The Ghar Station

I need to find a new build, I like my chonky cat but Beastmaster just isnt cutting it for the later content of PoA. I'm thinking a mix of Riftblade, Champion and Warlord. (Champ and Warlord have been my default subs all the way through.)

I really like Champion and I have a second bar set up to do a different rotation on grouped mobs. I also put a little in Warlord to get Sergeants Order as its by far the best way Ive found to peel mobs and take an area apart. So I want to keep Warlord in my build too. Even if it's only the bare minimum to have Sergeants Order. The heals in Warlord always seemed weak, but that may be because I didnt go deeper into the tree.

Riftblade has some stuff which seems to reflect damage. I like the idea of mobs melting themselves just by DPSing me. But the others do too so there's maybe an alternate better suited.

So I guess the question now is whether those 3 would work together or whether they overlap too much and something alternative is better.

Whatever I end up with needs to have decent AOE, decent self heal/survivability, decent DPS. Preferably involving Champ for decent AOE and Warlord to at least have SO. I dont plan becoming a tank so want to keep to a build thats viable as a DPS for endgame too. It doesnt have to be top tier DPS, but enough that it's making a decent contribution.

Plus of course I need to figure which one to have as the main and how deep to go with the subsouls.

I'd prefer not to macro, I like working with a rotation of 10 or so keybound abilities and cycling through them. Part of the fun in the playstyle for me is being in full control of what I do next and having to think and react fast.

I'm a free to play player so obviously I dont have access to some options.

I also prefer 2 handers. I realise 2x 1-handers go brrrrr but I like the vibe of using a 2 hand weapon.

Let me give this a try.

So it's mainly for the immersion for physical+ 2h
without being a pure RP dead weight in groups.


Champion: is a ton of fun- unfortunately it is slow, weak on 70 and overspecialized in aoe since SL. It used to be THE 'Arms warri' 2h in 50 Rift- but now, all it's signature moves: Charges, aoe bombs, selfheal- are all better done by other souls. Otherwise it would have been your piano hotbar.
Champion takes too many buffs&target debuffs just to not hit hard for the efforts. It also needs a healthy primary target- so it's not even good in raw mass aoe.

Warlord: defenitely your best 'True Warrior' experience. Though it has alot of ogcd's thrown in and operates better with 1h weps.
Main reasons for fast attacks are: Icy Burst auto attacks procc AQD. A 2h has ALOT of delay on getting feedback from attacks-and proccs.
61 WL can defenitely be played with a 2h np and is an absolute excutioner.

Riftblade: has over 30% of it's damage bound to fast auto attacks. Furthermore, the 'strike back' damage you mentioned (Burning Blood, Avatar of Flame) is really poor and nonphys/phys builds better double down on one element. RB with it's lvl 70 signature attacks is the only build right now that is dependent on auto attacks and thus a poor choice for diehard 2h play- But possible.



A thing that may fullfills your needs:
Paragon- though wanting a faster gcd, you can run it 8+ button. I played Paragon with no macros during Storm Legion and it is pretty interesting that way.
You weave in things like "Your next direct attack gets it's damage done as 3 extra hits" for which you want to line up combo points, the builder pattern, hardhits cd etc. (Shifting Blades+Tranquility)Things like this are just thrown in and all best managed manually.1button Paragon with Icy exists but it just ignores alot of gameplay. Stock Para provides alot of what you described. Only 'no target aoe strikes' are missing, which 12 Paladin (better) or 12 Champ can provide.

Paladin: Legendary Retaliation will give you THE best 'strike back' damage. 41 Paragon legendary unleashed even allows it to stack! 10 stacks = 10 slaps/ sec.
(So you aggressively stay in melee combat and stack a tricky buff to infinity)
Legendary Light's Balm also gives a selfheal with radiating damage. Furthermore, Every single Light's Balm hit proccs Paragon's Sweeping Blades.
It may not be the 'Brutal frontal cleave' animation- though it hits alot of targets and scales extremely well with additional enemies. With Way of the Sun, Grasping the Horizon, Light's Balm, Setting Moon etc you have a theme like the sun-worshipper from Dark Souls.
A Light's Balm+Sweeping + RB is the #1 aoe build in the game and Paragon can run a mini version of that in the pocket.


