Admiral Valerius vs Retaliation Build

I just beat the pirate boss using retaliation skills as my main damage source. Was my 3rd fight with him: first was a totem-based ranger who spent a long time safely taking him down; second was a very fast defeat by this retaliation build in the first phase. I've just started hitting red maps, my gear is passable for earlier maps but I didn't have time to really get ready for a lv 84 boss fight.

The key observation was that Valerius swings differently for what appears to be auto-attacks. The arm-only swing and when he steps back to put his body weight behind a bigger swing with a vocal grunt. The former can be tanked with mediocre armour. The latter needs a guard skill up. Once you know this, his animation (body posture) becomes a subtle reading game. His backstepping is good mind gaming: waste a guard skill to a feint and that adds seconds to the clear time.

I'm divided on whether the heavy swings are telegraphed enough. PoE boss melee has thus far relied on huge flashy effects and generously telegraphing voice lines to convey "this is a big attack". I do like having the player read more subtle cues. It'd definitely fit into PoE 2. I'm not sure if it fits into PoE 1. Then again, this IS the league of melee rework and retaliation skills make it ever more important to pay attention to boss melee animations.