Guild Wars 2

During HoT betas, Rev was pretty bad without weapon swap, and I think most of us agree that weapon weapon swap has made Rev not just much better, but viable.

That said, I do agree with your point that Rev was not made with weapon swap in mind. Initially, the devs wanted Rev to swap utility skills and not weapons. Rev has very few weapon options (fewer than any other class, save Ele, but they have attunement swap) – this low number of available weapons works when Rev can’t weapon swap but leaves little room for build versatility when we do have weapon swap.

Additionally, ANet created an interesting possibility with Rev’s underwater weapon, which has two auto-attacks (one ranged/condi and one melee/direct damage).

I think it is probably too late to make any drastic changes now. In the long-term I think Rev would have been better off without weapon swap, but with the following changes made to Rev terrestrial weapons to support this:
-two auto-attacks on some or all mainhand/two-hand weapons to support versatility
-reduced cooldowns on some weapon skills (because Rev would be unable to swap)
-increased versatility of weapon skills (because Rev would be unable to weapon swap)

For example, hammer is a ranged weapon with no ability to kite. If Rev had no weapon swap, this problem would need to be addressed.

Thanks for sharing. The new sword#2 looks potent single-target if used wisely, as expected (barring bugs that others have already mentioned).

It looks like you’re also minimizing the facet of light nerf by simply activating the facet before you need the heal. It’s too bad about the shield #5 healing nerf though … I haven’t gotten to play with the new changes, but the shield seems like it may now be undertuned – what do you think?

I have not used Diabolic Inferno with either of these elites, so there may be a bug. However, also remember that Diabolic Inferno seems to trigger on your character after the elite is activated (e.g. at the end of the cast time for Chaotic Release). Diabolic inferno has a 360 radius whereas Chaotic Release has a 450 range on top of a 360 launch. So there may not be enemies in range of you when it does trigger.

But again, I haven’t used Diabolic Inferno with these skills personally, so it may very well be bugged anyways.

Rekt.5360:

Burtnik.5218:

Misguided.5139:

gannondorf.7628:

Herald is pretty balanced. Revenant is not.

This from the leader of the Nerf Herald Brigade? What changed?

He got #rekt

m8 pliz I don’t play rev, warr’s mah boi, but shiro/jalis rev with sword/sword+staff sure looks cool :O I think I might give it a try, I won’t be touching herald tho.

fluidmonolith.3584:

I think UA is in the same class of skills as Hundred Blades used to be. It will destroy inexperienced players but skilled players will find a way to take advantage of its vulnerabilities (primarily, lack of user control). If, however, that does not happen, then maybe UA should be adjusted a bit. I think we should wait a bit longer though to see what happens.

Dude, don’t. You know that’s a bad point. You can’t compare a skill with a full 2 second evade frame that tracks your target EVERYWHERE (even ending up with you inside a wall sometimes, hur hur) gives might on each hit baseline to one that roots you in place and has a 50% longer channel. UA has implications where it could screw you over, like if a thief suddenly decided to shadowstep into his DH ally’s traps, then you can get rekt, but saying UA is anywhere close to HB is not true at ALL. HB has one counter that UA doesn’t and that counter is enough to counter it the vast majority of the time: move away. Warriors have to actually use CC to land a portion of HB, forget about landing the full thing without quickness unless u whip a 3 sec immob and the guy has no condi cleanse/immob breaks (which a lot of people have), a ~3 second stun could make it work, and only 1 warr wep has that and its SUPER easy to dodge.

On the other hand UA is either double dodge, pop invuln, stealth or something that cancels direct dmg or use blocks (the CD of ANY of these is always wayyyy longer than UA itself). In the event that the guy manages to fully mitigate UA by or has blown some big dmg mitigation utilities, IO+sword AA absolutely shreds everything. UA is great, please don’t act like it isn’t, I won’t personally judge it though I think its a BIT too good, considering sword AA is an already amazing dmg source, but then again I have beefs with other stuff and UA is far from being at the top of my list, I still manage to beat revs on my warr most of the time (unless I start an eviscerate with my weapon swap on CD and they pop glint heal, which is freaking amazing since it doesn’t have an activation time), though I honestly think CoR should get looked into, like true shot, its dmg/cd ratio is absolutely obscene unreliable or not because of elevation changes, its crazy.

I did not mean to compare UA to HB in terms of effectiveness, and I certainly agree that there are more counters for HB than for UA. I am only indicating that I think we should wait a while to see if people learn to counter UA as they did HB. But if UA were heavily nerfed now and people also learned to counter it, then it could become fairly lackluster, just like HB.

Seklies.2186:

Allow me to add to this topic in terms of UA…

You are not immune to all damage, Conditions go through all evade style skills, thus if you have active conditions or appear near a enemy with condition based traps are on the ground you will take damage.

The CD is rather long, and on top of that far from my favorite skill. It is a last ditch effort to stay alive in my book(Assuming I have no active conditions).

In fact I personally stay away from using sword until I absolutely have to, and by the screenshots from above I fare just fine.

---

I am torn on tossing my build on the forums right now as I do feel it gives me a slight edge in PvP, but as the creator I believe I hold this right. I will think it over some more, but I will possibly share it.

I will add that I found recently that confusion damage occurs on each strike of UA. I very abruptly killed myself when I used it before noticing that I had 9 stacks of confusion…

Also the player has no control over UA once they start it. When using it on another Revenant, for example, they can heal up quite nicely with Infuse Light (Glint) and the attacker using UA can do nothing (except pre-emptively) to prevent it.

I think UA is in the same class of skills as Hundred Blades used to be. It will destroy inexperienced players but skilled players will find a way to take advantage of its vulnerabilities (primarily, lack of user control). If, however, that does not happen, then maybe UA should be adjusted a bit. I think we should wait a bit longer though to see what happens.

I generally find that if I use Staff + Sword/X, then it is often more effective to use sword most of the time, swapping to staff only for #5 and #3, and maybe #4, then swapping back to sword as soon as possible. I think OP was looking for something that uses staff heavily rather than as an auxiliary/utility weapon.

