Guild Wars 2

blind was underpowered back then so they buffed it. in gw1 you had 90% chance of missing for the while blind duration, be happy that we have what we have.

no but weaponswap = more skills = more potential energy cost because you can pick from a bigger pool. so if before (as an example) there were 2 useful skills for yourplaystyle and now with weaponswap you have 4-5 you’re going to use more energy.

something that could be interesting though is if you got 50% energy for legend swap and another 50% for weaponswap. but all this stuff makes it overcomplicated…

yeah because you can spam weaponskills that have cooldowns… or utilities that cost 35-50 energy.

or just remove energy as a whole because it makes the whole thing hard to balance and clunky to use. i think the problem with energy is that 8/9 classes don’t have to care about it while one has to, and it’s not benefitting from it.

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.

“summon enchanted daggers which will attack as you attack, siphoning life from targets hit”

the problem with this is: when you’re low you don’t want to attack but you want to kite so this heal is completely useless in such a situation because when you kite you don’t attack and you will not benefit from the jade daggers and you will only heal for 1600. also shiro is supposed to be the dps legend, afaik it was played with a marauder amulet on the stream.

healing over time might go well with bruisers but not with something as squishy as revenant.

traits:

minors are fine imo, good synergy damage increase is always nice and siphon helps too

adept:

- 150 ferocity for allies. good for pve i guess. if it will be used in pvp depends on how good the other adepts compre to it.

- 2% attack speed per hit for 5s, max 10%. why not change this to +5% per sword worn?

- when blocked 2 next attacks will be unblockable. the problem with this is that revenant doesn’t have a hard hitting single skill but multiple smaller ones. this goes well with warrior stuff like evis or killshot but for revenant idk…

master:

- jade winds when downed. good when people try to res you.

- might for assassin skills. might stacking, why not. remove energy cost from weapons

- ferocity for 2x sword, would go well with my suggestion for the attack speed per sword worn.

grand master:

- 20% more damage below 50% enemy health. okay, similar to executioner bolt to the heart and close to death.

- cc removes 2 stacks instead of 1 stack of stability. tbh i don’t think this one’s good. usually when somebody has 1 stack of stab it’s for a short duration (revenant dodge for example) so you will just wait those few seconds. right now this is not worth being a gm trait. make it like this: cc removes half of the stacks of stability, this will make it interesting but even then not a first pick because people don’t spam cc on stability to remove it.

- life leech when flanking, looks very interesting. depending on how squishy shiro will be my first pick.

still no vigour?

so first, thanks for weapon swap, this will make everything a bit better for now but things i’ve seen on today’s stream that still concern me are:

while sword/sword looks all flashy the highest damage number on it was around 1500 crit on marauder amulet. it’s fast and all but other’s classes attacks are not only fast but also hit hard (thief and necro daggers for example)

basically auto attack hits for around 1500 finishers
skill 2 for the same
skill 3 for around 7×700
skill 4 and 5 also for around 1000-1500
the utility skills for 1500-2000

- the auto attack looks good, especially with the minor traits and vuln

- skill 2 looks useful for chase, need to test it though

- not sure about skill 3… interesting when people try to focus you and you just swirl around them but i don’t see this skill fit taking down a target in a bigger fight

- blocks are always good, i wonder if this skill gets the toggle anyway like ranger gs4 block? would be very nice

- skill 5 has good potential for relays and peeling

now i don’t know if that’s gonna be enough but we’ll see in the next beta.

concerns about the heal: first, cooldown too long. 2nd as a berserk you don’t want a heal over time but a fast burst heal so please consider adding multiple heal skills for the different legends including 4 utilities instead of just 3 and a 2nd elite for all legends so that we can customize.

upkeep skills, as mentioned before, make them instacast with a 1s gcd to prevent insta flashing.

remove energy cost from weaponskills, especially now with weaponswap even if you have to increase cooldowns a bit or you will be sitting on auto attacks most of the time.

will go over traits as soon as i have the notes

the reason i didnt go for hydro on hammer was because somehow, maybe because of a bug, it didnt proc for me on skill+swap.

jade winds were datamined once as elite skill, a 600 range unblockable 2s aoe stun. if they haven’t changed anything this will still be the elite.

oh well^^ i think 0.5s won’t break it but if it’s necessary they can just put a 3s icd on it. the stun happens when you toggle the upkeep anyway so maybe it would still be ok with 0.5.

