Guild Wars 2

With my rather limited testing, managing energy didn’t seem at all difficult.

Starting at 50 energy on engagement sucks though, because it means certain skills are locked off for the start of the encounter in our already limited skill selection and the worst of it is that the opponent (assuming human) will know exactly what those skills we don’t have access to immediately will be most of the time if not all of the time.

I get that the skills that can not be used immediately can be more powerful this way and it makes moving from engagement to engagement, so that your energy doesn’t reset, more advantageous in some cases.

If anything because two of the three legends seems to pair with two-handers and we only had one main hand and off-hand for this test the mixing and matching of one-handers based on both of your equipped legends, rather than exclusively choosing a weapon based on the primary legend of your choice that has the most synergies, was something I was missing a whole lot.

To be honest based on this test alone, I’d prefer if Revenant used mostly one handed weapons over two handers, because that is where some variation can be found at this point.

Astralporing.1957:

So, the fact that now we get all the problems that existed before, with no visible attempts to address them, suggests that all our feedback is completely useless, as it is being simply ignored.

Regarding feedback not being addressed, well since this test was outside of their original plans it makes sense that changes based on what feedback they did receive either are not done yet (ie. any internal deadlines they may have had probably did not account for this event) or if they are done they are part of the profession we have not yet seen. They are not going to spend time balancing an incomplete profession for, lacking a better word, an improvised beta event.

People are forgetting something about this beta… this whole event wasn’t in their original plans. It is a “bonus” event for extra feedback on the Revenant, as we have seen, because the short CBT they had didn’t give them enough feedback.

Colin said this himself, they don’t consider this a fully fledged Beta Weekend Event. Part of the reason this test exists is because the gear in the CBT was the same used for the convention demo and they basically said that while they had reasons for having that gear set for the demo in hindsight they should have changed it for the CBT event.

Source: first segment of the PoI stream today.

Olcodger.3792:

I have a Beta slot but I cannot get into the Beta. I create a character and it just goes to a level one starting area.

It is a little strange, you can’t click create, you have to click the button next to it that says ‘Create [BETA]’

Just completed the daily PvP player kills, did not get my potion of PvP Reward from it though. Everything else seems to be fine. Though it did not automatically remove it from tracked achievements either, so maybe that has something to do with this.

Edit: got it (the achievement) in Stronghold match, that we won (not so sure about that as winning should have also triggered thief winner, but I think we won), and no I wasn’t playing a revenant.

This was covered on the live stream, the beta slot literally makes a duplicate “ghost” account for the beta characters which is an exact copy of your real one.

So the answer is to all questions that nothing is retained but nothing is lost either (including transmutation charges, currencies, dailies, daily bonuses from dungeons etc).

Menadena.7482:

That is my concern as well. I probably will not do my dailies the next few days to avoid losing that progress after working for it but would like to know what will happen to my login rewards.

You are not going to loose any progress on your usual characters anyways, so the solution would be to do them on those. Besides, the whole notion of not doing dailies because they might be lost is a bit silly since at the same time they might not (think of it this way, if they had the ability to roll those back HoM would probably be sorted already, yet it is not). It is not like dailies are hard to do.

SarahWitter.2317:

To answer your question, you can Opt-In here: https://heartofthorns.guildwars2.com/en/newsletter

I would prefer something on our account management that shows whether we are opted in to the newsletter currently or not and the ability to change it there if necessary. Because in order to get communications about betas etc. the email has to match an eligible account, correct? So for these sort of communications that are tied to an existing account it would be intuitive to have control over it there where rest of our account specific options are.

Would be especially useful for those of us with multiple accounts.

Josh Davis.6015:

Opeth The Great.9251:

Should be a way to “opt in” the newsletters i guess :/

Dont have fast enough internet to download the whole thing in a few hours, so I guess im stuck to watching streams then.

But thanks anyway Josh Davis

It uses the new streaming client, so you don’t actually need the full download. Only about 5-6 gigs, I believe.

Just out of curiosity, wouldn’t it have been possible for the beta client to detect an existing gw2 installation, copy the data archive from that locally and then add to it the data for the stress test under the new installation (ie. use the pre-existing data file as basis).

Maybe it is not technically feasible, but it would have saved lot of bandwidth on both end if it was possible.

