alright, now that i’ve adapted my playstyle I can totally see the build, it really is effective. I went up a few levels and yeah I was wrong lol. My last question is for level 18, did you mean 3 points in Rending force or is there a typo?
Yeah, 3 points into Rending Force.
Basically you need 16 Forcewave and 12 Rending Force and 1 point in Tremor, then rush Oleron’s Rage. Internal Trauma is unnecessary.
So this build although fairly old has been updated and is still viable it looks like right? I’m just starting to play bought the game and all it’s expansions and plan to follow this build and then hopefully I’m able to farm gear to try all the other fun builds too 
Not…quite…
The guide is two years old, the game was different then. For example there was no Oathkeeper, so anything + Soldier was a fair game for the shield guy. Now if you want a sword and board build you go the cookie cutter Soldier + Oathkeeper, period. If S&B is the goal then this guide is in fact outdated beyond repair. You can replicate my shield cadence setup, just there isn’t any meaning anymore.
If you simply want an edgy class named Death Knight and don’t care much if it’s S&B or not then you can still use this guide, except when it says “it’s time to switch to Cadence” you ignore it and keep levelling with Forcewave until the bitter end, farm Krieg set, etc. Death Knight ain’t exaclty a bad class, well, not good one either and perfectly average sounds just right.
I’m currently levelling a new DK in a similar way to this one, but my endgame plan would be 2H Blade Arc with Celestial Halberd and Krieg set (which I expect to be a silly strong budget build) instead of that silly Cadence affair. If all goes well I’ll post it in a month maybe, and then I can finally put big red “obsolete” on this one without pissing any of the fans.
ahhh thanks Stupid_Dragon got it, so it seems you’ve contributed quite a bit to build guides thats awesome! I don’t want to go way off topic but what of your builds would you recommend for me just bought the game and the expansions so I have no items it will have to be all on self found gear. I haven’t even made a character yet but I’m about to 
All of my ‘beginners’ series build guides are self-found proven. Out of stuff that’s not too dated I have Blademaster, Dervish, Infiltrator, Spellbinder, Templar and another DK which is pet-based. I can recommend any of them except Pet DK, which is self-found proven too, but microcontrolling skeletons and still fighting close quarters is beyond normal player’s capabilities.
As for the list of beginner build guides you can check the Compendium, they are under the Builds for Beginners.
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Hello man,
Is there any similar build like that with forcewave ?
If you mean beginner builds with detailed levelling then no, I’m afraid not. There was one before but the author had removed them from the forum.
If you mean any build with Forcewave at all then I don’t know, check Compendium or google it?
Hey @Stupid_Dragon, thank you for such an in-depth guide (all your guides are great actually).
I know this is not your favorite guide and you have been recommending the blade arc DK (which is insanely powerful for the budget needed), but I believe there is demand for beginner shield builds and your guide happens to be great for that. I learned a lot from it and it felt extremely safe/tanky even when facing nemesis in Ultimate (I am not a beginner though, especially on physical melee builds).
Regarding the Warlord comparison, I agree that it is the best S&B class overall, at least when you have enough gear for it. The class is just too synergetic and stuff like safeguard, presence of virtue (and its modifiers), and its WPS are too good for S&B. However, the DK has 2 advantages imo: being less skill point hungry, which allows you to focus more on soldier tree, and having that Stonewall Defender as an option. That shield is extremely cheap to craft and gives the DK a 15% phys RR advantage over the Warlord, which, correct me if I am wrong, has no comparable alternative that is target farmable. DK is also better fit for Krieg’s and aether melee builds, where Warlord is probably bad. Finally, due to the good amount of flat aether, vitality, and cold on necro, it also works better with conversion sources (Seals of Might, Fleshwarped Pauldrons, and, if you are lucky, Gladiator’s Distinction and Beronath’s Reforged), which ignore armor.
I also think that the low popularity of DK among the top builders is mainly due to two reasons: the aether Krieg’s build didn’t change enough to catch people’s attention (like no new interesting MIs) and the build is not OP enough to be popular despite that. For example, Spellbinders and Battlemages have seen attention due to Lucius’s, Theodin’s, and Ascended Casque Mis. Imo, Krieg DK is still a solid alternative for first character: easy to level, target farmable, and can clear most of Endgame with the set.
Anyway, I am currently playing a SSF S&B DK inspired by this guide. I ended up changing devotions, skills, and gear slightly. I plan to test how good this new setup is and how far I can push it. It shouldn’t be better than your Blade Arc DK for sure, but maybe it is a competitive S&B alternative for beginners. I might try an analogous Warlord to see how they compare too. If the results are good, maybe I post it? We’ll see.
True!
It has one unpleasant quirk - it’s on Ill Omen which has Terrify effect.
True.
True, albeit Krieg’s main problem for a long time was that while the set itself is target farmable there was no budget weapon for it, many used Theodin but if you’re using Theodin I can’t help but question what’s the benefit of being a DK over say Spellbinder.
True, that’s how DW phys DK functions and it has and last time I asked it has an edge over Warlord and Witchblade.
Battlemage just has quite a bit of fan base due to formerly being considered as one of the shittiest classes in the game. Spellbinder is just quite a broken class still and is the go to aether class to boot (any aether Arcanist is likely to get Necro and any aether Necro is likely to get Arcanist).
But you’re correct otherwise, I’ve yet to find an updated Krieg build (both shield and DW Mindwarp) that is thoroughly tested in high end.
DK did receive a super strong high end build just recently, Physical BA.
I would consider Dire Bear if I were to build that again.
Rest assured that the guide won’t be gone away anytime soon. Good luck with your playthrough!
True, the terrify can be annoying, especially if trying to maximize farm efficiency.
