Guild Wars 2

There are two other weapons that allow us to block while moving (Staff and Sword OH), so I don’t think that Shield needs the same treatment.

I would actually like to see it get something like an invulnerability or generate a few stacks of stability at the start of the channel to make it harder to interrupt. There are a lot of unblockable attacks in the game now such that being immobile, even while blocking, leaves you pretty vulnerable (in PvP / WvW). Generating stability would be particularly useful since it would have some synergy with the Herald trait Enhanced Bulkwark, since the Rev currently has pretty limited access to stability.

I am enjoying the difficulty and appreciate the fact that one can’t just wander anywhere without considering the danger.

Of course, your opinion and experience is just as valid as mine. But these differences do demonstrate the difficulty ANet may have in trying to decide what is the best direction for the game (make it harder or make it easier?)

My poor staff ….
With the damage reduction on Surge of the Mists, can we maybe get the cooldown reduced to 15 or 16 seconds too? Staff cooldowns are pretty long relative to other Revenant weapons (except shield now…)

Joel Helmich.7398:

This is a bug for sure, but unfortunately there isn’t a simple solution. For context, action camera intentionally does not auto select skill targets if they are out of range, which usually feels better for gameplay as most skills don’t work on out-of-range targets anyway. The exception cases were enemy-targeted shadowstep skills, such as Guardian sword 2, so I put in special logic to allow these skills to be used on a target when out of range, so long you aim at the target (though there is currently a bug with this when you have autotargeting off; see this post that I made over on the Thief forums). Specifically, the client knows whether or not to target the out-of-range enemy because the skill being used does preemptive path checking, where the skill is stopped early if no path to the target can be found.

The way Phase Traversal works is that it does a short dash and then a shadowstep toward the target, which is a pretty unusual thing. Because the majority of travel distance in the skill is from a shadowstep, it may make sense to flag this skill as needing a preemptive pathing check, so that you don’t waste it on unfavorable terrain; this would also immediately fix the described bug. However, at the same time, there is a non-zero component of travel that comes from the dash, so stopping the skill because of pathing might seem wrong in some cases. It is something that will have to be pondered.

Thanks for the update!

Hmm, what to do in the meantime…do I abuse Phase Traversal on targets 2000+ units away but turn off action camera, or do I keep action camera on and limit phase traversal to targets within 1200 range…?

I think action camera wins. But it’s a tough call.

Thanks for the details Joel. I just tried turning on auto-targeting and shadowsteps (Infiltrator’s Signet and sword’s Infiltrator’s Strike) now work fine. They did not work with auto-targeting off. Steal, as others have mentioned, does not work either way.

I also tried Revenant’s Phase Retreat, and it does not work regardless of whether auto-targeting is turned on – it simply fails to activate and says that a target is needed. It works when action camera is turned off.

Does anyone know what happens with Guardian shadowsteps (Judge’s Intervention and sword #2)? Are there any other targeted shadowsteps I am forgetting?

I will arbitrarily rate the new HoT content 7/10.

Open world content is great, if you like a challenge. I die if I go afk somewhere, I fear death because waypoints are few and far between, and I think hard before engaging a single enemy because most of them are pretty tough. I spent an hour yesterday getting to the top of the canopy in Verdant Brink to be rewarded with some pretty amazing scenery and a Wyvern battle. A few times I fell back down to the main level and had to work my way back up. There are no waypoints up there. Jumping into an updraft is really scary prospect because if you can’t make it you go back to the waypoint…

I hope that this content isn’t nerfed. I know some people don’t like the difficulty. That’s valid, and there is nothing wrong with that. But I am personally enjoying the dangerous world experience and would hate to see it go the way of Orr.

World event chains are more immersive and have more steps than in Tyria, so it feels more like a living world than a playground for the players.

Some things I didn’t like:

Personal story mission puzzles. I like the normal combat system in the game, and puzzles that replace your action bar are usually very simple in comparison. I generally don’t enjoy them.

Hero points in Maguuma. It would be nice if some of the champion mobs that need to be killed for hero points would be scaled to be soloable – tough, but soloable. The added timer to complete the challenge is great (so people don’t just wear Nomad gear and earn it without difficulty), but they should be able to be accomplished by a single, skilled player in reasonable gear/trait setup. Alternatively, maybe the hero point count required for the elite spec could be reduced a bit…

The biggest thing I see that needs to be done with staff is making #2 easier to hit (as Loco mentioned), e.g. by reducing cast time from 3/4 to 1/2 second.

Second is the healing fragments dropped during third chain of autoattack. These are hard to pick up and don’t last very long.

I would also love to see a cooldown reduction on #5 (e.g. to 15 seconds) and would happily accept a minor damage nerf on staff #5 to compensate. But this is more of a luxury than a necessity.

Revenant – Staff, mace, sword

I had the same problem. I just now tried out similar moves (shadowsteps) briefly on Thief, and they have some problems too but it’s not always the same. Here are the results with action camera (AC) on or off, when a target is selected but out of range. All tests with AC on were done with the crosshair over the target. All tests were done in PvE (random mobs in Metrica Province).

Sword #2
-AC off: teleports towards target as intended
-AC on: skill is used (initiative depleted) and Initiator’s return becomes available, but you do not move towards the target

Steal
-AC off: does not work when out of range. Goes on short cooldown when used (5 sec) with no effect
-AC on: does not move towards target but activates and goes on full cooldown. You get boons if you have the appropriate traits (Thrill of the Crime), but you do not get boons from Bountiful Theft. You do not get an F2 item from your target.

