Any hope for Willbender?

[Puck.3697]

51 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

True (assuming that when you say it's underperforming compared to other EoD elites you're comparing to the average or median therof, not to ALL of them - I'm pretty confident that it at least outperformed Catalyst), but the coefficient being that low suggests that in the case of Willbender Flames, it's less a case of being undertuned and more a case of "well, damage just isn't the point". Even with Holy Reckoning, the main point is the healing: 33% more of basically nothing is still basically nothing. I think it's worth remembering here that Willbender Flames is being added to the already fairly decent DPS of base guardian (minus one core traitline, but Willbender also has access to damage modifiers), so they probably don't want the flames doing a lot of damage on top of what is already decent damage.

Which means that "a smart enemy won't stay in the flames if they can avoid it" really isn't a damage issue. It's a "you get less of the on-five-hits procs from the virtues" issue.

Which can be accounted for by balancing the Willbender in competitive with the assumption that it won't get as many procs when it uses the virtues as a PvE Willbender is likely to.

As of the first beta, though, it has a double whammy - the virtues provide reduced benefit due to reduced procs, and you get to use them less often due to the aggressive skill split on cooldowns.

But these are solvable problems. Nobody here is saying that Willbender wasn't bad during the first beta. The discussion is on whether it can be fixed. And I think the fundamentals are there, ArenaNet just needs to be less paranoid about it being overpowered.

well yes.. its very much agreed.. Willbender is built for a Role its Damage mechanically doesnt function in, Its design wise ment to play like Herald.. a Strong Roamer with Flexibility into a Sidenoding. but its Damage is backloaded which doesnt work. It doesnt have the CC to Lock a Target down in its Damage.

It can be Saved.. but the issue is.. the core problem with Willbender is its Paying for Core taxs. it has Low hp and backloaded Damage because it works with core, however with whats lost takingf willbender we no longer can work with that at all. its Savable sure.. the Specc could be amazing, but yeah its got some deeprooted problems thats gonna require more then just willbender to fix realistically.

[otto.5684]

2 hours ago, Daddy.8125 said:

well yes.. its very much agreed.. Willbender is built for a Role its Damage mechanically doesnt function in, Its design wise ment to play like Herald.. a Strong Roamer with Flexibility into a Sidenoding. but its Damage is backloaded which doesnt work. It doesnt have the CC to Lock a Target down in its Damage.

It can be Saved.. but the issue is.. the core problem with Willbender is its Paying for Core taxs. it has Low hp and backloaded Damage because it works with core, however with whats lost takingf willbender we no longer can work with that at all. its Savable sure.. the Specc could be amazing, but yeah its got some deeprooted problems thats gonna require more then just willbender to fix realistically.

For PvP I am unsure how it can ever work without full redesign. Power guardian dps is married to valor and mediations. There is no option not to use them (less trolling with trapper runes). FB provides alternatives for sustain and combos with honor, so if was able fo chart a different path (at least back when it was playable in PvP). WB does not provide any sustain alternatives. 

PvE, same, kinda. The question is: are we going to deviate from GS + S?The answer is still a resounding no, so far. 
I am sure it will be better next beta, however, it has major flaws in design that I doubt will be fixed… ever.

Edited November 19, 2021 by otto.5684

[Puck.3697]

14 minutes ago, otto.5684 said:

or PvP I am unsure how it can ever work without full redesign. Power guardian dps is married to valor and mediations. There is no option not to use them (less trolling with trapper runes). FB provides alternatives for sustain and combos with honor, so if was able fo chart a different path (at least back when it was playable in PvP). WB does not provide any sustain alternatives

I don't think it'd take a full redesign. Although you are correct, core guardians balancing is effectively the down fall here.

There are quicker ways to fix the issues but they'd have to be fixs to the right parts of the proffession to realistically get results. 

I don't think willbender however will ever be meta unless the changes are drastic. I'm expecting it to basically be DH tier in spvp maximum if the feedback is listened to. 

30th November will give us a good idea of the direction theyre pushing this specc to fill. I mean people think their aiming for heralds level with this... Some people think it will never measure up and potientally it simply won't 

 

19 minutes ago, otto.5684 said:

am sure it will be better next beta, however, it has major flaws in design that I doubt will be fixed… ever

Tbh we could say this about almost every EoD specc currently. And there's has to be effectively a reason why. 

Early on when they first started announcing stuff, they announced they split their team in 2 and one team is susposed to be doing major rebalancing and changes to current games speccs. 

We havent really heard or seen anything else on this but apprantly it is ongoing. 

I'm curious to if they're intending to bring the current elites down to where these EoD speccs are and are intending to make some major changes to the proffessions core trait lines. 

