Guild Wars 2

Honestly, when it comes to movement speed… what they should have done baseline is similar to what they are doing for fall damage.

In other words, every class should have 25% movement speed added to one of its traits… or a passive effects on a skill like signet, for complete parity between professions I would choose the trait approach and rework the skills that currently grant this for the professions that have them (and do something about Traveler runes, or maybe not).

This way swiftness and superspeed can be the differentiating factors for each profession but everyone has access to same base mobility increase just like everyone has access to a fall damage decrease right now, afaik.

In light of recent elementalist specialization info… not that this has anything to do with elementalists per se, however, they happen to be the first instance of players getting a break bar.

So, how does a break bar on a player impact PvP mechanics like channeling for example. Now elementalists way of getting a break bar might prohibitive of channeling in the first place but it is still something that should be discussed especially if this doesn’t remain as an isolated instance of break bar on a player, which I find unlikely in the long run.

PurpScurpington.6457:

Are DX11 and/or 64-bit clients a pipe dream. or are they something that ANet might be willing to look into after HoT? A performance patch would do the game good in lieu of the next feature pack.

Even if he knew the answer to that, regardless of what it was… he likely isn’t going to definitively say no if they aren’t looking into it and he wouldn’t be allowed to say yes, without getting permission to do so, if they are.

However, while performance patches may happen and would definitely be welcome, I find it extremely unlikely that they would be changing the DirectX version they use… because they likely want to avoid changing the minimum requirements for the game.

They already did a test on a HoT map on the “live” servers… with Verdant Brink. So it is quite likely they will keep doing that. Of course the definition of live is bit skewed here, since the maps could be walled off so that an event will either take place on new expansion maps or in the old world. Whether we will have events where this boundary can be freely crossed is something we don’t know yet.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Welcome to the first profession in GW2 where you must press 2 buttons (sometimes 3) to swap a single playstyle to another.

Better that than not having the ability to completely switch between the playstyles and having to compromise… is it not. I agree with you regarding Ventari, but other than that profession mechanic and weapon swap have always been separate actions.

I don’t know if there is any fix for this issue other than combining weapon swap and legend swap behind one button… but this too has downsides. Same applies to any other potential fixes or then they are just simply too involved at this stage probably.

If they can do something with the ventari summon then that would be cool though. I mean technically the summoning happens only on demmand because that way it is in theory more flexible and because of the elite skill. I think they explained the reasoning some on the ventari reveal stream, however, the details escape me at the moment.

I don’t think I have actually posted my general feelings about these changes yet, if I have well you are in for some repetition then most likely.

Weapon swap is really big for me this along with devastation line and swords opened up some more choices, especially with instant legend swapping being made baseline, this enables some much needed diversity to the profession. That being said more one-handers would be even better, because those add many more potential combinations just by itself.

Will reserve judgement on the weapon changes as they are in this topic for when I get to play them, but I will say this much. I really liked the weighty feel of the hammer (even though it was hitting like a wet tissue before, if it was hitting at all) so I like that you are trying to retain it even if it probably means it will end up as secondary weapon because of it… sure it will see use because of its range alone though.

runeblade.7514:

Why no Invuln? There is no difference between evades and invuln.

The difference is invulnerable stops all sources of damage evade just the actual attacks being used against you.

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

Traveler runes.

Mesmer has pretty bad access to swiftness too unless they trait and equip runes for it.

Well Mesmer is getting 25% speed in Chronomancer, if I recall correctly, and we still have Revenant elite spec to look forward to… Roy, please put that on a fast track.

Also, show Rubi how to summon her moose so she is distracted with them instead of stopping you telling us all them juicy details.

Invictus.1503:

And anybody with an interrupt will kill it in less than a second.

Stability and/or Impossible Odds seems like the answer to this, and something you would consider for a burst scenario anyways, not entirely sure how much quick access to stability Rev has now (but hey it is probably more than a Thief :P) still trying to digest all this information.

glehmann.9586:

I’d be really curious to see what the actual reasoning was behind adding weapon swap. I’ve heard numerous arguments for it, I wonder which ones convinced the devs to add it.

