cat.8975

That HP isn't as difficult as people think it is if you just cheese it with a ranged weapon. https://i.imgur.com/8rHAnX8.png <- Took about 3 minutes, would've been faster with a more optimized gear setup Definitely agree on the cringe whenever someone calls this spec "willy" though. It pains me.

I'm so glad they upped the F1 coef from 0.6 to 1.5. It's an absolute blast to chain it w/ the kill resets from Radiance.

I still enjoy playing cfb. Cfb makes me feel like the party's mom, cwb makes me feel like the feral cat in the backyard. They're both different playstyles and they're both great.

I'm not talking about Restorative Virtues. Phoenix Protocol is the gm trait that gives you alacrity whenever you proc Resolve, and Battle Presence (Virtues gm) allows you to share your Resolve passive. If they revert the nerf on PP and give it 1.5s base alac again, then we'll have a viable alac build. As it stands, that trait is worthless in PvE right now.

cfb is definitely easier to play than cwb

Just played through every strike (both IBS and EoD) with 90% boon duration and was only able to upkeep ~70-80% alac on my subgroup. This has the potentially to be a really fun and interesting build, but it's dead in the water right now. The fact that you NEED to run the Virtues line with it means it wont really dominate the meta, but it'd be nice if it was at least playable.

It's definitely possible, but very tight right now. I wouldn't mind seeing it bumped back up to 1.5 or even 2s per attack, as you're sacrificing a fair bit of damage to play alac in most encounters (UC is not a viable trait in 90% of PvE scenarios).

You can still play power, and it still performs fine. I imagine we'll see some more buffs to off-hand sword for PvE at some point, but it's also not the end of the world to use it as is.

Virtues 311, Radiance 221, WB 112 (or 122 if solo) Sw/t + sc if running the typical full condi setup, sw/t + gs if running a grieving+flame legion build. Utils are whirling light, purging flames, condi signet. If solo, it's worth swapping the signet for sword of justice so you can pump out some vuln.

Yes. For the purpose of traits, the active buff effects after casting a Virtue is considered the passive effect. The only one of those traits that doesn't 100% work w/ this logic is Indomitable Courage's bit about how "its passive effect gains a shorter interval."

For the purpose of traits, the "passives" are all the short duration effects you get when you cast a Virtue. Justice: Every 5th hit (every 3rd when traited w/ Permeating Wrath) will apply burning to your target. Resolve: Every 5th hit will heal you (or apply regen+alacrity when traited with Phoenix Protocol). Courage: Every 5th hit will apply aegis and stability (Deathless Courage removes the aegis, but makes you invulnerable to fatal damage for the duration).

Oh no, you might need to dodge/sidestep big attacks again. How terrible. As someone with over 6k hours on Guard this change is fine. I would've preferred to see a way to get the aegis back via trait choices (something like forcing you to pick between aegis, quickness, or damage), but I've had no issues on cfb or cele hb in PvE. Where this change DOES suck is WvW. Maybe it's time they up the heal amount and/or share some of the heal with allies now that you can't heal them w/ the aegis. (As for PvP, it's an irrelevant change, as FB was already irrelevant there lol.)

I find this change to be pretty irrelevant, at least in PvE. There are a couple of spots in fractals/raids that it hit, but I wouldn't consider any of them to be hugely impactful.

WB feels pretty good in PvE so far. I think now that the chill bug has been fixed, it could probably use a small (5%?) strike damage mod on one of the minors and some more coefficient buffs to offhand sword. Condi feels pretty good in group content, but not so stellar when running solo (not having alac/quickness really hurts it as your Justice uptime will drop and it's harder to maintain the damage mod). Not sure if the Whirling Light nerf was necessary either, but we'll see where the numbers land in the coming weeks.

Honestly, give cele hb a try. Full cele, Honor 332, Radiance 221, FB 233, smoldering+bursting sigils, traveler runes. Axe/Torch is your primary weapon set, and staff, greatsword, and scepter are all great secondary choices for the utility they offer. Very self-sufficient build that'll also work GREAT whenever you run into other players.

