Willbender Feedback Thread

[Gwaihir.1745]

39 minutes ago, Brokensunday.4098 said:

The heal is actually good once you get use to it 

 

No, it's terrible. You can be feared out of it for a no proc. You can be dazed. Gets shut down by cc when it should 'absorb' the attack. Pve enemies hit you so slowly you may as well just take a good heal skill. Pvp/wvw has a 5 second longer cd timer so its useless there for a minute 4k heal.

[Brokensunday.4098]

6 hours ago, Gwaihir.1745 said:

 

No, it's terrible. You can be feared out of it for a no proc. You can be dazed. Gets shut down by cc when it should 'absorb' the attack. Pve enemies hit you so slowly you may as well just take a good heal skill. Pvp/wvw has a 5 second longer cd timer so its useless there for a minute 4k heal.

You can unblock stun or fear shelter and ur point was? Like i said is good once you know when to use it. You cant use it at random like a traditional heal skill. Use it when ur about to get hit

[Gwaihir.1745]

1 hour ago, Brokensunday.4098 said:

You can unblock stun or fear shelter and ur point was? 

 

The differences are:

1. You can stability your shelter. You cant stability reversal. Pretty massive difference.

2. Reversal doesn't even need an unblockable, any skill that cc's without a physical hit does it.

3. They have to use an unblockable attack using that cooldown.

4. Shelter is rarely used because of that anyways, so you kind of just backed up the entire point of the earlier post. 

 

Edited March 12, 2022 by Gwaihir.1745

[Brokensunday.4098]

8 minutes ago, Gwaihir.1745 said:

key work phisical skill you have to get hit by atleas 1 damage, have to test the stab one you said. 
and like i said before you have to ise it when your about to get hit for it to work properly.

and i would love if it work when cc would be the best heal skill it it did. 

 

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

1. Allow Justice, Flowing Resolve, and Crashing Courage to stack. Right now they overwrite each other.
2. Remove animations from certain abilities entirely. The final punch of F1, the initial dash on sword 5... Despite being mobility skills, the animations make it possible for your target to w key away or counter attack while you are winding up waiting for the final hit. Additionally its very easy to accidentally cancel the animation before the final strike, putting it on cooldown without actually doing anything.
3. Crashing courage needs to grant stability and aegis at the beginning of the cast.
4. Heavens Palm cast time is way too long for the skill to be usable.

The reason why roamers like rev, thief, holo work is because they can actually stick to targets. Willbender cant and never will unless they shave off all the animations of its mobility and allow more movement while using GS, sword, and hammer.

[HotDelirium.7984]

Can the justice professional skill create 5small  lines (like from a fist) instead of three long ones. It looks like a dinosaur clawed the ground instead of me.

Sword skill 4 should also be a gap closer.

The heal skill seems a bit confusing but why can't it also be a block to synergize with other block traits? Is the lethal damage factoid factored into the coefficients? Maybe revise the tooltip? Why do we need to know it will negate an attack even if its lethal? It sounds like it negates attacks no matter what. However, I guess if its not factored in- if one attack would be lethal then maybe heal for an even higher amount? As you can see its a bit confusing and maybe not optimal lol.

[HotDelirium.7984]

7 hours ago, Paradoxoglanis.1904 said:

1. Allow Justice, Flowing Resolve, and Crashing Courage to stack. Right now they overwrite each other.
2. Remove animations from certain abilities entirely. The final punch of F1, the initial dash on sword 5... Despite being mobility skills, the animations make it possible for your target to w key away or counter attack while you are winding up waiting for the final hit. Additionally its very easy to accidentally cancel the animation before the final strike, putting it on cooldown without actually doing anything.
3. Crashing courage needs to grant stability and aegis at the beginning of the cast.
4. Heavens Palm cast time is way too long for the skill to be usable.

The reason why roamers like rev, thief, holo work is because they can actually stick to targets. Willbender cant and never will unless they shave off all the animations of its mobility and allow more movement while using GS, sword, and hammer.

I agree and wouldn't it be interesting if some of the skills were a dash as fast as a teleport (or even a shadowstep but we don't want to turn it into Willspecter) with greater range (and maybe even a blind application nearby).

[Ezrael.6859]

Physical skills are lacking compared to other utilities and compared to Warrior and Thief physical skills.

Willbender physical skills have no traits to give extra potency to them and they are far from potent by default, hence most Willbenders seem to be running Meditations and Shouts for their builds, the same utilities since 2012.

