AION 2 Gladiator Macro: Best PvE Macro, Chain Order & Level 16 Changes

What is the best Gladiator macro in AION 2?

One chain: Rage Burst → Overhead Slam → Rending Blow, held together with your basic attack. It is the macro of Grobs, whose leveling build is the most-liked Gladiator macro on questlog.gg (55 likes on 26 October), and it is still the most common Gladiator chain: 38% of the 458 public Global Gladiator builds with a macro use that exact chain, and 80% of the builds named for leveling do. The whole setup:

How chains, the macro key and delays work for every class is in our AION 2 macro guide.

Why does the chain go in that order?

A chain casts the first skill in it that is ready, so the longest cooldown goes first and the filler last. Each skill in the Gladiator chain has a job, according to the client data:

1. Rage Burst is a stigma with a long cooldown. It deals damage, lowers the target’s Attack, raises your PvE Damage Boost and enables Overhead Slam on the target for 10 seconds. Grobs takes it to stigma level 5 first, which he says cuts its cooldown from 45 to 30 seconds.
2. Overhead Slam is your biggest single-target hit, but it can only be used on a knocked-down target, after Rage Burst, or on the 7% chance it triggers when you hit a target immune to crowd control, which most bosses are. Placed second, it fires whenever it is allowed.
3. Rending Blow hits up to four enemies and raises your Enmity. It fills every moment the other two are not ready.

Put Rending Blow first and the chain would never reach the other two. That is the trap GunghoGuns warns about in his macro guide: with an instant skill at the front, a chain never moves on.

What changes at skill level 16?

Overhead Slam loses its cooldown and Rending Blow starts refunding MP. Their level 16 options in the client data:

Grobs’s level 45 rotation is built on both. Once Overhead Slam and Rending Blow reach 16, he stops holding Keen Strike and holds only the macro key, because Rending Blow now refunds mana on crits. The public builds have moved the same way: 72% of Gladiator builds with a macro take Overhead Slam’s no-cooldown option, and 52% take Rending Blow’s MP refund (65% and 41% on 14 October).

Grobs’s newer public build, “Gladiator - Overhead Level 16” (published 2026-10-18), has Rending Blow, Ruinous Blow, Overhead Slam and Sword Aura Rampage at 16 and runs a different macro: Lunge Stance → Zikel’s Blessing and Rage Burst → Ruinous Blow → Overhead Slam.

Before 16, keep Keen Strike on left click. It restores 100 MP per hit, and Grobs holds it with the macro while leveling to keep his mana up. Ulfhednar keeps it on left click at level 45 as well. In the client data, its level 12 option also cuts a second off Ruinous Blow’s cooldown with every hit. Choose based on how often you run dry. 89% of public Gladiator builds with Keen Strike on the bar leave it out of the macro, so it can stay on left click.

Grobs — The Only Gladiator PvE Guide You Need — YouTube

Grobs — The Only Gladiator PvE Guide You Need

Which other Gladiator macros do players use?

Three longer macros are common. These are the full macros, counted among the 458 public Gladiator builds with a macro, checked on 2026-10-26:

The longer macros add the buffs and Ruinous Blow, which 63% of all Gladiator macros include. Ruinous Blow grants Prepare for Battle, a 20-second buff to PvE Damage Boost and Critical Hit, so keeping it in the macro keeps the buff up. Lunge Stance is in 48% of Gladiator macros and Zikel’s Blessing in 47%.

Ulfhednar’s split is the one built for bosses. His Sword Aura Rampage → Rending Blow chain uses the ordering rule: Sword Aura Rampage can only hit a staggered target, so the macro fires it whenever the boss is staggered and Rending Blow the rest of the time. At level 16, every Sword Aura Rampage hit also cuts 1 second off all your cooldowns. Both creators have since changed their own macros (questlog.gg, checked again on 26 October). Ulfhednar’s PvE DPS build (49 likes) now runs only Zikel’s Blessing → Lunge Stance → Blade Toss → Ruinous Blow and Rage Burst → Overhead Slam; his “Endgame” build (30 likes) keeps Sword Aura Rampage → Rending Blow but drops Blade Toss and Ruinous Blow. Netero (47 likes) now runs Keen Strike, Ankle Slice → Overhead Slam and Sword Aura Rampage → Rending Blow. Sword Aura Rampage → Rending Blow is now in 28% of Gladiator macros, up from 21% on 19 October, and builds named for level 45 or a later stage run the core chain in only 51% of cases (79% on 14 October); the others move to splits like these.

What should you keep out of the Gladiator macro?

Your dashes, Focused Block and your crowd control. Among public Gladiator builds with a macro that have each skill on their skill bar, these are the shares that leave it out:

A dash fired by the macro can carry you into a boss attack you were trying to avoid, and Grobs’s boss opener uses Leaping Slam and Focused Block at set moments: leap in, use Ruinous Blow for Prepare for Battle, then parry the boss’s first attack. The full opener is in the Gladiator PvE build.

What delay should a Gladiator macro use?

10 ms, or none. 178 of the 458 public Gladiator builds with a macro set a delay, and almost all of those steps use 10 ms, as Netero’s does; Grobs’s builds leave it at 0. If skills come out late on a slow connection, raise it; the AION 2 macro guide lists what the creators use for each ping.

For the skill levels and stigmas behind this macro, see the Gladiator PvE build; the most-liked builds are compared in the best Gladiator build, and every Gladiator page is linked from the Gladiator builds hub.

Where does this Gladiator macro come from?

• Macro data: the macros in 458 public Global Gladiator skill builds on questlog.gg, read on 2026-10-26. questlog.gg lists only the first 900 of its Gladiator builds.
• Grobs: The Only Gladiator PVE Guide You Need (2026-09-29) and his public Gladiator - Leveling and Gladiator - Overhead Level 16 builds; his “Gladiator - Goal Early 45” build, cited here before, is no longer public.
• Ulfhednar: AION 2 Gladiator PvE DPS Build (2026-10-06) and his public Ulf’s Gladiator PvE DPS and “Endgame” builds (updated 2026-10-18 and 2026-10-20).
• .maksimvladimirov: the public Netero build.
• imbamuertes: the public Gladi build.
• Chain order: GunghoGuns Gaming’s Aion 2 Macro Guide: How to Build Macros for Any Class (2026-10-05).
• Skill effects: the Global client data in questlog.gg’s skill builder.