grimslawMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 43
edited January 2014
Dumb question, but will this build make the gf more "viable" to the 3 CW, DC and other, type of parties? Also, If the group is pretty high end geared, will this build make them want you anymore? Not including skill and all that. Or this a build to help with people still armoring up/pugs type of thing?
It'll work better in PUGs. This build make the act of tanking a more viable role for the GF. The worst your group are, the better you perform since they won't be getting hurt much as you are constantly shielding them from harm while you are immune to damage. It makes the act of tanking more enjoyable since you can see countless adds swarming towards you, and it feels epic, like a Spartan warrior in 300 if you've seen the movie.
Unless the devs decide to give an ample amount of needed buffs to the hard taunts, defensive utility and aggro generation of Guardians, the GF class will remain as one of the most unwanted classes in dungeon delves.
As far as I know, yes it does. And it's bugged like the GWF's Roar. It goes through CC immunity. I just hate Interrupt skills in PVP. It's an automatic rubberbanding for any player hit by interrupt skills. Hope they fix this in the future for PVP, but it would be great if bosses weren't immune to interrupt mechanics.
All the more if you use the Protector tree, you should test if you come to like the At-Will pair Weapon Master's Strike and Tide of Iron more than the normal Cleave and Tide of Iron. I changed it due to the fact that Weapon Master's Strike strikes twice and in a bigger area (and it has also no target limit, am I right?); in the end as Protector you would stack your Capstone debuff faster and wider as with Cleave.
I use Weapon Master's Strike at the moment to spread out and keep up the Plague Fire debuff while not using Supremacy of Steel with or without Knight's Valor.
I arrived at a similar build like your Tactician tree build with the difference of some heroic feats: till now I use Ubiquitous Shield and Powerful Attack, but actually I reconsider the 4 point investment in Ubiquitous Shield putting these points back into Action Surge and Distracting Shield. (Still keeping Powerful Attack but increasing my 2 points in Action Surge.)
Thank you for your thoughts overall, so I can tinker around a bit more and maybe I am satisfied with my build one day; but actually, my build and gear has aspects of yours and dkcandy's.
Hey, Aethenas! As far as I'm aware, Weapon Master Strike seems to have a 5 target cap. 5 from the first strike, another 5 for the 2nd strike from the ghost that appears behind the enemies. So technically you can hit 10 different enemies if you are up against hordes of mobs. But if I'm wrong please do correct me! I read this in a thread some months back in Open Beta so it might have changed. It seems that you went for a debuffer for your GF. Good choice of path. But if you want to generate maybe some extra aggro you may wish to try a Lightning Enchantment. It's so fun to watch lightning bolts dance around the mobs whenever they strike you. And because of the sheer number of adds coming for us, the biggest enemy we tend to encounter will be lag. Sometimes my graphics driver can't handle the amount of animations on my screen when I pop my SoS swords and Lightning bolts cover the entire screen.
But anyway, glad the guide helped you even if it's just for a bit.
This build will also be receiving significant bonuses thanks to the new additional mechanics GF's will receive for Enforced Threat, Iron Warrior and Lunging Strike. The boosts to Mark is also pretty nice, as well as the added new mechanics to guard where we don't have to worry about our guard being consumed too much by direct target powers.
Regeneration is the best stat for this build. However I have also been thinking of ways to better incorporate Life Steal to this build, particularly because of the T5 Dread Ring Boon that allows us to get the chance to steal 3x more HP from Life Steal. I'm not a big fan of Augmented Thayan Bastion because of the 1 minute ICD, so I'm currently thinking of getting at least 1000 Life Steal for my GF. Still trying to plan how to do it, however. I might just make my Ioun Stone do the work for me.
But to answer your question, for now, it's Regeneration. And most probably always will be better than Life Steal.
Hey, Aethenas! As far as I'm aware, Weapon Master Strike seems to have a 5 target cap. 5 from the first strike, another 5 for the 2nd strike from the ghost that appears behind the enemies. So technically you can hit 10 different enemies if you are up against hordes of mobs. But if I'm wrong please do correct me! I read this in a thread some months back in Open Beta so it might have changed. It seems that you went for a debuffer for your GF. Good choice of path. But if you want to generate maybe some extra aggro you may wish to try a Lightning Enchantment. It's so fun to watch lightning bolts dance around the mobs whenever they strike you. And because of the sheer number of adds coming for us, the biggest enemy we tend to encounter will be lag. Sometimes my graphics driver can't handle the amount of animations on my screen when I pop my SoS swords and Lightning bolts cover the entire screen.
But anyway, glad the guide helped you even if it's just for a bit.
This build will also be receiving significant bonuses thanks to the new additional mechanics GF's will receive for Enforced Threat, Iron Warrior and Lunging Strike. The boosts to Mark is also pretty nice, as well as the added new mechanics to guard where we don't have to worry about our guard being consumed too much by direct target powers.
