Swordmaster.... Build.

[shaggyboomboom]

You adhere to the lore.

That's why you play SM, to adhere to the lore.

On the side note, Ether Dance + BS procs = great damage + your stat steal is around 120 points.

[Rebuke]

Oh I 100% agree, put PE into the mix and you got solid damage. It however pales in comparison to the increase of damage your entire group generates when you pop WW on cooldown + BS on SnB Hoeth spec.

[Ugle]

RoR.builders - Sword Master

My most used semi defensive khaine/hoeth spec.
Renown specced fully into parry and dodge/disrupt at rr45. Full merc with str talllies, str precursor cloak, precursor belt. Torment, strife,skaven parry ring and green keep bag str/parry ring. Also, switching into FO for the lols when there is little melee dps on enemy side or got good heals/second "proper tank" in group. Armor dosent help on guard dmg or magic dmg, so why not!

[blaqwar]

Why would you run Ensorcelled Agony when you want to be skipping normal balance as much as you can to take advantage of Balanced Accuracy and 0 AP cost finishers? Or did you actually mean Potent Enchantments, I mix those two up sometimes aswell.

If you didn't you should seriously reconsider running PE over EA. PE does dmg on the first tick (application) and doesn't require the use of a crappy ability. It's a must have for any ED build since ED procs blade enchantments which procs PE and if you get a crit in there you get 3 ticks of spirit damage (ED crit + shock + PE tick). If that happens twice or even three times in a row that's some awesome pressure damage.

But I was leaning towards essentially the same build on my fresh T4 SM. My question is; does a R40 SM in Ruin gear with the Epic quest sword dish out respectable damage with an ED build? Or should I go with a WW/CW build until I min/max my gear, get the Scen wep, fix my jewelry and get Merc? Is ED a competitive build without the best gear available atm? (I'm concerned because while the current gear level is low across the board SMs tend to scale a bit better than some other careers.)

[Ugle]

The last tactic spot is the one I change the most, but the reasoning for using EA over PE is spirit dmg, shorter dot time, better against hig armor targets, scales with str, but is better when running def build (no renown spent on str). That said I somtimes use PE. Personally I never used Ruin set, so can't answer that. I chose Redwind for the aa speed and def proc, until I got emblem sword.

[Azarael]

I don't know why you would skip Normal instead of Improved. If you're dealing damage, EB+EA should outperform anything available at Improved.

[Ugle]

I don't know why you would skip Normal instead of Improved. If you're dealing damage, EB+EA should outperform anything available at Improved.

Agreed.
1st rotation: EB, debuff spirit, CW
2nd rotation: EB, SS, ED

[blaqwar]

I believe we're looking at it from different perspectives. Blurring Shock duration is only 10 sec, making sure it's up for the whole ED duration to maximise damage output is a pain unless you're skipping normal balance (2 gcd + lag + wanting to taunt up before ED means BS will fall off quickly after you start ED).

I believe that an ED build with Balanced Accuracy, PE and GWM with BS uptime for the full ED duration, on a spirit debuffed target from WoH (perhaps even swapping to HB on high resist targets like if there's a damn aurabot around) is the most burst damage a SM can achieve.

Between the importance of Shattering, keeping defensive and offensive debuffs up and maximising the damage of ED I never saw the benefit of EB, perhaps that's why I under-value EA. Also if you're running BA skipping normal balance is a big boost. I could see a build without BA would favour EA.

Also it strikes me odd that a single tactic would make you value normal balance so much when SMs strongest tools are in improved/perfect balance and have a short duration to boot.

Just a note, PE is spirit damage as well so the argument of EA being better damage on armored targets is not valid. I do realise that EA scales with STR while PE does not. But I am fuzzy on the subject of EA being able to crit (it shouldn't, but then again proc dots shouldn't refresh/reproc afaik so the exact mechanics are fuzzy to me).

Edit: I believe I will go for Ninth Peak because the proc on Redwind doesn't stack, it's also a proc "on defense" instead of "on hit". Also the stats seem much better. I wish I could get both, I might if I skip the shield and go for 2x 2h and a 1h from rewards.

Still curious about how Khaine specs perform on a mediocre geared SM.

[Ugle]

Unless there have been recent changes PE is not spirit dmg.
Edit: also afaik PE does scale with str, while CoT does not.

[blaqwar]

PE has always been spirit damage on live, despite the tooltip implying it's physical. I went ahead and tested both on a mob on RoR. A WoH spirit debuffed Ebonmane Lion (lvl 30, my SM is 32):
- EA ticks for 80 (11) mitigated,
- PE ticks for 87 (1) mitigated,
- AAs hit for 282 (136) mitigated,
leads me to conclude it is indeed Spirit damage.

I don't know if this is intended on RoR or if there's been changes to it but I need to restate that PE has always been spirit damage in the past.

Edit: Per your edit, I do not know if PE scales off str on RoR but it didn't on live (just like CoT, as you point out). I shall test it when I have time.

DI/EA scaled with Str while PE/CoT did not (on Live).