KOTBS - 2hander builds

[TanithScout]

My Knight is Str stacked at the moment in Full SNB gear. I've tried 2H for about 5 minutes and thats all I needed.

I lose what I bring to the table (Aoe snare, crit and +healing, a KB that is basically a death sentence, infinite AP, other things) and what do I bring as a 2H knight specced offensively in the best gear? What's the benefit right now to running 2h right now:

* A woundsdebuff. great, you can remove 1k hp from a target every 10s. Build with SNB and dirty tricks and properly support a DPS and they will do 5 times this much because of you. Also there are an abundance of wou debuffs now and I suspect there will be more.

* Staggering Impact for -10% defences. Great for WB play, noone else is ever gonna take it nor should they.

* 10% crit on your arcing swing targets. Nice. Is what it says.

* It kinda feels better if you're razebombing with a 2h, I guess thats a benefit? Theres nothing else...

So you get crit and -1k wounds ona target going 2h. IB's and SM's will hit MUCH harder and do MUCH more damage than you in the same spec, while still having bufffs and utility, you'll have the same boring mandatory auras. Some can even outdmg you as offensive specc'd SNB but there arent many, and in RoR 2h dps tanks are really good IF they can actually do dps. Knight can't.

So, noone will agree with this but if anyone does, we can agree that currently, 2H Kotbs is useless, objectively, when compared with speccing proper snb tactics and going SNB to guard a dps. Even a solo pug one.

Auras are boring, andmandatory. Its getting reworked. We all know. I hope that the resource mechanic wil be like this:

Enables one or 2 auras constantly. Tactics and gameplay skills, buffs and tactics will give extra resource, allowing properly specced Kotbs/Chosen to use up up to 2-3 Auras, but it'll cost them and they'll need to be 'skilled' (God I hate using that in the context of an MMO RPG but its true) to maintain it due to decaying resource mechanic. What I hope to see ADDITIONALLY is that upon maintaining a certain amount of resource for a certain time, your aura/auras that you are using will gain an ADDITIONAL benefit. What benefit? For example lets say they, Oh, lets pick something random, GIVE YOU THE EFFECTS OF ANOTHER AURA. YES, ITS TWISTING BABY. But through your tactics, hotbar abilities, and any innate class buffs that may or may not be included. So you'd be twisting through actually playing rather than using a macro or doing what I did and binding it to E, hammering your keyboard constantly, and ending up with your Mum asking you to put a towerl or soemthing underneath your keyboard because she can hear aforementioned hammering downstairs... thinkw e can all agree that 'twisting' is interesting but was implemented badly. Times have moved on and so has game development ideas.

The best way to describe what I've said is the WP mechanic in heal mode. They're constantly gaining a small amount of resource, and constantly spending more resource than they gain to to heal. Instead of healing, this would give KOTBS/CH aura uptime, and depending what the devs want with regards to THE REST OF THE GAME AS A WHOLE (note I'm just rambling here and am generally happy enough to trust them with class balance...) this individual chocie to manage aura resource could result in base amount fo Auras being buffed for example 2 to 3, if they choose to go that route of 3, and/or due to choosing to focus on resource mechanic auras could be buffed with a surplus, gaining additional effects resulting in the same amount of auras we have now but for a cost/playstyle choice. This would be balanced around gaining auras as I've said comes as a heavy investment and effectively turns them into what they are now, a boring mandatory aura class. But now it's a choice of the group/player, therefore making 'aurabots' more valued as due to being a personal choice there won't be as many and therefore not as many auras.

How do we avoid this becoming the new mandatory, well I've already mentioned a few ideas, mainly personal choice because now its not as simple as clicking 3 and doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING and off you go. We buff knight/ch abilities and ability damage. Chosen not so much obviously (obviously because they have more frontliners to work with and therefore any changes affecting said frontline is EXPONENTIALLY stronger than on Knight). So all the mouthbreathers who would be running FO/1 aura on live, and the wannabes that think 6V6 is useful (its fun, but it isnt useful, 12 v 12 is where the fun starts!) have a reason to play 2H FURTHER DIMINISHING the prevalence of aurabot style, because as I mentioned to keep the auras you'll need a heavy investment in your tactics abiltiies and playstyle. Having t be locked to SNB only suits this. So SNB could be an aura bot, 2H less because they can't possibly get the same amount/buffed auras of a 2h but they do more DAHMAHJJ if they want.

