Vindicator - Retribution Greatsword Roamer

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

Focused on: Direct damage and Sustain

Designed for: WvW Roaming

Difficulty:

TBD

This build was last updated on October 19, 2022 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 patch.

Overview

A 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.

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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

Consumables

Food

• - pushes you to 100% increased endurance regen when combined with Vigor and Enduring Recovery while providing some extra healing. These healing procs also ensure effortless 100% uptime on Unyielding Devotion, but so does Regeneration so it's not mandatory.

• - 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.
  • - cheaper version, even this is enough to reach the endurance cap, but you'll get less Might stacks.

• - 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 some synergy with Vassals of the Empire.

Utility

• or , whichever is cheaper.

Usage

General

• Invoking a legend resets energy to 50 and could even proc the sigils of your current weapon set. Swapping legends is basically the main resource management tool in the build - swap whenever you're out of CDs or low on energy. 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 Tatics (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.

• 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

• Greatsword is the set you'll be using to pressure targets, but it does have some defensive capabilities too.

• 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.

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

• Archemorus adds a bit of reach to an otherwise very melee focused build with Spear of Archemorus and Scavenger Burst. 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.
  • Swapping legends doesn't cancel Spear of Archemorus.
  • These skills have value in any fight not just in ranged scenarios. When your offensive weapon skills are on CD these will help you keep the target pressured.

Ranged burst combo example:

1. Enchanted Daggers
2. Phase Traversal
3. Impossible Odds
4. Mist Unleashed

Sustain/Support

• Staff is the defensive set in the build, offering ways to avoid damage via Surge of the Mists and Warding Rift or AoE cleanse conditions through Renewing Wave.

• While Archemorus is an offensive legend with plenty of damage, most of the time you'll be swapping to Legendary Alliance Stance because either you or an ally is under pressure and you need Saint Viktor's help. In teamfights you're more than just a damage dealer, keep an eye on allies too as you have some tools for helping them.

• Tree Song is an excellent source of AoE condition cleansing, something the build otherwise desperately lacks. Your best way of dealing with conditions is not getting hit by them, luckily the build has plenty of block/evade frames.
  • 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.

• Both Shiro and Saint Viktor have tools for evading attacks, these are Riposting Shadows and Battle Dance. With only 1 dodge bar these will come in handy, along with the block from Imperial Guard.