Infiltrator’s signet
-AC off: You move towards the target and the skill goes on full cooldown, as intended.
-AC on: You do not move towards the target but the skill still goes on full cooldown.

So Infiltrator’s signet and Sword #2 are behaving similarly to Phase Traversal for me. Steal is doing odd things.

Yep, I had the same issue. With action camera enabled, I can’t use phase traversal at all when my target is > 1200 units away. As soon as I disable action camera, phase traversal can be used as normal. Not sure if other profession shadowsteps are having the same issue.

Solori.6025:

Demented Yak.6105:

Solori.6025:

gannondorf.7628:

Please don’t tell this argument again “weakness to condis” when they have barely none. With Glint/shiro, marauder amulet, vampirism rune i haven’t ANY real problem with condi last BWE (only again high stacks of burning and too much condis like other classes). The new trait in retribution line (the proc od ROTGD) make condi management even more easy too. Revenant really don’t have a weakness to conditions. Looks at mesmer for exemple, it’s much more squishy than revenant and without inspiration line have just NOTHING to do with conditions (revenant without Mallyx have Glint heal,regen, shield skills, evade … AND soon a talent in retribution line). When mesmer need to don’t be hit at all (actually mesmer need more skill to play than herald, who makes revenant a child game to play with the upkeep cost of Glint abilities). There is more, when revenant is really tanky with herald and shield mesmer can actually be one shooted (i play Mesmer and i can say you this "condition weakness is clearly none. Would love to have this “weakness” on my mesmer without taking inspiration line). So please stop with that conditions weakness. It’s really a false thing.

The revenant (majoritarly the herald but i hope Jalis and Mallyx would change too) and others elite specs are going to be down and have some changes in one or two months, i’m pretty sure. Currently there is no balance thing on elite specs ( i really hope myself they redone the berserker spec, if none this clearly throw warriors away the meta and let revenants become the more powerfull melee class)

You don’t play a mesmer.

There is so much counter play a mes has vs a revenant it’s sad.
There is no way.
A Revenant should ever counter a mesmer unless that mesmer is terrible.
And if it’s a chrono then that player must be pure garbage.

Chrono in either condi OR power has enough tools to render most if not all of the kits of a revenant obsolete.

You’re 100% right. Chronos absolutely dominate the rev.

I played against one in bwe3. Got double stunned by the shield skill and then stepped in to a gravity well. I had no clue why I was flying and then I dropped and got shattered.

Obliterated in under 3 seconds along with the rest of my team. After that we pretty much all got destroyed every time he came along (maybe because both my team and I were kitten, I don’t know). I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s too OP to play against as a rev but any decent chrono is basically a god. Nobody’s allowed to complain about mesmer.

During BWE3 I defended the Gravity Well.
I rarely advocate for things to be nerfed on mes because I know how to fight them, and to me, they don’t seem powerful.
But Gravity Well does too much. 3 types of CC then massive damage at the end.
You need pulsing stability,blink, OR an invuln to get out once you are in. And then you have to pray that they mes doesn’t have any daze,immob,or stun to KEEP you in.
I think we will see a damage nerf if not on the 23rd then 24-72 hr’s after that. Anet has a list of classes that aren’t allowed to perform well and I believe Mes and Thief are at the top.

I don’t know that Gravity Well is necessarily OP (though I did, on occasion, get destroyed by it in the BWEs). I think, rather that it might be very binary in it’s effects and not very fun. It has a long cooldown, so it should be powerful. But there’s really only two results I can think of that can frequently result from it:
1) the Mes traps their target in the gravity well and the target doesn’t have an escape. The target is disabled for a few seconds taking full damage from the gravity well plus whatever blurred frenzy or shatters the Mes also wants to dump onto the target. This will likely instant-kill the target (PvP).
2) The target escapes the gravity well via blink, multiple stacks of stability, invulnerability, or damage mitigation (e.g. Endure Pain). The gravity well, with it’s long cooldown, is completely mitigated by a defensive skill with likely lower cooldown and does pretty much nothing.

I don’t really see much that can happen inbetween these two extremes. Either Gravity Well succeeds and the target blows up, or it fails and does nothing. I don’t know that this is really fun from the point of view of either the target or the Mesmer (but I don’t play Mesmer, so I probably can’t evaluate how much fun it is from Mesmer point of view).

We can try to compare GW2 to first person shooters (FPS), which do not have weapon swap cooldowns. Disclaimer – whether or not GW2 should be modeled after some FPS elements is up for debate, but for this argument, we will assume that it should be.

Even in FPS, there is cost to weapon swapping, even if it’s not a cooldown. That cost is essentially a short ‘cast time’. While you’re swapping weapons, there is a brief period of time during which you cannot shoot or reload as your character is performing the weapon swap animation. I think it would be cool to remove weapon swap cooldown in GW2, but weapon swapping would still need to have a cost of some sort. I think the best way to do this would be to add a short cast time to weapon swapping (e.g. 1/4 or 1/2 sec). Of course, as others have pointed out, ‘on swap’ sigils would still need to retain their cooldowns. The warrior trait ‘Fast Hands’, for example, could reduce weapon swap cast time (e.g. from 1/2 to 1/4 second).

