How is Willbender compared to Revenant ?

[HybridReaper.1530]

Hello everyone,

I recently came back to the game after a very long pause (pre-HoT) and I am completely lost as to what class to play. In the core game back at launch I played a Thief but it didn't really click with me. Now that I came back I started reading a lot of threads/posts regarding which profession to play and narrowed it down to Warrior/Guardian/Revenant. 

I started playing the Warr and got it to 80 and half-way through HoT but decided to jump on a Guardian for comparison and I got to pretty much the same place with it and I must say I enjoy it more than the warrior, however, my issue is that it seems the Guardian is used more as a support than a dmg dealer which really isn't my playstyle, I like being the 'assassin' of the group. And from what I gather the Guardian mostly shines as FB and not WillBender which would sort of be my preferred playstyle (I really want to play with a GS).

My question is how is the Revenant compared to the Guardian? I would like a class that I can play everything with (WvW, PvE and PvP) and I just don't want to waste the time getting another char to 80 just to not like it. So what do you guys think, how does the Revenant compare to the Guardian in play-style, mastering and fun? I know the classes are mostly balanced, and I am not looking at doing 1vX with anything, but as far as I have seen from videos, Revenant would much better fit my playstyle, but is it any good in late game activities?

Thank you all in advance for taking the time to read this post and I wish you all a great day/night.

 

As a side note: from watching streamers and vids I noticed that you see a lot of Revenants in Raids/Strikers but hardly any WBs.

[MercurialKuroSludge.8974]

TLDR: WB is strong in PvP settings, very niche and borderline bad in PvE.

Willbender is insanely powerful in PvP/WvW as a dueling class with high mobility.

In PvE it has high raw dmg, and personal boon generation like basically perma capped Fury and Might, but those are the only 2 things it can do.
Its terrible at sharing/giving boons, its elite spec utility skills are garbage except for Whirling Light, and the Elite skill is extremely lackluster with overlong wind up time.
Taking any defensive specs, swapping out Zeal/Radiant will absolutely murder your DPS, and Willbender is also receiving an out of the blue Nerf instead of Adjustment in the upcoming May patch.

I highly recommend playing WB in PvP if you dont want to play Thief but want something similar, otherwise do NOT recommend WB for PvE at all.
That being said, going zoomzoom is REALLY fun, so if you wanna force WIllbender, play it in Open World.

Edited April 26, 2023 by MercurialKuroSludge.8974

[HybridReaper.1530]

48 minutes ago, MercurialKuroSludge.8974 said:

TLDR: WB is strong in PvP settings, very niche and borderline bad in PvE.

Willbender is insanely powerful in PvP/WvW as a dueling class with high mobility.

In PvE it has high raw dmg, and personal boon generation like basically perma capped Fury and Might, but those are the only 2 things it can do.
Its terrible at sharing/giving boons, its elite spec utility skills are garbage except for Whirling Light, and the Elite skill is extremely lackluster with overlong wind up time.
Taking any defensive specs, swapping out Zeal/Radiant will absolutely murder your DPS, and Willbender is also receiving an out of the blue Nerf instead of Adjustment in the upcoming May patch.

I highly recommend playing WB in PvP if you dont want to play Thief but want something similar, otherwise do NOT recommend WB for PvE at all.
That being said, going zoomzoom is REALLY fun, so if you wanna force WIllbender, play it in Open World.

Thank you for the reply and all the info.

[Ferus.3165]

Willbender is not meta in pvp. It's still playable for a long time (untill you reach plat) but the downsides of willbender are that you are mostly a melee dps with very little cc and you are very squishy. You have to make your Judges Intervention port count or you need teammates who cc the enemy for you. The pros of willbender are that you are quite mobile and you have a huge burst. Just don't use it into the enemy block or invulnerabiliy.

 

In PvE Willbender is completely fine as DPS. There are some fights that make it harder for a willbender because you have to use your movement skills to get very important buffs. In PvE you should be using condi willbender and you have to make sure to always activate the f1 skill because literally 90% of your damage comes from the buff this skill grants (that also means that you can use any weapon on willbender and still be condi... so you can play greatsword condi willy and the difference to sword mainhand is extremely small. Just have x/torch for your other weaponset). The willbender elite skill is good for breakbars in pve. Willbender may not be the best dps in the game but noone will say anything about it (except for conjured amalgamate because you need power dps for it --> dragonhunter easily fills that role)

Alacrity willbender will probably not be played after the next balance update and it is already very niche right now.

 

In wvw you can play power and condi willbender but i'd say that power willbender is superior to the condi variant because the condi variant has only one condition and that is burn. You can burst people down with condi willbender because a lot of the time people are simply not suspecting 10 stacks burn in 1-2 seconds because most people play power willbender (or celestial but your burns hit for far less on that build than on a full condi willbender) but as soon as people realize you are playing condi you probably will not beat them anymore. The (almost) full glass willbender with marauders/berserkers/dragon stats hits extremely hard in wvw. You can kill people in a few seconds if they are unaware but you easily explode yourself if you get targeted or you can play the more balanced approach and play with celestial stats. That would probably be the easiest thing to start in wvw because it gives you more time to understand what is happening before you die. And that will happen a lot if you are new.

