Whats the current state of revenant?

[Meril.5924]

Hello.

I'm currently consider which class to play while reentering the game. I'm especially interested in build variety and interesting playstyles: playstyles that let you use skills more thoughtfully, that offer interesting decisions to be made during combat instead of simply spamming skills or a fixed rotation. Whats the current state of revenant in that regard? For example the legendary alliance stance looks like it could be interesting to play, since it has this whole skills turning into another version mechanic going on, but I'm not sure if that will work out well in practice.

[Joxer.6024]

Well I just found Hizen's Vindi build for open world and Condi ren (alac) got a buff, so its looking up! I too only just came back and always liked Rev back in the day and am pleased to see whats happening. Also, go here for some more "info"  

 

 

Enjoy!!

[LucianTheAngelic.7054]

10 hours ago, Meril.5924 said:

Hello.

I'm currently consider which class to play while reentering the game. I'm especially interested in build variety and interesting playstyles: playstyles that let you use skills more thoughtfully, that offer interesting decisions to be made during combat instead of simply spamming skills or a fixed rotation. Whats the current state of revenant in that regard? For example the legendary alliance stance looks like it could be interesting to play, since it has this whole skills turning into another version mechanic going on, but I'm not sure if that will work out well in practice.

While the DPS versions of Rev have always had a fixed rotation (just like every class in the game), the beauty of Rev has always been that, regardless of build, Rev has additional options that are not necessarily used, but are still available given the right situation/need. This means that while there are optimal ways to play to maximize damage, if necessary Rev has other tools to use. This can be helpful in raids/fractals/strikes, but this type of flexible gameplay is most often seen in open world, WvW, and PvP, where skill choice is flexible from moment to moment. In this way, Rev is one of the more flexible classes while in combat because it provides “a little bit of everything,” despite being locked into specific utilities. 

Edited March 8, 2023 by LucianTheAngelic.7054

[Yasai.3549]

PvE: Good. Healthy even. Every spec has its place, but you can fulfil all roles sufficiently with what we have right now with no real issues. 

 

PvP: Er... kinda flimsy cos we don't know when Anet is gonna randomly nerf another core aspect of Rev. Vindicator is very strong, Herald and Renegade are still played. This makes people worried because Anet does do knee jerk nerfs now and again. 

 

WvW: solid I guess. You get bullied by counter builds, but that's unavoidable. Still very strong as a zerg staple. 

[draxynnic.3719]

16 hours ago, LucianTheAngelic.7054 said:

While the DPS versions of Rev have always had a fixed rotation (just like every class in the game), the beauty of Rev has always been that, regardless of build, Rev has additional options that are not necessarily used, but are still available given the right situation/need. This means that while there are optimal ways to play to maximize damage, if necessary Rev has other tools to use. This can be helpful in raids/fractals/strikes, but this type of flexible gameplay is most often seen in open world, WvW, and PvP, where skill choice is flexible from moment to moment. In this way, Rev is one of the more flexible classes while in combat because it provides “a little bit of everything,” despite being locked into specific utilities. 

Revenant builds can also have situations where you make a change to your build to deal with a particular situation, which has major effects on your playstyle. Good examples here are swapping a more DPS-focused legend for Jalis to provide stability, or Ventari for projectile blocking. These both have significant changes to your playstyle but usually don't involve massive DPS losses.

There's not a lot that can projectile block like a Ventari rev.

[Buran.3796]

PvE: extremely strong and with a large amount of varied builds; probably the best profession out there at the moment.

WvW: very good at zerging, one of the backbones of that playstile. Good at roaming but far trom the top dogs.

PvP: mediocre; Herald and Renegade are fairly weak vs the top EoD  specs; Vindicator is better but is not part of the meta.

[Meril.5924]

Thank you for your varied responses. I'll give revenant a try.

[Player.2475]

It's become my favourite class since I decided I'd remake it, but there's some glaring issues that have been partially fixed recently.

 

It's also the only class I've ever played that can very comfortably solo pretty much all open world challenges, even the HoT ones, thanks to how good battle-scars from the Devastation traitline is.

 

The tl;dr is: play rev if you want a jack-of-all-trades class that can be decent at every role, but understand that you will never. ever. ever. EVER. be the best pick for any of those roles.

