Meet the Legendary Canthan Assassin!

[DonArkanio.6419]

Hey everyone!

Here's my another little project I've been working on for a while. This time, I tried to reimagine our corrupted assassin - Shiro Tagachi. I really like bridging GW1 and GW2, so I tried to make Legendary Assassin Stance as close to the original Guild Wars villain as possible. Some skills might seem confusing as I sticked with the current names but changed their functionality. The concept wraps up the entire functionality of assassin; with Swords, Traits, Skills and Legend itself. Also, new icons, visuals and dialogues.

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important note: This is a fan project and most artworks used here are made by ANet, I just remade them to fit in the project.

I hope you'll enjoy!

Artwork made by Naomi Baker

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The legendary canthan assassin Shiro Tagachi, allows to use his vicious speed and cause havoc in the battlefield for revenants who summon him from the Mists. Your weapons of choice will be the swords that will give you the ability to cut through your enemies.

Legendary Assassin Stance is a core Legend that allows revenants to summon powers of Shiro Tagachi.

Original Guild Wars

I always thought that Shiro summoned by revenants was missing something. This is caused mostly by having 2 pure movement skills. While this feels good to use in PvP, it also takes up 2 out of 5 skills on our skillbar. Revenant doesn't have a pool of utilities to choose from, so in PvE all we do is pop up Impossible Odds and keep spamming autoattacks. Here, I decided to give revenants some skills Shiro used in GW1. This way it's closer to the original boss. This means no more Jade Winds. While the CC with vulneraility is cool, I just wanted to make something completely different for an elite skill. Here, the legend is focusing on the sustained damage; life-siphon, while also being as mobile as possible.

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While the Main-hand sword stays mostly the same, I decided to give some utility to the off-hand. Duelist's Preperation comes back before Shackling Wave. This way, Shackling Wave can have a quicker cast-time because it follows a huge telegraph that is a block. Another thing is that I added an optional flip-skill to Deathstrike that allows you to teleport back to where you shadowstep from. Similar to Thief's Infiltrator Strike. I made some energy cost, cast-time and cooldown changes to the weapons as well. More in the Traits.

Main-hand Sword

• Auto-attack chain stays the same
• Chilling Isolation stays the same
• Unrelenting Assault's cast-time is now 0.5s and the number of hits increased to 7.

Off-hand Sword

• Added Duelist's Preperations before Shackling Wave
• Deathstrike gains optional flip-skill Phase Traversal that will allow you to teleport back to your previous location

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Duelist's Preperation:

• Block duration: 2 seconds

Shackling Wave:

• Immobilize changed to Cripple

Deathstrike:

• Deals 1 hit
• Damage depends on your target's health

Phase Traversal

• Range: 600

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With the rework I decided to refresh the look of our skillbar. This isn't a huge change as it's mostly a recolor of current one. But this, in my opinion, adds to the whole experience of that fan rework. Here you can see new skill icons (mostly from Original Guild Wars). These are slightly recolored and repainted to better fit the Revenant, so a splash of grey and red did the job. I know this is very similar to Renegade's skillbar color palette.

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Skills

Some skills were renamed to better fit the Original Guild Wars Shiro Tagachi. For example, Battle Scars became the new upkeep. Impossible Odds is a stunbreak and Riposting Shadow was changed from being an evade to being a target teleport. I know this is confusing but I feel like the overall kit could be pretty fun to use.No more Jade Winds.I decided to change Jade Winds into something more interactive. While the sole idea of turning everyone into jade seems cool, Shiro had a pretty cool ability that is directly tied to the Mists. I thought it would be cool to use Echoing Banishment as a new elite skill. It changes the playstyle of Shiro and allows you to be a bit further from combat while still being a big threat to your enemies.

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Let's dive deeper into the skills!

Here are some skill concepts, so they feel fresh and distinct from the current theme. Color palette: yellow, red and misty white.

