What makes a good tank?

PaigeEvenstar

Basically I am sometimes a tank, my main char is a dps and next to that i even heal sometimes. All on different characters ofcourse, with class appropriate gear and skills. I have a question for all off you, just because I am curious and I would like to improve my experiences with this class/profession.

My tank is a dragonknight running Magma Shell with Tavahs Favor and the monsterset that generates ultimate. This makes me invincible for a short while, and able to take a high damage spike if i do the taunting right. I generate my stamina with heavy attacks and am able to take a lot of damage with my 44k hp. I run in, turn the boss away from the group and keep him taunted and steady on one position if at all possible. Can anyone give me tips/suggestions on how to possibly improve this ?

Yesterday I did trials with a well balanced (supposedly) group and i kept on dying because i ran out of stamina, I even resorted to stamina/weapon power potions because my group was getting fed up with me. To be honest I have never died that much in any group/experience and I'm thinking I did something wrong there. The off-tank, and stamina nightblade with a shield and a taunt, had to take over for me everytime my char decided to take a nap on the floor during a boss fight.
In detail it was mostly the warrior in nHRC and the mage's axes nAA. It obviously annoyed me to no end, that he could keep everything going without blinking an eye and my char (who is build for tanking) had to nap every time.
What may I expect as a tank, from healers and dd's, in trials? What is best for me to do, how can I improve so that I can do this without dying?

Please ask me any questions about whatever you need to know to give me a good answer/positive feedback.
(To the moderators, if this post belong in another topic, please be so kind to place it there)

TARAFRAKA

your health is too high. drop to 33 to 35k until yoyr comfortable and add it to your stam pool. when you get comfy, drop health to 30k.

Jonno

how much stamina and block cost reduction do you have? 44k health seems very high 30k is enough for even the hardest content in the game. do you use igneous shield and ultimates to get stamina back?

Eweroun

1) tanking dungeons is not the same as tanking trials.
2) in trials you cannot release the block (or you're instaRIP)
3) dungeon tanking gear is not the same as trial tanking gear


Like said before, way to much health.
Put all points in stamina, use health enchantments to generate around 30K health
Watch videos of @Woeler with explanations of tanking (trials)


But man, the moment I saw you were doing heavy attacks to recuperate stamina.... nah, not good.

paulsimonps

Tanks in trials NEVER use 2-handed weapons. You do 2 shields. Also some quick tips.

Your CP. The points you have in the Lord are better to put into the damage reduction stuff in the lady, you will survive better. Try putting points in the Blessed in your blue tree to increase your self heals strength. And if you are running out of stamina try putting more points into Shadow Ward for the block cost reduction. I tank all types of veteran trials and I can tell you that I have all possible forms of cost reduction and I can block for days and still be useful to the group with high magicka recovery for other support.

Also you are not using the melee taunt and that is a big issue. The range taunt costs to much stamina to keep using on ALL the mobs. Get the sword and board taunt, it not only costs WAY less, its also a great debuff. And take of noxious breath, you don't need to deal damage, its useless, and most dps will buff themselves so don't need to get igneous weapons either. However, get Igneous shields spam that sucker when you get low on stamina or need extra protection. its a strong damage shield and since you are a DK you will get 5% of your stamina back when you use it.

As well like others have said you HP is actually too high, it means you are losing out on other resources. Try this. Get rid of plague doctor and get something like Dragon or Ebon. Then get all Tri glyphs on your gear and then use your attributes into HP until you get to 30k HP. All other points should be put into stamina. And since you are a imperial you can actually if you wish try your hands at a few points into Magicka. Give it a try, you will be able to use more abilities this way and your Stamina return on synergies, earthen heart abilities, shards and ultimate's will increase.

EDIT:

Also health recovery is 100% completely useless. Get ride of those enchants for block cost or magicka recovery. Also saw you are werewolf, that does nothing for a tank, however try Vampire. Vampire tanks are extremely successful. The extra fire damage is not noticed by a tank but the extra magicka recovery and mitigation is.

Flameheart

Your worn sets sound good already. Tavas + Bloodspawn for ultireg is standard. 44k health is far too much. Everything just over 30k health is fine. There should be no single attribute point in health and you should use prismatic glyphs at least on the "big" armor pieces (head, chest, legs). Your small pieces should be "sturdy" for less block costs with health glyphs. You should use tristatfood and tripots as a raidtank. You don't need to get to the resistance cap. 28k to 30k resistances selfbuffed is enough. The difference from that to cap (33500 at moment I believe) should be less than 5% inc damage.