 

Here's the main problems I keep having in 700+ hrs of playing rev (mainly talking about PvE):

1. Not the best DPS: there's 3 different flavours of DPS but you are only going to be top DPS in inexperienced groups. because of how timing dependent a lot of your skills are. You are basically fighting with two cooldown systems (cooldowns + energy) at the same time, and if you have to swap out or use a different skill than your intended rotation it translates to a massive DPS loss, not just because you spent all that time using a non-dps skill, but because you blew 3-4 damage skills' worth of energy in the process.

Good enough for open world, but subpar in raids and fractals UNLESS you're just mindlessly repeating your DPS rotation. If you want to mix in anything that might help with boss mechanics, like CC or boon strip, don't expect to deal more than 60% of your potential damage.

In WvW/PvP some builds can provide a bit of a punch, but it's nowhere near as bursty as half of the other classes. It's more of a bruiser class, with decent sustain and consistent damage, so don't expect to kill anyone with more sustain or damage than you.

 

2. Good healing, but doesn't offer a lot of party utility? The numbers are amazing because your passives stack like +70% healing to others, but it's very sensitive to energy. You also need to run Ventari's or else you basically have no healing or condi cleanse, but you need to pair him with a spec-specific legend to benefit from your spec's traits, but that means that you can't provide stability with Dwarf. For encounters with no stuns or one shots, though, it's pretty good.

In PvP/WvW you aren't expected to provide 1000 boons to your party that need 4 different legends and 2 different specs, so you can actually play heal vindicator, which is somewhat okay for some trolly team compositions or support in a zerg.

 

3. Generally not very competitive in PvP/WvW: Vindicator used to be overpowered, but rev specs have a really hard time against EoD specs in general. Like I said, neither the damage nor sustain are anything to write home about. For sustain, the best thing you can do is abuse Herald's heal and reduce condi damage by a ridiculous amount, but both Warrior and Ranger also have access to skills like that. Elementalist and guardian basically outheal your damage and condi cleanse every time they fart. Engineers quite literally deal more damage with their autoattacks (grenade kit) than your strongest burst skill. I also don't like playing against thieves because your power skills are kinda slow compared to theirs, so you lack the burst to get the drop on them, and your condi skills hit them with those specific conditions that thieves cleanse TWICE when they stealth every second. 🐵.

Edited March 11, 2023 by Player.2475

[zeyeti.8347]

If you play in Ow i can suggest the "jumping vindi" , while it is a bit stupid to play , it is well fun to watch , just play with a superior sigil of stamina , use all increase damage traits , be sure to have fury covered (with Roiling Mists) and just dodge/land kill everything , you will do an infinite loop of "iron man" landing on bubble of mob , while being on a dodge 90% of the time .

Does not work very well on high hp lonely targets .

Edited March 11, 2023 by zeyeti.8347

[draxynnic.3719]

15 hours ago, Player.2475 said:

The tl;dr is: play rev if you want a jack-of-all-trades class that can be decent at every role, but understand that you will never. ever. ever. EVER. be the best pick for any of those roles.

Quickherald is giving firebrand some pretty stiff competition in both DPS and healing modes, especially if you want power damage or one of the other things that it can do better than firebrand. (Of course, the reverse is also true - rev doesn't have aegis, for instance.)

15 hours ago, Player.2475 said:

2. Good healing, but doesn't offer a lot of party utility? The numbers are amazing because your passives stack like +70% healing to others, but it's very sensitive to energy. You also need to run Ventari's or else you basically have no healing or condi cleanse, but you need to pair him with a spec-specific legend to benefit from your spec's traits, but that means that you can't provide stability with Dwarf. For encounters with no stuns or one shots, though, it's pretty good.

You don't really need Ventari to heal (although it certainly helps). A fair amount comes from weapon skills and traits. Depending on just how much healing you need, you can get away with switching out Ventari for Jalis if stability is needed. And even staying in Ventari but using the energy for something else, Protective Solace is possibly the best projectile blocker in the game if you don't specifically need a reflect.

For more DPS-oriented builds, Jalis's DPS is close enough to Shiro's that you can make that substitution for stability or CC from taunt. At a greater DPS loss, Ventari can be an option for the aforementioned projectile blocking. Condi builds naturally include boon removal, and it can sometimes be worth running Mallyx for that purpose even on non-condi builds.

[Player.2475]

50 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Quickherald is giving firebrand some pretty stiff competition in both DPS and healing modes, especially if you want power damage or one of the other things that it can do better than firebrand. (Of course, the reverse is also true - rev doesn't have aegis, for instance.)

