KOTBS - 2hander builds

[Scottx125]

Don't listen to this. If you wanna play 2H, you are not tanking in WB, you are tanking in 6 man or less. Hence, don't stack wounds, basic set of gear will get you close or above 8k, plenty enough. Don't stack initiative either. With Runefang, you will cap easy at 400+ which is more than enough (I run somewhat successfully at 200 on IB). Adding more is not useful.

For stats of physical 2H tank, there is 2 way : duo stats or triple stats.
If you play with a armor debuff (WL, SW, IB), stack equal amount of strength and toughness.
If you don'T play with an armor debuff, stack equal strength, toughness and WS.
Always consider your stats with Runefang procced. Which mean from talis and gear you will mainly want toughness, so it is equal to the other 2 when the 240 runefang buff procs.

Edit : in annihilator at RR40, it is possible to get around a 700-700 build or a 600-600-600. Somewhere ballpark.

All renown point, at RR40, should go in parry (20 points) and deft defender (remaining 20 points) for 2H tanks. Some talis should go as armor, imo. Getting around 5k ish with a buff or a pot is very helpful.
For spec, I'D say listen to Tankbeardz.
My 2 cents.

5k armour? What a waste. At 3300 ish armour (which you will have at lvl 40 easily) you have the 75% cutoff. You can only be debuffed around 1200 armour on top of that and it's unlikely all of that will occur at once. As a KOTBS you can use a potion to give you 400-600 armour. You also have Perseverance that gives you an extra 618 for 10 seconds and regens AP when hit. WS is one of the worst talism to stack atm, it's extremely inefficient. Toughness maybe. More wounds are always better. As a 2H tank your purpose is still primarily a tank, not a DPS. So you only need 550 strength MAX that gives you 800 str on runefang proc. I turn all my damage into elemental damage to avoid most of the DPS loss due to lower WS and let my toughness take care of itself. You are never going to be as tanky as a s/b tank, so your goal in how you build your stats is damage avoidance first, then damage mitigation. With RR maxed and good gear you can prolly get 40-60% parry & dodge and disrupt. When runefang procs you could even push that potentially to 70%! Which is IMO better than having 800 toughness.

[Alfinnete]

What about slice thru, vigi, ea or fm, runefang...it's not even close. Knight is wayyyy better almost every 2h spec.

Okay buddy, if you say ...

Good points you make. Very well thought out. I guess you're right.

Dude, just chosen not to need WS is one of the best perks. You can leave the skills that beat spiritual very strong without needing qr for 1 point in WS.

I have the 2 and by experience the KOTBS is good fun of 2H, but defensive.

[Scottx125]

Ok this is gonna be my last post on this topic. But here's how I think it should be done. As a 2h KOTBS your job is to in ANY situation guard DPS just like a normal tank and join them in harassing the back line healers. This means you NEED to build defensively, but also need to do enough damage to actually put pressure on healers and potentially enough to take down tanks. This is why I use this build: RoR.builders - Knight of the Blazing Sun

This build allows you to do primarily elemental damage, avoiding most absorption whilst also giving important group buff tactics for your auras. Whilst also providing a nice AOE snare for some CC. Rest of the points just go into the Path of Conquest to increase strength of wounds debuff, but you can invest in anything else after you have the AP regen aura and increased crit chance tactic in PoC.

The rest of my build is mainly defensively focused, my current armour is 4 Conq 2 Dom. This will eventually change to 2 Conq 2 Dom 2 Overlord. This sacrifices the 120 wounds gained from the 3 set bonus for the Overlord 2 set bonus which is a 10% chance to increase parry/ dodge and disrupt by 7% for 10 seconds on being hit. Couple this with 20RR in parry, 20RR in dodge and disrupt. Plus any other bonuses including the runefang proc. You can easily see yourself with 40-60% parry/dodge and disrupt. Reducing damage is good, but avoiding it is better.

