Neverwinter CW PvP Renegade Build Guide

Neverwinter CW PvP Renegade Build Guide by jawarisin

All the basic information is here for the build, but it is still under construction for the explanation etc (believe it or not, but it’s somewhat time consuming) I also understand that I will have to work on aesthetic, but that will take some time. I’m working on it steadily.

Why: I know there is a lot of other builds out there currently, but from my point of view, most (I haven’t seen them all) are ineffective. They will suggest combinations or passives which in my opinion will stray you away from some other really good stuff. I see some level 50’s make guides, so as one of the top end-game players I think I can enlighten a few.

I’m currently an end game DC // CW (and a TR but I kind of abandoned it shortly after 60). My cw’s gear worth is around 7.5 million. I’ve spent a lot of time on this game. The renegade path is really effective and a good direction to head into. So here I will explain all the feats you will want, why and how they will be applied.

More than theory-crafting, here I’m going to explain things from someone who has experience and played extensively. I will talk about the skills in a realistic fashion which will relate directly to what you will see in-game.

This comprehensive build will be separated in chapters as follow:

0.5 – This will be a really short “What you’re getting into” kind of thing, where we will see the main goal of renegade and a general overview of what you’re going to do.
1- First we will examine the feats, I will point out which one works, which one don’t and why. You’re race, rolls and the such will also be included in this section.
2- Secondly, We will see what skills we are looking at. The real deal is the PVP ones, so those are the one we will focus on. I will still make a small talk about the PVE one, but that’s pretty simple and quick, so there will only be the essential.
3- For the third section we will discuss the Enchantments we will want.
4- I will discuss strategies and behaviors from other classes. How you should react why and what you can expect.
5- This will be a dedicated section to CW vs CW. It happens often and it’s always a pain. Most peoples will trow anything they have in any order, hoping the other CW will die first.
6- I will dedicate this particular chapter to the use of teleport and avoiding/dodging.
7- Team fight / Positioning will cover who to target, where do you want to go and how so.
8- The running away section. It’s not gracious but it happens. It will also include what to do if said enemy is running away.
9- General Tips / tricks section, contains general useful little things that you might want to do.
10- Gear-talk.
11- Will contain changelog as well as any particular event due to this guide (usually involving either a patch or additional information/coloring etc etc).

WARNING: Some information, especially ability scores, contain information which is long and tedious to explain since it relates to every part of the guide, and I would have to quote nearly the whole guide. Therefore, I recommend re-reading it a second time to have a better understanding.

Chapter 0.5 ~ Renegade

What is renegade focused on: Dealing criticals, which hurt alot and triggers all the other feats one by one to have synergy together. In itself, the renegade build is like a gamble, and you’re goal will be to make yourself win as often as you can. Luckily for you, this is a video game, and since true randomness is impossible, you will always hit it with consistency.

As a renegade, you’re ideal scenario would be to hit all criticals and kill your enemy in 2-3 skills. You are the one who will target the “squishy” ones first, CW’s TR’s and DC’s.

Race:
We’re maximizing efficiency here, so you’re definitely heading for Thiefling. The ability scores it gives are the best, as well as the passives. I don’t think I need to talk extensively about it. There is numerous “viable” options, but this one is the best. I will probably go more in detail in the future, for those of you who really want to hear it said again.

Ability Scores:
As you might know, there is only a few possibilities you might roll. Instead of looking at your main stats and trying to get them as high as possible, we will look at the actual important and sneaky ones. The grey ones. You will have 3 of them, strength constitution and dexterity.

In order of importance, you’re ability scores will go this way:

Intelligence
Charisma
Wisdom
Constitution
Strength
Dexterity

What you will be looking for is the combination: 8 dexterity ~ 10 strength ~ 10 constitution. The main reason for this is that if you get this combo, your main and secondary ability scores will be as high as possible. Also, dexterity is the least important ability score, so it’s the one we want at 8. Ability scores start giving out per-point bonus after 10, so dexterity will be two points “late” on there.

In the worst case scenario, you could get 10 dex ~ 8 str~ 10 const. That would also be a good option, a tiny fraction of a percentage less effective, but nearly the same.