Jephiroth.3197:

Excellent writeup and overview. Keep this up top and visible. I’ve been playing your Marauder Staff Mallyx/Jalis build in WvW today and it does surprisingly well with some support around you. You aren’t incredibly “bursty”, but you can at least deal a little damage. I split the gear between Valkyrie and Assassin with Traveler runes. You still melt like butter on a tin roof, but at least you can do 6-8k damage before you go.

Hopefully the devs read some of this and take it to heart, a lot of these proposed changes would go a long way toward helping the Revenant class.

thanks for the flowers and i’m happy you enjoy my build^^

i really hope a dev will read my review and maybe find some of my suggestions useful :P

there was no stealth in gw1 and shiro was nothing like a thief

what they do in heroes of the storm when you play matches in the practice mode is, they show you a short video of the map and the objectives before the match starts. i really like the way they do it.

doesn’t affect elementalist attunements either.

Stinja.9612:

When i read the original description I always figured Rev was going to pull utility skills from various legends, maybe signature monster moves they had in gw1 ect.

Ideally the elite skill was going to be a Dervish Form-like move that lets you become the actual legend but work more like an engineer kits fused with gw1 enchantments.

What I feel we actually have is a thematic class that barely delivers on quite a few ends. I know its beta and not complete but for a marketing sake Rev should prolly have been OP vs UP when show casing it for sales purposes.

I also find it so very odd that each legend has “Skill Types” but the only trait-line that provides any bonus at all to actual legend skills is Corruption giving resistance on skill use.

All in all this class really gives off the impression it was built on the old trait system so heavily and it can no longer stand up to the new Specs core classes are rocking. (Lack of condi boon duration ect)

exactly, especially as a gw1 dervish main the revenant announcement was very exciting for me but the class turned out different than i expected.

problem with your suggestion is: spamable invul is not a problem, 50% energy is 2x with 100% or 3x if you wait a bit longer so as long as it prevents point capture it’s more or less okay. on the other hand nobody will try to break your bar for something like an aoe protection for 5s.

Highlie.7641:

for Pvp. What do you think of the Idea of Project Tranquility Radius increase from 340 radius to 10,000. Sort of like a long range healer, or a “back line bunker”. A Reverant sitting on home point would heal allies at mid (340 ever 3 seconds). This would force the enemy team to break mid and rush home if the lacked dps . It Might add another dynamic to pvp.

the rest of the radius on other ventari tablets would stay close range (340 radius)

(con) people hiding tablets in random locations, though the tether migrates this a little bit)

I would Also like to See a “Push” trait added to Ventaris will. with protactive solace active, so say every 10s while moving the tablet it will push enemys (cap control)

won’t work, how do you wanna manage a tablet 10000 units away from you lol. i’d say the max reasonable range is 2000, more than that and it will get close to impossible to move it around at such a range.

it’s not 50% of the class it’s actually 3/4. Shiro is the last legend of the base revenant, glinth will be the elite specialisation as it seems.

adding shiro and a sword won’t magically turn up the damage by 50% unless that’s what the first minor trait does.

other classes have multiple viable dps weapons and you can’t tell me that revenant only getting sword for dps makes sense.

the right way to design a new class is to make it strong and tone down, that’s usually a lot more easy than trying to buff a weak class. the issue here is not even numbers but the whole picture. while everything might be a nice idea and something new it didn’t turn out that great.

i was pretty hyped for the revenant when i read the blogs but after the verdant brink and especially now after the first beta test i am very disappointed with it and i just realized how far from completion this is.

i do really hope the devs take the necessary time to polish the revenant or even to overhaul the revenant if neccessary. i don’t mind if they release the expansion without the new class if it takes them longer, if only they make it strong enough and viable.

fluidmonolith.3584:

IMO, part of the problem with Rite of the Great Dwarf is not necessarily the casting time but the reward for using it. Damage reduction is fine, but especially in WvW / PvP, damage reduction alone is not enough to keep you alive. I think if the cast time is going to be long and the effect duration short (5 sec), it should really be rewarding – e.g. 50% damage reduction plus 50% reduced incoming condition duration and a few stacks of stability.

atm it’s just not an elite, it’s your.. way too pricey stunbreak generally invul skills are instacast but also have a cooldown.

one of the problems with this skill is that it’s aoe, not only for yourself. this results in a weaker effect for yourself because it needs to be balanced for more players than just you. lore wise it also makes sense, jalis turned all of the dwarfs into stone, not only himself.

the question is, what’s more important, lore or balance.

if this skill became an invul what needs to happen is:

instacast
cooldown
reduced energy cost
remove stunbreak and add it to a different skill (the stability one because it would make sense).

what needs to happen if it does not become an invul and stays the way it is:

first of all a better tooltip.. how much is the damage reduction?
shorter casting time or longer effect
reduced energy cost

this needs to stay on page 1. updated some stuff from playing a bit more today.

