Guild Wars 2

Except this aint your standard Minion Master build! That’s the idea. Every minion master I’ve seen runs a crap ton of Minions, Blood Magic+Death Magic, and is typically a bunker.

This is build is intended to be a power build with 3 minions as opposed to 5+Jagged Horrors. The minions aren’t there to do the work for you either like a regular minion master. The minions are there to snare, boost your dps, and remove conditions from you as well as provide some mobility with Flesh Wurm.

This build is by no means a traditional Minion Master where you can just fall asleep and win. I’ve also fought several 2v1’s and group fights using this build and found great success as well considering your minions are only there to help a little. Well, if you guys aren’t sold on the idea, maybe my gameplay video will help change your minds next BWE.

Saving this spot for potential changes to the build after the next BWE and gameplay/build guide video

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQJARWjc0QrN2XDe1A7NWoGMpAwAYYFHCHhtQqYQN4EA-TZBFwAy3fgwFAYxhAoaZAAPBAA

Thinking about how Reaper is a monster in close range combat and suffers trying to deal with ranged enemies, I came up with this build. The idea is to use Bone Fiend and Flesh Wurm to punish ranged enemies and snare/pull them to you to deal massive damage using GS 5 and Spectral grasp. Flesh Golem also helps by allowing you to knock them down therefore letting you walk up to them and keep striking them.

Death Magic also gives you some really nice survivability and DPS by giving your minions more damage, more health, condition removal, condition transfer, health regen while in Shroud and an automatic death shroud if you’re about to die too. You also get a tiny bit of toughness for each minion which is a nice bonus to have but not a total game changer.

Pick up Soul Marks for more life force generation, Vital Persistence synergizes well with Death Magic by giving you more time to regen health in Shroud and Foot in the Grave also makes Unholy Sanctuary a stunbreaker if you are being heavily cc’d and about to die plus also acts are your primary stunbreaker to preserve your Flesh Wurm for as long as possible.

Finally, Relentless Pursuit, Soul Eater, and Reaper’s Onslaught let you stay on your enemy, gain additional life siphon healing combined with sigil of blood, and lets you annihilate your enemy in close range with Reaper’s Shroud by giving you increased attack speed.

Greatsword is obviously good to run with this set as you can provide aoe blinds to help you and your minions stay alive, gives you fantastic cleave and good damage(after BWE changes), and allows you to pull your enemy in for the kill as well as generate good life force with Auto Attack and skill 3. Staff is secondary as it lets you play defensively should you need to as well as provides chill which is great for a Reaper, weakness, fear, and some decent ranged damage as well which is necessary, imo, without Death Shroud and just overall synergizes better with these trait lines.

You can run your choice of Marauder or Berserker amulet though I prefer Berserker as it gives me better damage and doesn’t sacrifice too much considering Necros already have a huge lifepool.

So far, I have tried this build in PvP running Spite instead of Reaper for the time being to see how well this concept performed and I used Dagger/Focus instead of Greatsword. It’s great! I’ve defeated Signet Necros, Burn Guards, Interrupt Mesmers, Condition Mesmers, and Dagger/Dagger eles all in 1v1’s. I am really looking forward to try this full iteration in the next BWE and update the build if needed. I’ll also probably update this thread with a video after the next BWE.

I feel like maybe if they upped the physical damage, it could be pretty good. Then it really would be a skill shot as you have to aim it to land and you will also apply burning along the way.

The properly named QQ guild xD
These guys need to research thief a bit more haha

Personally, I’d like to see the opposite happen with sword as in making Sword an even more viable option for Power. I think Sword is already good enough as a condition weapon personally.

Champion Rabbit, ftw.

It looks to me more like a bleeding eye. I like it!

I would love to see this XD

I think the alternatives are strong. You don’t even need to have Facet of Darkness on 100% of the time to get perma fury. I think maintaining fury is gonna be a thing for sure though and probably part of the task of playing a Cavalier/Valkyrie Revenant. That being said, I don’t think it’ll be too strong considering you have to manage your energy while applying Fury and using your skills so it might be strong but have a skill gap required to play it and also counterplay in being boon stripped/corrupted/weakened.

