Guild Wars 2

I got my Rev up to level 80 shortly after HoT debuted, but outside of the occasional PvP daily usage, it had been sitting idle ever since. Last week, I decided it was time to finally unlock and fully train up Herald, and I started trying to gain some of the ~250 hero points needed to do so in some of the lower-level Tyria maps. However, compared to my other characters, my current rev seems really clunky, and I’ve been struggling against stuff that my other toons just blow past with ease. Based on this, I suspect I will struggle horribly on some of the higher level content, and it will be an absolute nightmare on the HoT maps. That’s likely due in part to my unfamiliarity with the class, but I wouldn’t be surprised if my current build is also fundamental to the problem.

Searches for rev builds keep referring to meta builds such as those on metabattle, and all of the currently listed ones use Herald, so that isn’t much help. I’m trying to figure out what I can use in PvE for the primary objective of capping Hero points until I have Herald fully unlocked. A few people I’ve spoken to suggested to just join HP trains in HoT maps, but I was hoping to be able to obtain most of the HPs on my own if possible.

Current build I’m running is:
Shiro/Mallyx
Sword/Axe + Hammer
Devastation: 2/3/1
Invocation: 1/1/1
Retribution: 2/3/2
Gear:
Exotic weapons – mostly zerker stats with Force and Air sigils
Exotic armor – mix of power/zerk/condi stats with Rage runes (cheap, can change to something better)
Ascended trinkets – mostly zerker stats

Any tips on revamping the build would be appreciated. Alternately, if the HP train option really is the best/easiest/least frustrating way to fully unlock Herald, let me know.

Emm, so trying to cover everything you’re bringing up here heh. Apologies if it’s not useful advice.

HoT HP trains can be a handy way to help unlock Herald, and are probably the quickest. My experience with them wouldn’t lead me to saying they’re the least frustrating method, though that may not be representative. There are a lot of HoT HPs that you’d need a bit of a group for completing anyway, and if it’s somewhere like for example Tangled Depths it’s handy to have a guide who knows how to get around (just try stick with the group or be lost forever if you’re anything like me haha!) Tbh I’d suggest a mix of HP trains, HoT metaevents (people tend to stick around for HP after in for example VB) and just like map completion on the old maps to get more familiar with the class, since only one or the other method can get boring quickly and you don’t need herald to start enjoying the class.

The thing I find worst about Glintless revenant is the lack of swiftness or passive move speed (is this what you meant by clunky?), just as a quality of life thing. So Shiro never left my bar. If it annoys you beyond what impossible odds can do you could try solve it more with cheap runes like Centaur.

As for builds, the way I did it was by regularly switching things around a bit since switching is so easy on revenant, and I found that once I got herald I stopped feeling as free to switch things up since it competed with Devastation and Invocation for “never leaving my build” status.

Shiro never left my bar for the QoL speed.
Staff stayed because it’s the weapon I find most fun.
Devastation stayed for the life siphon grandmaster to help when I was learning (rewards you for practicing constant movement in combat), with the other two changing based on whether I was using a sword or not and doing group content (world bosses, HoT HP) or not (map completion).
Invocation stayed for the fury grandmaster (I never really cared about maximising uptime) with usually Equilibrium and the fury on heal.

After that I tended to switch things up a lot.
Things I found include:
Staff with Mallyx is a lot of fun for the leeching bolts on autoattack and the defence options. Can be used as your secondary weapon set to let your condis tick for longer (I didn’t take much condi stat investment, mace/axe and maybe an extra amulet is enough really when trying things out in pve, taking Corruption with Diabolic Inferno, the extra poison duration and sigil of doom on one of the weapons) or as a support stance to a pure power set (immunity to blind, good heal skill, boon strip for the odd times that comes up). Usually used when solo.

When feeling hard pressed or against large numbers of mobs I used Jalis, almost exclusively for the vengeful hammers (tagging in group events, personal sustain when solo).
May as well slot Retribution with it to double up on the elite skill and get extra use out of taunt against breakbars.

If feeling very hard pressed or very lazy I’d slot Ventari with Salvation, just for the blind spam heal, the extra energy fragment sustain (again rewarding constant in-combat movement, with added tablet management practice) and the fun elite skill.

So I couldn’t really say that I had “a” build when unlocking herald, but this let me familiarise myself with all of the components of the class a bit more. Which ideally meant that when I got herald I knew where I wanted to focus, really.

What I meant by clunky is the combat seems awkward. I’m used to just mowing through stuff with most other classes, but this one doesn’t seem to have the same kind of firepower. Maybe I’m running out of energy, or cooldowns seem to be an issue or something, but it doesn’t have the same smooth flow in combat that other classes seem to have, and the net result for me is lower DPS while sitting in auto far longer than is probably optimal. I’m guessing this is partly an L2P issue, and partly a build issue. I’m making progress on the former, but I’m looking for advice on the latter.

As for speed/movement, I do sit in Shiro a lot and spam Impossible Odds quite a bit for the speed boost, but that tends to leave me with low energy when I get into combat which might be part of why the combat ends up feeling clunky.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vlMQNAscmnvNeNS6JvJRVlHlsrykSYW5SJYssrkFNFRdWuesjP3udQgGA-TFSBABBu/gZKBvR9HAeSAPcKAQRfxVK/24ACsZIAgVVSBM2WL-w

I presume you already have the ascended trinkets; for the rest of the gear I’ll sugest berserker’s exotics, with traveller runes for the mobility (another option would be pack runes, better for combat).

If you’re going to farm the hero points in the HoT maps (which wouldn’t take you molre than a week or two, at most) maybe you should replace the axe for the off hand sword: the extra block is gold untill you unlock the shield with the Glint Traitline. And in my opinion you should move from Mallyx and Retribution to Glint and Herald very, very soon.

Thanks for the build – I’ll try it out.

Since you don’t have Glint for pulsing Swiftness, I’d say going Shrio/Jalis is your best bet. Just pop Impossible Odds in Shiro and then when you’re out of energy swap to Jalis, drop your Light Road and blast it with Staff 4 for swiftness (don’t even need to stop running).

Because, really, in open world PvE and leveling, getting around is the most important thing in my book.

It’s good for combat too I suppose, just auto attack with sword using precision strike off CD while using Daggers and Impossible Odds in Shiro until out of energy, then swap to Jalis and pop Hammers, repeat, and profit.

As a bonus, this will give you a lot of practice in the two PvE stances you’ll be using most at 80. (Shiro/Glint when solo or in fractals w/o a Chrono and Jalis/Glint in raids or fractals with a chrono.)