Playing Revenant makes you a better player

Okay, probably subjective. But after 14k hours in this game and only recently (about a month ago) picking up Revenant, I've noticed a significant spike in my own proficiency.

Now, I'm still pretty bad. By no means am I saying I've suddenly become amazing. Some very important skills previously underdeveloped have become much more refined however. I'm finding myself paying more attention to my opponents weapons, the skills they've used, anticipating common rotations, etc. All things I've always known, but often ignored in favor of being carried by mechanics. On Revenant, I can't really do that. Every mistake is heavily punished very similarly to how it feels to play Necromancer. The difference is that I can't just cleave my way to victory.

I understand some may see this as a "Revenant is underpowered" thread, but that's not what I'm saying. In fact, I still consider it to be one of the most dangerous professions if properly mastered. I'm saying that learning Revenant and fighting skilled opponents will teach you some very good strategies and habits that other professions will not. There's no auto pilot with Revenant but there are a lot of skills that can shut those auto pilots down. And those are some of the things I'm loving.

Revenant doesn't have passive carries and it doesn't have a ton of sustain to cover for mistakes. It's incredibly unforgiving which makes the demand for skill to pull it off greater, which explains why you see a spike in your personal skill level. I noticed the same thing when I started playing rev, you start dodging better, timing bursts better, and you kite/platform better.

Tbh though, rev is underpowered. It's damage is mostly carried by sword 4 and 5 due to over nerfing MH sword's damage and overbuffing everyone else's sustain/defense. Shield would help solve the sustain issue but it's garbage due to 5 rooting you and then without the OH sword damage you can't kill anyone who isn't a total monkey because every other meta build is loaded with defense and sustain on top of better damage (unless you run OH sword). Not to mention the added challenge of energy management when all your skills require energy (even weapon skills that already have a cd...) and each utility drains a third of your energy pool that also only starts at 50%. It needs a few buffs (and OH sword needs some dmg nerfs) but it's pretty close to being balanced imo.

@Ario.8964 cant we call facets other players passives? xDHErald is the best class for passives :} that 1k hp regen per sec for each target...

@Aeolus.3615 said:@Ario.8964 cant we call facets other players passives? xDHErald is the best class for passives :} that 1k hp regen per sec for each target...

Oh yeah that 2k healing power is going to land some epic damage spikes!

@Aeolus.3615 said:@Ario.8964 cant we call facets other players passives? xDHErald is the best class for passives :} that 1k hp regen per sec for each target...

I mean, if they were permanently upkept with no disadvantage to us (hello energy degen) and we never had to press any of the buttons except for consume skills I'd be down XD.

I think any difficult to learn/master professions will make you a better player overall. So folks who are good with Elementalist and Engineer are likely to be stronger players overall when they step down to professions that aren't as complicated to win with.

@Dace.8173 said:I think any difficult to learn/master professions will make you a better player overall. So folks who are good with Elementalist and Engineer are likely to be stronger players overall when they step down to professions that aren't as complicated to win with.

Depends on the build. I was running Cello's sword weaver build in WvW before and I got carried by the build a lot, simply because I could make mistake and just go into water, dodge, water 2 and blast the water field to get back to full health. The combo saved me so many times that even when I fought good players, I didn't bother going back and see why I died, I just simply thought: Oh I should (or should not) have used Twist of Fate, or oh he's lucky my water attunement's on CD, or something like that.

Of course there are more high risk, medium-high reward Ele builds like the FA builds (core/tempest/weaver), lightning rod Sw/F Weaver, core/tempest D/D, but I decided I needed an entire new class that is way more bursty, and I saw Tubby's video and I made a Rev. For Rev there's no oh-sh!t combo except for Glint heal which has a 30s CD, so I had to be more careful, play more passive, kite more, time the opponent's dodges to hit my burst, and watch Tubby's videos to see and hear how he did it. So yeah, for me Rev made me a better player.

@idolin.2831 said:

@Dace.8173 said:I think any difficult to learn/master professions will make you a better player overall. So folks who are good with Elementalist and Engineer are likely to be stronger players overall when they step down to professions that aren't as complicated to win with.

In this case, you're talking about specific builds. I'm talking about understanding the profession and being good at the profession as a whole as opposed to just one build type.

@Dace.8173 said:

@idolin.2831 said:

@Dace.8173 said:I think any difficult to learn/master professions will make you a better player overall. So folks who are good with Elementalist and Engineer are likely to be stronger players overall when they step down to professions that aren't as complicated to win with.

Makes sense - I thought I was good at Ele but I wasn't, the build was just good at sustain, it kinda did the job for me.