Heh, sounds awesome I might try lightning out when I can get a good one.
I went with plague fire because of debuff from tide of iron which works for everyone stacked with PF and WMS will help increase my at will damage at least and can still be feated to increase encounter damage; You'd just have to replace one full feat from this build which isn't too hard.
Heh, sounds awesome I might try lightning out when I can get a good one.
I went with plague fire because of debuff from tide of iron which works for everyone stacked with PF and WMS will help increase my at will damage at least and can still be feated to increase encounter damage; You'd just have to replace one full feat from this build which isn't too hard.
That's true. The build is highly flexible anyway so it's completely possible to rework some of the feats or enchants to others which may suit the player's preference. What matters is the play style and the focus of the build, which is tanking. I just like the Lightning Enchant because... honestly, I just think it looks good with my GF's white dye theme. The aggro is secondary for me. which is why I used Thunderhead instead of Briartwine. But I might try out a Lesser Briartwine again and see if I can stand the visual effects. It's an ugly armor enchant when the tier gets higher. Also the main reason why I switched from Soulforged to Elven Battle for my TR. I hate the black smoke.
Thunder head sounds like it would be good in greater or better because of its better chance for stuns and lightning enchant added to it I bet it does make your white dyed gf look awesome with bolts flying around the room and around your armor.
I only have lesser thunder head on my cw and it doesn't get much use so I might switch to thunder head once I get it past childhood.
I thank the gaming gods for the lowered cost of changing enchantment lol.
Agreed any SM GF is able to use the play style and the feats are all viable as long as you know what they do and how to use them.
Thunder head sounds like it would be good in greater or better because of its better chance for stuns and lightning enchant added to it I bet it does make your white dyed gf look awesome with bolts flying around the room and around your armor.
I only have lesser thunder head on my cw and it doesn't get much use so I might switch to thunder head once I get it past childhood.
I thank the gaming gods for the lowered cost of changing enchantment lol.
Agreed any SM GF is able to use the play style and the feats are all viable as long as you know what they do and how to use them.
Whoops, just saw this reply man. Yeah Thunderhead does work better in higher tiers. But I'm particularly wary about the fact that it only procs about 1 per minute. It's useful but not as useful as a Briartwine that works well even with a Lesser, and is always active. But that's just me. I just like how Briartwine fixes our threat-holding problem by reflecting damage as soon as the opponent attacks. This allows us to maintain our threat build-up on them without worrying much about them getting peeled off in the process.
Anyway, I guess I just convinced myself to switch out Thunderhead for Briartwine again thanks to this conversation lol.
But it looks like we'll be getting some problems along our way. It seems that Steel Defense is indeed broken.
Hey, Link. I've got no problem with seeing it in your website. One of my other guides is there as well so it's cool. And keep up the good work in maintaining the website! I've had people sending me tells in the game that they found my build in there. So it's definitely helping the community, that's for sure.
And just a small update; I just figured out how to incorporate Life Steal for this build and this should work as another form of Threat generation and HP recovery aside from just relying on Regeneration to buffer the damage our opponents deal to us. I'll be posting these updates later. I figured a total of ~9% Life Steal should be competitive enough when you factor in the benefits of getting tripled Life Steal from Endless Consumption (T5 DR Boon). We should be able to proc this a whole lot since we're getting attacked a lot and we reflect damage a lot from SoS.
For Ioun Stone of Allure, the following changes shall be made.
Neck: Necklace of the Illithid (138 Power/Recovery, 150 Life Steal)
- Offense Slot: Dark Enchantment Rank 7
Ring: Grand Berserker's Ring of Cleaving (150 Power/ArPen/Life Steal)
- Offense Slot: Dark Enchantment Rank 7
Icon: Greater Icon of Retribution (125 Power/ArPen, 175 Life Steal)
- Offense Slot: Dark Enchantment Rank 7
Offense: +185 Power
Offense: +185 Power
Defense: +740 HP
For the stats that we'll get from the stone, we have the sums of...
So in essence, by getting an extra 9.5% HP healed per attack via Life Steal, we'll also get the chance to heal for 3x that amount, which gives us a total of 28.5%. Life Steal will become a lucrative method of buffering the opponent's damage output towards us by healing a portion of the damage they deal to us whenever we're using Supremacy of Steel.
This way, we'll be able to receive effective healing from both Life Steal and Regeneration; thereby increasing our threat generation and survival in the process. Augmented Thayan Bastion is just so bad. It seems to have a very reliable proc chance but has an internal cooldown of 60 seconds, which makes Rampaging Madness and Endless Consumption more reliable since they do not have ICD's associated with them.
Is it first and second activation of SoS? Or just second because I can live without the second activation but if neither do this might be less effective. And if both are then cryptic's steel defense tooltip wouldn't just be vague or wrong; it would be a liar too. Lol I'm just messing around but no less telling the truth.
