Ezrael.6859

Wish the Guardian's Scepter became a 3-chain auto-attack. Like the Necro's scepter or the Mesmer's scepter or the Specter's scepter.

DH and Core both hit harder for Guardian. Willbender has very low access to % damage increases, in terms of options and how long they last for; both Core and DH do far better in terms of initial burst engagement options and sustained DPS in PvP.

Physical skills are lacking compared to other utilities and compared to Warrior and Thief physical skills. Willbender physical skills have no traits to give extra potency to them and they are far from potent by default, hence most Willbenders seem to be running Meditations and Shouts for their builds, the same utilities since 2012. Reversal of Fortune - Should be a 1s duration block rather than a single attack block. Heel Crack - Should be a 600 range dash with an evade component like Bull's Charge - the Warrior's skill is a 30s cooldown, but a 900 range evading 3s knockdown combo leap. And it has interactivity with 10 different traits. Whirling Light - Needs to apply Cripple per hit also, most enemies simply walk out of the animation and only get hit once. (It also needs to be bug fixed to actually attack in a 240 radius, rather than only in front of the player). Flash Combo - Make it instant or it will never see use over Judges Intervention. Repose should always be available. Roiling Light - Needs to remove Immob/Cripple/Chill at minimum, otherwise people will just use Stand Your Ground for Stun break + 5x Stability & Resolution for yourself and 4 allies... Quick Retribution - After rolling backwards with Roiling Light, this skill never lands on a moving target - Make it a 600 range leap with a 1s evade. Heaven's Palm - Make it a stun break and an evade during the 1.25s animation. Everyone takes Renewed Focus because Guardian lacks oh kitten skills to try and avoid damage when getting focused; it also recharges the Virtues. So Heaven's Palm needs something similar but different to compete. As this skill has a long and large telegraph, enemy players can still dodge or use stability against the knockdown they can see coming, but the evade will mean the Guardian won't be destroyed by attacks while frozen in mid-air. The stun break is there because as a melee multi-hit attacker the Willbender is subject to a lot of CC compared to ranged specs.

Cele Weaver is insane today, just as it always has been.

Yeah, heaven forbid the Guardian gets the ability to apply consistent damage with its utter lack of decent CC, soft-CC, cover conditions and ranged options. The Guardian was built for sPvP, dominating small circles that players need to stand inside. It's useless when it comes to open world PvP and roaming, which is why the viable Power builds were designed around one-shot combos with Shield of Wrath Hammer or Longbow Test of Faith. The Condi application has limited uptime for Willbender and the Willbender flames themselves are useless, making the burn per hit or heal per hit trait options utterly useless. It works on target golems only.

Wow, so happy that we waited for years to get a terrible spec as our roaming DPS option that only works in PvEasy just so people like you can take screenshots without Aegis up...

Willbender's Physical skills - heal, utilities and elite are all worse than the Warrior & Thief versions.

Bugs still present: Whirling Light - Tooltip and previous update stated this was now a 240 radius AoE attack, but it only hits a frontal cone. Advancing Strike - Tooltip now says 750 range, but it only travels 500 units still. Flowing Resolve - Tooltip says 450 distance traveled, but when you use it while moving you will only dash around 150-200 units. I consider the following a bug in terms of functionality - Quick Retribution range is 300, but Roiling Light evades backwards 300 range before. - If you use this skill while 130 range from an enemy (melee range) when you leap back to the target after evading you will land short of the target and not land your hit. Quick Retribution leap range should increase to 450-600 range to ensure it manages to land after the 300 evade backwards and to account for the mobile nature of combat in GW2. Stationary target golems do not count. Tooltip missing - Roiling Light - Missing a boon indication of the Swiftness granted. Looks like 5s base.

Surprised? This is what the ex-head of the studio said about WvW. They ones in charge of the resources to make a difference have never really understood what they created with WvW.

You're right, it wouldn't work for the few traits that are triggered by F2; that's an oversight as those traits are so bad, I wasn't even thinking about them.

Willbender is an offensive spec; it is meant to be a roaming assassin style elite specialisation. Balance considerations don't need to make a non-offensive build viable.

