Willbender Feedback Thread

[Jojobean.3960]

Before I start, I want to say I'm a long time player of gw2 who has been with a guardian main since the game came out. I'm a pretty casual player though -- I only do PVE and living world.

Incompatibility with the Virtues Build Tree:

I have the virtues tree activated. Some of the last skills (? Unsure what to call these) in this tree, such as permeating wrath, battle presence, and indomitable courage, give additional bonuses for the passive effects of virtues. However, it appears that the Willbender's virtues don't have any passive effect, thus making this last tier of options not as useful as they could be. The only one of those that would be useful at all is indomitable courage because it has an effect on an active virtue. The other options are completely useless as they only add benefits to the passive virtues. If the willbender virtues do have a passive effect, it's not clear at all what it does.

More ranged abilities:

I agree with another poster that more ranged utility skills would be nice. I usually play the Dragonhunter and love the utility range gives me (especially in fights where you need range or can't do damage at all. I'm thinking of some of the Elonian bounties).

Positives!

Overall, I really love the Willbender. I love being able to move. I always loved the wings of resolve ability for the dragonhunter and this spec feels like that but more. The willbender's movement makes for dynamic fights versus the dragonhunter where I feel like I always do the same things over and over again, and it seems less complex than the firebrand which has always intimidated me. I remember in the HoT beta, the dragonhunter's virtues were incompatible with the Virtues tree, so I have faith this will be fixed in the final release. Looking forward to playing it!

Edited December 4, 2021 by Jojobean.3960
Wanted to add more

[Jojobean.3960]

22 hours ago, leonidash.9416 said:

An easy fix would be to reintroduce the guardians passive skills. This will probably bring back build diversity and sustain making the specialization way more interesting as an option.

I completely agree. In addition, since the Willbender does not have passive virtue skills, the Virtue Tree in the build section has many useless options (permeating wrath, battle presence, and indomitable courage) since they provide benefits for passive virtue skills.

[Arctarius.2649]

As a martial artist, I did these combo's earlier today, Here's to praying anet reworks some Willbender animations >Link to my Reddit post <

[Tachenon.5270]

Tried bending more wills this morning. As before, the only thing getting bent was my attitude. All that leaping and hopping like a hylek with a spastic colon looks fancy, I guess. But if I wanted to do anything besides lie down and cry 'Help me over here!' after the bad guys pantsed me and took my lunch money, I'd go with one of my other Guardians (I have three). Willbender's fancy moves might serve quite well on, say, Dancing With the Stars, but when it comes to bending wills? Not so much. Hey! Maybe some sort of dance contest is one of the unrevealed features of EoD! It might even be The Thing That Cannot Be Shown in all the streams. If so, this will be the go-to spec.

In which case 'Rugcutter' would be a much more appropriate name. And they could add (and sell!) dance move novelties. "I swung my partner. I swung my partner again. Hey! Macarena! Ay!"

[Ezrael.6859]

Willbender sustain is still too low.

It's meant to be a melee brawler that keeps up the attack but it simply can't sustain against all the AoE power and condition damage it therefore facetanks.

It either needs evades added to all of the physical utility skills and Reversal of Fortune made into a channeled 1 second block.

Or add some raw healing self-sustain into Willbender itself, I would suggest reworking the poor trait Deathless Courage.

Deathless Courage - Gain health whenever you apply boons to yourself. Crashing Courage now also grants Might, Resolution and Fury when Courage's effect triggers. 

Healing: 100

Might (5s)

Resolution (5s)

Fury (5s)

Killing a foe extends the duration of Courage - 1s per kill, max 4s (remove you cannot be downed & base duration reduction). So max 10s Courage.

Edited December 5, 2021 by Ezrael.6859

[Kain Francois.4328]

I'll keep it simple. (PvE Perspective)

 

Positives

• Virtues - They're in a good place now. F1 hits hard and travels far, F2 is a nice Daredevil-style evade, and F3 is a neat blink. I really, really love the Willbender virtues now.
• Traits - Good build variety.

 

Negatives

• OH Sword - Feels clunky, doesn't blink far enough, too much cast time, aftercast, and just plain don't feel right.
• Power - Still lacks a bit of dps with it. (While condi is very strong)
• Greatsword - Please give me  a reason to stop using it on a spec with a literal dual swords icon.