Hopefully they are just feeling out if it is op or not which it really isn't I still die sometimes and gwf can do the same thing without the reflection, theres a reason we call it SoS other than the acronym if we use it with steel defense it is exactly like an sos.
Lol, Todes.
I just recently got the grand regent armor set with the briar twine and I must say that it is pretty awesome sure my guard breaks slightly easier but I was only using basic PVP gear, Any how the damage from sos seems to be increased because my power is now 2.8k with only 300 deflection removed which I then increased with my silvery rank 6. Which is a nice trade off from 1.9k power.
I forgot to mention this but until I saw a picture of your feats I had no idea I could even skip tiers in feats this made my NHR and GF much better than they were originally going to be.
Nice, I was anticipating your write-up as I'm currently trying a similar build.
Just some things on the top of my head (and sorry if that has already been answered):
- What's the reasoning behind not using Greater Rings of Life and the Reinforced Frostpelt Girdle on you and the Augment?
- I think you have to get both Brawling Warrior and Powerful Strike (even at the cost of a capstone feat) and Lunging and Enforced Threat should never leave your power bar. It's a massive DPS and threat increase with the upcoming buffs.
- Have you tested Bronzewood? People once claimed it would be THE ultimate monster magnet
I haven't acquired all gear yet, but I was thinking a 2/2 Fabled/Dread Legion setup and Fallen Dragon set. That should bring you close to 40k HP, 50%/30% RS/Deflect, 1.5k Regen and 1k Life Steal before any artifacts on a Halfling. Is additional Power/Defense/Deflect (last two especially considering diminishing returns) really necessary?
I also have to say that these builds are horrible to solo and you won't pug a lot because few people will give defensive GFs a chance in dungeons. I'd spec for a Conq and would acquire all gear before retooling to the final build.
Does the Briartwine enchantment trigger life steal too? That would allow to mitigate more damage between the SoS casts if it worked.
Hey, man. I haven't really had the chance to test this but I like the idea. I'll test it in the preview shard later after I get home. But I'm currently thinking that it may not trigger Life Steal, but then again I could be wrong. Armor Enchantment procs don't count as attacks players make themselves, but it counts as our damage if it's the type that flings damage. Maybe it's because it is tagged as a form of damage made by a separate entity associated with us. But I'm hoping I'm wrong. If Briartwine procs Life Steal, that would be REALLY fun.
Is it first and second activation of SoS? Or just second because I can live without the second activation but if neither do this might be less effective. And if both are then cryptic's steel defense tooltip wouldn't just be vague or wrong; it would be a liar too. Lol I'm just messing around but no less telling the truth.
Hopefully they are just feeling out if it is op or not which it really isn't I still die sometimes and gwf can do the same thing without the reflection, theres a reason we call it SoS other than the acronym if we use it with steel defense it is exactly like an sos.
Lol, Todes.
I just recently got the grand regent armor set with the briar twine and I must say that it is pretty awesome sure my guard breaks slightly easier but I was only using basic PVP gear, Any how the damage from sos seems to be increased because my power is now 2.8k with only 300 deflection removed which I then increased with my silvery rank 6. Which is a nice trade off from 1.9k power.
I forgot to mention this but until I saw a picture of your feats I had no idea I could even skip tiers in feats this made my NHR and GF much better than they were originally going to be.
It's actually both the first and second activation. Worse, Steel Defense isn't working at all. I tried it with every Daily I had and I just can't get to make it proc. Knight's Challenge is as broken as Knight's Valor too, so... I'm not sure anymore. I'm happy that the GF is getting some ample buffs, but it's going to break my favorite toys. Though I'm pretty sure they'll be rolling a fix for this before it goes live. *crosses fingers*
I actually wanted to get a Grand Regent as well for the stats it gives, and the Sharandar set too. They have stats we need, but the set effects of Tier 2 PVP is just too awesome to pass on. But if Tenacity will screw up the PVP set (since it seems the stats of the set will change in order to accommodate Tenacity), guess we'll have to find a better-working set... But 25% more Guard Meter is just so good. When I guard in Preview, I feel much more tankier because I rarely get those hits that take more than 20% of my Guard Meter with the recent changes to Guard. It feels a lot more reliable now!
And yep, I can imagine how much more damage you're doing with Grand Regent, since our Defenses are really high. 20% of 5k+ defense, 1k extra Power, that's a boost I'd be glad to have. Extra threat too.
Nice, I was anticipating your write-up as I'm currently trying a similar build.
Just some things on the top of my head (and sorry if that has already been answered):
- What's the reasoning behind not using Greater Rings of Life and the Reinforced Frostpelt Girdle on you and the Augment?
