Thinking man's warrior PVP build (VK/RB)

[Testercules]

bump
because it took me too long to find this page again

[Soulsurfing]

i was thinking about this spec and how we could tweak things around...came up with this

http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0c...o0o.xMsLzsMGzs

you get the pally insta heal, 10% extra s&b dmg, and sweeping strike, plus a 3rd caster interrupt (light's hammer, face slam, earth burst)

all while maintaining the core utility of the vk/rb build. planar blade, rift summon, purge, cleanse, elemental burst, and silence.

might have to play with this a bit

[nocks]

I've seen these around, and other people like it.. I personally like 38 vk more, or at least about 30 in VK to get Residual Absorption and Devourer

But, ultimately having higher block is just not much of an advantage. Most of the damage you will receive in PVP is elemental or magic based - including Marksmen spam, and everything Mages will throw at you. Block can also be overcome by high amounts of hit, supposedly (I haven't tested this, but Rogues swear by it.)

32 Riftblade is fun, but your Rift Surge actually maxes out at 29/30 points. You would get the extra point of Enhanced Burst, which is nice.

I'm not that crazy about Paladin in PVP. When 1.5 hit, I thought I would really need a Paladin/Riftblade build to counter all the crazy rogues, but in reality it performed worse than the Eldritch Knight build.

This could be an interesting build, but in my opinion what you're really getting here is just the 10% damage bonus from Paladin.. which just isn't worth giving up your two good silences, Shock Burst and Unstable Reaction. Not to me, anyway.. but let me know if you have better luck with this, if so maybe I'll give it another shot.

[Mortim]

Problem with 38 vk build is damage. its utterly pathetic 28 rb or ch or any other combination is just not enough to kill stuff. Believe me i tried all i could to make 38vk a good all allround build but the damage isnt there:-(

You need at least 2 dps souls to be able to do damage.

And as for paly.

Sweeping strikes crits for 1k to 2k depending on targets with a decent spec/gear. Read that again. 1k to 2k in pvp.

- SS is the best attack we have atm.

[Vedorial]

Problem with 38 vk build is damage. its utterly pathetic 28 rb or ch or any other combination is just not enough to kill stuff. Believe me i tried all i could to make 38vk a good all allround build but the damage isnt there:-(

You need at least 2 dps souls to be able to do damage.

And as for paly.

Sweeping strikes crits for 1k to 2k depending on targets with a decent spec/gear. Read that again. 1k to 2k in pvp.

- SS is the best attack we have atm.

Sweeping strikes does not crit for 2k on valor targets. You normally see 600 physical and 450 life on crits on similarly geared targets. If you had a crit of 2k in pvp, it was a fresh 50 with no valor.

[Xney]

Sweeping strikes does not crit for 2k on valor targets. You normally see 600 physical and 450 life on crits on similarly geared targets. If you had a crit of 2k in pvp, it was a fresh 50 with no valor.

^-- what he said. You don't even get 2K total against anybody in decent gear. more like 1K.

[Mortim]

Yes Exactly!

1k to 2k crits is what i said depeneding on targets.

I cant think of any other ability that is able to regurarly crit for 1k on full valor target can u (and crit for 2k on crap geared player)?

I did actualy find a higher damaging spec ability. 38 paragon 28 riftblade (no planar blade).

Modifiers on searing strike:

Frost strike + 20%
Frost armor + 20%
Strike like iron + 50%
Enhanced burst + 30%

and of teaching of five rings maxed out + almost maxed out rift fury.

That gives when the stars align 1300 crits on full valor target around 2k crits on dummy.

Too bad its too complicated in pvp to align all those buffs to searing strike. I tested it last weekend. was able to sudden death a few r8 clerics that were not supsecting a few 1300 crits in a row.

[nocks]

The damage on this build (38 VK/28 RB) is not THAT bad. At least, I get plenty of killing blows - usually 5-10 per Warfront with it. I agree it's not a DPS spec, but I think a lot of the reasons Warriors are suffering in PVP right now is because they have this mindset of "If I'm not doing as much damage as possible, I totally suck." But often, those people end up back on the Warrior forums complaining about the 5k crits they're receiving from Mages.

Take a page from other smart PVP'ers - like good Rogues - and accept a DPS hit if it means you are stronger overall. NB/RS is not anywhere near the highest DPS spec Rogues have, but it is their strongest spec.