Healing Skill

Meditation of the Reaper

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Let's get crazy for a moment. I know, Infuse Light is the pain in the kitten for most of the players, so imagine we live in a world where Infuse Light doesn't work as we know it. Instead, Shiro has access to something similar that is also semi-offensive.This skill doesn't heal you for the full damage you receive but just the portion, let's say 40%. During the meditation you are unable to attack, but you also gain a second cast that is Harvest. This way, you can damage nearby foes and heal for % of the damage dealt. So you're not left with 1k heal when enemies suddenly stop attacking you.

• Damage converted to healing: 40%
• Duration: 2 seconds
• During cast-time you're unable to attack
• CD: 30 Seconds
• Harvest - Heal for the 50% of the damage dealt to enemies around you. (Counts as life-siphon)
• Energy cost: 5 (+ 5)

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Utility Skills

Impossible Odds

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This skill is no longer an upkeep. It now works as a Stunbreak that gives cures conditions and gives you quickness. I loved the original concept of Impossible Odds giving revenants quickness on demand. This was later nerfed and we are currently with that weird mix of movement speed, bonus damage and it doesn't feel good. So, a fixed quickness duration after a stunbreak can feel like a good counter attack. Also, with Revenant having energy system, this skill can be used many times giving more quickness. But in order to keep it less spammy, I added 3 seconds of CD, so you still have to be careful while using it.

• Breaks stun

• Conditions cured: 3

• Quickness duration: 4 seconds

• Energy cost: 30

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  Riposting Shadows

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  An evade? A teleport? A damage skill? - what is that?So, Riposting Shadows becomes current Phase Traversal, but this time it's also a skill that deal a pretty decent unblockable damage. So it can be used as a burst, or as a gap-closer. Since the whole Shiro is going to be much more telegraphed with Duelist's Preperation and an increased cast time of Deathstrike, it's fair to have a skill that can deal massive damage and do something more.

• Damage power coefficient: 1.67 (?)

• Range: 900

• Unblockable

• Energy Cost: 30

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Battle Scars

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Battle Scars become a new upkeep. This time, it isn't about speed or dealing extra strikes - it's sustain. Once you pop up Battle Scars, you are able to heal up pretty quickly, because the numbers increase when you're low on health. And while life-siphon also deals damage and is unblockable by design, I thought it could be a pretty cool skill. Movement and speed increase is provided via Traits, so skills don't have to do 4 things at once.

• Life-siphon
• Heal increase under 50% HP: 25%
• Heal increase under 25% HP: 50%
• siphon damage increase under 50% HP: 10%
• siphon damage increase under 25% HP: 25%
• Energy Cost: 5 / -6 per second

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Elite

Echoing Banishment

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Here it is. This concept can seem kind of janky and clunky, but bear with me. Echoing Banishment will allow you to quickly resustain afar from combat, if you use it properly. The soul works basically like a real enemy, so all the life-siphon and vulnerability gets transferred onto your foe making it a good opener for a fight or a quick resustain during battle. If you happen to hit both soul and the enemy simultaneously, you deal normal damage to the target + the damage from their soul.

• Soul duration: 5 seconds
• Multiple souls possible
• CD: 1 seconds

• Energy Cost: 30

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So, when recreating a concept of Shiro, I also tweaked Devastation to fit better into the overall legend mechanic. I think it synergizes with Assassin pretty nicely, as it works with single abilities as we as the whole weapon-set of revenants. It can be also useful with legends other than Shiro, though it obviously favors it. Traits are pretty self-explainatory, so I won't talk much about them. Though I really enjoyed doing them.

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Upon activating Assassin Stance while in combat:Shiro: Death by a thousand cuts!

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Upon meeting a Tengu:Shiro: Even though our people never came to like each other, I value Tengu for their prowess.

• Asura: These avian creatures don't seem to like cooperation.
• Human: I hope to live the day we stand together to face the threats of Tyria.
• Charr: Birds that can't fly.
• Norn: I've heard great tales of Silverwing's deeds.
• Sylvari: I have yet to learn about their past.

