Intro

Hi, I have been playing Archeage since Alpha and have been pirating most of the time. I have tried multiple builds popular builds for pirating (Primeval, Stone Arrow, Darkrunner, Blighter, Daggerspell and Paladin)and I have found that Abolisher seems to be the best. So this is the build I personally use for pirating, as someone who pirates in a very small guild (3 people) its not uncommon to get on a boat and be outnumbered 2:5. In outnumbered combat you need to bring damage to the table along with having enough survivability to outlast your opponents. This means that you need to generally out gear, out consumable and out skill your opponents. Don't be afraid to spend money to win a fight if there is a reward at the end. When I get on a merchant ship that is about to go into hostile I will spend 5-10g to win that fight and turn in the 50-100g worth of packs on said ship.

Why Abolisher Over X

Darkrunner - Darkrunner is a cookie cutter glass cannon, they will get the opener and likely win or they will get opened on and get obliterated. Darkrunner pretty much always loses against the witchcraft tree which most people have because its so good. So, Darkrunner is Really only a 1v1 build because of its huge lack of defense and weakness to witchcraft.

Blighter - Blighter is the middle ground between darkrunner and abolisher. A blighter has more burst than an abolisher but less than a darkrunner, Less survivability than an abolisher but more than a darkrunner. Blighters are very susceptible to magic damage because they have no mitigation toward it. In a pirating situation generally the enemy will know you are there, this makes stealth not required and makes survivability more important. Thus, making abolisher better in a pirate situation. I would suggest a blighter if you want to be a tankier melee character doing general PvP.

Primeval - Primeval is the best class in the game IMHO, it has so much mobility that the best primeval in the game can beat any other class in the game. While pirating both groups (the pirates and the pirated) have to be on the same boat meaning the primeval will be within 8m and do 20% less damage than normal. Their mobility doesn't help them on the boat because you can't dodge around on a boat and you cant jump off the boat or you will lose LoS.

Stone Arrow - Some regard stone arrow as the best build in the game, I really don't think so. They give up teleport, sleep and the stun break of auramancy in trade for blocking and melee range stuns. Magic characters aren't close enough to be CC with the defense tree and aren't far enough to be put out of range. Archery's hardest hitting abilities concussive arrow and charged bolt both cant be blocked. This means that against a primeval the Stone arrow only has a chance to block piercing shot and toxic shot. Also runs into the 20% damage reduction problem like the primeval. Blocking doesn't work when your opponent is behind you so if a melee gets on you and CC's you, you will most likely lose.

Daggerspell - Daggerspell is mostly a 1v1 build, they can perma CC anyone who doesn't have witchcraft themself. In a group situation a daggerspell more or less will just get steamrolled. Daggerspells solely rely on CC, that don't have much mobility or defense making them far from ideal in boat combat.

Gear and Consumables

Armor
Currently I use 3 pieces of GHA Leather and 4 pieces of Epherium Earth Leather. With this setup I have a 16% crit chance and 72% crit damage. Unbuffed I have 4.5k physical defense and 2.5k magic defense. With the and combo my MDef comes up to 4.5k also. Most Abolishers run plate armor, this gives them very one-sided protection like 6-7k PDef and like .5-1k MDef. With that much defense the diminishing return gets so high that they only have ~7% more physical reduction than I do in leather.
Plate 7/7: Increases Defense +3% and max health +5%. Also decreases duration of Stun and Shackle -20%.
3% defense really isn't going to change your physical reduction,if it does it is so minimal it doesnt matter. 5% max health is nice but isn't worth changing to plate for. Decreased duration of Stun (which is broken by ) and Shackle (Which is broken by ) making it mostly a completely worthless passive.
Leather 7/7: Increases Attack Speed and Evasion +3%, bow skill range +3m, and Melee/Ranged Citical Rates +5%. Also decreases duration of Trip -20%

