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My GWF DPs/PvP Build
forsakenlich1
Banned Users, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users Posts: 0 Arc User
Here is my build that doubles for PvP quite effectively
it differs from the builds posted so i wanted to put it up
the dps is just as effective if not more if played properly than the 'other' builds, and it is all round powerful and not just a min-max build like most have been trying to find
At Wills: Sure Strike 3/3, WMS 3/3, Wicked Strike 3/3
Wicked strike is insane damage on groups of 3 or more. WMS is an excellent spell because it debuffs, does good damage, hits multiple targets, and most importantly has a single click commitment. Sure Strike has a 4 hit commitment. This means in fights where there is a lot of aoe that needs to be dodged or you need mobility to run around and draw add aggro/peel for your cleric, your dps will be sub maximal. With WMS, you have to commit one click only. You are, indeed, bound by the animation of your 'clone' for a little longer while it gets the second hit in, but it allows for way more mobility and relaxed attention so that you can preemptively move between swings. And in all honestly, i haven't found a really big boost in damage from SS over WMS.
Encounters: (for dungeons)
Roar: 3/3, Indomitable Weapon Strike 3/3, Punishing Charge 3/3
Roar is an excellent spell, does good damage, brings an interrupt for pesky casters, and builds a HUGE amount of action points if you hit enemies properly with it. Your most powerful ability, Slam, can be up 50% of the time if you learn to use roar. With the 25% power increase from the destroyer feats, this really helps make you unstoppable.
Indomitable Weapon Strike is an excellent nuke. Unlike flourish, and unlike its tooltip, you have no 'target' but a target area. If a group of enemies is lined up, you hit them all for full damage. If you crit on one you crit on all. You can be critting for around 15k on 5-6 enemies at once with this ability with an 8k GS.
Punishing Charge - most guides are taking flourish or some other spell. They are overlooking the need for mobility. Speed rush/sprint is clunky to use in fights and often doesn't give you enough reaction time to get out of red circles or to move around peeling for your cleric and such. Punishing charge has excellent range - not too much or too little, does a good amount of damage to every enemy you pass through, almost always has charges up - has 3 charges inherently at max rank, and breaks your attack animation. This is very important as being stuck in attack animation is the number one reason you get caught in AoE and die. Sprint doesnt break it fast enough and is clunky. This spell is a MUST for a pure DPS GWF in high end dungeons. You WILL die without it and in fact the sticking power that it gives you and the dps it adds will provide you with far more dps than flourish.
Encounters: For pvp:
Indomitable Battle Strike 5/5 still a great nuke here
Takedown 5/5: Good damage, short cooldown with Relentless Battle Fury, and knocks your target prone. This is the strongest cc in the game - as it is a stun but has a recovery period after. Use this first then Indomitable Battle Strike to land it guaranteed
Come and Get It 5/5: Your now Darius from league of legends. Enjoy the fear that getting pulled into melee range of a Great Weapon Fighter invokes. Abuse the psychological power of it, and abuse your ability to pull running squishes into your team or into yourself - you one man team you
Dailies: Slam 3/3, Crescendo 3/3
Slam is a must get. The boost in the Destroyer tree that gives you +25% power is insane, especially since SLAM lasts something like a total of 10 seconds. It does a lot of AoE damage, slows, and best of all, does not lock your character up. You are free to move around and keep doing damage with encounters and at wills, and free to dodge enemy attacks. With Steel Defenses as a pvp class feature, you are now doing tons of damage, being mobile and doing your normal dps + 25%, AND IMMUNE TO ALL DAMAGE FOR A WHOPPING 5 SECONDS. It doesnt get much better than that
Crescendo - because its the only other daily worth a ****. Slam takes care of AoE take this as a single target nuke for isolated targets in PvP or Boss/Elite mobs in dungeons
Class Features: Steadfast Determination 3/3, Steel Blitz 3/3, Steel Defenses 3/3
Steadfast Determination is a given. You need determination to get your Unstoppable up, and this increases it naturally in combat. Consider that there are no other abilities to increase your determination in this build, and this becomes a natural choice
Steel Blitz: Destroyer gives a max of 6% extra damage, Steel Blitz is way better consider the GWF strikes many opponents at once. Steel Defenses and Steel Grace are your third options as Class Features. Steel Defenses is a little gimmicky but can be a very powerful gimmick. Activate Slam and tear up your enemies for 5 seconds of immunity and boosted 125% damage. Or if you choose to be 'safer' and less gimmicky, CC reduction is always a good thing.