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  When near Mouth of Torment Point of Interest:Shiro: This place. It was the source of my pain.

• Asura: If only we could investigate it, we'd learn a lot more about the structure of the Mists.
• Human: The Six is no more. And Abaddon was the first to step down from their throne.
• Charr: Shouldn't have trusted a false god.
• Norn: Human gods are hateful and filled with greed, unlike the Spirits of the Wild.
• Sylvari: Mordremoth was the source of mine, and I faced him.

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  When in Cantha:Shiro: What have I done to my home...

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  Occasionally when using Echoing Banishment:Shiro: Meet me in the Mists!Shiro: Taste my blade!

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  Occasionally when using Impossible Odds:Shiro: I'm unstoppable!

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  Occasionally when using Battle Scars:Shiro: Feel my pain!

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That's all! I hope you enjoyed the read! I'd love to read your thoughts and comments.

[Alek Seven.2374]

After a good read, I'll say that just by reading the skills, it makes me want to use them. (I'm on my phone, feedback a bit short)

[Yasai.3549]

I like the general approach to the kit but some feedback here :

• I feel like Shiro should be more focused on offense and rewards being on the attack. While the proposal fulfills this somewhat, I feel like it could stand to be MORE aggressive.

• I like the idea of putting a Shadowstep back in Deathstrike through a trait. Some may argue that it is too powerful but I think it's fine.

Feedback on Impossible Odds :I think that instead of just curing 3 Conditions, it should transfer Conditions on hit, up to 5 hits.Shiro users will then have to keep up the aggression to reap the rewards of the Condition cleansing.

Feedback on Meditation of the Reaper :
Very cool idea.It's pretty much a Shiro version of Infuse Light with Shield 5 channel, but also has a flip which forces a Siphon in AoE.I still wish that we had Enchanted Daggers though, because all Enchanted Daggers needed was a flip skill to consume all remaining charges to heal.Again, rewards aggression.

Feedback on Echoing Banishment :Might be too powerful, but again, it costs alot and lasts only 5 seconds.

Feedback on Dance of Death :Don't like it.Rev has low access to good CC abilities, or reliable CC skills.I think it should just be changed to upon hitting a target over 10 Vuln Stacks for Quickness buff.

Feedback on Battlescarred :Nope, still don't like anything tied to a healing skill on Devastation.Should make it do something on Evade instead.Like maybe deal an unblockable hit which rips 1 boon in a 200 range upon evading an attack.

Cooldowns :

I think Unrelenting Assault needs to be on a shorter cooldown to facilitate more use as both an aggressive and defensive skill.Duelist Preparation and Deathstrike are powerful in the proposal, but shouldn't dictate how the entire kit is being played, and 10sec cooldown is abit too short for such powerful skills.

Imo Unrelenting Assault should be 10 sec CD while Duelist Preparation and Deathstrike should be 15 sec CD.

Those are powerful skills after all, and I think Rev will be more assassin like if they are allowed to use Unrelenting Assault more often to keep the pressure up.

[Thornwolf.9721]

I feel like this is the shiro I had hoped we'd of gotten when he was revealed; What we got was kind of a mess and I honestly feel it doesn't truly fit him. Here is to hoping that they remake him like this, I enjoyed the read and can't give you any more thumbs up..

[Psycoprophet.8107]

Yes pls, this is very thought out and creative. Great job!Because of what's stated above sadly anet team will never implement this, thank u for the fantasy tho lol

[LucianTheAngelic.7054]

Obligatory “I disagree with most rework ideas” post.

I appreciate the effort that was put in, but it seems to trade some of the current fluidity of the spec for theme, which imo is bad. Also some things are fairly overpowered for the current meta while some things were nerfed for no reason (phase traversal to range 900 for example, why?). Also you (probably accidentally) deleted the current viable traits for PvE 34k dps Power Ren, with unsuspecting strikes, assassins presence, impossible odds, and dance of death all getting changed functionality. With all of those changes PvE power rev would become a dumpster fire again.

