I have a lot to add for any random viewers watching this video: -Smoldering Sigil is completely useless paired with Balthazaar Runes. You should swap to Trapper runes to deal a lot more damage, but if you want to stick to the Balthazaar runes for budget/accessibility reasons, swap the Sigil of Smoldering for something else. I like Sigil of Concentration, which helps a lot with boon uptime, but there are several reasonable alternatives for more damage (Force, Frenzy, Frailty, Torment, Geomancy). -Feel My Wrath is the best elite skill. Only swap to Heaven's Palm if you specifically want breakbar damage, and only use Signet of Courage if you are feeling lazy and want one less button to press off cooldown. -Swap Inner Fire with Right-Hand Strength. You really don't need the extra fury, especially when taking Feel My Wrath. Making this switch is just a DPS buff. -I don't really see the point in using a focus, just stick to sword/torch + scepter/x. You don't want to miss the extra Zealot's Fire while swapped to scepter. -If you're only using Stand Your Ground for the stun break, Signet of Judgement is just better. It's a lower cooldown, provides a very relevant passive when not needed, and even deals bonus burn damage when used. Only bring Stand Your Ground if you specifically want a stun break coupled with stability or if you find yourself in a group setting (SYG is far superior with a group). -If you can live without a stun break, take Signet of Wrath for a big boost in damage. -Whirling Light sucks. If you want a damaging skill for this slot, use Sword of Justice instead. -Bow of Truth is the only other relevant skill. You may want to flex to this for more sustain. -Standard skills should be: Litany of Wrath (never replace), Purging Flames (never replace), Signet of Wrath (swap to Signet of Judgement/Stand Your Ground if you want a stun break or Bow of Truth if you want more sustain), Sword of Justice (only replace if you want to equip both Signet of Judgement and Bow of Truth for maximum defense), and Feel My Wrath (only swap to Heaven's Palm for breakbar damage or Signet of Courage for low-intensity/lazy sustain). This is a pretty fun open world build, and its really worth making the adjustments above to get the most out of it. -Bonus, if you're into using food/enhancements, use Bowl of Orrian Truffle Soup/Magnanimous Tuning Crystal with Balthazaar Runes, Plate of Beef Rendang/Tuning Icicle with Trapper Runes.
Feel my wrath quickness duration is doubled on yourself, so thats 9 seconds, and u have alacrity so the cooldown is cut down some. Combined with protocols if u choose to use those lets u upkeep quickness for quite a while into the fight before it starts dropping. Helpful for some longer fights. Tought it was worth mentioning.
If your engaging a boss you could swap in relic of the cavalier, and use the skyscale engage. It'll activate the relic on each pulse of the skyscale field, and usually cap your quickness plus some other boons at 30 seconds, it's nice!
There is a Power version of this in metabattle which runs berserker stars with GS and LB. I tried it and it is so awesome. Huge damage, mobility, CC, cleanse. This has it all. I hope anet wont nerf WB.
Abit late to the party but wanted to say, Thankyou for putting this build guide together, looks like it could be just what I'm after or close to it. Keep up the great work Evan its muchly appreciated😊
I think that I should definitely try this one, cuz running in open world in full berserker gear as solo player is really hard. Sometimes I just die to autoattacks :D
Instead of Smoldering, probably better to take Battle, Strength, or Frailty. Still 100% burning duration but defiantly more damage. Maybe best combo is Strength or Battle with Frailty.
You can swap out relic of the defender for a relic of rivers this way you will have Perma alacrity and regeneration which will make phoenix protocol obsolete so that you can pick tyrant's momentum as the grandmaster trait for more damage and the same survivability since phoenix protocol removes the ability of your virtue to heal you.
Love the way you say "Feel My Wrath has a 4 second quickness duration" while literally showing the tooltip that says "this skill grants double duration quickness to yourself" lol. It's about 9 seconds of quickness on a 24 second cooldown with celestial gear. It's not 100% up time, but it's certainly not terrible.
you can swap rune of balthazar for trapper and you have more damage and still 100% burning duration (only 2% overcaped if using condi damage food otherwise its just 97% burning duration)
Just made a guardian so going to unlock them hero points for willbender and eventually firebrand. I usually run with berserker or marauder for pve but I have tried celestial in wvw and enjoyed it. This is my 3rd character and looks like I’ll be crafting multiple ascended armor sets. I’m fixing to finally get the vision legendary achievement done so that helps
If you are overcapping burning condition, why don't drop sigil of Smoldering and put something like Sigil of Concentration on it. It won't change a thing for your burning, but you get more sustain right?