Feats: Heroic
Unstoppable Action 5/5: Self Explanatory. You need action point game to SLAM as much as possible in pvp and pve
Steely Defense 5/5 : Some say it is bugged, perhaps it is. I doubt it will be forever though. It is a good double dipping feat giving you power based on your defense - up to 20% at max rank
Weapon Mastery 3/3: Needed to fill up the Heroic feats, and 3% extra crit chance is not bad at all for a passive
Disciple of Strength 5/5: Self explanatory. Especially as a human who chooses strength as his primary attribute, you will get a nice boost in damage from this.
Endless Assault 3/3: 6% more damage on encounters? Yes plz
Devastating Critical 3/3: 15% extra crit damage is quite excellent. You get plenty of crit in end game gear, so you do crit a lot. In conjunction with the Paragon feats Deep Gash and Student of the Sword, your criticals are a very dangerous thing
Toughness 1/3: A little more HP. Needed to fill the Heroic tree. The only thing worth getting with a single rank in it.
Feats: Paragon
Great Weapon Focus 5/5: 10% extra damage on At Wills. Self explantory.
Staying Power 5/5: Makes your WMS reduce enemy target mitigation to your Encounters by 10%, in addition to the debuff applies to your on wills. Awesome!
Deep Gash: Does 15% of your power in damage over time when you crit. With a gear score of 8k i have 4.1k power with an Ioun Stone. This translates into roughly 525 damage additional (before mitigation) with each crit. When you crit, you crit everything as this game appears to calculate crit on your swings and not on the damage the enemy takes. Very powerful on a GWF
Relentless Battle Fury 5/5:
Self explanatory. Allows your Roar to be up plenty of times in PvE, in turn allowing you to generate action points faster and in turn allowing you to have slam and your power boost/ damage immunity up more often. Also allows you to have Takedown up more often in PvP A must have...
Battle Awareness 5/5: This is the feat that gives that big boost to you when you are running SLAM. Excellent feat
Destroyer 1/1: As needed. Improves damage of Encounters by 10% when unstoppable is active (not that great as to maximize DPS during Unstoppable you want to burn your encounters BEFORE becoming unstoppable, then use at wills only during Unstoppable, then use the refreshed cooldowns again after), but gives you determination for attacking which is good. The Titleic feat isnt that great, in truth, and Instigators Titleic feat is WAY better. To make up for it, the instigator tree itself is trash for DPS, while the destroyer tree is easily the best and most viable
Student of the Sword: 5/5
Makes your crits even more deadly
For gear 'prioritization', well, you cant prioritize anything. You get what you get end game. In tier 1, I prefer Bladestorm's set as recovery is a super valuable resource and I prefer it over crit especially since it helps slam be up EVEN MORE often, and your 25% boost on power from slam with the feat easily outweighs extra criticals.
I havent gotten to play around with enchantments much yet but I am using Plaguefire right now and it seems to be fine. I use Power enchants on all offensive slots and HP enchants on all defensive slots. This is because I find that it is high burst damage that is really your enemy in encounters and boss fights, and HP mitigates it better and allows you to pot after CC or get healed better than defense or deflect would. Utility i put movespeed because - really, what the **** are the other ones for?
General Comments/Advice about pve
Open with your Encounters ASAP. You want them to get on cooldown then off again ASAP.
Use punishing Charge to reposition yourself when enemy skills target the ground under you, to chase enemies that have gotten displaced from you (the less time you miss getting to them = more dps), to clean up slightly scattered low health enemies that wicked strike would not reach and to position yourself to peel for your squishies.
Use WMS on 1-2 enemies and Wicked Strike on 3 or more. Use WMS first any way to get the debuff, and add it in to the rotatio nevery 2-3 seconds to keep the debuff on.
