Guild Wars 2

skowcia.8257:

Dat animations..so incredible but..am i the olny one worried that i wont see a kitten? Gotta see stream how it play out, maybe finally i will have a viable sword/shield char..

Particle Wars 2 the more the merrier, IMO it’s better it looks kitten and it actually lets you know what skills the enemy is using, hurts low spec PCs though.

xarallei.4279:

Yeah, the upkeep skills have me very skeptical about the whole thing. If they got rid of energy cost on weapons maybe it could work, but I don’t know…

I doubt you’ll be able to use more than 1-2 skills per legendswap as it is now, if you were able to use 2-4 skills then it’d be overkill, 2-3 per swap is good enough that is a matter of energy cost balance, we’ll have to wait until next beta and then give feedback on energy costs, I think that upkeeps are not worth using with their current effects and costs, they’re supposed to feel stronger the more time you keep them up when they just feel as a drain to your energy pool.

Kaiden Valor.7163:

The Facet of Nature is presumably an F2 skill and will be available on all legends (while specced for glint). This fits with how chronomancer and tempest both got off-hand weapons and an addition to their mechanics as opposed to a makeover of it.

This was the most interesting thing out of that, revenant doesn’t have enough boon generation, but if you run mace/axe and strength runes and invocation you nearly always have 10-15 might, plus 5 seconds of fury each 10 seconds, if facet of nature works like I think it does this could put Revenant as some sort of PS spec, and if you run Malyx instead of Glint you could also share spam resistance with LDS traited, I’m guessing that’s the support love Roy was talking about, could fix some of the support problems that Revenant has but would force you run Glint as it is much more effective than other stances for that, if upkeeps on auras are as high cost as other stances and have the same lackluster effects then nothing will change at all, still hurling a god kitten ed mist dragon at your foes is bad kitten enough to make up for that.

slayert.5904:

Seems the elite spec is giving exactly what jalis should have already given us…protection..

I’m not expecting it to be any different than the other stances, mostly because of this

“Crystal Hibernation: This one is all about personal defence and is a great save-me button for those sticky near-death situations. A crystal energy shield prevents damage after this skill has been channelled, and it also quickly tops up your health pool. Your character gains a defiance bar when this skill is used, and the risk of using it will need to be considered carefully.”

“Cronacher: The Crystal Hibernation ability does indeed have trade-offs. It is a defiance bar skill for the player, similar to what you’ve seen monsters have (such as the Wyvern). Once the break bar is depleted with control skills, the protective shell will burst, which will stun the player for two seconds and leave him or her with 25 stacks of vulnerability for those two seconds, so you risk being left in this super vulnerable state. The ability doesn’t remove conditions, so if you wait too long to use it, it’s possible to be downed while it is active for ticking conditions. While it can be used to immune key attacks, recover some health, or give yourself enough time for some skills to recharge it definitely can be punishing if used incorrectly. You cannot move while the skill is active, either, so you are kind of a sitting duck for when it ends.”

This is like RotGD 2.0, sounds good and strong but ends up leaving you as a free kill on PvP modes, the counterplay to that is just target you, set all the CC off and then kill you, the breakbar will give players that are not used to find a way to counterplay for something and learn the combat mechanics think that the profession is OP when it really isn’t, now don’t get me wrong that skill seems to give some ways to survive 1v1 for just a bit more until you can get support from a roamer in PvP since it makes you invulnerable unless they ditch all the CC on you.

The skill base effects, synergies and survivability needs to be revised for skills like this to work, in PvE there is no need for that sort of stuff as no mobs risk your party in a way they can all wipe at once given that your team mates learn the fight mechanics and the effects of the skills they have at their disposal, it just needs some time and effort and the standard formula of making bosses have more HP and one shot you can be denied easily with the active combat system that GW2 has you just need to be aware of the attack animations and know where and how to position, having a low DPS tank with support that doesn’t cater the active combat system and uses a more standard low mobility tank on your face type of support is currently not needed unless they make content that somehow needs that, and even then it more likely means that the tank will get one shotted unless skills like this get used and it has a way to keep the aggro on himself, currently aggro is random.

So far IMO all developers do not get that “front line support” based on increased thoughness and giving “defensive boons” is only of use in WvW zergs and for certain PvP bunker specs, actually the only bunker spec that uses that kind of playstyle is AH shouts Guard and it’s not as effective as bunker elementalists because elementalists have better condi cleanse and heals because they have regeneration, cleanses and water fields and that makes them effective hybrid point holder-assaulters, bunker playstyle in PvE is viable but not optimal in the current state of the game, as the “zerker meta” has still room to grow, just take a look at the meta builds, they prioritize party surivability, party offensive support and then personal DPS.

Revenant needs more ways to support a party other than having the ability to spam some healing and face tanking as it’s not needed, even with the optimized AI in Verdant Brink I just died 4 times during the Beta and that was because I glided off the map to the void, if it is to be given deffensive support it really needs more access to stuff like blind, aegis, reflects, taunt, weakness and protection, since that is what’s needed with the active combat system, we’ll have to wait and see what the other auras give, currently all the auras seem like a good an interesting mechanic AND seem to make Glint mandatory for the best party support Revenant spec.

Kidel.2057:

Rygg, just a question, why are you posting your review and general suggestions in this thread that is only about energy?

Gave a second thought and I’m posting a suggestion thread myself, but I can agree with what you said, you need to make energy management easier but make it still have some mandatory tactics and planning to not make it faceroll easy and keep the legendswap/energy mechanic menaingful

Kidel.2057:

CountzuCrytus.7256:

No Synergy with Runes/Sigils

What is Superior Rune of Rage and Superior Rune of the Pack + Invocation line?
Or Superior Sigil of Frailty + Devastation line?

Yeah those do have synergy, Rage isn’t reliable it does give fury but the damage output isn’t as good as Pack, Strenght or Hoelbrak and even then if you run Marauder you don’t need that much fury uptime also Rage main stat is ferocity so Marauder+Pack is almost the same as Marauder+Rage, excepting that Pack gives you some free speed, Rage synergises well with Soldier, as for sigils, they depend mostly on the weaponset but S/A is good with Air/Fire if running crit chance>50% gear, offhand gave good results with: Intelligence>Battle>Doom>Frailty>Leeching in that order, mostly because I swapped to Staff and it hits as hard as a truck.

CDPS isn’t reliable but if you tried it out Carrion+Mallyx/Shiro did Synergise well with balthazar runes because you could use Shiro’s heal offensively and elites gave burning on demand, weaponsets were S/A – M/A or M/A – Staff, in such case I ran Geo/frailty on M/A and energy intelligence/battle on the other weaponset

I always thought Phase Traversal was weak, I just used it to hit engis when they used gear shield, weekend warriors using Mace/Shield builds, or Guardians trying to use shelter. 2 charges of unblockable are lackluster, and for a gap closer Frigid Blitz is much better at a much lower energy cost.

I’d Change them to this:

Enchanted Daggers: remove delay of extra hits, damage is not a problem, it can be easily denied and or countered the initial heal is rather weak, if the delay stays then make the initial heal 3280 or remove 1 condition each time you hit a target up to 3 conditions.

Riposting Shadows: doesn’t need a change

Phase Traversal: add an extra effect besides the unblockable so it sees more use, again if you run axe you have a cheaper gap closer that deals decent damage, gain 3-5 might for 5 seconds or gain 850 lifesteal for 5 seconds or something that sees some more use

Impossible Odds: IMO it always sounded OP on paper but it actually isn’t, 3-5 seconds of superspeed and quickness at the cost of almost all of your energy isn’t worth it, it’s just useful because of the OoC superspeed and on targets that are below 40% HP and that is if you manage to land all of the attacks for the time you can upkeep the skill, the original shiro skill transfered hexes and contions on shiro to foes, it should either steal boons or transfer conditions on you to foes on hit or generate random conditions on hit.

Jade Winds: no change needed.

Recursivision.2367:

I found revenant pretty strong 1v1. Bigger fights is where it lacked because it had no way to mitigate focus and not enough sustain to keep up with other classes.