Sorry for the ramble but heres 2 new playstyle choices for Kotbs/Chosen rather than the boring mandatory style we have now, that people constantly debate and ino my opinion for the reasons above is totally useless. 2H kotbs is totally useless currently especially now wou debuffs are tied to morales as premade can just train down a target anyway wou debuff or not.

[TanithScout]

Is stacking weapon skill viable to ensure runefang uptime?

No it is not. Go onto the wiki and google something called Parry, it'll be better to learn about it yourself rather than explain here but basically there is a statisic that increase your chance to proc runefang and this stat also procs off of Guard damage, so as long as you're guarding somone and have a decent amount of Parry yu'll have runefang.

[lefze]

Spoiler:

My Knight is Str stacked at the moment in Full SNB gear. I've tried 2H for about 5 minutes and thats all I needed.

I lose what I bring to the table (Aoe snare, crit and +healing, a KB that is basically a death sentence, infinite AP, other things) and what do I bring as a 2H knight specced offensively in the best gear? What's the benefit right now to running 2h right now:

* A woundsdebuff. great, you can remove 1k hp from a target every 10s. Build with SNB and dirty tricks and properly support a DPS and they will do 5 times this much because of you. Also there are an abundance of wou debuffs now and I suspect there will be more.

* Staggering Impact for -10% defences. Great for WB play, noone else is ever gonna take it nor should they.

* 10% crit on your arcing swing targets. Nice. Is what it says.

* It kinda feels better if you're razebombing with a 2h, I guess thats a benefit? Theres nothing else...

So you get crit and -1k wounds ona target going 2h. IB's and SM's will hit MUCH harder and do MUCH more damage than you in the same spec, while still having bufffs and utility, you'll have the same boring mandatory auras. Some can even outdmg you as offensive specc'd SNB but there arent many, and in RoR 2h dps tanks are really good IF they can actually do dps. Knight can't.

So, noone will agree with this but if anyone does, we can agree that currently, 2H Kotbs is useless, objectively, when compared with speccing proper snb tactics and going SNB to guard a dps. Even a solo pug one.

Auras are boring, andmandatory. Its getting reworked. We all know. I hope that the resource mechanic wil be like this:

Enables one or 2 auras constantly. Tactics and gameplay skills, buffs and tactics will give extra resource, allowing properly specced Kotbs/Chosen to use up up to 2-3 Auras, but it'll cost them and they'll need to be 'skilled' (God I hate using that in the context of an MMO RPG but its true) to maintain it due to decaying resource mechanic. What I hope to see ADDITIONALLY is that upon maintaining a certain amount of resource for a certain time, your aura/auras that you are using will gain an ADDITIONAL benefit. What benefit? For example lets say they, Oh, lets pick something random, GIVE YOU THE EFFECTS OF ANOTHER AURA. YES, ITS TWISTING BABY. But through your tactics, hotbar abilities, and any innate class buffs that may or may not be included. So you'd be twisting through actually playing rather than using a macro or doing what I did and binding it to E, hammering your keyboard constantly, and ending up with your Mum asking you to put a towerl or soemthing underneath your keyboard because she can hear aforementioned hammering downstairs... thinkw e can all agree that 'twisting' is interesting but was implemented badly. Times have moved on and so has game development ideas.

The best way to describe what I've said is the WP mechanic in heal mode. They're constantly gaining a small amount of resource, and constantly spending more resource than they gain to to heal. Instead of healing, this would give KOTBS/CH aura uptime, and depending what the devs want with regards to THE REST OF THE GAME AS A WHOLE (note I'm just rambling here and am generally happy enough to trust them with class balance...) this individual chocie to manage aura resource could result in base amount fo Auras being buffed for example 2 to 3, if they choose to go that route of 3, and/or due to choosing to focus on resource mechanic auras could be buffed with a surplus, gaining additional effects resulting in the same amount of auras we have now but for a cost/playstyle choice. This would be balanced around gaining auras as I've said comes as a heavy investment and effectively turns them into what they are now, a boring mandatory aura class. But now it's a choice of the group/player, therefore making 'aurabots' more valued as due to being a personal choice there won't be as many and therefore not as many auras.