Aomine.5012:

Ilharn.6813:

Aomine.5012:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

nicknamenick.2437:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Overall, after the last BWE, we felt like revenant was in a solid spot. For launch we mainly focused on bug fixing and a few outliers such as changing the second hit of the sword auto-attack as well as speeding up the tablet move speed.

That’s not to say that there aren’t more things we are thinking about how to improve or tweak, but we want the profession to get in more playtime and thus more feedback before we make any more larger changes. I’m definitely reading all the feedback and taking under consideration for future changes so keep up the awesome work.

So your happy with how good it is/plays, how about how balanced it is compared to others? (core classes) for now revenant counters every other power class. and when they spec condi they also counters every condi class.

This issnt only for Rev but also for allot more new Elite specs you/Anet brought into this game. some core classes have NO place or chance anymore against new (combined) stuff you/Anet put on this class and other elites.

We need to have players get more time with them in general to see how things play out. We’ve made a lot of changes in beta weekends, but once they are live and people really spend a lot of time playing with them it will give us better data. We want non-elite spec builds to be viable as well. There will be balance patches to address and adjust things.

Yeah, feel like we can enjoy this OP class for at least a month before the nerf-hammer coming :P

Though it’s obvious some of the skills are too strong in PVP, if you guys are ok with it, then we’re ok with abusing it.
Let’s hope we don’t see a 5~20 Revs team in most contents post HoT

What skills are you talking about? O.o

Hint: One-hand sword and Glint.
Some on Shiro, but this one is debatable.

Also feel like Hammer will be a WvW Zerg friendly weapon thanks to perma mobile dark field + projectile block (If multiple Revs present)+ short CD AOE KD. (One KD hammer is not a big threat, but imagine 20 RANGE AOE KD, plus hammer’s dps is almost equivalent to Ranger’s LB if you spam 2 on CD)

Also 5 Revenants in Glint standing together can easily upkeep 25 mights, fury, regen, swiftness without doing anything.

I don’t think the ‘make a team of 5 of X profession and you can do crazy things’ is a really valid argument against a single profession though. You could make that argument for almost any profession. 5 staff guardians = lots of might. 5 thief wvw roaming teams are ridiculous.

I’m not disagreeing that some aspects of Revenant may be OP, but I don’t think that what 5 of them working together can do is a good way to evaluate it.

There’s been a lot of heated debate already about what is or is not OP on Revenant, and people are already pretty much set in their opinions. So I’m not going to give specific examples of what I think is or is not OP.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Yup, that’s a thing. Rite of the Great Dwarf procs when hit at or below 50% HP and makes Rite of the Great Dwarf provide 50% condition damage reduction as well.

I like that number. 20% felt underwhelming for a costly elite skill. It wouldn’t save your life when you would need it to. 50% seems much more appealing. I hope Vengeful Hammers gets a similar consideration/ treatment, because spending your entire energy for 20% damage reduction is equally underwhelming.

That sounds like really sold GM trait. So if you stack lots of healing power or simply don’t use Jalis, Steadfast Rejuvenation is okay. Otherwise, the new RotGD trait will better serve you. And Empowering Vengeance is still probably bad.

I don’t think Vengeful Hammers needs a buff. It can be turned on instantly whenever needed, and does damage/healing in AoE. Get hit by thief basilisk venom? Toggle on Vengeful Hammers to soften the impending burst. It is instant cast but I can’t recall if it was usable while stunned or otherwise CC’d….anyone know?

…to Rev from your current main?

For me, it is:

-1500 range mortar in WvW
-knockbacks, launches, and more launches
-magnet pull
-stealth
-overcharged shot
-aesthetics (guns / steampunk)

Great video again!

I have also been playing Revenant heavily through all three BWEs (though I am probably not as skilled as OP), and I do share the unpopular opinion that a few aspects of the Revenant need to be toned down a bit (though others need to be improved).

On my list is:
-Sword#3 – it needs to be good because it’s the sword’s primary damage skill, other than auto-attack. But I’m not sure that it needs to provide awesome mitigation and hard to avoid burst damage (and might) all at once. I think the best solution is to perhaps cut the number of strikes in half (3 or 4), double the damage of each strike, and probably double the might stacks from each strike. Then most of the attack could be avoided in a single dodge, and burst stacking from the Shiro heal when using UA would be reduced.
-phase traversal. This is a really fun skill and don’t want it to be nerfed in a way that makes it unfun. I previously supported giving it a short cooldown, but am instead starting to think that a small energy cost increase (e.g. to 25 energy) may be better.

I agree with OP about Mallyx and Jalis. Mallyx lost a lot of tactics and flavor after BWE2. I think the biggest problem with Jalis is cast times (or other time delays). There is a long delay on stability from Inspiring Reinforcement and the elite, while giving good damage reduction, also has a long cast. While Glint gives a powerful emergency heal that can take you from 1-100 in the right situation, Jalis has no emergency skills – this is probably why Jalis feels less tanky than Glint.

I also agree with OP about the Salvation line. It’s only worthwhile to take in a dedicated healing build. However, I am not okay with this. I don’t think any traitlines in other professions are solely dedicated to healing. Salvation has traits that aren’t focused on healing … but they are very few and generally not very good (long ICD on disarming riposte, and Momentary Pacification doesn’t work well with most elites).

