Guild Wars 2

I really like Mallyx and the Corruption traits, but I I still think they could be improved.

For one, Demonic Defiance is very fun. This is a build-defining trait, and I think it should be Grand Master level.

Second, as others have mentioned, Maniacal Persistence is very bad. And unless one is using condition damage, there is very little synergy (e.g. on crit effects) in Corruption. There is only Frigid Precision (chill on crit), which is probably not very good.

I haven’t gotten to play BWE for more than a couple of hours so far (and I only played Rev), so it may be too early for me to say. But so far I do agree that Rev build diversity is limited. I don’t think it’s caused by the lack of utility skills though. I think the number of utility skills Rev has is fairly non-limiting since energy instead limits the Rev. I will give two examples:
1) For PvP I could build a Hammer Mallyx build focusing on using Unyielding Anguish to keep people off of me while I do damage. Alternatively I could make a condition tanking build using Pain Absorption with Demonic Defiance. In either case, much of my energy will be going to one utility, and the others will see much more situational use, and as a result, the two builds will play very differently despite having access to the same utilities.
2) I could use Jalis by focusing on party support through stability (Inspiring Reinforcement) and Rite of the Great Dwarf. Alernatively, I could use a build focusing on augmenting my dps with Vengeful Hammers. Just like example (1), energy limits me from being able to use all utility skills frequently, so instead a build may focus primarily on using just one or two in each stance.

So I don’t think that utility skills are currently limiting build diversity in Rev. Rather, I think weapon options are limiting. Rev has a single ranged weapon, a single condition damage weapon, and two melee dps weapons. When weapon swap was added, the number of reasonable weapon combination became incredibly small. I would much rather see another one handed / main hand weapon added to Rev. That said, extra utility skills wouldn’t hurt either.

With a small amount of boon duration and the Demonic Defiance trait, Mallyx skill Unyielding Anguish is an OOC mobility skill – leap with 600 range (the boon duration means the resistance you get will last longer than the self-cripple – or alternatively, -condi duration effects might work too). But with the short aftercast it’s only very slightly faster than running with swiftness.

slayert.5904:

-Staff improvements are really good still I feel that #3 on staff just lacks information on exactly what it does. It blocks attacks but what kind of attacks?

-Sword main-hand overall is good but a bit clunky, #2 just never use it: waste of energy and time. the third skill is good but your character just goes away sometimes chasing a person and the camera has to go to you and you lose a second and you don’t know what the enemy is doing at all during that time.

-Sword off-hand block is perfect however the skil lyou gain frm blocking just does the same like the second skill which is Grasping Shadow, guess it is so you still have that soft cc if your Grasping Shadows is on cooldown.

-SHIRRRROOOOOOO. the heal skill is just noodles. the internal cd on the siphoning is just stupid. it defeats the purpose of the burst healing which you already lack on Revenant Assassin Stance.

-Every Utility skill is amazing. 10/10
Maybe Riposting Shadows from 35 energy to 30. But I can live with this.

-Jade wind is also nice especially the damage on it, able to get sweet 3.5k crits on AoE? Yes, please.

-TRAAAIIIITSSS
Overall synergy between traitlines just is no existable. Corruption and Devastion is work well-ish but none like any other class has. This gives Revenant a pretty bad hit because you either go lackluster damage with great self sustain or go good damage with nearly none self sustain.

-Revenant lacks that instant condition removal because now if I get bombed by lets say a trapper ranger I need to switch to Jalis and then heal.. get staff ready and use #4…. meanwhile I am taking damage and nothing I can do about it since I either die by conditions or just not able to do anything.

The internal cd on the Shiro heal is probably not to slow down healing but to slow down outgoing burst damage. Without the icd you could probably use sword#3 while the heal buff is up, for example, and pile on 10k+ damage in a second or two (*I haven’t done the maths, so this number was completely fabricated).

Theoretically, they probably could give early access to Rev to pre-purchasers before HoT release, and keep the elite specialization tied to release like they do for all other professions’ elite specializations. All of the base information for Rev has been revealed after all.

I suspect the chance of ANet doing this is near zero, and while it would be cool, I’ve also never heard of something like this being done in an MMO. Am I incorrect?
Then again, I also can’t think of any glaring obvious reason that it would be a bad idea for ANet to give pre-purchasers early access to Rev either.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

skowcia.8257:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Kidel.2057:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

DresdenAllblack.1249:

1 second of swiftness? 1? No, really…1?

Impossible Odds is a pulsing quickness and super speed while you are upkeeping the skill.

Does it trigger the cd of legendswap when out of combat? I’m curious to know if we are going to be able to use it (almost) permanently while ooc.

It’s not intended to be constantly used out of combat, but I think in the version you all get to play this weekend that you’ll be able to do what you said..

Just remove the superspeed part and add condition transfer like it was in original gw1 version of this skill. You wont have to worry about it “unintended part” boosting our move speed outside of combat anymore, while also providing us a viable tool to remove conditions in dps builds – it would also synergy well with Mallyx. Basically 3in1. With phase traverser and chill on sword 2 we dont really need superspeed. We would like to use upkeep abilities before the combat start, disabling it just due to this one skill is simply wrong.

It wouldn’t be disabling anything, just making the legend swap recharge is both in and out of combat so you can’t get back much more energy out of combat then you do in it. Which is something I intended to change anyways.

Having a legend swap recharge ooc sounds kind of clunky, sort of how weapon swap doesn’t have a cooldown ooc. Would it be better if maybe legend swapping ooc just didn’t reset energy to 50?

