Guild Wars 2

My guardian is also meh but that was because I outfitted her as one of my first characters. My warrior is WAY more durable though.

Revenants have a lower HP pool compared to Warriors and aren’t as survival and protection focused as the Guardian. The Retribution and Herald Trait Lines can help with this significantly, however, as can the Herald shield and the sword offhand block. Would also recommend using the Jalis (Dwarf) Legendary Stance, which has the Whirling Hammers skill to reduce damage by (I believe, but didn’t verify) 20%. Glint also offer some strong survival with its damage converting heal and a straight toggle that gives protection.

I actually find Revenants to be fairly sturdy in practice. They have two heals, so if you’re in a bad spot you can always use one, stance change, and use the other when all else fails.

If you’re interested in an extremely sturdy open world build and aren’t picky about damage, I actually took this build all the way to 80 on a second “for funsies” leveling build. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vlUQJAWinXNmNSqJzJR/kNlsgyoS4Q5UJYrMskFOFR91tdtBGkY94yqA-TRSBABWcBAeS5XsKBdZ/BgU/55DBQDm/A4JAEjuASBYxYA-e

For traits, I first got Salvation, then Retribution, and finally Destruction for some added damage. This build shines on sustain, with Ventari’s Tablet causing an AoE blind around you whenever you move it, steady health recovery from the staff orbs/tablet healing, and CC from the staff 5/ hammer 5/Ventari Elite. When swapping to Jalis, you have a 50% damage reduction skill which dazed. a bigger spike heal (which will AoE blind), and Whirling Hammers for that 20% reduction and a bit of extra damage. Your traits give some significant additional protections by enhancing Ventari’s Tablet, the staff, and giving you a touch of Weakness on hit. You can cleanse conditions like crazy, and when you dodge you gain stability.

Ranged, just spam hammer hits, use the hammer 4 skill for a 6 second projectile block, and use the tablet’s ranged block as needed. Easy peasy. It isn’t a DPS monster, but it’s survivable and durable to the point of excess and handles most all of PvE leveling and open world exploration without problems. To be further supportive, swap out Destruction for Invocation and get traits for cleansing conditions and amping healing power. Change out Destruction/Invocation and Jalis for Herald and Glint at level 80 and gain both DPS and support strength.

I personally find them squishy, just like a guard with out aegis/massive healing.
But, what makes it up is the massive evades, blocking skills they have

Only trait I find EXTREMELY useful to help you stay in a fight, would be Assassin’s Annihilation, another thing that can help you keeping that hp up even more is foods granting you HP on a 66% chance when critting, being on a 2sec cd.

Yes. I use a lot of skill combo of life steal and blind to survive.

Depends on how you look at it. They are a reactive class when it comes to surviving, a lot like what Guardians are. However, they also happen to have a higher HP pool then Guardian, so they tend to sit somewhere between Guardians and Warriors in terms of just how reactive they are. Warriors don’t tend to be nearly as reactive with their naturally high HP pool. If i remember correctly, running full zerker except for my back piece which is knights, i’m sitting with 15.9k hp and 2,274 armor. Hardening Persistence ((40 points of toughness for every point of upkeep you are using)) is another great trait for helping with sustain as just running around you should have 5 points of upkeep in most cases. This is a 200 toughness increase and brings me up to nearly 2500 armor. If you use your Facet of life, which costs 1 upkeep and then Facet of Nature, which costs 2 upkeep, this gives you another 120 toughness which is nearly 2700 armor. When you run out of armor, i generally swap to dwarf stance and pop your swirling hammers ((forget the name of it)) skill which gives you a 20% reduction on damage while it is up. Not to mention, you can trait so that you get a 56 hp heal when striking a enemy with vuln. Your swirling hammers hit the enemy multiple times while your auto attacks apply vuln. So, you should be able to sustain fairly well in Dwarf stance until Glint is off of recharge and you can swap back. I think its something like 500 hp a second you are getting in dwarf stance if you use the combo i mentioned above. There is also a trait you can take in Invocation which allows you to heal 332 hp every time you use something that costs energy. Sadly this doesn’t seem to work with up keeps but anything on your 2 to 5 skill slot heals you for 332 hp every time you use them.

At the end of the day, its mostly about how you trait your Revenant out. As mentioned above, Assassin’s Annihilation with the things i mentioned above is a great combination for keeping you alive. I however have a hard time not using Swift Termination for the +20% damage increase when an enemy is at 50% or less hp. However, i do play a fair bit of WvW so i feel like i get more use out of it then the heal.