Vindicator - GS/Shortbow Vindicator Roamer

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

Focused on: Strike damage, Hybrid damage, Mobility and Sustain

Designed for: WvW Roaming

Expansions required:

Difficulty:

Normal

This build was last updated on January 12, 2024 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 patch.

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.

Skill Bar

Greatsword

Shortbow

Utility

Utility

Template Code

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Specializations

Variants

All 3 options are viable for the last slot of Invocation:

• Song of the Mists improves Quickness uptime.
• Charged Mists allows you to spend more energy each legend swap cycle, giving you more of everything.
• Roiling Mists 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 Sigil of Superior Sigil of Vision 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:

• Rune of Superior Rune of Durability - good defensive rune with boon duration.

• Rune of Superior Rune of the Pack - 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 Roiling Mists, so you should swap out a ring for one that has Dragon stats.

Relics

Relic of Evasion 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:

• Relic of Isgarren - better burst damage.

• Relic of the Daredevil - improves the consistency of some of your harder hitting skills on Greatsword. Has some anti-synergy with Roiling Mists but works well with other Invocation GM traits.

• Relic of Speed - 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 Sigil of Superior Sigil of Vision when NOT playing with Roiling Mists on Invocation. Making Sevenshot 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 Unyielding Devotion.

• - 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.

• Rapid Flow allows for easy permanent Swiftness uptime.

• Dodging removes 1 condition via Eluding Nullification. 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, Rapid Flow and the Holo cake consumables could help with that.

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.

Weapons and damage

• Mist Unleashed and Eternity's Requiem 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.

• Scavenger Burst and Spear of Archemorus 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 Spear of Archemorus.
  • Scavenger Burst 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.

• Nomad's Advance 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.

• Sevenshot and Bloodbane Path are your primary burst CDs on bow. 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.
  • 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.

Sustain

• Greatsword is the more defensive of the 2 sets.

• 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).

• The Kurzick (blue) side of Legendary Alliance Stance is your defensive legend, atlhough both the Luxon side and Shiro have some great defensive skills too.

• Tree Song 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: Battle Dance on alliance stance and Riposting Shadows 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 Reaver's Rage 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 Selfish Spirit and Selfless Spirit back-to-back, especially after Reaver's Rage for Stability.

• Urn of Saint Viktor 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.