I don’t think weapon function should be tied to the active legend, that would be pretty restricting to build variety. I do like the underwater (spear) method which uses two auto-attacks – one melee / direct damage and one ranged / condition damage. This could be cool on the terrestrial weapons as well – except that since the addition of weapon swap for BWE2 onwards, it is completely unnecessary.

I do think, however, that Rev could use another weapon (many point out that Rev lacks a ranged condition weapon).

I have decided, following BWE3, that I will be maining Revenant.

I needed to test scrapper first. Hammer on Engi is very nice. Gyros are not great, but they’ll probably be buffed. So overall Scrapper is not the best, but was not disappointing in the least. But if I stayed Engi I would have to give up Phase Traversal, Jade Winds, perma resistance, melee staff, the energy mechanic, and so on…

Alternative build idea. Can we make a chill-based Revenant? We have:

Sword #2
Axe #4
Hammer #3
Unyielding Anguish
Frigid Precision

Can a chill-based build work? I didn’t get to try it during the BWE. Maybe throw in some runes of the ice (7% more damage vs. chilled targets and 30% increased chill duration) and sigils of chilling, hydromancy, or ice. Probably uses Mallyx and Corruption trait line. Not sure if direct damage or condition damage would be the best route. Did anyone try something like this or have any thoughts on it?

Malchior.5732:

fluidmonolith.3584:

Phase Traversal is a lot of fun, but I do understand the complaints about it. No one can escape from a Rev outside of stealth. I think it would be fine to add a cooldown but it would have to be very, very short. 2-3 seconds would be ideal, and definitely no more than 5 seconds, IMO.

Whole point of the class was to have little to no cooldowns on our utilities and Shiro already has a cooldown on his elite. Can we just not do this and keep our good chase potential? Even if you spam it, you’re going to be left with little to no energy and forced to swap, so it’s not like it’s unstoppable.

I don’t mind a short cooldown (again, 2-3 seconds or at most, 5) if it will balance the skill. A cooldown that short, in my opinion, would not change the overall feel of the Revenant (being energy-limited rather than cooldown-limited). Of course, whether or not one feels Phase Traversal needs adjustment is up for debate. After playing mostly Rev during all three BWE’s, I think it does need a small adjustment and would rather see a small cooldown added than an increase to the energy cost. But that is just my opinion, others are free to disagree.

Phase Traversal is a lot of fun, but I do understand the complaints about it. No one can escape from a Rev outside of stealth. I think it would be fine to add a cooldown but it would have to be very, very short. 2-3 seconds would be ideal, and definitely no more than 5 seconds, IMO.

Malthurius.6870:

This is where Salvation falls short. Salvation is way too biased towards ventari and staff; to the point where the line is mostly a waste unless you have 1 of those 2 things. Ventari could possibly benefit from less benevolence and more base healing so that healing moves from the other legends could benefit. Without having ventari or a staff, the best I could do with the line is support this weak control type selection of traits. Staff/Ventari is too mandatory with the Salvation line.

As for Invocation, it has the problem of being difficult to use. Like I mentioned earlier, I spent most of my time camped in 1 legend and only swapped if the situation called for it or if I needed healing; due to heal skills having CDs and the other not. The traits related to energy in the Invocation line are better than the swapping traits. Taking advantage of legend swapping traits doesn’t come naturally because of lack of incentive to swap; I suppose invocation creates incentive; but does it outweigh swapping into a legend unfit for your current situation?

I agree that Salvation and Invocation (along with some traits from other lines) could use some work. Salvation is useless in anything other than a healing-oriented build. I tried using the control traits in WvW/PvP, but they were generally too weak to be worth it. I didn’t like Invocation primarily because it has one role – Rolling Mists. The other GM traits are too weak to be competitive at all, so anyone using Invocation is using it for the fury boost. I don’t think Rolling Mists should necessarily be nerfed, but I do think the other GMs need to be brought up to its level.

Some of the other trait lines had some traits that I found to be too weak to be worth considering. These traits include: (Devastation) Mutilate Defenses, (Corruption) Frigid Precision, (Retribution) Improved Aggression (atleast in WvW/PvP), Retaliatory Evasion, and Empowering Vengeance.

Kaizoku.1298:

fluidmonolith.3584:

I can see reason in both viewpoints. On one hand, UA is very difficult to counter. It gives evasion, high damage (when against a single target), and has a relatively short cooldown. Many professions or builds do not have a reliable counter against this.

On the other hand, if it is nerfed heavily, sword will have nothing left for damage other than auto-attack, and I hope no one wants that. I don’t have a good suggestion at the moment that would be able to simultaneously address these conflicting issues.

SotM, however, I do not believe needs any adjustment. It does hit hard and strips stability well, but the cooldown is long-ish, the evasion is short, and it’s on a weapon that doesn’t have much else for hard hitting attacks.

UA can be countered by stealth, you can reveal them to land UA.
But the problem with SotM is that it is an insta-kill if you land it. Minor tweaking should be fine with SotM but UA can make it without looking at it.

I found it pretty difficult to land all or most of the hits from SotM against enemy players. Often the knockback on the first few hits would push them out of range of the rest. But I do agree that it is devastating if you get most of the hits in.

I do like Sword#2, but I think it could use a slight range buff (e.g. 600 range). It doesn’t need to out-damage the auto-attack, it should just be more useful as a gap closer.

