Lia Knowles Great Weapon Fighter

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Updated for Mod 8! No feat change (as of yet, still under testing). Boon tweaks (Underdark ones), gear, etc. No class changes this mod, build is still viable.

Updated – Jan 1st, 2016.



Mod 6 kindly granted the GWF’s with new tools, allowing the class to regain the long lost former glory. I will say upfront, the build is not cheap. Might get very expensive to an extent, but will most definitely do the job DPS wise. Lead paingiver will be no stranger to you, and yet, there’s no magic to make it all happen other than hard work and understanding of the class and its core. So with no further ado:

On what we’re going to achieve
• Single target royalty. • Up to 100% crit chance madness. • Become mobile Off-tanks.

On what we’re not going to achieve
• Become actual turtle tanks. • Become Superb PVP players (a slightly different build is required to be viable + paragon change.) • Become Superior trash cleaners (although much better cleaners than GWF’s ever were prior to this mod.)

A few more words about the build
The Great Weapon Fighter is amongst one of the highest (or  the  highest) single target DPS’rs there are as for mod 6. Thanks to new abilities and powers, we’re able to assist the party with AOE’s, but must never forget – we’re built for single target. Elite mobs? Bosses? All of those are our primary duty and contribution. The two core ingredients for single target DPS are high crit rate (chance and severity) and bonus damage. Buff/Debuff are also a core ingredient, on which I’ll explain later on. Of course none of these will be achieved without proper mechanics and decent understanding of the class and its feats.

=== Race choice === Since a GWF’s core abilities are both DEX and STR, the best choice for a race would be an Half Orc for +2 DEX/STR, and 5% more crit severity (which will play a big role later on). Another good choice (and mine, personally) is human. +2 to any ability (a loss of 2 if compared to an orc), but +3 heroic feats and +3% defense. I believe both race bonuses balance each other out eventually, (like the extra feats are mostly equivalent to the +2 ability an orc gets), but it’s a matter of choice. Orc is by all means superior due to the Crit Severity.

=== Ability rolls === I like my bonus damage as high as it can get without hurting my crit chance, especially since we’re not stacking power this mod. So, if human, roll 17 STR and 16 DEX. (this will balance out since we’re wearing a 2/2 belt eventually.) If Orc, then basically 18 STR/DEX for max results.

We’re going to add +1/+1 to DEX/STR every 10 levels.

Why Swordmaster?
This is my personal point of view. I’ve tried both, and I feel as if IV is mainly about Frontline Surge, yet another AOE encounter with low damage. I’d prefer my Crescendo, Weapon Master Strike and Flourish over these, all designed to do major dps or boost our personal damage. Since this build is built upon marking foes, some might argue that Daring Shout’s cooldown is ridiculous and would prefer Threatening Rush for that reason. Thing is, Rush will mark a single foe at best while Daring will mark a lot more with ease, which will cause the Destroyer feat to proc, and we all want that bonus damage eventually. Even though both mark features will grant you combat advantage, Daring Shout will also boost up your damage resistance, allowing you to tank the mobs better and reduce mobs damage resistance for yourself and the party as long as they won’t attack you. Overall, SM is designed for dps route, while IV is more of a tanky route. All in all, this build is for SM.

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Powers [Power chart for leveling] ===== The routine pretty much fits everywhere, either for clearing trash mobs and single target bosses. There’s hardly need to change it, but if you need a little bit of CC or healing, the options are vast.

Routine consists of:

At wills: Sure Strike/Weapon Master Strike Encounters: Restoring Strike/Flourish/Hidden Daggers, Daring Shout, Indomitable Battle Strike. (preference on Hidden Daggers for trash clearing and single target due to the massive buff we get.) Dailies – Crescendo and Sp+inning Strike Class Feats (that’ll rarely leave your tray): – Destroyer and Weapon Master.

* An ideal routine would consist of – Hidden Daggers, Daring Shout, IBS.

*Avalanche of Steel can also be an option for an AOE daily rather than spinning strike, but the casting time is incredibly long, and by the time you land you will lose all stacks of Weapon Master and Destroyer, thus doing less eventual damage (although you will be building those up by hitting mass amount of mobs)

A little bit about my choice of encounters
Restoring Strike – Will save your life often during potion CD and when you’re out of stamina. Damage is more than decent. Flourish – Animation might be long, yes, but the damage is great, and the added stun for an elite mob will benefit the party. Hidden Daggers – Great AOE. The charges are flexible and the damage is also decent. The 40% melee damage buff is very useful, try to use it before you use IBS or Crecendo. Daring Shout – Is our greeting to mobs. Great buff/debuff encounter for the party and for yourself. Generates Combat Advantage. Also since feated, 15% more damage to marked targets. Indomitable Battle Strike – Our best friend and strongest encounter. Should be used wisely (will elaborate in a bit).

