The Cleave Tank - 4wl2d push build

[Kardinaal]

It all started with a comment to a post in the latest balance thread here on these forums, by Romme:

-Warrior needs some massive passive buffs to survive high trials since you know.. they can't kite and actually need to get hit... Dw needs ww procs for the 30% damage reduction and all the healing it gives. They need leap for the 50% damage reduction. They need itz for the 2000 parry. Without just 1 of these good luck surviving tl150+. Unless you want to massively increase warrior damage so they aren't forced to pull half the map. Or buff armor for warrior so it's possible to get like 98-99% damage reduction...because that's what it would take.

The 99% damage reduction thing got stuck in my head. Rattling around. Clashing with the 95% damage reduction I saw on my shield warrior. That little voice going “bet that’s possible”.

So after a few months of this, decided to give it a try. How to get a tank that gives you 99% damage mitigation. And at what cost damage wise. Well enough introduction, I give you:

The Cleave Tank


Skills:

cleave / frenzy
jump / charge / in the zone
sword and board / tough as nails / duelist


gear:

4 warlord
2 defender
cleaver
encrypted shield
belt of the templar
cleave BoM
Integralas mantle
talisman of storms
charm of qol


stats:

crit damage
1500 AR / block
20% parry / power / cr (use naht’s files for ideal ratio)
+%physical dmg / speed / vit


The tank:

99% damage mitigation for mob phase was the goal I set, and I got quite close. 95% from armour (needs 3 norgrim), and 20% from parry work against all attacks (melee, ranged and magic). So far it’s simple.

But it gets complicated once you start on blocking. First, you can block at max 95% of incoming attacks for 75% of the damage, but only melee and ranged. You can’t block magic. And also you cannot block a parried attack… But magic attacks can be parried.

Then there’s itz, cleave, jump, the shield bubble and the defender 2 procs all providing mitigation. No way I’m doing all that math.

So I went with a more practical approach: I went into the training grounds to test it that way. Only magical attacks there, so no block factor. Shot of attacks for 5 minutes untill the numbers stabilised at 98%. Add to that the block and I should be close or at 99%…


The trade off:

Since I swap out the ww axe for a shield, I need a different source of healing for that 1% damage that bleeds through. That’s where the armour sets come in. 2 pieces of defender give a healing proc for every jump, charge, ww and br. The bonuses from warlords provide ww procs and battlerage procs. So they synergise for a lot of healing.

So no fury / storm of sword cause I need healing, that’s 15% of our damage. Luckily shield slam provides a nice extra source of damage to soften the blow. 125% block provides some crit block to have enough shield slams go off.

[Turgeon]

So wich trial are you able to do with this?

[Turgeon]

If it give curiosity to master romme it maybe worth the try isit it?

[Romme]

I think you wouldn't make it to tl150 with this set up

[Turgeon]

Probably too much 8nvestment into block for the small return

[Romme]

So after that post the devs actually made some changed to base armor for warriors and I can get 35k armor on my dw warrior, which is 96% damage reduction. It's still not enough to get anywhere close to mage and bh max trials but I'll definitely take it as a step in the right direction.

[davidz]

Why don’t you use the black guard set? It gives %50 damage reduction and slam damage, plus everything you mentioned. It doesn’t have the %1200 buff I reckoned.

[Turgeon]

Yeah and without that buff cleave worth nothing so absolutly need that

[Kardinaal]

Problem is I don’t have the gear to really see how high in trials I can go. With a 75 cleaver, 77 shield, rest of the items on average 74, I got stuck at tl144 (my new current best).

Now here is what I did test: swapped out the shield for a 77 ww axe and ran a normal cleave warrior with compareable stats at tl142. Tried 5 times, made it once, barely. Shield slam did as much damage as storm of swords (partially due to skill, I tend to miss a fair amount of the time. It’s definately more tanky, with the normal build I cleared in 3 mobs, with the cleave tank I did two half map pulls.