Definitely don’t need balth runes with smoldering sigil. Trapper runes will provide much more damage without losing 100.% burning. I would really recommend using axe as well, Guardian really doesn’t have a better condi mainhand and it has good power coefficients too. For condi cleanse purging flames is usually enough.
Would Celestial be a good choice for other classes out there in the world by themselves? Or is it just particularly suited to Willbender? Seems to be a lot of negativity directed to Celestial for some reason.
lots of classes can benefit from celestial in the open world, especially when playing solo. I think a lot of the "hate" for it comes from it making open world content seem too easy sometimes. Also in wvw it used to be very over tuned stat wise so some classes would dominate with very little effort
@@Evan4KThere is no such thing IMHO as "too easy." Which is probably why group content wasn't for me, too much pressure to git gud...after a year away I came back and doing map completions and fishing and enjoying GW2 again. I tried out your Celestial build on my WB and it rocked. Thanks for all the great content that doesn't talk down to the casual play community.
I'm fairly new to GW2 but would there be any value in the new pistol proficiencies in main or off hand? There is a whole lot of burning and better range, but the aoe may not be as good as other options or there might be another reason they aren't fantastic. just curious
What do you think to chenge scepter+Focus for longbow? You will have weapon set to hit from distance and when you are full buffed skill 2 from lbow its huge.
I've played the same build a fair bit, and it's a lot of fun playing the Blue Thief. As you say, it's a really solid solo open world build. One small change that I ended up making was to change from Willbender to Untamed, which gave me more defence and healing, more weapon versatility, and +40% damage. I'm throwing out quickness now instead of alacrity.... but... the Willbender might be more fun, I don't know. I still log onto the Willbender here and there... in fact, I'm going to do just that now :)
Don't forget WIllbender can do provide quickness too with Feel My Wrath. You can time it with your multi hit combo to make the best use of its F2 alac.
I would like more details on your experience. 40% more damage? I have looked at some Untamed gameplay and while it definitely looks very effortless, the damage did not look high at all. Are you certain it is so?
@@Gleandra well I'd be comparing 12k on the golem for the willbender with 16k on the golem for the untamed... however... out in the open world, the willbender will actually deliver 10k to 12k in real boss fights, topping out at ~15k if the wind is blowing in the right direction and I have some support... the untamed is more variable, and tops 16k in the real world on occasion, but also more often delivers 8k if the fight is chaotic. Having said that, it is easier on the untamed to tune the build a bit more towards an instance build, replacing a half the celestial with 'zerker, and then top 20k. It is worth simply playing the builds yourself, as it very much comes down to your own gameplay. Since I made that post, I have settled back on the Willbender as my main. I enjoy the untamed very much, but I find the willbender slightly more fun in open world. If I was doing more instanced content, I would be sticking with the untamed.
@@CarnaghSidhe Thank you so much for the fast and detailed answer. I did not think you would. This was very insightful, and it's good to see you back at Willbender. :) Why is it easier to tune the build of Untamed towards more damage vs. Willbender? Does something prevent Willbender from dropping some Celestials? I am very inexperienced, so please forgive my questionaire.
I want to play with an open world hammer guardian, strictly for events, meta trains/bosses etc... but all I can find that are hammer builds are for WvW and PvP which I am not interested in, can anyone point me in a direction or hook me up with a build and gear setup?
Damn. I was thinking about making a Willbender build for a good while and just few days ago I went for a "super duper optimized" build from a well known website. I like this version better, but now I would have to invest in it again for a new gear...
Celestial works well with almost every class in OW. If you went ascended think that ultimately you can move a cele gear to any other heavy and still get value if you end not playing this one.
