Guild Wars 2

There has been a lot of talk about how expensive some Revenant skills are, especially on Renegade. I don’t think expensive skills are the problem, I think they just highlight the real problem, no energy management.

All the other professions (War, Necro, Thief) with resource pools have management skills and traits but none of the others have to use this pool for every skill. Not giving energy management to Revenant was a mistake.

Currently you have to switch legend on cool down, not because it’s beneficial to be in that legend over the other for the situation, this makes energy seem like a last minute addition to revenant that wasn’t properly thought through and makes legends more of an annoyance than a tactical choice, as you can lose skills you need for a while.

So my solution? Energy management! I’m not going to give specific numbers as that comes down to balance, just the concept.

1. Energy on hit:

Have auto attacks generate energy, Revenant all too often is stuck AAing for a while as it is, make it more useful. This has been suggested a lot but I think it would help, also as a Derv main in gw1 I always loved zealous weapons.

2. Energy Skills: There is a weird idea floating around that because Rev has two sets of utilities, the lack of swappable utilities to tweak builds is okay. It’s really limiting and when you look at Ele (attunements and conjures), Engi (F Skills & Kits) and even War (Banners) who can bring far more skills with more choice, also all other skill types, for example stances on war, have four 7-9 skills, Rev only has 3 per type/legend.

My suggestion, a second set of skills (1 heal, 3 utilities, 1 elite) for the invocation trait line that can be slotted into any legend, if already slotted, slotting into the second legend should remove from the first, so can only have once. I had a look at the other resource building skills and here are my suggestions (only suggestions, feel free to improve)

Heal: Heal and energy base on current level (War: old healing surge). This could work either based on current energy level or current health level i.e. if at high health gain less healing and more energy, if at low health gain more healing and less energy. Giving the skill a double functionality.

Utility 1: Stun break, on a successful stun break gain energy for each enemy near you (See warrior’s outrage)

Utility 2: Remove x amount of conditions, gain energy per condition removed (Necro: feast of corruption).

In the current meta, every professions needs the option to slot a stun break and condi cleanse, CC’s and Conditions are handed out like Sweets these days.

Utility 3: Not too sure of the third, but two possible ideas;

1. Dodge and gain energy (Thief: Roll for Initiative)
2. Dmg and/or condition dmg reduction + gain energy on being hit. (Necro: Spectral Armor)

Elite: Don’t really have an idea for elite, perhaps a passive energy gain with an activated buff like Signet of rage.

So what would this do?

- Help reduce the impact of high energy skills, allowing them to stay impactful and so expensive.
- Give Revenants more choice and diversity, which as a Rev main I can say is sorely needed to keep the class viable and fun long term.
- One step closer to moving away from the feeling of beta.

There is also the discussion of energy traits giving perks such as reducing costs, gaining on circumstance. And speaking of beta, an extra core weapon, maybe energy based focus? … And of course under water skills!

Thoughts?

With both energy and cool down requirements skills can be more powerful as they require bigger investments to use. Problem is a lot of the skills are far too expensive for what they actually do, to the point that you use one or two skills and then have to legend swap.

For me the problem is not they have energy and cooldown costs it’s that there’s no energy management outside of legend swap, which forces you to change legend after a couple of utilities to be able to use your weapon skills, not because that legend is useful in the current situation.

A simple fix would be to add energy gain on AA, say 5-10% per attack, or whatever numbers work.

Schnas.5416:

5 – At first glance a good skill for WvW but you have to aim
it through character facing when not targeting an enemy right in front of you – Solution Make it aim like Dragon Hunters Longbow 3 ,also could buff the damage a bit too for the 20 energy it

SB 5 does target the enemy, but only in a small cone. Testing just now if you stand with your back to the foe you get a “no line of sight” message. But if you stand with your side or front to the foe it’ll shoot straight at them. Where as a normal attack will turn you to the enemy no matter what direction you’re facing, would be nice if did that.

What would like?
- New core legend for invocation
- Extra skill per legend to bring in line with other professions utility numbers
- Less high cost skills with high cool downs as well, should be one or the other
- less or no energy usage on weapon skills
- Extra base weapon
- Less emphasis on swapping legend on cool down, should be changing tool set to meet the situation not fill a bar
- Finish underwater rev, enabling all legends

I’ve never understood the one weapon desire on Rev. It was not good with one weapon, rev has the least build choice of any profession as it is, weapon swap was required to provide versatility.

