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Sword and Shield / Greatsword PvP Build Guide

Last Updated:December 12, 2024|Changelog

Welcome to the Sword and Shield / Greatsword PvP Build Guide. As a tank, you brawl in the thick of it with your guild. Most people would refer to Sword and Shield / Greatsword when they think of a "Traditional Tank" in Throne and Liberty. A walking juggernaut that frontlines and provides a ton of utility to their party through Damage Reduction and AoE CCs such as Devastating Smash.

With Greatsword passives like Vital Force and Robust Constitution, stacking Health allows you to increase a plethora of your Stats allowing you to do your job better than other tanks.

End Game Sword and Shield / Greatsword PvP Build

If you're interested in PvE, check out our Sword and Shield / Greatsword PvE Build Guide!

Pros
  • High Damage
  • Stong AoE CC
  • Extremely Tanky
Cons
  • Melee
  • CC Magnet
  • Low Self Sustain

Skill Builds

Bruiser / Frontline PvP
Bodyguard / Utility PvP

This Sword and Shield / Greatsword PvP Build focuses on being a "Bruiser" or Frontliner for your group. You go going toe-to-toe with your enemies, setting up kills for your team with constant stuns and hooks, and you can secure your own kills with the high damage skills that Greatsword offers.

For the Collision Res PVP build, make sure you take Steely Physique mastery and take off the 2 points in the middle tree.

Active Skills

Damage Skills

  • Frost Cleaving is a very strong AoE.
  • Death Blow is a low cooldown skill with great single target damage.
  • Guillotine Blade with the charging Damage collection Skill Specialization hits hard.
    • Additionally, adding the Area Damage AoE Skill Specialization adds great cleave to the skill.
  • Piercing Attack is your lowest cooldown damage skill, with a frontal cleave.
    • It can be used in rapid succession if you are being hit and have Counter Barrier active.

Utility Skills

  • Counter Barrier is your bread and butter defensive.
    • It allows you to reset the cooldown on Piercing Attack increases your shield block chance and reflects damage to your attackers.
  • Chain Hook is a great way to isolate and lock down ranged DPS players and peel for your team.
  • Stalwart Bastion gives you bonus Move Speed and provides a very strong Damage Reduction buff to yourself.
  • Precision Dash is your number one mobility skill. It allows you to move toward the enemy ball and connect with them quicker than most tanks.
    • Additionally, you can use this to escape a dicey situation.
  • Stunning Blow is a single target stun.
    • Use this to peel for your team or lock down a kill target.
  • Strategic Rush is another mobility skill; however, this also allows you to push and charge enemies into walls or off of terrain.

Passive Skills

  • Greatsword has access to one of the strongest passives in the game. Vital Force increases your Hit, Skill Damage Boost, and Stun Chance based on your Max Health.
  • As a tank, you get hit a lot, so Indomitable Armor increases your defenses while active.
  • Slotting in Robust Constitution complements Vital Force.
  • Your Heavy Attack Chance is particularly high on Greatsword, as Cold Warrior gives you a massive damage bonus against targets you Stun with Stunning Blow.
  • Resilient Mind provides you with a little bit of self sustain available to the SNS/GS build.
  • Impenetrable is similar to Indomitable Armor however it scales based on the number of enemy targets around you.
  • The biggest downside of a SNS/GS tank is being CCed. Gerad's Patience allows you to gain a healthy amount of CC Resistance just by blocking passively or using your defense skills.
  • Aegis Shield is simply a Stat passive. With Counter Barrier up, you get increased value from this passive.

This Sword and Shield / Greatsword PvP Build is essentially the "Bodyguard Build." Your job here is to make good use of Devoted Sanctuary to not only buff your party's damage but also redirect 70% of the damage your party takes back to yourself. Using this and the rest of the kit lets you lock down your enemy, and allows your party to fight longer.

For the Collision Res PVP build, make sure you take Steely Physique mastery and take off the 2 points in the middle tree.

Active Skills

Damage Skills

  • Annihilating Slash offers a 60% slow with a massive range that also does good damage.
    • Should you get Queen Bellandir's Blade as well, then you have a ton of CC baked into one skill.
  • Guillotine Blade is used to finish off lower health targets or capitalize on CC effects that you or your party inflict on enemies.

