Hello! Today I am bringing you my take on the Reaver (or, Dual Wield) tree and the feats available within it. As with the Berserker Feats Guide and the Skills Guide this will be focused toward a solo/small group playstyle for PvP and leveling/raiding for PvE.
The Reaver (DW) tree is often refered to as our primary DPS tree, and for good reason. The feats within this tree that augment Cyclone of Steel serve to make it our highest damaging combo and a staple of the Hybrid Spec. For end-game raiding, this is hands down the top DPS spec and generally will put barbs ahead of the rest on single target.
Further reading on Reaver feats can be found in Mad's Reaver Guide over on the official forums. I'll be giving each feat an "out of 5" rating for both PvE and PvP along with including a little information about each specific feat.
- Reaver Stance: Grants the barbarian a combat stance that increases the damage inflicted by their strikes, which also have a chance of causing additional damage. This effect can be applied three times.
- The first feat in the tree, and, as such, a must take. Great stance for raid environments where it can stack to full.
- PvE: *****
- PvP: *****
- Hand Weapon Expert: Increases damage inflicted with one handed edged and blunt weapons.
- Flat, passive, DPS increase while using 1H weapons. Wonderful talent when it comes to maximizing damage.
- PvE: *****
- PvP: *****
- Ambidextrous: Permanently increases the chance of attack with their secondary weapon.
- Offhand swings are not yet fully understood, but they CAN add a decent chunk of damage. However, for PvP, there are often better places to allocate your points. This is a great filler talent, and absolutely necessary for a max DPS PvE build
- PvE: *****
- PvP: ***
- Sever: Attacks with the barbarian's primary weapon have a chance of inflicting additional slashing damage.
- First off, THIS IS NOT A DoT. Just to clear that up, it is a direct (slashing) damage proc that his for a significant amount. This is in the same line as Ambidextrous, good filler for PvP, necessity for PvE.
- PvE: *****
- PvP: ***
- Unstoppable: When dropping below 30% health the barbarian gain a large amount of damage deflection.
- Fluctuates between broken and functional. Even while functional, not very impressive.
- PvE: *
- PvP: **
- Brutal Cyclone: Increases the chance of inflicting critical damage when using the Cyclone of Steel combo starter.
- Take a look over at The (my) official word on Smash 'n Crush and Brutal Cyclone to get a feel for how these abilities work. They only affect the damage from the initial press of the combo. Due to the popular technique in PvP of getting all of the presses of a combo done except the last before you get to the target, this is not very useful. Makes for great damage in PvE.
- PvE: ****
- PvP: *
- Smash 'n Crush: Increases the combo starter damage done by the Cyclone of Steel combo.
- Reference what was said above, this works the same way.
- PvE: ****
- PvP: *
- Twist and Tear: All attacks with the barbarian's off hand weapon have a chance of inflicting a bleeding wound that damages the victim for a short time. This effect can be applied five times.
- Does good damage, and in a raid environment, this can definitely add up. In PvP and solo PvE, though, DoTs aren't too big of a deal. One point here is MUCH better than none, but I'm not sure it's worth going further.
- PvE: **** (at least one point)
- PvP: * (at least one point)
- Predatory Instincts: Grants the barbarian an ability which increases their evasion skill and rate of stamina regeneration for a short time.
- Wonderful ability on its own. However, as a prerequisite for Spirit of the Panther, there is no excuse to skip it.
- PvE: *****
- PvP: *****
- Gushing Wounds: Augments the Cyclone of Steel combo with a chance to inflict a bleeding wound that damages the victim for a short time.
- Again with bleeds: great in raids, not so good while soloing (lots of one shotting mobs make them not very useful). This will proc a bleed of your most frequently used combo. Again, one point here will do great things compared to none.
- PvE: ****
- PvP: **
- Haste: Grants the barbarian an ability which for a short time increases their movement speed and increases damage inflicted by their attacks.
- Awesome. Use it before a CoS for huge damage. Or, use it for the speed boost to chase someone down.
- PvE: *****
- PvP: *****
- Too Many to Count: Grants the barbarian an ability to increases the damage inflicted by their attacks, based on how many living foes are nearby. The effect can be applied ten times.
- Never tried this one personally, but I've heard the damage can be pretty significant. In a raid or 1v1 environment, probably not very necessary. However, in mass PvP, it might be useful.
- PvE: **
- PvP: **
- Berserker: Grants an ability that increases damage inflicted by the barbarian's attacks, but can only be used when they are significantly wounded, and cancels when their health improves enough.
- Another I have no personal experience with. I'm not a big fan of feats that you have to activate when you're holding the short end of the stick. However, I can think of some occasions it could be useful.
- PvE: **
- PvP: *
- Unstoppable Berserker: Improves the Berserker feat by increasing the rate of stamina regeneration.
- May be a nice augmentation to Berserker (the feat) but as it stands, stamina is not a huge issue. Even less of an issue if you begin to consider potions.
- PvE: **
- PvP: *
- Jagged Weapons - Increases the damage done by the barbarian's Jagged Cut combos.
- Jagged Cut is horrible currently. Do not spend points on it.
