Impressions on last week's betas including the new WvW map and updated Stronghold PvP and Revenant profession.

I also loved the staff. The animations for the weapon was what really put it over the top for me. All of the spinning with action poses were awesome. The next time you get the chance to play the Revenant, I recommend paying attention to the pose your character takes at the end of the third attack of the auto-attack chain. It will make you feel epic.

I have already mentioned that damage is low on the staff, but there were also a few things that I didn’t like about the staff that I would like to feel tweaked. The #2 staff skill is two separate skills. The first attack is a single target damage skill. If your target is using a skill when struck, it gives access to Debilitating Slam, an AoE that damages and weakens nearby enemies. Other than the low damage, I don’t think the first skill is bad, but the second skill feels really underwhelming for the requirement of timing it right on an enemy. I’d like to see a short duration Daze added to the follow-up skill, just long enough to interrupt skills. This gives it more reward as if you get the first hit off while the target is using a skill you can follow it up with the ability to interrupt nearby targets on the follow-up.

The #3 skill, Warding Rift, blocks attacks while it is active as well as shooting out a blinding projectile to nearby enemies. The animation for this skill is another spinning staff that brings to mind the Whirling Defense axe attack on Ranger. The big difference is that Whirling Defense will damage nearby enemies caught in the flurry of axes, while Warding Rift does nothing to nearby enemies outside of the weak blinding projectile. I’d like to see this skill gain the ability to damage nearby enemies. Another option that I think would work for this skill is to give it some movement increase when used in combat. The revenant is lacking in the ability to move around, so giving this skill something like five seconds of swiftness or super speed for the 1.5 seconds it is active gives it this charging, projectile deflecting move that you only see in kung-fu movies.

I think the #5 skill should get some similar treatment. Surge of the Mists has the player charging forward, damaging and knocking back any enemies that are caught by the skill. What I’d like to see added is that if you don’t hit anyone with the skill while in combat you gain swiftness. ArenaNet said that the Revenant was going to be a slower class but have a lot of movement while in combat, but for the first three legends and their weapons we are not really seeing any of this. Giving this skill swiftness during combat if the attack doesn’t hit gives it the ability to catch up to the target they were trying to hit or to turn around and use it as an escape. Additionally, this skill has a pretty lengthy cooldown at 20 seconds. With the addition of an energy cost, it feels bad that some of these skills have cooldowns similar to weapons on other classes. While the ability to do multiple knockbacks on a target is probably the source of the long cooldown, I think I would rather have a shorter cooldown and the knockbacks limited in some manner such as only one knockback per target per cast.

The #4 skill, Renewing Wave, I think is really good and is a nice solid heal. In fact, I’d like to see the #4 and #5 switch places on the bar. The weapon skill bars are ordered in order of their cooldowns and thereby their power. I’d like to see the Renewing Wave move to the #5 skill and go from 15 energy and 15 cooldown to 20 energy and 20 cooldown, with the addition of the skill gaining the Blast Finisher ability and a slight buff to the healing in return for its larger cooldown and energy costs. Surge of the Mists would then move to the #4 skill, potentially have the reduced knockback effectiveness but gain the swiftness on miss in combat and have its energy increased from 15 to 16 and its cooldown reduced from 20 to 14.

As for the damage on staff, I have seen comments that with the staff being a support weapon it should have lower damage compared to other weapons. For most classes I would agree that having a more support or control based weapon having lower damage would be fitting, but for Revenant you only get to choose to have one weapon equipped at a time. I can’t wield a support weapon and then weapon swap in combat to my offensive weapon when the need arises. As such, the Revenant really needs to get the damage balance correct across all of itsweapons. With the weapons we have currently, that balance is there. Hopefully the dual swords coming with the Shiro legend don’t break that balance or all we will see are dual sword wielding Revenants.

Matt "Mattsta" Adams thinks Mattsta would have been a better Ninja to channel than Shiro.

Shiro sounds pretty cool. This was written before the Points of Interest livestream, so hopefully he looks as cool as he sounds. I am still a little worried how balanced Shiro will be compared to the rest of the legends with it being a pure DPS legend. As for dungeon progress, I have finished all of the dungeons save for Sorrow's Embrace which I just need to complete this last reward track for. What are you working on while we wait for Heart of Thorns?

If you have a question for me or a topic you would like to see talked about here, leave a comment below. You can also tweet your question and topics to me on twitter @MattstaNinja. Also, check out my site Mattsta.Ninja that focuses on guides and more for Guild Wars 2.