Tips to Wingrave Build
By Wavuvi
S&S choices
- Offensive: Tooth and Claw. Weapon ability on this thing is a monster, and warmasters have a talent to fill pips faster.
- Balanced: Unity. You get some burst damage from the weapon ability, which is nice in tandem with the talent for getting heat of battle up to 300%. Great stats since it’s a rare weapon with no crit.
- Defensive: Legacy or Bastion. Bastion has better stats (no crit), but a less flexible weapon ability. Legacy’ ability is easier to use since the effect sticks around.
- Honorable mention: Radiant Dawn. Break power on the weapon (oddly rare for S&S) and a weapon ability that makes your normal combos better for a great sustainable effect if you can fight without interruption. Harder to use outside of expedition ambushes because of short fights or boss invulnerable mechanics.
Accessories
- Desire Set HP/WP/AP. Drops using greed imbuements (pristine spoon, circlet of desire, crafted: ring of desire). Good for an offensive hybrid build.
- Fervor set. HP/WP/BP. Drops from Solar Imbuement. Great choice if you’re doing BP as a secondary instead of AP.
- Blood blob mythic boss set. WP/PD/MD Forgot the name. Tank set.
Wingrave has natural bulk stats, especially PD, you can build entirely offensive on him if you’re good with enemy mechanics. WP is your main damage source. AP is nice if you can spare it and use Righteous Strike often. BP shoot for 4-5k for solo, maybe 6k for multiplayer.
Doing Light to held heavy to righteous strike will keep you healthy.
I like 3 in strike, 3 in shield, and final ability point in either halo or ultimate. Halo usually sees more use, especially in multiplayer.
Talents
Immovable (down right) if you find your resilience is broken often, so you don’t flinch.
Faster weapon skill gain (up) and using weapon skill increases heat of battle (down left). Great if you can keep the combo going and stuff lives long enough to break 200% combo. Faster weapon skill only otherwise for weapons with offensive abilities.
HP -> WP talent (up left) is very good for Wingrave. He can already spam heals with S&S, so the other option for healing when using a Wayfinder ability is less important.
After that it’s just stats. You might be able to reach the extra attack slot.
Weapon power
It’s at least 2/3 of your damage output, even when doing the righteous strike combo. Abilities don’t scale as well compared to basic attacks with Heat of Battle, so if you’re doing a build where you can hit 300% from talents, you get more value from WP in extended fights. Also you can’t always land a finisher when you want, so righteous strike isn’t a garmented refresh depending on how the fight goes.
Also WP works better with S&S flexible kit, because you can block cancel most attacks (interrupt them early so you can act again sooner).
Need to ramp up HoB faster? Do a 1,2,3 light combo and block to reset so you can repeat. Hits 1,2, and 3 are fast while 4, 5, and 6 (4 and 6 especially) taking longer to land for higher damage. So a 1, 2, 3, block -> repeat can build up HoB and weapon ability pips something like 50% faster then doing the full 1 through 6 light string.
You can block cancel rightreous strike too. It saves like 1/2 a second with good timing compared to waiting for the strike animation to end in full.
Recommendations for a 2hander besides windmothers
Windmother’s is so good, it’s genuinely hard to recommend anything else.
Titan’s Bane has a niche with the weapon ability persisting, making it good for mid/end ambushes in expeditions and helpful on bosses with adds. Larger enemies can hit by 2 even 3 of the hitboxes at a time if positioned well, which can lead to crazy fast guard breaks.
Colossus has a meh weapon ability that’s barely worth using compared to a normal heavy swing, and it’s stats are extremely niche if you’re trying to build a tanky 2h sword build for some reason.
Haven’t actually tried Portent or Bloodthirst much. Portent seems to have a decent up front weapon ability for burst damage. Bloodthirst’s weapon ability seems good on paper, but needing to specifically kill with the weapon ability greatly limits its value. Wingrave also already has several ways to heal chip damage, and if you want a burst heal weapon Bloodsong (scythe) is probably better.
Best echoes
- Broodmother Sylreth if you’re having trouble surviving.
- Aturach the Deathless. Just leave this one on when you have it.
- Bloodspawn (jump attack for extra AoE damage + snare).
- Azaar Storm of Blades.
- Slyv’r the Deathbringer.
- The Renegade.
- Dark Star Night Maw (or regular night maw).
These all use your WP and are easy (even passive) to activate for good reward.
Misc. build tips
Accessories drop at the level of the enemy. With world scaling turned on, this brings pre-crucible content up to 30.
- Crucible is 34.
- The expeditions cap at 35.
- Mythic hunts are 35.
- The 4 unique mythic hunt bosses are 38.
- Mythic Crucible bosses are 40.
So it’s possible to get the 4 mythic crucible boss accessories at 40 along with any accessory added to their drop by using an imbuement. The Ferver set from solar (HP/WP/BP) is a good example.
Crafted accessories cap at 35. It shows in the top right of the craft screen what level they will craft at. This changes based on the active character. So if you can make them at 35 with Wingrave, but switch to level 2 Silo, he may only be able to make level 5 accessories.
Crafting caps starting at 3700 power rating (might be as low as 3200, unsure).
I believe the only weapons not on the Mythic Hunt vendor are the ones from the unique mythic hunt bosses. Portent, Queen’s Pyre, the gold themed shotgun, and Vesper III.