Willbender Feedback Thread

[Arken.3725]

Here's my Arken Spvp feedback:

 

-Most physical skills are still REALLY bad.  CD reductions weren't really the problem for most of them.  The only decent one is Whirling Light that's still bugged and doesn't hit behind you.

 

-RoF heal still feels VERY weak.  Blocking a single attack(not even cc/condition application) just isn't good.  It's weaker than Mantra of Solace(when it had aegis) that actually blocks ANY incoming damage/cc/condition dmg.

 

-Willbender Flames are still useless/weaker versions of symbols

 

-Offhand Sword is better but still weaker than Rev Offhand Sword

 

-Most traits are boring/weak(random stat increases for example)

 

-Still no forms of Soft-cc, Quickness or Superspeed.  You can still be kited most of the time.

 

Excellent patch in the right direction, though.  Keep it up

 

 

 

Edited April 4, 2022 by Arken.3725

[Supes.7831]

Agreed mostly with @Arken.3725

My spvp perspective:

 

Core Guardian issue's play a big role into WB effectiveness.  Poorly tracking skills, horrendous healing abilities and sticking power keep WB from filling it's true potential.

 

Reversal of Fortune feels weaker than the already weak healing skills Guardian has access to.

 

While having more ports, the issue of sticking power still remains.  WB still has very little soft-cc and no Superspeed to keep up.  And certainly no Hard-cc to speak of that's worth taking.  So how does a WB keep someone close?

 

Sustain is a tad better but still rough given how many hits you need to trigger virtue's.  This becomes even more problematic when you realize your sticking power isn't that great for the reasons I've stated above.

 

I'm sure there's more but while this patch was a good one, it needs more.

 

Edited April 6, 2022 by Supes.7831

[medivh.4725]

Makes no sense
Firstly why would a WB want to keep 2 swords to do a volley of fist?
And then how is the heavy amour wearing WB making such long distance leaps?

Uninspiring moves
Spin kick is from Street Fighter 1992. Punch volley is from GW2 thief. They are all seen before. The class suffering abit from originality.

The martial arts are as uninspiring. Moves do not chain like they are suppose to.

Hard rotations
The WB is just dashing in and out of combat zone excessively. Which is why rotation could take some work. This rushing in out of combat confuses the heck out of me.

Playing WB for 2 weeks now.  It is not helping in WvW, PvP, without tapping at core guardian's specs. Offers none or little in group settings as well. 

Improvements
Like any glass canon build substainability is issue. But this can be countered simply by tapping on the guardians straits. But having self substainbility build in is always preferred.

Dual swordplay experience needs to be better.

Devs watch more kungfu competition and incorporate it into the WB. It is suppose to be kungfu genre but feels like a karate kid to me.

Getting use to WB
While you can't go all out on WB straits. With guardian skills and substain and making use of WB's many quick short teleportations, it can confuse opponent (hopefully not confuse yourself) If you time those moves correct. The class is actually playable. Just don't bring it to group setting

Edited April 19, 2022 by medivh.4725

[Unicorn Luna.5204]

I've settled into WB and feel fairly competent with it. PvE as Zerk DPS or Diviner/zerk alacrity sharing.

Virtues:

BUG1 : F2 and F3 have different versions underwater. They do not share cooldowns or even traits it seems. I can't maintain alac on the party in aquatic ruins because of this (and the lack of hits available underwater). To be fair it's pretty much only aquatic ruins that this matters.

BUG2: Purity of Body trait in Honor line does not seem to work at all with willbender.

F2 is a problem in that we can only choose a direction - rather than a distance or location. This makes providing alac in some situations very difficult as you are forced into travelling to do it. There are some encounters where we need to be careful about our positioning. Try alac WB on final boss of thaumanova reactor with all platforms around you gone. It doesn't work so well.

Offhand sword: Love it. Much improved since beta. Very happy

Utilities:

Reversal of fortune: I don't use it, but as a pve dps guardian I don't know why I would choose anything besides litany. I'd take shelter over RoF simply because the heal is consistent and the block duration is better.

