Secretly Overpowered BOON LORD HERALD Build Guide!

have you ever wanted to make your friends better at guild wars 2 well have i got the build for you introducing the boonlord herald this build features solid dps great crowd control high durability 10 target protection fury swiftness a bit of might and some powerful unique effects that are just brilliant for gently carrying your team to victory i dare say this is the most underplayed underrated overpowered build in guild wars 2 so let's dive in not having good boon up time is probably the biggest weakness in group play particularly in 10 player content such as strikes or raids dropping protection missing fury imperfect quickness and alacrity all of these things can subtly contribute to groups destabilizing or even wiping and this is exactly where this build shines the cool calming presence of the crystal dragon will all but guarantee your group does not have these issues the unique effects straying away from basic boons are where things get really interesting just for existing your party will get an extra 150 ferocity from assassin's presence and up to 10 players will be blessed by the special herald ability facet of nature which in fact has multiple effects while channeling the legend of shiro it provides a lifesteal effect to every player affected and if the player takes on the stance of the legendary dragon glint facet of nature increases the duration of boons applied to affected allies by twenty percent which means that your chronomancers fire brands renegades and even yourself just got twenty percent better at playing the game not too bad this boon extension effect actually ignores the 100 boon duration cap so it will always provide value it doesn't end there though because it turns out that the lifesteal effect is actually incredibly powerful and will often end up hitting for upwards of 250 damage and healing for 85 with a very short internal cooldown of just half a second when you scale this up by 10 you've ended up with a sizable damage increase for your team and a neat bit of sustain as well all of this great utility is bundled together into a build that's easy to play works regardless of your team composition and no matter how chaotic a fight becomes all of that while having completely broken defensive options to help it survive summary aside let's get down to the details gearing this out is very simple full berserker with scholar runes and your weapons of choice are two swords and a staff inscribed with the classic force and air sigils things get a bit more complicated if you can't rely on spotter from a druid and or banners from a warrior if you don't have a range to grant 100 precision to you from spotter you'll need to take an assassin chest piece shoulder and ring for crit cap and if you don't have either banner of discipline or spotter another assassin ring accessory and back pieces needed to be optimal it's worth noting that this isn't the end of the world and you can just go full berserker if you want especially for open world where perfect gear isn't really important and if you're using exotics then it's not worth messing around too much with optimization full berserker is the way to go if you want to get sweaty with your ascended then break out the power infusions for the true pinnacle boonlord the other alternative setup you could go with is the same setup as an alacrity renegade allowing you to run both builds with just one gear set for that you'll want the same weapons with a sigil of concentration instead of the air sigil but full diviner with an assassin back piece the boom duration from diviner is a bit overkill for most raid scenarios but if you really need those boons then diviner is highly effective you can even stack up a massive amount of might using facet of strength and shared empowerment with the diviner setup and of course as previously mentioned it will allow you to get a two-for-one deal on builds with both alacrity renegade and the boonlord diviner can also work quite well for open world gameplay as you will be able to upkeep all of your boons very easily without any help from the players you are boosting however again is a significant damage loss on boone herald so choose wisely much like chrono jail as soon as people know you can play alacrity rev there is no escape the finishing touch is consumables nothing spies here though just feast upon the classic power food butternut squash soup and sharpening stones or fruit cake the ascended food i'd recommend going for would be sous-vide peppercorn steak as a bonus tip always go for ascended food particularly for raids it lasts for a whole hour so it ends up not being that expensive and having 10 damage reduction is incredibly powerful the specialization choices for this build are fairly straightforward devastation invocation and of course herald most of the traits are simply passives unsuspecting strikes and devastation causes the boon lord to have powerful burst damage particularly on high hit point bosses assassin's presence is a powerful group buff for power classes and dance of death is well this trait is just plain broken in player versus environment all of that packaged together with the very powerful minor traits and devastation form a huge damage increase for ourselves and for the team let's briefly talk about dance of death and what it does dance of death turns you into an unkillable avatar of shiro himself battle scars is a unique mechanic for the devastation trait line that adds a lifesteal effect to your attacks in player versus environment it's absurdly strong hitting for over 500 and healing for about 200 and every single attack you inflict will activate a stack if you can generate enough stacks you become pretty much indestructible especially in cleave situations as there is no internal cooldown on this effect whatsoever fortunately it's very easy to generate battle scars stacks dance of death also causes vulnerability you apply to grant you a stack of battle scars your auto attack applies vulnerability shackling wave applies masses of vulnerability gaze of darkness applies 10 stacks using an elite skill will throw some bonus vulnerability at this point you're probably sick of hearing the word vulnerability but with this trait up non-player characters will be far more fed up with it as you battle impossible odds with ease if you want even more sustain for example for solo situations in the open world then swap out assassins presents for thrill of combat which will just generate a battle scar stack every second while in combat this is very useful while kiting out mobs because you can stack up to 25 while running around in circles before re-engaging with massive damage and sustain invocation is similar but with an added dash of support rising tide and ferocious aggression throw a few more percentages onto the pile and contain temper and invoker's rage produce