Cheap but effective PVE Revenant please
I usually use my WvW stuff for open world PvE and it’s Zerker with some Zerker+Valk accessories, 6/6 Durability runes, Sword/Sword (Air/Blood), Staff (Energy/Leeching).
If you’re gonna get more serious tho, it’s just Zerker/Scholar/Air/Force meta.
Ways to get exotic gear. craft it (semi expensive), buy it (likely worse), karma from the temples in orr (temple of grenth has berserker), bladed armor from verdant brink for airship parts (chest from tier 4 meta). I even mixed in a few pieces of valkyrie when leveling revenant until i got used to it, relying on keeping up fury.
power builds are by far the most popular, getting used to use staff, sword/axe, with sometimes sword/sword or hammer.
Get the berserker exotic gear from wherever in dungeons/karma vendors/stat selector gear and such. Get the ascended berserker trinkets from fractals/wvw/new maps and such. Put runes of strength on the armor. Use Hammer/X with major sigil of force and superior sigil of accuracy. Get Chocolate Omnomberry Cream food. Use shiro/glint and go crazy. Shouldn’t cost you above 15g if you play for the setup and buy the 6 runes.
Citadel of Flame for Zerker Exotic Armor and weapons. All the way. 0 gold and you can buy 1 weapon or piece of armor every 1-2days.
Ascended trinkets from Fractals, guild commendations, WVW and laurel merchant. You pay 0 gold.
You can easily outfit yourself in about a week paying 0 gold, except for the sigils and runes.
If you have lots of karma, just use teleport to friend with someone who has access to temple of grenth and buy the exotic zerker armour off that karma vendor. This is only if you plan on using cheap runes on your armour, as those karma pieces can’t be salvaged (unless that has changed).