I have spent some time working on staff, as I also really like the weapon. Unfortunately I don’t yet have a build that I would consider better with the staff as the primary weapon than the sword.

The sword hits harder, and if you put sword or shield in the offhand, your defense is as good or better (with the long evade on Sword #3). You are also better able to deal with opponents who try to kite due to Sword #2 and the moderate range on Sword #3.

Conversely, Staff #2 is too slow to be used on most mobile targets, and Staff #4 has a fairly long cast and so can’t be used reliably under pressure. Staff #5 is great, but the cooldown is kinda long.

I am currently using around 600 healing power in my build (I do WvW primarily with a mix of gear so I can’t recommend a specific PvP amulet) and find one redeeming factor in staff when you take the Tranquil Benediction trait in Salvation. Regeneration (which you get from the trait) and the base orb healing from the auto-attack chain both scale really well with healing power (each doing more than twice as much healing with a cleric amulet vs. an amulet with no healing power). In my WvW build with a modest 600 healing power, the two orbs you drop from the final auto-attack chain will heal you for about 1800 total, if you manage to pick them both up. Not sure yet if it’s worth it or not though, since many opponents simply won’t let you auto-attack them continually, and going out of your way to pick up the orbs can sometimes do more harm than good.

Phoenix the One.4071:

Or teleport to target and then drag then back through the mist

That would be very cool. And useful.

Shadelang.3012:

As far as the ventari utility skills. Im of the mind that all 5 of ventari’s skills should be usable while stunned.

I.E. Ventari doesn’t get stunbreaks But instead can continue to function even while stunned. By moving and utilizing the tome to respond threats.

Your being stunlocked? Move the tablet to you and detonate it to buy you time to get away. Or use it to burst heal you or cleanse condis off you. Or even to stop the arrows of that ranger pew pewing you while your stunned. Thats the kind of gameplay I REALLY want to see from revenant.

It will take more skill than your typical stunbreak. But it leaves the option there and gives you further methods of mitigating effects without simply copying every other pattern out there.

I think this is a good idea. Most of Ventari’s skills would be an odd place to put a stunbreak anyways.

I mostly do WvW with some PvP. I like offhand sword because the block allows movement and has a shorter cooldown than the shield block. Clever opponents will wait out your immobile shield block and prepare to hit you hard right as it finishes. And of course, when zerging, using shield #5 at the wrong time can cause the whole enemy zerg to surround you and wait for it to end, so it doesn’t really save you.

However, offhand sword #5 is generally useless in my opinion. I rarely use it. It can be useful for pulling an enemy off of a stomp or res….but usually I’ll just use jade winds or heavy dps pressure instead.

To be honest, I don’t think shield needs a buff. The other offhand weapons are pretty weak in comparison.

I do agree that orbs (from tablet and staff) should stick around for 10 seconds rather than 5.

I also agree that every legend needs a stunbreak. Mallyx and Ventari do not have one, and Jalis’ is too expensive to be reliable in an emergency.

Versepelles.1972:

Balance is hard, and PvP metas change over time. However, from what we’ve seen so far, The Power Shiro-Glint build is by far dominant in PvP, with Mallyx-Glint a distant second. Here are some suggestions that can help balance the class with minimal design change, given that most current bugs are fixed as well.

As always, many people will have different opinions , so please leave constructive comments only, which of course can include criticisms or proposed changes.

Weapons

Sword

• Unrelenting Assault: Reduce damage by 50%. This skill should be an evade and teleport, but the damage is too high.
• Grasping Shadow: Reduce cast time to 1/4 second (-50%). Sword off-hand can be just as viable as shield if Grasping Shadow is buffed, adding a layer of complexity, skill, and variety.

Hammer

• Coalescence of Ruin: Reduce damage by 33%. Just a moderately overtuned skill, like True Shot.
• Drop the Hammer: Reduce cast time to 1.25s (-29%). This skill is fairly useless in mid to high tier PvP, but could be more interesting with decreased cast time.

Mace

• Misery Swipe (chain): Increase range to somewhere between 300 and 480. This weapon would see much more use in condi builds with some range on the auto attacks.

Axe

• Temporal Rift: Add a chain skill to detonate the rift, like mesmer’s focus 4 (Temporal Curtain). Decrease the range to 600 (-33%). This alone could make axe a viable choice.

Utilities

Mallyx

• Pain Absorption: Transfer 2 conditions from each ally and youself to the target. Increase cast time to 3/4s (+50%). This allows active counterplay to conditions, and gives revenants meaningful condition removal. This change alone makes Mallyx competitive with Shiro.
• Banish Enchantment: Corrupt 2 boons instead of removing them. Increase cast time to 3/4s (+50%). This allows for active counterplay to some boonful classes.

Ventari

• Remove from the game. (I kid, but this would need a major overhaul to be viable in PvP, it seems).

Jalis

• See Ventari.

Herald

• All facets: Add 1/4s cast time to initial cast. This forces Revenants to think when to activate the signets, rather than spamming them during Unrelenting Assault or Crystal Hibernation. (Leave Infuse Light and Gaze of Darkness chain skills as instant cast!)
• Infuse Light: Make this skill about 5 times more visible (+400%). This is a great active mechanic but is currently not visible enough except in the buff bar.

Traits

Devastation

• Malicious Reprisal: Remove the hidden ICD from this trait. This allows active counter to bunker builds which rely on blocking.

Corruption

• Opportune Extraction: Reduce ICD to 6s (-40%). Optionally corrupt boon rather than remove. This allows condition-specced revs to be a threat to boonful classes.

Invocation

• Roiling Mists: Reduce critical chance while under fury increase from 20% to 10%. This is not vital, but it might be a good place to balance overall Revenant damage.

Herald

• Shared Empowerment: Reduce might duration to 5s baseline (-38%). Currently, this trait alone overpowers Revenant raw damage output. A fair reduction will put Revenant damage in line with other classes.

