Guild Wars 2

Hey guy’s.

I just got HOT and decided to give a revenant a go for fun. My main is a lvl 80 war at the moment. I’m pretty much a casual player and really don’t have a clue how to play this class. I’ve looked at some guides I’ve found on the web but they get a bit over my head with some of the terminology. Does anyone know of a pretty basic guide on how to play a rev? I got him to 34 with instantly with a lvl 30 insta lvl and a few tomes so now I just need to figure out how to play this guy. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Play him a bit like an elementalist. Swap legends when you run out of energy, and use up that side’s energy in ten seconds, and repeat. Swapping legends, with full energy, gives you a loss of 50 energy because it always resets to 50. Sword/axe and hammer seem to be everyone’s favourite for power. Mace/axe and X for condi. Staff and X for healing/support with centaur.

Currently Corruption line is kinda useless unless you go Tormenting/condi so save that for last unless you like DoTs and can kite mobs well.
Invocation gives you healing for attacking like the ele & thief signets.
Devastation helps with crits/power damage.
Retribution is tanky stuff.
Salvation is for healing/support.
So, while leveling, you basically want devastation and invocation to make your life easy unless you specifically want the tanky stuff in Retribution. At 75, take what you want more for of the others until you get Harold unlocked. Once you hit eighty, you will have it all unlocked and can go now work on Harold. HoT hero challenges give ten points and you can likely get 10/11 in VB without much effort and asking around will find you HP running teams.

Beyond that, choose your play-style but know:
Dwarf is tanky
Centaur is support
Mallyx/Demon is condi
Shiro/Assassin is power
Glint/Dragon (elite spec) is also support.

Lastly, while leveling, you are better off avoiding water… it is incomplete and will be disheartening.

Thank you! This helps a lot!

I hate to shelf my warrior but this class seems like it could be a lot of fun to play. I’ll get him to 80 then I can decide what I like more or play a mix of both I suppose.

Or if you mainly plan to use your Revenant in PvE you could go lazy mode like me:

Mix of Zerker gear and Zerk+Valk trinkets. Grab a hammer and go Glint. With Fury active I’m sitting on 100% crit chance and 226% crit damage and around 19k health with mainly exotic gear, ascended trinkets and an ascended hammer.

Keep Facet of Light and Facet of Darkness on passive at all times (consume Light when low on health and anticipate an incoming mega-hit). Use passive Facet of Elements for perma-swiftness when running around and use the consume for AoE on mobs. Consume Facet of Chaos only to look cool or when you really need an awkward AoE knockback that takes too long to cast.

Rotation: do whatever you like and have fun without a care in the world as you shouldn’t run out of energy unless you really try.

:D

Pompeia.5483:

Currently Corruption line is kinda useless unless you go Tormenting/condi so save that for last unless you like DoTs and can kite mobs well.

This is incorrect. Early on Corruption is the best line to first specialize into at level 21 because of Maniacal Persistence.

See lower level Precision is downscaled horribly. For example if you go to a level 15 zone at level 80 with 40-50% chance to crit you’ll scale down to only 15% chance to crit from Precision. You just don’t get much crit % from precision. This is what makes buffs like Fury so strong and allows us to literally walk around 1-2 shotting lower level things because our power, crit damage with actual crit rating is too much for lower level areas.

This is where Maniacal Persistence rolls into picture. Getting a stacking 10% crit every second you don’t crit with such a low crit rating is a colossal boost in DPS. Furthermore by the time you do max the line out you’ll mostly be swimming in “Honed” gear (Power/Ferocity) because that’s what the game likes to give you in the 40-60 range pre-Berserker (and Strong Gear from 20-40).

One could make the argument that going Corruption solely for MP is a waste, however you gotta consider that lines like Devastation really only work with a large amount of crit (since it’s all +Ferocity which requires crit) as well as Invocation early on can’t keep up enough Fury up time to really take advantage of Roiling Mists until Herald (which is long past 80) making it the single best DPS line we got until later on.

I cover all this in a post here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/revenant/Looking-for-a-leveling-build/first#post5723388

When leveling, I suggest working first on Shiro. The speed boost from IO will make your life easier when traveling the open world, and it’s high damage is a big plus. It also gives some gap closing, a nice stun, and a dodge which doesn’t run on endurance. Its only major flaws are that it can burn too quickly through energy and it’s heal skill is rather weak.

