Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Class Guides – Swordmaster: MMOGrindHouse.com

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Class Guides – Swordmaster

Tuesday, July 14th, 2009 · Filed Under age of reckoning, the land of the dead, war online, warhammer asia, warhammer build guide, warhammer job change, warhammer online

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The Swordmaster class is known as the tanker class of the High Elves. They specialize in Blade Dancing (sword combination attacks) and Balance (swordmaster mechanic). Their allegiance belongs to the Shining Guard Army.

The following guide discuses the Swordmaster Class – general information, abilities, playstyle, tips, etc. This guide is written by SwordmasterCyris.

The Swordmaster Guide by Cyris of Vendetta

This guide will provide an introduction to the Swordmaster and give advice on how to play the class.

Who am I and why should you care?

I’ve been in WAR beta since before the High Elf/Dark Elf pairing was created. Since the Swordmaster class was released, I’ve been playing it alongside nearly every other class. As a Swordmaster, I’ve leveled from 1 through 40 over the course of multiple beta phases, I’ve tanked and DPSed nearly every PQ in the Elf and Empire zones, and I’ve run every instance currently in the game – including the King battle in Inevitable City. So when I say I know a thing or two about Swordmasters, hopefully you’ll believe me.

An Overview of the Swordmaster

The Swordmaster is one possible tank class that Order players can choose to play in Warhammer Online. Originally designed as an anti-magic tank, the boundaries have since become fuzzy. The strengths of the Swordmaster stem from the ability to wear heavy armor, and the ability to deal large amounts of spirit damage instead of physical damage. (This checks against Spirit Mitigation instead of Physical Mitigation)

The Swordmaster Mechanic

Swordmasters use a mechanic called Balance. It’s a fairly straight forward system in which certain skills require either Normal Balance, Improved Balance, or Perfect Balance to use. In addition, many skills not only require a certain balance, but also increase your balance.

The path of progression through balance is as follows:

Normal -> Improved -> Perfect -> Normal

It is important to note that skills used from Perfect Balance do not consume any AP.

What can a Swordmaster do in PvE?

In PvE gameplay, the Swordmaster is first and foremost a tank. Their job is to gain agro on one or more mobs and hold it, ensuring that other players are not being attacked. To do this, a Swordmaster must be skilled at more than simply spamming high-threat skills such as Graceful Strike. They must also know how to position a mob and when to use their defensive skills to reduce incoming damage.

The Swordmaster excels at both multi-mob tanking, and tanking without a shield. However, just because a Swordmaster can tank without a shield does not mean that they should. Depending on Mastery spec, there are some options that will only be available when using a greatsword, and some options that will only be available when using a shield. Currently, however, the benefit of being able to block far outweighs those gained from using a greatsword; this is because in Warhammer, blocking defends against ALL attacks – ranged and magic as well as melee.

For those players who have picked a Swordmaster, yet lack the Zen required to be a worthwhile tank, fear not. For Swordmasters are able to pump out respectable damage with their greatswords and the help of mastery points spent in the Path of Khaine and the Path of Hoeth.

What can a Swordmaster do in RvR?

There are two main schools of thought about a tanks job in RvR. Some players feel that tanks should stand in the back and try to protect healers, and other players feel that tanks are front line assault warriors who should charge into groups of other players and get beat on.

It is my personal view that standing in the back and trying to protect a healer is a waste. There is no mechanic to force a player to attack you (e.g. Taunt in EQ2) and you have no way to remove CC from another person. Nearly every class in WAR has ample methods of CC – if a healer gets attacked by a melee class, they’ll be snared, silenced, and debuffed before you can even blink. At best you can snare the attacker or if you’re an ironbreaker, knock them down for a short amout of time and hope the healer can get away. Although chances are the healer is being focus fired, so it probably won’t do much good anyway. If I was forced to pick a tank class to stand back and “defend” the healers though, it would be an ironbreaker. They have many more tools for this at their disposal than a swordmaster does. (knockbacks, knockdowns, snares, damage-on-move debuffs)

Let us say then, for the sake of argument, that a Swordmaster’s role in RvR is to act as a front line assault element. Their high mitigation and ability to spec for very respectable damage makes them very, VERY deadly in this role. With proper healing, a Swordmaster can charge into a full warband of destruction and take them all out one by one without risk of dying. Without healing, they can still survive long enough to create an opening that the rest of the Order players can exploit.

