|
| |||||||
| Home | GzP Upload | GzP Arcade | Register | vbBux / vbPlaza | All Albums | FAQ | Donate | Members List | Calendar | Mark Forums Read |
| Guildwars Guildwars Discussion |
 |
| | Thread Tools | Display Modes |
05-24-2008, 05:33 PM
| #1 |
| u hav AIDS LOLZ!!!1!  | The Art of Tanking ~ All credits goes to Amity and Truth of guildwars guru for this! ----------------------------------------------------------------------- "Greetings to ye, fellow warriors. I welcome thee amongst those willed to protect the lives of their friends. You've chosen to learn the true art of a warrior. In the following minutes i will be giving you the basics, while it indeed takes practice to master these arts. Let the lesson begin!"  Table of Content
Introduction and First Words First Words You've chosen to learn something about being a Tank or tanking in general. Very good, as that allready makes you somewhat special. You've probably also noticed that someone who knows how to tank is in high demand. The sad thing about this is, that a very large portion of GuildWars absolutely has no clue how either tanking or managing the Aggro of enemies really work. There is a problem with tanking in GuildWars. You've probably allready noticed a lack of Skills that help you keeping the interest of enemies. The lack of these kind of skills, opens up a whole box of mistakes not only you but even moreso your team can do. This quite simple problem will make tanking in PUGs almost impossible, even if you've read, understood and trained the lessons i'm about to give you. You should also know that for the majority of PVE Content, tanking isn't necessary and in most cases not really helping either. So why should you read this article then? You've chosen to become a better player. This thread will help you no matter if you're actually a tank or a backline caster. The latter may chose to skip the Armor Part of this Article completely, though i'd really advice them to read the words on Aggro. The knowledge about how to control Aggro properly makes you a good PVE Player and you will no doubt be one of those to conquer even the hardest missions without having to rely on others to make nice little cooke cutter builds for you. I now welcome you to the art of tanking. Enjoy! The Choice of Armor, Weaponry and Shields Before you even head into the battle, you will have to spend a few thoughts on your equipment. While it is true that any equipment is suitable for a tank, it is very important to know that good equipment will keep you alive quite a bit longer. Though also know, that none of this is really a requirement as the true art of tanking comes from skill and the use of the terrain, not from shiny items. Nonetheless, we will have a look at weapons and your armor. The most important weapon a true tank warrior MUST have in his inventory is a... longbow. It doesn't matter how good or bad the longbow really is, you'll want to bring it for pulling enemy mobs not for doing damage, and as far as range is concerned - nothing beats a longbow. Shields! If you're bringing a shield (and unless you're one of those rare hammer warriors, you will do so) make sure that you fulfill the requirement and that it also has some kind of damage absorption. Damage absorption comes in many fashions and you'll instantly notice it as being one of the following:
Once again notice that the while hexed condition is slightly more powerful than the others. This can proof useful in certain situations. The while hexed shield naturally is not the choice of shield to constantly wield, but it is an excelent backup choice in one of your four weapon slots. Most shields use one kind of damage reduction and one kind of health bonus. You can easily obtain collector shields with perfect stats from your average [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] or [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] in Cantha or Tyria anytime. If you feel like adding some vanity into the mixture, you can of course also go for the [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] which often spurt a nice skin. For the sake of completeness, let me also tell you that there is a very rare breed of shields which you can only obtain from drops. These rare shields include two different types of damage reduction though lacks the health bonus. But unless you're a very lucky person, don't get your hopes high on finding one anytime toon. Even in the highend tradeboards those things are a rarity. Rumors are they've been completely taken out of the loot anyways. Armor! The next choice you've got to make is what kind of armor to bring. Before we make this choice, you should know how absorption works. In one word: Globally. This being said, you will now choose your armor appropiately. Have a close look at the different options out there (simplified)
Let me explain this in detail: Let's say you buy 4 Pieces of Sentinel Armor and 1 Piece of Knight's Armor. Every single one of the 4 pieces has 100 Base AL versus everything. The Knight's Armor however only has 80 Base AL with an added 20 al versus physical damage. In the worst case scenario we can assume that the Knight's Armor is 20 AL short, so basically you don't want it to be hit often. That only leaves 3 choices as to where your piece of Knight's Armor should go. Expecting height differences, and their shift in hit percentages towards the headpiece, buying a Knight's Helmet wouldn't make much sense either. That now basically just leaves the gloves or boots as an option. Runes! After you've chosen your armor, the next choice is runes. While i'm in no position to give you orders on which runes to buy and which not, i will give you pointers and small hints. First one is, buy an absorption rune. Damnit. I've just given you an order. Well i'm sorry, don't think about it, just buy one. And while you're at it, buy a vigor rune as well. The reason for this is that they don't come with a health penalty. You can only profit from having them. Keep in mind that damage reduction works globally and runes don't stack. You don't need more than one absorption or vigor rune. Weapons! The final part of equipment you might want to consider is your weapon. Yes, your weapon. While offense often is the best defense, this is not what i am talking about. Every weapon has mods which can increase your AL a small bit. The possible mods are:
Simply put, while health is nice against degen damage, higher AL will work out better in the long run. +30 Health from a perfect Fortitude Mod may be tempting and nice, but once those 30 health are gone due to you taking damage, your mod no longer serves a purpose. But improved AL will allways work in your favor no matter the circumstances (except armor ignoring damage and degen of course, duh). If you finally have a look at the prices of items, the choice is a quite easy one.
