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Ironwill's GWF PvE DPS Instigator Guide
ironwill92
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users Posts: 39
Hi.
I'm Ironwill(Ironwill@Ironwill92) from the server Dragon and I'm in the guild rolemodels. After reading the other guides on the net and trying out lots of different builds myself, I decided to write an own guide, because I didn't find a guide on here mentioning all information I find to be crucial for GWF gameplay.
Race
I strongly recommend Half-Orc cause of the extra Strength and Dexterity and the 5 % Critical Severity, which is really nice to have.
Ability Scores
Skill full Str/Dex. Nuff said. Just for max Damage and Crit.
Stat Priority
3000 Recovery > 2222 ArP > 3000 Crit > Power > Defense
Recovery is the most important stat cause it gives massive Cooldown Reduction and action point gain, combined with Unstoppable it's just insane. After a value from 3000 it has too massive Diminishing Returns so 3k is the cap. After that comes Armor Pen. A boss mob has 22 % reduction and you need 2222 ArP to penetrate that. Crit is also very good cause of our racial (5 % increased Critical Severity), the Feat Student of the Sword (Crits apply Defense Debuff), Vorpal Enchantment (Additional Crit Severity) and Devastating Critical (Critical Severity increased by 15 %). After 3000 Crit DR is again very high and it doesn't make very much sense to stack it. After you gained all these caps it's basically pure power stacking. Defense is a viable stat cause it gives us 20 % Power and in addition of course survivability, what helps us to fulfill our role as Off-Tank.
Enchantments
Utility Slots: Movement
Offense Slots: Recovery until cap, then ARP until cap, then Crit until cap, then Power
Defense Slots: Defense
Weapon Enchant: Perfect Vorpal Enchantment - Additional 50 % Crit Severity
Feats
Heroic:
Disciple of Strength 3/3 - Bonus damage through strength, always good
Unstoppable Action 4/5 - More Action Points, more Slam, nice to have
Endless Assault 3/3 - More encounter damage, must have talent
Steely Defense 5/5 - One of the best feats out there, makes Defense so much better
Weapon Mastery 2/3 - Only 2/3 points cause Critical Severity is slightly better
Devastating Critical 3/3 - Very nice feat, pushing your Critical Severity to the limits, this plus the racial is insane crit damage and this is a crit focused build
As Paragon Path we choose the Instigator Path cause the final feat is just too strong, 50 % more power, and in additon an important Wicked Strike buff through Group Assault. Of course I tested both paths very intensively, Destroyer Path is nice but Instigator is slightly better. Also it provides your group with additional support through the feat Allied Opportunity, giving the group 3 seconds Combat Advantage.
Paragon:
Unstoppable Recovery 5/5 - Not a very good feat but it's the only viable option there
Vicious Advantage 5/5 - The better you play, the better is this feat, cause it improves Combat Advantage, it's even better combined with the feat Allied Opportunity
Allied Opportunity 5/5 - Very important feat, nice group support as mentioned above
Group Assault 5/5 - Pretty good feat due to the WS buff from the recent patch
Instigator's Vengeance 1/1 - The strongest feat ever and the main reason why we pick the Instigator Path, has the best effect when you have a GF as tank so you receive as less hits as possible and have the 50 % power up
Student of the Sword 5/5 - Very strong feat cause it gives your class a unique ability that reduces defense for all mobs you crit hit by 45 %. Must have.
Powers
Just try to maximize the skills I recommend here.
Skills
Encounters:
Not so Fast - Good AoE damage and important to apply the 3 seconds Combat Advantage from our Allied Opportunity feat
Indomitable Battle Strike - Very nice damage and if killing blow marks the enemies for extra damage plus extra Action Points
Roar - Pretty good skill since the last patch where it got buffed with reduced cooldown, good AoE damage combined with tons of determination, only bad thing about it is the slight knockback but it's still viable
Roar is not a must have, alternatively you can choose between Flourish (Good single target damage), Daring Shout (extra determination and extra damage), Mighty Leap (extra mobility and AoE damage), Come and Get it (principially a good skill but range is unfortunately very short), Restoring Strike (damage and heal) or Punishing Charge (choose this for encounters where you need very high mobility to charge around like crazy).
