Poison Blades W/R - feedback please

This all started when I had managed to salvage a poison hilt from a sword, and I was thinking how can I put this to some use. So I though why not make a poison based W/R.

This has not been tested in game yet. I was just putting some ideas down on paper. I am sure people already have something similar and they can make some suggestions to the build.

== Poison Blades ==

Sprint - Strength
Apply Poisons - Wilderness Survival
Gash - Swordsmanship
Sever Artery - Swordsmanship
Frenzy - Unlinked
Hundred Blades {E} - Unlinked - sword required
Dryder's Defenses - Wilderness Survival
Nature's Renewal - Wilderness Survival

Strength 13 (11+2)
Swordsmanship 12 (10+2)
Wilderness Survival 10

== Modifiers ==
Plate Mail Helmet (+1 Strength)
Rune of Minor Strength (+1 to Strength)
Rune of Mayor Swordsmanship (+2 to Swordsmanship)

Or another variant was to maybe put some points in Expertise for some more disruption

Sprint - Strength
Apply Poisons - Wilderness Survival
Gash - Swordsmanship
Sever Artery - Swordsmanship
Frenzy - Unlinked
Hundred Blades {E} - Unlinked - sword required
Dryder's Defenses - Wilderness Survival
Throw Dirt - Expertise

Strength 12 (10+2)
Swordsmanship 12 (10+2)
Wilderness Survival 9
Expertise 7

The aim of the build is to make them bleed and give them deep wounds as well as being able to poison multiple targets with 100 Blades and maybe disrupt them with Nature's Renewal or Throw Dirt. My focus with the skill selection was to make sure that the energy use was manageable.

As a way of possibly re-charging all of your skills I though of maybe add the remaing 1 point into Marksmanship and use Determined Shot (have a bow equipped as a quick change weapon), I figured having low marksmanship you would more than likely miss against the high armoured warriors OR you could maybe add a pet to the equation.

Thanks for your time.

From what ive heard, although i havent actually done this poison thing, it kicks ass pve, not so hot pvp. The main reason is since you got nice degen, theres no power to actually finish someone off. Pve of course, that isnt a problem, poison them and bog off.

Well, from what I've experienced, raw POWER isn't always a warrior's answer for everything.

Ah, but disruption, that's the REAL deal. It's a LOT easier to disrupt your enemies rather than damage then in pvp. If you're team has a smart mix of hard hitting dmg dealers coupled with condition/hex disruption, you've got urself a team that's VERY HARD to defend against.

[what you think it's easier to defend against, SUPER HIGH dmg or even spreads of conditions, hexes, and mediocre sustained dmg?]

I see Poison, Bleeding, Deep Wound, and Blind. Ditch 100 Blades, get Victory is Mine! instead. 4 conditions means you get 20 energy when you use it.

Hmm, from what I can see, if you want to immunize yourself from a lot of dmg and still keep energy going, Bonetti's Defense with a chunk of tactics should be fine. Remember, you're bleeding, deep wound, and poisoning your enemy all at once. That -7 or so degen coupled with sustained swinging due to your sprint should mean that you're not going to be spamming too many other skills. So Bonetti's should help against the occasional Warriorvs.warrior skirmish.

Thanks for feedback, so what do you think of this variation. I swapped out 100 Blades with Victory as well as swapping the Blinding for Hamstring, its still a condition so i am maximising Victory but it also means they cant get away so i can finish them off.

Sprint - Strength
Apply Poisons - Wilderness Survival
Gash - Swordsmanship
Sever Artery - Swordsmanship
Hamstring - Swordsmanship
Frenzy - Unlinked
Victory is Mine{E} - Tactics
Dryder's Defenses - Wilderness Survival


Strength 12 (10+2)
Swordsmanship 12 (10+2)
Wilderness Survival 9
Tactics 8 (7+1)

my personal opinion is that defending against a 600 1 second spike is much harder than 40dps sustained.

Quote: Originally Posted by rii

You can't put points in expertise if you're a W/R since that's the Ranger's "Special" skill. R/W would work though, but then you lose out on plate armor.

If you want poison, why not Axe and Cyclone axe then?

Winnowing? Tiger's fury?

Louis,

Yeah you loose on armour.... but if you know who your up against, get greater conflaguration or winter and get the anti cold/fire set depending. Then there is probably an increase in armour :S

Quote: == Modifiers ==
Plate Mail Helmet (+1 Strength)
Rune of Minor Strength (+1 to Strength)
Strength 13 (11+2) 2 minor strenght runes do not add up to +2, its +1. Only highest rune counts for the same skill (so with 1 minor & 1 major in the same skill then only the major will count).

(Dont up strenght for sprint only if you already use hamstring, but you changed that).

100 Blades is end game so another skill needs to be used until you get it, Final Thrust could be used (Description: Lose all Adrenaline. If Final Thrust hits, you deal 1 more damage. This damage is doubled if your target was below 50% Health.)

The plus one from his helmet is not a rune, helmets have + to attributes. And they do stack with runes. My necro's scar pattern has +4 to Death Magic because it has innate +1 and +3 from a rune.

