Introduction to the Revenant

Revenant is a profession unlocked with the purchase of Heart of Thorns (which is usually bought together with Path of Fire), which means it’s not available for Free to Play accounts, and once unlocked, it comes with Herald specialization with Heart of Thorns and Renegade with Path of Fire.

This profession is centered around invoking the power of Guild Wars lore legends: the notorious assassin Shiro Tagachi, the steadfast dwarven King Jalis Ironhammer, the tormenting demon Mallyx the Unyeilding, and the peace-loving centaur leader Ventari.

Your fighting style will be dynamic, you’ll be fighting by either teleporting through the mists or ripping the fabric of reality itself to summon powerful attacks.

As a Revenant, you will have access to Swords, Mace, a Hammer, an off-hand Axe, and a Staff.

Both Swords and Hammer are power-oriented weapons, Hammer offers safe play while delivering massive blows at range, while the Swords are very acrobatic, melee weapons allowing you to blink through the shadows to assassinate your targets.

Mace and off-hand Axe will be your main condition damage weapons, causing flames to erupt from the mists and tormenting foes by tearing apart the fabric of reality.

Lastly, the Staff will allow you to support players as the main healer choice and an amazing second weapon set for utility support on damage builds.

If you don’t know anything about Guild Wars 2 profession, and you maybe are looking for a short comparison, check out our introductory guides:

Creating your first character

What race do I pick? What profession do I choose? Do I want my biggest regret in life to be that I never joined the circus? After reading this guide you'll know all about the choices you'll face while creating your character.

Game basics – first steps in Tyria

This short guide contains answers to the questions you might have on the first days of your adventure, such as where to look for tips, how to look for a group (LFG), what are the most important parts of the interface, and more!

Profession mechanics

Invoking Legends

The main mechanic of the Revenant class is the ability to invoke the powers of Guild Wars Legends. Each Legendary Stance has a different set of utility skills that fit thematically with the legend you are invoking. You may select two Legendary Stances and can swap between them during combat with “F1” by default.

You also have access to Ancient Echo (by default is bound to “F2“) which when activated will give you unique bonuses depending on your current Stance.

Energy

In addition to normal cooldowns on skills, you’ll be spending energy on each skill. Some abilities will keep draining the energy while they are active instead of the using it instantly for single cast, that drain of energy and its power is called “upkeep cost“.

You have 50 energy available by default out of combat, and once you are in combat, 5 energy per second will start refilling. If you have any upkeep skills active, that refill force will be reduced by the upkeep cost, and instead of refilling, it will start depleting.

Skills

Due to the unique nature of the Revenant’s mechanics, skills are classified according to their Legend. Thus, each Legend is also a unique skill type.

Legendary Assassin Stance

Invoking the agile Shiro Tagachi changes your utility skills to abilities around mobility, evades, and damage. This stance is often paired with the Devastation and Invocation specializations due to the high damage and sustain modifiers available in these trait lines.

Shiro is most often played in PvE as it offers great Crowd Control with Jade Winds and very good healing skill Enchanted Daggers allowing you to siphon life upon hitting an enemy, but most importantly due to Impossible Odds which is very good damage skill.

Activating Impossible Odds drains your stance energy until you run out of energy or deactivate it. Whilst active it increases your movement speed (stackable with ) and causes all of your attacks to hit again for a set amount of damage on a short delay.

This stance sees play in PvP thanks to its incredible mobility from Phase Traversal, evades from Riposting Shadows, and damage. It also sees play in Power DPS PvE builds because of its incredible damage output.

Legendary Dwarf Stance

King Jalis Ironhammer changes your utility skills to abilities centered around supporting allies with and damage reduction whilst inflicting enemies with debilitating conditions such as and .

This stance is often paired with Invocation because of its access to boons and Retribution to increase your defensive capabilities even further.

Inspiring Reinforcement is an incredible skill supporting your team with pulsing . Although the tooltip says the number of affected targets is 5, it’s actually more, because each section of the “carpet/road” (as it’s often referred to) counts as a separate entity with its own target cap of 5.