You either didn’t face skilled enough players or did not play against meta builds, Revenant is viable but it’s far from strong 1v1 speacially against meta builds, you can’t deal damage and mitigate damage at the same time because most of the time you ran out of energy before you could decide which one was more important, survival or downing an enemy, specially against professions with reliable condition pressure or low cooldown burst capabilitites (so Panic Strike thieves, MoD Mesmers and Survival Power Rangers that ran entangle instead of rampage as one), Necros were a problem but mostly due to DS, you tried to burst them and they just went into DS and your burst got wasted, your energy drained and once that happens Revenant is a free kill.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Thanks for the input guys, great dialogue.

Although I still lean towards removing CDs, I am starting to think that maybe #3 might be a better option. Or at least a readjustment of sorts. Killyrox makes a great point on this if they remove one or the other.

Something else I noted in the posts is talk about AA giving energy back. I kind of agree with this. However, do Revenant’s currently have any type of energy generating skills or traits at all?

Nope no traits for energy generation, in GW there was an Elementalist elite called Ether Renewal, that gave you 10 pips of energy regen instead of the base 4 for the profession, that’s 1.5x energy regen, they could add to an invocation trait a when you land a critical hit you have 1.5x energy regeneration for 5 seconds with 5 sec ICD.

Kidel.2057:

legendswap is literally instant energy generation.

Technically it’s a reset, but if you swap and need to use 1-2 utilities you’re stuck with 20% energy for 3-5 seconds, and if you use weaponskills probably some more time, you could actually use the same principle as above and make a trait that gives 1.5x energy regen when you swap legends or that gives 1.5x energy regen if < 50% energy and another bonus if above 50% energy

Kidel.2057:

Killyox.3950:

Taunt is just… bad. I get it can be used on someone who is trying to stomp your friend in pvp but… it’s just bad. Same can be achieved with hammer, axe #5 and lots of other stuff.

This. That skill needs energy cost lowered a lot and a cd added. Can’t spend 50 energy for a taunt, it’s not Jade Winds.

It’s not only that Jade Winds is 100% better, but that it should give another effect for that cost, stapple 6 seconds of protection, up the damage to 500 or up the slow and taunt duration to 5 seconds and I’m happy with the 50 energy cost, 2 seconds of taunt and slow are worthless, specially when most classes have much better options for CC than revenant does.

Kidel.2057:

Revenant = legendswap. .

So much this, that’s why I say that either the energy cost on weaponskills needs to go away and let the energy costs as they are now, reduce the costs on redundant/poor use skills such as Forced Engagement to half their current cost, or both that way you solve energy management problems arised and upkeeps can actually be used for a bit more than 3 seconds and won’t seem as much as a waste of energy.

Aeolus.3615:

A defensive play style will not work withing the actual gameplay becouse is very lack luster against offensive.
.

Not to mention that offensive specs still have room to be effective using the same gear just exchanging some traits, weaponsets or skills to be more defensive i.e. Warrior can just use base Warhorn for Weakness uptime, Banner of Defense instead of Signet, and Guardian can just camp Hammer if needed be for perma protection uptime, Eles always have waterfields on demand, and Necromancer will have blindness uptime, Revenant has Staff 3, etc. no actual need to go full healing support, when you can mitigate a ton of damage via boons, conditions, traits, evasion and blocks.

Not to be rude or anything, but Unyielding Anguish is at best annoying and sometimes situational set up for another skill/move, it’s nice to move enemies when they’re trying to res them, but if you displace a foe while an ally is channeling a stomp if the bar isn’t at halfway you’ll actually help your foe, it does help to decap but it’s far from being OP, it’s easily counterable you just need to avoid the purple haze circle that is at the landing location of the revenant, think about it like a well, all of you just fought people with no actual knowledge of the skill usage, if you get displaced then you just try to disengage until the skill goes off, if a revenant leaps it’s either Unrelenting Assault or Unyielding Anguish, you just dodge/blind and are easily countered, also the energy costs are kittenedly high, if you get displaced wait for 1-2 skills then burst the revenant, it’ll have no energy to counter you fast enough and survive. In PvE if you go and use it without communicating to your party you’ll just be flamed on, I can’t wait to see how annoyed people get on open world because of revenants going nuts using this to move bosses around.

It does have condi removal and a decent ammount if you spec for that, Jalis heal removes 6 condis/minute which is 2 cleanses less than Engineer, you also have the minor that removes condis on weapon swap on Invocation, the master on Salvation that removes a condi on dodge, Ventari does remove other 3 conditions in a low CD given that you have energy, and there’s de Corruption trait that gives resistance on Malyx usage, the problem is that you melt if you use Malyx resistance alone because the resistance uptime isn’t enough and the energy cost of skills drains you out before you can cleanse, same goes for all of revenant options for sustain.

Precision Strike is nice, Chill lets you catch up and set up attacks, and also makes the CDs on your enemy longer, if anything what it needs is another CC option, Immobilzie, Daze, KD or Stun, it’ll essentially serve the same purpose crippling your enemy to set down a burst.

leftyboy.9358:

Kidel.2057:

I don’t think they’re going to change the core mechanic at this point.

I think you misunderstand what a beta is for. There are alot of people commenting that legend swapping for energy, energy regen and consumption currently is a problem. Anet wants this feedback to make it a fun and enjoyable class to play. If there is an inherent problem with a core mechanic then this is the time to point it out so things can be adjusted.

Let’s spread out some stuff
1) Energy management vs cost: that’s one of the issues and potentially the main issue of the class at the moment, the damage issue has partially been adressed but you can’t do much if your abilities are high risk and low to no reward to use, even with 10 utilities you end up using 1 or 2 skills out of each stance, each time you swap and that is if the circumstance arises, open world content can be cleared with staff 3, staff 5, axe 5 and sword AA and just the healing skills.
2) The Revenant has nothing of value to offer to a party: as in every other profession has better support AND dps options than Revenant has and I seriously doubt Glint will fix this, the skills and traits need adjustments to make them more valuale, Assassin’s Pressence is redundant with fire fields from eles, doing 2000-3000 extra damage as a whole party just compensates for the loss of DPS of having a revenant in a party (that’s in speedclear/optimal min maxing group conditions), Healing in Ventari? that can be done with Water fields, Revenant Grants no protective boons or conditions that help with damage mitigation we have access to weakness and blind in decent ammounts though but we really need other ways to support party damage management, both defensive and offensively.
3) The profession is actually pretty interesting and fun to play as is IMO the game isn’t difficult enough to justify putting it on a better place, we the players who like the theme and playstyle that Revenant has brought are bent on trying to put it on par with the other professions, that’s it, specially because the weaker overall spot a profession is found the harder it’ll be to fit into the “meta” category and the harder it’ll be to be accepted on parties and that’s a fact, take a look at what happened to Necro the last 2 years.
4) Boosting the damage modifiers was a decent workup fix, but still Revenant is in the lowest tier of damage if you’re gonna do that then it’d better have loads of usefull party group support to make up for that, the profession has not access to that atm, people have compared Elementalist and Engineer to Revenant because of the access to different skillsets at 1 button tap, if we were to compare them Revenant is leagues and leagues away from them, both those professions are the top 2 on DPS Engineer is the top CDPS profession atm, they have smoke, fire and water fields on demand, at least 2 blast finisher on demand and can do much better party support that pretty much any other class.

Tl;DR The class is fun and interesting to play even if it isn’t in the best state, it has the same issues Necromancer had for the past 2 years plus it has a lot of energy cost vs efficiency of play issues mostly because the utility skills have high costs and low benefits on use.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

The choices are:
1. Remove Cooldowns.
2. Remove Energy cost.
3. Keep both but reduce the cost of one or both.
4. Leave them how they are now.

Most viable is 3, Removing CDs will make people hate on Revenants much more because they would just start spamming Sword 3 mindlessly when Staff 5 is way better… seriously though Removing CDs on weapons won’t fix it, lowering Legendswap CD would be viable but that would just promote sawping, using the most effective utility from a certain stance and repeat, removing energy costs on weapons is a viable option to as they already have CDs, leaving them how they are now? sure if they want Revenant to be the new core Necro (as in the most lackluster profession in the game), not that I have a problem with that but it surely would disappoint a lot of people.

Teutos.8620:

Q1: What is the design concept behind the Revenant?
Q2: How is he supposed to survive in a pvp match?
Q3: How is he supposed to survive in a pvp match as a Bersi or Marauder?