Abilities, Tactics, and Morals

The Swordmaster is unique among most other classes in that nearly every skill has a well defined purpose in either PvE or RvR. Due to the Balance mechanic that a Swordmaster employs there is no one set skill that is best spammed until your target dies.

Exact descriptions of all the abilities, tactics, and morals that you can get as a Swordmaster have been done by other players to a much better degree than I am able in this guide. For example, the WarDB database has a very nice listing of all the skills and how they change with level. I will therefore not repeat their work. Instead, I will give a few short notes on the various skills and their uses.

A list of our skills that work off the balance mechanic is as follows:

Requires Normal Balance and leads to Improved Balance:

Graceful Strike – A physical based DD+DoT attack that also increases hate
Ensorcelled Blow – A spirit based DD attack
Sapping Strike – A physical based DD attack that also drains 50 AP over 5 seconds
Gryphon’s Lash (Khaine Mastery) – A physical DD attack that cannot be blocked or parried

Requires Improved Balance and leads to Perfect Balance:

Eagle’s Flight – A physical based DD attack that increases your chance to parry
Crushing Advance (Khaine Mastery) – A physical based DD attack that increases your Armor and chance to Block as well as interrupts your target
Quick Incision – A physical based DoT attack that also snares your target
Dazzling Strike – A physical based DD that increases your target’s build times by 1 second for 5 seconds
Gusting Wind – A spirit based AoE DD attack with a 10 foot range
Phoenix’s Wing (Khaine Mastery) – A physical based frontal AoE DD attack that also increases hate
Intimidating Blow – A physical based DD attack that also reduces your target’s morale

Requires Perfect Balance and leads to Normal Balance:

Bluring Shock – A physical based DD attack
Wrath of Hoeth – A spirit based AoE DD attack with a 30 foot range that also reduces spiritual resistance
Dragon’s Talon – A physical based DD attack that hits twice and reduces your target’s damage by 20%
Ether Dance (Khaine Mastery) – A spirit based DD attack that hits 5 times
Whispering Wind (Hoeth Mastery) – A spirit based DD attack that hits twice and silence your target
Crashing Wave (Vaul Mastery) – A spirit based DD attack that hits twice and knocks down your target
Protection of Hoeth (Hoeth Mastery) – Creates an shield around you that absorbs damage

In addition to skills which work on the Balance mechanic, we also have a number of useful buffs:

Taunt – Interrupts your target and increases damage you deal to them by 30%
Guard – Your target’s hate and damage taken is split 50/50 with you

Juggernaut – Removes most CC from you, but does NOT make you immune to further CC
Aethyric Grasp – PBAoE root

Heaven’s Blade – Buff that adds a DD proc to all melee attacks
Nature’s Blade – Buff that adds a stat drain proc to all melee attacks
Phantom’s Blade – Buff that adds a morale drain proc to all melee attacks

Aethyric Armor (Hoeth Mastery)– 30 minute buff that increases armor and disrupt chance

We also have a number of passive buffs, called tactics, that we can use. The number of tactics you can have depends on your level, capping at 4 class tactics at level 40. I’ll describe the more interesting ones that I typically use here:

Focused Offence – Increases all damage you do by 25%, but increases all damage you take by 20%
Rugged – Increases your toughness by 160 at level 40
Menace – Increases all threat generated by your attacks by 100%
Centuries of Training – 25% chance to proc a DoT lasting for 5 seconds
Ensorcelled Agony – Ensorcelled Blow now adds a DoT lasting for 5 seconds
Potent Enchantments – Each time your enchantment procs, a DoT is applied for 9 seconds
Gryphon’s Precision (Khain Mastery) – 25% chance to stun your target for 1 seconds when you use Gryphon’s Lash
Perfect Defences (Vaul Mastery) – Increases your chance to Block and Parry based on your Balance level
Bolstering Enchantments (Hoeth Mastery) – When your enchantment procs, your target is drained of spiritual and corporeal resistancefor 10 seconds and you gain the amount drained.
Volatile Enchantments (Hoeth Mastery) – Increases your enchantment proc rate to 50%
Deep Incision (Khaine Mastery) – Increases the DoT component of Quick Incision
Vaul’s Buffer (Vaul Mastery) – On a successful block, dodge, parry, or disrupt you become surrounded by a small absorption shield for 10 seconds

From first glance, there is an obvious synergy between various skills. I will list the most common chains below:

(1) Graceful Strike -> Eagle’s Flight -> Dragon’s Talon

This chain is your bread and butter tank chain. You open with a high hate attack, then follow it up with a blow that increases your chance to avoid damage, and finish it with an attack that mitigates any damage you do take. In addition, this chain can be used while wielding a greatsword.

