Power Willbender

February 2023

Power Virtues Willbender is a high-mobility roamer that excels at skirmishing through offensive support in form of Absolute Resolve and Indomitable Courage, outnumbering and sticking to targets given its high mobility via Judge's Intervention and Advancing Strike amongst others, while providing powerful area pressure when contesting the capture point or cleaving a downed enemy through the likes of Whirling Wrath, Whirling Light, Symbol of Resolution and Symbol of Blades. Therefore, taking advantage of your mobility and burst damage is mandatory to get maximum value from the build. If you want to maximize your burst for survivability, you can also swap your Marauder Amulet for Berserker Amulet.

Build Fundamentals

Atypically compared to other PvP roamers, Willbender heavily relies on modifiers to reach its full damage potential. Willbender’s important sources of damage amplification are Resolution (activating Retribution and Righteous Instincts), Aegis (activating Unscathed Contender), and Lethal Tempo, which is applied when activating a virtue or triggering the passive effect of a previously activated Virtue (Rushing Justice, Flowing Resolve, Crashing Courage).

To maintain these modifiers, there are a couple of aspects to keep in mind:

1. Use your teleportation skills as often as possible to set up damage, since they constantly reapply Resolution through Vanguard Tactics.
2. Try NOT to use Rushing Justice or Flowing Resolve after using Crashing Courage offensively. The lingering effects of your Virtues will overwrite each other, and the free Aegis and Stability every few hits while bursting will increase your damage massively.
3. Use your Virtues (Rushing Justice, Flowing Resolve, Crashing Courage) liberally. They not only provide additional Resolution through Virtue of Resolution, but also prevent your empowered Lethal Tempo stacks from running out. While the Willbender Flames left behind after the use of every Virtue already help with activating the lingering effects, it’s perfectly reasonable to Flowing Resolve between bursts to maintain Lethal Tempo stacks.

Mobility

Willbender has excellent mobility on par with a Thief or Mesmer, the only minor drawback being most skills requiring a target. As for mobility that can be used with or without a target, Leap of Faith, Crashing Courage, Advancing Strike, and Rushing Justice are your best options – although Advancing Strike will not teleport you after the dash if you have no target or the target is too far away and Rushing Justice requires you to cancel its aftercast in order to fully utilize it for mobility.

Symbol of Blades is excellent for vertical mobility on maps like Khylo, since it has a decently short CD and will teleport you in your target’s direction, even if the target itself is out of range.

The main takeaways to mastering Willbender’s mobility are:

1. Make sure you’re ‘detargeting’ before using skills like Leap of Faith. If you have a target when they are activated, you will move in the direction of your target instead of the direction of your character. To detarget, just left click somewhere that isn’t an enemy player. If that doesn’t work, make sure you have “Autotargetting” ticked off under your combat settings.
2. Like a Revenant, Willbender has much better mobility if your team calls targets. Use your ‘take target’ keybind to get into and out of fights much faster with Symbol of Blades and Judge's Intervention.
3. Rushing Justice is also a good mobility tool, but it requires some extra steps to get the full advantage from it. Rushing Justice has an ‘aftercast’, meaning you’re locked into place in an extra animation after you’ve finished moving forward. To get around this, simply Weapon Swap after you’ve moved forward to skip the extra animation.

Sustain and Healing

Willbender has access to decent healing and self-sustain on its own – although Willbender’s Virtues variant is best paired with a Support Build in teamfights to not run out of resustain too fast. Reversal of Fortune provides significant healing on a short cooldown, but only if you take damage in the time window. Thanks to Virtue of Resolution, Vanguard Tactics , and Symbol of Resolution , Willbender has almost permanent Resolution uptime which provides 33% condition damage reduction. Crashing Courage is an important repositioning tool that also grants Stability to allies thanks to Indomitable Courage.

Try to time Reversal of Fortune so that it negates a significant damaging ability such as Dragon Trigger or Maul to get the most value. If you’re struggling with getting focused, you can also try Superior Rune of the Revenant or Rune of the Dolyak instead of  Rune of Divinity . The frequent Resistance uptime from your heal is more than worth it into druids or multiple Necromancers, while additional Toughness works wonders against heavily Power reliant opponents.

Willbender has decent condition cleanse from the combination of Absolute Resolve and Flowing Resolve. Flowing Resolve removes up to three conditions on each activation from you and your allies – as well as all movement-impairing conditions from yourself; it can be used either to cleanse yourself or your teammates. Your most powerful cleanse comes from Contemplation of Purity. Contemplation of Purity is not only a stunbreak, but also converts all conditions on you into boons. This can be very powerful if you’re getting locked down by classes like Necromancer, Mesmer, or Ranger.

While pressuring the opponent, the lingering effects of Flowing Resolve and Crashing Courage can greatly reduce the pressure taken through resustaining with Flowing Resolve or defensive boons from Crashing Courage. Especially when cleaving downed enemies, it’s a great idea to dash over (Flowing Resolve) or teleport onto (Crashing Courage) them to not only deal additional damage with your Willbender Flames, but also to stay healthy.

Lastly, make sure to take advantage of Flowing Resolve and Crashing Courage before you use Renewed Focus. The invulnerability and reset on Flowing Resolve is one of your best disengage tools, allowing Willbender to extend into the enemy more than most other roamers can as long as it has its Renewed Focus ready to fully restock its defensive CDs and get out safely afterward.