And that's the missing piece of the puzzle here, the EoD speccs felt wildly beneath PoF or hot speccs even like their traits and more they are far less bloated with access to alot less with heavy trade offs unlike the current elite choices. 

If they're releasing it like this the expansion would die in 5 seconds realistically. So it can't be the overall here. 

[draxynnic.3719]

Backloaded damage? Guardians can spike pretty hard if they're built for it, and they don't need to build up a resource to do so like some professions do.

[Arken.3725]

36 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Backloaded damage? Guardians can spike pretty hard if they're built for it, and they don't need to build up a resource to do so like some professions do.

Yeah man, ANY power Guard build(outside of trapper dh) relies heavily on symbols for its output.  Symbols, by mechanical definition are backloaded.  They require you to keep your enemy inside a small circle for a lengthy period of time which isn't happening outside of PvE.  

 

 

[draxynnic.3719]

3 minutes ago, Arken.3725 said:

Yeah man, ANY power Guard build(outside of trapper dh) relies heavily on symbols for its output.  Symbols, by mechanical definition are backloaded.  They require you to keep your enemy inside a small circle for a lengthy period of time which isn't happening outside of PvE.  

 

 

The "Judge's Intervention into Whirling Wrath" trick isn't exactly backloaded unless your margin for comparison is a power mesmer throwing Mirror Blade, Mind Wrack, and Mantra of Pain simultaneously out of stealth. Especially if you combine it with a Wrath of Justice proc.

 

Plus, there are plenty of times where, for various reasons, either the enemy has to stand in a symbol, or forcing them to stay out of a particular area is tactically beneficial.

[otto.5684]

46 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Backloaded damage? Guardians can spike pretty hard if they're built for it, and they don't need to build up a resource to do so like some professions do.

Yes and no. In PvE the burst is usually a 4-5 sec window. All guardian builds are brusty in PvE, including condi. PvP, we had periods where it was brusty. Now nothing is.  On top, it is retry meh among the current meta.

12 minutes ago, Arken.3725 said:

Yeah man, ANY power Guard build(outside of trapper dh) relies heavily on symbols for its output.  Symbols, by mechanical definition are backloaded.  They require you to keep your enemy inside a small circle for a lengthy period of time which isn't happening outside of PvE.  

 

 

When I saw WB as a mobility spec, I was thinking how are they going to integrate symbols and the plethora of ground AoE guardian has? However, I quickly realized this is way over the head of the current Anet devs, so they did absolutely nothing. Just like how the removed the last charge of mantras without making any adjustments. This will end-up being a slightly mobile core guardian, with a but more dps and much less sustain. This ain’t an assassin or monk, and surely not mobile enough to be played as roamer/decapper +1. 

[Puck.3697]

3 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Backloaded damage? Guardians can spike pretty hard if they're built for it, and they don't need to build up a resource to do so like some professions do.

I'm talking willbenders new virtues mechanic and symbols  neither of these mechanics work realistically in a PvP situation unless your CCing them down into it 

Edited November 19, 2021 by Daddy.8125

[oscuro.9720]

13 hours ago, otto.5684 said:

it has major flaws in design that I doubt will be fixed… ever.

What design flaw are you referencing? The lack of sustain options?

[Arken.3725]

25 minutes ago, oscuro.9720 said:

What design flaw are you referencing? The lack of sustain options?

What makes a good high-dps roamer in pvp?  You need solid mobility(and a little bit of soft/hard-cc for staying power), decent sustain and front loaded damage.  Think of herald and why it fits this role so well and then think of wb and why it doesn't. 

 

I can spell it out for you but let me know what you think. 

Edited November 19, 2021 by Arken.3725

[otto.5684]

9 hours ago, oscuro.9720 said:

What design flaw are you referencing? The lack of sustain options?

Short answer: guardian emphasis on ground AoE, which does not work with high mobility. In addition, redundancy in game play as power build is centered around same weapons and abilities.

Long answer, refer to the second post on this thread. I am not going to retype the whole thing.

 

[Puck.3697]

7 hours ago, otto.5684 said:

Long answer, refer to the second post on this thread. I am not going to retype the whole thing

Only thing I'd disagree with you on Ur orginal post would be saying trapped builds a troll, Naru used trapper DH in high plat and legendary and was doing well with it. It's a good build providing you arent someone who can only play it as far as sitting in traps and relying on them to do everything. 

Imho the offhand sword needs a major buff. However i can't see it pivoting from GS mainly because it has a weapon swap and even if Sword / Sword became a thing. With guardians CDs I can't see us running sword/sword + Focus. 