Increased attack speed, your abilities will go off a little faster and the GCD will be a little lower not much changes. Increases evasion by 3%, 3% chance to be invulnerable to an attack? Don't mind if I do. Increase bow skill range by 3m, Increases your bow auto attack range for shooting people out of the air or finishing someone very low off at range, but its still mostly a worthless bonus. Increases Crit rate by 5%, This is is great, you need to crit to activate increasing your damage by a lot, crits are just amazing. Decrease duration of trip by 20%, This is mostly worthless because makes you trip immune, but it does not break it so if you get tripped before you can pop all your prebuffs its actually isn't too bad.
Overall I find leathers buffs to be better than plates, I also like that leather had 60% PDef and 60% MDef rather than plates 100% PDef 0% MDef meaning leather gets 20% bonus defense for free.

Weapon/Shield
I am using an Epherium Unique sword with a Magnificent Heroic shield. Each Weapon type has a different proc which can be found here, Personally I think that a sword is the best because more parries = more abilities casted = more kills. Having the best weapon you can get is more important than having better armor because weapons scale alot better than armor, Upgrading a tier in armor gives you like 300 armor and 15 stat points where upgrading a weapon will increase your damage more significantly. Shields on the other hand don't scale very well, shields should only be upgraded after you have your armor and weapons bought.

Consumables
Consumables can make a pretty big difference and are generally cheap. You can get the tier one MDef( Rainbow in Reach) and PDef(Royal Guard's Honor) potions for around 10s each for a 30 min buff, this means you can either spend 100s of gold upgrading your armor or just buy a potion. The other buffs I use are the Spellbook: Unstoppable Force and Spellbook: Brick Wall, These range from 80s to 1.2g for a 30 minute buff. These books are outrageously good, Brick wall can reduce most peoples endless arrows/mana stars to 1 damage in combination with your armor. Unstoppable Force gives you 86 DMG, this is crazy that you can use a consumable to increase your damage so much. Also the not very well know "Wild Ginseng" It is an instant full heal for around vendor cost (2 gold)

Skills

BattleRage

- Your Auto attack + trip when combo'd with
- Gap closer + CC
- Instant Cast AOE Damage.
- With triple slash being uncontrollable this ability's cast time makes it pretty unusable when every other ability is an instant cast.
- Used for when your opponent is running and your out of gap closers or pulling the driver off an opposing boat.
- Although it would be nice theres not really enough points to get it and its not really worth using it making another GCD.
- Breaks a boat load (no pun intended) of cc and reduces physical damage by 50%, no reason to ever not take this ability.
- Big damage backstab, your hardest hitter and an instant cast.
- Although its good against casters it will make melee and archers more or less destroy you. At max stacks it gives you 300 Melee attack which with books on i have close to 500 so its not really worth the downside.
- Bonus crit damage, CD Reduction and increased parry rate and decreased mana costs. so much power in one ability, it is a must have.
- 20m leap along with a good AOE ability, while pirating click on the boat and use it, generally it will have you jump to passengers on the boat or to the cannons/harpoon. Excellent for boarding boats.
- 5% really isn't worth a stat point when you can pop a book for a much higher percentage.
- Increased Crit rate, If I were to change my build it would remove for this.
- You already have CD reduction from , not really worth the point.
- Required instantly refreshing most battlerage cooldowns, amazing passive when combo'd with .
- a good passive if you do more land combat but in water everyone is pretty much the same speed and cant get away, The CC reduction doesn't do much when breaks all the CC's.
- So op is unbelievable, can reduce pretty much all cloth wearers and some leather wearers to 0 PDef.
- Already have enough points in the tree and increase damage by 15% totally worth it.