How do we avoid this becoming the new mandatory, well I've already mentioned a few ideas, mainly personal choice because now its not as simple as clicking 3 and doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING and off you go. We buff knight/ch abilities and ability damage. Chosen not so much obviously (obviously because they have more frontliners to work with and therefore any changes affecting said frontline is EXPONENTIALLY stronger than on Knight). So all the mouthbreathers who would be running FO/1 aura on live, and the wannabes that think 6V6 is useful (its fun, but it isnt useful, 12 v 12 is where the fun starts!) have a reason to play 2H FURTHER DIMINISHING the prevalence of aurabot style, because as I mentioned to keep the auras you'll need a heavy investment in your tactics abiltiies and playstyle. Having t be locked to SNB only suits this. So SNB could be an aura bot, 2H less because they can't possibly get the same amount/buffed auras of a 2h but they do more DAHMAHJJ if they want.

Sorry for the ramble but heres 2 new playstyle choices for Kotbs/Chosen rather than the boring mandatory style we have now, that people constantly debate and ino my opinion for the reasons above is totally useless. 2H kotbs is totally useless currently especially now wou debuffs are tied to morales as premade can just train down a target anyway wou debuff or not.

http://www.ror.builders/career/knight-o ... ,3094,3073

2H spec. Alternately take AP aura if you have an AM buffing resists. You don't loose any of the things you mentioned, you just specced wrong. The advantage of 2h is 10s CD superpunt and 10% inc crit debuff+wounds debuff and far outweighs what SnB brings in smallscale.

2H kobs is 100% mandatory when min-maxing a 6 man. You are free to deny it, but you really shouldn't.

Also you oversimplified the wounds debuff, it's not about how much damage it deals.

[TanithScout]

Spoiler:

My Knight is Str stacked at the moment in Full SNB gear. I've tried 2H for about 5 minutes and thats all I needed.

I lose what I bring to the table (Aoe snare, crit and +healing, a KB that is basically a death sentence, infinite AP, other things) and what do I bring as a 2H knight specced offensively in the best gear? What's the benefit right now to running 2h right now:

* A woundsdebuff. great, you can remove 1k hp from a target every 10s. Build with SNB and dirty tricks and properly support a DPS and they will do 5 times this much because of you. Also there are an abundance of wou debuffs now and I suspect there will be more.

* Staggering Impact for -10% defences. Great for WB play, noone else is ever gonna take it nor should they.

* 10% crit on your arcing swing targets. Nice. Is what it says.

* It kinda feels better if you're razebombing with a 2h, I guess thats a benefit? Theres nothing else...

So you get crit and -1k wounds ona target going 2h. IB's and SM's will hit MUCH harder and do MUCH more damage than you in the same spec, while still having bufffs and utility, you'll have the same boring mandatory auras. Some can even outdmg you as offensive specc'd SNB but there arent many, and in RoR 2h dps tanks are really good IF they can actually do dps. Knight can't.

So, noone will agree with this but if anyone does, we can agree that currently, 2H Kotbs is useless, objectively, when compared with speccing proper snb tactics and going SNB to guard a dps. Even a solo pug one.

Auras are boring, andmandatory. Its getting reworked. We all know. I hope that the resource mechanic wil be like this:

Enables one or 2 auras constantly. Tactics and gameplay skills, buffs and tactics will give extra resource, allowing properly specced Kotbs/Chosen to use up up to 2-3 Auras, but it'll cost them and they'll need to be 'skilled' (God I hate using that in the context of an MMO RPG but its true) to maintain it due to decaying resource mechanic. What I hope to see ADDITIONALLY is that upon maintaining a certain amount of resource for a certain time, your aura/auras that you are using will gain an ADDITIONAL benefit. What benefit? For example lets say they, Oh, lets pick something random, GIVE YOU THE EFFECTS OF ANOTHER AURA. YES, ITS TWISTING BABY. But through your tactics, hotbar abilities, and any innate class buffs that may or may not be included. So you'd be twisting through actually playing rather than using a macro or doing what I did and binding it to E, hammering your keyboard constantly, and ending up with your Mum asking you to put a towerl or soemthing underneath your keyboard because she can hear aforementioned hammering downstairs... thinkw e can all agree that 'twisting' is interesting but was implemented badly. Times have moved on and so has game development ideas.

