Tree of Savior Forum

A good Defensive build

Hi there :slight_smile: I relatively new to this game. Is there a good build for swordsman with high defense capabilities ? I dont mind having low damage but I 'd prefer if I dont have to spam Healing potions when needed :slight_smile: Pretty lax about it tbh.

Simply put Peltasta in your build. The HP modifier they have and the defense skills will carry your whole defensive build.

Peltasta > Rodlero > Murmillo is a time proven commodity, which is a build focused around all shield based classes.

You can also mix Peltasta with Retiaritus and another Spear-focused class, if that’s up your ally. I personally run a Peltasta > Retiarius > Dragoon build, which is a lot of fun, because it has defensive capabilities while also having a lot of strong attack skills to play around with.

Peltasta > Templar is also okay for GTW (Guild Territory Wars), if you want to focus your character on it. The third class choice is up to you, but Retiarius seems to be a good candidate.

If you like spear, Retiarius - hoplite - dragoon with 1handed spear + shield
Decent dmg, crowd control and defensive build, can fit anywhere even in pvp once u get the right ichors

pelt was just recently nerfed defensively, nothing is really that defensive anymore imo (in the swordsman tree at least), at least with regards to magic damage

I was thinking of making a character using this build (Peltasta would be the last class tho) and I have to ask, is Hard Shield better than Dagger Guard currently?

I’m not even sure what dagger guard does. I think it increases block by some percentage. Still didn’t block anything though. Hard shield at least increases your PDEF by a lot.

No, it blocks a lot. The block system in this game work as damage reduction now, if I’m not mistaken. When you successfully block, the incoming damage is reduced by 50% instead of negating all of it as it was before. I have a Reti-Dragoon-Hoplite and I have Dagger Guard maxed out + lvl60 attribute and mobs on CM5 Out15 don’t even tickle my character.

Thank you all for the feedback :slight_smile: Has been very informational

Kinda hard to tell when block has been activated in that case then. Though I do see numbers fluctuating up and down…hard to say if it was just a crit or something when the damage is higher.

Either way though, physical damage is not the problem. Between high guard and hard shield, you will have very high PDEF as well as high block chance. The problem is magic. Nothing in the swordsman tree can help you against magic. (Guardian is only effective 1/4 of the time, hardly what I’d call reliable. I guess it’s better than nothing though.)

Is it important how the classes are lined up or can I use them randomly ? like is there a flow of classes which makes them better ? still unknown to that subject

Depends what you’re going for I guess. For example, if you’re mounted there are restrictions in terms of what skills you can use while mounted. In that case at least, you can’t just put random circles into your build.

There are some stance restrictions for classes. So for example, if your build primarily uses 1h spears, you wouldn’t be able to use something like cross guard without switching to a 2 handed sword.

I’m building a hoplite - peltasta - cataphract just 4fun and I hope this build is ok for pvm/boss.

if you want a defensive mounted character i would recommend hacka-cata-X, you can put pelta or rodel on X for defense or blossom for a full fleshed damage top build.
is way better than hop-cata pelta, yeah you may lose finestra extra block and this is bad but hacka right now is having a nice damage, not top but nice with his 50% buff from storm bolt and once you add cata in the mix with his buff that work for all hacka skills it becomes a respectable damage dealer without doubt.
the only thing that makes him not be at the top is that like some classes on TOS imc have not blessed them with good art’s(hacka and cata)!! and even with all of that given their current strength as well the reason we have not seen a lot of them popping up is the main prejudice against one handed sword-shield warrior as whole that right now that is not well seen and once we add mount in the mix it becomes even harder for it since the warrior counterpart standard lancer two handed build always have been one of the top for the past months and thus his little brother hacka is not talked-used a lot and receives a lot of prejudice even if some of them are justified by imc lack of knowledge of what to do with 1 handed sword users, but imc is trying and recently hacka receive some love that at least put him back on the game with honor.
i only wrote this because you asked for boss-pvm build and i must say that hop-cata-pelta will not work, in reality you can pretty much use most builds in todays tos but not all of them are “good” per si and would make enough difference in the overall super top content , if you get what i mean, in today’s tos to be a respectable build would be better to mix some character that have RAW brute damage and other classes that have RAW brute buff-debuff, you will see that every strong build is based on this simple premise i wrote here and to be true is obvious why is that way cata-hop and pelta is more on the side of stronger buff-debuffer with their pierce +% in hop, or acrobatic mount in cata and pelta with his defense and without raw brute damage you lack the raw strong damage dealer for it to really work and in mounted character there is only lancer- and hacka that combo’s with cata acrobatic mount but since you want defense with a shield , hacka is perfect fine choice to make a great character, a little different but nonetheless great.}
edit: plus there is one thing i must make it clear cata hacka is fun as hell, recently imc have been buffing a lot all charge skills from hacka lancer and cata, like they want us to use it and to be true, after all those buffs they are in a really nice place right now but unfortunately a simple lack of skill point in all those 3 characters made us be really hard to leave points for them, is super bad because of this but my hacka cata i still put points on them because i’m crazy and like to be different and i never regretted it since jumping with cata-hacka charge between the map when doing dailies is fun as hell, super fun,maybe because is different i don’t know, is just a splash of fresh air jumping and smashing mobs instead of using standard skills that makes everything better, too bad that lancer is two handed weapon and hacka is one handed, if they all could be used with one hand i would create a lancer hacka cata just so i could have 3 charge-jumping ability and be using all the time without stopping, would be fun as hell, since i’m already happy doing with only 2.