Guild Wars 2

Another option that popped into my head:

• Increase base heal to be around 5 or 6k, each dagger no longer siphons health but can transfer 1 condition to 1 target. Interval stays the same.

The idea is to have more instant healing and an option for more GW1 Shiro functionality—when he could transfer conditions per hit. Some may say that 6k is possibly too much. I would say that if you’re running Shiro, chances are, you’re running something that’s more offense oriented than defense oriented and need something big to keep you alive.

While using one heal skill and then swapping to another stance for another heal skill is really powerful, you’re effectively forced to change playstyles a bit if you swap to heal.

I’d like to see what the skill will be like now that the interval is 0.5 seconds. If it feels really bad, perhaps increasing the base heal and reducing the amount of daggers summoned could be an option? Example: Base heal is doubled but the amount of daggers summoned is now 4 instead of 6. All other numbers are the same (including intervals).

As the title suggest, I would hope to see (in the options menu) an option in the future to turn off sound effects of minipets. If players want minipets solely for their sound effects, that’s their preference, not mine.

You’re not the only one who thinks the AA animations are weird. I think it’s because of the order in which they are performed: a swing, a thrust, and another swing. Usual AA sword animations have always been swing twice and then thrust.

I’m pretty curious as to what has been incorporated.

Kidel.2057:

I’m thinking about that, but it will be impossible to test in the next beta

How is it impossible and what playmode?

Adrian Guardian.9480:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

• Phase Traversal: This skill can now be used on a target out of range to close the distance similar to how Infiltrator’s Signet on thief works.

Seriously? That sounds like a bit too good…
I wonder how far away it can be activated, closing 2400 range for 40 energy would be so whoosh

Well, it will take 8 seconds to regenerate 40 energy while in Shiro stance so that’s likely to be the limiting factor. Also, the skill only works if you have a target, so out of combat mobility when there’s no targets in sight will still be pretty low.

I know some of the legendaries are considered by some players to be too silly for them to want to create/buy, so I think Anet will address those particular legendaries first. In particular, Quip and the Dreamer are the “offenders.” I’m not sure if the Moot is considered silly enough compared to the Minstrel, but it’s a disco ball with trumpets so that may be part of the three.

I want to have an emergency escape option where they are temporarily invulnerable but can’t do anything other than move around—similar to mist form and elixir s. Of course, there’s no cooldown on revenant utilities so perhaps the energy cost could be in the upper 50s-60s.

Also, more utilities to fill in the utility difference between the revenant and the other eight classes would be nice.

Main hand Weapons

Sword: The auto-attack chain is weird. I say weird because the second skill, brutal blade, is basically a boomerang projectile and I’m not a big fan of it on an auto-attack. Rift Slash definitely has the functionality and feel of a third auto-attack chain skill and I would suggest keeping it as is. As for Precision Strike, well, it’s really lackluster. In terms of damage and effect there is nothing exciting about it and I rarely use it.

Now for Unrelenting Assault… Welp, it’s got great visual impact, but in terms of functionality, it’s almost there. As it stands, it feels like Unrelenting Assault is a great way to get yourself killed or reduced to half health in several cases. I believe that having at least 1 second of evade with a 15% damage increase (to each hit) would really bring this skill to where it should be in terms of functionality. This skill needs to have an evade component because it can’t cancel to a dodge and the damage needs to be higher because it isn’t very consistent when there are 3+ enemies. Also, that bug where the skill stops teleporting and attacking when enemies are near obstacles (such as walls, rocks, wreckage, etc) really gets on my nerves.

Staff: I love the animations, and it’s finally nice to have a melee staff (though the majority of the skins look like they wouldn’t last long as a melee weapon). I would say that while the majority of skills are fine, the damage is a tad bit lower and I think a slight damage increase would really make it shine. The only letdown for the staff is Punishing Sweep -> Debilitating Slam. In my opinion, it’s not exciting and the effect should be reworked.

Hammer: Fine after the damage boosts. I would say that Coalescence of Ruin sometimes bugs out and doesn’t travel along the floor very well—especially along slopes, but I suppose that’s a bug to be fixed. This weapon now feels fine and feels perfectly balanced. Excellent work!

Off hand weapons

Axe: This weapon is great because Frigid Blitz applies chill and is my favorite for initial engagements. Temporal Rift is nice, but the pull effect feels weak and doesn’t pull some enemies as expected.

Sword: Why would I care for immobilizing in a cone if Unrelenting Assault allows me to basically “teleport” around enemies? Grasping Shadow is great for single target isolation. Semi-boring with one boring skill and one exciting skill so it’s a… mildly interesting option?