Your primary goal is to maximize your godlike AoE DPS. Refrain from getting caught up DPSing the boss/elite and instead reposition yourself with Punishing Charge into the thickest density of enemies and use WMS to debuff then wicked strike to burn them down. for really large, really sparsed encounters you can use punshing charge multiple times in conjunction with WMS and Wicked Strike to cover a much larger area.
Contrary to what is being said, do not 'save' your Indomitable Strike for 'dying' enemies. It is a waste of dps and the debuff is junk any way. The range is poor and you often dont debuff nearby enemies, and the worst part that you forget is that they lose the debuff if they attack you - whic hthey very well might. Instead, use it at the start of your rotation to get it on and off cooldown asap, and try to position yourself with lined up enemies to hit them all with it. Contrary to its tooltip, it has no target but a target area and will hit as many enemies as will come under it
Enjoy! GWF is a great class and plenty of fun
Additionally, you dont need to have a facefull of enemies to use slam. even 2 elites is a perfect time to use slam or 1 super elite (savage or similar). On boss fights, use it instead of crescendo. Especially combined with the 25% power boost, you are going to do way more damage than with a crescendo. Crescendo is only slightly less worthless than the other dailies. This is the only daily you need, I am still trying to figure out where i would use it over SLAM
it differs from the builds posted so i wanted to put it up
the dps is just as effective if not more if played properly than the 'other' builds, and it is all round powerful and not just a min-max build like most have been trying to find
At Wills: Sure Strike 3/3, WMS 3/3, Wicked Strike 3/3
Wicked strike is insane damage on groups of 3 or more. WMS is an excellent spell because it debuffs, does good damage, hits multiple targets, and most importantly has a single click commitment. Sure Strike has a 4 hit commitment. This means in fights where there is a lot of aoe that needs to be dodged or you need mobility to run around and draw add aggro/peel for your cleric, your dps will be sub maximal. With WMS, you have to commit one click only. You are, indeed, bound by the animation of your 'clone' for a little longer while it gets the second hit in, but it allows for way more mobility and relaxed attention so that you can preemptively move between swings. And in all honestly, i haven't found a really big boost in damage from SS over WMS.
Encounters: (for dungeons)
Roar: 3/3, Indomitable Weapon Strike 3/3, Punishing Charge 3/3
Roar is an excellent spell, does good damage, brings an interrupt for pesky casters, and builds a HUGE amount of action points if you hit enemies properly with it. Your most powerful ability, Slam, can be up 50% of the time if you learn to use roar. With the 25% power increase from the destroyer feats, this really helps make you unstoppable.
Indomitable Weapon Strike is an excellent nuke. Unlike flourish, and unlike its tooltip, you have no 'target' but a target area. If a group of enemies is lined up, you hit them all for full damage. If you crit on one you crit on all. You can be critting for around 15k on 5-6 enemies at once with this ability with an 8k GS.
Punishing Charge - most guides are taking flourish or some other spell. They are overlooking the need for mobility. Speed rush/sprint is clunky to use in fights and often doesn't give you enough reaction time to get out of red circles or to move around peeling for your cleric and such. Punishing charge has excellent range - not too much or too little, does a good amount of damage to every enemy you pass through, almost always has charges up - has 3 charges inherently at max rank, and breaks your attack animation. This is very important as being stuck in attack animation is the number one reason you get caught in AoE and die. Sprint doesnt break it fast enough and is clunky. This spell is a MUST for a pure DPS GWF in high end dungeons. You WILL die without it and in fact the sticking power that it gives you and the dps it adds will provide you with far more dps than flourish.