I’m still deciding between male human, male sylvari, and male norn Going for a bald monk-like theme to make good use of the martial staff (though sylvari would not necessarily need to be bald). Any recommendations?

I wonder, in BWE1 will we be able to make Revenants of any race (well, in reality ‘species’ but all the MMOs seem to call them races), or just human?

If I recall, the Rev in GW2 had pips going from +5 energy/sec to -5 energy/sec. This means that the default energy regen rate maxes out the generation pips in the user interface while upkeep skills with -10/sec (like Impossible Odds) max out the degeneration pips. This, to me, implies that ANet probably doesn’t plan on allowing energy regen at more than +5 or degeneration at more than -5. Which is unfortunate, it would be cool to see ideas like these ones you’ve presented.

I agree that Rev needs more weapon options. Personally I do not think pistol is fitting, and I would rather stay away from magic weapons like scepter. I think a dagger could work as a ranged condi damage weapon though (because Rev likes to use weapons in an unconventional manner…)

Racial skills could be really relevant on Rev, if Rev’s don’t have options for utility slots (other than by the legend they pick). If a particular utility skill is useless on your build or in the game mode you play, might as well swap it with a racial skill instead.

But no, I don’t have any information as to whether or not Rev will have access to them.

And what about other skills, like the Antitoxin heal? That could be better than some legend heals…but it could also be sloppy and broken if we were allowed to put it in the Ventari heal slot, for example. I think racials could give Revs a lot of much-needed versatility though, so I’d hate so see them unusable.

So I have a tough decision to make. I am on ET and I mostly play WvW, but, like Gilkin, I am also resorting to EoTM recently to actually do something other than capture camps or cata a wall by myself for 10 minutes.

So, I have sufficient gold to either transfer to a different server or buy a comm tag. But not both. What should I do?

Artaz.3819:

Rygg.6237:

Having to wait for 10 seconds before you’re able to swap legends is what made the people ask for weaponswap in the first place because you were locked in a single legend running out of energy for 10 seconds while not being able to do much with just 1 weapon and no way to use your utilities, again…[remove ele/eni rant]…if you’re gonna use 2 skills on each stance because of the high energy cost and wait 10 seconds to be able to do anything else besides autoattacks and 2-3 weapon attacks, let alone try to manage your energy and damage mitigation/output in an efficient way and that adds a lot to the profession feeling slow and with no synergy between skills and traits…

^ This is ultimately what is odd about the Revenant feel that weapon swap can’t fix. You can only run the same 1-2 “energy efficient” rotations because it is so limiting. Adding a weapon swap means you might have 2-3 rotations or another defensive/utility option but ultimately Revenant needs a Fast Hands -esque trait but focused on energy reduction/energy gain or handful of other traits like energy gain on critical hit, energy discount on next ability used in trait line, energy reduction after use of elite, energy reduction on all line skills after invoking a legend, etc…

TL;DR There is a feeling of a double-penalty. Cooldown prevents spamming (unlike the Thief with only initiative). And energy cost prevents chaining all weapon skills on cooldown (unlike pretty much every other non-thief class) and even prevents you using utilities when you want. It should be one or the other, but not both. Utility skills should use energy and weapon skills should use cooldown.

If energy cost were removed from weapons, the cooldowns would probably be increased. Similarly, if cooldowns were removed, the energy costs would be increased. I think it’s okay to have both. I didn’t play Guild Wars 1, but it seems that many GW1 skills had both energy costs and cooldowns.

Personally, I would prefer that energy cost not be removed because I like the short cooldowns – I would hate to see 30 or 40+ second cooldowns on weapon skills like some other professions have. Removing the energy cost would turn many weapon skills into “use on cooldown” rather than “use when appropriate”, which requires more tactical decision making. Whether the current cooldowns and energy costs are balanced, of course, is another matter entirely.

I don’t expect that Rebound! will be changed to specifically affect thieves and Rev’s differently, but I do expect that it will not trigger on skills that have no cooldown. But Revs will have to be very careful to avoid wasting it on things like Inspiring Reinforcement and Ventari’s Will, that have very short cooldowns…

I don’t think Rebound! needs to be modified though. As ronpierce says, certain affects generally benefit some professions more than others, and this is okay. Just like thieves, Revs will also be less affected by chill, for example.

Sylent.3165:

From the other legends what do to think glint needs the very most?

1. Shield that can offer protect, and blocks.

2. Utility skill. Passive grants 25% movement speed. Activate to remove one condition and regeneration.

3. Possible trait line, while wielding a shield gain toughness (depending how well our shield is this may be needed)

Personally I’d love if shield was as good as guardians focus for blocks and regen. What do you all want to see to complete this class still?

I think we are good on blocks with staff 3 and offhand sword 4. I recall datamined shield skills with healing and condi removal but I suspect that may have been turned into staff 4. I’d like to see some more ranged offense or CC skills. Rev has plenty of gap closers but no ranged attacks except for the hammer.

There were four of us just on EB on ET server tonight! I’d say that’s pretty good for a week day…

DiogoSilva.7089:

Protection and retaliation fit Jalis like a glove, yet, there’s so little of either of them. It seems to me that they are trying to find alternative, more visually-striking mechanics to replace boons with the Revenant. So, in a way, transforming allies into stone is their own version of protection and vengeful hammers is their own version of retaliation (likewise, staff #2 is another variation of retaliation’s flavor).

