I'd like to do a dual wield damage dealer using the non corrupted dawnsword. What sort of skills/other equipment/class/companions should I take?
Dawsword dual wield build
- Thread starter Lostname475
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The highest damage offhand weapon you can wield is the sanctified gladius, that means your melee attacks will have a fair amount of holy damage. There are other options though, like the Wing of Asira for Disarm immunity. Dual wielding means you'll get 2 attacks every time you make a weapon attack, including AOEs so you should definitely use Cleave. If you're gonna be weapon attacking a lot, Charge Weapon is good to add more damage to your weapon passively.
That leaves you one recharge slot, the encounter slot, and the ultimate slot. Those are pretty flexible and you can change them as you like, though weapon based powers will likely be best because they benefit from the dual wielding and the weapon buff from charge weapon. That said, bringing some kind of healing or crowd control is also a good idea. Personally I use Power Wave as my other recharge power, it adds a damage type and the attack is ranged to let you hit fliers and it recharges real quick while hitting hard. Dastardly Trick is a strong weapon attack that also stuns, good for breaking an enemy out of a dangerous stance. If you have spellpower though, Dawnbreak is even better hitting all enemies for big damage and giving you another weapon buff. Assassinate is a weapon attack and also useful for taking down dangerous targets quickly.
Companions are also pretty flexible depending on your stat spread, though you'll want strength if you're doing weapon attacks. Willpower, Agility, Cunning, and Toughness are also important stats but since you can only buff 4 you'll have to dump something. It's debatable which stat is best to dump so I'll just leave that to your discretion.
Personally I level Strength, Willpower, and Agility and if I remember to take a drink buff I use Cunning. Then I just take as much spellpower gear as I can. The real decision you'll have to make is whether you'll have a tank or not. There's some split on this so I can't really tell you which is better, I personally don't use any tank though I don't know if that's optimal or not. I will say you typically don't need a tank if you've got some real damage on your team even against bosses, just one healer is usually fine.
Yes this does just end up being basically a tweaked version of Cait and Arona's spellblade builds, but those builds are fantastic to the point that running both of them as spellblades along with this build is a perfectly viable strategy against like, 99% of bosses.
That leaves you one recharge slot, the encounter slot, and the ultimate slot. Those are pretty flexible and you can change them as you like, though weapon based powers will likely be best because they benefit from the dual wielding and the weapon buff from charge weapon. That said, bringing some kind of healing or crowd control is also a good idea. Personally I use Power Wave as my other recharge power, it adds a damage type and the attack is ranged to let you hit fliers and it recharges real quick while hitting hard. Dastardly Trick is a strong weapon attack that also stuns, good for breaking an enemy out of a dangerous stance. If you have spellpower though, Dawnbreak is even better hitting all enemies for big damage and giving you another weapon buff. Assassinate is a weapon attack and also useful for taking down dangerous targets quickly.
Companions are also pretty flexible depending on your stat spread, though you'll want strength if you're doing weapon attacks. Willpower, Agility, Cunning, and Toughness are also important stats but since you can only buff 4 you'll have to dump something. It's debatable which stat is best to dump so I'll just leave that to your discretion.
Personally I level Strength, Willpower, and Agility and if I remember to take a drink buff I use Cunning. Then I just take as much spellpower gear as I can. The real decision you'll have to make is whether you'll have a tank or not. There's some split on this so I can't really tell you which is better, I personally don't use any tank though I don't know if that's optimal or not. I will say you typically don't need a tank if you've got some real damage on your team even against bosses, just one healer is usually fine.
Yes this does just end up being basically a tweaked version of Cait and Arona's spellblade builds, but those builds are fantastic to the point that running both of them as spellblades along with this build is a perfectly viable strategy against like, 99% of bosses.
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If you've cleared the Winter City then you should at least have access to Royal Leathers which are a good armor until you get access to Tiran Vestments or Dragonscale if you want to go more defensive. You can swap Charge Weapon for Great Heal as well in scenarios where you need more survivability. Queenly Raiments Ryn is a good companion for this set since she buffs your damage with Blessing and also has Heal as an At-Will.
Here's a damage example against wolves. They've got no resistances or weaknesses so they're good for damage tests. I made sure to have no companions or buffs and immediately use cleave on turn 1 so this is just the base damage of the build. It's very easy to hit 300+ damage per hit with blessing, crits, buffs, and enemy weaknesses.
I use Wing of Asira because I don't like getting disarmed, honestly I think the damage difference is negligible either way. I go Black Mage with Arcane Penetration for that free -15 to all enemy resistances. Technically Thief could do more damage if you inflicted a debuff thanks to Twist the Knife, but that means you have to use someone's turn inflicting a debuff. The goal is to kill everything real quick so wasting a turn is a pretty big downside but in a longer fight it might be worth it. You could swap Senninbari for Reagent Pouch or Champion's Belt for more damage, I like the Senninbari both for the revive and because it's a gift from family which is cute. You could also swap Weedwalkers for Winged Sabatons to get a bit more initiative.
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Yeah, the sheer value of being Disarm immune makes up for any damage loss, although I honestly didn't notice much difference between Sanctified Gladius and the Wing of Asira
If i go valkyrie, would it be better to use sunstrike and celestial form, or is charge weapon and power wave/ holy shock better?
huh, so it looks like Sunstrike replaces Power Wave and Celestial Form replaces Charge Weapon on the surface of it. However, the damage formulas are a bit different. Assuming you're using willpower as the driving stat for all these abilities (and you should because otherwise you're diluting your stats even further, unless you're very confident about not forgetting your drink buffs).
Celestial Form uses raw Willpower as a number while Charge Weapon uses "Spellpower as a %" which I'm not sure what that means. I'm not sure which number would be higher.
Power wave does normal attack + (33 + Spellpower as a %) damage and is a ranged attack while Sunstrike does normal attack + (attack power as a %) + (15 + spellpower as a %. For pure damage purposes, as long as (attack power as a %) is higher than 18 sunstrike should deal more damage. It does have reduced accuracy against flying enemies but that might not matter sometimes.
The crux of the issue is what (as a %) means so I'm not sure.
Celestial Form uses raw Willpower as a number while Charge Weapon uses "Spellpower as a %" which I'm not sure what that means. I'm not sure which number would be higher.
Power wave does normal attack + (33 + Spellpower as a %) damage and is a ranged attack while Sunstrike does normal attack + (attack power as a %) + (15 + spellpower as a %. For pure damage purposes, as long as (attack power as a %) is higher than 18 sunstrike should deal more damage. It does have reduced accuracy against flying enemies but that might not matter sometimes.
The crux of the issue is what (as a %) means so I'm not sure.
Huh, I guess the mods on one or both of the valk abilities aren't as good. Can't tell which though I assume that it's Celestial Form that's worse than Charge weapon simply because raw willpower would only be 20 damage or so while Charge Weapon is definitely more. On top of that sunstrike isn't a ranged attack so it's gonna miss more than Power Wave because of flying enemy's evasion.
