The Ultimate Bruiser Guide For Wars: Great Axe/ War Hammer

Hello everyone, this guide was written to provide you with the core concepts of the Bruiser and I hope it will provide you with a great level of fundamentals.

Your Role

Your main role in a war is to set up opportunities for your group to wipe multiple enemy players so it is very important to land a good Gravity Well and then follow up with the combo together with your team. 

Also, make sure to always help your healers and always harass the enemy healers but try to not waste your core abilities for peel / chase.

By the way, this guide is also available in video format:

How to Gear

Stats: 200 CON rest STR

Most of the time you would want to be in Medium Armor Weight unless you are gonna play the point then u might consider Heavy Armor Weight.

The most optimal to achieve the medium weight can be found in the table below:

Armor: You need Resilient on all 5 of the pieces, Shirking Fortification on at least 3-4 pieces but your goal should be to have it on as many pieces as possible, Insatiable Gravity Well as a must then Enfeebling Maelstrom, Leeching Path of Destiny and Fortifying Whirlwind(Heavy Bruiser) are nice to have. The BIS 3rd perk is Refreshing Ward ( It only works on the active weapon but the goal is to get our Gravity Well back as quickly as possible).

Amulet: Health and Stamina Recovery is a must then Slash Protection, Divine or Shirking Empower. You can get Champion’s Amulet from the PVP Rewards Track.

Ring: Hearty and Invigorated Punishment is a must then something like Slash Damage, Refreshing Ward, Leeching, Keen Awareness, or Mortal Empowerment. You can get Champion’s Ring from the PVP Rewards Track.

Earring: Refreshing Toast is a must then Purifying Toast is really nice + Regenerating or Refreshing Ward. You can get Doom’s Chance Earring from The Garden of Genesis.

Great Axe: Refreshing Move is a must + Thwarting Strikes and a 3rd great perk can be Elemental Attunement, Shirking or Chain or as a budget 3 perker Refreshing Move as a must and Enchanted/ Vicious and an Elemental Attunement, Shirking or Chain. There is no Named Great Axe with the perks we'd like but Aeternum's Hoffnung can work until you get something better.

War Hammer: Sundering Shockwave is a must + Thwarting Strikes / Keenly Empowered and a 3rd perk can be Elemental Attunement, Shirking, or Chain.

Heartrune: Brutal Heartrune of Detonate, Greater Heartrune of Stoneform

Some Notable Named/ Crafted Items: Teardrop, Gleaming Pitch War Hammer, Yul'kithir, Regular Pants, Heart of Maahebgal

How a budget build could look like:

How a BIS build could look like for Heavy Bruiser:

How a BIS build could look like for Medium Bruiser:

Armor Gems

Onyx/ Diamond/ Opal /Malachite, try to achieve somewhat of a balance between Physical and Magical Resistances. It also depends on the server meta.

Or

5x Runeglass of Energizing Malachite, 5x Runeglass of Punishing Malachite

Accessory Gems

Onyx / Diamond 

Weapon Gems

Great Axe - Opal / Runeglass of Empowered Opal

War Hammer - Malachite / Runeglass of Electrified Malachite

Weapon Trees

Grit

When you have Grit you are not affected by Staggers, Flattens, and Displacement. The easiest way to proc Grit is to just Left Click.

Left Clicks also move your character forward so in combination with grit you can use this to prevent getting pulled in a gravity well or to escape one. This way you can save your stamina.

You can cancel your swings by dodging.

Ability Guide

Gravity Well

You have to be careful and let your group know when you are using your Gravity Well and you should in 99% of the cases never use it on a single person or when nobody can follow up on it.

Try to throw Gravity Wells nearby to increase their chance to land and to be able to cover the distance to it in time for the “bomb”. (I’d say keep it within ~5 meters)

Your Great Axe has to be equipped when the Gravity Well explodes for the Insatiable Gravity Well to work.

Maelstrom

It should be 99% of the time used in a combo, on CC’d players because the 2nd spin doesn’t have grit.

It is your biggest damage source and pulls people back into clumps.

Charge / Whirlwind

Should be used for escaping dangerous situations or for kill confirms, it can be body blocked so alternatively u can use Whirlwind to escape the clumps.

Shockwave

It’s a hard CC ability and can be used either offensively or defensively.

It is the best follow up to a Gravity Well.

Path of Destiny

Consider this as your ranged aoe ability, use it on big clumps to get the most out of it and try to do it from a distance cause it can be interrupted and has a fairly long channel time.

Leeching Path of Destiny can save you sometimes.

Wrecking Ball

Gives us 20% Fortify and it’s a great tool for finishing a target and stopping Healers / Mages from casting or escaping clumps.

The Combo

Gravity into Shockwave into Maelstrom into swinging your Great Axe or Charging out of the clump.

You will not be able to kill people solo 99% of the time so you need to combo with your 5 man or help other combos. Do not waste your abilities on random single targets and if your abilities are out of sync wait for your combo to be off cooldown. Swinging ur Great Axe in clumps should be done to secure kills on targets that are low hp and only if you are 100% sure you won’t die.

While your combo is on cooldown focus on putting pression on the healers and mages harassing them get your abilities ready with the help of  Refreshing Move.

Prepotting

You should use your Gemstone Dust or Oakflesh Balm, Regenerating Potion and a Cleansing Potion right before you are about to the “The Combo”.

While in clumps most of the time it is better to get out then use your health potion to avoid getting stuck in the potion animation.

Stamina Management

It is very important to manage your stamina well, try to not use it for movement and instead use it to dodge stuns and damage or to get out of clumps. Try as much as posible to not run out of stamina unless you know you are safe because otherwise it usually leads to death or chain CC.

Group Play and Communication

Group comms are the most important if you want to find success, playing by yourself won’t be impactful and won’t get you that many kills. Communicate with your group and let them know what’s the cooldown for your combo or your Gravity Well in case your other combo abilities are on cooldown since most of the clumps will require multiple people in order to be killed. Most of the time you want your Bruiser partner to sync with you. For example, he might have Gravity Well and you might have Shockwave and Malestrom or vice versa. Make sure to make it clear where you wanna hit. (Ex: Bottom Right of the Point, Bonfire, Opposite of Bonfire, etc…)

You can also use STT as a workaround until they add something in the game to be able to easier find your teammates.

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Army Play

The easiest way to kill people is to bomb harder and faster than a healer’s response.

Make sure to coordonate with your group or army and throw every single ability at once

Playing the Point

Unless you are assigned to play the point the only times you should touch the point is if your main shot caller calls for it or if you see the enemies ticking the point you can step on the edges where you can find a “safe spot” in order to tick it back but be careful and smart about it to not create a clump, go in and out as you need, do your combo and find the “safe spot”

Improving

In order to further improve your gameplay my advice is to record your gameplay and do vod reviews either by yourself, with your group, other bruisers or with your company coach. Write down your mistakes and try to avoid them next time.

Also, you can look for what you could do better mainly in terms of positioning and timing, playing OPR/ 3v3 Arena will help you improve but ultimately practicing in wars and doing VOD reviews is the best way.

Thank you for reading! If you found the guide useful consider checking out my Youtube and Twitch for more content!

By the way, this guide is available in video format, check it out:

NW.guide afterword

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