Guild Wars 2

While it does roots you, it is a long block that also heals you for a large amount. Basically like some of our lower heal skills right now. If you could move while using this skill it’s power would need to be brought down a lot.

Hey, everyone! Once again, I’m back to talk with you all about upcoming changes to the revenant which you’ll get to play in the upcoming BWE3. These were made from all the awesome feedback we received from BWE2 as well as our internal testing.

Similar to the other posts like this that I have made, I’ll be providing some of the thought behind these changes as to why we made them. Overall, revenant has been doing very well and is much closer to how we want it for HoT launch. As you all have seen, the profession has come a long way since the first time that it has been played and a lot of that is with the help of all the amazing feedback from you all. (Thanks!) There were a few lingering issues, tweaks, and polish which I’ll discuss below. So, let’s get into it.

General
Here we have some polish changes for the profession. It was brought up on the forum as a suggestion to have a custom dodge FX and that got added as a direct result.

• Added an effect to dodging.
• Added underwater versions of the downed skills.
• Added a hand glow when invoking legendary centaur stance.

Downed
Unfortunately, the displace mechanic was interacting poorly in the game as a whole. It was causing undesired behavior with NPCs and pathing, its strength varied by game mode, it was very disorienting to the receiving foe and other issues as well. We made the decision to remove displace and change the skills which had it on them. In this case we changed it to a knockback because it was similar functionality.

• Forceful Displacement: This skill no longer displaces foes, instead it will now knockback the foe 600 distance.

Sword
For sword, there were some minor tweaks. Precision Strike was made a whirl finisher because it made sense as your character is spinning around, plus the skill needed a bit of help. Unrelenting Assault was a bit strong after the last set of changes so I slightly increased the recharge to have a lower window between evade times.

• Precision Strike: This skill is now a whirl finisher.
• Unrelenting Assault: Increased the recharge from 10 seconds to 12 seconds. Fixed a bug so that this skill will more report damage as a multi-hit skill allowing it to stack up damage per target rather than displaying each instance of damage individually.

Staff
In staff the changes were mostly about the flow of play. It felt awkward to have to stand still to cast Renewing Wave so I changed out the animation to one that would work while moving to keep this weapon more mobile feeling. Debilitating Slam had a long cast time for a skill which is used for an interrupt so I went ahead and shortened that down to so it could be used as a more reactionary skill.

• Warding Rift: Fixed a bug where this skill could be cancel-casted to gain the benefit of the block without going on full recharge.
• Renewing Wave: Changed the animation on this skill so it can be used while moving. It retained the same 1 second cast time.
• Debilitating Slam: Decreased the cast time from 1 second to 0.25 seconds.

Shield
We were trying out defiance bars on player skills in a few places, but it didn’t really work out. Defiance bar is balanced around being on creatures which left some pieces of it feeling awkward for players. It also had essentially a duplicate functionality to stability. In the end we felt like it didn’t play well on player skills so we removed all player defiance bars.

• Envoy of Exuberance: Decreased the energy cost from 15 to 10. Fixed a bug so that this skill will properly heal at the target location instead of around you.
• Crystal Hibernation: Removed the defiance bar. This skill will now block attacks for the duration while regenerating health. Lowered recharge from 30 seconds to 20 seconds.

Legendary Assassin Stance
Jade Winds was a bit too strong being able to cast it back to back if you stored up the energy. This skill got a short recharge to limit being able to chain it back to back with itself. You may notice we have some this with a few skills so pressing one skill multiple times wouldn’t be encouraged and allow for a breathing room for your foes.

• Jade Winds: Added a 5 second recharge.

Legendary Centaur Stance
Here I made some changes to the cast time. Now all utility skills are instant, only the heal and the elite have a cast time. The elite has also been lowered in cast time as well as decreased energy cost.

• Naturalistic Harmony. Decreased the energy cost from 25 to 20.
• Purifying Essence: This skill is now instant cast. Decreased the energy cost from 35 to 30 and added a 5 second recharge.
• Energy Expulsion: This skill is now a blast finisher and reduced the cast time from 2 seconds to 1 second. Decreased the energy cost from 50 to 35.

