Herald - Shiro Roamer

The community gave this build a rating, making it top-tier: Great

Focused on: Strike damage and Mobility

Designed for: WvW Roaming

Expansions required:

Difficulty:

Hard

This build was last updated on July 08, 2024 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 patch.

Overview

A Power-based Herald build for WvW Roaming with exceptional burst damage and mobility. While the build has plenty of active defenses in the form of block and evade frames, its passive sustain and condition cleansing are rather low, which makes this build rather unforgiving but also highly rewarding to play.

Skill Bar

Sword/Sword

Staff

Utility

Utility

Template Code

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Specializations

Variants

• The combination of Notoriety, Swift Termination and Roiling Mists on Invocation could create a more high risk/high reward build by sacrificing the passive life stealing for better damage.
• Thrill of Combat could be considered for slightly higher sustain.

Variants

• Roiling Mists - pushes you near the crit cap which should yield higher damage but it does give up some utility value with the loss of things like Quickness access, and even results in lower self-healing due to the loss of Dance of Death synergy from Call of the Assassin. If you go for this trait make sure to take a different rune, one with no Precision or else you're actually going to overcap crit chance.

Equipment

Head
Marauder

Shoulders
Marauder

Chest
Marauder

Hands
Marauder

Legs
Marauder

Feet
Marauder

Backpiece
Berserker

Accessory
Berserker

Accessory
Berserker

Amulet
Berserker

Ring
Berserker

Ring
Berserker

Sword
Marauder

Sword
Marauder

Sigil

Sigil

Staff
Marauder

Sigil

Sigil

Rune
x6

Infusion
x18

Relic

Equipment Variants

Runes

Rune choices don't make or break the build and there are several viable ones to pick from based on personal preferences, but retaining some boon duration is generally recommended:

• Rune of Superior Rune of the Herald - great defensive option with high boon duration in case you want to be a bit more tanky.

• Rune of Superior Rune of Fireworks - worse crit chance but higher boon duration than Pack.

• Rune of Superior Rune of Resistance - condition management in the build isn't great, this rune coupled with food that reduces incoming condition duration could help you out if you're struggling in those matchups.

• Rune of Superior Rune of the Scholar - raw burst damage.

Relics

The current relic significantly improves your mobility which uiltimately helps with everything from chasing enemies to kiting targets when you need to wait for CDs or energy, but there are other viable options too:

• Relic of Zakiros - converts some of your outgoing damage into healing, offering higher survivability.

• Relic of Isgarren - greedy option for higher burst damage.

• Relic of Leadership - adds a new source of condition removal to the build, cleansing several conditions whenever you use an elite skill (once every 30 seconds). Works especially well with the Glint elite because it has no cast time.

Consumables

Food

• - great offensive stats and some direct damage mitigation.
  • - a bit more defensive but equally viable option.

• - highest damage option, no damage mitigation but the life steal procs still provide some sustain.

• - this food provides some defense against condition damage without sacrificing damage.

• - active damage mitigation via more frequent access to dodging, and the Might generation has synergy with various traits.
  • Budget version:

• or - cheap precision bump and armor ignoring damage procs that also heal you.

Utility

• or .

Usage

General

• Invoking a legend resets energy to 50, breaks stun, removes 1 condition, and could even trigger the sigils of your active weapon set (if they are not on CD) among other things. Swapping legends is basically the main resource management tool in the build - swap whenever you're out of CDs, low on energy, or need to cleanse.

• In combat don't try to maintain your Glint upkeeps for too long, in most cases they shouldn't stay up for more than 3 seconds. Activating Facet of Elements and Strength only to immediately follow up with using Elemental Blast and Burst of Strength is a perfectly fine thing to do - these are also some of your best AoE skills.

• Chaotic Release can be used to knock downed opponents away from their teammates who are trying to revive them.

• Both elite skills have obvious tells and are easy to dodge, stow weapons to cancel casting if they're about to be evaded/blinded - this will save all the energy cost and only send the skill on a cd of 5 seconds. The same qualities make these skills perfect for fake casting by stowing weapons immediately after beginning the cast, baiting enemy dodges/blocks without spending energy or CDs.

• Facet of Darkness is one of the most versatile and strongest skills in the build:
  • Gaze of Darkness is a cheap stun breaker and one of the few skills in the game that can reveal stealthed targets.
  • The Blind from Gaze can be used to avoid powerful attacks without wasting dodges, and can help you stomp warriors/revenants/engineers/rangers by blinding their downed CC. Even mesmers can be stomped with a little luck because of the AoE reveal.
  • If you're Blinded while channeling Chaotic Release you can use Gaze of Darkness at the last moment before the skill finishes its animation - in this case Gaze of Darkness will miss instead of your elite.

• Facet of Nature's active chain skill is best used while on Shiro as a source of ranged poking/AoE cleave.

Dealing damage

• Playstyle:
  • Herald no longer has the sustain it once had, and staying in melee range without active blocks or evasion could quickly overwhelm it. Although generally perceived as a melee build, there are quite a few ranged skills that will play an important part. The build's geared towards massive burst damage and utilizes hit-and-run tactics.
  • Use skills like Elemental Blast, Chilling Isolation, Shiro's True Nature (Assassin) or Shackling Wave to poke from a safe distance if going into melee would be too dangerous.
  • Create openings where you can pressure targets uninterrupted by utilizing your CC skills such as Surge of the Mists or Chaotic Release. Make every moment count by capitalizing on the setup with tools like Quickness, Enchanted Daggers and Impossible Odds to further increase the damage of your followup burst.
• Shackling Wave will serve as the primary burst skill in the build.