Hel Ra vet last boss is "special". It's not enough to just tank him you need to avoid/survive his channeled flurry attack. This is a special attack of 4 consecutive hits which deal over 40k+ damage if all strikes hit even if blocked. It is possible to avoid the attack (or at least a part of the attack) by just moving out of effect area or roll dodging. You need to watch what he is doing and pay attention to his animations. Sometimes and with some luck and a 25% dodge buff (medium armor active skill) and awesome heals you might survive it, but it's no guarantee. For unexperienced groups it is great to have an offtank there who takes over if the main tank bites the dust and is rezzed again. An offtank is not a bad idea in general for the last boss in vet without hardmode, because he is able to spot melee adds and even ranged adds to draw them among boss and players so they can be interrupted and finished just by the typical AoE skills (Elemental Blockade etc.)

Your death in vet AA could be caused by ressource drain and/or just too many axes (it should be 6 at max when the Mage enters the final phase where all gather in the middle and the the axes vanish) or just not blocking.

A hint for almost all boss fights on vet: Avoid to change bars a lot (my advice is to avoid to change them at all). If you change bars the game identfies you for a short time as standing there without block. The Manticore especially loves to aim for such a gap.

paulsimonps

Flameheart wrote: »

Hel Ra vet last boss is "special". It's not enough to just tank him you need to avoid his channeled flurry attack. This is a special attack of 4 consecutive hits which deal over 40k+ damage if all strikes hit even if blocked. It is possible to avoid the attack (or at least a part of the attack) by just moving out of effect area or roll dodging. You need to watch what he is doing and pay attention to his animations. Sometimes and with some luck and a 25% dodge buff (medium armor active skill) and awesome heals you might survive it, but it's no guarantee. For unexperienced groups it is great to have an offtank there who takes over if the main tank bites the dust and is rezzed again. An offtank is not a bad idea in general for the last boss in vet without hardmode, because he is able to spot melee adds and even ranged adds to draw them among boss and players so they can be interrupted and finished just by the typical AoE skills (Elemental Blockade etc.)

Best way to survive the warrior is the have someone, not necessarily an other tank, guard you. That is use the Alliance War Support Ability Guard, if at all possible Mystic Guard for the extra healing received. The 30% extra damage mitigation goes a long way. With that on Normal and Non Hardmode Veteran you can without problem stand in his Channeled Strikes. But it does require focused heals. But since the adds really shouldn't be that big of a deal to bring down then 75% of the fight you are the only one that needs to be healed so both healers can spam strong heals on you. That is how most guilds do it. Some tanks with great healers don't even need guard on regular veteran, on hardmode thou its a must have, he hits just to damn hard.

You really don't want to try and dodge it, if you move him constantly DPS loss will be extreme. As well there is a brief period after a dodge roll where you are not immune to damage and also not blocking where the warrior can and most likely will one shot you unless you ran a bit away from him before dodging.

Jonno

PaigeEvenstar wrote: »

im going to replace one skill in my 2handed bar with green dragon blood as soon as i have the skillpoint to do it. .

go for the other morph as an oh *** heal the recovery from green dragon blood will be useless as it doesnt work while blocking.

replace plague doctor with ebon (dont use ebon for S+B its bugged recraft a tava S+B). For axes i also swap to hist bark that way i dont have to waste stamina recasting shuffle.

Change jewelery enchant to reduced block cost

Heres a handy block cost calculator
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dPefUmJlK4YfkhIuC39-0uo8wITIPqSHeS9btKY9J2Q/edit?usp=sharing

paulsimonps

Jonno wrote: »

PaigeEvenstar wrote: »

im going to replace one skill in my 2handed bar with green dragon blood as soon as i have the skillpoint to do it. .

go for the other morph as an oh *** heal the recovery from green dragon blood will be useless as it doesnt work while blocking.

replace plague doctor with ebon (dont use ebon for S+B its bugged recraft a tava S+B). For axes i also swap to hist bark that way i dont have to waste stamina recasting shuffle.