I am sorry that you have gotten some rude criticism regarding these proposed changes. That said, I do agree with many of the others in that these changes may go too far. Some specifics:

-Unrelenting Assault: This is a powerful skill in 1v1 precisely because it combines strong damage with a long evade. However, it also has a long (3/4 sec) cast time, which allows some counterplay. Reducing the damage by 50% will turn it into a primarily evasive/defensive skill. I do not think a defensive skill needs such a long cast time. While I do not agree with the 50% damage nerf, I also think that even if the damage were nerfed, the cast time would also need to be reduced, probably to 1/4 second. Ultimately I think that if UA were deemed to strong, the energy cost should be increased a bit (e.g. to 20) so that Revenants are a little more conscious about using it at opportune times.

Grasping Shadow: I agree that this needs a buff. A shorter cast time would indeed help, but I think it could also use a slightly longer range (e.g. 300).

Coalescence of Ruin: This skill does hit really hard. I think we need to be careful with balancing though. If it’s nerfed too much, as others point out, it will not be used over auto-attack. I would rather see the energy cost increased to make Revenants really think about using it rather than spamming it on cooldown. And, it probably shouldn’t hit any target twice, that’s too much damage.

Pain Absorption: I’m not sure about this change…What if there are no targets in range? Can the skill be used without a target? Right now Pain Absorption has a minor synergy with the Mallyx healing skill, but this would be gone with the proposed change. Basically you are changing a defensive skill into an offensive one. Of course, during BWE 1 and 2, it could be used for either offense or defense due to the function of EtD, but that’s another discussion…

Glint skills: I don’t see a need to add a cast time to facet activation. It’s normal to see Revenants activating 2-3 facets at a time every time they enter Glint stance, and adding a cast time would make this process exceedingly cumbersome. Whether or not the boon output from facets is balanced or not is certainly something that can be discussed, but even if they are unbalanced, I don’t think that adding a cast time is a good way to balance them.

auei.6540:

TLDR; You should probably not use the staff for anything other than condi removal and only if you really want to because there are other ways to remove conditions like ventari tablet, Generosity/Purity sigils. or other players

First things first, I love the staff. When I started my rev I was using sword and axe and I thought it was so cool but then I got a staff and decided to try it out and it was love at first sight. I had already decided I wasn’t going for a full dmg kamikaze build and the supportish skills of the staff were just perfect for me. Sure #2 does suck, the weakness debuff is negligible, the daze even more so and the whole “if using a skill” just makes it even worse, #4 glitches more often than not and #5 requires practice to use it effectively but I was happy and ejoying using my staff… Then Herald happened. You get a shield with 2 healing skills, one is a 3s block and the other heals for substantially more than staff #4, has faster casting time, lower energy cost and same cooldown. So if you use Sword/Shield you get better heals than the staff with Shield #4, you get better escapes (Staff = #3: 2s block, #5: 1s evade/move forward. Sword/Shield = #3: 2s evade, #5: 3s block) and way more dps with Sword’s auto vulnerability + Devastation’s Targeted Destruction + Devastation’s Vicious Lacerations + Devastation’s Swift Termination, adding all of these you’d probably do more than double the staff’s damage because it’s not hard to get at least 10 stacks of vulnerability with devastation + sword so that’s 10% then stacked vicious laceration adds another 10% then 7% from targeted destruction and 20% from swift termination, do note that you can get swift termination and even targeted destruction bonus using the staff it’s just not as effective because you will only have 25% chance on hit to apply vulnerability so in the end sword can easily get 27% plus the 20% from swift termination while using the staff you can kinda maybe but probably not I mean really get 7% bonus plus 20% from swift termination. Btw did I mention that sword already has a higher base dps than the staff? So yeah…

I agree with most of this. I also really like staff and tried to use it early on (PvP, WvW), but it just wasn’t working for me. Not only does it do less damage than sword (as it should), but it’s also terrible at keeping up with mobile targets and the defenses are not great compared to X/sword or X/shield. So when I equip staff my survivability and damage both go down. I could see it functioning as a group CC weapon, but as you say, skill #2 really needs to be looked at for this. It’s too slow to be used for AoE daze, and the weakness duration is very short. I also think #5 needs a cooldown reduction.

I will point out, regarding the Devastation traits, that I put a sigil of frailty on my staff and that does help a lot with the damage. But it is still much less than sword (again, sword should do more damage, so this is not bad in principle).

I will also admit that, on paper, staff may be okay for a healing build, since when traited it can put out a lot of self-healing (about 2300 hp per autoattack chain at around 1200 healing power). But most targets in PvP/WvW will not sit around and let you autoattack them, and furthermore running around picking up all the orbs is not always possible.

meepeY.2867:

I used to have loads of issues with Revenant on release. After the PA nerf, they’re a lot more fair to deal with now, however:

My biggest Issues with CoR is that it can hit you twice. There’s no way to know whether it will hit you twice either – it’s a “sweet” spot in the ability. This “feature” will oneshot me 90% of the time. ~5-7k on the first hit and ~8-10k+ on the second.

It also has a 2 second cooldown, which is insane. The bad kind of insane. I believe CoR has the lowest cooldown : highest damage ratio in the game (for a single spell). Whilst it’s not exactly spammable, it’s always available to them if they see an opening to use it.

Now to the people saying “Just strafe out of it”, then you’re obviously suffering from OP Syndrome. Whilst Rev’s/CoR aren’t really OP, saying “strafe out of it nub l2p qq” isn’t a good answer, nor is it a good defence mechanism against it. If I’m inside the 2nd portion range of the skill – you’re too slow to get out of the area. If I’m in the 3rd portion range of the skill, I can just about get out of range, IF and I mean, IF I was already walking in that direction.

To boot, I have pretty bad eye sight, so if we’re fighting on a dark surface I can’t clearly see the particle effects on the floor, which makes dodging the damage a seriously difficult task.

Revenants right now are “okay”… I used to have a big grudge against Unrelenting Assault as it just burnt away dodge rolls but spamming Shortbow 3 seems to do the trick.

