Guild Wars 2

That’s a good point. I updated the guide to mention it. Others in the group giving boons and unrelenting assault should help fill in the gaps to some extent though. Having to use centaur will tank might output and this would really help it too.

yo obal, this still updated?

Obal, I know condition is bad compared to pure DPS, but can you elaborate on its viability for high scale fractals? I read a comment from Nike saying that at high scale fractals all pure DPS builds plummet in terms of damage, so I’m curious as to how condi rev holds up in that sense.

Aldrin.7641:

yo obal, this still updated?

Yes.

Zeroth.7046:

Obal, I know condition is bad compared to pure DPS, but can you elaborate on its viability for high scale fractals? I read a comment from Nike saying that at high scale fractals all pure DPS builds plummet in terms of damage, so I’m curious as to how condi rev holds up in that sense.

When I looked at it it was like half the dps of zerker assuming targets don’t move at all for torment. I had 4 trait lines chosen since I didn’t bother to see which would be best to take out. I used shiro + mallyx to focus on dps. Glint is much more useful but your dps would probably go down even more. For the few bosses that move around a lot it would be ok but not really anything else. A lot of them stand still a lot. Your better off taking a different condi class.

This really needs a sticky.

For high level fractals, would shield be a viable alternative to axe? I absolutely love shield, but understand the value that axe provides with regard to break bars and teleports.

That would be fine. You can just use sword 2 twice to run out the energy in glint instead of axe 4 and take shield if you don’t use anything from shield during that glint swap or you can just have axe in your secondary swap.

obal.3218:

Altair.8402:

For Devastation adept traits, how much better DPS is Vicious Lacerations over Ferocious Strikes?

It’s a little over 900 dps better.

Hey Obal, is this assuming 100% uptime for Vicious Lacerations. I’ve been testing this, in boss fights/ static fights I can manage 80%+ uptime of 5 stacks. When hitting mobs in events/ solo play, I have only around 60% 5 stacks uptime. At what point does the lack of stacks uptime become relevant?

Edit: Also, against trash which dies in <8s, the build uptime 2-3s from my testing seems to be less dps than perma 150 ferocity. So unless there are huge trains of them, I find myself using the +150 ferocity. Thoughts?

Nice guide. Any idea how much damage a condition build puts out roughly?

Roxtar.6487:

Just something I haven’t seen mentioned – the icd for Shared Empowerment (give 1 might to allies when you apply a boon) is 1sec. Your herald boons sync with the server and refresh every 3s so you are effectively getting 1/3rd of the potential from the trait. If you stagger your utilities a little you’ll get better might sharing. If you run sigil of strength you can get, on average, a sustained 4 extra might shared to allies (tested in the mists). While this is a loss in personal dps from an air sigil and you will easily cap at 25 might, it’s definitely worth noting you can get some insane might sharing for such a small price.

Here’s the breakdown if anyone is interested:

baseline (just facet of darkness and nature): 4-5 might
w/ Facet of Strength: 10-11

w/ Sigil of Strength: 9-10
w/ Sigil & Facet: 15-16

w/ Sigil & Runes of Strength: 11-12
w/ Sigil & Runes & Facet: 18-19

*all tests had 86.85% crit chance and had facet of darkness and nature maintained. Number range is the amount of maintained might applied to a nearby ally. This was against the indestructible golem in the mists. Note that more enemies will allow more sigil procs so the sigil might actually average 1 or 2 might higher in multiple enemy scenarios.

If you’re in a pve scenario where your party has little might or you are the sole might provider, definitely consider sigil of strength and maybe strength runes! Or if your war doesn’t want to run PS!

Thanks Obal for the guide.

Roxtar brings up a good point and I wish I had considered it before I switched out my Sigil of Strength for Sigil of Air. I pug 99% of the time and the vast majority of groups don’t bother to stack might. I’m assuming the extra 4 stacks of might on the group from Sigil of Strength is better overall DPS than Sigil of Air but can someone confirm before I switch back to Sigil of Strength? This would be in conjunction with Strength Runes.

Zerikin.1593:

Nice guide. Any idea how much damage a condition build puts out roughly?