For Staff, I like the change to debilitating slam, but punishing sweep still seems too slow. When I use it (WvW, PvP), I pretty much have to hope my opponent will still be in range and casting when it goes off. I think the cast time should be reduced to 1/2 second.

I can see reason in both viewpoints. On one hand, UA is very difficult to counter. It gives evasion, high damage (when against a single target), and has a relatively short cooldown. Many professions or builds do not have a reliable counter against this.

On the other hand, if it is nerfed heavily, sword will have nothing left for damage other than auto-attack, and I hope no one wants that. I don’t have a good suggestion at the moment that would be able to simultaneously address these conflicting issues.

SotM, however, I do not believe needs any adjustment. It does hit hard and strips stability well, but the cooldown is long-ish, the evasion is short, and it’s on a weapon that doesn’t have much else for hard hitting attacks.

I think it can be tricky since you have two action bar swaps to manage separately (weapon and legend), as well as managing energy. Since energy is a limiting resource for all skills (weapon, utility, healing, and elite), the number of button presses (actions-per-minute) is lower than some other professions (e.g. ele, engi). There also seems to be less combo field interaction than some other professions.

However, one thing I have noticed, and that I have enjoyed about Revenant, is that if you do not manage your energy, you will yourself unable to both attack and defend. There is a very large performance gap between a player managing energy well vs. poorly. The shared resource takes a different mindset for effective play than we have gotten used to with some of the cooldown whack-a-mole styles that can work with some other professions.

I had noticed the enemy nameplate sometimes turning yellow and the enemy becoming untargettable for the remainder of the match in PvP. I didn’t know taunt + resistance was was causing it, but it definitely occurred when I used Rev + Jalis in PvP.

That would be pretty cool if EtD transferred one of your conditions to nearby enemies every second or every three seconds or so. They might need to tone down or remove the torment application, but that would be fine, in my opinion. Pull condis onto you with Pain Absorption and transfer them (get them off of yourself) with EtD.

But is it fun gameplay to activate facets 1 second apart to get this bonus? It seems like the type of static MMO multitasking that GW2 was trying to avoid (e.g. it seems like it adds complexity for the sake of complexity rather than to promote dynamic gameplay). Well, that’s my opinion anyways, so feel free to disagree.

I would rather see Shared Empowerment have a 3 sec cd to match the facet interval, but increase the might (stacks or duration) from Shared Empowerment appropriately.

I noticed this once as well. Also in PvP (hotjoin).

Jekkt.6045:

didn’t have any issues with it and without ground targeting it’s a lot more responsive so i’m against this.

weaponswap cancels the skill in case you’re about to fall of a cliff btw

it might take a bit of practice, maybe playing with burning speed for such a long time helped a lot.

I agree. I like it as it is and feel that making it ground targeted would slow it down. However, I have heard the suggestion of it moving in the direction of your camera rather than the direction your character is facing, and this could be useful perhaps.

This happened to me atleast once. I was playing hotjoin and had bleed/cripple from Ranger’s entagling roots. I used staff 4 but the conditions were not cleared. The bleed stacks weren’t even reset (if they had been, it could indicate the condition clear did work but the entangling roots pulsed the conditions again immediately afterwards).

Demented Yak.6105:

I’ve been testing Mallyx out for a while and I agree.

Embrace the Darkness isn’t bad but unyielding anguish is just better nearly all the time.

I’m really enjoying using Unyielding anguish with Unrelenting Assault. It’s absolutely devastating in conquest. EtD, not so much.

I noticed as well, Unyielding Anguish is pretty good now even for power builds. In addition to chill, it pulses damage now, about 1k crits for my knights armor build.

Dirame.8521:

Knighthonor.4061:

Legends are locked into certain predesigned roles and each legend’s doesn’t seem to sync with other legends and their roles. Legend swap also seem to be the go to design for regenerating energy when fully low as well.

This to me seem to be a flaw in the design of the Revenant’s Legend and Energy system.

Because let’s say, I am a Ventari Support Revenant in full cleric gear and Centaur Legend for support.
I run low on energy. Now what Legend will benefit my role and gear choice now? Centaur has the only heal support of any legend besides Herald.
Should I switch to a condition legend? Or Dwarf legend, or Assassin legend with my cleric gear to get that energy boost?
What benefit would I have in doing so, if I will be locked out of the Centaur Legend when I do swap?

IMO the better solution to this flaw, is by giving each legend an additional set of skills that can be switched in place of the stock skills, that may potentially fit the role of the build I may be building around at the time. This way all stats would still fit the legend I swap to, as well as the role I can continue to play.

The legends do sync.

Taking Ventari for Support is just one form of support. You can take Jalis for damage reduction on the Elite (and now condi damage reduction) OR you can take Mallyx to pull condis off of your teammates.

The most interesting part about the Revenant is the skills and how you can play around with them. That is really not an area where the Rev has issues. If you had gripes with the traits themselves, then I’d be more inclined to agree.

