Newbie revenant here!

[Veprovina.4876]

Hi!

So recently i've started playing GW2 again with my friend.Started out with playing my first character, a Charr Engineer, but even at level 35 that felt like playing a piano, and i just want to hit things. And no, i already have a warrior, i don't want to play a warrior now.We're just doing leveling for now, no hard content, just world roaming and story, something chill so we can talk.

Anyway...

Tried a revenant before and i hated it, i have no idea why.Made one now and it's amazing!

Currently lvl 20ish.

I know it's stupid to ask anything this early because i can just have power gear and use condi damage exclusively and i'll do fine for regular content.But i seriously don't know what i'm doing with Revenant. I have a full ascended Mirage that i like but i couldn't use him, he has 100% world completion which sucks that i can't reset it so i'm going with revenant.

So...

Currently having Mace/Axe and Hammer weapons with Demon//Dwarf Legends unlocked (minus the elite).

What's a fun world roaming combination i can use? I like condition damage a lot, but i'll try anything.Can you recommend what specializations to go for first?I know i can just look up entire builds, but that's endgame, i'm looking for something fun to get there.

Thanks!

[Kichwas.7152]

Personally I find Mace / Axe a lot of fun because it has really nice animations and sound effects.

A lot of people level with staff and hammer because power gear is easy to get while leveling and takes little thinking to play well enough to get through. Plus the staff and hammer both have great animations and sounds (something true for nearly all combos on this class).

I see sword/sword a lot, but it's not very potent. It's strong on any other profession so people assume it's good on revenant. It is better than staff because staff is support... but it's not as good as going mace/axe condition.

At 80:Shortbow will outperform hammer by a good margin once you unlock it. But Hammer looks and sounds better.

Mace/Axe with a swap to shortbow and using all viper's gear is the high damage build for revenant.

For a complete flip - go staff / hammer and be support with either harrier gear for a healer or diviner's for a boon-bot. The harrier build will probably not be good for solo play. The diviner's build will be good in open world if you're good at avoiding taking damage - and is very popular in group content.

If you go DPS, people will usually assume you're support of some kind - but I've never been hassled over bringing a DPS build and it does perform very strongly when played well.

Aside: Staff 5 is a knockback that scatters enemies. PLEASE don't ever use that if paired with a Mace/Axe DPS revenant. Nothing worse than group a huge collection of mobs into my field, only for someone to scatter them out of it right before my blast goes off...

[TheAgedGnome.7520]

I think Revenant is the most difficult profession to grasp. When I first tried it years ago, I hated it because it sucked (couldn't have been because of me - inconceivable!).

I boosted my rev, but if I was leveling from 20 I'd focus on:

• Traits: Devastation & Corruption
• Legends: Demon/Dwarf
• Gear: Dire, Rabid, Apothecary, Carrion as you can find/afford it. You'll be replacing it so often as you level, there's no need to be too picky.
• Weapons: mostly just Mace&Axe (staff=meh, hammer=meh, but allows you to tag ranged)
• Elite: When you hit 31, you'll get access to Embrace the Darkness, which is amazing, but it really teaches you the need to watch energy costs, even more than Vengeful Hammers. It takes practice to determine whether the damage/energycost ratio of Darkness or Hammers exceeds the damage/cost ratio of your mace/axe skills. You might just use mace 1&2 if using Darkness or Hammers to limit drain on a bunch of trash mobs, or if its single target only, then go all in on weapon skills instead of using Darkness/Hammers (until you get a lot of condi duration, then Darkness often pulls ahead of weapon skills).

Once you hit 80....full Trailblazer. Herald and Renegade are both great as condi...I use them both for different scenarios.

I think doing the mental calculations of energy costs vs. damage while also considering current vs. future (i.e. 5-30 sec from now) expected energy needs is what makes rev so difficult to learn, but also rewarding once those become engrained as instinctive.

[Shao.7236]

Power has less interactivity for PvE compared Condition on Revenant, Power is more PvPish.

Like, most of the time if you want to deal damage as power after using most of your skills, Song of the Mist Quickness + Impossible Odds on autoattack swords is your best call.

The classic would be, Inspiring Reinforcement then legend swap safely to commit energy into damage with the latter recommendation because of many traits that do synergize well with the actions.