A: 1 that’s a tricky question, everyone will answer what they feel about the profession out of their playing experience, only the leading dev aka Roy would be able to give the most accurate answer. IMO they wanted to get a straightforward heavy armor magic user feel, which kind of is accomplished since heavy armor users classically are high sustain, moderate CC and moderate to low damage. Currently Revenant stands at the bottom on all of those.

A2: Patience, knowing when to use certain skills (staff 3, Mallyx resistance spam, heals, etc.) and energy management, it’s sort of playing a crossover between Thief/Mesmer and Meditation guardian… excepting no ports and no Invulnerability and… well it has the burst feel of those 3, you need to use the most survivability from your traits and always try to keep your energy between 40-60%, nice burst potential but a burst leaves you without escapes be it that you burst the enemy or that the enemy tries to burst you, Ventari is useless in PvP without Cleric Gear and with Cleric Gear you do no damage, most bang for buck options currently are Shiro/Jalis and Shiro Mallyx.

A3: only zerker spec currently that is viable enough because of the risk vs. reward is Mesmer given you’re not yoloing, I ran marauder and had no problems excepting against DPS Ranger, Bunker Necro, S/P Panic Strike Thief and MOD Mesmer, you really burn out your energy countering the CC on them, and they can easily peel and deny your burst options, since you really run out of energy if you try to get a kill from above 50% HP, also DS on Necros is really hard to counter as a Revenant for the same reason, they deny your burst and you have to wait on your burst skills plus legend swap to get back your energy while they just blast their damage out, best way to counter those? if you can’t win then ignore them and help elsewhere, just like any pvp situation where you can’t win alone.

Sylent.3165:

Hm was expecting seeing warrior or thief by now. But still nice

Actually that kind of gets me hyped for Berserker, if they follow the same motto than the original reveals, they revealed the professions they had to work most of because the devs thought mechanics were more complex, I’m not getting my hopes up since E-specs are just different ways to play the profession so far the only one that seems to be more effective than the original core specs is chronomancer, others are below what you could do with the core specs.

Crack idea, add F3 to toggle on/off energy costs for weapon skills, if you toggle it on they get buffs i.e. a direct 10% damage mod, better crit chance, etc.

Being more serious, removing the weaponskill energy costs is just enough, they already have cooldowns on them.

Adjusting some utily costs would be nice to Forced Engagement costing half your energy meaning you get locked in autoattacks and have no access to defenses for 2-3 seconds for taunt? no thank you it’s just worth it in some really specific situations it either needs to go down 25-30nergy cost or pulse protection/add ticks of damage or add something else for that much energy, Impossible Odds OP? yeah sure just for the 1 1/2 autoattack chain you can keep it up for, if upkeeps are gonna be that costly then make them cost effective, or again make them have an extra effect, Ventari has no utility asides healing and I find that pretty weak unless they have bosses that can hit for 21k instantly on PvE and most professions get better party protective support than plain heals with a delayed deliver thanks to having to activate the tablet, the list could go on, a lot has been said, there are some quality feedback threads out there, lets wait and see what devs have to say about all of it.

That is some kitten fus-roh-dah looking art, I hope the Elite is the skill Rytlock uses on the VB cutscene, spamming drgon ghosts at people is bad kitten enough to compensate anyhthing, heck you could make the other 4 skills spam chickenados and with the elite being that skill I’d be happy.

Killyox.3950:

Sylent.3165:

Brutal blade the 2nd attack in chain is extremely underpowered. The damage is way to low where the 3rd attack does not compensate for it. Yes it’s underpowered compared to many classes considering our 2 skill is junk, 3 skill is bad unless on solo target

Heck both necromancer and thief auto attacks crush revenant by about 25%. The swords damage is not good.

It’s actually strong. It hits twice, giving more vuln and hitting all in line. It’s just awkwardly presented due to 3/4s cast instead of 1/2 like the rest. #2 isn’t great but it’s not the worst. Lets you catch up people. It could use a buff though.

Coefficients don’t seem to be accord with the DPS delivered since they’re high but currently the DPS is around 6-6.5 k for both Sword/Axe and Staff, that’s the lowest DPS out of all professions.

PvE wise that’s too low considering the “party support” that Revenant brings which is just adding +150 party wide ferocity (assassin’s presence which is overkill considering you get fury and might uptime from other sources) and zerker gear gets you to 55-60% crit chance alone), some stability (given you take Jalis), 4-8k burst heal (that can be easily equaled by blasted waterfields) plus projectile destruction on Ventari (which is bad since you have reflects in 2 professions and 1 blind spam plus projectile destruction) and an unreliable spammable CC in Jade winds (which is weaker than Deep Freeze, I tried it and it didn’t always work and the stun durations is shorter), in short Revenant has nothing valuable to add to a party, you don’t need that much healing because you have a lot of defenses even in zerker gear: Water Fields, Protection, Weakness, Blind, Reflects/Projectile Destruction, Vigor, Positioning, LoS and well if you stand in the god kitten fire path that has tendrils growing out of it no healing, boons or protection will help you survive.

PvP wise the burst potential is there, but you have to be cautious and also hitting still targets is very much different from hitting a moving intelligent player, you won’t be able to hit them as much without getting countered, 1v1 I could burst around 50-70% HP with Axe 5, Axe 4, Sword 2 and Staff 5 (2-3 hits) of most classes besides Necromancers and Warriors however the set up for that included using either Displacement or Jade Winds so literally you bursted them to the point they could die that seems good right? well not so much, they could peel, heal and leave you locked in a legend with 20% energy and no options to counterpressure them until you either got to 50-70% energy, got weaponswap up or legend swap up, that’s why Revenants can’t do much 1v1 the energy cost of most abilities was too demanding vs your options to counterplay specially because other professions have better survival and defense options, even with the high damage modifiers you have.

skowcia.8257:

Kidel.2057:

They just need to get rid of the icd of the daggers.

In pve for sure. Theres one problem tho. Interval was made so that you cant deal too much damage at once.

Yeah sure damage would be a problem if Revenant was in the top 3 classes on DPS but DPS wise it’s in the bottom end of the foodchain, even lower than necro, burst damage wise not so much… but again Thief, Ranger, Mesmer and Reapershroud have more burst potential than Revenant, if we count Rampage as Burst potential Warrior and Engi are better than Revenant too so no point in having a delay because it “would be too much damage at once” also the initial heal is mediocre at best, if the deleay stays then make the base heal at least double the ammount it is now.

Krysard.1364:

Kidel.2057:

it’s not squishy, but not even tanky. Survivability in pve relies more on Shiro then Jalis.

Same in PvP, I mean, Jalis is the worst deffensive thing ever seen, it only have the elite to tank damage…

Still Jalis is great for a roamer and direct damage spec but has no survivability, also the cast times are plain useless I’ve tried to secure stomps with Inspired Reinforcements and have gotten KD, Fear and stun because the god kitten cast time and animation take too long to get down in time, Forced Engagement is just useful in SH vs. the Heroes… and that’s it, you can get a nice burst from Vengeful Hammers if you pop it right before porting to an enemy, specially if you proc the Hammer from the trait, there are some good combos, the main problem it’s that it lacks sustain no point in having burst potential if 4 out of the 9 professions can avoid it with an evade and 2 skills and then burst you because you can’t mitigate the damage.

IMO Revenant could use lower energy costs, more boons for passive defense and more damage, the as someone already said those problems were there before the PoI and haven’t been adressed, I just hope that Revenant feedback doesn’t get ignored for 3 years as Necromancers were, it’s not like Roy hasn’t done anything to try to get the Revenant in a better spot the team has done it, but most of the time devs try to “fix issues with the profession that we feel fit the theme of the profession” and well, that doesn’t help much if the root of the problem is not looked at.

Billionaire.5607:

I have spent a good time “theory crafting” (Not numbers) trait synergies, weapon synergies, understanding legend swapping, etc. I agree with the fact that under pressure there isn’t any escapes or active avoidance options. I just can’t find the synergy with revenant that I can find with other classes/builds. Am I missing something? This is from a pvp point of view. I did various 1v1s against different classes, a bunch of group Qs. When I was focused I could not escape properly (kite) and was shut down immediately. Not sure if anyone else notice the lack of revenants in pvp lately?

