Introduction

Welcome to our Sword and Shield Spear PVP build guide for Throne and Liberty. This guide focuses on the PVP set-up for Sword and Shield Spear and how to play it. The weapon combination forms the “Steelheart” Class.

Skills

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

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

The Sword and Shield Spear set-up is pretty straight forward. The build is pretty locked in for a specific playstyle in most content. In this case, it is served best as an aggressive, diving tank. This build set-up potentially has the highest AoE damage numbers for a tank too, allowing for a very aggro style.

Specializations

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

Every Specialization helps towards locking down targets, dealing damage to targets while stacking your Javelin ammo, boosting your defenses and providing your party with buffs, and diving the enemy backline. For smaller scale PVP such as Arena, aim to remove more of the cleave/AoE type specializations and invest more into survivability, cooldown and other utilities.

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 50 Strength 30 Fortitude while participating in PVP – gear depending. Below is our recommended baseline Stat allocation:

• Strength – 8 Points
• Dexterity – 2 Points
• Perception – 13 Points
• Wisdom – 6 Points
• Fortitude – 20 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.

The gear above is more on the aggressive side of building compared to a traditional tank with Shock Commander set-bonuses, for example. However, you’re still decently tanky with the right amount of Endurance and Skill Damage Resistance in your runes.

Archboss weapons are a great bonus to any build, however, do not feel any pressure to obtain them. They’re not mandatory, no matter how cool they are!

Runes are set-up to push our Ranged and Endurance thresholds higher and increase our base Hit chance. Finally, we round out the supportive side with increased Amitoi Healing and Skill Damage resistance where possible.

For a guide on early progression, see our 1-50 leveling guide for Sword and Shield Spear.

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.
• Lady Knight Kamarshea – This Guardian is a fantastic safety net, just incase you’re taking too much damage on an engage. You’ll also get a huge amount of Cooldown Speed too.

How to Play the Sword and Shield Spear PVP Build

The Sword and Shield Spear build is the best of both worlds, you’re able to play up-close as a skirmisher-come-tank, and from afar with potent Javelins. As a result, you’ll need to master managing both sides of the kit’s playstyle to shine in PVP.

For PVP, this build is used to aggressive dive enemy backlines, compared to a frontline-holding tank such as the Sword and Shield Greatsword. Spear provides a great engage in the form of Death from Above, and a plethora of high-damage, multi-use Skills.

Large Scale Rotation

Below is a quick but straight forward rotation for large scale PVP:

• Death from Above
• Unyielding Sentinel
• Gale Rush
• Counter Barrier
• Annihilating Slash
• Piercing Attack
• Explosive Fury x5 (unless you already have 5 javelins stacked)
• Javelin Inferno x5 (or as many as you can with ammo resets)
• Abyssal Cleave
• Phoenix Barrage
• Piercing Attack

Sword and Shield Spear heavily thrives off of skirmishing and diving. As a result, Death from Above is the perfect tool to get you right into the heat of battle. Upon landing with Death from Above, multiple targets receive the Fear crowd control. Due to this, you can follow up by using Gale Rush, using any defensives required such as Counter Barrier and then begin your rotation. Annihilating Slash helps to keep players in place with a 60% AoE slow (or a Bellandir S&S suck-in) and Piercing Attack can easily be spammed if your Counter Barrier is hit enough. Finally, using the well-tested bread and butter of Explosive Fury x5 to stack your Javelin ammo and then unleashing all your Javelin Infernos helps to clean up kills.

Small Scale Rotations

A very straight forward single-target kill rotation is as follows:

• Unyielding Sentinel
• Gale Rush
• Explosive Fury x5
• Abyssal Cleave
• Phoenix Barrage
• Javelin Inferno (if needed to clean up)
• Piercing Attack (between cooldowns where possible)

This rotation involves weaving Crowd Controls into your standard arrangement to ensure your target remains locked down for you to hit and not respond to you. Any of your defensive Skills can be used when it makes sense. This also applies to Controlling Rake and Annihilating Slash.

Sword and Shield Spear PVP Build Guide Conclusion

That Concludes our Sword and Shield Spear PVP build guide! For more Throne and Liberty content, news and guides, be sure to check out our Throne and Liberty Home Page.