[Ezrael.6859]

5 hits to proc Virtues is still too much.

The Willbender is meant to be an aggressive roaming, decapper, +1 assassin style spec.

5 hits to proc Virtues is just too many in any 1v1. F2 and F3 do too little to sustain and they absolutely don't make up for losing the passive Resolve healing ticks or the active healing component like Dragonhunter's 4k burst heal.

 

The Virtues only look decent against 5 grouped immobile target golems that don't attack back.

[pitchBLACK.5479]

So before I jump into my thoughts and feedback with the class, I want to point out that I’m by no means a hardcore Raider/PvPer/WvWer, etc. I’ve played through from the start of GW1 and GW2 and enjoy playing all the different kinds of content at a more casual pace. Therefore numbers, min/maxing, having alacrity here, or might there isn’t my angle. My feedback is from the perspective of: “Is this class fun to play”, so if things feel off, or janky, or not right with the class playstyle or targeted thematic’s, that’s where I like to place opinions.

I have to say that compared to the previous beta, the Willbender feels significantly more enjoyable to play. None of the janky locking yourself into certain actions are there now and it hits harder than before as well. I do think it can still feel a bit clunky, but am confident those things will be tuned before release/with time. As such my feedback below is what I feel could be improved upon to make the class overall feel really good/better.

Sword

1. Executioners calling (sword 4) – skill usage is fine, but the sound effect really doesn’t fit. It sounds very odd compared to the rest of the classes thematic’s, especially the 2nd follow up double hit.
2. Advancing strike (sword 5) – Skill states a shadow step, but that doesn’t seem to happen? Am I just not using it right? Have tried at various different distances and nope. Also same as sword 4, the sound effects don’t feel like they fit, I swear they were different previous beta?

Utilities

Most of these actually feel pretty good. I think Heel crack is a little bland, but the utility is nice when timing it correctly. My only complaint here is the sound effect on Rolling light seems to share the sword sound effect which I just don’t think fits, but it’s only the sound effect on the rolling back part, the leap in is fine. The sound effects on all the other utilities and the elite sound great for the thematic’s of that “Monk fast holy warrior” kind of feel, where as the ones mentioned above feel jarring.

Virtues

Rushing Justice and Crashing Courage feel fun to use, but Flowing Resolve feels a bit… meh? If it’s meant to be used as an initiator skill, it feels lacking… I can almost run to my destination faster than using the very short dash forward. I’m not sure what to suggest here to make it feel better though, maybe 600 range or a leap with aoe team support, but slightly less effectiveness on the regen, swiftness, etc.?

Traits

Don’t have a huge amount to comment on here, they are all OK. But nothing that really modifies the play style greatly… maybe the alacrity generation does a bit.

Overall, a great improvement Anet! Keep up the great work!

[Arctarius.2649]

Gave some feedback this week and thought of a good idea. I mentioned in a previous post that adding a multi strike mechanic could be a way to remove willbender flames. I feel that the flames are entirely out of place for the spec and completely unnecessary as we have so many builds for firebrand already. I think guards are coni'd out and while wielding 2 swords and having physical skills, it would be really great to not get shoehorned into Condi again... 

 

F1: remove the fire on the floor and add 3 rapid low dmg shockwaves that resonate outward from the blow. This will help lethal tempo without hoping enemies stand in fire.. 

F2: remove fire trail and have it trigger a weak 3 hit multi strike when passing through foes (also for lethal temp because of the fire removal) Maybe make its animation a jump kick instead of walking sideways at a slow the way it is now.. 

F3: remove the fire ring and make 3 shockwaves rapidly resonate outwards from the point of impact. (again for lethal tempo) 

 

For traits, I propose we remove searing pact, and add something that would benefit a different playstyle rather than just slapping condi in. On that same note, why not make gameplay  augmenting grandmasters? 

 

Top grandmaster:  This trait could have something to do with applying 5 target boons upon using physical skills near allies.

 

Middle grandmaster: This could be a trait that causes a weak, 3 hit multi strike that triggers every time you land a physical skill or 1 handed sword skill (for the purpose of enhancing Lethal tempo without depending on Willbender flames) 

 

Bottom grandmaster: This could trigger protection on the guardian whenever using physical skills. This would be a great way to hep them function in pvp as well. 