lots of cell fury to guarantee uptime of extra critical strike chance you'll notice that roiling mists our grand master trait doubles the effectiveness of fury meaning having fury grants an additional 40 critical strike charge which is absolutely absurd that's 840 precision that combined with the aforementioned ferocious aggression which is a seven percent damage modifier means that you'll want to make sure you have 100 fury up time fortunately for you this is incredibly easy because of invocation and also facet of darkness in dragon stance the final invocation trait we use is spirit boon it's not super impactful in this instance but it throws a little extra protection and might to your group when attuning to glint and shiro respectively herald is as you might expect where the true power of the boonlord is formed first off it gives you access to the legendary dragon stance and facet of nature both of which are where all the supportive power comes from legendary dragon stance abilities are called facets they pulse a boon when activated at the cost of energy upkeep and have a secondary powerful effect when activated again this is greatly enhanced by draconic echo which causes unleashing the wrath of a facet to provide another two pulses of boons over six seconds meaning that by casting the faster abilities just before legend swapping you can generate nearly 100 boom pulse uptime on the entire squad and you'll see exactly how to get value out of that later in the video needless to say this trait is very powerful and massively increases boon output allowing the boons to flow even while not in dragon stance however if you don't need the full boon output for whatever reason because someone else is covering that particular boon then fear not swap over to forceful persistence for some extra damage instead remember to maintain your heal skill facet with this trait on though each facet maintained is more damage shared empowerment is a subtly powerful trait just through applying other boons it passively stacks about three or four might on up to 10 players now that's not that impressive as such but it can fill a gap if your might stacker is slacking especially because combined with facet of strength your actual my output is closer to six stacks if you're running the diviner variant you'll end up at around 12. the ram top time though is quite slow so it's not ideal there but there is a place for it particularly in open world situations or low experience groups where it will pretty much guarantee full my uptime in addition to the other boons the build provides rising momentum is another sleeper trait it might not look like much but another great addition moving around slowly in combat is no fun at all and this trait puts an end to all of that for each point of energy upkeep in use you'll move five percent faster this stacks with other movement speed increases so this will push the herald to newfound heights of near super speed even while fighting greatly increasing your maneuverability herald miner traits are also noteworthy draconic fortitude adds a hefty bonus 10 hit points and reinforced potency is a free 8 boon duration and an extra 1 damage per boon which adds up very nicely particularly in group situations the time has now come to investigate the source of the boons the slot skills revenants don't get to choose utility skills like other professions instead they choose two legends they can swap between with a short cooldown they each have their own complete set of slot skills as mentioned earlier this build uses assassin stance and dragon stance let's start with the dragon stance the true core of the boon lord each skill pulses a single boon every three seconds when activated and gives access to a secondary skill when the secondary skill is used that's when the ability goes on cooldown however if you run out of energy while channeling facets they'll turn themselves off and go on a short cooldown facet of light pulses regeneration and its active ability is infused light regeneration can be handy sometimes but infused light is one of the best heal skills in the game it inverts all damage taken into healing for three seconds this essentially gives you three seconds of invulnerability while still being free to perform actions like revive allies or do damage the uses of this are widespread need to stand some aoes no problem survive a deadly boss one shot attack easy infused light also has no cast time but the facet does so if you think you'll need it activate it early you can use the healing component while stunned but you can't activate the facet while controlled so be careful facet of darkness is up next and it pulses out fury which is very good upkeep this a lot it's active is a very nice stun break packaged in with the blind which can save you in a pinch it also has a very large radius reveal which is more of a player versus player thing but certain mobs do stealth so it has its niche utility in player versus environment too it also applies 10 stacks of vulnerability to all targets hit which is an insane amount of battle scar stacks next up is facet of elements it pulses out swiftness when maintained swiftness is very underrated it's a bit like toes you take them for granted but you definitely miss them if they were suddenly taken away you are a complete snail in combat in guild wars 2 without swiftness and this facet makes sure yourself and your allies are all moving at a decent pace consuming the facet casts a powerful elemental blast at range it deals heavy damage and applies weakness chill and burning it has an incredibly short cooldown so it can be thrown about a lot and deals great area of effect damage it's also one of the few sources of range damage the build has so that's an important feature the final non-elite facet is facet of strength which predictably spews out might burst of strength can be used after the facet is activated and it's a very juicy ability it will cause the herald to ride up for five seconds of 25 increased damage and also unleashes a burst of very strong melee cleave damage you'll want to use this one unleashing your biggest burst damage or when obliterating multiple foes ah elite facet is facet of chaos this ability combined with draconic echo is absolutely insane it provides possibly the most free and consistent protection up time in the entire game just sitting around doing nothing with this facet active will provide permanent protection in a massive 600 unit radius its consumability is also very handy chaotic release deals heavy damage in front of the herald launches all foes hit and makes yourself and four allies super speedy for a short time this can be used before switching legends to maximize protection output or saved for a break bar or for mobility making up the other half of our revenant build is of course the legendary assassin shiro shiro provides the revenant with a very