Nature’s Avenger set has been seriously lagging behind in the Forgotten Gods meta (as most 2handed builds have). Builds based on it don’t do well in the damage department nor have enough tankiness to justify low damage output. There are literally just a couple of relevant two-handed physical builds in the builds section: it’s my Leviathan/Bloodrager Blade Arc Witchblade and @John_Smith’s 2-piece Avenger/Bloodrager Archon. As you can see, only second one uses couple of Archon pieces and both use full Bloodrager set (which is primarily a Bleeding set).
Damage
Nature’s Avenger Warder is a relatively slow killer, average reported Crucible timers are around 8-9 minutes mark. Bloodrager with Avenger pieces beats full Avenger any day of the week. So what does Avenger need?
- Resist reduction. -rr% kind of resist reduction. Put on Grasping Vines if possible. Or if not, then Devouring Swarm will do (although it’s a pretty inconvinient way to apply rr debuff for a melee)
- MOAR damage. Radius to Upheaval. More weapon damage to wps. Crit Damage. Anything.
- Attack Speed. This is both damage and survivability. And the main reason why Bloodrager is better then Avenger.
- Piercing damage on weapon’s proc. Come on, now. It’s useless. Change it to physical, please.
Tankiness
- Make proc permanent. Having physical resist just 60% of the time is a no-go for any endgame melee build.
- Health regeneration does not work on melee builds unless it’s like constant 3k+ hp regeneration per second. It works well on kiting casters. But when you have to facetank to deal damage even something like 2k hp regeneration doesn’t help against endgame content. Please consider adding ADTCH to WPS.
In conclusion I wanna say that overall two-handers are still in a pitiful state. They lose to dual-wielders and sword and board builds in every department. I think they should deal MUCH more damage to compensate for innate squishiness that comes with playing with a big slow two-hander with a huge damage spread and just one component as opposed to two components that dual-wielders have.
P.S. In case anyone reads it and thinks that current Avenger’s performance is fine, please take a look at my latest Cold Blade Arc (!!) Blademaster, a meme build with zero dedicated gear pieces that just shits all over Nature’s Avenger both in terms of damage and tankiness.