Stream up and running. http://www.twitch.tv/supjeremiahHey guys I just want to take a moment to say that I've made one last "general" update to this guide before specializing solely on PvP gameplay. There are a few reasons why I've come to this decision.
- With time and testing, both mine and Rokuthy's builds in regards to PvE have became nearly identical. I believe Rokuthy is better suited to provide advice and suggestions for that area of the game, so I'll keep to what I know best.
- Another reason I'm straying from the PvE side of things is that I've cleared all the content and I almost exclusively PvP now, doing DD's only as a means of financial income. (I need that armored worg ._.)
- Alongside the decision to only advise on PvP, I won't be uploading anymore videos until the next content release, which I'm hoping will include the 20v20 PvP scenario, Gauntlegrym.
In the meantime, feel free to ask any questions you might have! Expect a guide polish and update later tonight! Envy's DPS Guardian Fighter (PvP)Source
In this guide I'll tell you what feats I like and which I dislike, which powers I use, and what gear I focus on. Playstyle, strategy, and rotations will be towards the bottom. By the end of this mini-guide you'll be hitting numbers rogues are jealous of.
I. Race/Stats
While I encourage you to pick the race you like best, there are races with clear advantages when it comes to min-maxing.
Human - Humans come with the sweet bonus of having 3 extra heroic points. While I don't find this game breaking, it does allow a little more freedom when choosing feats.
Half Orc - 5% crit severity. This isn't much, but it's something!
Tiefling - 5% more damage to targets below 50% health. If I had to recommend one, it would be the Tiefling. You can't go wrong with a pure 5% damage bonus.
As for stats you should focus on STR/CON. These are pretty self explanatory. My final stats for those two are 22 STR and 24 CON. You might have some success with DEX as armor pen has proven to be a really efficient offensive stat.
II. PowersGoodDecentBad
Cleave - Probably one of the most solid at-wills in the game. I haven't changed it out once. Does great damage once feated for it, and its a frontal cone AE. Weave the first swing of cleave before using Bull Charge or Lunging Strike in PvP.Tide of Iron - Again, another at-will you will probably keep slotted for the entirety of your Guardian Fighter career. The damage is about the same as cleave, but single target. The reason this skill shines is the guard meter replenish and a resistance debuff added to the target. Helps you stay alive and do more damage. You'll likely never use this in PvP, but it's a good skill nonetheless. Lunging Strike - With 3 points, you get an incredibly long range gap closer with really good damage. I know you're tired of hearing this but, this is another skill that I've kept since level 1. At 60, I'm consistently critting ~12k with it, and as high as 18k. With a decent amount of recovery you can easily get a 6 second cooldown on this skill. Definitely my favorite. Villian's Menace - You'll always want this daily on your bar whether it's PvP or PvE. CC immunity is really good but it also comes with a damage buff. I haven't done the math but it seems to be about a 20% damage buff for the duration? Correct me if I'm wrong!
Shield Talent - Increases your guard meter by 5% for each point you put in it. This is irrelevant for my build.
Enforced Threat - Always use this in dungeons. It's a good AoE with good damage. It also helps keep the mobs off your healer companion. Best used in tandem with Frontline Surge.Griffon's strike - This is a really great skill for lower level PvP. You get 3 stuns for the price of one power slot. It does pretty good damage to boot. However, once you're higher level you'll more than likely drop this for good.
Fighter's Recovery - Keep this daily in rotation with Indomitable Strength. It's a life saver. It's basically a buff that gives you something like 200% lifesteal. Try not to use it while your encounters are on cooldown because they will be the bulk of your recovery.Terrifying Impact - This is a nice daily to have in your AoE build. It's one of your hardest hitting skills and its a front column AE knockdown. I have this maxed out but I never use it due to it's long animation time. Knee Breaker - Another great skill for our DPS. This is a damage over time skill which is great because it means you're always damaging your target even if they've managed to create distance. It also comes with a slow. I use this for single target boss fights like Frozen Heart of the Spider Temple. You probably won't use this in PvP for the lack of burst.
Enhanced Mark - Doesn't help our DPS but put it at 3 points so you can keep bosses on you when you're doing dungeons.
Guarded Assault - At 3 points reflects 3% of the damage you blocked back to the attacker. Haven't gotten a point in this. If you find success with it, good on you.