Now, here’s the “what”. Every point in * gives * per level over 10:

Intelligence
~ 1% damage bonus ; 1% cooldown reduction
More damage, and more cooldown reduction. I don’t even think I need to explain how much this is mandatory. Maximizes your damage and CC output.

Charisma
~ 1% critical change ; 1% combat advantage ; 1% companion stat bonus
Critical is our core, and combat advantage synergies with our feats. This is nearly as awesome as Intelligence. Not quite, but nearly.

Wisdom
~ 1% control bonus ; 1% control resistance ; 1% cooldown reduction ; 1% action point gain
This is filled with tiny utilities that have their use, they are just not as efficient as the two previous one.

Constitution
~ 2% extra HP
More Life, a few percent extra HP will make the difference between life and death.

Strength
~ 1% damage over time resistance ; 1% stamina regeneration
The stamina regeneration is awesome, but it just doesn’t make strength worth the while compared to the other two.

Dexterity
~ 1% Area of Effect damage resistance ; 0.5% deflection chance
Deflection is useless. 0.5% chance at 50% severity means 0.25% damage reduction. It’s unreliable.

Chapter 1 ~ Feats

Some of the feats stats are not the same anymore, this is all taken into consideration for this build. The feat simulator simply isn’t updated yet.

First: a link. Go to the feat section.
http://nwcalc.com/cw?b=p9b:4nwad:8fd…0u00:bz501&h=0

column by column.

Controlling Action: 0/5 Controlling action is horrible.

Weapon Mastery: 3/3 Criticals are whole point of a renegade build. More crit= better.

Toughness: 3/3 As for thoughness, you want to resist as much as possible. This will also synergise with the future radiants in the defensive slots.

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Fight On : 5/5 10% cooldown reduction… it would be utmost deficient not to get it. This is literally like saying 10% more damage, cc and debuff.

Battlewise : 0/3 We dont need threat reduction.

Wizard’s Wrath: 0/3 We are not aiming at an AOE PvE build

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Blighting Power: 1/3 We have a point to spend, best option overall

Lightning Teleport : 0/5 we dont kill adds here, that 10% restored is not worth 5 feat points.

Arcane mastery: 3/3 Magic Missile is arcane, entangling force is arcane and ray of enfeeblement is arcane. More damage.

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Learned spellcaster: 5/5 We are an egoistic pvp build, we want to murders others, 5% more damage is awesome.

Prestigitation: Not bad but not worth it for PvP.

Focussed Wizardry: we are not PvE and even then…

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PARAGON
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Thaumaturge –

Tempest magic: 5/5 Bugged but we need points, and once it’s debugged it will prove useful.

Malevolent surge: 0/5 Nearly NEARLY useless. the use is so tiny I didn’t even deem it worth putting in and respecing later.

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Destructive wizardry: 0/5 The name is nicer than the effect.

Snap Freeze: 5/5 This… Is… Awesome… It makes you hit few thousands more on Icy rays and/or not chill strike hit. It’s a MUST have to burst. The condition is easily met also.

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Renegade –

Critical power: 5/5 Helps charge your ice knife quicker, and we needed to spend 5 points, so here they are.

Reaper’s Touch: 5/5 I said I was realistic, well here’s reality, you WILL fight close combat a lot. 3/5 classes are melee and will rush to you. It’s not like you can always stay at 80 distance from them. Rogues will be in your face, guardian fighters will rush to your face, and gwf will run to you. A must have. 15% is a lot.

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Nightmare wizardry: 5/5 It will proc the next feat also, all about synergy. This also adds a big bunch of damage. You’re CHA will also boost this! (we will see it later, but it will synergise with eye of the storm).
http://neverwinter.gamepedia.com/Combat_Advantage

Unrestrained chaos: 0/5 Useless

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Phantasmal Destruction: 5/5 Everytime Nightmare Wizardry procs, it will proc this. Or every time you hit someone in the back mostly. You’re a crit based character, 15% increased severity is better than sex for you.

Energy Recovery: 0/5 Useless

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Masterfull Arcane Theft: 0/5 Enfeeblement ray is our first spell cast in 99% cases, this wont profit it in any way whatsoever. The buff is also severly lower now.