Cynz.9437:

They are not going to answer you: reality is, too many players rolled thief (for RP purposes/pve mainly) and this class will continue get nerfed to garbage tier for the sake of:
- reducing numbers of thieves in game to improve statistics
- to please QQing masses

Oh and obviously they will never admit that none of them ever touched thief or they would know about backstab bug for example or wouldn’t embarass themself so badly on POI stream by not knowing neither trait names nor what they do.

Not sure how accurate this is but http://guildwars2viz.com/

Thief is 4th most played class so if anything, they nerfed Thief to encourage people to play Mesmers or Engineers which get stealth also xD

But I don’t think that’s the case, tbh.

I would actually like to see some Physical skills for Thief as long as they are as good as Bulls Charge or better. Also 25% endurance regen on use of a physical skill sounds pretty kitten good imo. Very interested in what’s to come.

Daredevil*
That’s how it should be.

I’m kind of okay with the name though. I didn’t mind Dragonhunter either but that shoulda been Dragonslayer instead.

Roy’s our boy

/15chars

I have a Rifle/Greatsword Signet Warrior and it works just fine for anything, really. Even has Phalanx Strength now for more group DPS.

Azure.8670:

Rain.9213:

^
Definitely accurate.

I also want to emphasize how good Glint is gonna be for dungeons/fractals. Facet of the Elemental provides decent aoe cleave, while Chaotic Release lets you knock down all enemies to prepare to burst them with your team. The changes to Unrelenting Assault also further improve your aoe cleave. The rest of Glint is just amazing boon support and with all the vulnerability stacking of a sword+shiro, parties are gonna welcome Revenant with open arms

Rev will be shunned from fractals. It’s looking way worse for group content than ranger and nec

On the contrary, a Revenant running Shiro/Glint and a Staff+Sword/Shield can potentially rival if not completely replace a PS warrior. AOE Ferocity increase, AOE might stacking, AOE Fury, and AOE Protection and +50 outgoing boon duration to all party members gives it very good group support AND DPS.

^
Definitely accurate.

I also want to emphasize how good Glint is gonna be for dungeons/fractals. Facet of the Elemental provides decent aoe cleave, while Chaotic Release lets you knock down all enemies to prepare to burst them with your team. The changes to Unrelenting Assault also further improve your aoe cleave. The rest of Glint is just amazing boon support and with all the vulnerability stacking of a sword+shiro, parties are gonna welcome Revenant with open arms

Using the information from the POI, we now know that Revenant can have permanent out of combat increased movement speed by popping a combination of Facet of Nature, Impossible Odds, and Facet of the Elemental.

Furthermore, the lack of condition removal was a concern until I realized the above mentioned facts about Revenants being able to maintain ooc movement speed therefore removing the need for Traveler runes.

Runes of Lyssa/Runes of Hoelbrak/Runes of Melandru/Runes of Antitoxin

If you’re running a Shiro/Glint set any of these runes will provide plenty of defense against conditions. Furthermore, you can trait to remove a condition on weapon swap plus have a sigil of cleansing AND use staff 4 to supplement your condition removal.

In this aspect, Revenant is very similar to thief as you have very little straight up condition defense. It’s a matter of setting up your build. I, for one, am very satisfied with how Revenant is looking right now.

There is also the option to use Runes of Rage and have permanent Fury while in battle thanks to Fury on Weapon swap, Facet of the Elemental, and Facet of Darkness.

So many possibilities and that’s just on Shiro/Glint set. You also have the option to use Shiro/Mallyx like I did last BWE and still have plenty of success if you like just being able to tank conditions. Jarlis/Glint will make you a tanking monster with Shield, Mallyx/Glint gives you a lot of possibilities for condition builds, and Ventari/Glint makes you the ultimate support Revenant for zerging.

All in all, Revenant has easily taken the spot for my new main with this week’s POI and PLEASE JUST RELEASE REVENANT AT LEAST ONE WEEK EARLY ROY!

I BEG YOU! I CAN’T STAND THE WAIT!! xD

“Unrelenting Assault: Increased the damage by 30%. This skill will now evade while your character is preforming this attack.”

GG everything without a pet, minion, or clone in 1v1 XD Jesus, I thought the skill hit hard already just needed evade frames. This is gonna WRECK
Thanks Roy, now I’ll destroy enemies even easier!