Yeah, I would suggest Theodin as a budget weapon too, but then there is no reason for Cadence and Spellbinder becomes more attractive. The upside of DK (if any) would be having more WPS. In fact, the new Zolhan’s technique rework for dual wield might make DK an interesting alternative with 100% WPS. I have a Theodin Spellbinder so maybe I can test a DK alternative and compare.
Yeah, I saw that build. Insanely strong and a straight follow up from your beginners Blade Arc DK.
I have been playing with Dire Bear. Did you try the armor reduction version already? It looks great on paper, but the low duration is really annoying (only 3 s). From my calculations, I need a skill that hits more than 2.222 times per second to sustain the debuff permanently. The only skill that can keep that frequency up would be Cadence, but then I need something else for assassin’s mark. Omen does not hit frequently enough for bear. I saw someone using it on Deathstalker (which is the relic I am using), but I am not sure that is reliable enough. Omen does not hit frequently enough either, but maybe it could be a good alternative for Assassin’s Mark?
I just finished Ultimate with my scuffed S&B DK. Campaign was really easy, no real close calls. SR 35-36 was also quite easy, so I managed to finish the last skill points needed. The build does lack damage though (even with really good RR from Necro, almost permanent War Cry with hard capped Break Morale, Deathstalker, and Shield). I believe that even with the shield diff, Warlord might still outperform this (gotta test it first though to be certain). I was also able to finish SR 50 without deaths, but I did have some tense moments in final room when I accidently pulled Valdaran and another boss together (I was trying to use camera abuse, but I still am pretty bad at it). If I learn proper camera abuse, I might go for SR 60 and get that juicy SSF Shattered Guardian set. Fun fact: I dropped a Gladiators belt on act 7, but obviously won’t use it as this is supposed to be SSF.
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Hi I have also experimented a bit with dire bear proc on my sword and shield cadance builds. With the death knight I use ravenous earth for casting assassin mark, yes one more button to push for you but skill hits fast and has several projectiles. Not problem for me cause useage of other shield that the one with ill omen enhancer
also you need to do SR 60 & 61 to get to buy SR set I think?
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Either bind it to Cadence and AM to Ravenous Earth or vice versa. You’ll have to pump RE a bit for extra projectiles to make it more consistent.
I tried Dire Bear on 2H build and didn’t found much impact, which is expectable. Haven’t tried it on 1H build and AFAIK noone made a proper test for 1H weapons yet (crazy, I know! lazy builders).
Not expecting much difference tbh unless you pump Safeguard points somehow (well, Totally Normal Shield + Turin’s Grip do that on budget quite well).
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I have tried it, but not sure if dragon proper 
Suggestions on what I should look at?
I just compared ravager kill times on average with and without proc
That’s a decent enough test, was there much of a difference?
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Yes but not sure if statistically certain
but when I tested I had skill bound to guardian (warlord) and when they proc it no life stealing because removal of weapon part of skill proc so I wanna re do those testings.
Also I wanna respec build to get more flat physical damages so test can become even more conclusiving. Like getting safe guard and rebuk higher
With death knight your only flat physical is from cadence skill it self right? Rest are converted damage from spectral bind and soul harvests that are not checked by armour anyway
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Yes, for a clean test I’d rather it to be done on Warlord since all of his extra flat damage is a native physical. Deadly Momentum is a big chunk so it shouldn’t be affected by armor that much to begin with, but who knows. Cadence is a special cookie with damage concentrated into one hit, which would get through the armor due to sheer amount of %weapon damage multiplier, so it’s more of a question whether it’s worth it to take Dire Bear for the two ‘white’ hits in-between the Cadence discharges.
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True there is also deadly momentum and also markovian wps
Hi, thanks for the input. For some reason I totally forgot about Ravenous Earth existence. That might solve the problem.
It’s been a while since I farmed mine. Is it both? Now that you said it, when I did only SR 50 there were no SR gear pieces on the vendor. Glad you reminded me it would be tragic to finish SR 60 with budget build just to not get any pieces of SR set.
I soft capped III omen already (10/10) for 100% RR uptime. How many points would be enough? I might just ditch dire bear all together tbh. Not sure the increase in speed (I am expecting something like 5-10%) will outweigh the loss of tankiness I would get. I am using Stone Form from Obelisk of Menhir right now, which I would have to ditch to get Dire Bear.
One kill will hardly be statistically meaningful tbh. How strong is your build and how easy is it to kill Ravager? A better analysis would be kill it 3-5 times and get an average time for each one (maybe even standard deviation). I am sorry if I am being annoying with this much criteria, but it would be really cool to start seeing this kind of in-depth analysis in the forum. For SR and CR this would be really hard because you would need the same mutators (plus climbing SR if high shard), but it seems like a viable approach for Ravager. The problem with 1 run is that Ravager is quite hard for most builds, so, if you get one hard hit or you mess up your rotations, that run can be longer than the average run.
DK has less sources than Warlord, but usually phys builds have several sources. I guess it depends on the build. For example, Stupid_Dragon’s build has other sources on gear and devotions (Faction gear chest and shoulder, Faction amulet, Oleron’s relic, Turin’s Grips, Ulzaad devotion, Seals of might, Augments, and so on). His build also uses Menhir’s Bulwark, which would be heavely affected by armor too (one of the reasons I went for Oleron’s, but mainly the OA). The small sources on gear are the biggest problem though, because they are heavely reduced by armor and they inflate the dps tooltip, while maxed out safeguard and Menhir’s Bulwark are more meaninful values.
I meant I have killed ravager several times with and without dire bear proc, but still not enough “data” to give statisics maybe. Also I need to change to more safeguard for flat physical damage source. Also try with some gear that has flat sources as you mentioned. Will test again soon.
I do not think SR shop sells anything unless you complete at least two shards. If I remember rightly
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