The Ironbreaker is THE hardest tank to be a rockstar at in RoR and one of the toughest classes in general to play well. It is an incredibly diverse class that can be extremely tanky for warband play and do significant damage in scenarios and 6v6. It does not bring a lot of utility to warbands like its order counterparts, but that can be mitigated with a strong understanding of the game/class as well as skill.

Class Mechanic - Grudges

The Ironbreakers’ class mechanic is centered around properly managing Grudges. Grudges are primarily obtained by you or your Oath Friend being hit by enemy players but can also be obtained more quickly by running various tactics. Grudges is extremely important because it affects the strength of your damage as well as buffs/debuffs. Managing Grudges along with properly using the loads of situational abilities the Ironbreaker has in its toolkit is what makes the class difficult to master, but is incredibly rewarding when you start getting the hang of it.

Grudges - The numbers

As stated above Grudges is almost always obtained by you or your Oath Friend being hit by enemy players. Everytime you get hit by an enemy you receive 5 Grudges. Every time your Oath Friend takes a hit, you gain Grudges based on how many Grudges you already have.

Oath Friend Grudges Gain

0-29 Grudges: Gain 10 Grudges

30-59 Grudges: Gain 5 Grudges

60-100 Grudges: Gain 3 Grudges

Grudges - Tactics

There are loads of situations you will find yourself in playing RoR (solo, 6man, 24man, etc.) and each come with unique problems with regards to managing Grudges. If you are solo you might find that it is hard to get enough Grudges to dps down the enemy before they dps down you, or if you are in a warband you might not be able to generate Grudges fast enough to buff yourself and your party. That is where some tactics can help out! Check out the Tactics section to learn more.

Tactics for Grudges

Rising Anger

Dwarven Riposte

Mastery Trees

The section will give a brief description of the Ironbreaker’s three Mastery Trees and what abilities, morales, and tactics to look out for.

Left Tree - Path of Vengeance

The Path of Vengeance tree is all about damage with some crowd control sprinkled in. You’ll be speccing into this tree if you want to add more damage to your arsenal, or you are looking to buff up groupmates/allies' melee dps damage. Ancestor’s Fury sits 5 points up the tree and is a MUST for 2H Ironbreaker specs. It is also incredibly good to bring along for warband play as the 10% melee crit and strength will be extremely helpful for your Oath Friends. At 9 points you’ll find Cave-In which is a 3 second knockdown and is a solid DoT.

At 11 points is the best dps tactic an Ironbreaker can run in Greataxe Mastery. It provides 5% additional parry which gives added survivability with a Great Weapon and the 10% damage bonus is pretty great too. My all time favorite Ironbreaker skill, Grudge-Born Fury, is at the 13 point marker and can do absolutely nutty damage if you are stacking melee crit. With the right gear and at 100 Grudges your chance to crit with GBF can be >50% which makes it possible to absolutely melt squishy targets.

Middle Tree - Path of Stone

The Path of Stone tree is primarily focused on improving your survivability with a bit of utility sprinkled in. Oathbound is 5 points up the tree and it is an absolute MUST no matter what build you are running. It gives you and your Oath Friends 25% parry, an initiative buff (fyi Ironbreakers have the lowest initiative of tanks on Order), and is spammable at the low cost of 15 Grudges. If you are bringing a shield and need a bit more survivability or doing some PvE, it is usually worth grabbing Shield Mastery 11 points up in the tree.

Right Tree - Path of Brotherhood

The Path of Brotherhood provides supplemental utility generally for specs that go higher in the left or middle tree. Runic Shield is 5 points up and is especially useful when you are going up against groups that will be heavier on magic damage. If you will be following melee dps into destruction backlines in a city siege, it is always worth considering bringing Punishing Knock because it provides a 50% outgoing heal debuff which is awesome. Consider using this tactic (via Inspiring Attack) in combination with Kneecapper as it will essentially serve as a double heal debuff. Ironbreakers have very little when it comes to AoE’s, however, its best AoE sits in this tree as Earthshatter. Earthshatter is an AoE snare and also the Ironbreaker’s strongest direct damage ability.

Tactics

Below you’ll find all of the tactics an Ironbreaker has at its disposal. Each includes its ingame description followed by my thoughts and recommendations. I have categorized the tactics based on their major function. In a given category I have ordered each tactic by usefulness. Note that core tactics are obtained by leveling your Ironbreaker to 40 as they are default to the class. All other tactics are obtained by speccing into a specific tree and are highlighted accordingly.

