User:Masel/Builds/Willbender
Pistol + Torch Condition Willbender[edit]
Criterion | Rating |
---|---|
Burst Damage | 4/5 |
Sustained Damage | 4/5 |
Utility Options | 4/5 |
Survivability | 3/5 |
Difficulty | 1/5 |
Condition Willbender has a very simple-to-learn rotation and is lots of fun to play in open world. It has good burst damage for a condition build, since it mainly relies on Burning. It has access to a lot of mobility via its Virtues and lots of utility built-in, making it an excellent choice for beginner Guardian players in instanced content and open world PvE. It can provide itself with many essential offensive boons ( Might, Fury, Alacrity and a partial uptime on Quickness) and can share Alacrity with allies very easily.
Link to the DPS Build in the Editor
Playstyle + Skills[edit]
Skill Type | Skills | |||||
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Virtues |
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Pistol + Torch |
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Utility |
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Playstyle[edit]
You can find my most recent rotation showcase here.
Guardians evolve around Virtues and - as the name implies - are excellent support builds for allies. While they are great at supporting allies around them via Aegis, Stability, condition cleanses and other boons, they have relatively low amounts of passive defense for themselves and a low amount of health. On top of that, they have relatively few native mobility options.
Virtues[edit]
- Willbender alter Virtues by making them mobility-based and lowering their cooldowns.
- As a trade-off, the virtues will only provide their passive effects for their duration, like the periodical Burning from Rushing Justice and healing from Flowing Resolve.
- You can have multiple virtues active at the same time!
- On willbender, the virtues will place Willbender Flames on the ground in different shapes, dealing damage and applying Burning when using Searing Pact.
- Rushing Justice should be maintained as much as possible, as it applies Burning every few attacks and is responsible for massive amounts of damage. With Permeating Wrath, it applies to up to five targets and triggers every three attacks. With Alacrity, it will have a cooldown of 8 1/4 seconds, allowing you to keep this up almost 100%. It will apply a Light Aura to you, reducing incoming condition damage by 10% for 4 seconds.
- Flowing Resolve and Crashing Courage are excellent tools for defense and mobility.
- Flowing Resolve will heal you every few attacks and includes an Evade window, so you can use it to dodge incoming attacks. It will also give you Vigor when using Restorative Virtues and Regeneration when using Virtues. It will further cleanse Chilled, Immobile and Crippled, which is a great side-effect for open world!
- Crashing Courage grants Aegis and Stability every few attacks, allowing you to block attacks and ignore incoming Control effects. It is a Shadowstep, teleporting you to the target location. It will also grant Protection when using Virtues.
Restorative Virtues [edit]
- This trait is important, as it changes how often you can use damaging weapon skills, such as Zealot's Flame, Zealot's Fire and Symbol of Ignition.
- Every time a Virtue triggers, it reduces the cooldowns of your active weapon abilities by 1/4 second.
- Combined with Rushing Justice, this trait makes condition willbender scale more heavily with Quickness, as it increases the pace of hits applied to enemies.
- Through this, even pure power weapons become great options when they apply many hits in quick succession (e.g. Greatsword with Whirling Wrath).
Weapon Skills[edit]
- Through the Heart is a strong auto attack chain that applies Bleeding. This allows you to trigger Relic of the Fractal reliably.
- Peacekeeper is a strong ranged skill that applies lots of Burning.
- Symbol of Ignition is a Symbol that also applies Burning. This seems like a pure melee skill at first as it places a Symbol on your position, but it has two functionalities: if an enemy stands inside it and you hit that enemy, it will apply Burning. If you shoot a projectile through the symbol, it will make that projectile apply Burning. Those two effects share a cooldown, so you can do one or the other. But this way, the skill works both at range and in melee range as long as you stay close to your symbol.
- Zealot's Flame and Zealot's Fire apply a lot of Burning on both casts. The first cast is instant, allowing you to use it at any time. Once you activate the first, you have 3 seconds to use the second cast. Always use both casts, as using the second does NOT cancel the pulsing Burning from the first.
- Cleansing Flame is no significant damage increase over auto attacks, so we are not using this as part of the regular rotation. It can be used to cleanse Conditions off of allies. Note that the cleanse does not apply to yourself, making it lackluster in solo gameplay.
