Is alacrity willbender viable/taken seriously?

[FourOhFour.3598]

My guardian is pretty much the only character I play, but I don't really like the firebrand class mechanic, so I'm usually a dragonhunter, and lately testing out a willbender. But it can be a little awkward to join a fractal or strike group and be asked for some kind of support build, only to say that I don't have any set up, despite guardian having some solid support build options.

 

I know that willbender can be configured to grant alacrity through a combination of battle presence and phoenix protocol, but how viable is it really for endgame content, considering that you have to be constantly landing attacks for it to work? Am I going to get laughed out of groups for trying to play alac wb?

[Massimoni.9453]

5 hours ago, FourOhFour.3598 said:

Am I going to get laughed out of groups for trying to play alac wb?

Short answer: Yes, if the group isn't made up of newer players.

The build is more of a meme than anything else pretty much, that's why you never see them.

[CraftyK.9062]

Yeah well, I have been struggling to make it work well, or at least better than the other more popular and more tested alac choices

 

a) The fact that you have to take Battle Presence in the first place means that you:

1) Can't take Permeating Wrath for Condi

2) Are forced into Virtues for Power (And using F3 for Aegis might not be a given as it would reset other virtues)

 

b) The way the alac is applied is kinda wonky, the Radius is 240 (1/3 bigger than SW2 Radius) and you need to be hitting things to get Alac, which sometimes is not possible if you either kill things too fast or they becom invuln

 

c) Willbender Alac doesn't really give many boons or specific utilities aside from the Alacrity, maybe fury and regen. Mirage/Mech can do 25stx might, Specters can provide Barrier, and Untamed just does a ton of damage. Pretty much everything else that you can provide as Willbender (aside from a bit of extra cc) can be provided by a Firebrand.

 

Dunno, Alacbender at least right now feels like it tries too hard to provide not as much as other Alac specs. I think it would be nice if they removed the requirement to take Battle Presence to spread and instead made it maybe provide the Resolve effect once every 3 hits instead of 5 like with Permeating Wrath and overall buff the Willbender damage. I mean, how else can you specifically buff Alacbender really without buffing other Willbender builds in that direction, and also buff the Bender without changing the core stuff (which might as well have been used by a FB at this point)

[cat.8975]

alac wb is nonviable, don't bother

[Massimoni.9453]

3 hours ago, CraftyK.9062 said:

I mean, how else can you specifically buff Alacbender really without buffing other Willbender builds in that direction, and also buff the Bender without changing the core stuff (which might as well have been used by a FB at this point)

Changing core stuff would actually be a good thing in this case, as their approach in nerfing qFB by taking down every other condi with it brought cWB, cCore, cDH and cFB down to non-viable levels in performance-focused engame content. I've actually got the chance to play cFB during the last full clear of my static outside of the wings where I can't fulfill my usual roles with guardian (W1, W6, W7, so basically half the wings eksde) and across the board performed WORSE than I usually do on my cVirtuoso DESPITE having full infusions compared to none and being able to play the cFB way closer to benchmark compared to cVirt (~200 DPS off on cFB, >3.5k off on cVirt). They need to just revert their 5% core trait nerf, which would help all these underperforming builds (which still wouldn't make them great, but at least more viable that they are now) and then go on and nerf qFB in particular (if they REALLY feel the need to do so anymore, now that Power Herald is out-DPSing it LOL). Also give it 360 radius like literally everything else and add at least some possibility to provide Alacrity without being in a specific combat scenario. Easy fixes, but won't happen because guardian.

[CraftyK.9062]

8 hours ago, Massimoni.9453 said:

Changing core stuff would actually be a good thing in this case, as their approach in nerfing qFB by taking down every other condi with it brought cWB, cCore, cDH and cFB down to non-viable levels in performance-focused engame content. I've actually got the chance to play cFB during the last full clear of my static outside of the wings where I can't fulfill my usual roles with guardian (W1, W6, W7, so basically half the wings eksde) and across the board performed WORSE than I usually do on my cVirtuoso DESPITE having full infusions compared to none and being able to play the cFB way closer to benchmark compared to cVirt (~200 DPS off on cFB, >3.5k off on cVirt). They need to just revert their 5% core trait nerf, which would help all these underperforming builds (which still wouldn't make them great, but at least more viable that they are now) and then go on and nerf qFB in particular (if they REALLY feel the need to do so anymore, now that Power Herald is out-DPSing it LOL). Also give it 360 radius like literally everything else and add at least some possibility to provide Alacrity without being in a specific combat scenario. Easy fixes, but won't happen because guardian.