[Veprovina.4876]

@Kichwas.7152 said:Personally I find Mace / Axe a lot of fun because it has really nice animations and sound effects.

A lot of people level with staff and hammer because power gear is easy to get while leveling and takes little thinking to play well enough to get through. Plus the staff and hammer both have great animations and sounds (something true for nearly all combos on this class).

I see sword/sword a lot, but it's not very potent. It's strong on any other profession so people assume it's good on revenant. It is better than staff because staff is support... but it's not as good as going mace/axe condition.

At 80:Shortbow will outperform hammer by a good margin once you unlock it. But Hammer looks and sounds better.

Mace/Axe with a swap to shortbow and using all viper's gear is the high damage build for revenant.

For a complete flip - go staff / hammer and be support with either harrier gear for a healer or diviner's for a boon-bot. The harrier build will probably not be good for solo play. The diviner's build will be good in open world if you're good at avoiding taking damage - and is very popular in group content.

If you go DPS, people will usually assume you're support of some kind - but I've never been hassled over bringing a DPS build and it does perform very strongly when played well.

Aside: Staff 5 is a knockback that scatters enemies. PLEASE don't ever use that if paired with a Mace/Axe DPS revenant. Nothing worse than group a huge collection of mobs into my field, only for someone to scatter them out of it right before my blast goes off...

That's what i'm using now as well!Mace/Axe and Greathammer for ranged.It's kind of a cool combo too, like, weird weapon choices haha, a mace and an axe, i like it.And i like how totally not ranged weapons in this game are actually ranged.Hammer for Revenant, Greatsword for Mesmer haha.

Hammer is a bit weaker from what i can tell (for now), but it's good when i don't want to be near something.I have both expansions and stuff, so i'll definitely unlock the elite specialization. I think i'll go with the shortbow one.

I'll definitely try staff/hammer though, sounds interesting and since i never play that character solo, only with a friend, i could be a nice support.I'll have to unlock Centaur first though, i don't think demon works well with a staff. Dwarf might work, it's close ranged after all, but demon is condi based so idk...I'll get Centaur next when i have enough points. Thanks for the suggestion!

@"TheAgedGnome.7520" said:I think Revenant is the most difficult profession to grasp. When I first tried it years ago, I hated it because it sucked (couldn't have been because of me - inconceivable!).

I boosted my rev, but if I was leveling from 20 I'd focus on:

• Traits: Devastation & Corruption
• Legends: Demon/Dwarf
• Gear: Dire, Rabid, Apothecary, Carrion as you can find/afford it. You'll be replacing it so often as you level, there's no need to be too picky.
• Weapons: mostly just Mace&Axe (staff=meh, hammer=meh, but allows you to tag ranged)
• Elite: When you hit 31, you'll get access to Embrace the Darkness, which is amazing, but it really teaches you the need to watch energy costs, even more than Vengeful Hammers. It takes practice to determine whether the damage/energycost ratio of Darkness or Hammers exceeds the damage/cost ratio of your mace/axe skills. You might just use mace 1&2 if using Darkness or Hammers to limit drain on a bunch of trash mobs, or if its single target only, then go all in on weapon skills instead of using Darkness/Hammers (until you get a lot of condi duration, then Darkness often pulls ahead of weapon skills).

Once you hit 80....full Trailblazer. Herald and Renegade are both great as condi...I use them both for different scenarios.

I think doing the mental calculations of energy costs vs. damage while also considering current vs. future (i.e. 5-30 sec from now) expected energy needs is what makes rev so difficult to learn, but also rewarding once those become engrained as instinctive.Haha! Same here! :DFirst i made a Sylvari revenant and i was like, WTF is this, people play this? Eww...And deleted the character at level 10 or 15 idk, i didn't even finish the starting map.And of course, it could't have been me sucking at it haha!And it didn't help that i really don't like Sylvari, and i don't know why i forced myself to create one. I think i just wanted like, varied characters, so far i have 2 charr, 2 norn and 1 human, i guess i didn't want only (basically) 2 types of characters haha, but i don't "vibe" with Sylvari so leveling one would have been a pain.