No weapon swap? Can’t switch between ranged and melee, can’t swap from dps to use a defensive skill, it’s just so limiting. Granted weapon swap was the easy fix, they could’ve done something new like have the legends change weapon skills.

One weapon works on ele and engi as they have access to alot more skills through kits, attunments/conjures

As for avoiding nerfs, I really doubt it. Everyone would’ve gone sword Shiro still and the same nerfs would’ve applied.

I’m actually quite enjoying renegade, though the utilities feel more gear towards a melee weapon not a SB, I think with some balance (lower energy costs) and a few tweaks/bug fixes it’s gonna be good.

Rev has had a lot of nerfs, as has every class in the game, but it’s still perfect viable in all game modes, it doesn’t help that most of the updates ignored clearly broken or unfinished aspects of rev while including nerfs. Anet should, in general, adopt a take something away give something new approach to balance. Even minor buffs along with a nerf are better for moral than just nerfs alone.

We’ve been asking for this since the HoT betas so I wouldn’t hold your breath. I think the best approach would be a combination of the two. A set of core skills tied to invocation that can slot into any legend. Fill the weak spots with a stun break/condi clear or something of that sort. But like I said I wouldn’t hold your breath. They’ve not even finished underwater Rev yet.

Ranger’s AA damage is weapon AA + Pet AA so.. makes sense.

My experience so far has been fairly positive.

SB is pretty solid, range lacking but otherwise nice condi dmg and utility. What’s weird is the summons seem more geared around staying in place, at least on a point. Would better suit a melee weapon I think

Heal feels really weak and shouldn’t be the only stun break.

Razorclaw’s rage is fine, nice to drop on a friendly zerg.

Not really used Icerazor’s much as don’t have alot of spare energy. Problem for the legend in general is high energy costs.

Darkrazor’s daring is very nice, great to drop on a downed ally to prevent stomps.

Soulcleave’s summit again not problems.

There is an issue with the summons not working in knee high water, as I posted in another thread, hopefully this is just a bug.

F skills are a little underwelming. Not really used F2 much, F3 probably the best but way too expensive. kittenain way too expensive for what it does, why half kitten d alcarity again? Would suggest putting a stun break on that or swiftness. Legendary has no mobility.

Underwater ignored again…

Will look into traits more.

Cannot summon any of the spirits in knee high water. See attached.

Yas, also let us move while using shield 5! It was said a long time ago that to allow this they’d have to drop the healing alot, they did that a few patches back but it still roots!

The healing is okay, but requires too much investment and loss of dps to compete with druids really. Fun to backline in WvW with though.

I’ve always used sword 3 defensively, it’s a nice evade and it builds might ready for a spite with sword 2. Sword 2 could do with a change, I’d like them to make it 1 hit per target but up to three so the dmg is always the same.

Been mainly Rev since HoT came out, played warrior/guardian and ele before but can’t go back to them for long. I don’t pvp so idk how it is there but rev is fine everywhere else. There’s a lot of room for improvement but all this drama recently like the “deleted rev today” thread all seems blown well out of proportion.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Lightsbane.9012:

core revenant needs two things at the very least:
1.) access to a condition based weapon with range
2.) condition cleansing spread out among the legends instead of entirely in mallyx.

+/-
3.) stop tying weapons to legends. you restrict their use.

Mallyx doesn’t have any Condi cleanse besides the one transfer from Pain Transference….
jalis has all the cleanses

And ventari, the only rev build without decent conditions cleanse/management is shiro/glint even that gets one on legend swap with traits.

Aeolus.3615:

Guard/DH is forced to play medi trapper, so that means players have more useless skills than rev..

I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here tbh, i’m not overly familiar with the state of guard atm having only played Rev since HoT launched. But even if they only have one viable build, which i highly doubt, that is a temporary balance issue. Balance changes over time but core rev is still going to have a small skill pool with only two choices when it comes to your utilities.

Even once there are more legends, if those legends are also completely fixed rev will remain the least customizable profession when it comes to utility skills. Now that can work, assuming the skills that are there cover everything rev needs but the fact that you are pointing out that other professions have useless skills makes me want more options even more so if a legend’s skill gets nerfed to near useless we could swap it out.

gannondorf.7628:

You need to understand that revenant is NOT ritualist. In fact he is, mechanicly, more suited with the Dervish playstyle.

