This week, we’re going to cover a new build that I’ve become quite fond of in PvP, known simply as a Ragestorm build. Now that name on its own is quite awesome, but that name is actually one of the core abilities that makes the spec tick.
This specific build picks up a bit of Riftblade for a Fiery Burst finisher. Simply put, this build makes people dead.
Now you might not have a Sylvan Greatblade, but don’t fret. It’s pretty easy to get a very respectable two-handed weapon from tier 2 experts, the original epic quest chain, or our old friend Duke in Greenscales Blight. If these things are out of your reach, however, you might want to look in to having the new crafted two-hander, Blood-Forged Claymore. The crafted weapon is very expensive, but a great starting point.
Now, getting right down to it!
The Build
[30 Riftblade / 20 Champion / 16 Void Knight]
The spec we’re looking at is a Riftblade Ragestorm build, as seen here.
The build calls heavily on Riftblade abilities, while going far enough in to Void Knight, typically a tank soul, for Ragestorm. You might not think it initially, but Ragestorm is actually a very powerful ability, and will knock enemies down a good chunk of health all around you.
Further, it goes deep enough in to Void Knight for Spellbreaker and Disrupt. Spellbreaker is best used in yourself with a macro targeting it on yourself automatically, as really, in the heat of battle, and with such a long cooldown, it’s unrealistic to have decent opportunity to use it on others, but still possible.
Spellbreaker Macro:
#show Spellbreaker
cast @self Spellbreaker
This will become your friends against many casters. The trick, as always, is knowing when to use it, and this depends heavily on who you’re going against at the time. If you’re in an overwhelming battle of the entire team versus the entire team, you may as well use it off cooldown; one on one, or at least close to this, you’ll want to survey your opponents abilities and use it at the best possible time. There are too many permutations of this to even reasonably touch on, but you’ll learn with time how to use this.
Moving focus over to Champion, you’ll find that you mostly use the buffs and control abilities from it. Bash, naturally, will be very useful on interrupting those big heals, or powerful damaging spells. A little trick here is to not interrupt until the last possible moment you can reliably do so; in doing this, you make the caster waste the most time, and they will love you all the more! You should have this easily accessible on your hotbar at all times.
Riftblade is where some of the magic comes in. Abilities here will be your core nukes, along with some things from our Void Knight tree. This will all come together in a little bit with majority of our macros. The majority of the abilities here will be hidden away in macros, and explained in a little more detail in the next section. The ability you’ll be using outside of macros is Stoneshield. This ability is exceptionally hard to time in a hectic group battle. In those situations you might be best off using it when you get scared to give your healers a small buffer to keep you up. In smaller, more controlled, battles, however, you’ll find it very useful waiting for the class you’re against to use their painful abilities. When facing against melee this might be hard to judge, as you don’t know how many combo points they have. When facing against most casters, that are not using instants, it’s a bit more controlled, and you can time it with the end of casts.
The Macros
Main Builder
#show searing strike
cast frenzied strike
cast inescapable fury
cast frost strike
cast airburst
cast ragestorm
cast discharge
cast thunder strike
cast flamespear
cast stonespear
cast spark
This one is kind of cumbersome, but effectively, it uses Frenzied Strike and Inescapable Fury, your reactive abilities, every time they’re up. Airburst and Ragestorm, again, might seem kind of odd choices, but they do very considerable damage. Note, that Airburst does not actually have a taunt effect in PvP, so no need to worry about the entire team hitting you simultaneously. Similarly, you have Discharge that will be used whether in melee range or not and does not require a target. Further, Ragestorm will hit progressively harder as you spend time in a battle and build up pacts. Incidentally, it is also an exceptional way to generate attack points out of combat, and find pesky rogues around you in stealth.
The rest is all relatively uninteresting, just some hard hitting abilities to build up your combo points. It is worth noting that this ability will also cast ranged attacks when Ragestorm, Airburst, and Discharge are on cooldown, or otherwise not usable.
Single Target Finisher
No macro needed here, your single target finisher will just be Fiery Burst. While recommended, like in PvE, that when you use this ability it doesn’t “clip” (overwrite the current DoT before the last tick), with the hectic nature of large battles, pretty much feel free to use it freely but only when you have three attack points; any less than that and the tick of the debuff is insignificant.
Charge
#show Riftwalk
cast Riftwalk
cast Bull Rush
Pretty self explanatory here. One note, however, if using Planar Blade, as I often do, Riftwalk will almost always be ready for use when you have a decent amount of crit. There is a trade off in that you can’t use it with Storm Blade, but generally I find the mobility of Riftwalk too hard to pass up in big heated battles.
AoE Finisher
#show earth burst
cast earth burst
cast storm burst
Earth Burst and Storm Burst might not be the type of AoEs that you are used to. Both of these abilities to not take immediate effect like other AoE finishers, and actually take effect on your next attack. Earth Burst also has the bonus of silencing all that it hits for a respectable duration.
Bringing it all Together
With this build, I recommend four buffs that must be up at all time, one of them being an overall choice of two. Maintain Avatar of Water, Void, and Slayer’s Bearing at all times. Optionally, using Avatar of Wind in place of Water for traveling, flag carrying, and so on.
Your big option comes from something discussed in the macros section, Planar Blade versus Storm Blade. Both have their benefits, even one on one using Riftwalk as often as possible can be beneficial, due to it’s root (and similar) breaking abilities. Overall, I recommend Planar Blade for this reason, but it’s entirely playstyle.
And finally, that’s a wrap for this weeks look in to a fine PvP spec for you all.