Defense

- Stun, damage, instant cast. no reason not to take it when using a shield.
- Bonus health and stacks mettle for .
- Silence and combo with , you have to stop the healers from healing.
- Instant cast 3000 damage? sign me up. Combos with to be a 4800 damage instant cast.
- Could be used to stack mettle but the regen on it is so terrible. The worst healing food in the game, hardtack, heals for 40 and it costs like 5c each.
- a meh heal, using a potion would be a better option, eats mettle so you cant use .
- Great ability, 38% chance to not take damage from a melee/archer? too good. Also gives immunity to trip/knockbacks.
- Yolo's hammer, such a slow missle speed that turtles walk out of range of it, don't take it.
- AOE taunt/Worthless for PvP which this build is meant for.
- Good for arenas but it is destroyed when a boat touches it and people can just fly out of is, I don't find it useful in open world situations.
- Gets some pressure of you or wait for a certain CD to come up or have a healer send some heals your way.
- Boost that block rate higher.
- A one second stun that will make your opponent immune to stuns making not work, don't take this ever
- 700 PDef, a pretty good passive, gives some damage reduction to melee/ ranged.
- more PVE garbage
- 10% reduction? what a joke. don't use it.
- Bonus HP, not really all that important and makes you take to many points in defense.
- CD reduction, you don't really need to pop most defense CD's more than once in a fight for this to matter.

Auramancy

- must be used in combination with , increased attack speed is pretty good but I personally could never get in the habit of pressing this every 15-30s
- a small sprint in a line, only good in certain situations. I have a new found love for this ability, when that primeval is just out of range and is down this can get you in range for one of your leaps to kill them.
- Alright ability, a lot of debuffs that reduce healing and I personally feel like it doesn't work a lot of the time.
- I take this as an interrupter/ pull for AOE/ pull for runners that are barely outrunning me because of the debuff. Very replaceable, its a personal preference.
- Mobility helps a lot.
- you already have and they don't stack.
- Can't really be used in a fight, if you need mana use a pot, if its after a fight its 40s to respec your auramancy tree.
- Breaks stuns and impales, 50% magic reduction and a 60% DMG increase for , cant go wrong taking it.
- Makes it so you can use your abilities all the time, Combo's with for 1960 bonus MDef.
- melee range sleep/ buff steal. Not many buffs can be stolen and often you autoattack your target waking them back up.
- Magic damage immunity, not really worth the point, more of a PvE ability.
- A lot of healing reduction in the game, points are needed elsewhere.
- Combo's with , personal preference if you run it or not, I prefer not to.
- Points are needed elsewhere and when you get backstabbed for 4000, 100 damage reduction isn't going to do anything.
- requires too many points in auramancy and forces you to pray to RNGesus
- Requires too many points and its not really worth it.
- if isn't worth is, this totally isn't worth it.
- 10 points in auramancy is crazy, ability isn't really worth it anyway.

Rotation

Always on -
Prebuffs->>
General rules of thumb for smaller combat
If they have Auramancy you need to knock them down with> before using or they will use breaking your stun.

If they are Sorcery use and to break their Insulating Lense and preventing them from using abilities.

If they are archery they will avoid you like the plague, Its a good idea to have movement speed on your boots and a black cat to run them down.

When facing a primeval I use to get close then to snare them, preventing or backflip then to knock them down then further preventing and . Then I use to continue keeping them in one spot. Then use and to do finish them off/some damage.

In outnumbered combat and are your best friends with the constant reseting because of you can AOE down an entire boat spamming those abilties.

Some Personal Experience

After doing a few (20) 1v1 arenas I found out that most build aren't really problematic for me other than primevals and some stone arrows.

I changed out for because if you start casting lasso and they get out of 20m it doesn't work but still goes on CD. Getting within 20m is hard to do against a good primeval/stone arrow, in the 1v1 arena wasn't helping me much so I changed it out for to try closing the gap. I also traded for because I felt that I really needed to crit more often then I was to proc .

I will try to keep up to date with my arena stats here

TL:DR

Abolisher is a tank build that does enough damage to hold its own in pretty much all combat. I built the abolisher to survive a darkrunner opener, a daggerspell cc/meteor and to be able to get close to an archer and burst them. Like all builds in the game it is very gear dependent, a hasla sword and GHA armor is the minimum. As an above average geared abolisher, i'm not afraid to enter combat with 2-3 people alone whatever their builds may be. The build is good for beginners as well as more experienced players, its a generally easy build to play not many reactionary abilities.