Welcome to the Sword/ Shield and Dagger PvP Build for Throne & Liberty.
The Sword, Shield and Dagger is a versatile weapon combination for PvP. This is not the most damaging setup, but it is good for utility and for crowd controlling groups of enemies. This build works best when you’re playing with a group of allies, however you can also play it solo.
With this build you have high survivability, fairly high mobility and multiple ways to mess with enemy players, such as pulling them away from their group or knocking over multiple enemies. You can also deal fairly good damage with this setup, however please keep in mind that the Sword and Shield is arguably the least damage-oriented weapon in the game and you are forced to deal with this limitation when using it as your weapon for PvP. If you want a PvP melee build that’s entirely focused on maximum damage output, we recommend our Greatsword and Dagger PvP build.
Table of Contents
Sword & Shield and Dagger PvP Build Basics
Weapons Overview
Mainhand: Sword & Shield – The Sword and Shield is a primarily defensive weapon, although it also possesses some offensive and utility skills. With this build, you will be able to use the Sword and Shield to protect yourself and your allies, deal some strong damage and mess with enemy players by pulling them out of their group, or charging through a group of players and knocking them over.
Offhand: Daggers – The Daggers can deal decent damage in their own right, but what makes them so useful is their ability to grant you extra Critical Chance and Damage from the Inject Venom skill, along with several of its Passive Skills. We will look into this in more detail later in the guide, explaining why this synergy works so well.
Stat Allocation
An important aspect of any build in Throne & Liberty is allocating points between the four stats. For this build, we recommend prioritizing Strength for the HP and melee damage increase that it provides, as well as Dexterity to improve your Crit.
We recommend a stat distribution similar to the following (but it’s okay if yours is a little different):
- 30 Strength
- 30 Dexterity
- 10 Wisdom
- 19 Perception
Sword & Shield Dagger PvP Build Details
In this section we will explain the details of the Sword & Shield and Dagger PvP Build, including the best skills and equipment, and how to proceed with your Weapon Mastery tree.
Defence Skill
You can slot one defensive skill in Throne & Liberty. Every weapon in the game has one Defence Skill associated with it, so you can choose between the following two options for this PvP build:
- Sword & Shield: Shield Survival Technique
- Daggers: Ambush Stance
We recommend using the Shield Survival Technique as your defensive skill for this build. Using the skill restores some HP, and defending against a Fury Attack will also grant you a damage shield that is scaled based on your maximum HP. After defending against a Fury Attack, Shield Survival Technique changes to Retaliatory Strike, which deals damage to the attacker. Defending against several Fury Attacks in a row will buff the damage from Retaliatory Strike up to three times.
Active Skills
The most noticeable part of your build, Active Skills are all other skills that are activated by pressing a button on your keyboard. You can choose any skills from your two equipped weapons, and you may equip 12 of them at any given time.
For this Sword & Shield & Dagger PvP Build, we recommend making use of the following skills:
Sword & Shield Skills
- Shield Strike – Has a short cooldown and deals fairly high damage to the target, and also applies a Weaken debuff that reduces their Hit Chance temporarily. The short cooldown of this skill makes it very useful and gives some much needed damage potential to a player wishing to use the Sword and Shield for damage output.
- Strategic Rush – Charge forwards, dealing damage with a fairly high chance to push enemies in your path. If they hit a wall after being pushed, they will be knocked over. This is a fun skill to use, is great for mobility and also for messing with groups of enemy players.
- A Shot at Victory – Deals very high damage, and has a 20% chance to activate for a second time. The chance is increased by an additional 5% for every enemy within 10 metres who is Weakened by you. A further 60% chance is added if you defended against a Fury Attack in the last 3 seconds. This is a very powerful skill that lets you deal massive burst damage to an opponent. However, it needs to be obtained from Resistance Events before you can use it. If you don’t have the skill yet, you can use any other skill of your choice in the meantime.
