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Revenant - a Ritualist or Dervish?


DonArkanio.6419

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Hey there,

So time ago I decided to give GW1 a play. I really really enjoyed it. My main character in GW2 is Revenant since it was released in 2015. I love how it feels.

People compare it to Ritualist 24/7 and people badly want an E-Spec that works just like Ritualist. At first I thought - Yeah, that makes sense! ANet made a heavily Rit-inspired heavy class. It wears blindfolds, connects to the Mists and just feels like it.

But then, I played both Ritualist and Dervish in the original game. The more skills I unlocked on Rit, the less I was sure about Revs being inspired by them. However, actually trying a Dervish I have to say that it feels a lot like it. The Gods' powers were replaced with Legends, the skills feel very similar in functionality.

So, here I am. I'd love to hear your thoughts as it became pretty clear to me that Revenants aren't these Ritualists as we first thought.

What do you think?

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From my point of view it got 100% of the ritualist thematic (channeling the legend of the past) but a totally revamped gameplay compared to the ritualist. But the same thing can be said for the necromancer or the mesmer so it's not surprising. That's why I tend to agree with derd here.

Edit: And to be honest, the both the ritualist and the dervich's gameplay which is asked again and again are already scattered and incorporated in most of the professions. The ritualist's spiritmastery being owned by mesmer (clone), ranger (nature spirit), the renegade (kala skillset) and engineer (turrets) and the dervich's avatar being owned by the necromancer (shroud), the druid (celestial avatar), the elementalist (attunments) and the holosmith (holoforge).

Give the necromancer or/and mesmer ranger's nature spirit and they will be ritualists, give him a mechanism where he "eat" boons on him and they will be dervichs.That said eating boons on self is probably closer from the necromancer's thematic than from the mesmer's.

Give any profession skills that grant allies unique buff that give on hit effects and you got the foundation for ritualist's spirit weapon, currently thief (venom), ranger (nature's spirit), tempest (air overload), ... etc.

Seriously, every point of gameplay are already here on most of the professions. What's really important is the thematic and thematically revenant is closer to a ritualist than anything else. The communion necessary to create a bound with a legend, the invocation of those legend and the channeling of their power are enough to push the revenant into the definition of a ritualist.

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Definitely get a Ritualist feel from Revenant, much more modern of course. I think Necromancers have more in common with Dervish now, being able to take on the reaper form reminds me of the 'Avatar of Grenth' skill they had back in the day.

Curiously though, now that we're on the topic, I thought Dervish were killed off, only one I can think of is an Awakened Boss in the Domain of Instan which is a Dervish.

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@Zeike.7469 said:Definitely get a Ritualist feel from Revenant, much more modern of course. I think Necromancers have more in common with Dervish now, being able to take on the reaper form reminds me of the 'Avatar of Grenth' skill they had back in the day.

Curiously though, now that we're on the topic, I thought Dervish were killed off, only one I can think of is an Awakened Boss in the Domain of Instan which is a Dervish.

In the lore, dervichs are supposed to be rare with a legacy only given from a dervich to a single pupil.

There is no established church or school for Dervishes in Elona. Instead, a master passes down their secrets and philosophies to a single pupil at a time. Even after that pupil has set out into the world to follow their own path, it may be some years before a master takes a new pupil.Source: GW wiki

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I consider revenants to be to ritualists as guardians are to monks, essentially. The power is coming from the same or a similar source (most ritualists drew power from numerous spirits that are individually relatively weak, while revenants draw power from a couple of significant legends each), but they way they use that power is very different.

Mind you, Kalla/Ventari alacrigade may well be the closest thing to a ritualist playstyle nowadays, just as a support firebrand my be the closest thing to a monk.

There are also similarities with dervishes - dervishes, however, seem to draw their power from the gods or, possibly more accurately, from the sparks of divinity that the gods gifted humanity with. With maybe a bit of elemental magic mixed in.

(On that topic, I would note that there are Sunspear Dervishes and Loyalist Dervishes in Istan. So dervishes don't seem to be extinct, they just appear to be specific to Elonian humans.)

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@draxynnic.3719 said:I consider revenants to be to ritualists as guardians are to monks, essentially. The power is coming from the same or a similar source (most ritualists drew power from numerous spirits that are individually relatively weak, while revenants draw power from a couple of significant legends each), but they way they use that power is very different.

Mind you, Kalla/Ventari alacrigade may well be the closest thing to a ritualist playstyle nowadays, just as a support firebrand my be the closest thing to a monk.

There are also similarities with dervishes - dervishes, however, seem to draw their power from the gods or, possibly more accurately, from the sparks of divinity that the gods gifted humanity with. With maybe a bit of elemental magic mixed in.

(On that topic, I would note that there are Sunspear Dervishes and Loyalist Dervishes in Istan. So dervishes don't seem to be extinct, they just appear to be specific to Elonian humans.)