General Problems Brainstorm and what Revenant needs

the revenant is just way too squishy, especially for a heavy armor class.

the revenant needs more stunbreaks, more customisation with utility skills, there are skills that i don’t want but i’m still forced to take them, why?

more skills per legend, stop basing the legend’s theme around direct damage, condi or support but gameplay: 3/4 of the mallyx skills are useless for a berserk revenant but if you want unyielding anguish you still have to take all the skills that are not optimal for your wanted playstyle.

weaponswap, only 1 weaponset is way too limiting, especially as we are already limited to our utility skills, heals and elites.

legend swap should be instant all the time.

moblity – mobility is king in pvp

overall damage way too low compared to existing classes, be it condi or direct damage.

vigour on crit please

cooldown reduction on legend swap, from traits (15%?).

selfsustain

active defense, more blocks,more blinds, built in evades etc.

reserved for (maybe) trait reviews

reserved for (maybe) trait reviews

reserved for (maybe) trait reviews

now for the weapons

generally i would either remove all energy costs from weapons because i don’t like that you have to decide to either use a utility or a weapon skill because of energy management or leave the cost but remove the cooldown of the skills, having both energy cost and cooldown is unnecessary.

Staff

Auto Attack: i like the AA of staff a lot, great animation and visuals. the damage needs to be higher though, a lot.

#2: my least favourite skill on staff by far, i avoid using this as much as i can. low damage for the casting time, waste of energy, hard to use, 2nd skill another long casting time and only 3s weakness.
what i suggest: make this skill a 1x block (like ranger gs 4) and if you block an attack you smack the enemy to cause weakness.

#3: best revenant skill. cooldown reduction to 8s :P?

#4: needs to be castable while moving and with a lower casting time, 3/4s i’d say.

#5: good skill, can be hard to use sometimes. why not add some evade frames? would fit the mist animation.

Hammer

my least favourite weapon, too slow and too clunky, no kiting potential for a ranged weapon.

Auto: needs to have a 3/4s casting time. i know it’s a 100% finisher but still.

#2: needs increased damage. to add kiting potential: adds a pushback (not a knockback) the closer the enemy is to you so that it’s also worth using this skill at close range and to gain some space between them and you. pushback is not a cc but just a displacement, you push them away from you, the closer they are the more they get pushed back. i wonder if that’s possible with the current engine.

#3: i like this skill, could be a bit faster, 1s instead of 1.25 making it evade or invulnerable while using it would certainly help as you eat all the damage when you pass through stuff :/

#4: the skill is fine, as usual, to make the weapon not so clunky, casting time to 3/4

#5: casting time is way too long, you can just walk out of it, the animation is also big enough that a 1s or 1.25s casting are justified, i mean pin down on warrior is less visible and with 3/4s casting time and is 100% dodgeable. i understand that this is an aoe but 1.75s is way too long.

Mace

mace in general is fine but needs some tweaking and QoL improvements.

Auto: needs more direct damage, around 30% increase.

#2: this one is difficult.. either make it wider, it’s too narrow or increase the burning duration so that it’s actually punishing to stand in it. increase the burning to 5s instead of 2s. casting time 1.25s? this needs to be 0.5s and not 1.25s.

#3 very inconsistent skill. to hit a double blast it is required to turn up the camera, possible with all leaps, to shorten the leap but with this skill it happens way too often that the character just leaps in a random direction. also needs 30% damage increase.

Axe

the concept of the axe is very cool. imo this is a hybrid weapon, usable by both condition and dd but the damage numbers need tweaking and the axe is in need of QoL.