At-Wills:
Weapon Master's Strike - Use this once to debuff the mobs
Wicked Strike - Spam this after using WMS to deal massive AoE damage
Dailys:
Slam - Use for very nice AoE-Damage, main Daily
Avalance of Steel - Slam has much more damage but this is a good alternative skill to use when you're in a bad situation and have no other option to dodge something that would kill you + you deal AoE damage and stun
Passives:
Steel Blitz - Very strong passive, cause at 10+ mobs it will proc nearly every swing
Destroyer - A flat 12 % AoE damage buff, what should I say more
Combat
Initiate with Not so Fast, then IBS which hits all targets in front of you, then roar, debuff once with WMS, then spam WS, don't forget to activate Unstoppable for max damage and activate Slam if available.
Hope you enjoyed my guide
Comments and constructive criticism are very much appreciated.
I'm Ironwill(Ironwill@Ironwill92) from the server Dragon and I'm in the guild rolemodels. After reading the other guides on the net and trying out lots of different builds myself, I decided to write an own guide, because I didn't find a guide on here mentioning all information I find to be crucial for GWF gameplay.
Race
I strongly recommend Half-Orc cause of the extra Strength and Dexterity and the 5 % Critical Severity, which is really nice to have.
Ability Scores
Skill full Str/Dex. Nuff said. Just for max Damage and Crit.
Stat Priority
3000 Recovery > 2222 ArP > 3000 Crit > Power > Defense
Recovery is the most important stat cause it gives massive Cooldown Reduction and action point gain, combined with Unstoppable it's just insane. After a value from 3000 it has too massive Diminishing Returns so 3k is the cap. After that comes Armor Pen. A boss mob has 22 % reduction and you need 2222 ArP to penetrate that. Crit is also very good cause of our racial (5 % increased Critical Severity), the Feat Student of the Sword (Crits apply Defense Debuff), Vorpal Enchantment (Additional Crit Severity) and Devastating Critical (Critical Severity increased by 15 %). After 3000 Crit DR is again very high and it doesn't make very much sense to stack it. After you gained all these caps it's basically pure power stacking. Defense is a viable stat cause it gives us 20 % Power and in addition of course survivability, what helps us to fulfill our role as Off-Tank.
Enchantments
Utility Slots: Movement
Offense Slots: Recovery until cap, then ARP until cap, then Crit until cap, then Power
Defense Slots: Defense
Weapon Enchant: Perfect Vorpal Enchantment - Additional 50 % Crit Severity
Feats
Heroic:
Disciple of Strength 3/3 - Bonus damage through strength, always good
Unstoppable Action 4/5 - More Action Points, more Slam, nice to have
Endless Assault 3/3 - More encounter damage, must have talent
Steely Defense 5/5 - One of the best feats out there, makes Defense so much better
Weapon Mastery 2/3 - Only 2/3 points cause Critical Severity is slightly better
Devastating Critical 3/3 - Very nice feat, pushing your Critical Severity to the limits, this plus the racial is insane crit damage and this is a crit focused build
As Paragon Path we choose the Instigator Path cause the final feat is just too strong, 50 % more power, and in additon an important Wicked Strike buff through Group Assault. Of course I tested both paths very intensively, Destroyer Path is nice but Instigator is slightly better. Also it provides your group with additional support through the feat Allied Opportunity, giving the group 3 seconds Combat Advantage.
Paragon:
Unstoppable Recovery 5/5 - Not a very good feat but it's the only viable option there
Vicious Advantage 5/5 - The better you play, the better is this feat, cause it improves Combat Advantage, it's even better combined with the feat Allied Opportunity
Allied Opportunity 5/5 - Very important feat, nice group support as mentioned above
Group Assault 5/5 - Pretty good feat due to the WS buff from the recent patch
Instigator's Vengeance 1/1 - The strongest feat ever and the main reason why we pick the Instigator Path, has the best effect when you have a GF as tank so you receive as less hits as possible and have the 50 % power up
Student of the Sword 5/5 - Very strong feat cause it gives your class a unique ability that reduces defense for all mobs you crit hit by 45 %. Must have.
