Cleave Build

[Arawn]

I tried this build and literally fought the same mob for 10 minutes. I honestly don't see how this is the meta build for warrior. It's absolute sh*t. In the four and half years I've been playing this game this is by far the worst warrior build

[Nhat]

Might be worth comparing to these videos, if you haven't seen them yet...

https://forum.makingfun.com/forum/eternium/gameplay-videos/195645-warrior-cleave-push-tl151

[Mandrah]

Did you pull an elite pack with a healer, or a shielder? Do you have the belt, with enough parry, with CD on all gear? It's a miserable build when its not set up right, and I abandon trials if i get the wrong elite pack, but I'm at 155, mobile only, with 2000 CL, so it can't be that bad.....

[davidz]

Same here. Did they buff the mobs for warriors? So hard to just kill a small mob.

[Mandrah]

But no harder to kill a lot of them, they all die at the same time. The extra mobs provide extra parry which provides more crit and more WW. Killing 1, or just one pack, is maddening. Watch the Romme videos and see the groups he pulls.

[davidz]

Yes, I’m doing the same but stuck at 144 now… even my crafting is very sloppy now… I lost my confidence. There’s one time I almost killed garm before time out, but I was killed by him, so time expired.

[Mandrah]

149 was weeks for me. And then 153. I even saved a screen shot of 0:00 time remaining kill but didn't get credit. 154 dropped a day after 153. 150 dropped on first pull after the weeks on 149. Keep at it. Garm will drop. I would need 5 minutes or so, in a corner with stacked circles, to kill him.

[davidz]

My build still has quite a few problems that need to be fixed through some ANB, I guess I have to be patient. Thanks for all the great advice

[TheExorcist]

In the old days for a strictly shield warrior perspective (DW I dunno it's not my department):

1. Everythin frenzy (mobs & bosses). If do it right Rarely dies. The only matter is Timin. 2. Then Frenzy not working against mobs. We used Cleave.
4. Cleave is powerful until recently.
5. RS? even worser. Rare for me doin massive pulling safely usin RS.
Wat' s left?:

1. Cleave. It's the best among the worst I should say. Have to think of somethin/ new strategies etc.ANY IDEAS?

2. The only thing left?: Shield slam. It's the one and only /single most powerful thing for a SW. Without it a shield warrior better go hibernating/to sleep

Have a nice day

[davidz]

Do you use cleave BoM or slam BoM? With Qol, we can use both cleave and frenzy.

[TheExorcist]

Shield slam = slam bom. Cleave bom not working well for a shield warrior I'm afraid

[Kardinaal]

Bleed warrior might be viable since the buffs, but no one seems eager to try it out. I’m almost tempted but I still got a ton of work on my shield warrior. There’s some old builds here if you wanna try to build one:

https://forum.makingfun.com/forum/et...d-eg-xp-1-5-18.

If you’re looking for a chalenge, making the bleed build work with the extra cast and differences in ar will get you that . The bleed build was never nerfed in damage, only the changes in ar made it unplayable. With the extra cast you could get around that, and end up with a bleed warrior that has the damage of the old days, and the extra boosts done in the update added on.

I even believe that the warrior meta might have shifted to bleed, only no one tried afaik. But apart from that you would end up with a build where you do damage with a casted skill on a tight budget cast speed wise. If that is more what your looking for, try it out.

[MrNoob]

Bleed build cleared tl155 this season and sw cleared tl 154. Both builds look about even for clearing trials.

[MrNoob]

Has anyone tried 4j/2f for the bleed warrior? The 70 % bonus from the 4 piece bonus along with Shockwave bom should be strong if you don't die too much.

[Romme]

It's 70% base damage. Doesn't factor the bleed damage, so it's bad.

