Willbender - Radiant Spearbender
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: Strike damage and Mobility
Designed for: PvP Conquest
Expansions required: 
Difficulty:
Easy
This build was last updated on November 29, 2024 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 patch.
Overview
A new Power Willbender build for PvP utilizing the most recent addition to Guardian's arsenal, the spear. This build was made to deliver massive bursts in teamfights and while +1ing.
Currently one of the most popular builds in ranked arenas, but somewhat less prevalent in tournament play.
Skill Bar
Spear
Sword/Sword
Utility
Skill Variants
Utility
- over - makes you cleansing worse but gives you a more frequently available stunbreak that also mitigates direct damage both on its active and passive effect. Great option against predominantly Power-based comps.
Elite
- - this is seen as less competitive and thus much less popular, but the
Quickness could help you deliver burst damage while also buffing your team. is often used with this elite for even stronger bursts.
Template Code
[&DQEQPi41QS84AQMBBAE2AUcBBAHYGi0BNwE3AQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACCQFaAAA=]
Specializations
Equipment
Spear
Sigil
Sigil
Sword
Sword
Sigil
Sigil
Rune
Amulet
Relic
Usage
General
Resolution increases your critical strike chance by 40% via , pushing it near the crit cap while you have this boon. Always try to maintain Resolution or at least apply it before bursts.
- Every Virtue and shadowstep (teleport) grants Resolution from the traits and . Most of the time these skills are part of your burst combos so you don't have to worry too much about maintaining this boon.
- Every Virtue and shadowstep (teleport) grants
- is refreshed after each kill so make sure you always have it on cooldown right before a kill. Using it also applies AoE
Blind which can be useful for stomping or making high priority skills miss. It's also one of the hardest hitting skills in the build.
- Try to burn through all of your virtues before resorting to . RF is a great skill to use if you're being focues by the enemy team and you don't have any CDs left. Just keep in mind that this skill makes you lose capture point contribution for its duration.
- One of Willbender's greatest strengths is its mobility:
- Every virtue skill is a mobility skill.
- Both weapon sets have some sort of movement abilities. Most of the teleports require a target, but you can get creative with that by doing things like selecting a far away enemy target and spamming teleports to get across the map faster, or selecting objects such as a Trebuchet on Battle of Kyhlo to leave enemies behind.
- is a good mobility skill even without a target as it makes you dash forward.
- Blinds are important even when bursting targets as Blind spam prevents them from counterpressuring you. and all apply this condition on top of doing great damage. could fill a similar role as the
Weakness is great for mitigating incoming damage while also pressuring opponents.
- grants you
Stability and 
Resistance (among other things) which allow you to ignore CC and debilitating conditions like Weakness while bursting targets. Being a shadowstep (teleport) skill it could also reposition you right on top of your target so that you may follow up with immediately for burst damage.
Sword/Sword
- The main source of burst damage here comes from the the offhand skills:
- deals good damage and sets up your next attack perfectly with
Immobilize and Resolution (it's a shadowstep). - is the hardest hitting skill on this set and combos well with Advancing Strike.
- deals good damage and sets up your next attack perfectly with
- is both defensive and offensive, deals solid damage while destroying enemy projectiles. Note that the damage of this skill can be very unreliable in anything but melee range. is a good setup for this too.
- has many uses: vertical mobility via teleportation, symbol for cleaving, Blind to make an important skill miss, or a combo field which can be used to combo
Light Aura with a leap finisher.
Spear
- Spear has its own unique mechanic called illumination. Using any of skills 2-5 and fulfilling the right conditions gives you the Illuminated buff, which increases the effectiveness of your next skill.
- Starting off with is recommended, because it ensures that the rest of your combo is illuminated.
- and go well together, you should aim to line up the 2nd strike of GD with the pass-through damage of HR.
- is the main burst skill here, a powerful AoE with heavy damage that can also heal and cleanse allies in range. Make sure that this skill is always illuminated.
Burst combo examples
Willbender isn't a very complicated spec and you don't have to work hard to do a lot of damage. This section is only meant to give you a few ideas for sequencing, especially when it comes to doing damage with minimal risk.
Defensive burst combo
- for defensive boons including
Protection and Stability which should ensure that you get to do the rest of the chain uninterrupted. - to root the target into the flames left behind by Crashing Courage and the upcoming step.
- for damage and Weakness.
- to Blind enemies and do AoE damage.
- You can continue adding skills that blind enemies from here. This chain does a lot of damage while making it hard for enemies to counterpressure you.
- for defensive boons including
Spear Combo
You basically just go through your skills from right to left, 5 to 2.
- Optional if you're outside melee range.
- for CC and to illuminate the rest of the combo. You don't have to stay inside the symbol!
- , the goal here is to hit the target with the second strike at the same time Helio Rush connects.
- through the target.
Sustain
- The build is rather squishy, Willbender relies heavily on its mobility to avoid damage, jumping in and out of fights to deliver burst damage while keeping melee contact to a minimum.
