Willbender - the dual swords class that never dual wields swords

[Kozumi.5816]

Willbender class icon? Dual Swords.

Willbender trait art? Dual swords.

Willbender trailers? Dual swords.

Yet, dual swords are not used.  What's the purpose of this offhand weapon?

https://snowcrows.com/builds/guardian/willbender/condition-willbender

https://snowcrows.com/builds/guardian/willbender/power-alacrity-willbender

https://snowcrows.com/builds/guardian/willbender/condition-alacrity-willbender

https://snowcrows.com/builds/guardian/willbender/power-willbender

[Buran.3796]

   Power Willbender is currently the strongest Guardian spec in solo roaming at WvW. So is used.

   Off hand sword in Willbender will never be meta at PvE and instanced content, for two reasons:

* First is that Willbender is a specialization designed to bring Guardian mobility (a staple in the profession) in exchange of selfness. Usually Guardians are extremely good at support, but they lack in mobility. WB has tons of mobility but is entirely selfish. And is very hard to make work in team PvE/instanced content a spec that just doesn?t share, specially since Firebrand is excellent at both offensive and defensive support.

* The second reason is because the off hand sword was designed to work in the same direction as the spec: to fill the mobility gaps. So you have better dps and better support weapons.

   I understand the desire of having a specific weapon to shine in every game mode in each class; the problem is that GW2 is designed to provide different weapon choices to each class, and that means that as the patches change their properties, some of them will enter and exit of the meta. In other MMOs classes usually only wield a single set of weapons, which means that you can always expect from them to work, but here is different.

   Being said that, swords are overrepresented in media compared to their real performance in the battlefield. In pre-fire arms times the main military weapons have been always the spear and the bow; swords are more or less the equivalent to a handgun (and anyway dual wielding is crap unless you use a shield in your off hand). Not like this is a military sim, but don't feel bad if your fav set of weapons does bad at PvE. As I said, they wrk well in WvW roaming...

[Kozumi.5816]

1 hour ago, Buran.3796 said:

 Power Willbender is currently the strongest Guardian spec in solo roaming at WvW. So is used.

Roaming is a unsupported gameplay type in a niche game mode...

[Gaiawolf.8261]

1 hour ago, Kozumi.5816 said:

Roaming is a unsupported gameplay type in a niche game mode...

And yet it's rather popular, so it sees plenty of use. I pretty much always use OH sword on my WB, and I'm really excited to try it on my FB later this month. I might actually not be useless when trying to catch up with my zerg or just roaming for funs while still reading my books. 

[Buran.3796]

9 hours ago, Kozumi.5816 said:

Roaming is a unsupported gameplay type in a niche game mode...

  WvW is unsupported gameplay. PvP is unsupported gameplay. Raids is unsupported gameplay. The only game mode encouraged by ANet (since is where most of players thrieve and from where most of the microtransactions sales arrives) is Open World PvE. At which Guardian isn't that special, to be honest (very good in teams, but rather weak as solo in ebvery specialization).

   My advice is: play the things you enjoy; don't wait from ANet to enhance things that you enjoy since most of the time they will do nothing. Don't expect sword + sword to become relevant for Guardian in PvE because they already have a solid PvE spec in the Firebrand and due design reasons as selfish spec Willbenderwill never shine there. It doesn't mean that I like or support that design approach, I'm just telling you that aknownling that reality will save you from frustation and delusional hopes.

[Ghorast.8290]

It's a pvp weapon

[Ezrael.6859]

14 hours ago, Kozumi.5816 said:

Roaming is a unsupported gameplay type in a niche game mode...

Playing GW2 for the PvE 🤣

No trinity, no class identity, extremely limited mechanics. Just memorise a dps rotation and build your character the way some website tells you, then avoid the big orange shapes on the ground.

[Kozumi.5816]

4 hours ago, Ghorast.8290 said:

It's a pvp weapon

There should not be pvp only weapons just like there aren't pvp only specs anymore because pvp isn't even the main game mode.

