New tank. What craftable gear to use while farming the gear I ultimately want?

Shakri12

This is the first time I’ve played as a tank. I’ve done tons of research on the role and know how I ultimately want to play and what gear I want. I’m almost CP 160 and am ready to take the plunge and get into dungeons for farming my end goal gear.

What craftable gear can I wear to benefit me the most while I gather the sets I want?

gronoxvx

Cant go wrong with torags pact and fortified brass.

I havent tanked for a while admittedly (since before elsweyr), but torugs pact was also something you could continue to use at end game if you didnt have the best in slot or all other required sets (ebon etc) were used by the other tank.

Asardes

I recently made a character on NA. Stamina DK, basically a straight copy of my first character on EU. I leveled fast to 50 and CP160 taking advantage of the event double XP bonus, then made a basic DD setup - 5 Shadow of the Red Mountain armor pieces, Spriggan weapons and jewelry and 2 random heavy armor pieces - Plague Doctor in this - for head and shoulders. Then I cleared some overland content for more skill points since I only had ~100 at this time. Then when I was around CP300 - which didn't take long - I just queued as fake tank for normal Crypt of Hearts 1 & 2, slotting Inner Rage instead of Flames of Oblivion, got 2 Ebon Armor pieces - chest and legs, and a set of blue jewelry, then I did the same for Crypt of Hearts 1 on veteran, and got purple jewelry to replace the blue ones since I wasn't happy with them. The dungeon is easy so I managed to get no death and speed run on it as fake tank. Then I crafted Torug's weapons and 3 armor pieces for the other slots. For the head & shoulder I used the same filler heavy armor pieces until I got the monster set I wanted, which is Earthgore. Now my tank uses 5 Ebon 5 Torug 2 Earthgore and it's basically ready for any content - this is one of my builds on EU and it works like a charm for most 4 man content, and even did some trials. Long story short, I didn't need any intermediate, throwaway gear, let alone crafted one.

zvavi

Tanking in ESO is mostly support, in endgame tanks usually have usually at least one set they don't even get anything from. Buy I must warn you, you don't really start to tank up till the harder content, before that nothing can hurt you and it is kinda boring. I still remember my cultural shock walking into a vDLC dungeon first time as a tank.

Kiyakotari

Torug's Pact and Fortified Brass are craftable go-to sets for tanks setting out on farming dungeon, arena, trials, and overland gear. Both also have the benefit of being sets that you can hang on to even after you've got your desired sets, because they both have situational usefulness in different boss fights or group compositions.

An easy overland set to get, to quickly supplement your two crafted sets, is Plague Doctor from Deshaan.

Another easy set to farm that you'll find applicable to a lot of different situations is Ebon Armory from Crypt of Hearts 1 and Crypt of Hearts 2. You can blow through Crypt of Hearts 1 on normal very quickly, and vet is only slightly more challenging - and has the benefit of dropping gear in purple quality. You can easily farm out the Ebon Armory body pieces, and likely in the traits you want, in just a few hours of play (even if you're having bad RNG).

As for the specific usefulness and application of the sets...

Torug's Pact is a group support set. It's best to get this on weapons and jewelry. If you're tanking, it's good to have an ice staff on your back bar, for magicka regen and the block buff and slow from chilled effect, or a lightning staff, for the magicka regen and the off-balance from shock effect. You'll want the staff (regardless of which you opt for) in the Infused trait, with Crusher enchant. Using Elemental Blockade will help you keep Crusher up longer than if you equip it on your front bar. Then you can have a shielf and one hand weapon on your front bar, with Infused and a Weakening enchant on the one hand weapon.

Fortified Brass and Plague Doctor's are both going to fall into your "selfish" tanking toolkit, and help you with surviving some of those harder hitting bosses, but at the cost of some of your group support capabilities (depending on whether you equip just one or both of them).