The Basics of Aggro Basic Tanking What the hell is aggro? What is Aggro? Whenever someone claims you as his or her target, he aggros you. Aggro derives from Aggressive. Dealing with the Aggro of enemies, is called Aggro Management (some confuse this with pulling which is a completely different story in a whole). To fully understand aggro, it is important to understand your minimap (also known as Radar).  Green dots on the minimap represent your team. Green Triangles on the minimap represent NPCs, Spirits, Pets, Minions Red dots mark everything that is hostile towards you Do you notice something else? You really don't? Have a closer look at your own dot and the surroundings. Do you notice another circle around your character? That one indicates your Aggro Circle (often called Aggro Bubble).  I've marked it in a bright orange color. The most basic thing you need to know about aggro and tanking is simply how your aggro circle works. And it really is quite basic. If your Aggrocircle touches one of the red dots, you've aggroed the enemy. This simply means they've noticed you and will now engage combat with you. However as basic as your aggro circle is, as tricky can it be at times. Take care of it anytime as a patrol may all of a sudden enter your circle and you've just aggroed a second mob.  Enemy is aggroed "But madame Truth, how do i use this to my advantage? That's really just a circle there..." That is indeed a good question there fellow warrior. And if you're the only person on your team you can mostly ignore the Aggro Circle. The one thing that makes this small circle so powerful is that everyone of your teammates has one of those. This is the most basic form of tanking and your first priority in what to learn. You must learn how to aggro a mob, as in get it's attention without it noticing your friends. To do this, you must get the enemy to attack you while the Aggro Circles of your teammates don't aggro that enemy as well. While this is really an easy concept, the less skilled casters often make the mistake to be too close to you. However if this simple tactic is done right, none of your friends will get a problem with any of the mobs. Know your enemy, part 1: Target behavior Perfect Environment The mechanism behind this behavior is called Target Lock (often also referred to as "hold the aggro"). Once an enemy has locked his aggro on you, he will keep on hitting you until you or it are dead. There are a few exceptions to this rule, but those are rare. After you've safely gathered the enemies the casters can approach and kill the targets with great efficiency. Realistic Environment If you've read the above paragraph, you will also notice that i'm assuming a perfect environment where all your casters know their place. This however is quite a rarity these days. There are many ways a not so careful backline character can mess up your work. The enemy gathers information over your characters as soon as they enter a battle. They're mostly looking for a few things and don't think you can fool them. They can look through your nasty armor and really see how good it is and how healthy you really are. Target Priority
To make this one a bit more clear, let me construct an example. Character A: 100 AL Warrior, 500 Hitpoints Character B: 70 AL Ranger, 530 Hitpoints Character C: 60 AL Monk, 480 Hitpoints Character D: 60 AL Elementalist, 380 Hitpoints (has some Death Penalty) Character E: 60 AL Necromancer, 430 Hitpoints A is doing his job, he is the first to engage the combat. C,D and E are also doing their job. They're standing back to wait for you to gather the aggro. B however, is impatient. He is within the range of the enemy before they started hitting you. Your enemy now notices the Ranger and instantly compares your Armor Level. Your armor is much higher than the one of the Ranger and the mob will now go to chase the Ranger. Now almost as he attacks the brave (but dumb) Ranger he notices the 3 Backline Casters. The casters carefully took care to not mess up the warriors aggro, but did not expect the Ranger to build a bridge. Now the mob compares the AL again. Seeing 3 Targets with an AL of 60, he instantly forgets the ranger (who will later on claim innocence for he was not attacked :P). He also instantly notices the Elementalist who has far less Hitpoints than his friends and instantly goes for him. What could YOU have done to prevent his? Well beside from telling your ranger to stay back or maybe give him your sword and shield, only the art of positioning could maybe have prevented this (explained later on). Know your enemy, part 2: Combat behavior There are more situations that will cause a change of target, even after you've gathered the Aggro. Area of Effect (AOE) Spells Basically evertime an enemy gets hit by more than 2 AOE Spells in less than 3 seconds, he will run away for a few seconds and return later. While this rule is basically true, it is not persistent amongst all of the spells. Some strangely cause the enemies to run away (also known as "scatter") while others that should, simply don't do so. Hex Spells If the ENEMY uses Hex based Spells, he will switch the target all too often to apply a coverage