Guild Wars 2

I decided to try out Revenant this weekend with the demo to hit 80 automatically.

Revenant seems pretty cool, but I’m not sure if I’m doing it right.

The game sets me up with Shiro and Jalis and weapons that are their signatures (dw swords & hammer).

Now obv, you can mix and match, but when playing with builds the logic seems to be to use the weapons & Legendary utilities together. Like Shiro’s utilities feel like they compliment the DW sword abilities. Might be a trap I’m falling into. Additionally, the logic seems to be to pick the trait lines for the two souls you’re running and then the general utility line.

Other than “because you can” (Anet let’s you do lots of things, even to your detriment) would you break away from building like that?

IE: do Souls dictate the weapons and trait lines?

Also, do souls combo well with each other in all cases or are there obvious soul pairings? Are there combos to avoid because they don’t synergize well?

You can mix up legends, weapons and traitlines, but some of them had sinergies so they are optimal and sub-optimal combos.

Starting for the weapons, the mace and axe are oriented towards condition damage or at least hybrid damage; Mallyx is the legend focused on this kind of damage and Corruption the traitline specialized towards condi.

The swords, hammer and staff only do physical damage. Shiro is an offensive legend wich benefits the most with the Devastation traitline and with the use of swords.

Jalis is a legend oriented towards (cof, cof) tankiness and Retribution is his traitline. The staff, the off hand sword, the hammer and (only if you use the Herald specialization) the shield do provide defensive skills (which can do well in any build, by the way).

Ventari is focused in healing and support, and his traitline Salvation has sinergies with the staff.

Glint and her traitline Herald is oriented towards boon sharing and support, providing also access to the shield. Due is one of the strongest legends, is pretty common to use Glint paired with almost every other legend.

Finally, Invocation is a “neutral” traitline which benefits the use and swap of legends. Oftenly people do chose their 2 legends and their associated traitlines and then do use Salvation as the third one.

Must be said also that the number of optimal traits in each line are small, so theres not much variety inside the builds.

For revenant,
Weapon dictate mode of gameplay you want to play.

Sword are for direct damage, melee range
Hammer are for direct damage, 1200 range
Mace are for condition damage, melee range
Staff are for direct damage and cc, melee range

Legend dictate utility skill you want to complement your gameplay

Jalis for survival/tanking, stability utility skill
Malyx for condition damage utility skill
Shiro for quickness/direct damage utility skill
Ventari for healing utility skill
Glint for buffs sharing utility skill

Legend has nothing to do with weapon you are using.
You can combine mace with shiro if you want more poison stack to your enemy.
You can combine it to complement attribute like Mace with mallyx or sword with shiro for stronger condition damage/direct damage.

There is no rule that you must use a particular legend with particular weapon. Anet grant us the ability to change our legend anytime we want out of combat to suit your need.

Some utility are useful for some situation more than other.
For example,
-Jalis’s vengeful hammer are incredible useful for survival and encounter with multiple enemies. You are virtually invisible for the duration since the hammer proc passive healing for a riddiculous amount. Vengeful hammer also can clock large amount of hit with low damage. Useful to remove boss’s buff that require amount of hit.

-Ventari’s protective solace are a must on uncategorized and underground facilities fractal since it blocks projectile.

-Glint basically can give your party permanent protection in case your party having a hard time on survival.

- Mallyx can boon strip your enemies incredibly fast.

basically you adjust to whatever situation you have in your hand and pick legend that best help your current situation.

Since he used a lvl 80 booster I guess he’s talking about PvE.
I’ll only talk about DPS because I don’t have experience with the support builds.

In this game, if you want to maximize your damage you should choose between Power damage or Condition damage.
There is some hybrid build that works, though (Revenant is much more hybrid than other classes, for example).

This choice determinates your weapon and your traitlines.
Right now, for both Condition Damage and Power damage the best builds use the Devastation and Invocation trait lines and the Jalis legend.
Power has Herald as the 3rd trait line and Glint as the second legend, Condition has Corruption as the 3rd trait line and Mallyx as the second legend.

Now, as weapons you’ve got:
- Mace, main hand: top choice for condition damage (it has burn and torment application)
- Sword, main hand: top choice for power damage and, with the Abyssal Chill trait in the Corruption line and its skill #2, somehow works as a condi weapon (but it’s weaker than mace)
- Axe, offhand: the best damage choice for an offhand weapon for both types of damage
- Sword, offhand: it gives you a block and a pull that grants you Fury. Axe helps with the DPS but it’s not that big of a difference, it’s ok if you like sword more I guess

As for the second set of weapons, it’s really your choice.
Staff it’s good for a defensive and a CC build, Hammer it’s the only ranged weapon we have until the next expansion hits.

So yeah, there is some correlation between weapons and traitlines.
The one between legends and weapons/traitline is not that strong, usually (Mallyx, Glint and Ventari being the exceptions)