With Ebon Armory, I would highly recommend getting your gear in the body pieces (chest, legs, waist, hands, and feet) instead of weapons and jewelry. Ebon Armory is a group support set that buffs the max health of party members who are within a certain range of you, and there is a known issue with it when it's equipped on weapons. When the tank player swaps bars, the buff drops off for a second or so, as the game counts the set as being equipped in less than the full five pieces for that brief moment of the swap. The brief health drop from the swap often results in dead DPS or healers.

If I'm setting up a new tank, I get Torug's on weapons and jewelry, and Fortified Brass on body. Then I go farm either Ebon Armory on body or Plague Doctor's on weapons and jewelry. From there, then I start working on more niche sets, like Roar of Alkosh and Yolnahkriin.

LashanW

Shakri12 wrote: »

This is the first time I’ve played as a tank. I’ve done tons of research on the role and know how I ultimately want to play and what gear I want. I’m almost CP 160 and am ready to take the plunge and get into dungeons for farming my end goal gear.

What craftable gear can I wear to benefit me the most while I gather the sets I want?

What is your class?

Torug's Pact + Armor of the Seducer if you are a dragon knight tank. (and strictly want craftable gear) But tbh, Torug's Pact set only really matters in trials, not dungeons.

If it's possible for you to get overland sets (buy from guild traders or farm), I'd suggest Livewire + Armor of the Seducer sets especially for dungeons. Most overland tank sets are available for cheap at guild traders, use TTC website to find good deals. If you are using Livewire set, try to run a lightning staff on the back bar.

gatekeeper13

Since you are a beginner, from craftable sets choose Torug's + Fortified Brass.

Then, farm CoH1 and drop Fortified Brass for Ebon or Brands of Imperium (White Gold Tower). Ebon is better for trials, Brands better for dungeons imho.

Finally, you can farm Sunspire and Maw of Lorkhaj for Yolna and Alkosh sets.

Other non-craftable, overland sets that you can buy are Bahraha's Curse, Powerful Assault, Plague Doctor, Warrior-Poet.

BalticBlues

For PURE tanking, combine a HEALTH set with an ARMOR set.

Craftable:
Orgnum's Scales (HEALTH) plus Fortified Brass (ARMOR)

Overland (you can buy it):
Plague Doctor (HEALTH) plus Warrior-Poet (ARMOR)

The next step could be farming two useful sets to combine with Warrior-Poet:
Ebon Armor (HEALTH) plus Warrior-Poet (ARMOR) for Trials
Brands of Imperium (HEALTH) plus Warrior-Poet (ARMOR) for VetDungeons

Warrior-Poet is easy to buy/farm, so you make it your foundation of jewelery and weapons.
Ebon, Imperium etc. are much harder to get, so you make it your body armor.

CMDR_Un1k0rn

zvavi wrote: »

Tanking in ESO is mostly support, in endgame tanks usually have usually at least one set they don't even get anything from. Buy I must warn you, you don't really start to tank up till the harder content, before that nothing can hurt you and it is kinda boring. I still remember my cultural shock walking into a vDLC dungeon first time as a tank.

I disagree with this. I wish I had started as a tank in the first place.

Have another character for a DPS role? And a healing role? Definitely. But treat your tank like a tank from the start. So much better to do it that way in my opinion.

If he needs damage for overland stuff then a simple crafted set will suffice there too.

zvavi

CMDR_Un1k0rn wrote: »

zvavi wrote: »

Tanking in ESO is mostly support, in endgame tanks usually have usually at least one set they don't even get anything from. Buy I must warn you, you don't really start to tank up till the harder content, before that nothing can hurt you and it is kinda boring. I still remember my cultural shock walking into a vDLC dungeon first time as a tank.

I disagree with this. I wish I had started as a tank in the first place.

Have another character for a DPS role? And a healing role? Definitely. But treat your tank like a tank from the start. So much better to do it that way in my opinion.