Flash combo: It's a nice single target attack but I don't ever take it. Might use it more if outside of pve.

Roiling light: Excellent stun breaker. I still will take SYG though.

Whirling light: I would take this but sword of justice is better. Whirling light would need a significant damage boost and probably some ammo before I chose it over sword of justice.

Heel crack: I don't think I've ever slotted this except to look at it simply because there are better options for CC and I've probably already got some of them equipped.

Heaven's palm: Goes with me everywhere. It is much better now that it has a small shadowstep. The only thing I'd say about the skill is that it feels very uncomfortable to start casting only to have the target move out of range. Like the change from vanilla renewed focus it would be much more fun if we can move while casting heaven's palm.

Trait notes:

Deathless courage: Half of the functionality of this trait feels redundant. Not being downed is a great feature but reducing the duration of courage by 2 seconds (to a 4 sec duration) and that can be extended up to 8 seconds if you defeat two enemies in that first 4 second window is what feels redundant. Who's avoiding being downed and killing two enemies within a 4 second window? That's so niche it hurts! In my opinion the duration could stay at 6 seconds and this trait gains the features from "Vanguard Tactics" trait which on its own is not a great trait on its own.

Holy Reckoning: Isn't the better choice for DPS despite granting might and fury and being on the line for power damage. Holy reckoning boons are not shared with battle presence even if they are granted by application of resolve - I only mention this as this trait may have had some value as part of a boon support build. Restorative virtues trait is better for damage and support builds.

Conceited curate: I'm yet to find a good use for this trait in PvE besides having some back up healing... which I never think I'll need.

Phoenix Protocol: It works with battle presence to turn wb into boon support with 100% uptime of alacrity and regen from f2 triggers. Very cool indeed. The problem with this is that using any virtue besides f2 is undesirable most of the time and then only as a filler for the small windows when flowing resolve drops off. This means that as boon support you are easily penalising yourself and your group by using the other two virtues except in that small filler window. Changing this trait to activate on any virtue trigger would make the alac build feel much less trapped within itself but then how/why would it work with battle presence which is only for resolve? I don't know the answer! What I do know is that wb easily gives way too much alac when there's multiple targets. It works fine with one target but as previously mentioned it's very easy to find yourself in a situation where you can't get enough hits on that one target to provide alac to the group. The scale is broad from easily 20+ seconds of alac with multiple targets all the way to no alac for anyone because you're busy avoiding mechanics rather than getting many strikes in. It's an awkward setup, it works, but it could be more smooth/reliable/consistent than the current iteration.

Other alac classes don't fall short of alac uptime simply because they (for whatever reason) aren't able to hit a target enough times in quick succession. Situations where this is a problem are low in general but other alac specs don't suffer in this way at all.

Many thanks!

Edited April 17, 2022 by Nayaru.4716

[Narrrz.7532]

Just to echo what it seems a lot of others have also been saying: The Justice effect needs to trigger burning off fewer attacks, otherwise it's objectively worse than the baseline guard passive which is just always active.
It could be 3 attacks and hit 3 targets, reduced to 2 hits and 5 targets with the virtues grandmaster trait. That at least makes the virtues traitline optional while still making it an upgrade if taken.

Also my personal experience is that the willbender flames effect is too weak. It does hilariously minimal direct damage and the 1s of burning it inflicts is not even 1k dps. I get that that's on top of the active effects, but a) we trade out our permanent, passive effects for this, and b) the actives on all other guardian specs, INCLUDING base guard, are stronger.

[MagicBot.1570]

PvE feedback (+ Ensolyss PoV to back up my feedback)

Ensolyss Alac Willbender PoV

Hello, 

Here are a couple suggestions to turn Willbender into a viable PvE spec, in the alacrity generation role. Currently it's too weak for 5-man content and I would assume it's the same for 10-man content, because Renegade does the job better.

