Skills, I have them. After last Saturday night’s leveling party with friends, I progressed far enough to unlock utility skills. I trained three of the four Legendary Dwarf skills, and four of the six Legendary Demon skills.
With two utility slots unlocked, I chose Inspiring Reinforcement and Vengeful Hammers. I avoided the third skill, Forced Engagement, because it taunts enemies, and the last thing I wanted as a level 23 scrub was to draw attention to myself.
Forced Engagement later became my go-to skill, especially when fighting a single enemy. They’re already targeting me, so why not deal some damage while I’m at it?
This lets me swap Dwarf Stance for Demon Stance, which has the utility skills Pain Absorption, Banish Enchantment, and the healing skill Empowering Misery.
Necromancer continues to be the game’s primary emo class, but Revenant’s Demon Stance is a close runner-up.
I carefully examined the Demon stance skills, then proceeded to leave my Revenant on Dwarf stance for the next three days. I’m a sucker for the Cobblestone Road of Death (TM) and spinning hammers.
Because of my rapid progress last Saturday, I rolled into level 10 Personal Story at level 18. Personal Story is a great way to level your character, but the loot is the level of the story, not your character. Thus, all the gear I got from this chunk of story was 7-8 levels below what I could use.
Also, we need to talk about Beigarth’s outfit.
The color scheme says “McDonald’s french fry box,” but the straps, buckles, and D-rings say “leather daddy.” I’m so confused.
Some of the best writing in Guild Wars 2 can be found in the first three installments of Personal Story (levels 10, 20, and 30). This particular Personal Story variation is all about spite, and I am – as the kids say – here for it. However, they made the unfortunate choice to deliver large chunks of dialogue in this “talking heads” format.
I had a hard time paying attention during these scenes because I can’t stop scrutinizing my character. In this case, I’m also distracted by staring at the jotun, who are even more ugly than I realized.
As we get into the meat of the story – fighting jotun and an ugly, sexist Son of Svanir – I found that the Dwarf Stance utility skills are so useful, with such short cooldowns, that I use them almost exclusively. Which is good, because the Revenant profession energy mechanic affects how often you can use your weapon.
This feels backwards, although I don’t know why. Every skill has cooldowns, it’s just that with Revenant, sometimes all your weapon skills go on cooldown at once, without your having used them. It takes getting used to, and at this point I still didn’t fully understand how it works.
It took longer than I care to admit to notice that Revenant’s hammer 1 skill is not a melee attack, but a long-range attack. As in, REALLY long-range – 1200 – almost as far as Ranger longbow 1. Once I stopped having to run all the way up to an enemy before hitting them with my hammer, it greatly improved my gameplay.
After finishing level 10 story I rolled straight into level 20 story. At least I was at the right level, and getting leveled loot. After I finished level 20 story, I returned to working on map completion for Wayfarer Foothills.
I also leveled up enough to unlock Centaur Stance. I gave it a brief glance, discovered that it’s all about healing and protection, and tossed it aside. Centaur Stance could be useful in the future, but at level 24 doing PVE content… not so much.