See, that is my point. Kalla is essentialy the closest to Ritualist.It might be an E-Spec that fills the role of Ritualist people wanted do badly, but because Revenant doesn't work like Ritualists, the whole Specialization feels out of place for a lot of people. It's the mechanics.Necromancer in GW2 could and acts a lot more like original Ritualists - imagine having something like Kalla there, that would fit perfectly.

As for the Dervish, I see a lot of similarities, since Gods' powers got replaced by Legends'. The playstyle is very similar and combat mechanics are far from close to Ritualist's. That's why, over time, I came with a conclusion that even though Revenant are considered some kind of Ritualist's descendants, they play and work like Dervishes do.

Lore-wise both fit imo. Ritualists channel powers from the Mists, już like Revs do. But Revs actually get their powers from Legends that happen to be in the Mists, hence their magic source.Afterall, Dervishes could absolutely have ties to the Mists via Gods' powers granted to them.

Even though Ritualist was always my 100% in similarities with Revenant, I'd say that it's just a concept and it's, for me, actually a Dervish.

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@"DonArkanio.6419" said:Hey there,

So time ago I decided to give GW1 a play. I really really enjoyed it. My main character in GW2 is Revenant since it was released in 2015. I love how it feels.

People compare it to Ritualist 24/7 and people badly want an E-Spec that works just like Ritualist. At first I thought - Yeah, that makes sense! ANet made a heavily Rit-inspired heavy class. It wears blindfolds, connects to the Mists and just feels like it.

But then, I played both Ritualist and Dervish in the original game. The more skills I unlocked on Rit, the less I was sure about Revs being inspired by them. However, actually trying a Dervish I have to say that it feels a lot like it. The Gods' powers were replaced with Legends, the skills feel very similar in functionality.

So, here I am. I'd love to hear your thoughts as it became pretty clear to me that Revenants aren't these Ritualists as we first thought.

What do you think?

I think it has aspects of both but is neither at the same-time. Ritualists channel the dead and the spirits of their ancestors; Dervishes invoke the power of their gods and auras to protect and damage enemies. We have aspects of both but we lack other portions of them as a whole such as the channeling of spiritual energy, and the urns as well spirit summoning from the ritualist. We lack the combat effectiveness of the dervish and the aura's but we do channel legends so there is that I suppose which could be seen as a potential link.

  • Dervish's can take differing forms and have a ton of powers dedicated to encapsulating their gods energy; Where as the ritualist is more about your bloodline and the spirits of those who came before (Kinda necromancerish.)
  • We neither tap into the dead or the gods, the legends we channel are "Echos" from the mists of characters from the past but are not nessacarily the full being. They are simply what the mist remembers? You have to be a being who left enough of a ripple to be channeled, for example gods don't make ripples in the mists at all because they are apart of the mists and from the mists. So we can't channel them where as the dervish is a devote fanatic of the gods; And thus has been granted the ability to channel their power.
  • There was a ton more to ritualists than simply spirit spamming and channeling, we have buffs for the party and even a healing line with tons of ritualistic practices meshed together. Frankly Im unsure of what one would find in common or what the design behind the Rev was; As it stands now the only thing in my opinion it shares with Rit is the blindfold, and with dervish is the use of powers outside ones self.
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@DonArkanio.6419 said:

@draxynnic.3719 said:I consider revenants to be to ritualists as guardians are to monks, essentially. The power is coming from the same or a similar source (most ritualists drew power from numerous spirits that are individually relatively weak, while revenants draw power from a couple of significant legends each), but they way they use that power is very different.

Mind you, Kalla/Ventari alacrigade may well be the closest thing to a ritualist playstyle nowadays, just as a support firebrand my be the closest thing to a monk.

There are also similarities with dervishes - dervishes, however, seem to draw their power from the gods or, possibly more accurately, from the sparks of divinity that the gods gifted humanity with. With maybe a bit of elemental magic mixed in.

(On that topic, I would note that there are Sunspear Dervishes and Loyalist Dervishes in Istan. So dervishes don't seem to be extinct, they just appear to be specific to Elonian humans.)

See, that is my point. Kalla is essentialy the closest to Ritualist.It might be an E-Spec that fills the role of Ritualist people wanted do badly, but because Revenant doesn't work like Ritualists, the whole Specialization feels out of place for a lot of people. It's the mechanics.Necromancer in GW2 could and acts a lot more like original Ritualists - imagine having something like Kalla there, that would fit perfectly.

As for the Dervish, I see a lot of similarities, since Gods' powers got replaced by Legends'. The playstyle is very similar and combat mechanics are far from close to Ritualist's. That's why, over time, I came with a conclusion that even though Revenant are considered some kind of Ritualist's descendants, they play and work like Dervishes do.