So I don’t think it needs a rework, even if it sounds cool, since it’s still meta in pvp and finally performing well for dps in PvE.

I will say though that Echoing Banishment sounds pretty cool. As much as I love Jade Winds thematically i feel Echoing would be more interesting. And meditation of the reaper would be great if Infuse Light didn’t already exist like you said.

[DonArkanio.6419]

@Yasai.3549 said:I like the general approach to the kit but some feedback here :

• I feel like Shiro should be more focused on offense and rewards being on the attack. While the proposal fulfills this somewhat, I feel like it could stand to be MORE aggressive.

Feedback on Impossible Odds :I think that instead of just curing 3 Conditions, it should transfer Conditions on hit, up to 5 hits.Shiro users will then have to keep up the aggression to reap the rewards of the Condition cleansing.

I thought about transferring condis but that is already Mallyx’ job so I didn’t want to take it away from it. But yeah, it’s a good idea.

Feedback on Meditation of the Reaper :

Very cool idea.It's pretty much a Shiro version of Infuse Light with Shield 5 channel, but also has a flip which forces a Siphon in AoE.I still wish that we had Enchanted Daggers though, because all Enchanted Daggers needed was a flip skill to consume all remaining charges to heal.Again, rewards aggression.

It came to my mind that Shiro’s actual Mediation of the Reaper is split into Revenant’s 3 skills. Unifying it into Shiro and giving Glint + Shield something different could profit Revenant.

Feedback on Echoing Banishment :Might be too powerful, but again, it costs alot and lasts only 5 seconds.

Feedback on Dance of Death :Don't like it.Rev has low access to good CC abilities, or reliable CC skills.I think it should just be changed to upon hitting a target over 10 Vuln Stacks for Quickness buff.

Initially I thought about Quickness on Chill with ICD, or Quickness when your target’s health drops below 50%. Similar to Warrior’s trait.

Feedback on Battlescarred :Nope, still don't like anything tied to a healing skill on Devastation.Should make it do something on Evade instead.Like maybe deal an unblockable hit which rips 1 boon in a 200 range upon evading an attack.

This would increase the healing of each healing skill Revenant has, since you would life-siphon. It could work like the new invoke effect on Corruption. On-evade is already in Retribution and Salvation, so yeah. Again, if we didn’t have Mallyx this would definitely be a boon rip somewhere in the kit.

Thanks a lot for your feedback. I like that playing Shiro feels so fast, but I believe we could use some utility other than movement abilities. Hence the Phase Traversal thing on Deathstrike.

[DonArkanio.6419]

@LucianTheAngelic.7054 said:Obligatory “I disagree with most rework ideas” post.I appreciate the effort that was put in, but it seems to trade some of the current fluidity of the spec for theme, which imo is bad. Also some things are fairly overpowered for the current meta while some things were nerfed for no reason (phase traversal to range 900 for example, why?). Also you (probably accidentally) deleted the current viable traits for PvE 34k dps Power Ren, with unsuspecting strikes, assassins presence, impossible odds, and dance of death all getting changed functionality. With all of those changes PvE power rev would become a dumpster fire again.

So I don’t think it needs a rework, even if it sounds cool, since it’s still meta in pvp and finally performing well for dps in PvE.

I will say though that Echoing Banishment sounds pretty cool. As much as I love Jade Winds thematically i feel Echoing would be more interesting. And meditation of the reaper would be great if Infuse Light didn’t already exist like you said.

Actually Riposting Shadows (current Phase Traversal) was nerfed because it has no CD and deal big unblockable damage. And since Revs with Shiro are most likely running double Swords, there will be a lot more movement in the kit that is cheaper. Deathstrike’s CD is lowered, and you get a flip skill. I wanted to make Shiro less slippery, and focus more on sustain and speed.

I agree with the PvE side. This could arguably be a nerf for Revenant, but as Renegade shows - it’s all about numbers. The Quickness wouldn’t find much use in Raids as it’s already near permanent. But we could always tweak the Battle Scars numbers in PvE.I deleted the +10% and +20% damage traits simply because I wanted something more interacting, though I don’t disagree that Shiro needs these traits. But, a rework is a rework, so I thought - why not?