 

You can play both willbender and vindicator (only rev spec with gs) in every mode. The biggest advantage vindi has over willbender as a new player is imo that you need less different gear sets on a vindi. Vindicator is always power damage (there is a support build for vindi but you said that's not what you want) and the dragon stats that you need for willbender are quite hard to come by as a "new" player.

[shion.2084]

Will bender is most definitely playable in Platinum for good players.  If you look at Dac Nacem, or Goofy Silverfur, or Saiyan, Infinite Light, all those guys are able to maintain top 100.   I was duo-ing with Saiyan last night for a ranked game and I think he's 38th right now.

What WB may not be meta for is competitive 5 man pre-made.   In Pug PvP though its competitive at top-ish levels of play if you are a strong player.

Edited May 3, 2023 by shion.2084

[MercurialKuroSludge.8974]

7 hours ago, Ferus.3165 said:

Willbender is not meta in pvp.

You incorrectly assume I referred to Willbender as "meta".
Stop watching clickbait youtube videos that conflate "Strong" "Insanely powerful" with "the most broken build you've ever seen!!!".

Also, your entire essay is literally the same thing I said, just with more words.
Well, everyone sees FB/DH waaaaaay more than WB in every piece of PvE content. The ratio of Guardian players who don't touch WB in PvE is astounding, but yes, its absolutely perfectly fine, just hated and reviled in any PvP game mode, especially WvW, and completely neglected and forgotten in PvE.

[draxynnic.3719]

7 hours ago, Ferus.3165 said:

In PvE you should be using condi willbender and you have to make sure to always activate the f1 skill because literally 90% of your damage comes from the buff this skill grants (that also means that you can use any weapon on willbender and still be condi... so you can play greatsword condi willy and the difference to sword mainhand is extremely small. Just have x/torch for your other weaponset). The willbender elite skill is good for breakbars in pve. Willbender may not be the best dps in the game but noone will say anything about it (except for conjured amalgamate because you need power dps for it --> dragonhunter easily fills that role)

Power willbender benches higher than condi willbender, and at just under 42k is one of the highest in the game, and doesn't seem to require a particularly complicated rotation. Does require Unscathed Contender, but you can reapply Aegis easily with Unscathed Contender, and after the rework, not having aegis is less of a hit than it used to be. It's also worth noting that technically it's still something of a hybrid rather than pure power - DH likely edges it out when you really want power burst - but it's still using full power stats.

I'd note that willbender is also pretty decent for solo play, although not at the level that cele vindicator can reach.

Revenant does, however, have the advantage that if you wanted to flex into quickness and/or alacrity, that's relatively easy to do, and if you're sticking to power quickness or, to a lesser extent, power alac, you'd still have at least some of that assassin-esque feel. Guardian, on the other hand, needs to go firebrand for quickness, which is certainly not an assassin playstyle.

[Buran.3796]

   In instanced PvE and related to Guardians, Firebrand is the king due the versatility of the skills which came from the tomes and the overall set of utilities a Guardian can chose. Firebrand can also run condition builds (lets see how the patch affects this one), quickness + conditions and heal/support builds. Dragonhunter has a high burst which is conveneint in Fractals, but doesn't outplace FB. Willbender delivers very good damage (specially conditions) but lacks the versatility of FB and having so much mobility linked to your burst skills sometimes puts you in akward places in fights.

    In instanced PvE Revenant has qHerald, alacrigade and power Vindicator as main builds. QHerald is very versatile, with tons of cc and can provide stability, projectile negation, etc. just changing a legend. Alacrigade can work both with power and condi stats, retain the same versatility and maintaining alacrity requires minimal input and doesn't disrupt your gameplay. There's healing builds but not that popular. Vindicator is an outlier which as happens with Willbender provides good dps but not much else (although can deliver tons of cc, stability and some quickness if needed):

   For OW PvE solo my list is very clear. In performance celestial Vindicator > celestial Herald > power Vindicator > condi Willbender = celestial Renegade > celestial Firebrand. In terms of gameplay I do enjoy more power Vindicator and condi Willbender than the other builds, but celestial Vindi and Herald run in circles around the others in terms of self sustain while retaining good dps.

   In PvP Guardian has a strong support core build, a good Willbender options and a serviceable DH build. Firebrand is worst PvP spec in the game, and his position has only worsened along the time. At the moment I would say that Revenant PvP builds are overall weak: it doesn't have a good support build and the +1 options aren't that good.. Power Vindicator, Renebow and Herald are playable but Willbender feels/performs better, and ANet keeps pushing a condi build which no one uses...