But yeah, i didn't understand the revenant back then, and because it was a Sylvari i didn't really give him a chance to begin with.

As for your suggestion, so far that's exactly what i have. Demon/Dwarf, Mace/Axe and Hammer. I don't pay much attention to gear right now, but if i can, i get the ones with condi damage as i get them or find them.

Thanks for the Elite suggestion! I'll definitely try that one first!So far, nothing really requires that much energy, and i only run out if i forget to turn off the dwarf spinning hammers, but you know, lvl 20 trash mobs don't really require much though. I know later open world and story areas are tougher so i'll get a chance to get acquainted with the mechanic.

I think that's why i still haven't leveled it up to 80.I have a lvl 80 boost in my shared inventory slot, but that kind of skips a lot of steps when it comes to learning the profession mechanics i think.Maybe i'll level it to like 50 or something then use the boost, idk...I know using it for just 30 levels is a waste but it's just using space in my inventory anyway.We'll see. I wish i can give it to my friend, but it's account bound, and so are all the XP scrolls and books. Bummer.

@Shao.7236 said:Power has less interactivity for PvE compared Condition on Revenant, Power is more PvPish.

Like, most of the time if you want to deal damage as power after using most of your skills, Song of the Mist Quickness + Impossible Odds on autoattack swords is your best call.

The classic would be, Inspiring Reinforcement then legend swap safely to commit energy into damage with the latter recommendation because of many traits that do synergize well with the actions.

Yeah, for some reason at first i thought Revenant was a power based profession.I'm glad it's not, i like condi (yet i still didn't make a necromancer which is like, condi god lol).

For now, i'll go the route i'm already on, and after enough hero points i'll unlock Centaur to try support based play.

Thank you all for your suggestions! Much appreciated!

[Kichwas.7152]

@Veprovina.4876 said:

@Kichwas.7152 said:Personally I find Mace / Axe a lot of fun because it has really nice animations and sound effects.

A lot of people level with staff and hammer because power gear is easy to get while leveling and takes little thinking to play well enough to get through. Plus the staff and hammer both have great animations and sounds (something true for nearly all combos on this class).

I see sword/sword a lot, but it's not very potent. It's strong on any other profession so people assume it's good on revenant. It is better than staff because staff is support... but it's not as good as going mace/axe condition.

At 80:Shortbow will outperform hammer by a good margin once you unlock it. But Hammer looks and sounds better.

Mace/Axe with a swap to shortbow and using all viper's gear is the high damage build for revenant.

For a complete flip - go staff / hammer and be support with either harrier gear for a healer or diviner's for a boon-bot. The harrier build will probably not be good for solo play. The diviner's build will be good in open world if you're good at avoiding taking damage - and is very popular in group content.

If you go DPS, people will usually assume you're support of some kind - but I've never been hassled over bringing a DPS build and it does perform very strongly when played well.

Aside: Staff 5 is a knockback that scatters enemies. PLEASE don't ever use that if paired with a Mace/Axe DPS revenant. Nothing worse than group a huge collection of mobs into my field, only for someone to scatter them out of it right before my blast goes off...

That's what i'm using now as well!Mace/Axe and Greathammer for ranged.It's kind of a cool combo too, like, weird weapon choices haha, a mace and an axe, i like it.And i like how totally not ranged weapons in this game are actually ranged.Hammer for Revenant, Greatsword for Mesmer haha.

Hammer is a bit weaker from what i can tell (for now), but it's good when i don't want to be near something.I have both expansions and stuff, so i'll definitely unlock the elite specialization. I think i'll go with the shortbow one.

I'll definitely try staff/hammer though, sounds interesting and since i never play that character solo, only with a friend, i could be a nice support.I'll have to unlock Centaur first though, i don't think demon works well with a staff. Dwarf might work, it's close ranged after all, but demon is condi based so idk...I'll get Centaur next when i have enough points. Thanks for the suggestion!

You won't get to shortbow until you get to the elite specs. It's from the Path of Fire elite spec and even though it's a condition weapon, it's more powerful on power builds than hammer - the power weapon... which is... sad...

