Willbender - Radiant Spearbender Roamer
The community gave this build a rating, making it top-tier: Great
Focused on: Strike damage and Mobility
Designed for: WvW Roaming
Expansions required: 
Difficulty:
Easy
This build was last updated on February 11, 2025 and is up to date for the February 11, 2025 patch.
Overview
The usual, notorious Power Willbender roaming build for WvW, but this time with Spear.
Skill Bar
Spear
Sword/Sword
Utility
Template Code
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Specializations
Variants
- Take if you can afford to give up some condi cleansing for more damage. Adding to both weapon sets could help you get away with this.
Variants
- is another trait you could take for extra damage at the expense of survivability.
Equipment
Head
Marauder
Shoulders
Marauder
Chest
Marauder
Hands
Marauder
Legs
Marauder
Feet
Marauder
Backpiece
Dragon
Accessory
Marauder
Accessory
Marauder
Amulet
Dragon
Ring
Dragon
Ring
Dragon
Spear
Marauder
Sigil
Sigil
Sword
Marauder
Sword
Marauder
Sigil
Sigil
Rune
x6
Infusion
x18
Relic
Equipment Variants
Relics
- - offers even better mobility at the expense of damage.
- - focuses more on burst windows rather than consistent pressure. Also a good alternative in general if you want an offensive relic but haven't unlocked Stormsinger yet.
Runes
- - better boon duration without sacrificng too much damage.
- - more tanky option.
- - good offensive stats and better
Might stacking.
Stats
- On the current set you should have ~87% crit chance with
Resolution (assuming full Ascended quality gear). You gain another 10% against 
Burning targets via traits, but that's not going to be active all the time. Our goal was to achieve consistency without overcapping crit chance in most situations while leaving some room for other buffs, but you might still overcap occasionally when we factor in things like Borderlands Bloodlust and other WvW buffs. Since you can't have permanent uptime on Burning or 
Fury and WvW buffs are largely out of your control, we believe that a higher crit chance like this is better, but replacing a few 
Marauder pieces with 
Dragon stats for lower crit chance (until 80% or so) and slightly higher Ferocity is also a viable option. That way you'll have a bit higher burst damage if things go well, but also less consistency when the other buffs aren't active.
Consumables
Food
- - strong mix of sustain and damage.
- - cheaper defensive option.
- - active damage mitigation via more access to dodging.
- is a cheaper version of Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew and sufficient enough in most cases.
- - non-ascended offensive option.
- - cheap crit chance boost (brings you up to 90%) with armor ignoring damage procs that also heal you.
Utility
- or
Usage
General
- Resolution increases your critical strike chance by 25% via , pushing you 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
- Every Virtue skill is a mobility skill on Willbender. Besides their base functionality they are great for sticking to targets or escaping damage.
- 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 either teleports or movement skills. Most of the teleports require a target, but you can get creative with that by doing things like selecting a far away neutral NPC (mosquito, dolyak, etc.) or objects such as walls or Catapults built by the enemy and spamming teleports towards them to get away from danger.
- 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.
- for CC and to illuminate the rest of the combo. You don't have to stay inside the symbol!
- Optional if you're outside melee range, pre-cast Symbol of Luminance and use JI right at the end of the cast.
- Optional - . Note: consider skipping this when prioritizing single-target damage. ST has a long cast time, you might be better off focusing on the other 2 steps while the CC lasts. ST is best used against multiple targets who are spread, or if you're not in melee range.
- , 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, unless the target has Blind and Weakness.
- 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.
Related Builds
- Willbender - Radiant Spearbender - sPvP version of the build.
Ratings
Even after the nerfs this still feels strong. The damage is more or less unchanged, but you may need to be more careful with CD management due to the cooldown increases.
Incredibly broken as Willbender has been for ages in roaming. With spear it just became worse for everyone facing you. Since Anet is reluctant to nerf Willbender even a bit, just play this for easy kills.
Comments
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