 

Willbender doesn't bring much to the table outside of Alacrity. It Can keep good uptime (and it should stay that way) but it's still not competitive enough. It has the advantage of  sharing Bane Signet to the party if played with Radiance, but I heavily suspect that Perfect Inscriptions will get reworked too on June 28th, since unique class buffs seem to have become public ennemy #1.

 

I think offhand Sword should receive major damage buffs, because Focus still outperforms it. Willbender should also be allowed to have an access to party might generation. 

Since it seems that you want to allow DPS roles to share some boons, giving might share to baseline guardian would be a good idea overall. I suggest adding might share to Radiance (on Perfect Inscriptions for example. Casting a signet could give might to allies)

 

That's all I have to say on that matter.  Weapon Swap Cooldown Reduction Somewhere would be nice too since cooldowns are so short (on Tyrrant's Momentum when using Fishing Justice for instance).

 

[MagicBot.1570]

More PvE feedback

Felt the need to provide more PvE feedback for the Willbender after testing it a bit more in endgame content.

It's a very promising spec because it can be played as a support, but it lacks some of the tools that other supports might provide (especially on the offensive side like Renegade)

There are three main issues : Offhand Sword, Lack of Might, and CC.

 

CC:

The Willbender has excellent CC but Heaven's Palm cooldown is way too high. 400 CC on a shadowstep is great for PvP, not so much for PvE. I suggest a cooldown Split between gamemodes, lower it to 25-30s in PvE so it can be used more often. Increasing the CC on Heel Crack also wouldn't hurt, this ability is so weak (then again lowering the cooldown to 10s instead would work as well).

 

Offhand Sword:

Offhand Sword is decent but it needs a little boost. I think another 10% damage on both skills wouldn't hurt. Could also add some CC on Sw4 if damage is too much to ask. I also would love to see Right-Hand Strength work on both hands instead.

 

Might:

The Willbender lacks Might application. Then again, I think everyone lacks Might application, so I think it should be more common accross all DPS roles to provide Might. This doesn't have to be a Willbender issue if things are done properly. Making Holy Reckoning Might shareable would do the trick though.

 

Last minute suggestions :

- Put weapon swap CDR somewhere in the traitline to make rotations smoother on Willbender (some damage can be nerfed to compensate);

- Move some of the damage around in the Virtues traitline to make it less punishing to lose Aegis. I think Unscathed Contender is a bad trait that is not very engaging. Could buff Inspired Virtues to 15% for 3 seconds instead of 6 and change Unscathed Contender to 10% under aegis and 15% for 3 seconds when losing Aegis or something like that (with a small cooldown so both buffs don't overlap).

Edited May 9, 2022 by MagicBot.1570

[Silvoshipnos.2089]

I was s thinking about how the willbender elite skill is absolutely unusable in competitive game modes and how recent patches reduced the cooldown in an attempt to make it less bad 

I think a good way to make it a bit more usable would be to make it act like it does for the boss in the kaineng strike mission. Make it so it targets multiple enemies within a certain range and so that it follows the targets while the willbender remains in place and casts it. It would most likely just force a dodge or a stunbreak out of people, but hitting multiple targets and tracking them would certainly put it at a level were it would be somewhat usable, certainly a niche option, but right now it's absolutely worthless.

[Dante.1508]

I know this is pretty poor feedback but its trash.. I got sick of dying on content other classes breeze through and gave up tried three or four different builds and all were terrible..

I went on to play other classes that are far superior.

What the hell happened to Guardian it used to be great.

[The Boz.2038]

4 hours ago, Dante.1508 said:

I know this is pretty poor feedback but its trash.. I got sick of dying on content other classes breeze through and gave up tried three or four different builds and all were terrible..

I went on to play other classes that are far superior.

What the hell happened to Guardian it used to be great.

Have you tried pressing F3? Or F2?