Traits

I actually think they’re fine where they are and don’t have much if any strong opinions at all. As the class currently stands, and I know it may be an unpopular opinion, but I think Anet is doing a fine job with the traits.

Sure, maybe a couple of traits may need to be looked at or reworked, but for the most part, the traits are good and I tried experimenting around a bit with other trait lines and found some do a good job together while others do an incredible job together. Overall, I think the traits are going towards the right direction.

I held off against making any revenant posts in the previous preview because much of the revenant wasn’t available yet. Since the core of the class has been revealed entirely and I don’t have much time to play for the rest of the weekend and Monday, I thought I’d share my thoughts. I’m primarily a PvE player so everything is in terms of PvE having spent over 8 hours in Verdant Brink:

Legends

Jalis: Somewhat tanky, the healing skill is the only skill that I know of that removes damage conditions, so for me, I felt compelled to run with Jalis purely for the healing skill. The elite skill takes too long to cast, I understand why (50% damage reduction is no joke), but I disagree that, in PvE, it should take that long to cast and believe there are more balanced alternatives.

Utility thoughts:

• Inspiring Reinforcement is too slow and should have it’s ramp up time (the time it takes for the road to fully extend) reduced by 1/3 or even 1/2.
• Forced Engagement is incredibly high cost, I get that taunt and slow is really powerful, but wow is it a high cost.
• Vengeful Hammers should be named to “Randomly Disappearing Hammers” because that’s what they frequently would do during combat. They would randomly turn themselves off leaving me scratching my head and wondering where they went. To be a bit more serious, I say that this is a great skill for melee revenants.

Mallyx: With the crazy amount of conditions I saw flying around in certain areas, I would say that Mallyx helped out a bit. I’m not a fan of Mallyx but I am ashamed that I didn’t spend more time playing a condi revenant to see how Mallyx shines.

Ventari: I’m not a fan of the low healing from the tablet, but I get that you need to really spec for it via armor and weapons to gain a semblance of a noticeable effect. Personally, I think that for a stance that is supposed to be support oriented with healing, the healing is relatively low. Like Mallyx, I think I’m going to spend much more time in the next BWE with it to have a more thorough opinion.

Shiro: Now we’re sort of getting somewhere—I think. Shiro is about combat mobility which is fine. Shiro having any sort of survivability via his healing skill, however, is not fine. It’s not fine if you have to perform 6 seconds worth of attacking to get the full heal effect while enemies target you with 5+ swarms of bees and snipers are rapid firing at you. Having said that, I think the healing skill needs to either have the ICD reduced in half or removed entirely but with a reduced “life siphon damage” (healing per attack can stay as is).

Shiro’s Jade Winds skill is incredible and though it’s a stun and not an actual freeze like the frostbow’s Deep Freeze (#5) skill or a petrify like the thief’s Basilisk Venom, I think it serves its purpose.

Utility thoughts:

• Phase Traversal is a great way to open up a combat encounter, but it’s very expensive when you’re at 50% energy.
• Riposting Shadows is a great escape skill though it is expensive, it acts as a dodge that restores stamina and removes debilitating conditions so it’s almost worth the price. I say almost because I wouldn’t mind seeing weakness included in that list as I’d say weakness is certainly debilitating. (I suppose that’s arguing semantics?)
• Impossible Odds is great, but I certainly would have loved to be able to transfer damage conditions with each hit much like GW1 Shiro’s original skill or even on critical hits. However, I suppose that would cause too much overlap with Mallyx and be incredibly overpowered at the same time. It does its job just fine but as a GW1 vet, it leaves me a bit wanting for that condition transfer on Shiro.

I’m loving the weapon swap. Given the higher skill level needed against HoT enemies, I believe that weapon swapping between a melee and ranged option is practically a requirement for some enemies.

I’d like to know how did the player characters manage to get a hold of Shiro’s soul. I can understand if Jalis and Ventari agreed to help, but Shiro is directly addressing the player that they release him from their control. I would really love to hear some ambient dialogue between the player and Shiro about how they encountered each other.

Using the skill when near any objects that you cannot pass through (Ex: doors, walls, large objects randomly askew on the ground) prevents the shadowstep effect from happening and causes the skill to go on full cooldown, has anyone else experienced this?

More chili pepper nodes AND sources of poultry. Make the pocket raptors drop tons of poultry!

Mai Trinn without the crazy time gated cannon segments would be a better fight. I can’t stand encounters that are time gated.

Anet could also allow us to combine 5 exotic luck into 2 legendary luck… I’m just saying it would be a nice option to have as legendary luck is currently the only essence we cannot craft.