For anyone just reading this… basically they were considering it already before the previous revenant beta thingy (can’t call it a BWE when the man himself said it isn’t really one of those :P) and the feedback just helped push it along…

There should really be Superior Rune of Shiro, Jalis, Mallyx and Ventari rather than a single Superior Rune of the Revenant. Or then the Superior Rune of the Revenant would have to be very themed around the invocation style things for the revenant.

Invictus.1503:

Sword #3 really should have an evade aspect.

Doesn’t it have an evade aspect to it though, just that it is not a guaranteed evade (ie. no evade frames) but you are still a moving target during that skill (unless your hitbox remains stationary while it is being cast, specifics please?).

If it works how I think it does, it can still be used to evade an attack (if you bounce to a second target), however, you can’t simply press it and become invulnerable during your burst on a single isolated target. Seems balanced to me, while evade frames would likely make it a bit too strong… just don’t fire this skill of inside a ring of fire, because you’ll hurt yourself.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Weapon bind is a terrible idea. What if I wanted to be a Condition spec’d Revenant using Mace/Axe but need to switch to Jalis for tanking. Now I don’t have access to my condition-inducing Mace/Axe. I’m stuck with Hammer and no conditions to give.

There seems to be quite a bit of misunderstanding about the suggestion “bind weapon swap to legends” in most instances what this is actually referring to is combining the action of swapping weapon sets with the action of swapping legends not forevermore binding Hammer to Jalis or Mace/Axe to Mallyx.

So the way tou would retain your Mace/Axe in Jalis in your above scenario is to leave your second weapon slots empty.

Well seeing as you can now level in PvP as well that is something to consider… about the worth it part of your post I can’t really say.

Still conquest (capture points) all the way, at least until stronghold comes along with HoT. Overall PvP now is bit less of a separate game from the rest of GW2 than it was at launch. You can still definitely do exclusively PvP but it is pretty different from launch.

Evans.6347:

He can’t turn in his grave, he got turned into a jade statue.

Well people in this franchise don’t even technically stay dead, all death is in Tyria seems to be mostly a change in form.

Calling it, Droobrut: The legendary “troll” stance.

This is the only way to do justice to Revenants underwater :P.

Acrisor.8097:

<snip> so I can throw the old box to trash when cleaning my room.

You heathen! Game boxes are a dying breed in this era of digital sales they should be cherished mementos of an era that is eventually going to end (How can collectors make due without boxes to collect… the disaster).

Seriously though, just write the old core game key on a post-it note and put it alongside the HoT key, in the case that they do ask for it, but everything points to it that they won’t. You only see a single entry when logged into arena.net with your account after applying a HoT key.

skowcia.8257:

Weapon swap is not the answer. They can make him adapt by other means than weapon swap. If engi and ele could do fine without weapon swap for 3 years, why revenant would end up as exception?

Perhaps because symmetry, and this pattern the users have observed, alone isn’t really that strong of a reason to not at least consider it. It is fine that they started with the idea of third heavy armor profession without weapon swap when drafting the profession, however, sticking to that initial decision just for the sake of sticking to it is not the right way to design anything. If ArenaNet as they say is truly iterative developer it would be wrong of them not to consider this feedback about Revenant’s lack of customization… all of the various proposed solutions not just weapon swap.

Elementalists and Engineers have different replacements for weapon swap, Elementalists arguably more than one. Right now, as far as we know, Revenant has none of that. Sure two sets of utilities are nice and all, but those utilities are also way more rigid than say Elementalists (since even some of them have multiple variants) and balanced in line with the idea that you have another set of them. Yes, other classes have longer cooldowns on their utilities and Revenant have energy mechanic but that same resource is class wide, unlike say Thieves initiative which it uses only for weapon skills, which means that our weapon skills actually sometimes have two cost factors to them instead of the usual one cooldown.

Weapon swap is not the answer, but it is an answer… one that should warrant just as much consideration as any of the other solutions. If it turns in the end then be the solution they choose then so be it, if not that is fine too.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

The elite spec won’t be an underwater setup, haha. Revenant will have underwater setup, just not yet. Soon tm.