I agree. I do not think it is sufficient to call a Revenant a ‘Ventari’ Revenant’ or a ‘Jalis Revenant’ because you will not have the energy to use all of the utility skills on a given legend on a regular basis. Taking Jalis as an example, a player could prioritize Vengeful Hammers as either an offensive or defensive strategy by increasing their healing power stat or taking devastation traits to allow the hammers to cause life siphon on vulnerable foes. Or you could focus on Rite of the Great Dwarf for group support (presumably by taking the upcoming redesigned GM trait Roy mentioned). Or perhaps there are builds that focus on CC which benefit from Forced Engagement. And in each of these example roles, you can find another legend which has a complementary function. For example, group protection using Jalis elite can be supplemented with Ventari for more group protection with Protective Solace. A crowd-control oriented build using Forced Engagement can be supplemented with Shiro for more crowd control with Jade Winds. A tanky build using Vengeful Hammers can supplement with Mallyx’s Pain Absorption for resistance (more tankiness).

The most important contributor to this build diversity is the fact that you do not have enough energy to use all of the utility skills within a legend all the time. So you can pick a build that specialized around one or two utility skills, or use them all equally but sparingly.

I suppose that was a bit off topic, but as others have said, swapping legends is not necessarily a requirement on Revenant like swapping attunements is on Ele (or atleast if it is a requirement, it should be rebalanced so that it is not). Swapping legends is a choice that has consequences both positive (energy) and negative (10 second utility skill lockout). But if the legends are designed well (and whether or not they are is still up for debate), then each legend won’t have a singular, narrow role which is incompatible with other legends.

I think you recorded the celestial avatar weapon cooldown times for Ranger instead of staff. Should be 6.5, 12, 15, 20 sec for staff 2, 3, 4, and 5 for ranger = 53.5 seconds total.

While I certainly understand the dangers in self-root abilities, I am also not sure that we need another normal weapon skill block, since we already have them on sword OH and staff. I think the self-root is fine as is, and if it ends up being too vulnerable, maybe they could even increase the healing on it a little bit (though probably not, the healing is already very good).

HungryBDinner.2694:

After the #4 change I will definitely use it more for condition removal.

Just wondering with staff #3 it’s block all attacks or just missile attacks (with the blind).

staff #3 blocks all attacks, just like warrior’s shield block, engineer gear shield, or guardian’s shelter.

I won’t know until after BWE3, but I think it’s greater than a 50% probability that I will switch to Rev.

…but if I don’t, what do I do with all the Revenant gear / bag slots / etc. I’ve been accumulating?

OP, I agree with your assessment about Medic Gyro vs. Healing Turret. I understand the hate you may get about it, as I have also previously expressed that HT is too good, an opinion which is not very popular.

I think your suggestion to increase HT cooldown to 28/21 seconds would put it in line with the other heals (though, as others have pointed out, some of our other heals are also too weak and need buffs). It wouldn’t change the drop and pop playstyle for HT, but I think that ‘prolonged healing’ is a niche that Medic Gyro could fill.

As insanemaniac says, significantly increasing Medic Gyro’s healing, and especially the heal over time component, would make it more competitive. It would also reward the user for keeping it alive. Currently it pulsed 800 healing every 3 seconds for 15 second (I guess 5 pulses), for 4000 healing, plus 2600 from the initial heal = 6600 hp every 45 seconds (30 second cooldown + 15 seconds duration of the gyro). This is terrible for the long cooldown, and I agree that a doubling or tripling of the healing, as mentioned, really is necessary to make it viable. Increasing the initial heal would only reward the player for using it like HT, so I would rather see the initial heal left alone and the heal over time significantly increased.

As a fellow martial artist, I actually think the Revenant’s staff is much better than Thief (from a martial standpoint). I hadn’t actually noticed the OP’s point before, but it I do agree with it. The animation does seem to add some blurring so that it’s not quite clear what the Rev is doing with his staff during the last hit of the AA chain.

The thief AA (similar to Revenant’s staff#3 block), has more problems in my opinion. This last hit in the autoattack animation uses a motion which spins the staff in a circle in front of the user. The staff should be spun using the character’s body movement rather than expecting it to rotate in plane about the character’s wrist without any force behind it. We can look at Ranger axe #5 which is, in my opinion, a pretty good (realistic) animation for a spinning motion, even though the weapon is different. Here’s an example for a spinning motion with the staff that, I think would be more realistic:

I can give the Revenant some leeway here since he’s using mist powers and the skill does actually look pretty cool for blocking attacks (staff #3), even if it’s not necessarily realistic. But on thief autoattack, the spinning looks kind of silly.

I don’t know if I like short-term condition resistance triggered on all Jalis skills … it just turns Jalis into a poorer version of Mallyx + Demonic Defiance. I prefer Roy’s original intention over this, which allows RotD to be used for strong, temporary condition damage reduction. Since it only lasts 5 seconds and costs a lot of energy, I could see the condition damage reduction being as high as 50%. The normal 20% we see on a few other skills would probably not be high enough for such a short-duration, expensive skill.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Hey all,

The Reflexive Hammers trait in retribution is going to be changed after BWE3, before launch. Right now since it uses projectiles that hover around you, they currently don’t work underwater and I think it no longer really fits the line as that is more about damage, plus it muddies the FXs around the character when the actual hammers are around you.

Soooooo…. I wanted to throw out an idea I had about a new GM trait for retribution to place it and see what you all think. The trait would be more dwarf stance focused since we don’t have a dwarf stance specific trait.

• It would give you some way to proc Rite of the Great Dwarf like at some percent health trigger or something and then make Rite of the Great Dwarf (both proc and the skill) have reduced condition damage taken as well while allies have the buff.

Let me know what you think.

Thanks for all of your hard work Roy!

