Vindicator - GS/Shortbow Vindicator Roamer
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Focused on: Strike damage, Hybrid damage, Mobility and Sustain
Designed for: WvW Roaming
Expansions required: 
Difficulty:
Normal
Overview
A versatile Vindicator roaming build for WvW that can be played either with 
Celestial for high sustain and medium damage, or as a Power build with high damage and medium sustain. Despite having no true defensive set the build's still quite durable because of the traits and legends, and the 2 sets provide excellent damage both in melee and ranged combat.
Archival note: the core of the build still works just fine, but we've decided to merge several builds into one universal page since the only difference between tham was the second weapon set. Go to this page for the updated version.
Skill Bar
Greatsword
Shortbow
Utility
Utility
Template Code
[&DQkMKwM5RRncEQAABhIGEisSKxLUEdQRyhEAAAIHBwLUESsSBhIGEisS1BECMgBZAAA=]
Specializations
Variants
All 3 options are viable for the last slot of Invocation:
- improves
Quickness uptime. - allows you to spend more energy each legend swap cycle, giving you more of everything.
- is an excellent passive damage boost that pushes you near the crit cap, and the build has permanent
Fury uptime to go with it. With this you also get to drop on bow for something else.
Equipment
You can customize the gear based on what you want to get out of this build.
The Power-based one is centered around Berserker / 
Marauder stats. Sustain's still good and you'll have excellent burst damage on both sets. This variant is better at killing tankier builds like Celestial ones:
Head
Berserker
Shoulders
Berserker
Chest
Berserker
Hands
Berserker
Legs
Berserker
Feet
Berserker
Backpiece
Marauder
Accessory
Marauder
Accessory
Marauder
Amulet
Marauder
Ring
Marauder
Ring
Marauder
Greatsword
Berserker
Sigil
Sigil
Shortbow
Berserker
Sigil
Sigil
Rune
x6
Infusion
x18
Relic
The other way to go about this is Celestial, this variant trades some damage for better passive survivability. It makes the build more forgiving to play, but the lack of 
Might stacking on Vindi is not ideal for Celestial so you might struggle to get kills against tankier opponents:
Head
Celestial
Shoulders
Celestial
Chest
Celestial
Hands
Celestial
Legs
Celestial
Feet
Celestial
Backpiece
Celestial
Accessory
Celestial
Accessory
Celestial
Amulet
Celestial
Ring
Celestial
Ring
Celestial
Greatsword
Celestial
Sigil
Sigil
Shortbow
Celestial
Sigil
Sigil
Rune
x6
Infusion
x18
Relic
Equipment Variants
Runes
Other viable runes include:
- - good defensive rune with boon duration.
- - offensive rune with boon duration, works well on both sets. On the Power variant you might slightly overcap crit chance when playing with this rune and , so you should swap out a ring for one that has Dragon stats.
Relics
provides quite a lot of extra endurance regen which is important for various trait synergies. If you want to play a more offensive version of the build you could play with a different relic too, but in that case using endurance regen food is highly recommended. Other viable relic options are:
- - better burst damage.
- - improves the consistency of some of your harder hitting skills on Greatsword. Has some anti-synergy with but works well with other Invocation GM traits.
- - significant mobility boost, could be useful for chasing down enemies or keeping distance while on shortbow or waiting for CDs/energy to come back up.
Sigils
- Consider replacing one of the Shortbow sigils with when NOT playing with on Invocation. Making crit is very important for the build, both for the Celestial and the Power variant.
Consumables
Food
- - extra endurance regen, and the healing procs ensure effortless 100% uptime on .
- - same as the previous option but offers slightly higher damage instead of sustain. More endurance means more dodges, and dodging is a key part of the build.
- - great offensive stats and extra tankiness via damage reduction.
Utility
- or , whichever is cheaper.
- Budget: either from Canned Food Crates found in WvW s or purchased from the Permanent Portable Provisioner.