It will be interesting with what they try do with willbender in all honesty, because it's held back by quite alot of problems. And imho its new virtues mechanic seems... Flawed at best. 

 

 

[oscuro.9720]

23 hours ago, Arken.3725 said:

What makes a good high-dps roamer in pvp?  You need solid mobility(and a little bit of soft/hard-cc for staying power), decent sustain and front loaded damage.  Think of herald and why it fits this role so well and then think of wb and why it doesn't. 

 

I can spell it out for you but let me know what you think. 

I was just clarifying what he was referencing and sustain was the thing he mentioned in the quoted post. I can’t read every post in this thing 😂

14 hours ago, otto.5684 said:

Short answer: guardian emphasis on ground AoE, which does not work with high mobility. In addition, redundancy in game play as power build is centered around same weapons and abilities.

 

While I agree it doesn’t work well with symbols, I don’t think a full rework or the concept itself is flawed, and believe it can still function with appropriate tweaks. We will just have to agree to disagree ig 🙂

[subversiontwo.7501]

I think it has been said both here and elsewhere now but the big issue with Willbender is that it just does not do what Anet wrote on the label. It was built to be fast and it wasn't fast.

I think this thread does a good job at outlining why that is and why it is a problem: Being fast mostly only have value in two places of GW2, in WvW roaming and sPvP off-noding. The problem is that WB is not anywhere near as fast as other classes' builds that are fast there. It's not that it isn't the best there or that the others are better, the issue is that it can't even hang with them. It is slower and compared to some of those it is more dependent on being fast or more one-dimensional beyond it.

To understand that last bit you need to understand the Guardian as a class. The original conception of the class is based around an affluence in boons (also on F-skills), passives (heals, burns) and team/ground control mechanics. To offset that it pays for it with stat holes, few extra effects on weapon skills, few conditions and mobility. This is why Guardians excel on stats like Celestial but have always been rather do-or-die on stats like Berserker.

The other elite specs also built into this. The Firebrand simply plays by the same rules are core (in the eyes of many it is just better core, or a restoration of things taken from the original core). The Dragon Hunter uses the extremes of its new F-skills and utilities to bridge the gaps in stats, buffs and passives to play into the do-or-die niche (the meditation elite essentially gives it three invuls, the F2 heals are substantial without stats [which differs from core heals] and bakes in both mobility and control, similarily the F1 also bakes in a number of different functions from damage to control to reveal). The bow and the traps also play into the same niche.

The niche is why the DH does not really need the stat-affluence of, say, the Revenant or Warrior which excels by being able to strike a balance between offense and defense how you see fit, rather than having to deeply spec into either one of them and find synergy, like the Guardian where stats like Cele pokes at all these otherwise poorly base-attributed things like boons, many small heals and many small free burns from consecutive power-oriented attacks.

So, the WB gives up all those things but does not really gain any of them back or gain anything that lets it thrive in its intended role. It gains multiple sources of speed but it is not fast. It lacks alot of the conditions afforded to other classes on its weapons and by limiting the F-skills to be of less importance and limiting boons to be of less importance they take from all three base aspects of the class (F-skills, boons, passives) without any compensation in the areas where that is offset (stats, weapons, mobility). Instead, the traits sacrifice further on those things as some ill-attempted compensation for core - giving further stat drops on a class that already has compensatory stat holes.

Now I don't mind the concept. I just think people underestime just how much more mobility and control the WB needs to even play in the same league as some of the other fast builds (Revs, Beasts, Warriors) or how much it needs to play in the same league as the absolute fastest builds (Thief) because it gives up so much other things that you can't really warrant keeping it at the lower end of the spectrum. Now it is both slower and more of a one-trick-pony than the lower-end fast builds.

I think one issue to highlight is that some things that traditionally should be on weapons or unique mechanics have now been put on utility skills (some control, some counter-play, some additional mobility play too) but nothing usually on utilities have been put on the uniques or weapons. The traits also have so many trade-offs that they end up in some +/- state with some flat sum, ultimately making the class slow and feeling like it misses both traits and at least one facet/dimension of either weapons, utilities or uniques.

You can't balance it to core if you underestimate core (which excels at using its F-skills, utilities and broad selection of traits to create build diversity with stats) 🙂 .

 

Edited November 20, 2021 by subversiontwo.7501

[otto.5684]

19 hours ago, Daddy.8125 said:

Only thing I'd disagree with you on Ur orginal post would be saying trapped builds a troll, Naru used trapper DH in high plat and legendary and was doing well with it. It's a good build providing you arent someone who can only play it as far as sitting in traps and relying on them to do everything. 

