Herald - Quickness Support Condi DPS

Part of the current metagame

Our curator decided this build is in the current metagame regardless of rating. The community gave this build a rating, making it top-tier: Great

Focused on: Condition damage, Support and Utility

Designed for: Raids

Expansions required:

Difficulty:

Normal

This build was last updated on December 30, 2023 and is up to date for the March 19, 2024 patch.

Overview

A condi Herald build that provides permanent Quickness, Fury, Swiftness (optional), Regeneration (optional), high Protection, and around 23 Might to its subgroup. It also provides Facet of Nature, increasing boon duration while channelling Glint.

It can also provide other utilities depending on the second Legend chosen, such as Stability or damage reduction, though this a more significant damage loss than it would be for the power build.

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Skill Bar

Mace/Axe

Shortbow

Utility

Utility

• Your second Legend defaults to Legendary Demon Stance. Read the Legends section below to see other alternatives.

Equipment

Head
Viper

Shoulders
Viper

Chest
Viper

Hands
Viper

Legs
Viper

Feet
Viper

Backpiece
Viper

Accessory
Viper

Accessory
Viper

Amulet
Viper

Ring
Viper

Ring
Viper

Mace
Viper

Axe
Viper

Sigil

Sigil

Shortbow
Viper

Sigil

Sigil

Rune
x6

Infusion
x18

Relic

• This setup has ~35% boon duration without the need to invest into any concentration.
  • Quickness uptime is quite tight with this amount, so feel free to swap in as many Ritualist stats pieces as are needed to make it permanent.
• You can tank by swapping some pieces to Celestial stats.

Equipment Variants

Rune Variants

• Many of the popular Alacrity providers also some Might, but in the event this is not the case, you could use Rune of Superior Rune of the Aristocracy to gain an extra ~5 stacks of might generation.

Consumables

Food

• , , , or ascended alternatives (such as )

Utility

• or

Usage

Quickness

You apply Quickness through the trait Elevated Compassion. This pulses healing and Quickness whenever you are using upkeep energy of six or above. Fortunately, all of your non-Legendary Dragon Stance legends have a skill that uses exactly six. Thus while in these legends you want to maintain the skill in question for almost the entire time. Glint is a little trickier as all the skills use upkeep, but Facet of Chaos and Facet of Nature combined are six energy, so these two are maintained together.

Swiftness

By default, the rotations below only generate ~35% Swiftness uptime. To provide more, you need to skip the first use of Elemental Blast and maintain Facet of Elements while on Legendary Dragon Stance (you should still use Elemental Blast before swapping legend). You may need to toggle off Facet of Darkness early to ensure you have enough energy for weapon skills.

Alternatively, as Swiftness is not stripped at the start of encounters, you can make sure to channel Facet of Elements before the fight starts. If you manage to start with 60s, you should be able to maintain it for a further two minutes without compromising your damage, or even longer if there are split phases in which to refresh it.

Legends

• Legendary Dragon Stance - absolutely key to the build, this is your source of almost all your non- Quickness boons. It's Facet of Nature—Dragon increases the duration of boons your subgroup provides by 20%. Note this effect does not actually increase Concentration, it increases Boon Duration (and is not shown in the Hero Panel), so a build with this effect and 100% Boon Duration would provide boons lasting 120% longer.

• Legendary Demon Stance is by far the highest DPS legend, and also offers a pull with Call to Anguish which may be useful when fighting trash mobs if your group does not have pulls.
  • It can also be used in fractals to remove the boons from No Pain, No Gain if no-one else is able to.

Other legends are a significant DPS loss, and will leave you doing less damage than the power build taking the same legend.

• Legendary Dwarf Stance is a significant DPS loss. You can provide Stability through Inspiring Reinforcement, CC through Forced Engagement, and reduce personal incoming strike and condition damage by 20% with Vengeful Hammers. If needed, it can also reduce incoming strike damage to your subgroup by 50% with Rite of the Great Dwarf. This legend is much easier to bring on the power build, as it loses much less damage.

• Legendary Centaur Stance is an extremely niche option. It is a massive DPS loss that should only be taken if your group desperately needs projectile block through Protective Solace. It also offers condition cleanse through Purifying Essence, CC through Energy Expulsion, and a very weak heal through Facet of Nature—Centaur.

• Legendary Assassin Stance provides personal mobility through Phase Traversal and Impossible Odds, and CC through Jade Winds. It has no real use in combat, but could be used in between encounters.

Rotation

Opener
Start on Glint and Mace/Axe with Facet of Strength, Facet of Elements and Facet of Darkness active:

1. Temporal Rift
2. Facet of Nature
3. Searing Fissure - this allows us to blast Might to build it up faster
4. Facet of Chaos
5. Burst of Strength
6. Elemental Blast
7. True Nature (Dragon) - we slightly delay using this to be sure that Quickness has pulsed at least once
8. Legendary Demon Stance
9. Embrace the Darkness
10. Echoing Eruption
11. Weapon Swap

Shortbow
The stronger effect of Embrace the Darkness can only be activated once per pulse, so a single autoattack is added after key skills to ensure that no pulses are wasted. This requires precision to avoid either cancelling Shattershot or delaying your legend swap, so it may be better in practise not to worry about it.

1. Bloodbane Path, Shattershot
2. Spiritcrush, Shattershot
3. Sevenshot, Shattershot
4. Shattershot, and Bloodbane Path whenever it comes off cooldown
5. Legendary Dragon Stance as soon as it is available
6. Facet of Strength ⇒ Burst of Strength
7. Facet of Elements ⇒ Elemental Blast
8. Spiritcrush
9. Sevenshot
10. Bloodbane Path
11. Weapon Swap

Mace/Axe

1. Searing Fissure
2. Temporal Rift
3. Echoing Eruption
4. Facet of Nature
5. Facet of Chaos
6. Facet of Darkness
7. Auto-attack chain
8. Searing Fissure
9. Auto-attack chain
10. Chaotic Release
11. True Nature (Dragon)
12. Searing Fissure
13. Facet of Strength ⇒ Burst of Strength
14. Facet of Elements ⇒ Elemental Blast
15. Echoing Eruption
16. Legendary Demon Stance
17. Embrace the Darkness
18. Searing Fissure
19. Weapon Swap
20. Return to start of Shortbow section

Video example