Now you might ask well what about talismans? Well I choose 6 wound, 1 initiative and 1 strength. The basic reason for this is you need as many wounds as you can, since you've lost the 120 wounds bonus from the two armour sets you have to make up for it. You should be sitting pretty at around 9k+ wounds with all 6 max wounds talismans. The reason you invest in wounds over armour or toughness, is simply because IMO it stacks better, it doesn't decrease in efficiency and it has no maximum % effectiveness. Plus you should already have about 3300 armour (at your 75% cap already, can be buffed with pots and skills by around 1200, max debuff is about 1300) and somewhere around 300 toughness. Now the strength talisman is to get your strength somewhere in between 500-550 (including active aura), when runefang procs it increases this by 240(str, weapon skill and initiative) giving you nearly 800. Plenty of strength for all your needs, a good amount of weaponskill and a nice buff to initiative, and speaking of initiative. The final talisman slot containing initiative is optional, I find it gives around 1.5-3% reduces crit chance which is really nice, it also slightly increases parry chance but you can swap this for more strength or wounds. Also note, make sure to put any spare RR points into crit chance reduction.

And that's it. If you ever get to this point you should be pretty strong. Dealing okay damage, having pretty much constant runefang procs (make sure to guard as that keeps it procing even outside melee combat). Huge damage avoidance and okay damage reduction and a comfortable wound pool to work with. Don't be expecting though to be as tanky as pure built S/B wounds/toughness builds. But with elemental damage you should be able to melt through that armour and kill a tin can relatively easily. If you find you need more toughness or strength or whatever after this, use potions.

[szejoza]

How hard are you hitting with that spec, what is your gear?

You write a lot but it seems garbage to me, no banish darkness? no KD? looks like wannabe loldps build rather than proper cc-assist tank

[deathkylem]

Don't listen to this. If you wanna play 2H, you are not tanking in WB, you are tanking in 6 man or less. Hence, don't stack wounds, basic set of gear will get you close or above 8k, plenty enough. Don't stack initiative either. With Runefang, you will cap easy at 400+ which is more than enough (I run somewhat successfully at 200 on IB). Adding more is not useful.

For stats of physical 2H tank, there is 2 way : duo stats or triple stats.
If you play with a armor debuff (WL, SW, IB), stack equal amount of strength and toughness.
If you don'T play with an armor debuff, stack equal strength, toughness and WS.
Always consider your stats with Runefang procced. Which mean from talis and gear you will mainly want toughness, so it is equal to the other 2 when the 240 runefang buff procs.

Edit : in annihilator at RR40, it is possible to get around a 700-700 build or a 600-600-600. Somewhere ballpark.

All renown point, at RR40, should go in parry (20 points) and deft defender (remaining 20 points) for 2H tanks. Some talis should go as armor, imo. Getting around 5k ish with a buff or a pot is very helpful.
For spec, I'D say listen to Tankbeardz.
My 2 cents.

5k armour? What a waste. At 3300 ish armour (which you will have at lvl 40 easily) you have the 75% cutoff. You can only be debuffed around 1200 armour on top of that and it's unlikely all of that will occur at once. As a KOTBS you can use a potion to give you 400-600 armour. You also have Perseverance that gives you an extra 618 for 10 seconds and regens AP when hit. WS is one of the worst talism to stack atm, it's extremely inefficient. Toughness maybe. More wounds are always better. As a 2H tank your purpose is still primarily a tank, not a DPS. So you only need 550 strength MAX that gives you 800 str on runefang proc. I turn all my damage into elemental damage to avoid most of the DPS loss due to lower WS and let my toughness take care of itself. You are never going to be as tanky as a s/b tank, so your goal in how you build your stats is damage avoidance first, then damage mitigation. With RR maxed and good gear you can prolly get 40-60% parry & dodge and disrupt. When runefang procs you could even push that potentially to 70%! Which is IMO better than having 800 toughness.

You know that potion armor doestn stacks with perseverance no? i love see a screenshot with 40%-60% dodge disrupt in KOTBS 2H...maybe +40% dodge if you build ini(useless) with runefang...disrupt? hahahahahha and 70% parry without build ws? hahahah sorry but are you trying troll us?

