Herald - Shiro Roamer

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

Focused on: Strike damage and Mobility

Designed for: WvW Roaming

Difficulty:
Hard
This build was last updated on October 06, 2023 and is up to date for the March 19, 2024 patch.

Overview

A Power based Herald build for WvW Roaming with exceptional burst damage and mobility. While the build has plenty of active defenses in the form on block and evade frames, its passive sustain and condition cleansing are rather low, which makes this build not very beginner friendly.


Skill Bar

Sword/Sword
Staff
Utility
Utility


Template Code

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Specializations

Variants

  • - pushes you near the crit cap which should yield higher damage but it does give up some utility value with the loss of things like Quickness Quickness access, and even results in lower self-healing due to the loss of synergy from Call of the Assassin.


Equipment

Head
Marauder
Shoulders
Marauder
Chest
Marauder
Hands
Marauder
Legs
Marauder
Feet
Marauder
Backpiece
Berserker
Accessory
Berserker
Accessory
Berserker
Amulet
Berserker
Ring
Berserker
Ring
Berserker
Sword
Marauder
Sword
Marauder
Sigil
Sigil
Staff
Marauder
Sigil
Sigil
Rune
x6
Infusion
x18
Relic


Equipment Variants

Runes

  • - keeps most of the boon duration but trades the defensive stats for purely offensive ones.
  • - same boon duration as Surging but increases your defensive stats instead.
  • - raw burst damage.


Relics

  • - provides less frequent cleansing than Antitoxin, but removes more conditions in one go (and even converts them into boons).
  • - higher damage if you're really confident that you can get by with a very low amount of condition cleansing.


Consumables

Food

  • - great offensive stats and some direct damage mitigation.
    • - a bit more defensive but equally viable option.
  • - highest damage option, no damage mitigation but the life steal procs still provide some sustain.
  • - this food provides some defense against condition damage without sacrificing damage.
  • - active damage mitigation via more frequent access to dodging, and the Might Might generation has synergy with various traits.
    • Budget version:
  • or - cheap precision bump and armor ignoring damage procs that also heal you.


Utility

  • or .


Usage

General

  • Invoking a legend resets energy to 50, breaks stun, 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/break stun.
  • In combat don't try to maintain your Glint upkeeps for too long, in most cases they shouldn't stay up for more than 3 seconds. Activating Facet of Elements and Strength only to immediately follow up with using and is a perfectly fine thing to do - these are also some of your best AoE skills.
  • can be used to knock downed opponents away from their teammates who are trying to revive them.
  • Both elite skills have obvious tells and are easy to dodge, stow weapons to cancel casting if they're about to be evaded/blinded - this will save all the energy cost and only send the skill on a cd of 5 seconds. The same qualities make these skills perfect for fake casting by stowing weapons immediately after beginning the cast, baiting enemy dodges/blocks.
    • is a cheap stun breaker and one of the few skills in the game that can reveal stealthed targets.
    • The Blind Blind from Gaze can be used to avoid powerful attacks without wasting dodges, and can help you stomp warriors/revenants/engineers/rangers by blinding their downed CC. Even mesmers can be stomped with a little luck because of the AoE reveal.
    • If you're Blind Blinded while channeling you can use at the last moment before the skill finishes its animation - in this case Gaze of Darkness will miss instead of your elite.
  • Movement speed is capped at 33% while out of combat, making Swiftness Swiftness just as strong as Superspeed Superspeed. During combat however can be used for boosting your mobility, which is also useful for disengaging.
  • 's active chain skill is best used while on Shiro as a source of ranged poking/AoE cleave.


Dealing damage

  • Playstyle:
    • Herald no longer has the sustain it once had, and staying in melee range without active blocks or evasion could quickly overwhelm it. Although generally perceived as a melee build, there are quite a few ranged skills that will play an important part. The build's geared towards massive burst damage and utilizes hit-and-run tactics.
    • Use skills like , , Shiro's or to poke from a safe distance if going into melee would be too dangerous.
    • Create openings where you can pressure targets uninterrupted by utilizing your CC skills such as or . Make every moment count by capitalizing on the setup with tools like Quickness Quickness, and to further increase the damage of your followup burst.
  • will serve as the primary burst skill in the build.
  • works best in 1v1s, where the damage isn't split. In team fights it's mainly used for the evasion.
    • Note: If you're facing an opponent with access to Stealth Stealth, land Facet of Darkness' chain skill on them to apply Revealed Revealed, as stealth cancels Unrelenting Assault.
  • 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.
    • 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.
  • is great for initiating fights from range and immediately starting off with Quickness 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 if you wish to interrupt them (and to cancel their blocking skill).
  • 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 .
  • won't be used much because it blows pretty much your entire 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.


