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Guardian Fighter as a striker! "Who needs a big sword when mine is just as pointy!"
zingarbage
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users Posts: 0 Arc User
Most people believe the guardian fighter was meant to be played as a defender, but its true role is as a striker! Just joking, it is a great defender, but I want to take a closer look at the striker role. I'm mainly looking at it in regards to PvP, but want to explore the PvE aspect as well.
First off, I want to briefly talk about stats. When you look at things such as armor pen. and crit chance, stacking them has a diminishing return. Meaning the more you get, the more it takes to get an extra percentage of each. So it may take 100 crit to get 1% chance to crit, but once you get more of it, it may take 150 to get 1% chance to crit.
Power seems to be the exception. It appears that it follows a linear path. Every 25 power gives you 1 extra damage and that rate never increases, well at least not up to stacking 2100 power, it stayed the same.
Why is this important? Because the final feat in the conqueror line gives you 100% power. So stacking power as a GF striker seems to be very good. I think 3000 power is realistic at max level, or assume it is since I have seen 2100 at 50 fairly easily. So that would be +120 damage and healing doubled to 240. Pretty good.
One thing I'm totally unsure of is how power stacked that high interacts with your heals. For instance, the heal from crushing surge. If anyone has any insight, please share.
Now that the power discussion is out of the way, let us look at damage multipliers.
Strength. I may go dexterity since I think aoe resist is more important than DOT resist, but for the sake of discussing damage, let us assume we will have at least 10% from strength.
Powerful attack/Distracting shield. This is basically a straight 20% damage boost.
Combat Superiority. With the feat in the conqueror line, you get a straight 15% damage increase.
The above are just straight multipliers that you will have at all times. So you are looking at 45% increase. From just your power stat, not including anything from abilities or weapon, you will be adding 348 damage per hit. Not too bad.
Now let us look at conditional damage multipliers.
Knights Challenge. This is the big one. With feats you will be doing 120% more damage to your target.
Temporary Hit Points. Any time you have temp. HP, you do 15% more damage. Any time you get CC'd or are healed, you will get them. The one at will has a heal attached to it as well if you wanted to set it up that way.
Control Power. Any time you use a control power on your target, you do 15% more damage.
Mark. This lowers the damage resistance of your target by an unknown amount. Worth mentioning.
Damage from abilities. Some abilities such as villians menace and anvil of doom can cause extra damage. Worth mentioning.
In regards to burst, with all of these stacked, you are looking at 195% increased damage. Again, from just your power stat, that is 708 increased damage per hit. This burst setup is what I'm looking at for PvP.
I'm looking at an attack plan along the lines of wait to get CC'd, villians menace, knights challenge, bull rush, lunging strike. That should take off a huge chunk of health while leaving me immune to CC while controlling the target. Then just rinse and repeat on CDs. Just on paper it looks very effective in PvP.
In PvE, I'm still undetermined. I'll test this out as much as possible in the upcoming weekend.
Anyway, just sharing some thoughts.
First off, I want to briefly talk about stats. When you look at things such as armor pen. and crit chance, stacking them has a diminishing return. Meaning the more you get, the more it takes to get an extra percentage of each. So it may take 100 crit to get 1% chance to crit, but once you get more of it, it may take 150 to get 1% chance to crit.
Power seems to be the exception. It appears that it follows a linear path. Every 25 power gives you 1 extra damage and that rate never increases, well at least not up to stacking 2100 power, it stayed the same.
Why is this important? Because the final feat in the conqueror line gives you 100% power. So stacking power as a GF striker seems to be very good. I think 3000 power is realistic at max level, or assume it is since I have seen 2100 at 50 fairly easily. So that would be +120 damage and healing doubled to 240. Pretty good.
One thing I'm totally unsure of is how power stacked that high interacts with your heals. For instance, the heal from crushing surge. If anyone has any insight, please share.
Now that the power discussion is out of the way, let us look at damage multipliers.
Strength. I may go dexterity since I think aoe resist is more important than DOT resist, but for the sake of discussing damage, let us assume we will have at least 10% from strength.
Powerful attack/Distracting shield. This is basically a straight 20% damage boost.
Combat Superiority. With the feat in the conqueror line, you get a straight 15% damage increase.
The above are just straight multipliers that you will have at all times. So you are looking at 45% increase. From just your power stat, not including anything from abilities or weapon, you will be adding 348 damage per hit. Not too bad.
Now let us look at conditional damage multipliers.
Knights Challenge. This is the big one. With feats you will be doing 120% more damage to your target.
