Revenant - how to fix

I think it's time to admit that revenant was a failed experiment.

The base class was obviously aimed and advertised at people who don't like GW2's cooldown driven combat. But both elite specs are very heavy on cooldowns. Either the developers are stupid or more likely the intent was to "cleverly" convert the different crowd to love CDs.

Obviously and not surprisingly that failed and I'm guessing ANet are now debating what to do. Either they tweak renegade to the tastes of the different crowd - to broaden the game's potential playerbase - or throw energy out the window and make it appeal to the existing playerbase.

Should they decide on the former, here's the relatively minor changes which would fix it.

1) Remove the +50 energy for swapping legends and also the 10s cooldown on it. Why? It's stupid. Swapping legends to maximise energy regeneration is dinky and worse, it goes directly against what this kind of player wants. They want straightforward and logical control of their character. They want to switch legends because they need to use one of its abilities, not because of some arbitrary energy mechanic.

Removing the cooldown on legend swap isn't just going to generally appeal to this kind of player, but also fixes several major gripes with the profession. Take away the cooldown and you effectively double the available number of profession abilities constantly available to revenants. Related to this, you solve the problem of particular legends not having, eg. condition removal. Provided one of your equipped legends has it and if you could swap legends freely at any time, then you're fine.

2) Rework herald, simply.

Get rid of all the cooldowns. Keep buffs as their base utilities and make the actives work in combination with the F3 as a preparatory. So if I wanted to spew some dragon fire I'd need to F3 to prime myself (which might take a second) and then execute the ability (which would cost energy but have no cooldown).

3) Rework renegade, simply.

Get rid of all the cooldowns. The interrupt pet might need to be toned down but otherwise the cooldowns - both on utilities and the "citadel orders" are totally unecessary. Energy is finite. Balance accordingly.

Leaving things as they are isn't tenable IMO. Personally I love lots of things about GW2 but not its combat, and revenant as it is is sufficiently unappealing that the game is unplayable. I've kept my toe in and been playing on and off since launch but didn't buy PoF specifically because of renegade's design and see no future in it for me unless there are changes - which as I've outlined could be minor and simple but totally gamechanging.

Go one way or the other. This weird middle ground doesn't seem to be loved by many and I suspect that's a cause for special concern at ANet. Revenant is probably the most unique of the professions and it's the only one which is indelibly tied to GW2 lore. It being unpopular is not ideal.

The core idea of Revenant is fine and the class can still be played if you know what you are doing. All problems with Revenant are much more simple than it seems:

1. Crap condi clear
2. Has not been updated for the PoF power creep

Fix these two issues and all is well.

@Master Ketsu.4569 said:The core idea of Revenant is fine and the class can still be played if you know what you are doing. All problems with Revenant are much more simple than it seems:

1. Crap condi clear
2. Has not been updated for the PoF power creep

Fix these two issues and all is well.

Condi clear is only on Ventari.Malyx was design to hold on to condis and ignore them.Problem is Demonic Defiance isn't baseline while Oportune Extraction is. If we had Demonic Defiance as a baseline trait than we could get better build options for condi resistant builds and condi damage dealing builds.

@"Master Ketsu.4569" said:The core idea of Revenant is fine and the class can still be played if you know what you are doing.

Oooooh. Such a cutting and devilishly intelligent insult....

No it's not fine.

During development ANet decided to do away with energy for all but 1 profession - initially guardian and later thief. They hyped this as one of their leaps forward in combat design. If you've got cooldowns, what's the point of energy? It's silly. Personally I think they were right. Just CDs is better than CDs and energy. Many critics agree. And the game has certainly been successful.

But many players prefer just energy over just cooldowns. It's not a matter of us "not knowing" how to play. It's a matter of us preferring a different style of play.

CDs dictate pre-determined rotations. If pressing the same series of button in a particular order over and over and over and over entertains you, fine. I don't judge. Truly. But it's dreadfully boring to me. I can tolerate it in short doses. I've been playing since launch but only for short bursts and this is why.