It’s pretty muchs summed up that damage is still not good enough and the problems of energy vs pressure uptime, that’s why some people have trouble vs. mesmers, rangers and thieves, if they stealth and you use sword your only option is Precision Strike until they go out of stealth, against thief hammers work well, but not so much vs. Ranger and Mesmer because of ranged attacks, Hammer sucks for PvP because it’s just too slow and predictable, if you manage to hit a drop the hammer it’s because they already used up their endurance OR you managed to effectively stun them with JW.

Griffith.7238:

Kidel.2057:

Griffith.7238:

Oh let me add yet another amazing thing about Revs. Infinite swiftness out of combat. Pop Impossible Odds wait until right before you run out of energy and then switch Legends immediately switch back to Shiro at 50 energy and pop IO again. Your welcome.

Yeah, I already asked that in another thread and Roy said it won’t be possible in the next BW. You’re welcome xD

LOL RIP =(

You still can run mace/jalis for perma swiftness uptime, the fire field on mace and the swiftness you get from Inspiring Reinforcement it’s worth the loss of DPS in some situations.

SolarDragon.7063:

Revenants are hugely weak to crowd control. Hope you’re good at tells and dodging. (Oh wait half the CC doesn’t have tells!)

It’s easy to dodge some immobs, the problem is that you can’t react to direct pressure/condition pressure and CC fast enough because you are outsustained very easily, the healing output and the utilities are not enough, you’ll have to use both legends to mitigate very little damage, if you do that then you run out of energy and afterwards you’re pretty much a free kill, if you do manage to get into a 2v2 in time Revenant is strong enough, but being nearly useless 1v1 is actually detrimental to your team.

Kidel.2057:

Since they probably want Jalis to feel slow, I may have another suggestion. Leave the cast time as it is, but add 5s Protection on cast with icd or 10% damage reduction for the duration.

Totally this, but also I feel that all the upkeep skills are lacking on the cost vs. effectiveness department, you’re drained out of energy in 3-4 seconds if you use them, but you’re better off using them in really specific situations or when you’re positive about not running out of energy.

It’s not that it’s squishy, it’s that Revenant has no chance to survive under pressure because of several things: 1) Energy is really hard to manage under constant pressure, try to survive a burst in PvP outside teamfights, you won’t be able to unless you play almost flawlesly, 2) Healing skills have low CDs but they healing output is lacking in those cases, 3) Malyx can’t manage conditions as well as devs thought it could, 4) lack of defensive boon/condition uptime: no access to protection you do have some access to weakness but it pales in comparison to other professions skills with access to weakness, 5) Jalis is supposed to be tanky but it actually isn’t it just has nice stability uptime, taunt at a high energy cost, some DPS in hammers and a suicide button as an elite.

Dragon Ruler X.8512:

I do believe the Revenant has improved since the last Beta, but it’s still not ready for the rest of the game.

Props to you for the hard work on this one, this actually should be bumped to the skies devs do need to take a look at this, I had the idea to make something like this to test Revenant’s viability but you beat me to it, as I see Revenant even when trying to minmax into either role it’s still not enough to bring it on par to other professions, specially in PvP a decent Revenant build can fare well against a subpar build but it can’t do much against an optimal build (meta builds) and I agree 100% with you, if Revenant goes live in the current state it’ll be the weakest profession out of the lot and will be heavily seggregated in all game modes.

Some other stuff I’d like to add:

Lack of reliable direct damage modifier traits there’s only one trait with this which is Targeted destruction and it’s quite good because it’s a master minor, but the others are too pigeonholed in certain situations, ferocious agression would be better if revenant had more fury uptime but it’s not that optimal at the moment.

Upkeep skills High energy cost and very situational, if they added another effect they would be much better even if they still were very situation base, some suggestions: Protective Solace: Reflect projectiles instead of destroying them, pulsating protection or aegis.
Impossible Odds: add lifesteal while active
Vengeful Hammers: pulse protection/retaliation while active
Embrace the darkness: pulse resistance while active and add 1-3 random conditions to nearby foes/deal extra damage per conditions on you

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

ranger has not had the chance to be a Main Feature of a team comp since they have to build around a old Preexsisting team comp which has not changed classes or set up , it is still Port tactics be it lighting flash or blink or ports with might stacking , medi guards ports ect.

Ranger Requires A different type of Team comp which has not been Tried yet and that is the reason why they are not choosen people just don’t know how to utilize a Ranger on a team which only knows how to do Port Tactics or Stealth tactics , beyond that you have Engis,necros and rangers which play on a Equal but totaly Different type of team style.

Again whats used is the most effective, even if it’s not a way to enhance directly 100% the performance of a player, IMO what you’re trying to do is speak about Rangers being called as bad, top players not using Rangers or Rangers being out of the meta, so that’s a rant between the lines so I’m assuming you play Ranger… anyways I do agree with you, the guy wasn’t playing at the whole potential of the build, meaning he still has room to grow, mix and match and fine tune.

There in fact have been teams with Rangers and top players using Rangers, take ROM fas an example he used Ranger in a match against TCG in the last Go4 cup, and if I remember well rank 55 dragons also ran with ranger in some matches and made it to the finals several times.

Another problem is that there’s not someone at least in the scene that can play Ranger at the same level as let’s say Chaith or Helseth can play their professions, if there was that kind of player it would actually benefit the reputation of ranger and thus it would get picked more often.

Apolo.5942:

Write down the bullkitten builds you hate to loose against which have no counterplay.

1- DD ele.
2- Insta invi burst down mesmer.
3- double endure pain rampage warrior.
4- invi burst down thief.
5- 5k crit litch necro.

1) DD Ele gets shots down by: Mantra Mesmer, Marauder Warrior with Rampage, Elixir X Engi with Rampage, anything with high physical damage output given their protection wears off, don’ts tep in an out of ring of fire, it’ll proc blinding ashes and also stack more burning on you, or just ingore it and help your team elsewhere then plus 1 the Ele, play smart.
2) Get away from the clones and anticipate the shatter, you shouldn’t really engage with a Mesmer if you can’t counter pressure or don’t have stunbreaks availeable, also target the mesmer as fast as possible instad of the clones.
3) Wait for the stances to get on CD, then burst it, learn to dodge hammer KD’s, if it goes in rampage kite and juke for 15 seconds, use blinds and weakness to get some damage off, or just Moa the warrior for extra giggles.
4) if you see the backstab or mug hit you just wait until it uses 2-3 skills, if it’s happy trigger or doesn’t wait long enough it’ll run out of energy and be easier to catch, just don’t pop out all your active defenses pointlessly.
5) use LoS, use blind and weakness… pretty much the same counterplay as rampage but easier since it can’t hit if you LoS it, don’t step on the marks, pop swiftness and peel, engage again once the skill goes in CD .

The fact that you don’t know how to counterplay a build doesn’t mean it can’t be done, if you don’t have enough skill to win against x or y build then do the smart thing and go help on teamfights, always try to outnumber your oponents, if you’re standing alone somewhere and are not fighting while your team is wiping 5v4 is a bad call, if the cap you’re fighting in isn’t of your team or worse you’re fighting offpoint and can’t down the enemy player it’s a bad call, try to make things go in your favor even if the situation isn’t so much with you.

If you want to learn how to fight against certain builds then 1v1 a lot, there’s private arneas for that, also keep in mind most of the builds you’re referring to are meta builds which means they’re the best bang for your buck at the intented role, don’t expect to win against them with every build you use, you just won’t and that applies for this or any other game out there it’s nothing surprising or new.

Elincia.5174:

I was the elementalist on the other team and I have no idea how any of you would get offended by that. I am very familiar with the team we fought and am friends with most of them. It was literally playful banter. There was no harmful intention behind it. This hasn’t been the first time those words have been used in Guild Wars 2 and won’t be the last. If you have children watching COMPETITIVE tournaments, then that’s at your hands, not the players. I am not limiting my language because of a couple kids watching. It is the Internet, nothing is censored. You should be the smart one to figure that out.

