User:Masel/Builds/Herald
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Dual Swords Power Herald[edit]
Criterion | Rating |
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Burst Damage | 4/5 |
Sustained Damage | 3/5 |
Utility Options | 4/5 |
Survivability | 5/5 |
Difficulty | 2/5 |
Power Herald is a very strong and straightforward damage build for instanced content. The iteration provided here uses Dual Swords, but it works in a similar way with Hammer and Greatsword too. Herald is also a great pick for solo gameplay, as it can provide itself 'and allies with good amounts of the most essential offensive and defensive boons: Quickness, Protection, Fury and Might. Through Dance of Death and Relic of Zakiros, it can reach great passive sustain with a fairly small damage loss on top.
Link to the Build on the Editor
Playstyle & Skills[edit]
Skill Type | Skills | |||||
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Herald Skills |
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Dual Sword Skills |
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Hammer Skills |
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Utility Skills (Legendary Assassin Stance) |
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Utility Skills (Legendary Dragon Stance) |
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Consume Skills (Legendary Dragon Stance) |
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Facets & Consumes[edit]
- On Herald, you main mechanic are Upkeep skills that pulse Boons. You'll always have access to Facet of Nature:
# | Skill | Description | |||||
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F1 | Legendary Dragon Stance | Invoke the power of the legendary dragon Glint. | |||||
F2 | Facet of Nature | -2 | Legendary Dragon. Facet. Place the Facet of Nature on yourself to grant nearby allies enhancements based on your channeled legend. | ||||
Legend specific mechanic | |||||||
Facet of Nature—Assassin | Grants allies the ability to steal life with their strikes. | ||||||
F2 | True Nature | ¼ | 20 | Legendary Dragon. Consume. Strip boons from nearby enemies. | |||
Facet of Nature—Dwarf | Reduce incoming damage to allies. | ||||||
F2 | True Nature | ¼ | 20 | Legendary Dragon. Consume. Grant stability to nearby allies. | |||
Facet of Nature—Dragon | Increase the duration of boons applied to allies. | ||||||
F2 | True Nature | ¼ | 20 | Legendary Dragon. Consume. Increase the duration of allies' boons. Remove conditions from allies. |
- In a similar vein, your utility skills become toggle skills with a secondary cast that puts them on cooldown.
Skill | Description | ||||
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Facet of Light | ¼ | -1 | Legendary Dragon. Facet. Place the Facet of Light on yourself to grant nearby allies regeneration every few seconds. | ||
Infuse Light | 30 | Legendary Dragon. Consume. Consume Facet of Light to heal yourself and convert all incoming strikes to heals for a short duration. | |||
Facet of Darkness | -2 | Legendary Dragon. Facet. Place the Facet of Darkness on yourself to grant nearby allies fury every few seconds. | |||
Gaze of Darkness | 15 | Legendary Dragon. Consume. Consume Facet of Darkness to reveal the area around you, pulling foes out of stealth and blinding them. | |||
Facet of Elements | -1 | Legendary Dragon. Facet. Place the Facet of Elements on yourself to grant nearby allies swiftness every few seconds. | |||
Elemental Blast | ¼ | 12 | Legendary Dragon. Consume. Consume Facet of Elements to cover the target area in magical dragon breath. | ||
Facet of Strength | -2 | Legendary Dragon. Facet. Place the Facet of Strength on yourself to grant nearby allies might every few seconds. | |||
Burst of Strength | 1 | 12 | Legendary Dragon. Consume. Consume Facet of Strength, granting increased damage for successful hits. Facet of Strength will be disabled while this skill is recharging. | ||
Facet of Chaos | -4 | Legendary Dragon. Facet. Place the Facet of Chaos on yourself to grant nearby allies protection every few seconds. | |||
Chaotic Release | ¾ | 20 | Legendary Dragon. Consume. Consume Facet of Chaos, releasing chaotic winds damaging and knocking back foes while granting superspeed to allies. Facet of Chaos will be disabled while this skill is recharging. |
- If you want to provide Boons, you just need to maintain a particular Upkeep skill and watch it pulse that boon.
- The secondary casts - Consumes - apply various effects that are helpful for damage, utility or survivability. I'll go into more detail in the later sections!
Rotation Concept[edit]
You can find my most recent rotation showcase here. Damage Log
Rotation Flow[edit]
Section | Notes |
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General Stuff |
Careful:This build scales with the number of Boons on yourself, so you should only apply 10 Boons including Might, Fury, Quickness and Alacrity. For guidance on setting up the training area, see my guide for it |
Opener |
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Section 1: Legendary Assassin Stance |
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Section 2: Legendary Dragon Stance |
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CC Skills for Breakbar Damage |
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Gear & Traits[edit]
Important Stats in Hero Panel (descending in Importance):
- At least 50% Critical Chance: Fury together with Roiling Mists give the remaining 50%.
- Maximize Ferocity
- Maximize Power
Invocation | ||||||
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Devastation | ||||||
Herald | ||||||
- For a budget variant, simply replace all ascended armor pieces of Berserker's with rare/exotic Berserker's.
- Superior Rune of the Scholar and Superior Rune of the Dragonhunter are basically equivalent in terms of damage, use whichever you have or is cheaper.
