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

Expansions required:

Difficulty:

Easy

This build was last updated on July 09, 2024 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 patch.

Overview

A Power Vindicator for WvW Roaming focusing on high survivability with medium damage.

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.

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Equipment

Head
Marauder

Shoulders
Marauder

Chest
Marauder

Hands
Marauder

Legs
Marauder

Feet
Marauder

Backpiece
Marauder

Accessory
Diviner

Accessory
Diviner

Amulet
Diviner

Ring
Diviner

Ring
Diviner

Greatsword
Marauder

Sigil

Sigil

Sword
Marauder

Sword
Marauder

Sigil

Sigil

Rune
x6

Infusion
x18

Relic

Consumables

Food

• - pushes you near the endurance regen cap when combined with Vigor and Enduring Recovery while providing some extra healing. These healing procs also ensure effortless 100% uptime on Unyielding Devotion.

• - 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 Song of the Mists, 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.

• 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 Tactics (F3 by default).

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.
  • Most Greatsword skills are rather slow, you only really want to use this for Eternity's Requiem (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.

• 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

• 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. Imperial Guard hits particularly hard once it's charged up.

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

• Unrelenting Assault 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 Enchanted Daggers and Impossible Odds.

• Shackling Wave and Deathstrike 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 Immobilize. Try to get some Quickness for this combo, makes it harder to avoid.

• Archemorus in a way acts as your second offensive set in case your GS skills are on CD or you need better range.

• Scavenger Burst and Spear of Archemorus 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.
  • 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 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

1. Enchanted Daggers
2. Eternity's Requiem
3. Impossible Odds - activate this right before Eternity's Reqiem starts dealing damage and maintain it for the rest of the chain
4. Dodge while ER's doing damage, land on top of your enemy
5. Mist Unleashed

Defensive/counterpressure combo

1. Block attacks with Imperial Guard
2. Dodge
3. Hit them with True Strike (Vindicator) (IG's chain skill)
4. CC them and gain Stability with Reaver's Rage
5. Heal up with Selfish Spirit

Disengaging if you're getting chased

1. About face into Riposting Shadows for moblity, cleansing and to avoid damage while swapping to Alliance Stance
2. Nomad's Advance away from the fight, without a target
3. Use Selfish Spirit if you can afford it, swap to Kurzick and keep running if they're still on you
4. Optional About face once more and use Battle Dance to build more distance while evading attacks
5. Optional Phantom's Onslaught without a target to build even more distance
6. Heal up with Selfless Spirit

Sustain/Support

• Dodging removes a condition via Eluding Nullification.

• Unyielding Devotion provides passive damage mitigation, you should aim for a permanent uptime. Maintaining Regeneration from Balance in Discord and Kurzick skills is key, but even dodging heals you so you don't have to worry too much about keeping this buff up.

• Resilient Spirit 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:
  • Resolution, Might, Vigor and Protection from dodging.
  • Regeneration from legend swapping and Kurzick skills.

• 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: Reaver's Rage. The CC is great for taking pressure off you even against multiple opponents and the Daze is just long enough to cover an entire cast of Selfish Spirit. 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 Reaver's Rage and Awakening to break a stun, Reaver's Rage is usually the better choice.

• Tree Song 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 Selfless Spirit which makes it ideal under pressure.
  • 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.
  • This is an AoE skill, keep an eye on allies and share it with them if you're roaming in a group.

• Both Shiro and Saint Viktor have tools for evading attacks, these are Riposting Shadows and Battle Dance. Quite useful when you've got energy to spare but not enough endurance to dodge and you need to avoid attacks.

• Try to share Selfless Spirit with allies whenever you can.

• 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.

Related Builds

• Vindicator - Greatsword Shiro - closest PvP counterpart of this WvW build.