Crushing Surge - Your basic tanking at-will. Slow and low damage. Irrelevant for our goal of out dps'ing everyone.Knight's Challenge - This skill has me torn. It's really good if you want to go for the 2-shot cheese as demonstrated in my video below. However, I only use it when there are multiple clerics on the enemy team that need to die quickly. Otherwise you may want to slot something with a bit more utility.Combat Superiority - This is one of the passives that makes a DPS tank succeed. You get 10% damage after you're hit. Once feated, you get 15% damage and it no longer requires you to get hit first.Anvil of Doom - Arguably the highest damaging skill a GF has access too, under the condition that you use it on a target under 25% health for the double damage. My highest damage with this skill is 72k, non crit. Yeah, non crit. Not any good in PvP because if your target is below 25% any of your other encounters will hit hard enough to finish them off.Frontline Surge - As mentioned above, this is one of your AoE bread and butter skills. It's a faster, slightly weaker version of terrifying impact. Extremely good in PvP for a multitude of reasons. AoE KD. Fast animation. Big damage. Stacks the Timeless Hero set bonus easily.
Ferocious Reaction - I love this passive. When you reach 15% health you gain 10% of your max health and do that much damage to the target who hit you. Temporarily gain a damage resistance buff. Just... wow. So good for PvP! A nice trick for this is to have Fighter's Recovery up when this passive procs. The damage it does will add onto the 10% heal to refill your health to almost full.Threatening Rush - I slot this in PvP. It's STUPID. How does this exist? A 20~ meter charge with no cooldown? I hope you weren't trying to kite me because it's not going to happen. Between this, lunging strike, and all your interrupts, no one is getting away from you. Did I mention it applies mark, which debuffs your target?
Into the Fray - Decent group utility skill but without it being feated for the damage bonus (in the tactics tree), it's mostly unwarrented for this selfish DPS build. Screw you group, I'm trying to put out big numbers not help you put out bigger numbers!
Supremacy of Steel - Reflect. Really good for big mob pulls. I slot this in between bosses and while questing. Trample the Fallen - 15% more damage to controlled targets. While a seemingly great boost in DPS, both our passive slots are full already. If you slot this over Ferocious Reaction I suggest you use Fighter's Recovery as your second daily, rather than Indomitable Strength.
Iron Warrior - Really good skill in conjunction to the feat that increases your damage by 15% while you have temporary hit points. I don't currently use this in my build, but if you find success with it I would love to hear.
Knight's Valor - Blah blah. Tanking bodyguard skill.Bull Charge - High damage, decent cooldown, small gap closer, interrupt knockback. Everything you want in PvP. At first you'll be annoyed at how far you knock back everyone but with Lunging Strike and Threatening Rush you quickly realize it's not much of a hassle at all. A bonus is another tool to knock Clerics out of their circle. Get one swing of cleave before using this for quick damage.Indomitable Strength - Really high burst, interrupt daily. Have this in one of your daily slots. I crit in 5 digits with this often. In conjunction with the lunging/bull/surge power setup you can keep an opponent locked down for over 6 seconds.
Enduring Warrior - Why does this exist? So bad..III. Heroic and Conqueror Feats
Strength Focus - Increases effectiveness of strength by 15%. More strength more damage!
Toughness - 9% more hitpoints. Live longer, hit longer!
Shielded Resurgence - Gain 4% of your max hit points when affected by a control. A little bit extra of survivability goes a long way.
Armor Specialization - Increases your armor and AC by 15%. This helps pad the damage youll be taking by not blocking as much.
Powerful attack - 10% more damage to your at-wills. Cleave OP.
Weapon Mastery - 3% crit chance. This is just to help hit that crit rate sweet spot once youre geared to the teeth.
Improved Vigor - Gaining more action points while low on health can be clutch. Pick this up.
Take Measure - When you're crit you gain temporary hit points (50 sec CD). Not only does this help you stay alive, in conjunction with Wrathful Warrior you get a huge DPS spike.
Reinforced Surge - Adds a second onto Frontline Surge KD. No DPS gain. Not worth.
Wrathful Warrior - 15% more damage while you have temporary hitpoints. Yes. Yes yes yes.
Cruel cut style - 15% more damage on cleave. Duh.
Staggering Challenge - This feat is worded confusing but I just avoided it since I don't use the frontline surge and Griffon's Strike in the same build.
Tactical Superiority - Combat superiority does more damage and I dont need to get hit for it? k Ill take that. Thanks.
Menacing Impact - Buffs two dailies. Dailies aren't up often enough to warrant using paragon points on.
Reckless Attacker - This is it. This is what makes a DPS GF work. You gain power equal to how full your guard meter is. A full guard meter is a full 100% bonus in your power.
Fight on - This feat is in the bottom tree. Which you will use your 5 remaining points on. 10% CDR on your encounters. Nuff said.