Encounters: For pvp:
Indomitable Battle Strike 5/5 still a great nuke here
Takedown 5/5: Good damage, short cooldown with Relentless Battle Fury, and knocks your target prone. This is the strongest cc in the game - as it is a stun but has a recovery period after. Use this first then Indomitable Battle Strike to land it guaranteed
Come and Get It 5/5: Your now Darius from league of legends. Enjoy the fear that getting pulled into melee range of a Great Weapon Fighter invokes. Abuse the psychological power of it, and abuse your ability to pull running squishes into your team or into yourself - you one man team you
Dailies: Slam 3/3, Crescendo 3/3
Slam is a must get. The boost in the Destroyer tree that gives you +25% power is insane, especially since SLAM lasts something like a total of 10 seconds. It does a lot of AoE damage, slows, and best of all, does not lock your character up. You are free to move around and keep doing damage with encounters and at wills, and free to dodge enemy attacks. With Steel Defenses as a pvp class feature, you are now doing tons of damage, being mobile and doing your normal dps + 25%, AND IMMUNE TO ALL DAMAGE FOR A WHOPPING 5 SECONDS. It doesnt get much better than that
Crescendo - because its the only other daily worth a ****. Slam takes care of AoE take this as a single target nuke for isolated targets in PvP or Boss/Elite mobs in dungeons
Class Features: Steadfast Determination 3/3, Steel Blitz 3/3, Steel Defenses 3/3
Steadfast Determination is a given. You need determination to get your Unstoppable up, and this increases it naturally in combat. Consider that there are no other abilities to increase your determination in this build, and this becomes a natural choice
Steel Blitz: Destroyer gives a max of 6% extra damage, Steel Blitz is way better consider the GWF strikes many opponents at once. Steel Defenses and Steel Grace are your third options as Class Features. Steel Defenses is a little gimmicky but can be a very powerful gimmick. Activate Slam and tear up your enemies for 5 seconds of immunity and boosted 125% damage. Or if you choose to be 'safer' and less gimmicky, CC reduction is always a good thing.
Feats: Heroic
Unstoppable Action 5/5: Self Explanatory. You need action point game to SLAM as much as possible in pvp and pve
Steely Defense 5/5 : Some say it is bugged, perhaps it is. I doubt it will be forever though. It is a good double dipping feat giving you power based on your defense - up to 20% at max rank
Weapon Mastery 3/3: Needed to fill up the Heroic feats, and 3% extra crit chance is not bad at all for a passive
Disciple of Strength 5/5: Self explanatory. Especially as a human who chooses strength as his primary attribute, you will get a nice boost in damage from this.
Endless Assault 3/3: 6% more damage on encounters? Yes plz
Devastating Critical 3/3: 15% extra crit damage is quite excellent. You get plenty of crit in end game gear, so you do crit a lot. In conjunction with the Paragon feats Deep Gash and Student of the Sword, your criticals are a very dangerous thing
Toughness 1/3: A little more HP. Needed to fill the Heroic tree. The only thing worth getting with a single rank in it.
Feats: Paragon
Great Weapon Focus 5/5: 10% extra damage on At Wills. Self explantory.
Staying Power 5/5: Makes your WMS reduce enemy target mitigation to your Encounters by 10%, in addition to the debuff applies to your on wills. Awesome!
Deep Gash: Does 15% of your power in damage over time when you crit. With a gear score of 8k i have 4.1k power with an Ioun Stone. This translates into roughly 525 damage additional (before mitigation) with each crit. When you crit, you crit everything as this game appears to calculate crit on your swings and not on the damage the enemy takes. Very powerful on a GWF
Relentless Battle Fury 5/5:
Self explanatory. Allows your Roar to be up plenty of times in PvE, in turn allowing you to generate action points faster and in turn allowing you to have slam and your power boost/ damage immunity up more often. Also allows you to have Takedown up more often in PvP A must have...
Battle Awareness 5/5: This is the feat that gives that big boost to you when you are running SLAM. Excellent feat
Destroyer 1/1: As needed. Improves damage of Encounters by 10% when unstoppable is active (not that great as to maximize DPS during Unstoppable you want to burn your encounters BEFORE becoming unstoppable, then use at wills only during Unstoppable, then use the refreshed cooldowns again after), but gives you determination for attacking which is good. The Titleic feat isnt that great, in truth, and Instigators Titleic feat is WAY better. To make up for it, the instigator tree itself is trash for DPS, while the destroyer tree is easily the best and most viable
Student of the Sword: 5/5
Makes your crits even more deadly
For gear 'prioritization', well, you cant prioritize anything. You get what you get end game. In tier 1, I prefer Bladestorm's set as recovery is a super valuable resource and I prefer it over crit especially since it helps slam be up EVEN MORE often, and your 25% boost on power from slam with the feat easily outweighs extra criticals.
