I had the opportunity for playing revenant for quite some time now, and as it appears to me, they suffer from various big problems.
Problem number 1:
No weapon-swap.
Yes, it’s a design decision to not give a class a weapon-swap, in order to make it unique, but the 2 classes we have so far who don’t come with 2 weapon-sets are engineer & elementalist, both of which use alternative methods to actually swap their weapon-skills. In fact, these classes have access to tendentious more weapon-skills than the rest of the classes.
While the engineer gives up his utility-slots for a individually chosen amount of kits, he gets compensated by his class-mechanic which gives him one utility for each occupied utility-slot, while the elementalist has its weapon-swap as class-mechanic, still able to choose his utility-skills freely, with the assurance that regardless what weapon-set he runs, he will always at least receive basic levels of synergy with the correct attunement(s) active.
The revenant has neither of these options. All he gets are really low cd’s, gated by a energy-bar, but that leaves him with locked-tight utility-choices, since he’s unable to customize the set of utilities he’d like to receive from the legends he summons. So in total he will have 5 locked sets of utilities (counting in shiro & glint), forced to pick no more than 2 at a time, while his weapon-sets so far seem to be themed very closely for single legends (both thematically and synergy-wise) leaving him with at least 1 legend that will always feel out of place and dispatched to his actually chosen setup.
To gain at least reasonable amounts of synergy between his weapon, his chosen legends, and the chosen trait-lines, it’s almost required to give revenant weapon-swaps in order to make this class borderline viable in itself.
Problem number 2:
No weapon-skill-support from the Traitlines.
Currently, in order to make a Legend function effectively, it’s necessary to pikci t’s associated traitline. That in itself is not an issue, but almost without any exception, all traits rather support the associated set of utility-skills and completely leave out trait-options to improve their associated mainhand weapon. Jalis offers zero traits for the hammer. Malyx offers zero traits for mace/axe. The few traits in between give bonus dmg / support / defense on certain energy/range tresholds, but none of them reduce (the already low) cd’s, improve a weapons attack speed or dmg. As it stands currently, revenant will end up with the lowest PvE dps output of all classes, mainly because of the almost-complete lack of dmg-modifiers.
Shiro might change that for double-sword, but if that happens, the build-variety for revenant in PvE will be horribly narrow, locking him into exactly one spec, without even the option for less-performing-but-still-viable niche builds.
Not to mention that his group-support is already barely existent (not even counting ventari, since its current group-heal output is nothing but a joke, on top of bottom lvl dps if chosen with staff, compared to literally all other classes). The only thing he seems to bring to the table for groups is easy stability /dmg reduction in jallis, and easy condi-cleanse (with a suicide-move / more about that in point 3).
In its current form, revenant will not be a welcomed guest for dungeons/fractals, and shiro will not change much about that, even if it comes with viable dps.
Problem Number 3:
Suicidal condi-builds.
Malyx has zero condi-cleanse, and even if traited doesn’t provide enough resistance, so every attempt to deal with necros / engis / rangers / mesmers / burning guards will end in downstate, even if the opponent gets down first.
It appears that malyx-revenants are not meant to solo-roam since they only get barely enough resistance to survive, if they suck up enough condis from allies around them. On his own, they’re dead meat.
While it would be broken for every other class, malyx-revenant needs a way to apply perma-resistance OR one big condi-cleanse (5 condis or more) on low cd, unless he gets redesigned to not require certain amounts of condis on him in order to function effectively, AND receives the option to not only spread, but transfer condis away from him.
As it stands, malyx kills you faster than the enemy in PvP.
That’s it from my POV.
The low movement speed could be a potential issue as well, but since revenant actually has small leaps on low cd’s, I guess it’s okayish. Still, options to apply decent amounts of swiftness or get a 25% movement-speed bonus will be necessary for PvP, since mobility is one of the key-atributes there. And as it stands currently, revenant has no teleports or long-range leaps to compensate for that, so would be pigeon-holed into running runes of the traveler or speed.