[ashton007]

Don't listen to this. If you wanna play 2H, you are not tanking in WB, you are tanking in 6 man or less. Hence, don't stack wounds, basic set of gear will get you close or above 8k, plenty enough. Don't stack initiative either. With Runefang, you will cap easy at 400+ which is more than enough (I run somewhat successfully at 200 on IB). Adding more is not useful.

For stats of physical 2H tank, there is 2 way : duo stats or triple stats.
If you play with a armor debuff (WL, SW, IB), stack equal amount of strength and toughness.
If you don'T play with an armor debuff, stack equal strength, toughness and WS.
Always consider your stats with Runefang procced. Which mean from talis and gear you will mainly want toughness, so it is equal to the other 2 when the 240 runefang buff procs.

Edit : in annihilator at RR40, it is possible to get around a 700-700 build or a 600-600-600. Somewhere ballpark.

All renown point, at RR40, should go in parry (20 points) and deft defender (remaining 20 points) for 2H tanks. Some talis should go as armor, imo. Getting around 5k ish with a buff or a pot is very helpful.
For spec, I'D say listen to Tankbeardz.
My 2 cents.

5k armour? What a waste. At 3300 ish armour (which you will have at lvl 40 easily) you have the 75% cutoff. You can only be debuffed around 1200 armour on top of that and it's unlikely all of that will occur at once. As a KOTBS you can use a potion to give you 400-600 armour. You also have Perseverance that gives you an extra 618 for 10 seconds and regens AP when hit. WS is one of the worst talism to stack atm, it's extremely inefficient. Toughness maybe. More wounds are always better. As a 2H tank your purpose is still primarily a tank, not a DPS. So you only need 550 strength MAX that gives you 800 str on runefang proc. I turn all my damage into elemental damage to avoid most of the DPS loss due to lower WS and let my toughness take care of itself. You are never going to be as tanky as a s/b tank, so your goal in how you build your stats is damage avoidance first, then damage mitigation. With RR maxed and good gear you can prolly get 40-60% parry & dodge and disrupt. When runefang procs you could even push that potentially to 70%! Which is IMO better than having 800 toughness.

I have heard that its good to get atleast 85%+ armor to help mitigate other players WS. Can u maybe shed some light on this?

[deathkylem]

Ok this is gonna be my last post on this topic. But here's how I think it should be done. As a 2h KOTBS your job is to in ANY situation guard DPS just like a normal tank and join them in harassing the back line healers. This means you NEED to build defensively, but also need to do enough damage to actually put pressure on healers and potentially enough to take down tanks. This is why I use this build: RoR.builders - Knight of the Blazing Sun

This build allows you to do primarily elemental damage, avoiding most absorption whilst also giving important group buff tactics for your auras. Whilst also providing a nice AOE snare for some CC. Rest of the points just go into the Path of Conquest to increase strength of wounds debuff, but you can invest in anything else after you have the AP regen aura and increased crit chance tactic in PoC.

The rest of my build is mainly defensively focused, my current armour is 4 Conq 2 Dom. This will eventually change to 2 Conq 2 Dom 2 Overlord. This sacrifices the 120 wounds gained from the 3 set bonus for the Overlord 2 set bonus which is a 10% chance to increase parry/ dodge and disrupt by 7% for 10 seconds on being hit. Couple this with 20RR in parry, 20RR in dodge and disrupt. Plus any other bonuses including the runefang proc. You can easily see yourself with 50-70% parry/dodge and disrupt. Reducing damage is good, but avoiding it is better.

