Carry Vindicta by Suzu

17300

This Vindicta build focuses on a hybrid damage profile, with both quick burst and sustained damage, It’s simple in theory but offers a high skill ceiling and strong potential in almost any team composition and game state.

High-Velocity Rounds now upgrades into Opening Rounds, which makes it perfect for poking down full-health targets so you can eventually bring them into execution range for your Assassinate, the burst damage early on can catch enemies off guard.

Extra Charge and especially Rapid Recharge are a decent spike, you have several attempts at executing your enemies with Assassinate and the lower recharge time means you are always a threat.

Swift Striker and Long Range gives you your gun damage spike to fill the lack of damage outside your Assassinate windows.

Optional Early Game:

Fleetfoot is a pretty nice item that gives you more mobility and will help with Spellslinger later on, if you buy this, you can skip Enduring Speed and buy Enchanter's Emblem instead or another green item later.

Healing Rite is a good option if you are getting poked out of lane too hard and having a hard time, dying is always worse than purchasing green items.

Grit is a good item against burst laners, it can upgrade into Reactive Barrier later which is also a pretty decent item.

While in Flight, Vindicta becomes a major threat in any skirmish. Vindicta is capable of dominating with mostly raw damage in current patches, Stake and Crow Familiar are still great and are very important regardless of build path. Use them and immediately start shooting to bring the enemy as low as possible before finishing them off with Assassinate. In longer fights don’t forget to keep reactivating your abilities as they come back out of cooldown.

Please keep in mind you are very squishy and you need to hit your 4.8k soul investment bonus on Vitality items. Each time you reach a certain threshold on souls spent on each category, you get a bonus of that stat, but the specific bonus for 4800 souls is considerably higher so we aim to hit that. You can check your progress by hovering the colored bars on the bottom left of your screen, usual picks are Counterspell and Enduring Speed.

Your Assassinate is also a big source of damage before your big item spikes, do not be afraid to use it on targets not in execute range, being capped on charges is never a good thing.

Try to join every fight that looks even slightly favorable, Enduring Speed really helps with that, Vindicta can snowball a lot early on, and have huge impact compared to characters who are still farming and haven’t reached their power spikes yet. Use Flight to have privileged positioning and angles.

Burst Fire is very good for your early damage, this item makes your DPS for the duration of Stake decently higher, your sustained damage will lack but you have a window of decent burst damage with the buff + Assassinate.

Spellslinger is your best item, as you use your abilities, you build up to gain Fire Rate and Reload Speed, you can stack this even faster if you use active items, making Fleetfoot a strong contender for mobility instead of Enduring Speed if you can delay your vitality items a bit. Keep in mind that a 0% charge Assassinate still gives you a stack, so don't be afraid to use that to your advantage.

Once your core damage is online, Leech is the absolute best item to round out your build even if you’re already dominating. It guarantees great sustain allowing you to endure any situation, especially when combined with Counterspell, Reactive Barrier or Indomitable, you gain the survivability needed to kill multiple targets by yourself.

After that, you have multiple options and the choice can sometimes come down to game state and your own experiences, a few examples are:

Crippling Headshot gives you even more shred, if no one on your team has bought it, it's not a bad pick as it is a decent DPS increase and you only need to land a single headshot to activate it.

Lucky Shot is usually a "win more" item, it's really good if the enemies have bought no Bullet Resistance and you have a lot of Assassinate stacks.

Armor Piercer counters Plated Armor, which enemies will frequently buy if you are the person dominating the match.

Dispel Magic, Indomitable and Unstoppable are good defensive options, depending on the state of the game and the enemy heroes Indomitable upgrades from Reactive Barrier and is usually a good item to prevent you from getting blown up while in the sky. Unstoppable is also a good contender for that slot if you’re confident in using it, it can prevent Lightning Scroll from stunning you and can save you from Death Slam and similar abilities.

Warp Stone is great for repositioning for better angles to shoot, and to escape when being targeted (and also gives a Spellslinger stack!)

Alchemical Fire and Heroic Aura and underrated items that can really help your team for clumped fights, which are really important in the current patch, you can go for those if you feel like you're falling behind and won't be able to carry by yourself.