As for more uses for luck, I’d like to have consumables crafted from luck that can increase the chances of salvaging components such as inscriptions and insignia from armor and weapons.

fluidmonolith.3584:

If I recall, the Rev in GW2 had pips going from +5 energy/sec to -5 energy/sec. This means that the default energy regen rate maxes out the generation pips in the user interface while upkeep skills with -10/sec (like Impossible Odds) max out the degeneration pips. This, to me, implies that ANet probably doesn’t plan on allowing energy regen at more than +5 or degeneration at more than -5. Which is unfortunate, it would be cool to see ideas like these ones you’ve presented.

While I do believe that Anet doesn’t want to go above the +/- 5 energy per second, I don’t think there is anything that prevents the design of skills, particularly temporary buffs, that could possibly reduce the upkeep costs of skills by say, 1 or 2. Just a thought.

Sadly, you can’t really change ascended backpiece stats—perhaps yet. I would say that a legendary backpiece sounds intriguing, but I imagine getting one for nine characters (my main and eight alts) would be a nightmare.

Well, I suspect that the bright green floating objects are more easily identifiable from a distance than the floating swords seen in the concept art. Could it have been jade swords instead daggers? I believe so and I think it’s still early enough that if people band together, we could probably get the skill renamed to “Enchanted Swords.”

Wondrouswall.7169:

I can already see it…

Actually, mecha devourer would imply that it was built. It would make more sense to call it a prototype mecha devourer and have the rangers bring in parts to an NPC that will build or alter the devourer in some way.

Who knows, it may become a precedent where rangers will get pets with customizable stats and/or pet skills. Example: bring in a bunch of targeting crystals to improve precision or armored crystals to improve toughness or even replace the mortar tail which causes a ground targeted AoE attack with a flamethrower tail that with a 600 range 120 degree cone of burning.

Dinos are coming back for HoT so I’d love some pet dinos such as a pet pocket raptor, or maybe a ceratodon. I’d even take a pet obsidian drake that has a point-blank aoe skill instead of the terrible breath skills that current drake pets have.

Off the top of my head:

1. Fear
2. Taunt
3. Aegis
4. Quickness
5. Poison
6. Confusion
7. Lifestealing/siphon
8. Stealth

The mystical dragon mini pet is now available via enabling (or re-enabling) 2 factor authentication on your account. Here’s a quick screenshot of it.

Lightning flash used to always be on my skillbar in all situations (modes), but now, it’s gone. I miss that stunbreak so much.

I would assume Rebound! would apply the bonus to weapon and healing skills. Therefore, there would be a total of five revenant skills at any moment that would benefit from the cooldown bonus: weapon skills two through five, and the healing skill.

A thought occurred to me: are there any really good reasons to not take the invocation traitline? Just looking at the traits, invocation grants a stunbreak on weapon swap, bonuses on/to fury, stance switching, etc. It almost seems like the “correct” way to effectively play the revenant would be to take two legend trait lines and invocation.

All the other trait lines seem to favor one particular stance and weapon set, so wouldn’t having a third trait line that isn’t invocation render it underutilized?

Lauren Kamieniecki.6245:

Krypto.2069:

Lauren Kamieniecki.6245:

The Mad King pops in with this pun for the thread:

A Monumental announcement is approaching “soon”

Lauren, when you do finally reopen HoM, I feel that it would go a LONG WAY in the eyes of your more than patient GW1 and GW2 patrons to receive an In-game Email of Apology and Announcement that the HoM is once again open for business. Not everybody comes to these forums daily to check on this (or any other) outstanding issues.

Side thought: You might do well to just send such an email to every player period upon login. It may give us renewed faith in your commitment to communicate with the community on important issues, and perhaps people will reconsider buying GW1 and grinding some monument points (not to mention reconsider buying HoT ).

GL!

I don’t decide these kinds of things, but there is an ingame mail associated with the fix! It’s a great email too… I think all of the people with legitimate HOM achievements will really like it.

As a side note, I am sorry you guys had to wait so long. This isn’t a fix where you can bring someone in from outside of the company to fix or put multiple people on it to get it done faster.

You had my curiosity, now you have my attention.

I recently (finally) reached scale 40 and I figured I start running scale 50. However, having reached scale 40 with pugs have left a bad taste in my mouth as there’s too much room for intolerance and relies too much on randomness. Are there any fractal running guilds out there that are:

1. Not 100% rep based
2. Open to players with builds that are within 5-10% of full meta (between 1-3 different armor/trinket pieces from a full zerker/strength rune build) or just open to damage oriented builds in general
3. Holds daily runs with multiple teams

As for me, I can provide a staff ele at 75 AR. I can do some item crafting to get ascended s/f/d/d for team compositions if needed but I have other maxed 80s that are waiting in line for weapons too.

