Build:Vindicator - Greatsword Shiro

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

Focused on: Direct damage and Sustain

Designed for: PvP Conquest

Difficulty:

TBD

This build was last updated on August 22, 2022 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 patch.

Overview

A PvP Vindicator power build with high damage and sustain/group utility, making it suitable for anything from 1v1s to teamfights.

Skill Bar

Greatsword

Staff

Utility

Utility

Skill Variants

Legends

• Legendary Dwarf Stance over Legendary Alliance Stance - both legends are perfectly fine and offer a good mix of pressure and sustain, with Dwarf (Jalis) being more on the defensive side. Jalis is also more beginner friendly in general as there's 1 less legend to worry about.

Weapons

• Sword/Sword over Staff - more burst damage, worse sustain.

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Specializations

Variants

• Versed in Stone is also a viable option.

Variants

• Take Leviathan Strength when playing without Alliance stance.

• Vassals of the Empire is also a viable option.

Equipment

Greatsword

Sigil

Sigil

Staff

Sigil

Sigil

Rune

Amulet

Usage

General

• Invoking a legend resets energy to 50 (ideally 60, more on that later), removes 1 condition, and procs Song of the Mists. 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. As the CD on legend swap is 10 seconds you want to plan ahead with your energy pool accordingly.

• Legendary Alliance Stance Vindicators have access to 3 legends in a way, but swapping between the Kurzick legend Saint Viktor and the Luxon legend Archemorus does not proc legend swap related traits and class mechanics.
  • You can swap between the two with Alliance Tatics (F3 by default).

• Rapid Flow allows for permanent Swiftness uptime. The easiest way to trigger this is to turn either Impossible Odds or Vengeful Hammers (if you chose Jalis) on and off every 5 seconds.

• The build works just fine from 1v1s to teamfights, although you can make certain tweaks to specialize in a given role.

Shiro

Damage, mobility, CC, minor sustain through evasion and condition cleansing

• 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. It's not a great healing skill, so most of the time it'll be used to boost your burst damage.

• 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, 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.

• 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.

• Jade Winds 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

• Greatsword is the set you'll be using to pressure targets, but it does have some defensive capabilities too.

• Imperial Guard is great for blocking attacks under pressure and Phantom's Onslaught could be used not only as a gap closer but also a gap builder (just make sure you don't have an enemy targeted). These are not purely defensive skills though, their damage shouldn't be underestimated either.

• Mist Unleashed and Eternity's Requiem are great AoE skills, but the latter deals more damage against single targets.

• Archemorus adds a bit of reach to an otherwise very melee focused build with Spear of Archemorus and Scavenger Burst. Use these to poke from a safe distance if you don't want to go melee for some reason. 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.
  • Swapping legends doesn't cancel Spear of Archemorus.

Ranged burst combo example:

1. Enchanted Daggers
2. Phase Traversal
3. Impossible Odds
4. Mist Unleashed

Sustain/Support

• Staff is the defensive set in the build, offering ways to avoid damage via Surge of the Mists and Warding Rift or AoE cleanse conditions through Renewing Wave.

• While Archemorus is an offensive legend with plenty of damage, most of the time you'll be swapping to Legendary Alliance Stance because either you or an ally is under pressure and you need Saint Viktor's help. In teamfights you're more than just a damage dealer, keep an eye on allies too as you have some tools for helping them.

• Tree Song is an excellent source of AoE condition cleansing, something the build otherwise desperately lacks. Your best way of dealing with conditions is not getting hit by them, luckily the build has plenty of block/evade frames.
  • Tip: if you need to cleanse a lot of conditions and you're on Shiro, try to use Riposting Shadows first. This way you'll potentially get rid of a few non-damaging conditions, increasing the chance of Tree Song cleansing the damaging ones.

• Both Shiro and Saint Viktor have tools for evading attacks, these are Riposting Shadows and Battle Dance. With only 1 dodge bar these will come in handy, along with the block from Imperial Guard.

• Vassals of the Empire transforms your dodge into a source of AoE boon application, try to land on top of as many allies as possible to share it with them.