Sword & Shield / Rapier PvP Build
Season 8
Sword & Shield is meta for a reason. It hits hard, has excellent mobility and CC, and most importantly is very easy and forgiving to play. I’ll be honest I did not invest much into this build and it still surpassed my expectations.
Check out a video guide with gameplay for this build!
Equipment / Attributes
This is a DEX build at heart, with the 300 DEX passive being very important for cleansing CC. I liked running 100 STR to give the SnS some good damage, while the 50 INT is perfect for Rapier damage and the % damage bonuses help out the SnS too!
The rapier is excellent, with Sundering Stacks being one of, if not the best rapier perk in the game right now! You will need Leaching Flurry on your weapon or armor for this build!
The Sword I have here is not too amazing.. Ideally I would have Empowering Leaping Strike, Trenchant Strikes, and Sundering Stacks. The Shield would then have Fortifying Shield Rush, Vicious, and Keenly Jagged to maximize damage. Artifact wise you could use Dogorts Blade on this build, but honestly no artifact with the BIS weapons mentioned would be ideal.
The armor perks are not to shabby, with Contagious Upheaval and Leeching Flurry being very important to have! A single Hasted Vigor and Shirking Energy are also great. Vital Synergy is VERY STRONG this patch and a must have for any chest piece!
I use Vampires Vestments as the artifact armor here, but ideally I think Featherweight would be much more effective.
The jewelry is perfect, giving a whopping 31% empower in total! Now for that hidden healing tech.. using a survival potion this patch puts all other survival potions on an 80% cooldown, and this cooldown is independent of perks like Refreshing Toast. This also applies to Endless Thirst’s special perk, meaning that as long as your cycling between two different potions you will have the crazy strong +33% potion healing with an 80% cooldown and no additional penalty! Check the footage and watch the potion cooldowns to see this in action.
Use the best food you can find, Desert Sunrise, and Honing Stones. The two potions of choice for this build are the Regeneration and Burst Regeneration potions since they give the most healing value. You can use normal healing potions if you want as they can heal up to 10k Health with this setup!
Active Skills
Sword & Shield Skills
Upheaval is crazy strong, it hits like a truck against a snared opponent (easy to setup with this build!) and moves two de-buffs to your opponent with the Contagious Upheaval perk! You can easily dispatch squishy players with this skill.
Shield Rush is also crazy strong, the stagger lasts long enough that you can guarantee an Upheaval after landing it and it puts out an AOE snare on hit! Perfect for setting up your combo as well as snaring and escaping foes.
With the Empowering Leap perk Leap is the starter to your kill combo, giving a massive 32% damage bonus to anyone affected by the snare. This gap closer also staggers, and is quite fast.
Rapier Skills
A balanced offensive and defensive rapier skill tree.
Leaching Flurry is a must have for running Flurry in PvP! This skill has excellent damage and can steal life while trading with anything and winning.
Evade is the bread and butter of Rapier. Perfect for both offensive and defensive plays this skill has a very high skill ceiling!
Fleche can hit like a truck if you line up the backstab and the gap closer itself moves through opponents making it perfect for escaping a body block.