* Why Weapon Master Strike? – Any kind of debuff to our attacker is super crucial this mod, much more than it was in previous mods. Even though the animation is super slow and clunky, the eventual result is more than amazing and can get a single swipe of your Sure Strike to crit for 100 – 150k. Plus, since we got it feated, it’ll boost our encounters by 10%, thus providing further DPS for us.

==== Important mechanics for that routine [For a gamplay video demonstrations, please visit my Youtube playlist/channel] ==== Although all we want is to rush into battle and smack everything with IBS, our feats and encounters allow us to do more damage over time. Keys for correct entrance to battle and mechanics throughout:

• As soon as you rush into a pack of mobs, use Daring Shout. If more than 3 mobs around (and even if not, we still have a 25% chance since it’s feated) our Destroyer class feat will proc and start stacking, plus we get 15% more damage on marked targets and combat advantage buff for ourselves and our party.

• After Daring Shout, when we finally use IBS we want it to be 100% effective and possibly high critted. For this to happen, we’d want to stack our Weapon Master class feat to a max (In my case a total of 98% crit chance including this lovely feat, our offhand feature and glyphs) by spamming Weapon Master Strike, debuffing the mobs for our next Sure Strike spam.

• Since feated to build determination by both getting hit by mobs AND hitting mobs back (and of course Daring Shout), by this stage our bar will be full, and then we can go unstoppable.

• While finally unstoppable, we’re going to spam as many encounter charges as we can (given our super long CD) for max damage thanks to Destroyer’s Purpose that’ll grant damage bonus for each stack and 20% more damage for our encounters. To make this effective, and due to our WMS feat, the following order is crucial to buff yourself properly – Mark, WMS, Hidden Daggers, and only then IBS. Only use your encounters while you have stacks ready and full (10 Destro Purpose, 6 Weapon Master, at least 1 Destroyer). Make sure you build up to that by using just your at wills for a few seconds during Unstoppable.

• From then on, rinse and repeat. Try to use your encounters while unstoppable as much as you can to maximize your usefulness.

• As far as dailies go, try to use Spinning Strike when mobs are grouped. CW’s will often ruin your daily with Oppressive Force, but there’s nothing you can do, just be alert and expect their behavior beforehand.

• Crescendo is also best when all the above is activated. Try to use Hidden Daggers before every major strike, such as Crescendo and IBS. Always eye your buff bar to see if Destroyer’s Purpose, Weapon Master, Destroyer and Staying Power are all fully stacked while the boss is marked before pulling Crescendo in order to maximize your damage.

A few important things that’ll help you along the road –
 * At-wills are your main source of damage. Use them wisely! (much more effective during Unstopabble as they are faster.)
 * Your encounters come secondary and two of them actually serve to buff your at-wills and IBS.
 * Dailies can sometimes be a waste of time. For example (and this is very situational), sometimes it’s better not to use Spinning Strike and WMS all the mobs down instead as it’ll do more damage overall and be quicker. Spinning Strike is a must-use during Unstopabble, most mobs will try and CC you, hence interrupting your daily if you’re not already CC immune.
 * Foot work is important! Learn how to use your Stamina wisely, prevent from sprinting between a batch of mobs to another to maintain your stamina high enough to maneuver between mobs and avoid one-shot type attacks.

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Gear
Armor set

Best in slot – If you have access to Dragonflight gear, we’ll go for the crit/no-armpen pieces depends on your armpen situation (differs usually in the helmet as you can pick a recovery or armpen version. If you lack armpen and don’t reach the 60% in any other way, the Assault would be a better fit), and armpen/crit chest piece since we have no other choice to keep our crit intact. We’ll use the Drowcraft Raid gloves, thus gaining crit from all 4 pieces. Going 4 pieces of DF is also an option, you will not lose any crit, but the gain is very little and mostly not worth it.