“Grasping Shadow: Decreased the recharge from 20 seconds to 15 seconds and increased the damage by 75%.”

Yep. Dual Sword Revenant is gonna be a complete powerhouse now BRING ON THE NEXT BETA WEEKEND, BABY!

xarallei.4279:

No condi cleanse for shiro/glint though. Not without being forced to take things not so great for your dps.

Though at least sword got buffed. Though I didn’t hear anything about offhand sword.

If anything, Sigil of Cleansing plus cure condition on Legend swap might be needed… Also, running staff with skill 4 allows for 2 more condition cleansed as well. Hopefully Roy added some condi cleanse to Shiro after feedback though because even with Cleansing sigils and condition cured on legend swap, it’s still pretty weak to condies.

Yeah I really loved how that Elite spec looked. It just might be my favorite Elite spec so far Shiro/Glint looking really good right now. Only issue is condition cleanse…

Scale 50 has approximately a 12% chance and scale 40 has a 9% chance, I just rounded. At least according to research done on drop rates. I only do one run a day though. I used to do two but getting burnt out and one is the most I can do and still not get grumpy at the game.

I keep forcing myself to do fractals to try to get the Fractal Sword for my future Revenant… but RNGeesus keeps slapping me in the face over and over by giving me repeated skins instead… honestly, it’s sometimes hard to find the motivation to get on knowing I’m 99.95% certain to not get a Fractal Sword. (That’s actually a pretty accurate number and not an exaggeration considering you have a 10% chance of getting a Fractal skin and a 0.5% chance of it being the one you want)

Team Jacob… err, I mean. Team Staff.

Also, I really wish there were more scythe skins in the game. So lame that there are only 3 and out of those 3 only one of them is really a legitimate scythe.

Azure Prower.8701:

No. Please take your anime some where else. This is Guild Wars 2.

Also, thief is getting a war horn and is going to be called the “Shadow Caller.”

I also want to point out that RWBY is not an anime.

I actually never thought about that. Good call! Man, I just can’t wait for the next Beta Weekend. Watching my videos over and over, I keep seeing all the different things I coulda done.

Silhouette.5631:

Sooo yeah. Me and the rest of the Guardians were talking and we were wondering if you would wana trade shields with us

That legitimately made me laugh out loud xD

Thanks guys! And yeah I have some stronghold footage I might post soon where I actually do land the 5 and pull the enemy and then they port back due to rubber banding. I was like, “Really? -_-” I think that was the point I stopped using #5.
But yeah, glad you guys liked it. Hopefully this helps show the potential that a Revenant has. Especially after some much needed tweaks and bug fixes to the legends and weapons, I think we’ll have one very AWESOME class

But… I like the Revenant’s name xD

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Mournilg.4870:

I guess upkeeps will be something like -3/-4, so you can activate 2 and still not be out of energy in 8 seconds.
Well at least i hope you can keep at least one permanently with still a low but positive energy regen

Some are cheap, some are expensive. You’ll be able to keep multiple up at the same time. A lot of the inspiration for the skills came from what you might find a bard style class doing in other games.

I’ll be showing it all off plus some extra things on the POI this Friday which will give a much better idea of how everything works.

Oh wow that actually sounds kind of interesting. The only thing I hope is that it works for both group and solo settings. If not, well at the very least I can have a legend that makes people want me in their Fractal runs

Yeah I should use Sword 5 more but I kept having trouble landing it throughout the day so I kinda stopped using it at some point. Revenant was really different from anything I’ve tried so there are a lot of mistakes I made in the video xD

Hey guys. Just sharing footage of some 1v1 duels I captured over the weekend.

I fought against another Revenant, a Reaper, a condition Ranger, and shatter Mesmer. I also played against an Engineer but sadly forgot to record that x.x

As I said in the disclaimer, I did get rekt every now and then but I wanted to show off what a Revenant can do 1v1 when you manage to play him decently. Revenant’s are REALLY good in 1v1 against both condition and power based opponents if you’re running the Shiro/Mallyx build I was using. Only exception was Longbow Ranger… that taunt on pets destroys me if I don’t have resistance up. Anyway, enjoy!

https://youtu.be/f5kyEljgTYg

Egron Redmoon.5764:

Something I noticed playing Revenant is that staff skill #4 (Renewing Wave) does not always seem to clears conditions on yourself. Not sure if it’s due to moving during the aftercast or whatever. But it’s kind of annoying getting downed because your condi cleanse doesn’t work reliably.

