It's too late for June 27th, but Alacrity Willbender needs to be addressed

[MagicBot.1570]

TL;DR at the end.

 

Despite the latest Willbender change, which allowed Virtues to be active all at once, this single change, no matter how significant, cannot fix Alacrity Willbender entirely and it still needs further iterations to make it compelling.

Here are suggestions to put it back in line with other more popular specializations, like Renegade. Please note that this entire thread only covers PvE Willbender. I have no idea how it performs in PvP.

 

The off-hand Sword problem

 

For a spec whose silhouette was believed to be an assassin Thief spec at first, by roughly 25% of the community, double Sword gameplay is a bit of a letdown. There is a lot of room for improvement in that department. Additionally, Focus got buffed and overshadows off-hand Sword even more, with no compensation to make this weapon more effective.

I'm gonna go over the main issues, and give suggestions to fix them. I'll also give some suggestions on how to reaffirm the spec's identity.

 

Alacrity share

 

The Willbender can share Alacrity thanks to the Battle Presence trait in the Virtues traitline. They made it so Phoenix Protocol and Battle Presence would synergize: the first one allows the Willbender to get Regeneration and Alacrity when attacking under the effects of Flowing Resolve (F2), and the second one shares them with allies.

While this is an interesting synergy, it forces the Willbender to equip the Virtues traitline to share Alacrity.

This is fine, because Virtues is a traitline which synergizes extremely well with the Willbender, for multiple reasons: short baseline cooldowns on virtues, Boon and easy Aegis uptime, Permeating Wrath...

I don't think this tradeoff should be fixed anymore.

Here is a set of changes that would greatly improve the Willbender's support potential:

- Phoenix Protocol no longer changes Flowing Resolve's base healing feature to Regeneration. Instead, said healing is reduced by 66%. Flowing Resolve also applies 3 seconds of Alacrity to allies upon activation.

- Restorative Virtues no longer provides Alacrity.

- Battle Presence shares Alacrity, and Flowing Resolve's baseline healing is still shared with allies.

Both Grandmaster traits would still synergize well, as Flowing Resolve has a strong healing capacity, and this would help healing builds tremendously. The tradeoff aspect is kept in a milder form, with reduced healing, to prevent it from being too strong. This set of changes offloads Restorative Virtues a bit too, which is currently too strong.

 

The issue of Might share

 

The Willbender doesn't have an efficient way of providing consistent Might to the party. This is a dealbreaker for any Alacrity provider, or offensive support in general. The specialization that fills the same power Alacrity niche as the Willbender, currently, is the Renegade. Both have excellent CC, burst, and damage, but only the Renegade has optional party sustain through Soulcleave Summit and excellent Might share with Heroic Command. The Willbender as it stands is mostly inferior to the Renegade, because it lacks at least decent Might share and unconditionnal Alacrity share.

 

The latter is covered by my previous suggestion. The first one could be fixed by a change to Holy Reckoning. This trait in the Willbender traitline is an excellent Might source, but it is sadly not one that can be shared with allies.

Suggested change:

- Holy Reckoning: In addition to its previous effects, off-hand Sword abilities now share 5 stacks of Might for 10 seconds.

 

This is a good compromise, because it gives a niche to off-hand Sword and gives more flexibility to the support build; the player can choose whether or not he wants to share Might or deal more damage.

This is a healthy place to put Might share on, because this trait is also competing with Restorative Virtues, which is a major damage trait.

In my opinion, this is the bare minimum set of changes that Power Alacrity Willbender is missing. Fundamentally, it doesn't need anything more to compete with other Power Alacrity sources, but it also isn't really able to compete with them right now. Might share is the critical feature that needs to be added to this specialization to make it good.

 

Lack of Identity & Wishful Thinking

 

I'll be honest, when I saw the specialization preview  two years ago, I was fully expecting the double-Sword brawler fantasy to be fulfilled for the Guardian. The first thing that sprinked to mind was that it was gonna take some features from Thief.

 

I thought we would have a special interaction with the two Swords equipped. We've seen a lot of people on the forums expecting some kind of flip-over skill on Sword 3. Sadly, this didn't happen, and off-hand Sword isn't even good in PvE!

