Willbender - Support Alacbender

This is a rough draft. Once adequately written, it will progress to the testing stage, where it can be rated by the community. You can help by proposing changes with a comment.

Focused on: Condition cleanse, Boon support, Healing and Crowd control

Designed for: WvW Zerg

Expansions required:

Difficulty:

TBD

Overview

A support Willbender build for WvW. Provides a large amount of Alacrity, cleansing, healing and boon support.

Skill Bar

Staff

Scepter/Shield

Utility

Weapon Variants

• Torch provides better cleansing at the cost of shield utility

Skill Variants

• "Stand Your Ground!" if more stability is needed
• "Feel My Wrath!" good fury uptime + 2 condition removal but lose the burst heal + stab from signet
• Signet of Mercy if you want res utility

Template Code

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Equipment

Head
Minstrel

Shoulders
Minstrel

Chest
Minstrel

Hands
Minstrel

Legs
Minstrel

Feet
Minstrel

Backpiece
Minstrel

Accessory
Minstrel

Accessory
Minstrel

Amulet
Minstrel

Ring
Minstrel

Ring
Minstrel

Staff
Minstrel

Sigil

Sigil

Scepter
Minstrel

Shield
Minstrel

Sigil

Sigil

Rune
x6

Infusion
x18

Equipment Variants

Sigils

• Sigil of Superior Sigil of Concentration for higher boon uptime
• Sigil of Superior Sigil of Water healing on crits every 5s, with symbols you'll use it everytime it's available.

Consumables

• • personal food option

General Understanding

Condition Removal Sources

• With Trooper runes and Pure of Voice, each shout will remove 2 conditions on 5 targets.
• Absolute Resolve will proc on each F2 use, 3 conditions removed 5 targets.
• Purging flames, works best if we need to stay still (stairs/choke points/hand-rez fiesta...) 7 pulses each removing 1 condition on 5 targets.
• Blasting symbols with Staff 2 will remove 1 condition on 5 targets

Alacrity Source

• The alacrity you offer to the party comes from F2 traited with "Battle Presence" and "Phoenix Protocol". After using f2, you'll gain the boon "Flowing Resolve" and every few time you attack an ennemie you'll gain and share alacrity. The easiest way is to put symbols inside the ennemies zerg (or where they are moving). This is why we use scepter instead of mace in this build.

Healing Sources

• With the Honor trait line, you'll gain the ability to heal on dodges and on aegis (shield 4 / Advance x2). Because you're playing with Energy Sigils and with Battle Presence from Virtues you'll have a higher endurance regeneration rate and can use them a bit more "freely" than other classes.
• You can use Staff 2 and 4 to heal allies
• Signet of Courage : Passive heal around you every few seconds and a strong active pulsing healing, stability, protection and resolution.
• F2 spam give perma regeneration to allies.
• You get extra +120 healing power from playing Willbender

• The healing you offer is less than the other cleansing classes (but higher than firebrand due to regeneration / receive the light and signet of courage)

Usage

• Cleansing is mostly priority based instead of a real rotation :
  • Advance! is used to remove a small amount (2)
  • Save Yourselves! is used to remove a HUGE amount (beware because you'll transfer a few to yourself, it's best to use it if you can stand inside your purging flames or if you have f2 available)
  • F2 is to be used to remove 3 conditions on each charge and to give alacrity to allies
  • Your healing skill will get back someone to full health if you can aim it correctly + removing 2 conditions because it's a shout. It's often better to keep it to heal someone than to clean conditions.

• F1 and F3
  • They are mobility and boon skills, you can use them to go support someone / come back to zerg and/or to give boon (Might from F1 and Protection from F3)

• F2
  • F2 is a skill you want to use often because it's a good condition removal source + giving regeneration and you source of alac. When you see "Flowing Resolve" going out you can almost re-use F2 to reapply it to yourself to keep giving alacrity. As you have 2 Charges, you can keep one to burst clean with Save Yourself. F2 is also an evade for yourself.

• Weapons :
  • Staff is a popular weapon in all game mode for support guardian, it brings healing(Staff 2 and 4), swiftness (Staff 3), might (Staff 4) and a good crowd control skill (Staff 5). You can use Staff 3 inside ennemies to proc alacrity from F2 (you're party will always have swiftness due to running Advance) or to put a light field in case you want to blast it with Staff 2 for the extra condition removal.
  • Scepter is the best weapon to apply alacrity with because the symbol is ranged + extra hits (while pulsing might to allies if we push inside of it). Scepter 3 can be used to root a target from 900 range, it's a fairly deadly skill if used in sync with squad damage dealers or on late ennemies.
  • Shield provides projectile-hate (since firebrand can't spam F3-3 anymore is pretty nice to have), extra healing from shield 5 and the aegis + proection from shield 4

Surviving

• This build has high passive defense from minstrel armor
• This build has mobility skill access (f1-f2-f3)
• This builds has high active defense (condition removal / burst healing / Aegis)
  • While your active defenses are strong, they are ideally saved for your group and not used selfishly

Settings

• Under General Options / User Interface check Always show squad health bars and Always show party health bars. These will make it much easier to keep track of who needs your support.
• Also under General Options / User Interface turn on Thick party health bars
  • Thick squad health bars can be used too as a matter of personal preference, but is not recommended for large numbers
• Under Squad Options uncheck View as a grid. This will allow you to keep track of your allies' boons, conditions and health, enabling a better decision-making and skill management.

Gameplay Videos

Youtube video of an exemple in Inhouse format (20+ vs 20+)