I actually stopped using staff because of that. I thought it only cleansed conditions on allies. Guess it was a bug o.o

I think it definitely needs to have evade frames throughout the entire skill. I wouldn’t mind if the damage got nerfed to bring it line with Rapid Fire but it NEEDS an evade. If a ranger can hit Rapid Fire and your only option is to dodge, block, or invuln then I don’t see why Revenant can’t have something similar. Except with a Revenant, you have to actually run up close to them whereas a Ranger, you can pew pew them to death from 1500 range. Furthermore, a Revenant has to isolate their target to get this kinda damage off.

When you compare it to Ele, Guardian, or Mesmer which are arguably the most powerful classes in the game right now, yeah traits are very limited. Those have so many viable builds compared to everything else so I know where you’re coming from. With Revenant we are limited to picking trait lines depending on our legends.

You are wrong on certain things. The trait lines are pretty married to their legends but the weapons are not. I was running dual swords/hammer on Mallyx POWER build and it was doing great for the most part. Also Staff works REALLY well with Shiro as does Hammer.

Didn’t try mace so I can’t comment on that but axe was run by a lot of Revenant players with power builds for the gap closer.

It sucks that we either have to pick between stun breaks/survivability or being able to actually do something with our skills. I literally cant legend swap because that’s my stun break. If I swap into Mallyx. That’s it. No stun breaks until legend swap is back up and if I switch to Shiro, I can’t heal because his heal skill is pretty bad. I think Roy is gonna make some changes though. With all the feedback that’s been coming in from the Beta, there are repeated issues I’ve seen and I’m sure Roy has noticed them too.

Shiro+Mallyx
Dual Swords+Hammer, Air and Energy sigils on both
Devastation: 1/3/3
Corruption: 2/1/1
Invocation: 2/2/3

Marauder Amulet with Runes of the Centaur for swiftness. I can pretty much keep up permanent increased movement speed out of combat using Shiro’s heal skill to proc swiftness then use Impossible Odds and switch to Mallyx after and use his heal skill. Then switch back to Shiro, Impossible Odds, and then Shiro heal again and rinse/repeat.

Also deals out really good damage considering I’m getting two ferocity buffs and if I load myself up with Resistance+Conditions on Mallyx, I get 3% increased damage for each one. That stacks up REALLY fast. Very solid build though and once Roy adds swiftness to Rev, gonna be even better. (Please be swiftness on legend swap added to the fury on legend swap)

It’s not a bug. I think it’s intended. As for balance issues. Idk where I stand on this. I love being able to push people off point with it. I consider it similar to on par with minion master necro or turret engies. It’s easy point capture. However, a true bunker Revenant who can be unkillable and just constantly spam that skill might be too broken.

You can simply make stability give you immunity to it but idk. I think displacement is supposed to be one of Revenant’s main unique mechanics and that port on down state is supposed to let you stop a stomp guaranteed similar to thief stealth, mesmer stealth, and ele mist form.

Personally, I think just increase the interval at which players get ported slightly OR the energy cost to use it so you can’t just spam it non stop. I really think it should be able to bypass stability though as in a fight, it’s not THAT poweful. Just annoying.

Well, that’s VERY broken. xD But then again, we all knew Chronomancer was gonna be OP.

^ This. What’s the point of being able to isolate a player and burst them with Unrelenting Assault if they will just interrupt you or deal the same or more damage to you while you’re stuck in a long animation?

GOOD players that I fought today on my Revenant knew when to dodge my Unrelenting Assault. With just one dodge, you mitigate quite a bit of damage from it. So there’s really no reason not to give it evade frames.

Pridedemon.3041:

Revenant skills has no CD, its energy based so you can probably spam it atleast 3 times before you run out of energy, that’s probably too much evade.

ANET is definitely testing it internally and prolly know’s better then most of us here and there’s a reason it isn’t evade yet.

Umm… Unrelenting Assault has cooldown actually.

Recursivision.2367:

An evade for the full duration might be on the strong side, but it certainly needs something. Maybe evades between hits at least.