Powers
Just try to maximize the skills I recommend here.
Skills
Encounters:
Not so Fast - Good AoE damage and important to apply the 3 seconds Combat Advantage from our Allied Opportunity feat
Indomitable Battle Strike - Very nice damage and if killing blow marks the enemies for extra damage plus extra Action Points
Roar - Pretty good skill since the last patch where it got buffed with reduced cooldown, good AoE damage combined with tons of determination, only bad thing about it is the slight knockback but it's still viable
Roar is not a must have, alternatively you can choose between Flourish (Good single target damage), Daring Shout (extra determination and extra damage), Mighty Leap (extra mobility and AoE damage), Come and Get it (principially a good skill but range is unfortunately very short), Restoring Strike (damage and heal) or Punishing Charge (choose this for encounters where you need very high mobility to charge around like crazy).
At-Wills:
Weapon Master's Strike - Use this once to debuff the mobs
Wicked Strike - Spam this after using WMS to deal massive AoE damage
Dailys:
Slam - Use for very nice AoE-Damage, main Daily
Avalance of Steel - Slam has much more damage but this is a good alternative skill to use when you're in a bad situation and have no other option to dodge something that would kill you + you deal AoE damage and stun
Passives:
Steel Blitz - Very strong passive, cause at 10+ mobs it will proc nearly every swing
Destroyer - A flat 12 % AoE damage buff, what should I say more
Combat
Initiate with Not so Fast, then IBS which hits all targets in front of you, then roar, debuff once with WMS, then spam WS, don't forget to activate Unstoppable for max damage and activate Slam if available.
Hope you enjoyed my guide
Comments and constructive criticism are very much appreciated.
Post edited by ironwill92 on
0
Comments
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?173021-ExtinctioN-style-GWF-Initiator-leave-them-all-bloody
Completed all content waiting for more.
And class balances.... trololollol.
The only problem i see is that the destroyer tree will give more short time dps results when i level. Instigator vengeance is one of the best feats in game i think, but its a long way to grab it. So i choose the V tree and if i want to try your build i sadly have to pay 600 zen to test. Poor job from Cryptic... But non the less i will test it in the future tanks again..
And yes its very sad that you have to pay 600 zen for respecing...
The similarity to Extinctions guide is randomly and there are some points I do different.
Thx
I also use to use flourish, but by deep into end game I've found roar work a whole lot better with regards to building AP for slam and generating determination for unstoppable. If a build uses roar instead of flourish I would edit into the main post to possibly swap the feat investment into buffing flourish.
I think we've built a similar shell for a build, I've really tried to optimize mine for maximum aoe dps output.
Extinction - GWF
yea im using WMS for AoE and Sure Strike for Single Target.
Sure Strike's damage is only slightly better than WMS but it hits faster and the last hit deals additional damage which makes it viable to use it. Of course i still debuff with WMS. Sadly Sure Strike still is a weak skill but better than WMS single target.
Roar is quite a nice skill and I really thought about using it cause it builds determination like crazy but sadly it has a knockback which is very bad for the whole group cause they're all losing damage when the mobs are knockbacked. I guess with Roar I'd deal slightly more damage due to Unstoppable uptime but the whole group would deal less.
Your guide is pretty nice, too, and I'm still thinking about changing my Sure Strike with Wicked Strike like you did. But I figured out dealing AoE with Wicked Strike isn't that much of a difference to pure WMS spamming so I take the single target damage from Sure Strike cause GWF already has a great AoE but lacks single target damage. Even with Indomitable Battle Strike and Flourish.
Rogues splatter targets single target and are so far ahead in that department I don't see sure strike putting out meaningful numbers sadly.
I can't wait for the GWF rework to see how they intend to make us relevant to end game content.
Extinction - GWF
at the moment im destroyer with good paragons and bat choice on powers.
Thanks for your help.