Oh boy, that would have been an epic troll… though, just saying underwater combat could use some love, it really needs traits designed specifically for it across the board.

Adding an underwater specialization for each profession, at some point, could actually address that aspect of underwater combat.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Make sure to check out the stream tomorrow, seeing it in game does the skills way more justice then reading about them.

To be honest more interested in traits personally… and perhaps the heal skill specifics.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

It has been removed from PvP, WvW, all starting zones, and a few mid level zones already.

What underwater content has actually been removed from mid level zones?

Ayrilana.1396:

Read up on the difference between an alpha and a beta. Nowhere was it stated, or necessary, for the entire class to be available in order to test it.

This is kind of a tangent, but there is no singular correct definition for the development stages Alpha and Beta. One “textbook” definition might say that a Beta is defined as “feature complete” whereas an Alpha is a stage where major systemic changes may happen and features can be added or removed.

One, more game development specific, definition might be that a first Beta simply means that the content can be completed from start to end, ie. that all the content exists in some form and is in sequence.

About the only thing related to the use of Alpha and Beta to describe state of development these days, that is constant, is that Alpha comes before Beta. There are exactly as many definitions of these stages as there are developers to define them. More so when the development is iterative or agile in nature and thus doesn’t even necessarily follow linear development stages of any kind.

Silverkey.2078:

Well you have 1 weapon set (5 skills), 2 “kits” (10 skills) and 2 utility sets (10 skills).
I am not sure how energy should be handled. My feeling is that it should not affect skills 1-5 in the first place. But it would be possible to use the energy to fuel the “kits”, yes.

I see, dunno if I would count the kit activating skill as a full utility skill personally. Also the second kit for your currently inactive legend is behind two cost factors already so its not exactly the easiest to get to in combat especially depending on the cost of the kit activator (ie. since stance swapping resets you to 50 energy that could be both a hindrance or a boon depending on situation and cost of access to your second kit.

So the way I would count it would be that you readily have access to 5 weapon skills + 4 utility skills * 2 (or 5 depending how you count the activating skills). So at most that is still 20 skills that you have access that would be comparable to say attunement swapping of the elementalist imo.

Silverkey.2078:

No it does not have any link to the weapon. Else it is too much different skills. It only depends on the legend.

So kits then, without re-reading your post would the kits use be limited eg by your available energy? Your math with the skill numbers kinda throws me for a loop. I mean how would that equal three weapon sets (you would have 20 skills if I understood correctly).

Silverkey.2078:

I would like to add one possibility that has not been listed.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/revenant/Suggestion-Legend-specific-1-5-skills/first#post5279427

I like this thread, it is the most complete on the lack of flexibility of the class.

So basically a legend specific kit skill… that has different skills based on the weapon used (so I guess it is actually more like a conjure weapon, minus dropping a copy of it, that is tied to your equipped weapon).

Personally I would be happy if only our customization matched other professions more closely, there is really no need to have as many skills as the elementalist, quality over quantity (within reason of course).

butch.8136:

Yes, but on the other hand some skills/classes can never be interrupted when they start the channel. That’s not good either.

I agree, stability is perhaps a bit too strong here… and I also think that treating the treb as the counter to stability isn’t necessarily the best solution, however, it is a solution.

Like someone said denying a hero should be conscious choice that one has to commit to in equal measure as the opponent who is trying to channel a hero. Instead of just “I will poke you with auto-attack at 1,200 range”. Honestly what I would do regarding the heroes is quite a bit different than it is now.

Basically make the channel near instant but make that channel only decide which hero will spawn at the channel location, then, make these heroes NPC’s that either team can win to their side by defeating them (and they would just have to scale this part of it so it doesn’t take longer than the channel does currently), in this case last hitting would be required to for a deny in a case two competing opponents. Thus player that gets there first has the advantage of deciding the hero the players will compete over, but said competition falls under same rules as NPC buffs in Forest (scaled whatever they deem appropriate for this gamemode). Of course then Treb would have to be adjusted so that one can’t use it to one-shot and win a hero.