CoR right now is not exactly OP, but it could use some balance tweaks. Either, give it a 4s Cooldown like True Shot, double its energy cost or remove its ability to double-hit you.

As a personal change, I would like to see a brighter-easier to see outline for it’s max distance.

I do agree that it should not be able to hit any target twice, simply because of how hard it hits. I’m not sure how a change to prevent this would be implemented because the cascading skill hits three times (once each at close, medium, and then long range) in a time sequence. Thus it is possible that a moving target can get unlucky and be hit by two of the strikes. If the size of the hitbox or timing of each strike were adjusted to make this impossible, then you would also likely have gaps where a moving target could get lucky and not get hit at all (even when within the hitbox of the skill) and this would be sloppy as well. So I don’t have a good answer unfortunately.

I still disagree with a cooldown increase, but if CoR does turn out to be too powerful, then I would not be opposed to an increase in the energy cost. If it cost 10 energy instead of 5, then players who just mindlessly spammed it on cooldown would have little energy to do much else.

Increasing the cd just makes it more trivial to use CoR, in my opinion.

Right now if you use CoR on cooldown, it will use around 33% of your base energy regen (minimum 16.7% of total energy regen if you’re switching legends every 10 seconds and spending all your energy beforehand). If the cooldown were increased, the energy cost could become trivial.

If CoR needs to be re-balanced (and I’m not yet sure that it does), I would rather see an energy cost increase than a cooldown increase. I also don’t see much point to a damage nerf because then it may just be better to use autoattack. Conversely, an energy cost increase on CoR allows the user to choose between depleting energy for more burst damage or auto-attacking for more sustained damage.

FYI, some skills/traits have negligible healing power scaling, so there is no benefit to using cleric gear with them.

Focused siphoning (Devastation trait) and Vengeful Hammers, for example, practically do not scale with healing power at all. Assassin’s Annihilation (Devastation GM trait) does scale somewhat, and shield skills have good scaling, for example.

Just might want to keep in mind what scales and what doesn’t when evaluating whether or not Cleric gear is good for your build.

Babytater.6803:

Rest In Peace Eredon Terrace…

Yeah, I did like ET. I wasn’t there from the beginning, but I was there for well over a year. The WvW group was small but committed. On my new server, if I announce crossed swords over our keep and say “what’s going on at keep”? I get a silly response inappropriately referencing my mother…

On the other hand, there are actually people in WvW on my new server, so that’s a plus. I waited a while before transferring, hoping the population would get bigger on ET, but it really has only gotten worse.

joneirikb.7506:

Or just reduce from 3 borderlands to 1.

Heck for T8 we probably can’t fill a single map…

This system will not work as long as it doesn’t adapt itself to the players and number of players. The WvW system is to rigid, it needs to adjust itself dynamically to numbers/players.

4 Maps is just overkill for the lower tiers, I don’t think any server in T8 right now could max more than 40 players each during reset, we’re not even half-way to a queue on a single map. All that means is that whoever leads gets to own 4 maps.

Honestly it doesn’t even matter if it is Desert or Alpine maps, there is still 5-40 players from each server trying to control 4 maps.

• Remove the HOME borderland system
• Run single map for Borderland
• Rotate Alpine back in (when it’s ready and updated again)
• Run EBG +BL map
• Use the EotM system to make more instances of maps as needed

Yeah, that is probably a better idea.

My question would be, what is the thematic difference between the EBG and the new single BL map? Does there need to be one? Currently, EBG is relatively symmetrical, whereas BL is designed to be best for the home server. Do we want two symmetrical maps instead of one home map per server plus one symmetrical map?

I’d also have to ask if people want to go down from 4 maps to 2. In my experience in low and mid tiers, this is great. But at T1, decreasing the map count from 4 to 2 would essentially cut the maximum WvW poplulation limit in half and possibly increase queues. But does T1 currently experience long queue times? Someone who plays on T1 would be better able to answer this.

Yeah, I just transferred out of ET, it was pretty bad. Conceptually I do like the new desert borderlands, but they are too big (no one is there), even on my new server (Maguuma). I think the problem is that there are three of them. I think a map this size is fine for EB, but not for borderlands.

What would everyone think if borderlands were reverted to alpine but EB became some modification of the new desert map?

SamTheGuardian.2938:

Mitch.4781:

why are people always asking for stuff to be removed???? They’ve removed enough stuff as it it!

And no, I like Skyhammer…Risk of falling???

God get better for heavens sake

“get better” at what exactly? Avoiding unblockable knock downs that toss me to my death? Even considering the aspects a player could focus on getting better at for sky hammer, to have a map in the game that requires players put all that effort in for ONE LITTLE KITTEN MAP that’s most certainly not going to even by in ranked rotation makes no sense. How do you rationalize that? I will give you a chance to consider the rules that govern sports, think about ANY KITTEN sport and the importance of balance of playing field and validate your suggestion of “get better” and in detail explain why one map should be left in the game that requires this level of focus. The bottom line is you’re wrong. It doesn’t make any sense. I realize I’m probably coming across a bit rude, but I have a low tolerance for ignorance and in this case I’m just asking you to put a rebuttal instead of casually blowing this off. I actually care about PvP in this game a great deal and think a map like Skyhammer makes a mockery of it.

It is the only map where trying to make your opponent fall to their death is a play mechanic. It’s the only map where on top of all the other dynamics of play you have to worry about the floor under you shattering or stepping into a shattered floor and falling to your death. If you respect GW2 as an e-sport, then consistency among mechanics has to be there. One unique secondary mechanic is the standard that was established and by invoke secondary mechanic alone the team can’t get the win. Think of NASCAR where each track is unique, but imagine if on one track NASCAR track decided to make it so drivers have to deal with oil spills that randomly occur or something ridiculous like that. That’s analogous to what Skyhammer is to the other maps. If you think I’m putting too much thought into it, then you’re coming from a different place and have no understanding of rules of play, mechanics etc that contribute to a sport being a sport. Again, consistency among the arenas is CRITICAL to making it respected. A good number of players don’t care anything about balance. The designers behind Skyhammer obviously did not, but it seems someone at ANet does care a great deal about making the game respected as an e-sport so hopefully they will listen.

