User:Masel/Builds/Willbender

Pistol + Torch Condition Willbender

Build Rating (Subjective)

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

Skill Type	Skills
Virtues
Pistol + Torch
Utility

Playstyle

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

• 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

• 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).

Rotation Concept

You can find my most recent rotation showcase here.
Damage Log

Section	Notes
General Stuff	Careful:This build scales with the number of Boons on yourself. For guidance on setting up the training area, see my guide for it The rotation concept is very simple: camp Pistol & Torch and win.
Opener	Precast 2x   Flowing Resolve and   Crashing Courage for stacks of   Lethal Tempo. Start with   Rushing Justice.
General Flow	Then use the following skills on cooldown:   Rushing Justice is priority #1, as explained above. This forces you into melee range every ~10 seconds.   Purging Flames   Symbol of Ignition   Zealot's Flame &   Zealot's Fire   Peacekeeper   Whirling Light
CC Skills for Breakbar Damage	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 & Traits

Important Stats (descending in Importance):

1. 100%  Burning Duration
2. ~30% Overall Condition duration
3. Maximize Condition Damage

• Since the vast majority of damage comes from  Burning, it is important to reach 100% condition duration on it.

Gear

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

Traits

Radiance
Virtues
Willbender

• 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.

Open World Build

You can find my most recent open world build showcase here.
Link to the Open World Build in the Editor

Increasing Survivability

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

• In order to share  Alacrity with allies, we're using  Phoenix Protocol and  Battle Presence:

1.  Phoenix Protocol grants you  Alacrity when you use   Flowing Resolve and when its passive effect triggers.
2.  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

•  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.
•   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.