#4 idk if i’m doing something wrong but when i throw this skill at a target i never get the final damage hit but only the pass through damage. the pass through damage needs to be higher so that it’s actually worth throwing through as many enemies as possible. what also needs to happen is, make it a “noscope” skill. i wanna use this without having to click on a target, like so many other skills in the game
casting time from 0.5s to 0.25s

#5 nice skill and awesome animation, higher damage please i’d say around 50% more direct damage.

now that i covered all my builds i would like to go over the legends and the weaponskills

Jalis:

Soothing Stone (heal): generally this heal isn’t bad by design but it does not heal for enough, the cooldown is too long. for consistency: give this heal a flat 4 to 5 seconds of retal no matter how many conditions it removed. the healing needs to be increased to around 6.5k and the cooldown lowered to 20-25s.

Inspiring Reinforcement (stability): good for stomps and cc heavy fights at the cost of a limited area for you and the team. the problem with this skill: it takes like a second until it actually starts pulsing stability (after the animation ended). what i suggest is that stab starts pulsing after you casted it, not when the “road animation” ended.

Forced Engagement (taunt): by far my least favourite skill on jalis. it’s slow, clunky and costs way too much. what i suggest: energy cost down to 25-30, casting time to 1/2, speed of the chain needs to be increased, i mean come on, it’s a 1s cast and then after 1s the chain leashes out finally?

Vengeful Hammers (flying hammers): not a bad skill, it kind of “marks your presence” and is intimidating. the problem is the casting time. make it instant or 1/4s.

Rite of the Great Dwarf (elite): costs too much, too long of a casting time for only 5s. either you decrease the activation to 1.5s max, or increase the duration to 10s. energy cost from 50 to 35, revenant is in need of stunbreaks anyway.

Mallyx

the problem with mallyx is that it’s actually only strong if you face an opponent that applies many conditions. against everything else it’s mediocre at most and you cripple yourself more by using your utilities.

Empoering Mysery (heal): my least favourite heal by far. the skill is too inconsistent and like a worse version of consume conditions. what i suggest: increase the healing of it to around 6.5k, the casting time down to 1s and the cooldown to 25s. instead of healing more for every condition on you, make it apply resistance for 2s for every condition on you.

Banish Enchantment (boonrip): a good skill if you want to rip stability or annoy boon heavy classes. energy cost is fine.

Pain Absortion (condi transfer to yourself): also fine imo, maybe the casting time could get toned down to 3/4 and the energy cost to 30 (from 35).

Unyielding Anguish (displacement): a good idea but – imo – very inconsistent in the way it works… what i would suggest is that the field teleports the target back out in the same direction where the target entered the field.

Embrace the Darkness (elite): too long casting time. needs to be 1/2s so that you can react to condi burst as fast as possible.

Ventari

the tablet needs to auto summon when you attune to ventari and only needs to be resummoned with Project Tranquility when you made it explode before.

another problem with ventari is that it’s just pure heal, except for regen from trait there are no boons at all. the reason why bunker guard is good is because he is a mix between heals and boons (and because he is actually tanky).

Ventari’s Will (tablet move) needs to be instacast without the casting time. it’s too disruptime for your own gameplay.

Natural Harmony (heal) this skill is fine imo

Protective Solance (bubble) the upkeep cost needs to be adjusted from -8/s to -7/s because it is very crippling to support + keeping this up. something that also needs to change is the cooldown after disabling the the skill, it has a 5 seconds cooldown which should be removed to allow upkeep flashing, the upkeep already has a 1s cooldown so i see no reason in having the 5s afterwards.

Purifying Essence (condi remove): energy cost too high, would tone it down from 35 to 25 and make it instacast without the 3/4s casting time.

Energy Expulsion (tablet explosion): remove the casting time but leave the 2s explosion delay. this skill should synergize better with moving the tablet so that you can move an exploding tablet into enemies. i suggest removing casting times on ventari in general so that you can multimanage tablet + staff skills, this will result in a very high skill ceiling.

4. Sentinel decap revenant ventari/mallyx staff

more of a troll build but it doesn’t work that well because even in sentinel you are rather squishy still without much active defense. the decapping is also just mehish and doesn’t work as well as on engi because a perfect staff #5 is not that easy to land and unyielding anguish is pretty inconsistent in where it teleports the enemy.

5. Marauder Staff jalis/mallyx

this build is the build i had the most success with during the 3 days of testing. now don’t misunderstand me, it’s still very weak but at least it has potential.

i used the marauder amulet with staff and pack runes, energy hydromancy sigil on the weapon.