Guardian has the tools to stay alive in melee range for most encounters, and even on the worst stuff (e.g. Dragon's Stand tower bosses), you still end up contributing loads of damage from a distance thanks to how much damage is loaded into the tome. If you're looking for a self-sufficient build for open world, try an honor/radiance/firebrand full cele setup. Traveler or Leadership runes are fantastic for it.

Just run the full dps cfb build. It's a mix of sinister and viper, and the runes it uses give you 10% extra health. You can also just replace your HB gear with full cele and do anywhere from 15-25k dps depending on traits and which specific runes/sigils/food you use while still pumping out boons and heals for your party. Survival on guardian relies on active damage mitigation (blocks, boons) more than mobility. Learning when you need to give yourself aegis/stab or when you need to bring projectile reflection/destruction is crucial to survival on the class.

Most of the mobility issues in PvP/WvW would be alleviated if they removed the split cooldowns. The PvE cds were solid, but the ones in PvP definitely sucked. I still think people over-value the passive effects of the core virtues (read: PASSIVE, not active!), so I don't really understand the complaints about them being gone. If anything, the focus should just be on making the active effects strong enough to rival/beat the core/dh/fb actives.

I wonder if loading a bunch of boons onto it would make it any good for PvP.

Y'all are giving the regular virtue passives too much credit. They're good, but they're not amazing by any means. Some burning, a passive ticking heal, and a stack of aegis that refreshes every ~30-40s. The Willbender "active" variants of these virtues do much more. The F1 virtue can be made just about permanent in PvE gamemodes, and in PvP scenarios it'll likely still be solid in a burst-burn build (which is how most guardian burn builds worked in PvP anyway). The initial punch is an absolute nuke, the mobility is great, and the cooldown is pretty low (12s to the core 20s). If we compare the core f2 and WB f2, we get: Virtue of Resolve: 30s cd, 84 heal/s (0.06 heal scaling) Flowing Resolve: 20s cd, 652 heal/proc (0.12 heal scaling) To match the core f2's healing output, you only need 2.57 procs of the WB one. That is, on average, ~13 hits required in a 6s window. Sure, the core virtue can be used for another 1625 healing, but it's still not very hard for the WB one to outclass it when you consider the ammo, evade, and higher heal/s ceiling. As for Crashing Courage, it blows Virtue of Courage out of the water. Instant cast aegis button (45s cd) w/ a passive aegis that refreshes every 40s (30s traited) versus 6 seconds of multiple applications of aegis/stability on a ground-targeted blink. If anything, maybe the cd needs to be lowered in PvP/WvW (it's 30s in PvE and 50s in the other two gamemodes), but it's a ridiculously strong defensive skill as it stands. The complaints I've seen of people claiming WB loses a bunch of trait synergy because they "don't have virtue passives anymore" are just incorrect. Every trait that modifies a virtue passive will modify the "active" portions of the WB virtues. While the devs may have been a little too cautious with the cooldowns in PvP/WvW, Willbender virtues are still fantastic skills.

Good chance it's 5, but I've never bothered testing. You could probably test it on the PvP golems.

Making Heel Crack unblockable would go a long way towards fixing that pathetic excuse of a utility skill. Support.

Allow me to quote you again, but this time I'll specifically point to where you made the mistake. In the above video (see the timestamp!), they directly correlated Willbenders with an assassin archetype. You know what the other two "assassin" classes have in this game that help them in PvP? Unblockable skills. It's not a stretch by any means for people to ask for a change like this.

Did you not watch any of the preview streams?

Counterargument: why would a ranged class need mobility? You need to be very careful with giving ranged builds high mobility/target-evasion, otherwise you end up with problematic stuff like Deadeye. The option is still there, the trait isn't that bad relative to what the other two offer (cripple on disable or lower trap cds + slow on trap activation). If anything, I'd just change it to keep the 25% movespeed even when F2 is on cooldown