Always going to depend on your skill at keeping up the conditions, the runes and sigils to help that, and the battle conditions (purging if in PvP/WvW or stationary like Tequatl). I can burst my torment stacks to 30-35 and maintain about 23. Hard to tell with burning when so many other classes (all but thief?) apply it. Same for poison.

I tend to maintain roughly 3k when I floor my energy (I am waiting for more) from just torment on a stationary target (Tequatl burn phases is where I watch numbers). It, of course, doubles on one you kite or that moves around (like 80% of the mobs in HoT maps). Poison can be another 800-1k, burning is another 1500-2800. I did hit an 11k tick of damage with torment on a mob—two ticks worth—but that was an ideal situation where I got my torment stacks upwards of 30 (which I can now do regularly from playing it so much) and it was moving.

Comparatively, on my Reaper, with Epidemic, and the same armors (diff runes cuz chill vs torment), I get easily quadruple, or more, that when I copy from a boss-like creature (the legendaries in DS) like the time I had three ticks of 15k burning. If it is just the creature by itself, and Epidemic is thus “useless”, I get about the same but through four damaging conditions. (900 chill, 800 fear, 1500 burn, 2300 bleed)

So… outside of that one skill.. our condition damage is comparable to Reaper. But, sadly, Epidemic is the ultimate skill for condi builds and we have nothing at all like it with Corruption/Mallyx so we average less overall damage in groups of creatures and roughly the same for a single-target. Not to say it is anything to pass up, just keep in mind we are second to necro when it comes to condi damage. I feel, if Roy does make that change he thought up to increase standing-torment damage… we will be on-par/equal to condi necro’s.

Leodon.1564:

Roxtar.6487:

Just something I haven’t seen mentioned – the icd for Shared Empowerment (give 1 might to allies when you apply a boon) is 1sec. Your herald boons sync with the server and refresh every 3s so you are effectively getting 1/3rd of the potential from the trait. If you stagger your utilities a little you’ll get better might sharing. If you run sigil of strength you can get, on average, a sustained 4 extra might shared to allies (tested in the mists). While this is a loss in personal dps from an air sigil and you will easily cap at 25 might, it’s definitely worth noting you can get some insane might sharing for such a small price.

Here’s the breakdown if anyone is interested:

baseline (just facet of darkness and nature): 4-5 might
w/ Facet of Strength: 10-11

w/ Sigil of Strength: 9-10
w/ Sigil & Facet: 15-16

w/ Sigil & Runes of Strength: 11-12
w/ Sigil & Runes & Facet: 18-19

*all tests had 86.85% crit chance and had facet of darkness and nature maintained. Number range is the amount of maintained might applied to a nearby ally. This was against the indestructible golem in the mists. Note that more enemies will allow more sigil procs so the sigil might actually average 1 or 2 might higher in multiple enemy scenarios.

If you’re in a pve scenario where your party has little might or you are the sole might provider, definitely consider sigil of strength and maybe strength runes! Or if your war doesn’t want to run PS!

Thanks Obal for the guide.

Roxtar brings up a good point and I wish I had considered it before I switched out my Sigil of Strength for Sigil of Air. I pug 99% of the time and the vast majority of groups don’t bother to stack might. I’m assuming the extra 4 stacks of might on the group from Sigil of Strength is better overall DPS than Sigil of Air but can someone confirm before I switch back to Sigil of Strength? This would be in conjunction with Strength Runes.

If your party isn’t giving you 25 might stacks then strength is better. However, in optimal parties, Rev’s should be getting might from the group and in return give the group 100% fury uptime, a dozen might stacks and 50% boon duration for half the fight. As such, you run night or 10% vs [insert enemy] in dungeons or air if it’s daytime. Frailty is another option if mob doesn;t have 25 vuln stacks (but this should be rare).

I use strength for soloing, but air/ night in fractals. With the upcoming raids, between 10 people, you should be getting your 25 might. As such, air will be recommended.