Lore-wise both fit imo. Ritualists channel powers from the Mists, już like Revs do. But Revs actually get their powers from Legends that happen to be in the Mists, hence their magic source.Afterall, Dervishes could absolutely have ties to the Mists via Gods' powers granted to them.

Even though Ritualist was always my 100% in similarities with Revenant, I'd say that it's just a concept and it's, for me, actually a Dervish.

I think one of the factors is that revenant isn't really supposed to feel like a single cohesive entity, but a half-dozen mini-professions bolted together. I've seen people claim, for instance, that one of the revenant characteristics is mobility, but that's not really accurate - it's more true to say that it's a Shiro characteristic, and people just perceive it as a general Rev characteristic because Shiro is the most popular core legend. Other legends have average or below-average mobility, but when combined with Shiro you get a highly mobile and slippery build.

In terms of ritualist playstyles, the intended replacement for the ritualist, playstyle-wise, is the engineer. Your mileage may vary on how well this actually fits, but when you get back into the development of the ritualist, it was basically an exercise in implementing an engineer-like playstyle into a setting which, at the time, did not have the technology level to support a turret-building engineer profession, so the ritualist was essentially a magical means of doing the same thing.

The general concept of creating a zone which buffs allies and disadvantages enemies, though, is available in different forms across multiple professions. Kalla/Ventari renegade we've discussed. Ranger, druid in particular, can also be considered to count while packing spirits. Scourge's sand shades can also apply, especially if combined with the right set of utilities, and might actually be the closest thing thematically to ritualist over all.

Dervish, too, has been split over multiple professions and specialisations. Reaper and holosmith both have a theme of powering up for melee combat against multiple opponents. Revenant probably does have the most, though - Mallyx rev does the same thing, Jalis definitely has the feel of using buffs to survive against and beat multiple opponents in close combat, and prior to the Heart of Thorns announcement I wrote an article for GuildMag pointing out, among other things, that one of the playstyles missing from GW2 was the Dervish playstyle of stacking enchantments and throwing them off for powerful attacks and other effects, which could be converted into GW2 mechanics through flipover skills where the initial cast provided some form of persistant buff and the flipover sacrificed that buff for a shorter-term effect. That's basically Herald in a nutshell.

Lorewise, I think the revenant is still closer to ritualist. Both are themed around drawing power from the Mists and the entities within. The distinction is that the ritualist acted more as a traditional spellcaster and drew power from multiple lesser spirits, while the revenant draws power from powerful Mist echoes in order to augment their martial fighting prowess. Which, actually, matches some pre-HoT requests people were making: namely, a ritualist-like heavy armour character which empowered itself by allowing itself to be possessed by spirits.

Broadly speaking, the revenant we see seems to be intended as a means of bringing together the themes and playstyles from GW1 that didn't make it into the main professions. With respect to the ritualist, the revenant shares a power source - the Mists and the entities within - although the nature of the relationship and what they do with it is different. When compared to the dervish, by contrast, the revenant can be seen as means of creating a dervish-like character who draws their power from a more race-neutral source than the human gods. It's essentially a hybrid of both, although individual legends are reminiscent of other professions (Shiro thief, Jalis guardian, and so on).

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I said this before on a similar question.they both.

Revenants channel spirits from the Mist and Mist energy like Ritualist, and they invoke and become one with the spirits like Dervish.

Dont confuse the limitations of GW1's game mechanics. Dervish were warriors as well like Revenants, which in GW2 its called "Soldier" parent class. Ritualist were masters of Mist magic, but were limited by game mechanics to show full potential.

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@Dadnir.5038 said:

@Zeike.7469 said:Definitely get a Ritualist feel from Revenant, much more modern of course. I think Necromancers have more in common with Dervish now, being able to take on the reaper form reminds me of the 'Avatar of Grenth' skill they had back in the day.

Curiously though, now that we're on the topic, I thought Dervish were killed off, only one I can think of is an Awakened Boss in the Domain of Instan which is a Dervish.

In the lore, dervichs are supposed to be rare with a legacy only given from a dervich to a single pupil.

There is no established church or school for Dervishes in Elona. Instead, a master passes down their secrets and philosophies to a single pupil at a time. Even after that pupil has set out into the world to follow their own path, it may be some years before a master takes a new pupil.
Source: GW wiki

Revenants come from the Mist, so time doesnt matter to Revenants and who(when) they gain knowledge from.

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@"Knighthonor.4061" said:Revenants come from the Mist, so time doesnt matter to Revenants and who(when) they gain knowledge from.

Well they don't specifically come from the Mist. They come from the exact same place than the other professions and just like other professions they can roam the Mist from time to time.

You said it,

Revenants channel spirits from the Mist and Mist energyBut channeling the Mist doesn't mean that you come from the Mist, otherwise the sylvari character creation/story would make no sense for a revenant.

