Guardian Fighter

Subject: Guardian Fighter Thu May 16, 2013 6:24 pm

DPS Guardian Fighter

Source: Envy

Envy's DPS Guardian Fighter compendium.
Update to Gear section and a new video!

So you picked a tank and want to do damage.

In this guide I'll tell you what feats I like and which I dislike, which powers I use, and what gear I focus on. Playstyle, strategy, and rotations will be towards the bottom. By the end of this mini-guide you'll be hitting numbers rogues are jealous of.

I. Race
Pick what you like. There, done. Moving on.

II. Powers

Good
Decent
Bad

Cleave - Probably one of the most solid at-wills in the game. I haven't changed it out once. Does great damage once feated for it, and its a frontal cone AE.

Tide of Iron - Again, another at-will you will probably keep slotted for the entirety of your Guardian Fighter career. The damage is about the same as cleave, but single target. The reason this skill shines is the guard meter replenish and a resistance debuff added to the target. Helps you stay alive and do more damage.

Lunging Strike - With 3 points, you get an incredibly long range gap closer with really good damage. I know you're tired of hearing this but, this is another skill that I've kept since level 1. At 60, I'm consistently critting ~12k with it, and as high as 18k. With a decent amount of recovery you can easily get a 6 second cooldown on this skill. Definitely my favorite.

Villian's Menace - This is the first daily you get. It increases your damage and makes you immune to CC for a short duration. It's okay. I rarely use it at 60, but would consider slotting it in a control wizard heavy PvP match. Upon further use I found this increases your overall DPS substantially in dungeon crawls. It's helped me crit for over 30k!

Shield Talent - Increases your guard meter by 5% for each point you put in it. This is irrelevant for our DPS needs.

Enforced Threat - Always use this in dungeons. It's a good AoE with good damage. It also helps keep the mobs off your healer companion. Best used in tandem with Frontline Surge.

Griffon's strike - This is a really great skill for lower level PvP. You get 3 stuns for the price of one power slot. It does pretty good damage to boot. However, once you're higher level you'll more than likely drop this for good.

Fighter's Recovery - This daily is great for health gain. The heal is dependent on how much damage you do so it heals for a ton with this build. I originally found this underwhelming as I tested it when I wasn't doing great damage. You can solo T2 bosses because of this and stay alive in 1v3s in PvP/

Terrifying Impact - This is a nice daily to have in your AoE build. It's one of your hardest hitting skills and its a front column AE knockdown. I have this maxed out but I never use it.

Knee Breaker - Another great skill for our DPS. This is a damage over time skill which is great because it means you're always damaging your target even if they've managed to create distance. It also comes with a slow. I use this for single target boss fights like Frozen Heart of the Spider Temple.

Enhanced Mark - Doesn't help our DPS but put it at 3 points so you can keep bosses on you when you're doing dungeons.

Guarded Assault - At 3 points reflects 3% of the damage you blocked back to the attacker. Haven't gotten a point in this. If you find success with it, good on you.

Crushing Surge - Your basic tanking at-will. Slow and low damage. Irrelevant for our goal of out dps'ing everyone.

Knight's Challenge - This skill has me torn. It's really good if you want to go for the 2-shot cheese as demonstrated in my video below. However, I only use it when there are multiple clerics on the enemy team that need to die quickly. Otherwise you may want to slot something with a bit more utility.

Combat Superiority - This is one of the passives that makes a DPS tank succeed. You get 10% damage after a mob hit you. Once feated, you get 15% damage and it no longer requires the mob hit you first.

Anvil of Doom - Arguably the highest damaging skill a GF has access too, under the condition that you use it on a target under 25% health for the double damage. My highest damage with this skill is 72k, non crit. Yeah, non crit.

Frontline Surge - As mentioned above, this is one of your AoE bread and butter skills. It's a faster, slightly weaker version of terrifying impact. Extremely good in PvP for a multitude of reasons. AoE KD. Fast animation. Big damage. Stacks the Timeless Hero set bonus easily.

Ferocious Reaction - I love this passive. While not majorly attributing to DPS, it does with my playstyle. I'll touch on that later. When you reach 15% health you gain 10% of your max health and do that much damage to the target who hit you. Temporarily gain a damage resistance buff. Just... wow. So good for PvP! If you don't slot this you're not doing it right.

Threatening Rush - I slot this in PvP. It's STUPID. How does this exist? A 20~ meter charge with no cooldown? I hope you weren't trying to kite me because it's not going to happen. Between this, lunging strike, and all your interrupts, no one is getting away from you.