[Dante.1508]

4 hours ago, The Boz.2038 said:

Have you tried pressing F3? Or F2?

Yes have you tried playing Mechanist, Ranger, Necro or Mesmer.. they make poor willbender look like a nobender.

[The Boz.2038]

2 minutes ago, Dante.1508 said:

Yes have you tried playing Mechanist, Ranger, Necro or Mesmer.. they make poor willbender look like a nobender.

Yes, all those but mesmer. 

[Dante.1508]

Just now, The Boz.2038 said:

Yes, all those but mesmer. 

My Virtuoso kills way faster than willbender. like 3x the dps.

[The Boz.2038]

And Willbender becomes invulnerable when pressing F3, while still dealing some nice DPS.

[Dante.1508]

10 minutes ago, The Boz.2038 said:

And Willbender becomes invulnerable when pressing F3, while still dealing some nice DPS.

My willbender uses scepter and torch. I tried melee but i die super fast and dps is low. Anyway this is feedback so i'll leave it to feedback.

[Dib.4612]

I somewhat get the theme, it's Shiro inspired. Emperors protector with two blades.  

 

However I think it's wrong to make two out of three elite specs self-focused on a class that is meant to protect others. "Protect allies by defeating foes" sounds like a poor excuse to me.  

 

(Writing from PvE perspective)

Furthermore the class feels too basic. There are some simple physical skills, three new virtues and two new weapon skills. The supposed main profession mechanic, willbender flames, just doesn't do much at all. The most obvious interaction would've been for Lethal Tempo to act like Symbolic Avenger, but now we see that guardian already has a very prominent ground effects, Symbols. It would be better to add a different and more interesting profession mechanic.

Like unlocking a big hitting 1-skill after a successful evade, block and shadowstep, or after any movement skill.  

 

Which brings me to the off hand weapon. Advancing Strike is cool, provides mobility and for PvPers a way to grab hold of opponents. Executioners call, while looking cool and being strong, leaves the set with no defense. A riposte would be too dull, but would fit the Willbenders style.  

 

Lastly the class brings no condition cleanse at all and thus you're always forced to run a utility cleanse (intentional?).  

 

On the bright side the animations look good and the effects look stylish too, as well as the icons etc. And mobility is fun. 

[RAZOR.7246]

The main problem with PvE willbender is that it's a condition class designed to attack like a power class, but lacks the burst to play like one. You do absolutely nothing if you can't hit which happens a lot and the slow ramp up makes it unviable on fights with phases. The way I see it, the ramp up needs to be much quicker. My solution would be for Willbender flames to apply more stacks of burning earlier in their duration and then reduce the amount of burning applied as the duration goes on (e.g. at the start when you've just activated f1, from 1-2s, 1 hit applies 3 stacks of burning, 2-4s 1 hit applies 2 stacks, 5-6s 1 hit applies 1 stack and 7-8s 2 hits apply 1 stack). Just an example of how it would work. Something like this encourages you to manage your burst better and gives a better reward for the attention to detail IMO.

[Saiyan.1704]

It's another day, and another opportunity to emphasize how bad Heaven's Palm is.

 

HOW are we not able to evade attacks while in the air, enduring the 1.25 second animation time when casting Heaven's Palm?

Rename the elite to Death Sentence because that's basically what we're doing to ourselves when casting this skill.

[Sagedurk.7358]

On 8/18/2022 at 12:14 AM, Saiyan.1704 said:

It's another day, and another opportunity to emphasize how bad Heaven's Palm is.

 

HOW are we not able to evade attacks while in the air, enduring the 1.25 second animation time when casting Heaven's Palm?

Rename the elite to Death Sentence because that's basically what we're doing to ourselves when casting this skill.

The weird thing about Heaven's Palm is that it's set to full CD even if you cancel it, and using it on a moving target, even in PvE, it's easy to miss the CC

[Unicorn Luna.5204]

On 4/16/2022 at 12:04 PM, Luna.2158 said:

I've settled into WB and feel fairly competent with it. PvE as Zerk DPS or Diviner/zerk alacrity sharing.