This is a very good point. Consistency is important unless we want people to need to change their build with each map. I would prefer not to have a ‘skyhammer’ build and a ‘everything else’ build. However, I also enjoy skyhammer. Situational awareness can and should extend to more than just what one’s opponent is doing. In skyhammer, it is important to also be aware of what the environment is doing. The environment of skyhammer is dangerous, but it is not random. You will not randomly die in skyhammer due to the environment, but you may certainly die if you are unaware, unprepared, or if you fail to stop your opponent from using the environment against you. So I would propose a second alternative that also meets these requirements of consistency between maps:

Add death traps to all maps so that they are more like Skyhammer.

I have been experiencing something like this as well, in WvW. Until I saw this thread on it I just thought I had been missing something (e.g. maybe I was stunned or pressing the wrong key…). Unfortunately, I have not yet determined what causes this, but I think I have only observed it in combat.

Potato Slayer.3107:

AehAZE.1867:

Anyone having luck with it? Ive been tempted…

revenant does not scale well off of healing power, unless you go into the ventari trait line. even then, it is subpar to the support a druid can bring. I would suggest not speccing into any healing power and going with soldiers/knights if you want toughness. Revenant has enough blocks/evades to usually avoid damage alltogether.

This is a good point. I am not in game right now so cannot give specific numbers, but here is what I have seen for healing power scaling (by looking at trait / skill tooltips with different amulets in PvP):

Scales very poorly (practically not at all) with healing power:
-focused siphoning (devastation trait)
-vengeful hammers (Jalis skill)
-replenishing despair (corruption trait)
-invigorating flow (invocation trait)

Scales with healing (modestly to very well):
-staff autoattack (healing orbs)
-staff skill #4
-assassin’s annihilation (devastation trait)
-shield #4 and #5
-equilibrium (invocation trait)
-steadfast rejuvenation (retribution trait)

I haven’t played with Ventari or Salvation pretty much at all, so I am not familiar with healing scaling here.

You will notice that most of the things that scale with healing power on this list are either self-heals, or long-ish cooldown small group heals. So I do think it is possible to build with healing power for a self-sustain build (whether or not this is effective is another question altogether). However, I do agree that using healing power to heal allies (outside of Ventari) does not appear to be useful.

I used crusader armor for a while, but found that the stats aren’t necessarily better than celestial.

Exotic crusader vs. celestial armor have exactly the same ferocity / healing (about 200).
Crusader armor has about 150 more power and toughness than celestial, while celestial has about 150 more precision, vitality, and condition damage than crusader. Again, I am only talking about the exotic armor, not sure about trinkets.

I primarily roam in WvW, and IMO as long as you equip Shiro you’ll be fine. Shiro allows you to escape almost everything, primarily due to Riposting Shadows (use Riposting Shadows, then dodge, use Riposting shadows again, then dodge again).

Running without Shiro might be possible, but you’ll need to be much more selective about what fights you choose to engage in because you won’t have an easy way to back out if things don’t go well.

Artaz.3819:

Same sentiments. It’s the F2 from Herald line that pushes it way over the top to be required. It’s not a bad thing to be pigeon-holed (as every class has a best-build) but it sure would be nice if Revenant’s other lines had similar F2 utility/offense/defense. And this would go a long ways to potentially fixing Ventari/Salvation line (AoE burst healing on a longer cooldown).

Yeah, I think this is it exactly. I can equip two core specializations and debate over what to use as the third… and Herald usually wins because F2 gives 10 seconds of fury, 7 seconds of protection, plus might / switftness / regen to me and everyone around me, every 25 seconds. For what I play (WvW roaming) generally no single other trait line has something that can compete with this.
Plus the Herald traits are pretty good too, even if you don’t equip Glint.

I agree that Herald is pretty mandatory right now. I keep trying a build a non-Herald build (for WvW roaming) but haven’t had any success yet. That said, I don’t always use Glint (though Glint is really good too), but I do atleast spec into Herald pretty much all the time.

mexay.3902:

Soothing Stone – reduce the cast time, possibly to 0.5s
Inspiring Reinforcement – Pulses should begin instantly and the stability should last for 2 seconds.
Forced Engagement – This skill is fine IMO, though it isn’t super useful on Jalis
Vengeful Hammers – A really great skill if they don’t disappear. Needs the projectile rubbish fixed
RotGD – Instant or very short cast (0.25s) and increase duration 6 – 8s.

I agree with most of this, though if RotGD gets a significant cast time decrease then it will be much more useful in an emergency, in which case it would no longer need a duration increase IMO.
I don’t agree with decreasing the cast time on Jalis’ heal though – most other heals have a cast time around 1 second, and I don’t see why Jalis’ should be much better.

Regarding (2), Changing Soothing Bastion to activate Infuse Light sounds really useful, but I imagine opponents would complain.

Regarding (3), you can manually turn off Impossible Odds any time you want, even when stunned, but I do agree that it is frustrating.

I’ve been trying Dismantle Fortifications a lot and I really want to like this trait, but I can’t yet tell if it makes a difference or not. Do you think it would be useful for front-lining to help with stability stripping? If you also traited Salvation and then used an AoE CC elite (e.g. Jade Winds or Release Chaos), you could theoretically strip up to 4 stacks of stability at at time.

Garimeth.8725:

Kirk.3086:

May be i don’t know something, but hammers even at pvp with 1.2k healing is ~ 60 hp per hit with -7 energy regen. It’s really low, not against 5+ mobs.

I haven’t used it in pvp, but in pve I’m getting 58 hp per hit per enemy with no healing power. There is two hammers, so for easy math let’s just drop the healing to 50 hp per hit. That’s 100 per enemy, for 5 enemies that’s 500 hp aproximately every second that deals damage also. Go fight a pack of those pocket raptors in AB and you’ll see what I mean by how much healing you get. It’s not enough to keep you alive by itself, but its a solid supplement.

