Swordmaster ahoy!

[Urlocke]

Evening Quillies,

After pottering around with the Knight and Bright Wizard, I finally gave into temptation and rolled a Swordmaster. I'm a big HE fan in general so the character appealed from a lore POV, I just wasn't keen on the (tank) role...always thought the SM was more of a DPS type of dude. And they look cool.

So, I'm only just into T2 but already need some pointers and advice. Initially I went with a 2H sword and tried to lay the smack - without much success. My damage output was low, as was my general tanking ability. Towards the latter end of T1 I decided to switch to Sword & Shield AND start to stack strength where possible (although all jewellery is for Toughness) - I don't know if it was general progression or the above move, but not only was I doing better in terms of OMGWTFpwn'ing people, but also surviving a bit more.

What I'm really asking: Is this a viable move? It seems to go against the grain to stack strength with sword n' board - should I just accept that I should not be trying to kill stuff and stack defensively instead (Toughness & Wounds)? Alternatively, should I switch back to a 2H and try to maximize my damage output that way?

Cheers for any help.

[Ostalic]

from what i know (albeit not allot) about tanks. sword n board for rvr and main tank. 2h sword when being an off tank or summit :D.

note: warrior priests are awesome tanks ^^

[Torryfys]

Actually I think that the S&B tank with offensive gear, renown and spec is the best way to go. As a Swordmaster, I often dreamed about ranking up one myself so I tried to grab informations and watched masteries paths ;)

So I had decided to go with Vaul path taking only Crushing Wave and Vaul's Buffer, and maybe Lingering Intimidation, and then put other points into Vaul taking Protection of Hoeth.. What I wanted was to have a tank able to do his job in a RvR enviroment and in PvE. Also, spec'ing 2h in Vaul can give good resuslts I think, afterall with the said spec you don't have any "shield only" ability, Parry is often enough to proc Vaul's Buffer, and Crushing Wave and Protection of Hoeth are always welcome :)

About group utility, you would gain a knockdown with good party buff and maybe a -25% crit chance debuff with Lingering Intimidation which can actually cut down the damage of most classes combined with Dragon's Talon.

About tactics, I thought of using Rugged, Vaul's Buffer, Lingering Intimidation and an offensive one, could be ENsorcelled Agony. So you are still pretty much as tanky as a SM can be plus you have both the option of line breaking with S&B and playing some more offensive role switching some tactics and equipping a 2h..

Renown would go into strenght and offensive stats and so would talismans and jewels.. Infact, being tank your sets often have enough toughness to let you have a decent amount with too much effort so this leaves some space to strenght talismans and such ;)

Hope this somewhat helped and good luck with playing the most cool looking class in the game :beer:

[Polemides]

there's lots of info on the SMs in the forums, you can do search here for some different ideas.

Briefly, imho, S&B (despite the fact that this is completely contrary to original Warhammer lore) is the way to go until Inv/DP/Tyrant gear, at that point you can begin to switch to 2H and be pretty decent.

The two specs most popular are Khaine/Hoeth and Vaul/Hoeth. Both are superb, I recommend trying them to see what suits you.

Btw, the new Bolstering Enchantments helps survivability (last night in scenarios was healing 6-8K!), and first and foremost, make nice with our guild healers, because they will keep you upright more than gear ever will.

Happy to help with any more info. Plus, give a shout to Ael, Torr, and Icevixon. They all have been doing fantastic with their builds :)

[Prelate]

Lot of SM and general tanking stuff can be found here.

http://immune-systems.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=5300#

[Urlocke]

Some useful info and link there, thanks a bunch guys.

[Aelahin]

My ears were burning (thx Snowy, you're quite the badass yourself), so after I'd put them out and got back from hospital I'd thought I'd chuck my .75 cents in (damnn inflation).

I run Khaine/Hoeth spec (Hoeth to Protection of Hoeth(Nice Shield) and Aethryric Armor(nice boost and great disrupt), Khaine to Ether Dance(oooh mama) with GWM and BA - (Build does Require RR60)) - with Sandstorm greatsword and Invader gear, LotD jewel/cloak melee power combo. Renown Spec for strength. Usually take morale pot, liniment of melee crit and armor pot. Against certain types of enemies my melee crit chance can hit 40% (damn good for a tank). PoH mean I can run at enemy and have my perfect balance knockdown ready to flatten des tanks/MDPS when guarding DPS en route to their squishies, or run with guarded healer for protection (and as soon as I see a WE stealth out I get it ready - nothing says leave me alone to a WE like a round of...

Ether Dance smackdown:flame:

I can solo anything PvE below hero at lvl 40 and have soloed lvl37 Hero, I have enough AoE stuff to be offtank in LV and enough dam output to be offtank elsewhere and still kill things.

I've been crunching some numbers (not very well though, I am NOT statboy) - and it seems to me that if I spec WS instead of strength and use Parry Jewels/LotD gear -I can get my parry close to 100% - which means that coupled with Taunt/challenge(beware of adds) I actually have a decent shot at Main Tank in PvE vs any melee boss...without slotting/specing toughness or wounds. Plus that high parry is very helpful in RvR vs anything but ranged (apart from wankers with the ignore parry pocket items) But if I mix armor sets I can get a decent boost to strength/toughness to help offset this loss of specced strength.