Sure, there’s always retribution’s traits, but they feel kind of underwhelming. Protection is tied to incoming disables, retaliation only lasts for 2 seconds and the grandmaster retaliation trait has almost nothing to synergy with.

They should rework retribution’s trait line much the same way they reworked invocation’s fury traits.

3s Protection on disable with 5s cooldown is amazing – I play Engi and we have the same trait. I’m not trying to defend anything else about Jalis though…like the horribly long cast time on the elite…

Weapon swap (or an alternative mechanic) was definitely needed, so I can’t complain about this much. But I am left with one big concern. Revenant has very few weapon choices.

For example, if I play condi Rev, then I equip Mace/X in one set, and what in the world do I put in my other weapon set? There is no functional weapon I can equip for the second set…The best I can think of is Mace/Axe and Mace/Sword, but this still leaves condi. Rev without any range, which is the same problem they had before weapon swap.

Power Rev is better, but still lacking in build diversity atleast where weapons are concerned. Almost all direct damage Revs by necessity will be Hammer and Staff or Sword/X.

Or will this not be as big of a concern as I am imagining? I know that Necro and maybe Mesmer, for example, also have limited weapon choices, but I don’t play those professions much, so I don’ t know how much effect it has on them.

Khenzo.2465:

I don’t even get why Hammers is even apart of Jalis skill set. The legend is around tanking. Then there is this weird low dps skill that doesn’t provide any form of defense.

It’s just really weird and oddly pushed into a defense legend. It should have a small duration protection proc every time one of the spinning hammers connects on an enemy or a cripple.

At least then it fits more into defensive set.

I don’t think it’s wrong for a single offensive skill to have a place in the defensive legend. I think we can all agree that it needs a buff though, e.g. lower energy cost, added effect (cripple, protection), or more damage. Some of these effects could come from traits – as an upkeep skill, some builds may simply not have the energy to devote to using it often, whereas other builds could specialize in it through traits.

Abnaxis.4593:

I don’t think you understand my issue.

Ever single minor trait—every single one—in Devastaion triggers off of vulnerability. Sword is the only weapon set that procs vulnerability. Therefore, you have to wield swords if you want any benefit from minor traits in devastation.

Furthermore, sword gives very little benefit to the other legends. It doesn’t have any damaging conditions to synergize with Mallyx. It doesn’t have any outgoing healing to synergize with Ventari. The Dismantle Fortifications and one skill that procs weakness could help Jalis, but that’s the extent of cross-legend synergy for the sword.

In other words, if you are in Devastation, you are obliged to use swords have have either Shiro or Jalis as one of your legends. Weapons, traits, and legends are too tightly coupled to one another.

Sigil of frailty, 50% chance on hit to inflict 10 sec of vulnerability, 2 sec cooldown. I understand a sigil slot is not always a trivial cost, but it does give another option for vulnerability with weapons other than sword. I can’t disagree with the other points you make though.

The problem I have with Rite is that, in addition to it’s cast time, it does not provide any protection against CCs or conditions. This might be fine in reducing damage from a large single attack in PvE (if you can predict such an attack 2.5 seconds ahead of time…), but in PvP, direct damage mitigation alone is not sufficient – especially on such a long cast time. I think the effect should also reduce condition duration on affected targets, and perhaps even add stability.

Kidel.2057:

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Forcing the rev to swap to regenerate energy with any efficiency is just bad design wise.

I do not agree. It’s actually pretty smart to give reasons to use the main class mechanic. They even did it with war in the last patch. Plus if you trait it, then legend swap (as thief steal) can become a useful slill, with buffs, stunbreaks and so on.

If you don’t design it that way, people won’t use it, making every class the same.
plus the lack of customization on skills is replaced by the legend swap, so of course you should get benefits from that, since you lose time swapping

I think it should be possible to make successful builds that swap legends frequently as well as successful build that do not. Currently, however, it is difficult to make a successful build that camps a single legend. The only advantage in doing so is to pool energy for upkeep skills or unleashing a quick chain of high-energy-cost skills.

I think we can address this by reducing the energy regen from legend swap (e.g. reset it to 30 instead of 50) and then also reduce energy cost of abilities to compensate. A trait could be selected to increase the legend swap reset back to 50 energy. This way we can have builds that specialize in legend swapping frequently (by taking the trait) as well as builds that can define themselves around specific utility skills in specific legends that benefit from sitting in a single legend for an extended period of time.

For example, if I want to build around Mallyx ‘Embrace the Darkness’ then I may want to stay in Mallyx stance until I have nearly 100 energy, then activate my elite for maximum uptime. Being nearly required to swap legends every 10 seconds because it’s such a strong source of energy regen makes this impractical.

Someone mentioned an idea (sorry, I don’t couldn’t find the post to link it here) to give the Revenant an additional F2 skill that switches weapon skills to a sort of ‘mist energy’ weapon set. This could include a set of attack and utility skills to augment the Revenant’s capabilities since it lacks weapon swap.

One of the ideas the OP mentioned (if I recall correctly) is a ranged autoattack that generates energy when it hits a target. This would help with one of Rev’s weaknesses in energy regeneration. Other skills I can think of could include things the Revenanat is lacking: a stun break, a block/invulnerability, and ranged cripple/chill skill (for range control, useful to both melee and ranged builds). I personally think such a weapon set should be useful primarily for utility and not damage – so that it addresses the weaknesses in the Rev’s main weapon set. But perhaps some builds could use the ‘mist energy’ weapon for dps by taking traits to buff it (e.g. in the Invocation line).