- I think you have to get both Brawling Warrior and Powerful Strike (even at the cost of a capstone feat) and Lunging and Enforced Threat should never leave your power bar. It's a massive DPS and threat increase with the upcoming buffs.
- Have you tested Bronzewood? People once claimed it would be THE ultimate monster magnet
I haven't acquired all gear yet, but I was thinking a 2/2 Fabled/Dread Legion setup and Fallen Dragon set. That should bring you close to 40k HP, 50%/30% RS/Deflect, 1.5k Regen and 1k Life Steal before any artifacts on a Halfling. Is additional Power/Defense/Deflect (last two especially considering diminishing returns) really necessary?
I also have to say that these builds are horrible to solo and you won't pug a lot because few people will give defensive GFs a chance in dungeons. I'd spec for a Conq and would acquire all gear before retooling to the final build.
Hey, man. Allow me to answer some of those questions for you.
1. I mainly chose the items I have now over the 2 which you mentioned because of Offense Slots. I absolutely wanted a decent amount of Recovery for this build, as it gives me RSI to be able to use Encounters much faster and extra AP Generation. The faster I can use Encounters, the more Guard I can recover (Iron Warrior, Enforced Threat, almost always never leaves my bar). Not to mention faster Encounter usage and increased Recovery gives us better amounts of AP. The more Guard I can recover, the more AP I gain from blocking attacks. The more AP I gain, the faster I can get to SoS, and the longer I can increase my uptime of it. The main goal of the build is to have it up as much as possible, so we can tank and kite as much as we can in dungeons, and intelligently generate/maintain threat in order to keep our allies from getting bothered by adds while they're taking care of the boss.
2. Hmmm. You make a good point. It will be superior for Threat Generation, that we can be sure about. I personally think it's a good call but in the end it will all depend on your play style, and the feats are simply there to help us improve that. I personally like the Tactician's capstone as it gets me nearer to getting my dailies faster when my block is down. I personally will chose the path that will net me the most utility and benefits, and that path is more often than not associated with getting your capstone feat.
3. Yep, I did! For some reason it doesn't seem to be working the way people describe it to. I can see the increase in DPS, so maybe that's the "threat increase" people are talking about. I'd much rather trust Lightning to do that for me. Not to mention it's only available once every 20 seconds, which makes it unstable and unreliable.
4. As for the gear, I most probably will not switch the T2 PVP set unless it provides me some bonus to the Guard Meter like the Fabled set. But the Fabled Set isn't as good as T2 PVP's 4 piece bonus, which is, in my humblest opinion, the best set effect for tanking. Stats are reliable, but the T2 PVP set bonus is equally reliable and that's something a person will not get from stats no matter what. It's irreplaceable. Which is why I struggled to find out ways as to how to get better Life Steal while having the set on. I could also opt to go for the full 4pc Dread Legion if its set effects prove to proc a lot without an ICD. And lastly, I'd be willing to lose defense for about 4680. That's the lowest I'll go for Defense. For Deflect, I want it to be as high as possible (30% is my current goal) in order to get a reliable chance of it proc-ing since I'll be getting hit alot. Power is secondary, as I merely want to boost it for increased Threat gain.
I'm glad we had this conversation, it helped me think deeper about the build. I most probably will still be switching some jewelry around in order to see what other choices I have. The rings will be going, that's for sure. Good thing they're cheap as heck. I'll try to make room for more HP, Life Steal, or Recovery if I can. I'm currently leaning towards HP and Recovery. But I'll see how well things will connect with one another. The game doesn't have the best itemization I know of.
5. And lastly, soloing. I understand what you mean. I know it can be slow, specially when you're not fighting a lot of stuff. But I tweaked my play style a little in solo to make it work faster. Let's use Dread Ring dungeons, for instance. What I do for all of those dungeons is to run from the start of the dungeon to the end, just before the boss room. I drag all the mobs in the place and face them all in that one room and kill them via Supremacy of Steel. We're exploiting the fact that we can expect mobs to keep on attacking us, which is what makes Supremacy of Steel really good for killing an entire room of monsters irregardless of number. SoS, Cleave, and Aggravating Strike, all of them do have a target caps (both the first activation and the second activation for SoS), which is good for handling an indefinite number of monsters. I try to face as much mobs as possible by TAB-marking everything I see from afar to make them come to me and I face them all in one go. This build works best like that in solo situations.
And that's true. I absolutely will not PUG at all. I dislike PUG-ing and most PUGs dislike GF's. As long as the game is broken, the GF's will remain broken with it too. No dungeon requires tanks when your cloth-wearing wizards can just steamroll everything to death.
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menahen57Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 3Arc User
edited January 2014
Hi Todes..,
First of all Great GF guide as always.
2nd.... If I'm not mistaken when U put dark enchantments in Offense Slots U get 185 ArPen... not life steal..
Just wanted to point that out...
Thank You for the GREAT work
First of all Great GF guide as always.