Proccing Rite of the Great Dwarf sounds really cool, and I certainly agree that having some function to improve condition mitigation on the skill would really help too (e.g. reduced condition damage taken or reduced duration of incoming conditions).

I do have a little concern that traitlines could be too narrowly focused though. If Retribution only offers defense, then will it be useful to a build that isn’t tanky, or a build that isn’t running Jalis? In my opinion, the Salvation traitline suffers from this same idea – if I don’t want to heal, I will never run Salvation (to be fair, Salvation does have some non-healing traits, but they are generally pretty weak; that is a discussion for another time…). It seems that trait lines on other professions aren’t necessarily so narrowly focused, allowing them to be more versatile.

That and the weakness on hit for the current Reflexive Hammers trait allows it to be ‘defensive’ while still having offensive properties – so it simultaneously fits the trait line theme while also allowing for more build versatility. I actually really enjoy the Reflexive Hammers trait as is, and running Reflexive Hammers + Vengeful Hammers at the same time visually looks really cool to me. But I understand that the projectile collision with walls is a problem.

Killyox.3950:

Prepare for some laughs…

I have prepared a couple of exotic armors and weapons along with some jewelery (other jewelery parts were ascended). I have been seldom playing the game in recent time so I forgot some things. I thought I will ready stuff all the way along with putting in sigils and runes in the armor. Boy, oh boy was I surprised to find out that I bound 80% of the stuff to my engineer who couldn’t even use it!

Stuff I bound by mistake/carelessness to my engineer that was meant to be for my Revenant:

- Berserker’s Draconic; helm, chest, shoulders, gloves, boots, legs (all with Superior Rune of Rage)
- Berserker’s Pearl Sabre (Superior Sigil of Accuracy), Berserker’s Pearl Sabre (Superior Sigil of Force), Berserker’s Pearl Crusher (Superior Sigils of Force & Accuracy)
- Cleric’s Draconic: helm, chest, shoulders, gloves, boots, legs (all with Superior Rune of Altruism)
- Cleric’s Pearl Quarterstaff (Superior Sigils of Water & Benevolence), Cleric’s Pearl Shell (Superior Sigil of Benevolence)
- Dire Draconic; helm, chest, shoulders, gloves, boots, legs (all with Superior Rune of Tormenting)

The worst part is that I didn;t have too much gold so Most of it went into it and gems. ArenaNet does not help with this. Already tried. So in the end I had to salvage everything from the list above (mostly the armor with Runes of Tormenting since they are 10g/piece.

Since then I sold some mats and farmed a bit through events so I am up to ~80g now and already recovered 95% of these items:P

So much for prepping XD

This is very unfortunate…
sorry!

If you are going to post your upcoming Revenant name here, make sure you reserve that name first by making a character with it…
I have not done this, so I will not post my name here

I have:
-enough tomes of knowledge for instant 80
-sigils: frailty (for devastation traits on all weapons other than sword)
-runes: traveler’s (2 sets)
-exotic armor (Knight’s, Celestial, and Carrion)
-ascended trinkets (many types)
-220+ laurels to buy more ascended trinkets
-makeover kit
-20 slot bags (7) + bag expansion slots (3)
-salvage o’matic and unlimited gathering tools will come from my current main
-mats for up to 5 ascended weapons
-artificer and weaponsmith characters at L500 to make ascended weapons (not bothering with ascended armor)

I just haven’t decided yet if Rev will be my main. I’ll try Scrapper out next BWE and then I’ll know for sure.

Are.1326:

Terrahero.9358:

And that Sneak Gyro is pretty redundant. You know exactly where the enemy is moving because you see the Gyro. Plenty of skills, CC and now also Stealth-breakers, can be easily used. Or just pick off the very squishy gyro itself.

While I hate how we never use our utilities for their intented proposes (just look at how we use healing turret). I should remind you that the elite gyro is instant cast. That means instead of using it to sneak up to your enemies, you pop it once you get stun locked or when you try to stomp an enemy. Then you blow it up afterwards to put it on a 30 sec cooldown and have it ready for round 2. It seems to be very good to give ourself some breathing room, or to cover up charge abilities like magnet (if it wasn’t bugged).

The toolbelt seems extreamly good too, 20 sec cooldown on a 6 sec AoE reveal in 900 radius, you just pop that kinda skill whenever you feel like it.

If I notice the wording of the elite Gyro toolbelt, it doesn’t apply reveal, it just removes stealth. Does everyone else interpret the wording similarly?
In either case, it still sounds pretty cool since it has such a large radius.

Edit: Ignore this, I am incorrect. I see now that the tooltip does indeed say 6s reveal.

Inexor.7804:

miriforst.1290:

Ye, it feels like there wasn’t enough time for them to design a fuel system without making it only useable with the scrappers bots so they slapped on a finisher/rezbot which they still have not demonstrated in action. “TBD”.

A resource management game for the engineer instead of a short limited duration would have been interesting indeed.

I would still allow them to be damaged though, just as long as toolkit heals them and they get a major stat boost.

Yeah, this just came to my mind too. Maybe the AA of the Hammer could heal them too, if they are near the Scrapper. This should be possible, if we suggest in for BWE3. Ofc it would still not make them viable for Zerging, just for small PvP-battles.

Are.1326:

So… if you ran no gyros the fuel bar would do what?