Vissarion.6509:

Why can’t we keep the rewards?
Playing a new class but doing the same old stuff you already do each day, and dont get rewarded in the end? why…

This is just my personal speculation on the matter, but call it consistency… also. it somehow sounds like this event we are getting this weekend is something that wasn’t originally planned to happen at all.

By that I mean that the beta slot and the restrictions imposed on it were built to facilitate only betas within the scope of expansion content, where no progress should really be retained at all since those maps and content are unreleased. This kind of event, however, can be seen as something that falls bit outside of that, in that the content we will be playing will be old content apart from Revenant and Stronghold. Of course this event can also be seen as a content skip in the core game, and by that logic the restrictions on it make perfect sense (ie. think about it as a new player with no real level 80 characters).

phokus.8934:

I’m not sure why people are having a hard time understanding this…

If you create a character in the beta slot on character creation, you will not retain any of the items, gold, karma, etc. you gain while playing that beta character.

This is fine, however, that still doesn’t answer all questions.

Will we be locked out of earning dailies, if we accidentally complete some or all of them on a revenant? Will we also loose the ability to earn other once per account per day bonuses if they happen to be triggered as a beta character?

Coldtart.4785:

Since you can’t swap them I think rev should have a stunbreak on each off hand and two hand weapon. Empty vessel seems like a bandaid solution and makes invo the most mandatory trait line ever.

Well, while I haven’t spent a whole lot of time looking at the other trait lines, basically why would you ever run anything but the trait line and weapon that best synergizes with your main legend.

Trait lines have synergy with a legend and a weapon type, so basically say you are running supportive revenant, this will always be Staff or Hammer, Ventari (primary, if using Staff), Jalis (likely primary, if using Hammer) and for traits invocation and the trait lines matching Jalis and Ventari.

Edit: so in a nutshell Revenant builds will boil down to a choice of weapon between the weapons your legends happen to pair with and gear. The only room for variation is when it comes this is with legends that pair with one-handed weapons.

innocens.1582:

if you dont have a screenshot, anet can check the chat logs for what was said.

I still advise you to submit a report through support “submit a request”

While OP should absolutely do that (he is going to need things like the average time this happened and a character names when he does), it should be noted that ArenaNet doesn’t return gold or items lost to scams that is just their policy. They will, however, take action against scammers if appropriate.

sirsquishy.8531:

to make bank space for the weapons I am getting from Teq :-)

Wait, what… Teq actually drops loot other than vendor trash and salvage items (aka. rares).

/s

If you are actually getting the good stuff from Teq frequently enough to worry about bank space in andvance, then I am really envious right now.

Tornupto.2304:

Buying through webpage took me 5 min to get the Code and upgrade. Upgrade was still insteant Restarted and got the Betaslot.

I believe it can take up to 4 hours if done using the in-game interface. Someone also mentioned it having taken 24 hours for purchase to clear so it may depend on various things like the payment method being used and/or the total amount your purchases add up to (the two last points probably can have an impact regardless of where the purchase was made).

MamaGumbo.3982:

The toon we make for revenant, will it be deleted before the expansion comes out? I just want to know if I would have to go through character creation process all over again or not.

Any toon, revenant or not, created in the beta slot will as per this thread and reddit be deleted once the beta(s) are over or at the very least before HoT launches. Any proggress or gear given (by arenanet or by looting while playing as them) seems to also be lost. These charactes are essentially completely separate entities from your main account, they seem to have separate bank and material storage as well.

The things unclear or without a definitive yes or no answer are:
- How are account bound currencies handled?
- Will core game achievements (say Staff Master f.ex.) be counted while playing in this upcoming beta? Same for Dailies,, if they can be earned will they be retained or be able to be earned again on non-beta characters?
- How will the system handle things like daily gold bonus from dungeons etc. ? (ie. assuming we can’t keep any currencies earned as revenant, will we loose the ability to earn a bonus for that day if we accidentally earn it as a revenant).

We can reasonably assume no progress will be retained when playing on expansion maps, however, since we are sharing the map servers with live players for this weekend there might be some key differences between this test and tests ran on completely separated maps with only beta characters on them.

Evans.6347:

I’ve had dozens of them now. Rule of thumb is that once you won’t need them anymore, they’ll drop all the time.

My experiences exactly.