I tried this build and it does around 9k without buffs/debufs on golem and 14k with them. Not bad, not amazing. For some reason I feel way tankier and deal way more dmg with a reaper. Might need to learn it a bit more
If you don't already have then get the Jade bot tier 10 power core and also make sure you have the reinforced armor buff and then you should be higher in HP. Hope this helps.
Update: Just looked and with this build I'm sitting at 21,725 in Lion's Arch. so make sure your build is matching the build link he has in the description.
pretty much unchanged since this video was made, actually even better with the addition of pistols so use those weapons, my recommendation is to camp main hand pistol and swap between off hand pistol and torch
![Wing 8 - Decima The Stormsinger - [cX] First Kill](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/dTsBkwnB1Qw/mqdefault.jpg)
I have a lot to add for any random viewers watching this video:
-Smoldering Sigil is completely useless paired with Balthazaar Runes. You should swap to Trapper runes to deal a lot more damage, but if you want to stick to the Balthazaar runes for budget/accessibility reasons, swap the Sigil of Smoldering for something else. I like Sigil of Concentration, which helps a lot with boon uptime, but there are several reasonable alternatives for more damage (Force, Frenzy, Frailty, Torment, Geomancy).
-Feel My Wrath is the best elite skill. Only swap to Heaven's Palm if you specifically want breakbar damage, and only use Signet of Courage if you are feeling lazy and want one less button to press off cooldown.
-Swap Inner Fire with Right-Hand Strength. You really don't need the extra fury, especially when taking Feel My Wrath. Making this switch is just a DPS buff.
-I don't really see the point in using a focus, just stick to sword/torch + scepter/x. You don't want to miss the extra Zealot's Fire while swapped to scepter.
-If you're only using Stand Your Ground for the stun break, Signet of Judgement is just better. It's a lower cooldown, provides a very relevant passive when not needed, and even deals bonus burn damage when used. Only bring Stand Your Ground if you specifically want a stun break coupled with stability or if you find yourself in a group setting (SYG is far superior with a group).
-If you can live without a stun break, take Signet of Wrath for a big boost in damage.
-Whirling Light sucks. If you want a damaging skill for this slot, use Sword of Justice instead.
-Bow of Truth is the only other relevant skill. You may want to flex to this for more sustain.
-Standard skills should be: Litany of Wrath (never replace), Purging Flames (never replace), Signet of Wrath (swap to Signet of Judgement/Stand Your Ground if you want a stun break or Bow of Truth if you want more sustain), Sword of Justice (only replace if you want to equip both Signet of Judgement and Bow of Truth for maximum defense), and Feel My Wrath (only swap to Heaven's Palm for breakbar damage or Signet of Courage for low-intensity/lazy sustain).
This is a pretty fun open world build, and its really worth making the adjustments above to get the most out of it.
-Bonus, if you're into using food/enhancements, use Bowl of Orrian Truffle Soup/Magnanimous Tuning Crystal with Balthazaar Runes, Plate of Beef Rendang/Tuning Icicle with Trapper Runes.
Thanks for your time to make this comment once I get dlc I will do as you suggested
Now this is a comment 😁
Thanks for taking the time to put this together, have taken notes for a future project,
Again Thankyou DJNaste 😃💯
I think the focus and whirling is so you have some combo finishers
Hey man thanks for taking the time to explain really appreciate it
Feel my wrath quickness duration is doubled on yourself, so thats 9 seconds, and u have alacrity so the cooldown is cut down some. Combined with protocols if u choose to use those lets u upkeep quickness for quite a while into the fight before it starts dropping. Helpful for some longer fights. Tought it was worth mentioning.
If your engaging a boss you could swap in relic of the cavalier, and use the skyscale engage. It'll activate the relic on each pulse of the skyscale field, and usually cap your quickness plus some other boons at 30 seconds, it's nice!
Don't know what I love more: your video style or the build xD
There is a Power version of this in metabattle which runs berserker stars with GS and LB. I tried it and it is so awesome. Huge damage, mobility, CC, cleanse. This has it all. I hope anet wont nerf WB.
Abit late to the party but wanted to say,
Thankyou for putting this build guide together, looks like it could be just what I'm after or close to it.