Couple things... Platemail helm does not have +1 anything on it. While there are head items that do, that isn't one of them.

I was looking into a degen warrior build as something to break away from all the womo's out there, and I've ended up with this so far... Constructive criticism welcome but I'm still tweaking this, so I by no means think this is an amazing build, just something I'm tinkering with.

W/R

Attributes:

Swordsmanship 12 (10 +1 rune +1 hat)
Wilderness Survival 10
Strength 9 (8 +1 rune)
Tactics 9 (8 +1 rune)

Most good shields require tactics. Mine takes 9. If I find a good STR shield I'll drop tactics altogether most likely, and funnel the points into wilderness and strength

Skills:

Hamstring
Galrath Slash
Final Thrust
Sever Artery
<random skill that most helps my group and depends on PVE or PVP>
Frenzy
Poison Arrow {Elite}
Res Sig

I looked at apply poison first, but it has some major, major drawbacks due to the bunk energy cost of most ranger skills (apparently only R primes with expertise are allowed to have fun with ranger skills). Apply poison, with 12 wilderness, will stay on you for 12 seconds, and poison for 13 seconds. A two second cast time and a whopping FIFTEEN energy cost for this short duration made it unacceptable to me as a warrior primary. Looking at your skill list, without using gladiator armor or a focus, you can't even stack all the skills you have listed.

This is where poison arrow comes in. 5 energy, negligible recast time, and up to 17 second poison duration (at 10 WS, it's 15 seconds) just seem to make this fit better into a warrior's narrow energy spread.

Arrow? As in, use a bow? Sure. Initially, I wanted to simply bind weapon set 2 and the poison arrow skill button to the same key, and bind weapon set 1 to my "do it" key. This, at least at first glance, seems impossible because it won't let you multimap keys. Next best workaround: There IS a keybind for "cycle weapon sets" so I mapped that sucker to an easy to reach key, then set up my weapon sets as such:

<sword and shield> <bow> <the same sword and shield> <the same bow>

What this does it lets me quickly toggle between my bow and my normal gear with one keypress instead of reaching for two separate F keys.

Basic strategy is to keep poison and bleed on my target as often as possible, and in the 15 seconds or so (I use a poison bowstring) between degen applications spam frenzy to get my adrenal skills charged as fast as I can. It's working well so far, though I still have a lot of testing to do. If you time it right, the weapon swap to poison then swap back to melee is fluid and only takes maybe one or two total seconds out of your attack cycle, which is one or two hits at most.

So far this seems to be working for straight DPS on a single target, and whittling down runners. It seems really helpful toppling resilient targets because of the combined sustained degen and the small bursts from the adrenal skills and odd criticals. If someone runs and I can't get the hammy off in time, I just pop a poison shot into it then focus on the next target.

The idea of apply poison really appeals to me but within the confines of the game, I just couldn't see it being practical for a warrior.

Quote: Apply poison, with 12 wilderness, will stay on you for 12 seconds, and poison for 13 seconds. Apply Poison lasts for 24 seconds, not 12.

Quote: Originally Posted by Unruhe

Quote: Originally Posted by Unruhe

Quote: Apply Poison lasts for 24 seconds, not 12. Hrm, skill list on here must be flat out wrong, or at the very least outdated...

Quote: Apply Poison - Preparation
For 12 seconds, enemies struck by your attacks become poisoned for 3-13 seconds. So, I stand corrected on that point.

Quote:

The Platemail helmet does come with a standard +1 Str already part of the helmet. I have it on my Warrior at the moment. Check Droknars Forge for yourself if you don't believe me =) This must be a recent change. I looked in Drok and sure enough, the +1 STR was on that helm. The one in my inventory (that's been there for 2-3 weeks now) doesn't have it. I'm ... sad now. Nice catch on the helm there, and thanks for pointing it out. Now if they'd only make the non-ugly helms have other stat options on them, too, I'd be a happy camper. As it is, my now gimp plate helm sits in a bag while I wear my leather skullcap of cutting things better. Annnd lastly Quote: how about instead of poison arrow, u have apply poison and have hundred blades for that random skill? I explained, in pretty thorough detail I thought, why I don't like apply poison. Duration errors aside, 15 energy is still a large cost for a warrior for what is still a relatively short lived buff, that you only get the effect of once per target (you can't stack poison, once your target is poisoned that skill's work is done until it wears or is removed) and I just don't see enough clumping in PVP aside from King of the Hill to warrant choosing hundred blades. I think the next thing I try in that random slot will be Warrior's Cunning or something like that, to cut through the stance-and-protection spamming monks. Usually my tombs group goes for fear me spam from the warriors, but not always. 'Twas why I called it random and situational. I'm not saying Apply Poison is outright bad, I'm saying it's hard to fit a 15 energy ability with situational and usually "one time" use into my playstyle, whereas Poison Arrow lets me cheaply keep the same amount of degen on my target. Depending on the circumstances, one will most likely be better than the other, but one won't be invariably best. Forgive any typos or other such errors please... I'm very, very sleepy.