I can already see some people hating this due to more PvE elements, but it is in my opinion a fairer solution than normal damage interrupting a channel (as auto-attacking takes no skill but last hitting does, and it has a risk associated with it).

I played a ton of stronghold this weekend and it was honestly some of the best PvP I have played in a long time (maybe it is because it is fresh, I dunno… conquest is so dull by now), especially for the games that were really close.

Archers are still useless though and easily exploitable, there really is no need to spawn them or kill them at the moment. I mean I saw an archer decide an enemy rangers pet was more appealing target than the guard in front of him… and this was an unintentionally done by the enemy as he was running up the stairs behind the middle supply area. You can also infinitely delay an archer if you so choose just by poking them once while they are outside the range from which guard aggro takes over. In this state it would be better they did not exist at all, since they are only wasted supply.

I get that they want this whole Rock, Paper, Scissors mechanic for the NPC’s forcing actual players to be on both offense (protect) and defense (stop archers and doorbreakers once guards are down), but right now it is so lopsided that there are some real issues.

Sure the fact that revenant has two heals and two elites in combat is important when balancing those skills. However, if no legend gets more than five skills at this rate Revenant will have the least utilities out of all the professions regardless of its unique gimmick.

Elementalist has the most weapon skills in combat, yet she still has standard number of utilities to choose from. So why should the in-combat utility count have direct correlation to the number of weapon skills accessible in combat. Either they need to beef up the legends to have some skill choice or if not provide that missing element of choice on the left side of the skill bar. This whole discussion, in its many forms and number of suggestions all comes down to profession depth and customization.

The Revenant as we have seen it is obviously a specialist profession, he can theoretically only optimally perform with one of his two legends after all thanks to how the weapon sets are designed.

I called it the tech demo profession in another topic because that is also what it is, each legend and weapon set is so carefully crafted and designed in conjunction with one of the trait lines that you will almost always want to choose one such set of three. You choose your legends and your weapon and that is two out of the three trait lines chosen for you basically… and unless the power traits change the game significantly invocation seems as the go to third trait line as well. We literally have predefined packages to choose from with barely any customization within them and each of them houses some cool new gimmicks unique to Revenant, but I would give up on some of those in a heartbeat for more open customization.

Staff + Ventari/Jalis setup is probably the only one where both of the legends play well, if the remaining weapon sets provide similar overlap for the remainder of the legends then we might have some of the depth we are looking for (especially once we get access to more one handed weapons) but right now we just don’t know.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Terrible idea and will encourage camping in one Legend.

While I agree that whatever they do with regards to weapon skills be it any of the various ideas thrown around that not being able to customize either side of your skill bar nearly as much as any other class is generally not a good idea.

How would his ideas incentivize camping in one legend?

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

AzureSky.3175:

But what is absolutely problematic, is being locked into melee combat….

D/D Elementalist don’t agree with this.

I wouldn’t call D/D on elementalist exactly melee, at least not quite as melee as the Revenants melee options (if memory serves you have around 300 range on that setup, revenants melee options have less range than that) and Ellies have movement skills, I sure hope the remaining Legends and weapons address this because right now mobility options are bit lacking.

Putting NPC’s in PvP doesn’t make it PvE.

The only way you win a Stronghold match without engaging in PvP is if the entire opposing team a) doesn’t know how to play the map or b) is AFK for the entire of the match.

If I would change anything at all in the map is remove the ability to spawn archers when all guards are dead (ie. opposing lord room is open). Archers are useless anyways, a player can do their job 100 times better right now.

The downfall of most Stronghold games at the moment is one team not delaying the offensive push of the opponent at all. They will only consider defense when the first gate is down. While denying supply is also valid defense, after the recent changes, it is still super easy to get ahead of opposing team simply by rushing your own offensive because most opponents do nothing to stop you before the first VO about outer gate.

The only counter argument to this would be that it is easier to buff one profession than to ne- err… re-balance 8 other professions. Though seeing as we have necro, I guess the actual number wouldn’t be exactly 8.

I don’t think this is very likely though, seeing as their solution to power creep for world bosses was double health but with crits.