Legendary Demon Stance
In this stance we had a bit of a bigger change happen. Demon Stance was in an awkward place because it was mechanically cool when you looked at it in a vacuum, but when you were put around other players there was this point of tension which was created. When using demon stance you wanted to manage your conditions and try to keep certain amounts on yourself to empower your skills.

Though, allies directly impacted this play style. While you were around allies, especially players running support, it created tension and frustration between the two players. You wouldn’t want to be near these other players that removed conditions from you as it weakened your skills. This isn’t a tension or frustration that we wanted to create between allies so I moved this stance away from focusing on scaling effectiveness based on your personal conditions. As such, the self-conditions didn’t make sense anymore as you had less reason to utilize these so they were removed. Similar to Forceful Displacement, the displace was removed on unyielding anguish and the skill was re-designed a bit.

• Empowering Misery: Removed the self-applied weakness. Increased the base heal by 40% and decreased the heal per condition by 40%.
• Pain Absorption. Removed the self-applied blind.
• Banish Enchantment: Removed the self-applied vulnerability. This skill now applies 3 stacks of confusion for 6 seconds instead of being dependent on the conditions you have on you.
• Unyielding Anguish: This skill has been re-worked. This skill will now leap to the target location creating a dark field which chills for 1 second and torments for 5 seconds per pulse. The field lasts for 4 seconds and pulses every 1 second.
• Embrace the Darkness: Removed the self-applied torment. This skill no longer copies conditions to nearby foes. This skill will increase stats by 10% while active and pulse 6 seconds of torment every 1 second to nearby foes.

Legendary Dwarf Stance
A lot of you thought Forced Engagement was too high of a cost for a single target control skill, and I agree! But, I can’t allow you to use it back to back or else it creates bad chain controlling situations so there is an added recharge as well.

• Forced Engagement: Increased the recharge from 3 seconds to 5 seconds and lowered the energy cost from 50 to 35.

Herald
In herald overall I think it played out fairly well, but there was a few small tweaks I wanted to make. Shared Empowerment was slightly under-tuned compared to other similar traits. Gaze of Darkness bypassed defenses like dodging which wasn’t intended.

• Shared Empowerment: Increased the might duration from 5 seconds to 8 seconds.
• Facet of Nature: This is now useable underwater.
• Gaze of Darkness: Fixed a bug so that this can be properly avoiding using things such as your dodge.

Corruption
In the corruption specialization, there were a few traits which needed some tweaks in power to be competitive options. As an example revenant did not have many options to apply poison, but had the trait Venom Enhancement which increased poison duration so I thought it made sense to also apply poison itself.

• Pulsating Pestilence: Increased the trigger chance from 15% to 25%.
• Replenishing Despair: Increased the base heal by 300% and added a 1 second internal cool-down.
• Venom Enhancement: This trait will now apply poison for 5 seconds with a 20 second recharge when you apply torment as well as increasing poison duration.

Devastation
In this specialization, I addressed an issue a lot of you brought up in feedback which I thought made a lot of sense. Basically you all said the profession stat buffs like empower are generally in master tier and ferocious strikes was just a weaker trait. So I went ahead and switched the position of both of these traits.

• Assassin’s Presence: This trait has been moved to master tier replacing the place of Ferocious Strikes.
• Ferocious Strikes: This trait has been moved to adept tier replacing the place of Assassin’s Presence.

Retribution
In the master tier for this line there were two traits based around incoming control effects, which made little sense and ended up fighting with each other. I went ahead and merged these two traits together creating room for a new trait which I added as the master tier needed a trait to help support the tank feel of retribution.

• Eye for an Eye: The Redeeming Protection trait has been merged with this one. When Eye for an Eye triggers, you will also gain protection for 5 seconds.
• Redeeming Protection: This trait has been merged with Eye for an Eye.
• Dwarven Battle Training: This is a new master tier trait replacing redeeming protection. This trait provides a 25% chance on hit to weaken foes for 4 seconds with a 10 second recharge and decreases weakness’s effectiveness on you by 50%.

Update 1:
I just wanted to stop in and say I’m definitely closely reading all the feedback about these changes and while I know some of you will miss some old functionality we feel it will be the right choice for the health of the game and profession for the long term. That being said I’m open to feedback and suggestions to make sure everything is awesome.