Retribution 2-3-2
Corruption 1-2-2
Invocation 3-1-1

this build actually lets me deal burst damage with staff 5 and weaponswap. i can more or less oneshot the light armor golem every 20 seconds. after the burst there is almost no damage except from the auto attack that crits for 1k and is dangerous because as mentioned many times, revenant is very squishy.

what i noticed is that the healing skills are very weak when playing this. they don’t heal enough / are on a too long cooldown and it’s very hard to refill your health during a fight.

during the 3 days of the revenant i tested the class with different builds in all PvP modes, in 1v1 fights and in actual matches. I am a longterm PvP player from eu with close to 7k PvP matches and i found the idea of the revenant very interesting but sadly the class didn’t turn out as good as i hoped it would. i will review the class in PvP and add my personal comments and suggestions for the devs, and hopefully they will read them

the builds i used had different roles, some more serious and some more trolly:

1. marauder hammer backliner, jalis/mallyx

this one definitely packs the highest single attack damage numbers but is essentially the worst build/weapon for pvp.

this build/weapon is more or less designed to stay at range and freecast on enemy players with auto attacks and skill 2, for a burst you dive in with skill 3 and on impact you switch legend for the explosion above 50% energy.
this works okayish if the enemy team lets you freecast. the damage is mediocre and the weapon is slow and clunky.

as soon as the enemy starts to come at you, be it thief or whatever comes your way, it’s over. you don’t have any survivability nor disengages. hammer 5 is way too slow and the animation way too big to serve as a disengage and even then you have no gap closers or swiftness if you don’t land your hammer 5 into your lightning field first which will definitely take too long for a disengage. kiting is practically nonexistent here, something that is essential on everything that is ranged.

2. Celestial mace/axe frontline jalis/mallyx

on paper this build is very strong. on tests against golems i managed to stack 22-25 might stacks with double blasts and battle sigil.

the damage, although i had that many might stacks, was also just mediocre, the poison (usually 3 stacks) was ticking for 150-200, the torment for 350 (5 stacks) without moving, and the burn (2 stacks) for 650. the auto attack crits on it were around 500-1k depending on the skill and mace #3 was hitting for about 1.5k crits.

now you might think that’s not too bad right? the problem is that actual enemies don’t stand still, interrupt you or just don’t stand in your fire field.

the build can be kited very easily and will deal clost to no damage anymore. even if you taunt them it does not make things better especially because the taunt costs 50% energy which is way too much.

the survivability, thanks to vit/heal/toughness components of the celestial amulet, was a bit better but still subpar. celestial builds usually bring loads of sustain, shoutbow ele and engi are very hard to take down but that’s not the case for revenant.

the only time this build is good is when you have a condition opponent whose condis you can copy and if he doesn’t bring any condi cleanse.

again, a very slow build with no disengages and a weakness to cc which is very bad.

3. cleric staff ventari/jalis support

with monk runes and some ventari traits you can get close to 50% outgoing healing which is nice and allowes you to heal allies for 3k+ at the cost of 25% energy.

the problem here is that you yourself are not tanky at all and if they focus you it’s over in an instant. you can maybe stay alive in a 1v1 but of more than 1 players focus you it won’t end well for you.

the main problem for this is, you are constantly using your energy for allies to support them so most of the time you won’t be sitting at 100%. if the enemy lands a big burst on you you can heal yourself for maybe 4-5k at best and then your energy is depleted leaving you with nothing. you lack a real heal like for example shelter from guardian which is awesome to negate damage and heal yourself. if you get cced you don’t have a stunbreak in ventari so you need to switch to jalis, a stance that won’t support allies really that much. what you do in this stance is more or less heal you with your healing skill, kite a bit if possible and block stuff for 2s.

if you’re not dead by then you try to get back into ventari to repeat the whole process. usually you are dead though because your only defensive skill is a 2s block on 10s cooldown, no cc appart from the tablet explosion which even has a casting time so you can’t even move it to you while it explodes.

it would certainly provide a better longterm goal than just a normal increase of pvp ranks^^ we also lack something to display the knowledge of a class.

what if we had a set amount of utility skills, heals and elites, not tied to legends but just normal utility skills that change their effects based on the legend you are in when you use them similar to how elemental glyphs work.

for example:

unyielding anguish (mallyx)
inspiring reinforcement (jallis)
protective solace (ventari)

get merged into 1 utility skill that creates a field based on the legend you’re in.