Rev has less passives than some classes (though it doesn't seem to stop some revs using the taunt on getting cc'd trait, especially in WvW) and some of the heals require more thought than most classes, but then on the other hand damage application on Rev is ezmode. Overall what class you play doesn't really make much difference to learning, which is why there are good / bad players on every class.

I disagree. Revenant is very passive. It's difficulty comes from poor game design and disadvantages. But the class is not harder to play. Pve proves this.

@Dace.8173 said:

In this case, you're talking about specific builds. I'm talking about understanding the profession and being good at the profession as a whole as opposed to just one build type.

The post creator was talking about PvP/roaming, and in that area Revenant (I mean, power Herald) only has one build, and has been this way since forever. It's not like there's an option to play different with this class.

@"Knighthonor.4061" said:I disagree. Revenant is very passive. It's difficulty comes from poor game design and disadvantages. But the class is not harder to play. Pve proves this.

PvE makes everything passive. Revenant is easily the hardest class in the game to play (especially if you play without OH sword which carries bad revs) due to it's "sustain" being dependent on dodging enemy attacks and avoiding taking any damage as opposed to just healing through any damage you can't avoid (Which is literally every other class except a few thief builds out there)

rev has a monkey rotation that anyone can learn but against anyone competent the rotation is worthless. so no, I wouldn't call it the hardest build (since thats what were talking about here) to play.

Dual sword power renegade deva/retri/renegade who basically doesn't use stamina at all and thus has max crit without much precision and instead goes for defensive stat combo to replace precision. My favourite extreme soloer, right up there toe to toe with reaper. You have 2 heals, you life siphon hard, dwarf stance hammer whril makes you facetank stuff, renegade darkrazor eats defiance bars for breakfast. Almost insta 25 stacks of might and vuln even against normal mobs in open world due to kalla.

And it like takes almost no skill at all, just a bit of timing of unrelenting assault and such skills when your about to get hit big red circle and such.

And this was all before sigil/rune rework. Now theres so many diff combos to make power renegade even stronger.

And doing quite well even in WvW both surviving and killing players.

@Buran.3796 said:

@Dace.8173 said:

In this case, you're talking about specific builds. I'm talking about understanding the profession and being good at the profession as a whole as opposed to just one build type.

That's relevant how? Reread what I actually said. I said that I find that in a more general way any hard to play profession will yield similar results. I was agreeing with the OP and extending his point beyond his one specific example to include a broader range of ways in which you could achieve the same benefit he observed while playing Revenant. To repeat myself, I am talking specifically about professions, not builds.

Even then, understanding Revenant as a whole will make you a better player regardless of build types. The OP may be talking about PvP and roaming but if you can understand how to play Revenant in a variety different situations and a variety different builds from other game modes you will find that on average your play skill has increased.

The benefits he speaks of are not tied to playing Revenant in PvP. You can gain those benefits in other ways and that's the point I was making. I'm making a point about transferable skills.

@idolin.2831 said:

@Dace.8173 said:

@idolin.2831 said:

@Dace.8173 said:I think any difficult to learn/master professions will make you a better player overall. So folks who are good with Elementalist and Engineer are likely to be stronger players overall when they step down to professions that aren't as complicated to win with.

Yeah, some builds will carry you and pretty much teaches you nothing about the profession or the game in a more general sense. Still, playing Weaver did improve my ability to anticipate the attack and knowing when to dodge.

18 months ago I would have agreed with this topic. These days, the problem is that revenant's skillfloor and skillcap have decreased a lot over the last year and a half. Good revs used to be distinguished by their ability to stack 25 might and a high protection uptime, now you get 25 might automatically and protection uptime has been decreased dramatically unless you run shield and use glint F2 expressly to increase prot duration (i.e. not worth it). In addition, shiro F2 is an unblockable, undodgeable, unblindable boonstrip, which neuters boon stacking in the mirror match regardless. The changes to equilibrium (cheesy design but difficult to use) and impossible odds lowered the ability to catch your opponent off guard with smart energy usage and a good understanding of when to burst through the enemy's defenses.

The other big problem is sword offhand, which allows you to play extremely lame and safe. I guess I'll just speak from a mirror duel perspective here- what I see from a lot of revs these days is that they just blow their load in glint, wait for the opponent to dodge, spam the sword skills, then instantly turn tail and run away in shiro so they can get full energy (both profession energy and endurance with dodge food/energy sigils) until they can spam the sword skills again. Which, of course, requires me to do the same thing as I'm not a passive player but I don't exactly want to go all in when the enemy has accomplished essentially a complete skillbar reset in ~15 seconds of running away.