I havent gotten to play around with enchantments much yet but I am using Plaguefire right now and it seems to be fine. I use Power enchants on all offensive slots and HP enchants on all defensive slots. This is because I find that it is high burst damage that is really your enemy in encounters and boss fights, and HP mitigates it better and allows you to pot after CC or get healed better than defense or deflect would. Utility i put movespeed because - really, what the **** are the other ones for?
General Comments/Advice about pve
Open with your Encounters ASAP. You want them to get on cooldown then off again ASAP.
Use punishing Charge to reposition yourself when enemy skills target the ground under you, to chase enemies that have gotten displaced from you (the less time you miss getting to them = more dps), to clean up slightly scattered low health enemies that wicked strike would not reach and to position yourself to peel for your squishies.
Use WMS on 1-2 enemies and Wicked Strike on 3 or more. Use WMS first any way to get the debuff, and add it in to the rotatio nevery 2-3 seconds to keep the debuff on.
Your primary goal is to maximize your godlike AoE DPS. Refrain from getting caught up DPSing the boss/elite and instead reposition yourself with Punishing Charge into the thickest density of enemies and use WMS to debuff then wicked strike to burn them down. for really large, really sparsed encounters you can use punshing charge multiple times in conjunction with WMS and Wicked Strike to cover a much larger area.
Contrary to what is being said, do not 'save' your Indomitable Strike for 'dying' enemies. It is a waste of dps and the debuff is junk any way. The range is poor and you often dont debuff nearby enemies, and the worst part that you forget is that they lose the debuff if they attack you - whic hthey very well might. Instead, use it at the start of your rotation to get it on and off cooldown asap, and try to position yourself with lined up enemies to hit them all with it. Contrary to its tooltip, it has no target but a target area and will hit as many enemies as will come under it
Enjoy! GWF is a great class and plenty of fun
Additionally, you dont need to have a facefull of enemies to use slam. even 2 elites is a perfect time to use slam or 1 super elite (savage or similar). On boss fights, use it instead of crescendo. Especially combined with the 25% power boost, you are going to do way more damage than with a crescendo. Crescendo is only slightly less worthless than the other dailies. This is the only daily you need, I am still trying to figure out where i would use it over SLAM
Post edited by forsakenlich1 on
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Comments
Sentinel is pure worthless as guardians simply do a better job tanking - so why should you? Unless you get all tank gear, then your damage goes for ****, you dont want too much aggro any way.
Instigator is also meh. It does increase offhand AoE dps a little, but the 25% increase in power with SLAM is too good to pass up. It does have by FAR the best 31 point feat of the 3 trees, a guaranteed 50% increase in dps. Even if you take aggro the minute you lose it it is back up again. This does mean you cannot off-tank though, which is not really what a GWF wants to do. He wants to be available to peel and tank adds.
Companion - while leveling cleric is great and saves a lot of headache and irritation - not to mention gold. End game If you have life steal acolyte for solo to keep potting down a minimum and Ioun Stone for dungeons. The stone is the only companion that is untargetable and cannot die, and gives excellent bonuses. My stone is only rank 12 and gives me a whoping 340 Power, 141 defesne 121 arpen and some deflect regen and recovery - this is in addition to boosts from its items with a +7% pet stats rune stone.
The rest of the pets, until the ai is improved anyway, are just gimmicky. The only viable end game pets are the cat and stone at the moment and given the heavy AoE in dungeons like Mad Dragon, the only really viable 'pet' at all is the Ioun Stone
i have a new, secret playstyle that is super effective dps AND utility wise. your team will LOVE you and GWF will TONS more fun to play in dung.
I await beseeching
it also makes you the #1 executioner by far
Do tell? :P
it doesnt involve the enchants but the enchants are by far the best right now
its gameplay not enchants
haha ok
you use come at will, indomitable strike, roar and strike with the same feats build as the original post
Come at will gives great control and keeps adds and the mob groups together. Its the opposite of that annoying wizard spell and has GREAT range.
additionally, your next attack gets a flat damage buff. what is your next attack? Indomitable strike. You hit most of the group with it, and as i said it is not a target spell but AoE - and hits every enemy for the full amount. You then use roar, on all these well positioned enemies. you can easily get half an action bar or more per rotation.