Energy gives you freedom and control. You execute abilities not because a particular sequence results in the most efficient output of damage over time courtesy of CDs but because it makes sense to use that ability at that particular moment. I strongly prefer this. Unfortunately I hate the concept, theme and function of thief. In all games. And I've tried playing them in this one but it's just not fun for me. Had guardian kept initiative rather than thief I'd be a super fan. Or if revenant didn't have cooldowns (except perhaps on the self-heals).

Revenant is a weird and not much loved throwback which is in an awkward spot. Like I said, it's within spitting distance of being awesome fun but they should just go one way or the other.

@Caeledh.5437 said:

@Master Ketsu.4569 said:The core idea of Revenant is fine and the class can still be played if you know what you are doing.

The only reason most GW fans play Revenant is because of sword animations and lore.The only reason I made a Revenant - staff animations, on the human they are the best.

My conclusion:you need brain power and lots of practice with this class to make it work.Revenant has very situational utility kits locked behind stances.

@"Master Ketsu.4569" said:The core idea of Revenant is fine and the class can still be played if you know what you are doing. All problems with Revenant are much more simple than it seems:

1. Crap condi clear
2. Has not been updated for the PoF power creep

Fix these two issues and all is well.

Ketsu is 100% correct. Revenant is a high skill cap class that requires the user to know what they're doing to be effective. And by "know what they're doing" I mean a deeper knowledge than just the base rudimentary knowledge of the class. Positioning, patience, and timing are even more important on revenant than a lot of other classes.

I wouldn't call the class failed, it's different and provides different gameplay for those that want that. They might have designed the class to be closer to a mana system, but the combination of CDs and energy generally doesn't feel bad to me . This is largely going to be a subjective thing, so while you may not enjoy it (along with some others on the forums) there are definitely others that do enjoy it. The forums are mostly full of complaints or ideas; it doesn't give an accurate picture as to the reasons why people like or dislike the revenant.

As for revenant being unpopular, it became this way due to poor pve performance for over a year where it didn't have a single build that was even remotely close to meta. It gained a bad reputation during that time. However, it was still popular and powerful in pvp if you knew what you were doing up until POF. Revenant just needs a few tweaks and it will be fine.

@Jack Skywalker.5674 said:My conclusion:you need brain power and lots of practice with this class to make it work.

More personal attacks. What a community....

I have no shortage of brain power. I've been tested and seen the results. I have several degrees.

As I've made painfully clear, repeatedly, the problem is that cooldown driven combat is simply too boring for me. And it always will be.

It's pigeon level gameplay. You know, bird rats. They can be trained to press buttons in a sequence for rewards. That's galaxies away from posing a challenge or being entertaining for me.

@Caeledh.5437 said:

During development ANet decided to do away with energy for all but 1 profession - initially guardian and later thief. They hyped this as one of their leaps forward in combat design. If you've got cooldowns, what's the point of energy? It's silly. Personally I think they were right. Just CDs is better than CDs and energy. Many critics agree. And the game has certainly been successful.

If you had no energy, how would channeling skills and upkeep work? You could just turn on Impossible Odds/Embrace the Darkness forever and still spam all of your weapon skills off cooldown? Yeah, that'd be real balanced.

So many people complain about Rev's energy system, but it's literally the core dynamic of the class... People tend to just QQ about not being able to use all their abilities because they mismanaged their energy, but nobody ever talks about how you can use the energy system in a positive way since it effectively lets you stockpile offense power. Like, say you have to go do raid mechanics... Normally this is a loss of dps as it pulls you out of your rotation, but a Revenant can now add in extra skills that they wouldn't have been able to use before to make up some of that dps. Other classes can't do this, they just have to re-prioritize their skills and amend their rotations to lose as little dps as possible.

If you don't like the energy system, obviously that's cool... To each their own. But why lobby to make it play exactly like the other classes? What's even the point of that? If you want that play style, you can just reroll DH...