The healing scaling on Vengeful Hammers is almost non-existant – it will heal around 58-64 regardless of healing power. That said, each hit on vulnerable targets will proc Focused Siphoning in Devastation trait line, giving even more healing and damage. I put sigil of frailty on my weapon and the sustain from hammers gets pretty crazy.

Now that I think about it, all the other professions have 5-7 stun breaks (including elite spec skills) whereas Revenant has 3 (I’m not counting traits on the Revenant or other professions). So I think it could be appropriate for Revenant to have more stunbreaks, presumably one on each Legend.

Let’s look at each legend and how well stun breaks work for it:
-Glint (herald): 0 energy, 20 sec cd. I think this is fine
-Shiro: 30 energy, evades backwards, also removes movement impairing conditions and restores some endurance. I think this is fine
-Jalis: 50 energy, 1.25sec cast. This is expensive and has a long cast time. This is not so great. I think it should probably add stability for 1.25 seconds at start of cast to help protect the expensive ability from interruption and make the stunbreak more useful.

Where can we add stunbreaks on the existing legends?
-Mallyx: Pain Absorption is probably a good place to add a stunbreak. 35 energy for a stun break plus resistance is not a bad deal. Since the Mallyx changes post BWE2, Pain Absorption has felt a bit expensive for what it does, and adding a stunbreak may be useful here.
-Ventari: Ventari probably has the greatest need for a stunbreak since it has no mobility, emergency heals, invulnerability, or CC. However, I can’t really think of a good place to add a stunbreak. Any ideas?

cheesy sci-fi mode and samurai mode

I’m not sure where Revenant staff wants to be. It’s certainly not a direct dps weapon, since we already have sword which does a better job of that.

Is staff supposed to be defensive? It has some defenses, but sword/shield gives better defense with shield 4 & 5 and the evasion on sword 3.

Is staff supposed to be healing support? It has some of that. The auto-attack does a decent job of healing (though only one target per orb, which makes it limited for group support). Staff #4 does heal, but the cooldown is pretty long relative to the amount of healing. Of course, the group condition removal is useful. That said, does the healing of staff compete with shield, which offers great self healing in #5 and good group support and healing in #4? I am not so sure…

Is the staff supposed to be offer crowd control? This is where I think the staff can fill a role that other weapons don’t provide. Unfortunately, the crowd control that exists on the staff is a bit weak.
Staff #5 is great CC, but the cooldown is really long. I would like to see a 15 second cooldown, even if it meant even lower damage.
Staff #2 is a group daze on Debilitating Slam, but hiding it behind Punishing Sweep makes it really hard to use as an interrupt when you need it (instead, you can just use it ‘when it’s available’). I would like to see Punishing Sweep get a cast-time reduction, maybe to 1/2 second instead of 3/4 seconds. The weakness duration could perhaps use a buff too (e.g. to 4-5 seconds).

Other than that, I think Rev staff is in a good place.

Burtnik.5218:

fluidmonolith.3584:

Rite of the Great Dwarf is also a stunbreak

Um…not really.

I certainly agree that it’s not a good stun break.

Burtnik.5218:

Star.8401:

Run Malyxx and the corruption trait line…Condis do nothing to you….
L2 make a build

And then someone strip your boons..Ops

I generally don’t run into too much trouble with boon removal unless it’s continual boon removal. E.g. sword mesmer, s/d thief, and some necros. If they remove resistance from you once, you can just reapply. It’s just when they can keep doing it that it becomes too costly to keep reapplying it.

One related thing I have seen people do in gameplay videos that often results in eventual death is to use Pain Absorption in Mallyx to get resistance while they have a bunch of condis, and then immediately switch to their other legend. If their resistance gets removed at this point, they are very vulnerable and can’t protect themselves from all of the conditions they have. I like to stay in Mallyx until my condis are reduced or completely gone, even if I have resistance, just in case my opponent can remove my boons.

Rite of the Great Dwarf is also a stunbreak (Jalis elite), and you can trait to break stuns on legend swap (minor trait in Invocation line).

Condi cleanses are:
-staff #4
-one ventari skill
-jalis heal
-and a couple through traits: 1) on legend swap (adept major trait in Invocation) and 2) on dodge roll (master major trait in Salvation)
-you can also get lots of resistance in Mallyx

I have found, so far, that if I am using Glint, and especially if I am activating the facet actives, energy is pretty much a non-issue. I think others have said as well that Glint seems to play like any other the other professions (primarily cooldown-limited), and under many scenarios I agree. Though it isn’t true if you’re leaving facet passives on, especially if you have more than one turned on, or are using the elite facet. When energy pips drop to 0, +1, or sometimes +2, I am much more cognizant of energy.

Morfedel.4165:

Sure. I’ve suggested it before, but I think some kind of energy tax mechanism would work great here. You know, something like first time you use a skill, it casts, then adds some number to its next cast, but that second number counts down by 1 every second.

So for instance, maybe an attack skill that isnt too bad, say it has a tax of 3; maybe a heal skill, being a heal skill, has a tax of 50; and a fairly powerful utility has a tax of like 25. Maybe Jade Winds has a tax of 75

then it would remove 1 pt of tax every second. Jade winds becomes usable again in 50 seconds, at the cost of 100 energy

Ok, maybe thats too much, but you get the basic idea. I’m not trying to throw out actual numbers to work with, just the basic idea.

I mean, having an energy mechanism that charges 20 energy AND a 25 second cool down seems kinda silly, as well as against the general idea that we’ve seen with the revenant.

I’m not saying my particular idea would work. But something that would at least put the management of skills in the energy department instead of the cool down department I think would be nice.

This method sounds to me like it would solve the problem. I just have one concern, and that is transparency / usability.

