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The Vindicator Explained
The Best Traits For The Vindicator Open-World Build
The Best Gear For The Open-World Vindicator Build
Are you looking for the best open-world build for your Vindicator Revenant in Guild Wars 2? Then you've come to the right place, let us show you how to take your mist-forged fighter and turn him into an open-world wrecking ball.
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The Vindicator is a strong power DPS option for the Revenant, similarly to the Thief's Daredevil elite specialization, the Vindicator turns their dodge mechanic into a heavy damage dealing tool. The Vindicator is quite simple to play, so if you're after a build where you can just run around causing utter mayhem on the map, this is the build for you.
The Vindicator Explained
The Vindicator works similarly to the core Revenant, but you also have the option to channel a new Legend called the Legendary Alliance Stance. This refers to the two legendary faction heroes of Saint Viktor and Archemorus. Revenant is different from other professions in that they cannot freely choose which utility skills they want, they have to use the skills that come with the Legend they are channeling.
Saint Viktor And Archemorus And Greatswords
Revenants have Legends for every kind of role; some are focused on healing, others on survivability and damage. The Vindicator combines two into one — Archemorus is more focused on dealing more damage, as his skills focus on boosting your damage and granting you swiftness and stability to get back into the action.
Saint Viktor is more focused on support — his utility skills focus on healing and buffing any allies around you, and he can also break their stuns and provide friendly targets with protection. You can freely swap between these legends by using your Alliance Tactics skill (usually bound to F3).
The Vindicator also adds a couple of extra things to the Revenant profession, you get to use greatswords, which is a heavy-hitting power damage weapon, plus their dodge becomes an offensive tool, capable of hitting for large amounts when you land on enemies.
While this dodge can trample weaker mobs in the open world, it does mean you sacrifice some defensive utility for extra damage.
The Best Traits For The Vindicator Open-World Build
For the Vindicator Traits, we'll be using the following — Devastation, Invocation, and the Vindicator traits. The picture above shows you what you should pick for excellent open-world performance. We're going to go into the details of the traits below to explain why they work together.
Invocation
In Invocation, we'll be taking the following traits: Rising Tide, Rapid Flow, and Roiling Mists. These traits give you extra survivability and massively boost your damage output.
- Rising Tide - gives you seven percent extra strike damage while above 90 percent health. This will be up very often, especially in easier content
- Rapid Flow - whenever you use a skill that costs energy you'll heal yourself and gain swiftness, this is a very easy source of swiftness and the healing is a nice bump
- Roiling Mists - Increases the effectiveness of fury by 100 percent (this means that fury gives you an extra 40 percent extra chance to crit instead of 20)
This is what you get for putting points into Invocation:
- Gain fury when you invoke a Legend in combat
- An extra seven percent damage when you have fury
- Gain fury when you disable a foe
Just in case — fury is a boon in Guild Wars 2 that grants you extra critical hit chance; it's great in most builds, but it especially works well with power builds.
Devastation
In Invocation, we'll be taking the following skills: Unsuspecting Strikes, Thrill of Combat, and Dance of Death. These traits will buff our base damage and give us access to some nice sustain.
- Unsuspecting Strikes - you deal 20 percent extra strike damage to foes above 10 percent health
- Thrill of Combat - you gain one stack of Battle Scars every second in combat
- Dance of Death - when you apply vulnerability to your enemies you gain a stack of Battle Scars
Here's what you unlock for putting points in Devastation:
- The first attack you make when in combat puts five stacks of vulnerability on the enemy and then gives you stacks of Battle Scars
- Increase your damage by an extra five percent
- You deal extra to an enemy depending upon how many stacks of vulnerability they currently have (up to a maximum of 12 and a half percent)
Vindicator
Vindicator is the backbone of the build, it gives you access to the Legendary Alliance abilities, the greatsword weapon skills, and the damage-dealing dodge. You'll be selecting the following traits, Leviathan Strength, Song of Arboreum, and Forerunner of Death.
- Leviathan Strength - a flat ten percent increase to damage when your endurance bar isn't full
- Song of Arboreum - gain yourself vigor (a boon that increases dodge energy regeneration) after dodging
- Forerunner of Death - dodging deals 15 percent more damage but affects a smaller area
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Use your dodge on the hordes of weak enemies in the open world, which allows you to obliterate enemies from the air and is a very satisfying gameplay experience.
These are the passives you get as a result of investing in Vindicator:
- Your dodge becomes a hard-hitting attack, but you only have one dodge at a time (instead of the usual two)
- Gain health and the regeneration boon when you swap your active Legend
- Gain extra 240 power when you're above 50 percent health or gain 240 healing power when below 50 percent health
The Best Gear For The Open-World Vindicator Build
You'll be using Berserker's stats in every weapon and armor slot — nice and simple, this build is all about hitting as hard as you can. However, you could always opt for gear with extra Vitality or Toughness (Marauder's gear can also be great in this build as it gives tons of extra health, allowing you to be a bit more reckless).
Weaponry Of Choice
You'll be using the greatsword as your primary weapon, the staff acts as a very strong secondary weapon - giving you access to more utility and support options.
Runes And Sigils
For your runes, you can use either Scholar or Fireworks (fireworks can be good for open-world, but the scholar runes are overall a bit more damage).
For your sigils, you'll want Force and Impact - these squeeze even more damage out of the build. If you want more sustain you can substitute Impact for sigil for Blood.
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