Pompeia.5483:

snip

Searing fissure should be able to maintain 9 stacks of burning if you max out duration. I’m thinking viper weapons/armor with runes of balthazar would be best. With pizza and a sigil of malice you get 52% condi duration base. With traits you would have
100% poison
97% burning
85% torment

Zerikin.1593:

Pompeia.5483:

snip

Searing fissure should be able to maintain 9 stacks of burning if you max out duration. I’m thinking viper weapons/armor with runes of balthazar would be best. With pizza and a sigil of malice you get 52% condi duration base. With traits you would have
100% poison
97% burning
85% torment

I guess, for now, burning can do more damage if you go that route but I wanted to be, basically, a full demon and went with torment. Also, I hope and look every day for the chance Roy will get in the increase to standing-torment damage, which would put the two close enough on par to favor torment due to the quantity of it we can apply.

As for food… I rarely have it so I never put it in my calculations. For the most part I am running around with the pumpkin cookie that has 30% mf and 70 condi damage instead—and that is when I notice it is not “on” and replace it immediately.

obal.3218:

Dionan.2645:

I’m not understanding how running down energy affects the cooldown of One with Nature, can you explain further?

You want to turn on facet of nature while in glint. You will want to run out of energy before swapping back to shiro so facet of nature turns off instead of you having to use one with nature making it so that you can’t use facet of nature for 25s. If you swap to Shiro before running out of glint energy facet of nature will still be on and you won’t be able to use impossible odds unless you use one with nature.

To run out of glint energy close to when shiro comes back up you activate all but the prot facet, sword3, axe4, and elemental blast (when you have around 4 energy left). You can use sword2 to help run out of energy if need be.

Running out the energy is no loss in dps and you get to have 50% boon uptime every time your in glint which is goal.

Does that also count for soloing or is there another approach when you only buff yourself?

Great guide, thanks for that and sticky please!

ulchanar.4309:

Does that also count for soloing or is there another approach when you only buff yourself?

Great guide, thanks for that and sticky please!

I would say yeah.. situationally. For soloing trash mobs, quite often the thing’s dead pretty early in the rotation. So what I do for the mobs that tend to not last long is just modify the parts of the rotation that makes the most sense in the situation. A lot of times, I can’t even be bothered to swap out of hammer.. I’ll stay in Shiro, but hammer them at range because I feel too lazy to run up to them and use sword/axe. If they’re already on me, then yeah, I’ll use sword/axe and that’s usually enough to kill them without swapping to glint.

In Verdant Brink, I took out 3 champ spiders just with Shiro, sword/axe, and then Enchanted Daggers, Impossible Odds, autoattack. 8 seconds, they were all dead and my health never dipped much below 95%.

So for most trash mobs, just use whatever parts of the rotation make sense for the situation. If they live for a while, like champs, then you get to spam the rotation to its fullest.

Excellent guide for a new Revenant to help them get their feet wet. This had some great tips in it.

Skoigoth.9238:

@obal: Do you have any thoughts on using Plate of Roasted Cactus instead of Fried Golden Dumplings in PuGs or for solo play? The extra boon duration from the dumplings feels a bit wasted to me sometimes, the +100 ferocity from the cactus however would offer additional ~6.6% crit damage if I’m not mistaken.

That’s a good choice too. It will help keep up group might for when you are in glint since it will proc more boons too.

Terra.8571:

obal.3218:

Altair.8402:

For Devastation adept traits, how much better DPS is Vicious Lacerations over Ferocious Strikes?

It’s a little over 900 dps better.

Hey Obal, is this assuming 100% uptime for Vicious Lacerations. I’ve been testing this, in boss fights/ static fights I can manage 80%+ uptime of 5 stacks. When hitting mobs in events/ solo play, I have only around 60% 5 stacks uptime. At what point does the lack of stacks uptime become relevant?

Edit: Also, against trash which dies in <8s, the build uptime 2-3s from my testing seems to be less dps than perma 150 ferocity. So unless there are huge trains of them, I find myself using the +150 ferocity. Thoughts?

It assumes 100% uptime. Hitting a dummy i kept up 5 the whole time with glint + shiro. Whatever downtime you have would still be a gain over the ferocity trait given how much of a difference it is.

Zerikin.1593:

Nice guide. Any idea how much damage a condition build puts out roughly?