2nd.... If I'm not mistaken when U put dark enchantments in Offense Slots U get 185 ArPen... not life steal..
Just wanted to point that out...
Thank You for the GREAT work
Shiiii*. I love you, menahen57. Thanks for pointing out that one very crucial oversight of mine! This helps me a lot. No wonder something didn't feel right when I was canvassing for items.
Edit: So in order to accommodate for this oversight, I'll be making the necessary changes to the gear. It's hard to pack Life Steal into an Ioun Stone of Allure, so what I'm thinking is that I'll be switching around some items in my gear setup in order to make room for Life Steal, and allocate the Recovery items to the Ioun Stone. I'll try to find the right balance.
This sure got a little more complicated than I thought.
No problem, I'm glad I was able to answer them for you. I'm confident Lightning will work wondefully in generating the extra threat you want.
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menahen57Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 3Arc User
edited January 2014
Hey Todes,
Just a follow up on the Life Seal Problem...
Here is what I did..
Player:
Belt: Mindslayer Sash / Dark Enc.rank 6
Stone:
Stayed with your Ring, Neck, & Icon But put Silvery enc. rank 7 in them...
Here R my stats:
Reg: 500 = 4.2%
Life Steal: 750 = 6.2% ( I do not have the 250 LS Boom yet )
RSI: 27.5%
AP Gain: 32.2
Dam. Resis.: 48.9%
Delf. Change: 27.2
These Stas are without any campfire or potions.
I did all the daily quest in the dread ring and I think I did good..
I want to Thank You for the tip about rounding up all the moobs. then lowering the boom on them very fun
Shiiii*. I love you, menahen57. Thanks for pointing out that one very crucial oversight of mine! This helps me a lot. No wonder something didn't feel right when I was canvassing for items.
Edit: So in order to accommodate for this oversight, I'll be making the necessary changes to the gear. It's hard to pack Life Steal into an Ioun Stone of Allure, so what I'm thinking is that I'll be switching around some items in my gear setup in order to make room for Life Steal, and allocate the Recovery items to the Ioun Stone. I'll try to find the right balance.
This sure got a little more complicated than I thought.
I get frustrated with confusing offense defense bonus slots all the time lol. i did it just yesterday luckily its not 58k ad to remove anymore.
None of them work on preview anymore? I'm almost absolutely sure now that they are just testing SM GF without it.
Here is what I did..
Player:
Belt: Mindslayer Sash / Dark Enc.rank 6
Stone:
Stayed with your Ring, Neck, & Icon But put Silvery enc. rank 7 in them...
Here R my stats:
Reg: 500 = 4.2%
Life Steal: 750 = 6.2% ( I do not have the 250 LS Boom yet )
RSI: 27.5%
AP Gain: 32.2
Dam. Resis.: 48.9%
Delf. Change: 27.2
These Stas are without any campfire or potions.
I did all the daily quest in the dread ring and I think I did good..
I want to Thank You for the tip about rounding up all the moobs. then lowering the boom on them very fun
Whoops! Sorry for the late reply, guys. That's a pretty good idea. What I was thinking of is that I'd get all the Life Steal/Regen I need on my character itself, then stack Recovery on the Ioun Stone. This way I'll have less of a harder time choosing the LS gear. I want it to at least get to 9% so Endless Consumption will steal 27% whenever it procs, and I will also retain Regen to around ~10%. I'll try and play with it a bit more just to see if we can find better ones.
The goal is to retain the following stat percentages.
DR: At least 50%
LS: At least 9%
Regen: At least 10%
Deflect: At least 25%.
RSI: At least 30% (40% with Fight On factored). 35% would be perfect, though.
I'm thinking it's possible. But if not then I guess I'll have to settle with stat percentages which are lesser than my current goals.
And fighting hordes of mobs in one go is fun, right? Drag them all to the last room and go all Sparta with them. Kills things a whole lot quicker thanks to SoS not having a target cap.
I get frustrated with confusing offense defense bonus slots all the time lol. i did it just yesterday luckily its not 58k ad to remove anymore.
None of them work on preview anymore? I'm almost absolutely sure now that they are just testing SM GF without it.
Hehe. Good thing people read my ideas first before I actually went through with it! Would have wasted a lot of AD's. And yes, Steel Defense doesn't work anymore in preview for some reason. Hopefully, just hopefully, they fix it before the new PVP patch comes in. I'm drooling over the new PVP content such as new sets, artifacts and jewelry, but it won't be as good if Steel Defense still will not work at the release date.
Comments
Unless the devs decide to give an ample amount of needed buffs to the hard taunts, defensive utility and aggro generation of Guardians, the GF class will remain as one of the most unwanted classes in dungeon delves.
- Added a Tactician alternative build.
- Added Pig as one of the high priority companions.
