3
Gear: All Berserker. This includes weapon, armor, accessories, jewels, etc. The "main" weapon for this build is the 1H sword, with either shield or focus offhand. Your alternate sets can be mace, greatsword, or staff. Sword can be replaced with scepter for fights you need to range.
Runes: Either [2x Superior Monk (AC dungeon drop or token reward), 2x Superior Water, 2x Major Sanctuary (HotW dungeon drop or token reward)] OR [6x Superior Eagle]. The former is more balanced between offense and defense, the latter is full offensive. Both are good. The numbers I'm using here assume boon duration, because that's what I personally use.
Sigils: Either Superior Strength or Superior Blood on your MH weapons, and always Superior Accuracy on your offhand (if one exists). The former is offensive, the latter is defensive. Again, both are good.
Traits:
10 Zeal: Fiery Wrath
30 Radiance: A Fire Inside OR Signet Mastery, Powerful Blades, Right-Hand Strength
10 Valor: Retributive Armor
20 Honor: Superior Aria OR Pure of Heart, Empowering Might
In summary, your crit rate should be about 75%, while your additional crit damage (on top of the base 50%) will be 77% with ascended rings (no amulet yet, need dem laurels).
Potential utilities:
Sword of Justice; Dies rather quickly now that they can be attacked, but still a good burst of DPS in some cases.
Wall of Reflection: Self-explanatory.
Hold the Line: Protection and regen, for when what you're currently getting just isn't enough.
Signet of Judgment: This is possibly the best signet in the game. 10% damage reduction is, at minimum, worth something like 300 toughness. Take it and forget it.
Stand Your Ground: Probably the best stunbreak in the game ever, except for back in beta when the Engineer's juggernaut trait turned Flamethrower into an infinitely spammable stun break for no cost.
Save Yourselves: Fury boon? Sign me up. Also comes with some other stuff as an added bonus.
Retreat: Long stack of swiftnesss, plus an extra Aegis block for when you can't be bothered to dodge. With Pure of Heart traited, you also get a free heal out of it.
So basically I worked with this as a replacement for the 10/0/30/30/0 dungeon build, which I was feeling had too little damage output. Now that roll canceling no longer works, Elusive Power is crap and "too little" damage output is now "no" damage output. Ergo, time for something new. The advantage of this build is having an extremely high crit rate; your base crit rate will be about 75%; This is important not just because it makes you deal more damage and proc might more often, but also because it makes you heal for a ridiculous amount with every swing with Omnomberry Pie. Omnom Pie heals for 325 per proc at level 80, 66% chance on crit, with no internal cooldown. This means that you have a 50% chance to heal 325 heal with every attack. If you don't appreciate how much this is, consider that the auto-attack chain hits, on average, twice a second. That's 325 health per second just from auto-attacking. A Smite with a scepter will net you 2.4k if all the hits connect.
The important thing, however, is that your DPS will be super high. The sword averages out to 2729/sec, while greatsword nets 2848/sec on a boon duration spec, and slightly higher if you use Eagle runes. If you are against a large target you can land max Smite hits on, you can get as much as 2925/sec with a scepter. What you will notice, of course, is that I am recommending you use 1H sword instead of greatsword, even though it deals slightly less damage. The main reason for this is because you will note that, unlike most guardian builds, you do not get Altruistic Healing for this build. That means you will need to get your defensive buffs from elsewhere. Sword is good for this because it has a higher crit rate, allowing you to proc Sigil of Blood/Omnom heals more often, and you can take a shield (for protection and knockback) or a focus (for regen/blind and block). The secret, however, is that you don't actually sacrifice DPS by going with sword as your main weapon. Greatsword has more "burst damage" skills but a weaker auto-attack, and they're all on a 10s or longer recharge. That means you can constantly rotate between the two, allowing you to get the extra defensive benefits from sword plus the higher auto-attack DPS while the greatsword skills recharge.
In general, though, your offhand should probably be mace, with whatever offhand you're not using on sword, or staff. This will give you an "emergency swap" if you are running low on health for the extra panic buttons. It will also allow you to "lead" into a fight by dropping a symbol (and Orb, if staff) for a chunk of burst damage, before you go to sword to deal damage.
Beyond that, there isn't much to say. It's still as self-explanatory as the other build, really.
Other Stuff:
1) You can go 10/30/30/0/0 instead of 10/30/10/20/0. Your damage will be roughly equivalent (in fact, I think it's slightly higher) and you will gain about 7% more damage reduction, at the cost of 2k health, a small bit of health per regeneration tick, and not being able to spread might to your entire party. The advantage is that you can trait meditations and take Monk's Focus (I don't recommend taking Altruistic Healing since you won't have any real means of proccing enough boons to make a difference without Empowering Might). In general I prefer the group damage boost and constant vigor uptime (plus the minor healing from rolls) but the option is there if you want it.
2) You don't actually need Omnoms. I've run plenty of dungeons, including Fractals wiithout any kind of consumable and done just fine. If you just play smart the passive defenses from your offhand and alternate weapon are typically more than enough to keep you alive.
3) Zealot's Defense isn't worth using unless you are trying to proc more lifesteals or block an incoming projectile. It actually deals less damage than your auto-attack over the same period of time. Don't spam it on cooldown and save it as a defensive measure.
4) If you know you are up against a big boss that is easy to connect all hits of Smite on, use a scepter. This applies even if you are confident you can range the boss. Scepter damage with full Smite hits is even higher than 1H sword and racks up crit procs like no one's business.
Edited by GuanglaiKangyi, 01 February 2013 - 08:21 AM.
