In this week, Guild Wars 2 shone a light on the new class Revenant. Here, ArenaNet attempts to achieve the impossible: the class is meant to reconcile fans of Guild Wars 1 with the now not-so-fresh “new” game and show GW2 players a new direction.
The Revenant will be the first new class in Guild Wars 2. ArenaNet has come up with several ideas that have been publicized this week in major specials on US sites. The new class is intended not only to move the game forward and allow for a fresh playstyle, but also to look back and bring back former fans of Guild Wars 1. In other words, they want to show some “roots”.
The special gimmick of the new “heavy armor” class Revenant: it can summon the “souls” of past legends and fight in their combat style. Depending on which legend the Revenant channels, he switches out the “right” side of his hotbar. These “legends” are important figures from Guild Wars 1, such as the Dwarven King Jalis Ironhammer or the demon Mallyx. While Jalis is more “tanky”, Mallyx will focus entirely on “conditions”, the debuffs of GW2, to torment the enemy with them.
ArenaNet also sees the Revenant as a sort of “homage” to those earlier times.
To get to the new class in Guild Wars 2, for the first time, a look back was taken to Guild Wars 1
The Revenant is said to have emerged as a response to the feeling that Guild Wars 2 was increasingly moving away from its roots, explained design chief Jon Peters to the US magazine Polygon. When searching for something new, they found it in the past, in Guild Wars 1.
Not only do the new combat styles find their counterparts in the past of GW1, but the “energy system” also recalls Guild Wars 1. While GW2 classes only need to wait on cooldowns, the Revenants must also ensure that their energy bar does not get too low. This represents their connection to the currently channeled legend.
Three weapons, as we know, can be used by the Revenant: he uses the hammer as a “two-handed ranged” weapon. The one-handed weapons axe and mace will primarily feature abilities where the position of the enemy relative to the Revenant will be important. These “position” aspects are supposed to be emphasized in Heart of Thorns.
By the release of Heart of Thorns, more “legends” that the Revenant will fight in their style will be announced. He will also be able to use more weapons beyond the three known so far.
For more on GW2 and the Heart of Thorns expansion, you can find it on our Guild Wars 2 topic page.