[Balsa.3951]

19 hours ago, Gaiawolf.8261 said:

And yet it's rather popular, so it sees plenty of use. I pretty much always use OH sword on my WB, and I'm really excited to try it on my FB later this month. I might actually not be useless when trying to catch up with my zerg or just roaming for funs while still reading my books. 

roaming in wvw is really not plenty lets not deform reality to win an argument.

to OP

OHsword was many times asked to be buffed or changed Anet seems fine or has no time to rework it now.

u can use OH sword in the open world thats not to bad and a major game mode

[Gaiawolf.8261]

3 hours ago, Balsa.3951 said:

roaming in wvw is really not plenty lets not deform reality to win an argument.

to OP

OHsword was many times asked to be buffed or changed Anet seems fine or has no time to rework it now.

u can use OH sword in the open world thats not to bad and a major game mode

This is the internet, there is no winning. At 1.1k posts, you should know that by now.

But there is fun in roaming wvw for plenty of players. That is all that matters. I saw some of them there a just few minutes ago. 

Edited August 6, 2023 by Gaiawolf.8261

[Junkpile.7439]

Do you even need off hand in PvE?

[draxynnic.3719]

Theoretically speaking, it could be an offensive melee power offhand. In practice, though, focus does more damage in that role, so the optimised builds run that instead. I don't think the difference is that great, but OH sword also has the issue of being yet more mobility on a build that probably has enough mobility without it (virtues, mainhand sword already has a teleport to target skill), so one more teleport is a bit redundant. It might, ironically, see more use on dragonhunter post-SOTO.

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

Real guardians use their bare hands.

[Zoid.2568]

I use dual swords all the time, at least in pve.

[Sakiri.4809]

On 8/6/2023 at 4:47 PM, Ezrael.6859 said:

Playing GW2 for the PvE 🤣

No trinity, no class identity, extremely limited mechanics. Just memorise a dps rotation and build your character the way some website tells you, then avoid the big orange shapes on the ground.

Memorize a dps rotation, use a cookie cutter build and avoid orange shapes reminds me of every mmo I've ever played. 

[Ezrael.6859]

On 10/8/2023 at 8:17 PM, Sakiri.4809 said:

Memorize a dps rotation, use a cookie cutter build and avoid orange shapes reminds me of every mmo I've ever played. 

Sorry you’ve played so many shallow and simplistic MMOs in your time then.

[yLoon.5289]

Why do you take it so seriously on a random talented piano player skillfully hitting an unmovable sandbag?
If a weapon gives you mobility with Ultra Deep DPS, is that balance? 
Tell me, which weapon in GW2 is able to provide full coverage, super useful on all game modes of PvE, OW, WvW & PvP?

Edited October 11, 2023 by yLoon.5289

[Sakiri.4809]

7 hours ago, Ezrael.6859 said:

Sorry you’ve played so many shallow and simplistic MMOs in your time then.

I've played every one released for a western market from EverQuest to World of Warcraft and FFXIV. 

If there's a talent or skill build system, there's predone builds for it. People find out what mathematically does the most damage or healing or even stuff like CTC calculations from WoW back in the day, and publish it, and most people will ask advice, get told to look it up, go look it up and just copy it. 

Even WoW today, with its super huge talent trees, there's very little variance in build, and heck, a lot of dps don't even talent for an interrupt because something else gives more damage. They then wonder why they get trucked and still refuse to change build. 

[Aenesthesia.1697]

On 8/6/2023 at 5:15 PM, Kozumi.5816 said:

There should not be pvp only weapons just like there aren't pvp only specs anymore because pvp isn't even the main game mode.

It's not a pvp weapon. Just a weapon that offers a little more than damage. As such, it's going to be outclassed if your only aim is to hit a golem and get bit numbers. 

Try dual swords on the golem to see what the actual dps loss is. You might be surprised. Or ask the people that made the builds, they will surely have the numbers. 

Keep in mind they look for the absolute highest dps possible against a non moving target that doesn't hit back. Convenience or real encounter mechanics are not even in the menu for their builds (and yet, some may include weapon and utility variations for specific encounters).  