Red Queen.7915:

I assume as long as you buy/register before the weekend, you’ll get to participate. You’ll get the beta slot right away, anyway, so why not?

Buying during the event should work too, as the account is automatically flagged for access.

sirsquishy.8531:

Selling them for 3silver~ is not bad, but it feels wasteful when you know they could be broken down.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3af1qv/a_system_to_change_stats_on_ascended_gear_is/csccn80

The above dev statement might be of interest to you.

azizul.8469:

hopefully the veterans will get the promised character slot soooooonnnn.

Not going to happen before July 31st, as that is when that offer expires as far as I know.

Dibaryon.7469:

Are we going to be able to access our bank with the revenant ? Are we going to be able to send in-game mails with the revenant? If we can send mails: if we send something with the mail to another player is that same item going to disappear after the beta test is over?

I doubt they have the ability to make an item disappear if it has changed “owners”, especially if it is an item that exists in the live game normally, it is unfortunate mailing to yourself is disabled on all characters… assuming of course that in-game mails would be a way to transfer items off of that character in the first place.

Rahkylus.8097:

These are my main questions:
So lets say i end up farming stuff with revenant. Do i keep the loot or not?
If not do i keep it anyway if playing with another profession?
Also if i, for example, spend transmutation charges on revenant, will i get them back later?

Can’t answer all of your questions, but it seems to be that anything you do with a character in the slot marked as beta (for the next event it will only make sense to create Revenant there anyways, but for the others maybe not) will have restrictions placed on it, can’t say if existing currencies will exists as entirely separate pools for that slot since they are all account bound.

In case this hasn’t been posted here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3cfv8u/announcing_the_guild_wars_2_revenant_and/csvvrxb?context=3 (about bank, mind you he is missing a red flair so he might be an impostor… but somehow I don’t think so).

They honestly have made it pretty clear they don’t want, or at least have no intention to have, a public test server.

Honestly if they ever had on-going public testing of any kind it would probably be something like the sPvP side of the game only, definitely not WvW (technical reasons, judging from how the WvW stress test is being handled vs other recent beta events) and PvE they don’t want to give any spoilers on quite clearly.

skowcia.8257:

Crise.9401:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Crise.9401:

Fadhli.9086:

How will underwater combat be like, since we have no seen any underwater action with Revenants, let alone the type of underwater weapons they can use?

My guess would Spear + Trident.

Since the Rev doesn’t have weapon swap on land I doubt it will have it in the water, so not spear, only a ranged weapon.

I guess you are right, there is that trend… I was thinking since they have two legends they might want to build two weapons for Rev underwater.

If it is just one though, I vote for ranged spear… just cause it being different would be nice.

Different? Guard actually use spear as ranged wep and let me tell you something..it sux, like really.. Guard has no dps underwater, with exotic spear it takes me 3x longer to kill something than a warrior with blue spear. We saw torment on auto so i dont have too much hopes for a decent wep in terms of damage.

Okay, I barely play my guardian, his only job is crafting because I am too lazy to get waypoints for him. Guess I need to check Guardian out underwater then. I Just hope we don’t get a healing stick with Trident, like the staff is sort of…

Also, didn’t they just “do something about that” today, or at least try to.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Crise.9401:

Fadhli.9086:

How will underwater combat be like, since we have no seen any underwater action with Revenants, let alone the type of underwater weapons they can use?

My guess would Spear + Trident.

Since the Rev doesn’t have weapon swap on land I doubt it will have it in the water, so not spear, only a ranged weapon.

I guess you are right, there is that trend… I was thinking since they have two legends they might want to build two weapons for Rev underwater.

If it is just one though, I vote for ranged spear… just cause it being different would be nice.

Fadhli.9086:

How will underwater combat be like, since we have no seen any underwater action with Revenants, let alone the type of underwater weapons they can use?

My guess would Spear + Trident.

Really good questions, we haven’t even seen something as simple as the underwater drowned skills.

IndigoSundown.5419:

This is what makes me wonder.

• Each legend has a weapon that the legend specializes in.
• Players can equip two legends and switch between them.
• No weapon swap.

Not making my mind up yet, but those three facts make it seem like something is akilter.