Well, OP did resurrect his own thread, so that’s fitting. Personally, I think OP’s initial ideas about weapon switching during an overcharge and the like just won’t fit the ele since sitting on one single attunement with two weapons just doesn’t sound like something Anet would do to an established profession.

As for the idea of single attunements, currently, cooldowns are balanced on switching so it’ll be interesting to see how Anet deals with that (or not deal with it) in Friday’s preview.

All hail Mordre… Mom?? Mordremom!

Welp, it looks like I’ll start HoT on my human, than go straight to my sylvari.

Personally, I prefer soul reaping solely for foot in the grave and that one trait that reduces shroud cooldown down by 30%. That means I get a 7 second cooldown stunbreak with 1 stack of 3 second stability. That also means I technically won’t have to pack any other stunbreak skills. I’m certain other necros will disagree with me but I like my fast stunbreaks that have stability with it.

If there were such a prized ticket, the item skin would have to be account bound on acquire so I doubt that would happen.

Considering the birthday blaster was entirely unexpected (at least for me), I would think we’ll be getting something completely different than the straightforward gift of crafting mats, or weapons/armor, or even BLTC items. Chances are, Anet made unique items specifically for the birthdays.

Zalladi.4652:

It would be nice if there were a vendor from which we can exchange items like these into the required time we prefer. Whenever I use a 24-hour booster, I feel too obligated to play a specific game type whilst that buff is active (so a WvW marathon etc) for that character, effectively making that character feel locked from any other game type until the buff ends and I have gotten the most out of it.

With the 1-hour boosters, as they are fairly easily attainable, I feel less obligated and can freely play what I want without the feeling of wasting the buff.

Then again, that is just me and my quirky sense of waste.

That is my exact viewpoint on using birthday boosters which is why I included the ability to separate a birthday booster into 24 celebration boosters in my suggestion.

I figured that some players would want birthday boosters for the convenience of not needing to open their inventory from time to time (and filling up a stack of birthday boosters takes way more time than filling up a stack of celebration boosters) hence the first item on the list. The second item on the list is more aimed to players with mindsets that you and I have: less time wasted on a buff.

From what I understand, anything that can’t be bought with gold exclusively or isn’t time gated to some extent such as dungeon gear (limited tokens per day with heavy DR) cannot be salvaged.

Rauderi.8706:

DanteZero.9736:

This has been posted before and I think it’s a great idea. However, I do wonder about the logic that, if all commoner town clothes were made into an outfit, why not make all the former town clothes (now tonics) be made into outfits? Basically, where exactly does it stop and end?

That’s what we’ve been asking.
I have more than just the Town Clothes tonic. I and several others got leather hoodies and khaki shorts way back around Southsun’s introduction, and those are tonics now. They used to have dye channels and such, but now they come out very bland, and you can’t do anything in them because of the transformation.

I think you misinterpreted my post. I’m questioning the logic behind the suggestion. If the common clothes tonic were made into an outfit, then you could arguably say that other town clothes tonics could be made into tonics, however, there’s a ton of problems that would arise from that conversion because they can be bought and sold without gems. What is the line where you say “ok, no more converting these tonics into outfits?”

If these tonics were converted to outfits, there’d be a buying frenzy and releasing the converted outfits on the gemstore would be unfair due to the gold to gems conversion price discrepancy—unless the prices in gems reflected the approximate value of the outfit’s gold cost in the BLTC but I assume it’s changing fast in such a situation.

Even so, converting existing non-common clothes tonics to outfits would require tons of work if only because of the possible backlash because existing tonics can be bought and sold for gold.

Well, The GW2 elementalist makes a whole lot more sense than the GW1 version. The GW1 elementalist sounded very versatile on paper, but in practice, it was very limited. Back then, you would specialize in one, maybe two elements or focus on one element entirely.

Because of the limit of eight skills, you basically had to bring some form of energy management in the form of enchantments (auras), or glyphs. That would leave room for around five to six skills which made things really tough when you wanted to use more than one element.

With GW2, you can switch between four elements which each have their own set of skills ready to use. That alone is 20 skills at five skills per element compared to GW1’s possible two skills per element due to the eight skill limit.

You also need to keep in mind that two skills per element would be incredibly ineffective since you would have no energy management and attributes would basically be spread out. Spell effectiveness was governed by attribute level and spreading out points in four attributes was just really bad build planning. The only way to get more than 12 levels in four attributes without losing too much health from major/superior runes would have been master of magic but that was an enchant and took up a skill slot.