 

As for the current grandmasters.. I dont feel any are too impactful and if people really want them they can be adjusted and moved down to tier 2 traits. Other lower tier and tier 2 traits can be removed to make room, like searing pact. 

Edited December 5, 2021 by Arctarius.2649

[Exile.8160]

9 hours ago, Ezrael.6859 said:

5 hits to proc Virtues is still too much.

The Willbender is meant to be an aggressive roaming, decapper, +1 assassin style spec.

5 hits to proc Virtues is just too many in any 1v1. F2 and F3 do too little to sustain and they absolutely don't make up for losing the passive Resolve healing ticks or the active healing component like Dragonhunter's 4k burst heal.

 

The Virtues only look decent against 5 grouped immobile target golems that don't attack back.

And if you manage to actually proc them the reward for it is miniscule.

 

Edit: it should atleast be, proc on every hit after activating the virture but with a 1 sec ICD so at max you get out 6 to 8 passive procs rewarding you for landing hits.

Edited December 5, 2021 by Exile.8160

[MagicBot.1570]

PvE Feedback after long considerations ahead

In PvE, Willbender is very fun to play and the changes that were made are definitely on point. We're almost there! Personally I think there's very little to change now.

Some additional changes to make in order to make Power Willbender viable :

- Executioner's Calling : reduce the cooldown from 12s to 10s.
- Advancing Strike : increase the power coefficient from 2.0 to 2.55 in PvE only.

- Rework "Right-Hand Strength" into "Sword Proficiency" or something, so that it works on both mainhand and offhand Sword. It would just feel so much better. The recent changes on Greatsword cooldowns just go in that direction of Guardian having very short cooldowns. This would make the cooldowns of Executioner's Calling and Advancing Strike respectively 8s and 16s, which would fit like a charm on a power DPS rotation.

- Fix the unintended 10% damage buff against Chilled foes on Tyrrant's Momentum (I believe the bug comes from there, unless I'm mistaken)

- Please keep Restorative Virtues exactly as it is ! It's absolutely amazing and feels great to play.

As a final note on these proposed changes, I must add that the only thing missing for this spec in my opinion is a way to slightly reduce the weaponswap cooldown. This spec has ways of constantly spamming abilities, and it would fit in so well with the rest : having to wait 9 whole seconds on a set is actually kind of hampering the spec's full potential. The change I suggest for Tyrrant's Momentum is twofold :

- Either change Tyrrant's Momentum so that Lethal Tempo gives 5% power damage per stack and 3% condition damage per stack (Power and Condition builds are not equivalent).

- Or add the following effect to the existing Lethal Tempo enhancement : Using Rushing Justice reduces the cooldown of your Weaponswap by two seconds.

Now obviously that would be quite a significant buff, but I was thinking that putting it on Tyrrant's Momentum would make a lot of sense. Instead of the power buff I suggested, you could say that activating Rushing Justice reduces the cooldown of your Weaponswap by two seconds. It's original, fun, and I doubt that it's stronger than a 10% modifier. Additionally, someone made a valid point earlier in this thread saying that two Grandmaster traits out of three already enhanced their own Virtue respectively. Wouldn't it be amazing if Rushing Justice had a thing of its own, like this one?

Another option would be to simply add that to the rune of the Willbender we'll get on release, which would cause balance issues for other classes.

I personally wouldn't change anything else. Perhaps you'll find that the condition variant is a bit overtuned, but damage-wise, it is almost exactly on par with, say, a Daredevil for example. Here's a YouTube PoV on Dark Ai :

 

I hope I kept it short. Thanks for reading and listening to our feedback, I'm very excited for this spec!

Edited December 5, 2021 by MagicBot.1570
Formatting

[Sorasnobody.9350]

I don't have much feedback as I only really tried one specific build on Willbender this time as it became possible with the changes they made. I'll probably just talk about that and one small issue me and my friend ran into when he was trying this in the open world with me. I want to say well done though, again these changes feel for the better but I don't know how best to sum them up into an overview as I didn't do enough testing with the spec so I don't want to make comments I can't confidently support.