Btw is Instigator indeed very strong cause the 50 % extra power have a very high uptime and is way better than the Destroyer last skill.
But when I opened this thread I didn't knew about this caps just because nobody in this forum here is writing about this stuff...
indeed for me, new player, this is very confusing.
managed to get to 60 with some blue items (no t1/2 yet) and i focused on crt mainly. 37% overall crt chance.
my problem is the fact that i can't really quantify crt with power and recovery. crt is somehow easy cause severity is 95% means 35% crt means 32-33% more dmg overall. But have no idea how power, better said dmg power (power/25) affects my actual dmg. cause i get at 145 bonus dmg. what does it represents ? a flat dmg over actual dmg or i should consider my weapon has another 145 dmg to it's listing (1145 instead of 1000 for example) ?
also the feat student of the sword has any logic since some1 has 22% penetration ? - at least in pve.
another question would be about the so called [combat advantage], what it is basically ?
First I want to thank Ironwill92 for taking the time to make this spec guide.
I tried this spec in a few dungeons tonight but I found it lacking.
This is my own personal experience with the instigator spec.
We had another GWF with 2200 gear score less than me and we were doing the same damage. We ran two dungeons together with me using instigator.
So I asked him what spec he had and the answer was Destroyer with emphasis on determination and action points.
So I changed my spec to almost match his - with a few changes.
The result of this was that I did a ton more damage.
We ran two more dungeons with me using the destroyer spec.
I beat the other GWF with 20-50% in every dungeon, using his damage as a measurement for my old damage using the instigator spec.
I found myself using dailies and unstoppable a lot more and it felt more consistent with higher damage numbers and don't forget the added survivability with more unstoppable up time
if anyone is interested in my spec you can find it here.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://guidescroll.com/2013/05/neverwinter-great-weapon-fighter-guide/
The changes i made was;
Changed Powerful Challenge to Focused Destroyer (I bet you could manage with only 2-3 points in it and put the rest somewhere else).
Changed Daring Shout to Roar.
Changed Steadfast Determination for Destroyer (passives).
Same stat priority as in Ironwill92s spec (although I don't have any recovery yet, but I think recovery is even better for the destroyer spec).
Thanks for reading.
Hi,
crit is indeed a very good stat but only until a value somewhere like 2k cause if you get more the Diminshing Returns (DR) ist too high. Recovery is the best stat until 3k cause it gives massive Cooldown Reduction on all skills AND higher action point gain which means more Slam uptime. I tested it myself and it's very nice to have. ARP is important cause if you have 2222 ARP it's basically 22 % more true damage which is op. Then of course comes crit with a cap at 2k. As you see power isn't as good at all. Only if you have all caps you begin stacking power.
Student of the sword makes sense cause with that talent you can reduce the enemies defense up into negative values.
When you have combat advantage you will get bonus damage. You get combat advantage when you stand in the right spot versus an enemy, mostly it's attacking him from behind. You can see where the right spot is cause its marked by a blue area.
Hope that explains everything
Hi,
in some way I have to admit you're right.
In the last time I was more and more theory crafting and testing the destroyer tree and I found out for myself that maybe it is indeed the better tree. I got the Recovery cap (3k), which is even better in combination with the destroyer tree cause you'll have an ridicilously high Slam uptime due to Unstoppable uptime which gives not only damage but also damage reduction AND cc immunity.
Maybe I'll change my guide in this direction at an appropiate time.
Have to say didn't expect negative Armor Rating. AR of 2200 (@22%) is a true 28% more dmg indeed which is a lot, as it is the 11-13% more dmg u get from crt around 2k. But the question is now how does it go into negative values. Cause if it goes with the same magnitude it did so far it would make sense to go above 22%.
The effect of Recovery is fixed ? or it's formula is also based on diminishing returns. It's not that hard to quantify it's effect nevertheless.
Well it's a pity about power. If it were indeed dmg bonus on top of weapon dmg 2k for example would have been around 10% more dmg.
And i dont know either how exactly power works but I think it makes sense the way you described it.
NP man, you're welcome
(there are some other ones - and they all seem to come from pvp - sadly)