Therefore, the elementalist transferred very well into GW2 and (arguably) benefited the most with the new combat system and the attunement switching mechanic.

This has been posted before and I think it’s a great idea. However, I do wonder about the logic that, if all commoner town clothes were made into an outfit, why not make all the former town clothes (now tonics) be made into outfits? Basically, where exactly does it stop and end?

1. We should be able to merge 24 celebration boosters into 1 birthday booster.
2. The option of splitting a birthday booster into 24 celebration boosters should be present as well if players want a greater degree of control of when they want to use the boosts.

Welp, time to wait for Friday’s specialization preview!

Abnaxis.4593:

I don’t think you understand my issue.

Ever single minor trait—every single one—in Devastaion triggers off of vulnerability. Sword is the only weapon set that procs vulnerability. Therefore, you have to wield swords if you want any benefit from minor traits in devastation.

Sword is the only weapon that can proc vulnerability by default. Sigils, runes, and other players exist and can apply vulnerability as well.

Furthermore, sword gives very little benefit to the other legends. It doesn’t have any damaging conditions to synergize with Mallyx. It doesn’t have any outgoing healing to synergize with Ventari. The Dismantle Fortifications and one skill that procs weakness could help Jalis, but that’s the extent of cross-legend synergy for the sword.

Some builds that don’t have access to confusion became insanely good when the perplexity rune set was released. The point is, you’re looking at the problem purely with the skills without considering other sources that can cause conditions or make up for shortcomings.

In other words, if you are in Devastation, you are obliged to use swords have have either Shiro or Jalis as one of your legends. Weapons, traits, and legends are too tightly coupled to one another.

The traits seem pretty generic to me. They do have some traits that benefit specific legends or weapons, but for the most part, they grant wide access benefits and that seems perfectly fine.

While the skill doesn’t sound exciting compared to unrelenting assault (sword 3), I think we should wait until another beta to test it out before casting judgement. We haven’t played it in various conditions and have only seen it in action in a controlled environment so it’s too early for conclusions.

Rite takes too long to cast for an elite. It’s not like Signet of Courage where it fully heals everyone, I think it should be instant cast or at least 1 second cast time.

I know one thing about this skill: retaliation is going to hurt really bad when using this skill.

GoldenTruth.2853:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

It actually will have a 1/2s cast time in the iteration you all get to play, the video didn’t have the latest version. You have to hit so there is play to it, but the reward is high as it’s good added spike as well as healing.

You sure it isn’t going to end up being the same as guardian’s <Litany as Wrath> because it seems almost the exact same and no one uses that heal skill in any playtype.

Litany of Wrath heals based on damage done, lasts a short time, and therefore can’t be controlled that well since you only have 6 seconds to attack and heal yourself. Based on the preview, I would assume that enchanted daggers has a much longer duration in addition to a set amount of healing that’s based on per attack. With a much longer duration, there’s a greater amount of control for when to attack.

Ursanway, now there’s a build name I haven’t heard of in a long time. It only took Anet a long time to fix. Sheesh.

Also, I would love to see an accurate replica of Shiro’s blades on the gemstore. Not the replica from GW: Factions, I mean from the cinematic. The hilt on those blades looked so much better than the in-game model’s hilt.

I’m almost certain that many GW1 veterans would have loved to have a skill named Impossible Odds. So many memories both good and bad are conjured up by those two words linked together. Seriously, Anet only listed three of Shiro’s stance skills, I’m hoping that at least one of the two unmentioned skills will be Impossible Odds.

Shiro’s elite will be the Jade Wind. It’s too iconic to the character (narrative wise) for Anet to ignore and the revenant is basically a big bag of nostalgia based on all the names and mechanics included into the profession so far.

Rym.1469:

We don’t need another critical chance increase.

Instead, rework it to increase attack speed, similar to Risen Abomination’s Frenzy, stacking whenever you gain a condition/going up with stacks the more conditions you have on yourself.

That sounds more in line with what the Mallyx/Corruption line than many other posts here: growing more powerful based on more conditions.

MiniEquine.6014:

TheBlackLeech.9360:

nooooooooooooo…… being able to craft legendary luck essences would totally undermine my beautiful collection.

Unless you are capped on Magic Find, you are doing a disservice to yourself by not consuming those EoLs. Consuming luck as you receive it increases your odds of finding rare items linearly, but holding on to luck for a long time does not provide any benefit as the potential to find rare items is being wasted.

Not to mention the huge amount of boosters taking up all those bank slots could be reduced to two, maybe three bank slots if boost enchantment powder were used.