 

Sustain:

1.  There needs to be more healing/self sustain in the willbender by default. You lose the passive heal from the F2 and you only get a little bit of regeneration from the F2 when you have virtues as a trait line. Yes, you can go phoenix protocol for regeneration but then I do believe you lose the base healing from the trait so you are losing healing to try and get extra regeneration when you have zero healing in the spec. There needs to be more healing somewhere, increase the healing from the F2, reduce how many hits it takes to proc it, just something to give the spec some extra healing 🙂. At the moment I can't see a Willbender keeping themselves alive in the open world against anything more than 3/4 mobs if they're all vets/elites as when you take hits you don't have much healing to get it back. Just some kind of extra healing in the spec would be awesome for yourself! 😄 

Heal Willbender:

I first tried this in the initial beta for Willbender but I scrapped it as the alacrity was only solo, but then I saw that they changed Phoenix Protocol to work with Battle Presence so it could give AoE alacrity and I have to say it feels really fun from my perspective! Me and my Guild leader who is a long time Guardian main tried it out as she really liked the concept of a healing Willbender. There is a strong sense of lining up your multiple hit skills in your F2s to get the alacrity right as we both tried it and couldn't get 100% but once we figured out it was best to do sword 2>3 into shield 4 then swap and staff 2, you got a lot of procs of alacrity off. The extra cast of the F2 is nice as well as if you can see your alacrity about to drop off, you can pop it and drop symbols and weave autos for extra hits to get it back up. This was all done without quickness too mainly, aside from the bit from "Feel my Wrath!" so for 60% of the rotation/fight I wasn't able to cast skills quickly to get them off faster. If you could get skills off faster during the F2 window you could use your F1 as soon as it is up to facilitate more uptime on might-and in an actual situation you would have quickness from an external source to allow you to do this but hey ho boons were bugged on the console as usual 8)...

 

We went on the moderately threatening damage field in the special force's training area and we didn't drop below 80% health when one of us was going a DPS and the other a heal Willbender so they have decent healing in their kit and with them being a Guardian at core they have nice burst healing with Empower, Holy Strike and "Recieve the Light!" Now of course, a healer is not defined by just the healing it can do. However upon testing, and working on timing the F2s correctly, you can give:

100% alacrity, 100% fury, 100% regen, 100% protection, 100% resolution, 100% swiftness, 18-20 stacks of might (you do hit 25 might but you can't cap it fully) and nice stability choices.  Heal Willbender boons & healing

 

You even have a free utility slot. I went "Stand your Ground!" as a default choice for more stab and of course it is a nice stun break that is used regularly but if you don't need that you can go Wall of Reflection for projectile hate, Healing Bow for more heals or even Purging Flames for pulsing condition cleanse that is on a lower cooldown due to Master of Consecrations. With this build as well I felt I was able to make use of all the virtues, F1 for might, F2 for alacrity and regeneration and F3 for protection which was nice as when I briefly (as in 30 minutes) tried a Willbender for open world play, I was only really using the F1 for damage and the F2...kinda I guess? for the little healing it gave. Of course, the big thorn arises though of Renegade and staff Mirage do give 10-man alacrity. I said this in my Specter feedback post and I still stand by it as it needs to be done, nerf Renegade and Mirage alacrity to 5-man otherwise all these new alac specs you have created won't even matter as people will only build them as pure DPS, not even DPS boon supports as there will be no reason to 🙂 

 

Healbender build

That is the build I went with, of course gw2skills has the old Willbender but the trait positions reflect the ones I went in the current version. I had full exotics too besides legendary on my staff, backpack and both accessories so I didn't have this full 93% boon duration. I did try Honorable Staff but the extra concentration and reduced cooldown on Empower didn't let me get better might generation over against Empowering Might and your other boons don't need extra boon duration to be at 100%. If you have extra sources of might though you could go Honorable Staff for reduced cooldown on your burst heal skills or even Pure of Heart for Shield 4 and go "Advance!"

 

As I said, I haven't really tested Willbender in other areas, so I can't make any other statements, but I wanted to share my little theorycraft with you all!