I use Weapon Master's Strike at the moment to spread out and keep up the Plague Fire debuff while not using Supremacy of Steel with or without Knight's Valor.
I arrived at a similar build like your Tactician tree build with the difference of some heroic feats: till now I use Ubiquitous Shield and Powerful Attack, but actually I reconsider the 4 point investment in Ubiquitous Shield putting these points back into Action Surge and Distracting Shield. (Still keeping Powerful Attack but increasing my 2 points in Action Surge.)
Thank you for your thoughts overall, so I can tinker around a bit more and maybe I am satisfied with my build one day; but actually, my build and gear has aspects of yours and dkcandy's.
But anyway, glad the guide helped you even if it's just for a bit.
This build will also be receiving significant bonuses thanks to the new additional mechanics GF's will receive for Enforced Threat, Iron Warrior and Lunging Strike. The boosts to Mark is also pretty nice, as well as the added new mechanics to guard where we don't have to worry about our guard being consumed too much by direct target powers.
But to answer your question, for now, it's Regeneration. And most probably always will be better than Life Steal.
Heh, sounds awesome
I went with plague fire because of debuff from tide of iron which works for everyone stacked with PF and WMS will help increase my at will damage at least and can still be feated to increase encounter damage; You'd just have to replace one full feat from this build which isn't too hard.
That's true. The build is highly flexible anyway so it's completely possible to rework some of the feats or enchants to others which may suit the player's preference. What matters is the play style and the focus of the build, which is tanking. I just like the Lightning Enchant because... honestly, I just think it looks good with my GF's white dye theme. The aggro is secondary for me.
I only have lesser thunder head on my cw and it doesn't get much use so I might switch to thunder head once I get it past childhood.
I thank the gaming gods for the lowered cost of changing enchantment lol.
Agreed any SM GF is able to use the play style and the feats are all viable as long as you know what they do and how to use them.
Whoops, just saw this reply man. Yeah Thunderhead does work better in higher tiers. But I'm particularly wary about the fact that it only procs about 1 per minute. It's useful but not as useful as a Briartwine that works well even with a Lesser, and is always active. But that's just me. I just like how Briartwine fixes our threat-holding problem by reflecting damage as soon as the opponent attacks. This allows us to maintain our threat build-up on them without worrying much about them getting peeled off in the process.
Anyway, I guess I just convinced myself to switch out Thunderhead for Briartwine again thanks to this conversation lol.
But it looks like we'll be getting some problems along our way. It seems that Steel Defense is indeed broken.
I really liked your post, can I add it to mmominds.com???
And just a small update; I just figured out how to incorporate Life Steal for this build and this should work as another form of Threat generation and HP recovery aside from just relying on Regeneration to buffer the damage our opponents deal to us. I'll be posting these updates later. I figured a total of ~9% Life Steal should be competitive enough when you factor in the benefits of getting tripled Life Steal from Endless Consumption (T5 DR Boon). We should be able to proc this a whole lot since we're getting attacked a lot and we reflect damage a lot from SoS.
For Ioun Stone of Allure, the following changes shall be made.
Neck: Necklace of the Illithid (138 Power/Recovery, 150 Life Steal)
- Offense Slot: Dark Enchantment Rank 7
Ring: Grand Berserker's Ring of Cleaving (150 Power/ArPen/Life Steal)
- Offense Slot: Dark Enchantment Rank 7
Icon: Greater Icon of Retribution (125 Power/ArPen, 175 Life Steal)
- Offense Slot: Dark Enchantment Rank 7
Offense: +185 Power
Offense: +185 Power
Defense: +740 HP
For the stats that we'll get from the stone, we have the sums of...
Life Steal: 250 + (185*3) + (150*2) + 175 = 1280 Life Steal (9.5%)
Power: 138 + 150 + 125 + (185*2) = 783
ArPen: 150 + 125 = 275
Recovery: 138
Hit Points: +740
So in essence, by getting an extra 9.5% HP healed per attack via Life Steal, we'll also get the chance to heal for 3x that amount, which gives us a total of 28.5%. Life Steal will become a lucrative method of buffering the opponent's damage output towards us by healing a portion of the damage they deal to us whenever we're using Supremacy of Steel.
This way, we'll be able to receive effective healing from both Life Steal and Regeneration; thereby increasing our threat generation and survival in the process. Augmented Thayan Bastion is just so bad. It seems to have a very reliable proc chance but has an internal cooldown of 60 seconds, which makes Rampaging Madness and Endless Consumption more reliable since they do not have ICD's associated with them.
Hopefully they are just feeling out if it is op or not which it really isn't I still die sometimes and gwf can do the same thing without the reflection, theres a reason we call it SoS other than the acronym if we use it with steel defense it is exactly like an sos.
Lol, Todes.
