WvW Offmeta Roaming - Guide to playing Condi Ventari Core Revenant

[DISCLAIMER: Do not attempt to use this build if you are a new player. It's a meme-tier build for the experienced player. If you are not familiar with all other classes you will die, a lot.]

Background:Revenant has been pretty lacking in the interesting WvW builds department since it's arrival in the HoT expansion, being generally limited to the roaming power herald. While condition revenant builds were sometimes used after the launch of HoT, with the recent prevalence of power builds on most classes since the release of PoF, condition builds have largely faded into the background. This being the case, i figured something rarely seen might be fun to talk about.

Since i'm often asked "What the heck is that build" i figured i'd share it with you all.

A while back i was working on creating an in-game cosplay of Obélix from the Astérix comic book series, and i figured throwing large rocks (Ventari Tablets) was a good match.

Thus the idea of creating a build centered around the Ventari legend. Having played the meta Shiro/Glint power Herald for a month or two after HoT, i started trying to create a Shiro/Ventari build. Which was terrible due to having too many variables to account for, eg. Movement speed, Healing Stats for Ventari, Pow/Pre/Fer stats for a power build.

The Build:

• Legends used are Mallyx and Ventari. Mallyx provides boonrip, slight mobility and solid condition pressure. Ventari is your sustain/cc legend, providing healing, cleanse and pressure through knockbacks and rune/trait procs.
• Weapons used are Mace/Axe + Staff. Mace/Axe is required for condition pressure, staff is your offhand set for dealing with pressure.
• Sigils/Runes: Mace/Axe uses Frailty+Hydromancy. Frailty is optional, i use it as an easily accessible cover condition that also increases your damage. Staff uses Absorption and Hydromancy. Absorption works great with tablet knockbacks, but since there is boonrip on mallyx you can also replace it with something like Doom sigil. The Hydromancy sigils on both weapon sets have trait synergy through abyssal chill. Runes used at this point in time are Tormenting runes for extra sustain. Other options are Grenth or Balthazar runes.
• Food: Pretty straightforward, anything boosting your defense or condi damage. I use -10% dmg + 70 condition damage food and vit/tough -> condi dmg utilities.

Combos:

• Cleansing: Detonate your tablet inside the protective solace shield for a guaranteed 2x cleanse, more if your energy is >10. Also use staff 4 inside solace for another cleanse combo. Alternatively use Purifying essence if your energy allows it. NOTE: Detonation blast finisher does not occur around the tablet, but the player.
• Healing: You have two main methods of sustain, active and passive. Actively heal yourself by moving the tablet through you and starting Natural Harmony before it reaches you. Passively heal yourself through the healing fragments spawned by traits/detonation of the tablet.
• Damage: Open every fight while in Mallyx, remove boons on boon heavy classes or start with using UA. Chain cc's together when possible, eg: Land axe skill 5, legend swap into Ventari and detonate tablet right away for the basic damage combo.
• CC: The tablet is an amazing tool for annoying people and preventing rezzes, having spammable knockback provided by the elite skill.
• Securing stomps: Place an Unyielding Anguish field then use a blast finisher like staff 4 or tablet detonation to blind the downed player. Alternatively move your tablet to proc Planar Protection (20s CD), then detonate the tablet to blind players. Detonate the tablet next to players reviving downed targets to knock them away from the downed player.

Closing Comments:Obviously this build was not even supposed to be viable, but i found it very fun to play with, and was surprised at how often you can actually win fights. The response I've gotten from players i fought with and against has been pretty good, although i still often get spammed by people saying condi builds are cancer/easymode/for noobs etc. (I guess condi is easymode since 90% of people play power these days.)

I'd like to give one shout out to a certain individual who referred to it as Pinball Revenant, which made me chuckle.

If you tried this build yourself and have comments, or if you have any suggestions or feedback i can use to improve upon it's current form, i'd love to hear it!

CURRENT BUILD VERSIONGW2Skills link V_2019_05_14

Edited on 2019/05/14: Updated to current build.Edited on 2019/01/06: Updated to 2019 version. Updated post with video guide.Edited on 2018/11/14: Updated to post 13/11 patch: No longer uses Diabolic Inferno (DI) since Pulsating Pestilence (PP) now actually works as intended and transfers properly. Some stat/rune/sigil changes.

ofc it works.. its condi....

@Aeolus.3615 said:ofc it works.. its condi....

Can smell the salt all the way here.

@Velran.1052 said:

@Aeolus.3615 said:ofc it works.. its condi....

