Vindicator - Retribution Greatsword Roamer
The community gave this build a rating, making it second-tier: Good
Focused on: Strike 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 Power Vindicator build with a healthy mix of sustain and damage for WvW Roaming.
Skill Bar
Greatsword
Sword/Sword
Utility
Utility
Skill Bar Variants
Weapons
- Staff over Sword/Sword - much better sustain and some extra CC, but we only recommend this against enemies with low sustain. Giving up the Sword set makes it way harder to win against tanky opponents, your damage might not be enough with Staff.
Template Code
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Specializations
Equipment
Head
Marauder
Marauder
Shoulders
Marauder
Marauder
Chest
Marauder
Marauder
Hands
Marauder
Marauder
Legs
Marauder
Marauder
Feet
Marauder
Marauder
Backpiece
Marauder
Marauder
Accessory
Diviner
Diviner
Accessory
Diviner
Diviner
Amulet
Diviner
Diviner
Ring
Diviner
Diviner
Ring
Diviner
Diviner
Greatsword
Marauder
Marauder
Sigil
Sigil
Sword
Marauder
Marauder
Sword
Marauder
Marauder
Sigil
Sigil
Rune
x6
x6
Infusion
x18
x18
Relic
Consumables
Food
- - pushes you near the endurance regen cap when combined with Vigor and while providing some extra healing. These healing procs also ensure effortless 100% uptime on .
- - with this and Vigor/traits you'll reach the cap of 100% bonus endurance regen and it provides slightly higher damage than Holographic Super Cake does.
- - cheaper version.
- - great stats and extra tankiness via damage reduction, but you'll no longer be endurance regen capped. The build's still going to work just fine, but you do lose out on some trait synergy.
Utility
- or , whichever is cheaper.
Usage
General
- Invoking a legend resets energy to 50, removes 1 condition, procs , and could even proc the sigils of your current weapon set if they're no longer on CD. 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.
- You can swap between the two with Alliance Tatics (F3 by default).
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.
Shiro
Damage, mobility, CC, minor sustain through evasion and condition cleansing
- Protection or even . That being said it still can't go through evasion or invulnerabilities such as . It's not a great healing skill, so most of the time it'll be used to boost your burst damage. is a skill with life steal, which means the damage it deals bypasses any damage mitigation including
- 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.
- Most Greatsword skills are rather slow, you only really want to use this for (or autoattack spam with Quickness) before turning it off unless you really need to squeeze out all the damage you can in your situation. Works much better with the Sword/Sword set's more rapid attacks.
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.
- 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. is great for initiating fights from range and immediately starting off with
- 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
- 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). These are not purely defensive skills though, their damage shouldn't be underestimated either. Imperial Guard hits particularly hard once it's charged up.
- and are great AoE skills, but the latter deals more damage against single targets. Use these on CD.
- works best against single targets, this is a great skill for sticking to targets. While it doesn't hit that hard, it strikes multiple times and you could boost its damage significantly with and .
- Immobilize. Try to get some Quickness for this combo, makes it harder to avoid. and are the main burst skills on the Sword set, and they work well in this order too. You could use the Shackling Wave even from outside melee range and then teleport in for a Deathstrike while they are still rooted with the
- Archemorus in a way acts as your second offensive set in case your GS skills are on CD or you need better range.
- Swapping legends doesn't cancel .
- Quickness which makes it a great setup skill for GS burst combos or it could speed up your attacks when you need downed cleave. applies
and add a bit of extra reach to an otherwise very melee focused build. 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, 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.
- does a lot of damage on a very short CD, if your GS skills are not available 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.
Combo examples
Greatsword/Shiro melee
- - activate this right before Eternity's Reqiem starts dealing damage and maintain it for the rest of the chain
- Dodge while ER's doing damage, land on top of your enemy
Defensive/counterpressure combo
- Block attacks with
- Dodge
- Hit them with (IG's chain skill)
- CC them and gain Stability with
- Heal up with
Disengaging if you're getting chased
- About face into for moblity, cleansing and to avoid damage while swapping to Alliance Stance
- away from the fight, without a target
- Use if you can afford it, swap to Kurzick and keep running if they're still on you
- Optional About face once more and use to build more distance while evading attacks
- Optional without a target to build even more distance
- Heal up with
Sustain/Support
- Dodging removes a condition via .
- Regeneration from and Kurzick skills is key, but even dodging heals you so you don't have to worry too much about keeping this buff up. provides passive damage mitigation, you should aim for a permanent uptime. Maintaining
- Resolution, Might, Vigor and Protection from dodging.
- Regeneration from legend swapping and Kurzick skills.
passively grants you barrier every few seconds for each boon you have (up to 5 boons). You don't have to try too hard to achieve that, but do keep an eye on your boons. Easiest ones to maintain are:
- Alliance stance can be defensive on both of its legends, in fact one of the Luxon ones could be better for survival than any of the Kurzick ones: Daze is just long enough to cover an entire cast of . Even if the CC didn't work the skill itself has Stability to protect your casts. You can also extend the Stability with dodges.
- This is quite an expensive skill, but could make all the difference if you're seriously pressured.
- If you can choose between using and to break a stun, Reaver's Rage is usually the better choice.
. The CC is great for taking pressure off you even against multiple opponents and the
- Tip: if you need to cleanse a lot of conditions and you're on Shiro, try to use first. This way you'll potentially get rid of a few non-damaging conditions, increasing the chance of cleansing the damaging ones.
- This is an AoE skill, keep an eye on allies and share it with them if you're roaming in a group.
is your best source of source of mass condition cleansing and acts as a 2nd Kurzick healing skill but with a way shorter cast time than which makes it ideal under pressure.
- Both Shiro and Saint Viktor have tools for evading attacks, these are and . Quite useful when you've got energy to spare but not enough endurance to dodge and you need to avoid attacks.
- Try to share with allies whenever you can.
- 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.
Ratings
It's still strong against high damage, low sustain builds but tanky cele ones can be a struggle. Damage is not what it used to be and losing the Chill on dodge hurts more than expected. Still a very sturdy, beginner friendly build that can stand its ground in just about any matchup, but it's not as faceroll as it used to be, and it's worth swapping to some harder builds that have more damage once you're more familiar with Revenant.
After playing this for about a week and going up against some stiff builds, I can say this build is pretty amazing. With the flexibility of dual Alliance for both DPS and self healing and the benefit of Impossible Odds for higher damage output, Retribution Vindi is so good for survivability. The roaming Willbender is a heavy hitter and really annoying to combat, but with proper mitigation of damage and dodging at the right times, you can easily take them down and survive their onslaught. Highly recommend in the current meta!
Comments
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