Chilling Advantage: 0/5 This would be wonderful if it was with storm spell, but we are sadly not using chilling presence.

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Chaos Magic: 1/1 Well duh~!!! Can be very useful. A bit of randomness but eh, we are renegades. That means we are pro gamblers with critical. One more gamble won’t hurt, but on this one we never lose!

Chapter 2 ~ Powers

Same link: Power section this time
http://nwcalc.com/cw?b=p9b:4nwad:8fd…0u00:bz501&h=0

I will first present to you the set-up followed by the regular combo you will be using. I will then explain the use of each skill. This section will stay relatively short since most of the fighting content will be explained into the general strategies chapter.

Here’s what you will want for pvp:

At will 1: Magic Missile
At will 2: Storm Pillar ~ Used to charge Daily when there’s no action

Passive 1: Storm spell
Passive 2: Eye of the storm

Mastery: Icy Rays

Encounter 1: Ray of enfeeblement
Encounter 2: Chill Strike (recommended once you hit 60)// Repel
Encounter 3: Entangling Force

Daily 1: Ice Knife
Daily 2: Ice Storm// Arcane singularity

~~~~~

Regular Encounter combo:

Ray of enfeeblement
Icy rays ~~~~ PS: Always only aim at 1 target. You need to press it twice.
Entangling force
Magic Missile
Chill strike

~~~~~

Ray of Enfeeblement ~ Weakens your target greatly.

Icy Rays ~ Un-avoidable skill which will stun your target and do a humongous amount of damage.

Entangling Force ~ Beware the Sith! A good CC which also allows you to land your ice knife with certainty.

Magic Missile ~ Yes your at-will! It might not seem like it, but it hurts hard! and that’s a few thousand damages you add in for free instead of blowing all your spells away.