This ‘mist energy’ weapon set could be the Rev’s weapon swap, with the same functionality and cooldown as other professions’ weapon swap. Therefore, all Revs would have equipped the ‘mist energy’ and their primary weapon (e.g. hammer, mace/ax) and be able to swap between them.

The animations could look pretty cool, as the Rev could be unarmed with a martial pose and ‘mists energy’ (or whatever) pooling around his fists.

Xenon.4537:

My solution would be to remove special effects from weapons (conditions, healing, stuns, etc) and put those effects on traits. That way you can use whatever legend you want while getting the effects you want passively. Those passive weapon effects would be augmented by whichever legend you use.

• Want to do ranged DPS? Take hammer, equip Shiro traits.
• Want to do melee DPS? Take axe/mace, equip Shiro traits.
• Want to do ranged condi? Take hammer, equip Mallyx traits.
• Want to do both power and condi dps? Take Mallyx and Shiro traits. Pick suitable weapon…
• Etc, etc…

Weapon difference would come from the range, attack speed, animation, and style. Effectiveness would depend purely on the traits. No need for weapon swapping. you retain the trait effects regardless of current legend. Current legend only affects utility skills.

This is the solution I was thinking of too, I like it. The traits could be made very strong if the base weapon effects and damage modifiers are reduced. Yes, this would require that Revs always use a specific trait line (e.g. Shiro if they want to do high direct damage) … but that will probably be true anyways.

It probably doesn’t take too much modification for condition damage weapons – the June 23rd patch that really made condition damage weak without any condi damage stat. This means that conditions probably don’t need to be removed from mace, the direct damage just needs to be increased. In a power build those conditions contribute very little (except for the healing reduction on poison).

I didn’t get to test it, but I heard that displacement ignores stability and defiance. In that case, is it not categorized as an interrupt? If I’m using a skill and get displaced, will I be interrupted? What if it’s a skill that requires I don’t move (e.g. Warrior’s Kill Shot)?

ronpierce.2760:

makagoto.1204:

What i miss the most in the Invocation line is some sort of energy enhancement, like all skills use 15% less energy for gm or degen skills degen 1 pip less or cd reduced by 20%.
Or simply all weapon skills generate 2 energy per hit. We simply have to many traits that generate health by some sort of action across all those traits, but nothing to help with energy management.

You’re right! That’s a topic I wanted to bring up, but totally forgot. I didn’t want a very basic 20% more boost because then that would likely require more artwork, due to how they display it. Maybe a proc style energy regain, energy reduction costs and so far, so yeah, like making auto attacks regenerate Energy would be good.

Only problem with it, and maybe why they didn’t add it, is that it might make Invocatikn feel 100% mandatory (as if it didn’t already).

Invocation is really important because of the grandmaster minor Empty Vessel. If this was made a major GM trait, and the increased energy regen trait was also GM … well, then Invocation would still be mandatory, but perhaps no more mandatory than it is already.

Lyrsen.6702:

Well here are the traits of yours that I really like:

ronpierce.2760

Invigorating Howl (Master, rework): Heal yourself and nearby allies for 15(.02) health per energy spent. 360 radius. (No ICD)

Would be a great sustain and group sustain trait, awesome!

Diabolic Inferno (GM, rework): Landing a Critical hit with an energy-costing skill (no auto attack spam!) applies a 2 second burn. (Shouldn’t require a ICD not affecting Autos.)

I really like this one way better than my re-make of it.

They’d probably have to put a short ICD on it (e.g. 1 sec) so it wouldn’t get out of hand against abilities that hit several times (e.g. staff #5)

I’d prefer weapon skills have no cooldown rather than no energy cost. Though if they did this they would probably need to reduce the energy cost of some utility skills.

Kharr.5746:

fluidmonolith.3584:

Yes, resistance can be cleansed, but it can also be reapplied fairly easily. Uncounterable condition immunity would not be fun. I think the trait provides a high-risk, high-reward style of gameplay. But that is just my opinion, you are free to disagree.

The problem is that it gets passively cleansed by builds that it is supposed to counter. That makes it very high risk and very low reward (lets keep in mind that it does nothing vs power builds).

Compare this to berserker stance, diamond skin, obsidian flesh, distortion, evades, blocks, etc which all prevent condi application and can negate way more damage. All of these can’t be removed when activated.

Or, just look at the condi transfers on necro. On my necro I can instantly put all stacks of most of my condis from long range onto any opponent. That is a “high risk, high-reward” gameplay style. I regularly run through fire fields on my necro to build up 8-12 stacks of burning on me and then transfer them onto my opponent. I tried doing something similar with revenant and just died miserably since the elite transfers only at 240 yards in a random direction and my resistance got passively stripped by the burning.

I think it’s a cool mechanic, but it is destroyed by passive boon removal. Either other professions’ passive boon removal needs to be reworked, or resistance needs to be reworked.

I am not so sure that Demonic Defiance + Pain Absorption is similar to things like Berserker stance, distortion, etc. Those are are short-lived abilities that can be used to avoid a quick burst, or allow the user to continue to put out offensive pressure for a short time while being avoiding a counter-attack. Demonic Defiance + Pain absorption is probably a little too expensive in energy for that purpose, since you won’t be able to easily pair it with your own burst.

I am also not conviced that resistance is useless against power builds. To be sure, it is likely more useful against condis, but even against power builds it prevents immobilize, cripple, chill, slow, and vulnerability.