Into the Fray - Decent group utility skill but without it being feated for the damage bonus (in the tactics tree), it's mostly unwarrented for this selfish DPS build. Screw you group, I'm trying to put out big numbers not help you put out bigger numbers!

Supremacy of Steel - Reflect. Really good for big mob pulls. I slot this in between bosses and while questing.

Trample the Fallen - 5% more damage to controlled targets. While a decent boost in DPS, both our passive slots are full already. If you really just want more DPS and don't mind sacrificing some survivability and utility, replace Ferocious Reaction.

Iron Warrior - Really good skill in conjunction to the feat that increases your damage by 15% while you have temporary hit points. I don't currently use this in my build, but if you find success with it I would love to hear.

Knight's Valor - Blah blah. Tanking bodyguard skill.

Bull Charge - High damage, decent cooldown, small gap closer, interrupt knockback. Everything you want in PvP. At first you'll be annoyed at how far you knock back everyone but with Lunging Strike and Threatening Rush you quickly realize it's not much of a hassle at all. A bonus is another tool to knock Clerics out of their circle.

Indomitable Strength - Really high burst, interrupt daily. Have this in one of your daily slots. I crit in 5 digits with this often.

Enduring Warrior - Why does this exist? So bad..

III. Heroic and Conqueror Feats

Strength Focus - Increases effectiveness of strength by 15%. More strength more damage!

Toughness - 9% more hitpoints. Live longer, hit longer!

Shielded Resurgence - Gain 4% of your max hit points when affected by a control. A little bit extra of survivability goes a long way.

Armor Specialization - Increases your armor and AC by 15%. This helps pad the damage youll be taking by not blocking as much.

Powerful attack - 10% more damage to your at-wills. Cleave OP.

Weapon Mastery - 3% crit chance. This is just to help hit that crit rate sweet spot once youre geared to the teeth.

Improved Vigor - Gaining more action points while low on health can be clutch. Pick this up.

Take Measure - When you're crit you gain temporary hit points (50 sec CD). Not only does this help you stay alive, in conjunction with Wrathful Warrior you get a huge DPS spike.

Reinforced Surge - Adds a second onto Frontline Surge KD. No DPS gain. Not worth.

Wrathful Warrior - 15% more damage while you have temporary hitpoints. Yes. Yes yes yes.

Cruel cut style - 15% more damage on cleave. Duh.

Staggering Challenge - This feat is worded confusing but I just avoided it since I don't use the frontline surge and Griffon's Strike in the same build.

Tactical Superiority - Combat superiority does more damage and I dont need to get hit for it? k Ill take that. Thanks.

Menacing Impact - Buffs two dailies. Dailies aren't up often enough to warrant using paragon points on.

Reckless Attacker - This is it. This is what makes a DPS GF work. You gain power equal to how full your guard meter is. A full guard meter is a full 100% bonus in your power.

Fight on - This feat is in the bottom tree. Which you will use your 5 remaining points on. 10% CDR on your encounters. Nuff said.

IV. Gear

The T2 Timeless Hero set. This is the BiS DPS gear for Guardian Fighters. 4 Piece allows you to take out those Azure stones you've been holding up in your offense slots. Your new offense slots should be Tenebrous enchantment. I won't go into numbers but this enchantment is BROKEN. It's such a large increase in DPS that I don't expect them to stay in the game the way they are for long. Since I've finished this set and socketed these enchantments my DPS has went up by over 30%. Just missing Castle Never BiS weapon set and I'll be BiS everything. ^^

V. Playstyle

Like many of the feats names, the conqueror spec encourages you to play reckless. That means don't block unless absolutely necessary. You'll find that you have enough passive survivability that blocking becomes largely irrelevant. Do your best to position yourself in such a way that you'll always have combat advantage. This shouldn't be a problem if you have a rogue in your group, as flanking provides CA.

VI. Rotation

PvE AoE - Terrifying Strike if full AC, Frontline Surge, Lunging Strike to gap close , Enforced Threat. Repeat when CDs allow (Weave Cleave combo's when efficient)

PvE Single Target - Tide of Iron, Griffon Strike, Lunging Strike, Griffon Strike, Knee Breaker, Griffon Strike, Indomitable Strength. Repeat. (Weave Cleave combo's when efficient)

PvP - Very Similar to the PvE single target, as PvP is all about the burst. You might want to mess around with a different build but I find my single target PvE to be successful

VII. PvP matchups

Trickster Rogue - When you see a rogue coming. Block. Just hold block. If you can, keep your back to a wall. Keep blocking until they blow their encounters, and make sure you block their disarm. Once their CDs are gone, use lunging strike and your at-will gap closer to stick to them. Knee breaker will help with this. You can use Griffon strikes for upfront damage but try to save one to stop them from running away at low health. Using the reflect daily is funny against them.