 

 

Edited December 5, 2021 by Sorasnobody.9350

[Artyport.2084]

What really would make this spec shine is dual skills when using sword at least
 

I’d move sword 4 to the dual skill for sword/sword 

 

new sword 4 range slash that cripples

 

scepter sword  should have a slash and a blink backwards 

[Ragnar.4257]

From a PvP perspective, at the moment Willbender is the worst of both worlds. It is not mobile enough to be able to truly skirmish/kite, and it is not durable enough to stay in a fight. If WB is to live up to its stated intent of mobile power-DPS roamer, it needs the following:

• Increase F2 distance to 600
• Increase F3 distance to 900
• Increase immobilise on Sw#5 to 2s
• Increase damage on Sw#4 by at least 20%, maybe needs as much as 50%. Increase range to 240 (for reference, Holoforge autos are 240, Maul is 220).
• Add 5s cripple to F1
• Virtue procs need to be more than once every 5 hits. Given that the stances only last 6s, realistically in PvP you won't trigger them more than once. Make them trigger on every hit, but with 0.5s ICD.
• Willbender flames either need to cover a wider area, or better, follow the WB player around and pulse in a radius like torch#4. Or else, if they have to stay as they are, then they need to have a WAY bigger pay-off in terms of effects. 3s cripple on hit would be ideal.
• Elite needs to be reworked from scratch. It is just Bane Signet, but worse. The only way I would consider running this is if it had evade/invuln frames, which would go a long way to help with current survival issues.
• All 3 grandmaster traits bring absolutely nothing for PvP. Rework from scratch. I can understand having 1 or 2 of them being "not for PvP", but all 3 is unacceptable. With current iteration, I would rather not run any of these traits, because they all have more negatives than positives.
  • Phoenix Protocal - useless, since you will never get more than 1 trigger of Resolve per usage in a PvP environment. 1s alacrity is meaningless and not worth giving up your healing.
  • Tyrants Momentum - useless, since, again, you won't be getting that many Virtue procs in a PvP environment, and therefore reducing the duration of Lethal Tempo is effectively the same as removing it entirely.
  • Deathless Courage - useless, you won't be getting that many kills in PvP to take advantage of the duration extension, and the "cannot die" part is useless since you can still be reduced to 1HP, which means you will instantly die when it ends.
• Reversal of Fortune is either not working as intended, or else your intention for how this is supposed to work is misguided. Half the time it straight up does nothing, which means we can't use it, because we can't take a heal skill that doesn't work 50% of the time. At the moment it is just a "please kill me now" signal to the enemy.
• Flash Combo needs to have the initial teleport be instant with no animation, so it can be used simultaneously with other skills. Have the 5x hit and 'return' elements be optional flip-over skills that can be used a short time afterwards, like Ranger GS#4. Honestly I'd just get rid of the 5x hit requirement to return, since that is really quite hard to achieve against human players. Shadowstep on thief already does this for free, with the bonus of also not requiring a target, AND cleaning, AND stunbreak, AND longer range.

Edited December 6, 2021 by Ragnar.4257

[CrusaderCody.6935]

Im a high-end pve player just to state my biases. I enjoyed playing Willbender massively this beta, I notably loved the changes to Whirling Light – its now a super fun skill that I think fully lives up to its potential and embraces Willbenders fast paced gameplay. Overall, I think every mechanical change that has been made to the class since the last beta has improved it tremendously.

 

I can only think of two changes that would improve Willbender further:

 

Lethal Tempo and Tyrant’s Momentum number changes

-I think the addition of a condition damage modifier to Lethal Tempo was a great decision and opens up a lot more gameplay styles with the Willbender however I think that having the power and condition damage modifiers equal each other has led to an imbalance in playstyles. I think that increasing the power damage modifier and decreasing the condition damage modifier whilst traited with Tyrant’s momentum would be the best solution for this issue

-change Lethal Tempo when traited with Tyrant’s Momentum to be 4% power damage modifier and 2% condi damage modifier in pve – from its current 3% damage modifier in both styles

 

Underwater utility skills

-I think that Willbender being locked out of its physical toolset whilst underwater creates a jarring feeling where you don’t feel properly like a separate class whilst underwater since you only have normal Guardian utilities available

-I hope its possible to implement even a few of the Willbender utility skills underwater so you can utilize your physical skills in any environment and maintain the feeling of a single elite spec whether you are on land or underwater.

 

Thank you for reading and I can’t wait to play Willbender more in February.