Take a look at the board, it’s full of whining about nerfing classes instead of asking for advice to get better, sparring partners or hardcounter to x or y builds/professions. If I’ve seen anything is people ranting from elitism in this game end up acting the same as the elitist people they call out, if they don’t like something they’ll just rant and neglect in the same way, go try and give advice to someone and you’ll get the next answer: I know what I’m doing I’ve been playing since beta, have 50,000 APs, it’s just a game, and kitten you I play whatever I want, whenever I want. The best thing to do is to just go on, shut up, and ignore them like you would do in your daily life, sucks because at least in PvP the competitive community won’t grow for good if people don’t try to get better at the game, I might come of as rude or whatever but it’s just a fact, you have to try to get better until you get better at something and hey you might as well get yourself something useful, like some extra money from weekly tourneys, it’s not much but it can pay your gas or something.

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

Discussing the Viablity ..it not what this topic was about but i’ve got 5 points for you.

1. did the Ranger Successfuly Support in the role of prevention on Far into Mid : yes
2. was the Build able to Stand upto Meta builds : yes
3. Did the build provide Ample CC : yes
4. Was the player a Great ranger Maybe not as great if he Practiced a bit more but was he able to play without any Handicap : yes
5 . was he able to win Cap / de-cap nodes : Yes

all those points = Team Viablilty
weather or no Ranger is Viable even if it is in the Alright Catagory because the build he was running Was not Opptimaised to its Full potentional he missed fears , used CC at wrong times and generaly could of done better , including using Taunt or Wolf fear while being more than the required units away.

on that note , he played well , the build is good could he be the +1 in G,W,E,E yes the class can and since it is a option I class that as Viable!

On topic, I think that the OP is making a storm in a glass of water, the same for all the other people complaining about the commentaries, it actually is good to see someone commenting on plays, skill usage and teamcomps like Nos did, even professional sports casters do this on Football, Soccer and even Olympic events,what made them actually lash out is beyond me.

Returning to your post if something is viable it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s optimal, if we’re talking of things at a competitive level being viable is not enough, you have to perform the best you can and that includes teamwork, communication, personal skill and skills as a whole team, 1 player doesn’t make a team, 1 bad play doesn’t lose a game, but accumulated bad choices, bad plays, bad communication and lack of skill and teamwork do, the team as a whole took some bad decisions as the casters stated and that made them lose.

See those NFL Players that are 6’2 and 264lb? they used drugs to enhance themselves even if they say they don’t and even if the tests say they don’t, why do they do it? it’s the most effective way to achieve such a heavy weight and having that much muscle to achieve optimal performance in their sport, the same goes for cyclists, gymnasts or any other sportsman.

Every profession can be viable if you have the personal skill to make it viable, if it is optimal for a given role is a completely different thing, that’s why metagames exist, if something gives you the best results with the least effort, or it has a high risk high reward approach but you’re actually can manage it well, you’re gonna use it, top players and teams follow this concept in every e-sports game at a competitive level, that’s why you see teams running 2 mesmers, 2 eles, 1 thief nowadays. Even Phantaram has stated Abjured he wanted to make a team with the best players he could find of what he thought were the strongest professions to have the best results they could, go ask the guys that’ve won WTS and they’ll probably agree with that, why? simple they earn extra money for their daily life out of that.

If you’re not at a competitive player, you can play solo with a condition signet Elementalist or a Cavalier Signets Warrior, just don’t expect people on your team to welcome, cheer on you and react well if you don’t perform as expected even if you’re not palying at a top level.

It just tells that a player was in the right moment and place to take credit for objectivs, that don’t have necessarily anything to do with the total score of the team in a match, now we need to break down how do you get points in the personal score, again Match Score is a totally different thing:
Player kills if they get downed and rally you don’t get any points, count for 5 points, if a player dies and you tagged damage you get 5 points too
Objective Assaulter if you kill a player that was capturing/defending a cap point you get 15 points instead of 5.
Skirmisher Killing a player offpoint, that’s 10 points.
Objctive Assaulter/Defender/Neutralizer that has to do with turning caps to your color, defending caps you have or turning caps white, 10 points each, assaulter/neutralizer just give points when the bar is filled or it gets white, defender triggers when you kill an enemy near a cap that is your collor

Map specific:
Kyhlo:
Trebuchet hit if you hit something with a treb it’s free 3 points
Trebuchet Destroyed/Repaired 15 points for this
Niflhel:
Forest Creature Kill 25 points per mob (reason behind caps being priority, 1 point each 2 seconds per cap=5 points in 10 seconds=30 points in a minute, wow that’s 5 points more than the beasts given you don’t get decapped).
Foefire:
Guild Lord Kill 25 points if you tag the lord.
Temple:
Commune 10 points.
Firs example: Kyhlo, total team kills are 20, you tagged 14 of those, 4 of those kills an enemy died in a cap, you used de treband hit 10 times, repair the treb of your team, take down the treb of the enemy team, make 2 decaps (just neutralize), 2 kills offpoint, cap 3 times thats: 14(5) + 4(15) + 10(3) + 1(30) + 2(10) + 2(15) + 3(10)= 70 + 60 + 30 + 30 + 20 + 30 + 30 = 270 personal score, you’re the 2nd place in personal score after a team mate that had 290 as personal score. Final result your team wins 500 to 430 in a close match, total game time: 14ish minutes.

Second example: Niflhel, 3 full decaps (counts as 20 points), tag 5 enemies killed, kill 2 beasts, kill 1 enemy offpoint, make 1 cap for your team, defend1 time in a 3v3 and kill 2 enemies, given that somehow your team rocks and carries you to a decent loss in a 11ish minute match: 200 points, you’re the at the top on the personal score, while your teams personal score ranged 90-120. You did good for yourself but your team lost 500-410, just because you weren’t in any teamfight or did a bad job rotating from one cap to another, also beast kills make personal scores skyrocket in this map.

Third Example: Temple of the Silent Storm, tag 10/15 kills, 2 caps neutralized, 1 capture, defended 2 times, 2 kills offpoint, 1 commune: 140 points.
Your team wins 500-290

All of the above apply to very active roamers with high dps, mesmers, thieves, engineers, warriors (current meta). Pointholders/full bunkers will always get less points, and in the same scenario a not so skilled roamer or a roamer with a team that doesn’t favor him moving in between sidepoints will have a lower score than any other team member, you can get to the top of the personal score board with just side objectives in each map, even after all the rank changes people farmed ranks by just completing caps so they had higher personal scores even if they lost the match.

Tl;DR personal score tells you how many objectives a player completed which doesn’t really mean who’s the MVP, and if a certain player is trying to win the match he/she certainly wouldn’t care about the secondary objectives or personal plays as much as teamfights/team support.

Kidel.2057:

Legendswap with no cd = infinite energy, so no.
You still don’t get what legendswap is for and how Revenant is supposed to work.

I do get it, but you’re missing a point, if legendswap was instant/ had a lower CD a lot of the problems that stem from the mechanics like the profession feeling slow, hitting at most 3 utilities and having a hard time with sustain would be fixed, sounds OP, but it’s not that much, it would just give you needed acces to better energy management and trait procs. There’s so much you cand do spamming 1 single strong skill permanently, mainly because most of the support skills on revenant just pale in comparison to other profession utilities (they’re in pair with Necromancer and Ranger utility so there you have it), also CD’s and energy costs could just be adjusted, I’m betting that if this was the case people wouldn’t even have asked for weaponswap in the first place.

Jalis is way much better than Mallyx, as you have access to taunt, a decent ammount of stability, condi cleanse and damage mitigation, in Mallyx you’re gonna get overloaded with conditions and melt, Shiro’s a good option because of Impossible Odds is another option for stomping and upping your dps, but I’d rather run Shiro/Jalis, Devastation, Salvation and Invocation with Sword/Axe and Staff, or Mace/Axe and Staff (Staff has blinds, and extra heal, swiftness, regen, blocks and some CC), Mallyx needs a lot of polishing before it works as Roy intends it to work, it just can’t cope with the ammount of condition pressure the playstyle is supposed right now you just walk in pop 2 skills, and wait for your death to conditions and direct damage if you’re in LDS.

lighter.2708:

what makes you think that there are no other ways to fall back during a fight and still have a means of actually doing something?
D/D is completely viable and one of the best builds in PvP.