If you have chosen to put points into the Path of Vaul and plan to use a shield, then you can switch in Crushing Advance for Eagle’s Flight. This allows you to increase your armor well as your block value; the results are both an increase to physical mitigation, and a higher chance to outright avoid all types of damage. Crashing Wave can also be alternated with Dragon’s Talon in order to knock your target down, thereby preventing them from doing anything for the duration. However, the cooldown on Crashing Wave is on the longer side, so it’s not a skill that you can use every time perfect balance is achieved.

(2) Ensorcelled Blow -> Gusting Wind -> Wrath of Hoeth

This chain is your basic spirit attack chain that you can use against heavily armored opponents (such as destruction tanks). Every skill does spirit damage, and Wrath of Hoeth lowers your target’s spiritual resistance. Additionally, this chain can double as your basic AoE chain, allowing you to take on multiple targets at the same time. However, this is not the chain you should use for AoE tanking.

(3) Graceful Strike -> Gusting Wind -> Wrath of Hoeth

This is the chain you should use for AoE tanking. As long as your party members are attacking your target, graceful strike will build enough hate to ensure you keep agro. The damage from Gusting Wind and Wrath of Hoeth will ensure that healers will not accidently pull agro. This chain can also be used to multitank when other classes are AoEing. The cravat is that they need to wait a few moments so that you can build initial agro.

If you have gone down the Path of Khaine and picked up Phoenix’s Wing, then you should switch out Gusting Wind for it due to the increased hate it generates. However, to do this you must be tanking with a greatsword.

(4) Sapping Strike -> Dazzling Strike

This partial chain can be weaved into other chains for RvR battles. The 10 second cooldown on each skill prevents them from being used in the same manner as other Normal and Improved balance sills, but their impact can be enough to turn the tide of battle in your favor.

(5) Gryphon’s Lash -> Quick Incision -> Ether Dance

If you plan to DPS as a swordmaster, this is the only chain you need to know. The ability of Gryphon’s Lash to bypass block and parry makes a huge difference in the DPS dealt compared to other attacks. Quick incision not only adds a large DoT, but it also ensures that your target stays nice and close. Finally, Ether Dance is able to deal over 1000 damage per cast is you build yourself correctly. Put all this together and you have a heavily armored melee DPS character that can put real MDPS classes to shame.

As mentioned before, these are only a few very basic chains. In actual practice, your tactics and mastery choices dictate what skills you are most likely to use. For instance, picking up Ensorcelled Agony makes Ensorcelled Blow much more attractive for general damage if you aren’t Khaine spec. And I you’re full Khaine spec, then you would want to use Ether Dance over Wrath of Hoeth in chain (3).

Advice and Tips on Playstyle

What stats should be stacked?

It depends on how you want to play. If you want to DPS, stack Strength and Weapon Skill, then Toughness, then Wounds
.
If you want to mitigation tank, stack Toughness and Initiative first, and then worry about Wounds, Weapon Skill, and Will Power

If you want to avoidance tank, stack Weapon Skill, Will Power, Initiative, and then worry about Toughness and Wounds.

Wounds really isn’t very important, as long as you’re getting healed. No player can burst out enough damage to kill you in a couple of hits (bugs excluded). The only way for you to get one shotted in this game is though being focus fired. (E.g. You get hit by 10 doombolt spells at exactly the same time)

What type of crowd control/debuffs can I use?

Swordmasters have a large number of crowd control skills, though not all of them are available on demand and some require tactics to use.

However, we have the ability to… Snare (quick incision, wings of heaven), Root (aethyric grasp, grappling blow), Silence (whispering wind), Stun (gryphon’s precision), Knockback (forceful shock, whirling geyser), Knockdown (crashing wave), Reduce Armor (demolishing strike), Reduce Spiritual and Corporeal Resistance (wrath of hoeth and bolstering enchantments), Spell Interruption (crushing advance), Increase build up (dazzling strike), Drain AP (sapping strike), Drain stats (Nature’s Blade), Reduce damage (dragon’s talon, dampening talon, distracting blow)

And then of course we have all of our damage absorption and damage reduction buffs.

