Vindicator - Retribution Greatsword Roamer

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

Food

• 全息超级蛋糕 - pushes you near the endurance regen cap when combined with 活力 and 耐力恢复 while providing some extra healing. These healing procs also ensure effortless 100% uptime on 不屈奉献.

• 碗装欧尔松露鲜肉煲 - 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.

  • 碗装鲜肉冬菜煲 - cheaper version.

• 黑胡椒粉真空烹调肉排 - 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

• 强效超级磨刀石 or 罐装水果蛋糕, whichever is cheaper (note that the sharpening stone lasts twice as long).

• Budget: 紧密硬质磨刀石 either from Canned Food Crates found in WvW 突袭宝箱s or purchased from the Permanent Portable Provisioner.

General

• Invoking a legend resets energy to 50, removes 1 condition, procs 迷雾之歌, 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.

• 传奇同盟 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

• 附魔匕首 is a skill with life steal, which means the damage it deals bypasses any damage mitigation including 保护 or even 痛苦忍耐. That being said it still can't go through evasion or invulnerabilities such as 失真. It's not a great healing skill, so most of the time it'll be used to boost your burst damage.

• 压倒优势 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 永恒挽歌 (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.

• 位面穿行 is great for initiating fights from range and immediately starting off with 急速 coupled with unblockable attacks. 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 . Try to get some 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.

• and 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 .
  • applies which makes it a great setup skill for GS burst combos or it could speed up your attacks when you need downed cleave.

• 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

3. - 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

Defensive/counterpressure combo

1. Block attacks with
2. Dodge
3. Hit them with (IG's chain skill)
4. CC them and gain with
5. Heal up with

Disengaging if you're getting chased

1. About face into for moblity, cleansing and to avoid damage while swapping to Alliance Stance
2. away from the fight, without a target
3. Use 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 to build more distance while evading attacks
5. Optional without a target to build even more distance
6. Heal up with

Sustain/Support

• Dodging removes a condition via .

• provides passive damage mitigation, you should aim for a permanent uptime. Maintaining 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:

  • , , and from dodging.
  • 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: . The CC is great for taking pressure off you even against multiple opponents and the is just long enough to cover an entire cast of . Even if the CC didn't work the skill itself has 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 acts as a 2nd Kurzick healing skill but with a way shorter cast time than which makes it ideal under pressure.

  • 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.