Now you might ask well what about talismans? Well I choose 6 wound, 1 initiative and 1 strength. The basic reason for this is you need as many wounds as you can, since you've lost the 120 wounds bonus from the two armour sets you have to make up for it. You should be sitting pretty at around 9k+ wounds with all 6 max wounds talismans. The reason you invest in wounds over armour or toughness, is simply because IMO it stacks better, it doesn't decrease in efficiency and it has no maximum % effectiveness. Plus you should already have about 3300 armour (at your 75% cap already, can be buffed with pots and skills by around 1200, max debuff is about 1300) and somewhere around 300 toughness. Now the strength talisman is to get your strength somewhere in between 500-550 (including active aura), when runefang procs it increases this by 240(str, weapon skill and initiative) giving you nearly 800. Plenty of strength for all your needs, a good amount of weaponskill and a nice buff to initiative, and speaking of initiative. The final talisman slot containing initiative is optional, I find it gives around 1.5-3% reduces crit chance which is really nice, it also slightly increases parry chance but you can swap this for more strength or wounds. Also note, make sure to put any spare RR points into crit chance reduction.

And that's it. If you ever get to this point you should be pretty strong. Dealing okay damage, having pretty much constant runefang procs (make sure to guard as that keeps it procing even outside melee combat). Huge damage avoidance and okay damage reduction and a comfortable wound pool to work with. Don't be expecting though to be as tanky as pure built S/B wounds/toughness builds. But with elemental damage you should be able to melt through that armour and kill a tin can relatively easily. If you find you need more toughness or strength or whatever after this, use potions.

hmm i dont believe you, send a screenshots with that avoidances and repeat again show me your 1200 buff skill...rolf really you dont know that potion dont stack with perseverance?...and elemental damage is only with path of glory skills...why go so much useless poitns in Conquest?
Plis send screenshot and name of the toon...

[Eathisword]

I have heard that its good to get atleast 85%+ armor to help mitigate other players WS. Can u maybe shed some light on this?

You are correct. This is a simple case of more is better. We wouldn't have spend the first 2 years of this project debating how to control armor stacking if 3300 was optimal. But debating this versus clueless people is not my cup of tea.

In a real fight, you can run 8000 armor and still fall short of the 3300 mark for 75% mit.
8000 - 1200 (mara debuff) - 1000 (tank M1) = 5800
5800 against 50% armor pen, leaves you at 2900 armor. Quite short of 3300. It's not rocket science.

[ashton007]

I have heard that its good to get atleast 85%+ armor to help mitigate other players WS. Can u maybe shed some light on this?

You are correct. This is a simple case of more is better. We wouldn't have spend the first 2 years of this project debating how to control armor stacking if 3300 was optimal. But debating this versus clueless people is not my cup of tea.

In a real fight, you can run 8000 armor and still fall short of the 3300 mark for 75% mit.
8000 - 1200 (mara debuff) - 1000 (tank M1) = 5800
5800 against 50% armor pen, leaves you at 2900 armor. Quite short of 3300. It's not rocket science.

Awesome! Thank you Volgo this makes a lot of sense. I actually wasn't even aware the M1 stacked as i was told it doesn't.
I have been having a really tough time debating on the effectiveness of armor and toughness on my new character, and also weighing how much of each stat to aim for.

[venrik]

I have heard that its good to get atleast 85%+ armor to help mitigate other players WS. Can u maybe shed some light on this?

You are correct. This is a simple case of more is better. We wouldn't have spend the first 2 years of this project debating how to control armor stacking if 3300 was optimal. But debating this versus clueless people is not my cup of tea.

In a real fight, you can run 8000 armor and still fall short of the 3300 mark for 75% mit.
8000 - 1200 (mara debuff) - 1000 (tank M1) = 5800
5800 against 50% armor pen, leaves you at 2900 armor. Quite short of 3300. It's not rocket science.

This is true, but if enemy are blowing this much on you to take you down, then either your group is dead already, or you are holding them up while your group kites away, or they are just wasting stuff on you that could be better off used elsewhere. Not disagreeing with you on what armor brings to the table, but in a 6 man you wont need so much. I slot def talis in my gear, armor and ini, and have 40% parry for the runefang proc (50% with weapon proc). I run the str aura, resists and health/ap regen as a basic set, and use toughness pot. Take KD from middle tree, slice through, plus 10% crit on str aura. the rest is up to your preference, or your groups needs.