Virtues:

BUG1 : F2 and F3 have different versions underwater. They do not share cooldowns or even traits it seems. I can't maintain alac on the party in aquatic ruins because of this (and the lack of hits available underwater). To be fair it's pretty much only aquatic ruins that this matters.

BUG2: Purity of Body trait in Honor line does not seem to work at all with willbender.

F2 is a problem in that we can only choose a direction - rather than a distance or location. This makes providing alac in some situations very difficult as you are forced into travelling to do it. There are some encounters where we need to be careful about our positioning. Try alac WB on final boss of thaumanova reactor with all platforms around you gone. It doesn't work so well.

Offhand sword: Love it. Much improved since beta. Very happy

Utilities:

Reversal of fortune: I don't use it, but as a pve dps guardian I don't know why I would choose anything besides litany. I'd take shelter over RoF simply because the heal is consistent and the block duration is better.

Flash combo: It's a nice single target attack but I don't ever take it. Might use it more if outside of pve.

Roiling light: Excellent stun breaker. I still will take SYG though.

Whirling light: I would take this but sword of justice is better. Whirling light would need a significant damage boost and probably some ammo before I chose it over sword of justice.

Heel crack: I don't think I've ever slotted this except to look at it simply because there are better options for CC and I've probably already got some of them equipped.

Heaven's palm: Goes with me everywhere. It is much better now that it has a small shadowstep. The only thing I'd say about the skill is that it feels very uncomfortable to start casting only to have the target move out of range. Like the change from vanilla renewed focus it would be much more fun if we can move while casting heaven's palm.

Trait notes:

Deathless courage: Half of the functionality of this trait feels redundant. Not being downed is a great feature but reducing the duration of courage by 2 seconds (to a 4 sec duration) and that can be extended up to 8 seconds if you defeat two enemies in that first 4 second window is what feels redundant. Who's avoiding being downed and killing two enemies within a 4 second window? That's so niche it hurts! In my opinion the duration could stay at 6 seconds and this trait gains the features from "Vanguard Tactics" trait which on its own is not a great trait on its own.

Holy Reckoning: Isn't the better choice for DPS despite granting might and fury and being on the line for power damage. Holy reckoning boons are not shared with battle presence even if they are granted by application of resolve - I only mention this as this trait may have had some value as part of a boon support build. Restorative virtues trait is better for damage and support builds.

Conceited curate: I'm yet to find a good use for this trait in PvE besides having some back up healing... which I never think I'll need.

Phoenix Protocol: It works with battle presence to turn wb into boon support with 100% uptime of alacrity and regen from f2 triggers. Very cool indeed. The problem with this is that using any virtue besides f2 is undesirable most of the time and then only as a filler for the small windows when flowing resolve drops off. This means that as boon support you are easily penalising yourself and your group by using the other two virtues except in that small filler window. Changing this trait to activate on any virtue trigger would make the alac build feel much less trapped within itself but then how/why would it work with battle presence which is only for resolve? I don't know the answer! What I do know is that wb easily gives way too much alac when there's multiple targets. It works fine with one target but as previously mentioned it's very easy to find yourself in a situation where you can't get enough hits on that one target to provide alac to the group. The scale is broad from easily 20+ seconds of alac with multiple targets all the way to no alac for anyone because you're busy avoiding mechanics rather than getting many strikes in. It's an awkward setup, it works, but it could be more smooth/reliable/consistent than the current iteration.

Other alac classes don't fall short of alac uptime simply because they (for whatever reason) aren't able to hit a target enough times in quick succession. Situations where this is a problem are low in general but other alac specs don't suffer in this way at all.

Many thanks!