[Nero.7369]

Willbender felt a bit better in Beta Four, still can need some minor work tho:

• This spec is kinda more of a duelist, and should have more conter like skills. Just like on mesmers word offhand, our scepter
  • Specially an conter evade frame on Reversal of Fortune because single skills that hit multiple times with high damage like the bladesong shatter or grenade barrage kinda punch completly thorugh it and still deliver high damage. So negating the first hit is a good think but a brief evade afterwards would be needed. An conter attack itself would be that much needed tho, maybe just a simple blind around us or sth like that would do it.
  • Also i think sword could need such an conter attack
• The offhand sword should hit fast and hard. We already have thinks like Whirling Wrath and Zealot's Defense that deal good damage but take plenty of time to deliver it.
• A condi cleanse on the physical skills is kinda missing, maybe add one to Roiling Light
• Rushing Justice feels smoother now, but is still a bit clunky and has a bit of stutter in it. The power damage could still be a little bit higher
• Flowing Resolve changes are great, the range could be a bit further tho and the animation itself a bit more dodgy
• Please remove the cast time from Crashing Courage
• Willbender Flames itself should always be around us not be left at the location. we are a high mobile class kinda meh to leave our flames behind us while we move on lol
• Flash combo kinda feels underwhelming in the current state, what is it meant to used for? I see it as a single target spike damage skill, but kinda not worth it in wvw at least, while Whirling Light does at least a good amount of aoe damage. I'd expect similar damage on both, but one for aoe, and one with port and single or maybe three closeby target and the other with five target and a wider aoe.
  Sadly the meditation didn't impress me too much i mostly ended up ending up with many meditations once more in wvw :'S

Edited December 5, 2021 by NeroBoron.7285

[Tungsten Monarch.6058]

Will bender seemed to work out great, as a anti thief roamer class. I would like to make one suggestion.

Please include a trait that allows them to see through Stealth as a passive ability.

[otto.5684]

Some suggestions from beta 4:

virtues, all 3, should not be a ground target. This is a mobile spec. It should not have any ground target effects (less symbols which we are stuck with). Justice now is decent. A slight reduction in cast time, when it goes for a long distance, and it will be great, plus not being a cone ground aoe. Resolve, instead of healing for a few hundred on hit, it should heal for 10% of damage dealt. More thematic and rewards playing aggressive. Courage needs more range. Again, no ground targeting. It is CD in PvP is ridiculously long. This aint DH shield or FB tome. It has no reason to have such a long CD.

 

Utilities, Whirling Light is good, the CC break is okayish (30 sec in PvP is too long for what it does). Everything else is there so we have a full set. They are absolutely useless. There is no situation in PvP or PvE where you would use any of these. And the CC ones are redundant with other CC skills guardian has and do not use. Did anyone consider why that is the case. The elite in particular should lose the CC. Just make it an AoE damage skill, double its damage in PvE, and make it apply 1 sec snare and 4 sec cripple.

 

OH sword, since you copied the design from rev, just copy the whole thing. Give skill 4 range so it can hit stuff. Skill 5 needs lower CD. 15 secs is more reasonable.

 

Traits, major master traits are okay. The courage one needs a bit more love. The major grand master all need rework. The resolve one, I dont get. Why alacrity? This is not WB niche and is by no means thematic. Removing the heal makes it not viable in most situations. The courage one, is a downgrade. No thanks, I would rather have aegis. It is supposed to help me reduce/block damage. 
 

WB, has 2 swords as it symbols. It should better support sword as its main weapon. Tyrant momentum, instead of reducing the duration of lethal tempo (which seriously hurst consistency), it should increase the damage dealt only for swords. Additional 2% per sword equipped (5% total). In addition, the minor grand master should increase ferocity by 50 for every sword equipped. This should push WB to be sword centric for dps. Power DH and core already use GS. This helps promote diversity.

 

PvP, WB may eventually have the damage (assuming OH sword is improved), it has the ability to chase, however, it cannot disengage.  If it cannot play hit and run, like similar builds, it will not work. This can be fixed by giving courage longer range, and changing on of utilities to have a long range teleport.

[Rising Blade.9206]

Changes made the willbender smooooth, can't be stressed enough. made the Willbender play a lot better compared to the previous beta, in light of this it really shows how the spec's strength of being very mobile in exchange for some of guard's survivability(due to changes in virtues), turning it into a blue assassin of the sorts.