What is the best single target DPS spec?

First make sure that you’re using Heaven’s Blade and keeping Taunt up.

This is your spec: Link

Your tactic choices are Focused Offence (25% extra damage), Bolstering Enchantments (reduce spirit resistance when your enchantments proc), Deep Incision, and Rugged

Alternatively, you can use Centuries of Training instead of Deep Incision and put the extra point into Khaine. If Centuries of Training is nearly always up, you should do more damage than with Deep Incision. The advantage of Deep Incision is that it will always be on your target.

Your attack chain is: Gryphon’s Lash -> Quick Incision -> Ether Dance

In the event that Ether Dance isn’t off cooldown, wait until it is and then use it. DO NOT start trying to do a difference chain or use another finisher. You lose DPS because you increase the time before you can use Ether Dance again.

Now I’m sure at least one of you is saying “you’re an idiot, you can do more damage if you change out rugged or put more points into Khaine instead of taking Aethyric Armor!” And you’d be right; you can do more damage that way… until you die. The first rule of DPS is that dead players have a DPS of 0.

At level 40, Rugged gives you 160 extra toughness. The extra armor granted by Aethyric Armor goes a long way in increasing your physical mitigation, and the increased chance to disrupt added to the increased spiritual and corporeal mitigation gained from Bolstering Enchantments means you take a lot less magic damage. This means that you live longer, which in turn increases the amount of damage you’re actually able to do.

What are some different ways to spec a swordmaster?

One of the best things about this game is that there is no one great spec. Everyone’s spec needs to be different if you plan to get the most out of RvR – unlike other games, you are not a hammer and every problem is not a nail.

Having said that of course, there are some generally cookie-cutter ways to play a swordmaster. First off, you can spec for DPS as mentioned in the tip above. However, as also mentioned above, there are various ways to do this… Do you want to be a pure DPS class with no regard for how fast you die? Do you want to be burst damage or sustained damage? Do you want to be single target or AoE oriented? The Swordmaster can fill all these roles… and that’s just if you want to DPS.

Swordmasters are also able to tank, even better than they can DPS. But again the quest arises – what type of tank do you want to be? Do you want to be a mitigation tank? An avoidance tank? Do you want to use a greatsword or a longsword and shield? Do you want to build yourself to absorb maximum damage, or would you like to be able to do decent damage at the same time? Do you want to tank single target encounters or multi-target encounters?

As you can see, there is no one way to play a Swordmaster, every encounter has a chance to require a different setup than the one you’ve chosen for maximum efficiency. That isn’t to say you won’t be able to do it, just that if you were speced differently it’d probably be easier.

I was asked to give a list of specs, however I don’t know of a career builder that also lets you select mastery points, your equipped tactics, your equipped morale, and your renown abilities all on the same page to share with others. The other issue is that this game is designed to have you switch tactics between encounters, so there really is no static set of tactics you’ll be using all the time.

Under what conditions should I use my blade enchants?

Swordmasters get three blade enchants – Heaven’s Blade, Nature’s Blade, and Phantom’s Blade. Each one of these has its own uses. One important thing to mention is that these enchantments have a chance to proc (base 25%) on each attack… this means both autoattacks and skill attacks. At first this doesn’t sound so great, and it isn’t… until you remember that we have a lot of multi-hit attacks. Dragon’s Talon, Whispering Wind, and Crashing Wave all hit twice… and ether dance can hit 5 times. Needless to say, these proc a lot in real play.

If you’re planning to be in a situation where you’ll be doing single target damage – grinding, leveling, RvRing – then you probably want to use Heaven’s Blade. The other common condition is AoEing mobs that are fairly below your level – the extra damage can make them die pretty fast.

For AoEing mobs at or above your level, or tanking, Nature’s Blade is the only choice. On each proc, Nature’s Blade removes over 100 stat points (at level 40) of a random stat and gives you the amount drained for a few seconds. Often times you end up with something that won’t benefit you, like intelligence or ballistic skill – but after a while you begin to notice that you’ve drained toughness, strength, and weapon skill. Not only is this nice because it increases your damage, but it also decreases the damage your enemy is doing. For AoEing this can mean the difference between life and death.