As it is, it’s extremely high risk with limits reward. One hilarious example I ran into in PvP earlier was using it on a guardian who had just popped purging flames. I dashed in and out of the circle stacking 20 something burns in about 1 1/2 seconds and died before the skill animation even completed.

Hahaha yeah this happened to me a couple of times as well. So dumb. That’s why I started ranging with hammer instead.

Yeah pretty much entering the blob guarantees you die or you blow most of your cooldowns trying to get out alive. Best thing for Revenant right now is to provide ranged damage with hammer. It’s actually really good for zerg fights considering how hard each aoe skill hits and that its auto attack penetrates.

I only went in for the kill when I saw smaller 2-3 person groups get split off and my buddies and I hunted them down.

As for the legends. I used Jarlis, Mallyx, and Shiro throughout the day. I feel like Jarlis is just WAY too slow and clunky to be used with a power build. Rite of the Great Dwarf takes an eternity to cast and I often died before it got off. Plus with the 50 energy requirement… it’s really not worth using. Heal skill for Jarlis is pretty solid, the stability road and hammers however… more super slow and costly skills that harm you more than help you AS A POWER BUILD.

Mallyx on the other hand… by the gods, what an amazing synergy Mallyx has with Shiro. At first glance, you wouldn’t think so considering you condi bomb yourself and his utilities are condition oriented but when it comes to defense, Mallyx is the best for a power build in my opinion. Simply load yourself up with condies and resistance, then pop your heal skill and you’re instantly back up to 80% or so. Also the elite skill is just amazing. Increased all your stats by 10% and gives you resistance. This lets you tank a bit AND increases your damage output slightly. I would often pop Shiro’s Heal skill, switch to Mallyx, Elite skill, and then unrelenting assault to deal out tons of damage. Also the displacement skill is just awesome. Perfect for capping points or forcing enemies off your downed teammates then switching to Shiro for a quickness boosted revive.

Last but not least, Shiro Tagachi. This one I was just a tiny bit less impressed mainly because Enchanted Daggers, is NOT a heal skill. It’s a damage skill. This is why I decided to run Mallyx instead of Jarlis. With Mallyx, I can buff my heal to make up for the poor recovery of Shiro’s heal skill. Another skill I feel needs a bit of rework is also Phase Traversal. I think it needs a slight evade frame right at the beginning. Mainly because that initial dash often gets interrupted in group fights. It’s kind of annoying. That or if it was an instant port like Steal on thief, it would be worth using a bit more, imo. But maybe that’s just because I felt I didnt need to use it as bad thanks to Hammer range. On the other hand, Jade Winds, Riposting Shadow, and Impossible Odds are just awesome. I still think Impossible Odds should provide some condition removal though. Shiro really needs some defense to conditions and I hate having to waste a legend swap to get some lazily applied burns from a guardian or ele removed. Also I mentioned in another thread Riposting Shadow was bugging out to cc every now and then… apparently you cant stun break from Reaper elite? o.o That’s crazy. Anyway, with that in mind, I think its fine.

Well that’s about it. I absolutely love the class despite several issues I feel it still has. Definitely gonna main it when HoT lands. I feel like you definitely need to think and be smart about how you use Revenant. It’s a class that rewards you for taking the time to master its intricacies. I know I definitely surprised several players today when they fought me. Though not initially as there was a big learning curve for me the first half of the day.

TL;DR
Revenant’s a great class and performs well if you know how to use it. Just needs a few tweaks and it will be perfect.

These are my impressions as of right now. I’ll update it a bit more after the weekend. Note: This is stricly on my Power build running Dual Swords+Hammer and playing PvP and WvW

So, Dual Swords. Despite the fact that skill 3 needs to have evade or blur on it, skill 2 needs either a slight damage increase or range increase, skill 4 bugging out and letting attacks through, and skill 5 rubber banding and sometimes not working….