For your other Stance, I would choose Jalis. It offers a very good heal (thus shoring up Shiro’s weaker one), a defensive boost in its Vengeful Hammers skill, and it can apply AoE weakness with Inspiring Reinforcements in a pinch. In practice most of the time you’ll toggle on the hammers and whack stuff until your hammers run out, at which point you’ll swap back to Shiro.

For weapons, I would suggest the sword Mainhand with either a sword or axe offhand depending on the situation. The axe offers greater mobility and aggression, while the offhand sword gives a block. For your other set, I’d take the hammer for ranged damage.

For traits, I would first work on Destruction for raw DPS and fury generation. It can also help to generate might as well. Second, I’d get Invocation or Retribution. Third, I’d get whichever of the two you didn’t have before. Invocation can give fury, slight healing, some condition removal, and about 7% extra damage minus all the fury it gives. Retribution gives damage reduction, extra endurance, stability on dodge, and other generally ‘tanky’ skills.

For the rest of your leveling, once these skills and traits have been fully mastered, just fill in the rest until you’re maxed.

Gear-wise, focus on power. Precision and ferocity will certainly up your DPS and are preferred when you can gear only them and live, but if you’re having a hard time surviving then there’s nothing wrong with adding in vitality or toughness.

Lots of open world completion is suggested, as this levels you quicker these days than dungeons and includes several skill points in most maps, so you can get the jump on Herald once reaching level 80.

Playing with this setup, currently, is probably the easiest ride to 80. After getting into HoT and unlocking your Herald trait line, I would probably replace either Retribution or Invocation with the new Herald traits, swap out your primary offhand for a shield, and trade Jalis for the more Boon-oriented Glint, whereupon your main combat ability will involve buffing yourself into oblivion, then in most cases swapping to Shiro to unleash a hailstorm of pointy murder on everything you see.

I REALLY don’t get why people keep suggesting to get Devastation first. It’s two principle DPS boosts are Ferocity boosts that only work if you have a respectable amount of Crit. Devastation has zero fury generation thus most of the DPS boost is non-existent until you get said crit rating much later with Invocation and later gear/Herald. Even the final triat, +20% dmg under 50%, is just a 10% damage boost.

Even Invocation offers minimal Fury up time, only when you heal or stun break. So while that’s a nice boost, you’re either forced to lead with your heal to generate Fury or you have to save your heal for when you need it and then you don’t really generate Fury.

Now when you’re 80…none of that is a problem. You have gear to offset these factors and make up for it with full Berserker or even Valkyrie when you can get Permanent Fury with Herald. However when leveling you just can’t make the most of these lines.

I recommend Shiro/Mallyx for leveling. Devastation/Invocation traits. Third can be whatever.

Devastation is for the 10% increase in sword dps (Vicious Lacerations) and Focused Siphoning and Assassin’s Annihilation for the life steal sustain. Invocation for Fury uptime (use the Fury on heal trait), which synergizes with Devastation.

Shiro for single mob dps, Mallyx for group tagging in map events.

Unyielding Anguish in Mallyx is amazing while leveling. The damage is good, and there is no cap on the number of targets. It isn’t as great at 80, but while leveling, you can tag huge groups of mobs during events like the Harathi Highlands world boss for lots of XP.

If you’re soloing things, most things will be facing you so Assassin’s Annihilation isn’t as useful as you’d think (at least with me playing around with it since mobs instantly turn to face you as you move). In addition while 10% from Vicious Lacerations is definitely nice it’s nothing compared to the scaling 10% crit until you crit lower level.

Now as you get on in levels, 100% agree that by about 70 or so Corruption loses it’s flavor due to access to gear and precision scaling is much better.

Okay, so I admit I insta-leveled my Rev to 80 and know little of the crit-scaling problems in low-level area’s because I always condi since I <3 DoTs.

I would guess some of these other folks know better in regards to leveling area’s and for power… but what I mentioned for what the trait lines and weapons do is still valid.

Regardless, always good to experiment on your own once you know the basic idea of each trait line on any class!

Kodiak.3281:

Even Invocation offers minimal Fury up time, only when you heal or stun break.