:) ahahha kinda, condi offers to much for the player due how condi is working, i played ocndi builds in the past, and for sure the current one are similiar gameplay but in steroids.

I've been playing a lot of Rev in WvW lately, it never occurred to me to use Ventari offensively, hilarious! Unfortunately I find it difficult to move away from the back-line power hammer build for roaming or zerging.

Litterally /cheer everytime i see you running around knocking people around.Regardless of the build/gameplay thanks for just being in wvw haha

I was sold on the idea at "Pinball Rev", and I'm gonna see if I can adapt this for ranged zerging during the No Downed week, and position the tablet as a land mine.

@Velran.1052 said:

@Aeolus.3615 said:ofc it works.. its condi....

I thumbs up both cause both are right lol.

Seen you, farmed you. Was fun to see something new nonetheless so kudos to your build.

You had me at manly man build. If nothing else, the build should aid in my quest to reach an unrealistic understanding of epistemic virtues.

@Vasdamas Anklast.1607 said:Seen you, farmed you. Was fun to see something new nonetheless so kudos to your build.

Could not sound more like a neckbeard if you tipped your fedora to him. Nice over inflated ego you got there.

@Velran.1052 said:

@Vasdamas Anklast.1607 said:Seen you, farmed you. Was fun to see something new nonetheless so kudos to your build.

Oh common, I still loved his appearance and build! Shame it's irrelevant but at least the guy came up with something original and did quite well unlike most of those meta copy-paste roamers out therere.

Small update after about a month of toying around with Renegade/Kalla in the build. Had many great fights, and got a lot of feedback from people i fought.

Keeping in mind that this elite spec was most likely not meant to be used in solo play, here are my thoughts on the elite spec in such a role, starting off with what i thought was good in conjunction with my build:

• The Kalla's Favor buff you build up is a nice 10-15% condition damage buff, compensating for the lack of condition damage on the traveler's rune.
• The Ashen Demeanor trait in the Tier 1 section has great synergy with the detonation of the Ventari tablet, providing vuln and cripple as cover conditions.
• Tier 3 traits Lasting Legacy and Righteous Rebel are both very solid, the first increasing the effectiveness of Kalla's Favor and giving solid might gain, and the second giving constant -33% condition damage taken, which is very valuable when fighting the numerous condition mirages and scourges strutting about the borderlands.
• Shortbow has been semi-decent, providing some ranged pressure in the form of the AA and skill 4-5.
• The Kalla Stance itself has good utility in the Breakrazor's Bastion (heal skill) and Darkrazor's Daring (Stunbreak/Daze Spam). The heal skill is very potent, especially in my build that has high healing power. Plus Darkrazor's Daring is a very powerful lock-down ability.

On the other side of the coin, there are some flaws and underwhelming aspects I've found with both the shortbow, the Kalla stance, and the traitline itself:

• The 2nd and 3rd minor trait are pretty underwhelming. Comparing Endless Enmity (Gain Fury (6s, 8s CD) when you critically strike a foe below the health threshold (50%) ) to say, the mesmer's dueling trait Master Fencer (Gain fury (5s, 5s CD)when you strike a foe below the health threshold (75%)) it seems mediocre at best. As for Brutal Momentum, i don't really understand the design behind this minor trait. I get that this elite spec is tailored to PvE but for a class like revenant that uses dodges as its primary form of damage avoidance it seems counterproductive to offer benefits for being at full endurance. In any case these traits provide nothing to this build.
• Tier 2 traits seem quite dull to me. For this build i'd pick Heartpiercer for the damage increase or All for One for the decent protection uptime.
• Kalla utility skills: Razorclaw's Rage is mediocre at best as a slight damage increase, for this to be of use in solo play you would have to either increase the potency of the bleed or remove the interval cooldown. Icerazor's Ire is really only useful to provide some area shutdown and cripple/vuln stacking. I really think they should just make it apply chill as was probably intended in the first place. Put a small ICD on Abyssal Chill if the devs fear it would be too potent. Soulcleave's Summit, decent only for outnumbered fights where having this up alongside Icerazor or Darkrazor can keep your health full 24/7.
• Shortbow: Bloodbane Path and Sevenshot just have to be either completely revised or scrapped altogether. I don't even understand how bloodbane path made it past initial testing, this just misses 2/3rd of its projectiles 90% of the time, which is an absolute shame as the idea behind being able to move away from your opponent and shooting your projectiles through portals behind/around them is great. Sevenshot is utter trash, though it's very satisfying when you hit that lucky 7 hit on a moving target. I've seen people suggest for it to create lines akin to Mordrem Snipers, but i'd honestly just turn it into some kind of evade/portal leap/shadowstep to match with the other class shortbow skills.
• Citadel Orders: Heroic Command is decent when traited with Lasting Legacy. Citadel Bombardment is just not worth using in my opinion, especially from range due to the horrendous projectile speed. You can land some of the hits when you fire it pointblank at a target in melee range but i'd rather use the energy for other skills. Orders from above is great, both in solo play to speed up skill/utility recharges. And i personally love using it in team play to provide alacrity to people using siege.