I can’t defend the Mallyx elite though. I was using most of my energy to maintain resistance, so I probably wouldn’t have been able to upkeep the elite skill to transfer condis to enemies.

My best success with Demonic Defiance + Pain absorption was in using it for survival or to keep condis off teammates. Doing this limited my offensive capabilities because much of my energy was spent maintaining resistance uptime. Just casting a single Pain Absorption wasn’t enough unless a zealous Necro or Engie decided to load me up with 5-6 conditions at once. I’d often have to cast it 2-3 times to make sure the resistance duration exceeded the duration of the conditions I already had. I don’t have a problem with this. If it could be maintained indefinitely and simultaneously didn’t reduce Rev’s offensive pressure, it would probably be OP. Unlike Berserker stance and the like, I can keep spamming Pain Absorption every 7 seconds.

I can see where it may never become meta because it doesn’t necessarily contribute to the bottom line of getting things killed. But it does have situational uses to keep teammates up against condis, or to buy yourself time in 1vX situations (against some builds). And it’s a lot of fun.

This is an interesting idea. I definitely agree that resetting energy to 50 upon legend swap penalizes the Revenant if they don’t dump their energy and swapping legends every 10 seconds. This surely can’t be intended.

I also agree that Rev could really use a way to increase energy regen (currently, they can only slow down energy regen, not increase it).

The only issue that I have with weapon skills generating energy is that this will encourage many of them, which have very short cooldowns, to be spammed. Sure, the cooldown could be increased, but I like the short cooldowns. If I want to use Hammer #2, for example, the cooldown is only 2 seconds. But I don’t use it on every cooldown because it costs energy and it’s only a dps increase in specific situations. I think this is really great, and I’d hate to see weapon skills on Rev become more cooldown-limited than they already are.

I would like to see energy no longer reset when swapping legends, but to make up for this, the energy cost of many skills could be reduced. I would also really, really like to see an additional F skill that might be a long channel that regenerates energy (e.g. 4 second channel, regenerates 5 energy per second, for a total of 10/sec when combined with the base energy regen rate). You’re vulnerable to interrupt when using it, and you’re not doing dps, but you would have some control over energy regen. You’d probably have to be able to move while casting, or it would be really bad. This way you could channel energy to build up your reserves and prepare for a burst. Or use it strategically when you’re out of range of your target or waiting on a cooldown.

I very much agree with the shadowstep. I previously advocated for the removal of the return teleport, but using it as a shadowstep gives you more flexibility. I don’t mind that it takes some time to travel (unlike a true teleport) – after all, it is on a very low cooldown.

Hammer strongly needs a way to get out of melee range, since Rev’s do not have weapon swap.

I would really like to see Hammer #3 not teleport the Rev back to the original location. It could really use the mobility.

Even so, it has a target cap of 5, so it might work in SPvP, but anywhere else the extra range would be useless dilute the effect tremendously when there are dozens (or more) allies within 10k radius.

Yes, resistance can be cleansed, but it can also be reapplied fairly easily. Uncounterable condition immunity would not be fun. I think the trait provides a high-risk, high-reward style of gameplay. But that is just my opinion, you are free to disagree.

Am I the only one who thinks this trait needs to be Grandmaster? When combined with Pain Absorption, Rev can be very, very resistance to conditions, and excels at clearing condis from teammates without dying in the process.

I had a lot of fun using this trait in PvP and WvW, and IMO it is build defining. I think it should be grandmaster level and compete with a good condi damage trait (e.g. Diabolic Inferno, if it were good). Pulsating Pestilence does not seem all that great at first glance (though I did not test it), and perhaps could be swapped with Demonic Defiance?

Knighthonor.4061:

fluidmonolith.3584:

Jekkt.6045:

fluidmonolith.3584:

IMO, part of the problem with Rite of the Great Dwarf is not necessarily the casting time but the reward for using it. Damage reduction is fine, but especially in WvW / PvP, damage reduction alone is not enough to keep you alive. I think if the cast time is going to be long and the effect duration short (5 sec), it should really be rewarding – e.g. 50% damage reduction plus 50% reduced incoming condition duration and a few stacks of stability.

atm it’s just not an elite, it’s your.. way too pricey stunbreak generally invul skills are instacast but also have a cooldown.

one of the problems with this skill is that it’s aoe, not only for yourself. this results in a weaker effect for yourself because it needs to be balanced for more players than just you. lore wise it also makes sense, jalis turned all of the dwarfs into stone, not only himself.

the question is, what’s more important, lore or balance.

if this skill became an invul what needs to happen is:

instacast
cooldown
reduced energy cost
remove stunbreak and add it to a different skill (the stability one because it would make sense).

what needs to happen if it does not become an invul and stays the way it is:

first of all a better tooltip.. how much is the damage reduction?
shorter casting time or longer effect
reduced energy cost

I do like the theme that Rev utility skills are not balanced by cooldowns, and making it an instant stunbreak with cooldown would make the skill similar to other profession skills. Of course, I also understand that balance is important, and if the skill isn’t useful it doesn’t matter how unique it is.

What if, rather than a cooldown, it had a really high energy cost – e.g 75-100?
You make a good point that the cast time is probably too long for it to be useful regardless of the energy cost. Is it reasonable to have one effect for yourself and another effect for other allies? E.g. “Gain invulnerability for 1-2 seconds. Nearby allies (including yourself) gain the Rite of the Great Dwarf effect (50% damage reduction) for 5 seconds.” It can still have a cast time and stun break, it would just need to provide you with stability to cover the cast like all other non-instant stunbreaks do. This would reward you for keeping a high energy reserve while in Jalis, but it would the make the skill less useful as an emergency button.

with real high cost, it would never be used in SPvP.