Beside, Revenants don't learn from the Mist, they borrow/channel power from entities from the Mist. If they were given gidance from the entities I dare say that the power channeled wouldn't feel nearly as clumsy as it does and revenants themselves would probably hold overwhelming power.

One more point, this sentence is wrong:

they invoke and become one with the spirits like Dervish.Invoking and becoming one with a spirit isn't something that a Dervich does. Dervich rely more on a life philosophy than on borrowed power, thus they aren't "invoking".

It might be easier to describe it in term of D&D professions. In D&D, Dervichs would be monks (Honing themselves through a strict life philosophy) while Ritualists would be warlocks (Borrowing power from one or more powerful entity). Dervichs don't borrow power from the gods when they use avatars, they push themself to the point where they touch upon the gods domains and display godlike power. Ritualist on another hand vow their life to the cult of the past heroes, keeping a "link" with their "pantheon" allowing them to borrow their power, this is why a lot of the skills used by the ritualists contain the name of a past hero.

In gamer langage, a Dervich would be a player that rely on it's own player skills to finish a game while a Ritualist is paying IRL cash to win the game. On gain equipement through grinding, blood and sweat while the other open it's irl wallet and buy it.

Revenant don't try to follow a strict philosophy that can lead them to touch upon a powerful entity domain, they directly make a pact with these entities in order to invoke their power and channel their might.

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@Dadnir.5038 said:

@"Knighthonor.4061" said:Revenants come from the Mist, so time doesnt matter to Revenants and who(when) they gain knowledge from.

Well they don't specifically
come
from the Mist. They come from the exact same place than the other professions and just like other professions they can roam the Mist from time to time.

You said it,

Revenants channel spirits from the Mist and Mist energyBut channeling the Mist doesn't mean that you come from the Mist, otherwise the sylvari character creation/story would make no sense for a revenant.

Beside, Revenants don't learn from the Mist, they borrow/channel power from entities from the Mist. If they were given gidance from the entities I dare say that the power channeled wouldn't feel nearly as clumsy as it does and revenants themselves would probably hold overwhelming power.

One more point, this sentence is wrong:

they invoke and become one with the spirits like Dervish.Invoking and becoming one with a spirit isn't something that a Dervich does. Dervich rely more on a life philosophy than on borrowed power, thus they aren't "invoking".

It might be easier to describe it in term of D&D professions. In D&D, Dervichs would be monks (Honing themselves through a strict life philosophy) while Ritualists would be warlocks (Borrowing power from one or more powerful entity). Dervichs don't borrow power from the gods when they use avatars, they push themself to the point where they touch upon the gods domains and display godlike power. Ritualist on another hand vow their life to the cult of the past heroes, keeping a "link" with their "pantheon" allowing them to borrow their power, this is why a lot of the skills used by the ritualists contain the name of a past hero.

In gamer langage, a Dervich would be a player that rely on it's own player skills to finish a game while a Ritualist is paying IRL cash to win the game. On gain equipement through grinding, blood and sweat while the other open it's irl wallet and buy it.

Revenant don't try to follow a strict philosophy that can lead them to touch upon a powerful entity domain, they directly make a pact with these entities in order to invoke their power and channel their might.

Invoking and becoming one with a spirit isn't something that a Dervich does. Dervich rely more on a life philosophy than on borrowed power, thus they aren't "invoking".

thats exactly what Revenants do. In GW1 Dervish couldnt get their skills changed to the spirits they are using due to game mechanic limitations. Rev in GW2 can. its the same thing you just described.

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Dervishes had nothing to do with spirits. They used magic in the form of prayers just like monks, though their magic wasn't healing but more elemental (wind and earth prayers; heavy use of plant, cold, and fire) with avatar forms (a bit of an oddity which played to the prayer/priestliness of the profession).

They were basically combat elementalist priests, thematically speaking.

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@Knighthonor.4061 said:

@"Zeike.7469" said:Definitely get a Ritualist feel from Revenant, much more modern of course. I think Necromancers have more in common with Dervish now, being able to take on the reaper form reminds me of the 'Avatar of Grenth' skill they had back in the day.

Curiously though, now that we're on the topic, I thought Dervish were killed off, only one I can think of is an Awakened Boss in the Domain of Instan which is a Dervish.

In the lore, dervichs are supposed to be rare with a legacy only given from a dervich to a single pupil.

There is no established church or school for Dervishes in Elona. Instead, a master passes down their secrets and philosophies to a single pupil at a time. Even after that pupil has set out into the world to follow their own path, it may be some years before a master takes a new pupil.
Source: GW wiki

Revenants come from the Mist, so time doesnt matter to Revenants and who(when) they gain knowledge from.

Dadnir already fielded this, but if you are interested in the source: "... a brand-new revenant starting on their journey will not have had to visit the Mists or undergo any more of an advanced process to access revenant powers than they would for the other core professions."