Alternatives – These sets take quite some time to achieve, so in the meantime, if leveling between 60 – 70, you can use the Well of Dragons Eternal set offered for a small price of ToD campaign currency via the vendor. Delving into 70 dungeoneering, you can mix between the Raid and Assault t1 and t1.5 sets, try to pick relevant pieces for your need (if you lack armpen, then armpen comes above all), and of course, critical strike. For tier 2 equipment you can go for the Elven Ward set. (You obtain it by doing T2 dungeons, gaining Protector Seals and buying the pieces from the vendor in Seven Suns Coster Market.) Crit, power, recovery and defense. Since it’s quite easy for us to cap our armor penetration (60% for PVE) early on, we have no need in the stat within our armor. As far as Underdark goes – Dusk and Drowcraft are valid alternatives for Dragonflight if you can’t obtain it, pieces with crit are a priority.

Weapon and Offhand

Best in slot – shall be the artifact set, in this case Twisted Labrys (+the sure strike/WMS bonus, I change mine frequently) and it’s matching offhand Twisted Sword knot. As far as the offhand stat increase and class feat of choice go, choose Weapon Master (for extra crit chance) and Combat Advantage for stat increase. The set can be obtained via Epic Demongorgon and is currently the best choice for a DPS GWF since the stacks are easy to maintain on the offensive side, and even if that doesn’t go well – extra defense always grants us double values in the form of damage resistance and power (due to our feats).

Alternatives – While leveling, you can use either dragon bone weapons or Ensorcelled Mulhorand weapons. If you don’t have the funds to get either, just normal weapons are fine. After finishing the Spinward Rise area you’ll obtain the Elemental Fire weapons. It’s recommended to use them in the meantime (since getting the Twisted set takes time), however – refining them to max is not beneficial and they can stay at epic level at most.

Belt

Best in slot – Golden belt of Puissance to get our core STR/DEX stats and complete our Lostmauth set.

Alternatives – You can simply wear whatever, the belt is very easy to get or pay for.

Jewelry

Best in slot – 2x Personalized Adamant Ring of Recovery/Piercing. I own two sets of ring since my armpen dependency changes according to gear frequently. The choice is individual and a sight for the long-run is needed including pace of evolving gear wise, etc.

* Note (about the Underdark rings) – I personally refuse to farm the skirmishes for a drop rate that’s utterly ridiculous only to get a ring I don’t want or need. If you happen to be lucky/can tolerate the grind better than I do, a Ring of Rising Precision +5 with a Ring of Rising Power +5 would be ideal for our kind of build.

Alternatives – 2x Elemental Alliance Assault rings, at least until you get your Jewelcrafting up.

Neck

Best in slot – We’ll go for Lostmauth’s Hoard Necklace for our major DPS stats – crit/power/armpen.

Alternatives – You can go for Elemental Alliance Assault Necklace in the meantime, recovery is never bad in addition to power.

Weapon and Armor enchantment

For weapon a Vorpal is the best choice for us by far up to 100% of our hits in will crit, severity is important for increased DPS. For armor, since we take a lot of beating and the tiniest of spiderlings will one shot you if you’re not careful, a Soulforged would be best.

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==== Artifacts ==== I went with – * Once close to Best in Slot or very highly geared (+if you have a snail equipped), our AP gain will more than suffice and we can drop the DC sigil for other options. A good option is the Wheel of Elements with the fire buff, or switch out to the Lantern as primary (wise to use it in Tiamat, DragonFlight, etc. since it it’s a shared damage buff and not just personal.)
 * Lantern of Revelation – Crit/Armpen/CA
 * Lostmauth’s Horn of Blasting – Power/Armpen/Control resist
 * DC sigil as primary/Wheel of Elements – AP refill, Power/Defense/Incoming Healing/HP, Power, Stamina gain + 30% more damage over 28 seconds (fire buff)
 * CW sigil – Power/Crit/Control Resist

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Companions
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Augment – I believe every Ioun with 3x offense slots shall be best for a GWF. Radiance, might, Black dragon, etc. I’ve chosen a Ioun of Radiance.

* Important! I am no longer using an Augment. I do NOT recommend players with lower gear to ditch their Augments for regular companions, it’s still ideally the best choice for you. If you’re BIS, close to it, or looking to really min/max your damage, I’d recommend switching your Augment to a Zhentarim Warlock. The Slaad is not a bad option but proved to be a little less useful since it’s melee (despite the dots). The key in using these companions is basically equipping perfect (or above) perfect bondings in their Runestone slots. Those provide 65%x3 of the companion stats to you in combat. The Warlock has absolutely no CD on one of its powers and the procs are instant. (The bondings actually provide more than 65% at this point, could be a bug or a tooltip problem at rank 12.) This requires a slightly different playstyle, you have got to be aware of your companion, make sure it’s not left behind, not too far off or dead for too long but the results proved to be very positive. The damage gain from the companion compared to the augment are near to 20%. With 3 stacks of Companion’s Gift a BIS GWF can get up to 40k power, 30k crit, etc.