I have the exact same worries, every legend seems to have both a trait line and weapon set that was designed in tandem with it. If they can make all of those viable configurations in some respect then the Revenant will be easy to get into but hard to master, hopefully. Of course one handed weapons can be mixed… but what I worry the most, is there really a way to run say Staff with Mallyx or Hammer with Ventari at all and have it work in any capacity, I just can’t see it.

Running Staff seems to be pretty keyed into Ventari, and likely Jalis as secondary, especially. It seems basically set in stone, pun intended.

Anakita Snakecharm.4360:

Will the names we use for our Revenants be reserved in any way when the beta weekend ends? Or will it all go back up for grabs afterward? Thanks!

I assume the beta character will either be wiped after each event or once all events are over. Either way, as long as he sits in yout character selection, whether you can play him or not, the name is reserved and once he disappears I would hope that the name is subject to same rules as normal character names (ie. reserved for 24 hours after deletion).

Ayrilana.1396:

We got items from the last beta and were able to deposit collectibles. Whether they actually went there I’m not sure. What he is likely referring to are the items you get for the Revenant such as the equipment boxes, runes, food and such.

Those are given loss, but I recall from the first Verdant Brink seeing footage that clearly had “Deposit Materials” greyed out.

It would really be nice to know the exact specifics concerning this test… things like daily dungeon gold bonus, tokens, daily achievements etc.

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

This class NEEDS weapon swap.

I wouldn’t put it as strongly as you have but with the weapons so closely themed to be used with particular legend and trait line combination, it sure would help a bunch.

However, the lack real cooldowns on most utilities is something that I have to play with before giving it more though (rite of the great dwarf is a stun break, for example, so with fast energy regen it can be used pretty often I hope).

Also, revenants are a heavy armour class with two heals skills in combat, plus staff that has effectively regen on auto-attack. Things to keep in mind. The only real thing I worry is, for example that using a Staff will only make sense for Ventari (and his trait line) Axe/Mace for Mallyx and Hammer for Jalis. Of course the one-handed weapons you can mix and match, but staff and hammer in particular seem like they could have it tough with other than their assigned legends.

Wrong party… You want a casual run, looking for things like “not meta” “all welcome” etc. in the LFG description. Or join a guild, most people are pretty talkative when doing guild stuff including dungeon runs.

Also, about your toons did I get this right: you have 5 toons between levels 21-65 ?

Personally, I’d welcome any WvW tournament… even a reuse of any of the previous formats (as far as achievements goes, whatever they think was best).

I just want something bit more substantial to do, anything at all… be it WvW, PvE or PvP the golems event sounds real fun one off thing. But it is short and probably for a good reason.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

NPCs do rubberband a bit if you have speed boosts going on, because they’re playing catchup. This is also noticeable in summons like a necromancer’s minions or ranger’s pets.

Why don’t they just automatically share swiftness and other speed effects to your NPC allies if you are the instance owner (for ranger pets and necro minions this could be bundled into some trait, for general gameplay). The rubberbanding looks just silly and can seriously break stuff like VO based on player position. I had Treaharne stutter on a line (trying to say it failing and starting again) presumably because of this as well.

MauricioCezar.2673:

Crise.9401:

What OP is asking is just not going to happen, at most they will announce something like the 3 day head start for the original launch if even that (the economy could suffer if they did that maybe, so they might not).

I like your name along with your economy assumption

Heh, thanks… it is actually derived from “crisis” before I was very good with English and realized that “crisis” is not actually a plural and what the actual plural was. I just stuck with it and various variants of it because I found it wasn’t taken very often.

BobbyStein.2315:

Phoenix.6917:

I just started a new toon and darned if when she got to L40 PS and headed to LA that it was the old LA that Destiny’s Edge is currently arguing in. I’m not a designer/programmer. But how hard would that have been to add into your big LA roll out.

All Personal Story steps that take place in LA should reflect the old version of the city once you enter the story instance. Is that not happening?

Slight hijack here, but if it isn’t known… the new Lion’s Arch has some trouble with the arrow trails to the instance markers on map. Namely where I saw this was the Priory instance immediately after Claw Island attack where you use Balthazar’s effigy to transform and kill a wraith.

Ironically, once the wraith can be damaged I was so far from it that the NPC’s had almost killed it without my supposed supercharged help. Also is it just me or do your allied NPC’s have way more rubber banding now in their movement Treaharne in particular seemed to bounce around all over in those to instances (I was on Traveller Runes with +25% speed though), it looked pretty funny.