- Counter Barrier – Temporarily improve your Shield Block Chance. Evading an Attack, defending against a Fury Attack or using Shield Block will cause you to perform an automatic counterattack, dealing damage that is scaled based on your Damage Reduction stat.
- Chain Hook – High chance to pull the target to you and Bind them for 3 seconds. In PvP, this is best use when playing with a group to isolate an enemy player from their group and burst them down before they can react. If you’re playing solo then you can use it as a way to immobilise your opponent (or just to troll).
- Stalwart Bastion – Apply a temporary Damage Reduction buff to yourself and allies within 10 metres.
Dagger Skills
- Predatory Strike – Another short-cooldown skill that deals good damage. The damage is improved if your target is under the effect of your Burning, Curse or Poison. Thanks to their short cooldowns, you can alternate between this and Shield Strike to keep up steady damage pressure on an opponent.
- Brutal Incision – Deals heavy damage. The Critical Chance and Critical Damage of this skill is higher if you are attacking a target with less than 50% HP remaining.
- Frenzied Sword Dance – Attack a target 7 times in quick succession, dealing heavy damage. If there is another enemy within 6 metres, the attacks are distributed between both targets. This skill also needs to be unlocked from Resistance Events.
- Camouflage Cloak – Become temporarily Hidden, unable to be directly targeted. Attacking while Hidden will guarantee a Critical Hit, but you will be visible again immediately.
- Inject Venom – Infuse your attacks with Poison. Poisoned enemies take damage over time and cannot regenerate HP. A target can have up to 20 stacks of Poison at a time.
- Shadow Strike – Teleport behind a target and damage them. Has a high chance to Poison and Bind them.
Passive Skills
Passive Skills are not manually activated, but instead provide a passive bonus that is either active constantly, or triggers under certain conditions. These can be used to create further synergy between your weapons and Active Skills, since passives from both of your equipped weapons will remain active at all times, regardless of which weapon your character is currently holding. You can equip eight passive skills at a time. We recommend going with the following options:
| Passive Name | Passive Name |
|---|---|
| Aegis Shield | Assassin’s Instincts |
| Impenetrable | Shadow Walker |
| Resilient Mind | Wrathful Edge |
| Skillful Evasion | Profuse Poison |
Sword & Shield Passives
- Aegis Shield – Your Defense is increased, scaling from your Shield Block Chance.
- Impenetrable – Your Defense is increased, proportional to the amount of enemies within 9 metres of you.
- Resilient Mind – Evading an attack restores Mana and Health. Blocking an attack restores a portion of the damage blocked as Mana.
- Skillful Evasion – Ranged and Magic Evasion are increased depending on your proximity to the target.
Dagger
- Assassin’s Instincts – A flat increase to all Critical Chance.
- Shadow Walker – Using a Mobility skill increases your Damage Reduction and Magic & Ranged Evasion.
- Wrathful Edge – Significantly increases your Critical Damage.
- Profuse Poison – Improves your Poison Damage and Poison Duration during the day. At night, you do not receive a buff to Poison Duration, but the Poison Damage buff is much stronger.
Equipment
Equipment is a vital part of any build in Throne & Liberty. In this section we will list the ideal equipment for the build, along with the optimal traits. Don’t worry if you can’t get all of the optimal traits – this is a very time-consuming process that can take weeks or even months to completely accomplish. Just make do with what you have for now, and if you like the build then you can gradually start working towards perfecting the traits.
Weapons
Chernobog’s Beheading Sword allows you to debuff enemies simply by blocking their attacks. Doing this will apply Curse: Sleep for 3 seconds. The effect has a 17 second Cooldown however, so you cannot send entire groups of players to sleep.
