Neverwinter's

closed beta phase is over now, and it has been a fun and informative

experience. During the three beta weekends, I got a chance to try all five

of the character classes and to put some serious time into three of those

for the sake of research. It seems fitting, then, that I ended my closed

beta experience with the class I found the most fun and engaging - the Great

Weapon Fighter.

This is not a class that requires a lot of careful, deliberate thought.

Not compared to the other classes, anyway. The Guardian

Fighter is required to strike a balance between offense and defense,

and to take measures to keep his teammates protected during group content.

The Devoted

Cleric has to divide his attention between smiting the foes of his

god with righteous fury and using his holy purity to heal wounds. The

href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/neverwinter/guides/trickster-rogue-class-preview-guide">Trickster

Rogue

has to try to find that most effective path to deliver hisdevastating stealth-stab, and the Control

Wizard has to "shape" his attacks in a specific way and build stacksof buffs and debuffs to achieve the desired effect. The Great WeaponFighter, now... he pretty much just hits stuff with his giant-ass sworduntil it dies. If the situation calls for special tactics, his tactic isto hit harder and/or faster.

It may sound simplistic - and it is, in a way - but the Great Weapon

Fighter plays a lot more dynamically than it sounds. As with any class,

the incautious and ill-prepared will not fare well, and having a set of

long-term plans will help make the earlier choices seem easier.

Great Weapon Fighter Class Overview

As a primary dealer of raw melee damage, your main goal is dishing out

the hurt as effectively as possible. That's not all that hard to do,

really. The giant two-hander sword takes care of that fairly well. Some

people refer to the class as a "skinny barbarian," but that label is

inaccurate. The focus of the Great Weapon Fighter is Area of

Effect (AoE) damage - spreading large amounts of damage over

several adjacent targets - while still retaining the class progression of

the base Fighter class. The Trickster Rogue will deal more damage against

single targets, but in situations with a lot of mobs in a confined space

(such as basically any dungeon ever designed), the Great Weapon Fighter

will come out on top of the Damage Dealt leaderboard.

Defense Shmefense

In the eyes of the Great Weapon Fighter, the best defense is an

overpowering offense. The class has two abilities that can be loosely

described as "defensive," but everything else is geared towards dishing

out big, steaming platefuls of hurt.

The Great Weapon Fighter's Shift-key ability is Sprint,

which uses Stamina. The Stamina meter is the tiny chevron atop the flaming

d20, top-center of the toolbar. A full Stamina bar gives a good second or

so of full-steam running. This can be used in smaller chunks, similar to

the Trickster Rogue's roll or the Control Wizard's teleport, so you don't

have to burn through all of your Stamina at once and can perform several

micro-Sprints during a long boss fight.

This can be used defensively to avoid damage, but is rarely necessary -

usually the character can just sidestep out of the way at normal speeds.

However, because many attack animations root the character in place for a

time, the occasional burst of speed can save a lot of healing potions.

Sprint can also be used to close in on an enemy quickly before that enemy

has time to take notice and launch a ranged attack. A well-timed Sprint

gets the Great Weapon Fighter right up in his foe's grill to draw first

blood. This was my primary use of Sprint during the beta; I used it only

sparingly during boss fights to avoid taking damage, and even then usually

only to kite until my health potions were cooled down and ready to use

again. Mostly, though, I used it to launch myself at the enemy and get the

first hit in.

src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/249247">

The other key "defensive" ability is Unstoppable, which

is permanently bound to the Tab skill slot. This skill is gained at level

10, and is fueled by Determination, which is built up by taking damage and

killing enemies. The Determination meter, indicated by a split meter to

the left of the character, must fill up to 50% or more before Unstoppable

can be used - when the sword-axe lights up, you're good to go. This

functions like a "Rage"-type ability - attack speed is much faster (but

does less damage per hit), and the character takes less damage for the

duration of the effect. The amount of damage mitigated by Unstoppable

depends on how full the Determination meter was when the skill is used. At

50% Determination, the mitigation is fairly low, but at 100% it is

significant. It also makes the character immune to controlling effects for

a short time, making it particularly valuable in PvP.

