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 February 15, 2023 and is up to date for the March 19, 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.


Template Code

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Specializations


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 Vigor and while providing some extra healing. These healing procs also ensure effortless 100% uptime on , but so does Regeneration 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 .


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.
  • 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

  • is a skill with life steal, which means the damage it deals bypasses any damage mitigation including Protection 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.
  • 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 (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.
  • is great for initiating fights from range and immediately starting off with Quickness Quickness coupled with unblockable attacks. Quickness 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.
  • 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 .
  • 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 Immobilize Immobilize. Try to get some Quickness Quickness for this combo, makes it harder to avoid.
  • 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 and . 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 .
    • 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.
    • is a really cheap source of Quickness Quickness too, you could use this to set up bursts or cleave downed enemies with autoattack spam.
  • does a lot of damage on a very short CD, if your heavy hitter weapon 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

  • Dodging removes a condition via .
  • provides passive damage mitigation, you should aim for a permanent uptime. Maintaining Regeneration 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.
  • 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: . The CC is great for taking pressure off you even against multiple opponents and the Daze Daze is just long enough to cover an entire cast of . Even if the CC didn't work the skill itself has Stability 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.
  • is your best source of source of mass condition cleansing and if you manage to cleanse enough conditions this heals about the same amount as , but with a way shorter cast time.
    • 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.
  • 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

This build has a rating of 5 stars based on 2 votes.
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4 stars
Hanz gave this build 4 stars • August 2023
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.
5 stars
Kanok gave this build 5 stars • April 2023
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!

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