Reversal of Fortune -  Should be a 1s duration block rather than a single attack block.

 

Heel Crack - Should be a 600 range dash with an evade component like Bull's Charge - the Warrior's skill is a 30s cooldown, but a 900 range evading 3s knockdown combo leap. And it has interactivity with 10 different traits.

Whirling Light - Needs to apply Cripple per hit also, most enemies simply walk out of the animation and only get hit once. (It also needs to be bug fixed to actually attack in a 240 radius, rather than only in front of the player).

Flash Combo - Make it instant or it will never see use over Judges Intervention. Repose should always be available.

Roiling Light - Needs to remove Immob/Cripple/Chill at minimum, otherwise people will just use Stand Your Ground for Stun break + 5x Stability & Resolution for yourself and 4 allies...

Quick Retribution - After rolling backwards with Roiling Light, this skill never lands on a moving target - Make it a 600 range leap with a 1s evade.

 

Heaven's Palm - Make it a stun break and an evade during the 1.25s animation.

Everyone takes Renewed Focus because Guardian lacks oh kitten skills to try and avoid damage when getting focused; it also recharges the Virtues. So Heaven's Palm needs something similar but different to compete.

As this skill has a long and large telegraph, enemy players can still dodge or use stability against the knockdown they can see coming, but the evade will mean the Guardian won't be destroyed by attacks while frozen in mid-air. The stun break is there because as a melee multi-hit attacker the Willbender is subject to a lot of CC compared to ranged specs.

[HotDelirium.7984]

When we activate our virtues as Willbender we get flames around our hands- red for justice, yellow for resolve and purple for courage. The first line of traits also correspond to the flames so why not have the flames on the ground be red, yellow or purple as they mingle with the baseline blue flame like they do right now. Fidelity is so important in video games.

Edited March 16, 2022 by HotDelirium.7984

[Gwaihir.1745]

Absolute Resolution does not currently work with Phoenix Protocol.

 

Regeneration granted while traited with Phoenix Protocol should heal for 25% more to match the trait tool tip.

[Desh.7028]

Quote

• Searing Pact: Fixed a bug that caused the burning this trait added to strikes from Willbender Flames to use the PvP/WvW duration of 2 seconds in all game modes instead of the intended 1-second duration in PvE that is on the trait tooltip. 

 

So, new feedback:

Buff condi Willbender because it now deals it's pillow damage from beta. 

[Gwaihir.1745]

1 hour ago, Desh.7028 said:

 

So, new feedback:

Buff condi Willbender because it now deals it's pillow damage from beta. 

 

1. Anet isn't reading this thread nor using any of the feedback from the 3 beta events.

2. They will nerf core guard. Id say I got this inb4 but they actually nerfed core today once already.

[Desh.7028]

1 hour ago, Gwaihir.1745 said:

1. Anet isn't reading this thread nor using any of the feedback from the 3 beta events.

 

 

"Hope dies painless."

[Exonfang.6784]

Unfortunately, alacrity generation is so inconsistent (due to being based on the fifth attack), that it's unusable in raids and strike missions. The adjustment today was not enough, instead of increasing the duration of alacrity, reduce the number of strikes required to trigger.

[Kuya.6495]

13 minutes ago, Exonfang.6784 said:

Unfortunately, alacrity generation is so inconsistent (due to being based on the fifth attack), that it's unusable in raids and strike missions. The adjustment today was not enough, instead of increasing the duration of alacrity, reduce the number of strikes required to trigger.

I would prefer it would just not be based on attacks at all.  Alacrity only if you can attack instantly makes it a less valuable choice vs alacren and way less useful than mechanist. 

 

There are times when you need to provide alacrity to your team during downtime so they can get their heals off faster but as a wb you can't do that if the boss is invul.

[Gwaihir.1745]

2 minutes ago, Kuya.6495 said:

I would prefer it would just not be based on attacks at all.  Alacrity only if you can attack instantly makes it a less valuable choice vs alacren and way less useful than mechanist. 

 

There are times when you need to provide alacrity to your team during downtime so they can get their heals off faster but as a wb you can't do that if the boss is invul.

 

Willbender should quit trying to be a boon support. It would still have a place in raids with its condi dps, where another role will already be filling alacrity and quickness better.

What it should provide, and needs, is self quickness which would make it a much better and rounded spec everywhere else while still having a use in raids.

[Naxx.6203]

Okey so i really like WIllbender. I think it's greatly designed spec with cool fantasy around it. 

However there are two main issues for me that kind of need to be addressed.