now if arenanet gives us 10 utility skills, 3 heals and 2-3 elites that change their effects based on the leged and let’s us actually choose which utility skills we want then revenant could become a very good profession. right now the only thing that impresses me about revenant are the visuals and downed skill 1.

thoughts?

the problem with the legends is that you can only slot 2. you don’t care about the 10 or 8.5s on ele because you have 4 attunements so it seems not as long as on revenant.

what would help out is maybe starting with 75% energy or even 100% and having a -15% legend cooldown minor trait.

the problem right now is the decision making… can i use this skill so that i will still have enough..

challenge and brain is cool and stuff if it actually was rewarding, but it’s not.

best example is staff skill 2, that thing is completely useless and still costs energy. if only it was an actual block with a follow up weakness.

especially on dps builds you want to cycle through the legends when you have 50%< energy to get the damage from equilibrum so you will not benefit from this gm minor at all.. so you’re actual only stunbreak is rite of the great dwarf.

stun breaking on revenant is pretty problematic in a PvP view and something needs to change here. either give more utility skills stunbreaks or put stunbreaks on weaponskills.

having to decide wether to use your weaponskills or your utility skills is a bad design. please remove the energy cost from weaponskills.

this needs to happen because it cripples the gameplay. either remove the cost or remove the cooldown.

who cares about such stuff if revenant sucks overall. it’s bad, just bad.

something that pvp lacks at the moment are longterm goals and progression. after you reach level 80 and after the pvp titles the progression ends.

playing in esl with teams is nice and is something competitive but other than that there is nothing that you can work your way to.

so what i suggest are PvP Class Ranks:

after you reach level 80 in PvP you unlock the class levels and each time you play a match you gain xp with the class you played.

What will you gain by leveling your PvP Class Rank?

you will gain titles, class specific armor and finishers to display your efforts and the mastery of your class.

Armors:

there will be different tiers of armors depending on your class rank, sets that start with simple looks in the lower ranks and sets that are truly impressive for the highest rank reflecting your achievements and are worth being legendary pvp armor skins with some particle effects.

The armor tiers will be called according to the corresponding title you will be getting.

Titles:

- Elite [] (will award the Elite Paragon/Magus/etc. set, title and finisher)
- Master [] (will award the Master Paragon/Magus/etc. set, title and finisher)
- Legendary Mist [] (will award the Legendary Mist Paragon/Magus/etc. set, title and finisher)

Finishers:

upon reaching the different levels you will also unlock finishers that show your class knowledge, so every class finisher will obviously be themed after its specific class.

Levels:

as for the normal PvP Levels there will be again 80 Class Ranks but with more required xp per level: 40k per level.

Elite Rank will be granted with level 20, the equivalent of ~533 won ranked/unranked matches.

Master Rank will be granted with level 40, the equivalent of ~1066 won ranked/unranked matches.

Legendary Mist Rank will be granted with level 80, the equivalent of ~2133 won ranked/unranked matches.

while the amount of xp/won matches might seem like a lot the PvP Class Ranks are supposed to be a longterm goal after you reached dragon rank and you truly enjoy playing your class. for people that multiclass or simply don’t play that much there will still be the lower ranks to reach.

What about the normal PvP Level Experience Bar and the Chest i get after every 20k xp?

nothing will change about this and you will still get your chest after every 20k xp.

feel free to discuss, criticise (in a constructive manner) or just tell me if you like the idea or not.

pvp is just boring right now and that’s it. if you’re not playing with a team and going for esls there is absolutely nothing to do.

there are no titles to get after champion no matter how long you play your class, no progression at all.

i want achievements for my classes: winning matches should not only stop at titles but you should even get special gear and armor. why not give us a special class specific armor piece for every 250 won rated games? a title for 150, 500, 1000 and 2000 games so when you see somebody with a full pvp elementaist gear with a “legendary magus” title you can be sure that he knows his kitten.

there is no such progression right now, no ingame generated tournaments, no pvp shop and not even a way to get gift of exploration in pvp.

all we have now is an ugly glorious hero armor that is gted behind farming the leaderboards.

DaShi.1368:

Mesmers got flattened by fresh air bursts, which were far more reliable than shatters.

the only fresh air burst is phoenix flash and wave which can be easily avoided if you dont waste your stunbreaks or keep your distance in fire.. the air procs is sustain and not burst.

mesmer has an advantage in weapon range, blink range, hp pool and stealth. if you get 100-0 bursted by a fresh air ele then it’s a lp issue because you wasted your dodges and stunbreaks.

also mind wrack is on a way lower cooldown than phoenix and co.