If he needs damage for overland stuff then a simple crafted set will suffice there too.

No no, you misunderstood me, I lvl my tanks as tanks, just that sometimes when full tank skill load has 40% of dmg in random normal... It is discouraging. Long fights that you can't change the outcome of much, nothing can really kill you..
Etc etc.

CMDR_Un1k0rn

zvavi wrote: »

CMDR_Un1k0rn wrote: »

zvavi wrote: »

Tanking in ESO is mostly support, in endgame tanks usually have usually at least one set they don't even get anything from. Buy I must warn you, you don't really start to tank up till the harder content, before that nothing can hurt you and it is kinda boring. I still remember my cultural shock walking into a vDLC dungeon first time as a tank.

I disagree with this. I wish I had started as a tank in the first place.

Have another character for a DPS role? And a healing role? Definitely. But treat your tank like a tank from the start. So much better to do it that way in my opinion.

If he needs damage for overland stuff then a simple crafted set will suffice there too.

No no, you misunderstood me, I lvl my tanks as tanks, just that sometimes when full tank skill load has 40% of dmg in random normal... It is discouraging. Long fights that you can't change the outcome of much, nothing can really kill you..
Etc etc.

Fair enough. I see your point. Thank you for explaining.

Shakri12

CMDR_Un1k0rn wrote: »

zvavi wrote: »

Tanking in ESO is mostly support, in endgame tanks usually have usually at least one set they don't even get anything from. Buy I must warn you, you don't really start to tank up till the harder content, before that nothing can hurt you and it is kinda boring. I still remember my cultural shock walking into a vDLC dungeon first time as a tank.

I disagree with this. I wish I had started as a tank in the first place.

Have another character for a DPS role? And a healing role? Definitely. But treat your tank like a tank from the start. So much better to do it that way in my opinion.

If he needs damage for overland stuff then a simple crafted set will suffice there too.

I’ve leveled this character up as a tank from the get go. I don’t do any questing really with her because she has such low DPS. I’ve kept other characters for that. I’m over all fairly new to ESO as well (been playing a couple months but switched up characters often to figure out what I wanted to play. Finally settled and started leveling).

All of these answers have been great to go through. I didn’t expect such a great response from the forum. Thanks everyone!!

CMDR_Un1k0rn

Shakri12 wrote: »

CMDR_Un1k0rn wrote: »

zvavi wrote: »

Tanking in ESO is mostly support, in endgame tanks usually have usually at least one set they don't even get anything from. Buy I must warn you, you don't really start to tank up till the harder content, before that nothing can hurt you and it is kinda boring. I still remember my cultural shock walking into a vDLC dungeon first time as a tank.

I disagree with this. I wish I had started as a tank in the first place.

Have another character for a DPS role? And a healing role? Definitely. But treat your tank like a tank from the start. So much better to do it that way in my opinion.

If he needs damage for overland stuff then a simple crafted set will suffice there too.

I’ve leveled this character up as a tank from the get go. I don’t do any questing really with her because she has such low DPS. I’ve kept other characters for that. I’m over all fairly new to ESO as well (been playing a couple months but switched up characters often to figure out what I wanted to play. Finally settled and started leveling).

All of these answers have been great to go through. I didn’t expect such a great response from the forum. Thanks everyone!!

Most of this forum is great. Truly. Much better than every other community I've been in.

zvavi

CMDR_Un1k0rn wrote: »

Shakri12 wrote: »

CMDR_Un1k0rn wrote: »

zvavi wrote: »

Tanking in ESO is mostly support, in endgame tanks usually have usually at least one set they don't even get anything from. Buy I must warn you, you don't really start to tank up till the harder content, before that nothing can hurt you and it is kinda boring. I still remember my cultural shock walking into a vDLC dungeon first time as a tank.

I disagree with this. I wish I had started as a tank in the first place.