-> 61 Paragon, 15 Paladin, 0 Warlord
or 61 Paragon, 4 Paladin, 11 Warlord (less aoe)
(Without icy Burst, Paragon doesn't care about 1h/2h)
You combine buffing strikes, bleeds, follow ups, finisher.
(A refined version of this holds a dps record for Warrior-dps-tanks) Aggressively pursuit melee uptime and get rewarded for it. Very plan- and relyable without proccs or rng dependency.

-> 61 Warlord, 11/13 Paladin, 4/2 Riftblade
A wrecking ball. Finisher buff your builder.
Aoe capped to 5. Very Jedi-style with cd reset-tricks.
Everything revolves around a 300% dmg procc for A Quick Death. Which in return doubles the damage of st/aoe hardhits. The 'fishing for proccs' may suffer from a 2h, however you may not even really notice.
The catch: Warlord allows you to run a very potent build fully free 2 play. However macros manage alot of little side details and even with those, you have things to manage carefully. Running a performance 70 WL fully manual can be a fun challenge, defenitely exceeding 15 buttons with 3 layered priority lists, dependencies and rng alterations.
Spent 3 years mastering that& got bored? Now do it on 1s gcd!


Both Para and WL have great sprints and charges, can 'offtank' on the fly and heal enough to sustain themselves.

Hybrids from the free to play souls are all not that great. WL and Champion draw too much from the 61 Buff.
Paragon defenitely gives the best value for wonkey mixes.

Ok cheers, that gives me something to work with. Ill see whats possible with those on the talent trees.

Ok so Combat Veteran lets you block without a shield and a few of the early abilities to buy in Paladin improve block. So I assume they'll work with a 2 hander because of Combat Veteran.

Kaikordehth wrote: ↑Mon Aug 08, 2022 7:51 pm Ok cheers, that gives me something to work with. Ill see whats possible with those on the talent trees.

Ok so Combat Veteran lets you block without a shield and a few of the early abilities to buy in Paladin improve block. So I assume they'll work with a 2 hander because of Combat Veteran.

Exactly. Note that blocking only works against weapon attacks with melee tag. It's the worst tank stat but Reta's high block absorption bonus is unique.

Though Stalwart Shield is bad value/point, synergies like this are throughout the soultrees and can suddenly skyrocket a hybrid. Warrior is pretty straight forward. 4 Warlord with Recovery Posture turns Sergeant's Order into a taunt.
Even if not actively tanking, Order has ever been great utility, good spot there.

I didn't give much detailed info since you seem like you really only need a direction and will figure the rest.

Enjoy & feel free to update on it.
A 'classic physical 2h Warrior' is unnecessarily niche on sfp 70 so happy to see the results.

This is what Ive ended up with

https://rift.magelo.com/en/soultree.jsp ... Gg/2s|_t_g

These are the legendaries Ive picked

Paladin - Retaliation
Warlord - havent comitted yet, but guessing Everything is a Weapon, A Quick Death and ?
Riftblade - Icy Burst

the link isnt saving the masteries I chose, they were

Resonating Strikes
Steadfast Soul
Energy reserves
Precision STrikes
Healers Intuition

which might be the best or worst choices, so hard to tell from the descriptions

Ah you want to go hard.

Please do try around, see what makes sence and how things interact with each other before copying a thing.
I think you are someone who can learn alot just by trying!

What's your idea behind the 62 Mastery Steadfast Soul.




One important thing to buff values:

The 65 Mastery Power Variation flat out fully heals you for free once a minute.


Did you start the Eternal Weapon yet? Maybe pick that one up and try Warlord on the mandatory elites& rifts for it.
WL is just perfect for the Eternal 'grind'.
https://www.cadrift.net/quests/saga-que ... weapon-70/

Not sure if Im trying to go hard, I’m just sick of getting melted and dying. I'm still 69 and trying (and failing) to finish the storyline so I'm not at Eternal weapon yet.