I just recently got the grand regent armor set with the briar twine and I must say that it is pretty awesome sure my guard breaks slightly easier but I was only using basic PVP gear, Any how the damage from sos seems to be increased because my power is now 2.8k with only 300 deflection removed which I then increased with my silvery rank 6. Which is a nice trade off from 1.9k power.
I forgot to mention this but until I saw a picture of your feats I had no idea I could even skip tiers in feats this made my NHR and GF much better than they were originally going to be.
Just some things on the top of my head (and sorry if that has already been answered):
- What's the reasoning behind not using Greater Rings of Life and the Reinforced Frostpelt Girdle on you and the Augment?
- I think you have to get both Brawling Warrior and Powerful Strike (even at the cost of a capstone feat) and Lunging and Enforced Threat should never leave your power bar. It's a massive DPS and threat increase with the upcoming buffs.
- Have you tested Bronzewood? People once claimed it would be THE ultimate monster magnet
I haven't acquired all gear yet, but I was thinking a 2/2 Fabled/Dread Legion setup and Fallen Dragon set. That should bring you close to 40k HP, 50%/30% RS/Deflect, 1.5k Regen and 1k Life Steal before any artifacts on a Halfling. Is additional Power/Defense/Deflect (last two especially considering diminishing returns) really necessary?
I also have to say that these builds are horrible to solo and you won't pug a lot because few people will give defensive GFs a chance in dungeons. I'd spec for a Conq and would acquire all gear before retooling to the final build.
You don't use the same encounters for solo that you do for dungeons with any class even with the DC; astral shield isn't even necessary.
Because GF in solo is tanky enough to not need to use any of the defensive abilities.
Hey, man. I haven't really had the chance to test this but I like the idea. I'll test it in the preview shard later after I get home. But I'm currently thinking that it may not trigger Life Steal, but then again I could be wrong. Armor Enchantment procs don't count as attacks players make themselves, but it counts as our damage if it's the type that flings damage. Maybe it's because it is tagged as a form of damage made by a separate entity associated with us. But I'm hoping I'm wrong. If Briartwine procs Life Steal, that would be REALLY fun.
It's actually both the first and second activation. Worse, Steel Defense isn't working at all. I tried it with every Daily I had and I just can't get to make it proc. Knight's Challenge is as broken as Knight's Valor too, so... I'm not sure anymore. I'm happy that the GF is getting some ample buffs, but it's going to break my favorite toys. Though I'm pretty sure they'll be rolling a fix for this before it goes live. *crosses fingers*
I actually wanted to get a Grand Regent as well for the stats it gives, and the Sharandar set too. They have stats we need, but the set effects of Tier 2 PVP is just too awesome to pass on. But if Tenacity will screw up the PVP set (since it seems the stats of the set will change in order to accommodate Tenacity), guess we'll have to find a better-working set... But 25% more Guard Meter is just so good. When I guard in Preview, I feel much more tankier because I rarely get those hits that take more than 20% of my Guard Meter with the recent changes to Guard. It feels a lot more reliable now!
And yep, I can imagine how much more damage you're doing with Grand Regent, since our Defenses are really high. 20% of 5k+ defense, 1k extra Power, that's a boost I'd be glad to have. Extra threat too.
Hey, man. Allow me to answer some of those questions for you.
1. I mainly chose the items I have now over the 2 which you mentioned because of Offense Slots. I absolutely wanted a decent amount of Recovery for this build, as it gives me RSI to be able to use Encounters much faster and extra AP Generation. The faster I can use Encounters, the more Guard I can recover (Iron Warrior, Enforced Threat, almost always never leaves my bar). Not to mention faster Encounter usage and increased Recovery gives us better amounts of AP. The more Guard I can recover, the more AP I gain from blocking attacks. The more AP I gain, the faster I can get to SoS, and the longer I can increase my uptime of it. The main goal of the build is to have it up as much as possible, so we can tank and kite as much as we can in dungeons, and intelligently generate/maintain threat in order to keep our allies from getting bothered by adds while they're taking care of the boss.
2. Hmmm. You make a good point. It will be superior for Threat Generation, that we can be sure about. I personally think it's a good call but in the end it will all depend on your play style, and the feats are simply there to help us improve that. I personally like the Tactician's capstone as it gets me nearer to getting my dailies faster when my block is down. I personally will chose the path that will net me the most utility and benefits, and that path is more often than not associated with getting your capstone feat.
3. Yep, I did! For some reason it doesn't seem to be working the way people describe it to. I can see the increase in DPS, so maybe that's the "threat increase" people are talking about. I'd much rather trust Lightning to do that for me. Not to mention it's only available once every 20 seconds, which makes it unstable and unreliable.
