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GWF Build help
sac1987
Member Posts: 1 Arc User
Ok i have made a GWF the other day and it will be my main so i can play the game more as my other character is a level 38 cleric (used only when friends are online to roleplay with) my GWF is only level 14 at this time so wanted some advice before i make a mistake and have to spend zen to fixs it or even re make the character
Character info
LVL14
Humen - 21 strength 14 dex 13 con
ive been useing the Stunlock guide in masters list but looked at the last few posts and posts under the video and players have been saying its out of date.
what i want to know is what the best dungeon dps build that can also do well in pvp what powers i should use untill i get the higher ones what feats i should use would be helpfull too.
any help would be appreciated
Character info
LVL14
Humen - 21 strength 14 dex 13 con
ive been useing the Stunlock guide in masters list but looked at the last few posts and posts under the video and players have been saying its out of date.
what i want to know is what the best dungeon dps build that can also do well in pvp what powers i should use untill i get the higher ones what feats i should use would be helpfull too.
any help would be appreciated
Post edited by sac1987 on
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Stun Lock build was a good PvP build but was never a great PvE build. Also ever since people figured out how good Tenebrous enchantments are in PvP, stacking HP/Constitution with some life leech and going Sentinel tree is now the preferred PvP build. Keep in mind for an optimal PvP Sentinel build, you're gonna be picking up a lot of abilities that are only really good in PvP and skipping ones that are good for PvE, so unless you're gonna PvP a lot, I'd probably just go with a more normal DPS build while leveling, until 60, at which point you can decide if you just want to be a strictly PvP player or want to stay PvE.
Here's just my suggestion. LINK
Don't pay too much attention to my Powers, the main thing is my Feats build (tab at the top of the page). For the Powers, that's my build after respeccing at 60 because I knew exactly what I use and don't use but it might not be feasible as you're leveling (for instance I don't have Wicked Strike slotted at all because at level 60 I have Weapon Master Strike, however as you're leveling, it's about 10 levels between Wicked Strike and Weapon Master Strike, so I'd pick it up just to have an AOE attack in the meantime).
My Heroic feats, I'm still going back and forth on a couple points here and there. The Paragon tree points though (right side) are pretty set. As far as order of points, I went Great Weapon Focus first, Deep Gash 2nd, Staying Power 3rd, then keep going along that tree until you reach the end, then go to the Sentinel tree.
At level 60, for PvE I run with Destroyer and Weapon Master passives slotted. Sure Strike for single target and Weapon Master's Strike for AOE (if you sprint cancel your attacks, it does more DPS than Wicked Strike, not to mention debuff enemies). Dailies are Slam for AOE and Savage Advance for single target (Savage Advance does more damage than Crescendo because you can attack right after popping Savage whereas Crescendo is a channeled attack where you stop attacking, I still keep Crescendo though for PvP).
My usual Encounters are Daring Shout, Roar, and Indomitable Battle Strike. I know it's unusual to have Daring Shout and Roar but it's worked out great for me. If I see a mob of enemies, I run in and hit them with Weapon Master Strike for 10% bonus damage, hit them with Daring Shout for 15% bonus damage, Roar, you should be able to pop Unstoppable now which gives 10% bonus damage, then pop Indomitable Battle Strike (if you've managed to keep all buffs up on the target, IBS will get a 35% damage boost), which if you can kill an enemy with, will mark enemies around him, giving you that 15% damage boost again.
I've run builds that favor direct damage encounters (Flourish, Takedown/Restoring Strike, Indomitable Battle Strike). That is a good rotation for PvP and I switch to it when I PvP, but for PvE, to me, GWF who run this just seem like crappy versions of Trickster Rogues. It's not playing to the strengths of the class. While it's good damage single target, in PvE as long as there is two enemies you can hit, I've found the double shout + IBS build to be much better. Even the majority of boss fights in this game spawns adds non stop so you're almost never just hitting one boss target for very long in this game.