- is an excellent reactive skill which cleanses several conditions and even has an evade frame in case you need to dodge something but don't have the endurance.
- is worth holding onto for its passive in order to get free condition cleansing, but don't hesitate to use it on low health (and even its active can cleanse conditions).
- is a purely defensive stunbreak and your best answer against an overwhelming amount of conditions. Usually a last resort for when you're heavily pressured and other options don't cut it anymore.
- is an excellent and versatile defensive skill. Short CD, breaks stuns, grants boons, it's also a ground targeted ranged teleport which adds a lot of vertical mobility to the build. Leaving attackers behind while teleporting to the highground can save your life. As with most Willbender skills, it's not purely defensive - the AoE it leaves behind upon landing is a good source of cleave damage too, so you could sacrifice this skill to chase or pressure targets if you're fine with giving up a defensive CD.
- is also a stunbreak but most of the time it'll be used to execute burst combos from range. Worth holding onto for defensive purposes when every other stunbreak is on CD though.
- As long as you have you're somewhat safe. It's an incredibly powerful defensive skill which grants you immunity to incoming damage and CC (other than fall damage) when under heavy pressure, and refreshes all of your Virtues which could either help you stay alive longer or run away.
Top Streamers
- Twitch: Naru
- Twitch: Josh
Related Builds
- Willbender - Radiant Spearbender Roamer - WvW version of the build.
Ratings
High mobility, high maintenance, high damage. but short cd ...? well . they never nerf because the designer plays Guardian. Easy to play. The best choice for RANK games. ppl now afraid get nerf start give low rating lol however u can see best player duo nec then swap to wb snowball every p2p3 rank game
Spear is nowhere near as oppressive as it once was, it still works but will struggle in high ranked play. I'd argue that the greatsword variant is better now.
Still a decent build that noob stomps but it has been nerfed 5 times. Unfortunately one more and I don't see a point at running this at all. You're literally playing a thief without stealth function and have to melee... deadeye does the role much better. If you're thinking about playing this consider playing something else because this will get nerfed more and more until the bunker meta returns.
Everyone complaining about this build are likely low skill players that have been killed by this. Now, it's a great build with a ton of mobility and boon uptime; don't get me wrong. However, it has been nerfed 3 or 4 times since spear was released and it's not nearly as free win as it used to be. There's plenty of specs and classes that outperform this one while providing much more to their team, so I would definitely not say that this is the BEST PvP build, like so many others claim. You can't even make a post on the /r/GuildWars2 subreddit about WB without people losing their minds and crying about it's existence, but I really don't have a problem with them any more. The only reason it's so popular, and why people hate it so much is because it has a minuscule skill cap making it so that anyone can pick up the class and quickly start doing good. Where-as something like D/D Catalyst has a huge skill ceiling, but the learning curve prevents most people from picking it up and mastering it. Yet, a well-played Catalyst will outperform a WB 100/100 times.
Fun build to play but it's quite easy to counter, just dodge the incoming burst or block it and the guy will start to run in circles waiting for the burst to come up again. Builds like Dragon Hunter with Aegis spam can perma block the damage while countering by applying indirect damage with symbols and GS. To me is overestimated, there is other builds and professions that can easly counter it, people play it because it does insta damage and normally in unranked no one dodges.
I cannot imagine an argument against one of the lead devs being a Guardian main / WB main. The spec is cool enough, fun enough, and fast enough that many people would play it even if it wasn't busted. But guess what, it's fn busted. With the ability to permanently stick onto targets, do MASSIVE burst and sustained damage, both ST and AOE, kite and evade or block damage, abuse terrain, there is nothing this class cannot do. You can get off of ANY class in the game, get on a WB, and within 2-3 games you'll be farming top stat badges, rank points, raw kills, whatever you want. There is no spec in the game that has a lower floor. Spam buttons, win. That's it, that's the build. It requires absolutely zero finesse or technique. Far too powerful for the simplicity in its function. Toxic. Should be gutted power wise.
The nerf literally did nothing lol, it's still the most busted pvp class in the game. Ridiculous
It's easy to play and offers overwhelmingly strong DPS. Jump in, one-shot your target or the enemy team with solar storm, then pop Renewed Focus and run or port away. With all the ports, it's essentially Thief 2.0, but without the drawbacks. While it’s not as strong in P2/P3, you're mainly up against the minority who possess the knowledge and speed to counter it. The only true drawback is that it's squishy, but you have a robust boon setup with Aegis and Resolution spam to mitigate a significant amount of damage. Although not mentioned, this is likely to be added to the nerf list for the October 24 patch. If it isn't, it won't be long before it meets the same fate as Warrior Spear/Staff.
Very strong, good sustain, great against condis, only loses when it's outgunned, which isn't often. the amount of mobility the build has makes it easy to leave a fight that isn't going your way. If people using terrain is making it difficult, swap OH sword to torch.
Comments
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