The rev mirror used to be one of my favorite mirrors in the game and now it's just a game of cat and mouse, with sword offhand spam being the major difference. There's players that I'd never lose a single round to in the old days that now can just press 4 and 5 and kite for the next half a minute and reset the fight. And of course, by then, they've got both heals back up, all defensives, and all offensive burst skills. Recently I fought a particular player who, upon looking at my recording of the fight, kited for 25 seconds in Shiro because both of us had burned most of our cooldowns and he was scared of the low health trades. At this point, I decided to play his game since using my energy to phase and burst would be unwise. The fight was essentially decided by who used glint heal at the right time to gain a significant amount of health. Revenant turning into a game of turning tail and playing passive is completely counter to how it used to play.

The one thing I will definitely agree with the OP on is that there are zero passives to carry you. Other than that, I'd argue that the optimal rev playstyle has become extremely dull and passive by nature due to the universally low cooldowns and state of sword offhand.

@"ventusthunder.5067" said:18 months ago I would have agreed with this topic. These days, the problem is that revenant's skillfloor and skillcap have decreased a lot over the last year and a half. Good revs used to be distinguished by their ability to stack 25 might and a high protection uptime, now you get 25 might automatically and protection uptime has been decreased dramatically unless you run shield and use glint F2 expressly to increase prot duration (i.e. not worth it). In addition, shiro F2 is an unblockable, undodgeable, unblindable boonstrip, which neuters boon stacking in the mirror match regardless. The changes to equilibrium (cheesy design but difficult to use) and impossible odds lowered the ability to catch your opponent off guard with smart energy usage and a good understanding of when to burst through the enemy's defenses.

The other big problem is sword offhand, which allows you to play extremely lame and safe. I guess I'll just speak from a mirror duel perspective here- what I see from a lot of revs these days is that they just blow their load in glint, wait for the opponent to dodge, spam the sword skills, then instantly turn tail and run away in shiro so they can get full energy (both profession energy and endurance with dodge food/energy sigils) until they can spam the sword skills again. Which, of course, requires me to do the same thing as I'm not a passive player but I don't exactly want to go all in when the enemy has accomplished essentially a complete skillbar reset in ~15 seconds of running away.

The rev mirror used to be one of my favorite mirrors in the game and now it's just a game of cat and mouse, with sword offhand spam being the major difference. There's players that I'd never lose a single round to in the old days that now can just press 4 and 5 and kite for the next half a minute and reset the fight. And of course, by then, they've got both heals back up, all defensives, and all offensive burst skills. Recently I fought a particular player who, upon looking at my recording of the fight, kited for 25 seconds in Shiro because both of us had burned most of our cooldowns and he was scared of the low health trades. At this point, I decided to play his game since using my energy to phase and burst would be unwise. The fight was essentially decided by who used glint heal at the right time to gain a significant amount of health. Revenant turning into a game of turning tail and playing passive is completely counter to how it used to play.

The one thing I will definitely agree with the OP on is that there are zero passives to carry you. Other than that, I'd argue that the optimal rev playstyle has become extremely dull and passive by nature due to the universally low cooldowns and state of sword offhand.

I will say that it is nice to run a super off-meta build and have potential to success because of offhand sword. I've been roaming with a Shiro/Ventari Zealot/Magi/Cleric Core Rev build with sword/sword and staff, and I am surprised that I can actually have an okay time at dueling, but so much of that is because of sword 4/5. Still a C-tier build, but even without any ferocity investment it does solid damage.

@"ventusthunder.5067" said:18 months ago I would have agreed with this topic. These days, the problem is that revenant's skillfloor and skillcap have decreased a lot over the last year and a half. Good revs used to be distinguished by their ability to stack 25 might and a high protection uptime, now you get 25 might automatically and protection uptime has been decreased dramatically unless you run shield and use glint F2 expressly to increase prot duration (i.e. not worth it). In addition, shiro F2 is an unblockable, undodgeable, unblindable boonstrip, which neuters boon stacking in the mirror match regardless. The changes to equilibrium (cheesy design but difficult to use) and impossible odds lowered the ability to catch your opponent off guard with smart energy usage and a good understanding of when to burst through the enemy's defenses.

The other big problem is sword offhand, which allows you to play extremely lame and safe. I guess I'll just speak from a mirror duel perspective here- what I see from a lot of revs these days is that they just blow their load in glint, wait for the opponent to dodge, spam the sword skills, then instantly turn tail and run away in shiro so they can get full energy (both profession energy and endurance with dodge food/energy sigils) until they can spam the sword skills again. Which, of course, requires me to do the same thing as I'm not a passive player but I don't exactly want to go all in when the enemy has accomplished essentially a complete skillbar reset in ~15 seconds of running away.