of his hexspells. There basically is nothig except good positioning that prevents this. Personal Space Violation Another player entering the "In the area" range of your enemy. If another player accidently or on purpose gets too close to the enemies and has lower AL or Health, he will break the target lock. This is often the case with Assassins engaging combat. Note that "In the area" is roughly about half your Aggro Circle. With the exception of the Assassin, no class should be that personal with the mobs. Movement If you, the tank, starts moving you will break the aggro as well. So basically, stand still. Don't move (well hit them, laugh at them whatever you feel like but just don't run away). Advanced Tanking Terrain Control Congratulations warrior. If you've read, understood and trained the above you're a better tank than many many many others out there. Yes, it is that bad. But yet, still there is more for you to learn. The basic Tanking Tactics are far too vulnerable in many situations. And they're not effective to start with. The truely skilled tank uses the terrain to his advantage. Using terrain includes as many facettes as proper bodyblocking, height advantage or the secret corner tactic. You've all ready guessed it by now, i will once again start with the basic part of the more advanced tanking tactics. That's the simple bodyblock. No enemy can walk through you and for some reason even the flying ones can't fly over you. You're a wall. Quite simply a massive damage dealing, hit taking wall. Once you've understood this basic concept you will see lots and lots of opportunities during a fight to completely prevent the enemy from passing, even if your lemming ranger broke the target lock. Furthermore, a blocked enemy will soon search for another target. The next thing you need to know about the terrain is that one of the other classes (so far) gains damage when it is placed on higher ground. And this class is the ranger. So by moving yourself towards the lower ground, you're giving your ranger buddy the opportunity to deal more damage and even increase the range of his bow (so he no longer needs to be personal with that laughable Wood Stick, uhm Shortbow). And there is one nice trick in positioning i'm going to tell you. Yes, there are a lot more. But you will learn with age and experience. There is only so much you can learn from reading and practicing. This trick i will tell you, is referred to as corner tanking. The enemy is as dumb as a brick. When he engages a target, he does it in the most basic way it can think of. Run towards it, straight and direct way. It will heed any terrain, but a single not too common obstacle will block his path and leave the enemy puzzled and confused, even more awaken his anger. You've guesses it right, a corner with a tank standing there is the natural enemy of the AI.  The green dot to the left is your favorite squishy target. The green dot at the corner is you. The enemies (red) want to go for the weaker target (indicated by the blue line). They're however incapable of doing so as their path (purple haze) is bodyblocked by you (green dot at the corner). This is a certain failure in the AI that will grant your squishies almost 100 % immunity from your enemies. Pulling and Patrols: Crowd Control Remember that i told you to bring a longbow, no matter it's specs? Now is the time to put it to a good use. This is the very final chapter of how to be a good tank and master the art behind it. The only reason you're bringing the longbow is to seperate one mob from another. Observe the enemy carefully and you will soon notice that he is moving in small packs, small teams. If you use your longbow to hit a target standing slightly outside of the group (And the curious little victims often will), his pack and himself will come for you. The other groups however are unaffacted by this and you've now effectively seperated one group from another. If your ranger insists on being the one to pull the enemies, tell him to grab a sword and shield and do your job. Really, pulling is the job of the tank though many many rangers will disagree. Pulling would not be pulling if you wouldn't actually pull the enemy back. You can lure an enemy out of mob but you can moreover avoid being surprised by patrols by simply walking back a bit. In GuildWars, almost every team of enemies has a written patrol path. They will walk a certain route again and again and again. These routes are placed in a way that they will intersect with each other. So if there are two teams of enemies, you can be quite sure that their path will meet at one point. If you just aggro the enemy, you're at a very high risk to be surprised by one of the patrols. I will once again explain this by using an example.  This is once of many situations in GuildWars. Let's just assume this is somewhere in Kaineng. The grey blockes represent the buildings. Once again, the red dots represent the enemy while the green dots are your team. The circle around one of the dots represents you, and your aggro circle.  