the way of the 1.4 choppa

1.4 brought many changes to the way people play their classes.

In the last few days I saw master bomber sorcs trying out single target specs, and full on damage marauders dabbling with defensive sets.

I am not an exception to this change, as obvious as I may sound.

With Epikk I was running a high damage crit spec (but then again, who wasn't?). Tons of melee power, capped str, high crit value, and some added damage tactics + crit triggered ones.

After 1.4 went live, my damage plummeted. Thanks to that forsaken "reduce damage from crit attacks" renown training, 2 out of 3 of my hits were being massively nerfed damage-wise.

It was a tough couple of days if I do say so myself. Must have spent around 50 gold and some 5 hours trying different things to see what now worked for me in this completely new world of post 1.4

for a while there I even considered a full defensive build, which would actually be something very very different from my usual suicidal builds.

But alas I crossed paths with an old friend called weapon skill. To be honest it's a pretty obvious choice, but one that didn't cross my mind at first.

So now, I ditched crit completely. Ok so I have some on parts of my gear, but to be honest I couldn't care less for it.

My current renown training is completely devoted to strength, weaponskill and parry. nothing else.

Thanks to this, I gained two new tactic slots (since there's no crit.. there's no need for crit-triggered tactics) and with my newly acquired high parry, I'm actually trying out Riposte for the first time. That and some healing coming from my exhaustive blows (25% chance) are making me survive a little bit more at least in scenarios (still running an exhaustive blows spec btw)

Best part of all of this? I'm still pro at dying, but now I can actually deal some damage to 2h tanks, and every order that trained reduced chance to be critted and reduced damage from crits actually just has a huge amount of useless renown points when it comes to fighting this choppa :P

let's see how this goes from now on. I suspect that with more people training reduced crit and reduced crit damage, more people will stray from crit builds. and with that happening, I can see people dropping the reduced crit training (or at least not going as far as 50% reduction)

Time will tell.

cheers.

My Single Target Choppa Specc (I'ts Epikk!!!)

This is massively delayed, I know, but here it is

Epikk's Choppa Build and some more stuff!!! (AKA big wall of text incoming)

I'm gonna split this up into a few sections in order to cover Mastery training, Renown training (even though this part will get changed when 1.4 arrives) and gear, so, let's get started.

Renown Training:

Might up to 5 for 102 strength

Blade Master up to 3 for 30 Weapon skill

Oportunist up to 2 6% crit

Mastery Training:

I went full Hitta with a dash of Savage, meaning I spent 17 points on the Hitta tree (getting it to 15 and buying "Bleed Em Out" and "Strong Finish" on the way) and 11 points on Savage (got "Wot Rules?" and "Can't Stop Da Chop")

Gear:

Currently I'm runing with a mix of Invader Darkpromise and Tyrant. Will change to Tyrant/Warlord only in a couple of Renown Ranks but that's still to come

Head and Shoulders are Tyrant

Hands and Belt are Invader

Chest and Boots are Darkpromise

The reason for this is to get the two STR bonuses from DP and Invader plus the wounds bonus from Tyrant.

The added crit from shoulders and boots together with the MP from the gloves are very nice.

Obviously, MP talisman on gloves, and crit on shoulders. The rest i slot STR.

I'm going with a "Krogengz, Cutta of Doom" (City bag) on my right hand and a "Titan's Choppa of Anathema" (Invader insignias weapon) on my left hand.

The Cutta of Doom provides some needed MP while the Anathema one gives out some more MP and a little bit of crit.

Cloak and 2 glyphs from TOVL. Still haven't been able to get a Panahasi though, for the MP and the 4 piece bonus, so, the other 2 jewelry slots are filled with an Executioner's Ring and an Icon of Assassins for the Nehekharan set.

Tactics:

Brute Force: 160 STR

Wot Rules?: exhaustive blows no longer remove rage

Flanking: Added 15% damage when attacking from sides or back

Strong Finish: Increases crit chance with Hitta abilities by 15% and decreases my ability to defend crits by 10%

As you can probably tell from the tactics, my main focus is spamming abilities that require rage, and are from the Hitta tree.