The main damage source in Dwarf stance is upkeep skill Vengeful Hammers, offering passive damage from flashy hammers floating around you with additional damage reduction.

This stance sees play in PvE and large-scale WvW due to its great access to Crowd Control, damage reduction, and .

Legendary Demon Stance

Invoking Mallyx the Unyielding, ruler over the Domain of Anguish gives you abilities centered around removing boons, crowd controlling, and inflicting massive amounts of deadly conditions on enemies. This stance pairs perfectly with Corruption to increase your condition damage.

The most commonly used skill in this stance is Embrace the Darkness. Whilst active it drains your energy but pulses damage and damaging conditions to nearby enemies and makes you a portable Dark combo field.

Skills like Call to Anguish offering Crowd Control in form of useful pull, and Banish Enchantment which is a “boonstrip” ability, are especially useful in some raid encounters, PvP and WvW.

In PvE, Mallyx legend is an integral part of any condition damage builds. It also sees play in WvW roaming due to its ability to stack vast amounts of conditions on unsuspecting enemies.

Legendary Centaur Stance

Wise, peace-loving Ventari offers access to a floating tablet, and your skills are used to manipulate its effect and position. This stance pairs impeccably with the Salvation traitline due to its incredible synergy with healing.

Unique interaction in this stance is the ability to spawn a Ventari’s tablet with Project Tranquility and then move it across the area with Ventari's Will.

Tablet can then be empowered to heal and support allies via cleansing conditions and blocking projectiles. Protective Solace is used particularly often in some PvE encounters to block deadly projectiles in some end-game PvE encounters.

Specializations

Corruption

Corruption is a trait line oriented around increasing your condition damage and duration, most noticeably , it’s most often used in conjunction with Legendary Demon Stance.

Usual traits selections is 131 ( Acolyte of Torment, Pact of Pain and Diabolic Inferno). These traits synergize ludicrously well allowing you to inflict an incredible amount of conditions very quickly.

Retribution

This specialization can make your character incredibly durable and synergizes well with Legendary Dwarf Stance.

Most commonly selected traits setup for this traitline is 133 (Planar Protection, Dwarven Battle Training and Steadfast Rejuvenation). The other notable trait is Versed in Stone.

This specialization sees play in PvP to help with survivability, reasonable damage, and projectile block. It also has a niche use in raids for very specific roles in some encounters.

Salvation

The go-to healing specialization for Revenant. It provides incredible healing modifiers and thus greatly increases the efficacy of Legendary Centaur Stance.

111 (Invoking Harmony, Words of Censure, and Generous Abundance) are the most commonly used traits with optional Eluding Nullification allowing you to cleanse allies’ conditions on dodge roll.

This specialization primarily sees play in PvE Heal Revenant builds. However, it is sometimes used PvP too.

Invocation

Invocation is centered around giving your player large damage modifiers and access to some key offensive boons, it’s used in every damage Revenant build regardless of game mode.

The most common trait pick is often 213 (Rising Tide, Spirit Boon,Roiling Mists). Roiling Mists is commonly swapped out for Charged Mists. Another notable trait for solo-play is Incensed Response offering your great boost in damage thanks to application.

Devastation

This traitline is composed of dealing damage, siphoning life from your enemies, and inflicting large amounts of .

The commonly selected traits are: 222 (Unsuspecting Strikes, Notoriety and Swift Termination). For Open World, traits Thrill of Combat and Dance of Death are extremely useful due to high life siphon damage.

This traitline is commonly used for Power Revenant in PvE due to its large power damage modifiers.

Gameplay Tips

Revenants have a lot of “cool” animations that often come with evasion, allowing for defense-through-offense gameplay.

Skills like Surge of the Mists, Phase Smash, Deathstrike, Unrelenting Assault, and Riposting Shadows allow you for very dynamic offensive gameplay with safe evade frames at the same time, try to utilize them when in trouble.

Battle Scarred is extremely useful especially for leveling, as life-siphon is not only healing but also damage, further supporting offensive gameplay with passive defenses.

If you are ready to start playing this profession we recommend a starter build that was created to help with the traditional leveling experience of the core profession.

If you are looking for more builds for all game modes, make sure to check out our build guides.