Also, as a Minor Master trait, I added attack-speed increase for each weapon in hand, so this could help with the overall damage. And the Deathstrike hits based on the missing health of target, so this one could also be nice to keep up the damage output.

I believe that Shiro could use an update to unify its kit as a whole. Though it’s currently pretty focused on raw power damage, I think his kit is all over the place.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback, I’m glad you enjoyed!

[DonArkanio.6419]

@Thornwolf.9721 said:I feel like this is the shiro I had hoped we'd of gotten when he was revealed; What we got was kind of a mess and I honestly feel it doesn't truly fit him. Here is to hoping that they remake him like this, I enjoyed the read and can't give you any more thumbs up..

Yeah, looking at the Original GW boss mechanics Shiro had, I really think that except the skill names not much of actual Shiro was left. The whole Jade-green concept seems pretty cool but I don’t feel all that powerful, when 4 of my skills do; Movement, movement, speed, heal + buff. At this point Jade Winds seem like the coolest actual skill in the kit for me, just because it does something different than the rest of the kit.

Thanks! Glad you like it.

[Thornwolf.9721]

@"LucianTheAngelic.7054" said:Obligatory “I disagree with most rework ideas” post.

I appreciate the effort that was put in, but it seems to trade some of the current fluidity of the spec for theme, which imo is bad. Also some things are fairly overpowered for the current meta while some things were nerfed for no reason (phase traversal to range 900 for example, why?). Also you (probably accidentally) deleted the current viable traits for PvE 34k dps Power Ren, with unsuspecting strikes, assassins presence, impossible odds, and dance of death all getting changed functionality. With all of those changes PvE power rev would become a dumpster fire again.

So I don’t think it needs a rework, even if it sounds cool, since it’s still meta in pvp and finally performing well for dps in PvE.

I will say though that Echoing Banishment sounds pretty cool. As much as I love Jade Winds thematically i feel Echoing would be more interesting. And meditation of the reaper would be great if Infuse Light didn’t already exist like you said.

The legends themselves if based around the guild wars 1 bosses/characters should use (If they have any) all the skills they ACTUALLY USED. I feel like they didn't actually look at what shiro had because a lot of his abilities make no sense in terms of him as an actual character. The jade winds happened when he died; The energy went out of control and basically due to the vessel dying in an unsavory way and not passing it on caused huge cataclysmic damage. The jade winds in game doesn't feel remotely close to what the jade winds actually was; If anything it should of been a trait to do big damage when you get downed/finished. Because that is the only time it actually happened in lore was durring his death, making it like a last "Haha" would be amazing.

The mechanics of shiro's fight had him more like a lost inbetween of a warrior and an assasin as he had aspects of both. The biggest part of this is that shiro had a very iconic fight and it should of been payed homage too in a nicer way. I never fought or knew who mallyx was as I never cared about nightfall outside of the campaign (I don't know never gibed with me.) So im unsure if he is closer to his actual fight~

That said if we got like a Lich stance for Vizer Khelbron id expect for him to use much of his mechanics and be tied to the titans and zaithan, Id be super nettled if they took him and just made some rando skills from say the sinking of Orr. (Mainly because we know nothing about him from that time, while we know him best from Prophecies.) This is the slippery slope of taking an established guild wars 1 character, and using them as a legend because in most cases they have skills and mechanics. Shiro however should be more of a duelist and a bruiser rather than suto-thief with green paint. Sword is unique and sword off-hand was unique but they messed it up in favor of streamlining the class for raids (A mistake they've made time and again.) Im not much of a End game PvE guy and I really couldn't care less about raiding, I think these changes wouldn't hurt at all especially if they added some things such as weapons to rev as we need a few more in the core class to make it so we at least, can run core with both condi/power having melee and ranged.