Weaponswap is ok, it just brings another tool that actually was needed, people who compare Revenant to Elementalist (specially a cantrip build) just don’t get that there’s a lot of difference between having access to not only 20 weaponskills, but also to traits and utilities that have much more synergy than any of the weapon-trait-legend combinations on revenant… also what makes strong the cantrip D/D build is that you have on demand might through fire fields (which also apply a constant uptime of burn and is more than enough to make half of the condition pressure on the build), you have protection on attunement swap, fire aura if you leap trhough the fire field, stuns, regen, it’s the build that has the most condi clear… overall it’s the only build that does sustain well while just going thorugh your basic damage+stacking rotation, if a single trait, cooldown or field got changed the build would go out of the meta also that’s only viable if you’re a pointholder in PvP, most of the usefulness for PvE and WvW it’s that staff is ranged, has ridiculous damage, AoE and field avalability, the firefields are more than half of the reason elementalist is as strong as it is, it has acces for the most useful boons for your party and top notch dps, give that ammount of support, damage and versatility to any other profession and they’ll instantly be 80% better than Ranger or Necromancer.

As of the main point of the thread, IMO I do agree with you in the fact that weaponswap (or buffing the damage output on weapons) do help, but it doesn’t fix the problems the Revenant design has, the problem stems from the way the Energy+Legend Swap mechanic works. If you look at individual skills some of them seem strong on paper, but most of the time you find yourself using 1-2 skills then having to wait on regeneration or legend swap, it makes you easier to counterplay and actually harder for you to mitigate pressure while being able to deal damage, you either do one or the other and have little room for other ways of play, which ends up in making the profession feel like it lacks synergy, combat flow or that skills are not rewarding enough becuase they’re not cost-effective.

Having to wait for 10 seconds before you’re able to swap legends is what made the people ask for weaponswap in the first place because you were locked in a single legend running out of energy for 10 seconds while not being able to do much with just 1 weapon and no way to use your utilities, again comparing elementalist attunements and engineer kits with this mechanic is pointless overall kits and attunements add much more rewarding skills than having 10 utility skills (you can deal damage, stack boons and mitigate damage while waiting on CDs with ele, and you can stack conditions and boons while dealing damage and using utility on engineer also while waiting on important CDs), there’s no point in having 10 utility skills with no cooldowns if you’re gonna use 2 skills on each stance because of the high energy cost and wait 10 seconds to be able to do anything else besides autoattacks and 2-3 weapon attacks, let alone try to manage your energy and damage mitigation/output in an efficient way and that adds a lot to the profession feeling slow and with no synergy between skills and traits, If anything Legendswap cooldown should be either reduced or removed alltogether, yeah it sounds so strong and overpowered but if you take into account energy costs and cooldowns you actually make players think when it’s worth to burn your energy and CDs to your favor and add an easy way to add balance to the profession because you can always add cooldowns or change energy costs to skills instead of revamping the whole way the core of the profession works.

Artaz.3819:

If it’s at all based off GW1 (it will be), it’ll be based on soft CC (chill/immobilize like Crystal Bonds and slow like Crystal Haze) and Retribution boon like Jagged Crystal Skin. Crystal Hibernation makes for an aesthetically themed group heal/regeneration (something the Revenant currently lacks).

Glint is made for battlefield disruption and supports a more control-orientated level playstyle. Hopefully, it’ll have an interrupt or another mobility option of some sort as well or it’ll be an odd, clunky one requiring frequent swapping in/out to use properly.

There’s more than enough group healing in Ventari, heck it’s even an overkill if HoT’s PvE is as easy as the current PvE, Jalis is supposed to be made around CC and “punishing” enemies.
What the revenant lacks for party support and theme is boon spamming, specially good party support boons like protection, vigor or might, Revenant as of now has very limited access to might and fury and the uptime is too low to make it worthwhile, but as far as Revenant is supposed to feel as a sort of high risk-high reward frontline class that focuses on manipulating enemy damage and negating it, and I feel like it doesn’t accomplish that quite well yet.

For the Elite spec, skill placeholder icons found by datamining seem like glyphs/signets. If anything they’ll be based on Glint’s Skills from GW just like half of the LAS skills but I don’t expect anything too much of a gamechanger or that is party focused sadly, we’ll have to wait another 1-3 moths to see.

So far 3/4 of the traitlines and legends are pretty much selfish and if it wasn’t for Assassin’s Pressence, the Burst Healing output on LCS (currently not needed and I doubt it will ever be unless your team is sort of inexperienced), both Protective Solace & Field of the Mists (Mesmer & Guardian do Projectile Deflection instead of destruction which is 100% better), Warding Rift, Forced Engagement and Inspired Reinforcement the Revenant would stand last in line in both damage dealing and support, yes it has good options, but still Guardian, Warrior and Elementalist can provide both more damage and party support than what Revenant can probably deliver.

Rym.1469:

Kidel.2057:

Rym.1469:

Imo, Devastation is dull as hell.

There’s really nothing interesting as a concept in the whole traitline besides last 2 GMs: Life Siphon when flanking and Stability remover.

I actually like Devastation a lot. It’s pretty straightforward vulnerability+damage multipliers for PvE, while having block bypass and stability removal for PvP. Even tank and healer builds may like it for the syphons.

It’s a trait line that is good for probably every Revenant build, like Invocation.

I know it’s simple to basics and viable, but it always hurts me that in such wonderful combat system they can’t just get rid of most stupid and boring damage modifiers in the game and use some creativity with traits.

People don’t get used to the active combat system that much and they barely use it, actually a lot of people complain that it’s too hard to learn the animations/have the coordination to dodge attacks/learn the skill animations to actually be more skilled, if you made traits more focused in certain combat situations people would plainly go jackhammer crazy about it. Also making dynamic traits makes it harder to balance because the devs don’t want to spread effects of traits in between game modes; simply put you’ll want higher damage modifiers for PvE content like 10-20% bonus based on your total damage (think about bosses ranging between 500-800k HP and actual challenging content) but if you apply the same modifiers to PvP it would just make pure damage builds faceroll defensive builds even more so than it’s done now.

As of now there are a lot of synergies between traits, weapons and legends, the problem is the flow of skills feels slow because of utility effects, energy costs and legend cooldown times (high risk not so much of a reward instead of high risk high reward), that’s what makes Mallyx so bad at managing energy and condition pressure and what rends the healing overkill on Ventari almost useless in PvP and WvW.

Kidel.2057:

As I told you in the other trait, you are under the impression that
1) You get fury on stunbreak, always, so also on legendswap.
2) When you get Fury your whole crit chance it 50% higher

Both are wrong.
1) You get fury if you stunbreak while you are stunned. Unless you are stunned 100% of the time, I can’t see how are you supposed to get 100% fury uptime. You don’t usually get stunned a lot, expecially in pve. And this isn’t even really good, since you’re forced out of your legend, maybe going to a legend where you have things on cd, or maybe you can’t even legendswap because it’s on cd.
2) Only our crit rate bonus from fury is 50% stronger, meaning you get +30% crit rate under fury instead of the normal 20%. It’s a 10% difference and Roy confirmed it (it wasn’t clear).

According to the post on changes I thought legend swap lost it’s CD so yo can change in between them like they were kits, so the fury proc should change each time you swap as it has 5 seconds of ICD… the thing is I did misread that and it’s just that they made it INSTANT CAST. Which then ruins a lot of the things I thought Revenant Could Achieve. As for Roiling Mists if the desired effect is increasing fury’s effect from 20% crit to 30% crit they should fix the tooltip, as it’s understood that it affects total crit chance and not only fury.

As I see it Legend swap shouldn’t have a CD if weaponswap has a CD, or a CD reduction trait at least simply because it would allow to manage energy and make the profession feel much more fluid.

Knox.8962:

savacli.8172:

• Maniacal Persistence seems like the go-to GM, but it seems that Rolling Mist will push us over the top for crit chance.

Maniacal Persistence is an absolutely terrible trait for anyone over 25% crit. It is possibly the best choice of the group of GM traits there, but it is still abysmal.

Actually I just found out you literally can get to permanent 100% crit chance by given that you take Precision food or use Berserker gear or get anywhere near 50-55% base critical chanc, if you pick Devastation and Invocation. Roiling Mists gives 50% extra effectiveness to critical hit rate while under the effects of fury, and given that you switch legends each 5 seconds you have permanent fury uptime, if you have 56% base critical chance thats (56 base crit chane + 20 from fury) x 1.5= 115% crit chance while under the effects of fury, and also have 7% extra damage while under the effects of fury, maniacal persistance is a bit overkill, but since you can’t actually spam boons your fury will get stripped quite easily, not that it’s a true problem because Invoker’s rage has a 5 seconds ICD and all this is great because it means you can use either Salvation or Retribution to make other type of builds, I am eager to see what can be done with the current changes with Rev.

