Sword and Shield Longbow PVP Guide

Introduction

Welcome to our Sword & Shield Longbow Build guide for Throne and Liberty. This guide focuses on the PVP set-up for Sword & Shield and how to play it.

Skills

Below are the Skills and Specializations we recommend for the Sword & Shield Tank Build in PVP. This includes Large Scale and Small Scale:

ALL PVP (PVP Boss, GVG, Castle Siege, Arena, Events etc)

This set-up is focused around sustaining yourself as much as possible with healing Skills from the Longbow and defensives from the Sword and Shield. You can switch this build around to be a bit more backline healer focused. However, the tank-paladin style is preferred.

Specializations

With 100 total points to play with once you hit Level 50, below is our recommended Specializations for the Sword & Shield Longbow build for ALL sizes of PVP:

Every Specialization helps towards keeping yourself as hard to kill as possible, while protecting your teammates. This class can get away with running the same set-up in almost every scenario.

See our Skill Specializations guide for more information.

Weapon Mastery

This guide assumes you are at least in the range of Level 13-16 Weapon Mastery. However, if you’re below this threshold, it’s not an issue. Simply spec into the mastery trees that provide the most damage first.

Stats

Stats once you reach Tier 1 Epic gear can vary frequently due to stats built into gear. As a result, try to push for at least 40 Perception and 70 Strength while participating in PVP – gear depending. Below is our recommended baseline Stat allocation:

Dexterity – 5 Points
Perception – 20 Points
Strength – 18 Points
Wisdom – 6 Points

Gear & Equipment

The gear loadout largely, if not entirely, stays the same across all content once you reach Tier 1 Epic. Our Tier 1 Epic set assumes that most of the base content has been unlocked with the Milestones completed.

We also recommend picking up Nirma’s Sword of Echoes. Finally, Queen Bellandir’s Languishing Bl ade is the ultimate S&S to obtain. However, it is incredibly rare, as a result, do not expect to see it for quite some time.

Guardian

Guardians are a unique transformation on a 10 minute Cooldown that gives powerful bonuses to you for 30 seconds. Some Guardians work as an additional “Active” Skill, while others provide buffs. We recommend the following Guardians for PVP:

Green Ranger Elowen – Green Ranger is the ultimate Guardian for a Sword and Shield player in the frontline. Once you’re deep into the enemy forces, activating Green Ranger Elowen Binds all nearby enemies. Also, the bound enemies have an increased Critical Hit Chance on them. As a result, this Guardian is a fantastic engage tool.

How to Play the Sword & Shield Longbow Build

The Sword & Shield Longbow build is heavily focused around frontline tanking in PvP and sports a “paladin” gameplay style. The build plays off of an incredibly high Health pool with damage reductions and barriers. Your objective is to gain space and soak damage, ultimately being as annoying as possible.

Skill Rotation

The main goal of playing this build is to know how to rotate your cooldowns efficiently and not over-spam them, reducing their effectiveness. There isn’t really a “clear” rotation to follow. However, a priority and breakdown of your kit can be seen below:

Utility Skills

You have various utility and Crowd Control options for the build, however in this case, the most important things to note are:

Tornado is a fantastic large AoE Crowd Control Skill that knocks players up into the air. This Skill is one of the best Crowd Control Skills in the game. As a result, look to use this to cover a disengage from your team or to disrupt enemy frontlines or even DPS casters.
Blitz is a simple tool, you use it to reset any of your major cooldowns during a fight. Simply use this Skill to reset whichever Skill makes the most sense during a fight.
Chain Hook (Controlling Rake) is a very powerful Skill that can pull up to 10 enemies towards your location and Binds them for 3 seconds. You can combo this Skill with Annihilation Slash to put some very potent slows and decent damage onto stacks of enemies.

Healing Skills

You have the ability to not only keep yourself alive, but your party members topped up too. As a result, consider the following when fighting:

Healing Touch can be freely used between yourself and party members based on situation – keep track of health
Nature’s Blessing provides Health and Mana sustain for your whole party. However, if you cast it before casting Healing Touch, it’ll boost the effectiveness of Healing Touch too.
While Flash Wave is a damage Skill, it doubles up as a nice additional heal across you and your party too.
Immortal Pride doubles up as a pseudo healing Skill while also increasing your Max Health for a period of time.

Defensive Skills

Defensive Skills need to be used at the right time and rotated properly – otherwise you’ll die as soon as you have nothing left. As a result, try to balance their usage like in the example below:

Do not spam your Q block needlessly, try to predict and look out for perfect block-able Skills to trigger the effect of your Q block.
Overlapping Stalwart Bastion and Counter Barrier is not needed most of the time. As a result, if you notice you’re taking a lot of individual hits very fast – pop Counter Barrier and rotate your Stalwart Bastion after Counter Barrier is on cooldown.

Your job is solely to soak damage, protect your teammates and engage for the team. You’ll be able to Spam Shield Strike (Piercing Attack) during your Counter Barrier window for damage output.

Between the Bow Passives “Devoted Shield” and “Earth’s Blessing”, you can keep yourself alive for incredibly long durations. Earth’s Blessing provides additional sustain while Devoted Shield gives you up to a 6500 shield when you’re close to death!

Finally, remember to time your Defensive Skill (your block) with enemies engaging on you. The chances are, you’ll defend a Fury Attack, giving you a shield and more survivability.