Other companions –

Legendary Erinyes of Belial – For 10% extra crit severity. (Unfortunately, I accidentally upgraded the erinyes, epic is just fine, no need for it to be legendary at all.)

Epic Yeti/Cambion Magus– for extra 10% damage for me upon taking damage (procs very well and been tested.) / or 10% crit severity (more of a constant buff instead of a proc, yet very very expensive to get.)

Epic Blink Dog/Air Archon – for +5% Combat Advantage / or +5% to any target not at full health (0.5% more because we have the fire archon).

Epic Fire Archon/Dancing Blade – for +7% extra damage against foes under 50% HP. (stacks beautifully with the Exec’s Style feat.) or +5% crit severity.

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==== Enchantments ==== Offense slot – Azure Enchantments. Defense slot – Radiant enchantments. Utility Slot – Dark enchantment/Hoards/Fey blessing.

[Note] – At first you’re going to have to balance your stats a lot, will lack a good amount of armor penetration and will need to have dark enchants in your offense slots. As your gear improves you’ll gain more arpen and can begin swapping the darks for azures. Keep in mind the game changes often and you’ll find the need to periodically re-balance.

==== Stats ==== Power – Not as important as it was in previous mods. We’d like to keep it at a decent level, and will get all of it from gear alone (no enchantments).

Critical Strike – Our best buddy in the build. We will work to stack as much crit as we can from gear, enchantments and companions to eventually reach 95% – 100% chance in combat to make the build viable.

Armor Penetration – With either 14/15 CON (4/5% resistance ignored respectively) we’ll need 54/55% more to reach the PVE cap of 60%. Around 6k – 6.2k will do.

Recovery – We’ll get some recovery from our gear, 3k at one point tops. Most of our damage comes from our actual at wills, so it’s less important, and if it is, it’s mainly for the Action Point gain.

Combat Advantage – Since Daring Shout will generate flank for us, this is an important stat for increased damage. Around 1k should be enough for 8 – 9% bonus damage.

Defense – We’ll be stacking HP instead of defense this mod, so our DR will be rather basic. We’ll have around 5k defense from our gear alone in endgame. (no amount of DR in the world will save us from one shots, sadly.)

Regen – Not really something you need for PVE. If you have jewelry on your augment and have some extra AD, +100 regen kits will contribute for some incoming healing, not more than 1 – 2% though.

Deflect – A great defensive stat (and as explained above, can be an alternative to HP stacking.) With boons and raw stats, we’ll have around 20% endgame.

Life Steal – Lifesteal became obsolete during this mod since it’s now a proc, but a decent amount can still save you from near-death experiences. Anything above 7% but under 10% is perfect.

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==== Feats

==== '' *Powerful Challenge is a major key in this build to build up our dps. Both of the options to get to this feat (Scale Agility and Unstoppable recovery) are decent. I personally like my deflect chance higher, but if you’re feeling squishy, 5/5 in Unstoppable Recovery can also do. ''

'' *Mighty Blade does not affect many of the encounters we regularly use, but it’s good for leveling (plenty of Not so Fast, Mighty Leap, etc.) When your crit chance is high enough and above around 60%, Student of the Sword is a better choice. [Note]'' – For non-humans –

[Note] – The missing point could easily transfer to Weapon Mastery instead.

Boons


[Note]  – Unless you have reached the armpen cap of 60%, refrain from choosing both the deflect boon from Dread Ring and defense from Tyranny of Dragons. Once you have though, choose the defensive boons.

[Stronghold] – As for guild boons, since I’m the GM of my guild our choice of boons was convenient for the guildies and for me as well. BIS boons for this build would be the +15% crit severity boon and either HP or Defense for the defensive part, in case your guild is going to get just one of those, both are very valid. I personally picked defense since it contributes to power and I’m in no need for extra HP (due to my Radiants).

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Final Stats
(With a summoned companion/not in combat)

(With a summoned companion/In combat + 3 stacks of Companion’s Gift)

''And there we go! Hope you enjoyed the build. I would appreciate feedback of any kind. I apologise for any mistakes done (mainly language wise. English is not my primary language) and would like to thank my super supportive guild – ★The Holy Crusaders★and my very best friend in-game, Haumea@prezblack for helping out.''