Build:Willbender - Radiant Swordbender

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 August 23, 2024 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 patch.

Overview

A glass cannon PvP Power Willbender build that's all about massive burst damage (with ~100% crit chance when fully buffed) and exceptionally high mobility to chase down any target or avoid damage. Willbender is sometimes referred to as "blue Thief" due to the similarities in playstyle.

Skill Bar

Greatsword

Sword/Sword

Utility

Skill Variants

Heal

• Reversal of Fortune - worse cleansing but it might work better under pressure due to the lower cast time (assuming it blocks an attack). The same's true the other way around, this could let you quickly recover some health while pressuring targets without skipping a beat. Both healing skills are popular options.

Elite

• "Feel My Wrath!" - 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. Relic of the Sunless is often used with this elite for even stronger bursts.

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Equipment

Greatsword

Sigil

Sigil

Sword

Sword

Sigil

Sigil

Rune

Amulet

Relic

Usage

General

• Resolution increases your critical strike chance by 40% via Righteous Instincts, 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 Vanguard Tactics and Virtue of Resolution. 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 skill is a mobility skill on Willbender. Besides their base functionality they are great for sticking to targets or escaping damage.

• Rushing Justice 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 Renewed Focus. 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 either teleports or leaps. 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.
  • Advancing Strike 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. Symbol of Blades, Leap of Faith and Rushing Justice all apply this condition on top of doing great damage. Whirling Light could fill a similar role as the Weakness is great for mitigating incoming damage while also pressuring opponents.

• Crashing Courage 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 Whirling Wrath or Whirling Light immediately for burst damage.

Sword/Sword

• The main source of burst damage here comes from the the offhand skills:
  • Advancing Strike deals good damage and sets up your next attack perfectly with Immobilize and Resolution (it's a shadowstep).
  • Executioner's Calling is the hardest hitting skill on this set and combos well with Advancing Strike.

• Zealot's Defense 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. Advancing Strike is a good setup for this too.

• Symbol of Blades 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.

Greatsword

• Whirling Wrath is the main burst skill on this set, make sure that it lands - do an unexpected ranged burst with Judge's Intervention, or use it after pulling targets in with Binding Blade.

• When in combat, always try to combo Leap of Faith in a Light field such as Symbol of Wrath for Light Aura. Few things to note when using this for mobility:
  • If you're OOC (out of combat), swap weapons just before the leap finishes in order to cancel the final part of the skill which would otherwise bring you to a halt.
  • In combat this can be used for jumping away from the fight to avoid damage. To do that simply just detarget (click anywhere on your screen that's not an enemy player) before using the skill, and make sure that auto-targetting is disabled.

• Binding Blade is useful even when the target has Stability and thus cannot be pulled. The damage over time part of this skill is decent, and you could time it in a way that the target's stability runs out before Binding Blade does, allowing you to pull them in later. Note: while the initial projectile itself can be dodged, once the blades are attached you can pull targets out of any kind of evade frame! The blades also seek out enemies even if they are Stealthed.

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 1

1. Crashing Courage for defensive boons including Protection and Stability which should ensure that you get to do the rest of the chain uninterrupted.
2. Advancing Strike to root the target into the flames left behind by Crashing Courage and the upcoming step.
3. Whirling Light for damage and Weakness.
4. Symbol of Blades to Blind enemies and do AoE damage.
5. 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.

Defensive burst combo 2

1. Symbol of Blades for the teleport while immediately applying Blind, also creating a combo field.
2. Advancing Strike to root the target.
3. Rushing Justice while they can't dodge, this should also Blind them.
4. Optional - Whirling Light if you can fit it in, but if you're slow then the combo field from step 1 could run out before you'd get to step 5. You could also skip it if you fear interruption and want to keep the blind spam going.
5. Leap of Faith after weapon swap in order to combo Light Aura with Symbol of Blades and to apply yet another Blind.
6. Symbol of Resolution
7. Note: swapping steps 1 and 3 would yield more damage, as the F1 gives you an extra damage modifier via trait synergy. Doing so however would leave you a bit more exposed at the start of the combo, as Rushing Justice has a much longer cast time before applying Blind. It's more risky, but sometimes worth it. Careful with Resistance though, against enemies with this boon you'll be vulnerable as they can ignore your conditions.

Ranged AoE combo

1. Pre-cast Whirling Wrath from a distance.
2. Judge's Intervention to teleport to the target right before WW starts doing damage (WW has a cast bar, jump in as the bar's about to fill up).
3. Whirling Light

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.

• Flowing Resolve 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.

• Signet of Resolve 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).

• If taken Reversal of Fortune (your healing skill) is best used when an attack is already coming your way or you're absolutely certain that you're going to be hit in order to get maximum healing (and block value) out of it. If you're not being focused but want to heal consider moving briefly into an enemy AoE skill.

• Contemplation of Purity is a purely defensive stun break 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.

• Crashing Courage 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.

• Judge's Intervention is also a stun break but most of the time it'll be used to execute burst combos from range. Worth holding onto for defensive purposes when every other stun break is on CD though.

• As long as you have Renewed Focus 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.

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Related Builds

• Willbender - Radiant Swordbender Roamer - WvW version.

• Guardian - Radiant Greatsword - core/F2P version of the build.