Though, I will say for mallyx most of the skills were brought into the middle-ground of meeting the condition threshold. As an example Banish Enchantment applies 3 stacks of confusion, it used to apply 2 if you didn’t meet the threshold or 4 if you did.

Also while it may be hard to see it on paper, some areas got improved such as torment application actually went up significantly. I can stack up an incredible amount internally, which is a bit scary, but we’ll have to see how it plays. It should help with making it much more of a condition damage viable build though.

Some things to note:

• Unrelenting Assault did have some bug fixes to it which should help with issues like using it and having it fail being stuck in place as it animated should no longer be a thing. It’ll just fail without playing the whole animation.
• Condition removal or resistance application has not changed, so the Revenant should have the same way to deal with taking conditions on themselves.
• The recharge for unyielding anguish was a remnant of an old change and wasn’t supposed to be there. This skill shouldn’t have a recharge and I’m thinking about lowering the energy cost from 35 to 30 to make it more usable as mobility and condition application. It also should be applying 5 seconds of torment instead of 4.
• Embrace the Darkness now applies a lot of torment in an area, twice as much as before. I’m looking at adjusting the cast time or upkeep cost for it to make it a bit more in line with the new functionality.
• Since corruption and mallyx is all about being the master of torment and being pushed more that route, I’m playing around with an idea I wanted to run by all of you. Torment is less valued in stationary fights due to the way torment functions. Since torment is the main damaging condition for Revenant, I’ve been thinking about adding functionality to a trait or maybe changing the minor 2 in corruption to increase the base damage torment does while not moving while not increasing the while moving damage to help it become more of a viable option in all areas of the game. What do you all think?

I’ll keep reading and I’ll be open to suggestions and feedback. Just try to remember it may look more devastating on paper than it actually is in game. Some areas of this build actually got stronger.

I’ll try to get it as close as possible before the next beta, but there is still time to address feedback after BWE3 before launch. Just remember playing something usually tends to give different impressions rather then just reading it. Balance is an ongoing thing though and we’ll continue to adjust as necessary even after launch. Balance is never-ending.

Rym.1469:

Champion Roy’s Boi :O

Ship it. On a more serious note I’ll pass on some of these suggestions.

Valfaros.6908:

Roy since you are in the forums right now do we get a BWE changes thread for rev again or do we have to wait for the next BWE to see those?

Yes. soon™ there will be an upcoming changes thread.

Bitoku Kishi.8346:

I’m guessing they might be able to be slotted into any Legend, which could be pretty convenient to replace some of the less useful Legend skills…

The problem is that they are balanced around having 1 skill bar and not 2 for the right half of your bar. They are also not made with energy in mind and would need to be changed to work with revenant, but would muddy the purity of each legends skill set playstyle. I thought I had mentioned it before on one of the initial streams, but racial skills won’t be usable on revenant.

Gaaroth.2567:

Kaligos.7285:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Tried it out and looks awesome. It won’t be out in time for the next beta weekend, but know that it’ll be coming.

/bump

I’m kinda curious if this is still in development ‘cause it’d be a cool feature to have. If it isn’t, I won’t mind ’cause I know you guys have lots of balancing work for the revenant to do, especially after BWE2, and you are doing a great job at that.

roy stated somewhere else that next BWE there are coming many tweaks to the skills, a missing hand glow on ventari and the dodge animation ;-)
2-3 weeks from now i guess!

Yup! We’ll be making posts soon™ talking about changes that came out of BWE2 feedback and internal testing for all the elite specializations in the last beta. This will include the dodge FX on revenant which you’ll get to see in BWE3.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Zev.3407:

Still no aura when in Centaur stance(from BWE2)

might be you just didnt get to put it into the build for bwe2, but just letting you know cus most people would miss this XD

It’ll be in for BWE3.

Nice! Will the dodge effect also be in BWE3?

Yup.

Zev.3407:

Still no aura when in Centaur stance(from BWE2)

might be you just didnt get to put it into the build for bwe2, but just letting you know cus most people would miss this XD

It’ll be in for BWE3.

