Power Vindicator

March 2024

Vindicator’s Invocation variant is the go-to Revenant damage build. It’s a conventional roamer and can easily outnumber fights and also enjoys being in team-fights. It uses full DPS trait lines for maximum burst but less sustain.

Introduction

Your goal is to generate as many kills as possible. You want to be where the action is and burst vulnerable targets with your team.
With Vindicator, your dodge now deals significant damage and gives you a damage increase via Forerunner of Death.
You also get access to excellent sustain skills in Legendary Alliance Stance, such as Tree Song Selfless Spirit and Selfish Spirit.
This means you have quite a lot of damage uptime and resustainability. Use it to stick to keep the pressure up on key targets.
Your mobile nature allows you to get to a side node to outnumber a 1v1 if needed.

Quick Tips

• Refer to the “Rotation” segment for an opener and other useful combos.
• Utilize kiting effectively to avoid being teleported on to when vulnerable.
• Your best defence is offense – look for an opening to turn on your aggressors.
• The importance of Impossible Odds cannot be overstated. Make sure you utilize it in your bursts.
• Manage your cleanses carefully. Dodge highly dangerous condition attacks.
• Don’t miss your hard-hitting skills.
• Utilize Stow Weapon to cancel telegraphed skills and bait defensives.
• Trigger Balance in Discord as often as possible by Legend swapping or using Alliance Tactics.

Dealing Damage

Before bursting mostly but also throughout fights, we want to make sure we maintain Forerunner of Death and Leviathan Strength for massive damage increase.

Legendary Assassin Stance offers reliable Quickness through Phase Traversal and legend swap with Song of the Mists, extra damage through Impossible Odds , and our best gapcloser – Phase Traversal, but its skills are also very costly.
Therefore, it’s the stance in which we would most often want to burst and start a fight with. The general opener idea can be found in the Rotation segment.
What’s important to understand about the opener is applying our damage mods as well as Enchanted Daggers, which should be enough damage and resustain to always force the opponent to go defensive. The importance of Impossible Odds cannot be overstated. It brings your burst to its full potential.
Note: Shiro burst is notoriously telegraphed, and you can expect a skilled opponent to dodge if they see the animation. Teleporting from behind a wall is preferred for this reason. Then again, also keep in mind to not throw too many skills into a dodging opponent as to not run out of damage.

For followup, Legendary Alliance Stance offers devastating hardhitters like Nomad's Advance and Spear of Archemorus. Scavenger Burst is also a decent hit from range, providing you extra Quickness.
Swift Termination should help you finish off low enemies. Don’t let off the pressure a low target unless you have to.

Your auto-attacks on both weapons hit very hard and is a very good filler for when you need to save energy or wait for cooldowns.

Again, do not forget about Impossible Odds. it can be deadly in combination with Eternity's Requiem, and a substantial damage boost while you have Quickness in general. Always try to use Impossible Odds mid-cast to avoid spending energy you don’t have to.

When swapping to Hammer, or swapping legends with Hammer, you’ll get guaranteed 3 critical hits with Sigil of Intelligence. Try to spend them on Coalescence of Ruin, Phase Smash and Forerunner of Death in that order.

Lastly, your mobility skills (detailed in the following section) will provide you Resistance via Aggressive Agility, which lets you ignore Blinded, Weakness and even Fear. Make sure you utilize this to put extra pressure against classes that rely on these effects to survive.

Mobility

Vindicator has excellent proactive mobility through permanent Swiftness via Rapid Flow, as well as its many leaps, dashes and rolls like Phantom's Onslaught, Nomad's Advance, Battle Dance, Riposting Shadows, allowing it to rotate even faster than most pure roamers do.  Additionally, Legendary Assassin Stance offers Phase Traversal, further increasing Vindicator’s catchup potential and giving the important advantage of ignoring terrain by teleporting through it – as long as there’s a target available.

Every one of the aforementioned skills also grants you Resistance via Aggressive Agility, which makes you very hard to pin down, as you can ignore Chilled, Crippled and Immobilize.

The most important mechanics to master Vindicators mobility therefore are the “About face”, turning your character in a 180° angle so defensive rolls like Battle Dance and Riposting Shadows become additional mobility, as well as the “Take target” keybind to utilize Phase Traversal to its full potential. Additionally, Weapon Swap the aftercast of Nomad's Advance to cancel the strike animation and slow is also a neat trick to become ever so slightly faster.

Further, you have Impossible Odds which increases your movement speed significantly and stacks with Swiftness. If you’re in Legendary Assassin Stance with not much energy and you need to disengage or close in, pop Impossible Odds to be hard to catch. Urn of Saint Viktor and immediately dropping it can be used the same way and also grants you a 50% damage reduction, but your incoming healing is reduced to 0, so watch out to not cancel out your support’s efforts.

Lastly, do not hesitate to use Nomad's Advance or Phantom's Onslaught (without a target) to run away from an unfavorable fight. They can be used to create distance in the same way they can close it, use it to your advantage.

Sustain & Healing

Like any revenant build, it’s important to plan out enough energy to be able to Stun Break in the near future in case you get jumped. Be mindful to always be near the next Legend Swap or enough energy to use Riposting Shadows or Reaver's Rage in time to avoid significant damage. Awakening should be used as a last resort. it provides very little value for its energy cost, and ideally you avoid getting disabled while in Blue Stance.

Given its role as a pure roamer, the build has decent resustain compared to its counterparts through Legendary Alliance Stance’s Selfless Spirit and Selfish Spirit not sharing a cooldown. The build’s damage mitigation is still decent, through means like the enhanced endurance regeneration through Sigil of Energy, Song of the Mists and Energy Meld, as well as its strong blocks and evades such as Imperial Guard, Phase Smash, Battle Dance and Riposting Shadows. We do not have a lot of passive sustain, as this is a very active and aggressive setup. There’s some passive healing to be seen with Thrill of Combat and Rapid Flow. To play this variant effectively, you have to utilize your aforementioned defensive skills, as well as Reaver's Rage to avoid wasting a defensive on a crowd control ability.

In terms of raw healing, while not full health, it’s important to remember to trigger Balance in Discord as often as possible by Legend swapping or using Alliance Tactics. An example large heal will be left in the rotation section.

Urn of Saint Viktor and immediately dropping it grants you a 50% damage reduction and helps you resustain if you have nothing better to do.

Angsiyan's Trust will make Energy Meld free to use and grant you 25 energy which will help you maintain enough energy to stunbreak on demand.

While the build is reasonably durable against conditions in teamfight scenarios, it will struggle in a 1v1 scenario against a good condition build. Your best option is to try to dodge the heavy condition inflicting attacks. Utilize Sigil of Cleansing and Cleansing Channel for managing condition pressure you cannot avoid. At times in which you can’t access Tree Song quickly, be very careful and play safe.

Alternatives

Rune of the Dolyak or Rune of the Fighter are also viable options.
Relic of the Daredevil is a viable option for more reliable long-term damage.
If you have no issue with conditions, and struggle against lockdown, swap Cleansing Channel for Glaring Resolve.