 

 

[Batalix.2873]

On 8/5/2023 at 7:54 AM, Kozumi.5816 said:

Willbender class icon? Dual Swords.

Willbender trait art? Dual swords.

Willbender trailers? Dual swords.

Yet, dual swords are not used.  What's the purpose of this offhand weapon?

https://snowcrows.com/builds/guardian/willbender/condition-willbender

https://snowcrows.com/builds/guardian/willbender/power-alacrity-willbender

https://snowcrows.com/builds/guardian/willbender/condition-alacrity-willbender

https://snowcrows.com/builds/guardian/willbender/power-willbender

Good. It was always a stupid idea for a Guardian class anyway.

- as relayed to me by Shiro, the spirit possessing my revenant brain.

Edited November 18, 2023 by Batalix.2873

[ACrowley.7698]

On 8/6/2023 at 7:47 AM, Ezrael.6859 said:

Playing GW2 for the PvE 🤣

No trinity, no class identity, extremely limited mechanics. Just memorise a dps rotation and build your character the way some website tells you, then avoid the big orange shapes on the ground.

Look, someone with an axe to grind 🤣  I'm sorry you don't have the skill to hit DPS benchmarks, and dungeons are too difficult for you to figure out!  If you add me in game, I'll teach you a fractal.  Careful though, they have instabilities which  you have to adapt to... /sarcasm

On a serious note, PvE is the core of the game and it's a lot of fun, with many different challenges and classes to play, and there definitely is a skill floor to it and a teamwork aspect to it. PvP is great, but toxic and not for everyone. 

WvW is the biggest disappointment, which is why the devs are always trying to make people play it.  But let's be honest, hardly anyone plays unless they HAVE to for a legendary component.  Sure, it's great in theory, but it just doesn't  pan out.  It's a gamemode where you spend most of your time simply traveling around.  Walk walk walk ride ride ride.... ZZzzzZZZzzz... If you're in a zerg, you mindlessly follow the tag and autoattack, you can do that half asleep 🤣  If you're not in a zerg, you better run if you see one coming, the game is all about numbers not skill. 

What happens if it's an organized zerg vs organized zerg, you say?  Well sure that's when the skill comes in but you copy a build from a website and play like the meta tells you to.  Exactly... so I get your point, but the criticisms falls flat.

I also have an axe to grind but the opposite way, if you haven' t figured it out yet.  WvW players couldn't be bothered to just click on the food they're eating so they cried on the forums forever until the devs were forced to stop cake from over-writing other food buffs.  This is bad news for people who actually want to swap roles on the fly or know how to left mouse click on what they want, but WvW, what can you expect.... 🤣

[Kuya.6495]

Apparently the alac dps willbender build performs better with sword/sword/gs + peitha relic. 

[ACrowley.7698]

On 10/8/2023 at 12:17 PM, Sakiri.4809 said:

Memorize a dps rotation, use a cookie cutter build and avoid orange shapes reminds me of every mmo I've ever played. 

The fact that you send me in-game mail insulting me for my opinion,  then immediately block me before I can reply, says it all. You know you're wrong, and you're afraid.  Thanks for removing all doubt.

[Balsa.3951]

On 8/7/2023 at 7:57 AM, Gaiawolf.8261 said:

This is the internet, there is no winning. At 1.1k posts, you should know that by now.

But there is fun in roaming wvw for plenty of players. That is all that matters. I saw some of them there a just few minutes ago. 

rethinking by now i think u are right

[Quickpawmaud.6374]

Wtf is this topic?

On 12/7/2023 at 8:19 PM, ACrowley.7698 said:

The fact that you send me in-game mail insulting me for my opinion,  then immediately block me before I can reply, says it all. You know you're wrong, and you're afraid.  Thanks for removing all doubt.

Why did that guy send you in game mail flaming you? He agreed with you. Did you mean Ezrael and replied to the wrong person? Dang this is entertaining to read through though 😆