DaShi.1368:

So mesmers now have a chance against fresh air eles? No way! Nerf!

mesmers were always superior to fresh air eles, what are you even talking about….

usually when i feel like having some action and i play fresh air ele my matchups against mesmers look like this:

gs auto attack + air fire, 25% of my health gone, mantra interrupt another 25% gone.

i get in 900 range and now the actual fight starts.

i feel like curses is not the optimal choice here, sure it adds weakness and a passive cleanse but other stuff would give you more.

if you don’t like spite, have you tried death magic? unholy sanctuary benefits from the healing of celestial and by taking a dagger offhand you can go for vampiric prensence to add something for the team in teamfights without losing cleanse. rune of the pack to make up for the swiftness of warhorn or even travelers.

i also like spite because of the might, when you manage to get the enemy below 50% those 20 might stacks are just too good combined with close to death.

celestial necro will only become really powerful when reaper is availlable with reaper/blood/soul or reaper/spite/soul or maybe with death magic, can’t say yet but the one with spite will definitely be the most offensive one. the reason is the shroud auto, while life blast is 1s cast, reaper shroud 1 is 1/2s 3x with another 1/2s aftercast so it’s 3 hits in 2 seconds instead of 3 hits in 3 seconds with life blast.

the difference between reaper spite soul is that spite gets the might from autos and benefits from the vulnerability crit chance whereas reaper blood soul benefits from might on chill and the blood siphoning but loses the extra might (5s from chill vs 18s or so from shroud autos) from spite.

i have 2 builds in mind that could be pretty strong in 1v1 but it’s always the same, a focused necro is a dead necro in teamfights.

pre patch d/d ele was actually the celestial class with the lowest dps. now after the patch pyro d/d can hit for a decent amount but your main damage comes from smart burns that can tick for 2k/s.

sorry but you can’t showcase such a video when all parties in this video were unskilled.. it doesn’t prove anything.

given d/d ele is atm a bit of a noob carry but the guardians should destroy you in any case in a matter of seconds.

while pyro d/d is quite potent in 1v1 it doesn’t have enough to stay alive in a 1v2.

in a way the changes were amazing and in a way they are frustrating. usually duels between d/d eles were endless if both of them were good enough. now i managed one to end after 10 seconds when both were celestial. the problem is, if you play a fire water arcane build many burns are passive.. so they do not require a lt if skill sadly.

it’s a step forward with a step backward.

the only reason why you could think that is because a d/d ele can fight back and kill you. bunker guard can selfsustain better than a d/d ele, it just doesn’t pose a threat while you try to kill it.

you are overexaggerating, d/d ele doesn’t bring the same amount of healing and on demand cleansing as a bunker guardian nor quickness. before the patch it was slowly dropping out of the meta because of shoutbow and the superior healing/banner.

the only reason d/d ele is so good atm is because it is tanky and can actually survive the insane damage, is fast and can deal a sufficient amount of damage for a support bruiser.

d/d ele only has crazy burn damage if specced for it, that d/d ele won’t be nearly as tanky as an earth ele.

who do you actually think keeps you alive in a teamfight against all the yolo damage flying around.

the revenant skills from the beta were pretty much bugged quite a bit and while revenant might have been strong with the old combat system from pre patch it’s actually possible that he is weak now and has problems with bursts.

it did look interesting for celestial builds with mace/axe but if it doesn’t pack enough dps under the new system it won’t be too great. there is also the lack of mobility that could pose a problem.

hammer was a crap weapon and tbh i don’t think ventari revenant will be too great.

what i am personally looking forward to is a berserk assassin/dragon or assassin/dwarf sword/axe revenant.

if you’re talking about a fresh air s/d with marauder then it’s trash, lacks active defense and if you’re talking about a celestial s/d then it’s also trash because you lack ranged dps counters like ring of earth from dagger or whirling winds and earth4 from focus.

maybe it works in yoloq but believe me it doesn’t work against good players. if you face a shoutbow that actually knows how to play shoutbow, yes there are some rare species than can do that, the longbow pressure will take you down eventually, even if it takes time.

what annoys me on ele currently is the fire water arcane build with all the passives that cause burning. it is not very fun to play and not very fun to play against but still quite effective in soloQ.

the earth spec is fine as it is, just a tanky support.