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@Aaron Ansari.1604 said:

@"Zeike.7469" said:Definitely get a Ritualist feel from Revenant, much more modern of course. I think Necromancers have more in common with Dervish now, being able to take on the reaper form reminds me of the 'Avatar of Grenth' skill they had back in the day.

Curiously though, now that we're on the topic, I thought Dervish were killed off, only one I can think of is an Awakened Boss in the Domain of Instan which is a Dervish.

In the lore, dervichs are supposed to be rare with a legacy only given from a dervich to a single pupil.

There is no established church or school for Dervishes in Elona. Instead, a master passes down their secrets and philosophies to a single pupil at a time. Even after that pupil has set out into the world to follow their own path, it may be some years before a master takes a new pupil.
Source: GW wiki

Revenants come from the Mist, so time doesnt matter to Revenants and who(when) they gain knowledge from.

Dadnir already fielded this, but if you are interested in the source:

There Powers come from the Mist. Ritualist powers come from Mist Energy, doesnt mean they have to physically travel there. Same with Revenant. Their power is Mist Energy and they invoke spirits to access their magic all from memory of the Mist just like Dervish do. as said befroe due to game mechanic limitations Dervish couldnt get skills that change when they transform.

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@"Knighthonor.4061" said:Invoking and becoming one with a spirit isn't something that a Dervich does. Dervich rely more on a life philosophy than on borrowed power, thus they aren't "invoking".

thats exactly what Revenants do. In GW1 Dervish couldnt get their skills changed to the spirits they are using due to game mechanic limitations. Rev in GW2 can. its the same thing you just described.

Nope, revenant borrow the power of the legends in the mist, there is no life philosophy involved in that. The issue of most players is that they see dervichs as the profession that use avatar. The thing is avatars aren't a defining feature of the dervich, dervich weren't focalised on being avatar of something. Dervich were attuning themself to nature, learning to read the earth and the wind. Revenants have nothing to do with this they just make a pact and let themself be filled by the power of the pact.

On the other hand, ritualist focused their power on establish a link between them and the "legend" of the past to use skills and be bestowed abilities similar to these legend.

And objectively, there were no such limitation that you talk about, ritualist could already do what revenant does:

  • Fill themself with a legend power: item skills (Ashes urns).
  • Wield legend skills: weapon enchantement.
  • Dealing damage through Mist attune skills: All those unrefined lightning spells.

You could wield legends focused on anything:

  • Anguished was longsha made you a strong hexer
  • Attuned was songkai made you into a gift spellcaster/summoner
  • Courageous was saidra increased your mana pool which was basically GW1's elementalist main feat.
  • Generous was tsungkhai made you into an health tank.
  • Mighty was vorizon gave you balanced survivability
  • Vocal was sogolon made you into a paragon.
  • Tranquil was tanassen gave you stability and toughness.
  • resilient was Xiko gave you mallyx like resilience to conditions/hexes.
  • ... etc.

This is what ritualist did and the shadow of most current revenant legends and traitline associated can easily be seen in these ritualist's item skills. The revenant is just a ritualist that wear it's ash urn on it's back allowing him to fight with weapon at the same time.

Thematically the revenant have nothing to do with the dervich and if it had, it would be because it summoned the ashes of a dervich, like a good ritualist would do, and kept it in it's backpack to empower him.

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@Dadnir.5038 said:

@"Knighthonor.4061" said:Invoking and becoming one with a spirit isn't something that a Dervich does. Dervich rely more on a life philosophy than on borrowed power, thus they aren't "invoking".

thats exactly what Revenants do. In GW1 Dervish couldnt get their skills changed to the spirits they are using due to game mechanic limitations. Rev in GW2 can. its the same thing you just described.

Nope, revenant borrow the power of the legends in the mist, there is no life philosophy involved in that. The issue of most players is that they see dervichs as the profession that use avatar. The thing is avatars aren't a defining feature of the dervich, dervich weren't focalised on being avatar of something. Dervich were attuning themself to nature, learning to read the earth and the wind. Revenants have nothing to do with this they just make a pact and let themself be filled by the power of the pact.

On the other hand, ritualist focused their power on establish a link between them and the "legend" of the past to use skills and be bestowed abilities similar to these legend.

And objectively, there were no such limitation that you talk about, ritualist could already do what revenant does:
  • Fill themself with a legend power: item skills (Ashes urns).
  • Wield legend skills: weapon enchantement.
  • Dealing damage through Mist attune skills: All those unrefined lightning spells.

You could wield legends focused on anything:
  • Anguished was longsha
    made you a strong hexer
  • Attuned was songkai
    made you into a gift spellcaster/summoner
  • Courageous was saidra
    increased your mana pool which was basically GW1's elementalist main feat.
  • Generous was tsungkhai
    made you into an health tank.
  • Mighty was vorizon
    gave you balanced survivability
  • Vocal was sogolon
    made you into a paragon.
  • Tranquil was tanassen
    gave you stability and toughness.
  • resilient was Xiko
    gave you mallyx like resilience to conditions/hexes.
  • ... etc.