@narcx.3570 said:

If you had no energy, how would channeling skills and upkeep work? You could just turn on Impossible Odds/Embrace the Darkness forever and still spam all of your weapon skills off cooldown? Yeah, that'd be real balanced.

So many people complain about Rev's energy system, but it's literally the core dynamic of the class... People tend to just QQ about not being able to use all their abilities because they mismanaged their energy, but nobody ever talks about how you can use the energy system in a positive way since it effectively lets you stockpile offense power. Like, say you have to go do raid mechanics... Normally this is a loss of dps as it pulls you out of your rotation, but a Revenant can now add in extra skills that they wouldn't have been able to use before to make up some of that dps. Other classes can't do this, they just have to re-prioritize their skills and amend their rotations to lose as little dps as possible.

If you don't like the energy system, obviously that's cool... To each their own. But why lobby to make it play exactly like the other classes? What's even the point of that? If you want that play style, you can just reroll DH...

I could not have been clearer about loving energy as a mechanic - though not as it's been implemented here because of all the associated cooldowns. It is cooldowns I hate.

That said, even converting revenant to be entirely cooldown driven (i.e. no energy) like most of the other professions would be an improvement. At least then it would appeal to GW2's existing playerbase. No good for me but still a better state of affairs.

And in their present state, revenant has so many cooldowns - on weapon abilities, many utilities, weapon swap, legend swap, F-skills - that they don't feel much different to the other professions anyway. Their cooldowns tend to be shorter is all. If I go all signets on any other prof I end up juggling fewer CDs and don't have to worry about energy.

Re your question about channeling skills and upkeep, obviously if there's no energy there can be no upkeep. Those abilities could be converted to limited duration (5-10 seconds) abilities with cooldowns.

cooldowns are easier to balance.... This energy thing is set on top to make it "New" and more complicated. I actually see no need for it. One or the other. With energy and no cooldowns you will get the problem that the best kill wil lbe used as much as possible and 8 out of 10 left in the void ...I would remove energy from all weapons and all CD´s from the utilities so energy is for reve skills.

@Caeledh.5437 said:

@Jack Skywalker.5674 said:My conclusion:you need brain power and lots of practice with this class to make it work.

I never meant to accuse you of not having any. I was speaking generaly.

@narcx.3570 said:So many people complain about Rev's energy system, but it's literally the core dynamic of the class... People tend to just QQ about not being able to use all their abilities because they mismanaged their energy, but nobody ever talks about how you can use the energy system in a positive way since it effectively lets you stockpile offense power. Like, say you have to go do raid mechanics... Normally this is a loss of dps as it pulls you out of your rotation, but a Revenant can now add in extra skills that they wouldn't have been able to use before to make up some of that dps. Other classes can't do this, they just have to re-prioritize their skills and amend their rotations to lose as little dps as possible.

If you don't like the energy system, obviously that's cool... To each their own. But why lobby to make it play exactly like the other classes? What's even the point of that? If you want that play style, you can just reroll DH...

Most people here complain about getting their kitty beat up in roaming and spvp.Truth be told not enough is done with the energy sistem to deal with condi damage and hard cc.Me personaly,I'd wish for a legend with a cheap free insta cast stun breaker a strong healing skill targeting myself and just one upkeep skill.What would be nice is if Embrace Darkness converted condis in boons instead of pulsating torment and/or if Demonic Defiance was base line.

@Caeledh.5437 said:

@narcx.3570 said:

If you had no energy, how would channeling skills and upkeep work? You could just turn on Impossible Odds/Embrace the Darkness forever and still spam all of your weapon skills off cooldown? Yeah, that'd be real balanced.