In short: It was fun trying to make this elite spec work with my build, in general people don't even know what the Kalla skills do so they just stand in them. The reactions i got from people were the most enjoyable part about playing renegade. "LOL first time i see a renegade not die instantly" is among my favorites.

I've now gone back to an updated version of the original core revenant build, which i'll include here. This build is much more forgiving than the renegade version and offers higher damage at the cost of less cover conditions and having to spam a skill every 5 seconds for movement speed.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vlAQNApXmnfNmNSuJzJRHlNlskyoS4S5UJorMskFUFZ9VtdpBKkgtYzoA-jFiHQBC4UKEI1fMoyqQs/wa03AgnUQSUqEHlgxDCAGKqaVlqqqSKAX3pB-w

Thanks again to all the people who had 1v1's with me or encountered me during roaming sessions in T1-2 EU, it was fun!

Another update after close to two months of playing the core version of this build again. Also includes an updated original post and some commentary on the recent Herald balance patch.

Core is vastly superior to the renegade version, the increased sustain capabilities and added stunbreaks give condi revenant a fighting chance in today's meta. It's given the build a better chance against what i view as the biggest counters to the build, notably (SD) Holosmith and Soulbeast. It does require a more aggressive strategy which i'm slowly getting used to. I've looked into adapting it to PvP since roaming is a bit stale recently, but apparently bunker Ventari was a thing in PvP once and the 10s cooldown on Ventari's elite skill + the reduced stat choices cause it to be pretty unviable. Though i can see how this build would be utter cancer in a gamemode about holding nodes.

Currently solo roaming seems to be dying out a bit, so besides solo play I've also started playing with other people recently. Switching out one trait in the salvation line for extra heal effectiveness to allies and changing food to rice balls lets you provide solid heals in group scenarios while still dealing out pressure through condition damage.

The recent balance patch brought a reworked Herald into the game. I was interested in how the F2 skills would work on both Ventari and Mallyx, as well as seeing if the reworked herald line offers anything to this build. The loss of the trait which provided protection to self and allies on heal skill usage is a pretty big loss to the old Herald version of this build. As the near permanent up time of protection means herald loses pretty much any hope of being included ever again. The F2 for Mallyx pleasantly surprised me, as it brought back the old design philosophy behind Mallyx a bit, taking on conditions and spreading them to enemies. Although i would've liked Embrace the Darkness (Mallyx Elite) to function that way. The Ventari F2 seemed decent if specced with enough + heal effectiveness to allies modifiers, i presume it would reach close to 800 health/3sec on allies. Although it has little value compared to using the Invocation trait line when roaming solo.

In closing, i think some of the changes are a nudge in the right direction. And i'm looking forward to a possible future core revenant and renegade rework. The build is still in a decent place, certainly viable in 1v1 vs most classes, although there are plenty of good players running Holo/SB/Mirage that counter it pretty well. Condi builds are still pretty looked down upon in the current power meta I've noticed, but not as much as before PoF so there's still hope for the future i guess. :p

There's an idea floating around about making a small video showcasing the build after being offered help by people, but as i'm playing less often it probably won't be released for a long while yet.

Hello to everyone in 2019!

Finally got around to creating a video guide, includes some general gameplay to illustrate how to play. Might make a future video showing 1v1's vs all classes at some point. All my old footage is from outdated builds unfortunately.

I hope it's educational and entertaining!, taught myself the basics of editing for this video over the last couple days. :-)

@"WraithOfStealth.1624" said:Hello to everyone in 2019!

Finally got around to creating a video guide, includes some general gameplay to illustrate how to play. Might make a future video showing 1v1's vs all classes at some point. All my old footage is from outdated builds unfortunately.

I hope it's educational and entertaining!, taught myself the basics of editing for this video over the last couple days. :-)

This was great! It's always refreshing seeing something different being played, and you play it well. Thanks for the nice video. Would love to see more gameplay footage in the future.