Temporary Hit Points. Any time you have temp. HP, you do 15% more damage. Any time you get CC'd or are healed, you will get them. The one at will has a heal attached to it as well if you wanted to set it up that way.
Control Power. Any time you use a control power on your target, you do 15% more damage.
Mark. This lowers the damage resistance of your target by an unknown amount. Worth mentioning.
Damage from abilities. Some abilities such as villians menace and anvil of doom can cause extra damage. Worth mentioning.
In regards to burst, with all of these stacked, you are looking at 195% increased damage. Again, from just your power stat, that is 708 increased damage per hit. This burst setup is what I'm looking at for PvP.
I'm looking at an attack plan along the lines of wait to get CC'd, villians menace, knights challenge, bull rush, lunging strike. That should take off a huge chunk of health while leaving me immune to CC while controlling the target. Then just rinse and repeat on CDs. Just on paper it looks very effective in PvP.
In PvE, I'm still undetermined. I'll test this out as much as possible in the upcoming weekend.
Anyway, just sharing some thoughts.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Post edited by zingarbage on
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For the title I would have preferred "who needs a big sword when my shield can slam just as hard?" though :P
I expect it will make for very fast and fun leveling, and PvP you'll scare the <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> out of some squishies who think they can ignore you.
Heroic Feats
Tier 1
Strength Focus. (3/3) Increase the effectiveness of Strength by 5/10/15%. Should give me 4% extra damage at max level.
Toughness. (3/3) Increase your Maximum Hit Points by 3/6/9%. Can always use more health in PvP.
Tier 2
Distracting Shield. (5/5) Increase the damage of powers that use your shield by 4/8/12/16/20%.
Shielded Resurgence. (3/3) When affected by a control power, gain 2/3/6% of your Hit Points over 5 seconds. Can happen once every 15 seconds.
Armor Specialization. (1/3) Increases the effectiveness of Armor Class and Defense by 5/10/15%.
Tier 3
Powerful Attacks. (5/5) Increase the damage of powers that use your primary weapon by 4/8/12/16/20%.
Grit. (3/3) Gain 1/2/3% of your Max Hit Points in Temporary Hit Points when you are Healed by a power. (20 second cooldown)
Conqueror Feats
Tier 1
Take Measure. (5/5) When you are crit, gain Temporary Hit Points equal to 1/2/3/4/5% of your Maximum HP. This effect can only occur every 15 seconds.
Tier 2
Wrathful Warrior. (5/5) When you have Temporary Hitpoints you deal 3/6/9/12/15% more damage.
Tier 3
Staggering Challenge. (5/5) Gain 4/8/12/16/20% damage bonus to Griffon's Wrath when the target has recently been struck by Staggering Challenge empowered Griffon's Wrath. Additionally your damage bonus from Knight's Challenge is increased by 4/8/12/16/20%.
Tier 4
Tactical Superiority. (5/5) Combat Superiority deals 1/2/3/4/5% more damage. At 5th tier of this feat, Combat Superiority will not require that the target hits you first.
Tier 5
Reckless Attacker. (1/1) You gain bonus Power proportional to how much block meter you have remaining. When your block meter is full you gain 100% additional Power.
After level 50 I am unsure if you get any more points, but it would seem logical you would still get a point for each level up to level 60. I'm not set on these points if they exist, but would probably go with the following:
Tactician Feats
Fight On. (5/5) Encounter cooldowns reduced by 2/4/6/8/10%
Crushing Pin. (5/5) Your control powers cause the target to take 2/4/6/8/10% bonus damage for 3 seconds.
guardianfighter.com
Yup, that is my question as well. I'll do my best to push 50 next weekend. I have to do some stat testing on my GWF first thing and then bring the GF up from scratch. Leveling was fairly easy last go around so should be able to hit it by mid Sunday. I do doubt I will be able to get my power stacked though before it is over.
Granted each class works different, I would be concerned that the dps for PVE that we are hoping for from this build will be unreliable if it depends heavily on a chain of encounter abilities.
I've been thinking about the attack rotation or priority system I'd run and it would rely somewhat on encounters and even daily powers. In regards to AOE damage, it would simply be using cleave. Single target is where it gets more complicated. Below is my list of skills used:
At Wills
Cleave
Tide of Iron
Encounter powers
Knights challenge
Griffons wrath
Anvil of doom or lunging strike
Daily powers
Villains menace
Fighters recovery
In regards to at will powers, cleave seems to be the best option. I vaguely remember crushing surge was really slow. I would be interested though to see how much healing I could get from it by stacking power. It may still be the best option since it will activate my 15% damage from temp HPs, I'll just have to test it. Threatened rush would be to risky on pulling aggro, but needs to be tested. Any input here would be appreciated.