Utility Skills

  • The main skill that makes this build come online is Devoted Sanctuary.
    • Use this when your party engages in a fight to keep your DPS and Healers alive longer and boost their effectiveness in combat. This is your single most important cooldown in this build.
  • Immortal Pride with the All Defense ▲ Specialization, your Ranged/Magic/Melee Defense is boosted significantly.
  • DaVinci's Courage provides your team with additional Attack Speed, Max Health, and Health Regen.
    • The Specializations turn it into a Damage Reduction buff.
    • Use this in conjunction with Devoted Sanctuary.
  • Provoking Roar can be used to Taunt a target to peel and save a teammate's life. When a target is Taunted, they cannot use single target skills on anyone else. This is incredibly oppressive as it prevents Healers from using Swift Healing or Healing Touch on their allies.

Passive Skills

  • Raging Frenzy provides you a Skill Damage Boost as long as you are within 5m or 3 or more enemies.
  • SNS/GS has some cooldown issues. There are not many spammable skills, and thus Morale Boost becomes a very powerful tool, especially in the Bodyguard build.
    • Colliding targets with Strategic Rush provides a decent amount of Cooldown Reduction to use your skills more consistently.

Skill Prioritization

  • Use Quality Marind Ore to craft Quality Active Skill Growth Book and Quality Passive Skill Growth Book.
  • Use Rare Marind Ore to craft Rare Active Skill Growth Book and Rare Passive Skill Growth Book.
  • Prioritize getting all these skills to blue first before getting them to purple. These are universal skills you always use.
  • Upgrade the rest of your skills as you play the game.

PvP Gameplay and Skill Rotation

Bruiser / Frontline PvP
Bodyguard / Utility PvP

Single Target Rotation

  1. Precision Dash or Chain Hook
  2. Stunning Blow
  3. Death Blow
  4. Ascending Slash
  5. Guillotine Blade
  • This your bread and butter burst combo. It allows you to lock 1 target down for a long period of time. The issue with our rotation is that it's very predictable but with practice, you'll be able to throw your enemy off from predicting when you'll land your CC.
  • Death Blow is buffed by Stunning Blow.
  • Knocking the target down with Ascending Slash allows Guillotine Blade to hit harder.

AoE Rotation

  1. Devastating Smash
  2. Frost Cleaving
  3. Counter Barrier
  4. Piercing Attack
  • Devastating Smash into Frost Cleaving allows you to lock down a clump of enemies as well as deal a lot of AoE damage.
  • You use Counter Barrier on cooldown here to reset the cooldown of Piercing Attack as you are continually getting hit.

Engage Rotation

  1. DaVinci's Courage
  2. Devoted Sanctuary
  3. Immortal Pride
  4. Stalwart Bastion
  5. Devastating Smash
  6. Provoking Roar
  7. Annihilating Slash
  8. Counter Barrier
  9. Piercing Attack
  • The name of the game here is to get your Devoted Sanctuary up before you engage. You want to get your personal defensives rolling as well as to not die from the redirected damage. Then after you charge in and get your Taunt and Slow off, you are now just using Counter Barrier to reset Piercing Attack for your main sources of damage.

Tips

  • As the SNS/GS player, you dictate the tempo of your fights in most engages. Look for CC to follow up on, using Devastating Smash on top of a clump of players that just got slept on is a great way to secure kills for your guild or group.
  • As a frontliner, you can stay in the fight much longer than DPS and even some other Tanks. Use this to your advantage by looking to constantly harass enemy DPS players. Always look for hooks, stuns, and the ability to potentially Strategic Rush enemies off terrain or into walls.

Stat Priorities

Use the following stat priorities when playing a Sword and Shield / Greatsword build in PVP:

  • Primary Stats
    1. Strength, Perception, and Dexterity

You have 49 Stat Points you can freely allocate to any of the 4 primary Stats. Once you put 20 points into an individual Stat, it takes 2 points to increase the Stat by 1. Do not put more than 20 points into a Stat unless you are trying to reach a certain breakpoint.

You get bonuses for every 10 Stat Points you invest from 30 to 60. You invest our points based on acquiring these bonuses.

Dexterity not only adds maximum Weapon Damage but also increases your Crit Chance, Evasion, and Attack Speed. Increasing Dexterity is your best method of increasing your damage output. Wisdom is the next best stat for improving your Weapon Damage. Each added point into Wisdom also provides extra Cooldown Speed and Mana Regen.

Early to Mid Game

In PvP, Hit and survivability are incredibly important. So, with full green and blue gear, you want 30 Perception for the 100 extra Hit and 30 Strength for the 750 extra Max Health. Additionally, as a Greatsword user increasing your HP with Strength allows you to also increase your Hit, Skill Damage Boost, and Stun Chance from Vital Force.

As you progress further, you'll be able to hit 50 Strength for that 100 extra Heavy Attack Chance.