Your encounters are there basically to get you Unstoppable asap. With the way mob density works in this game, as long as you're smart about positioning yourself in front of groups of enemies, you can pop Unstoppable almost non-stop. Overall damage will be a lot higher because of all the debuffs/buffs you're applying. Also makes you a lot tankier because you're Unstoppable so often. Also you gain AP faster in Unstoppable so you're popping dailies more often.
as for skills yours are same levels as the stunlock build so i could still use that in pvp and swap line up for pve for dungeons.
now the only thing im unsure on is my feats as the ones in the stunlock build are little over the place but sound like they work well together if you think it would be beter to focus on one tree in them can you drop a link for your recomendations for feats.
as gear stats its crit>power>armourpen right? (i know dont make much difference at my level
as for my pve skill lineup at the moment restoring slash - not so fast - takedown and daily is avalanche of steel
So until then, just slot whatever attacks you prefer at the time. Don't be afraid to try new attacks too. I almost consider it a given that one will respec at 60 so I use the ride up to 60 to just experiment by putting at least one point in everything to just try it out.
Here
the skills are almost the same as ones you picked apart from wickedstrike is on there so i have a 2nd skill to use till i get wepon master strike
next is my feats i put them in as if im a burst dps but if you think that ive made big mistakes do tell me (im not too worryed about this as it can be respect for without zen)
anyway feed back would be helpfull
Just a personal preference on my end... Enjoy!
Which brings me to the feats and namely Focused Destroyer. I personally think it's the best feat in the whole tree and the point of going Destroyer. While it might not seem like such a big deal to have, as you feel you're hitting 3 or more mobs often enough in the game, as someone who used it, then didn't have it (tried Instigator tree for a while, that lasted half a day lol), it's a HUGE difference in terms of how often it procs. Besides the obvious prereq of having to have 3 enemies to hit in order for Destroyer to go off, the thing is the moment you stop hitting 3 or more mobs happens (if one dies or runs away), the countdown of wearing off starts. If it wears off, you're back at 0 and have to build up 3 stacks again. With Focused Destroyer, once you get 3 stacks up, as long as you hit a mob, even just one mob, it will stay up. With 5 points in there, I basically consider it on all the time, which is a flat 12% damage boost on everything.
This comes up most often in boss fights. I know a couple posts back I mentioned how boss fights in this game have a lot of adds, and that's true, I stand by that, but a lot of times the adds will be spread out enough that you can't hit all 3 at once. Maybe you can maneuver them around, push them together with Roar, etc, but by the time you can do that, a lot of times one of the enemies may die or is knocked back further by a CW, etc. It makes it such a struggle to get 3 stacks of Destroyer in those situations without Focused feat that it always feels frustrating for me as I know I'm missing out on a whopping 12% damage boost. Same deal for those phases of boss fights when there are no adds and only the boss. Can't stand knowing I'm doing 12% less damage. It allows Destroyer spec to have decent single target DPS.
Don't get me wrong, Relentless Battle Fury is good and I miss the reduced cooldowns (10 second roars, 8 second takedowns were fun), the damage bonus from Focused is too good to pass up, it's the whole point of going Destroyer imo.
Only other note is the Heroic feats, I'm not sold on Steely Defense yet but if you check the front page, I made another thread asking about it so I can't say 100% whether it's good or not yet lol. For what it's worth, if I put 5 points into Steely Defense, I would get 293 power. I guess that's decent, just wondering if Constitution Focus's increased Resistance Ignored is worth more than 3 points into Steely Defense.
I run a sent dps build on one GWF, and a Destroyer GWF on the other. Currently use Steely Defense and 1 pt into Con feat, but I'll likely sub out 2 pts and put it into con when i can afford it. Playing Castle never, and I still end up on the 'that hurt' side too often for my tastes.
i think it will run fairly smothly droped the marked damage as im unsure how it works for GWF but from what i found when i searched theres only like 2 mark skills for us
My opinion:
Focused Destroyer > Relentless Battle Fury
and
Powerful Challenge > Desciple of War (Unless you cant even afford rank5 enchants and/or dont have a Stone/Cat)
Yeah idk, I mentioned several times already in the thread that Focused Destroyer is almost the lynchpin of the entire Destroyer tree and how useful Powerful Challenge is.
As you probably know already, Relentless Battlefury is nice but not better than the 2 other options and plus reduced cooldowns is such a hard benefit to quantify. For instance, Battlefury power is not that great. With this node it's not too bad because you can pop it more often but the cast time takes so long and eats into the duration (though casting it while moving helps). Also Takedown is a great ability and it's awesome in PvP to have a super short cooldown. But in PvE the cooldown reduction isn't that big and chances are you wouldn't be taking Takedown as one of your main Encounters into dungeons (the next time I see another GWF trying to pretend he's a TR going Flourish, Takedown, IBS in PvE, I will just flip out. That belongs in PvP. Good single target DPS but horrible overall DPS in dungeon situation). Roar is great all around in PvE but again, I wouldn't put 5 points here for 1.5 seconds CD reduction on Roar over near 100% uptime on 12% bonus damage from Focused Destroyer.