IV. GearSourceThe T2 Timeless Hero set:
Head - Spellplague
Chest - Spider Temple
Gloves - Karru
Feet - Frozen Heart
Pros:
- High survivability stats
- High power
- More AC
- 4 piece bonus of 1350 stacked crit
- Has a cool name
Cons:
- No base crit stats
- Requires proper managing of cooldowns to fully utilize set bonus
- Most pieces are utility slots
- Looks kinda stupid
Bonus:
The reason why this set is the BiS PvP set is because of the set bonus. 1350 crit may not seem much to swoon over but that's not all you get. Because you gain so much crit from the bonus, you can free up your offense slots from the azure stones you've probably had slotted. Your new offense slot stones will be Tenebrous. Tenebrous scales best on the Guardian Fighter because of our naturally high health pools. Tenebrous is also necrotic damage. What that means is that it ignores resistances. It will always do the same, unmitigated damage. If you have 6 greaters slotted at 30k HP, and they all proc at the same time (pro tip: this is often), you get 5400 of sweet unmitigated burst. That 12.6k Lunging strike just became a clean 18k damage. Most classes have 20-24k HP. You do the math.
Jewelry:
There are lots of tiers of jewelry. Minor, Grand, Ancient etc etc. The stat difference isn't incredible so you're not hurting yourself if you hold onto those unicorns for a while.
Pyrotechnic Band x2 - 1st boss Karru
Necklace and Belt - T2 Drake vendor
You might have wondered why I included a blue belt above. Blue belts are special you see. If you noticed, the belt I have has an offense slot. This is another opportunity for a Tenebrous enchantment. You'll also notice the stats are a lot better than most epic belts you see. You can get this belt, and others like them from scoring 1st place in PvP.
Main hand / Off hand:
Brutal Lizardfolk Scimitar - AH for less than 10k
Believe it or not, this easily obtainable weapon is BiS. If you look at the picture provided, you'll see that I use the Castle Never main hand as a remodel for the Scimitar because it sucked so bad. The only weapon that might be better than the Scimitar is the Timeless Sword but I haven't seen it so that remains to be seen. (More people need to start clearing DV -.-)
Shield of the Timeless Hero - AH for ~100k
I haven't done number crunching between this and the crusher shield but I'm pretty sure this comes out on top purely because it's level 60 and it fits our Timeless theme quite nicely.
Clothes:
Gemmed exquisite shirt / Gemmed exquisite pants: At some point you'll want to find someone to craft these for you. Not only do they give you a bit of decent stats but the proc'd version gives you another offensive and defensive enchantment slot.
Weapon / Armor enchantment:
Greater Plague Fire:
45% armor shred and a dot that Tenebrous can proc off of. Until Vorpal is fixed this will be your go to weapon enchantment.
Soulforged:
I currently only have a lesser cause playa be broke, yo. When you take damage while below 25% health you go immune to all damage for 2 seconds. 60 sec CD. A regular is 3 seconds of immune and I can assume a greater would be 4. Pretty self explanatory as to why this is godlike.
V. Playstyle
Like many of the feats names, the conqueror spec encourages you to play reckless. That means don't block unless absolutely necessary. You'll find that you have enough passive survivability that blocking becomes largely irrelevant. Do your best to position yourself in such a way that you'll always have combat advantage. This shouldn't be a problem if you have a rogue in your group, as flanking provides CA.
VI. Rotation
PvE AoE - Terrifying Strike if full AC, Frontline Surge, Lunging Strike to gap close , Enforced Threat. Repeat when CDs allow (Weave Cleave combo's when efficient)
PvE Single Target - Tide of Iron, Griffon Strike, Lunging Strike, Griffon Strike, Knee Breaker, Griffon Strike, Indomitable Strength. Repeat. (Weave Cleave combo's when efficient)
PvP - Very Similar to the PvE single target, as PvP is all about the burst. You might want to mess around with a different build but I find my single target PvE to be successful
VII. PvP matchups
A lot of these match ups are going to sound same because.. we really can just 1 combo most other classes, sorry.
Trickster Rogue - Most Rogues will go into stealth a few meters out. Start blocking and spin your reticle around. If you hover over the Rogue in stealh you will see them. Use Frontline Surge to knock them down > Threatening Rush > Cleave once > Bull Charge > Lunging Strike. If RNG suits you, they should be dead. However, if not watch for some of their skills. If they jump into the air immediately hit block. They're trying to daze you. Smokescreen is a little harder to avoid but if you're blocking when they use it you can keep block up regardless of the daze. If you get <30% health they will probably try to daily you. Use Fighter's Recovery for a burst of health gain or just try to time your block. Rogues are really easy 1v1.