This is what ritualist did and the shadow of most current revenant legends and traitline associated can easily be seen in these ritualist's item skills. The revenant is just a ritualist that wear it's ash urn on it's back allowing him to fight with weapon at the same time.

Thematically the revenant have nothing to do with the dervich and if it had, it would be because it summoned the ashes of a dervich, like a good ritualist would do, and kept it in it's backpack to empower him.

Well, I don't agree. Dervish playstyle is very similar to the Revenant's. I don't argue that Ritualist isn't an inspiration here but there is no denying that Dervish favored melee combat - just like Revs, they became Avatars of Gods', just like Revenants do with RotG, EtD.The class is a mix of both and I see a lot of combat style being inspired by Dervish. The overall theme could be Ritualist, but I don't see much od it implemented in-game. Necromancer in GW2 here has a lot more in common with GW1 Rit.

I think Revenant actually plays a lot more like Dervish combat-wise, lore aside (though imo lore still fits both).Revenants have a lot of AoE. And we could even argue that Mallyx is a reverse of Enchantment-for damage increase playstyle.

All in all, I just don't feel like it's fair to say that Revenant is so much of a Ritualist while it isn't. Most lore-wise Ritualist, and most combat-wise Dervish. +Minor mixes of both.

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@"DonArkanio.6419" said:All in all, I just don't feel like it's fair to say that Revenant is so much of a Ritualist while it isn't. Most lore-wise Ritualist, and most combat-wise Dervish. +Minor mixes of both.

From a lore perspective, though, they are drawing from largely the same power source, albeit using it differently.

The monk/guardian relationship is the clearest analogy, as I commented on earlier. Guardian magic grew out of monk magic, but guardians are certainly not monks. They use broadly the same part of the magical 'spectrum', but there are some elements of the monk that the guardian doesn't use, and the guardian has some things that monks never had, either because they were incorporated into guardian from other professions, or because they were developed independently by guardians after the split. Most significantly, though, monks used their magic as scholars that wore light armour and were oriented towards casting spells from the back, while guardians are oriented towards suiting up in heavy armour and jumping into the thick of it.

There may be other such relationships - a few people have observed similarities between thief skills and mesmer magic, for instance.

In the case of revenant and ritualist - there isn't even that historical link, as the two professions developed entirely independently of one another. However, a similar relationship exists between them: both are drawing power from the same general source (the Mists and the entities within) - however, the ritualist approaches this from the perspective of a scholar, while the revenant approaches it from the perspective of a soldier. If it had been Zojja who had been pulled into the Mists instead of Rytlock, we might have had a revival of the Ritualist instead.

The similarity in style between revenant and dervish is similar to the similarity in style with the guardian, which was viewed as the closest thing to the dervish pre-HoT. It's common for a profession that combines melee combat with offensive magic to have certain similarities, particularly the use of magic to conjure damaging close-range effects to assist in dealing with multiple enemies. This doesn't just apply to those three - we also see it in the weaver, reaper, both warrior elite specialisations, and one could even argue that the ranger dabbles in elementalist magic to do this as well (mostly through traps). The only profession that seems to combine magic with melee combat that doesn't use it to conjure damaging area effect attacks is the thief, and that's probably because the thief is using mesmer-like magic which isn't generally well suited to area attacks.

It might be worth considering it in terms of the class system of 4E D&D. One of the features of this is that each class was essentially a combination of a "role" and a "source". "Role" was essentially what the class was intended to do for the party - tank, deal damage, provide healing and support, or CC enemies. "Source", on the other hand, defined what empowered the class - physical training, divine magic, and so on - which affected how the class performed its role and gave it flavour. (As much flavour as 4E ever had, anyway - it had some good ideas, but the execution left a lot to be desired).

From this perspective... both the OP and the general consensus are right, but are coming at it from different viewpoints.

Revenant and dervishes have a lot of similarities in how they play because they both fulfill the same role. So, for that matter, does guardian and both iterations of warrior. However, they use different power sources to do so - warrior is almost all pure physical strength and skill, guardian uses monk-style (probably Preservation, under the bloodstone definitions) magic, dervish uses a combination of elemental and divine magic, and the revenant draws power from the Mists.

Revenant and ritualist, however, share a power source - both draw power from the Mists. However, they have different roles (unless running at least one and preferably both of Ventari and Kalla). Because of this, they play very differently, but in lore terms, they're still fairly similar.

