Back Line Defense

Lately I've been assigned the role of protecting the back line of the party while another tank handles the front line players. I find the SM is quite adept at this role, especially in offensive sovereign gear. The SM is especially capable of frustrating melee trains to no end.

The SM has a few tools to help him keep the enemy melee line from reaching his friendly back line. First, the SM has access to a zero cooldown snare and a zero cooldown single target knockback with a tactic. This will effectively take a single target at a time out of the fight every 2-3 GCDs if you use Sudden Shift to skip normal balance. This is best used after a melee DPS pops some sort of cooldown to make him waste it. I've been against Forceful Shock in the past, but it's quite useful for this purpose. It will see more use in my slots.

Next, the SM can reduce an entire melee train to useless at morale 2. Wings of Heaven into the group and then pop Gusting Wind to send the entire enemy train away from your back line. Wings of Heaven is a morale snare meaning it's unbreakable and at a duration of 10s, it will be awhile before they can reach the back line again. This will usually buy your back line 15s of safety. If Wings of Heaven is on cooldown, you can also pop Leading the Charge! for your back line to let them get more distance. Using both Wings of Heaven and Leading the Charge! at the same time is overkill in my experience and leaves you more at risk of not having a cooldown available to save your group when it's needed.

In the worst case scenario, which is the enemy has Immovable and you don't have Leading the Charge! up, you can reduce a melee train down a third of it's normal damage against a target by using both Guard and Challenge just like any other tank. You also want to use your debuffs against the enemy's best melee DPS to further reduce incoming damage.

I know some of you are thinking that it would be easier to just use a Knight and stagger. You would be right in a sense that it requires fewer button presses. However, the stagger works off Unstoppable and the SM punts work off Immovable. You could almost chain CC a melee train that bunches up with both a Knight and SM working together making it easy for a ranged group to pick them off one by one.

The Swordmaster and Group Utility part 4

In the last part, I discussed builds useful when Whispering Winds is useful to your group. In this part, I'll show builds I use when WW is not useful to your group.

The first consideration when WW is not useful to your group is whether or not you need another knock down. I like to have two reliable hard CC abilities in the group so that two healers can be neutralized at the same time or within a short period of time at least. If you're it for CC and you are RR60 plus, use the CC extreme spec in part 3.

If you do not need the second knock down, you are basically a guard/challenge/distracting bellow bot. You need to be able to survive being hit by guard damage as well as any focus fire directed your way. The easiest way to make sure that you can do this is to wear a shield. The shield will block guard damage very reliably allowing the healers to just focus on your guardee. This will completely gut your burst though, forcing the rest of your group to make up the difference, so I only recommend this as a last resort. Also, Wall of Darting Steel will help you parry guard damage.

If you've decided to use the 2h like a real SM ;) and you don't need WW for your group, use the specs below. Modify for your RR by dropping extra points from Khaine or dropping Aethyric Armor.

DPS/Guard/Challenge bot spec
This has a little survivability added in. You have no extra CC or debuffs though. I like it's simplicity and ease of play. Only to be used when the CC needs of the group are WELL covered elsewhere.

DPS/Guard/Challenge/Debuff spec
Note: This spec makes me REALLY squishy. Don't say I didn't warn you. But it allows you to protect your guardee much better. Also, no extra CC is given here. Make sure your CC needs are well met.

DPS/Guard/Challenge/Heal support spec
I don't really like this spec, but it can be useful in the 3 tank, 2 dps, 1 healer group when your group doesn't take good advantage of WW. You can forgo one of the Khaine tactics for something else like Ensorcelled Agony.

If you need the knockdown or a shield, here's a few specs to help out. Also, feel free to use the full support spec or the healing support shield version from part 3 if using a shield even if your group can't take advantage of WW. WW and Sapping Strike work well together.



DPS/Knockdown Hybrid
Again, RR60+ needed. You can also take a different tactic from either Khaine or Vaul instead of Great Weapon Mastery.