Quoting myself as I'd like to add some feedback since having played it a lot more and it makes sense to keep it together. Plus helps me when I come back here next. I'll try as much as I can to refrain from making too many suggestions so that this is more straight to the point for the balance devs. My use of the word "appear" means: "I've done a bit of testing, I'm fairly sure I'm right about this observation but I could be wrong"

I actually don't want to talk much about power/conditions or DPS since that subjects being flogged pretty hard everywhere. Mostly I want to talk about the support capabilities as a dps or a healer.

I find phoenix protocol+battle presence to share alac(and regen) is a fun idea but there are two things making this not really be worth it for team content. Boon duration needs are ambiguous, you need more if you're fighting one target and if you have problems getting procs. But in many situations you don't need much boon duration to make it work - eg if you're playing well and even less boon duration needed if there's more than one target to hit. The other thing is that besides a weak permanent regen it doesn't provide anything else consistently to the group. I've tried this build in harriers as a healer, essentially my HFB gear in a WB build, it can work but the healing+boon sharing capability isn't much different to core guardian, the main difference being it's got alac, easy perma-regen and better mobility options through utility and virtues. Battle presence shares the alac from phoenix protocol but doesn't appear to share the F2 heal that occurs without phoenix protocol traited. I'd observe that the alac share must be intentional but the heal not being shared seems unusual if that is the case. There feels significant potential for WB to be an interesting healer if that worked - twinned with "Purity of body" from Honor traits could be interesting too but that doesn't appear to work on self or with battle presence, with or without phoenix protocol.

Restorative virtues (.25 skill recharge on virtue trigger + some alacrity for the willbender) is a very strong trait and it would still be strong without the alacrity aspect as it makes WB very quickfire. Holy reckoning trait is a useful trait for solo play but is outshined by restorative virtues. Due to the lack of clarity around how battle presence works with WB F2 (sharing alac and regen but not heals,) it seems like battle presence could share might from holy reckoning F2 procs, but it doesn't appear to do that.

All of this leaves Alac willbender as a boon support dps OR healer as rather lacking when stood next to other classes attempting to do the same thing.

My wee bit of suggestioning prefaced by my design philosophy in this case, which affects not just support roles but damage too: I believe something along these lines below would help to define willbenders trait lines as DPS or support, at the least it would give competitive options when choosing traits. Holy reckoning would not be a clear bad choice except for perhaps solo play in non-dps gear. Restorative virtues would clearly be a supportive trait and wouldn't compete with holy reckoning as a dps trait. Phoenix protocol and tyrants momentum would be a clear sacrificial choice either way. Here goes!:

-Restorative virtues: Add a duration of alac and regen that can cover 100% uptime with some amount of boon duration for the player and have that boon application be shared as a result of battle presence. Remove the .25sec skill recharge on virtue trigger.

-Phoenix protocol: Remove alacrity and regen application on F2 trigger, remove the denial of F2 proccing heal, add denial of F1 procs, add the .25sec recharge on virtue trigger and add some might on F2 proc.

-Holy reckoning: Remove the might and give this a crit chance or damage modifier.

-Battle presence: Allow WB F2 heal to be shared. Allow WB F2 endurance gain to be shared if Purity of body is traited (and allow purity of body to work with WB F2 at all).

I think that's all! Cheers for now!

Edited September 11, 2022 by Luna.2158

[ziloh.1796]

Weapons for the willbender seem very limited in the way they work in the theme for a martial artist as a whole, the only way it feels in its element is when i use x2 swords, but when i switch to any other weapon, the magic fades and i am back to a normal guardian, and the problem if i try to use only x2 swords is survival. Also, the skills for the willbender seem pretty weak, ALSO, the heal that heals for a crappy amount IF you block, lacks additional buffs or something, maybe one more virtue for the Willbender that is really martial artist flavored would add more pump, like a way of the fist virtue or something that lets you use your FISTS as deadly weapons and change your current weapon abilities to FIST special abilities for a bit would be nice?... otherwise, the whole idea of this martial artist is amazing and the speed is really nice when the abilities don't feel laggy, might be my connection though!