Ironbreaker solobitz!

[nocturnalguest]

Channel is awesome tool but overally meh grudgebuilder, best you can afford but still it doesnt cut it to reproduce bursts in solo roaming alike the ones you can do in group setting. I cant check atm but if my memory is not failing me its 5 hits, even considering its synergy with rising anger its still low amount of gain vs dwarven riposte. BG channel has 7 hits and its obligatory hate builder being this easily accessable in any 2h BG build.

But, however, its a great burst solo spec choice regardless of being a bad builder, because you cant make it a burst tool in solo either. To make it work and truly shine as burst tool you have to gear offensively, it means you run max str 5-6+3-4 vic/off sov pieces mixes ideally with bloodlord weapon getting from either off sov or vic important +% crit damage increase that synergies with build-in crit chance for GBF. You also need to be on high grudge everytime so you cant relay on rising anger, only dwarven riposte provides steady flow of grudges from external sources (mainly your guard), but you cant use dwarven riposte in solo because it will net you lesser grudgegains then rising anger on average encounter. So to produce all those crazy bursts that are on par with what some real DPS may bring you have to play in group and run offensively (instead of regular parry/ini group meta) which further complexify your party composition and increase heavy lifting on healers, your whole group has to be ready to carry you in offensive setup.

Running group offensive build (13-0-9 or 13-5-5 in 5-6+3-4 vic/off sov) in solo roaming is an absolute suicide, at this point you can just slot focused offense, at least you will have some fun this way and may blow up someone unprepared accidentially. Your damage will be impressive for a tank but it alone wont cut it and rest of parameters (defenses, selfsustain) will be missing so you will lose any decent fight automatically whatever your player skill is.

For solo (and regular scs pugging) tho, GBF, on contrary to its group full offensive burst timestamping usage, provides sustain DPS that either way IB is lacking because you struggle to reliably HB weave in 1vX situations, there are many GCDs you have to spent and it makes HB weaving not as reliable as it is in group play. And here comes GnM. GnM in 2h solo roaming specs did compensate for a parry losses but there was a build i mentioned that perfected 2h solo roaming spec and combined all at once. Before warlord detaunt nerf and WS->ini change you could take both GBF and GnM in 7p warlord build. Decent regen from warlord pieces, decent parry from WS stack along with proper 50% detaunt proc made it a perfection with a possibility to increase overall sustain pressure thru channel or interupt it to create some spikes. This way it was possible to skip parry buff from middle and go 13-0-13. You would be a bit higher on parry then classical high str regen setup (off sov+warlord+vic+sentinel), more armor penetration with lower raw melee power.

As for GnM, i highly doubt its ever coming back and obviosly that SnB GnM will be considered too OP for largescale from current balance team pov and i dont wanna see current mobility snb to be nerfed to fit GnM, mobility build is hell lot of a fun to play, gameplaywise way better then incredibly effective but rather dull passive AP pump just by 1 button press turning on GnM. So you are partly wrong here Farrul, it was absolute largescale meta pick, SnB IBs back in a day ran 5-5-13 for organised cities, 24v24 etc having all goodies and GnM on top of being AP pump compensated lack of shield mastery a bit. I admit tho, you could also play with 0-11-13, 0-11(13)-11 or 5-11-9 specs it foremost depended on overall party composition. Touching party composition subject, nowdays there is just no shiny composition for it anyways, previously you did it mainly to AP sustain ID spamming slayers. There are no such slayers now, they can spam under WW just as skirm SW but window is small they can rather just pot once or twice, not a big deal. 2h solo spec will also struggle even with GnM being back, you can no longer run 7p warlord and strikethru change messes up any build with not overstacked parry values. Overstacked parry values makes sense for balanced group play, but not effective in solo roaming as you are lacking damage now. Offensive 2h setup wont cut it either and has naturally low defenses. Even if we imagine GnM with old values as core ability there are way too many changes done that wont magically fix 2h roaming anyways imo so IB will not be back on top of solo roaming food chain as 2h. Obviously tho, it will be not as effecient as back in a day but much more pleasant to run in regen or semioffensive 2h setups with GnM.

Block being a separate avoidance check along with new procs on 1h+shield with good offensive itemization will ensure offensive snb as most optimal meta build for solo roaming anyways unless they change oathstone.

[Pahakukka]

P.S. although most likely the devs lied to us and wont keep their promise of restoring it, has it been 4 years now since they claimed it could return ''one day''?

i took few years for U wot to come back so it might still come, just probably not as it was.

[Farrul]

i took few years for U wot to come back so it might still come, just probably not as it was.

Maybe there's a small chance, but honestly i think they only told us that for the logical reason to calm the community backlash( harsh at the time). Perhaps im being a little cynical here but I wouldn't hope for it.

@Nocturnalguest

That was my point exactly regarding trade-off, this would obviously not work in the context of a solo, it would destroy the spec. As far as OP in a group setting etc, not sure about that, what difference will a self hot make when in the context with real healers doing the real work. As far as the AP regen goes, that was pretty good one and a shame IB lost this group utility imho( it's not like it was OP compared to a Kotbs group utility).

Also keep in mind there are two different versions of GnM, the one we enjoyed and loved for many years and the one that they finally removed( which basically lost about 50% of its uptime, i hardly think that version was anything related to being too strong).