Kozato wrote: »

These massive posts are ridiculous for tanking. I levelled up a Nord into the cp, applied all attributes to health, equip gear with resistance and health, sword and shield, and you're done. Taunt the boss constantly and keep their attention away from your fellow members. That's all it takes and you can be doing veteran content with ease. my guess is the massive group of people who get complained at for not tanking well in PUGs just tag as a tank for short waiting times but aren't really prepared, because tanking is almost boringly easy for me.

Kozato wrote: »

These massive posts are ridiculous for tanking. I levelled up a Nord into the cp, applied all attributes to health, equip gear with resistance and health, sword and shield, and you're done. Taunt the boss constantly and keep their attention away from your fellow members. That's all it takes and you can be doing veteran content with ease. my guess is the massive group of people who get complained at for not tanking well in PUGs just tag as a tank for short waiting times but aren't really prepared, because tanking is almost boringly easy for me.

VaranisArano wrote: »

I love to tank. I love talking about tanking. Thanks, OP, for giving me a reason to talk about tanking. I'm not going to pretend this is an exhaustive guide, so everyone feel free to add stuff I left out.

Here's the basics (applicable for normal and veteran dungeons)
The basic job of a tank is to taunt the boss, hold boss aggro, and don't die. If you can do that, you are a tank.
A good tank taunts the boss, holds, boss aggro, doesn't die, holds the boss more or less still, debuffs the boss, buffs the group, and provides crowd control.

How a good tank does all of those things is up to the tank. Any class can be a good tank, though the skills and gear they use to do those things will vary. You'll find that Dragonknights and Wardens have skills that make those jobs very easy, but Sorcerers, Templars, and Nightbaldes can all make effective tanks.

Must-Have Skills
Since every class can tank, the only must-have skill is that YOU MUST HAVE A TAUNT!
There are no AOE taunts; there are 3 single-target taunts.

• Puncture: First skill in One-Hand and Shield. I highly recommend the Pierce Armor morph because it grants both major fracture and major breach, two potent debuffs. (If you ever wondered why people think its necessary to to have a shield in order to tank, this skill is why. The passives in 1H&S are nice, but this is where the gold is at.)
• Inner Fire: Third skill in the Undaunted Line, a ranged magicka taunt (Very useful for ranged fights and for combining with the Swarm Mother monster set)
• Frost Staff heavy attack with passive: you need to unlock the Ancient Knowledge passive in order to turn a Frost staff heavy attack into a ranged magicka taunt. This also has the effect of making blocking with a frost staff cost magicka instead of stamina. In my opinion, while Wardens have made ice staff tanking slightly more viable, Frost staff tanking is inferior to tanking with a shield. (If you run normal dungeons, you are very likely to encounter a DPS with a frost staff who has this passive and didn't realize that it will taunt the boss with a heavy attack. I like to deal with such misguided people gently with a warning...the first time. If said DPS taunts the boss a second time, I'm going to let them handle it.)

Mechanics of Tanking
Trash Mobs: you want to provide crowd control. This can be done in a huge variety of ways, but there is no AOE taunt in the game. In order to deal with large groups, you want to use an AOE or Crowd Control skill to slow, stun, lockdown, or draw in the mob to you as much as possible. In certain dungeons, there are adds with more health or that are more dangerous and it will be greatly appreciated by your DPS and Healer if you taunt or grab those adds so they focus on you.

Bosses:
1. You want to keep the boss taunted and as still as possible. Your DPS are almost certainly throwing ground-based AOEs where the boss is at, so you don't want to drag the boss all over the arena.
2. Generally, if you get streaky white/yellow lines, you need to block because the boss is winding up for a big attack. If you get red lines, you need to interrupt (think Ogrims when then do that chest-pounding heal). If you get a red cone, block. If you get a red aoe, hold block or if you know you can't survive, roll dodge on out of there.
3. Be mindful of mechanics, many times you can turn the boss away from your group so the big attack comes at you and not your squishier teammates - notable examples are Selene's bear and the Spindleclutch I aoes, and there are many more.
4. Lag is going to kill you. Its okay. I spend lots of time yelling "I blocked that!" at the screen. You'll learn on harder vet fights to block AS SOON AS you see the indicator for the big attack so that game actually registers that you blocked. Normals are okay because you'll have enough health/resistances to survive a failed block, usually.