Few things which just came to my mind:
- Use it as additional fuel for the FT/fire bomb for some extra dmg/burn
- Give your AA a burn, if fuel is at 100%
- +x% dmg while fuel is at 100%
- Release it as a fire field under your feets if ccd, with x sec duration depending on fuel level

But how would a build without Gyros spend fuel? Or do you just build up your fuel bar with AA’s and then have a perma burn on AA’s, or +X% damage or whatnot? Other utilities would have to spend fuel just as Gryos do, in order for it to be a fun or meaningful mechanic. I’m not sure this would be so simple to implement.

TsukuZankaze.6951:

Bulwark cuts damage in half on a E-Spec that revolves around being up close and personal. iDefender is on a class that 90% of the time is attacking from range or different angles with ample clones for distractions. Different class concepts so iDefender kinda falls out there. Bulwark’s lifespan is going to scale with your toughness. The more toughness you have, the longer and more effective it will be. i ran some numbers with this and a Dolyak/Knights scrapper in Firearms/Inventions/Scrapper will have 50% crit, 3900 armor (full adaptive armor stacks) and 2200~ power with mass momentum. at 3900 armor zerkers are not going to hurt that much, and add the 50% from bulwark (and maybe even 33% from prot) have fun trying to burst that down with power damage. At 3900 armor a full glass thief backstab deals 1.3k damage without a crit. with its like 3300. if prot is up its 2200, and if bulwark is up its like 1100 damage from a high damage attack. it will probably force the enemy team to focus your gyro instead of you because of dmg mitigation.

If I recall, from the POI livestream, when the Bulwark Gyro absorbed damage from the player, the damage it took was greater than the damage the player took (when it should be taking 50% of the damage). This suggests that the Gyro has it’s own armor value, so it won’t necessarily scale in effectiveness with the player’s armor. I’m not completely sure about this though, I’ll need to check the livestream video again.

Killyox.3950:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Corruption
In the corruption specialization, there were a few traits which needed some tweaks in power to be competitive options. As an example revenant did not have many options to apply poison, but had the trait Venom Enhancement which increased poison duration so I thought it made sense to also apply poison itself.
Pulsating Pestilence: Increased the trigger chance from 15% to 25%.
Replenishing Despair: Increased the base heal by 300% and added a 1 second internal cool-down.
Venom Enhancement: This trait will now apply poison for 5 seconds with a 20 second recharge when you apply torment as well as increasing poison duration.

Few propositions of mine

Pulsating Pestilence – Trigger Chance 100%. When struck copy all conditions present on you if at or above threshold. (ICD 15s)
Threshold: 3
Radius 360
Duration 3s

Or

Pulsating Pestilence – Trigger chance 33%. When struck you have a chance to copy all conditions present on you and gain resistance with every pulse (1s). ICD 15s-20s. Radius 240-360. Duration 3s

Duration describes duration of pulsing so 3s = 3 pulses. Now this is GM worthy imo.

Replenishing Despair – this is way way too weak because resistance from this row is far far better. 1s of resistance in right conditions can prevent 3k burn dmg for example. If it’s supposed to have an ICD then it needs to heal more. 300% from ~50 up to 150 with 1s ICD is nothing.

Replenishing Despair – Incoming Conditions heal you. 1000 heal. 5s ICD.

Equals around 250hps if procced every single time so it’s not game breaking and is more useful. This way it is more meaningful and a bit more valuable while not being OP. 150 heal every 1s is bad because how often you get conditions every second on yourself? Not too often. Rather make ICD higher and the effect more impactful.

Venom Enhancement – how about a little twist on it? It can be understood in many ways since you enhance poison. It would also make 3rd attack in chain a bit more useful ever time ICD was recharged.

Venom Enhancement – Apply poison (5s). When you apply poison you also blind in area around your target (240 radius) for 5s. Poison you apply lasts 50% longer. ICD 25-30s

It makes all of these competitive imo and valuable enough to actually compete vs resistance one. Also GM PP one is a better. Option 1 allows to to estimate when it will take place and to guarentee a certain level of impact. Option 2 does not ave a threshold thus decrease it’s power a bit but it makes up for it with resistance. I thought about 1s per every condition copied but decided middle ground with 3s. It could end up being 1s or 10s otherwise.

I don’t like the upcoming change on Replenishing Despair (Corruption Adept trait) – now heals for 300% more when you get a condition, 1 second ICD.

The ICD kills the tactical use of this trait, in my opinion. Even if you increase the heal (1000 every 5 sec. as you mention), it doesn’t change this. You could previously use Pain Absorption to pull in 6 or 7 condis from allies and get a bunch of healing (triggering Replenishing Despair once for each condi you got), but now it’s capped at one heal per second whether you get one condi or five of them. There’s not much you can do to force it to trigger, it’s just boring passive healing. Of course, as you say, it doesn’t matter anyways since Demonic Defiance is better, and I certainly agree with you there. As is, Replenish Despair seems weak unless you’re taking Corruption without taking Mallyx – but currently there’s not any good reason I can see to do that.

Adamantium.3682:

Add to Decisive Renown: Super Speed applied by you is enhanced and now ignores Cripple and Chill.

OR… Add to Decisive Renown: +__% Super Speed duration.

OR… Swap Decisive Renown with Shocking Speed.

Slightly off topic, but I think super speed used to increase your movement speed to the same as swiftness out of combat, even if you were in combat and had cripple/chill. Did that change?