Utility Skills[edit]
Skill Choice | Notes |
---|---|
Litany of Wrath | Insanely strong heal, as it heals you for 33% of all damage you deal. With a bunch of burning stacks ticking on enemies, this will make you basically immortal for its duration, so that you only need to survive the 14 seconds of downtime until it becomes available again. In instanced content, it allows you to pump through high incoming damage (e.g. Gorseval the Multifarious's Ghastly Rampage). |
Whirling Light | Great for Damage, applies a bunch of Burning stacks. |
Purging Flames | Insanely strong ground area-of-effect ability that applies Burning and cleanses conditions off of allies. Always use on cooldown. |
Signet of Wrath | This is just there for the passive condition damage it grants. You can use it to apply Immobile, but try to prioritize other ways of applying Defiance bar damage. |
Heaven's Palm | Strong skil for Defiance bar damage, always keep it for that purpose. Note that the damage and Knockdown can be easily canceled by other skills if you press them too early during its animation. Be careful and wait until the Defiance bar damage applied! |
Rotation Concept[edit]
- The rotation concept is very simple: camp Pistol & Torch and win. Precast 2x Flowing Resolve and Crashing Courage for stacks of Lethal Tempo.
Then use the following skills on cooldown:
- Rushing Justice is priority #1, as explained above.
- Purging Flames
- Symbol of Ignition
- Zealot's Flame & Zealot's Fire
- Peacekeeper
- Whirling Light
CC Skills for Breakbar Damage[edit]
- Heaven's Palm
- You can use an offhand Pistol on the secondary bar for an additional Knockback via Jurisdiction. This has a very low damage trade-off.
- Immobilized via Signet of Wrath
Gear[edit]
Important Stats (descending in Importance):
- 100% Burning Duration
- ~30% Overall Condition duration
- Maximize Condition Damage
- Since the vast majority of damage comes from Burning, it is important to reach 100% condition duration on it.
Armor | Prefix | Rune |
---|---|---|
Head | Sinister | Superior Rune of Balthazar |
Shoulders | Sinister | Superior Rune of Balthazar |
Chest | Sinister | Superior Rune of Balthazar |
Gloves | Sinister | Superior Rune of Balthazar |
Legs | Sinister | Superior Rune of Balthazar |
Boots | Sinister | Superior Rune of Balthazar |
Trinket | Prefix | |
Amulet | Viper's | |
Ring 1 | Viper's | |
Ring 2 | Viper's | |
Accessory 1 | Sinister | |
Accessory 2 | Viper's | |
Backpack | Viper's | |
Weapon | Prefix | Sigil |
Pistol (Main Hand) | Viper's | Superior Sigil of Earth |
Torch (Off Hand) | Viper's | Superior Sigil of Bursting |
Scepter (Main Hand) | Viper's | Superior Sigil of Earth |
Purpose | Item Type | Source |
Damage | Ascended Food | Cilantro and Cured Meat Flatbread |
Damage | Non-Ascended Food | Plate of Beef Rendang |
Survivability | Ascended Food | Peppered Cured Meat Flatbread |
Survivability | Non-Ascended Food | Oysters Gnashblade |
Damage | Utility | Toxic Focusing Crystal |
Survivability | Utility | Potion Of Karka Toughness |
Damage | Relic | Relic of the Fractal |
- For a budget variant, simply replace all armor pieces of Viper's with rare/exotic Ritualist's and all ascended Sinister with rare/exotic Carrion. For the backpack, you can use a Crafter's backpack of the highest tier and select either Celestial or Rabid.
- Ascended gear is always ideal, but exotic gear is fine for everything aside from higher-tier fractals.
Traits[edit]
Radiance | ||||||
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Virtues | ||||||
Willbender | ||||||
Radiance[edit]
- Radiance massively increases the damage you deal via Burning and and increases Critical chance by around 19%.
- Through Amplified Wrath, it extends the duration of Burning you apply via by Rushing Justice and further extends the damage of Burning by 10%.
- With a Torch equipped, Radiant Fire will activate another instance of Zealot's Flame on critical hits, with a cooldown of 10 seconds. That allows you to cast Zealot's Fire a second time. The cooldown on this is not affected by Restorative Virtues, causing the casts of Radiant Fire and Zealot's Flame to diverge eventually.