2h Knockdown/Debuff spec
This provides an element of deception. You really don't have much DPS in this spec, but you do have a good number of debuffs available with your knockdown. It's not as effective as the WW full support spec though. A knockdown is generally superior to a silence, so that's the trade-off.

Shield Knockdown/Debuff spec
The unassigned mastery points can go wherever. This gives you the debuffs, the knockdown, and Crushing Advance for the extra interrupt. You won't have any DPS, but you'll be able to protect your guardee quite well while protecting yourself from guard damage.

I'm on a ToVL kick recently, so when I remember to get some video of it, I'll show you how crazy an SM (or two) :) is in PvE.

The Swordmaster and group utility part 3

In part 2, I talked about how to build a spec for group support. In this part, I'm going to give specs that I use to support my group when Whispering Winds is useful to the group. All of these variations will use Heaven's Blade as the main blade enchant except for the last one.

Full support spec

This spec completely guts my dps. Shield use is optional here. The idea of the build is to target a healer/caster, use Whispering Winds, and then rotate Sapping Strike, Intimidating Blow, and Dazzling Strike 3 times. It is very difficult for an opponent to cast anything, and anything that gets off won't crit as much. For RR60, take out Protection of Hoeth.

CC extreme version 1

CC extreme version 2

This gives both a silence and a knockdown to play with. I only run this when I don't have anyone else in the group who can get that CC for less mastery points, like an IB or Engineer or Knight. Version 1 gives Lingering Intimidation. Version 2 gives Protection of Hoeth. RR60 version takes neither of those two.

This spec I usually knockdown or silence on one target as a feint, then have my group FF a second target that I knockdown or silence when I get back up to Perfect Balance. Don't do that every time of course or the enemy will get used to it.

Healing support shield version

Healing support 2h version

I haven't run this one in awhile since I lack the good hp regen gear (curse you crappy ToVL drop rates). This is a spec that lets you get anyway with overextending a little bit. If my group's heals are a little weak, it helps a little in that regard. This works well in a 3 tank, 2 dps, one healer setup when I am not the guy assigned to protect the healer. I ran with this kind of group for 8 hours one day without losing once. Nobody thought to try to kill the tanks first. The other two tanks were squishier than the dps in that group.

Hybrid spec

I run this a lot. I prefer more burst damage over more consistent damage, so I take BA over GWM. Parry is too easy to circumvent in RvR. I can also take Crashing Wave instead of WW if WW doesn't help my group much. It's a good balance. If I have a Knight around who is debuffing resistances, I'll run Nature's Blade here instead of Heaven's Blade. I like it and it gets the job done most of the time. If it doesn't, I'll use one of the 5 specs above.


In the next part, I'll go over builds I use when Whispering Winds is not well suited to supporting my group.

The Swordmaster and group utility part 2

To continue the discussion, once you've decided whether or not you should take Whispering Winds, you fill out the rest of your build according to the strategy you intend to employ and what holes there are in the group.

Let's say the group is IB, SM, SL, WH, RP, AM. Clearly you would not take WW in this group because it doesn't really help everyone else out much. Also, you don't need to take Lingering Intimidation because the IB and SL have crit debuffs core. You also don't need Sapping Strike because the AM and WH have better AP drains than you do. The IB likely has a 4s knockdown and the WH has a 3s silence, so you don't need Crashing Wave either. In this group, you likely going to guard the WH and ride the assist train. You'd likely be rocking the DPS. Get Ether Dance, Great Weapon Mastery, and Balanced Accuracy and go to town.

If the group is SM, WL, BW, SW, WP, RP, you play a very different role. You would definitely take WW here. There is no crit debuff in the group, so you probably want Lingering Intimidation. There's no AP drain, so you probably want Sapping Strike. (Note you can't get WW, LI and SS until RR 60.) You have 5 silences in the group and a heal debuff, so you are good on CC, CW is likely a waste. (I've NEVER seen a SW without Shadow Sting.) You will not have time to DPS because you'll have to focus on rotating guards, timing challenge and WW.