I was getting around 11000 with shiro + mallyx. I haven’t finished looking into it but it’s looking to be not worthwhile.

ulchanar.4309:

obal.3218:

Dionan.2645:

I’m not understanding how running down energy affects the cooldown of One with Nature, can you explain further?

You want to turn on facet of nature while in glint. You will want to run out of energy before swapping back to shiro so facet of nature turns off instead of you having to use one with nature making it so that you can’t use facet of nature for 25s. If you swap to Shiro before running out of glint energy facet of nature will still be on and you won’t be able to use impossible odds unless you use one with nature.

To run out of glint energy close to when shiro comes back up you activate all but the prot facet, sword3, axe4, and elemental blast (when you have around 4 energy left). You can use sword2 to help run out of energy if need be.

Running out the energy is no loss in dps and you get to have 50% boon uptime every time your in glint which is goal.

Does that also count for soloing or is there another approach when you only buff yourself?

Great guide, thanks for that and sticky please!

I do the same rotations regardless if I’m in a group or solo.

AzureWolf.9150:

Excellent guide for a new Revenant to help them get their feet wet. This had some great tips in it.

Thanks!

Thanks for the reply!

obal.3218:

Skoigoth.9238:

@obal: Do you have any thoughts on using Plate of Roasted Cactus instead of Fried Golden Dumplings in PuGs or for solo play? The extra boon duration from the dumplings feels a bit wasted to me sometimes, the +100 ferocity from the cactus however would offer additional ~6.6% crit damage if I’m not mistaken.

That’s a good choice too. It will help keep up group might for when you are in glint since it will proc more boons too.

Thanks for answering, much appreciated

Obal, I guess you checked but I have to ask.
Taking into an account that might is provided by a warrior, I don’t understand why not to have nature, chaos, darkness and elements facets active (that puts you in -10) so energy drains out faster in glint. What is more, you also have to use axe4 (so I don’t think I am losing damage) to match shiro cd and you are even sharing permaprotection.
What am I missing?

One thing I’ve tried, but I am not sure of its worth (because we’re back on the same reasoning of using berserker, which is if we get hit we die anyway) is only turning on Might, Fury and Protection.

It loses the energy at about the same ratio of before but we provide both defensive and offensive boons. At the cost of Swiftness (meh), Regen (165 HP per second, meh) and 50% boon duration (that one hurts). Protection is not perma, but almost since it runs out when Glint still has a few seconds to go.

But it’s the old thing. With Protection on I still die if I don’t dodge hits or fire or whatever.

Facet of nature is pretty important too. You can keep up perma prot with facet of nature. You just have to give up the fury or might one. If you have multiple revenants in a group or fury is covered by others then it shouldn’t be a problem. It could be useful for raids.

Even if there isn’t someone else providing full Might, or as a lone Revenant in party, or solo, if you want Protection (at the cost of some DPS ofc), I wonder if alternating between Darkness and Strength each Glint rotation is a good approach for more survivability?

So (if you’re prestacking Might):
1st Glint: Nature/(Light)/Darkness/Chaos
Swap Shiro: Impossible Odds
2nd Glint: Nature/(Light)/Strength/Chaos
Swap Shiro: Impossible Odds
Repeat

Fury is really important to Revenant DPS I feel, so if you’re lacking (up after downed or similar) start your first Glint with Darkness, you’ll get some Might anyway.

With Facet of Nature (and pre-stacking Fury, and Invocation), I think you’d have consistent personal perma uptime on Fury and near-permanent on the party (depending on if you get 3 or 4 pulses in Glint over 10 seconds? Not sure how that works.)
With Strength runes (which I use), each pulse of Facet of Strength gives long-lasting Might (~20 seconds) so you’ll still be maintaining good amounts.

It’s possibly a better tradeoff if you want more effective health than subbing in tankier Soldiers/Valkyrie/Cavalier/whatever?

That’s a good point, Cneph, I didn’t consider alternating the facets. I’ll try it today and see how that pans out.

After a bit of testing we neither get perma fury nor perma protection with alternating facets.