Great Weapon Fighters wear scale armor, which is tougher and more

resilient than the leather armor of Trickster Rogues but less sturdy than

the plate armor of the Guardian Fighter. Theoretically, this means the

Great Weapon Fighter can "off-tank" in a pinch. While they don't have any

specific threat-building attacks, Great Weapon Fighters can build up loads

of threat with AoE attacks. They can't absorb and mitigate long periods of

sustained damage like Guardian Fighters, but they can build up

Determination and pop Unstoppable if given plenty of support by healers.

Raging Offense

The Great Weapon Fighter is a balls-to-the-walls melee DPSer with a heavy

focus on area-effect attacks. This guy is not an artful fencer who parries

and ripostes in a duel - he hurls himself at a group of bad guys and

swings for the fences, hitting everything around him with brutal

roundhouse swings of his massive sword. Most of the Great Weapon Fighter's

attacks are multiple-target area attacks, with a few strong single-target

attacks for boss fights and such.

This class is actually somewhat weaker in single-enemy fights than some

other classes - particularly the Trickster Rogue, which deals enormous

damage to single targets. But in fights with lots of enemies, the Great

Weapon Fighter is a friggin' beast. At low levels, he can take out entire

enemy groups with one charged-up swing of a Reaping Strike,

an At-Will skill that requires a second of channeling to charge up and

then unleashes a brutal swing in a full 360-degree arc. Even at later

levels, fights against regular "trash" mobs don't last very long and

seldom require the expenditure of Encounter or Daily attacks. A 3-hit Wicked

Strike combo is usually enough. Of course, the Great Weapon

Fighter can certainly handle his own in a one-on-one fight as well. Sure

Strike has a much narrower arc and slashes quickly, doing

slightly more damage in a more focused zone.

The ultimate cost of all-out offense is a reduced capacity for damage

avoidance. Attacks are slower, and the character is either rooted in place

or forced to follow their momentum while the animation plays.

Consequently, Great Weapon Fighters will want to stock up on as many

health potions as they can afford. In my own personal experience, I found

I had plenty for the first 14 or so levels, but when the difficulty ramped

up in the Tower District, fighting lots of orcs and ogres, I burned

through my reserves very quickly and had to buy a ton of them from the

vendors.

Equipment

As of the beta weekend, the only common weapon available to Great Weapon

Fighters was the greatsword. There were a few other weapons available - I

saw one rare-quality greatclub drop in a Cloak Tower run - but these were

the very rare exception, and the big-ass sword was the rule.

The offhand item is a "sword knot," the icon for which looks like a

tassle. Presumably this is affixed to the pommel of the sword somehow. It

is not shown on the character model and only functions as a bundle of

stats.

The Great Weapon Fighter uses scale armor, which is between the Trickster

Rogue's leather armor and the Guardian Fighter's plate armor. It is heavy

enough to allow the character to fight on the frontlines and absorb a bit

of a beating, but not enough to withstand a sustained ass-kicking. The

Great Weapon Fighter has the Hit Dice and physical endurance of the

Fighter base class, but he is not built for a protective, supportive role.

At least, not until the player starts stacking defensive feats and picks

the defensive paragon path.

Strength (STR) is the main stat for this class, contributing

significantly to damage output. Races with an inherent STR bonus

(half-orcs, dwarves and humans) can start out with a superhuman STR score

of 20, which gives them a slight edge in this class. Dexterity (DEX) also

contributes to damage output, and a bit to damage avoidance, and

Constitution (CON) contributes to total Hit Points and some kinds of

damage resistances. These three should be your focus when leveling up.

There are essentially two paths you can take for gearing up: increasing

your damage output or augmenting your mediocre defenses. Power, Critical

Strike and Armor Penetration all make your massive hits even massive-er.

Stacking Recovery, Defense and Deflect will improve your ability to take

hits, but you will still need to pick mainly defensive feats if you plan

on trying to off-tank.

