Asking for tips on playing Revenant

[Gyaddum.6145]

Hi, I started playing GW2 again a few days ago and decided to try out revenant as I like the concept of the class (I mainly played guardian and ranger until now). Firstly, what is better to run in open world: sword/sword + staff or sword/sword + hammer? Secondly, how should I prioritise my energy? Should I just use my weapon skills in the OW when dealing with mobs, and then use utility skills in certain situations e.g. phase traversal when the enemy is blocking damage etc. If so, when is a good time to use the active abilities like hammers and impossible odds? Thank you for any advice!

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

Weapon choice can be personal preference, but i would definitely use sword/sword as your main weapons. Staff is probably the best secondary weapon for most people, but if you want a ranged option stick with hammer. The most important part of playing rev is not wasting energy when you swap legends, so try to use up as much as you can before you swap. Energy should be spent mostly on weapon skills. Vengeful hammers and impossible odds should be used when skills are on cd, or if you have some remaining energy to spend before you swap legends.

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

Open World PvE: Sword + Sword & Hammer OR Sword + Axe & Hammer

Assassin and Dwarf work good for leveling. When on Dwarf you can stick to auto-attacks and use Vengeful Hammers when it is up. Dragon is also quite handy (Heral Elite Specialization). Biggest problem for the Revenant is imho the lack of proper healing-skills. Stick to either Dwarf or Dragon for healing and camp Assassin for DPS against single targets and trash-mobs. Dwarf for bosses and multiple encounters.

If you are mostly doing Open World, the Superior Rune of Vampirism can be a good choice. It pretty much solves the healing issue completely, as long as you do not run out of trash-mobs.

For energy-managementDwarf: Vengeful Hammers is useful against several mobs or enemies with more HP, good to raise up the DPS. When you are using sword+sword and your enemy is slow or has not much attack-variety, I would rather go for the hammers. If your opponent is mobile and tends to use stuff like CC against you, I would stick to the weapon-skills.Assassin: Impossible Odds for DPS when you can survive easily. Else I would go for weapon-skills and use the remaining energy for Reposting Shadows to evade attacks of massive damage, when your endurance is depleted.Dragon: Only use as many buffs as you really need. Protection drains too much energy, as long as you do not have to protect nearby players, you can ignore that. Regeneration can also be neglected as the heal-skill is actually decent here. Fury & Might are useful, Swiftness depends on the situation.

But to be honest, I am not an expert with that class. You may also find help in the Revenant sub-forum. The profession boards are always a good place to ask for assistance with certain classes and mechanics. The players there know their class very well and can give you good tips and suggestions.

[lunaeclipse.6843]

Not sure if u own PoF or not but im going to assume you do.

For Open World I would actually recommend renegade with sw/sw+shortbow. Mostly using sw/sw but SB for when you need to have range. Surprisingly, even though its a condi weapon, the power damage coefficients are significant making a full power build not insignificant while on SB (which is absolutely more DPS than hammer).

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PmwAwyVltQMsNyjpRdsMijNSkMDigJ3l+TF-zRIYR0xXE1mCVUBsExMA-e

Legends:

Shiro is a must-have for a power build. Kalla can be substituted for jalis if you really need the stability or just really prefer that legend. Kalla offers really good utility benefits to you though so its hard to pass up. Icerazor's Ire provides 20 vuln while also doing high damage. Breakrazor's Bastion is quite literally the second strongest healing skill in the game (second to glint's infuse light). Darkrazor's Daring is an AoE pulsing daze. In Open World, this can quite literally shut down and entire group of mobs for 6 seconds, and its on a 12-second cooldown.

Lastly, Soulcleave's Summit is your best utility skill. its an extremely strong lifesteal with no internal cooldown, so every attack you do no matter how fast, will always proc the lifesteal from this skill. While its only 389 healing per lifesteal in the build i linked, remember that due to the no-ICD, you can self-heal with this skill alone quite substantially.

Traits:

I personally recommend running glass cannon, similar to raid builds. The benefit to this is that it will help you to get better at the game in the long run, even if you find yourself having trouble at first. To this end, I would run Devastation, Invocation, & Renegade.

Devastation will give you general DPS increase increase (increased vulnerability effectiveness, increased might effectiveness, and percentile damage increases). The grandmaster trait will also give you an additional source of lifesteal to sustain with. However since it's passive, it does have an ICD of 1s.

Invocation gives the build synergy and more damage increases. The adept tier give you more damage while above 90% health, and further increases your damage while you have fury, which this build will give you plenty of. I chose incensed response for the master tier for this build, as it will give very easy passive 25 might. However, i would also strongly consider rapid flow too. This build lacks swiftness, so rapid flow can not only upkeep swiftness but also be a not-insignificant source of healing over time.