I wouldn't mind kalla being reworked either as I've always felt like renegade while cool on paper, feels wonky and almost just clunky.. So I disagree with everything you said and feel like this is best for the class.. Make it the homage class AS IT WAS SOLD TO BE in HoT.

[LucianTheAngelic.7054]

@Thornwolf.9721 said:

@"LucianTheAngelic.7054" said:Obligatory “I disagree with most rework ideas” post.

I appreciate the effort that was put in, but it seems to trade some of the current fluidity of the spec for theme, which imo is bad. Also some things are fairly overpowered for the current meta while some things were nerfed for no reason (phase traversal to range 900 for example, why?). Also you (probably accidentally) deleted the current viable traits for PvE 34k dps Power Ren, with unsuspecting strikes, assassins presence, impossible odds, and dance of death all getting changed functionality. With all of those changes PvE power rev would become a dumpster fire again.

So I don’t think it needs a rework, even if it sounds cool, since it’s still meta in pvp and finally performing well for dps in PvE.

I will say though that Echoing Banishment sounds pretty cool. As much as I love Jade Winds thematically i feel Echoing would be more interesting. And meditation of the reaper would be great if Infuse Light didn’t already exist like you said.

The legends themselves if based around the guild wars 1 bosses/characters should use (If they have any) all the skills they ACTUALLY USED. I feel like they didn't actually look at what shiro had because a lot of his abilities make no sense in terms of him as an actual character. The jade winds happened when he died; The energy went out of control and basically due to the vessel dying in an unsavory way and not passing it on caused huge cataclysmic damage. The jade winds in game doesn't feel remotely close to what the jade winds actually was; If anything it should of been a trait to do big damage when you get downed/finished. Because that is the only time it actually happened in lore was durring his death, making it like a last "Haha" would be amazing.

The mechanics of shiro's fight had him more like a lost inbetween of a warrior and an assasin as he had aspects of both. The biggest part of this is that shiro had a very iconic fight and it should of been payed homage too in a nicer way. I never fought or knew who mallyx was as I never cared about nightfall outside of the campaign (I don't know never gibed with me.) So im unsure if he is closer to his actual fight~

That said if we got like a Lich stance for Vizer Khelbron id expect for him to use much of his mechanics and be tied to the titans and zaithan, Id be super nettled if they took him and just made some rando skills from say the sinking of Orr. (Mainly because we know nothing about him from that time, while we know him best from Prophecies.) This is the slippery slope of taking an established guild wars 1 character, and using them as a legend because in most cases they have skills and mechanics. Shiro however should be more of a duelist and a bruiser rather than suto-thief with green paint. Sword is unique and sword off-hand was unique but they messed it up in favor of streamlining the class for raids (A mistake they've made time and again.) Im not much of a End game PvE guy and I really couldn't care less about raiding, I think these changes wouldn't hurt at all especially if they added some things such as weapons to rev as we need a few more in the core class to make it so we at least, can run core with both condi/power having melee and ranged.

I wouldn't mind kalla being reworked either as I've always felt like renegade while cool on paper, feels wonky and almost just clunky.. So I disagree with everything you said and feel like this is best for the class.. Make it the homage class AS IT WAS SOLD TO BE in HoT.

That’s fine you don’t have to agree with me and I appreciate your enthusiasm for more accuracy with GW1 mechanics and lore.

I will say though the class is still the “homage class” even if it doesn’t copy GW1 mechanics verbatim. Homage just means “respect or reverence paid” (dictionary.com), so any sort of acknowledgement and nod to GW1, regardless of size or quality, is a homage. The developers don’t have to carry over skills 1 to 1 for it to be considered paying homage and it’s worth noting that many great works of art, music, speeches, etc. pay homage to their predecessors/inspirations while still being their own, new thing.

[Thornwolf.9721]

@LucianTheAngelic.7054 said:

@Thornwolf.9721 said:

@LucianTheAngelic.7054 said:Obligatory “I disagree with most rework ideas” post.