And legend swap. I like invocation first for the Condi cleanse and stun break on swap.

Pompeia.5483:

Okay, so I admit I insta-leveled my Rev to 80 and know little of the crit-scaling problems in low-level area’s because I always condi since I <3 DoTs.

I would guess some of these other folks know better in regards to leveling area’s and for power… but what I mentioned for what the trait lines and weapons do is still valid.

Regardless, always good to experiment on your own once you know the basic idea of each trait line on any class!

I’m very hestitant about a Condi build. I’d love to do it, no REALLY love to do a Condi build, but the two big things holding me back are:

1. Terrible power scaling making most of the current Condi gear (Viper, Sinister) irrelevant on mace attacks.
2. Torment is one of the worst spammable conditions in the game because it only really shines during movement.

If the power scaling got changed a smidge to be on par with other professions and we got a trait that let us reverse the Torment effect (more damage on tick, less bonus dmg when moving) I’d be all over that in a heart beat.

That is why, even in melee, I kite the mobs so the movement is what kills them… and they never hit me so… bonus!

I do not get, however, why power scaling on mace is the least bit relevant when the goal is to apply condi’s. If you mean why go Sinister instead of, say, Dire… was mostly due to the ease of getting Sinister gear vs Dire and Rabid seemed silly when precision, to my knowledge, does not affect conditions (and the last, Carrion, also has power so why not just get Sinister at that point and L2P). That and Sinister is nice for Hammer for those few times you have no choice but to be ranged or use sword, which is what I run as my weapon-swap main-hand when I want that extra evade. As for Viper… I had my Revenant set made in-full weeks before BWE3 and have not seen much point in making a new set just for that.

LOL Harold

as you were.

Pompeia.5483:

I do not get, however, why power scaling on mace is the least bit relevant when the goal is to apply condi’s. If you mean why go Sinister instead of, say, Dire… was mostly due to the ease of getting Sinister gear vs Dire and Rabid seemed silly when precision, to my knowledge, does not affect conditions (and the last, Carrion, also has power so why not just get Sinister at that point and L2P). That and Sinister is nice for Hammer for those few times you have no choice but to be ranged or use sword, which is what I run as my weapon-swap main-hand when I want that extra evade. As for Viper… I had my Revenant set made in-full weeks before BWE3 and have not seen much point in making a new set just for that.

It’s all about dealing as much damage as you can and doing power damage is every bit as efficient as dealing condi damage when most condi based attacks also deal damage at the same time. It’s classes like, say Engineer, who can properly take advantage of both Power and Condi at the same time that work out the best in these regards. Especially with new Viper style gear where Power and Condi are equal.

Rabid, Rampager, Sinister and Viper matter because of traits like “Rampant Vex” where your crits have a chance to cause Torment. Many classes have something like this such as critical hits cause bleeding (the most common) or burning. More crits = more condition since almost none of these have an Internal Cool Down meaning their potential to generate conditions is pretty high. In fact this is what caused the Bleeding dilema prior to HOT, because so many classes like Engineer, Warrior and Mesmer have these passive bleeds that took up the 25 slots from Condi based players from crits alone.

There’s no reason to “make” new sets anymore. The thing after they made the Ascended stat swap is to simply get the materials to swap stats (10 Spirit Shards, 1 Exotic Insignia, 5 Globs, and the Armor piece) which is infinitely cheaper and very viable to do.

Well, yes, I suppose that is highly valid… and I do need to look at viper for my engi. I would not want to go viper on my Rev though.

However, even if we do a 10 damage crit, it is still a crit so that part is moot.

As for stat-swap stuff… that assumes you have ascended armor. The stat gain from ascended armor is so minimal that I would rather focus my mats into something else… like ascended weapons and a potential legendary or two. Oh, and Nightfury. So I generally have ascended weapons and trinkets and exotic armor. My druid will likely be the first with ascended armor only because I had made two ascended keepers insignia before that change came out.

Yea that’s why you don’t focus on Ferocity as part of Condi builds since you just wanted the Crit for a chance to proc a Condi.

Not sure how many alts you have but as you run them through the HOT story you get a box of Viper, Minstrel or Trailblazer gear on each character. I’ve used this to regear my Engineer out in Extoic Viper gear.

Oh, awesome. I will have to do that, Kodiak, thanks!