Lastly, I chose charged mists for the grandmaster trait. This trait is what the entire gameplay of this build revolves around. This trait will give you an additional 25 energy, if you legend swap with 10 or less energy remaining. This will give you more skills that you can use before being forced to legend swap and allows you to upkeep key skills like impossible odds, and Soulcleave's summit for much longer. I specifically did not choose roiling mists for this build. While this trait is very good, you'll see why it's unnecessary when paired with the renegade traitline.

The Renegade traitline is, admittedly, more condi focused than it is power focused. However there are key reasons why I chose this line. First is the shortbow, for reasons previously stated. Secondly is the trait have side benefits that synergize with the core traitlines. Additionally, it'll give you a passive buff that will increase your ferocity stat by a significant amount (Kalla's fervor).

The adept teir doesn't offer all that much. The top and bottom traits aren't great so i went with the middle trait to give you better bleeds if are forced to range. Some dps boost is better than nothing. The master tier I went with the middle trait again, not for the bleeding bonus, but for the piercing. This will let you AoE much better when youre forced to kite or are being pressured too much. For the grandmaster tier I went with lasting legacy, which directly benefits all pasts of this build. This trait will increase the the ferocity bonus the Kalla's fervor gives you, as well as increase the amount of might stacks that your new professions skill (heroic command) gives you by 50% (15 stacks total)*. Most imporantly though, is your grandmaster minor trait, which is the reason i specifically did not choose Roiling mists in the invocation traitline. Which gives you a free 33% flat critical chance increase while your endurance is full. This trait also gives you vigour when you gain fury, so if you do have to dodge you can quickly regain endurance and get the buff right back up.

Skill Usage:

Impossible odds is your main utility for damage, so you'll want upkeep skill you want on for as long as possible while in shiro, once you drain you energy, you'll want to swap legends. You can engage on mobs with phase traversal, or weapon swap to SB and retreat/kite with riposting shadows. These are pretty much the only time you should need these skills. Obviously, if you do get stunned/disabled you can riposting shadows to get yourself out of danger. Additionally, can you legend swap to break stun as well, but if you're not below 10 energy when doing so, you wont get the bonus energy.

Your main DPS skills are Sw5,4, 2 (if no other mobs are present), and 1. Your basic rotation is mostly, keeping impossible odds active while in shiro, and Soulcleave's summit active while in kalla. Try to use sw4/5 only while in shiro, so you can always use icerazors ire while in kalla. Dont be afraid to turn IO or Soulcleave off if u need energy for darkrazor (which is also a stunbreak) or riposting shadows to save yourself from dying. Use shortbow if you either cannot reach your target, or have too much pressure on you. While using SB you'll be mostly auto attacking. SB4 will apply AoE slow, making enemy attacks easier to dodge. SB5 is a cascading knowndown, which will CC a lot of targets infront of you. SB2 and SB3 aren't terrible if you can land them, but they may be difficult to land on a moving target.

I would recommend using your second profession skill (Citadel bombardment) sparingly. As flashy and cool looking as the skill is, it doesn't offer much damage and costs a lot of energy to use. Use it only if you've got energy to burn and you really need to get into the other legend without losing charged mists proc.

Gear:

I mostly recommend Berserker's gear for this build. Due to the free critical chance increases you get from your traitlines, you dont need any additional precision sources. If you due need something to help you take damage i would recommend maruader, but only if you need it. I cant reccomend anything with toughness as you will lose too much damage.

I left armour runes blank. If youre confident if your skill you can run Scholar Runes. Superior Runes of the Scholar will unquestionable give you the highest theoretical damage output you can get with this build. However If you can't maintain the 90% health threshold I would reccomend either Superior runes of the Ogre or Superior runes of the Golemancer. Other Runes I'd highly recommend are the Superior Runes of Strength you better maintain might uptime, especially in Solo, or Superior Runes of the Pack, as these will give you and addition source of fury, provide you with swiftness, provide extra precision if you need to dodge often, give you an extra 5 stacks of might, and give some boon duration to maintain might a little better.

Why I didn't choose Herald:

I wanted to point why i didn't choose herald, since most people will immediately point to it. In Open World Herald is good but its not great imho. You lose out on SB so you forced either full melee with staff (which isn't useless but you give up a ranged option for it) or have to take hammer, which in all honesty is pretty crap when it comes to PvE. Additionally, while it has the strongest heal skill the game the rest of its kit doesn't give you much benefit in PvE. 99% of enemies dont stealth, facet of elements almost zero DPS increase, and Superspeed from the elite isn't too useful in openworld PvE. Facet of strength does offer a significant source of damage, but it has a long cast time, and its only for 5s. Renegade also offers far more breakbar damage Herald can through Darkrazor's Daring alone. On top of all of that, the boons it does provide are either not enough (herald by itself cannot maintain 25 might; renegade with lasting legacy, which it naturally uses, can) in solo, or are already permanently applied by allies in group play. All while being forced to take Roiling mists since you have no other critical chance source, so you lose out on the bonus energy from Charged Mists.

Sorry this got so long, but I hope this helps even a little bit.