(try out WoDS with Bladeshield morale - that combo can take on a marauder and a WE at the same time, especially if you have the free extra parry tactic slotted...)

BIG NOTE: In ANY group situation, use GUARD - give nice renown boost(I've found) plus if you don't use it, on either a healer, slayer or BW, you just lost a heck of a lot of group utility - and the longer said guarded target is alive the more effect they have and the more renown/points Order can get

And remember to fire Challenge in RvR every time you are pointing towards several destro...essenctially a 30% dam debuff to every des for 20 secs(I think) unless they are hitting you.

[Urlocke]

Aelahin, thanks for that.

Just for clarification, how does me slapping Guard on a healer help with my own Renown? Does the Guard leech from him? Or is it purely assuming that with Guard, the Healer survives longer, does more healing and thus earns more (shared) Renown?

[Aelahin]

I think (and don't hold me to this) that when you guard a healer you of course get more shared renown from everyone being alive longer, but it seems possible that by guarding a healer you get assist renown from them as well as the dps'ers that you normally get from for assist.

But generally it seems guarding healers is only neccessary in some instances, or in RvR or Scen where there is not many, or only one healer (if ther is only one healer guard him and make like flypaper regardless of what any DPS says/whines at you...with only one healer death means traveltime)

Get Addon Think Out Loud and set it up to say "/say Guarding %f" when you fire guard - so everyone knows who you are guarding. And get addon Guardbot - creates a blue shield over your guarded target - great help in mass combat environments. Squared and Squaredclick is also useful. Squardclick allows you to target and fire Guard with one click...basically now you target, fire guard; with Sqauredclick you press a key and leftclick on any groupmember in squard and they get guard...

[Peavey]

Despite whatever negative things you may run into about SM -- Fret not. SM really is able to rock. Here is a quote from an SM showing his skill

I currenly run SM pve tanking with 2H. (And yes I do Solotank VL with 2H) I have tanked/killed dessie king pre patch 1.3.5 with 2 handed weapon

Cool class

[Polemides]

First of all, I know you're just trying to be positive Peavey, and it's appreciated. I personally think that the SM was poorly designed, with the "improved model" coming out as a KoTBS, and giving the devs an excuse to let slide SMs, since after the intro of Knights, SMs were getting squeezed out of a defined role in the game.

I solo tanked Lost Vale with my SM with BC about 5 months ago. Means nothing. A good party can kill anything :)

Last words from Devs on Swordmasters: "Working as Expected".

And you've heard my rant about Tyrant gear having a bonus to block(!!) on higher set number (4). Yep, that's a dev thinking real hard about SMs, giving a bonus to +5 BLOCK in which only is good if you choose S&B.

And don't get me started on the worthless bonuses for Vulture Lord glyphs. (3 glyphs for +4% block?!!!)

It's a neglected class, which demands a lot out of the people who play it.

It's a class I love to play and love to hate. :p

[Peavey]

Thanks Snowy.

Yes a good party can kill anything. No doubt. We are talking about Vulture Lord main tanking here. And using a two hander to main tank and solo tank. Whereby boss 8 hits incredibly hard.

A lot of people disagrees with the idea of main tanking with 2hand instead of Sword and Board. Nonetheless the idea of going away from traditional 2-2-2 grouping and going solo tank.

I'm listing few of the little cool things an SM can do for a person who started the thread and seem to love the class. I very much doubt I can solo tank with 2hander as a knight particularly on that boss 8 fight. Would love to try.

I don't feel guilty trying to make the person have something to feel good about investing the time to roll one.

I can't help it to try to be positive here as well because the negativity does not solve a thing.

Where I am now we started to try to embed SM more in a wb for two groups. And yes they are still useful in the way the warband works! (Btw it's not just whispering winds :P we try to find the little thing to go meta with what the class have)

Yes set bonuses from items are a lot of times questionable. For knights, I don't need willpower and they added it. But it's not just SM who complains.

Across the board for all tanks glyphs set bonus (at least the first 3 set bonuses) are completely standardized

Check:
http://www.wardb.com/itemset.aspx?id=4562
http://www.wardb.com/itemset.aspx?id=4570
http://www.wardb.com/itemset.aspx?id=4567

At least if wardb is correct SM is different in that for the 4th set bonus you get 4% mele crit chance while IB and Knight get the 25 hit points per 4 sec ...

so devs are lazy and not careful/thoughtful with these set bonuses.

But I do get your frustration Snowy, trust me!

[Polemides]

just wanted to make sure you didn't think I was upset with ya or anything! =) Yours (and everyone in the guilds) opinion and ideas are always great in the forums, just wish we could convince more people to use em!

plus, note that Snowy's not going anywhere, still my main, and the fact that the class is a challenge is actually one of the best points of it! (said as an ex-DAoC armsman!)

[Peavey]

Snowy is one of my favorite SM :P Will look awesome with those sovereign gear :D