Centaur is the right choice for a staff user - a Revenant healer would use that combo.Dwarf is a 'tank' spec for a game without tanking... it literally has a taunt on it... but it's very popular in power-damage builds also. I believe the top 'support' legend is herald - not sure. That's an elite so don't worry about it for now. For now You'd probably want to be swapping around between Centaur and Dwarf - they make great choices while leveling.

[Yasai.3549]

Power is kinda lacklustre in PvE because alot of yur damage skills are tailored to be swift and powerful, and that's not necessarily required in PvE, so when yu burn through all yur cooldowns, yu kinda just get stuck auto attacking.

Condi weapons like Mace have low cooldowns for their skill 2 and skill 3 so it is possible to keep putting on pressure on yur target.

[Veprovina.4876]

@Kichwas.7152 said:

@Veprovina.4876 said:

@Kichwas.7152 said:Personally I find Mace / Axe a lot of fun because it has really nice animations and sound effects.

A lot of people level with staff and hammer because power gear is easy to get while leveling and takes little thinking to play well enough to get through. Plus the staff and hammer both have great animations and sounds (something true for nearly all combos on this class).

I see sword/sword a lot, but it's not very potent. It's strong on any other profession so people assume it's good on revenant. It is better than staff because staff is support... but it's not as good as going mace/axe condition.

At 80:Shortbow will outperform hammer by a good margin once you unlock it. But Hammer looks and sounds better.

Mace/Axe with a swap to shortbow and using all viper's gear is the high damage build for revenant.

For a complete flip - go staff / hammer and be support with either harrier gear for a healer or diviner's for a boon-bot. The harrier build will probably not be good for solo play. The diviner's build will be good in open world if you're good at avoiding taking damage - and is very popular in group content.

If you go DPS, people will usually assume you're support of some kind - but I've never been hassled over bringing a DPS build and it does perform very strongly when played well.

Aside: Staff 5 is a knockback that scatters enemies. PLEASE don't ever use that if paired with a Mace/Axe DPS revenant. Nothing worse than group a huge collection of mobs into my field, only for someone to scatter them out of it right before my blast goes off...

That's what i'm using now as well!Mace/Axe and Greathammer for ranged.It's kind of a cool combo too, like, weird weapon choices haha, a mace and an axe, i like it.And i like how totally not ranged weapons in this game are actually ranged.Hammer for Revenant, Greatsword for Mesmer haha.

Hammer is a bit weaker from what i can tell (for now), but it's good when i don't want to be near something.I have both expansions and stuff, so i'll definitely unlock the elite specialization. I think i'll go with the shortbow one.

I'll definitely try staff/hammer though, sounds interesting and since i never play that character solo, only with a friend, i could be a nice support.I'll have to unlock Centaur first though, i don't think demon works well with a staff. Dwarf might work, it's close ranged after all, but demon is condi based so idk...I'll get Centaur next when i have enough points. Thanks for the suggestion!

You won't get to shortbow until you get to the elite specs. It's from the Path of Fire elite spec and even though it's a condition weapon, it's more powerful on power builds than hammer - the power weapon... which is... sad...

Centaur is the right choice for a staff user - a Revenant healer would use that combo.Dwarf is a 'tank' spec for a game without tanking... it literally has a taunt on it... but it's very popular in power-damage builds also. I believe the top 'support' legend is herald - not sure. That's an elite so don't worry about it for now. For now You'd probably want to be swapping around between Centaur and Dwarf - they make great choices while leveling.

Yeah, i know, Renegade uses the bow. I didn't mean i'll switch to it now, i mean, when i unlock the elite spec. :tongue:I have all the expansions so i can choose both.

My next unlock will be a Centaur legend, then i'll try the staff!

@"Yasai.3549" said:Power is kinda lacklustre in PvE because alot of yur damage skills are tailored to be swift and powerful, and that's not necessarily required in PvE, so when yu burn through all yur cooldowns, yu kinda just get stuck auto attacking.

Condi weapons like Mace have low cooldowns for their skill 2 and skill 3 so it is possible to keep putting on pressure on yur target.

Yeah, i noticed that about the Mace! 2 and 3 have really low cooldowns, i can usually use them like, twice in a "combo".Haven't played with a sword that much, haven't noticed the cooldowns on those. I just equipped it to see the animations and what the skills do.