Legend

Core
Path of Vengeance
Path of Stone
Path of Brotherhood

Survivability

Ancestral Inheritance - Increases your armor by 660. Unless you are facing a team of only sorcs, maguses, and/or dps shamans, you are pretty much always going to run this perk. Armor is king in RoR and is your best defensive stat. With an armor pot and decent gear, you should have over 5k armor.

Shield Mastery - Increases your chance to block attacks by 10%, and you take only 95% damage from all attacks when holding a shield. Huge for giving your Ironbreaker some additional survivability. When wearing a shield it is important to get your block as high as possible as you can block physical/melee, magic attacks, and guard damage. Your block should fall somewhere in the high 30s - low 40s.

Rugged - Increases Toughness by 160. Bring this tactic if you have not found a proper 4th, and want to be a bit tankier. You should make sure your armor is over 5k (with gear and pot), your chance to be crit is 0 or less using a shield, and your wounds are 9k+ before slotting talismans or using renown points for Toughness. Rugged can help add supplemental Toughness if you do not have available renown points or space in your gear for Toughness talismans.

Seasoned Veteran - Whenever you block an attack you will take only 85% damage for 5 seconds. Pretty good tactic to bring along if you are going for a super tanky build.

Stoutness of Stone - You recover from Stuns and Knockdowns 50% quicker. You will still gain immunity based on the original duration. Although this won’t necessarily provide a significant increase to your survivability (unless you are knocked down and getting stabbed in the back), the times you are removed from the fight are when your guard and party will be most vulnerable. That being said, in large fights, the opposing side usually hands out free immunities which will diminish the returns you get from this tactic.

Seen It All Before - Snares last half duration against you and when you are critically hit by an enemy, the bonus damage that you suffer is reduced by 15%. Like Seasoned Veteran, Seen It All Before is a decent tactic if you are trying to be tankier. That being said, you should have a 0% chance to be crit or lower (does not mean you still can’t be critted) and you should also have a high block and parry rate. You are going to be tankier if you just avoid being hit so think carefully before you use this tactic as there are usually better options.

Stubbornness - Increases your Corporeal resistance by 252. Probably not ever worth using this tactic as Stubbornness of Stone can do basically the same thing and it is a 20 second ability that only costs 5 Grudges with no cooldown.

Utility

Punishing Knock - Inspiring attack will curse your target, reducing the value of their outgoing heals by 50% for 20 seconds. Outgoing heal debuffs are a rare commodity. Inspiring attack is on a 5 second cooldown which means you can have several healers debuffed at the same time. Pairing this attack with Kneecapper can hurt healers as you will debuff their outgoing heals and slightly debuff heal crits. Definitely worth fitting into your city siege/scenario builds if you have room.

Furious Reprisal - Shield of Reprisal will also increase the cooldown times of the enemy's abilities by an additional 5 seconds for the next 5 seconds. This tactic synergizes well with Punishing Knock and Kneecapper and is definitely worth bringing along if you have room for it. Note that it will still increase cooldown times even if the enemy has immunities to being knocked down.

Told Ya So! - Any time you critically hit an enemy, each group member within 100 feet will gain 25 Action Points. This effect will not trigger more than once every 3 seconds. If you are going to use this tactic, don’t use it with anything other than a 2H as you are going to need to max your melee crit for this to be useful. Running this with Sweet Revenge is mandatory. My recommendation is not to use it outside of niche builds as it is very expensive (11 points up the Brotherhood tree) and will only provide about a skills worth of AP to your group mates every 3 seconds or so.

Avalanche - When you disrupt an enemy’s spell, your run speed will be increased by 30% for 5 seconds and you will recover 90 health. Although I have not used this tactic, it seems like it would fit into a 2H small scale build than a warband build. Generally speaking you are going to have higher disrupt running a 2H anyways. Definitely could see this being useful in tracking down sorcs/maguses and/or keeping up with your white lion or slayer Oath Friend.

Oath of Vengeance - Vengeful Strike will now also affect all other allies within 20 feet of your Oath Friend. Vengeful Strike is an ability that boosts you and your Oath Friends Toughness. This tactic would be far better if it affected allies within 30-50 feet as you could buff most or all of your warband. As it stands it is probably better to have a Kotbs bring their Toughness aura than to run this tactic.

