Neverwinter GWF PvE DPS Instigator Guide

Neverwinter GWF PvE DPS Instigator Guide by ironwill92

Hi.

I’m Ironwill from the server Dragon and I’m in the guild rolemodels. After reading the other guides on the net and trying out lots of different builds myself, I decided to write an own guide, because I didn’t find a guide on here mentioning all information I find to be crucial for GWF gameplay.

Race

I strongly recommend Half-Orc cause of the extra Strength and Dexterity and the 5 % Critical Severity, which is really nice to have.

Ability Scores

Skill full Str/Dex. Nuff said. Just for max Damage and Crit.

Stat Priority

Power > Crit > Recovery > Armor Pen > Defense

Power is just overall the best stat for GWF, pure damage, Crit is also very good cause of our racial (5 % increased Critical Severity), the Feats Deep Gash (Crits apply Bleed Dots), Student of the Sword (Crits apply Defense Debuff) and Devastating Critical (Critical Severity increased by 15 %). Recovery is a semi-good stat, though it’s nice to have, Armor Pen is not that good of a stat, still it provides some damage, so it’s viable. Defense is a viable stat cause it gives us 20 % Power and in addition of course survivability, what helps us to fulfill our role as Off-Tank.

Enchantments

Utility Slots: Movement
Offense Slots: Power
Defense Slots: Defense

Feats

Heroic:

Disciple of Strength 3/3 – Bonus damage through strength, always good
Unstoppable Action 4/5 – More Action Points, more Slam, nice to have
Endless Assault 3/3 – More encounter damage, must have talent
Steely Defense 5/5 – One of the best feats out there, makes Defense so much better
Weapon Mastery 2/3 – Only 2/3 points cause Critical Severity is slightly better
Devastating Critical 3/3 – Very nice feat, pushing your Critical Severity to the limits, this plus the racial is insane crit damage and this is a crit focused build

As Paragon Path we choose the Instigator Path cause the final feat is just to strong, 50 % more power. Of course I tested both paths very intensively, Destroyer Path is nice but Instigator is slightly better. Also it provides your group with additional support through the feat Allied Opportunity, giving the group 3 seconds Combat Advantage.

Paragon:

Unstoppable Recovery 5/5 – Not a very good feat but it’s the only viable option there

Vicious Advantage 5/5 – The better you play, the better is this feat, cause it improves Combat Advantage, it’s even better combined with the feat Allied Opportunity

Stunning Flourish 5/5 – Not the best feat but still nice to have, cause you’ll use Flourish in your Rotation, therefore the 5 % crit in addition with the Critical Severity we have is great

Allied Opportunity 5/5 – Very important feat, nice group support as mentioned above

Instigator’s Vengeance 1/1 – The strongest feat ever and the main reason why we pick the Instigator Path, has the best effect when you have a GF as tank so you receive as less hits as possible and have the 50 % power up

Powers

Just try to maximize the skills I recommended above.

Skills

Encounters:

Not so Fast – Good AoE damage and important to apply the 3 seconds Combat Advantage from our Allied Opportunity feat

Indomitable Battle Strike – Very nice damage and if killing blow marks the enemies for extra damage plus extra Action Points

Flourish – Nice damage and increased Crit chance due to our feat Stunning Flourish

Flourish is not a must have, alternatively you can choose between Roar (which is in general a very cool skill but is still not that good cause of the knockback), Daring Shout (extra determination and extra damage), Mighty Leap (extra mobility and AoE damage), Come and Get it (principially a good skill but range is unfortunately very short), Restoring Strike (damage and heal) or Punishing Charge (choose this for encounters where you need very high mobility to charge around like crazy).

At-Wills:

Weapon Master’s Strike – AoE

Sure Strike – Single Target, not very strong but still slightly better than WMS compared to single target

Dailys:

Slam – Use for very nice AoE-Damage, main Daily, even at only 3 targets still better than Crescendo

Crescendo – Not really a good PvE skill but still viable versus pure single target encounters, really use only if there are very few enemies, if there are more use Slam

Passives:

Steel Blitz – Very strong passive, cause at 10+ mobs it will proc nearly every swing

Weapon Master – 7,5 % extra Crit is very strong

Alternatively: Instead of Weapon Master you can also take Destroyer, provides 12 % additional damage if attacking 3 or more enemies, but in my opinion you have enough AoE-Damage and lack in single target so I recommend Weapon Master, which is always up.

Combat

5+ enemies: Initiate with Not so Fast and continue spamming WMS, don’t forget to activate Unstoppable for max damage and activate Slam if available. At 5+ enemies GWF feels at home and deals insane amounts of damage.

2-4 enemies: Initiate with Not so Fast, then Indomitable Battle Strike and Flourish, when everything on cooldown continue spamming WMS.

Single target: Still initiate with Not so fast for Combat Advantage Buff for the whole party, then Indomitable Battle Strike and Flourish, when everything on cooldown spam Sure Strike, if available activate Crescendo.

Final Note

You might noticed GWF is at the moment slightly underpowered. I’m sure GWF will get buffed and that’s fine. But I just want to tell you that even if you have good gear and you’re skilled and do everything like I recommended you, it is not 100 % sure that you will be number 1 in the Damage-Meter. Of course it can happen and is very nice to have but CW and TR are very strong at the moment.

Comments and constructive criticism are very much appreciated.