As another example of this sort of thing, you could look at the Blood Mage and Demon Hunter of Warcraft 3. Both have a similar theme of turning demonic magic against the demons (and other enemies), which means they have similar abilities, but one does it as a melee warrior, the other as a traditional spellcaster. While the Blood Mage burns his enemies with flame strikes from a distance, the Demon Hunter surrounds himself in fire to burn enemies up close. While the Blood Mage siphons enemy mana for his own use, the Demon Hunter simply burns it to harm the target. Where the Blood Mage summons a fiery creature to aid him in combat, the Demon Hunter turns into one. The end result is pretty much that the Demon Hunter gets used as a melee hero, while the Blood Mage gets used as a caster because those are the roles they play, despite the close similarities in what they're actually doing.

While professions in the Guild Wars universe are obviously more complex, a similar relationship exists between the revenant and ritualist. From a lore perspective, what they're doing is very similar. From a playstyle perspective, however, they're very different because of how they use it, making the revenant feel closer to other melee-oriented spellcasters like the guardian and dervish than to the ritualist.

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@Elric.4713 said:Obviously Ritualist, great job @draxynnic.3719 on explaining why. People will still push for Dervish as they have their own agenda and vision for what they want Revenant to play and feel like.

Is it really so obvious? We know that Ritualists called upon their ancestors. They used the ashes to create urns, they deployed spirit weapons and used binding rituals to force spirits under their will.

Revenants do nothing of this sort. They never use the corpses in any way, neither use spirit weapons and do only channel echoes, never bind real spirits. The only thing they share is their source of power being the mists (and the hood, but this is a classical stylistic fashion choice not specific to Ritualists even in GW1 since EOTN).

Dervishes on the other hand are supposed to stand confidently in the whirlwind of conflict. They use martial techniques to lash out quickly at multiple opponents. They often learn spells of self-protection, prayers that rush a combatant into battle, and invocations that empower attacks with elemental fury.

While this does not perfectly fit the Revenant, some of the points stick far better to the profession than the Ritualist portfolio does. The most important point would be the channeling of the echoes. While we assumed for a long time that dervishes channeled the gods, this is not necessarily true. Awakened Amala did still took on the form of the gods, but what she channeled was something completely different. Dervishes most likely did call upon what they believed to be their ideal picture of the gods – but what they really channeled was basically an echo of the mists. Just like Revenants do. That can easily explain why certain enemies could use the Avatar skills trying to stop the party during Nightfall. If they really channeled the will of the gods, they clearly would have been aware that the player was basically on a holy mission. But if they only channeled an echo, an (to them) idealized version of the God they prayed to – that would explain why they could use the skills.

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Dervish avatars seem to come from the sparks of divinity that the gods have gifted to humans (as featured in the Voice of Lyssa's speech near the end of Nightfall). The modern incarnation of dervish avatar forms comes in human racial skills, specifically Reaper of Grenth and Avatar of Melandru. Usage of these skills doesn't require direct intervention of the gods (and can even be used against them) because the potential to employ them was instilled in humanity before the Exodus - it's just that few manage to develop the capability to tap into that power.

It's worth noting that with the exception of M.O.X., every enemy which uses an avatar form was either human or otherwise linked to the gods (such as the snowmen and Grentches of WIntersday). The gods don't directly intervene when using these skills, but the power still ultimately originated with the gods, it was just bestowed centuries ago and passed on to subsequent generations.

As for your other comments:

I addressed this: it's basically the distinction between similarities in role and similarities in source. Dervish and revenant (and guardian, and warrior) have the same broad role, and have similar playstyles and mechanical abilities as a result. However, when it comes to the source of the power, revenant is closest to ritualist.

One could argue that there's a distinction between the ritualist invoking spirits and the revenant invoking legends, but ultimately they both draw power from invoking something in the Mists (or employing Mists energies directly). It's also worth noting that it's possible that ritualists too are calling on (lesser) echoes rather than the actual spirits, but weren't able to tell the difference.

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@"draxynnic.3719" said:Dervish avatars seem to come from the sparks of divinity that the gods have gifted to humans (as featured in the Voice of Lyssa's speech near the end of Nightfall). The modern incarnation of dervish avatar forms comes in human racial skills, specifically Reaper of Grenth and Avatar of Melandru. Usage of these skills doesn't require direct intervention of the gods (and can even be used against them) because the potential to employ them was instilled in humanity before the Exodus - it's just that few manage to develop the capability to tap into that power.

Counter-argument: Warden Amala who uses more traditional-looking avatars of the gods pull the power from Joko to create these avatars. This implies that like monks, the Dervish's power "never came from divinity" in any form, but was believed to do so.

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@Nikolai.3648 said:

@Elric.4713 said:Obviously Ritualist, great job @"draxynnic.3719" on explaining why. People will still push for Dervish as they have their own agenda and vision for what they want Revenant to play and feel like.

Is it really so obvious? We know that Ritualists called upon their ancestors. They used the ashes to create urns, they deployed spirit weapons and used binding rituals to force spirits under their will.

Revenants do nothing of this sort. They never use the corpses in any way, neither use spirit weapons and do only channel echoes, never bind real spirits. The only thing they share is their source of power being the mists (and the hood, but this is a classical stylistic fashion choice not specific to Ritualists even in GW1 since EOTN).