In order to balance Flowing Resolve across all the weapon types Guardian has access to and to avoid pigeon-holing the Willbender's F2 sustain into only a few viable playstyles, weapons and skills that have multiple attacks I propose that Flowing Resolve is changed to % of damage dealt is returned to you as healing, rather than heal for XXX every 5 hits. This would work for Power, Condition and Hybrid playstyles across all weapons, damage skills and underwater. Keep the initial self heal of 783. Flowing Resolve (6s) 20% of damage dealt is returned to you as healing. Absolute Resolution would improve the % damage to healing conversion from 20% to 25%. Edit - It would also be much easier to tweak and balance as necessary; the heal for XXX per 5 hits has far too many variables in PvE, WvW and PvP to balance easily.

Yeah, the attack radius and lunge has been wrong since the betas compared to the description. They were given this feedback and haven't yet done any bugfixes it seems. Whirling Light doesn't attack targets to the sides or behind; and it doesn't lunge towards the target, you just spin on the spot.

It would certainly help. They could also reduce the pulses and duration down to 3 total and roll the damage into 33% per pulse rather than the current 5 pulses and 20% per pulse. Perhaps this could be a Willbender specific change, and in addition to that make the Virtues proc every 3 hits.

Yep. What's the point of a 600 range single target skill that roots you in place if all the projectiles will also miss a player that is moving. That's just a bunch of negatives. They need to speed up the projectiles even more than the measly 33% increase in July 2016, or just make it useable while moving.

DoNotD does this, the players in the clips are so bad, eating all the damage and landing none in return, or just actual bots that stand and die yet included in a video >.<

From my own experience and from watching a lot of others play, I think a lot of people are in agreement that Willbender lacks sustain and therefore a lot of specs are still using Valour with Meditations for sustain and barely taking any physical skills at all, sometimes none. A simple way to address this could be to add some self-healing (1k - 1.5k per use) to physical skills in a similar way to how Meditations currently work with Valour. This would make physical skills more viable and increase build diversity options rather than people feeling they must slot Valour yet again for self-sustain. I’ve had Valour in every Guardian build since 2012, it would be nice to not have to. Perhaps one of the Grandmaster traits could be replaced to accomplish this. I would suggest Deathless Courage as I don’t see anyone using that in PvE, PvP or WvW.

Please take Alacrity away from the Willbender so all the PvEasy whining will stop. Then make it better at PvP, it's ok if it's mainly just good for PvP and WvW skirmishing.

Roiling Light - Needs a little condition clear added here for the Willbender. Quick Retribution - Range should be at least 450 as it currently struggles to hit even a stationary golem target after you evade away 300 with Roiling Light; it's even worse against a moving target.

Flowing Resolve doesn't dash the player the full distance of 450 units if you are already moving forward, it seems to only move the player around 150-200 units forward. https://clips.twitch.tv/SaltyBlazingPanUncleNox-vdwIF7zumxsfrzv7

"Balanced" https://clips.twitch.tv/ManlyMoralWheelDBstyle-I5HxjBVemwR8TnE0

5 hits to proc Virtues is still too much. The Willbender is meant to be an aggressive roaming, decapper, +1 assassin style spec. 5 hits to proc Virtues is just too many in any 1v1. F2 and F3 do too little to sustain and they absolutely don't make up for losing the passive Resolve healing ticks or the active healing component like Dragonhunter's 4k burst heal. The Virtues only look decent against 5 grouped immobile target golems that don't attack back.

Willbender sustain is still too low. It's meant to be a melee brawler that keeps up the attack but it simply can't sustain against all the AoE power and condition damage it therefore facetanks. It either needs evades added to all of the physical utility skills and Reversal of Fortune made into a channeled 1 second block. Or add some raw healing self-sustain into Willbender itself, I would suggest reworking the poor trait Deathless Courage. Deathless Courage - Gain health whenever you apply boons to yourself. Crashing Courage now also grants Might, Resolution and Fury when Courage's effect triggers. Healing: 100 Might (5s) Resolution (5s) Fury (5s) Killing a foe extends the duration of Courage - 1s per kill, max 4s (remove you cannot be downed & base duration reduction). So max 10s Courage.

It's too slow for sure.

Nice moves. And no aftercast delays! 🤣