Awesome! I need to get one haha.

posthumecaver.6473:

Rahkylus.8097:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Here is the build I used for PvP during BWE2. I would change around a few traits or sigils depending on what I fought, but this is basically it.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vlAQNAsemn3guNSuQ7JRboVlsP0rS4IaWJ4EdskFNFidMppNtBIBNwugJ8hA-TZBFABiXGohTBwCHBgW2fAgHAAA

make it sword sword and its my build, love shiro glint

Does Invocation, rolling Mists, make any sense with Marauder, with fury you will have %130 of crit chance wasted stats…..

Rolling Mists seems only make sense with Celestial and Crusader/Valkyrie (precision sigils with precison runes) I think.

In PvP I believe I have 54% critical-hit chance base with that build so fury would put me at 94% with rolling mists.

Here is the build I used for PvP during BWE2. I would change around a few traits or sigils depending on what I fought, but this is basically it.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vlAQNAsemn3guNSuQ7JRboVlsP0rS4IaWJ4EdskFNFidMppNtBIBNwugJ8hA-TZBFABiXGohTBwCHBgW2fAgHAAA

quaniesan.8497:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Much to your dismay, Revenant’s do need a weakness.

I do agree each class needs to have a counterplay. Don’t you think that it also doesn’t have to be he should be virtually helpless against it though. Conditions are no longer like they were when the game first launched, they are now more prevalent, easily reapplied (in matter of seconds). Especially in PvP when virtually every classes do condi now, it means that non-Mallyx will be weak against everyone. I do think condi removal on legend swap should be increased to one, each legend should have at least one way to remove condition, be it a weaker one than other classes.

I don’t think that is entirely true, as an example engineers don’t run much condition removal in PvP as they have limited options similar to revenant, but still aren’t helpless in PvP.

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

divine faithborn.8365:

Darkness.9732:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

There will be a fair amount of changes that I have planned and that have come out of the feedback from this last weekend.

What about rangers and engis? No elite spec announced yet and have only one BW left.

How will you handle the tons of feedback needed to make engi/ranger elite spec decent?^
Regards

Roy isn’t the developer in charge of the engineer or ranger elite specs. He’s only running the show for the revenant.

I’m involved with everything combat related.

The changes for revenant will be a lot of polish things, and little things from feedback. The only larger change so far is adjusting how mallyx skills work a bit so you aren’t frustrated when playing with support players who cleanse conditions. I’ll talk about all the changes when they are ready though, until then you’ll just have to #believe.

This has made me concerned for Ventari.

I think Ventari needs a large change tbh, the tablet is just too slow for a game with fast paced combat like GW2.

As it is right now, I honestly feel that Ventari is going to be that “skill set” that is never used just because of how clunky it is. Gives me Deja Vu of the Rangers mainhand sword, does awesome things, but just feels awkward.

There will be some ventari changes.

Thanks you all, means a lot!

Awesome feedback, thanks! Glad you had fun!

divine faithborn.8365:

Darkness.9732:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

There will be a fair amount of changes that I have planned and that have come out of the feedback from this last weekend.

What about rangers and engis? No elite spec announced yet and have only one BW left.

How will you handle the tons of feedback needed to make engi/ranger elite spec decent?^
Regards

Roy isn’t the developer in charge of the engineer or ranger elite specs. He’s only running the show for the revenant.

I’m involved with everything combat related.

The changes for revenant will be a lot of polish things, and little things from feedback. The only larger change so far is adjusting how mallyx skills work a bit so you aren’t frustrated when playing with support players who cleanse conditions. I’ll talk about all the changes when they are ready though, until then you’ll just have to #believe.

Much to your dismay, Revenant’s do need a weakness.

There will be a fair amount of changes that I have planned and that have come out of the feedback from this last weekend.

Thanks! Glad you are enjoying it!

Thanks everyone.

The skill functions like a melee attack, creating an arc attack coming out from your character. I have no issues personally hitting multiple targets in front of my character. If you could provide more information it would be useful but I have a feeling you just need to get used to the arc of the cone.