Keep up the great work Evan its muchly appreciated😊
I was looking for a solo build and ended up with a firebrand but this is so much better. Thx for sharing keep up the good work !
I think that I should definitely try this one, cuz running in open world in full berserker gear as solo player is really hard. Sometimes I just die to autoattacks :D
Instead of Smoldering, probably better to take Battle, Strength, or Frailty. Still 100% burning duration but defiantly more damage. Maybe best combo is Strength or Battle with Frailty.
You can swap out relic of the defender for a relic of rivers this way you will have Perma alacrity and regeneration which will make phoenix protocol obsolete so that you can pick tyrant's momentum as the grandmaster trait for more damage and the same survivability since phoenix protocol removes the ability of your virtue to heal you.
I tried this build and I think it's very good for open world because it's tanky while still doing some damage thanks for sharing !😁👍
Love the way you say "Feel My Wrath has a 4 second quickness duration" while literally showing the tooltip that says "this skill grants double duration quickness to yourself" lol. It's about 9 seconds of quickness on a 24 second cooldown with celestial gear. It's not 100% up time, but it's certainly not terrible.
you can swap rune of balthazar for trapper and you have more damage and still 100% burning duration (only 2% overcaped if using condi damage food otherwise its just 97% burning duration)
I was playing with this in gw2skills and noticed the runes of smoldering are completely superfluous as removing them still provided burning overcap.
@RecklessFables maybe taking runes of blood for extra sustain would be fun then
Wish there was a solo content guide or even tierlist
9:15 I think this IS actually the best solo Willbender build out there.
You've earned a subscriber. I'm a Guardian Main. Thanks!
Just made a guardian so going to unlock them hero points for willbender and eventually firebrand. I usually run with berserker or marauder for pve but I have tried celestial in wvw and enjoyed it. This is my 3rd character and looks like I’ll be crafting multiple ascended armor sets. I’m fixing to finally get the vision legendary achievement done so that helps
4:25 quickness granted to yourself is doubled
I run dragon WB in wvw and it’s absolutely fun and deadly to play. So much mobility and damage as well as heals/boons
If you are overcapping burning condition, why don't drop sigil of Smoldering and put something like Sigil of Concentration on it. It won't change a thing for your burning, but you get more sustain right?
I've been wanting to try Willbender and this looks like lots of fun, thanks!
Btw, how did you get that hair? Is it a mod?
Staff on backbar (with Celestial) ok for support or just too weak?
Definitely don’t need balth runes with smoldering sigil. Trapper runes will provide much more damage without losing 100.% burning. I would really recommend using axe as well, Guardian really doesn’t have a better condi mainhand and it has good power coefficients too. For condi cleanse purging flames is usually enough.
Isn't the point of going sword that Willbender profits most from many hits, while Axe is slower with less hits?
Would Celestial be a good choice for other classes out there in the world by themselves? Or is it just particularly suited to Willbender? Seems to be a lot of negativity directed to Celestial for some reason.
lots of classes can benefit from celestial in the open world, especially when playing solo. I think a lot of the "hate" for it comes from it making open world content seem too easy sometimes. Also in wvw it used to be very over tuned stat wise so some classes would dominate with very little effort
@@Evan4KThere is no such thing IMHO as "too easy." Which is probably why group content wasn't for me, too much pressure to git gud...after a year away I came back and doing map completions and fishing and enjoying GW2 again. I tried out your Celestial build on my WB and it rocked. Thanks for all the great content that doesn't talk down to the casual play community.
should i replace the scepter focus with dual pistol?
I'm fairly new to GW2 but would there be any value in the new pistol proficiencies in main or off hand? There is a whole lot of burning and better range, but the aoe may not be as good as other options or there might be another reason they aren't fantastic. just curious
Thanks!!!
What do you think to chenge scepter+Focus for longbow? You will have weapon set to hit from distance and when you are full buffed skill 2 from lbow its huge.
possibly the LB would fire less often and proc less so the buffs might go down. On the other and, longbow.
You actually give out alacrity to other people with this build on group play.
Yeah, it'll give alacrity to those around you also.