Ritualists used to gain their power from their ancestors because it was before the gift of magic, but by the time of Guild Wars that wasn't necessarily true anymore. I mean, it wouldn't make sense if every Ritualist had the same ancestors who also span three continents. We got some new insight into how Anet views spirit magic with the skyscale collection. When you talk to Amaranda, she says "Spirit magic hangs in places of historical significance. Go where great events or people once trod." That's in-line with how Revenants' use legends, so it can still be called spirit magic.

Kalla stance uses summoned spirits, and why dismiss the blindfold as a fashion coincidence? It holds as much lore significance as anything else about the class since the reasons for wearing the blindfold have been explained for both games:The Ritualist used it to better commune with spirits and Rytlock used it to help him focus with the voices in his head. Those are pretty much the same reason.

But I think your Dervish comparisons are perfectly valid as well, I just don't see why it has to be one or the another since Revenant was a dumping ground for GW concepts that didn't make it into GW2. I agree with the other posters saying it was intended to be bit of both. But since it's both, it's really neither but has strong potential to push further in either direction with elite specs. Hopefully we'll see the missing aspects of these classes return in the future.

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@draxynnic.3719 said:I addressed this: it's basically the distinction between similarities in role and similarities in source. Dervish and revenant (and guardian, and warrior) have the same broad role, and have similar playstyles and mechanical abilities as a result.

I did find your post about that well written and agree with you that certain mechanics and roles lead to fundamentally different interpretation of the professions. Just like a GW1 Mesmer does not act similar to a GW2 Mesmer, I do not assume that a GW2 Ritualist would necessary play like a GW1 one. However, the abilities of the professions are lore wise still connected. While certain skills changed with times, as for example Mesmers not using Hexes anymore, some aspects of the professions stayed the same. We also don’t need to argue that a Revenant is exactly that: A Revenant, neither a Dervish nor a Ritualist. Just like the Guardian is neither a Monk nor a Warrior. What we argue about is, from the perspective of lore, if they are closer to the Ritualist or the Dervish. Which brings us to the central and most important argument: Their source of power and in which way they use it.

@draxynnic.3719 said:However, when it comes to the source of the power, revenant is closest to ritualist.

I have to disagree with that statement. The Revenants source of Power are the Mists, more specific the Legends they channel, basically echoes of powerful beings. What do we know about Ritualists? They do bind real spirits (as evident multiple times in GW1) and not mere echoes. The only way to work around this would be to claim that there is no real necromancy in Tyria at all, and every spirit is just a well-made copy from the mists. While possible, that seems unlikely. The thing closest to channelling a legend is their use of ashes, but that resembles the use of powerful artefacts made from the dead, not at all the channelling of a legend. Dervishes on the other hand do channel something. We know that it is not divine in nature, which leaves us with the easiest explanation: Dervishes channel Legends - the Legends of the human pantheon. While you can argue that it was never explicitly stated, this is the easiest explanation for a lot of questions regarding the Avatar-Skills, as seen in my post above.

@hatsamu.4327 said:Ritualists used to gain their power from their ancestors because it was before the gift of magic, but by the time of Guild Wars that wasn't necessarily true anymore. I mean, it wouldn't make sense if every Ritualist had the same ancestors who also span three continents. We got some new insight into how Anet views spirit magic with the skyscale collection. When you talk to Amaranda, she says "Spirit magic hangs in places of historical significance. Go where great events or people once trod." That's in-line with how Revenants' use legends, so it can still be called spirit magic.

I only partly agree here: What counts as spirit-magic and at what point the Ritualist may have strayed from their original was to use magic (if they did at all) is not exactly clear. However, I would disagree with your notion of the Legends being real spirits. They are multiple times stated to be not. Kallas Stance does not summon spirits, it summons echoes. Regarding the blindfold, you basically stated the most important thing yourself:

@hatsamu.4327 said:The Ritualist used it to better commune with spirits and Rytlock used it to help him focus with the voices in his head. Those are pretty much the same reason.

Using a blindfold is either used to concentrate better or for its symbolic value. Since Ritualists and Revenants are hardly the only Professions to value concentration, it makes sense that other classes would apply the too (which they did in GW1). We also know that it is not necessary for either Profession to use them. In the end it comes down to a personal decision, which is a bit more than a fashion statement, but ultimately these reasons are not something exclusive to the Ritualists and Revenants – which is why I did not feel like it was necessary to talk about them. To get back to the main point: Revenants are neither Ritualists, nor Dervishes. But they resemble Dervishes so much more. If we set aside all the game play mechanics, we are left with a profession that channels Legends: Something the Ritualist does not, and the Dervish probably did without being aware of it. Ultimately, this makes them closer to the Dervish than the Ritualist.

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