DERVISH HYPE! …sorry but seriously gimmie a Derv legend Anet! Scythe and enchantments or PBAoE skills!

What Rev needs, in my opinion, as I’ve been saying since beta is more skills. Legends are too fixed, each should have 4 or 5 utility skills that match that legends theme to allow you to adapt legends to more situations, this would allow core rev to be more versatile without just overpowering existing skills to do everything.

Often the response to this has been “you can switch legends for more skills you don’t need more choice”, but in practice legend swapping is extremely limited often leading to having skills you don’t need in that situation. It’s not even a valid point when ele and engi can switch their weapon skills with far more diversity and choice than rev skill switching anyway. Even warrior with banner can to some degree.

Speaking of warrior, or any other professions 7,8 and 9 skills;
4 banners
4 physical
4 shouts
4 signets
4 stances
cultural skills

That’s 20+ skills of which you can take any combination. Meanwhile core rev have 12 skills of which you have only 2 choices. This to me is the main problem with rev, add the missing 8 skills spread across the core legends and you add more build diversity and can use those skills to fix the areas that core Rev is lacking in.

Also give us our kitten cultural skills even if just add with cooldowns only!

Why do Revs have energy and cooldown costs? I’ve answered this a few times, the short answer is balance. The skills should be balanced at a cost that lets you use a reasonable amount of different skills for your rotations while not being too spammable for what they do.

With just energy, the more powerful a skill the higher the cost. If you had a powerful skill with no cool down it would be used consecutively until your energy runs out leading to auto attack spam after that.

With just cooldown, the more powerful a skill the higher the cooldown, as it is with most other professions, not counting thief weapon skills.

With both, a skill can be powerful without a massive energy cost as it also has a cooldown. Thus you can use it in your rotation without tanking your energy.

So basically that’s the idea, to allow Arena net to balance skills to be useful but not overly costly or spammable. The balance is far from perfect though, the biggest two issues i hear about being CoR being too cheap/spammable and PT costing an excessive amount of energy.

Speak for yourself, I for one want more mini games, the more repeatable content there is in the game the better. Not everything has to be about combat.

On the topic of the thread, Rev skills should have both cool down and energy, this is to allow skills to be more powerful but not too spam-able.

As long as it’s balanced correctly there shouldn’t be a problem, there are some issues such as phase traversal which has a far too high energy cost but still a relatively low cool down.

The energy cost makes it very difficult to use this is a fight as it leaves you with very little energy. That said the unblock-able buff it provides requires a high cost, in this case it would be better to raise the cost in terms of cool down and reduce the energy required so you can use it when you need it but not spam unblockable.

The Game Slayer.7632:

Sounds like a personal problem, buddy. Stop complaining. You get double the amount of utility skills than other professions. If you don’t like Rev, don’t play it. Otherwise, it doesn’t need any major overhauls. The majority of people love Rev, and it sits in the meta for all game modes at the moment. /thread

While it’s not a problem per say, it does seem like poor design. Guild wars 2 was sold on play how you want, while you can argue on how true that was, much of that freedom came from being able to pick different skills to tweak your build to your play style. Rev is a great class but it’s fixed utilities have always seemed lacking to a lot of people.

Two sets of utilities may sound good on paper but it really limits rev, an idea that has been thrown around a lot since rev was in beta was to give each legend around 4-5 utilities to allow you to tweak your builds. All 5 utilities would be themed around the legend but provide different functionality within the scope of that legend. Other core professions have 5 sets of 4 skills for their utilities so rev’s 4 core legends having 5 skills would match the 20 utilities available to other prof, ignoring racial skills which should have been added to rev with just cool downs.

As it is at the moment some rev skills are useless in many situations and your inability to change them for something more useful basically means you have a dead skill slot. For example Inspiring Reinforcement in a ranged fight that needs no stability is pretty much a wasted slot.

It’s not complaining to give feedback on issues players are having with rev, the devs actively encourage players to speak out about what works and what doesn’t and the whole “you have two utility bars” isn’t the answer to any issues. Utilities are just skills, Eles and engineers can use far more skills in one build than a rev can and they have a choice over every single one. While the current rev system works the lack of tweak-ability is very limiting and will get old much faster than other professions that can switch individual skills at will.

