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Author: Rogue
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24 Comments
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Why weapon swap?
It increases your effectiveness obviously. As a frontliner, you should always be trying to maximize your damage. That means weapon swapping to maximize your damage output. As a caster you should always want to get the most effect out of your spells, but also be able to protect yourself from getting killed. Weapon swapping is a simple way to protect yourself, do more damage, and make your spells more effective.
The technique behind it
The keys F1 through F4 are the default assignment to your weapon swap keys, which is actually a configuration I recommend keeping as it’s right next to your skill keys. When you weapon swap, you’ll notice that you cannot do it while you’re attacking or casting. This is a large reason of why people don’t weapon swap when they should. To remedy this, you need to press your “cancel action” button, and then the weapon swap. Then you can do whatever it was you were originally doing. So a full weapon swap should look like this: [Cancel Action]+[Weapon Swap Key]. Most people skip the cancel action, and waste a lot of time trying to get it to work.
Frontline Weapon Swaps
There’s always some debate here as to what you should use, vamp vs sundering. However if you are really going to be picky about it, vamp is slightly more DPS. There’s also always the choice of which element to use for that swap. Typically, all weapons are going to be +15% damage while health is above 50% except in build dependent cases. However, that’s not the important part.
1Zealous X of Fortitude
2Vampiric or Sundering X of Fortitude
3Elemental* X of Fortitude
4Wand +15/-1 energy mod.
This applies to all frontline classes. The elemental choice is easy if you’re using a conjure – anything but ebon. However if you have a Mark of Rodgort Elementalist, common if a fire ele is on your team, you may want to take Fiery for that mod. On the other hand, you may want to take Ebon, since many people do not carry an ebon shield swap.
Use of each weapon is simple. Zealous will build your energy quickly, especially when under an increased attack speed skill. Vampiric is for general “I’m going to eat your face” type attacking. Sundering is nice for spiking and possibly getting a critical hit that finishes the guy off. And your Elemental swap is for use against warriors. The Elemental swap is nice. If there’s a strong defense web in place, you can swap to those and not have any negative effects, or if you’re not attacking at all
The wand swap is also important. It can be used to lure one knight at a time, or to trigger deep wound on an almost dead kiting character. Simply swap the the set and chuck a wand blast. Viola, deep wound triggered, target possibly dead. It’s also nice for building adrenaline on targets when you haven’t engaged yet. This is a large reason of why to have a ranged swap on a frontliner. The reason behind a wand instead of a spear is you get more + energy (more important when using the old death pact signet), but also wands damage is based on level, not meeting the requirement or passing it. So you’ll be hitting 20’s instead of 1s at a ranged distance.
Assassins may want to use a spear instead of a wand. You can have a +30 health and +5e on it, so it’s a quick boost to use a skill, or it’s also your emergency swap. You change to this to have +60 health from your equipment instead of +30 from daggers.
Frontline Shield Swaps
These are equally as important to a frontliner as weapon swaps are. However swapping shields is a little more complex and you may even want to have your inventory open for parts of some matches, so you can hop your different shields around to be with the different weapons you keep swapping to – because you swap in sets and not individual weapons. This mostly applies to warriors, if a dervish or assassin, typically keep whichever you think will be most effective in the fourth weapon swap so you can switch in emergencies.
All shields are generally “Of Fortitude”, so basically this is just the other inbions to put on.
“I Can See Clearly Now” -20% Blind.
“Swift as the Wind” – 20% Cripple.
“Not the Face!” +10AL versus Blunt damage.
“Sleep Now in the Fire” +10AL versus Fire damage.
“Through Thick and Thin” +10AL versus Piercing damage.
That’s right, 5 shields no warrior should be without. You can also use a general luck of the draw one, but that becomes a little pointless when you are using this many shields. An important part of this swapping, is noticing what’s on the other team. Do they have a Blinding Surge ele? Well you’ll want to keep the Blind shield up most of the time. Is there a cripshot ranger? Are you going to be splitting against assassins? Do they have a linebacking hammer warrior? These are all important questions to ask when thinking about which shield to have as your primary swap. Remember though which shield you have in which swap at all times, so you can use your inventory to switch even more.
On burning isle, everyone should have a cripple shield in one weapon swap for when you run through the fire. Always keep in mind what you’re going up against and what you need to do at that point in time, your swaps can aid you.
Caster Swaps
Casters need to swap weapons too! Imagine a world where an assassin could kill you in just a few seconds. But alas, we know what kind of damage they do – piercing (some slashing). So you get to have a shield swap with a +10vs Piercing damage. Or perhaps you’re about to put up an enchantment, swap to a +20% longer enchantments set. Maybe you’re getting trained by thumpers, have a +10vs blunt. Casters need the same kinds of weapon swaps as non casters, but also offhands and wands and staffs too.
Casters also have to worry about things that frontliners don’t. Such as energy denial, fast casts, high sets, enchantments, and defense. So they should expect to have several sets, but that goes along with the multiple shields for the inventory.
Low Set This is something most casters have, it’s especially important for monks even in today’s meta. Usually consists of an Axe/Sword and a focus that you don’t meet the attribute to, with as many –energy inbions as you can possibly find.
40/40 Set The 40/40 set is what you cast in. It’s a Wand and a Focus that is in the attribute of your most used/longest cast spells. It has nothing but Half Skill Recharge of X attribute +20% and Half Spell Cast Time of X attribute +20%.
Enchantment Set Your enchantment set is used for casting enchantments on yourself or others. Ele’s should have one for elemental attunements, monks should have one for protection spells. In reality, anyone who uses enchantments should have one. It’s a staff in the attribute of your skills that has Half Skill Recharge and Half Skill Cast Time modifiers on it, and a +20% to enchantment length modification too. So you end up with what’s called a 40/20 enchant set.
High Set Wand and Focus, both with +15 energy and -1 energy regen. So you get +30 energy by swapping to this set. Be careful to never get power leaked in this set, and never sit in it. It should be used to swap into, cast, and get out of as fast as possible.
Defense Set Sword and Shield. The sword should be +5e or 10% half skill recharge and +30 HP. The shield is whichever shield you need at the time.
Wild Card Set This is whatever you need for something you’re not primarily going to be doing. For instance, prot monks would put a healing set here perhaps. Or healing monks would have a prot set. An elementalist who’s primary skillset is air based might put an earth swap. A mesmer packing ward against melee should have an earth set. Anyone packing Flesh of My Flesh should have a set here. Oh and since I didn’t say it already, it should be a 40/40 swap.
Some people try to compress their swaps onto a single one, like a defense set being a casting set because it has some stuff with +5 energy. Really though, you should just swap a lot and hit your defense set pro actively when you’re not casting.
Conclusion
There’s something important missing from this post. I’ll post it here: Don’t be stupid. Don’t sit in your high set, don’t use vampiric weapons when you’re constantly blind, don’t cast in the wrong sets. Oh, and swap a lot – especially casters. You should think about which skill you’re going to use, and then use a swap before you use that skill.
Anyway, good luck to all and have a nice day.
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