Guild Wars 2

Intro:
I’m not the best Revenant player out there, but with a year of experience and with my day job and passion being number+statistics related, I have gathered and compared so many factors of the revenant that has resulted in shocking results. It was already obvious with complaints, but the numbers as well as interviews (more like stalker questions lol) from me to high level rev players revealed just how bad things really are.
After the most recent balance patch most of us have realized that the viability of Revenant in multiple modes of play has plummeted – it doesn’t have even close to a spot on Raid groups in guilds or PUGs, it’s very mediocre in PvP to which I get called to swap class often during my matches, and it has the less variety in terms of “viable” builds that are borderline playable.

TL DR: Lack of viability in best build for the highest tier pve content and spvp atm, lack of viable alternatives and weapons to support different builds that may help this situation, lack of approachability for newer and mid tier players in SPvP because of high skill cap in an unentertaining way (underwhelming against condi as an inexperienced player, low survability, low damage aside from autoattacks from sword unless other skills are positioned and used at the right time).

PvE and Lack of Variety:
The lack of playable variety of builds wasn’t so painstakingly obvious in the past, except now when the “best” build for pve or structured pvp is now average or below average, when we look to other options to try find a stronger set up it becomes extremely obvious how little we have.
The dps of the condi build is so far behind its a joke (you can test at the raid training area) and non of the trees synergize well with Corruption line to allow you to “focus” on a condi build completely. You selection corruption and the other 2 trees are just utility or very little boosts to damage in a non-condi fashion (boosting your crit chance, flat dmg, speedier revival speed etc).
The dps of standard power-based build like mentioned above is average right now, despite being the best option we got. Because of this fact, that our “best” build is behind in SPvP and PvE high content like raids, we have tried to find something better this patch. This has made it blatantly obvious that we have VERY FEW OPTIONS when trying to make a power build, we have to spec into Devastation, and we have to spec into Invocation, and we have to spec into Herald. In each of the trees, the dps talents are either set in stone for the tier or don’t matter much like first tier of invocation. On top of that, we are pigeonholed into Glint as a legend, and as for the second legend Shiro if we don’t have a chronomancer on the party for quickness, otherwise Jalis is used for the sole utility skill of vengeful hammers as the only option for a dps increase. Even worse, we are forced into using sword, and all offhand options don’t add any dps, only utility.
Our utility alone used to bring us a spot in raid groups, but losing the increase in buff duration from 50% to 33% with resonance from Facet of Nature really hurt us bad, along with the raid needing two Mesmers to keep up quickness and alacrity and our utility becoming worse all that’s left is our average damage.

Solution: We have the least variety in combinations utility skills already, needing us to use the same 3 per legend, so we need more excuse to match different legends for raids and high dps play. Or better viability on a tank or support role so we have the possibility of another choice. Buffing underused utility skills will help, as well as upping the damage of offhands so they are MORE THAN JUST SIMPLE UTILITY. We have few enough weapons as it is! The most common complaint I’ve heard when asking people who gave up or are giving up on the rev is lack of options and weapons – this really needs to be changed. The core mechanic of the class with legends already forces us into certain “sets” of utility skills depending on our need (Shiro dmg, Mallyx condi, etc) we don’t need weapons and talents to also be so straightforward and limiting. Which more options and damage choices across the board, more combinations will be found that can result in more variety and love for the class as well as viability in raids. We can bring some nice utility with Glint already, so perhaps higher damage to bring us in line to that of thief (second behind ele) might allow groups to bring us as opposed to thief if they need more consistent boon help. Some issues are in regards with how fixed the meta is with certain professions locked into spots on raids, but that is not the reason why revenant is mediocre in pve right now.

PvP:
We have a huge problem in pvp right now, which is viability in mid to low tiers of play, and while we are OK in high-tiers of pvp it requires significantly more effort, knowledge and skill to be a good member on the team compared to many other meta classes. As a reminder if you didn’t read the intro, I’m not the best player but this is from gathering info from streams, pro / high level players, and comparing statistics with other professions performance. So what have I found myself from experience and interviews with some high-end players?
Survability – Revs defence in spvp has always been poor, with heals being weak or exploitable (avoid attacking a rev during glint heal, for example). We have terrible “oh crap” talent and skills, like shield 5 which roots you and can be countered by unblockable attacks among other problems, and soothing bastion grandmaster trait that is the worst “second life” talent for the same problems unlike other professions’ (warriors defy pain, engineers shrink talent and elixir, rangers signet of stone and talent that procs it, elementalist can move during blocking etc etc). The worst thing about our survability though, is CONDI REMOVAL. we are forced into Mallyx or retribution to have borderline acceptable ways of dealing with condi, but that doesn’t work if we are trying to do damage which we lack (read problems of damage in sections below) as we need to remove a high damage trait line like invocation and devastation for retribution or glint/shiro for mallyx. Less of a problem with condo builds as we can run mallyx with corruption + retribution, but condi rev is terrible atm.
Damage – Used to be good, but from the last couple patches especially the most recent they have become mediocre in damage. This means nothing makes up for the lack of defensive capability anymore, as their offence is below average. Sword 2 requires positioning and skill to hit hard in the past now it hits like a wet noodle regardless, being passable damage if you hit all projectiles again which only top tier players can consistently do. Sword 3 is terrible damage against multiple players, requiring a 1v1 scenario or used situationaly as an evade (that displaces you, again a situation high level players can more easily take care of with e.g. Shirt evade). So right now for low level play you only auto attack – otherwise there’s a high chance you are gimping your damage.

Gathered Opinions of a Solution to SPvP: We need to make changes to the revs contribution to a pvp team without requiring so much skill and experience, to help low tier-mid tier play or people will keep getting punished for having a revenant on the team. This does not mean we need to be easily OP, just more effectiveness without needing so much experience and effort, but still requiring top play to reach the ceiling, right now there is only a ceiling that makes you somewhat good if you reach it, while everything under is below average. We can improve baseline survivability to help with this, and/or up the damage on weapons and offhand slots that currently only provide utility. With survivability improved you can see top players using more glass builds without shield taking advantage of the new offhand prowess, while lower tiers resort to the shield but have better defence and offence than the they do currently. Finally, improve CONDI REMOVAL FOR REVENANT CORE, through adding some condi removal in utilities/wep skills or adding more in talents. The whole condi weakness thing is also huge downer for new to mid tier revs – nobody likes to be whittled down with no option other than significantly nerfing your own damage to spec into things to be able to deal with

Conclusion:
Like most pieces of text, it’s even more boring if I bring in numbers and graphs but honestly I probably would have if this topic creator allowed drawing and graphs. Point is I’ve tried to include as much as I can on the findings of the issues and explain them in a way that does not include an overflow of numbers. Feel free to discuss these things with me in-game if that is your passion too. I hope some of you put forth your thoughts in improving the rev and bringing it in line with many of the other great professions.

TL DR: Lack of viability in best build for the highest tier pve content and spvp atm, lack of viable alternatives and weapons to support different builds that may help this situation, lack of approachability for newer and mid tier players in SPvP because of high skill cap in an unentertaining way (underwhelming against condi as an inexperienced player, low survability, low damage aside from autoattacks from sword unless other skills are positioned and used at the right time).