Willbender - Radiant Swordbender Roamer

• Guardian - Radiant GS Roamer - core Guardian version.

• Willbender - Radiant Swordbender - sPvP version of this WvW build.

• Meditation Swordbender Roamer - a more forgiving version of Power Willbender for WvW.

Variants

• Take 美德激励 if you can afford to give up some condi cleansing for more damage. Adding 超级洁净法印 to both weapon sets could help you get away with this.

• 以力换韧 is another trait you could take for extra damage at the expense of survivability.

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 , whichever is cheaper (note that the sharpening stone lasts twice as long).

General

• 决心 increases your critical strike chance by 25% via 正义本能.

  • Every Virtue and shadowstep (teleport) grants 决心 from the traits 先锋战术 and 决心美德. 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.

• 急速正义 is refreshed after each kill so make sure you always have it on cooldown right before a kill. Using it also applies AoE 目盲 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 专注复苏. 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.

• 旋风之光 is as much of a defensive skill as it is offensive, offering AoE 虚弱 application on top of great damage.

• 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.
  • 突进猛击 is a good mobility skill even without a target as it makes you dash forward.

• 目盲s are important even when bursting targets as Blind spam prevents them from counterpressuring you. 利刃符印, 信仰之跃 and 急速正义 all apply this condition on top of doing great 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 and (it's a shadowstep).
  • is the hardest hitting skill on this set and combos well with Advancing Strike.

• 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.

• has many uses: vertical mobility via teleportation, symbol for cleaving, to make an important skill miss, or a combo field which can be used for AoE cleansing by executing a blast finisher in it.

Greatsword

• is the main burst skill in the build, make sure it lands - do an unexpected ranged burst with , or use it after pulling targets in with .

• and are there to help you secure Whirling Wrath by snaring enemies and speeding up the skill. is a great followup with too.

• When in combat, always try to combo in a Light field such as for . 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.

• is useful even when the target has 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: the skill itself can be dodged, but once the blades are attached, you can pull targets out of any kind of evade frame! Last but not least, the blades seek out enemies even if they are ed.

Ranged burst combo example

1. If possible, have an active to gain the damage bonus from.
2. Weapon Swap to GS if you're not already on it (in combat this also procs your sigils).
3. - start casting it from range.
4. to teleport to the target right before WW starts doing damage.

Sustain

• 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 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.

• 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 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 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.

Equipment Variants

Relics

• - offers even better mobility at the expense of damage.

Runes

• - better boon duration without sacrificng too much damage.

• - more tanky option.

• - good offensive stats and better stacking.

Stats

• On the current set you should have ~87% crit chance with (assuming full Ascended quality gear). You gain another 10% against ing 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 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.