For the shield there is no really good choice. Blackguards does nothing for the build. Rylockes might be interesting for a nature damage based exp build, but at high trials the lightning effect is quite underwhelming. So this leaves us with encrypted shield. A bubble now and then is better than nothing, so it’s the best pick of the bunch. No use boosting it’s effects though, even with LoH on everything I don’t manage to sustain one permanently (where in pvp LoH helps a ton).

[Jude Smith]

I tried Rylocks shield before. The lightning damage just isn't worth it because reflected damage is rubbish on warrior. Reflect works best on mage because of mage armour and the offhand that increases reflect damage by 100%. But it was still only any good on bosses. I got Magroth to 1 shot himself by standing in his meteor shower with Paradox skill active once. Must have been a lucky crit. Normal mobs don't seem to do enough damage to kill themselves. As I said that wasn't with Rylocks though.

[TheExorcist]

I hope u do succeed in relaying to us a workable new build.
I'm from the old school.
In my mindset Shield warrior = full defender set.
Im not saying that hybrid Defender Shield warrior won't work/won't perform well:

1. "It's just that the old masters/SW experts never inform us of hybrid Defender build that works. hahaha"

2. I never try a hybrid Defender.

THus I'm only try this and that with the full defender set. eg:

1. years back we used encrypted shield now BG set, replace slam bom with DT ( now I know it won't work well at trial 150- so back to slam bom), for bosses shockwave won't perform well (for mobs Shockwave is excellence for a shield warrior), DT nearly useless against Kara at 150 (back to BR)

2. years back Shilieen and other masters has a success with BR DT and Shield block. At that time whirlwind shield warriors are behind any Shield warriors build without whirlwind. That is the time when AR is not being nerfed.

3. With recent AR status whirlwind is a must ( in my honest opinion - I might be wrong)

Conclusion (till today)

1. For me alone: Full defender set is some sort of a rule of law for any defender build.

2. Slam bom "if not the" it is one of the most powerful ability for shield warriors.

3. To step by step/slowly succeed until say just trial 150 = full defender set.

Nevertheless All my opinion above is obsolete (I'm wrong) If any hybrid Shield warriors can prove it will reached trial 150.

Have a nice day

[davidz]

I’m building my SW now. The DT is pretty good and sometimes close to the Slam. You mean DT is not good for high level trials? My SW is ok for lvl 105, but not good for higher levels. Needs a lot of work to improve it. What is the fighting strategy? I simply throw everything as soon as they are available. The only exception is to try to make SB to go with TOS. My main focus will still be my cleave build which is far from complete, so I don’t expect my SW to be seriously good for a while.

[Turgeon]

As soon as youll hit 140 maybe bfre youll need shield slam instead of dt.

[davidz]

Slam is already my top damage. I’m not sure about the third active skill right now

[Jude Smith]

Just did a test of rylocks. All blue gear has block and power. Only unique items are rylocks and a firelily. I put reactive armour enchant on just for a comparison. All I did was auto attack cleave the entire run with sword and board for the extra block. Of course the rylocks damage would go up the higher the trial because of how reflected damage works but still this was done without any spells used I think the damage wouldn't even appear on the list if it was a proper build. Deflect rating only increases the chance to reflect damage back, not the amount of damage it does, therefore increasing deflect wouldn't affect rylocks at all.

[Kardinaal]

Thanks for the explanation. Never managed any good damage with rylockes shield, now I get why. I thought it might just be low damage on the lightning so it might work on lower trials, but you put me back on my original idea about it: it’s a mage shield.

[Jude Smith]

I also did a test with block and deflect on all blue gear with just the rylocks and lily again. Tl 60 autoattack cleave again. Deflect was 11% damage and rylocks was 2%. I also managed to do tl 100, no where near in time of course but just to test with higher damage enemies. I used whirlwind, shield block and deadly throw otherwise it would have taken a week. Shield Slam was top damage which shows I was blocking a lot. Deflect damage was 3% and rylocks wasn't on the list even though lots of blocking and lots of reflecting.