Return of Reckoning

That you'd be better off running a Knight?

I'm one of the people who believes that WW itself doesn't make up for the utility/defensive power loss of a Knight over a SM.

Unless you design a group (careers and specs) around WW CD reduction itself, abusing low cooldown abilities and maximising burst/defenses with it. WW itself noticably affects only a few abilities (powerful stuff with 5-10 sec CD) and is almost unnoticable on most other abilities, as a 5 second reduction to a RP wounds increase for example will hardly matter most of the time.
And only if you are also capable of decent assist damage yourself. With your choice of tactics it feels like you really can't pull off much better damage than a Knight (also BA, you don't have that in your linked spec, did you mean Perfect Defenses?).

Aside from that, by not running a Knight you're losing better morales (ok WoH is amazing but both Guarian of Light and No Escape outperform SM counterparts), Dirty Tricks, auras which outperform blade enchantments, AoE snare, long-distance knockback, potentially AoE heal debuff and potentially an AoE stagger. Which I believe outperforms all of what a SM can offer to the group.

I mean sure, you might dislike playing a Knight (or already have one) and want to give a defensive SM a go but unless you find your niche (something like an immortal spec with healing tactics or the aforementioned WW comp with a group) you'll be feeling powerless and find the career unrewarding to play.

But that's just a personal opinion, I like playing to careers' strengths as opposed to making quirky or suboptimal things work. If you do, more power to you!

Well, i mostly plan to run in bomb warband so WW will help with annihilate on BW and ID on slayers.

What stats should i be looking at? Whats your toughness resist and wounds?
Got around 750 wounds, 680 toughness but my resist are piss, using 3x enervating toughness/wounds and 3% parry wing with the precursor belt and cloak.

I can't comment much since I don't run in a WB, I prefer small-scale but I can see why you'd want to be a WW bot, it's one of the niches that I talked about. Take all of this with a grain of salt.

I'd say that in a WB setting all tanks will be looking for similar stats, capped resists, healthy chunk of armor, toughness and block (not parry). If you need help with your resists you should look into getting Winds Impervious jewelry set, you'll be losing toughness but I'd argue it's worth it for resists. It'll get easier once you get Anni since first and second bonuses are 62 Toughness and 320 Spirit resist. Then you'll only be struggling with Corp resist.

Also, any tips on tactics I should be using? ATM I got Perfect Defenses, PE, Impeccable Reactions and Rugged/BE.

Outside of the limited healing of Bolstering Enchantments (and Blessing of Heaven) SMs have 0 large scale utility tactics. So your best bet is lowering the healing needed to keep you alive to be able to keep WW up as often as possible and guarding/HTLing. I don't find PE worth it since unless you can string a lot of hits together in a quick succession it's gonna be a meh tactic. From my testing it does proc on different targets (AoE) but it's very much fluff damage.

I'd look into running Isha's Protection, 20% more healing from ALL sources is extremely good when you're a defensive tank and for some reason extremely underrated. I'd run Rugged, PD, Isha's Protection and then either Impeccable Reactions or if you feel like your elemental resistance is in the dump, Bend the Winds (Magus AoE damage and some ST damage is Elemental, along with Shamans).

If you feel like your survivability is fine though you can always go back to your initial plan of adding some damage and run Adept Movements and PE and just spam some AoE (although one of the two AoE abilities is a bit of a nombo with Engi magnet so meh).

But again, I might not know what I'm talking about

I tended to run this as SnB defensive SM in bomb WBs.

http://waronlinebuilder.org/#career=sm; ... :2881:2882:

Bear in mind Crashing Wave and Crushed Advance are swapped around in-game.

Renown Points in Block then one level of Resolute Defense (to pop when WBs collide early on so you stick with your guarded friend when it matters) and the rest in Parry.

The spec is basically a WW bot spec, whilst granting CC through Crashing Wave. You basically try to cycle those and thus provide benefits to your group, stick to your guarded target and attempt to nullify key targets in the backline (see below). Mix in Challenge and Morales and that's about it.

Bear in mind that WW is also a silence, so try to use that on either their casters or healers, rather than tanks or MDPS in the front line. The same applies for CW which also provides a KD. If either is on CD or they have immunities, you slap a Blurring Shock on a key target that needs to be taken down - BS has no internal cooldown so in an AOE bomb party can stack some amazing damage - or you slap a Dazzling Strike on a healer (Shaman/Zealot) or Caster (Sorc/Magus) with long cast times.

I have a question. Im fairly new to the game, there is A LOT that I don't know/I don't understand, so keep in mind that before using complex terms . Anyways, I'm planning to create a swordmaster, I'm fine with being a tank or a dps but honestly, I would rather to kill a lot in PVP if thats possible with that class. What choices do I have using this class? Just want to see some great builds

Swordmasters are decently durable tanks that have what's considered the biggest damage potential of the tank careers at this stage of the game's life (but people will be quick to point out that's likely to change later on). What's special about the career is that it loses the least durability compared to other tanks when playing with a 2-handed weapon as opposed to a shield and a blade (S&B). This comes from a chanelled ability called Wall of Darting Steel that boosts your defenses while being channeled (you get this ability at Career Rank 40).