The rev mirror used to be one of my favorite mirrors in the game and now it's just a game of cat and mouse, with sword offhand spam being the major difference. There's players that I'd never lose a single round to in the old days that now can just press 4 and 5 and kite for the next half a minute and reset the fight. And of course, by then, they've got both heals back up, all defensives, and all offensive burst skills. Recently I fought a particular player who, upon looking at my recording of the fight, kited for 25 seconds in Shiro because both of us had burned most of our cooldowns and he was scared of the low health trades. At this point, I decided to play his game since using my energy to phase and burst would be unwise. The fight was essentially decided by who used glint heal at the right time to gain a significant amount of health. Revenant turning into a game of turning tail and playing passive is completely counter to how it used to play.

The one thing I will definitely agree with the OP on is that there are zero passives to carry you. Other than that, I'd argue that the optimal rev playstyle has become extremely dull and passive by nature due to the universally low cooldowns and state of sword offhand.

I don't 100% agree but you do have some valid insights. I think the issue is two-fold, on the one hand, Revenant is in desperate need of having all of its weapons looked at and reconsidered so that the profession doesn't rely so heavily on sword/sword and staff. On the other hand Revenant needs to retreat so often due to the overall increased level of sustain and/or damage mitigation from some of the other more meta specs in the game. So, for instance, against a Spellbreaker you are going to need to dart in and out to wear down his defenses before you can get that kill. In that regard, I don't view this as a direct result of offhand sword allowing you to play lame and safe. Without off-hand sword it is likely that Revenant would be less competitive, overall.

However, I don't find that you have to retreat while you wait for your CDs on off-hand sword. In a mirror match (or matches in general) once you blow your Glint upkeeps and switch to Shiro you don't need to pull back to dart in. You can use the newly increased level of Energy to power some Impossible Odds pressure or cast Jade Winds to prevent the retreat and leave them open to Impossible Odds. I've used that tactic in PvP to good effect.

@Dace.8173 said:

@"ventusthunder.5067" said:18 months ago I would have agreed with this topic. These days, the problem is that revenant's skillfloor and skillcap have decreased a lot over the last year and a half. Good revs used to be distinguished by their ability to stack 25 might and a high protection uptime, now you get 25 might automatically and protection uptime has been decreased dramatically unless you run shield and use glint F2 expressly to increase prot duration (i.e. not worth it). In addition, shiro F2 is an unblockable, undodgeable, unblindable boonstrip, which neuters boon stacking in the mirror match regardless. The changes to equilibrium (cheesy design but difficult to use) and impossible odds lowered the ability to catch your opponent off guard with smart energy usage and a good understanding of when to burst through the enemy's defenses.

The other big problem is sword offhand, which allows you to play extremely lame and safe. I guess I'll just speak from a mirror duel perspective here- what I see from a lot of revs these days is that they just blow their load in glint, wait for the opponent to dodge, spam the sword skills, then instantly turn tail and run away in shiro so they can get full energy (both profession energy and endurance with dodge food/energy sigils) until they can spam the sword skills again. Which, of course, requires me to do the same thing as I'm not a passive player but I don't exactly want to go all in when the enemy has accomplished essentially a complete skillbar reset in ~15 seconds of running away.

The rev mirror used to be one of my favorite mirrors in the game and now it's just a game of cat and mouse, with sword offhand spam being the major difference. There's players that I'd never lose a single round to in the old days that now can just press 4 and 5 and kite for the next half a minute and reset the fight. And of course, by then, they've got both heals back up, all defensives, and all offensive burst skills. Recently I fought a particular player who, upon looking at my recording of the fight, kited for 25 seconds in Shiro because both of us had burned most of our cooldowns and he was scared of the low health trades. At this point, I decided to play his game since using my energy to phase and burst would be unwise. The fight was essentially decided by who used glint heal at the right time to gain a significant amount of health. Revenant turning into a game of turning tail and playing passive is completely counter to how it used to play.

The one thing I will definitely agree with the OP on is that there are zero passives to carry you. Other than that, I'd argue that the optimal rev playstyle has become extremely dull and passive by nature due to the universally low cooldowns and state of sword offhand.

Agreed. I usually don't pull back, but I also don't like to leave myself open to a counter-burst by phasing in (easily countered with surge or a simple dodge+counterattack) or Jade Winds (only use if you know it's a 99% guaranteed win). It's more about baiting some dodges/defensives just by autoing and/or appearing threatening regardless of your sword cooldowns. I might have stated it slightly different but that's how a lot of the newer rev players fight. Then and again duels have gotten boring and I spend most of my time group roaming- it's still very rewarding for the revenant to shotcall for a group as its primary dps.