Increasing the cool down of a skill reduces the amount you can use that skill without reducing the amount you can use other skills. There are already a high number of skills that totally tank your energy, if Anet start increasing the cost of other skills we’re going to end up doing nothing but popping one skill then auto attacking until legend swap.

I would prefer a purely energy based system but one with energy gains and losses, say certain combinations of skills giving you a burst of energy or a zealous upgrade! I miss my zealous scythe of enchanting… Revs energy system is a little too simplistic, as it is the energy system is basically just a global cool down.

What!? Why? You people make me sad… i will continue to warble my warbler till i can warble no more!

There’s a lot of comments here along the lines of “You chose to get max you deserve nothing”. I don’t get the negativity towards people who are just playing the game. Regardless of how quickly they got to 300% they did so playing the game and they are getting more luck items now because they are still playing the game.

This is the same situation that T7 materials were in, players who played a lot had an excess that was mostly useless to them. Anet added sinks, which I and players I know were very thankful for, so why is the same solution to basically the same problem for luck a bad thing?

Let’s not forget that eventually people who didn’t rush will also hit the 300% cap and will then also be getting pointless items that just build up. It makes sense to either add a use for these items after 300 or to stop them dropping once the cap is reached, which isn’t really possible while some recipes require them.

Personally I’m only at 202% so it’ll be a while before I’m in the same boat but I’d like to see, as mentioned above, an item like the T7 consumers that eats luck and spits out random junk, possibly rewarded once you hit 300%. There’s nothing wrong with people getting more because they put more time or effort in.

There’s two reasons that i’ve come across for wanting to undercut by more than one copper.

1. To ensure a quick sale, if you undercut a lot you are less likely to be undercut by others for 1c as they stand to loose more on the sale. Better to undercut the price above you by 1c and wait for your listing to sell.

2. TP flippers, this one is a bit shady as far as I’m concerned but as it only works based on player laziness i guess it’s okay. Basically you take an item that players are going to buy in bulk, list the bulk of them at a fairly high price, then you list one or two at a lower price. Players who don’t bother to check later prices will buy a bunch not realising that they are paying more per item than was first listed.

In your case i think it’s more likely number 1, people just want to be sure their items sell without having to deal with being undercut.

Customisable utilities.

A similar mechanic exists on the warrior, you’re adrenaline drops at an excessive rate when you leave combat. The idea behind which is to prevent you jumping from fight to fight with your profession resource full, but it’s too punishing on both allowing for classes that can easily break out of combat with stealth to reset your resource then re-engage even before you’re health can fully recover.

I would like to see a brief delay of 5-10 seconds before the energy/adrenaline dropped especially in the case of the rev where the drop is instant. 5-10 seconds wouldn’t be enough to carry your energy to another fight but it would allow you to turn and start attacking the enemy that’s currently wailing on a party member a few feet away.

The changes listed on the stream were a preview not a complete list so may still be some banner changes in the patch.

Inexor.7804:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Energy

According to this the Revenant has +5 Enegry regeneration baseline.
Does this also work ooc while using an upkeep skill like these Facets?

IIRC ooc you had +5 energy regen up to 50% energy so should be able to keep them up @50% energy

NeroBoron.7285:

I doubt it, too. But else it wouldn’t be a “OH SHlT” Button as already stated in the other thread
(https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/revenant/Crystal-Hibernation-1/first#post5383210)

The “OH kitten ” factor is exactly why i want to know how much cc it takes to break as well as specifics of the trait version. As it stands it sounds like its only going to be useful in 1v1s against builds with limited access to cc. As was said in that thread one mesmer could break the ele bar.

I doubt it would scale with the number of opponents. Would be nice to scale though 1 vs zerg.

Yeah the main different for this skill from shield stance, the warrior shield 5 skill, is you get a heal. It’s the same cool down without an option to trait for a lower cool down and it costs energy on top of that but to compensate for the heal you get rooted and can be broken for a massive debuff where as the warrior one cannot but broken by direct cc.

Unless the heal scales really well it seems to just be a weaker or at least far riskier version of warrior shield 5.

Roy replied in another thread

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Facets deactivate by running out of energy, using the active skill or invoking a new legend. Switching legends does not cancel facet of nature though, since it is not tied to legendary dragon stance.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Facets deactivate by running out of energy, using the active skill or invoking a new legend. Switching legends does not cancel facet of nature though, since it is not tied to legendary dragon stance.