Kor.5983:

Will player’s Revenants character only have access to the two previously playable Legendary stances, three specializations, and 3 weapon choices?(Count Axe/mace as two choices since you don’t have to equip both at once).

The blog specifies Ventari will be available as well, but that is it.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Crell.6401:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/announcing-the-guild-wars-2-revenant-and-stronghold-test-weekend/

Since this will be a test in the live-game world including WvW/PvP..

Will we be gaining currency and things for our live account? or will these still be ENTIRELY walled off characters?

You’ll have a beta character slot you can use to create a Revenant. When playing with a beta character: all progress, items, etc. you get will not be saved once the event is completed.

You can however use your existing characters to play Stronghold, and will continue to earn rewards/progress that is permanent on your account.

-CJ

Can ANet disable precursors dropping for the rev, cuz that would really suck you know…

Yes please, no precursor RNG on beta slot… I don’t want to even have a chance of something like that happening and having to lament loosing it.

Ravezaar.4951:

Also one question: is this the half-finished kitten version of Revenant or the complete (minus Elite Spez) ?

Cause this will have a huge diffrence in testing both for us and for you.
Kinda hard to do a proper test with only 3/4 Profession imho.

While I agree with you entirely, they can just do this again once the final legends and specialization have been announced. For now though, I wouldn’t expect any surprises.

skowcia.8257:

And thats what i been waiting for! Hopefully the gear is full ascended

I’d wager it is exotic, because ascended being account bound might cause issue with the separation of the beta character from the rest of your account. Even if you couldn’t bank it.

Ascended armors have collections etc, but it could also have to do with how they intended to clean up the beta data from your account once they are over and done with, I’d wager having everything soulbound to a character will simplify that process.

Pickles.9436:

But will ALL the betas be just beta weekends and not the betas where the server is open weeks or months on end?

Anything without an NDA will be just like the stress tests we have seen or these weekend events. At least that was the way it was for the original launch (as in they had a closed beta, with an NDA, and these open events for pre-purchasers that lasted at most what constitutes a long weekend).

One BWE for the original launch was extended by 24 hours I think due to technical issues, but that is about it, they did pretty good holding on to announced schedules.

There has been no whiff of any kind of closed beta for HoT (outside the one lacking NDA when we first saw Verdant Brink), so there is even a chance that all their beta testing outside of these events will be paid QA. But of course, without leaks there is no way to tell if they have a test with players running that have signed an NDA (because said NDA can forbid talking about being part of such test).

What OP is asking is just not going to happen, at most they will announce something like the 3 day head start for the original launch if even that (the economy could suffer if they did that maybe, so they might not).

skowcia.8257:

Why they wont give us answer on official forum? I never understood that.

Because someone would have to type it twice, or at the very least copy paste it…

Seriously though, I haven’t the slightest as to why he would go on reddit and not here, unless the community people at ANet are already working on something for the forums/official site, maybe.

Now on topic: we have our answer to the whole level and loot question.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3cfv8u/announcing_the_guild_wars_2_revenant_and/csv90dr

This is just me guessing, but if ArenaNet is smart what they will do is allow everyone access to the last beta weekend event before HoT launches (pre-purchase or no), they probably won’t do anything like that very soon though, because their main goal atm. apart from finishing HoT is to incentivize pre-purchasing.

If they make a comeback with the portals any time soon you can probably assume HoT hasn’t sold enough pre-purchases without them doing that.

skowcia.8257:

Next beta assuming you talk about wvw one is on a different client.

Nope, I was referring the next weekend event that they said in the news post was coming soon. Taking anything datamined as anything even resembling a confirmation is not a good idea was the point I was making.

skowcia.8257:

Seems to be insta lv 80 with box gear on which you can select stats(datamined stuff)

Seems most likely yes, however, it could just as well be that those are preparations for the next beta.

Foefaller.1082:

Hopefully it’s anything that isn’t soulbound to the Revenant can be banked, any anything not soulbound in their inventory will be mailed to you after the event is over. Would really like to try out some stat arrays other than full Celestial with the Rev, and I’d like to have the option to just give them all my Warrior’s ascended gear for the weekend to do so.

I hope some kind developer will be able to clarify these things before Friday… just to avoid any unfortunate accidents due to mistaken assumptions.