If you want a spec that will suit you you'll need to provide more information. What tier are you in, are you in T4? What is your playstyle, do you prefer ORvR or scenarios? Group play or solo play?

Here's what usually people go for:
(Some of these specs require Career Rank 40 and either Renown Rank 40 or full Ruin/Mercenary/Annihilator set, which gives you an extra mastery point in one of the mastery trees)

1. Khaine/Vaul - Straightforward spec focusing on damage and burst, two-handed weapon required

You get 2 very strong damage tactics which synergise well with one of the best SM abilities, Ether Dance. Ether Dance (or ED for short) is a channeled ability that hits 5 times in 3 seconds, capable of triggering any damage effects/tactics/critting five times. It's probably the most burst damage any tank career is capable of.

Properly set up by:
- Slotting all your damage tactics (Great Weapon Mastery, Balanced Accuracy) and a tactic that deals damage over time every time your blade enchantment triggers (Potent Enchantments, it also deals damage immediately upon triggering)
- Debuffing your enemies spirit resistance with Wrath of Hoeth and/or Heaven's Blade (blade enchantment)
- Debuffing the enemy with Blurring Shock (a debuff that "shocks" your target for damage whenever you crit)
- Using Ether Dance and seeing the numbers fly off the screen in that 3 second window.

In Vaul you spec into a 3 second knockdown with a secondary effect of making yourself and your group members immune to knockdown/stagger/silence/disarm for 4 seconds. This gives you some much needed crowd control which allows you to manipulate the enemy and save your allies.

2. Hoeth/Vaul - Utility focused spec, can be played with a two-handed weapon or a shield

The high point of this spec is Whispering Wind which unleashes two hits, silences the enemy for 4 seconds and allows your and your groups' cooldowns to finish 5 seconds faster for abilities used within 10 seconds. This allows for some crazy chaining of powerful abilities that would otherwise have a short cooldown. But it requires a coordinated group of suitable careers/specs to take full advantage of. Naturally it's not a bad damage dealing ability but that's not where its power lies.

You also get Crashing Wave (CW) in Vaul because it's one of the abilities that allow you to truly play as a tank. In short, Crowd Control is king and most specs will incorporate CW in their build.

There are a few points that aren't allocated because they're quite situational and up to personal preference:
- There's Perfect Defenses in Vaul, which is invaluable if you're playing a more defensive spec and like pushing into the enemy lines and drawing enemy fire but will require a shield to take full advantage of.
- Protection of Hoeth is an absorb shield that helps you avoid damage on demand, very useful in all situations.
- Aethyric Armor increases your armor but won't stack with other armor increasing buffs, including potions, so if you're planning on using those (they give more armor at this stage of the game but they do require PvE farming) speccing into this ability probably won't be worth it because you're only gaining a 5% disrupt chance.
- Blessing of Heaven and Bolstering Enchantments heal group mates either passively or when they hit your target. The healing isn't very strong and your stats won't improve it so it's not amazing, but it is something that helps your group if you're planning on group play.

3. Vaul/Hoeth - Quirky Shield and Blade build that I've seen people run on live AoR but I've only heard it being talked of here on RoR.

This isn't something that a lot of people would consider a real spec since it doesn't deal a lot of damage and it doesn't provide much utility to the group. It's a solo spec that's meant to outlast the opponent by using tactics and abilities that increase your defenses, shield you and even provide some healing. It's a "why won't this guy die" spec with a weakness to being crowd controlled, kited and ignored (since you don't do much damage) because unlike other tank durability specs this relies on active defenses (hitting the enemy and using your abilities) as opposed to the advantage of raw stats and passive avoidance.

It's probably not something you're looking for but I thought I'd include it cause it's interesting (and it somewhat works).


Usually Swordmaster specs will be some variation of the first two specs, depending on the players' needs and playstyle. Although a Khaine/Vaul cookie cutter spec is pretty straightforward and not something that can necessarily be improved upon. The playstyle of that spec however, is probably trickier than some more defensive specs because of balancing assisting with damage and durability/tanking (effectively using Guard, Crowd Control, mitigation abilities, disrupting enemy lines and not over-extending), something that separates us from Melee DPS careers.

Wow this turned into a long post, hope some of this will be useful. I should extend and repost this on my blog.

Lingering intimidation can be used to effect on enemy aoe dps in wb vs wb bomb situations.

Ugle wrote:Lingering intimidation can be used to effect on enemy aoe dps in wb vs wb bomb situations.

Good point, I dismissed it because it's a single target ability and not as strong in small scale but when dropped on a Sorc in a WB setting it could be decently effective and worth running.