My thinking behind 62 Steadfast Soul is that I vaguely understood it compared to the others. Ill take your advice with the 65 one though.

I have a very vague grasp on everything you are telling me but tbh most of what you say is going totally over my head. There's a lot of jargon and abbreviated terms and some of it looks like programming code! But I think I'm getting a vague idea what you mean with some of it and those links have some stuff I vaguely understand.

Did the game designers make Rift with the assumption everyone would use macros? I mean I never even bothered much with them in WoW. And in comparison they were a lot easier to make and the internal logic was a bit more obvious.

So anyway I set up a bar with single target abilities and another with the ones for AOE and had a crack at some mobs. On single target that build melted them and I took hardly any damage. On groups it seems very slow and I came out at least half on health, often less.

All of the single target stuff was Warlord so Im sold on that. But Paladin didn’t really seem to bring a lot to the table. I’ll keep that build as one of my roles and see if I can figure what Im doing wrong.

I guess using macros and playing it the way you would play it ends up works totally different with how I am playing it. Which makes your suggestions possibly not the best way to go with how I’m doing it. But as I say I’ll keep it as an option for when I maybe figure a few things out

I think im also gonna try it with 16 points in Champ as another build and see how that works with my ‘seat of the pants’ action bar setup.

Hey there,

don't mind all that then!
I didn't know you are still that fresh.
And no all those calculations are not normal, just threw it out to see a reaction.
The Macros, esp on that Warlord have alot going on yes. In the end you just press them for the one ability in the icon though.

To taking alot of damage as 69 in Ashenvale& Vostigar:
http://forums.thegharstation.com/viewto ... 2617b0ab7f

Yes later development very much turned out to be more and more tailored around macros.

Champion just happens to be very weak on 66-70. It only misses the 'good enough for groups'- part for your needs.
That said, a dedicated Champion player in dungeons, lfr etc really wouldn't hurt anyone and the majority also isn't bothered by people just trying around.
Joining an active Guild to get dungeon premades with (and to sidekick you) is your best shot.
A poorly played 'optimal build' and a dedicated Champion defenitely overlap. Lots of people just copy macros and spam away- you are doing the opposite which is cool.


Trying around for yourself is the best approach now.
Some souls are more equal than others; take the time then maybe come back to the other info whenever.

Just to be clear I was gonna main Warlord and side Champion. Im totaly sold on Warlord as the core based on the (limited) single target testing I did.

After rereading some stuff you posted and stuff you linked Ive already deciphered some of what you were saying. As I go along I'll come back to it and im sure ill figure more out too.

Im still gonna hold back on messing with macros. But I'll have a dabble maybe i'll convert.

At some point soon I'll definitely need to join a guild for grouping and for dungeon runs etc. For the moment though I want to be self sufficient as possible. Sidekicking would of course be a help but when Im 69 and content im doing is 69-70 not so sure I'm getting THAT big a help (depends of course how much it scales you up from 69 to 70).

And its content in Gedlo and Xarth Mire thats part of what's kicking my butt so Im over the threshold anyway for being sidekicked.

That's the weird part about sidekicking.

It puts you into virtual full blue gear.
(And into purpil/ high tier on 50, 60 and 65)

Even losing a level may has you on 10-30% more stats.

As for 70:

69 has you in lvl 67 questing greens.
70 Sidekick is lvl 70 dungeon gear. Which is some 25- 30k Attackpower compared to the 10k of a 69? Should overall double / quadruple the performance. Leveling gear is for the most part terribly outclassed.
Xarth Mire should sidekick to 70 which makes that zone oneshot city.

Queuing for pvp as lvl 69 (and sidekicked to 70) usually have them outdamage most 'true level 70's' due to significant AP+crit+crit power. Welcome to the rabbit hole.

Idealy you finish the Vostigar story shortly before hitting 70.