It would be nice if we could steamroll players again like the days of yore, but it's not happening during 1.6. If anything, this is the time when we need defense most, considering the recent Mage buffs.

Sweeping Strike is okay... unless I am missing something, it's actually a little weaker than Ragestorm, just on a 3-second shorter cooldown. But with 26 in Void Knight you can use Ragestorm and Tempest...

[Mortim]

Mate!!

You missed something

Sweeping strikes is 2 times better than ragestorm

Ragestorm is 75% physcial damage 25% air damage

Sweeping strikes is 60% phys 40% Life damage.

Try see again if u can get the air portion of ragestorm up to 650 on a r6 player. U can with Sweeping strike. Check it out. SS hits 10 targets aswell... more than ragestorm.

Tempest in my best tempest spec crits 840 + 480 on dummy. All AIR damage 5 sec cd. Its ore like450+330 in pvp, but hey thats 800 damage on geared targets, 10 targets!

[nocks]

I'm just looking at the tooltips on ZAM (I'm at work, theoretically working) and it looks like SS is only 20 more damage than Ragestorm. It has Weapon + physical, then 11 damage per Pact.. which would be 110 damage with full Pacts. Sweeping Strike lists as 130 Life damage. You're right about the cooldown and targets, of course. I'll take your word on it being stronger. That is pretty interesting, and having all three (Tempest, Ragestorm, Sweeping Strike) would probably be a lot of damage. Then again, you definitely want to have at least 28 points in Riftblade for the Rift Fury bonus, which is the reason these attacks do any sort of damage at all.

I would think Tempest might be better than SS, since it has no physical damage in it whatsoever.. but maybe the weapon damage component is worth that much, especially with a 2-hander.

That is pretty interesting, I'll have to try it out.

But, just from my own perspective, I really enjoy all the little tools that the Eldritch Knight build has in its belt. You can't really add Paladin to this build without "Dumbing it down" and losing some of the coolest tricks, like Rift Summon/Residual Absorption/Shock Burst/Unstable Reaction, etc. Not saying those abilities are necessarily better (they aren't anything unless you use them) but I do love having them.

[Testercules]

It was the changes to Surge that got me using this again. It's excellent in library. The changes in RB might not be ideal, but they work for ME because I never really cared for using a gcd to get freeze armor off, especially on a manual cast. With the gains from PA, it's a non-issue for me, and I get increased dodge, and other chance-procs in its place: http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=1c...uzz.xGcozsMRzR

I would really like to get 2 points in Improved Rift Summon, though just to un-hide carriers and healers trying to LoS. But at the same time, it would always have to be dragging them to the group, because my personal damage is bleh. I'm often just hitting 4-5 people solo until I die if I go to the bottom at any time to try and deal with a carrier there that's being neglected.

I need to spellbreak more for my immunity procs! Half the time I don't even look at my debuffs until I'm slowed or visually see a dot ticking on me as it scrolls on my screen.
If I'm carrying the stone and get focused, instead of spellbreak being on it's own key, I use that

"Save yourself:

target [name] (or learn the @self macro.. which I forget at the moment)
cast spellbreaker
cast stoneshield
cast rift shield
targetlasttarget"

macro.

[Testercules]

I ran out of time to edit it!

#show spellbreaker
suppressmacrofailures
cast @self spellbreaker
cast stoneshield
cast @sel rift shield
targetlasttarget

named VKhalp in my list. tee hee

[Testercules]

A mage just called me OP. ha ha ha ha ha
This spec does very little damage, but I have been getting 5-0 on average with this.

I love just running right into the middle of a pile of casters and attacking the focus for 5 years solo.

[Xney]

Sadly the spec is only really strong in 2 situations:

1) Mages

2) Rogues 1v1 (except for an anti-VK rogue)

You can do well against warriors but not if they have any heals of any kind, even bard heals will outheal your damage. Mages will kill you if they have any type heals that you can't silence, but you have the most tools against their damage.

Still, it's one of the stronger specs in terms of defense that still can do stuff. The damage is just baaaadddd, however.

[Testercules]

Yeah, it's really low damage and crappy self-healing. I wish Atrius would boost VK damage. The original ragestorm spec used to be great til the nerf parade. The aggro with VK is still great. I wiped out a raid of Defiants earlier by drawing aggro on a boss and kiting it into the ranged. Good times were had by 1.