Do facets & other up keeps end when you reach 0 energy or when you go below it? IE if you used a skill that used exactly how much energy you had left but you still had positive gain would it cancel them?

Would make a different when you have low energy gain, if they end on 0 you’d have to wait a bit longer till you had more than you needed to use the skill in question.

Bumping so Roy sees

Could add the ability to double click the little icon that appears just above your skill bar to remove, that way could pick which get deactivated instead of all or nothing.

I would imagine changing legend also cancels them.

Reducing energy costs may alleviate some issues with energy on rev but actual energy managed skills and traits would add a lot more fun and complexity to rev. It seems almost crazy to put out an energy based profession that doesn’t have a means to manage it’s energy, well other than legend swap.

Energy management would fit nicely as the extra 1-2 utilities people want to be able to tweak their legends. “Gain energy on hit for next x hits” for shiro, “gain energy for each condition on your foes for mallyx” and so on.

I’m okay with both energy and cool downs it allows for powerful skills to not destroy your energy when you use them but at the same time not be too spam able.

What i would like to see is some energy restoration on auto attacks, skills or from traits, as it is now we only have ways to loose energy.

Maybe, problem with that would be the agony stopping the revival, best to wait till the cannon phase is over to revive normally.

quaniesan.8497:

The description said stunt protection is 4 second. So if say a mesmer put one CC on you that lasts 2 second, you will still be ok.

Hmm, yeah i read that but iirc that’s now how other break bars work they have a set value and different cc take a different amount from that total before breaking.

There is no shield cool down trait either, would be nice to have a separate trait that reduces the cool down on shield skills and provides the boon increase on skill use. Not sure where it’d fit in though.

How much cc is required to break the bar Roy?

Also does Soothing Bastion activate CH exactly as on shield 5 with rooting, break bar and vuln/daze or is it just the invuln and heals?

Rich Fuel.7253:

then it will be the same as guardian’s elite, infact the elite is 3 sec our shield skill is 4 sec

Except the break bar effect is basically insta-death against group with enough cc to break it.

Kidel.2057:

the whole point of the revenant is that you don’t choose utility skills but you choose the legend set

Yeah the point is you choose the legend and each legend has themed utilities. Adding 1 or 2 skills per legend would not take away from that the core idea of two theme bars based on your legend choices but it would allow for builds to be tweaked to meet certain situations, dropping skills for more useful ones as and when needed.

There was some data mined stuff that suggested the elite spec legend is going to be glint and the weapon shield, not confirmed so maybe not but possible.

Sylent.3165:

I really don’t understand those who don’t like it. Just don’t use it if you don’t like it

From what I’ve read people where unhappy with the limitations on rev such as fixed utilities per legend, weapons tied (loosely) to legends and wanted more variety/customization. With the addition of weapon swap it seems the fixed builds issue isn’t going to go away.

Which is understandable I’m still not 100% on the fixed utilities I’d prefer more options but weapon swap has been nothing but a boon to rev in my opinion.

Enrif.7359:

-snip-

Some nice ideas, signets would fit perfectly like gw1 signets that had no energy cost. In particular i like your “Signet of Energy” the passive fixes the boring-ness of my suggestion for a just grant X energy skill.

Agreed each legend should have 4 utilities to choose from, like other skill types on other professions, to allow a bit more flexibility. Also a full set (heal, 4 utilities, elite) of non legend aligned skills, possibly linked to energy management, that could be slotted into either equipped legend bar would be nice.

The balance would be maintained via the energy cost and the fact that you’d still be limited to the two pools of skills, 3 if with the non-aligned set.

Edit Had a quick brain storm of possible ideas for unaligned skills, i don’t expect anything like this to happen but fun to theory craft.

Heal: *
1. Heal based on remaining energy. restore energy on heal.
The lower the energy the higher the heal, or vice versa. Similar to “To the limit!” for warrior.

Utilies:
1. Restore X energy.
Boring but useful, could be spiced up with a stun break, maybe condi cleanse etc.
2. The next X skills don’t cost energy or have a reduced energy cost.
3. Energy bubble that knocks back foes.
Similar to engineer bubble but with a stronger knock back when energy is low or high, low would be better as a last stand option.

Elite
4. Maintained skill; successfully hitting an enemy grants energy.
The numbers would make this “elite”.