1) Sword 3 really doesn't fit Willbender's play style in its current form. Please consider removing root from this skill only for Willbender. It's only skill in kit that just doesn't feel right to use and doesn't blend with rest of the abilities and mechanics.

Virtuoso's sword 3 received similar treatment and so now it blends better with rest of the kit.

2) F1 still has that weird micro pause before it connects with target. I know its animations has already been smoothen compared to 1st beta but It still need to be addressed.

[Exonfang.6784]

On 3/15/2022 at 6:10 PM, Kuya.6495 said:

I would prefer it would just not be based on attacks at all.  Alacrity only if you can attack instantly makes it a less valuable choice vs alacren and way less useful than mechanist. 

 

There are times when you need to provide alacrity to your team during downtime so they can get their heals off faster but as a wb you can't do that if the boss is invul.

 

I agree, making it not based off attacks at all would be best.

Edited March 18, 2022 by Exonfang.6784

[Carnifex.3275]

I assume people mentioned this many many times but i'll mention it again.

F1 has to change. That rooting/aftercast delay just really messes up with the whole smooth "flow" of the class. It's not really going to make WB alot stronger or anything.. it will just improve the feeling and smoothness of the class making it more fun to play.

[Shaun.6937]

I'm 100+ spvp games in on WB, here are my thoughts and suggestions. Although I haven't read all 27 pages, I'll try my best not to repeat what others have said. Everything mentioned here is based on pvp.

 

None of the utility skills are worth taking. 
Reversal of Fortune is not dependable, for some reason, it just won't proc, even if you're in the middle of a team fight. Landing all 5 attacks of Flash Combo is rare, if the opponent is walking in any direction besides towards you or is standing still, they will easily avoid it. Whirling Light is my favorite skill visually, but the damage is equal to 3 auto attacks on greatsword, the skill description says "Lunge forward" but I don't see any increase in movement speed. Roiling Light does what is supposed to, the only suggestion I have is to decrease the cooldown if Quick Retribution lands. Heel Crack is just a boring skill, doesn't feel good when you land it, please add some visual effects to it. Heaven's Palm seems like it was supposed to work similarly to the sword 2 Dragon's Maw combo (before the patch), but isn't the purpose of the spec to get multiple hits in, why would you want to knock more people away, also the 1.25 second cast time means anyone with high movement speed(trait modifiers, runes, or superspeed) will just walk away from it before it lands.

 

The WB trait line is fine, decent modifiers and boons. The only trait I think needs a serious change is Deathless Courage. The use case is so narrow I don't think anyone has fully used it yet. Even if you get a kill while it's active the duration is extended for 1 second, what is 1 more second going to do? I would really like to see a trait that buffs the Physical skills, similar Monk's Focus and Weighty Terms. The new virtues significantly decrease the utility of passive virtue modifier traits, limiting build diversity, but many people have already complained about that.

 

Rushing Justice lands a large percentage of the time and does good damage. Flowing Resolve works well as an extra evade frame but the healing isn't there, requiring 5 attacks to get 652 healing is not worth it, one auto-attack or condi from the enemy will negate that. Crashing Courage is great as an initiator, but the long channel time leaves you vulnerable if it's being used as an escape.

 

Sword offhand is meh. Executioner's Calling was hyped up as the big damage skill, but torch 4 and focus 4 do roughly the same amount of damage and are easier to land. Advancing Strike is fine. I rarely took sword offhand because the damage wasn't there and having another dash just seemed pointless. There isn't any good reason to take sword offhand over the other options.

 

Visually the spec is underwhelming. The only visually impressive skills are Whirling Light, Heaven's Palm, (which aren't worth taking) and Crashing Courage. It hurts seeing all these new specs with flashy new abilities and guardian is just the same. Plus all the dashes look the same, there are mobs in Path of Fire that have better looking dashes.

 

I can't really judge the playstyle since I didn't take any of the WB utilities or the new weapon majority of the time. I played it like a medi core guard, but medi core is better because of the extra trait line, virtue passives, and instant cast virtues. But I don't see any other viable options to play WB in pvp.

 

TL;DR
Traits Good. Utilizes Bad. Virtues Good. Virtues interaction with core guard traits Bad. Offhand Sword Bad. Visuals Bad.

Edited March 24, 2022 by Shaun.6937
Wrong ability name

[KeoLegend.5132]

On 3/13/2022 at 11:27 AM, Ezrael.6859 said:

Physical skills are lacking compared to other utilities and compared to Warrior and Thief physical skills.