Remember weapon skills cost Energy as well. so to be at 100% you are a sitting duck with no real damage reduction.

Fair enough. I would like to see some very potent, high energy skills, but a stunbreak should probably not be one of them.

Jekkt.6045:

fluidmonolith.3584:

IMO, part of the problem with Rite of the Great Dwarf is not necessarily the casting time but the reward for using it. Damage reduction is fine, but especially in WvW / PvP, damage reduction alone is not enough to keep you alive. I think if the cast time is going to be long and the effect duration short (5 sec), it should really be rewarding – e.g. 50% damage reduction plus 50% reduced incoming condition duration and a few stacks of stability.

atm it’s just not an elite, it’s your.. way too pricey stunbreak generally invul skills are instacast but also have a cooldown.

one of the problems with this skill is that it’s aoe, not only for yourself. this results in a weaker effect for yourself because it needs to be balanced for more players than just you. lore wise it also makes sense, jalis turned all of the dwarfs into stone, not only himself.

the question is, what’s more important, lore or balance.

if this skill became an invul what needs to happen is:

instacast
cooldown
reduced energy cost
remove stunbreak and add it to a different skill (the stability one because it would make sense).

what needs to happen if it does not become an invul and stays the way it is:

first of all a better tooltip.. how much is the damage reduction?
shorter casting time or longer effect
reduced energy cost

I do like the theme that Rev utility skills are not balanced by cooldowns, and making it an instant stunbreak with cooldown would make the skill similar to other profession skills. Of course, I also understand that balance is important, and if the skill isn’t useful it doesn’t matter how unique it is.

What if, rather than a cooldown, it had a really high energy cost – e.g 75-100?
You make a good point that the cast time is probably too long for it to be useful regardless of the energy cost. Is it reasonable to have one effect for yourself and another effect for other allies? E.g. “Gain invulnerability for 1-2 seconds. Nearby allies (including yourself) gain the Rite of the Great Dwarf effect (50% damage reduction) for 5 seconds.” It can still have a cast time and stun break, it would just need to provide you with stability to cover the cast like all other non-instant stunbreaks do. This would reward you for keeping a high energy reserve while in Jalis, but it would the make the skill less useful as an emergency button.

IMO, part of the problem with Rite of the Great Dwarf is not necessarily the casting time but the reward for using it. Damage reduction is fine, but especially in WvW / PvP, damage reduction alone is not enough to keep you alive. I think if the cast time is going to be long and the effect duration short (5 sec), it should really be rewarding – e.g. 50% damage reduction plus 50% reduced incoming condition duration and a few stacks of stability.

Ventari
I only used Ventari a little bit and found it to be very single-minded in it’s role (whether intended or not). The summoned tablet could often get stuck out of range if I changed my elevation by jumping over an obstacle or dropping off a ledge, requiring me to switch legends or detonate it with the elite skill and then resummon it to continue using it. I really liked Natural Harmony because it is instant cast. The energy cost and time delay for the healing felt like a reasonable price for this instant heal ability. The elite skill had a very long cast time, so that the knockback couldn’t be reliably used on targets. It also prevents it from being used as an emergency heal. I think the cast time should be significantly reduced.

Conclusions
I don’t have many specific comments about traits, nor have I done sufficient testing to identify bugs. The swirling mist trait in Incovation was very hard to see, so I often did not know how many mist orbs I had (if any). The implementation of the mist orbs for healing is unintuitive. In conclusion, I think the Revenant’s biggest concerns are (1) it is very limited right now by being unable to swap weapons and being locked into set utilities for each legend, and (2) long cast times on many abilities makes them difficult make good use of (though some skills with long cast times seemed appropriate to me), and (3) the balance of energy use.

Many others have said Rev should get weapon swap. While I don’t think this is a bad idea, I would rather see all weapon sets become more potent and versatile such that weapon swap is not needed. This may be done by allowing all weapon sets to output sustained damage, by reducing weapon skill cooldowns, and by carefully balancing each skill to be multi-functional across different builds. Since Rev utility skills are fixed, I think the same careful balancing should be done for each utility skill. Each skill needs to have a purpose in all game modes and in all builds that can make use of that legend, since we can’t swap out useless utilities. The same is true for weapons – all weapon skills should be useful in all game modes and in all builds that can make use of that weapon.

Energy balance is an interesting topic that I could speak on for some time but will try to be brief. In some cases, energy balance felt very good – e.g. the energy cost on many weapon skills, and some utility skills (e.g. pain absorption, natural harmony, and inspiring reinforcement). However, I do have one concern about energy. When we swap legends, we are reset to 50 energy – this can encourage us to spend all of our energy, legend swap, spend it all again, and keep swapping every 10 seconds. I think this is okay, but we should also have the option to be effective when spending longer than 10 seconds in a single legend. To facilitate this, I don’t think energy should be reset when swapping legends. This way, pooling energy is possible, and this pooled energy can be used for burst or to make good use of upkeep skills. Energy recovery on weapon swap could be reintroduced through a trait, e.g. in the Invocation line. To deal with the reduced energy availability, it may be necessary to reduce energy cost of some skills.

