The Cleave Tank - 4wl2d push build

[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.

[Turgeon]

So wich trial are you able to do with this?

[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.