"Clay Soldier" Revamped

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Clay Soldier - Original Concept by Sausaletus Rex
Modified and Expanded by Wolf Bane
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Background
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I have to be a warrior primary. I respect the other characters and they all serve their role, but I have to be a warrior. It's a matter of principal. As a warrior I a concerned with 2 things. These are, staying alive, and beating the living snot out of something. My main priority is on staying alive for 2 reasons. 1. Dying is incredibly frustrating and in PvE DP can ruin a mission. 2. If you are dead you aren't going to be beating the snot out of much at all. After that I have to be able to deal damage. Being a god is great, but if you aren't killing anything you are useless and eventually when your team is dead everyone will come after you. Good luck tanking 8 on 1. Taking all of this into consideration and reading other peoples builds as well as running a few of my own, the logical choice is between W/Mo and W/E.

This is a revamped and expanded look at the "Clay Soldier" a Warrior/Earth Elementalist Build with various options to suit your playing style.

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Assumptions:
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For the sake of this post, assume these to be true.
1. The ideal base setup is 11/10/10 resulting in 1 free point.
2. While 1% peircing is weak, unless your build utilizes good tactics skills take the time to find a good towershield and go strength instead of tactics.

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Legal:
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I have taken bits and pieces in some cases chunks of other builds and combined and tweaked them. I take only partial credit for this, and hence only partial blame if it completely sucks ass. I am not claiming that this is the Ultimate Warrior, I am creating a foundation upon which we can build. Major credit goes to Sausaletus Rex as I based a lot off him.

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Attributes
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Swordsmanship: 11(+1)=12
Strength: 10(+2)=12
Earth Magic: 10

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Skills
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1. Sever Artery
2. Gash
3. Galrath Slash, Final Thrust, Hamstring or Savage Slash
4. Another of above or {E}: Warriors Endurance or Victory is Mine or Hundred Blades
5. Frenzy or Flurry
6. Sprint or another from number 3
7. Ward Against Melee or Elements
8. Armor of the Earth

The first 2 skills are pretty standard for any warrior. Armor of the Earth is great. You want to have this on permanently. With a recharge time of half its duration, you can do just that provided you have the mana. To deal with this mana issue we are going to need a skill. Our options are Victory is Mine, Warriors Endurance, and a Zealous hilt. There are a few other tactics skills for mana but since I want to stay away from tac we're skipping those. The zealous hilt is a must, because there is no good reason not to. In the third slot you have your pick of one of the great sword skills. The choice here depends on your mission and possibly your other skills. I insist on having a Zealous hilt which gives you mana leech at the cost of 1 mana pip. To maximize this you will use flurry or frenzy. Its your choice. With insane defence and WaM running as well as semi competent healers, Frenzy is probably a better pick. It additionally will last longer meaning that you are saving mana by using it. Also because your sword gives you increased dmg when in stance it is ideal to be constantly in a stance. Flurry has duration 5 and recharge 5 so that is tough, but frenzy has duration 8 and recharge 4 making it easy to be in a constant state of pwnage. Still, if you want to play conservatively go with Flurry but keep in mind it is going to nerf your damage too. I hear that Flurry may be 33% though as opposed to Frenzy's 25%. Your choice. Sprint is also a generic warrior skill and is very usefull. I recommend packing it, but sometimes you may want to swap it for another of the regular sword skills. Next is your Ward. In PvP WaM is great. My monk sits inside it and can feel alot safer healing. In most cases you will want to pack ward against melee but if you are expecting some heavy elemental opposition load elements instead.

As you can see I've been dogding around the forth skill quite a bit. It's a toughy. I'll explain the pros and cons of each seperately.

Victory is Mine!
5 mana, instant cast, and 15 recharge time. We don't have tactics so the health gain will be minor but the mana is pretty nice. But maintaining sufficient conditions is tough and makes this skill too unrelaible. Additionally it only works if the opponent is right beside you. Lastly you have 2-3 conditions tops but even if your entire team is casting conditions and you are conditioning everyone around you, you can only reach you max mana of 20 which then has to last you 15 seconds.

Warriors Endurance
Strength based is good. Gives us a reason not to entirely hate strength for being the shittiest primary attribute in the game... This is nice because it lasts over an amount of time which means you can charge up, cast, and charge up some more. With 12 str you will have to wait 11 seconds between uses and it can raise you all the way up to 15 mana. Not bad. It's a stance too which will pump the damage on the suggested sword. Even better, use flurry and you can gain mana uber fast..... No, you can't. Because they are both stances and you can only be in one stance at a time. That is the down side of this. Not really a downside actually just don't fool yourself into thinking its a godly combo there because it ain't.

Hundred Blades
Awesome skill. The more enemies the better it gets. I haven't tested but I'm pretty sure you gain adrenaline for each hit, so this should give you some nice boost there. Good damage, 8 second recharge time is acceptble, I wouldn't mind it lowered since the did make it an elite skill but whatever. Whats also really nice, is if you are using a Zealous hilt you can gain some mad mana from this skill, or atleast enough to cover the cost. I have only seen 1 mana stolen per hit Zealous hilts, but if they go higher than that then this would be without doubt my favorite of the 3.

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Equipment
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Sword: 15-22 +15% while in stance. The sword is available in desert from a crafter for 5 bleached carapaces all you need are the upgrade materials.
Shield: Best strength shield available.
Armor: Knights. Since you are reducing so much damage due to your awesome defence, the damage reduction on this will be a much greater asset than a bit more defence. If we had formulas for damage reduction someone could confirm this, but theoretically it sounds good.
Helmet: Strength +1. Simply because you can get you knights or plate set helm with this mod instead of the captains helm look. Either way just make sure you have 12 strength and 12 swords after all bonuses.
Upgrades: Zealous Hilt, Pommel of Choice
Runes: Minor Sword, Minor Strength, Best Vigor available, toss a fury in there for fun.

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Closing
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Once again, this is in no way the Ultimate Warrior. There are many way way better, it is just the foundation for a warrior that suits my style and possibly yours too. I desprately seek suggestions and comments on this build as I am still not satisfied with it. Additionally I would like to make not that if Sprint and Warriors Endurance are not used then strength can be swapped out for tactics and a tactics skill can be incorperated. If anyone can tell me if Zealous hilts come higher than 1 and/or would like to sell me one I'd also be gratefull. Thanks alot everyone for reading this and I look foreward to hearing your suggestions.

Nice build, I used something like this in PvP once, needless to say, it's a tank. Problem is, everyone then just gangs up on you and then you have 800hp/s coming off you.

I'm working on getting 100 blades to test out that part of it. I have a zealous hilt which is nice. Mana is good, but when I'm trying to constantly maintain Ward against Melee I'm a bit short. Suggestions please guys.

Hundred Blades is nice for PvE, but I find it absolutely useless in PvP environment. How often do you see people standing adjacent to each other?

Also, can anyone recommend a good way to make a w/mo along similar lines? I really still can't decide between the two.