So many people complain about Rev's energy system, but it's literally the core dynamic of the class... People tend to just QQ about not being able to use all their abilities because they mismanaged their energy, but nobody ever talks about how you can use the energy system in a positive way since it effectively lets you stockpile offense power. Like, say you have to go do raid mechanics... Normally this is a loss of dps as it pulls you out of your rotation, but a Revenant can now add in extra skills that they wouldn't have been able to use before to make up some of that dps. Other classes can't do this, they just have to re-prioritize their skills and amend their rotations to lose as little dps as possible.

If you don't like the energy system, obviously that's cool... To each their own. But why lobby to make it play exactly like the other classes? What's even the point of that? If you want that play style, you can just reroll DH...

Revenant skills need cool downs though... If they didn't have them, they would be so so insanely OP that they would have to either further nerf them into oblivion or just increase the energy cost by such a ridiculous amount that they'd effectively all be under the same shared cooldown. Without cool downs and using current energy costs, you could cast UA five times in a row, effectively becoming immortal. You could just cast Precision Strike every second forever, effectively making you untouchable. You could use SotMs to fly back and forth across a team fight endlessly cc'ing--same with spamming Rift. And that's not even starting on heal skills. They would have to make heal skills cost so much that they'd be even more unusable.

And like I said before, if you got rid of energy and kept cool downs, now it's literally making it the same as the other classes, but with a cool blindfold skin. Yawn.

But it´s not a bad idea to simplify it to CD´s only ..... But what will happen if all weapon skills don´t cost energy and have their CD´s. CD´s for revenant skills + energy is kept.

I think it has a lot of problems with its kit and basically ability to deal with the current meta. Sure you could get the numbers more inlined and the class would be improved in terms of effectiveness, but I still think the problem persists with the design of the class. It's a novel idea, but when individual utility skills hold so much weight and is an integral part of the game I think it is a terrible idea to lock them into sets of skills like weapons. Utility skills are not combat skills. It makes sense for weapon skills to be grouped because they share a playstyle and are meant to flow together. Utility skills aren't meant for this and grouping them up really limits what you can get out of them.If you could pick your secondary skills individually and only have one bar, like every other class, it would always be better than two legends because you get what you need. Not a bunch of skills you don't need and the useful skills split between two legends that you have a cooldown for switching.

What I think would be better is that you switch legends for some passive effects and being in said legend add extra effects to the skills in the same line. But there is only one utility bar and you get to handpick from legends. You just get extra bonuses from using let's say demon skills while in the demon stance. Maybe the legends can determine the elite skill, but I still think that would even be too limiting. Still use energy because I think upkeep skills are cool even if they are sorta boring. They're unique to the class.

@Wolfric.9380 said:But it´s not a bad idea to simplify it to CD´s only ..... But what will happen if all weapon skills don´t cost energy and have their CD´s. CD´s for revenant skills + energy is kept.

It's not a good idea to simplify it to cooldowns only. There are several skills that are worth using back to back in certain situations, like Unyielding Anguish or Riposting Shadows. If they moved revenant to an entirely cooldown based class, you'd lose out on the ability to use some of those key abilities as quickly. One of revenant's major advantages is its flexibility. Cooldowns on everything would kill its flexibility.

@LucianTheAngelic.7054 said:

@"Master Ketsu.4569" said:The core idea of Revenant is fine and the class can still be played if you know what you are doing. All problems with Revenant are much more simple than it seems:

1. Crap condi clear
2. Has not been updated for the PoF power creep

Fix these two issues and all is well.

This is the Truth :+1:

@XxsdgxX.8109 said:

@LucianTheAngelic.7054 said:

@"Master Ketsu.4569" said:The core idea of Revenant is fine and the class can still be played if you know what you are doing. All problems with Revenant are much more simple than it seems:

1. Crap condi clear
2. Has not been updated for the PoF power creep

Fix these two issues and all is well.

And to be fair ... Anet was smart in releasing such a class because nothing really filled that gap. Not sure people recognize that the class design isn't just about theme, it's about giving people a variety of different playstyles/complexities/learning curves; otherwise the classes are different in name only. Most of the complaints about these things stem from the idea that all classes should be equal on any factor that affects play ... I don't get that. Why? The key equalizer, especially for PVP modes ... are the players.

