New hit Throne and Liberty gives players quite a few unique spins on traditional MMO mechanics, but its most compelling is the weapon combo system. Instead of choosing a player class, by equipping two different types of weapons you earn both the active and passive skills of each, letting you create hybrid builds that can be a hell of a lot of fun to experiment with.
The best build is always going to be the one you have the most fun with, of course, and any combination of weapons is viable for clearing content if built and played well. But some combinations are better than others, leading to the inevitable metas—to give you an idea of what’s working best for many players at the moment, here are some of the most commonly used builds known for being top-tier.
You might imagine sword plus sword is a bit of a redundant pick, but by combining the Sword & Shield with the Greatsword, you can become the ultimate ass-kicking tank. This build allows you to not only mitigate damage exceptionally well with various defensive skills, but you also dish out the hurt using the Greatsword’s hard-hitting abilities. With the right setup, this can also be one of the best farming builds, letting you gather tons of enemies and DPS them down rapidly.
Also consider: A combination of the Sword & Shield + Wand & Tome turns you into a traditional paladin archetype, granting you substantial sustain via healing spells, while offering up some damage-over-time abilities. If raw survivability is your goal, this build is calling your name.
It’s essentially impossible to beat the type of healing you can achieve by using a Wand & Tome with a Staff. You’ll bring some decent damage alongside being able to spam single-target and AOE healing spells to keep your party alive through just about anything. Even better, this combo is also incredible for farming due to a mixture of both weapons’ AOE spells, making it one of the most versatile builds in the game.
Also consider: The Wand & Tome with the Longbow turns you into a utility class. Though you may be missing a bit of the synergy found in the Wand & Tome + Staff build, you’ll nevertheless be a useful addition to your party with high damage, passive and active buffs, and off-healing capabilities.
If dishing out consistently high damage with an enjoyable rotation is your cup of tea, you won’t want to sleep on the Greatsword and Dagger combo. Because you cannot sleep on a cup of tea. The high damage from your Greatsword abilities mix beautifully with the critical hit increases offered from the Daggers, and their passive skills complement each other perfectly. Whether you’re looking to melt bosses or be a pest in PVP encounters, you won’t find a better all-arounder in the melee space.
Also consider: Using the Greatsword with the Wand & Tome—this can also be a viable option if you enjoy AOE farming using crowd control, though it’s not always ideal for single-target engagements. Even so, it can be a lot of fun to round up tons of enemies and burn them down while keeping your health topped off with ease.
If you’d like the best single-target damage available in the game, look no further than the overwhelming power of the Crossbow and Dagger combo. Using a near-constant stream of attacks against your foes lets you rack up DPS at rates unseen on other classes, and the mixture of melee and ranged skills results in a thrilling rotation that often feels like a deadly dance.
Also consider: The Longbow and Staff combo ranks as one of the most deadly builds in the game as well, letting you utterly nuke enemies with fireballs, lightning, and flurries of arrows. This is the definition of a class cannon build, and it’s definitely the way to go if you’d prefer to avoid any melee attack requirements showing up in your rotation.
With all of that out of the way, make sure you also check out our tips for getting started in Throne and Liberty.