Unstoppable Juggernaut - Juggernaut’s cooldown is reduced to 20 seconds. Probably never worth running. There are far better tactics out there.

Relentless Training - Grudging Blow and Heavy Blow will cost 15 fewer action points. If you are PvPing, Grudging Blow isn’t going to be showing up in your rotation. Ironbreakers aren’t exactly AP starved classes either so it is better to not run this tactic.

Grudges

Rising Anger - Each time you hit an enemy you gain 5 Grudges. This effect will not trigger more than once per second. This is a great tactic if you are solo roaming the lakes and is usually paired with a 2H. It also has its place in 6 mans, but may not be as useful as some other tactics.

Dwarven Riposte - Whenever you parry you also build 30 Grudges. This effect will not trigger more than once every 3 seconds. As a tank you should almost always have relatively high parry especially if you are using Oathbound, so this tactic should activate every 3 seconds. This tactic fits well in solo and warband builds, especially if you are expending lots of Grudges buffing yourself and allies.

DPS

Sweet Revenge - Increases your chance to critically hit by 15% if you are above 50 Grudges. This is a fantastic tactic. It is my personal opinion that Ironbreakers do more damage when they stack melee crit. Consider using this with Ancestory’s Fury as that will give you easy access to 25% melee crit. If you are running a 2H dps spec, you should ALWAYS have this tactic!

Greataxe Mastery - When you are wielding a great weapon, your chance to parry is increased by 5% and all damage you deal is increased by 10%. A great tactic to bring if you are trying to max out your damage and gain a little extra survivability with a 2H. Note that it is fairly high up the Vengeance tree, so it does not come cheap.

Overprotective - Whenever your Oath Friend is attacked, there is a 25% chance that you toss the assailant a glare so fierce they take 150 damage. It’s crap… don’t run it.

Focused Offense - You deal 15% more damage and all enemy monsters will hate you 15% less, but your armor is reduced by 33%. Never bring this tactic into PvP unless you are looking to be a glass cannon that doesn’t do as much damage as an actual dps class. The only time to use this is if you are off tanking in PvE and need a bit more damage. New players will make the mistake of running this one not realizing that it completely nerfs your survivability with that armor debuff.

Crowd Control

Powered Etchings - Rune Etched Axe will now Knockback other players and Knockdown monsters and decrease their movement speed by 40% for 10 seconds. This is definitely a viable tactic in coordinated 24v24 combat (such as cities). It gives you the ability to interrupt various powerful destruction abilities such as Git To The Choppa and should help deal with pouncing melee squig herders. It can also be used as a way to protect healers/squishies from coordinated strikes. Be careful though because it is going to hand out immunities.

Long Reach - Extends the reach of Shield Sweep and Rune-Etched Axe by an additional 5 feet. This tactic is kind of a joke because 5 feet is nothing and you're not going to do much supplemental damage with a shield on anyways.

PvE

Menace - Enemy monsters will hate you 100% more than normal on all attacks. This tactic should be slotted any time you are main tanking.

Long-Held Grudge - All of your damaging attacks will cause additional hate based on Grudge. At 25 Grudges: Adds an additional 15 threat. At 50 Grudges: Adds an additional 20 threat. At 75 Grudges: Adds an additional 25 threat. At 100 Grudges: Adds an additional 30 threat. Basically adds additional aggro based on how many Grudges you have. Run Menace in place of this tactic.

Builds

The below builds can be divided into two categories: dps/2h, sword and board. They are all targeting rr70+.

DPS - 2H

Vengeance Heavy

Build

This build is all about maximizing your damage and is an absolute blast with the right gear. Many of an Ironbreakers most damaging abilities scale off of the Vengeance tree, so going up 13 points will certainly benefit Heavy Blow, Binding Grudge, and Stonebreaker’s armor debuff. You might be wondering if survivability will be impacted compared to the other 2H builds listed. The answer is, not really!

If you forget about gear/renown points for a second, this build grants an extra 5% parry that you are not going to have in the Tri-spec or self heal build. Obviously Grumble An’ Mutter (self heal) should make you last longer but remember it is on a 60 second cooldown, so you can’t use it that often. Assuming you are rr70+ you’ll still have access to the very important Oathbound and Runic Shield.