Change jewelery enchant to reduced block cost

Heres a handy block cost calculator
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dPefUmJlK4YfkhIuC39-0uo8wITIPqSHeS9btKY9J2Q/edit?usp=sharing

That way of calculating is no longer accurate. Here is the new formula since One Tamriel:

BLOCK COST=(Base*((100-CP)/100)*((100-#Sturdy*Strength of Sturdy)/100)*((100-Fortress)/100)-(#Enchants*Strength of Enchants))*((100-Defensive Posture)/100)

Flameheart

paulsimonps wrote: »

Flameheart wrote: »

Hel Ra vet last boss is "special". It's not enough to just tank him you need to avoid his channeled flurry attack. This is a special attack of 4 consecutive hits which deal over 40k+ damage if all strikes hit even if blocked. It is possible to avoid the attack (or at least a part of the attack) by just moving out of effect area or roll dodging. You need to watch what he is doing and pay attention to his animations. Sometimes and with some luck and a 25% dodge buff (medium armor active skill) and awesome heals you might survive it, but it's no guarantee. For unexperienced groups it is great to have an offtank there who takes over if the main tank bites the dust and is rezzed again. An offtank is not a bad idea in general for the last boss in vet without hardmode, because he is able to spot melee adds and even ranged adds to draw them among boss and players so they can be interrupted and finished just by the typical AoE skills (Elemental Blockade etc.)

Best way to survive the warrior is the have someone, not necessarily an other tank, guard you. That is use the Alliance War Support Ability Guard, if at all possible Mystic Guard for the extra healing received. The 30% extra damage mitigation goes a long way. With that on Normal and Non Hardmode Veteran you can without problem stand in his Channeled Strikes. But it does require focused heals. But since the adds really shouldn't be that big of a deal to bring down then 75% of the fight you are the only one that needs to be healed so both healers can spam strong heals on you. That is how most guilds do it. Some tanks with great healers don't even need guard on regular veteran, on hardmode thou its a must have, he hits just to damn hard.

You really don't want to try and dodge it, if you move him constantly DPS loss will be extreme. As well there is a brief period after a dodge roll where you are not immune to damage and also not blocking where the warrior can and most likely will one shot you unless you ran a bit away from him before dodging.

Yep, I don't play a tank there, was just remembering the tanking discussions there in my guild. You are right, I forgot about guard, most underrated skill ever in this game.

timidobserver

The best tanks know the content well enough to lead the group. Things are harder if the tank is unfamiliar with what he's tanking.

PaigeEvenstar

TARAFRAKA wrote: »

your health is too high. drop to 33 to 35k until yoyr comfortable and add it to your stam pool. when you get comfy, drop health to 30k.

Jonno wrote: »

44k health seems very high 30k is enough for even the hardest content in the game.

Eweroun wrote: »

Watch videos of @Woeler with explanations of tanking (trials)

OK that sounds logical... less hp >> more stam >> more block = stay alive
Hmm thanks good people !! And thanks for the video's I will certainly look at them and learn.

Jonno wrote: »

how much stamina and block cost reduction do you have? do you use igneous shield and ultimates to get stamina back?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5-vbWvVspC2bmVoVkQ1WXo0Wkk/view

my character sheet, as it is now.
i have 6 sturdy armorpieces, the rest reinforced. my weps are decisive (one hander) and defending (twohander).

i do use ultimates to get my resources back, and im going to replace one skill in my 2handed bar with green dragon blood as soon as i have the skillpoint to do it. Furthermore i have all the passives, in class abilities aswell as race abilities plus the undaunted metle and i eat tri-food of level 150.

PaigeEvenstar

timidobserver wrote: »

The best tanks know the content well enough to lead the group. Things are harder if the tank is unfamiliar with what he's tanking.

And the best way to learn is to experience it in the game and discuss it with people who have done it before and/or have heard about it. Thus through these kinds of awesome help you guys have given me here !

Thank you all very much for bothering to answer and given me your thought/experiences

sneakymitchell

If u want DPS instead of blocking all the damn time.https://youtu.be/vemr8LNY2y8

sneakymitchell

PaigeEvenstar wrote: »

timidobserver wrote: »

The best tanks know the content well enough to lead the group. Things are harder if the tank is unfamiliar with what he's tanking.

And the best way to learn is to experience it in the game and discuss it with people who have done it before and/or have heard about it. Thus through these kinds of awesome help you guys have given me here !