- PvE:
- PvP:
- Cyclone of Razors: Increases the damage done by the barbarian's Cyclone of Steel combo.
- Increasing the damage of Cyclone of Steel is always good. This is great.
- PvE: *****
- PvP: *****
- Spirit of the Panther: Increases the barbarian's chance of inflicting critical damage with the Cyclone of Steel combo, as long as the Predatory Instincts ability is active.
- Amazing feat, combine Predatory Instincts (with this feat) with Haste for crazy CoS damage.
- PvE: *****
- PvP: *****
- Boiling Blood: Increases the damage done by the barbarian's blows while the Savage Rage combo is in effect.
- If Savage Rage itself gets improved, this will be more valuable. As it stands, you use SR so infrequently, that it's not particularly useful to put points here.
- PvE: **
- PvP:
- Lashing Swords: Increases the area of effect of the Jagged Cut combos and it to also reduces the victim's chance to evade blows for a short time.
- Once again, Jagged Cut is not good.
- PvE:
- PvP:
- Back in the Fray: Grants a short range charge ability that can be used after the barbarian suffers a knock-back in combat.
- I have never seen this work properly. Currently bugged. Do not take. (However, if this is fixed before I update, 5 *'s for PvP)
- PvE:
- PvP:
- Overpower: When the barbarian evades blows in combat they gain a temporary damage increase. This effect can be applied 5 times.
- It has been indicated that this is actually misworded (not uncommon) and should be gives a damage increase when our targets evade, either way.. not very good. We don't evade often, nor do we get evaded often.
- PvE:
- PvP: *
- Rupture Armor: Improves the Wreck Armor combos by increasing the chance of inflicting a devastating critical hit.
- Rupture Armor does decent damage as it stands. If you find yourself using it frequently, drop a point here.
- PvE: ***
- PvP: **
- Shrapnel: Improves the barbarians Wreck Armor combo by inflicting piercing damage on any enemies nearby the primary target.
- Unfortunately, the prerequisites for this feat make it not worth getting. If it were alone, it'd be great.
- PvE: *
- PvP: *
- Lure: Double tap forward also grant the barbarian an absorb shield. If hit the enemy will also suffer a counter attack. This effect can only occur once every 30 seconds.
- Awesome. What isn't spelled out is that once you activate Lure, the buff is actually a 99% reduction in damage on the next attack that hits you. Only one point is really necessary, not truly sure what more do.
- PvE: *
- PvP: *****
- Impale: Grants the barbarian an ability so their next attack inflicts significant bleeding wounds with both their weapons.
- Great damage DoT. More points = more damage.
- PvE: *****
- PvP: ****
- Dance of Death: Grants an ability that makes all attacks inflict instant damage to all foes in close vicinity.
- Again, poor prereqs will prevent many people from even trying this out (myself included). However, those who HAVE tried it all indicate that the only effect is a wider frontal cone. On a longish cooldown below another crappy feat, not worth it.
- PvE: *
- PvP: *
- Armageddon Falls: Grants an ability so that for a short period of time when the barbarian strikes a foe they are temporarily doomed to suffer lingering bleeding wounds whenever struck in combat.
- This adds some great damage in a raid environment. Probably not too useful in PvP.
- PvE: ****
- PvP: ***
If you guys find any problems or corrections to be made, post em up! Thanks for reading and good luck.
Digg TCB!
7 comments:
I'm not sure about your overpower rating, particularly since part of its assumption seems to me flawed: "We do not evade often." Says who? What about those who opt for evade gear, put points into the Rogue feat for evasion, and then also use haste (which also increases evasion)? Undermined if it really means when the opponent evades, of course, but I don't know this yet. My own strategy is that since we are weak on armor, the next best thing is evasion, and even better is evasion that boosts damage.
In any event, this feat is often triggered for me. At most it seems to grant +8 damage, but that's nothing to sneeze at. I'd give it 2.5 stars.
Sorry, it's predator's instinct that boosts evasion. Still, my point is that the ways you can boost evasion add up, and shouldn't be neglected. My base evasion with gear and feats is around 10%, and with PI in effect it's rather higher.
Just checked it in-game: with PI activated, my evasion goes from 10.37% to 22.4%. This is significant in its own right, but if overpower does indeed trigger off our own evades, while the overpower effect lasts for at least 10 seconds, and can stack. This is potentially significant, and needs study.
Here's the thing with evasion.. when do you evade? I understand stacking evade gear increases the chance, but when you're 1-2 shotting mobs and jousting high armor players, there really isn't any opportunity for you to actually get a single evade in... never mind 5 evades in a short time frame to get a full stack of the buff.
I believe you severely underestimate armgeddon falls. On parsers its its own attack and it did almost 75k damage while the barbarian only did about 300k.
In pvp I use it with haste,PI,impale when doing CoS especially on soldier targets it makes them a lot easier to take down.
Armageddon is great if you have a lot of people hitting the target to proc the bleed (like a raid)
I've not heard how it is in solo PvP. But, due to how deep it is in the Reaver tree, it could be hard to pick up for a Hybrid build. I'll toss another * up on it though, it is definitely great for raids.
"Here's the thing with evasion.. when do you evade?"
When facing more than one mob at a time. Which happens a lot for me.
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