You never want to be comfortable in just one build as a SM. I used to play FFXI, so I'm going use to the famous answer to every single question about gear and tactics in that game. Waffle is situational.

You always want to be thinking about what other classes have core that you'd need to spec into. If another class in your group can cover something core, it's better for you to spend the mastery points elsewhere.

The Swordmaster and group utility

The Swordmaster is an odd tank, and requires a group to be spec'd to take advantage of what he can offer to play at it's best. It has great synergy with some classes.

The Swordmaster has excellent synergy with the White Lion, Shadow Warrior and Bright Wizard for DPS classes and the Warrior Priest and Archmage (more for the dps AM than healing AM) healer classes. The Swordmaster is not as well suited to supporting Engineers, Slayers, Witch Hunters, and Rune Priests. The best tank support for the Swordmaster is either another Swordmaster or a Knight. Swordmaster and Ironbreaker together is not as effective.

The definitive group support ability for the Swordmaster is called Whispering Winds. This ability has two effects. First, it's a 4 second silence, which is useful in and of itself. The second effect reduces the cool down timer on abilities by 5 seconds. The biggest decision about how the Swordmaster should spec depends upon which group of classes he is with.

If grouping with mainly WL, SW, BW, AM, and WPs, the SM should take WW. If he is not grouping with mainly those classes, he should not. The SM if using WW should announce it in vent once the proper target has been called. Usually, the SM will silence a healer while the group kills a different target.

A White Lion working with a Swordmaster should have Lionheart slotted. While WW is up, Lion's Fury is a 20 AP, spam-able, spirit damage attack that hits extremely hard. It normally has a 5 second cool down. Not only that, a Swordmaster can typical drop anyone's spirit resistance to zero by himself. WW also makes Blindside zero cool down, and makes Cull the Weak, Thin the Herd, Coordinated Strike, Fey Illusion and Pack Assault only a 5s cool down.

The Shadow Warrior synergy with the Swordmaster comes from the tactic Leading Shots and the ability Blurring Shock. Blurring Shock adds extra damage when a target is hit with a critical hit. Leading Shots makes more crits happen. Also, like the White Lion, they have a lot of very strong abilities on 5-10s cool downs. Festering Arrow is the classic example. A SW could get 3-4 Festering Arrows off during Unshakable Focus. Brutal Assault is another one, especially with the ignore armor tactic for it slotted. Rapid Fire could be kept up for 12s. Usually the SM would place BS on a target one balance cycle before hitting WW to make sure it dies when playing with a SW.

The Bright Wizard has a lot of fun while WW is up. Sear becomes zero cool down. Nova becomes a 5s cool down. Fireball, Sear, Nova, Fireball, Sear, Nova becomes possible. Withering Heat becomes 6s cast with 6s recast, meaning is can be kept up for 18s. So a BW could pre-dot a target then just focus WH on it once the WW fires. Or in a big clump of targets, Annihilate could be kept up for 12 seconds straight. Or notice how most of the AoE dots BW has happen to be 5 seconds shorter than their recast.

The Warrior Priest gains the ability to spam Smite under WW. Unlimited RF ftw! Divine Assault becomes 3s channel, 3s recast. That's a lot of single target healing. Or imagine Hammer of Sigmar on a 5s recast. Castigation has no recast under WW. Neither does Sigmar's Fist nor Sigmar's Vision for you WP buff bots.

The Archmage gets even more ridiculous with AP draining able to keep up two Drain Magics during the 10s WW is up. Also, like Withering Heat, they have a channeled spell called Searing Touch, which is spirit damage. Also, more Transfer Forces can be kept up with 5s recast. Personally, I like the synergy is better with the WP.

Also, all healers can use their cleanse ability with no recast. Abilities that remove enchantments and blessings also have no recast under WW.

When playing with a second Swordmaster, the two will alternate WW, although this usually requires some form of extra AP generation or it's not very sustainable.

The Swordmaster is a powerful class, if you work with it. You can't just throw one in a random group and expect miracles. But with the right players and classes around it, the SM is extremely deadly.