Ice tank?

Inhuman003

Can anyone give me any tip on how to ice tank? From Champion Points to what type of gear I need to wear and weapon I need to use?

VaranisArano

For weapon, Ice Staff and One Hand and Shield.

With Ice Staff, the Trifocus passive will make you heavy attack into a taunt and make block cast magicka. That's pretty nice, and fits the ice tank theme.

However, I also recommend tanking with one hand and shield because the Pierce Armor taunt is a great debuff, heroic slash a great up to generating tool, and for better or for worse, PUGs will expect a tank to have a shield.

Taleof2Cities

Safe to assume PvE, here, @Inhuman003?

DocFrost72

VaranisArano wrote: »

For weapon, Ice Staff and One Hand and Shield.

With Ice Staff, the Trifocus passive will make you heavy attack into a taunt and make block cast magicka. That's pretty nice, and fits the ice tank theme.

However, I also recommend tanking with one hand and shield because the Pierce Armor taunt is a great debuff, heroic slash a great up to generating tool, and for better or for worse, PUGs will expect a tank to have a shield.

This is a good overview of each style. For emphasis, even my ice staff front bar tanks use sword and shield on their back bar for easy breach/fracture uptime. That said, if you are dead set against using one hand and shield, you'll need to run through a checklist.

Tanks can provide:
Fracture,
Breach,
Taunt,
Maim,
Ultimate generation,
Warhorn,
(Sometimes) A pull
(Sometimes) A Root

Now, with just an ice staff equipped, you get the following:

Breach (ele drain is the advised morph),
Taunt (Heavy attack from ice staff, though it may be worth still using the undaunted skill "inner rage" and morphs),
Maim (Ice secondary effect with good uptime),
Warhorn,
A pull (Silver leash),
A root (Ice element effect of wall of elements)

Which leaves fracture and ultimate generation as things to consider when building. Some classes have innate fracture built in, so for dks/wardens/nightblades, you could juggle those. Another possibility is the crafted set "night mother's gaze", but the 2-4 bonuses are not the most helpful to you. This means if you want to provide fracture and your group does not have an ability to do so, you may want to use sword and shield back bar.

The trick to ice staff tanking is magicka management, if you plan to block often. Heavy attacks will restore mag, just be careful as they have a longer windup to charge than sword and shield. This leaves you open to stuns or really hard hitting attacks, so time them when you know you aren't about to become a pancake.

Templars have channeled focus (which gives you your major resist and more come next patch),
Nightblades have siphoning attacks (which can also be a secondary heal),
Dragonknights have their ultimates and a passive that gives them magicka back for inflicting burning (changed in summerset, I believe?),
Wardens have the betty netch (which also removes a negative status effect) and the green balance passive (best utilized with leeching vines in my opinion),
Sorcerers have dark conversion and pet death (the latter is only niche on paper- the clanfear or matriarch can heal for a ton)

All classes can access elemental drain, as well as balance. Be aware balance halves damage shields and healing done for 4 seconds, so time this for when you'll be using neither healing or wards.

Hope this helps! Tag me if you have questions