A new appreciation for Faith

Those who have been around for a while and read through the occasional Amazon topic here might recall that I tend to be on the "die hard

Windforce side" of things. But I figured let me depart from that for a minute and give some credit where credit is due.

For one,

Protector's Stone has very much shifted the eternal debate between WF and Faith from "matter of taste, they're too close to ever get a clear winner" to what in every new top-end variation I can come up with so far typically results in "Faith now wins by a decent margin in the all-rounder builds, at least/especially when focusing on multi shot" and "WF utterly crushes Faith in full-on dmg, pure dex builds, especially for

Strafe". Which makes sense I guess, seeing how Faith has a far easier time squeezing in a Stone without giving up too many other things but WF benefits far more from it when you do fit it in as it becomes pure weapon dmg (which then gets further amplified by the extra dex-ed in full dex builds).

For another, theorycrafting aside, the chronicle had me make a new Faith anyways so I figured might as well give the reality of it a go and do some proper shard running with it.

To no surprise, much like WF before it, it completely annihilates any TZ96 mobs that dare stand in range. With the only obvious exception being some higher tier heralds though even those largely drop disturbingly fast to a bowzon. And off-screen if you have the room.

What did surprise me though and I guess what I'm making this post to give some credit for is that I noticed something that I never noticed before as pre-

Herald, mobs just fell over dead too fast for it to ever become a factor:
Those undead Bobs Faith summons are actually crazy good tanks. Just multi-shotting down the adds around a

Herald tends to pop up a handful of them and as it turns out, they can actually full on

Swarm and face tank most T5 heralds:
Only came up against 2 heralds that didn't get "Faith swarmed". One because I got unlucky and not a single one got spawned off the adds. And one that actually rolled so much dmg that it did finally manage to chew through them.

But those two aside, can't help but be genuinely surprised by how good they are at keeping heralds busy so you can shred them in Peace.

Given, I'm still trying to figure out a better way to get WF back into all-rounder builds as well and really the only reason WF doesn't crush Faith across the board with a Stone is that A1 mercs utterly fail at staying in fana range if you try to use those on a proper build but hey, that's a separate topic.

as someone currently discerning between

Windforce and Faith , this is quite helpful! but like you i need to make Faith for my chronicle, so ill probably just try both