Lequirus’ Thorny Edge gives you some more bonus damage after you use a Mobility Skill – this helps you to keep the pressure on an enemy who is trying to kite or flee. Use Shadow Strike or Strategic Rush and you’ll not only catch up to your opponent, but also gain a temporary damage boost for doing so.
| Item Slot | Item Name | Optimal Traits |
|---|---|---|
| Mainhand: Sword & Shield | Chernobog’s Beheading Sword | Melee Hit, Melee Critical Hit, Melee Heavy Attack Chance |
| Offhand: Daggers | Lequirus’ Thorny Edge | Melee Hit, Melee Critical Hit, Melee Heavy Attack Chance |
Armour and Accessories
We are using 2 pieces of the Imperator set, which improves your Heavy Attack Chance. We are also using 2 pieces of the Death set, which improves your Critical Damage by a considerable amount.
We’ll be looking for traits that give survivability and damage output. As mentioned above, don’t worry if some of your traits are different to those listed below – it is very time consuming to get the traits exactly how you want in Throne & Liberty and most of your opponents will have the same problem.
| Item Slot | Item Name | Optimal Traits |
|---|---|---|
| Head | Reaper’s Black Mask | Cooldown Speed, Ranged Evasion, Ranged Endurance |
| Cloak | Hermit’s Shroud | Max Health, Weaken Resistance, Skill Damage Resistance |
| Chest | Reaper’s Concealing Shroud | Ranged Evasion, Ranged Endurance, Magic Evasion |
| Hands | General’s Frenzy Gloves | Attack Speed, Max Health, Melee Evasion |
| Legs | Special Resistance Ancient Dragon Pants | Max Health, Ranged Evasion, Ranged Endurance |
| Feet | General’s Charge Boots | Movement Speed, Melee Evasion, Ranged Evasion |
| Necklace | Slaughterer’s Collar | Max Health, Skill Damage Boost, Bind Chance |
| Bracelet | Specter’s Frost Bracers | Skill Damage Resistance, Weaken Resistance, Mana Regen |
| Ring | Abyssal Crystal Ring | Skill Damage Boost, Buff Duration, Mana Regen |
| Ring | Unshakeable Gold Ring | Skill Damage Boost, Max Health, Buff Duration |
| Belt | Skulls Spectral Belt | Skill Damage Resistance, Stun Resistance, Debuff Duration |
Weapon Mastery
Each weapon in Throne & Liberty has a Weapon Mastery tree associated with it. You will slowly gain progress in mastering each weapon simply by using the weapon. This allows you to further hone your character’s skills even after reaching Level 50, and representing a type of end-game progression in Throne & Liberty.
Don’t worry if you haven’t progressed enough to unlock everything recommended on the Weapon Mastery tree – the build will still work fine without it. This just makes your character a little bit more powerful.
We recommend the following paths for Weapon Mastery:
- Sword & Shield: Provoke & Counter – Increases your survivability and your chance to Weaken enemies.
- Dagger: Assassination – Increases your damage output, primarily by improving your Base Damage and Melee Critical Chance.
Sword & Shield and Dagger PvP Build Info and Tips
As mentioned earlier in the guide, this build works best as a group support build, due to its ability to buff allies, debuff and poison enemies and cause Crowd Control.
When playing solo, you still have decent damage output thanks to Predatory Strike, Shield Strike, Frenzied Sword Dance and A Shot at Victory. Your high survivability and potential to deal considerable burst damage with these skills makes you a formidable combatant, even though this build is not primarily focused on damage output.
Make sure to keep using Inject Venom to apply Poison to enemies for extra damage, and Shadow Strike and Strategic Rush to trigger your Shadow Walker passive for extra Damage Reduction and Evasion.
If you want to play this entirely as a “PvP tank” build, then remember that PvP tanking is not the same as PvE tanking – actual players can and will find ways to shut you down that PvE mobs will not, either through planned attacks or sheer weight of numbers. Don’t face-tank everything, but instead do what you can to avoid damage and give your assailants a hard time hitting you, making use of Mobility skills and Camouflage Cloak to gain reprieve to recover and heal yourself.