I think this is the closest thing there is: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ceremonial_Sabre

The two elite ones are because they have recharges, we only update the tooltip when it’s something guaranteed to happen.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/revenant/Beta-Herald-Facet-of-Nature-Unlocking-Issue/first#post5454848

Hey all,

As some of you may have noticed, there is an issue with the unlocking of the Herald profession mechanic on existing beta characters. Currently there is a work around where you can create a new Revenant beta character and it will unlock properly.

We are working on getting out a fix for later today for existing beta characters, so you may not want to delete your Revenant if you like how it’s currently setup and want to wait for that.

Our sound team did an awesome job with the herald sounds, they are slightly different the more facets that are active.

It’s one stack per energy point up-kept.

Looking into it.

Legendary Dwarf Stance (Jalis) is planned to be the starting legend.

Killyox.3950:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

NapTooN.6283:

Think of the Legends as Utility Categories like with the others Professions.

Shiro is Traps, Jalis is Survival, Ventari is Shouts. if you only spent a few points into Shiro, you only get 1 or 2 Skills in the Legend. If you want the whole legend, you have to spent the points for every skill like with the other Professions.

Basically this explains it pretty well.

So basically all or nothing because you can’t have cross legend skills and the more you put in the more expensive skills are meaning you will unlock less skills than another class.

You will unlock everything besides elite spec by level 80, just like any other profession. The order you choose to unlock them is up to you. You can mix two legends early on to be able to equip two legends and use a few skills of each on each. Such as unlocking the heal and first utility skill on two legends, then switching back and forth between those two legends.

NapTooN.6283:

Think of the Legends as Utility Categories like with the others Professions.

Shiro is Traps, Jalis is Survival, Ventari is Shouts. if you only spent a few points into Shiro, you only get 1 or 2 Skills in the Legend. If you want the whole legend, you have to spent the points for every skill like with the other Professions.

Basically this explains it pretty well.

I play everything, but I’ll definitely be focusing on Revenant for HoT launch.

… the world ends.

ROFL. Got to be wielding the juggernaut at the same time too.

Duration is something I can play with, but there are problems which can happen because of it. For example if it was 30 second duration it means it would always be most effective to pre-cast them before a fight which is something I’m not sure I want. I’ll think about it though.

skowcia.8257:

But what is the reason of this interval to begin with? Why these daggers also have olny 15sec duration? If i need heal i need it now, not slowly ticking it up hoping i will heal enough to stay alive. Pair that with lack of condi cleanse and here we go..

The initial heal is a joke as well. I rather have blood reckoning in this case, espesially when it really fits well offensive nature of Shiro. Jump in, start murdering everyone while healing for a decent amount. With current junk heal we cant do that at all.

There are a lot of hits, especially with sword so the interval is to prevent excessive spike. The daggers hit for about 900-1000 damage so having all 6 hits in rapid succession would turn a heal into a spike skill. It is intended to be good damage and healing though. The shorter interval should help a lot with the feel for Enchanted Daggers.

Tried it out and looks awesome. It won’t be out in time for the next beta weekend, but know that it’ll be coming.

Balance isn’t final, it never is really. All elite specs and Revenant will continue to be balanced up until launch and of course after it as well. Some builds/professions will be better vs Revenant then others. You shouldn’t judge something, by just seeing it in a live stream.

It’s good to have some things professions are stronger at and other parts they are weaker at. I’d agree with Rubi on this one. We’ll see how everything plays in the next beta weekend and balance accordingly.

Cool idea! I’ll think about it a bit and maybe try out some things.

Taverius.8645:

Knox.8962:

Taverius.8645:

Knox.8962:

You can basically run this trait without giving up any damage in your max DPS setup and hand out 6-7 stacks of AoE might permanently. You don’t even need to use the glint legend to pull that off.

2-3 might. Its only 5 seconds of might, 2 times every 3 seconds at most.

If you use Impossible Odds for DPS (you should), you’ll be putting up 5.75s of might every second without any runes or food. Just putting on a strength sigil will proc several even if you aren’t applying any other boons. The Golden Dumplings should be enough to proc the trait on cooldown.

Just using a STR sigil and STR runes will get you up close to 8 stacks of might. Glint aspects aren’t the only way to proc the trait.

