Guild Wars 2

This long spiel is basically my opinion on what Revenant needs to be to be successful as a profession! Firstly, I support weapon swap, because the Revenant felt very, if in one word, limiting. Engineers and Elementalists have access to several other weapon sets whether it be Kits, Attunements or Conjure Weapons. Even if Engineer does not use any Kits, their utility skills give them a far more diverse range of skills to choose from that SYNERGIZE WITH YOUR BUILD (very important!) because of Toolbelt skills.

I think there are two problems here. First, Revenant has two VERY different Legends to choose from in battle and the particular weapon you have equiped likely does not synergize well with one of them. Second, every weapons’ skills and design are not enough to mold to every single Legend’s playstyle. This is a huge problem, because you are essentially forced to stay in one Legend and it flat-out makes you feel constricted. Weapon swapping somewhat fixes this problem, because you have much more situational ability that was lacking before.

The name of the game is synergy and I think Revenant lacks this somewhat. When I think of synergy I think of two or more things working well together, and in no way constricting but flowing together. I will start with weapons. They are the heart of every build, and while they need their niche, they need to be general enough that they are not exclusively associated with one Legend. I think in the case of weapons that synergy is best found through weapon swapping and weapon-specific and general traits. Heal, Utility and Elites need to be detached somewhat to open up build possibilities (less constricting and more freedom).

When it comes to Legends, they each need to be able to provide the basic necessities of any build (a stunbreak and condition cleanse or condition damage mitigation) so they are useable, otherwise the Legend is clunky no matter what else you do. Maybe the stunbreak on Legend swap should be baseline to allow more freedom in the design of Utility skills (every single Legend would not need a stunbreak). Another important thing is the synergy between Legends. They cannot in any way inhibit the effectiveness of another Legend and they need to be unique and effective in their own right to be able to lace together interesting combinations that each bring something important to a build. For example, Mallyx needs to be able to quickly apply conditions onto the Revenant so that it is not affected by Ventari, because you likely will have little to no conditions on you if you are swapping into Mallyx out of Ventari.

Those are my thoughts, I know they are quite general, but hopefully I made some good points that will help!

Michelangelo.1742:

the particular weapon you have equiped likely does not synergize well with one of them.

This is a huge misconception, and I blame the comunication of the dev team here.

They tried to sell staff as the ventari weapon. That’s not true lol, Staff is awful with Ventari tablet, it’s just happens to be good if you have a full healer setup, so you use staff because it heals, and ventari for the same reason.

Aside from this particular build, staff is actually great with Jalis, and hammer with Ventari.
Jalis is the tank legend and has an upkeep that deals damage in MID RANGE. That upkeep is not useless with the hammer, because pvp enemies will not attack you in melee range willingly, but is useless in pve, where enemies will get close to you regardless, taking damage from rotating hammers but LESS damage from your actual hammer skills, that do more damage when you’re far from the enemy (did somebody say Shiro’s backdodge, block and superspeed?). Also Jalis has a skill that taunts an enemywith a chain, making it come closer.

On the other hand, Ventari tablet is a mess to manage. I found it usable only while attacking with a ranged weapon.

And guess what? Hammer is great with Shiro!
Quickness and superspeed upkeep will compensate for the slow animations, while the dodge skill will remove any CC effect and keep distance from the target (hammer does more damage if the distance is greater).

Swords? Mallyx upkeep is the one with the greatest dps bonus, even better then Shiro’s. Sword is a bursting weapon, and Mallyx provides the best burst.

In my opinion some weapons have MORE synergy with other legends then the one they’re sponsored with.

It’s not true that there is no synergy, is just that you don’t know the skills and the class enough, and you’re basing your argument on a misconception. You can make a lot of combination, you just didn’t think about them.

Feel free to prove me that hammer has no synergy with Shiro and staff has no synergy with Jalis. Both better then the corresponding weapons.

Sword: Shiro, Jalis, Mallyx
Staff: any except Ventari (unless you are going for full healer, but that’s just a side effect)
Hammer: Shiro, Ventari, Jalis (pvp)
Mace: any except Ventari

Weapons are only tied to trait lines, but there is just 0-2 traits in each line that talks about the weapon itself (and in Devastation that traits only says “dual wield”, so it could be mace/axe). Usually not even worth.