Every patrol follows a certain pattern. I've given both of the enemies a path to walk. The lower party is represented by the green color while the upper party owns a nice brownish color. Do you notice how their paths intersect and meet? If you just go in and tank the scenario will sooner or later look like this:  You've aggroed the lower party. And as you can see, the upper party is closing in and will soon enter the battle. Most of the times this results in a party wipe due to being outnumbered and outdamaged (unless your team really knows what it is doing. However if you pull properly you can totally nullify the danger of being surprised by patrols. To do this, your team naturally has to step back a bit to give you room to maneuver. Also applying the above mentioned corner tactic, the situation might now look like this:  The second party of enemies just walked by without even slightly noticing. The first party though stepped right into your nasty little trap while your casters are safely protected from their wrath. Nicely done. Increasing efficiency And finally (O'rly? Ya rly! No wai!) i'm concluding this guide with one more aspect of tanking. The ability to control the enemy mobs to your liking. Mobs will often be scattered around when you engage combat with them. And they then only move as far as they need to.  Notice the yellow cone i painted into it? You will understand this really soon.  This will happen sooner or later if you do not intervent. The ranged fighters will stay at the edge of your aggro circle while the close combat critters bash away. While you've gathered and locked the aggro succesfully, this is not very effective. Your casters will have to take out the enemies one by one, thus prolonging the battle. But mobility, can cure this problem. If you move away from your target (the image is a bit exagerated now) the enemies will of course continue to follow you around. The situation now might look like this.  Notice how the above mentioned cone got smaller? That is because the enemies are now standing closer to each other. This is only possible because the enemies approach you in a straight line. You can get them to pile up by constantly moving away a bit while keeping their aggro. And once the casters are all standing close to each other, you can simply engage the enemy casters. The melee classes will follow you into the battle. You now have a nice pack of enemies, all standing in one spot, ready to be nuked while you're still perfectly holding the aggro. The control of mobs usually takes about 5-7 seconds, but really pays of in means of efficiency. Communicating with your team During combat, you often lack the time to write well formulated tactics. But there still is the need to communicate with your team. There are two ways to do that (without using Teamspeak). Call! Basically, while holding your left control key (ctrl - the right one offers a translation of text if you're not a native english speaker) you can almost everything what you do or what affects you. Don't go overboard with this, keep it limited. For example you can use this to indicate that you're suffering under a certain hex which severely limits your ability. You simply point your mouse at the skill, hit ctrl and left click it. You now automatically say: "I have HexXYZ on me". Same goes with conditions. But once again, keep it limited. If you're just bleeding, there is no real need to remove it. If you're suffering from weakness when you're not really dealing direct damage to start with, just leave it alone. But if you're blinded and can't hit your target, thats worth a call. Or if you'Re suffering from spiteful spirit, worth a call. But you're suffering from empathy? Just pause your attacks for a moment. It's hard to decide what to call and what not to call. Allways keep an eye on those conditions and hexes, they can severely cripple you. You can also call your target or react to a target call. You will have to use ctrl followed by your "Action" Key (Space, if you've not reallocated your keybindings). Once you've called your target, there will be a small crosshair near your name in the party screen. Your party members can either click it, or hit T to target your enemy. Of course, you can do so as well. If your teammembers decide to focus fire on an enemy and call it, you can hit T as well to help them. But be careful to not accidently move away from your position. Minimap - The artist within You can paint white lines on the minimap by clicking and dragging your mouse over it. Woohoo. You can even ping a target or location by simply left clicking. Woohoo. Now don't start spamming nonsense on your minimap, use it to your advantage. There are a few symbols that are widely accepted and most people understand their meaning.  You're indicating your team that you want them to stay behind that line  Can mean a multitude of things, but is mostly used to point a certain direction.  You're indicating your team that you want to sneak THROUGH the enemy mobs. The two thick lines are roughly the width of your aggro circle  Often drawn along an edge. Basically means, walk past there. Can sometimes mean: Sneak past the enemies.  