Hmm I do wonder, is there a point to run zerker armor if Rev has access to perma fury ? I am running mix of sold with berk and the only concern one can have is ferocity. Yeah it is dps loss but not much i guess ?

You won’t get to 100 with fury + banner so yes you want berserker gear. You would need a ranger with spotter to put you over. At that point some precision will be wasted for the most part. Some defensive gear would be fine. Something like valkyrie or the one like it with toughness instead of vitality would be better for dps than soldiers though. It wouldn’t hurt you as much as other classes.

Kanto.1659:

After a bit of testing we neither get perma fury nor perma protection with alternating facets.

Yeah, I made a pretty basic error there. Got to cover four legend rotations, not two. Oops.

How does hammer DPS compare to sword? I know it’s less, but I’d be nice to know just how much of a hit I’m taking by staying at range.

I’ll leave the OP and his spreadsheet for a factual answer, but I find the hammer to shine in actual combat. The time we spend running after or to something is a few whacks by the hammer, and finding that sweet spot where #2 hits twice nets 15-20k hits every 2 seconds.

We can’t really rely on that though. Bosses that move, bosses who don’t have a large hitbox and the sweet spot is harder to find.

On the auto-attack it is obvious we lag behind the sword, which does roughly the same, or a bit more damage, while hitting much, much faster, but hammer does have #2, sweet spot or not, but then we don’t use #2 on Shiro either.

I looked into camping staff already. I guess I can do one for hammer too. I’ll assume the 3 different versions of #2.

Looking for a clarification on the Shiro/Mallyx rotation:
Shiro + Mallyx – Enchanted Daggers → Impossible Odds → Sword Auto → Demon Stance → Embrace the Darkness → Facet of Nature → Sword Auto → Unrelenting Assault after quickness is over → Sword Auto → Assassin Stance → Impossible Odds → Sword Auto → repeat Mallyx and Shiro off cooldown

Whats unclear to me, are you activating and consuming Facet of Nature after using Embrace the Darkness? Given the note of using UA after quickness is over.

And i am curious, is there any legend and trait selection that in particular benefits the Hammer? It seems fairly unsuported compared to sword, mace and axe for Shiro and Mallyx. I like staying at range, so I keep eyeing the hammer. But it feels so slow and underpowered compared to swords buffed by Impossible Odds..

Though if I understood it right, hammer dps lies in CoR spam? Especially if you can stay at range to ensure targets are hit with all impacts.

What’s the DPS/Rotation for hammer and staff using the exact same traits as the Sword build?

quick question

if you were to choose 1 ascended weapon set ( sword / hammer or sword /off-hand axe ), which would you craft first / is the most viable ?

fortunately I have gathered enough mats to craft them for free although it will take some time and I was wondering if there is any solid point to craft off-hand ( 2 skills with quite long CDs 12s / 15s ) instead of hammer which is the only ranged weapon and quite decent one

Sword/Axe first for DPS, then get Staff for heavy CC, then offhand Sword for blocks or Hammer for ranged.

It looks like a bunch of people questioned staff and hammer.

For hammer I put in hammer 2 -> elemental blast -> enchanted daggers -> impossible odds -> auto -> 4x hammer 2, autos, elemental blast in glint -> repeat shiro and glint. Hammer auto is pretty bad.

For staff I did staff 5 -> elemental blast -> enchanted daggers -> impossible odds -> auto -> glint -> auto -> staff 5 -> elemental blast -> repeat shiro and glint. Staff is somewhat generous since you will have downtime running back after staff 5 and I didn’t bother using staff 2 since it could be a small loss or gain depending on if you get the second part in.

LucianDK.8615:

Looking for a clarification on the Shiro/Mallyx rotation:
Shiro + Mallyx – Enchanted Daggers -> Impossible Odds -> Sword Auto -> Demon Stance -> Embrace the Darkness -> Facet of Nature -> Sword Auto -> Unrelenting Assault after quickness is over -> Sword Auto -> Assassin Stance -> Impossible Odds -> Sword Auto -> repeat Mallyx and Shiro off cooldown

Whats unclear to me, are you activating and consuming Facet of Nature after using Embrace the Darkness? Given the note of using UA after quickness is over.