Imho the offhand sword needs a major buff. However i can't see it pivoting from GS mainly because it has a weapon swap and even if Sword / Sword became a thing. With guardians CDs I can't see us running sword/sword + Focus. 

It will be interesting with what they try do with willbender in all honesty, because it's held back by quite alot of problems. And imho its new virtues mechanic seems... Flawed at best. 

 

 

I was hoping s/s + s/f would be the way to go. If it could pull over 30K, it could potentially work. Regardless, the whole elite needs major rework. 

[draxynnic.3719]

On 11/21/2021 at 6:57 AM, subversiontwo.7501 said:

I think it has been said both here and elsewhere now but the big issue with Willbender is that it just does not do what Anet wrote on the label. It was built to be fast and it wasn't fast.

I think this thread does a good job at outlining why that is and why it is a problem: Being fast mostly only have value in two places of GW2, in WvW roaming and sPvP off-noding. The problem is that WB is not anywhere near as fast as other classes' builds that are fast there. It's not that it isn't the best there or that the others are better, the issue is that it can't even hang with them. It is slower and compared to some of those it is more dependent on being fast or more one-dimensional beyond it.

To understand that last bit you need to understand the Guardian as a class. The original conception of the class is based around an affluence in boons (also on F-skills), passives (heals, burns) and team/ground control mechanics. To offset that it pays for it with stat holes, few extra effects on weapon skills, few conditions and mobility. This is why Guardians excel on stats like Celestial but have always been rather do-or-die on stats like Berserker.

The other elite specs also built into this. The Firebrand simply plays by the same rules are core (in the eyes of many it is just better core, or a restoration of things taken from the original core). The Dragon Hunter uses the extremes of its new F-skills and utilities to bridge the gaps in stats, buffs and passives to play into the do-or-die niche (the meditation elite essentially gives it three invuls, the F2 heals are substantial without stats [which differs from core heals] and bakes in both mobility and control, similarily the F1 also bakes in a number of different functions from damage to control to reveal). The bow and the traps also play into the same niche.

The niche is why the DH does not really need the stat-affluence of, say, the Revenant or Warrior which excels by being able to strike a balance between offense and defense how you see fit, rather than having to deeply spec into either one of them and find synergy, like the Guardian where stats like Cele pokes at all these otherwise poorly base-attributed things like boons, many small heals and many small free burns from consecutive power-oriented attacks.

So, the WB gives up all those things but does not really gain any of them back or gain anything that lets it thrive in its intended role. It gains multiple sources of speed but it is not fast. It lacks alot of the conditions afforded to other classes on its weapons and by limiting the F-skills to be of less importance and limiting boons to be of less importance they take from all three base aspects of the class (F-skills, boons, passives) without any compensation in the areas where that is offset (stats, weapons, mobility). Instead, the traits sacrifice further on those things as some ill-attempted compensation for core - giving further stat drops on a class that already has compensatory stat holes.

Now I don't mind the concept. I just think people underestime just how much more mobility and control the WB needs to even play in the same league as some of the other fast builds (Revs, Beasts, Warriors) or how much it needs to play in the same league as the absolute fastest builds (Thief) because it gives up so much other things that you can't really warrant keeping it at the lower end of the spectrum. Now it is both slower and more of a one-trick-pony than the lower-end fast builds.

I think one issue to highlight is that some things that traditionally should be on weapons or unique mechanics have now been put on utility skills (some control, some counter-play, some additional mobility play too) but nothing usually on utilities have been put on the uniques or weapons. The traits also have so many trade-offs that they end up in some +/- state with some flat sum, ultimately making the class slow and feeling like it misses both traits and at least one facet/dimension of either weapons, utilities or uniques.

You can't balance it to core if you underestimate core (which excels at using its F-skills, utilities and broad selection of traits to create build diversity with stats) 🙂 .

 

This is actually part of the reason I've been making a big deal about the aggressive skill splits on Willbender. PvE willbender has Justice on a 12s cooldown, Resolve on 20s, and Courage on 30s. Add Virtues for reduced cooldowns, possibly throw in Leap of Faith, and it probably would be able to keep up with the traditional sidenoders if the clunkiness of the animations was cleaned up a bit. Competitive balance, however, increases all of those cooldowns by 50% or more. Willbender is going to live or die by those cooldowns, since they provide both mobility and it relies on active use of Resolve and Courage to boost its sustain. That aggressive skill split killed both its mobility and its sustain, and the damaging skills don't bring enough damage to offset it.

 

Thing is, these are mostly all numbers problems, and those are easy to tweak. I would like to see a Ring of Warding-type skill in there since both Willbender-themed bosses have had one and neither used hammer, but Willbender's problems are mostly due to being undertuned.