different toolkit enchanted daggers heals a bit and then fires life-stealing daggers on the next six attacks it's a great heal skill that allows you to resustain while still attacking repulsting shadows breaks stuns evades backwards grants fury and removes all movement impairing effects this glorious display of heart of thorns power creep is a fantastic get out of jail free card just be careful you don't roll backwards into a flamethrower or off a cliff phase traversal has some niche usages it teleports you towards your target makes your next two attacks unblockable does a bit of damage and for good measure buffs you up with some quickness you can use it to move towards any target you like so you can get to an enemy faster or with a giant brain move use it to teleport away by targeting a different foe somewhere else the teleport will still work even if you're out of range it'll just take you 1 200 units in the right direction impossible odds is the ability you'll be using most in this stance channeling this ability makes you run really fast drains energy quickly and is a hefty damage increase as it causes your attacks to trigger another attack shortly afterwards you get to see some very nice numbers with this so enjoy it attacks generated from impossible odds can also activate battle scars or other lifesteal effects very much in flavor with the guild wars 1 boss ability the ultimate expression of the legendary assassin is of course jade wins this lethal attack turns five enemies to jade for three seconds it has a very high energy cost in proportion to this devastating effect so it needs to be used sparingly either to break break bars or shut down enemies that are dangerous to engage directly those are all of the baseline abilities for the boonlord revenant we'll talk about weapon skills a bit later on in the usage section if for some reason your team insists on feeding or you need some extra survivability or stability up time then you can take the legendary dwarf stance instead of assassin stance the facet of nature bonus is a 10 group wide damage reduction the elite skill right of the great dwarf is a massive 50 party power damage reduction if you use these abilities wisely your team will have a really hard time trying to die the stability from spirit boom and inspiring reinforcement can also be very useful in certain boss encounters or in open world don't underestimate forced engagement or vengeful hammers either the former is an amazing crowd control effect for multiple targets and the latter provides high area of effect sustained melee damage and even more damage reduction as if all of this excitement wasn't enough i have more good news boone herald is very easy to play a lot of your actions per minute are going into auto attacking as hard as you can while managing your energy first of all you always want to maintain facet of nature for big group situations less so for solo though remember it'll deactivate if you run out of energy so keep an eye on it in a nutshell your rotation comes down to maintain facet of darkness use sword four and five after burst of strength and elemental blast weave some sword twos in between auto attack chains be careful not to cancel your chains you want to finish them as much as you can your third attack is very powerful and then unleash gaze of darkness burst of strength and elemental blast and chaotic release before swapping to shiro in shiro you can relax as all you need to do here is toggle impossible odds on and unleash the pain throwing in an occasional sword too if you feel like it if you find yourself running out of energy while channeling glint then just cut the sword too as it should make the tolerance a bit better this rotation is also fairly dependent on alacrity if you don't have any then you won't have enough time to cast two sets of elemental blast and bursts of strength so just maintain facet of elements during your time in glint and then only use elemental blast and burst of strength before swapping to shiro instead always remember that you are a support player and your priorities should reflect that focus on your boon up time particularly protection and fury they will massively strengthen your allies so don't grieve for dps and forsake boon up times you should be one of the first players to try and revive allies or go for mechanics as you can do that very easily and still continue to perform your roll facets just keep on pulsing no matter what and with a huge radius and you can always use infused light to survive tricky situations to get some easy revise or just tank some damage so your team doesn't have to your other weapon staff is also incredibly strong its dps isn't horrible for a start but it has some of the best utility out of any weapon for player versus environment an excellent short cooldown block awesome area of effect condition cleanse for your allies and quite infamously devastating crowd control with an evade attached to it as well star 5 surge of the mists is one of the strongest crowd control abilities in the game against bosses with a very short cooldown you'll be easily able to use it for pretty much every single break bar an encounter can throw at you so as soon as you see the blue bar it's time to swap in terms of damage per second a good marker is reaching around 25 000 damage per second on a 4 million hp golem you can push that up to around 28 000 with some good practice and good execution and always remember that your facet of nature adds around 2000 to 2500 dps to a 10 man squad and assassin's presence is around a three to four percent damage per second increase on power damage players so combining that with the modest dps of the build itself results in a pretty impressive number overall considering the amount of support it outputs in summary maintain boons see some good numbers lifesteal your way to victory in the open world and bask in your teammates newfound skill as they pat themselves on the back congratulating themselves on their boon up times none the wiser it was you the entire time thanks for watching i've wanted to make a video about this build for a while actually it's quite an obscure one and a lot of players don't seem to realize just how strong it really is it's been in a few records in fact and it's even on the snow crow's site but even that isn't enough to convince players to give it a try but hopefully this video might have fun playing let me know if you have any questions in the comments or stop by my twitch channel and ask directly i'll see you there

Channel: MightyTeapot

Views: 59,985

Keywords: GW2, Guild Wars 2, Guild, Wars, Balance, MightyTeapot, Speculation, Podcast, Tea, Time, Herald, Boon Lord, Revenant, Open World, Raids, Fractals, Strikes, boons, protection, might, swiftness, fury, cm, challenge, mode

Id: 1AIYgHvlAEY

Length: 19min 58sec (1198 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 21 2021