The best way to describe what I've said is the WP mechanic in heal mode. They're constantly gaining a small amount of resource, and constantly spending more resource than they gain to to heal. Instead of healing, this would give KOTBS/CH aura uptime, and depending what the devs want with regards to THE REST OF THE GAME AS A WHOLE (note I'm just rambling here and am generally happy enough to trust them with class balance...) this individual chocie to manage aura resource could result in base amount fo Auras being buffed for example 2 to 3, if they choose to go that route of 3, and/or due to choosing to focus on resource mechanic auras could be buffed with a surplus, gaining additional effects resulting in the same amount of auras we have now but for a cost/playstyle choice. This would be balanced around gaining auras as I've said comes as a heavy investment and effectively turns them into what they are now, a boring mandatory aura class. But now it's a choice of the group/player, therefore making 'aurabots' more valued as due to being a personal choice there won't be as many and therefore not as many auras.

How do we avoid this becoming the new mandatory, well I've already mentioned a few ideas, mainly personal choice because now its not as simple as clicking 3 and doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING and off you go. We buff knight/ch abilities and ability damage. Chosen not so much obviously (obviously because they have more frontliners to work with and therefore any changes affecting said frontline is EXPONENTIALLY stronger than on Knight). So all the mouthbreathers who would be running FO/1 aura on live, and the wannabes that think 6V6 is useful (its fun, but it isnt useful, 12 v 12 is where the fun starts!) have a reason to play 2H FURTHER DIMINISHING the prevalence of aurabot style, because as I mentioned to keep the auras you'll need a heavy investment in your tactics abiltiies and playstyle. Having t be locked to SNB only suits this. So SNB could be an aura bot, 2H less because they can't possibly get the same amount/buffed auras of a 2h but they do more DAHMAHJJ if they want.

Sorry for the ramble but heres 2 new playstyle choices for Kotbs/Chosen rather than the boring mandatory style we have now, that people constantly debate and ino my opinion for the reasons above is totally useless. 2H kotbs is totally useless currently especially now wou debuffs are tied to morales as premade can just train down a target anyway wou debuff or not.

http://www.ror.builders/career/knight-o ... ,3094,3073

2H spec. Alternately take AP aura if you have an AM buffing resists. You don't loose any of the things you mentioned, you just specced wrong. The advantage of 2h is 10s CD superpunt and 10% inc crit debuff+wounds debuff and far outweighs what SnB brings in smallscale.

2H kobs is 100% mandatory when min-maxing a 6 man. You are free to deny it, but you really shouldn't.

Also you oversimplified the wounds debuff, it's not about how much damage it deals.

Firstly thanks for the Spec, and for telling me I specc'd wrong. Im aware its situational and shouldve been tested in pug 6man, or a regular premade but all the ones Ive come across have been exceptionally arrogant on RoR without any evidence of skills to back it up on the RvR field, probably due to a lack of competition when 6v6 is up and the increased difficulty to 6vX when it isn't. I love that difficulty but I can see how those with a certain mindset wouldn't like dying...

If you remove the AP aura you can get the debately situationally useful stagger and Dirty Tricks buffing your groups healing crits as well as as DPS. I'd trade 5% dps crit for 5% Healcrit anyday in my premade but thats me, we were focused on 6VX rather than 6v6 but we did them and were successful. Also the extra AP the enemy premade has IF we don't have an AP draining Am which is converted into damage is somewhat negated by our increased healing. I'd then give the 2H option to an SM or IB because they'll put out more damage, while I wouldn't let the Knight go so squishy as to be irrelevant. Assuming this hypothetic premade has 2 tanks which IMO they always should (assuming from the tone of your reply you know this) I'd then hypothetically choose a WP as a healer plus whatever else I can get (I prefer AM's for insta rez <3) and let the WP be the AP battery for the group, forgoing the -20ap per 5sec drain on the Kotbs, potentially, if we have an RP instead of an AM. RP obviously has its pros and cons over AM and vice versa. But is hypothetical like your reply. Oh, and obviously it'd be hypothetic chocie to have this WP with the wou buff or aoe detaunt. I actually preferred my WP to have aoe detaunt, because the WOU buff to me is only useful in that last 750 hp, ideally a situation I'd prefer to avoid from the increased healing of the group to to my kotbs setup (damage crit (NOT EXTRA as EA would give more, extra healing, extra healing crit)).

There's always more than one way to skin a cat. In this case the cat is minmaxing a premade regular 6vx group that has played together for years.