Impossible odds doesn’t apply boons to allies, so it doesn’t proc the trait.

You count as an ally like in the rest of our traits for professions. It’s just generally how we word descriptions.

Thanks, I’ll check it out.

I can neither confirm or deny that I have leveled up my mind-reading skill . Glad you enjoy it!

Kidel.2057:

Vennyhedgie.5369:

http://tooltips.thatshaman.com/
have fun :P

I forgot that tool existed. I made some adjustments here and there http://imgur.com/a/QcNFF

Amazing. I’ll get right on making that legend. Sounds like it might be a little OP though.

It’s supposed to resemble a ‘third eye’, kind of like enlightenment, for revenant’s ability to to use these powers learned from historic legendary beings in the mists.

skowcia.8257:

Just curious about one thing that wasnt mentioned at all.. Now that Jalis hammer were changed, whats about reflexive summon trait which remains at 180 radius? Can it get changed to 120 as well? Or maybe get rid of it completely and change it to apply 6sec on 15cd weakness when we get hit (instead of activating on our hit) similiar to protective ward from rangers?

Overall I feel like that trait is lack luster, I’ll probably be re-making it when I do a trait pass. If you all have any idea feel free to shoot them out. I’ll also likely combine the two on CC traits and make a new master tier trait for that line as well.

Keep up the awesome feedback everyone!

MunkeeBreath.9165:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

I’ll take a look at tweaking the sword AA animations to feel smoother.

Thats it! I now DEMAND for the next revenant specialization to be ROY!!!!

I’m not quite sure I am legendary enough.

Kidel.2057:

MunkeeBreath.9165:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

I’ll take a look at tweaking the sword AA animations to feel smoother.

Thats it! I now DEMAND for the next revenant specialization to be ROY!!!!

Legendary Dev Stance

Class mechanic: Forum understanding (each time a user gives a feedback Roy will activate a random Legendary Dev Stance skill without consuming energy)

Skill tipe: Shouts (but not loud).

Healing skill: “I’ve watched Wooden Potatoes” (lore understanding and Protection)
Utility skill #1: “Soon™” (aoe Super Speed 1 week later)
Utility skill #2: “When It’s Ready™” (aoe Quickness 2 weeks later)
Utility skill #3: “I’ll write a forum post after the show” (apply 25 stacks of Confusion for 1 day to a party member)
Elite skill: “CHOO CHOO” (summon an hype train with no brakes, giving infinite defiance bar)

Still weak on condi cleanse.

ROFL. Amazing.

Kidel.2057:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Jekkt.6045:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

If anything, we could tweak duration or stacks if it doesn’t feel good enough when you all get a chance to play it.

roy, would you please share your way of thinking with the other devs? i feel like some of the others would definitely profit from this, and the classes they work on too^^

I do. All of us on working on skills sit together, are all in the same meeting, etc. I’m involved in basically all things involving player combat. We always aim to constantly improve ourselves and our designs.

Roy, can you please explain the “Number of Targets: 5” in the tooltip? How does it work with the 1s icd?
Does it mean that we can get up to 5 stacks of might every 1s?

Number of targets is how many targets the skill or trait affects. In the case of this trait; it’s AOE might so when it happens so it would be applying might up to 5 targets depending on how many allies are within the radius.

Jekkt.6045:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

If anything, we could tweak duration or stacks if it doesn’t feel good enough when you all get a chance to play it.

roy, would you please share your way of thinking with the other devs? i feel like some of the others would definitely profit from this, and the classes they work on too^^

I do. All of us on working on skills sit together, are all in the same meeting, etc. I’m involved in basically all things involving player combat. We always aim to constantly improve ourselves and our designs.

This trait works differently then Phalanx Strength as that is personal applied might, this is any boon you apply triggers it. There needs to be an ICD since you can have many facets on at once pulsing out many boons, plus boons from traits. that would mean it would trigger multiple times per facet and with multiple facets active it would mean potentially like 20-25 might stacks AOE every 3s. If anything, we could tweak duration or stacks if it doesn’t feel good enough when you all get a chance to play it.

I’ll take a look at tweaking the sword AA animations to feel smoother.