Elite Specialization Teaser - Thief or Revenant (Curious as to people's reasoning)

[Geoff Fey.1035]

I've been wandering around a lot and I am incredibly curious why so many people believe (aggressively) that this teaser is the Revenant and not the Thief? To the point where there's posts lamenting that the entire 3rd Beta weekend will be all Medium classes.

 

The below are my speculations on this but I would very much like to hear people's reasoning as to why they think one way or another.

 

Reasons that it's the Revenant:

1. Gloves - Heavy Bounty Hunter  armour gloves have the spikes on the front. The lack of ridges and elbow spikes is artistic license and difficulty to see with silhouette
2. Boots - Spearmarshal's Armour boots for the spiked toes and form fitting nature of around calf.
3. Colour - Revenant historically has Reds and Blues for its colouration, ranging from Turquoise to Dark Blue from Herald to Renegade
4. Blue Flames - Revenant is more "spellcaster" than the Thief and has a history of having "flames" or flame-like-mist-energy flowing from them. It would make sense to have the Revenant summoning a weapon or casting flames moreso than a Thief.
5. Spoiler

   Leaked Weapon Greatsword - the size of the weapon implies it's a greatsword in addition to the long handle for 2-handers.

    

• Reasons that it's Thief

1. Spoiler

   Leaked Weapon Scepter - ANet has already set a precedent with Thief specifically in that they take a ranged spellcaster weapon and turn it into a melee brawler weapon with unique animations not found anywhere else. Scepter skins are also very large with exceptionally long handles, it would not be difficult to reskin it as a broadsword.

2. Chest Armour - Longer coat with tassels. The Elite Spec teasers thus far for EoD have largely used existing armours or artistic designs that's similar yet different to current armours. I've scoured the Heavy Armour gallery and cannot find anything even remotely close to the armour style in this silhouette barring the gloves (mentioned above).
3. Colour - Thief historically is Red & Maroon but has lately had severe overlap with Revenant with the Deadeye/Renegade Elite Specs. The red on the picture seems more blood splatter in design rather than the energy style that Revenant typically has
4. Mask - The horned mask is similar to an Oni Mask implied by the Elite Spec icons. Have not seen an argument as to how any Elite except the Revenant would have the Ritualist looking icon, which begs the question as to how this Oni Mask would not tie to the mask Elite Spec icon. In addition the flowing headband being similar to an existing style.

[Telgum.6071]

I'm receiving high vibes of "the silhouette may have heavy armor, the color may be blue, but it has two swords so it has to be thief!"

[draxynnic.3719]

4 hours ago, Telgum.6071 said:

I'm receiving high vibes of "the silhouette may have heavy armor, the color may be blue, but it has two swords so it has to be thief!"

Yeah. Claiming that the weapon that looks like a greatsword might actually be a scepter skin that just looks like a sword isn't quite as bad as the people who were trying to explain away the Willbender's heavy armour by claiming that ArenaNet might be 'breaking the rules' by giving heavy armour to a medium armour profession... but it has a similar vibe. Not going to say it's completely impossible, but it's certainly not a theory I'd bet on.

 

Regarding the other points made in favour of thief:

 

2: I don't think there has been any such trend. Of the EoD specs thus far, Willbender and the warrior silhouette have recognisable armour. Virtuoso and Harbinger do not - to the point that people used Harbinger to justify their 'maybe ArenaNet is creating elite specialisations that use a different armour weight to the core profession!' arguments. So I don't think there's any reason to think that the teaser will necessarily be wearing armour that we recognise.

 

3: Thief and Rev have historically had similar misty/shadowy backgrounds. Of the two, though, I think revenant is far more likely to break that trend and have bright background effects than thief. Revenant is a profession where each legend is potentially a completely new theme, while thief is probably always going to have some element of sneakiness in their themes.

 

4: Putting aside the possibility that the revenant-like icon COULD be for some other profession that's picking up a Mists connection (unlikely,  but guardian did get a thief- like icon, and it's probably no more improbable than a sword turning out to be a scepter skin), I'd also point out that the main thing that we're pointing out regarding the silhouette's headgear is the presence of spiky bits on the head that are being interpreted as horns. The revenant-like icon is distinguished from a regular revenant icon by the presence of pairs of spiky bits projecting above and below. I certainly would not be surprised to see spikes on the armour of an elite specialisation with that icon. The mask icon, by contrast, doesn't have horns to begin with.

Edited September 11, 2021 by draxynnic.3719
Fixed a minor grammatical error

[RabbitUp.8294]

Renegade, Spellbreaker, Mirage, Deadeye all featured PoF armour in their art, there's no reason why this teaser doesn't depict a new EoD set.