Mid to End Game

At End Game, you start working towards hitting the 60 Strength and 60 Perception breakpoints. They're essential because 60 Strength offers more Max Health, and 60 Perception offers more Hit. With Adentus's Barbaric Blade, you can even hit 70 Strength if you want to increase your Max Health by 450 and your Melee and Range Defenses by 200.

PvP Gear Progression

Acquiring Gear pieces and upgrading them is incredibly expensive and time-consuming. If you enjoy both PvE and PvP content, just use these sets for PvE as well.

If you're interested in PvE Gear Progression, check out our Sword and Shield / Greatsword PvE Build Guide here!

  • With 2-Star Dungeons being introduced, there are new BiS builds because of more accessible armor pieces and accessory pieces.
  • The main difference is the slightly higher Base Damage and much higher Attack Speed.
  • The next time these builds will be revamped entirely will be when T2 Epic gear comes out. This could possibly happen in January. No more changes will be made to this gear until T2 gear comes in January or earlier.
Early Mid
Game
Mid End
Transition
General
End Game
Collision Resistance
End Game
No Field Boss
End Game
End Game
Archboss

Sword and Shield / Greatsword PvP Build

Your Goals

  • Farm accessible gear by doing Open World Dungeons.
  • Trait those accessible gear.
  • Extract traits from gear for Lucent.
  • Turn important Purple Gear acquired from Co-Op Dungeons into Lithographs and sell them on the Auction House.

Stats

  • You reach high Melee Endurance and Max Health.
  • 50 STR for the 100 Heavy Attack Chance.
  • 40 PERC for the 5% Buff Duration.

Traits

  • Only pieces you can easily grind in Open World Dungeons are fully traited.

Trying to PvP with blues at this stage of the game is asking to get farmed. You want to transition as fast as possible to your Mid Game build. This will let you stand somewhat of a chance against other players until you reach End Game gear.

Fully trait your blue gear before transferring over to purple gear. A fully traited blue piece will give you 960 Blessings for you to use. You can use a trash blue gear piece and fill it up with cheap traits before transferring it to a purple piece in the same slot.

Dungeon Farming Priority

Do each Dungeon so you can craft the Ring below.

  • Sapphire Dimensional Band
    • Precious Epic Accessory Selection Chest
      • Requires Recipe: Dimensional Essence: Salvation to craft.
    • You must do each Co-Op Dungeon at least 3 times to acquire enough tokens to craft it.
  • After getting the Ring, there are two major dungeons you are target grinding.
  • Death's Abyss
    • Karnix's Nether Sword
      • You can also pity craft Recipe: Karnix's Netherblade using 2 Dimensional Essence: Salvation instead of relying on RNG.
      • You must do each Co-Op Dungeon at least 5 times to acquire enough tokens to craft 2 Dimensional Essence: Salvation.
    • Optional Gear to Equip
      • Gloom Guard Gauntlets
      • Dark Warrior's Resistance Armor
      • Gloom Guard Greaves
      • Gloom Guard Sabatons
      • Gloom Guard Winged Helmet
  • Butcher's Canyon
    • Duke Magna's Provoking Warblade
  • Cursed Wasteland (Optional)
    • (Optional Boots Replacement) Flying Dragon Claw Leather Boots

Open World Farming Priority

  1. Ant Nest
    • Corrupt Witch's Hat from Worker Ant
    • Elusive Hexweaver Pants from Acid Ant
  2. Sanctum of Desire
    • Alacritous Invoker Gloves from Avolos Hydromancer
  3. Temple of Sylaveth
    • Berserk Charge Blade from Shade Enforcer
  4. Syleus's Abyss 3F-4F
    • Deadly Single Edge Two-Handed Sword from Living Armor Foot Soldier
    • You can replace with Elite Resistance Broadsword.

Sword and Shield / Greatsword PvP Build

Your Mid End transition is where you start getting more Purple armor pieces. Some will also drop from Open World Dungeons. As you start gathering these pieces you will feel the increase in your survivability.

Your Goals

  • Target farm Purple Gear from Co-Op Dungeons.
  • Craft Common Trait Unlockstone Bundle to unlock Traits for your gear.

Here you can hit 60 Strength for that extra Max Health.

