*Personally, I would not bother with 2h in high pop RvR until you reach the end sets due to the stat requirements to make this not be a drain on your team. Sure, you COULD run a sentinel invader mix for example as an early entry set and not be totally awful but still it is generally far better for everyone if you play snb until you get the gear to justify the off specs place. But that is purely my opinion.
**This is talking about normal day to day rvr.
Build Principles
1. 1000 Toughness minimum in combat
2. 10k HP minimum
3. 0 or near 0 chance to be crit pre pots/buffs
4. As high parry as possible
5. Running Corruptive Power in anything organized
6. At least 1 defensive proc – Malal/Triumph
There is so much damage coming in that you must stack defenses if you want to play in zerg rvr, where all kinds of procs, barrages, morals, and rampages are coming in at the same time. Playing at the front with the tanks will often mean you face off against a large horde of enemies and the initial damage can and will drop you if your heals are not on point. Also, if people see you as 2h, then see you drop faster than they can save you they are simply going to stop trying and view the ress as better action economy, thus all the defensive steps for any of the builds used below.
Corruptive power is one of the main arguments you make for your spot in the wb, but it is an under-appreciated tactic. Sadly, to make full use of it you do need a party to build around it. In Unreal, back in August I and a few others worked on a party set up with some prepared people to make full use of it (and the choppa built to use the str aura too) and it turned into our most damaging group by far. So much so that when we had the people for it, we ran two and even now if it is formable, we always run that party, so obvious are its strengths. If you can find people to play with and build around this in wb play, you can get good milage and it can contribute to a stat redistribution on your dps and increase their numbers. Leading to things like this, in 2 hours back in August.
The Choppa, guarded by a BG or BO, despite stripping points from futile strikes and going all in on armour pen and crit even claimed to feel "tanky" at one point due to the admittedly solid heals but also the nature of the group and buffs, even in the middle of large enemy hordes.
The game play with this in truly outnumbered situations is not for everyone. You need to be behind your guarded dps and the hopeful hold the lines, get your crit, and then hang back simply to provide max benefit to your group and keep them alive. It is about timing and positioning like all classes and with some practice it is not hard to get the hang of it but when the odds are really against you, do not just sit in the middle. You are NOT dps, but you need to mix the tank moves with some dps positioning to justify your place because a lot of people have A LOT to say about “dps tanks” and you do not need any of that ****.
Gear set ups.
3 set ups tested:
5 Off sov + 4 Victorious + Malal
6 Off sov + 3 Victorious + Malal - Lets you take siphoned energy to get speed and defensive proc when in pugs.
5 Off sov + 4 Triumph + Doom
Victorious setups use more toughness talis and Triumph strength talis obviously. With this and renown you can achieve the principles mentioned earlier and always max parry and d/d.
First thing, since the patch Doom (yes, the old sentinel weapon) is my new favorite weapon. But wait you amateur I hear you say, the Fort weapon exists and is better? Fort weapon “wastes” stats for us here on crit and to a lesser extent weapon skill. Yes, we like WS for parry but it is further down our priority list than other stats. Such as Initiative, which helps us a lot with crit reduction and only having to use FS2 for these builds and wounds which Doom gives us 2.5x of roughly on top of more strength.
Obviously, the big sell here is the speed proc, which if you do not have via siphoned energy or other means will change your life in rvr. Sure, the upcoming patch is going to help with immunities and such but having an incredibly reliable speed proc as any tank is a god send and you should find a way if you can to get it. The pug set up with 6 off sov dropped corruptive power and took siphoned energy and more greedy tactics and using a defensive proc and max d/d you could often get a siphoned proc for a speed burst and you do not want to waste a second of that chop fasta on catching up.
5 Off Sov + 4 Vic and Malal resulted in this over 4 hours a couple of weeks back (post patch)
Let me quickly say that this Big Inc WB (if you play destro NA you should play with these guys) played through a very scrappy Shaodwlands with decent Aao and reset the lord multiple times, retook the keep multiple times and basically didn’t want to quit, thus the death counts. Also, other players with similar kill counts had similar deaths below these results as most of the deaths occurred then so my deaths were not disproportionate to the rest of the wbs average. What it does show is its ability to function in its job, do some support damage and face off against far greater numbers while not dying before too many others in the wb.
