ArenaNet teases the Revenant in a blog post about the new class coming in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns.

The Revenant is a new profession coming to Guild Wars 2 with the Heart of Thorns expansion. While ArenaNet revealed this new profession during their expansion announcement at PAX South, very little information was given on how the profession will play. That changed earlier today as ArenaNet released a blog post explaining some of the weapons, skills and some new mechanics for the Revenant as well as a few mechanics that will find their way into existing professions.

The Revenant is a heavy armor profession that uses a unique profession mechanic and resource system. The profession mechanic is the ability for the Revenant to channel legends of game's rich history to empower many of its non-weapon skills. While there will be a pool of these legends to choose from, players will only be able to slot two of them at any time. While slotted, players can then toggle between the two legends, similar to how other professions change weapons, but instead of changing the weapon skills this changes the heal, utility and elite skills that make up the right half of the skill bar.

The Revenant's unique resource system is the energy bar that appears to take a lot of inspiration from energy in GW1. Like energy and mana bars of other games, some skills will use a little while other skills will use a lot of energy. In addition to these the Revenant will have upkeep skills (again similar to GW1) that will cause energy to regenerate slower, or possibly even degenerate, while they are active. This system brings back the pip system from GW1 to show how quickly energy is being generated or degenerated. Swapping legends will also play into this as energy will start at 50% and regenerate more energy when the active legend is swapped.

The skills on the right half of the bar will not only change in their abilities, but will also become very distinct visually while channeling legends. Each legend will change the skills with a set purpose in mind, and this visual component will allow other players to tell what legend is being channeled and thereby know what to expect from attacks.

Legendary Demon: Mallyx the Unyielding

Mallyx is a legend that is focused on conditions, not by removing or applying them, but by collecting them to increase your strength. One skill, for example, is Embrace the Darkness. Using this skill transforms the player, increasing all attributes and copying conditions to nearby foes every few seconds.

This skill is one of the upkeep skills specific to Revenant, where players will be able to activate and deactivate this skill at will as long as there is enough energy to maintain it. This skill, like all demon embued skills, apply a condition to the Revenant. Embrace the Darkness applies Torment to the player, so at the very least Torment will be copied to all nearby enemies.

Legendary Dwarf: Jalis Ironhammer

Where Mallyx focused on conditions, Jalis Ironhammer focuses on doing what Dwarves do best, being a tanky, frightening presence on any battlefield. The upkeep example for Ironhammmer is Vengeful Hammers. While this upkeep is active, hammers will spin around the Revenant, damaging any enemies that come near.

While players will be able to channel these legends to swap out the abilities on the right side of their bar, the Revenants will be limited to a single weapon to wield. The examples given in this blog post were the Hammer, which Revenants will use as a ranged weapon, and main-hand Mace with an off-hand Axe.

The Mace and Axe are designed to be very directional based. The third attack of Mace's autoattack chain will hit an enemy at melee, but then will chain to hit other enemies that are behind the first. One of the skills for Axe is Temporal Rift, that will create an unstable rift in front of the player that after a short will collapse and pull enemies to it.

The two example skills for Hammer are Coalescence of Ruin and Field of Mists. Coalescence of Ruin is a new cascading attack that starts near the player and extends forward, dealing more damage with distance. Cascading attacks will also be seen in new specializations for other professions. Field of Mists creates a wall in front of the player that blocks projectile attacks. What makes this wall special is that it will follow the player, always staying in front of them for the duration.

To finish off the blog post, ArenaNet revealed some new boons and conditions that would show up for the Revenant and new specializations in HoT:

• Resistance (Boon): Conditions have no effect on you. While this means that bleeds and fear won't do anything, Resistance also doesn't remove them. So if you are running from fear and apply Resistance to stop running, if the fear is still on you when Resistance wears off you will go back to running in fear.
• Slow (Condition): Skills and actions are slower. The opposite of quickness, slowing down attacks to give more time to evade or interrupt big attacks.
• Taunt (Status Effect): Involuntarily attack foes. Causes the player to run toward the target and locks out all skills except auto-attack and any stun breakers.

While there were only a few of the skills given as examples of what the Revenant can do, players won't have to wait long to find out more as the Revenant will be playable as part of the Heart of Thorns demo at PAX East and Rezzed.

Matt Adams aka the Mattsta

Follow me on Twitter @MattstaNinja