Sword and Shield Longbow Solo Guide

Introduction

Welcome to our Sword and Shield Longbow solo guide. In this guide, we’ll go over our recommended way to set-up the Sword and Shield Longbow weapon combination for Solo Farming. This set-up is primarily used in Abyss Dungeons in the Open World.

Skills

Below is our Skill set-up for Solo PVE farming:

This combination of Skills allows for large mob pulls and plans to AoE everything down with defensives, S&S Passives and Longbow AoE Skills.

Skill Specializations

With 100 total points to play with once you hit Level 50, below is our recommended Specializations for the Sword and Shield Longbow Solo build:

These particular Specializations provides a comfortable set-up for farming mobs in large quantities. Your survivability allows for massive pulls and the Longbow brings good damage with the help of Provoking Roar and the Spectrum of Agony passive. Shield Strike (Piercing Attack) spam helps massively too. 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 60 Strength and 40 Perception while farming – 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.

Early on, make use of your Rare gear you acquired through MSQ. It is totally fine and expected to be in Rare gear for quite a long time – so don’t worry too much! Most of the time, your PVP gear is perfectly fine in PVE.

Archboss weapons are always a bonus. However, they’re incredibly rare – do not worry if you cannot obtain them.

Check out our Leveling guide for progression options early.

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 Solo Farming:

Shade Revenant Stheno – Stheno is the most offense-heavy choice in PVE. This Guardian dishes out consistent damage dealing projectiles to multiple targets.
Green Ranger Elowen – Green Ranger can help bind and blast down packs of mobs due to the increased Critical Hit.

How to Play The Sword and Shield Longbow Solo Build

Our Sword and Shield Longbow Solo guide not only aims to teach you how to put it together, but also how to play it.

The main objective of playing this build solo is to be able to manage multiple mobs alone and efficiently clear them. Fortunately, as a Tank, handling the damage of multiple targets and provoking them is your strong point! As a result, this build heavily focuses on gathering many mobs and clearing them fast with defensives and a burn-down approach. To achieve this, we utilize the Spectrum of Agony Passive from the Sword and Shield.

Skill Rotations

The standard large pack pull rotation is as follows:

Brutal Arrow (Gale Passive, Radius increase)
Provoking Roar to taunt the mobs and activate Spectrum of Agony
Counter barrier
Shield Throw
Piercing Attack
Strafing (all procs)
Zephyr’s Nock
Piercing Attack

While the above is quite simple to execute, the math and power behind this rotation is incredible. If you provoke the maximum amount of enemies possible with Provoking Roar (6 is the maximum), Brutal Arrow and it’s Gale stack procs really begin to shine. Each time a Gale tick happens to an enemy, it applies an instance of damage to each Provoked enemy nearby due to Spectrum of Agony. As a result, this two-Skill combination can create over 400 instances of damage on a pack of 6 mobs! As a result, the above rotation melts packs, and every other Skill in the rotation and your remaining Skills can be used as filler.

It’s important to note that Skills such as Strafing and Counter Barrier also apply multiple applications to enemies around you if they’re Provoked with Spectrum of Agony active. This build excels in large burst rotations.