Have another character for a DPS role? And a healing role? Definitely. But treat your tank like a tank from the start. So much better to do it that way in my opinion.

If he needs damage for overland stuff then a simple crafted set will suffice there too.

I’ve leveled this character up as a tank from the get go. I don’t do any questing really with her because she has such low DPS. I’ve kept other characters for that. I’m over all fairly new to ESO as well (been playing a couple months but switched up characters often to figure out what I wanted to play. Finally settled and started leveling).

All of these answers have been great to go through. I didn’t expect such a great response from the forum. Thanks everyone!!

Most of this forum is great. Truly. Much better than every other community I've been in.

The community in game is awesome too, really welcoming with everything.

Septimus_Magna

5pc Plague Doctor, 3x jewelry and 2x body (eventually replace this with Ebon)
5pc Torugs Pact 2x weapons and 3x body (no need to replace this unless you want to)
2pc Monster set of your choice (Lord Warden gets nerfed next update and Tremorscale might be quite good)

CMDR_Un1k0rn

Septimus_Magna wrote: »

5pc Plague Doctor, 3x jewelry and 2x body (eventually replace this with Ebon)
5pc Torugs Pact 2x weapons and 3x body (no need to replace this unless you want to)
2pc Monster set of your choice (Lord Warden gets nerfed next update and Tremorscale might be quite good)

This is a good point. Monster sets are getting a major shakeup in the next patch.

purple-magicb16_ESO

Shacklbreaker

Asardes

zvavi wrote: »

CMDR_Un1k0rn wrote: »

zvavi wrote: »

Tanking in ESO is mostly support, in endgame tanks usually have usually at least one set they don't even get anything from. Buy I must warn you, you don't really start to tank up till the harder content, before that nothing can hurt you and it is kinda boring. I still remember my cultural shock walking into a vDLC dungeon first time as a tank.

I disagree with this. I wish I had started as a tank in the first place.

Have another character for a DPS role? And a healing role? Definitely. But treat your tank like a tank from the start. So much better to do it that way in my opinion.

If he needs damage for overland stuff then a simple crafted set will suffice there too.

No no, you misunderstood me, I lvl my tanks as tanks, just that sometimes when full tank skill load has 40% of dmg in random normal... It is discouraging. Long fights that you can't change the outcome of much, nothing can really kill you..
Etc etc.

Hehe, while farming that Ebon it was not uncommon to do >50% of the group DPS as fake tank. The highest was almost 85%. I could have done it solo, but grouping has the advantage that the instance gets reset faster and you get extra loot if the other players are also at least CP160. That's the reason I started doing vets with the same setup, normals were mostly lowbies and I couldn't use the gear.

Foefaller

Shakri12 wrote: »

CMDR_Un1k0rn wrote: »

zvavi wrote: »

Tanking in ESO is mostly support, in endgame tanks usually have usually at least one set they don't even get anything from. Buy I must warn you, you don't really start to tank up till the harder content, before that nothing can hurt you and it is kinda boring. I still remember my cultural shock walking into a vDLC dungeon first time as a tank.

I disagree with this. I wish I had started as a tank in the first place.

Have another character for a DPS role? And a healing role? Definitely. But treat your tank like a tank from the start. So much better to do it that way in my opinion.

If he needs damage for overland stuff then a simple crafted set will suffice there too.

I’ve leveled this character up as a tank from the get go. I don’t do any questing really with her because she has such low DPS. I’ve kept other characters for that. I’m over all fairly new to ESO as well (been playing a couple months but switched up characters often to figure out what I wanted to play. Finally settled and started leveling).

All of these answers have been great to go through. I didn’t expect such a great response from the forum. Thanks everyone!!

In my case, I picked up a few stam DPS class abilities before I started going all in on tanking so I had something to switch to when soloing. Plus I gave myself Lycanthropy rather than the meta Vampirism (which doesn't look like it's going to be meta come Greymoor) for Public Dungeons if I'm not able to pair up with anyone. The combo of the two has made most non-dungeon content relatively painless, even if I'm still running around with S&B/destro staff and mostly heavy armor.