Phantom’s Blade is something I’ve never actually used. The amount of moral that it removes is very, very small, and at the time of writing it doesn’t scale with mastery points. If this reached the level where it had a chance on proc to remove 100 morale, it might be worth using in RvR. The biggest strike against it though is that most people use Morale 1 or 2 in combat, it simply takes too long to get to 3 or 4 and oftentimes you’re dead before you get there. Additionally, there’s a 60 second cooldown between morale uses, so there’s a high chance you can be draining your targets morale when they can’t use it anyway. Wouldn’t decreasing their toughness and ability to do damage be a better use of time?

What are some common tactic setups?

As I mentioned elsewhere, tactics are meant to be switched around depending on the situation. So what are some common situations one might run across?

AoEing:

When AoEing mobs, you typically have up Nature’s Blade and use Gusting Wind and Wrath of Hoeth as your last two attacks. Because you’re being hit by a large number of mobs (I normally pull 10-20 at a time) it’s a good idea to make sure you have Rugged equipped. Because you’re doing spirit damage, Bolstering Enchantments is good to have if you’re Hoeth Spec. If you’re trying to hold agro on all the mobs, then Menace is a good idea to have as well. For any remaining slots, use Centuries of Training or Potent Enchantments to help bring the mobs down a little faster.

Recommended tactics for AoEing: Rugged, Menace, Bolstering Enchantments, Centuries of Training, Volatile Enchantments, Potent enchantments

Single Target DPSing:

If you’re trying to kill single targets, you want to dish out as much damage as possible while maintaining as little risk. This can be accomplished by making sure that Heaven’s Blade is in use and Taunt is kept up on your target. You also want to mix around the following tactics: Focused Offence, Rugged, Centuries of Training, Bolstering Enchantments, Deep Incision, Potent Enchantments, Ensorcelled Agony and Volatile Enchantments.

The exact tactics to use depends on the length of the fight and your gear. In terms of maximum damage per second, Centuries of Training does more than Deep Incision or Potent Enchantments, but there’s no guarantee that it will be up as often. With Deep Incision you have absolute control on when it gets applied, and with Potent Enchantments you can have a higher probability of application by also slotting Volatile enchantments. However, Potent Enchantments is currently ticking every 3 seconds, which leaves open the possibility that it can be reapplied before a single tick goes off and hence you lose the damage.

Additionally, you’re mastery path has a very large impact over what skills will be available to you. If you don’t go down Khain, then Ensorcelled Blow with Ensorcelled Agony slotted is the best opening attack you can have; and one possible tactic setup might be: Rugged, Focused Offence, Ensorcelled Agony, Centuries of Training. And if you happen to be Hoeth, replace Centuries of Training with Bolstering Enchantments.

Until the game goes live and all skills are finalized and working, there’s no way to get accurate numbers on how to maximize single target DPS under different conditions.

Tanking:

Tanking is all about holding agro and not dying. As a Swordmaster, you can tank one mob, or if you prefer, all the mobs. Tactic selection for this goal is more straight-forward than other roles. If you’re not speced into Vaul, you want to at least have Rugged and Menace. If you plan to be taking damage from elemental sources, it might be wise to think about using Bend the Winds since we have no other way to buff this stat by ourselves. Isha’s Protection is also nice since it makes healing a lot easier, and the additional reduction from Dampening Talon stacks with our initial 20% – this changes Dragon’s Talon to reduce damage by 30% for 5 seconds.

If, however, you have chosen to spec into Vaul, the tactics that you can use become much more interesting. Rugged is still a must, but the addition of Perfect Defenses and Vaul’s Buffer bring a lot to the table. Volatile Enchantment’s also works well with Nature’s Blade to ensure that your target is nearly always missing multiple stats, and you’re buffed a good deal of the time. If you find yourself being crit a lot, Lingering Intimidation might be worth looking into.

Typically, when I go Vaul to tank, I slot: Rugged, Perfect Defenses, Vaul’s Buffer, and Menace.

There are of course many other combinations than the ones I listed here, and I doubt I could cover every single situation in which they might be used. As the game advances so will the strategies that are used to slot tactics.

Image Source of Swordmaster: WAR Site

Source: WAR Forums

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