Willbender is a neat specialization. However, I can't help but think that it is a bit dull compared to other specs. The main issues being:

 

* All of the utilities were designed with PvP in mind.

* Off-hand Sword is currently heavily outclassed by Focus.

* there is no special feature, no new special mechanic which gives the Willbender identity. It is essentially just a new set of utilities, mostly unusable in PvE, and new virtues slapped onto core Guardian. Restorative Virtues gives it a bit of flavor, but that's pretty much it.

 

In PvE, the Willbender heavily lacks identity. To fix this, the Sword/Sword fantasy needs to be fulfilled. This can be achieved through several degrees of changes:

 

* simply giving a support niche to Sword abilities.

* adding a new trait which strongly favors double Sword gameplay.

* making a small rework, enabling a new feature when holding two Swords. This could be anything really: a unique buff/aura, a flip over skill (new Sword 3?), an F4, an additional effect on the virtues or on Sword abilities (kind of like being above 100 heat on Holosmith).

I am very well aware that this part of the post is mostly wishful thinking, but I just feel it lacks a little something.

Besides, it doesn't necessarily need a small rework to be more fun in PvE. Personally, I would start by adding more damage to Flash Combo and call it a day.

 

Suggested changes to utilities in PvE:

 

- Roiling Light (→Quick Retribution):  1 → 2

- Flash Combo:  2.25 → 4

 

 TL;DR:

Willbender lacks:

* Might share

* Minor unconditional Alacrity share

* Damage in the right places

Proposed changes, for PvE exclusively:

* Phoenix Protocol no longer changes Flowing Resolve's base healing feature to Regeneration. Instead, said healing is reduced by 66%. Flowing Resolve applies 3 seconds of Alacrity to allies upon activation.

* Restorative Virtues no longer provides Alacrity.

* Battle Presence now shares Flowing Resolve's healing with allies.

* Holy Reckoning: Might is shared with off-hand Sword abilities (5 stacks for 10 seconds).

* Potentially interesting damage buffs:

- Roiling Light (→Quick Retribution):  1 → 2

- Flash Combo:  2.25 → 4

 

 --------

Other known issue (Misc.):

 

   * Rushing Justice (F1)'s pathing is sometimes very poor. It doesn't work well against stealthing targets, and it definitely doesn't work underwater. This could use a couple of fixes, and could be made slightly faster.

   * Sword and Greatsword are extremely clunky.

   * GS's second auto, Vengeful Strike, has a huge aftercast.

   * Whirling Wrath (GS2) has an aftercast.

   * Symbol of Resolution (GS4) has a huge aftercast and a root.

   * Binding Blade (GS5) has a huge aftercast.

   * Sword autos and Zealot's Defense (Sw3) also have aftercasts.

Edited June 22, 2023 by MagicBot.1570

[MercurialKuroSludge.8974]

Nah, it needs to reduced duration even further, at least thats what everyone in the Guardian forums said during last patch.
Alacrity Bender is overpowered and needs to be nerfed, it shud give 0.5 seconds of Alacrity every 30 seconds to compensate for its "way too high benchmarks that perfectly transfers into a real fight".

Am I being sarcastic enough?

[foxtrot.6902]

On 6/19/2023 at 8:59 AM, MercurialKuroSludge.8974 said:

Nah, it needs to reduced duration even further, at least thats what everyone in the Guardian forums said during last patch.
Alacrity Bender is overpowered and needs to be nerfed, it shud give 0.5 seconds of Alacrity every 30 seconds to compensate for its "way too high benchmarks that perfectly transfers into a real fight".

Am I being sarcastic enough?

Man if that was their intent (which everyone seemed to imply) talk about fail. Easier fix would remove -0.25sec wep cd from restorative and give restorative a fatter alac on activation with group share then move the -0.25sec wep cd to tyrants. Or something...Solve the non-realistic dps benchmark on a mob that doesn't attack, move, stun, or have invuln. 

Post has ton of great suggestions, only critique would be word choice on "Phoenix Protocol and Battle Presence would synergize" lol would argue against "synergize", eats two GM traits to be able to alac share and they work against one another removing healing haha.

After last patch armchair players saying to stack more BD is a bit of a bust when the base duration is already so low as it is