Abilities and rotation:

First of all, my Hurtin' Time is always on. I realy don't care if it damages me,

because the added damage that it provides is simply too good for me to not use it.

Other than that, I run things arround Reckless Blow.

Now, every one and their mothers bash me for using this cuz, as most say, "it's a crap ability because of the 5% penalty on getting critted and you can do almost the same damage with Slasha or Go For Da Soft Spot", but more on that later.

By the way, I rarely run alone. I'm usually either in a party or warband with guild mates, so, my buid has that into consideration, and I allow myself to suck on survivability because I know there's a healer somewhere that's taking care of me.

I wouldn't dream of roaming solo with this build. I'm just too squishie with it.

Anyway, getting on with stuff.

I revolve arround 2 main abilities, wich are Bleed em Out (sweet SWEEET DOT) and Reckless Blow. No matter what kind of oposition i get, these two are the ones I rely on.

So, as I said before, I run in groups. That being said, right before engaging, I usually kick Git Stuck In. The 35% AA haste for group mates is precious and unless everyone has a speed lower than 1 second, it does make a diference (even though most people won't notice it's magic).

Right after that, there's a 5 second gap that I hate... the 5 seconds it takes for my rage to build up.

So, before i have enough rage, what usually goes on is Slasha -> Slasha -> Bleed Em Out -> Can't Stop Da Chop -> Go For Da Soft Spot

Slasha's debuff stacks, so I try to get at least two in there right at the start of the fight.

Bleed Em Out starts ticking in slowly but it really does a lot of damage in total

The reason I spit out Can't Stop The Chop (for the healing debuff) only after 3 hits is that I really wanna take advantage of most of it's timer. It wouldn't really make a diference for the target's health if I had used it as an opener instead of when I do because even at 50% heals, a decent healer would be able to out heal my Slashas and the first tick of Bleed Em Out if they went in after CSTC, so, this way I just get 2 debuffs in and the first tick of a DOT, then the heal debuff, just in time for the big strikes to go in together with Bleed Em Out's bigger ticks.

Go For Da Soft Spot should already damage a lot at this stage cuz of the toughness debuffs

After this roll-out, it's time for the massive damage.

Reckless Blow is ready to use!!!!

Ok so, it deals a lot of damage. It's actually my most damaging ability. But it does have the drawback of debuffing your chance to be critted by 10%, which can be a pain, so, after aplying the first Reckless Blow, remember to toss in a Try 'An Hurt Me to reduce your target's chance of critting you by 100%.

Yhea ok so the other guys arround your target that you didn't debuff will still proffit from your chance to be critted, but hey, that's why I run with good healers :P

Anyway, after this point, it's just a matter of working your stuff arround Reckless Blow. Just keep spamming it, while reaplying anything that needs to be reaplied (like Git Stuck In when the cooldown ends, Try 'An Hurt Me whenever you change targets, CSTC when the heal debuff ends and most importantly, always have a Bleed Em Out runing on your target)

UPDATE

I forgot to mention something... Obviously, knock down your opponents whenever possible. This is also one of the reasons I have Wot Rules? slotted. The knockdown needs rage and I really can't be caught on a situation where I need a knockdown but there's no rage to use it because of some other ability I just used, and the same goes for the other way around... can't really be negated of a knockdown just because I used a Reckless Blow.

END OF UPDATE

With this set up I currently run at 33% crit (counting in the crit tactic for the Hitta tree abilities). I have had higher crit rates at the expense of other stats, but to be honest, 33% already crits enough.

All in all it's not an awesome spec, but it's what works for me right now. It's obviously extremely dependent on gear (reason for which I won't be able to wear Warlord untill i'm RR69) but then again, what isn't?

And I think that's that.

thank you for your time reading through this wall of text,

Cheers.