Power Willbender

June 2024

Power Willbender is a roamer that excels at skirmishing, outnumbering, sticking to and bursting targets given its high mobility and damage and has excellent tools to stay alive.

Introduction

Our main role is to generate as many kills as possible in teamfights and outnumbers.
With willbender our virtues are now all movement skills, making us very mobile.
Use your virtues procs and high damage to run down enemies that cannot afford to trade blows with you.

Quick Tips

• Use Flowing Resolve to evade attacks.
• Use Judge's Intervention right next to a moment you’re going to unleash a lot of damage like Whirling Wrath, Whirling Light or Executioner's Calling‘s second attack.
• Use Whirling Wrath inside the hitbox of an enemy to deal extra damage.
• Use multi hit skills like Whirling Wrath, Whirling Light or Executioner's Calling and symbols to proc Flowing Resolve and Crashing Courage as often as possible.
• Try to maintain to keep up your high critical chance from Righteous Instincts
• Try to avoid using Renewed Focus before you’ve used Flowing Resolve and Crashing Courage unless you have no choice.

Damage

Willbender heavily relies on modifiers to reach its full damage potential. The important sources of damage amplification are (activating Retribution and Righteous Instincts and Relic[s] of the Brawler), (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 through Vanguard Tactics.
2. Use your Virtues (Rushing Justice, Flowing Resolve, Crashing Courage) liberally. They not only provide additional  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.

Greatsword is a burst heavy weapon with great AoE pressure.

• Symbol of Resolution is your weakest skill but it’s great for cleaving, make sure to cancel its after-cast by moving or casting another skill.
• Whirling Wrath is a very high burst skill. Ideally use it on disabled targets that will be forced to tank the entire thing. Casting it inside the hitbox of an enemy will be extra deadly because of the projectiles it fires.
• Try to land Binding Blade early, as it does decent power damage over time, and allows you to Pull enemies that are blocking or evading, interrupting their defensive as long as they don’t have .
• Use Leap of Faith to catch up to an enemy getting away. Hits quite hard and applies and heals you.
• Strike‘s 3rd attack actually hits quite hard. If you can, finish the auto chain.

Swords have good catchup and single target damage.

• Executioner's Calling is your highest burst skill on this kit. make sure to hit the second strike.
• Use Advancing Strike to catch up, applying to setup further burst, nice damage and preventing your target from retaliating.
  It’s also a shadowstep and will therefore apply .
• Zealot's Defense has great damage but bad tracking, so use it up close and personal only.
• Symbol of Blades is a very good gap closer and applies a to prevent counter pressure.
• Sword of Wrath has decent damage on its 3rd strike. If you can, finish the chain.

Apart from maintaining Lethal Tempo, Crashing Courage is a great gap closer and source of and , allowing you to run down enemies that can’t defend themselves from your high damage output.

Rushing Justice also is a great gap closer and deals high damage. Beware of the animation locking.

Whirling Light compliments both weapon sets. It’s just a great area damage skill that is hard to avoid and should be used as often as possible.

Refer to the rotation segment for some burst ideas.

Mobility

Willbender has excellent mobility, one of the highest in the game. 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 uptime which provides 33% condition damage reduction. Crashing Courage is an important repositioning tool that also grants 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.

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.

Alternatives

Signet of Resolve is viable into condition heavy games but is significantly worse into power matchups.

Rune[s] of Vampirism is viable for more damage.