Control Wizard - Do they even do damage? I honestly stay full health when I fight them. Their blink is the same range as our at-will gap closer. I dunno what to say really, you can faceroll a CW without worrying about blocking anything in particular.

Devoted Cleric - Unless you have your daily ready, you're going to have a tough time bursting them down through their sustain. Do-able, just use your Griffon strike stuns sparingly.

Guardian Fighter - Just walk away. It's going to be a 5+ minute fight and nobody got time for that.

Great Weapon Fighter - Another faceroll matchup. Save your block for when they blow determination. Otherwise, you can mostly facetank their damage all while doing more than them.

Summary; Block TR initial burst and you win PvP.

Coming Soon

PvP Clips.
Dungeon runs.
Requests.

__________________________________________________ _________________________________

Just a short update for things that have changed:

PvP

Frontline Surge has become a permanent addition to my PvP setup. It's replaced Griffon's Strike. I did this because, while the 3 charges of high burst stun is good, it's not always feasible to stay in melee range to utilize them. Frontline Surge is a nice long ranged, AoE knockdown that can hit upwards of 14k.
Bull Rush has replaced knee breaker as a trial setup. I admit, when I first tried this skill I found it lack luster. I misinterpreted it for another gap closer, but when I found out that it wasn't I quickly wrote it off as useless. After seeing a friend use it to some success I slotted it for a few matches. Keep in mind that I only have 1 point spent in this skill atm. I'm loving it so far. While the knockback is rather annoying, it can be useful for point control and this skill crits just as hard as Lunging or Frontline. I can literally do 30k damage in 1 stun.
PvP enchants. I really really wanted Vorpal. Alas, I'm not rich so I'll leave that for another day. Instead, I've built myself a nice Greater Plague Fire. There are a few reasons why this enchantment works wonders. 1st it has % weapon damage on hit. That's okay. Then it has % weapon damage over time. This is more useful because as you know it takes 5 hits to dismount someone. If you lunging strike someone that counts as a hit. The initial enchantment damage counts as a hit. The next 3 ticks of damage count as a hit and bam dismounted from 1 skill use. Last but not least, a greater has insane armor shred. Reduces armor by 15% on each hit and stacks 3 times. 45% armor, GONE. Who needs armor pen when you have this? NO ONE. Now for the armor enchant. Soulforged. Another highly sought enchantment. However, even the lesser version is too good to pass up. When you take damage while below 25% health you go immune to all damage for 2 seconds. Free get out of death card? Yes please. I'll turn this into a greater one day.

PvE

Playstyle. Not a whole lot has changed here other than the fact I've now confirmed this spec is not only viable in t2 dungeons, but recommended over a tankier spec. Like Rokuthy mentioned in his update, the current meta only allows a Conq spec. Most fights are done with a Rogue solo'ing the boss, while you, the cleric, the wizard, and the weapon fighter are on add control. Your job is to gather up all the adds and make sure they're in one nice little spot to be AoE bursted. If you don't like that then I'm sorry, complain to Cryptic because it's the most efficient way of handling T2s at the moment.
Gear. I'm stacking crit strike. This is more of a preference because I like seeing big numbers. You could easily do well with a power stack. You can see my unfinished gear here. I still need new boots and a few pieces of jewelry.
Companion. I've mentioned this in comments to this post but for those of you who haven't seen, get the cat. The cat is a GOD. You get such a large bulk of stats. I really can't believe these are even in the game. They're that good. My cat is only level 19 and currently gives me all of these stats.

Powers and Feats

I will be buying a respec token shortly to utilize my points more efficiently. I'll be dropping iron warrior completely, along with some other tank skills I picked up in favor for 3 points into Bull Rush and a few into Knight's Challenge. For feats I'm going to rearrange some points around so that I can put 2 into Grit and see how that works out. I'll report back with new screen shots and a summary once I get enough AD to respec (donations welcome :3).

That's all for now. If there's anything more you'd like me to update on please ask. Yes, I'll record another video soon.

Subject: Re: Guardian Fighter Thu May 16, 2013 7:43 pm

Using a build fairly similar to this myself. Loving it so far, especially for PvP.

Subject: Re: Guardian Fighter Thu May 16, 2013 8:21 pm

Glad to see this build is going to be great for people then

Posts : 6 Reputation : 0 Join date : 2013-05-17

ty very hel[ful

Subject: Re: Guardian Fighter Fri May 31, 2013 2:32 am

Here is a decent built. includes feats

http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?166451-Envy-s-DPS-Guardian-Fighter-compendium

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