Build:Renegade - Shortbow Shiro

The community gave this build a rating, making it second-tier: Good

Focused on: Strike damage and Sustain

Designed for: PvP Conquest

Difficulty:

Easy

This build was last updated on August 25, 2023 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 patch.

Overview

A versatile Renegade PvP build that deals high power burst damage, potent group CC and can provide utility to the team. Suitable for fights of any size.

Skill Bar

Shortbow

Staff

Utility

Utility

Template Code

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Specializations

Variants

• Invigorating Dismissal helps maintain endurance for dodges and getting the critical chance increase for Brutal Momentum.

Variants

• Glaring Resolve reduces the chance of getting your Rite of the Great Dwarf interrupted after breaking stuns, making it easier to secure the second half of the skill.

Variants

• Lasting Legacy increases your damage but makes you weaker to conditions and reduces Alacrity uptime.

Equipment

Shortbow

Sigil

Sigil

Staff

Sigil

Sigil

Rune

Amulet

Relic

Equipment Variants

Amulet

• - lower burst damage, better survivability.

Usage

General

• Invoking a legend resets energy to 50, procs Song of the Mists, grants Fury and removes 1 condition. 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.

• Renegade comes with its 3 own specialization skills:
  • Heroic Command will hardly ever be used, but it's okay for pushing your energy below 10 before switching legends.
  • Citadel Bombardment could be a strong burst skill if you need to cleave and the targets are either stunned or immobile (for example when they are rezing a downed).
  • Orders from Above is decent, but not necessarily in combat (except for energy depleting before legend swap). Instead you should be using this between fights for the Alacrity to speed up the CD recovery of your team.

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

• Dodging cleanses 1 condition.

• Song of the Mists enhances your legend swap. Invoking Shiro now gives you Quickness to help you do burst damage on bow while swapping to Jalis inflicts Weakness on nearby enemies on top of applying barrier to you. The Jalis swap is especially valuable while you're CC'd as it's an instant defensive proc with two layers of damage mitigation.

Shiro

• 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.

• 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. Either follow up with hard hitting attacks or a Surge of the Mists / Scorchrazor if you wish to interrupt them (and to cancel their blocking skill).

• 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.

Shortbow

• Most of the damage comes from a combination of Shiro and Shortbow skills.

• Sevenshot and Bloodbane Path are your primary burst CDs. Use them as often as possible.
  • Enchanted Daggers and Impossible Odds 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.

• Spiritcrush is an excellent AoE that could easily cover a capture point on most maps. Using it before unleashing your other bow skills adds to your burst damage.

• Scorchrazor is a strong ranged CC, use it to root enemies into your burst combos.

• If you're out of CDs, Shattershot spam with Impossible Odds can still do a lot of damage.

• While Shortbow attacks pierce and hit multiple targets thanks to Heartpiercer, you should still consider using Staff auto attacks over Shortbow's for things such as downed cleave.

Jalis

• Legendary Dwarf Stance is great for mitigating damage for both yourself and your team.

• Inspiring Reinforcement provides excellent defense vs CC for every ally affected, whilst also mitigating direct damage through the Weakness.

• Vengeful Hammers is yet another form of damage mitigation, and it's instant. Steadfast Rejuvenation adds to the base healing of this upkeep.

• Rite of the Great Dwarf is one of the strongest skills you've got in the build, and also the only stunbreak on this legend. It's rather costly though, keep it for saving your allies or breaking out of stuns that could result in your death.
  • Being a stun break with a cast time, that means if you get interrupted while channeling it you'll lose the entire energy cost of this skill without getting anything other than a stun break out of it. Consider using it while standing on Inspiring Reinforcement whenever possible.

• Forced Engagement also deserves a mention. You've guessed, another skill for mitigating damage but this is a bit more situational as it doesn't work on targets that are immune to CC. It's also just in general a great AoE CC that could either set up kills for your team, or take pressure off of them.

Staff

• Staff is the defensive weapon in the build.

• The 3 main defensive skills include a block, a condition cleanse, and an evade frame. These skills are not only strong but also cheaper than Jalis skills in case you need to survive but you're running low on energy.

• Renewing Wave other than being a much needed condition cleanse is also a Blast Finisher - your combo fields are not that great, but you could combo this with whatever fields your allies are using for stronger benefits like Stealth.

• Surge of the Mists is an instant evade frame which already makes it valuable. Perhaps the best thing about this skill though is the fact that it CC's multiple times in a row, which makes it great at burning through Stability stacks of your opponent and interrupting casts they thought were safe.

Related Builds

• Shortbow Shiro Roamer - WvW roaming version.