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38 Void Knight / 28 RiftBlade / 0 Vindicator

38 Void Knight / 28 RiftBlade / 0 Vindicator

I've been having a lot of fun with this build. A lot of fun. It's sword/board (or 2hander if you want, there's no penalty), it's different, and there are several little hidden combo's that let you wrack up a lot of kills, and win a lot of 1v1 fights. This is the thinking man's Warrior PVP build, with good range and melee.

I think this may be the most complicated Warrior build, in terms of having a ton of abilities one 15 second - 1 minute cooldowns. This isn't a build for becoming a PVP God and topping Damage Done, though you can end up in the top five pretty easily and it has the same basic Burst characteristics as Zin's Ragestorm build, except about 25% less damage. However, it makes up for that by giving you much, much more defense.

Macros

For macros, I have an anti-magic, a root, a burst, a builder and a finisher. Then I have a few macro to spellbreak myself (essential for the 6 seconds of magic immunity) and arcane shield me, too. Then, there are four other useful finishers that need separate keybinds.

Antimagic

cast spell sunder
cast disrupt
cast freeze armor
cast soul pillage
cast discharge
cast flamespear
cast spark

Root

cast stonespear
cast freeze armor
cast spell sunder

Build

Cast frost strike
cast searing strike
cast flamespear
cast discharge
cast spark
cast freeze armor

Burst/AE

(use this after Enhanced Burst is set for a 20% boost. Can add in a loadequip macro to switch to 2hander for this)

cast ragestorm
cast tempest
cast airburst
cast thunder strike

Finisher

cast storm burst
cast earth burst
cast fiery burst

Anti-magic Finisher

cast devouring strike
cast catalyze

Save Yourself

target [name] (or learn the @self macro.. which I forget at the moment)
cast spellbreaker
cast stoneshield
cast rift shield
targetlasttarget

Strategies

Against Warriors

Root, kite, port, snare, mash fiery burst. If they are a reaver/rb warrior, enjoy receiving your second bar of health via Fusion of Flesh. Use a shield. Spell Sunder their buffs, and be ready to fight from range as much as possible. Between discharge, flamespear, stonespear, and spark you have decent ranged damage. Warriors are not your best target with this build. Ignore your VK side (but enjoy the extra armor, block and parry it brings) and focus on Fiery Burst. Also, you can run around just out of range of a warrior (or rogue) and spam tempest/ragestorm/airburst to get hits on your opponent while he cannot hit you. Also, don't underestimate Spell Sunder. For instance, riftblade builds heavily rely on their Planar Blade for power. Keep that buff off your target and you'll cut his damage output in half. This build gives you a lot of time to adjust and think because you've got high defense.

Against Rogues

Strip buffs, apply spell surge. Spell surge is death to rogues, who spam abilities. Fusion of Flesh is another tactic that works well here. If I can get a rogue to 50% health with my ranged attacks and melee spam, then spell surge usually handles the rest.

Against Mages

Build 3 AP, use Fiery Burst. Attack with Unstable Reaction. This will deal about 1500-2000 damage PLUS silence the mage. Unstable Reaction benefits from the 20% Enhanced Burst damage. I had a lot of wins in 1v1 PVP with this technique, especially in open-world fights. I think a lot of /lock builds tend to wait until their health is critical before they start healing, and this (along with the buff-stripping) tends to shut them down right about when they'd normally be healing. Constantly spellbreak yourself! It recharges every 15 seconds and gives you SIX SECONDS of immunity, meaning 1/3 of all spells will simply not work on you. This, along with Spell Shield, Void (20% spell reduction) and Avatar of Water (another 10%) you will have a long time to fight any mage you see.

Against Clerics

Strip buffs often, and don't forget about your two silences. It's a really beautiful thing to see a Justicar cleric run into a big group of players expecting to survive for a while, then be silenced and stripped of buffs, dying in four or five seconds. However, once DR starts to set in, clerics can give you problems again. However, at the very least the silences and buff-removal gives you two effective tools to fight healing clerics that most other classes don't have, so you in addition to a straight DPS can bring down even the toughest cleric.

Against Groups

People tend to leave you alone if you have a shield equipped, which is great when you're spamming waves of AE damage punctuated by 8-second silences on their back row. You can supplement this build with 13 points in Vindicator (taken out of VK) to make it a subdue build, but honestly I feel that the AE silence is just as useful and the other abilities you get make up for it, especially Fusion of Flesh.

Over Un-even Terrain

This build is the ultimate Codex defender because of the Rift Summon/Planar Blade combo. Every crit will reset your Rift Summon, so you can often spam the attack and pull 5-6 rogues/clerics/mages down from the cliff in Codex in a row, which really ruins their day when paired with a 8-second silence.

Closing Words

Anyway, this build isn't a min/max build, but one that gives you a lot of options to fight certain types of players. You get a lot of beautiful moments in which you completely decimate another player's strategies with a well-timed Spell Sunder or AE Silence, or a Rift Surge.

This build is ultra mobile, with rift summon and riftwalk constantly recharging due to Planar Blade. You have snares and roots, ranged damage, melee damage, and the best magic-resist of just about any soul combination in the game. This build is great for flag running in mage-heavy games because of spellbreaker/break free. I successfully ran Shards in Port Scion through 5-10 players by using Spellbreaker/Rift Shield/Fusion of Flesh and Avatar of Wind for the speed boost. Only marksmen pose a real threat to your health at a range, and you have heavy plate armor and a shield to help mitigate that. You can also fire off the only ranged-ae damage that warriors have available by sticking Storm Burst and Earth Burst to your ranged attacks and lobbing them into groups of enemies, building up your Damage Done.

*Source: RIFT Forum