Open World Build[edit]
Link to the open world build in the editor
You can find my most recent open world build showcase here.
For OW, it can make sense to make a build more forgiving, so that you can sustain on your own.
Increasing General Survivability[edit]
- To survive most open world content, it is enough to make the following changes:
- use Dance of Death in Devastation,
- swap out Legendary Assassin Stance for Legendary Dwarf Stance and
- use a Relic of Zakiros instead of Relic of the Thief.
- Dance of Death makes hits after applying Vulnerability steal health via Battle Scars, passively healing you. Dual Swords synergize very well with this trait, as they hit frequently and apply Vulnerability on the auto attack chain and Shackling Wave.
- Relic of Zakiros heals you for 4% of your damage dealt. The more damage you deal, the more healing you apply.
- Vengeful Hammers reduces all incoming damage by 20% while it is active, triggers Battle Scars often and heals you every time it hits. This makes it priority number one in Legendary Dwarf Stance. Generate Battle Scars with Auto Attacks or Shackling Wave.
- Forced Engagement reduces damage taken from its targets by 33% and applies ~300 Defiance bar damage over its duration. That is very strong, dont underestimate this!
- Second, using Hammer can help avoid damage that you'd otherwise take by kiting at range.
- Hammer also removes the requirement to run to every mob in open world through its high range, allowing you to kill them from range. It does pretty good damage after the buffs to it. Both Coalescence of Ruin and Drop the Hammer are strong for damage!
- It has a short-cooldown Block (via Aegis and Projectile blocking) with Field of the Mists and a short-cooldown Evade with Phase Smash.
- Use Infuse Light for a 3 second invulnerability window that also converts incoming strike damage into healing!
Boon Coverage[edit]
- Herald is a buff machine and makes it very easy to provide yourself and allies with important Boons:
- The most important traits for that are Elevated Compassion and Shared Empowerment.
- Elevated Compassion requires 6 points of Upkeep to pulse Quickness around you. The following Upkeep skils are available to you:
- Facet of Light - 1 Upkeep - Regeneration
- Facet of Darkness - 2 Upkeep - Fury and area Vulnerability and Stun break on the second cast.
- Facet of Elements - 1 Upkeep - Swiftness and good damage on the second cast. I recommend just using this on cooldown for damage.
- Facet of Strength - 2 Upkeep - Might and 15% damage for 10 seconds on the second cast. Always use both casts when available and you can hit in melee range.
- Facet of Chaos - 4 Upkeep - Protection and Defiance bar damage and high damage on the second cast. Prioritize it for CC whenever you need it.
- Facet of Nature - 2 Upkeep - incomign damage reduction in Legendary Dwarf Stance and longer Boon duration in Legendary Dragon Stance. The second cast gives area Stability in Legendary Dwarf Stance and an extension of all boons on allies by 3 seconds in Legendary Dragon Stance. Both effects are great!
- Vengeful Hammers - Incoming damage reduction, good damage and healing. Maintain this as long as you can.
- Shared Empowerment covers a lot of area Might without doing much for it.
- Invoker's Rage and Deathstrike cover a good uptime on Fury.
- Spirit Boon grants area Protection or Stability when you swap legends.
I recommend the following strategy:
- In Legendary Dwarf Stance, just maintain Vengeful Hammers to trigger Elevated Compassion for 6 point sof Upkeep.
- In Legendary Dragon Stance, activate both casts of Facet of Strength and Facet of Elements. Maintain the upkeeps on Facet of Chaos and Facet of Darkness for 6 points. In case you need CC or a Stun break, use their secondary casts. Gaze of Darkness will also apply lots of stacks of Battle Scars, healing you afterwards.
- You have quite a bit of leeway on the Quickness from Elevated Compassion, so you don't need to have 6 points of Upkeep at all times.
- Use Facet of Nature on demand to extend boons or provide Stability to allies and yourself.
- If you can, make use of Jade Tech Offensive Overcharge and Jade Tech Defensive Overcharge give 150 additional Toughness, Vitality, Condition Damage and Power as well as all boons aside from Stability, Resistance and Resolution on entering combat, with a 30 second cooldown. The free stats and boons are very nice to have, especially for harder open world content.
Dealing with Conditions and Control effects[edit]
- Soothing Stone cleanses multiple conditions.
- You can also put on a Superior Sigil of Purity on another cheap exotic Berserker's weapon. Simply swap to that weapon when you encounter condition-heavy enemies.
- Cleansing Channel cleanses 1 condition on every Legend swap, but costs a 10% damage modifier from Rising Tide.
- Inspiring Reinforcement gives pulsing Stability to yourself and allies, allowing you to ignore incoming Control effects.
- With Legendary Dwarf Stance, activating the second cast of Facet of Nature grants area Stability.
- Gaze of Darkness and Rite of the Great Dwarf are your two Stun breaks. With Contained Temper, you will gain 15 Energy back, making Gaze oif Darkness give 15 Energy back Rite of the Great Dwarf cost 25 Energy. Rite of the Great Dwarf is still pretty expensive, but also reduces incoming damage by 50% for 5 seconds.