With the recent Revenant DPS tests showing Herald only averaging 19k dps in near ideal raid settings, it has become clear that Herald’s need a new damage build to stay competitive with the other classes. Since Sword Revenant Damage was recently “adjusted” and is full of bugs such as certain skill’s not scaling with Weapon Strength, a Condi Revenant build may be able to be competitive and overtake power weapon damage.
So I present my Herald of Mallyx Build
I was able to deal 6.6k damage per second in Heart of the Mists with this build. While that is hardly impressive, I was not able to include additional damage from Crits, Vulnerability, Food, Sigil of Malice, Boons, Allies, etc. etc. which can easily scale up the damage by many multiples. I posted this build because I need help with number crunching from some of the more experienced members of the raiding community. Basically, I wanna know if this build can outperform the Power Herald without giving up any of its utility.
First for weapons, Mace/Axe gives the Herald most of its conditions in Torment, Poison, and Burning. Note that Echoing Eruption uses the same mechanics as Coalescence of Ruin, but was not fixed like CoR, so it can hit multiple times on Gorseval. Also, Torment scales off if the enemy is moving, so it will deal significantly more damage on Vale Guardian and Gorseval than it will on Sabetha. For my primitive tests, the target dummies would not move, so torment only did its Base damage. One disadvantage of using mace is how bad its power scaling is. Only 1k of my tested damage was from power sources, the rest was condi.
Now for traits, I wanted the build to provide all the same party utility of the power Herald, so that locks me into using Devastation for Assassin’s Presence and Herald for Glint Facets and Shared Empowerment. In addition, I focused on improving Condi Damage, so that caused me to take Corruption since that is the only Condi traitline for Revenants.
Next, the weapons and armor is pure viper’s and the trinkets are a Viper’s amulet, Sinister Rings and Accessories, and a Rampager’s Backpiece. Rune of the Berserker was chosen because you will be at the max duration cap for Poison and Torment from traits. I would be interested to see if the few sources of Burning in this build can justify a rune choice of a Nightmare/Trapper’s mix over the Berserker runes.
In terms of utility, you will have all the same as a Power Herald with the addition of a extremely short CD Fire Field in Searing Fissure and a triple Blast Finisher in Echoing Eruption. It uses Glint and Mallyx Facets, which is similar to one of the power build’s variation. Note that Mallyx’s Elite, Embrace the Darkness, multiplies condition damage after including stacks of might. So while you have it up about 50% of the time, your condition damage would be the highest possible in the game. So this build will have more utility than the Power Herald. So even if the build breaks even in terms of DPS, it should be adopted over the Power Herald. On the other hand, this build’s damage will suffer much harder than Power herald when it switches to staff for break bars. Heck, it may be argued that going mace/sword would be a better second weapon set despite lacking Surging of the Mists.
So what do y’all think? I imagine a few people who crafted Viper’s armor before Burnzerkers were nerfed should be very interested in this build.