Chill Strike ~ This is your other hard hitting spell combined with another CC.

~~~~~~~~~~~~
PvE

At will 1: Magic Missile
At will 2: Storm Pillar ~ Used to charge Daily when there’s no action

Passive 1: Storm spell
Passive 2: Eye of the storm

Mastery: Entangling Force

Encounter 1: Icy Terrain
Encounter 2: Steal Time (recommended once you hit 60)// Repel
Encounter 3: Shield


Daily 1: Ice Knife
Daily 2: Arcane singularity

Chapter 3 ~ Enchantments

Special Offensive: Greater tenebrous enchantment
~will be explained further with some un-told stuff in the tooltip

Offensive: Azures ~ 2100 crit // Dark ~ at least 1000 // Radiant ~ everything else

First and foremost, we will look at our critical. We will want azures to bring it somewhere around 2000-2100. The reason is simple, we are using criticals as our bread and butter. And the “soft cap” is 2100 roughly. Therefore, we will want somewhere around there before we invest in anything else.

Secondly, armor penetration (ArP for short). All low armored classes have a minimum armor. This small amount of armor how ever gives a big amount of reduction. Usually around 15%. We will want to remove it. You will need to bring your ArP around 1000 to 1500.

Thirdly and lastly, should you have anything left, Radiants will do. I strongly doubt you will have any slots left here, but I mention it just in case.

Defensive: Radiant
~ Flat HP gives you the best survivability, it will also combine with Toughness and become 9% more effective!

Utility: Dark
~ There’s nothing else really… Move speed, even small, isn’t bad either.

Weapon: Vorpal
~ The renegade build is critical based, hence why we are looking towards vorpal to be even deadlier!

Armor: Soulforged
~ The uncontested best. Makes you invincible for a good length of time, with a low cooldown! You can see if it’s ready if you’re armor displays the effect (greater+ will start oozing black smoke and will be easier to distinguish).

Chapter 4 ~ Strategies and general behavior

~Under construction – This section will be quite big if it goes as I think it will go, therefore I won’t write it all in one-go. Might be worth to check it back sometime.

First of all, let’s separate this into categories (Cw has his own chapter):

Trickster Rogues:

Trickster rogues are really annoying for most peoples, they hit hard, they daze you and, worst of all, they are invisible!

First of all, the most important thing when facing a trickster is not to be scared. Here’s a few reasons you shouldn’t:

Tricksters are forseeable, they ain’t no tricksters.
Tricksters only have three skills with any damage potential (not including their ultimate).
Tricksters can only roll(dodge) twice.
Tricksters are squishy.

Before I go into how to defeat tricksters, I’ve got to explain to you guys what tricksters can and might do.

Lashing Blade: The big sword coming from the side. A guaranteed critical strike if it hits out of invisibility. Melee range if not a little more.

Impact Shot: 3 charges of brute damage which adds a small push/stun. If cast to break stealth, it does not consume any charge and add a real stun to it.

Dazing Strike: Jump in the air and fall back down, disabling you for a few seconds. If it breaks stealth, the animation is 50% faster.

Deft Strike: Teleport behind you and hit you once, adding a massive slow. If cast to break stealth, it gives 20 extra range and allows you to teleport on teammate.

Impossible to Catch: Turns them dark/black and gives huge mitigation. If used out of stealth, it makes them immune to pretty much anything.
*I will add a section about this spell and how to deal with it. It’s annoying but not that bad in the end, once you understand some concepts.

Smoke Bomb: Creates an area where you are dazed. If cast to break out of stealth, it adds an annoying slow to it.

Shadow Strike: Looks like they are throwing a dagger at you like they are out of some kung fu / james bond movie. Does no NO NO NO damage. But it refills their stealth bar no matter what you do. Just refresh stealth it if they use it while in stealth.

Bait and Switch: Make a clone and dashes in a direction (always a stupid direction too). If used during stealth, it refreshes their stealth bar but does not do any dash.

Dailies:
Whirlwind blade: A blue circle around them, avoid it if you can, but not that dangerous.

Bloodbath: A low-level daily which will make them teleport around you and hit you. Nothing to do about it, just wait till it ends and don’t waste your teleports / freak out. It would result in the same as someone trying to avoid a CoI damage by rolling around. Not really problematic.

Shocking Execution: Jump in the air and fall back down. Does more damage the lower hp you are. Only way to avoid this is by killing / using crowd control on them. Hurts.

Lurker’s Assault: The most dangerous and vicious of all. It extends their stealth by 10 seconds by regenerating it at really high speed. Their attacks will also deal 60% increased damage. Really annoying, beware of it. It’s the most dangerous of all.

At-Wills:
Cloud of Steel: An at will that throws daggers at you. They have 12 charges with 3s to recharge each dagger. It does increasingly higher damage the more consecutive hits they get on you. Does not break stealth.

Sly Flourish: A basic attack, nothing special about it, they just slash and slash with no special effect.

Duelist’s Flurry: A very very slow hit, followed by another very very slow hit, followed by a dozen of light speed quick hits stalking your target with teleport. It also adds bleed on you and can add a few buffs on themselves.

Anything else than what’s on this list such as blitz which throws small daggers in a bunch while recoiling back or path of blade which makes daggers come out of the ground in an AOE. Laugh at it, it’s ridiculously bad and useless.

