Revenant's, what's their deal?

Hey, I'm really curious on what the deal with revenants is. I've googled, and gone to the wiki and looked them up, but I still don't really understand how they're played. From what I understand is you get access to two legendary heroes that you can embody, and swap between. This suggests that you have two different play styles at your finger tips that you can swap out at any time, along with weapon swaps.

So you can have the Dwarf hero and be more tanky, and then switch to the assassin hero for more damage output.

So, do they play a lot like Elementalists where they're constantly changing stances based on the situation, or do they generally stick to one, with the other stance being a "just in case" stance?

Can they change their stance out of combat at any time? If they don't need to be tanky, but need to be more of a healer can they swap out their Dwarf stance for the healing one on the fly? (While keeping their damage one) or are they "locked" to the particular stances that they choose? The wiki isn't totally clear on that. (It sais they have access to two, but can only have one active at a time.)

I'm just curious if someone can give me a brief rundown of how the general basic mechanics of the class works.

Edit: What are they good at?

Guardians are really good at supporting the team with buffs and heals.Elementalists can bring anything they need to the table at any given time.Engineers/mesmers/necromancers are good at laying down a lot of summons to distract the enemy.Thiefs are good with mobility, and assassinating.

Ect.. What's a Revenant good at? What are they known for, or what do they do best?

You can swap out legends while ooc. In combat you can swap between the chosen 2 every 10 seconds. A good Rev will swap periodically because they get an inherent bonus of resetting their energy to 50%. Because some of the legends are so polarized in role (ventari healers) they might camp just one legendary and use swap legend as "OMG I dieing" button. Power builds can benefit from several different legends as well as Condi.

To me I would define the legends,Jalis: facetank wvw zerging stuffVentari: ranged healer supportMallyx: Condi utilityShiro: utility damageGlint: cheap boon spam damageKalla: aoe mixed bag of healing, Condi, damage, cc and support

The most notable weapon is staff as it provides the best skill lineup for any build when placed on the swap weapon set.

For player vs player stuff:

Rev is really good at,Small-scale power builds

Rev is ok at,Medium scale power builds, Condi builds and healer/support builds

I don't know if Rev is meta atm in fractals/raids but it has been in the past. If narcx is still around he would be able to tell you.

Rev is mostly for offensive boons (fury,might,swiftness) in WvW on 10 people and hammer AOE damage on Phase smash/Drop the Hammer/COR. Depending on if it's a frontline rev or backline rev it will be running either dwarf (frontline) for stability (Inspiring Reinforcement)/ damage reduction (Rite of the Great Dwarf) /5 condi clear on heal, versus shiro on backline for more damage. Both variants run Glint. The reason you would normally take it over Kalla is because Renegade only provides alacrity (easily stripped making it semi-useless given the cooldown)+ Soulcleave summit (which depends on the summoned AI to not die). The loss of critical chance on dodge while running Renegade is a large problem when dodging is necessary in every WvW fight , whereas it's much less an issue in PvE. Glint applies boons every 3seconds, meaning getting boons stripped is not as much a liability.edit: another reason glint is preferred in competitive modes is because if you get focused you can pop glint heal and be invuln to condi damage and power burst for a few seconds.

For PVE it's mostly for alacrity and Soulcleave summit using Kalla. In PvP the fury/might from Glint helps but it's also used as a roamer due to high burst damage from sword+shiro legend. Rev is meta for fractals and raids: it's the renegade portion of the "firebrigade" , pumping out alacrity that firebrands cannot. Unlike with chronos, the alacrity is applied in a large area and instantaneously, meaning the amount of player awareness required is negligible to run it. Mallyx is sometimes substituted in for boon rip instead of shiro (also if it's a condi build), but Kalla is almost always run. Ventari generally isn't attractive due to the healing potential of Soulcleave summit on Kalla, it's only run if a pure healer is warranted; most people find the tablet to be clunky.

With the patch looming , I don't think rev is going to be as useful for outright damage in competitive modes because it's highly susceptible to bulk conditions other than the heal on dwarf that removes 5, staff 4 which removes 2, legend swap (traited with invocation), and shiro utilities (which remove cripple/chill/immob) you don't have many cleanses. In addition, CoR is still buggy with respect to pathing and aim and gets 0 damage if someone else hits with it simultaneously, so hammer 5 (Drop the Hammer losing almost all its damage) along with higher cooldowns overall means you need to be more coordinated if you still run hammer in WvW. Surge of the Mists (staff 5) is also getting its damage taken away.

Revenants are simply : resource juggling the game.

They are governed strictly by their Energy costs and Energy pool.

Their skills are low in cooldown compared to other classes, but powerful and expensive to use, which make Revenant need to swap their Legends to refresh this Energy pool and based on situation.

They can technically swap roles based on what the team needs but remember, stats on gear are a thing so unless yu have gear for say, DPS and healing, yu can't just swap to Centaur and call it a day as a healer.

Legends are picked based on yur build.

Healers like Centaur and supplement that with Glint or Kalla for support.

Power likes Shiro and use Jalis or Glint as backup support.

Condition likes Mallyx and use Glint or Kalla as their support.