I appreciate the effort that was put in, but it seems to trade some of the current fluidity of the spec for theme, which imo is bad. Also some things are fairly overpowered for the current meta while some things were nerfed for no reason (phase traversal to range 900 for example, why?). Also you (probably accidentally) deleted the current viable traits for PvE 34k dps Power Ren, with unsuspecting strikes, assassins presence, impossible odds, and dance of death all getting changed functionality. With all of those changes PvE power rev would become a dumpster fire again.

So I don’t think it needs a rework, even if it sounds cool, since it’s still meta in pvp and finally performing well for dps in PvE.

I will say though that Echoing Banishment sounds pretty cool. As much as I love Jade Winds thematically i feel Echoing would be more interesting. And meditation of the reaper would be great if Infuse Light didn’t already exist like you said.

The legends themselves if based around the guild wars 1 bosses/characters should use (If they have any) all the skills they ACTUALLY USED. I feel like they didn't actually look at what shiro had because a lot of his abilities make no sense in terms of him as an actual character. The jade winds happened when he died; The energy went out of control and basically due to the vessel dying in an unsavory way and not passing it on caused huge cataclysmic damage. The jade winds in game doesn't feel remotely close to what the jade winds actually was; If anything it should of been a trait to do big damage when you get downed/finished. Because that is the only time it actually happened in lore was durring his death, making it like a last "Haha" would be amazing.

The mechanics of shiro's fight had him more like a lost inbetween of a warrior and an assasin as he had aspects of both. The biggest part of this is that shiro had a very iconic fight and it should of been payed homage too in a nicer way. I never fought or knew who mallyx was as I never cared about nightfall outside of the campaign (I don't know never gibed with me.) So im unsure if he is closer to his actual fight~

That said if we got like a Lich stance for Vizer Khelbron id expect for him to use much of his mechanics and be tied to the titans and zaithan, Id be super nettled if they took him and just made some rando skills from say the sinking of Orr. (Mainly because we know nothing about him from that time, while we know him best from Prophecies.) This is the slippery slope of taking an established guild wars 1 character, and using them as a legend because in most cases they have skills and mechanics. Shiro however should be more of a duelist and a bruiser rather than suto-thief with green paint. Sword is unique and sword off-hand was unique but they messed it up in favor of streamlining the class for raids (A mistake they've made time and again.) Im not much of a End game PvE guy and I really couldn't care less about raiding, I think these changes wouldn't hurt at all especially if they added some things such as weapons to rev as we need a few more in the core class to make it so we at least, can run core with both condi/power having melee and ranged.

I wouldn't mind kalla being reworked either as I've always felt like renegade while cool on paper, feels wonky and almost just clunky.. So I disagree with everything you said and feel like this is best for the class.. Make it the homage class AS IT WAS SOLD TO BE in HoT.

That’s fine you don’t have to agree with me and I appreciate your enthusiasm for more accuracy with GW1 mechanics and lore.

I will say though the class is still the “homage class” even if it doesn’t copy GW1 mechanics verbatim. Homage just means “respect or reverence paid” (dictionary.com), so any sort of acknowledgement and nod to GW1, regardless of size or quality, is a homage. The developers don’t have to carry over skills 1 to 1 for it to be considered paying homage and it’s worth noting that many great works of art, music, speeches, etc. pay homage to their predecessors/inspirations while still being their own, new thing.

Im all for them doing their own thing, but shiro is my favorite or well one of my favorite characters. Its down-right disrespectful to shove things he never used onto him, and not pay true homage to him. I feel this kit is far more unique and interesting than the one we have now, and as a revenant player I want to be as different to the other classes as physically possible. I want NOTHING like them in my class, I hate feeling like im just recycled bits of classes I don't really care about nor want to play as I want to play as a being channeling the power of legends from our past..

