Hello all (and merry Christmas)
Long story short, I’ve been leveling new/old characters lately after a 2 year break. Lo and behold, leveling is super easy now! Hooray! I dusted off a roughly 3 year old Warder (lvl 76) based on a Retaliation build from around 2018 (not sure which game patch). Plowed through the rest of Elite/Ultimate, and this is the farthest I’ve cleared on Ultimate with any character (the rest are casters). Just started Malmouth, already finished FG. Cakewalk usually for this character. My casters are mostly arcanists, and I have around 530 hours played but I’m nowhere near an expert. You can always learn something new.
So that’s the context, and the point of the thread is: I’m looking for advice on how to optimize the build and playstyle. Currently I use Ramming Speed, Cadence (for Shield Wall proc mainly), Final Stop, War Cry, Wendigo Totem, Overguard, and Blade Barricade.
Dravis was hard, healers may or may not die, and nullification absolutely wrecks me (Cthonian nemesis especially). Everything else was easy. Kymon, Korvaak, and Mad Queen were all super easy (just don’t stand in the death pools).
I’ve come to realize most of the retaliation gear I see is better suited for oathkeeper or even occultist? As opposed to shaman anyway. Most of the gear I have on I’ve had on for quite a while, and I’ve only found one piece of craftable gear recently that was useful (Avenger of Cairn) but if I switch it out I end up losing most of my pierce resistance. Gear has been hard to come by for this character.
I changed my devotions recently when I happened to hear someone had hammers hitting for 40k. I had no idea what that was, so I did some digging and switched my devo build to include Targo and the Boar. Definitely noticed an increase in damage output, especially in groups.
Rough approximation of current gear/build, somehow missing 29% bleeding resistance (haven’t figured out why grim tools is showing less than in-game).
TL;DR
Looking for advice on a Retaliation Warder