Burst combo examples

  • From range: any of your other skills on the weapon set, or swap to staff for a CC (skill 5).
  • Melee: (optional step) swap legends and use


Self sustain & how to deal with conditions

  • 's chain effect is your jail free card - makes you immortal for the duration by converting all incoming damage into healing. It's also by far your best tool for dealing with condition spikes. Some players may stop pressuring you once Face of Light's been activated, in this case you should just wait a couple of seconds before using Infuse Light. Make sure you get at least 10k healing out of this skill, try to predict when burst is coming and use Facet of Light in advance - FoL has a cast time thus cannot be used while stunned, but Infuse is instant.
  • Revenant doesn't have any mass cleanses, instead it's the proper chaining of smaller removals that's going to do the trick:
    • The highest possible number of conditions that can be removed in one combo is 8 under normal circumstances (9 if we count Blindness, which you should attempt to remove before starting the chain, and potentially 10 when is not on CD).
    • Ideally start with to get rid of all snares and hard-CC such as Fear and Taunt. This skill alone could remove 4 different non-damaging conditions thus increasing the chance of cleansing the more important, damaging ones with other skills. The evade frame of the skills also ensures that you won't be inflicted with new conditions.
    • Swapping to staff removes a condition thanks to and swapping legends can remove another one via the trait , bringing the total count to 6. If you were already on Staff it's still possible to proc the cleansing sigil with a legend swap, as explained earlier.
    • Finish the chain with .
    • After this you should be safe, but you've also exhausted your kit so play defensively for a while in order to avoid getting hit with new conditions by chaining blocks/evasions, or just staying at a safe distance for a couple of seconds.
  • If taken The best way to proc is to activate , which is a cheap instant skill. You don't even need to use the second part of the chain to get the effect to proc, although you may still want to do that in order to get rid of the energy draining (in case you can't just legend swap out of it in due time).
  • The combination of Staff and Shiro gives the revenant amazing tools for disengaging/stalling. gives 15 endurance whilst also evading and removing every hard-CC / snare from the player. In addition to that Staff has a short CD block/evasion in form of and .
  • Safest way to benefit from when you need it for the healing is to use skills with evasion/blocking that also deal damage, such as Warding Rift, Surge of the Mists, or Unrelenting Assault.


Related Builds

Power Shiro (sPvP) - Conquest PvP version.


Ratings

This build has a rating of 5 stars based on 3 votes.
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5 stars
Hanz gave this build 5 stars • August 2022
One of the highest damage roaming builds out there, and while it's relatively hard to play to its full potential it's definitely worth mastering. Passive sustain is low and there are not a lot of ways to recover from taking damage, but the build has every tool you need to avoid damage if you play it safe, plus sometimes the best defense is a good offense.
5 stars
Idolin gave this build 5 stars • May 2021
A solid build that can deal with almost all power builds due to very strong (arguably almost broken) burst damage, strong engage, good disengage (in WvW where you have ambient creatures, NPCs or walls to teleport to), good evade and okay-ish sustain, and even boon stripping in Shiro to remove dangerous boons like Quickness, Stability or Protection. The key is to kite, bait dodges and hit your burst at the right time - a well-timed Shackling Wave alone can be really devastating. It however has both high skill floor and skill ceiling and requires quite a bit of practice and knowledge about the build as well as other classes, but undoubtedly very strong in the right hand. 2021 Update: Still viable. I don't find condi to be a big problem anymore, but the nerf to Incensed Response hurt damage pretty bad. Good burst damage but not good enough for outnumbered situations like it once was.
5 stars
Dekong gave this build 5 stars • June 2018
Suffers from the same problem it always has, Condi Pressure. But played well, it's a very strong roamer with evades/Teleports/High Damage burst/ clutch heal. High skill ceiling, it requires alot of practice and knowledge about the class and its traits.

Comments

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