BXR_Lonestar

My advice? Don't level up your tank as a tank. Instead, make them a DPS spec until you reach CP level, and even then, continue to stay DPS until you have run all of the public dungeons in the game that allow you to maximize the number of skill points that you have. At that point, you can then convert your DPS to tank specs by resetting your skills, attributes, and changing to a heavy armor setup.

As for armor sets that are good for a starter tank, Ebon is easy to get since it is a dungeon set, and it has long-term use as people like to see at least ONE of the tanks run Ebon in trials. Torugs is still good and its an easy craftable set to make.

A setup that I got early on for my tank for just S/G's and running around doing less serious content is Thunder Bugs body pieces plus Night Terror weapons and jewelry, combined with Grothdar monster set. I call it my "thorns" setup, as its a tank setup that allows me to do a decent amount of damage just by taking damage. If your not going to take my advice to level up your tank as a DPS first, then I'd recommend this setup while you are leveling up, as it makes killing stuff easier to manage if you are playing solo.

Asardes

Shakri12 wrote: »

CMDR_Un1k0rn wrote: »

zvavi wrote: »

Tanking in ESO is mostly support, in endgame tanks usually have usually at least one set they don't even get anything from. Buy I must warn you, you don't really start to tank up till the harder content, before that nothing can hurt you and it is kinda boring. I still remember my cultural shock walking into a vDLC dungeon first time as a tank.

I disagree with this. I wish I had started as a tank in the first place.

Have another character for a DPS role? And a healing role? Definitely. But treat your tank like a tank from the start. So much better to do it that way in my opinion.

If he needs damage for overland stuff then a simple crafted set will suffice there too.

I’ve leveled this character up as a tank from the get go. I don’t do any questing really with her because she has such low DPS. I’ve kept other characters for that. I’m over all fairly new to ESO as well (been playing a couple months but switched up characters often to figure out what I wanted to play. Finally settled and started leveling).

All of these answers have been great to go through. I didn’t expect such a great response from the forum. Thanks everyone!!

Yea, I made the exact same mistake with my first character on the EU. It was actually worse than that, attribute points spent almost equally stamina-magicka-health because there weren't enough skill points to go around back then, and also Hakeijo cost an arm and a leg. A good compromise is to go half stamina, half health, get a basic DPS setup with medium armor, 2H/Bow, and use Lava Foot and Saltrice with Warrior mundus. Then when you tank change mundus to Lord, and the consumable to health+magicka blue food. That gives nice resource pools. On my DK Tank builds recovery is a non issue since I'm using Balance for sustain. When I'm not taking damage I simply hit that a few times, refill the ~17k magicka pool, then wait for the debuff to wear out and hit Echoing Vigor, healing slowly back up.

Raudgrani

I'm using Seducer and... DAEDRIC TRICKERY(!?), and 2 piece Willow's Path on my Warden tank in leveling.
Yes, there's probably better options, but it still works really well, and Daedric Trickery is one-***uva-good and funny set, might even make a cp160 set later on.
Yes, it's not reliable and yada yada, but I don't need reliable sets for that kind of content. I could pick up a plain set of my level from some in-game merchant and do just as well anyway. That content is not that demanding, really.

Indoril_Nerevar

What are the sets that you want?

And if this thread got answered; that sucks for you. You could do a lot better than this out of date information people gave you.

Or even be more creative, fun and effective. Oh well.

Shakri12

Indoril_Nerevar wrote: »

What are the sets that you want?

And if this thread got answered; that sucks for you. You could do a lot better than this out of date information people gave you.

Or even be more creative, fun and effective. Oh well.