Neomir.7493:

I havn’t tested the Rev yet but I am theorycrafting a build I think will fit my playstyle.

A lack of on demand stability can be played around with clever dodge rolls, it might seem, but for me I need a ‘zergdiving’ (there, I said it) tool.

Will Revenant have any sort of mist form/endure pain/stone signet/distortion/invuln/exlixir s type of ability? Does it have one already? If it did would it be considered too powerful? I.e. There’s a reason Warrior doesn’t get protection etc.

Interested to hear.

Legends as of the last change announcement have no CD, so you do have permanent stability and weakness on foes (Jalis 7 pulses stability and weakness each second, the skill lasts 5 seconds and it has a CD of 5 seconds) so there’s some damage mitigation there,you’ll have to rely on your team mates to get protection since currently the only way to get protection is proc it when you get CC on you, you can get nice sustain with Jalis and Ventari if they keep the no CD on legend swap, the problem is you’ll either need to pick both Retribution and Salvation to maximize sustain and group utility, or Devastation+Retribution/Salvation if you don’t have enough damage which in a zerg scenario there’s people with other roles that can compensate for that.

As for invulnerability you have no currently source for that, 1 spammable evade on Shiro, 3 ways to grant a form of passive damage mitigations through traits plus Jalis elite so you can actually soak a ton of damage, and get to full HP because the heals on Ventari do really get overkill, it’s a matter of actually being able to manage your energy, you also have some nice control capabilities (stability, weakness, taunt, knockbacks, elites can stun for 2 seconds if traited, etc.) given that you spec for that.

The problem with Revenant’s last iteration because your damage output was too low both direct and condition damage and thus it rendered your survivability less effective while enemies could recover really fast from both your condition pressure and direct damage, while dealing much more condition pressure and direct damage that you could manage, you were outsustained and outdamaged all the time even against lv 80 normal mobs, literally every Orr or SW mob felt like soloing a champion.

TL;DR yes you can zergdive, but don’t expect it to carry the whole zerg by itself.

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

Can we get a stun break in Ventari and Mallyx? Currently you have to swap to other legends have stun breakers and this becomes redundant when you can trait to break stun when swap legends. Just for diversity sake so you’re not forced into that traitline or legends.

Not sure if I agree with you or not, Empty Vessel is a minor trait, so you’ll always get stunbreak when swaping legends, the profession design makes having critical chance uptime really high, if any traitline needs to be picked as baseline in revenant is Invocation because it has a bit of every traitline on it, plus it has potentialy permanent fury on yourself, the passive fury and might generation is quite good, condition removal on legend swap, damage, healing and incoming damage modifiers can be used with other traitlines to give then a boost or add some support if you think you need it, think of Invocation like Arcana for Elementalists, Strength on Warriors or Virtues on Guardians it’s reliable and stapple for the majority of builds, and I myself couldn’t rely much on staying more than 15-20 seconds per legend, right now you can camp weapons, but you need to swap legends constantly to manage energy and maximize utility (or personal DPS if you run Shiro).

Ok now, the final last notes I just remembered I had a problem with revenant weapon sets: they have no acces to cleave on adjacent foes excepting for staff and certain skills on the other weapons, I’ll leave damage alone until we see that on the next iteration (assuming there’s one before release/betas and Roy decides to readjust damage on weapons), and there’s also some things I’d like to see implemented on some weapon skills.

Hammer: I’d just like field of the mists to reflect projectiles instead of blocking them, increase the energy cost to 15-20 and cooldown to 20 seconds.

Staff: Increase cleave on autoattack to 5 targets
Debilitating Slam: reduce number of foes to 3 and increase weakness duration to 4 seconds, increase cooldown on Punishing Sweep/Debilitating Slam to 8 seconds

Sword mainhand:
Precision Strike: add to the text tool tip “Strike nearby foes with cold precision” so that chill doesn’t feel out of place
Unrelenting Assault: The animation is cool and all, but it could get messy if people just used the skill for the looks and then pulled mobs unnecesarily, also since you don’t completely evade I would like it to just cleave 2 foes adjacent to your target, and each time you shadowstep just move behind, on the sides and infront of the target, that way you can still get hit, but also can negate some damage while channeling the skill, to compensate for the burst reduce number of hits from 7 to 5.

Sword Offhand:
Duelist’s Preparation: It didn’t seem like you could move while channeling the skill, but if it roots you in place it feels kind of out of clunky as other similar skills allow moving while channeling

part 3 and final notes
Retribution another solid in what it tries to accomplish line.
-Reflexive Summon weak for a GM trait, Decrease ICD to 10-15 seconds and chance on hit to 33%
-Empowering Vengeance very weak for a grandmaster trait given that you take retaliatory evation, you have no acces to retaliation other than soothing stone, and even then it’s just 4 seconds of retaliation, so the trait isn’t reliable, change to: 1) chance to gain retaliation 2 seconds 30% when hit + base effect, ICD 10 seconds 3) give yourself and allies might(8s) each time you lose equal or more than 5% of your total HP
Salvation Kind of redundant on healing power buffs as they feel they’re all over the place and don’t enhance any other form of support asides healing, just like LCS.
-Tranquil Balance Could be merged with Selfless Amplification, you already have a trait that increases healing that is baseline, having 20% extra healing while above 75% is a bonus, suggested change: Convert 2 conditions on yourself and allies to boons each time a skill drops your energy below the threshold: 50 energy, ICD 10 seconds
-Hardened Foundation forces you to have Healing Power Based stats, would change to gain 150 Toughness while on LCS, grants protection (3s) each time you use a skill that heals an ally.
-Tranquil Benediction The orbs are realeased with the last hit of Staff autoattack, and swiftness isn’t so useful while in combat, change Swiftness (3s) to Vigor (3s).
-Selfless Amplification Merge with Tranquil Balance since it only boosts Healing done on allies, it reduces redundant traits that buff healing and lets room for healing yourself better under pressure and room for better energy management, plus brings diversity in picks for the traitline and allows for a more dynamic type of support outside of pure healing.

Revenant is quite interesting, but it lacks in support variety and potential boon/condition generation, making boon removal from you easy, condition pressure isn’t great as you rely on just 1 weaponset an 1 legend for that, in the last iteration the class really lacked survivability outside ventari/jalis and even so it could get outdamaged relatively easily, and the damage was underwhelming, it certainly has room for improvements and I hope that the survivability and utility options, mostly in party situations for PvE get better.

P.S. Will add opinions on weapons in a next post, also edited the LDS suggestions for skills

part 2, continuing with suggestions to trait changes:

Devastation it’s a solid trait line for what I assume it tries to accomplish
-Malicious Reprisal: Assassin’s Pressence and Rapid Lacerations are just much better than this trait, as it’s ICD is 30 seconds long and it only applies if your target uses aegis or blocks, if anything it could be themed around making stronger Phase Traversal and the unblockable buff it gives you, change to: 1) give 2 extra unblockable charges after using Phase traversal, 2) unblockable attacks deal 20% extra damage, 3) each time you hit with an unblockable attack you grant to yourself/allies fury (5 seconds).