Gear for Tanking
I recommend gearing like you were running a vet dungeon, because it makes running random normal dungeons a walk in the park even if you get a bad healer or low DPS.
Good tank gear allows you to survive, buffs your resistances, and at best, buffs the group.

Resistances
The resistance cap for physical and spell resistance is at somewhere between 31-33k resistances. This works out to be about 50% damage mitigation. The harder the content you want to do, the closer you want to be to the cap. You can get resistances from armor, set bonuses, and class skills. Personally, I stack resistances to the cap (using monster sets like Lord Warden's Dusk or Mighty Chudan) if I'm doing hard vet dungeons, otherwise I wear a different set to do a bit more DPS when I know I don't need full resistances to complete the content.

Health
You probably want somewhere close to 30 to 35k+ health, unless you are going for a build that needs a TON of health in order to use skills that scale with max health, such as a DK's igneous shields. For that to be effective, I think you need something along the lines of 60-70K health, and those are specialized builds.

DPS
You are a tank. DPS is nice, but optional. My MagDK does about 4-6K DPS, which is enough to kill some bosses very, very, slowly. A friend's stam warden who's even tankier does around 2k DPS. If you take the role of tank seriously, its more important that you be a good tank than that you do higher DPS.

Gear Recommendations
Take this one with a grain of salt, okay? Every tank is different and will have their own preferences, not to mention differing abilities to get crafted, zone sets, and dungeon sets. This part is mostly based on my experiences and is in no way intended to be an exhaustive list of good tanking gear in the game. Personally, I recommend that tanks use one "tanking" set and one set to do whatever they want with, whether more DPS or more debuffs, etc, but there's nothing preventing someone from wanting to be a "pure" tank and just doubling up on the tankiness.

Best Tank Gear for a general tank build: Ebon Armory. Ebon Armory drops from the group dungeon Crypt of Hearts 1 & 2 in Rivenspire, and it is a fantastic tank set for normal and vet dungeons. It gives you a ton of health and it gives your group members a small health bonus. When your DPS are running around with 17k health compares to your 30lish health, the 1k bonus from Ebon Armory is a substantial buff to the group.

Plague Doctor drops from Deshaan and gives you a ton of health, about equal to the health from Ebon armory but without the additional group health buff. This is often combined with Green Pact if you want to have a TON of health, but having a TON of health is only good if your build relies on using skills that scale off of max health.

Crafted Sets: Hist Bark, Whitestrake's Retribution, and Tava's Blessing would have been on this list but the Tava's/Bloodspawn meta took a nerf to the knee this last update. It looks like Fortified Brass from Clockwork City will be good if you want a set that gives you a ton of resistances. I used Whitestrake's while I was learning to tank, and that damage shield was great for when I had to rez dead teammates.

Reminder: once you've got your health and resistances where you want, which will probably take you at least one set of armor, feel free to experiment. On my magDK, I've used silks of the sun, knightmare, and Worm Cult as secondary sets at one point or another.

One Final Statement
The tank is a very important member of a dungeon team.

We've all heard people say that its possible to complete nearly every single normal and vet dungeon in the game without a tank and that's TRUE. So why have a tank?

A good tank brings order to the chaos. A good tank provides crowd control so that trash mobs don't spread out all over the room and the DPS don't have to chase, allowing them to burn down the mobs for a quicker, easier run. A good tank debuffs the boss and buffs the group so DPS and heals are better. A good tank holds aggro on the boss so that the boss doesn't run out of the arena chasing a kiting DPS and reset the whole encounter (that happened to me on a no-tank run, needless to say, my DPS slotted a taunt so that didn't happen again) and holds the boss more or less still so that DPS aren't chasing the boss around trying to kill it. A good tank doesn't die so that all of these benefits continue and the group doesn't have to deal with an enraged boss trying to kill them.

There is very little in this game that I find more satisfying than finishing a random dungeon and having group members comment on what a difference it makes to run a dungeon with a good tank.

All you tanks and soon-to-be tanks, have fun tanking!

VaranisArano wrote: »

So which one am I missing? Genuinely curious here, since I'm only familiar with

• Puncture and its morphs
• Inner Fire and its morphs
• Frost staff heavy attacks with the ancient knowledge passive

Blanco wrote: »

Do we really need a school for permablock?

kringled_1 wrote: »

...

And a specific question: Selene. I think it's her bear charge move that killed me more than once (first time for me on vet and someone went for HM). After I figured out that it was that move, I managed to avoid it some but sometimes there wasn't a lot of warning before the move went off. Any tips?