The rotation for this build is situational and very Grudge dependent. Keep in the back of your mind that the goal is to set yourself up for a successful Grudge-Born Fury. You should almost always open with Binding Grudge, and should be using Heavy Blow every 2-3 abilities. Oathbound should be used as soon as possible for the 25% parry and init buff, and hold off on using stonebreaker until you are at least at 25 Grudges. For maximum efficiency, hold off on using Grudge-Born Fury until you are at least at 75+ Grudges for the extra critical chance. My rotation for setting up GBF usually is some variation of this:

Stonebreaker
Taunt (enemy takes 30% more damage)
AF (10% crit + str)
Cave-In/Heavy Blow (if they do not have immunities you want to be hitting their back, otherwise Heavy Blow)
GBF

In order to maximize the damage you do with this build, you need to balance a couple of different stats. You are going to want to get as much melee crit as possible, but your primary focus will be on your strength and weapon skill. Remember IBs only do physical damage, and armor in RoR is super strong. Regardless of what 2H build you use, try to shoot for as much weapon skill as possible (500+) and any room you have left can go towards strength. Also note, the higher the crit, the more often GFB and Heavy Blow are going to tear up your enemy. Sweet Revenge and Ancestor’s Fury will get you to 25% melee crit and you should try to get 5%-10% more from gear (genesis, dominator, oppressor, bloodlord, off sov, weapons).

Pros

Solid damage with the potential to melt squishies
Endless fun

Cons

Requires good gear
Miss out on Earthshatter (AoE snare)

Tri-spec

Build

Solo self heal

Build

Sword and Board

If you are carrying a shield your primary focus should be surviving as long as possible and doing your best to keep your party/guard alive. The below builds do just that, with a few differences between them. Some bring more utility, others make you tankier.

Buff/Debuff Bot

Build

This is probably the most useful build you can run for city sieges. It provides a fair amount of utility, granted it is all single target, while still keeping you relatively tanky. This build is by no means easy. In fact, this is probably the most difficult Ironbreaker build you can run. Also note, if you are rr70+ you are going to have quite a few extra points. The extra points can be used to grab other tactics (such as the next build), or to provide stat buffs to various abilities.

Why is it so difficult? There is a ton to manage. All of your buffs/debuffs are single target which means you are going to have to manually apply them. In order to do that, you are going to need to switch around your Oath Friend constantly, including passing it to players outside of your party. I suggest moving Oath Friend to a key that is very easy to press. Oathbound should be given to as many allies as possible, and Ancestor’s Fury can be extremely helpful for all melee dps in your warband. If you are facing Sorcs or SHs, buffing important members of your warband with Stubborn as Stone (SaS) is essential. SaS gives you a 50% AA haste when hit by magic damage, so it can be paired with Watch An’ Learn to provide a huge AP boost to your Oath Friend. Also, keep in mind Oath Friend only has a 50 foot range which is shorter than you may realize.

When you are not buffing allies, you should be debuffing enemies. It is important to remember that you should layer your debuffs, with your stronger debuffs coming last. That will prevent them from being cleansed right away. Your go to throwaway debuff is Kneecapper. It is not that strong, and is better served for hiding your other debuffs. Consider specifically targeting healers, sorcs, choppas, SHs, and marauders with Kneecapper and/or Stonebreaker and/or Furious Reprisal. Kneecapper and Punishing knock, if used in combination, can serve as a double heal debuff because you can decrease their outgoing heals by 50% and reduce their heal crit by 20% (note it is not a flat 20%) at 100 grudges.

And if that wasn’t enough, as a tank it is paramount that you stay within guard range of your primary guard so that they are more survivable.

Tactics

Buffs

Debuffs

Ancestral Inheritance

Ancestor’s Fury

(10% melee crit + Str)

Stonebreaker (Armor)

Seasoned Veteran

Oathbound

(25% parry + Init)

Kneecapper (Crit)

Punishing Knock

Runic Shield (Magic Bubble)

Watch An’ Learn (AP)

Punishing Knock

(outgoing heal debuff

via Inspiring Attack)

Furious Reprisal

Stubborn as Stone

(Corporeal resists)

Inspiring Attack (WP + Str)

Guarded Attack (Armor)

Vengeful Strike (Toughness)

Furious Reprisal

(cooldown time increaser

via Shield of Reprisal)

Pros

Lots of single target utility
Very survivable
Useful in RvR and 24v24 play

Cons

Hard to master
Easy to get lost in the crowd
Difficult to determine what to focus on at any given moment

Max Utility

Courtesy of Throbbi!

Build

Selfish Survivor

Build

Balanced middle/right tree tank

Build