[Circassian]

I tried this build and literally fought the same mob for 10 minutes. I honestly don't see how this is the meta build for warrior. It's absolute sh*t. In the four and half years I've been playing this game this is by far the worst warrior build

Being a sh1tty player myself,I don't have much to say but after wandering around like a headless chicken for several months,I then started reading posts in the forum and learnt quite a lot in theory even though I can't execute them all.One thing I'm sure of is that 4w/2f cleave built is far more effective than any other.
as per fighting the same mob/group of mobs for 10mins is %2500 caused by a nasty nasty healer.
if you play the same trial level without rushing it,(to avoid pulling healers),you will witness how beautifully cleave is doing the job.
A snow map would be in your favour as you can see danger indicating circles more clearer.
May the cleave be with you

[Kardinaal]

Shockwave has 2 sources of damage:

- one doing 2000% weapon damage
- a second taking all the bleed damage done for the next 2 seconds, multiplies that by 20

Only the first (less important) part gets boosted by the BoM and juggernaut bonuses. For bom I’d go with rending slash.

It’s the second part that does the big damage, getting fed by all the bleeds you inflict, mostly from when it crits, turns into a big bleed, that feeds the next shockwave, crits again, snowballing into a massive damage 3rd shockwave. Then after you recharge your 3 casts, rinse and repeat…. Ideally you would have an under 10s recharge time on shockwave, so you can synchronize the barrage with a talisman proc. You need really high crit rate to have a good chance for this snowball effect to take place. After a bit of puzzling I came up with the following build:



The Bloodburst Tri-shock Warrior


Introduction:

The name says it all: It’s a bleed warrior burst damage build, bursting with 3 shockwaves every talisman proc. Here and there you will see ** signs. These are related to a more offensive and defensive variant, denoting gear and stat optimization.


Gear and skills:

vampyric blades
4 warlord 2 juggernaut or defender**
Belt of the Templar
Charm of QoL
Talisman of Unbridled Fury
Integralas mantle
Rending Slash BoM

Rending Slash / Cleave or Frenzy **
Jump / Charge / Shockwave
Endurance / Duellist / Tough as Nails


Stats and gear choices:

Lets first address the elephant in the room: Crit rating talisman. Yes. On a ToUF proc, you will have huge crit chance:

- Belt of the Templar 5000
- Talisman 3000
- Gear stat slots 1485
- Full complement of Topaz 850
- Champion levels 400
- Clarity enchantments 300
- Duellist 150

Total 11185 crit rate, translating into crit chance as 79% to crit once, twice 62%, trice 49%. That’s 50% chance you will crit the full 3 shockwave barrage. Not included here is the bonus from charge, as it will be used to get crit in the seconds before the barrage so we get decent bleeds to start the snowball.


Stats on gear:

- first row: crit damage all around
- second row: 2/3rd Power 1/3rd crit rating
- 3rd row: Trinkets, bom and belt +% fire damage, rest ability rate (we wanna get 40% faster cast rate so sw is 10s, and fully charged every talisman proc)
- 4th row: boots and pants movement speed, the rest split between parry, armour and vit **

By being creative with crit rating we free up a lot of gear slots for big crit damage and power stacking, and the necessary casting speed to make the build work. The setup gives decent crit chance all around so you have a steady source of bleeds at all times, and goes through the roof when we go Tri-shock . Even in boss phase without templar belt the chances of critting the entire tri-shock are 1 in 3.

Another interesting thing is with shockwaves full reload of 30s, it becomes a sort of timer that lets you know when the talisman will proc.


** Offensive variation:

2 juggernaut + Frenzy as a secondary attack. Gives +500% crit damage, which is a nice boost as we don’t have ToS.

Since you have only the bonus from vampyric blades for healing in between bursts, you want to do a 2 parry / 2 armour / 1 vit stat distribution, to emphasize damage mitigation so you need less healing. You would have 2 stacks of shockwave healing on for half of the 30s cycle and on top the vamp blade healing, the other 15s it’s just the vamp blade. So expect to see your life drop slowly, then heal up from the barrage, in a sort of yo-yo effect.


** Defensive variation:

2 defender + cleave as a secondary attack. Less damage, but more damage mitigation and healing.


Fortress of steel procs give 6% of total life. You will be getting plenty:

- Every cast of charge also casts battle rage: 8 procs
- Every cast of jump also casts battle rage: 8 procs
- Whirlwind proc every 5s: 4 procs

With our casting speed an average of 15% of total life every second, 17,5% with the vamp blade healing. This means this build has way more healing in between the barrages. Since all our healing is based on life, and we get that nice extra damage mitigation from Cleave, a stat distribution of 2 slots parry / 3 slots vit will get the most out of the bigger healing component. This will allow you to pull more mobs at higher trials.