Willbender physical skills have no traits to give extra potency to them and they are far from potent by default, hence most Willbenders seem to be running Meditations and Shouts for their builds, the same utilities since 2012.

Reversal of Fortune -  Should be a 1s duration block rather than a single attack block.

 

Heel Crack - Should be a 600 range dash with an evade component like Bull's Charge - the Warrior's skill is a 30s cooldown, but a 900 range evading 3s knockdown combo leap. And it has interactivity with 10 different traits.

Whirling Light - Needs to apply Cripple per hit also, most enemies simply walk out of the animation and only get hit once. (It also needs to be bug fixed to actually attack in a 240 radius, rather than only in front of the player).

Flash Combo - Make it instant or it will never see use over Judges Intervention. Repose should always be available.

Roiling Light - Needs to remove Immob/Cripple/Chill at minimum, otherwise people will just use Stand Your Ground for Stun break + 5x Stability & Resolution for yourself and 4 allies...

Quick Retribution - After rolling backwards with Roiling Light, this skill never lands on a moving target - Make it a 600 range leap with a 1s evade.

 

Heaven's Palm - Make it a stun break and an evade during the 1.25s animation.

Everyone takes Renewed Focus because Guardian lacks oh kitten skills to try and avoid damage when getting focused; it also recharges the Virtues. So Heaven's Palm needs something similar but different to compete.

As this skill has a long and large telegraph, enemy players can still dodge or use stability against the knockdown they can see coming, but the evade will mean the Guardian won't be destroyed by attacks while frozen in mid-air. The stun break is there because as a melee multi-hit attacker the Willbender is subject to a lot of CC compared to ranged specs.

100% agreed;

We need this live

[Patrick.9531]

Whenever I want to die faster than I ever have before without actually killing anything, I play Willbender. This one is actually worse than Catalyst, which is hard for me to say. 

I see Catalyst is getting many improvements in the next update. Willbender needs more. Just take a kitchen sink approach to improvements on it.

Edited March 26, 2022 by Patrick.9531

[The Boz.2038]

On 3/12/2022 at 2:14 AM, Paradoxoglanis.1904 said:

1. Allow Justice, Flowing Resolve, and Crashing Courage to stack. Right now they overwrite each other.
2. Remove animations from certain abilities entirely. The final punch of F1, the initial dash on sword 5... Despite being mobility skills, the animations make it possible for your target to w key away or counter attack while you are winding up waiting for the final hit. Additionally its very easy to accidentally cancel the animation before the final strike, putting it on cooldown without actually doing anything.
3. Crashing courage needs to grant stability and aegis at the beginning of the cast.
4. Heavens Palm cast time is way too long for the skill to be usable.

The reason why roamers like rev, thief, holo work is because they can actually stick to targets. Willbender cant and never will unless they shave off all the animations of its mobility and allow more movement while using GS, sword, and hammer.

I could be persuaded to support all points but #1. Jesus, not the #1. WB was designed with the "choose if you want to hurt people or be safe" dilemma built in. You shouldn't ever get a passive auto-proccing aegis dozens of times per minute, while in your passive auto-proccing DPS mode rotation.

[medivh.4725]

Substain still a problem. It is in need of quickness. Doesn't hit hard enough, doesn't hit fast enough.

I liked 'Heaven's Palm'.

There is a lack of origniality with 'Flash Combo'. Volley of punches is copy paste from Thief's. And its actually more boxing then kungfu. 

In addition, 'Whirling Light' spin kicks looks more a karate inspired kickboxing move then kungfu? Think Ken of StreetFighter? Again this is out of character and incorrect genre of martial arts.

Both these skills IMO does not fit theme or inspires of an elite imperial guard martial artist or a top level dual swordsmen. (Wields 2 swords but is instead using 2 fist?)

I also didn't understand 'Flowing Resolve'. Just a straight dash with effect? Come on. What is the WB doing there.

Dash distances should also be relooked at. WB is flying in and out, getting out of combat zone way too often.

You are not lacking in special effects. The martial arts or dual sword play elements are clearly lacking.

Edited April 5, 2022 by medivh.4725

[Antina.5973]

I think it would be great if Holy Reckoning worked with Battle presence (sharing might as now sharing alac works). It looks like it's bugged now and doesn't work. That would be somewhat on par with Staff mirage and alac mechanist with proper build/gear. Zooming around with F1/2/3 is super fun ^.^

Edited April 3, 2022 by Antina.5973