Vindicator - Greatsword Shiro

Part of the current metagame

Our curator decided this build is in the current metagame regardless of rating. The community gave this build a rating, making it top-tier: Great

Focused on: Direct damage and Sustain

Designed for: PvP Conquest

Difficulty:

TBD

This build was last updated on January 19, 2023 and is up to date for the March 19, 2024 patch.

Overview

A PvP Vindicator power build with high damage, sustain and group utility, making it suitable for anything from 1v1s to teamfights.

Skill Bar

Greatsword

Staff

Utility

Utility

Template Code

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Specializations

Variants

• Forerunner of Death is also a viable choice but a less popular one. With this you gain a significant damage increase at the cost of reduced sustain and utility.

Equipment

Greatsword

Sigil

Sigil

Staff

Sigil

Sigil

Rune

Amulet

Runes

• Rune of Dolyak - the 6th bonus counts as healing for Unyielding Devotion, securing a permanent uptime of 10% damage reduction for no effort. It's also a very tanky rune in general in case you want to focus more on the bunker aspect of the build.

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 Tatics (F3 by default).

• The build works just fine from 1v1s to teamfights.

• Spam Nomad's Advance for mobility while roaming between capture points. Alternatively if you're on Shiro Turn turn Impossible Odds on and off every 5 seconds in order to maintain permanent Swiftness through Rapid Flow.

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 faster Staff autoattacks in case you're on your defensive set but need to pressure someone.

• 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. 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.

• Archemorus helps with giving you some extra damage once your weapon CDs have been used up and 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 or if you need a bit of extra damage. 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.

• 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.

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.

• Dodging removes a condition via Eluding Nullification.

• Unyielding Devotion provides passive damage mitigation, you should aim for a permanent uptime. Rapid Flow is a big help here, taking care of 40% uptime on its own (assuming you proc it every 5 seconds). Impossible Odds is a great instant trigger for Rapid Flow even if you get caught in a stun. Another huge help is Regeneration from Balance in Discord.
  • If you're running Rune of Dolyak you don't have to pay any attention to maintaining this buff, the 6th bonus takes care of it.

• 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 and try to keep them capped. Easiest ones to maintain are:
  • Swiftness from Rapid Flow.
  • Might from dodging. You get Protection from the same source too but it has a very short duration, whether you'll have it at the right time or not comes down to luck.
  • Fury from various Invocation passives.
  • Regeneration from legend swapping and Kurzick skills.
  • For the 5th you'll have to work a little and get it from much more limited or expensive sources, but several key skills grant boons so usually you'll have more than 4 boons.

• Alliance stance can be defensive on both of its legends, in fact one of the Luxon ones could be better for survivial 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.
  • 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. Proccing Sigil of Escape also works.
  • This is an AoE skill, keep an eye on allies and share it with them if you can.

• 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.