Control Wizard - If you get the jump on a Wizard they're dead. Same rotation as with the Rogue and they won't even have time to CC you. If they get the jump, and you don't have Villian's Menace ready, you might have a tough time. Lunging Strike will probably get cockblocked by their choke. You need to bait out their blinks by spamming threatening charge. Once they've used it 3-4 times it's safe to KD them with Frontline Surge. If you're succesfull you should be able to run through your encounters with relative ease and win with health to spare.
Devoted Cleric - Circle's are stupid. If you have two or more clerics against you slot Knight's Challenge. ALWAYS initiate with bull charge. You wan't to get them out of their circle. Once you knock them away follow up with frontline surge and a threatening rush to close the gap. Get a few cleaves off before they inevitably slide back into their precious circle. Bull charge will be up after a few seconds and knock them out again, this time they should be low and a lunging strike will end them or make them panic at the least. If you have Indomitable Strength add that to your CC combo and they should die right away.
Guardian Fighter - Just walk away. It's going to be a 5+ minute fight and nobody got time for that.
Great Weapon Fighter - Same rotation as usual, only kite when they have determination active. Sometimes you'll come across a GWF who is just straight beast and you might find yourself losing in a 1v1, but more often than not they can be ignored.
Comments
Guardian Fighter PvP
Who needs a healer?
How to make 1mil AD in 5 minutes
Knight's Challenge PvP highlights
ACT Parser tutorial
Clips from this morning
Anvil of luls
Wrath - 60 Great Weapon Fighter - Mindflayer
Envy's Guardian Fighter DPS Conqueror Guide
Youtube Channel
http://www.twitch.tv/supjeremiah
Looking forward to the pvp clips
Yep! When you tank, switch out your combat superiority passive with the improved mark passive. I've tanked everything including the t1 epic dungeons. I'm usually 2nd in DPS too. (:
Wrath - 60 Great Weapon Fighter - Mindflayer
Envy's Guardian Fighter DPS Conqueror Guide
Youtube Channel
http://www.twitch.tv/supjeremiah
I'm guess Con/Str?
I picked Str as my high for the bonus damage. I put every point into Str and Con.
Wrath - 60 Great Weapon Fighter - Mindflayer
Envy's Guardian Fighter DPS Conqueror Guide
Youtube Channel
http://www.twitch.tv/supjeremiah
yes, if you can please, this is exactly what i was aiming for and at lv10 i picked the same abilities you suggest, working well so far.
thanks
I don't guard on trash mobs in t1 epics and I never go below 90% health!
Wrath - 60 Great Weapon Fighter - Mindflayer
Envy's Guardian Fighter DPS Conqueror Guide
Youtube Channel
http://www.twitch.tv/supjeremiah
wondering the same thing
I can't believe I forgot to add those! I'll edit them in as soon as I can log in and get the names / descriptions. (stuck in queue)
Wrath - 60 Great Weapon Fighter - Mindflayer
Envy's Guardian Fighter DPS Conqueror Guide
Youtube Channel
http://www.twitch.tv/supjeremiah
~Napoleon Bonaparte
I want to know if the tiefling is a good race for GF given the little boots of procc DPS or humans are def the better?
This sounds like a very viable way to go, and enables the GF to be successfull in both PvE and PvP. Great guide mate, I wont stop you updating it, as I will surely be looking into trying this out myself.
Human is better in the long run. I wouldn't worry about min/max though.
Wrath - 60 Great Weapon Fighter - Mindflayer
Envy's Guardian Fighter DPS Conqueror Guide
Youtube Channel
http://www.twitch.tv/supjeremiah
I would also like if you could share what feats you choose Before paragon.
Hi,
very intresting build surely going to try it. And i agree with Knox im in the same situation =p.
Thx for the build and good luck.
Would blue for the decent work?
Wrath - 60 Great Weapon Fighter - Mindflayer
Envy's Guardian Fighter DPS Conqueror Guide
Youtube Channel
http://www.twitch.tv/supjeremiah
right?
May bold, italics, and underlined to make it easier for the color blind?
Actually GF often out damage Rogues depending on the dungeon. We have better AoE! A competent CW is always on top, though.
Wrath - 60 Great Weapon Fighter - Mindflayer
Envy's Guardian Fighter DPS Conqueror Guide
Youtube Channel
http://www.twitch.tv/supjeremiah