So tell me what you think about this tank setup I am considering...

josiahva

Ok, this setup is really possible because of the proc changes, allowing you to control the Imperium proc to shield your group on demand by swapping bars...I already practiced this a little bit...getting better at controlling the proc.

Since I no longer need Imperium weapons on the front bar I can now slot a weapon set...so which one? Puncturing Remedy from DSA(really doesnt matter if its perfected or not). Why puncturing remedy instead one of the others? The self heal is nice...but what we are really after is the armor buff that goes along with it.

So here is what you do....
1. Swap to back bar to proc Imperium in high damage portion of a fight, giving your group a nice shield for 0 resources.
2. On your back bar, before you swap back, cast balance(assuming you have the spare health). Your monster helm of choice for this is Lady Thorn...casting Balance procs Lady Thorn, giving you a blood ball that lasts 10 seconds once every 30 seconds that you or someone else can synergize to apply major maim to the enemy, reducing their damage by 30%.
3. Swap back to front bar and cast puncture, healing half the cost of balance. the armor buff of puncturing remedy and the armor buff from balance will send you well over armor cap even if you are in the mid 20s unbuffed.

It seems to me this setup has a lot of group damage reduction potential....it does require a quasi-rotation to pull off and keep a good uptime on...as well as strategic use of the Imperium proc and the synergy from the blood ball....it also allows you to run whatever you feel like for your second 5 piece set....essentially you end up with a couple of free skills and a 4th set.

Grandchamp1989

I know Torugs and Winter's Respite are awesome backbar sets, never thought of backbar'ing Imperium.

Adding to the backbar
Remedy for healing
Rampaging Slash for more sustain

The shield stays even though you lose your 5 piece bonus on the front bar? If so.. Nice! You can almost time it with your crusher uptime on the backbar.

kathandira

I honestly haven't considered using Puncturing Remedy. This would be great on my healer when I need to Off Tank.

Xebov

The setup is interesting but also has some shortcommings.
Shielding your group in trash fights is easy, but in boss fights it can prove difficult. After all you get the shield after you got damage so you need to proc it the attack before the attack that you want to get shielding, which might not always work.
You also cannot block with the staff with the potential use of magicka.
On top of that you have to get the right skillbars for this so you dont need to swap for skills.

josiahva

Xebov wrote: »

The setup is interesting but also has some shortcommings.
Shielding your group in trash fights is easy, but in boss fights it can prove difficult. After all you get the shield after you got damage so you need to proc it the attack before the attack that you want to get shielding, which might not always work.
You also cannot block with the staff with the potential use of magicka.
On top of that you have to get the right skillbars for this so you dont need to swap for skills.

Its not as bad as you might think. For instance, I used it this way last night in vCT for the gargoyle fight....I know he is going when he is going to do his "machine gun" move(similar to lord warden except it targets everyone) so I stop him after he comes down from his flight on the staircase(which gives LoS protection to the group) and swap to my backbar(resto staff, so blocking uses stamina, though I dont see any real problem with ice staff) and Imperium procs, protecting the rest of the group from the rest of his machine-gun stream even if they move into LoS). That of course does not work with all attacks...but that is where the Blood Orb from Lady thorn comes in, it stays up for 10 seconds...so if you know a hard hitting group attack is coming, you wait until a couple seconds beforehand...then hit the synergy, reducing the damage of that attack by 30%(the shield may still even be up at this point, who knows?). The biggest danger in this type of play is bar-swapping....I have been one-shot because I was bar swapping often enough.

Grandchamp1989 wrote: »

I know Torugs and Winter's Respite are awesome backbar sets, never thought of backbar'ing Imperium.

Adding to the backbar
Remedy for healing
Rampaging Slash for more sustain

The shield stays even though you lose your 5 piece bonus on the front bar? If so.. Nice! You can almost time it with your crusher uptime on the backbar.

Yes, the shield lasts 6 seconds...standard shield time for everything except Barrier. I do have a crusher enchant on the resto staff as well, didn't even think about that. Rampaging Slash would be more appealing if I didn't suspect they are going to eventually change from heavy attack to light attack for resource restoration...I am sure they will forget all about the heavy attack based sets when they do so...it would suck to farm vMA(because perfected is actually useful for that set) just to have it worthless next patch. Puncturing remedy you can just farm nDSA if you don't need the healing received and since its 4-man, its bound to be a quicker farm.

The nice part about Imperium as your backbar set is that the 4 piece for Imperium is garbage(In my eyes anyway...I hate healing received, its just not very useful to my build, which has a lot of shields, it may well be useful to other builds, but even so...its only 4%) so your stats don't drop aside from whatever enchant is on your shield. If you farm the perfected version of puncturing remedy, you even gain 3% of that healing received back.