• Unrelenting Assault works best in 1v1s, where the damage isn't split. Against multiple targets it's mainly used defensively for the evasion.
  • Note: If you're facing an opponent with access to Stealth, land Facet of Darkness' chain skill on them to apply Revealed, as stealth cancels Unrelenting Assault.

• Impossible Odds can augment any skill and increase your damage output significantly while active. It's quite expensive though, so don't maintain it for more than a few seconds at a time, use it only for bursts. Note that it's only single target damage.
  • Always stop maintaining this skill if you're about to hit 0 energy - turning it off sends it on a 1 second CD while running out of energy results in a 4 second CD.

• Phase Traversal is great for initiating fights from range and immediately starting off with Quickness coupled with unblockable attacks. Quickness can be used to do burst damage or cleave downed targets better through auto attacking, while the unblockable attacks could seal the fate of enemies relying on blocking as their last resource option for sustain. Either follow up with hard hitting attacks or a Surge of the Mists if you wish to interrupt them (and to cancel their blocking skill).

• Enchanted Daggers is a skill with life steal, which means the damage it deals bypasses any damage mitigation including Protection or even Endure Pain. That being said it still can't go through evasion or invulnerabilities such as Distortion.

• Jade Winds won't be used much because it blows pretty much your entire energy pool, leaving you defenseless and with barely anything to capitalize on the CC. This should only be used to set up kills for your teammates, or to interrupt very important channels like a rez or a stomp.

Burst Combo Examples

These are merely supposed to give you some ideas for doing burst damage, you don't have to follow them all the time

Ranged combo

1. Enchanted Daggers then wait a bit for your energy to bounce back
2. Phase Traversal
3. Impossible Odds
4. Chilling Isolation or Shackling Wave
5. Any of your other skills on the weapon set, or swap to staff for a CC (skill 5). If you don't have the energy for followup skills just swap legends for a refill. Alternatively you could cut Impossible Odds from the rotation if you're energy-starved.

Melee Combo

1. Surge of the Mists
2. Activate Impossible Odds when SotM starts moving forward. Note: if you started this chain on Glint then legend swapping to Shiro for this step would also grant you Quickness from Song of the Mists and could even proc the sigils of Staff. The Quickness however is wasted on SotM so in this scenario you might want to consider swapping legends near the end of the cast and only activate Impossible Odds when you use Shackling Wave.
3. Weapon swap
4. Shackling Wave
5. Deathstrike
6. Chilling Isolation

Glint AoE Combo

1. Chaotic Release
2. Elemental Blast
3. Cast Burst of Strength but immediately swap legends, the skill won't be interrupted
4. Activate Impossible Odds while still casting BoS
5. Chilling Isolation

Self sustain & how to deal with conditions

• Facet of Light's chain effect Infuse Light is your jail free card - makes you immortal for the duration by converting all incoming damage into healing. It's also by far your best tool for dealing with condition spikes. Some players may stop pressuring you once Face of Light's been activated, in this case you should just wait a couple of seconds before using Infuse Light. Make sure you get at least 10k healing out of this skill, try to predict when burst is coming and use Facet of Light in advance - FoL has a cast time thus cannot be used while stunned, but Infuse is instant.

• Revenant doesn't have any mass cleanses, instead it's the proper chaining of smaller removals that's going to do the trick:
  • The highest possible number of conditions that can be removed in one combo is 8 under normal circumstances (9 if we count Blindness, which you should attempt to remove before starting the chain, and potentially 10 when Relic of Antitoxin is not on CD).
  • Ideally start with Riposting Shadows to get rid of all snares and hard-CC such as Fear and Taunt. This skill alone could remove 4 different non-damaging conditions thus increasing the chance of cleansing the more important, damaging ones with other skills. The evade frame of the skills also ensures that you won't be inflicted with new conditions.
  • Swapping to staff removes a condition thanks to Sigil of Superior Sigil of Cleansing and swapping legends can remove another one via the trait Cleansing Channel, bringing the total count to 6. If you were already on Staff it's still possible to proc the cleansing sigil with a legend swap, as explained earlier.
  • Finish the chain with Renewing Wave.
  • After this you should be safe, but you've also exhausted your kit so play defensively for a while in order to avoid getting hit with new conditions by chaining blocks/evasions, or just staying at a safe distance for a couple of seconds.

• True Nature (Dragon) cleanses 3 conditions when used on Glint. Against condition specs you should hold onto this skill for longer in case you need to use it defensively.

• If taken The best way to proc Relic of Leadership is to activate Facet of Chaos, which is a cheap instant skill. You don't even need to use the second part of the chain to get the effect to proc, although you may still want to do that in order to get rid of the energy draining (in case you can't just legend swap out of it in due time).

• The combination of Staff and Shiro gives the revenant amazing tools for disengaging/stalling. Riposting Shadows gives 15 endurance whilst also evading and removing every hard-CC / snare from the player. In addition to that Staff has a short CD block/evasion in form of Warding Rift and Surge of the Mists.

• Safest way to benefit from Enchanted Daggers when you need it for the healing is to use skills with evasion/blocking that also deal damage, such as Warding Rift, Surge of the Mists, or Unrelenting Assault.

Related Builds

Power Shiro (sPvP) - Conquest PvP version.