Looking at potential Renown builds in 1.4

The first draft of the new renown abilities have been published and they make for some quite interesting ready. Keeping in mind that they are very likely to change and currently do not have a tiering system in place we can start to look at potential builds. The abilities are a bit more defensive orientated but that suits as fine as tanks. Makes our lives easier.

One thing I want to keep in mind however is that as our gear gets better our block will also so the more I look at spending 20 points of renown for a total of 10% block I am struggling to justify it with other cool things in there.

So here's a few builds I can think of:

RR40 Defensive
Defender IV = 10% block increase
Futile Strikes II = 8% reduction in being crit
Trivial Blows I = 5% less crit damage

At RR40, you're just wanting to survive in ORvR against higher geared players, at this point you likely will be a guard bot so ensuring you have as much block and survivability is the way to go.

RR80 Defensive
Might IV = 72 Str
Deft Defender IV = 18% dodge and disrupt
Trivial Blows III = 30% less crit damage
Cleansing Wind I = cleanses all Curses, Ailments, and Hexes from you on a 5 minute cool down

RR100 Defensive
Might IV = 72 Str
Deft Defender IV = 18% dodge and disrupt
Trivial Blows IV = 50% less crit damage
Cleansing Wind I = cleanses all Curses, Ailments, and Hexes from you on a 5 minute cool down
5 points spare, possibly just pickup a bit of parry and block

Yes I picked strength, I still rate it highly on a tank even in defensive because if you hit like a wet noodle then you become worthless other than a guard bot and guard bots get ignored, you should be at least able to assist in dishing out damage, even if it isn't a huge amount. Some people prefer to pickup Weaponskill to improve armour penetration and parry so I'll leave it up to the individual to pick, I'd still recommend strength.

I picked Deft Defender over the block and parry for the simple fact that as a Black Orc we severely lack any sort of disrupt, we can get a high block (which will only get higher as gear progresses) and we have an OK level of parry available to us. This will help more in the long run than a smaller boost in block (and AFAIK, disrupt doesn't require you to be facing the target like block).

Trivial Blows. Crit damage is a pain, you can see 2k spikes even with high toughness and soft capped resists. A permanent reduction in damage taken from crits will help to balance out the fact that we will see more crit on higher gear levels.

Cleansing Wind. Perhaps it's a pet hate of mine but I detest seeing a pile of dots and debuffs on me and having no way to remove them other than the harbingers cloak (still not found the LotD ones to see if they're on the same cool down). Harbingers only removes a couple and isn't available to everyone anymore so having cleansing wind will give us a life line in small scale stuff, even if it's on a 5 minute cool down.

RR40 Offensive
Might V = 120 str
Blade Master I = 4 WS
Opportunist I = 2% melee crit

RR80 Offensive
Might V = 120 str
Blade Master I = 4 WS
Opportunist IV = 14% melee crit

RR100 Offensive
Might V = 120 str
Blade Master III = 38 WS
Vigor I = 4 Wounds
Opportunist IV = 14% melee crit
Quick Escape I = Adds a 5% chance to increase your movement speed by 25% for 5 seconds.

Obvious really, stack strength for guaranteed damage, then work on crit for the bonus and top off with WS to add armour penetration and I've added in Quick Escape since it should proc off dots etc to allow you to catch up with kiters to smash 'em in the face.

What I really don't rate
Looking through the RA and there's a few I don't rate for us which might look good to start with. The first one is Hardy Concession (You take X% less damage, but you deal X% less damage.). We want to do damage at some point and simply soaking up a bit of damage with a reduction in our own effectiveness offers nothing of benefit in my opinion. It IS very good for healers though.

Regeneration is another RA I don't rate. Ok, I don't rate the cost of it, the hp/4 is always nice but not for the cost in renown. I can't see any build where you'd even have 10 points left over which wouldn't be better placed in a stat compared to 30 hp/4.

I kinda go against the grain here but this is partially my own failings. I don't rate resolute defence currently as much as it was. The immunity timers right now work fine and with a Black Orc having Not in Da Face helps us and the group more. However! This is easily swapped if you want/require it for Cleansing Winds I in the 80+ builds so the choice is yours.

So that's my wee review of RA's as they currently stand, it will change and I get the feeling I've calculated something wrong at some point but... Meh :)