User:Masel/Builds/Herald

Dual Swords  Power Herald

Build Rating (Subjective)

Criterion	Rating
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

Skill Type	Skills
Herald Skills
Dual Sword Skills
Hammer Skills
Utility Skills (Legendary Assassin Stance)
Utility Skills (Legendary Dragon Stance)
Consume Skills (Legendary Dragon Stance)

Facets & Consumes

• On  Herald, you main mechanic are Upkeep skills that pulse Boons. You'll always have access to   Facet of Nature:

#	Skill				Description
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	0.25¼		20	Legendary Dragon. Consume. Strip boons from nearby enemies.
	Facet of Nature—Dwarf				Reduce incoming damage to allies.
F2	True Nature	0.25¼		20	Legendary Dragon. Consume. Grant stability to nearby allies.
	Facet of Nature—Dragon				Increase the duration of boons applied to allies.
F2	True Nature	0.25¼		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
Facet of Light		0.25¼	-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		0.25¼		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		0.75¾		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

Careful:This build scales with the number of Boons on yourself. For guidance on setting up the training area, see my guide for it
You can find my most recent rotation showcase here.

Opener

For the opener, start in   Legendary Dragon Stance and use the following skill sequence:

1. Activate   Facet of Nature. We're going to keep this active for the entire rotation. The more Facets you can maintain in  Legendary Dragon Stance, the more damage you deal via  Forceful Persistence.
2. Activate   Facet of Light and   Facet of Darkness. This is done to gain 10% damage for the opener.
3. Right after, use both casts of   Facet of Strength and   Facet of Elements.
4. The second cast of   Facet of Strength -   Burst of Strength - grants you 15% damage for 10 seconds when you hit with the melee attacks it does. Don't miss with this!
5. Then use both casts of   Facet of Chaos
6.   Shackling Wave
7.   Deathstrike
8. Swap to  Legendary Assassin Stance.

General Rotation

The general rotation involves swapping between   Legendary Dragon Stance and   Legendary Assassin Stance and using a list of priority damage skills on cooldown.

• In  Legendary Assassin Stance, you start with 50 Energy.
•   Impossible Odds will cost 5 Energy for its activation and then drain 1 point per second over a 10 second duration. You can thus spend ~35 energy in total when just keeping this up.
•   Facet of Nature drains 2 Energy per second, costing you another ~20, leaving you with 15 to spare.
• Always use   Chilling Isolation twice to maintain Relic of the Thief. This costs 10 Energy.
• Swap to   Legendary Dragon Stance as soon you drop below 3-4 Energy.

•   Legendary Dragon Stance is more liberal on Energy usage, as it includes fewer Upkeep points.
• Always start and end   Legendary Dragon Stance with   Burst of Strength and   Elemental Blast.
•   Burst of Strength is the strongest skill due to the 15% modifier and it has a ~10 second cooldown with  Alacrity, meaning you can only use it twice without delaying the rotation when you use it as the first skill. This will slightly delay the swap to   Legendary Assassin Stance.
• Activate   Facet of Light and   Facet of Darkness and maintain their upkeeps.
• On top of   Chilling Isolation, use   Shackling Wave,   Chaotic Release and   Deathstrike once.
• After the second cast of   Burst of Strength and   Elemental Blast, repeat from  Legendary Assassin Stance.

CC Skills for Defiance bar damage

• Depending on your secondary weapon:

1. Glint:   Chaotic Release - save and prioritize this when CC is needed!
2. Staff:   Surge of the Mists
3. Hammer:   Drop the Hammer

•   Jade Winds - do not use, this is way too expensive.

Gear

Important Stats in Hero Panel (descending in Importance):

1. At least 50% Critical Chance:  Fury together with  Roiling Mists give the remaining 50%.
2. Maximize Ferocity
3. Maximize Power

Gear

Armor	Prefix	Rune
Head	Berserker's	Superior Rune of the Dragonhunter
Shoulders	Berserker's	Superior Rune of the Dragonhunter
Chest	Berserker's	Superior Rune of the Dragonhunter
Gloves	Berserker's	Superior Rune of the Dragonhunter
Legs	Berserker's	Superior Rune of the Dragonhunter
Boots	Berserker's	Superior Rune of the Dragonhunter
Trinket	Prefix
Amulet	Berserker's
Ring 1	Berserker's
Ring 2	Berserker's
Accessory 1	Berserker's
Accessory 2	Berserker's
Backpack	Berserker's
Weapon	Prefix	Sigil
Sword (Main Hand)	Berserker's	Superior Sigil of Force
Sword (Off Hand)	Berserker's	Superior Sigil of Air
Purpose	Item Type	Source
Damage	Ascended Food	Cilantro Lime Sous-Vide Steak
Damage	Non-Ascended Food	Bowl of Sweet and Spicy Butternut Squash Soup
Survivability	Ascended Food	Peppercorn-Crusted Sous-Vide Steak
Survivability	Non-Ascended Food	Bowl of Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew
Damage	Utility	Potent Superior Sharpening Stone
Survivability	Utility	Potion Of Karka Toughness
Damage	Relic	Relic of the Thief
Survivability	Relic	Relic of Zakiros

• 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.

Traits

Invocation
Devastation
Herald

Open World Build

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

• To survive most open world content, it is enough to make the following changes:

1. use  Dance of Death in  Devastation,
2. swap out   Legendary Assassin Stance for   Legendary Dwarf Stance and
3. 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

•  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:

1.   Facet of Light - 1 Upkeep -  Regeneration
2.   Facet of Darkness - 2 Upkeep -  Fury and area  Vulnerability and Stun break on the second cast.
3.   Facet of Elements - 1 Upkeep -  Swiftness and good damage on the second cast. I recommend just using this on cooldown for damage.
4.   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.
5.   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.
6.   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!
7.   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

•   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.