For example, right now I know that Phase Traversal will cost 20 energy every single time I use it. But with a tax system like this, let’s say I used Phase Traversal at time t=0, and that the energy cost increases by 20 per use, then declines by 1 per second to a minimum of 20. So 10 seconds after using it the first time (t=10), it costs 30 energy. So maybe I use it again. Now it goes up to 50 energy for the next use. Let’s say, 8 seconds later, t=18, I want to use Phase Traversal a third time but I see that it’s greyed out on my UI because I don’t have enough energy. I can glance at my energy bar and see that I’m at 40 energy. But unless I hover my mouse over the Phase Traversal skill icon, I have no idea how much Phase Traversal will cost, unless I have been mentally keeping track of the time and the frequency of use.

The problem is that I don’t know how much Phase Traversal costs now, and therefore I don’t know how long it will be until I can use it. If it were 2 seconds, maybe I’ll wait and pool some energy. But what if it’s 6 seconds? Maybe I can’t afford to wait 6 seconds on it, so I’d rather use something else. But I won’t know unless I look at the tooltip. And it gets worse…Let’s say I do look at the tooltip AND at my energy bar. I see that I’m at 5 energy now and Phase Traversal costs 29 energy right now. How long do I have to wait in order to use it? I can’t just use the normal 5 energy/second math because my energy is increasing while the cost of the ability simultaneously decreases. Effectively, I need to wait atleast 3 seconds because the minimum energy cost is 20. But in that 3 seconds, the cooldown will have been reduced to 26. On the fourth second, my energy goes up to 25, while the cooldown also comes down to 25, so I can use it. But do I really want to try to do that calculation in the middle of a hectic fight?

This seems a bit unwieldy. I’m sure it’s possible to modify the UI to show real-time energy costs, but even then it still requires more time spent staring at the UI and less time looking at the action, because I would need to constantly see how much energy my skills cost AND how much energy I have.

So it is a cool idea and I do think it would work, but I also think it would make Revenant too complicated to play.

Edit: What if we take your idea and make it simpler / more transparent? All Revenant skill cooldowns go away (some skills would need to be redesigned), and instead they have three tiers of energy costs and a related cooldown. When you use a skill, it’s energy cost doubles and the skill icon changes color (e.g. to green) to indicate that you’ve used it once. A cooldown is displayed on the icon as if it were a normal skill. If you use the skill again while it’s green, you’ll pay the increased energy cost and then it will move up to the next tier. The skill icon changes color again (let’s say now it’s yellow), and the cooldown starts over. If you use it again now, it has triple the normal energy cost. Using it now will make it red (tier three) at quadruple the normal energy cost. Each time you use the ability at tier three, it will remain at tier three and the cooldown will refresh. Each time the cooldown finishes, the ability comes down one tier. An example:

Phase Traversal
Tier 0 cost – 20 energy
Cooldown – 5 seconds
Tier 1 (green) cost – 40 energy
Tier 2 (yellow) cost – 60 energy
Tier 3 (red) cost – 80 energy

So if I use Phase Traversal once, it costs 20 energy and turns green, and if I use it again within 5 seconds of the first use, it costs 40 energy and turns yellow. Now I’ll have to wait for two cooldowns (10 seconds) for it to return to green (5 seconds) and then normal (at 10 seconds).

This method would be much easier for me to glance at the UI and know what’s going on. Of course, it would still require a pretty big redesign so I doubt it would ever happen. But it’s a fun thought experiment.

I posted this in another thread, but I will repost it here since it’s more relevant to your topic.

Regarding utility skills
I don’t mind short cooldowns on utility skills in principle, because they are generally just implemented to prevent spamming of otherwise powerful skills in short succession. In other words, a 5 second cooldown on a utility that costs 20+ energy still feels primarily energy-limited, to me, while a 20 second cooldown would feel more limited by the cooldown. That’s just my opinon, of course.

However, to truly get at the core of the issue, I think we need to ask how long can utility cooldowns be before they break the theme of the Revenant? E.g. is a 1 second cooldown okay? 3 seconds? 5? 10?
Again, personally I think a few seconds (probably around 5 at most) is acceptable without breaking the theme of the Revenant.

Regarding weapon skills
Could we remove cooldowns on weapon skills and use energy alone to regulate them? Probably. But I’m not sure it would be worth the cost. For example, how much would Shield 5 have to be nerfed if the cooldown was removed? Or, alternatively, maybe they could just make it cost 50 energy, but then you’d never be able to use it in an emergency.

It seems easy to compare Revenant weapon skills to thief weapon skills and say “We don’t need weapon cooldown because Thieves don’t have them.” But because Revenant uses energy for utility skills too, they can’t afford to use all their energy on weapon skills. Thieves, however, can afford to dump 30-40% of their initiative into a single use of a weapon skill and still have utility skills available. I think the best balance for Revenant weapon skills is short cooldowns (e.g. 2-15 seconds) and low to moderate energy costs (e.g. 5-30). Just like with utility skills, a cooldown means a particularly potent ability can’t be spammed (like Shield #5). And this is good for us because it means we can have potent abilities. On the other side, lower energy costs means it’s hard to lock yourself out of weapon skills (because that would probably not be fun).

In summary
You will see that I am treating weapon skills and utility skills differently here. This differentiation allows weapon skills to be used frequently while utility skills are more selective. It is probably possible to give all skills (weapon and utility alike) the same treatment, but we’d probably find ourselves locked out of weapon skills more often (due to high energy costs) and we’d spend a lot of time auto-attacking. I’m not sure if we want that.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Artaz.3819:

Ultimately, big picture, we have an identity crisis for Revenant. Is Revenant supposed to be constricted by energy or is it supposed to be constricted by cooldowns.

On a general basis, weapon skills generally have high cd/ low energy while utility skills generally have low/no cd/ high energy, exceptions aside.

Weapon skills are meant to be used with less energy constraints, while the right half bar provides plent of energy sinks.

So far, this seems to be so coherent with the profession as a whole, so I can’t detect any identity crisis here. It works pretty well in practice, because the low energy cost of weapon skills means you’re not stuck AAing all the time, while the low or the lack of cds on the right half bar means you’re free to sink a lot of energy at any time for big plays. Again, it feels pretty solid to me, which makes me wonder if there is an identity crisis here at all. It all feels very intentional, very well thought-out by anet developers.