Loex.5104:

Revenant needs conjured mist weapons that are not bound to a legend but that are effected by it. So a conjured mist bow with Mallyx Stance would have other abilities than in Ventari stance.

In Addition each Legend definitively needs more utilities (at least 2 or 3) to choose from.
The Reason is pretty simple : all Classes can’t configure their 1-5 but they can configure their 6 – 0. The Revenant can’t do both atm.

Conjure Weapons on Revenant actually sound nice, I would definitely be content with that, since almost every legend seems to have one or more very situational skills right now. Extra utilities definitely also.

Zetsumei.4975:

1. Channeling a hero should be interrupted by damage, not just cc

I don’t agree with this at all, it just needs to be better messaged. You want CC skills anyways to interrupt heroes when one does get to your lord room (or as a way to slow them down on the way). So you should never have a build in Stronghold without any CC. Or in a co-ordinated team one person can be assigned the role of interrupting channels and heroes when they pop. Arguably you also want blinds and daze’s and CC if you want to push through guards without archers in a single push (ie. the second set of guards in particular, since if you can get doorbreakers past them you have plenty of time to kill the final set yourself before they get there).

Donari.5237:

Actually, Colin fessed up that there was some marketing interest in the weekend during the PoI.

I believe that part was referring to all beta events in general. Of course they have a marketing component, however, what is important is where the initiative for these events comes from. When you see Colin being that candid about this event and beta events in general in that PoI segment, at least for me, it makes it lot easier to believe when they say that these beta events matter. Also, if a forum was specifically created at a request of developers, as Gaile mentioned, to make it easier to go through feedback presumably this should only reinforce what was said.

The way I see it, having announced pre-purchases, they really had no way of doing this event any differently than they did without risking a huge backlash from the people that did pre-purchase. So in other words they had no way to make an event like this that could have had any less of a marketing component than this one has right now.

What is genuinely important now is what we see in the next beta weekend event. Will we see our feedback having an impact in some way or not… personally I don’t doubt it, because the changes seen in Stronghold in particular for this event are definitely based on user feedback.

DiogoSilva.7089:

I don’t think weapon swapping is unfun, I think that having two different keys for two different skillset swaping mechanics is unfun (and inelegant).

So bind weapon sets to legends and make it one action as has been discussed elsewhere. The weapons as they are already have been designed in such a way that this would make sense. Less flexible than a real weapon swap, but way better than what we have right now.

The only place where classes without weapon swap are truly range locked is underwater, so can we stop this pointless debate about range. Sure not all configs have optimal damage at all ranges, however, they certainly have better options than the Revenant as we know it.

If nothing else, then for them the utility skills that for Revenants are esentially kits with some flare can supplement that range. They have options right now, Revenant doesn’t. If it only used one handed weapons then we might have a bit more wiggle room. However, with only four one handed weapons (if we believe current rumors) some of them exclusively off-hand. There just won’t be enough skill combinations for either weapon skills or utility skills. As Revenant I feel like super locked down engi right now, only Revs kits happen to play with utilities and we can only bring two of them (or if you look at it differently we have to bring two of them).

Ragion.2831:

Naa..not a problem for me, im focusing on the person attacking not the flashy stuff. I actually zoom out to the max so i can see more of what is happening. I would rather have all the pretty colours on my screen than nothing at all (stealth)

Works fine in sPvP, as well as roaming in WvW, not so much elsewhere.

This

Fifteen Charrs dancing on the table….

Edit: relevant screenshot. That is a huge mob and you can’t even tell what color it is supposed to be much less anything else. This also definitely was not co-ordinated in any way, if memory serves it got even crazier before I snapped this. Follow the blue chip in action right there, most of those people are probably farmers in zombie mode.

NTDK.4897:

you gave it to an alt? you’re sure?
I dont think that’s possible. The revenant’s bank is a duplicate and seperated bank from other characters.

If OP did indeed find a way to get something from a Revenant to his other characters and can replicate this… he just found one hell of an exploit (infinite exotics from beta gear boxes).