You don't really need Ventari to heal (although it certainly helps). A fair amount comes from weapon skills and traits. Depending on just how much healing you need, you can get away with switching out Ventari for Jalis if stability is needed. And even staying in Ventari but using the energy for something else, Protective Solace is possibly the best projectile blocker in the game if you don't specifically need a reflect.

For more DPS-oriented builds, Jalis's DPS is close enough to Shiro's that you can make that substitution for stability or CC from taunt. At a greater DPS loss, Ventari can be an option for the aforementioned projectile blocking. Condi builds naturally include boon removal, and it can sometimes be worth running Mallyx for that purpose even on non-condi builds.

qherald is pretty alright, though I can't personally see it as a good healer.

 

In any non-ventari stance you're basically neutered and limited to only using your staff skills (which heal like what, 400-700 with the last hit on autoattacks, 700 with mender's rebuke and 1300  with their best skills?) You can double those numbers with all the modifiers from food, sigils, traits and monk runes, but at the end of the day your sustained healing caps out at around 2k per second TO OTHERS. Keep in mind that all these weapon skills don't just take energy, but they for some messed up reason also have cooldowns that are as long as similar skills other classes have access to.

 

At least Renegade stance works on healalac builds since dropping your heal and interrupts will trigger traits thatl help you reach 5k+ per second in a pinch. The problem is that renegade doesn't offer anything other than alac and spammable protection and very flimsy stacks of might. 

 

Obviously in raids and T4 fractals where a single attack will take off up to 15k per hit, even healing with Ventari's 9k burst every 3 seconds is not ideal, so HFBs are preferred for their aegis spam, stun breaks, more boons, and comparable healing capacity that is a lot more reliable, because they don't need to disable all their other useful skills for every 10 seconds just to get access to ONE skill that provides some utility, like stability or projectile block. They can just swap out a utility skill or switch to shield without neutering the rest of their kit.

 

As for all the other points, that's fair and expected. On power based builds, you can easily switch out Jallis or Shiro for the utility and barely notice a difference. If you want boon strip I use legendary sigils to swap to sigils of absorption (since T4 instabilities give boons every ~20 seconds anyway, the 10s cd is not an issue).

For condi builds, you only really have Mallyx, which only pairs nice with Renegade and if you want to combine it with anything else, you have to seriously consider why you are handicapping yourself so hard when you could just play a different build or class.

 

Honestly, come to think of it, I don't understand why all the non-pDPS revenant builds have such massive tradeoffs for getting access to just 1 utility that every other class gets access to. On one hand, everything is so super specialized to only be good at one thing, but on the other hand, nothing that isn't power DPS or raw healing on Renegade really works well together.

Edited March 11, 2023 by Player.2475

[draxynnic.3719]

I've run qheal herald in T4 fractals. It does the job. Fights that require a lot of stability are usually less dependent on healing through pressure, so weapon skills (including shield), regeneration from Glint, healing from dodges, and healing from Generous Abundance is often enough, especially if you can also spare the energy to leverage some of Jalis' damage reduction effects. Heck, qhuickheal herald kinda has to work this way, since you spend most of your time in Glint's stance. You don't have Aegis, but the block effect from Aegis doesn't need to come from a healer.

I've heard people say they actually prefer heal herald over healbrand for some of the more recent high-end content, such as HTCM. You're the first person I've seen advocating for healren since Soulcleave got nerfed a couple of years ago.

Condition quickness herald is decent. Quickbrand DPS is supercharged at the moment, so for condition fights you're definitely better off going that route, but it's not impossible for that to change. cqherald isn't that much of a DPS loss versus pqherald, though, so if you want the boonstrip, it's a pretty convenient switch to make. Glint works better with condi builds than you might think... but it would be nice if mace wasn't the only condi weapon available.

[Witch of Steam.5138]

Unless they've fixed it there's a Bug where doding as Rev can Potentially Crash your entire client. 

As a class it's fantastic, fun , flavorful and actually valid in a lot of end-game content. 

But It's also Anet's Buggiest Class

[ventress.4879]

Personally Revenant is best played in the open world due to the share utility it brings. The same could be said for WvW where classes that are able to provide boons while not in combat is better than ones that do not. 

Edited March 17, 2023 by ventress.4879