Feel free to disagree.

I agree. I’ve stated this before, but I don’t mind short cooldowns on utility skills in principle, because they are generally just implemented to prevent spamming of otherwise powerful skills in short succession. In other words, a 5 second cooldown on an ability that costs 20+ energy still feels primarily energy-limited, to me, while a 20 second cooldown would feel more limited by the cooldown. That’s just my opinon, of course.

However, we should realize that we have two separate issues that really should be kept separate:

1) is it thematically appropriate for Revenant utility skills to have cooldowns at all? If so, how long can those cooldowns be before they break the theme of the Revenant? E.g. is a 1 second cooldown okay? 3 seconds? 5? 10?
Again, personally I think a few seconds (probably around 5 at most) is acceptable without breaking the theme of the Revenant.

2) Is Phase Traversal balanced as-is with a 5 second cooldown?
This is up for debate. Personally I think a 2-3 second cooldown would be fine, but 5 may be a bit too long. Of course, there are other potential solutions as well, that many others have suggested.

Yeah, this is what they probably wanted to do for Revenant’s terrestial weapons too (rather than giving weapon swap), but I imagine they couldn’t get it working well enough in time for HoT release.

I have been enjoying the soundtrack as well and would certainly consider purchasing it if it were made available.

The grunts are a bit much, but I notice that Jalis sometimes has a maniacal laugh which is pretty great. (I’ve heard it when casting Rite of the Great Dwarf, but it may occur at other times too).

ah, I missed #9. At the moment, only the Shiro and Jalis legends work underwater, but I do not know if this is intended to be permanent or just temporary. So the only condition removal we have is through Jalis heal unfortunately…

1. yes to both (but I think renewing wave is bugged at the moment and doesn’t work all the time)

2. yes

3. I will need to leave this question to someone else since I don’t play Ranger. However, Rev has good emergency survival tools once you unlock the Herald elite specialization.

4. I think the wiki for the staff may be outdated, so I went into heart of the mists and equipped berserker amulet on both classes. With 2200 power, the damages (hits 1,2,3 of AA chain) are:
GS ranger – 473, 473, 619
Staff Rev – 559, 649, 850
Note that the last staff hit has a 1 sec cast time though, compared to 3/4 sec for the greatsword.

5. I do not know the answer to this one at the moment.

6. Focused siphoning does around 60 damage and healing per strike against vulnerable targets with very little power or healing power scaling. Assassin’s Annihilation does 344 damage at 220 power and will do around 240 with a build that doesn’t invest in power. It 306 healing with 0 healing power and 426 healing with 1200 healing power. On a 1 sec cooldown. Vampiric does around 40 damage and healing and doesn’t scale much with power or healing power. Vampiric aura does around 38 damage and 33 healing and doesn’t scale much with stats.
All of these numbers are taken from tooltips in game.

7. Revenant can get permanent swiftness by equipping Glint legend once you have the Herald elite spec (Facet of Elements). Other than that, you do not have any permanent speed boost. It is possible to blast lighting fields (Jalis’ Inspiring Reinforcement) for swiftness or use Impossible Odds on Shiro for around 50% superspeed uptime.

8. It’s an F2 skill that will appear once you equipped the Herald specialization. The icon appears centered above your energy bar.

I’d rather not see the cooldown go above 5 seconds for any Revenant utility skill, so I would like to see the skill designed in such a way that a 5 second (or less) cd is acceptable and not OP.

What does everyone else think? Would Phase Traversal be better ground targeted, or do you prefer it as is because it is better for sticking to a target?

Actually that is a decent idea. Back before it had a cooldown, a ground-targeted PT with 1200 range at 20 energy would have been OP. But now with the 5 sec cd, it might be okay. It might need a range reduction to maybe 900 though. A targeted teleport with 1200 range and 5 sec cd might be too much. I think, though, that if it becomes ground-targeted, it should not be instant cast at such a low cooldown. Maybe like this:

Phase Traversal
1/2 second cast
900 range
5 sec cd
ground-targeted teleport like Thief SB #5.

However, it would be decidedly less aggressive, and more difficult to use for sticking on a target. I would be okay with this, but is it the direction that we want PT and Shiro to go in?

Rym.1469:

I like the suggestion in this thread that Staff #2 should be just plain daze, without flip-over skill. Would make it worth using.

That is a good point. The flip-over nature of the skill makes it really unreliable to use as an interrupt. I get that it would lose some of it’s unique flavor, some damage, and application of weakness if it were just a daze, but on the other hand it would actually be useful as an interrupt.

The question is, what would we propose for the energy and cooldown of a 1/4 sec PbAoE daze?
Currently costs 15 energy and has minimum 5 second cooldown. I wouldn’t like to see the cooldown too high, because I think the high energy cost would minimize too much daze spamming. Maybe keep the 15 energy cost and cooldown somewhere between 5-10 seconds?

posthumecaver.6473:

Amiron.1067:

Surge of the Mists: Reduced the damage by 15%.

This makes sense. It wasn’t meant to do damage anyways.

Sry but what it should do if it is not doing damage, it is 20 CD skill god sake and best scenario in which could land 9 hits, which rarely happens, could do 10 K damage and knock somebody down.

It’s a great CC and quick evade. Staff is not a damage weapon, so I don’t mind the damage nerf to #5. That said, staff still has problems that I would like to see fixed:
-long cooldowns compared to other Revenant weapons
-long cast time on #2 makes it unwieldy
-high energy costs (#2 triggered ability, #4, and #5)

I personally propose (i) a reduction in cooldown of staff #5 to 15 seconds and so that it can be used more as a sustainable evade/CC rather than burst damage; (ii) reduction in energy cost of #4 to 10 energy, and/or cooldown reduction to 12 seconds (iii) reduction in cast time of #2 from 3/4 to 1/2 second.