What I liked about the Revenant was the difference in playstyle compared to other professions, primarily resource management. Most professions are limited by cooldowns, and this encourages cycling through cooldowns and using many skills on cooldown. With Revenant, this behavior is punished by running the user out of energy. I found this change to be refreshing and promoted more strategic use of the right skill at the right time. The low cooldown on weapon skills was very refreshing as well, and also seemed to promote the same idea. Many weapon skills felt available whenever you wanted them, but you had to pay to use them, so it wasn’t always best to just use them on cooldown. Many of the weapon skills were also smartly designed such that even if a skill had a low cooldown, it wasn’t necessarily a dps gain to use it all the time, (e.g hammer #2) or it had a longer cast time that required the player to be more selective about using it (e.g. mace #2). I think a few minor boosts to each weapon set for versatility will really help the Rev to take advantage of these smart designs.

My complete summary of the Revanant for the 7/10/15 to 7/13/15 beta weekend. I’ve made several small posts before now but I wanted to summarize my review in one place.

Summary
Overall, the Revenant has good animations and skills and attacks are mostly fluid (though some have overly-long cast times). Many of the new mechanics are very enjoyable, and players are rewarded for using energy efficiently and punished for wasting it. Versatility is fairly low, perhaps due to the lack of weapon swap combined with the limited role of each weapon set. Currently the Rev is also lacking several things important in WvW/PvP, such as mobility, soft-CCs to keep targets in range or out of range, blocks/invulnerability, and stun breakers. Additionally, many cast times on skills are quite long (3/4sec to 1 sec, even for skills with relatively minor effects). I will discuss my thoughts on specific weapons, traits, and utilities below:

Weapons
Staff
The staff seems to be a primarily support-oriented weapon with some personal defense as well. The animations are very nice, but the damage output is poor. While staff is likely not intended for burst damage, I think it should be capable of sustained damage, since Rev’s have no weapon swap. The energy cost for abilities can be a bit high, e.g. the two-part #2 combo takes 15 total energy, or skill #5 takes 20 energy! The cast time on skill #2, as many others have said, is too long to be worth using (for both the first skill and the triggered skill). Damage is also kind of low – this is okay, as again staff shouldn’t be a burst weapon. I really like skill #3. It seems to be a shield block type skill with a 2 second duration on 10 second cooldown. This adds really useful defensive utility. I also like skill #4 – although others have complained, I think a self-root and 1 sec. cast time is a reasonable cost for a medium heal and double condition removal on a weapon skill. Skill #5 is great, no complaints here.

Hammer
I think the hammer is almost in a good place. Power scaling is good. The auto attack does good damage, and skill #2 hits even harder when used at max. range. Skill #3 has a long cast time and doesn’t really add much value. Since Rev is limited to one weapon set, and hammer is ranged-only, I think #3 could be changed to not teleport the Rev back to the starting location. This would turn it into a sort of blink (but which takes some time to move the Rev rather than moving instantly) on a shortish cooldown. This seems reasonable since hammer works best at long range yet has no gap creators. Skills #4 and #5 seem to work well, I have no complaints about these. The cast time on skill #5 is reasonable IMO, as it is a ranged AoE knockdown with good damage.

Mace/Axe
I didn’t use this weapon set as much, but currently damage seems a little low. Power scaling is poor, relegating it primarily to use as a condition weapn and not a hybrid weapon. I like skill #2 – the long cast time is balanced by the short cooldown to allow the Rev to attain a really high uptime on fire fields. Axe skills seem to work well.

Legends
Mallyx
I really enjoyed using the Mallyx legend to tank conditions when combined with the Demonic Defiance trait (adds resistance when using a Mallyx utility). I could use Pain Absorption to stack up resistance and I found this method appropriately effective – not too cheap to make conditions trivial, and not too expensive to make the method ineffective. It was fun playing with the balance of keeping up resistance or crashing if you run out of energy to maintain it. Unyielding Anguish is very useful, but seems too likely to disrupt allies by teleporting enemy targets all over the place. As others have pointed out, it even displaces downed targets and targets with stability, which is likely not intended.

Jalis
Jalis seems decent so far. Forced Engagement saw little use for me not because of the energy cost, but because of the long cast time. A 1 second cast made it impossible to use reactively to interrupt an opponent, for example, and the short duration made it lackluster when used proactively. Inspiring Reinforcement was very useful, perhaps due to the reasonable energy cost and cast time. It was very multi-functional (as all Revenant skills should be, since they have so few options) for negating hard CC, reducing enemy damage through weakness, securing stomps, or allowing long cast skills (like hammer #5) to be used without interruption. I rarely used vengeful hammers – the energy cost was too high. The damage bonus is decent if they can be maintained, but it pretty much stops me from using most other skills in order to conserve energy. I didn’t find a use yet for the Jalis elite skill. With such a short duration and only limited protection (from direct damage but not conditions or CCs), the cast time might be overly-long.

I think there would be a lot of complaints if they don’t get racial skills. But I do not have an answer to your question.
In practice, I think racial skills may be more valuable on Rev than on other professions since we can’t swap utilities within a legend. If you’re playing a build or game mode (dungeon, WvW, etc.) that makes a utility or two completely useless, then you might as well swap it out for a racial skill.

I don’t like necessity of swapping legends for energy. The reason this is necessary is it is a significant source of energy regeneration (50 energy when you swap legends). I think it is fine to have builds that constantly swap legends, but it should also be suitable to have builds that are allowed to sit in a single legend for a period of time, swapping only for strategic uses rather than for more energy.