@Ario.8964 said:

@Knighthonor.4061 said:I disagree. Revenant is very passive. It's difficulty comes from poor game design and disadvantages. But the class is not harder to play. Pve proves this.

Renegade's PvE rotation is actually one of the least passive dps specs in the game... You pull off a whopping 2 aa chains every 20 seconds and your full large hitbox rotation has five different rotations to track and requires the macromanagement to know where to jump back into after doing mechanics for maximum gain. As a dps main in my group, I play every class depending on the encounter and current meta, and I can safely say that Renegades are one of the classes with the most to keep track of--even more so than weavering, but probably slightly less than holo.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Self-Deception

@Ario.8964 said:Revenant doesn't have passive carries and it doesn't have a ton of sustain to cover for mistakes. It's incredibly unforgiving which makes the demand for skill to pull it off greater, which explains why you see a spike in your personal skill level. I noticed the same thing when I started playing rev, you start dodging better, timing bursts better, and you kite/platform better.

Tbh though, rev is underpowered. It's damage is mostly carried by sword 4 and 5 due to over nerfing MH sword's damage and overbuffing everyone else's sustain/defense. Shield would help solve the sustain issue but it's garbage due to 5 rooting you and then without the OH sword damage you can't kill anyone who isn't a total monkey because every other meta build is loaded with defense and sustain on top of better damage (unless you run OH sword). Not to mention the added challenge of energy management when all your skills require energy (even weapon skills that already have a cd...) and each utility drains a third of your energy pool that also only starts at 50%. It needs a few buffs (and OH sword needs some dmg nerfs) but it's pretty close to being balanced imo.

I agree with everything you said, however, I wouldn't go around balancing the game by buffing Rev. I'd rather put some heavy nerfs on other classes. Imo, the way Rev is played or is supposed to be played to get results is how the game should be. So many people getting carried by passives and cheap 1-button miracles nowadays, unpunished skill spam, especially PoF specs, it seriously makes me want to puke. :(

@samo.1054 said:

@"Ario.8964" said:Revenant doesn't have passive carries and it doesn't have a ton of sustain to cover for mistakes. It's incredibly unforgiving which makes the demand for skill to pull it off greater, which explains why you see a spike in your personal skill level. I noticed the same thing when I started playing rev, you start dodging better, timing bursts better, and you kite/platform better.

Tbh though, rev is underpowered. It's damage is mostly carried by sword 4 and 5 due to over nerfing MH sword's damage and overbuffing everyone else's sustain/defense. Shield would help solve the sustain issue but it's garbage due to 5 rooting you and then without the OH sword damage you can't kill anyone who isn't a total monkey because every other meta build is loaded with defense and sustain on top of better damage (unless you run OH sword). Not to mention the added challenge of energy management when all your skills require energy (even weapon skills that already have a cd...) and each utility drains a third of your energy pool that also only starts at 50%. It needs a few buffs (and OH sword needs some dmg nerfs) but it's pretty close to being balanced imo.

Oh I agree, I don't really want to bring rev up to the current level of powercreep because that just continues to make it less skillfull/fun. The buffs would be geared towards the unused majority of the class in order to increase diversity within the class. First thing I'd like to see from anet is bug fixes. Fix the plague of bugs on rev, see how it performs when it actually works the way it's supposed to, then go from there. This would be in tandem with nerfs across the board to every other class/spec with the goal of creating a skill/timing based game rather than "12345 miss all your shit then full heal and invuln until you can 12345 again and repeat until someone is dead"

@Dace.8173 said:

That's relevant how? Reread what I actually said. I said that I find that in a more general way any hard to play profession will yield similar results. I was agreeing with the OP and extending his point beyond his one specific example to include a broader range of ways in which you could achieve the same benefit he observed while playing Revenant. To repeat myself, I am talking specifically about professions, not builds.

Even then, understanding Revenant as a whole will make you a better player regardless of build types. The OP may be talking about PvP and roaming but if you can understand how to play Revenant in a variety different situations and a variety different builds from other game modes you will find that on average your play skill has increased.

I can't talk for others but in my case If I run the PvE meta (condi Renegade) and it's rotations I lose muscle memory using power Herald tools so playing Renegade or condi builds for a while instantly makes me worse player in PvP/roaming. So I play the same build in PvE than in WvW and Conquest. Nothing I could knew about Kalla, the short bow, or even the mace or the shield will may improve my skill with the class in Conquest once those are proved to be highly sub-optimal choices for the game mode.