   In WvW zergs Guardian has core and Firebrand; Revenant has Herald, Renegade (less used) and Vindicator. Both porfessions are very unexciting to play in zergs, tho. At roaming, power Willbender is the best Guardian option, followed by DH, but DH has very limited mobility and that alone makes WB superior in any regard. Core is weak and Firebrand, while carried by celestial stats which doesn't exist in PvP is fairly weak: limited sustain, mediocre dps, easy to kite...   At roaming Revenant has Vindicator with good sustain and damage but poor cc to set combos, and Renebow with good cc and damage but much lower self sustain. I no longer consider Herald an optioin since is just a worse Willbender build. Both Willbender and Vindicator can struggle vs some ranged builds, and on the reverse, Renebow is weak vs sticky mele builds. The three are serviciable but far from being top dogs. Overall Willbender is in the best place there.

   In terms of gear, if you don't care about team content and play mostly solo, Revenant benefits from having good builds with celestial stats in any spec; then Marauder is great for Vindicator and Divine and Ritualist are good for qHerald/alacrigade and alacrigade respectively in instanced content. For guardians, celestial is great for Firebrand and core builds; with Willbender trailblazer/viper is the best at PvE but dragon/marauder is better fior WvW. But I run legendaries and my advice to anyone would be to get your legenbdary armor ASAP: is one of the best qol assets in the game.

   If I had to play instanced content I would chose either qFirebrand, qHerald or alacrigade builds. For OW solo I prefer Vindicator builds or celestial Mirage; I have fun with Willbender, Bladesworn and Reaper also, but don't perform so well. 

   In WvW roaming at the moment is Willbender > Renegade > Vindicator for me. In PvP, since the game mode is dead and I don't care much anymore, I play mostly a bunker Herald build which I enjoy, and aside of that Willbender, Renebow and DH. I never play Vindi in PvP, It sucks for me. 

[draxynnic.3719]

2 hours ago, Buran.3796 said:

 Divine and Ritualist are good for qHerald/alacrigade and alacrigade respectively in instanced content.

There is a quickness condi herald build, so technically you could run Ritualist for qherald as well.

[Saiyan.1704]

On 4/26/2023 at 1:39 PM, HybridReaper.1530 said:

Hello everyone,

I recently came back to the game after a very long pause (pre-HoT) and I am completely lost as to what class to play. In the core game back at launch I played a Thief but it didn't really click with me. Now that I came back I started reading a lot of threads/posts regarding which profession to play and narrowed it down to Warrior/Guardian/Revenant. 

I started playing the Warr and got it to 80 and half-way through HoT but decided to jump on a Guardian for comparison and I got to pretty much the same place with it and I must say I enjoy it more than the warrior, however, my issue is that it seems the Guardian is used more as a support than a dmg dealer which really isn't my playstyle, I like being the 'assassin' of the group. And from what I gather the Guardian mostly shines as FB and not WillBender which would sort of be my preferred playstyle (I really want to play with a GS).

My question is how is the Revenant compared to the Guardian? I would like a class that I can play everything with (WvW, PvE and PvP) and I just don't want to waste the time getting another char to 80 just to not like it. So what do you guys think, how does the Revenant compare to the Guardian in play-style, mastering and fun? I know the classes are mostly balanced, and I am not looking at doing 1vX with anything, but as far as I have seen from videos, Revenant would much better fit my playstyle, but is it any good in late game activities?

Thank you all in advance for taking the time to read this post and I wish you all a great day/night.

 

As a side note: from watching streamers and vids I noticed that you see a lot of Revenants in Raids/Strikers but hardly any WBs.

(sPvP) You wont really be 1vXing anything or anyone unless said players are incredibly lower skilled than you are. Willbender CAN excel in Conquest PvP by applying as much team AoE damage as possible, or +1 bursting some one as fast as possible. You may win SOME 1v1's but WB is absolutely not a 1v1 spec. The higher up the rank ladder you go, Mid Gold or Plat1+, you'll realize this real quick. In fact if you ever become that competitive where you're a consistent top 100 or top 240 player every season, you'll realize how poorly you are at 1v1 compared to other classes and that aspect can be frustrating. If you truly want to 1vX, play Cata (elementalist) or stick to Warrior. They have builds that are literally designed to 1vX on side nodes. Aside from all that, WB certainly is fun and I've hit Baron a couple of times on it.

(WvW) Willbender is still fun in WvW roaming and in team fights, or even in 10v10 (I hear this gamemode made by the community is growing in popularity). When it comes to roaming, it's not the best class but it's still very fun especially amongst friends. But just like in Conquest, it's not the best 1vX class. Currently Cata is the most OP class when it comes to 1vX... but I think they're receiving nerfs soon so the meta is uncertain after the June 27th patch.

 

On 4/27/2023 at 9:48 AM, shion.2084 said:

Will bender is most definitely playable in Platinum for good players.  If you look at Dac Nacem, or Goofy Silverfur, or Saiyan, all those guys are able to maintain top 100.   I was duo-ing with Saiyan last night for a ranked game and I think he's 38th right now.

What WB may not be meta for is competitive 5 man pre-made.   In Pug PvP though its competitive at top-ish levels of play if you are a strong player.

Awes thanks! I didn't have a pog duo though and i kept queueing... so i de-ranked to 116 hehehe. I've gotten top 100 a couple of times i'm stiiiillllll trying to get top25 but it's nigh impossible as a solo lowly WB :3