I want 5-piece leeching plate, Haiti’s for weapons and jewelry, and stone keepers monster helm. My concern is a may not be quite ready for these dungeons. I’ve been terribly nervous to go into a dungeon at all. I want to make sure I’m tanking “correctly” before I dive in. But I also need the practice. So I was hoping for easy armor to get my stats a little better once I hit CP 160 so I feel more comfortable going after the sets I really want.

kylewwefan

Farm them on normal.

It’s gonna be awhile before you’re ready for stonekeeper though. As a placeholder you can use a multitude of different sets. Sentinel, engine guardian, night flame etc.

This is just for starters. Any tank worth her salt is gonna have several different gears to choose from.

I wouldn’t waste my time on crafted gears, but I think it’s what Al recommends on his alcasthq.com site.

gatekeeper13

Shakri12 wrote: »

I want 5-piece leeching plate, Haiti’s for weapons and jewelry, and stone keepers monster helm.

These sets are not good tanking sets at all. Leeching is only good if you want to survive. Haiti's.... You mean Hiti's Hearth? If you mean that, its not a tanking set. Its a healer set. And Stone Keeper is mediocre at best, if not trash.

Right now these are the best combo in my opinion (from worst to best)

1) Torug's + Fortified Brass (crafted for new tanks)
2) Ebon + Torug's
3) Yolnakriin + Alkosh

Monster set = Lord Warden.

After next patch, Warden will be nerfed so I dont know how it will perform then. Tremorscale will be a good option because it will offer unnamed armor debuff.

And dont worry about how good tank you are gonna be. Start from normal dungeons, do all of them in normal first, learn the mechanics, then go to vet versions. It will take time and experience. After a while, you will do most dungeons mechanically, while watching tv.

frozzzen101

I would go for Seducer + Brass as two crafted options. Both are great for your own survival and will be nice enough to get you moving. I really have to stress how good Seducer is. Mag sustain it gives is absolutely insane and you can do so much with extra mag for utility skills.

Leeching and Hiti's are fine for your dungeonering needs and will provide you metric ton of survivability but won't do much in terms of teaching you to tank. See, they give so much selfhealing that you will barely need to put any effort in keeping yourself alive. It can lead to bad habits longterm as you might struggle a fair bit if/when you want to focus on switching to more meta focused playstyle (group support sets rather than survival focused ones).

newtinmpls

Shakri12 wrote: »

I want 5-piece leeching plate, Haiti’s for weapons and jewelry, and stone keepers monster helm. My concern is a may not be quite ready for these dungeons.

Let me second the comment by @kylewwefan who suggested you go in on normal and farm them (granted, you can't get the Monster Helm that way, but that can wait). It's a great way to start.

As for other people's thoughts about what you can and can't do with various sets - well a slightly unorthodox build that "works in your head" may end up working out better for you in a vet situation than a "Best In Slot" set that just doesn't fit your playstyle.

A big part of it is to go in, hopefully with a friend or two, and get some feedback (from your experience and from comments of others) about what your strong and weak spots are, then take steps to address them.

For instance; I have an Osimer Sorc Tank, that builds sets to proc electricity (lots of sorc bonuses).

My preferred combo (works for overland and for most non-vet situations) is:

Thunderbug: 1-armor, 2-Armor, 3- Spell Damage 4-When you take Physical Damage, you have a 50% chance to deal XXX Shock Damage in a 5 meter radius around you. This effect can occur once every 3 seconds.

Storm Knight: 1-Armor, 2-Armor, 3-Health, When you take non-physical damage, you have a 10% chance to deal XXX Shock Damage all to all enemies within 5 meters of you every 2 seconds for 6 seconds. This effect can occur once every 6 seconds.

And StormFist for the Monster Helm: 1-Stamina Recovery, 2-When you deal damage, you have a 10% chance to create a thunderfist to crush the enemy, dealing XXX Shock Damage every 1 second for 3 seconds to all enemies within 4 meters and a final XXX Physical Damage when the fist closes. This effect can occur once every 8 seconds.

