utilities and traits, and maybe new / changed profession mechanics.

I’d expect to see the Druid lose a bunch of rangery utilities – eg. survival and shouts, and get engineer-turret-like plant summons and something else plant-based.

Personally I’d also like to see new weapon skills for the specs. But that doesn’t seem to be what they’re doing – except of course for the single new weapon.

Test.8734:

Arguably the grenade skills are better underwater. You cannot aim so well, but at least you won’t break your hand when auto-attacking.

Definitely. I only recently discovered that one – last week – and have been playing around with it. I’d found the lack of auto-attack on grenades on land a bit annoying so had never even bothered to equip them underwater before.

Lazze.9870:

That’s not saying they wont add a new slot, just that it doesn’t matter what they did with the old games.

It does matter because it’s the same company.

Their doing it before doesn’t guarantee they’ll do it in the future, but the reasons they did it last time still apply. Not giving an extra character slot would be stingy and ArenaNet’s phenomenal success has been built in no small part on their generosity.

Tyrannical.9348:

World of Warcraft already did it, can’t say if it was out of respect or just for the PR….

Robin Williams was known to play World of Warcraft so there was a pre-existing connection. Nimoy has no known connection to GW2 that I know of so an in-game tribute could be seen by some as cashing in on his death.

Conncept.7638:

Where have they said that? This entire thread has been asking about that for over a week, and all we’ve got is that the they’ll ‘do their best’ to balance the older classes regardless of whether or not their older tech completely outmodes them.

Mmm, my bad. It looks like it was just the author of the article ‘presuming’ they’d do that.

I can appreciate concern on this score but I think they’d be rather stupid not to do that. Class imbalance – especially in a game with a sizeable pvp community – is super bad for business.

I’m a fan of the man and I’m sure he’d appreciate tributes but I think when businesses do this kind of thing there’s always a danger of it looking like they’re cashing in on a death.

It’s a different matter if the celebrity has a pre-existing personal connection to the game. But as far as I know he didn’t.

Tachenon.5270:

The closest thing we have to a Leonard Nimoy connection in GW2 is the asura, in that they are pretty much what one would expect of the offspring of a Vulcan and a Ferengi.

That disturbs me on so many levels…

I know the devs have said they’re revisiting abilities in existing professions to spice them up with the new tech. So I have no concerns on that front.

But when this profession goes live it will kill all the others for me, because I’m not a fan of cooldown driven combat and prefer to freedom that a shared resource like revenant’s energy provides. Thieves have that too with initiative, but I’m more into magic-type professions. I almost cried a little when I read that originally it was guardians who had initiative.

Not that I think they would or should – because it could seriously upset a lot of existing players – but I wish they’d done one non-cooldown driven class per armour type from the start. A caster with revenant or thief mechanics would suit me much better. But revenant should suit me well enough.

Just wish I could play them now.