My choice was to crank up the damage, slotting gear and enchantments with

Armor Penetration and Critical Strike bonuses first and foremost. I didn't

stack up on Life Steal this time, having seen less-than-satisfying results

from it on my previous two classes... but the little bit I did have from

one enchantment had a much higher health return due to the much higher

damage output. If I had stacked it beyond that one enchantment, I probably

could have done without my healer companion.

src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/249245">

Tips & Tricks

Overall, it's kind of tough to play this class wrong, but there are some

subtleties to master. Solo play is very similar to group play and

shouldn't require a specialized toobar setup, but you may want to tailor

your skill set to match the type of fights you are expecting.

Street Sweeper

This setup works best for general questing and running group content,

where you will be expected to fight a lot of weaker mobs at once. Speed is

not a big issue here, since you can take a bit of a beating before you run

into any real danger.

Try Wicked Strike and Reaping Strike as your At-Will skills. Wicked

Strike works for everything, but Reaping Strike is kind of an odd duck and

is best reserved for use against groups of standard landscape mobs.

Reaping Strike takes a bit to charge up, but when it is released it

strikes everything all the way around the character, and will one-shot

weak mobs.

For Encounter skills, try Not So Fast, Roar

and Daring Shout. Not So Fast is a fairly powerful

360-degree swing that debuffs the targets' run speed, and is strong enough

to one-shot weak mobs if it crits. Roar is a frontal cone attack that

sounds like the lion roar at the end of those Harlem Shake videos, and

pushes away any enemies caught in its cone. Daring Shout is an AoE debuff.

For Daily skills, there are no poor choices. Most of them are strong AoE

attacks. The ones I used most often for group battles were Spinning

Strike - not because it does stellar damage, but because I was

a huge Tasmanian Devil fan when I was a kid - and Slam,

which creates a hefty damage-over-time zone centered on the character

while still allowing me to beat the crap out of stuff.

Boss Battler

Speed and focused attacks are the key for solo boss battles. Channeled

attacks like Reaping Strike are less effective against enemies with a lot

of knockbacks and such, and wide-arc AoEs tend to do less damage to single

targets.

I ended up using Sure Strike much more often against elites and bosses.

This At-Will skill blasts two quick upward slashes at the target and

follows up with a massive downward slam. The first two strikes are fast

and deadly, and give me time to move out of the way of the enemy's next

attack without sacrificing too much of my own damage output.

For Encounter powers, I found Restoring Strike to be

outstanding. This is a nice ability to use right after you've ducked out

of the path of an enemy's big channeled attack and can hit him from the

flanks before it goes off. It gives a small self-heal, but more

importantly, it does a truckload of damage and seems to have a high crit

rate for big hits. Takedown is another good boss

Encounter power, but moreso for landscape elites and other tough mobs that

are not immune to knockdowns and CC. Mighty Leap

and Punishing Charge are also decent for boss fights,

allowing the Great Weapon Fighter to throw himself back into the thick of

the fight after a knockback.

Later Game

Because of my experience in the Tower District, chugging healing potions

one after another like a raver guzzling Red Bull, I went with a Cleric

Disciple as my first companion. I noticed the difference right away, and

basically stopped using potions except during particularly challenging

fights. The other pets are probably fine also if you don't mind supporting

your nasty potion habit, but the healer pet is the only one I would

choose.

src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/249253">

The three paragon paths show a kind of playstyle split in the class. I

went with the Destroyer path since it enhances damage output, but I could

foresee buying feats in one of the other paths as well to augment my

abilities. The Sentinel path bolsters the Great Weapon Fighter's defensive

abilities, making him more capable of tanking, and affects how Unstoppable

works as well.

For PvP matches, the ideal build will focus on tweaking Unstoppable -

feats that increase Determination gain, for example - and on focused

attacks rather than broad AOEs. PvP players don't tend to gang up in

convenient clusters like enemy NPCs do, so strong single-target attacks

are much more valuable. Mobility is also a chief factor, so the

anti-controlling aspects of Unstoppable, combined with the Sprint ability

and the effects of skills like Punishing Charge and Mighty Leap, make the

Great Weapon Fighter a force to be reckoned with in Domination matches.

Did you figure out any cool tricks for the Great Weapon Fighter? Share

them in our comments!