I heard reports that Disciple of War is bugged currently and not returning the values it promises. If so, then that really sucks. But even if it doesn't, I don't think it's that great and no way better than Powerful Challenge. You have to have a high amount of Recovery for that to be decent and while Recovery is good for a GWF, it takes really good gear to get high Recovery without sacrificing Armor Pen & Crit. Also no amount of bonus Armor Pen is gonna come close to a 15% flat damage increase.
If running around solo all the time, I can see how it it may not seem that useful. Usually you mark them and they immediately hit you. But 1) in that solo situation, you're mostly taking Daring Shout for the determination gain (if you fight 3 enemies, which is nearly all the time, Weapon Master Strike, Daring Shout, Roar = Unstoppable every mob group). And 2) It really shines in dungeon crawls, which is this game's endgame. First of all your GF tank should be marking targets so boom, doing 15% more damage to them. It'll drop off because they're hitting the tank, now you pop yours. 15% damage. If you're Destroyer tree, you won't have aggro/threat boosters so enemies are very unlikely to hit you so the mark will stay on the entire duration. Especially useful against bosses as the mark should be up 75-90% of the time.
But it is his choice if he wants to play the game how he wants to. If he has fun with his build, that's what matters most, just giving my opinion.
belladan
Power is a GWF's bread and butter , once you reach the soft caps there is nothing better than power other than crit . Every good GWF crosses 2 paths no matter which ones they choose , all take student of the sword and deep gash . Deep gash does 15% of your power 'every ' crit . when I stagger onslaught and activate madness my power goes to 8400 , that's over 1200 damage per crit just from gash . There's also intimidation which does 10% of your power in damage . I seldom kick people from a group for having a low gear score but if I saw a 12k+ GWF in my group who only put 2k in power there would be a vote kick from someone . Your quote came from an older post and maybe you've corrected that error in thinking .
belladan is offline
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Join Date:Apr 2013
Honestly? Power is overrated by a little bit. Given the feats that people will acquire, you are going to end up acquiring a certain amount of oomph from your defense stat. All builds that aren't using the int17 option will pretty much go this route. Now, I'm not lvl 60, so my end-game preference will be different. (pps: if it weren't for the human feats placed for a specific build type, half-elf 17int build is OP... ^_^)
Weapon Damage by far beats out the power stat. I'll forego an 80+ power upgrade if I can keep 80% of that increase in either armor pen or crit chance, but a 10 damage increase in weapon damage will outperform both alternatives hands down. Given my build, I actually lost 120 power and some armor pen for a shadowfell greatsword that had +86 weapon damage. At level 26, my at- will single target increased damage by a good 18%, my encounters by an easy 25%. My crits went from a top range of 1137 to occasionally hitting in the 1800's. (normally 1600.) PS: doing the dungeon for lvl 24, I can top damage easily enough. Sometimes I'm close to 200k over the next highest.
Slam is still my daily of choice simply because I can perform attacks while it is running. It gets it's guarantee of being on my hotkeys due to the extra bonus of a slow. My secondary is avalanche of steel currently due to the specific situation of being able to jump and move my land position if there are too many mobs between me and that pesky PC cleric that ends up pulling a dozen mobs on him.
End game, I'm going to scale so that I'll hopefully retain 30-33% crit, and then cycle recovery/power in equal measure. Then it's armor pen in last place.
IMO Roar is still a GWF's best utility skill , the damage isn't as important to me as the interruption it causes when the red appears under your party and the huge amount of determination you get in a mob . Roar is what I also use to keep Onslaught from AoW gear up , the destroyer tree has a cool down feat for it and with enough recovery from AoW onslaught you can pretty much stay unstoppable .
Thread is from July. Very few people would be referencing it if you hadn't necroed.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
Plus, you can tweak your own build based on his info, he is also quick with Q/A if you have any.
Here are the links, I find them super useful.
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?426811-Sentinel-GWF-Build-PvE-Focus-(PvP-viable)-LEEROY-JENKINS(!!!)
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?503601-Dakkon-Blackblade-PvE-Destroyer-Build&p=6245971&posted=1#post6245971
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?511181-Abaddon-Hellreaver-PvE-Instigator-Build&p=6332511#post6332511