 

 Though it still has some problems:

Rushing justice - has a tendency that does a back and forth thing on the last phase of it's animation, at least it keeps happening to me.

rolling light - quick retribution's range is still questionable, stubby to use because it's range is a lot less compared to the range of the evade

Heaven's palm- has an issue with it's telegraph with everyone can just dodge out of it easily, would be better if the teleport just happen a bit later compared to the current one.

heel crack - can this be put to 1/4 second cast time instead? 1/2 breaks the flow of the spec because it feels like it takes ages to finish

flowing resolve- not much of an issue but feels like it could have a trait that changes the skill into making it give superspeed, evade window/aegis, and remove movement impairing conditions instead of a dash

 

 

 

[bambi.6214]

As a non-guardian player I had a toooooon of fun with Willbender in WvW roaming, looking forward to play with it more.

I'd like to see some more cripple, slow or maybe superspeed to allow better target chasing.

The elite skill has potential but it needs to be faster with the stomp after the teleport. All it needs to miss is a target to be moving backwards and they'll receive the knockback effect .

Edited December 6, 2021 by Samug.6512

[Bambu.4270]

Compared to previous beta, the Willbender felt more fluid to play with. Someone most likely tested this better with proper build, but the physical skills felt weak power damage wise. Currently, I do not see the point of using them to deal damage.

[Kanto.2485]

The changes were all in the right direction, however the class is still not viable in pvp and will reamin so as long as it does not get either evade frames on its movement skill or some good cleanses.

The only reasonable access to cleanse (other than the must-take contemplation of purity) is taking the virtues trait to get 3x2 cleanses on your f2, which still isn't enough (it doesn't help that it's bugged as your elite skill does not refresh even a charge). Also sword 4 is still way too slow, something  like a leap with a small evade frame followed by a quick attack with moderate dmg and maybe cripple would be much better, and mobility on f2 is still bad, it would be ok if the movement speed wasn't reduced or the range was higher.

I woukd suggest changing the shadowstep trait to somethimg like "cleanse x conditions after using a movement skill", so that you actually have the incentive to chase down your targets and the ability to disengage from a fight.

[Matt H.6142]

Beta 4 - This is possibly my favorite spec of the 9.  The clunkiness is gone, so moving all about the battlefield.  Not falling to a Veteran Mordant Crescent Intimidator any more.  Traits are giving me some real choices now. 

Only issue I had was Rushing Justice once overshot the target and placed the WB flames way behind the target.

[Arken.3725]

Spvp perspective:

Virtues
-Reduce base cd’s on Rushing Justice to 15 seconds, Flowing Resolve to 25, Crashing Courage to 40.(Too long for skills that lost their team-support and instant access)
-Reduce strikes needed to trigger virtue’s from 5 to 3.(Currently too difficult to sustain in any given fight)
-Tighten tracking on Rushing Justice, misses quite a bit.  Increase range on Flowing Resolve to 600.  Increase range on Crashing Courage to 800.(Feel fast enough to actually be the roamer spec it’s meant to be).  Add 0.25 sec ICD on Flowing Resolve to prevent double-tapping.
-Willbender Flames:  These now pulse around you, think of Zealot’s Fire.(Static mechanics on a mobile spec make no sense, this is still back loaded but more useful)

Traits
-Righteous Sprint now grants 3 seconds of Super Speed instead of Swiftness.(self-empowerment speed since no crippling conditions)
-Power for Power pulses vulnerability on Willbender Flames instead of a damage increase.  Conceited      -Curate now increases Vitality instead of Healing Power. (Potential sustain option for TF’s)
-Vanguard Tactics now grants 3 seconds of Protection and 3 seconds of Resistance on shadowstep.(Allow you to both sustain and deal reliable damage when engaging).
-Remove all trade-offs on the GM traits.
-Right-hand strength now affects off-hand sword as well.

 

Skills
-Reversal of Fortune behaves just like Full Counter.
-Flash combo gains Repose regardless if it lands all hits or not.
-Add evade frames on Quick Retribution.  Roiling Light now grants Super Speed instead of Swiftness.
-Heaven’s Palm now ports at the absolute last second for the Knock Down and applies stability and quickness upon landing.  GTAoE
-Advancing Strike now applies 1.5 seconds of immobilization.

[Kain Francois.4328]

I want to reiterate my previous feedback: The Virtues feel REALLY good now.

OH Sword needs some more work. (Personally I really dislike the skills it grants me.)

I want a better reason to use Dual Swords, and to NOT use my Greatsword.