4. As for the gear, I most probably will not switch the T2 PVP set unless it provides me some bonus to the Guard Meter like the Fabled set. But the Fabled Set isn't as good as T2 PVP's 4 piece bonus, which is, in my humblest opinion, the best set effect for tanking. Stats are reliable, but the T2 PVP set bonus is equally reliable and that's something a person will not get from stats no matter what. It's irreplaceable. Which is why I struggled to find out ways as to how to get better Life Steal while having the set on. I could also opt to go for the full 4pc Dread Legion if its set effects prove to proc a lot without an ICD. And lastly, I'd be willing to lose defense for about 4680. That's the lowest I'll go for Defense. For Deflect, I want it to be as high as possible (30% is my current goal) in order to get a reliable chance of it proc-ing since I'll be getting hit alot. Power is secondary, as I merely want to boost it for increased Threat gain.
I'm glad we had this conversation, it helped me think deeper about the build. I most probably will still be switching some jewelry around in order to see what other choices I have. The rings will be going, that's for sure. Good thing they're cheap as heck. I'll try to make room for more HP, Life Steal, or Recovery if I can. I'm currently leaning towards HP and Recovery. But I'll see how well things will connect with one another. The game doesn't have the best itemization I know of.
5. And lastly, soloing. I understand what you mean. I know it can be slow, specially when you're not fighting a lot of stuff. But I tweaked my play style a little in solo to make it work faster. Let's use Dread Ring dungeons, for instance. What I do for all of those dungeons is to run from the start of the dungeon to the end, just before the boss room. I drag all the mobs in the place and face them all in that one room and kill them via Supremacy of Steel. We're exploiting the fact that we can expect mobs to keep on attacking us, which is what makes Supremacy of Steel really good for killing an entire room of monsters irregardless of number. SoS, Cleave, and Aggravating Strike, all of them do have a target caps (both the first activation and the second activation for SoS), which is good for handling an indefinite number of monsters. I try to face as much mobs as possible by TAB-marking everything I see from afar to make them come to me and I face them all in one go. This build works best like that in solo situations.
And that's true. I absolutely will not PUG at all. I dislike PUG-ing and most PUGs dislike GF's. As long as the game is broken, the GF's will remain broken with it too. No dungeon requires tanks when your cloth-wearing wizards can just steamroll everything to death.
First of all Great GF guide as always.
2nd.... If I'm not mistaken when U put dark enchantments in Offense Slots U get 185 ArPen... not life steal..
Just wanted to point that out...
Thank You for the GREAT work
Shiiii*. I love you, menahen57. Thanks for pointing out that one very crucial oversight of mine! This helps me a lot.
Edit: So in order to accommodate for this oversight, I'll be making the necessary changes to the gear. It's hard to pack Life Steal into an Ioun Stone of Allure, so what I'm thinking is that I'll be switching around some items in my gear setup in order to make room for Life Steal, and allocate the Recovery items to the Ioun Stone. I'll try to find the right balance.
This sure got a little more complicated than I thought.
Just a follow up on the Life Seal Problem...
Here is what I did..
Player:
Belt: Mindslayer Sash / Dark Enc.rank 6
Stone:
Stayed with your Ring, Neck, & Icon But put Silvery enc. rank 7 in them...
Here R my stats:
Reg: 500 = 4.2%
Life Steal: 750 = 6.2% ( I do not have the 250 LS Boom yet )
RSI: 27.5%
AP Gain: 32.2
Dam. Resis.: 48.9%
Delf. Change: 27.2
These Stas are without any campfire or potions.
I did all the daily quest in the dread ring and I think I did good..
I want to Thank You for the tip about rounding up all the moobs. then lowering the boom on them very fun
I get frustrated with confusing offense defense bonus slots all the time lol. i did it just yesterday luckily its not 58k ad to remove anymore.
None of them work on preview anymore? I'm almost absolutely sure now that they are just testing SM GF without it.
Whoops! Sorry for the late reply, guys. That's a pretty good idea. What I was thinking of is that I'd get all the Life Steal/Regen I need on my character itself, then stack Recovery on the Ioun Stone. This way I'll have less of a harder time choosing the LS gear. I want it to at least get to 9% so Endless Consumption will steal 27% whenever it procs, and I will also retain Regen to around ~10%. I'll try and play with it a bit more just to see if we can find better ones.
The goal is to retain the following stat percentages.
DR: At least 50%
LS: At least 9%
Regen: At least 10%
Deflect: At least 25%.
RSI: At least 30% (40% with Fight On factored). 35% would be perfect, though.
I'm thinking it's possible. But if not then I guess I'll have to settle with stat percentages which are lesser than my current goals.
And fighting hordes of mobs in one go is fun, right?
Hehe. Good thing people read my ideas first before I actually went through with it! Would have wasted a lot of AD's. And yes, Steel Defense doesn't work anymore in preview for some reason. Hopefully, just hopefully, they fix it before the new PVP patch comes in. I'm drooling over the new PVP content such as new sets, artifacts and jewelry, but it won't be as good if Steel Defense still will not work at the release date.