I've played the same build a fair bit, and it's a lot of fun playing the Blue Thief. As you say, it's a really solid solo open world build. One small change that I ended up making was to change from Willbender to Untamed, which gave me more defence and healing, more weapon versatility, and +40% damage. I'm throwing out quickness now instead of alacrity.... but... the Willbender might be more fun, I don't know. I still log onto the Willbender here and there... in fact, I'm going to do just that now :)
Don't forget WIllbender can do provide quickness too with Feel My Wrath. You can time it with your multi hit combo to make the best use of its F2 alac.
I do the same with herald and perm quickness.
I would like more details on your experience. 40% more damage? I have looked at some Untamed gameplay and while it definitely looks very effortless, the damage did not look high at all. Are you certain it is so?
@@Gleandra well I'd be comparing 12k on the golem for the willbender with 16k on the golem for the untamed... however... out in the open world, the willbender will actually deliver 10k to 12k in real boss fights, topping out at ~15k if the wind is blowing in the right direction and I have some support... the untamed is more variable, and tops 16k in the real world on occasion, but also more often delivers 8k if the fight is chaotic. Having said that, it is easier on the untamed to tune the build a bit more towards an instance build, replacing a half the celestial with 'zerker, and then top 20k.
It is worth simply playing the builds yourself, as it very much comes down to your own gameplay. Since I made that post, I have settled back on the Willbender as my main. I enjoy the untamed very much, but I find the willbender slightly more fun in open world. If I was doing more instanced content, I would be sticking with the untamed.
@@CarnaghSidhe Thank you so much for the fast and detailed answer. I did not think you would. This was very insightful, and it's good to see you back at Willbender. :)
Why is it easier to tune the build of Untamed towards more damage vs. Willbender? Does something prevent Willbender from dropping some Celestials?
I am very inexperienced, so please forgive my questionaire.
I want to play with an open world hammer guardian, strictly for events, meta trains/bosses etc... but all I can find that are hammer builds are for WvW and PvP which I am not interested in, can anyone point me in a direction or hook me up with a build and gear setup?
Damn. I was thinking about making a Willbender build for a good while and just few days ago I went for a "super duper optimized" build from a well known website. I like this version better, but now I would have to invest in it again for a new gear...
Celestial works well with almost every class in OW. If you went ascended think that ultimately you can move a cele gear to any other heavy and still get value if you end not playing this one.
Actually, my goal is to skip acended and wait for a new OW leg set. Still, even exo cele is expensive. At least for me.@@Buran01
PUG LIFE FOREVER!!!
can you solo the champion juggernaut at sparkfly fen? 😂
Cool build, Im gonna test this next week. Have you checked it on golem?
why would you check an open world survival build on golem? are you planning on dpsing on this? please dont
@@jurionov5358 Maybe to see if it will kill faster than my untamed which has 18k dps solo ?
@@jurionov5358 dps is still relevant for solo open world builds... you don't wanna be stuck fighting some enemies for too long lol
I tried this build and it does around 9k without buffs/debufs on golem and 14k with them. Not bad, not amazing.
For some reason I feel way tankier and deal way more dmg with a reaper. Might need to learn it a bit more
i have no clue why i got 16,5k health with the exat same equip and build.
If you don't already have then get the Jade bot tier 10 power core and also make sure you have the reinforced armor buff and then you should be higher in HP. Hope this helps.
Update: Just looked and with this build I'm sitting at 21,725 in Lion's Arch. so make sure your build is matching the build link he has in the description.
what does the jade bot do and where do i get the buff?@@theperson7718
This build is good against small targets but not on champions
haven't played this game for ages, is this build nerfed to the point of unplayable yet? (Anet often does this) Thanks.
pretty much unchanged since this video was made, actually even better with the addition of pistols so use those weapons, my recommendation is to camp main hand pistol and swap between off hand pistol and torch
Thing is, torch and scepter are just stupidly boring weapons. Fun vs Minmaxing. I went with fun =)
Why not use axe? I tried axe on a condi Willbender and it slaps.
edit: nvm you addressed later down the like. I guess it's a personal preference.
i like it😀
Big boons ;)
sweet u copied hizens build x'D well done
Well, I enjoyed this video anyhow. So it's alright in my book!
delete Guardians and Necromancers for a better game (y)