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Now we know what those pesky little things can do. Knowledge is power, and this is all the more true against Tricksters. The first step in defeating a Trickster rogue is spotting one of the 4 indicators that tells you “Hey, Trickster here!”

1~ A mount with a trickster mounted on it running straight at you(or at least an individual) which suddenly disappears into nothing. In case you wondered, no the mount didn’t fly off into the sunset. The trickster just activated his stealth. This is also valid if you see a trickster looking around your way and going invisible.

2~Projectiles being thrown your way. That’s cloud of steel, and in rare occurrence impact shot.

3~A weird distortion or seem like movement of some kind right beside you. Usually really brief. No it’s no eye-trick. It’s a Trickster.

4~ A Trickster running around in circle, trying to find a spot to hide and regenerate his stealth. Just your usual lost trickster, somehow seems to be more abundant in the Hotenow map (fire one).

—-

Scenario using the first(1) case.
Once that first step is done, meaning you spotted the Trickster, it’s time to act. What you should know is that tricksters are NOT interested in guardian fighters, neither great weapon fighters and rarely clerics. They crave wizards, you are a wizard.

Knowing they got limited time for their stealth and that they want you and think you are stupid and that they are so much smarter. The conclusion we can get is they are going to run straight for you.

Two options might happen:

They will start throwing daggers at you nearly immediately.
~View case 2 to see how to deal with this.
OR
They will run straight to you and try to cast one of their fancy skills. Usually lashing blade, sometime smoke bomb and more rarely around 60: dazing strike.

This second scenario is the most common and most easy to deal with. You know what they will do, and where they are going with the trajectory.
Imagine a straight line going from you to wherever they disappeared first. Then imagine they are running at you with a speed slightly lower than a regular t1 mount. As soon as you think he reached you, wait about .25 to .5 second to let him position himself and start casting. Then teleport. About a second later, you will see a rogue appear at your previous location, wondering where you got your psychic powers.
~I suggest teleporting backwards as it will keep him in your field of view.
~This might take you a few times to get the timing down, but it’s very easy once you are used to it.

His stealth is down, his highest damage or disabling skill is gone.

There is now two options:

He will stand there a second too long trying to think what to do or cast some fancy other skill.
~You can just trow your regular combo in there, and you can be sure he’s dead meat.
OR
He will teleport behind you using deft-strike.

As soon as you see him disappear, you should know it’s deft strike. Just quickly teleport somewhere else. You are then free to kill him with your regular combo.

—-

The second (2) scenario is the annoying scenario. This kind of rogue will run around invisible throwing daggers at you then either running away or coming to finish you off.

The first step in this situation is to deal with the Cloud of Steel daggers. It’s damage is exponential, meaning it will start with really low damage and go higher and higher the longer he can keep on attacking you with it.

Step 1.1: Locate where it comes from.

Step 1.2: Walk away from that location until around 4 daggers hit you.

Step 1.3: teleport away from him.

Step 1.4: Repeat step 1.3 if he hasn’t stopped shooting daggers at you.

Ok, so the chain is broken, even if he throws you more daggers, it won’t be very dangerous since he wont have full charges. It can still hurt though so if he does it simply repeat the previous step. After that, if he tries it again, don’t even bother dodging, he probably only has one or two left.

You took minimal damage, the rogue will now either flee, either try to push it.

If he flees refer to the “Running Away” section.

If he tries to push it, there’s four options:

He might try to run to you and hit you with lashing blade or any skill like that.
~Refer to the “case 1” if you think that’s what’s going on.
OR
He might get closer to you and start throwing impact shots.
OR
He might deft strike to you.
~Refer to the second part of “case 1” if this is what happens.
OR
He might throw you a Shadow Strike to replenish his stealth.
~He will either follow up with impact shot, run away, run in circles trying to get daggers back or run at you. If he goes with Impact Shot, simply keep on reading this part. If he runs, forget it except except if you got a RoE on him. Then refer to the “running away” Section. If he runs straight at you, refer to the “case 1” section.

So now he throws his impact shots. He’s got 3 charge but his first one doesn’t count since it’s out of stealth. That’s the key one. Make sure to spot it coming to you, it looks like some kind of tiny invisible anime super powered tennis ball. If you avoid it, you avoided the worst. You will usually have 1-2 teleports left around this time, depending on how fast it all went. in 99.99% of the cases, you will have 2 left, or you will get your 2nd while you’re dodging the first.

Now this part is very important, you will want to avoid the first of the 3 charges, get hit by the second and avoid the third. The reason we want to be hit by the second is because they create a small stun. You will notice it’s quite hard to get the timing right to dodge the next one after getting hit. But if you avoid the first two and let the 3rd one hit you, you will allow him to chain his next move which will most likely end up in having to take more damage / death.