Indicates a target location. Either to tank or stand. Symbols on the minimap are often only understandable under special circumstancs and in certain contexts. Though the above should give you a general idea. Oh and before i forget...If you see someone painting houses, or starting a game of Tic Tac Toe... that basically means your team is utterly bored.  Getting started Skills and Builds You're still here, huh? Still haven't given up? You want to know how to get started and how to train tanking? Allright, you've asked for it. Your very first step should be to get the appropiate equipment. As you've of course read the above paragraph on equipment, you now know what to buy. So we can just skip on that and dive into the realms of skills and builds. There are many options for your character. You can chose to be a pure warrior tank or resort to your secondary class to augment your abilities. There are basically 3 way to handle damage. You can either: Outheal it Reduce it or prevent it A mixture of these things is also possible though keep in mind that you want to be also dealing some damage or else you'd just be an extremely bored moveable wall. You lack the potential to do some damage (thus weakening your team) and you've also made a build giving you utter boredom. Do you want to know why so many good tankplayers have stopped being Tanks in the past? There was a time, when holding an item everyone would just attack you and only you. This created a whole new generation of Tankwannabe's. People who have never really learned to play the game. And they just couldn't. They were told to "get the ****ing gear you noob!" and so they did. Good tankplayers basically just gave up playing because this was ultimately boring and easy. As this little exploit was fixed, there was a sudden influx of really really bad tanks who didn't really know otherwise. So why am i telling you this? Your build is your own responsibility. If you put 8 stances into your build you've not only gimped your character, you've also exposed yourself to ultimate boredom. There is also a certain MUST in your builds. One of the slots is permanently reserved no matter what. And that is your ressurection skill. Don't leave home without it. Don't get too confident, everyone makes mistakes sometimes and if you're the last one standing, not being able to res your fellow players, you have just wasted tons of time. Keep in mind that each class combination has potential strengthes and weaknesses. For further information on how to build and maintain a good warrior character, resort to reading striderkaaru's awesome guides. [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] Final words I've now completely reworked the guide, working in the suggestions of the community. If you've still got some comments or complaints, feel free to post them. I've also re-checked the traffic the images cause. I can deal with it. Everythings fine. I now consider this article finished. Thank you for your comments and suggestions. _______________________ End of Guide ________________________ What i'm posting below this line, doesn't officially belong into the guide itself (anymore). The reason for doing this is, that it is a) Information that was asked for. but b) Is far too biased on my point of view. By providing builds, and stating strengthes or weaknesses of classes, i can't guarantee a neutral stance. Consider the following information optional. Maybe use it as a start but seriously don't take it as written in stone. I'm going to post a few example builds. Those are far from being perfect, but should give you an idea. I'm sorry for the lack of hammer builds, i'm not proficient enough to give examples about how those could work in a tanking situation. Warrior/X Often called a pure warrior or the pure tank. Someone going Warrior/X has decided to neglect the strengthes of their secondary class and instead focus on their primary class. Though my words may have sound sarcastic, they really aren't. Going pure warrior mainly offers one advantage, you simply don't spread your attributes too thin. A pure warrior will choose to bring stances and attacks, using interrupts to stop key skills while relying on skills and signets to heal themself. A pure warrior will most often find himself maxing two attribute lines. That is either Weapon Attribute / Strength or Weapon Attribute / Tactics. And a few decide to spread their points over all 3 Attributes. Advantages of maxing strength: If someone decides to max strength, his primary focus is to do damage. Though some strength based skills allow him to boost his defense. Some notable Attribute Breakpoints: 9 Strength results in 8 seconds of Tiger's Stance 9 Strength results in 9 seconds of I will survive 14 Strength results in 10 seconds of Tiger's Stance 15 Strength results in 20 seconds duration of Dolyak Signet, which has a 20 second recharge. Resulting in a permanent Signet Coverage So unless you're going for the full 20 seconds of Dolyak Signet, i wouldn't really advice to raise your strength above 9 when you're tanking. Though the little bit of dual spec can help. A pure Weapon/Strength Build might look like this: Quote: Strength: 15 Sword: Min 14 1. Dragon Slash [E] 2. Galrath Slash or Silverwing Slash 3. Sun and Moon Slash 4. For Great Justice 5. Tigers Stance 6. Dolyak