Daily powers I would want villains menace up as much as possible for the damage boost and CC immune. I believe at max level it lasts 12 seconds. Fighters recovery is just for heals.
Griffons wrath should put out some solid damage since I've got a 20% boost in damage for the second and third one.
In regards to knights challenge, I don't know if it forces the target to attack only you or not, hopefully not. The usage is self explanatory. It lasts 10 seconds at max level. Side effect of causing anyone else hit by it too take 50% less damage.
Basic priority system would be keeping villains menace up, keeping target debuffed with tide of iron and mark, making sure to use griffons wrath with at least two at a time, using knights challenge with villains menace to avoid being CCed, below 25% health using anvil with knights challenge for super damaging hit!
Still working on it though, but that is the basic first plan of testing.
I want to say the decreased damage done was on AoE affects (your cleave for example). I'm willing to test this on BW4.
guardianfighter.com
I will have a guardian pack by the end of the week, but always like others testing as well.
As to knights challenge, if it does lock the combat, let us say myself and the tank use them at the same time. Since each causes the target to do half damage to anyone other than the caster, it would seem they would offset and we would both do double damage. Well, it would be cool if that was the case.
Ohhhh...since another in my group is going to go the same route, can't wait to see how high I can get anvil of doom to hit! Brb, 1,000,000,000 damage hit.
guardianfighter.com
I like where you're going with this, but there is one thing you must keep in mind: just because you're speccing for damage doesn't mean you can ignore survivability. Heavy armor won't be enough to save you from getting nuked to oblivion before you ever reach your target!
Crushing Surge is very slow, yes, but might still be the better choice. You'll likely be Blocking very little in order to keep your 100% Power bonus so you'll need all the mitigation you can get, and as you said you get 15% dmg from temp HP so especially in PvP where you rarely get more than a single enemy in you frontal arc it's a solid choice. Also, Fighter's Recovery might actually be a Conqueror's favorite Daily. It heals based on damage dealt, so being the damage spec you'll get FAR more value from it than a full-tank GF ever could.
Knight's Challenge might be good, but it strikes me more as a tanking power, even in PvP. I would take Lunging Strike instead to close gaps and stay in the enemies' face, and keep Griffon's Wrath for burst damage and either Anvil of Doom for finishing or Knee Breaker if you're having a hard time sticking to your target.
guardianfighter.com
Sadly, some sort of gap closer (Lunging Strike) also seemed a little mandatory. So I already had most of my bar accounted for, with little viable choices in BW3. Hopeful that's changed for the better for BW4/OB.
guardianfighter.com
The way it is now each guy with a different strategy will be a different challenge. I know with time some builds will be the main used but anyway it will be something over one per class (at least three).
I thknk lunging strike is mandatory for GFs since it's the best option to reach enemies and in PvP that will be the difference between walk around for nothing and getting into your target.
I loved the Knight's Challenge power and I believe it is the first time I see a power that really helps you on taking effectively at PvP in an MMO. I just would love it more if the CD were 20s or less :P
I'll definitely be messing around with survival to find the spot I want to be in, especially for PvP where I will be using villains menace for the CC immunity and bonus damage and won't have much access to fighters recovery.
Crushing surge is something I really want to try out. I want to see how it interacts with having so much power, it may make the heal very good. I understand the level 57 version of it heals for 80% of weapon damage on the third hit. If you add on the healing for power, well I don't know how much it would heal. I'm hoping in the 600-800 range.
As too gap closing, does threatening rush not close gaps? I was looking at simply having it instead of lunging strike. Well at least in PvP. I figure villains menace for CC immune and threatening rush would keep me mobile and open an encounter power slot.
P.S. It should be noted that at least for PvP, I will gear for power, defense, and HP in that order. In PvE I will focus a bit more on damage stats.
I've kind of switched up my attack plan for PvP, at least in theory. The basic idea of the burst will involve knights challenge, bull rush, threatening rush, and the x3 griffons wrath. That should do substantial damage, especially in conjunction with a villains menace.
Sounds insane. And that Griffon's Wrath will stunt a lot of their ability to stop you from doing it, since they'll eat three micro stuns. Gods, I'm getting excited about this. Let me know how it goes at high end PvP!!!
guardianfighter.com