People want Revenant to be something else when it doesn't need to be.

The problem is anet keeps listening to these people. That's why we keep getting extremely silly changes like removing the block off sword 4 because of "hurr identity crisis durr". The buff to the damaging part of S4 was nice, and S5 to a teleport is also great, but there was no need to remove the block. A 2s block on such a low cooldown is worth gold in PvP, but anet keeps listening to PvE farmers for balance changes and that's why Rev is in such a sorry state.

This is also why Renegade is trashy in PvP as well. Everything about Leg Renegade stance screams "PvE support class". Designed for fast clears to please the raid crowd and any hint of PvP / WvW balance being a distant afterthought.

@"Master Ketsu.4569" said:This is also why Renegade is trashy in PvP as well. Everything about Leg Renegade stance screams "PvE support class". Designed for fast clears to please the raid crowd and any hint of PvP / WvW balance being a distant afterthought.

Which is why raids are filled with Renegade! Oh wait...

Also, really, what does it matter whether all 15 remaining active sPvP players are upset over a balance change? Isn't it kinda pointless to aim your design at the tiniest minority game mode?

@Carighan.6758 said:Also, really, what does it matter whether all 15 remaining active sPvP players are upset over a balance change? Isn't it kinda pointless to aim your design at the tiniest minority game mode?

So when Anet makes changes that affect sPvP in a negative way either to disrupt or make more unbalanced changes the sPvP players should just get over and deal with it is what you are saying?

@Carighan.6758 said:Also, really, what does it matter whether all 15 remaining active sPvP players are upset over a balance change? Isn't it kinda pointless to aim your design at the tiniest minority game mode?

Because PvE balance doesn't mean anything. Monsters are dumb as rocks and follow predictable scripted actions. This means the only thing balance in PvE can ever really affect is your clear times with certain class combinations. In 99% of cases, this can be fixed by simply adjusting certain class skills to do more % damage vs monsters only.

In PvP, balance means everything. Poor balance will affect the actual outcome of placement, and can easily ruin the match when done poorly. This is why GW2 Esports ragequit, because anet refuses to accept just how crucial it is for a proper meta to exist in PvP so that it can at least function.

@Obtena.7952 said:Most of the complaints about these things stem from the idea that all classes should be equal on any factor that affects play ... I don't get that. Why?

Or more to the point, why are you asking that question here?My strong and clearly expressed preference would be to strip all CDs from revenant and make it all about energy.There is definitely no other profession like that. Thieves only if you're willing to go all signets for utilities, but that doesn't leave you with much and it's dreadfully dull.

@Caeledh.5437 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:Most of the complaints about these things stem from the idea that all classes should be equal on any factor that affects play ... I don't get that. Why?

Because it was relevant to the previous post I quoted and if people think about that question, it change the way they propose fixes that are more relevant to the game; nothing is 'fixed' for reasons related to what other classes have or how they perform. ... and I agree that there should be only one way to manage skill timings on a class; Revenant is overly constricted by CDS and energy.

@"Master Ketsu.4569" said:People want Revenant to be something else when it doesn't need to be.

The problem is anet keeps listening to these people. That's why we keep getting extremely silly changes like removing the block off sword 4 because of "hurr identity crisis durr". The buff to the damaging part of S4 was nice, and S5 to a teleport is also great, but there was no need to remove the block. A 2s block on such a low cooldown is worth gold in PvP, but anet keeps listening to PvE farmers for balance changes and that's why Rev is in such a sorry state.

This is also why Renegade is trashy in PvP as well. Everything about Leg Renegade stance screams "PvE support class". Designed for fast clears to please the raid crowd and any hint of PvP / WvW balance being a distant afterthought.

I use sword/axe sword/sword, its great for offensive Attack. I think they should add the block to the shield first skill instead. But i just fear it becomes too cheesy.