Build:Herald - Celestial Herald Roamer

The community gave this build a rating, making it top-tier: Great

Focused on: Hybrid damage and Sustain

Designed for: WvW Roaming

Difficulty:

Easy

This build was last updated on January 12, 2024 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 patch.

Overview

A Celestial Mallyx Herald build designed for WvW Roaming, bringing excepptional survivability and high sustained damage to the table.

Skill Bar

Mace/Shield

Sword/Axe

Utility

Utility

Template Code

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Specializations

Variants

• Demonic Resistance can be taken for a more sustain.

Equipment

Head
Celestial

Shoulders
Celestial

Chest
Celestial

Hands
Celestial

Legs
Celestial

Feet
Celestial

Backpiece
Celestial

Accessory
Celestial

Accessory
Celestial

Amulet
Celestial

Ring
Celestial

Ring
Celestial

Mace
Celestial

Shield
Celestial

Sigil

Sigil

Sword
Celestial

Axe
Celestial

Sigil

Sigil

Rune
x6

Infusion
x18

Relic

Sigils

• Sigil of Superior Sigil of Cleansing over Hydromancy - take Cleansing if you need more condition removal.

Consumables

Food

• - great overall stat boost and damage mitigation.
  • and other similar Oyster consumables are fairly cheap on the Trading post if you don't have ascended cooking.

• - better endurance regen, more access to dodging (and thus better condition cleansing too with Salvation).

• - slightly worse endurance regen than that of the Orrian Truffle food, but the constant healing ensures effortless Unyielding Devotion uptime.

Utility

• Optimal: or , whichever is cheaper (the difference beween them is negligible, a grand total of 2 condition damage stat in favor of Tuning Icicle).

• Budget: either from Canned Food Crates found in WvW s or purchased from the Permanent Portable Provisioner.

Usage

General

• Invoking a legend resets energy to 50, procs various traits such as Invoking Torment or Spirit Boon, and could even trigger the sigils of your active weapon set (if they are not on CD) among other things. Swapping legends is basically the main resource management tool in the build - swap whenever you're out of CDs or low on energy. That's not all however, on Mallyx builds legend swapping may also be used to do AoE burst damage or manage conditions on yourself.

• Start on Dragon stance (Glint) and while still in the base activate the following 4 upkeep skills for party buffing:
  • Facet of Nature (use its active when your energy is about to hit 0)
  • Facet of Elements
  • Facet of Strength
  • Facet of Darkness

• In combat Facet of Nature is used for dealing with conditions. On Mallyx True Nature (Demon) transfers conditions to nearby enemies which is the main purpose of the skill in this build.

• Swapping legends deactivates the upkeep skills of that legend without sending them on full CD.

• Chaotic Release can be used to knock downed opponents away from their rezzing teammates.

Pressure

• Most of the damage coems from Mace and Mallyx.

• Chain Searing Fissure ⇒ Echoing Eruption in order to stack Might. Use these two weapon skills on CD.
  • Temporal Rift is great for setting up this combo, making sure both skills hit your target.

• Banish Enchantment is a strong and cheap offensive ability, not only removing boons but also pressuring targets via Abyssal Chill procs.

• Call to Anguish is the best CC skill in the build, capable of balling up an entire team or pulling enemies off the highground. While it doesn't do much damage on its own, if you have enough allies around you may consider abusing this skill as much as possible to harass the enemy team and set up kills.
  • Banish Enchantment is a great followup for CoA. While generally viewed as a single target ability, it's capable of hitting multiple foes if they are close enough to each other.

• Embrace the Darkness should be activated before unloading weapon skills whenever your energy allows it.

• Frigid Blitz serves as a gapcloser in the build, but the second part can deal decent damage.

Self Sustain & Disengaging

• Every Mallyx skill has a chance to proc Resistance on a 5s ICD. Other sources of Resistance include swapping legends with Fiendish Tenacity equipped.

• Crystal Hibernation is basically your third healing skill. It heals for a fair amount, blocks attacks and cleanses conditions.

• Envoy of Exuberance aimed at your character heals for a small amount and grants Protection.

• Dodge rolling removes conditions.

• Pain Absorption is the most reliable skill to use if you want quick access to Resistance. It's also a great support skill in general, removing conditions from allies and granting them Resistance.

• Call to Anguish will be your best mobility tool and on some maps can be used to leap to places where enemies can't follow (or at least, not easily).

• Facet of Light's chain effect Infuse Light is your jail free card - makes you immortal for the duration by converting all incoming damage into healing. Some players may stop pressuring you once Face of Light's been activated, in this case you should just wait a couple of seconds before using Infuse Light. Make sure you get at least 10k healing out of this skill, try to predict when burst is coming and use Facet of Light in advance - FoL has a cast time thus cannot be used while stunned, while Infuse is instant.