My actual skills are more traditionally tanky; Silver Leash, Both the S&B and the Undaunted taunts and so forth. I do have Warhorn, and I do have the S&B ulti on the other bar. Like I said, this combo does great, and procs like crazy - that is where most of the damage I do comes from.

In groups/dungeons, I switch out Storm Knight for Ebon Armory; 1-Health, 2-Health, 3-Increased Healing received and 4-Health for the whole party. This has been fine for doing all the Base undaunted dungeons, and a few of the Vet ones, but I'm gonna have to up my game, as there are a few vet spots where it's just not cutting it.

So I'm looking at Monster Helms:

Lord Warden 1-Armor 2-When you take damage, you have a 50% chance to summon a shadow orb for 10 seconds that increases the Physical and Spell Resistance of you and your allies within 8 meters. This effect can occur once every 10 seconds.

Mighty Chudan 1-Gain Major Ward and Major Resolve at all times, increasing your Physical and Spell Resistance 2-Health (I admit that currently I only have this set as I bought the helm from the weekend vendor).

And/or replacing Thunderbug (heavy sigh here) with Fortified Brass: 1-Health, 2-Armor, 3-Armor, 4-Even yet more armor.

.
Some edits for grammar and clarity

Bashev

zvavi wrote: »

Tanking in ESO is mostly support, in endgame tanks usually have usually at least one set they don't even get anything from. Buy I must warn you, you don't really start to tank up till the harder content, before that nothing can hurt you and it is kinda boring. I still remember my cultural shock walking into a vDLC dungeon first time as a tank.

Sadly this is the truth. If you want to tank, try hard content and use sets that increase the dps of your group. The whole game is oriented around improving the DPS, same for healers.

kichwas

I got my first 50 recently, and just crossed the CP 160 lines yesterday - as a Templar Tank that leveled as a tank doing questing plus a daily dungeon plus the undaunted dungeons once that opened up at level 45.

I don't get this whole thing about it being too slow or too hard. Maybe I just didn't have a DPS to compare it against. It was fast enough for me to enjoy what I was doing, and paced well with following all the quest dialogue (I feel if I had been on a character killing challenge mobs 10x faster, I would have spent 90% of my time in quest dialogues, and that would have been a much worse experience - instead the pacing between the two was just right).

I then got my second 50, a necromancer healer leveled as a healer doing the same thing - quests and a dungeon. I think she's the one that crossed the 160 CP line for me when running from here to there to do a quest objective... likewise the amount of damage she puts out means the time to 'do' activities in a quest paces just right with the time spent in dialogue screens and voiced moments.

Plus the advantage I have with both of them is having all the right skills leveled out, knowing how those work together, and since level 45 at least - learning a sort of easy form of dungeon tactics. Because a third alt was set aside to get all the craft skills to 50 - I've also already crafted up about a third of the 'purple' gear for them - including some pieces I will eventually upgrade to gold as keepers for the 'trial set'.

This third character is the only one that suffers in questing - at times she's gone into some quests with only a single damaging skill, or even no damaging skill - because I'd moved a point over to crafting, but then needed to go explore again to unlock more skill points and managed to aggro something, or tried to do 'main story' for the skill point it gives. This character is actually one of my oldest, and was set aside ages ago to just sit and do trait research and level crafts by breaking apart all the gear my other characters bank.

- this is where I think speed levelers can really hurt themselves, not having any of the traits they want researched or enough crafting levels to craft CP-160 gear. You will hit this long wall you cannot rush unless you use massive amounts of $$$ on the cash shop for a few hundred 1-day cuts to research time... where you then need to do all of that... and all the while your character is stitting there above CP-160 waiting for some gear to go do stuff, and trying to avoid boredom burnout...

My crafter hit level 50 in most of the crafts, and has complete almost all traits - right around the same time as I got my first 50 character. So everything lined up timing wise.