Gear Sources

  1. Cave of Destruction
    • Beast King's Gilded Bracers
  2. Saurodoma Island
    • Phantom Wolf Breeches
      • Reptilian Soldier
      • Precious Epic Equipment Selection Chest: Abyss
      • For these pants, you can use Debuff Duration over Magic Endurance.
  3. Syleus's Abyss 5F-6F
    • Shock Commander Plate Armor
      • Precious Epic Equipment Selection Chest: Abyss
    • Unshakeable Gold Ring
      • Demonhoof Tracker
      • Precious Epic Equipment Chest: Abyss
  • These are Rune Builds for when Runes come out on December 5th; these builds assume you will eventually reach the full blue Rune Synergy effect for Weapons and Accessories.
  • For non-rune builds, visit the dropdown at the bottom.

End Game Runes PvP Build

Shock Helmet Runes End Game PvP Build

Fortitude End Game PvP Build

Fortitude is a new stat released that provides Magic Defense, Resistances and Endurance all of which are best in slot for tanks.

Rune Building Philosophy

  • Critical Damage Reduction and Attack Speed.
    • Critical Damage Reduction counters the Critical Damage Increase from Death Set and other sources.
    • Attack Speed is self-explanatory.

Critical Damage Reduction will be the most impactful on Endurance for when we do not have enough Endurance to surpass our opponents crit rate. This will be beneficial for when we do receive a crit hit, it will reduce the damage significantly.

Usually, players take runes depending on the stat they need to hit the necessary breakpoints.

  • Max Health will be used on the rune synergy that doesn't offer Critical Damage Reduction.

Non-Rune Builds (Click Me!)

Nirma vs Karnix

  • Nirma's Corrupt Sword
    • More Shield Block Chance
    • More Damage Reduction
    • Less Max Health
    • It has a .3s stun effect that will stun everyone struck by your Piercing Strike.
  • Karnix's Nether Sword
    • Less Shield Block Chance
    • More Max Health

Either way, both builds focus on completing the Grand General's Victory and Imperator Set for their 2 set effects. The Imperator Set is more important as it grants you an extra 150 Melee Heavy Attack Chance which helps increase our DPS significantly. The Grand General's Victory 2 set provides a high amount of Damage Reduction which increases our survivability.

Armor Sources (Click Me!)

Collision Res Runes Sword and Shield / Greatsword PvP Build

This build is meant for stacking Collision Resistance which will help resist abilities that have Collision on them. As you can see from the previous End Game build the equipment that changes is the cape. We will also switch out the traits on your accessories to Collision Resistance instead of Debuff Duration by doing so you will be CCed longer though.

Gear Sources

  1. Blessed Templar Cloak
    • Ahzreil
  2. Bracers of Unrelenting
    • Valley of Slaughter
  3. Ascended Guardian Pants
    • Nirma
  4. Icy Necklace of Strength
    • Arenas

Non-Rune Builds (Click Me!)

SSF Sword and Shield / Greatsword PvP Build

A Solo Self-Found (SSF) build consists only of items that are obtainable while playing the game solo. This gear can be obtained by doing Co-Op Dungeons, Lithograph Book, and farming Open World Dungeons.

Gear Sources

  1. Death's Abyss
    • Visor of the Infernal Herald
  2. Cave of Destruction
    • Shock Commander Gauntlets
  3. Shadowed Crypt
    • Sabatons of the Field General
      • Dark Wizard
      • Precious Epic Equipment Selection Chest: Abyss

End Game Archboss PvP Build

End Game Archboss Tev GS / Nirma Sns PvP Build

Guardians

Guardians are special transformations that add offensive or defensive buffs or attacks to your character for 30 seconds. These are the recommended Guardians for this class in both PvE and PvP situations.

  • Green Ranger Elowen is your go-to. Keeping targets in place for the rest of your guild or group is incredibly valuable. Additionally, when the Guardian is active you gain 500 additional Critical Hit against any target you hit that is rooted by Green Ranger Elowen.
  • Another option is Vampire Slayer Ezekiel. He increases your Magic/Ranged/Melee Defense by 400 and deals damage equal to 0.6% of your Max Health to enemies within 2.5m of you. You are healed by 20% of the damage dealt. This is definitely more situational and usually is not run with SnS / GS, however it is a second Guardian you can look at if you don't need the root from Green Ranger Elowen.

Summary

  • Sword and Shield / Greatsword is what most people would refer to when they think of a "Traditional Tank" in Throne and Liberty.
  • Focused on being the frontliner for your guild, you dictate the tempo of your fights.
  • Devastating Smash is one of your key engage skills, stunning enemy players and creating opportunities for your team to capitalize on.
  • Your end game gear focuses on acquiring the General Set and Grand General Set as well as traiting Endurance.

Credits

Written by Grenton
Reviewed by Yaen

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