You get insane DPS with come and get it + indomitable strike, roaring at pulled enemies gives you tons of action points which makes your slam on once or twice every fight, more on the big ones, and you keep your adds grouped for yourself and for the team.
Roar oftentimes just hits a few monsters because of positioning or messes up the positioning like that wizard spell and pisses your party off. if mobs are well positioned you can even roar first, then pull and strike. You get a lot of determination gain from slam being up constantly, and a lot of action points from roar and determination being up constantly.
this is also the only reliable way you can 'peel' for your cleric as a GWF as our threat is pretty bad
there, i shared it. the new and only reliable GWF in dungeons especially on trash. enjoy
disclaimer - on fights like mad drag and grey wolf den boss you want to switch out to the original build. mad drag requires punishing charge to avoid aoe, strike for damage, and takedown to interrupt the magi
7% of whatever stats the stone has - ie whatever items with enchants you put on him. it is a runestone called Eldritch Runestone. It does not stack
Yes, I know the runestone but it is defense slot only. Ioun Stone has Offense slots only?
Kitty has a defense slot
your right this is my bad. it makes it a very good class feature then. i will be using it instead of the determination feat
yep im wrong here as well
Which is why you need to get a kitty. I have one. His name is Itty Bitty Kitty. And he's awesome.
On this note I was thinking that a few points in focused destroyer might be superior to something like staying power, if not 5/5.
The cat died once on me when it was level 1 in a 60 epic, but I've been bringing it along ever since and had no issues. Also, doesn't the stone do 3 stats (power/crit/rec) instead of just the two? I can't see the difference being too big, plus you can put the % stone in the cat, which is alot more stats.
it gives 5 stats actually but primarily power recovery and arpen.
ive had my acolyte die shes around level 18 and she occasionally dies even while farming trash mobs
Nothing like the acolyte then, my kitty is pretty much immortal at this point. still trying to find it a good belt though, seems like they are few and far between. Probably end up having to buy one with badges.
just did lair of the mad drag. granted i was probably higher GS than the rest of the group (9k) but at the 2nd boss I had 3 million more dps than both the rogues in the group. Not something many GWFs can claim unless they doing 10k GS runs with 5800s in Cloak Tower
this is THE build
just did epic lair of the pirate king. I got off to a slow start because i was fiddling with my graphics and coming late to packs. There was a CW and a rogue in similar gear. At the end of the dungeon i had 6 million more dps than the rogue. She said she didnt know what was going on and that this is the first time she has been outdpsed in PvE.
Ima keep touting my own horn. This is the only viable/utility build that makes a GWF a GREAT thing to have in your party instead of another rogue or CW
Getting hit seems to be a very valid strategy when determination starved, and no one seems to be mentioning intentionally doing so...
i havent gone into his guide much mostly because hes just trying to be different. A glance at the sentinel and instigator trees shows that they are not good
As a class your utility is heavy damage, especially AoE, and offtanking capabilities. An instigator cannot tank, a sentinel tries to pure tank but does it much worse than a guardian and loses a lot of damage. Destroer is the only viable build
I need to clarify and change the original post - it is not the original kit but the one posted on page 2 that is the best.
Chaining Come and Get It, Indomitable Strike and Roar does a HUGE amount of damage and easy gives you 1/2 - 3/4 of your action bar on epic dung packs. You can have slam up twice per pack, which in turn makes your determination maxed 24x7, and you have the 25% power boost a lot of the time.
I have also switched the determination gain class feature for destroyer - running destroyer and steel blitz together
I just think that the final destroyer feat is underwhelming in comparison, and that there is a possibility that an instigator build that runs almost exactly the same setup as yours -- indomitable strike, roar, and not so fast instead of come and get it -- could dish out more damage. I'm not arguing for its tanking viability, but purely the damage portion of the tree because I agree entirely on your definition of our classes role. I guess it all comes down to how much of an effect combat advantage has on damage: do you have any experience on this?
Thanks for your help, your tip on roar being amazing is spot-on. Any GWF not using it is out of his mind. I've also tried out come and get it with your setup and it works great, though occasionally the cooldowns may not line up when things get hectic to hit that come and get it --> indomitable strike combo.
edit: also wicked strike doing a load more damage in instigator