The loss of a speed proc was the real killer for me here and the fact that when doing single target the 4 piece vic proc for dmg increase is pretty rare and doesnt really add much to your damage. Sure having it with rending blade will get you a bit more numbers but to dedicate a large portion of our gear budget to achieve? im not so sure. your real damage comes from having a reasonable strength and then getting as many procs as possible, not chasing 20/30 more points of damage on a 10% proc. Meanwhile the set up required much more attention to crit reduction due to lacking the triumphs allocations of initative and flat crit reduction.
5 Off Sov + 4 Triumph + Doom resulted in this over a much shorter time 2 days later (again shout out to Big Inc for allowing testing during their guild wbs). This is also with basically the same group and procs etc.
2nd in protection and obviously under proper dps where it should be, but still not bad for again active RVR against large blobs who we fight head on. A “normal” death amount for the wb, no issues with main job of guard etc and contributing killing blows after bombs with some good old rending blade. The near perma speed boost means you can get in and out of **** reliably and cover retreats safely as well as keep up with charging dps.
As we can see, despite having 60 odd lower strength than the vic set up and no dmg increase proc our damage was actually much better given the number of kills and time. Sure the inital test could of had all sorts of variables to cause this but if you can do such damage as a tank and be fast moving and more survivable, why wouldnt you?
The Triumph Doom combo is definitely my favorite and it is hard to see going back. The initiative and anti crit on Triumph plus the defense proc and bonuses just make it an incredible foundation to build upon for rvr survival. The gloves even have parry. This set up has pushed and defended forts and can easily survive realistic rvr scenarios as long as you remember you are playing a tank without block in a range heavy meta. Do not always be an obvious target and learn when to make your move.
Both set ups had above 40% contribution to kills, with the Triumph Doom one having closer to 50%. Thats a weird metric sometimes as its highly dependent on your alpha strike capability but I was more using it to gauge if my extra damage was purely fluff or actually useful and not say under 20% given that we did manage to get a good number of kills.
Note on Numbers
The point of the stats shown is not to show godly numbers cus obviously you want way less deaths and all kinds of things but the 2h setup was able to do its job protecting its bomb sorc who was top damage and survive while the wb was fighting which is all that really matters. The damage and kills are a great bonus but you must always remember your number 1 job is protecting your guard and applying your buffs/debuffs and other tank duties. The above 2 scenarios were intense fighting against the odds (NA seems to swing between each side getting zerged and both pops behave in similar ways just like the rest of the server) and often were a case of kill as many as we could before being over whelmed and I have no complaints.
Full break down:
Triumph – chest, gloves, belt and jewel (Parry tali)
Off Sov – Boots, Cape, Shoulders, Helm and jewel
Doom
Talis: 3 Toughness, 1 wounds, 4 strength
2 parry event rings if you have em or can get them but if not, you can use warrior frag and remnant and rebalance your renown into toughness instead of strength for an easy swap with the loss of only 1 parry. Or use 2 everlasting, there are many ways to round out the character to achieve these or incredibly close to these results.
Giving you this base with toughness resist and strength aura
With Daemon Claw this gives us our desired stats of 1064 toughness and 902 strength. Due to our stat allocation and gear we are free to use a big strength pot at no real loss to our build if we do not use the strength aura.
I highly recommend you check out Marienburg Stoofvlees to use with this and snb specs. The moral boost is great and the large initiative boost is a nice addition for us as well. Also good are the Weapon skill reduced chance to be crit linis so you can still get a zealot buff.
Ok that is way longer than I intended but hopefully its useful or interesting to those trying to play 2h in the modern rvr with its many, many sources of death.
*Skargraive the Chosen assisted with numbers and tests on test server to help make this post.
