Hands-on with the Revenant in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

During ArenaNet’s event celebrating the upcoming (and first) expansion for Guild Wars 2, I got to experience playing both PvE and PvP as the game’s newest profession – the blindfolded Revenant.

This profession is as much of a throwback to the original Guild Wars as a profession can be in Guild Wars 2. The Revenant successfully blends aspects from both games and channels them into something brand new.

Incorporating lore and mechanics from Guild Wars 1, the Revenant is something of a ranged/melee hybrid. It runs off of a familiar energy mechanic — you might recognize it from Guild Wars 1. This soldier profession can use a number of weapons, it can mainhand a mace and offhand an axe or two-hand a hammer — looking at NPCs you’d think it could use a sword, but that is unconfirmed. They play similarly to elementalists where they don’t swap between weapon sets, instead they swap between stances.

Revenants have two different stances; one stance, the Legendary Dwarf Stance, calls on the power of the Dwarf king Jalis Ironhammer and the other stance, the Legendary Demon Stance, calls on Mallyx the Unyielding.

In PvE gameplay, I mainly kept the Dwarf Stance up. I found it kept me alive a lot longer than the demon stance and the skill that launches a chain at your target really came in handy during the Wyvern fight where CC is necessary. The chain essentially slows and taunts a target — in the Wyvern scenario enough chains could keep the beast grounded. It definitely felt like a more tanky class.

When it came to playing PvP, I found myself in the Demon Stance (alternating to the Dwarf Stance for the heal that removes conditions). The Demon Stance offered a gap closer that had you leaping to your enemies and it used the conditions that enemy players (or NPCs) applied to you and used them in your favor (the more negative conditions you have applied to you, the better the healing is — which is wicked).

I did not play very well as the Revenant, but with more practice, it seems like that profession could be damn near unstoppable. I definitely had a great time playing as the Revenant and left the Heart of Thorns event wanting to perfect my skills and destroy everything in game.

Click the links for impressions on PvE, PvP and an interview on Heart of Thorns with the Development Director.