This is not to say a Condi player can't pick Jalis either for example.

They can pick it too provided the Legend provides utilities they need.

@"Yasai.3549" said:

Their skills are low in cooldown compared to other classes, but powerful and expensive to use, which make Revenant need to swap their Legends to refresh this Energy pool and based on situation.

That was in the past. At the moment your cooldowns are pretty much in line with any other class, but you need to pay energy on top of that for most of them. Since you only gain 1 point of energy x second and swapping a legend usually resets your meter to 50, swapping is oftenly a need because your utility skills do dry your reserves. Post 25th patch a lot of those "powerful" and costly skills will also do 0 damage, because a lot of them were asociated to cc.

A lot of the popularity of the Glint legend is related to the way this spec maneages the energy: every skill can be activated as a small upkeep which works as a passive aura granting boons, and can be activated a second time at 0 energy cost to grant a brief but powerful effect.

@"Buran.3796" said:

That was in the past. At the moment your cooldowns are pretty much in line with any other class, but you need to pay energy on top of that for most of them. Since you only gain 1 point of energy x second and swapping a legend usually resets your meter to 50, swapping is oftenly a need because your utility skills do dry your reserves. Post 25th patch a lot of those "powerful" and costly skills will also do 0 damage, because a lot of them were asociated to cc.

A lot of the popularity of the Glint legend is related to the way this spec maneages the energy: every skill can be activated as a small upkeep which works as a passive aura granting boons, and can be activated a second time at 0 energy cost to grant a brief but powerful effect.

Yes, technically their skills are "in line" with other classes if yu factor Energy regeneration but the skills cooldown on tooltip are indeed lower than other classes.

Also yu forget stuff like Charged Mists exist, which allows a skilled player who can proc it often to get more out of each Legend swap over a player who doesn't run it.Granted, Glint builds don't use it, but Renegade builds do, since they do not really use Roiling Mist on Condi DPS builds for Raids.

@"Yasai.3549" said:

Also yu forget stuff like Charged Mists exist, which allows a skilled player who can proc it often to get more out of each Legend swap over a player who doesn't run it.Granted, Glint builds don't use it, but Renegade builds do, since they do not really use Roiling Mist on Condi DPS builds for Raids.

Nah, didn't forget about it: I cautelosuly used the words "usually" because I was aware of the exception. But is just that: an exception; not every build has the luxury to run Invocation and even if that were the case both Roiling mist and Song of the Mist trend to overshadow Charged Mist as the main choices in that tier.

@"Justine.6351" said:You can swap out legends while ooc. In combat you can swap between the chosen 2 every 10 seconds. A good Rev will swap periodically because they get an inherent bonus of resetting their energy to 50%. Because some of the legends are so polarized in role (ventari healers) they might camp just one legendary and use swap legend as "OMG I dieing" button. Power builds can benefit from several different legends as well as Condi.

Pretty much exactly this.Somethings I would add though is that the Revenant is known for its damage; Power in Competitive game modes, and Condi in PvE (although condi is emerging in competitive as well)

That said, Revenants can do many roles well, just like any class depending on how you build your character. Just as guardians can also do extreme amounts of damage, so too can revs also heal and support allies, for example.

Get used to the legend swap. Find ways to synergize the different legends, and you'll be very successful.

Rev is sticking to the 2 legends they chose to play with in fights.

Mainly the legends are bound to the equip to make them be good. Mallyx requires Condidamage, ventari healing power. The rest mainly power (especs aside, they can work with everything)

What they are good at? Let me say it like that: They can do everything, but arent the best in what they do.For example they can be

• healer/supporter(Ventari, Herald), while Firebrand is a better healer/Supp. (in case of raw 5man healing, rev is number 1)
• High damage&mobility(Shiro), equal to thief.
• Tons of sustain(Dwarf), like warrior ... and so on.I like to call it an "one man army"^^

To the legend swap: Its not like they are using only one legend and the second is for "just in case". They switch often between both of those.They do to be able to fight while having everything on cooldown OR to reset their "energy" back to 50 after having it completely drained.Legendswaps are also often used to fight in combat ,because of Cleansing, Boons(Spiritboon) ,stunbreak or even to damage and counter the enemies.

"What are they known for, or what do they do best?"tough question... Renegade are a good choice in WvW(siege cooldowns)&PvE due to their 5man heals and 10man alacrity(,which can do nobody else)For combat in wvw&pvp is the herald clearly outshining the renegade due to their perma-boons fury might protection swiftness (for many allies) and ,of course, the Herald-Heal immunity.

Revenant does nothing "best". It is ok at everything and if you work on it it can become really good depending on players skill. Although some game modes are more challenging for some legends (ventari for wvw for example) some are really excel at it (like kalla for pve). With the latest patch revenant is losing some seriously important talents so I cannot comment on its upcoming role in competitive without seeing the actual patch first.

Being a Rev-o-sorts, Revenant is all about mixing their perks together to have peak efficiency during set amount of times.

It's designed with a lot of pro-active telegraphed moves and buffs to benefit back and forth each legends but that is easily dismissed as people prefer playing it in whatever way they feel which is often camping legends.