Bringing it all together:

Playing the build is easy due to the shockwave clock:


1. Talisman procs - start the clock (0-6s)

burst your shockwaves, the last one right before the talisman proc ends


2. Rest of first shockwave recharge (6-10s)

Check your health. Are you healing enough? Apple/potion time. Start pulling with charge and jump (hold one charge cast).


3. 2nd shockwave recharge (10-20s)

If more healing is needed, cast an extra shockwave before the healing boost ends (15-16s) to extend healing at the cost of only having two shockwaves next burst. Keep pulling. After 15s stop using jump, remember to hold one cast of charge.


4. 3rd shockwave recharge (10-30s)

Time to prepare for the next talisman proc. Find a good place to park the mob around 25s, charge around 28s for the crit boost. Get in the center with jump. All this generates bleeds to feed that first shockwave when the next talisman proc comes, and a lot of them are on a 6s timer. And since shockwave needs 2s of bleeds you now have a 4s window. Get ready to shockwave at the proc (mobile users draw and hold the shockwave sign, so to cast all you need to do is lift your finger).

And when talisman procs it’s back to 1 ofcourse .

[Kardinaal]

I haven’t tried the build as a whole, but did high ar shockwave testing with my shield warrior, the timings described can be pulled off. I also did testing with the defender 2 bonus, and it does add up to a lot of healing if you have the base health to match. This build is a combination of some ideas milling around in my head for a cleave/shield warrior running 4wl 2d, and an aha moment for getting the high crit needed for the burst cycle.

Like most builds hit hard by the ar nerf, what used to be constant damage, is now more like a burst damage build. Keeping shockwave chaining indefinitely would need a shockwave cooldown under 4 seconds (bleed is 6s long and shockwave needs 2s left on the timer). Getting 3 shockwave reloads in 30s is hard enough. That’s also why the ridiculously high crit rate, you don’t get many chances so you need to crit consistently. A trial is 20 talisman procs, and roughly half of those will be 3 consecutive crits.

Another possibility is trying to get even faster cast time, under 9s for Shockwave would enable you to triple-crit shock, with the bleed from the 3rd shockwave lasting just long enough so shockwave 4 is ready with 2 seconds left on the bleed. You’d need to open up the info on the target and check the bleed damage to know how many crits you chained to decide if it’s worth using that extra shockwave, and have one less the next burst. Going even faster under 7,5s would give you the speed you need to have 4 shockwave cooldowns in 30s. The only way I can think of to get that low would be ar on everything, and belt of the whirling storm. And even then you might need a xagan companion.

One last thing, as you can see I give the timing breakpoints you need to hit to barely make these casts. Alacrity should shave off a tenth of a second here and there to shorten it all just enough to make the timing possible. Ofcourse the shorter your cooldown, the less chance alacrity has to nibble away at it. This would also become a problem at faster shockwave casting speeds.

[Kardinaal]

To give more of an idea on the healing of the 4wl/2D variant:

On average every second:

- 2 defender bonus is roughly 15% of total life
- sanguinarius bonus 2.5%
- shockwave has the 2 stacks of healing on for roughly half time for another 10%

Adding up to a total 27,5% of your total health regenerated per second.

My original idea was to use this life regen (well the 15% d2 gives at high ar) as the basis for a high damage mitigation shield warrior, shrugging off a big peace of the damage and healing whatever comes through. This would give me insane survivability, with a lot of the standard cleave build intact, and a more modest version of shield slam to make up for the missing parts.

So the bleed build stands on knowledge and testing of shockwave, the afore mentioned build, and general knowledge found in the link I shared in an earlier post. And the idea to use the crit rate talisman made it possible to get all the stats one one toon.

[Kardinaal]

One last thing to mention, is that I have no idea what would be the ideal power to crit damage ratio. I went with crit damage all around and limited power because power can be boosted higher with champion levels. That and the general thought that it’s crits doing the work in this build. But that’s more of a gut feeling, I didn’t do any math to check.