To solve this, I think energy cost of abilities should be reduced a bit, but swapping legends should no longer recover energy. Energy recovery on legend swap could be re-reintroduced as a trait (e.g. in the Invocation line).

DiogoSilva.7089:

cocowoushi.7150:

@DiogoSilva I’m afraid I still have to disagree. No other class is stuck to the same weapon skills. Eles change throughout the first, as with Engi kits. “Weapon swapping” our skills is not fun. I get new situational utilities, but not new attacks. It makes fighting as a Rev repetitive, predictable, and just boring.

If I’m stuck in Mace/Axe and I need to pick off someone at 1200 range I can’t do this. Axe’s range is only 900. I’m totally useless if someone gets out of that range. I can’t even gap close (Staff 5) because that’s a different weapon.

Elementalists have a fixed range, btw, yet they work fine as they are. Staff is weak against melee, D/D is quite close-ranged.

I’d rather have revenant’s issues be fixed by making utilities and weapon skills more useful, than adding a second button for a second weapon swap. Other class needs to press 2 buttons to change to a new skill set, revenant’s shouldn’t either (this includes my criticism towards ventari’s tablet function).

I very much agree with this. Revenant is lacking versatility right now, but I think the issue should be resolved by improving the utilities and weapon skills rather than adding weapon swap. I am currently enjoying the relatively low cooldowns on many of the weapon skills, and if we added weapon swap, the cooldowns would likely have to increase.

Laraley.7695:

I actually think that cooldowns should be removed from weapons. You can have either energy or cooldowns, but not both.

I like this idea…some skills that have potent effects (like CC) could be balanced by a higher energy cost rather than a long cooldown (e.g. hammer 5, staff 4, staff 5).

I tried Mallyx in PvP and agree with OP on some points here. Demonic Defiance makes everything work, and the cost-benefit of Pain Absorption (for resistance, with Demonic Defiance) seems pretty good – it’s not so cheap that you can just spam it mindlessly, and it’s not so expensive that it’s unusable). You can maintain pretty good condi immunity with it, but you’re always on the verge of running out of energy to do so… I think that makes it a lot of fun to use.

I think Demonic Defiance should really be a grandmaster and compete with a heavy condition damage trait. Then we can pick to use Mallyx traitline for either defense (with Demonic Defiance) or condition damage.

Brew Pinch.5731:

Possible solution if we are trying to keep Rev feeling quite different would be to have whichever weapon you use in your first weapon slot appear when using your first legend, and second weapon slot for the second legend.

I do not like this idea. Playing around with the Revenant today, I actually felt really good that when I swapped legends I didn’t invalidate my weapon choice for the next 10 seconds. I’m used to other professions where I might swap weapons to use a single weapon cooldown then I’m stuck with that weapon set for the next 10 seconds. With Rev, I could swap legends for a single utility skill but still have access to all of my weapon skills.

Nonetheless, I do still agree that, without a weapon swap, Revenants are very limited. I just don’t think that tying weapon sets to legends is a good way to fix it.

If ANet is set on not allowing weapon swapping for Rev, I think the weapons need to be really solid and versatile. We would need to be able to perform multiple roles with each weapon, and possibly function at different ranges.

Right now, Rev weapon sets are very limited in scope:
Hammer – ranged direct damage. Minor support / CC.
Staff – Support. Terrible damage. Direct damage only.
Mace/Axe – Condi damage, close range only. Minimal direct damage, and a little CC.

If Rev can’t weapon swap, I think these weapons need to be very carefully buffed not necessarily in potency, but in versatility. Hammer may need some way to deal decent sustained damage at close range, for example. Staff may need to be able to deal sustained damage. And what does Mace/Axe do from range?

I don’t mind the energy cost on weapons, though some (e.g. staff) are kind of expensive. I think GW2’s profession design has typically promoted spamming of skills on cooldown, so we may need to relearn to be effective with Rev, where we may be punished for doing this.

I do support the idea of weapon swap. Revenant just doesn’t seem to have the large toolbox that engi and ele do to support having only a single weapon.

I am not so sure about suggestion #3 (stat conversion), because it limits build diversity. If, for example, Mallyx stance reduced some stats and boosted condition damage, then it would be impossible to use a power build in a Mallyx stance. That means if I equip a power weapon (e.g. hammer), it will get weaker when I switch to Mallyx stance. And that means I won’t use hammer with Mallyx. Whether or not Mallyx is worth using at all in a power build is up for debate, but if this suggestion were implemented, the answer would be definitively no.

Staff is really weak, I agree. I get that it’s supposed to be support, but we don’t have weapon swap as Rev. A weapon that can only support is simply not good enough if we only have a single weapon set, IMO.

I think it is fine that Rev weapon skills cost energy – managing that energy is an important part of playing the class well, and separates the playstyle from other professions.

I do agree with Crise that starting at 50 energy seems odd, since it prevents you from bursting an opponent at the start of combat. I also think the energy recovery (to 50) on Legend swap seems a little cheesy and kind of encourages spamming legend swaps for more energy. I think this is fine for some builds, but it should also be reasonable to make a build that specializes is one legend and isn’t penalized for failure to swap solely to regen energy. I think the energy regen on legend swap should not be default, but could be provided by an invocation trait, for example. Without energy regen on legend swap, energy-expensive skills could be made more powerful since the player would need to actively conserve energy to use them.
I also think energy should also max at 100 when OOC.