Build:Renegade - Shortbow Shiro Roamer

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

Focused on: Hybrid damage and Sustain

Designed for: WvW Roaming

Difficulty:

Easy

This build was last updated on November 29, 2023 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 patch.

Overview

A Renegade build with heavy ranged burst damage and great survivability made for WvW Roaming. Works with both Celestial and Power gear, although Cele is seen as the superior option.

Skill Bar

Shortbow

Staff

Utility

Utility

Skill Variants

Weapons

• Greatsword over Staff - retains some of the defensive capabilities of Staff like the block or the mobility, but sacrifices things like AoE healing and cleansing for more damage. Requires Secrets of the Obscure.

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Specializations

Variants

• Take Bold Reversal if you're using Power gear and not Celestial.

Specialization Variants

Retribution over Salvation also works, both are defensive specializations. Salvation offers better condition cleansing, damage mitigation and passive healing (via barrier) while Retribution has an anti-projectile dome, better Weakness access and higher endurance regeneration (plus a bit more damage).

Equipment

There are several ways to make the build work. The first we'd like to highlight is Celestial, this variant has a really strong mix of sustain and hybrid damage:

Head
Celestial

Shoulders
Celestial

Chest
Celestial

Hands
Celestial

Legs
Celestial

Feet
Celestial

Backpiece
Celestial

Accessory
Celestial

Accessory
Celestial

Amulet
Celestial

Ring
Celestial

Ring
Celestial

Shortbow
Celestial

Sigil

Sigil

Staff
Celestial

Sigil

Sigil

Rune
x6

Infusion
x18

Relic

The second, alternate gear would be a Power based one centered around Berserker / Marauder stats. Sustain's going to be lower, but the burst will be higher and this gear should be cheaper / easier to obtain:

Head
Berserker

Shoulders
Berserker

Chest
Berserker

Hands
Berserker

Legs
Berserker

Feet
Berserker

Backpiece
Marauder

Accessory
Marauder

Accessory
Marauder

Amulet
Cavalier

Ring
Marauder

Ring
Marauder

Shortbow
Berserker

Sigil

Sigil

Staff
Berserker

Sigil

Sigil

Rune
x6

Infusion
x18

Relic

Equipment Variants

Runes

• Rune of Superior Rune of Durability - very tanky choice with extra boon duration.

• Rune of Superior Rune of the Elementalist - higher hybrid damage.

• Rune of Superior Rune of Leadership - better boon duration.

• Rune of Superior Rune of the Pack - good damage and boon duration.

• Rune of Superior Rune of the Herald - defensive rune with high boon duration.

Sigils

Short bow (Celestial variant):

• Sigil of Superior Sigil of Generosity - improves cleansing and potentially increases your condition variety.

• Sigil of Superior Sigil of Geomancy - adds an instant AoE condi burst to the build that could even proc Sigil of Doom.

Short bow (Power variant):

Sigil of Hydromancy can be replaced by:

• Sigil of Superior Sigil of Blood - armor ignoring damage procs.

• Sigil of Superior Sigil of Vision - if you want to make sure that Sevenshot crits no matter what.

Relics

• Relic of Antitoxin - better condition cleansing.

• Relic of the Adventurer - goes well with 2 healing skills, defensive pick that has synergy with various traits as well.

Consumables

Food

• - great all around stat boost and damage mitigation.
  • and other similar Oyster consumables are fairly cheap on the Trading post if you don't have ascended cooking.

• - better endurance regen, more access to dodging (and thus better condition cleansing too with Salvation).
  • Budget version:

• - slightly worse endurance regen than that of the Orrian Truffle food, but the constant healing ensures effortless Unyielding Devotion uptime.

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

Utility

• or (whichever is cheaper) if you're running Celestial.

• or (whichever is cheaper) if you're running the Power gear.

Usage

General

• Invoking a legend resets energy to 50 (ideally 75, more on that later), 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.

• Because of Charged Mists you should always aim to deplete your energy before switching legends in order to start at 75 energy instead of 50.

• Renegade comes with its own 3 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) but it's hard to land on moving targets.
  • Orders from Above is a bit expensive but quite strong, provides lots of Alacrity. Being instant cast makes it an attractive choice for depleting energy quickly even when you're stunned before swapping legends.

• 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 removes 1 condition via Eluding Nullification (potentially 2 with Antitoxin relic}}. This is your primary line of defense against conditions.

• Unyielding Devotion provides damage mitigation for a short while after you're healed. Ideally you should have permanent uptime, which isn't hard to achieve as Wrought-Iron Will and regular dodging should do the trick. Rapid Flow and the Holo cake consumables could also help.

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.
  • With Steadfast Rejuvenation this skill could also boost your sustain, making it that much more of a versatile tool.

• 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.
  • Retribution-only: The dome created by Planar Protection is a combo field. Using Sevenshot after Enchanted Daggers has a chance to proc leeching bolts for additional life steal.
  • Sigil-dependent: Use these two skills right after Sigil of Superior Sigil of Vision procs to make the most of this sigil.

• Spiritcrush 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.

• 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 (PvP) - Conquest PvP version.