Usage
General
- Invoking a legend resets energy to 50 (potentially 75 if traited), 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.
- allows for easy permanent
Swiftness uptime.
- Dodging removes 1 condition via . This is your primary line of defense against conditions.
- provides damage mitigation for a short while after you're healed. Ideally you should have permanent uptime, and the Holo cake consumables could help with that.
Shiro
- is a skill with life steal, which means the damage it deals bypasses any damage mitigation including
Protection or even . That being said it still can't go through evasion or invulnerabilities such as .
- 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, doesn't cleave.
- 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.
- With this skill could also boost your sustain, making it that much more of a versatile tool.
- 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 / if you wish to interrupt them (and to cancel their blocking skill).
- won't be used often because it exhausts most of your 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.
Weapons and damage
- and are great AoE skills, but the latter deals more damage against single targets. Use these on CD.
- Archemorus in a way acts as your 3rd offensive set.
- and add a bit of extra reach if you're on GS or out of shortbow CDs. The Spear has a huge delay so you could even precast it in a fight and line it up with other damage sources for burst damage, or burst targets while the spear is charging which forces them to choose between using their defensives to avoid the spear or your other attacks.
- Swapping legends doesn't cancel .
- applies Quickness which makes it a great setup skill for GS burst combos or it could speed up your attacks when you need downed cleave.
- does a lot of damage on a very short CD, if your weapon skills are spent then this is a solid option for pressuring targets at a reasonable energy cost. Being a mobility tool is a nice added bonus and makes it more versatile.
- and are your primary burst CDs on bow. Use them as often as possible.
- and work really well with these skills as multiple hits can mean multiple procs, and stacking several sources of damage at the same time is a big part of Revenant bursts in general.
- Sigil-dependent: Use these two skills right after procs to make the most of this sigil.
- is more of a defensive, area denial type of skill. Enemies are unlikely to stand in it to tank the damage but you can drop this on yourself to discourage melee from engaging, or on stealth fields to punish enemy stealth combos. While it's true that CC could set this skill up, usually you're better off using something more impactful to capitalize on CC like Sevenshot.
- is a strong ranged CC, use it to root enemies into your burst combos.
- If you're out of CDs spam with Impossible Odds can still do a lot of damage.
- While Shortbow attacks pierce and hit multiple targets thanks to , you should still consider using Staff auto attacks over Shortbow's for things such as downed cleave.
Sustain
- Greatsword is the more defensive of the 2 sets.
- is great for blocking attacks under pressure and could be used not only as a gap closer but also a gap builder (just make sure you don't have an enemy targeted).
- The Kurzick (blue) side of is your defensive legend, atlhough both the Luxon side and Shiro have some great defensive skills too.
- is your mass cleanse and basically a 4th healing skill on the build because of how much it heals for each condition that's removed.
- Both legendary stances have access to an evade skill: on alliance stance and on Shiro. If you have energy but not endurance to dode then these are great options for avoiding damage. While Battle Dance doesn't directly remove movement impairing conditions (unlike Riposting Shadows) it does give you
Resistance - it can be used while 
Immobilized so you'll be able to move freely after the evade frame.
- The best defensive skill is actually found on the most offensive legend: the Luxon skill is always useful. The
Daze can stop incoming burst attempts while the 
Stability makes it easier to get a full channel of your heal off. It even breaks stun and does decent damage.
- If you're low on health it's common practice to use both and back-to-back, especially after Reaver's Rage for Stability.
- is good for surviving heavy incoming damage if you have no other way to avoid it. It offers strong mitigation but also drains your HP and makes it so you won't be able to heal yourself, so don't maintain it for long. Only use it briefly, and rarely.
Ratings
Basically the Vindi version of the Shortbow Renegade build. I know most people are interested in the Cele version but personally here I prefer Power, the modifiers are only for Power and there's no real Might stacking, plus you're using GS that has no condi damage. I consider Renegade to be the better Cele build, but this one's pretty good too.
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