Once he’s done with the third shot, they will either try another skill most likely a few cloud of steel or some other wierdo thing*. Make sure to mark him with icy ray, avoid his skill and blast him off with Icy Ray. If everything went at a normal rate, skills casted as fast as he can etc, he shouldn’t be able to stealth for the next second, allowing you to hit the previously mentioned Icy Ray.

Tricksters are very squishy, thus there is no way in having to cast ray of enfeeblement first, preventing them from moving around is the first step. After that you can cast Ray of Enfeeblement, Entangling force and finish off with Chilling strike if he’s still alive.

*~ There’s one annoying annoying super annoying case here, where the TR will use ItC. It shouldn’t be a problem, just cast on him, but if he survives and still want to attack you, you will have to go thru part of the sequence again, he will have less daggers and possibly only 1-2 charges of Impact shot, making it fairly easy. But it’s a real pain. In this case, slowly back towards a health potion. They will have to go for it before you do, thus breaking their combo. Even if they get the health pot, just kill them as soon as they turn visible, with your burst, their potion shouldn’t be any use to them. They most likely will also be around half health already. More of this will be discussed in the “Running Away” section.

—-

The third(3) case is really simple. And possibly one of the easiest but also the hardest.

What you will want to do is avoid his skill, and then proceed as in the “case 1”.

It’s easy because it’s not much thinking, and those TR’s are usually dead fast. Most of them don’t think you could ever possibly avoid them, and might waste 2 skills in empty air.
But it’s also one of the hardest because you need to develop the reflex. Once it’s there, it’s simple, but until then, it requires constant attention.

PS: It’s better to dodge and dodge nothing than let it by and eat a huge amount of damage.

—

I will group the fourth(4) case here also because it’s pretty straight forward. The wandering Trickster probably just burnt his skills on someone else, or he’s low on HP.

Initiate with Icy Ray and then follow up with your regular pattern, he shouldn’t see it coming. Otherwise if he runs at you, he will do one of the two cases depicted above, minus a big chunk of life.

Though in most cases, he will run away. Refer to the “Running Away” Section for this.

—-

There is always this 1% of unorthodox who runs around carrying weird skills or trying to initiate in a strange manner. Just avoid their more than probable daze if that’s what they are going for, and then kill them, or tank whatever inefficient skill they are using (path of blade for instance) and kill them on the spot. Those are rare, and usually don’t really know what they are doing, or think they got it all right and that everybody is wrong. In both cases, they are blind to their mistakes and shouldn’t pose any challenge.

—————

Devoted Clerics:

Here they are, the divine little buddies who never die. Clerics are pretty simple to deal with. There is a few things you need to watch out for though, as those skills might completely annihilate you and/or your damage output.

They are the easy guys, with a lot of annoying functionality.
Clerics have a lot of spells in their book, but only certain of them are dangerous, some of them look like they might be, but they really aren’t, and some don’t look dangerous, but are devastating.

I will mention all the ones that you might possibly care to know about, the others you should just forget about them and let them hit you, as there is hardly a way to avoid them, while they do not change your damage output and will not restrict you in any way. In the worst case, you will suffer a slight defence debuff followed by a low amount of damage 5 seconds later.

Astral Seal: An at-will which looks like they are throwing a bowling ball. It throws a wierd light ball with runes in it. It’s inflicts weak damage, but will apply this seal on you. Any hit you suffer will heal the attacker for a small amount (usually 100-200 depending on critical). Not dangerous at all.

Lance of Faith: Light javelins at-will where the third hit will hit harder (roughly 150%). Not dangerous at all.

Forge master’s Flame: This is a near-troll spell. It looks like light falling from the sky on you (on you only, do not mix it up with a big aoe skill with glyphs). It damages and slows you. The nasty part of it is when it is used in divine mode. It will also heal whoever is near you by a HUMONGOUS amount. Stay far from everybody when you got that on you.

Break the Spirit: This one looks like a small ball of solid compact light coming towards you in a small curve. They will cast it by raising their symbol high above their head. It will slow you and reduce your damage by 40%, and reduce weaken you by 30%. The divine version will make it stun also. AVOID TO GET HIT AT ALL COST. Easy to see coming.

Astral Shield: that yellow / blue circle on the ground. It creates a zone which increases mitigation by 20% and if used with divine (blue) will heal whoever stands in it. Makes peoples a pain to kill in it.

Hammer of Faith: This is the only daily worth mentioning, all the others are self-explanatory (adds shield or buff offence / defence). The cleric will trow 3 hits at you, knocking you backward. It’s the strongest daily in the game damage-wise. A cleric can easily kill you with this skill alone. It is however really easy to avoid. AVOID AT ALL COST. If you can’t avoid them all, avoid the 3rd hit especially, it’s the strongest.