If OP is not mistaken, which seems likely, he should report this before we have another Karma Weapons style exploit in our hands.

Jermoe Morrow.9501:

If we do that, might as well just add weapon swap.

I would honestly be more worried about the lack of skills in general. I mean looking at Ventari in particular that legend is not ever going to get another skill most likely (definitely no choices for 6 or 0 as they are integral to the whole gimmick of that legend).

So far if the trend keeps up we’ve got two legends to go, unless they do something pretty off the wall crazy Revenant will remain a tech demo profession in my eyes. I said this elsewhere but right now Revenant consists of these crafted bundles of weapons skills and specializations that all can be neatly grouped. It is literally a bag of themed showcases of new tech.

He has many neat tricks but has yet to show mastery of any of them.

Great stuff, now if only the right people happen to read this. Revenant has a lot of potential in its mechanics, however, right now I am sorry to say parts of it feel like the developers sandbox (Hey, we can do this cool thing with skills now lets put it on Revenant!).

I like new and interesting mechanics as much as the next guy, but right now I am feeling like Revenant is a class entirely built around these invisible bundles that the devs made and we as players are not really allowed to change at all. This class is the Engineer kits for utilities and a single weapon from a set and that is about it.

slow and presets.

Slow, well it just is… movement and damage. Presets, because that is really all we have seen so far. There is no in-depth customization of this class to be seen anywhere as of right now. When making a build you literally have a short checklist of things to keep in mind and that’s it.

Edit: thought these two words are better fit “tech demo”, for explanation go here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/revenant/How-could-we-fix-the-missing-Customizability/first#post5273538

Super random two minute idea here… Give each legend a single kit skill in addition to what it currently has (probably as a second elite or something), functioning like an engineer kits ie. basically bundles.

Now for the reflection, ie. the important part of this post:

Unfortunately, this wouldn’t work at all for Ventari… while I like that this legends mechanic is very unique I think it is basically restricting Ventari to forevermore be those 5 skills nothing more nothing less.

Sadly this makes me think they are not even considering additional skill choice for legends at all which is a real bummer.

In closing, I am with OP on pretty much all of the points he made.

I found this skill interesting (disclaimer: PvP and I was in the receiving end, ie. not the revenant).

I think it is very risky skill though and should definitely not be spammable and if there is even a slight chance that existing content is going to be broken because of it (and ArenaNet isn’t willing to commit into fixing these infantile problems) then it would have to go as interesting as it may be in my opinion.

Too lazy to re-type/paraphrase it here, however, since it is relevant I figured I’d at least link the following post.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/revenant/Weapon-Swapping-would-be-CLUMSY-for-Revenant/first#post5273407

bearshaman.3421:

Crise.9401:

Re Revenant and weapons I would simply combine a legend and weapon swap into one action. Meaning you would have to choose the weapon to use with each legend in advance.

I think Revenant could work without weapon swap, but not as it is right now. The legend mechanics would need to change for that.

This is the suggestion I made on another thread, in light of the fact that its obvious certain weapons are meant for certain legends to use. combine weapon swap into the invocation, and swap all 10 skills in one go.
And it’s not broken because armor determines the bulk of your stat bonuses, and those wouldn’t change. So you are still only gonna use certain legends, you just have access to the others if you need to do something… suboptimally.

Also, more options for utility skills to customize each legend.

I totally agree with you, however, since I already though about this I might as well post it here. Generally I think weapon swap would be the better of the two though, done as we have discussed above. Though I also think ArenaNet wants to stick to the no weapon swap because it follows the pattern of other weight classes (not that I think this is a good reason alone).

Anyways, to the point… if Revenant is to stay without weapon swap then in my opinon what needs to happen is something like this. In a one liner, make channeled legend affect your weapon skills (emphasis on affect not change). They wouldn’t need to be entirely different skills in my opinion, because otherwise the elementalists will weep since they wouldn’t be as unique of a snowflake anymore.

What I was thinking was if you are channeling say Mallyx, then rather than Mace + Axe being the condition set (they could still have this element but it would probably need to be rebalanced) any weapon you have equipped will receive a set of secondary effects relevant to Mallyx’es theme (in this case conditions/condition management).