Corruption has some good damage modifiers, but doesn’t sinergyse well with LDS and Revenant has little access to conditions other than Mace/Axe and the LDS utilities.
-Demonic Defiance the LDS really needs the extra damage mitigation that comes from the extra Resistance but still it’s not enough if faced against heavy condition pressure, either: 1) make the resistance on LDS skill usage last 3 seconds or 2) merge the trait with Replenishing Despair.
-Replenishing Despair Same issue as with Demonic Defiance it’s not enough to mitigate condition damage, either: 1) merge with Demonic Defiance, 2) increase healing per condition applied to 160-200, if you’re suffering from damaging conditions make the healing tick each second damage is applied to you 3) Change name to something gimmicky like Gift of Despair, that copies a condition back to foes each time a condition is applie to you with athreshold of 3 conditions:
-Venom Enhancement your only source of poison is the autoattack chain of mace, but you won’t go past 3 stacks, you can technically go up to 4-6 stacks with Mace and Impossible odds, but that locks you in a Stance/Weapon combination just for the sake of taking this trait, overall the other 2 minor adept choices are much better menaing this trait will never get picked, suggested changes: 1) keep the original effect and make LDS skills give poison on use, 33% chance to apply poison on critical hits or 2) merge the base effect with pulsating pestilence; replace with: Enhance your blood with venom, giving having a 25% chance to apply posion (6 Seconds) ICD of 20 seconds, damage dealing conditions applied to you are less effective (reduces damage by 25% and duration by 1 second).
-Bolstered Anguish given that you have 2 or 3 conditions or are using LDS it’s good, but it doesn’t synergize much in teamplay mainly because some skills will cleanse conditions from allies (cleansing flame, ray of judgement, cleansing wave, healing turret, healing spring… etc), change: make it give charges like Rapid Lacerations that give 5% damage increase for each condition on you, triggers with 2 conditions and is reaplied each time a condition is applied to you, stacks up to 5 the buff lasts for 5 seconds even if a condition is removed, theoretically speaking the total bonus of damage with the trait as is is 3% per condition on you, there’s 13 conditions so that’s up to 49% extra damage if you have all the conditions in the game in you, so making it give a total of 15% extra damage plus making it last for 5 seconds, it might need tweaking since all condition base builds would be punished heavily if you ran this trait with condi clears.
-Pulsating Pestilence change the base effect to: 1)increase trigger chance up 25%, 2) trigger when receiving damage from all sources equal or more than 3% of maximum health

So far Revenant is not bad, but it’s not in the greatest place, it could use some fixes and has potential to grow into a profession like engineer or elementalist but with heavy armor, in the last beta it needed more damage and survivability, most of the traits are solid still some of them are redundant and others will just never get picked, weapon skill effects seem good but damage output needs to be tested again in a live patch.

These are my suggestions for some changes (might take more than 1 or 2 posts)
Legends:
Mallyx LDS is supposed to be high risk high reward and manipulate conditions on yourself to punish your enemy, in the last iteration it really failed to do so, mainly because it fell short on heavy condition pressure.
Empowering Misery: Add effects besides the base action of the skill 1) Copies 1 condition to 5 foes around you, or 2) gives 3 energy per condition maximum 12 energy, or 3) grant 2 stacks of might (8 seconds) for each condition on you
Pain Absorption: reduce cost to 25-30 energy , Party wide resistance 2s+2s per condition transfered to yourself.
Banish Enchantment: reduce cost to 20 energy, or add 600 damage per boon removed with the skill
Unyielding Anguish: add an effect to the base skill: copy 1 condition to foes in the area you landed.
Embrace the darkness: Increase upkeep to -10 and add one of the following: copies 2 conditions to 5 foes each second (instead of 1), 2) copies conditions to 5 foes each second (including full stacks as it just copies 1 stack) , 3) pulse 400 damage per condition on you each second
Ventari needs to give more boons as it feels like a burst heal one trick pony
Project Tranquility You efectively lose 1-2second for switching to ventari and then activating the tablet, if anything either project automatically the tablet or add a passive via minor traits that applies regeneration/small heal ammount when you switch to LCS to make up for time, I know it sounds stupid but if somehow you needed that second to save your butt, or worse your party you would wish you had faster hands (or a fix to the tablet mechanics).
Protective Solace nice and seems strong, but there are better picks against projectiles in other professions mainly because they either secondarily increase damage or give added direct protection (Wall of Reflection, Feedback and Smokescreen), upkeep could be made 10 energy baseline and pulse Protection (3s) to allies each 3 secs add 15-40 seconds of cooldown after using diminish solace depending on the strength
Natural Harmony add 10 seconds of vigor, decrease healing to 900-1200, and add a CD of 20 seconds
Purifying Essence and Energy Expulsion don’t need changes IMO.
Jalis The stance is quite solid, but the stance has almost no sinergy with the might while hit under retaliation trait since the retaliation uptime is low, which is kind of sad because the whole theme of the legend and retribution traitline of punishing enemies for trying to engage you fits with the effect of retaliation.
Vengeful Hammers couldn’t find the damage tooltip anywhere, and I don’t remember how hard they hit, they move quite slow and the counterplay is just staying out of range of the hammers which gets tricky if you’re not using a Hammer as weapon (doesn’t sinergyse well with other weaponsets), and even if it indeed increases damage output it could have a more interesting approach, specially given that you have a grandmajor trait that has almost no way to proc, again increase upkeep to 10, lower the base damage of hammers by 10-20% and add: 1) gain retaliation (5s) after being hit while the skill is active or 2) gain retaliation (1s) each second while the skill is active or 3) the hammers deal back 35-50% of the damage of skills used against you to the attacker (doesn’t apply to damaging conditions) or 4) just increase the travel speed of the hammers
Rite of the Great Dwarf 2 3/5 seconds cast is easy to interrupt, but it doesn’t seem to affect the skill that much abesides you do need some way to be counterplayed so the skill is good as it is.
Shiro the Legend skills are selfish, but it accomplishes in matching the theme and skills quite well, no comments here

Staff has most of it’s use on WvW as frontline/backline healer and Fractals because it applies at least some weakness (pales in comparison to other classes sources of weakness, for example if you compare it to Call to Arms which grants vigor 10s and applies 6 seconds of weakness) and has blinds and an extra heal, also some of the procs on Salvation traits can be useful asides healing because, excepting you’ll trade of some damage for rather mediocre utility, you can have 1 blind each 20-30 seconds with procs, plus the blinds from warding rift, Tranquil Benediction seems as a reliable source of regen if you’re not using Ventari but IMO the trait would be way much more useful if it granted vigor, resistance or protection instead of swiftness and Momentary Pacification can be used as an emergency daze each 10 seconds since the only elite that has a CD is rite of the great dwarf, a build focused on control could use Jalis & any other legend and picking Either Devastation, Salvation & Invocation, with Staff and Mace/Sword, you have a knockback, 2 immobilizes, taunt, 2 sources of weakness, blind on procs and daze on elite.

Aeolus.3615:

Kidel.2057:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

=(

Hopefully perception will be a bit different next iteration.

Don’t be sad, we know you’re putting effort into this.

I can totally see DPS Revenant being a thing, even if theoretical dps is still way lower then Warrior/Guardian/Elementalist.

The problem is that Revenant is not going to have much more survivability. It’s going to be kill before getting killed.

Tank Revenant won’t be possible if things don’t change.

The problem i noticed is similiar to guardian (mace/shield), defensive builds with low mobility can be easilly defeated trough high mobility or high damage builds (metabuilds are extremly good at this, and extremelly good within some classes), the game dont support that defensive/tactifull gameplay.

The problem is not only on the revenant.

It’s the combat mechanics, and your concern only adresses PvP/WvW Roaming.

“Tank” builds are not viable because defenses and damage mitigation come from boons and if you have access to it weakness/blind, positioning, crowd control, blocks and dodge also play a role on this, that’s why the celestial meta was so strong before the patch you want a good bunker/node keeper? get a profession with some mobility, moderate damage and acces to boons that amplify the damage they deal and decrease the damage they take and you have it, thoughness and healing alone are not reliable on fights that last longer than 30-60 seconds because in other professions you end up without cooldowns (revenant just runs out of energy), with your boons converted to conditions, tons of condition pressure over you and you get outdamaged by 2-3 players focusing you if no one helps you mitigate damage. I actually find this more challenging because it makes you think on what skills to use and when you should use them, if you should disengage or stay there even if you’ll die just to stall the attackers and not just a bash fest on keys to regenerate yourself and stand in the middle of the skirmish like an allmighty piñata.

PvE wise you just need to min/max DPS for your party and then for yourself and the same could be said, mobs don’t spam autoattacks, most of the time are stationary if you are on melee range and you just need protection, vigor, weakness, blind, blocks to manage the heavy hits they might do to you, not counting that you have 2 dodges, the highest damage that could 1 shot you can be mitigated and even then, you’re better off killing faster because if your boon/condition upkeep is low and you get outhealed, your utility skills will be on cooldown, and eventually you’ll die. That’s why people of the speedclear scene use berserker gear even in high level fractals.