I know what KOTBS brings in 6man, all I did in live was 6vX and occasional 6V6. The tone of your post automatically assumes what you know > what I know, which is fine, thats the atitude I've found a lot from 6v6ers on RoR, whereas my post is responding to the general queries of the thread and some of my own ideas, not the 6v6 niche where gameplay is thankfully MUCH different because you can rely on your teammates. If you want to debate 6v6 composition styles classes trees and tactics I'm up for it, just pm me. I don't see much of it, but might just be because on RoR it's in its own elitist bubble and newer members like myself arent interested in it anymore, at least thats the impression I've got so far.

So 2h Kotbs is useful for the reasons we mentioned and you're right it might sound like I'm oversimplifying the wounds debuff, but I did say its on a 10s cd. Luckily 6man teams like you mentioned are rare, most pickupgroups having the Kotbs SNB and the IB or SM SnB which I'm totally fine with, they do it better imo. And this thread has the general solo pug 2H Knight in mind. Most posters are not minmaxing for 6v6 let alone proper 6vX. A niche example, while what you say still 100% valid, is not the basis for my post, I hope you understand.

[BurbsToo]

Yes going up all 3 trees is generally the 2H build. Give or take a few personal tweaks. But IMO, this is the problem with knight. To be optimal for your party, you are pigeon-holed into this boring build. It's really frustrating when everyone expects you to be happily bored playing your class. And IMO, it's not the best way to play it because going up all 3 trees means your dmg is even crappier, and your auras aren't at maximum efficiency. I used to run max conquest with enough points into vig to get KD. Or if I wanted to be tankier, I would go far enough up middle tree to get vigilance, and then I would pump the rest into conquest. Now that the crit debuff has been moved to arcing swing (which is not as great as all the non-knight players think it is), I've actually abandoned conquest completely. They are still viable builds, but I'm being stubborn and refuse to accept the recent changes (It's like the 15th consecutive f*cking nerf to knight. When was the last time we got something?). For the last 2 days, I have been going up the mid tree to grab KD and Vig, and then pumping the rest into Glory. Now my group gets +359 resists, AP/HP regen, +112 toughess, and/or 215 dmg reflected (numbers might be slightly off). My dmg is lower now for sure, but I'm tankier than most SnBs (thank you fleshrenderer rings and def sc 2h), and my party has enough resists to survive drooler caster DOT rotations. Why don't I just play SnB if I've vig and glory? For the 10s punt. So much of my gameplay is based on moving people around. 10 more seconds for punts drives me nuts. We'll see how all this evolves in the next couple weeks.

[facundo7777]

so it seems there is no single correct build for kotbs. That sounds very good. Everyone can play in their way

[facundo7777]

i have question. Maybe i missed that in previous posts and topics. It is possible to have similar dps in terms of solo playing while wielding snb compare to 2h?

[szejoza]

not really, even if you go full offensive snb your dmg output will be terrible

[facundo7777]

not really, even if you go full offensive snb your dmg output will be terrible

ok, thanks.

[peterthepan3]

Yes going up all 3 trees is generally the 2H build. Give or take a few personal tweaks. But IMO, this is the problem with knight. To be optimal for your party, you are pigeon-holed into this boring build. It's really frustrating when everyone expects you to be happily bored playing your class. And IMO, it's not the best way to play it because going up all 3 trees means your dmg is even crappier, and your auras aren't at maximum efficiency. I used to run max conquest with enough points into vig to get KD. Or if I wanted to be tankier, I would go far enough up middle tree to get vigilance, and then I would pump the rest into conquest. Now that the crit debuff has been moved to arcing swing (which is not as great as all the non-knight players think it is), I've actually abandoned conquest completely. They are still viable builds, but I'm being stubborn and refuse to accept the recent changes (It's like the 15th consecutive f*cking nerf to knight. When was the last time we got something?). For the last 2 days, I have been going up the mid tree to grab KD and Vig, and then pumping the rest into Glory. Now my group gets +359 resists, AP/HP regen, +112 toughess, and/or 215 dmg reflected (numbers might be slightly off). My dmg is lower now for sure, but I'm tankier than most SnBs (thank you fleshrenderer rings and def sc 2h), and my party has enough resists to survive drooler caster DOT rotations. Why don't I just play SnB if I've vig and glory? For the 10s punt. So much of my gameplay is based on moving people around. 10 more seconds for punts drives me nuts. We'll see how all this evolves in the next couple weeks.

You don't traditionally bring KOTBS for damage, and having marginally-weaker auras is offset by having access to the amazing utility a tri-spec gives - like Focused Mending, Crit, and the KD.

Is it boring? Probably (which is why our guild can't manage to get a regular KOTBS for more than a week).