Ok I will admit that you are correct there, I couldn't wrap myself around them nerfing core to nerf FB. When talking about buffing the Alac without specific combat, what about buffing the Alac from Restorative Virtues? That would be a way to buff the Alac without either changing the in-combat scenario or adding a new sort of trigger to the Alac.

[Unicorn Luna.5204]

I play alac willbender in fractals sometimes. It's a lot of work to get alac right but I do enjoy it. Mix of diviner and assassins but perhaps ritualists might be better... The boon duration needed is ambiguous since when I struggle to get alac out I need all the boon duration I can get but when I'm not struggling to trigger the alac there is often more boon duration than is needed. The problem being that it needs to sacrifice dps for when proccing alac is tricky but in ideal circumstances it doesn't need that much of it. The f2 buff stacks duration so you can use it twice, hit the mistlock and then you've got a huge window to proc alac in. It's a shame it doesn't provide other boons, for example instead of taking the trait that reduces cool downs by 0.25 seconds we could take the one that gives us might on any virtue trigger and have that be shared with battle presence, but it doesn't do that. If wb f2 healed on the alac build and shared those heals with battle presence then wb could potentially be an interesting alac/regen healer (and if the previous trait I mentioned worked with battle presence it could be might too). One of the problems with wb is that (even since beta) it doesn't synergise well (or in some cases doesn't even work) with existing virtue related traits. I quite enjoy willbender as a play style but I've otherwise been shelving it and going back to dh or fb except when I occasionally play alac since they do more or better jobs otherwise. The potential is there and I really want it to meet that potential, and I enjoy it nonetheless and it can work. In its current form it isn't going to be turning any heads in terms of effectiveness, versus other options. 

Edited September 6, 2022 by Luna.2158

[SentriX.3209]

No but it's fun.

[SentriX.3209]

On 9/6/2022 at 7:40 PM, Luna.2158 said:

I play alac willbender in fractals sometimes. It's a lot of work to get alac right but I do enjoy it. Mix of diviner and assassins but perhaps ritualists might be better... The boon duration needed is ambiguous since when I struggle to get alac out I need all the boon duration I can get but when I'm not struggling to trigger the alac there is often more boon duration than is needed. The problem being that it needs to sacrifice dps for when proccing alac is tricky but in ideal circumstances it doesn't need that much of it. The f2 buff stacks duration so you can use it twice, hit the mistlock and then you've got a huge window to proc alac in. It's a shame it doesn't provide other boons, for example instead of taking the trait that reduces cool downs by 0.25 seconds we could take the one that gives us might on any virtue trigger and have that be shared with battle presence, but it doesn't do that. If wb f2 healed on the alac build and shared those heals with battle presence then wb could potentially be an interesting alac/regen healer (and if the previous trait I mentioned worked with battle presence it could be might too). One of the problems with wb is that (even since beta) it doesn't synergise well (or in some cases doesn't even work) with existing virtue related traits. I quite enjoy willbender as a play style but I've otherwise been shelving it and going back to dh or fb except when I occasionally play alac since they do more or better jobs otherwise. The potential is there and I really want it to meet that potential, and I enjoy it nonetheless and it can work. In its current form it isn't going to be turning any heads in terms of effectiveness, versus other options. 

 

I got 0% boon duration and I can keep alac. uptime close to 100%...the duration is so short and the application is easy that imo it's a waste of stats if you invest in boon duration. But yea it's a gimmicky build...though quite fun to play.

[Kulvar.1239]

On 9/12/2022 at 1:11 PM, Liisjak.4509 said:

 

I got 0% boon duration and I can keep alac. uptime close to 100%...the duration is so short and the application is easy that imo it's a waste of stats if you invest in boon duration. But yea it's a gimmicky build...though quite fun to play.

Issue is not keeping 100% alac on coordinated parties, it's the ability to recover from someone messing up or being unable to apply Alacrity because the boss went away for a mechanic.

[Emberheart.8426]

If you were paying attention during the betas you would notice that willbender was never intended to be a main alacrity provider. In fact, the alac started out not even being sharable at all but the devs thought that it was unfair for battle presence to do nothing on willbender.

You really should not expect this to ever be good unless the devs decide that they want willbender in the alac role. It's kinda like trying to force catalyst to be a healer right now. Technically possible if you try to force it and barely care about performance, but it's definitely not supported.