Either do it right or not at all as it were, A job half done or half-arsed is a job that was never worth doing. Fix it. I mean clearly the class needs some love and lacks direction, this would at least give shiro a role outside of a simple damage amp. Which honestly seems to be what 90% of rev is, just damage amps and freak'n boons shoved every which way as a band-aid to half baked design of an unfinished and rushed class who was gutted and altered to fit a design and game mode never intended to of been its niche. They keep changing it, gutting it, altering it and streamlining it for people who REFUSE to play it and those of us who like the class are stuck sitting here going "Why would you do this?" I get that its damage was kinda silly for its basic design, thats not our fault that we can theory craft better than they can build and its also not our fault that their answer to design issues is simply shoving a damage increase in there and juggling numbers. Sometimes the mechanics of a class or spec just don't feel good and honestly shiro is one of those cases where outside of his minor role (Especially now) he really is worthless. It's like all the clowns who say, "Well energy is the problem." No its not its the dang cooldowns ontop of the energy costs which they KEEP INCREASING. You can't have both, you can't simply try to use two systems like this together either weapon skills don't use energy and have cooldowns or they use energy and don't have cooldowns. Same with utilities. This could justify the upped energy cost on specific skills, it could make the class more unique as well.

The real answer is make the utilities strong, and the trait-lines not tied to legends but tied to channeling the mists for different purposes. This way you can design the traits to be more about class mechanics (Outside of maybe E-specs) and open them up to be used in any which way because they don't add inherent benefits exclusively too a legend, but rather the whole class. (Like Invocation kind of, but with more pinpoint accuracy.)

The legends themselves should be more stand-alone and have impactful reasons to take them, they should all be extraordinarily powerful because we are locked into using the skills on our bar the legend provides. This means the legend had better come with an awesome kit or it will be really hard to justify using it as it would feel pointless, slapping a characters name on something and shoving traits at it doesn't make it unique. The class suffers because honestly there is too much focus on the legends within their trait-lines and not enough focus on the legends within their skill-lines and what those mean. All of those traits currently in the classes legend lines could be rolled in as base portions of the legends themselves. This could be a good and easy to manage change that makes it extremely viable and logical reasons as why one legend would be chosen over another. The trait-lines themselves should have better synergy as a lot of the time they feel almost independent of one another in the wrong way, they don't feel as inner connected and thus they feel odd. A lot of the traits mind you are based around the mists themselves, but specific traits that exist could be made to be base portions of a legends utility..

Such as getting downed while IN shiro's stance you cast jade-winds automatically just as he did, this doesn't need to be a trait especially since it no longer does damage. There are just tons of little things like that which could make the class feel fresh, strong and otherwise better built and add to its infrastructure without compromising design. Another good change would be more weapons, we need more core weapons and thats just a fact as any E-spec would be hard pressed to bring something to the table that will not just feel like something we should of had due to lacking it in the first place.

The utilities and legends being more useful and powerful, as well as each having defensive options along with good offense and decent mobility would be a good way to get them going. Since traits no longer would be amping them strictly speaking and the traits would be about more mist/energy/effects going on as you fight due to your otherworldly nature, it would make the E-specs more unique as well. The E-specs would bring strong utilities and a trait line that can suite WHATEVER legend combo you want to bring, this means then that say you don't like glint you could get benefits for having the E-spec traitline that is more neutural and can give cooler advantages. Or perhaps you could do whatever, but the point is they keep trying to push each spec to a one-trick pony.

Power = Sword/sword and maybe either Staff or hammer but honestly both are trash. So you might see some wacky combosCondi= mace/axe and maybe shortbow IF kalla is being used but honestly.... eh shortbow seems meh.Healing? = Staff + Sword/Shield with glint, or maybe just staff with kalla im not sure.

Does it really seem fair to be so limited? I mean we are already limited in our utility choices, and we are very limited in their uses. Really with shiro its just proc impossible odds and just hit the thing. Thats all he is really useful for right now~ Condi... well condi rev is doing good.... for now at least. This change too shiro would be really unique, and I feel it would be healthy for him and by proxy us revenants. It should of been the design from the beginning, Im not honestly sure why they decided to make him as he is now as he feels... well just off I guess.