I think the dual sword set is actually REALLY good! I mean, obviously the class is still in development so it’ll have a few hiccups here and there and anyone who immediately says, “Oh this is garbage”, you need to relax. I think Dual Swords just needs a bit of tweaks and they will be a fantastic set. You guys who keep saying that you forget to use Skill 2, don’t forget to use it. Despite it’s low damage and lame 2s chill, it’s actually really important to use right when you’re about to start auto attacking. I do think it needs a range increase but as of right now, it’s okay I guess. An important but okay skill.
Auto attack is the biggest offender to me, personally. It’s just so awkward and I really wish it could just cleave 3 enemies similar to Necro dagger. I literally preferred to stay in hammer in close range group fights because of the amazing aoe and penetrating auto attacks. Not to mention with lack of evade frames on Unrelenting Assault, I just had little to no reason to use swords when fighting anything more than 1 player.

Right now, Hammer is probably the best pvp damage output I’ve had. I can completely tear groups apart with skill 2, 3, and 5. My only complaint. Skill 4 is a little slow on the activation. I was dueling a ranger who kept tearing me apart because I’d hit skill 4 and take his entire rapid fire before the darn thing came up. Skill 5 is a really good skill and takes well skill… to use correctly. Mainly try to bait enemies into it or catch them by surprise. Then you can follow up with a Jade Winds or Unrelenting Assault.

The sword auto attack is TERRRIBLE. It honestly needs to be a swing instead of a thrust. It’s just bad as it is right now also Unrelenting Assault desperately needs some evade frames. It’s awesome for sure but gets you killed half the time. Enchanted Daggers either needs to get rid of the 1 second interval for each siphon or make the initial heal a lot better.

Other than that and maybe the lack of condition removal on Shiro, I think Revenant is pretty great. Also Riposting Shadows gets bugged sometimes and isnt available to use when you get cc’d ocassionally.

Still, the class is great. I love it. Just fix the tiny bits Roy

Cynz.9437:

Sagat.3285:

No just drop the vulnerability for blindness.

^^this probably would be more reasonable buff to the set

I second this. Would be a HUGE improvement to both SA and Acro sets and help solve part of the issue of thieves getting destroyed in team fights when running anything other than a D/P set.

I did state that I know we don’t NEED this but it’s a bit of a suggestion should Anet decide they have the resources to spare to make a short cutscene to give veteran GW2 players who don’t frequent the forums or read blogs, a bit of exposition as to why you’re a Revenant before Rytlock as well as giving us players who know the situation a bit of immersion without telling us, “Just close your eyes and pretend guys”. Cuz honestly, if you took a break from GW2 then come back or you’re a totally new player and make a Revenant without having read anything on the site, play through personal story and Living Story, then get to Rytlock in HoT and he’s like, “Yeah I taught you some Revenant tricks.” You’re just gonna sit there and go, "Huh? When? Wtf? o.o "

Been seing a lot of these topics but this solution is pretty realistic, imo, and feasible within the lore. Now I know that we don’t NEED something like this but I think it will add just a bit more depth to a Revenant’s story.

Just change the starting cutscene and done.

Have character voice actors voice this quote in the foreground of the cutscene:

“Tyria. A world in peril. All around us, ancient forces known as Elder Dragons are rising; threatening to wipe out civilization as we know it.

I am a Revenant. Taught by the Charr, Rytlock Brimstone, in the ways of manipulating the energy of the realm we know as the Mists. I have been tasked with re-experiencing the events in my life that led to where we are now and in the process, learn more about how to control my newfound powers.

It will be a long road but in the end, I will master this strength and with it, protect this world. This is my story"

Bam. Drops you into your race starting area. In the background of the cutscene, it can show glimpses of you talking to Rytlock and being sent to the Mists to see the personal story events, the fight against Zhaitan and the rise of Mordremoth without giving away the fact that you become Commander of the Pact and the Pact gets destroyed. This would give new players the interest in completing the personal story and veterans some cool exposition as to why you’re a Revenant before Rytlock.

The beginning personal story won’t really be affected as you’ll still get descriptions of your personal story options while making your character and any information about race specific lore such as the Pale Tree for Sylvari or Centaur attacks on Kryta are pretty much already covered just by playing through the game.

I want to say yes but at the same time…. “No Valid Path to Target” crap exists, unfortunately.

I literally got wrecked in wvw today for fighting in the harpy area because what seemed like relatively flat land was actually a big zone where no porting of any kind worked.

Seriously Anet. No valid path to target broke more than it fixed.

Looks pretty good actually! That first initial burst will completely wreck face.