And i am curious, is there any legend and trait selection that in particular benefits the Hammer? It seems fairly unsuported compared to sword, mace and axe for Shiro and Mallyx. I like staying at range, so I keep eyeing the hammer. But it feels so slow and underpowered compared to swords buffed by Impossible Odds..

Though if I understood it right, hammer dps lies in CoR spam? Especially if you can stay at range to ensure targets are hit with all impacts.

You never consume the Facet of Nature, it needs to get disabled by running out of energy, so it doesn’t go on CD. You don’t want it on CD, because it’s vital part of draining energy while in Glint (whilst boosting your boons).

Consider hammer as comfy option, it’s dps is nowhere near Sword, but the range can be nice and safe. I tend to hammer more often than not during meta events, as the saurian mobs are particularly annoying.

I considered that when I plugged it in. The hammer one required a little bit extra time camping glint for the 4th hammer #2 to drain it all. For staff you can use staff 2 to help drain it but I didn’t bother plugging it in since it made little difference.

I updated the guide for raids and in general.

Got a question,
how its possible to get 3 Hammer with Vengeful Hammers as Dwarf, its clearly shown in your video,
so exploid?

It’s a bug where if you cast vengeful hammers as you are swapping legends you will have one spinning around you in the legend you swap to. When you swap back to dwarf and use vengeful hammers it will add the normal 2 hammers to the one that is up already that shouldn’t be. Mallyx worked the same way in that you can use the stance as you swap legends and get it but they fixed that recently. I’m not sure why they didn’t fix dwarf though.

So assuming you have a Chrono that can give you a pretty nice amount of Quickness in a raid, Jalis is actually higher DPS than Mallyx or is EtD’s cast-time (and recent bug fix) just too much of a drop for the long fights and therefore Jalis wins overall (also taking into consideration the fact that you can keep a hammer while swapping)?

Jalis is higher dps. I didn’t take into account bugs. It’s a fair amount better without quickness but is more in line with Mallyx with it since the hammers aren’t impacted by quickness. Jalis is still a little better dps with permenant quickness, gives you damage reduction, and has some aoe to it. I have some dps charts in the beginning of the video to show what it looks like over a minute in a group.

obal.3218:

It’s a bug where if you cast vengeful hammers as you are swapping legends you will have one spinning around you in the legend you swap to. When you swap back to dwarf and use vengeful hammers it will add the normal 2 hammers to the one that is up already that shouldn’t be. Mallyx worked the same way in that you can use the stance as you swap legends and get it but they fixed that recently. I’m not sure why they didn’t fix dwarf though.

So you are saying for max dps, i should use a bug?
Great job

Seems to me if you have the Shared Empowerment trait and use Facet of Strenght, you stack might twice as fast?

Patty.1324:

obal.3218:

It’s a bug where if you cast vengeful hammers as you are swapping legends you will have one spinning around you in the legend you swap to. When you swap back to dwarf and use vengeful hammers it will add the normal 2 hammers to the one that is up already that shouldn’t be. Mallyx worked the same way in that you can use the stance as you swap legends and get it but they fixed that recently. I’m not sure why they didn’t fix dwarf though.

So you are saying for max dps, i should use a bug?
Great job

No. If I was it would be noted in my text guide, shown it while I was going over rotation notes, shown it in the sample rotations, or shown it in the charts. I put it at the end when I was wrapping up the video as a joke. I try to add some humor since people find my voice and videos boring. I don’t bother doing it myself and was hoping they fixed it along with mallyx but didn’t.

LucianDK.8615:

Seems to me if you have the Shared Empowerment trait and use Facet of Strenght, you stack might twice as fast?

For the most part yes while your in glint though it depends. The might from the trait only lasts half as long and the facets give you boons every 3s and the trait is 1s cooldown which is why unrelenting assault is pretty good to throw in the rotation if possible to proc it more and if your not alone others should help fill in the gap as well.

‘updated guide on pressing #1’

good stuff at usual, thx Obal

Any chances of a small section devoted for those who enjoy leveling their characters from Level-1? Advice like which skill lines to use and avoid during the journey to 80?

simple, start with Destruction. You dont want Salvation.