Thank you all very much for bothering to answer and given me your thought/experiences

Being a good tank is up to u the matter is survive and try to taunt many mobs and block when almost low on health. But the video will help self substain and deal damage. Tanks can do damage without blocking much at all this build can DPS as well but ain't much support to the group.

raj72616a

i just started tanking normal trials recently, done nAA and nSO. i use full heavy armor and pariah set for almost capped resistance, always keep minor maim (-15% damage) on boss, extended ritual for major mending (+25% healing) and HoT, Vigor for more HoT, Leeching Plate set for more HoT, engine guardian set for occasional heal or stam restore. as templar i cant restore stam as good as DK so i need to heavy attack and use potion and use drain stam weapon enchant to recover stamina.

but i only have 24k health, dies sometimes, and people were unhappy and yelled at me, and we finished the trial anyway. so for now i'm sticking with normal trial and wont try vet trial yet.

paulsimonps

sneakymitchell wrote: »

PaigeEvenstar wrote: »

timidobserver wrote: »

The best tanks know the content well enough to lead the group. Things are harder if the tank is unfamiliar with what he's tanking.

And the best way to learn is to experience it in the game and discuss it with people who have done it before and/or have heard about it. Thus through these kinds of awesome help you guys have given me here !

Thank you all very much for bothering to answer and given me your thought/experiences

Being a good tank is up to u the matter is survive and try to taunt many mobs and block when almost low on health. But the video will help self substain and deal damage. Tanks can do damage without blocking much at all this build can DPS as well but ain't much support to the group.

That set up of yours is only good in PvP and 4 man content, absolute crap for trials. The dps you gain is nothing compared to the dps increase the rest of the group gets from a proper support tank. A Trial tank blocks like 90% of the time. I mean try dropping block on the Warrior, The Mantikora or the Axes of the mage, see how that goes, but to be fair thou you can go without blocking on the Twins and other weaker bosses as their own attacks are weak but their mechanics makes them difficult. And he did kind of ask about trial tanking advice. And really unless you are going for score in vDSA, there is no need to swap out to a different set up for dungeons or veteran dungeons. Just stick with the trial tank set up and you are golden.

And just taunting and surviving is not enough to be considered a good tank, crown control is a HUGE deal, getting mobs in the right type of placement is key for fast and successful runs whether its Trials or Dungeons. Being able to know how to Chain weaker targets or how to Pull CC Immune targets to stack them up for increased AoE DPS, its also easier for the healers to manage since the DPS's and the Tanks will be stacked up better for better use of Healing Springs and or Combat Prayer. It will also make it easier for the tanks themselves, not having to run around the entire instance to retaunt everything cause all the people you didn't CC are chasing the DPS's and they are now trying to run away from the mobs rather then helping stacking them up.

A good tanks as Uriel pointed out Knows the fights and remembers how and where to put the mobs for optimal performance as well as knowing how to stay alive and to keep your team alive, and to help them get the best possible set up Crowd Control wise for an easier fight. That's how you tank.

SquareSausage

As said above, get reduced block cost on rings/neck, its helps innumerably. I run infused head leg chest, sturdy on small pieces, reinforced on shield.

Again, drop health spec into stamina instead. I prefer about 33k at the moment, nice wee cushion to survive off. You dont need too much magicka as all you'll be using that for is volatile armour, igneous shields and dragon blood (if needed).
Casting igneous gives you back 5% stam everytime you use it when fully levelled with helping hands passive so is a great way to regain stamina when you cant drop block.

using warhorn if you have it and casting it in a rotation is the way to go, that also will restore your stats.

All else fails get your templar to throw you shards, and dont be afraid to ask for them. Especially when tanking multiple targets like axes as it is stamina heavy blocking them all and keeping them all taunted and debuffed.

SquareSausage

Your champ points are all wrong for a tank. Everyones is different but there are some fundamentals.

Drop heavy armour focus and expert defender and spec bastion for your igenous shields and quick recovery. you should be at armour cap or just under already.

Put points into elemental defender and hardy.

precise is good for improving vigor heals. piercing and mighty not needed but if you going for last stand yea and helps solo play

Specc blessed for your self heals

choose lots in warlord, forget about bashing focus

Arcanist for magicka recovery to cast shields, no need for stam recovery as you'll be blocking and won't recover

Shadow ward for some block reduction

Also i prefer to run magicka regen mundus for that extra boost

CPTRutt

On my tank I run 5 dragon/ 5 histbark/2 bloodspawn. My health is around 30k and i can block for a very long time. Tanks should actually be carrying multiple sets. Each situation is different. I have a complete set of dragon, histbark, tavas, alkosh, and footman. My only heal i have on my bars is dragon blood because vigor is not needed. you should have a healer around but if not. vigor is a waste of stam because you need it all for blocking and taunting.