- Renewed Justice refreshes Rushing Justice whenever something you damaged dies, allowing you to use it more frequently on encounters with adds.
Virtues[edit]
- It gives 180 condition damage and increases the frequency of Burning applied by Rushing Justice, making it trigger on every third hit and burning in an area.
- Master of Consecrations increases the duration of Purging Flames by 2 seconds, increasing both the total stacks of Burning and number of conditions cleansed.
- Inspired Virtue grants Might, Regeneration and Protection on casting the respective Virtue and gives 1% increased Strike damage for each unique Boon you have.
- Inspiring Virtue grants 10% Strike damage whenever you actviate a Virtue.
Willbender[edit]
- Willbender increases your condition damage by 120 and makes your Willbender Flames apply Burning on hit.
- Restorative Virtues is covered in a dedicated section above.
- Lethal Tempo increases all damage dealt when Virtues are activated or when their effects trigger, requiring you to maintain at least one of them to benefit from the increased damage.
- The grandmaster trait Tyrant's Momentum reduces the duration of Lethal Tempo, but increases its potency. Therefore, it is even more important to maintain Rushing Justice to keep it up.
Open World Build[edit]
You can find my most recent open world build showcase here. Link to the Open World Build in the Editor
Increasing Survivability[edit]
For OW, it can make sense to make a build more forgiving, so that you can sustain on your own.
- The first major step to increase survivability versus bosses is to stay on Pistol. That allows you to deal damage from range so you can kite dangerous enemies instead of facetanking their damage. You will have to go into melee for Rushing Justice periodically.
- Staying alive on condi guradian builds is made easier by Litany of Wrath, which heals you based on your damage dealt. If you have a bunch of burning stacks on the enemy, this will keep you alive for its duration. As pointed out above, it boils down to surviving the downtimes of Litany of Wrath.
- The gear can stay the same as for instanced content, but the more pieces of Ritualist's you have, the easier maintaining the Boons listed below becomes. Ritualist's Armor and Trinkets are cheap to buy, so you can just replace Viper's pieces with them. That will get you right between the two builds in terms of stats and provides a good allrounder setup of all kinds of PvE.
- Use the survivability food and utility item listed above for -10% damage taken and 150 Toughness.
Boon Coverage[edit]
- In order to share Alacrity with allies, we're using Phoenix Protocol and Battle Presence:
- Phoenix Protocol grants you Alacrity when you use Flowing Resolve and when its passive effect triggers.
- Battle Presence makes you share it with allies. You can keep Permeating Wrath when you play alone for higher solo damage. Don't be selfish though.
- Holy Reckoning in Willbender, Inspired Virtue in Virtues and Inner Fire in Radiance help covering Might and Fury on yourself.
- Crashing Courage can provide a good uptime on Protection, drastically reducing the amount of strike damage you take.
- You will also maintain a partial uptime on Resolution through Virtue of Resolution.
- Swiftness is covered by Righteous Sprint.
- Condition Willbender has no reliable source of Quickness. Therefore, using Jade Tech Offensive Overcharge and Jade Tech Defensive Overcharge will massively increase your strength in solo gameplay.
- These give for 150 additional Toughness, Vitality, Condition Damage and Power as well as all boons aside from Stability, Resistance and Resolution on entering combat. These effects can be pre-stacked by using an Enchanted Snow Diamond Tonic repeatedly when out of combat. They will fully cover Quickness and Protection in general roaming, where you enter and exit combat frequently!
- In story instances (or if you don't want the hassle of reapplying protocols), you can abuse the synergy between Relic of the Cavalier and Blast from the Skyscale to apply lots of Aegis, Resistance, Might and Quickness to yourself. It does not have an internal cooldown and applies the boons on every hit of Blast.
Dealing with Incoming Conditions and Control effects[edit]
- Absolute Resolve in Virtues removes three conditions awhenever you use Flowing Resolve. I recommend using this in open world, as it takes care of conditions and provides decent passive healing.
- Flowing Resolve also removes Chilled, Crippled and Immobile from you.
- Crashing Courage applies Stability every few hits, allowwing you to ignore incoming Control effects.
- Purging Flames cleanses conditions on each pulse, so you can try to stay inside it.
- "Save Yourselves!" and Signet of Judgment are both Stun breaks that you can use on demand.