The end result would be that no-weapon set would completely loose the theme and more importantly most synergies of the active legend this way, without having to have completely unique skills per weapon per legend (which could be quite cost prohibitive in the long run and step on the toes of the elementalist a bit). The main reason why I thought of this in the first place is because both legend skills and some weapons skills have energy costs… semantically in my opinion that cost makes less sense on weapon skills since the legends do not influence them at all currently.

Edit: this might also be something that keeps Silverkey’s points above in mind, totally coincidentally mind you… didn’t see those posts before writing this.

Re Revenant and weapons I would simply combine a legend and weapon swap into one action. Meaning you would have to choose the weapon to use with each legend in advance.

I think Revenant could work without weapon swap, but not as it is right now. The legend mechanics would need to change for that.

I guess this is as good a place as any. I was in a stronghold match in 1v1 with a hammer revenant (Jalis) while I was on a thief.

My setup was not really dishing out optimal damage either, however, I could see him using plenty of skills and they literally did nothing to me. The 1 skill, or auto attack, when it hit (which didn’t happen that often) I just brushed it off… I could swear the rotating hammers attack didn’t do any damage to me either.

I didn’t try standing still but I legitimately thought that I probably could have won like that. I mean I was fighting an actual player but it felt like I was fighting a bit smarter than average NPC. The coolest thing in that fight was when he trapped me inside his directional shield to actually land one of his attacks. The hammer seems to be a weapon that is supposed to be used from range, but it was so easy to not let him do that. He was literally toothless.

This was the biggest letdown of the entire test tbh. Underwater combat is not super important for ArenaNet right now, I get that. But how is revenant supposed to do some parts of TA or Fractals without it. Revenant can’t do anything underwater right now. If all the legends we have seen up to now remain unusable underwater, as they are now, Revenant is just going to be a blast whenever it has to go underwater.

Sure UW content and combat has some issues in general, but since it can not be totally avoided having Revenant in a state it is in this test is really making me worried.

Astralporing.1957:

Well, if Shiro and its weapon would change the dps situation, it would mean that it would become a must-have. And Shiro’s weapon (likely a sword) would be the only weapon to use.

I agree with this, however, you are forgetting that Shiro’s supposed weapon is one-hander. You are assuming a dualwield swords, which although might happen is hardly confirmed. The only weapon that seems to be totally tied to a legend to use is Staff. Seeing as hammer and Axe are the only ranged options so far they might see some use (especially the axe, depending on sword off-hand skills).

Astralporing.1957:

So you agree, that this beta doesn’t seem to be well prepared, and as such is likely a pure marketing ploy, instead of (as they claimed in their blog) a real event aimed at improving the game?

Crise.9401:

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.

It can be both is the way I see it anyways. Sure there is a marketing component to this, but a developer working on the game doesn’t care about that the marketing team does. Meanwhile the developer is focused on what they can gain from this. If this was a “pure” marketing ploy why would they have bothered to give you different gear and bunch of other stuff that wasn’t there before (after all the majority had yet to play Revenant at all in any state). Also, here is another angle on this, perhaps they wanted to test the restrictions placed on the beta slot with a larger test group before throwing other things to it, that do not exist in the live game, as well to see if anything was overlooked.

Astralporing.1957:

And if they weren’t addressed yet, there’s no point to test them again before those fixes are applied. It’s not like such test would give a different result.

You are too easily putting value on the opinions of at most a couple of hundred people of which minority voiced their opinion openly most likely. The rest are just basing it on backseat gaming or echoing others. Also, ArenaNet likely has things set up that allows them to pull data about various aspects of Revenant usage, simply adding additional stat selections in play can give them information about the current setup of Revenant they did not have access to before (from speculation and observations to hard data). Not to mention previous betas and showings were not on the core specializations patch but lacked all those adjustments to other classes (PvP in particular). Not to mention any data about how Revenant interacts with existing content (see reports about certain dungeon paths for example).

Astralporing.1957:

Ah, so you do agree that it’s not a real beta.

See above.