Signet 7. Wild Blow or Distracting Blow 8. Res Signet Adantages: With 14 Points in Swordmastery, you have a very powerful Skillcombination in there. With 14 points of Swordmastery and For Great Justice up, you can spam the first 3 skills until FGJ runs out, and even after that, your attacks are a force PVE enemies have to deal with. Tigers Stance furthermore increases your damage output. Dolyak Signet is basically there to reduce the damage you take (it's just too good of an opportunity to miss). Slot 7 is an option, depending on where you're going. If you know you'll face lots of enemies with annoying evasion stances, you might want to bring Wild Blow. And if you know you'll be faciing lots of spellcasters, Distracting Blow is your choice. Yes i'm full well aware that there is also Savage Slash in the Swordsmanship line. But... Savage Slash has double the recharge of Distracting Blow and even double the energycost, only to get a bit of damage in a trade against a potential AoE Interrupt? No really... take distracting Blow. Another, axe based build, may look like this: Quote: Strength: 15 Axe Mastery: High enough 1. Triple Chop [E] 2. Cyclone Axe 3. Disrupting Chop 4. Dismember 5. Free Slot 6. I will survive 7. Dolyak Signet 8. Res Signet Not really a powerful build. Mind you, it's just there to get you started. The purpose behind this build is to deal AOE damage to fuel yourself with enough adrenaline to spam Disrupting and apply a deep wound to a mutltitude of enemies. Once you're holding the Aggro. You use Triple Chop and Cyclone to fuel yourself with adrenaline (don't spam them one after another though - use up your adrenaline first). If you're doing it right you can either focus on one enemy or on multiple enemies (just make sure you're not accidently moving). After each Triple Chop or Cyclone, all of your adrenal skills should be charged, or atleast close to be charged. Either focus fire on a target with your team and apply your deep wound, as well as your interrupts (Disrupting Chop is insanely powerful) or distribute deep wounds left and right. Advantages of maxing tactics Many consider a tactics based warrior as the one real tank. The tactics line is filled with lots and loads of evasion stances and ways to avoid damage. You must be careful when you're going full tactic. By doing so, you're severely neglecting your primary damage and mostly rely on conditional ways to deal damage. I'm not too keen on pure Tactic Builds. As they tend to overfocus on the defence. And if you're going pure tactic, you're almost required to bring more than one stance, more than one counter and some powerful energy management to keep your build working. On top of that, Tactics is heavily reliant on energy. Pure Tactics is the choice to go if you want to play a gimped character and one of the examples is the build below: Quote: Tactics: High Sword: High 1. Gladiators Defense [E] 2. Shield Bash 3. On your Knees 4. Riposte 5. Deadly Riposte 6. Bonettis Defense 7. Watch Yourself 8. Res Signet That is one hell of an energy reliant build. Don't use it (unless you're facing loads of melee enemies). But if you do, this one is nasty. Use it at your own risk, it's utterly flawed. The purpose of this build is to constantly keep up your Eliteskill. This is possible by Using On your Knees in combination with Shield Bash. This requires a good timing as well. Riposte and Deadly Riposte tear through PVE Mobs, Watch Yourself increases your defense... a bit and Bonettis is basically just there to keep your energy up and high. A terrible build, though it is a good example as to why i wouldn't advice someone to go pure tactics. It just doesn't pay off. Advantages of mixed builds Now we're getting somewhere. If you leave the "max two attribute lines" mentality behind, you can enter the realm of the more powerful tanking builds. The strengthes are manifold, while the weaknesses can be overcome. An example what i'm talking about: Quote: Strength: 15 Tactics: 9 Weapon: Weaponbased 1. Victory is Mine [E] 2. Desperation Blow 3. Drunken Blow 4. Dolyak Signet 5. Watch yourself 6. Healing Signet 7. Interrupt 8. Res Signet This build combines all three ways of dealing with damage. First off, your 15 points in strength allow you to keep Dolyak Signet permanently up. That is good, because you negate the negative effects of Desperation Blow and it's evil twin Drunken Blow plus get a nice little armor boost of +40 AL. Using both of your Blows you're dealing conditions left and right (switch targets inbetween), which are the base for ViM to heal and boost your energy. Healing Signet is basically there to combat Health Degeneration though you might risk to use it while you've got Watch Yourself and Dolyak Signet up. Your interrupt is almost self explanatory. An interrupted Meteor Shower is something you won't have to worry about... and not enough, you're also dealing damage. Going Warrior/Monk Yikes. The most common class combination and also the most infamous one you could have chosen. Most Warrior/Monks rely on enchantments to keep themself alive. Enchantments have a serious disadvantage though, they can and will often just be removed from you. Sometimes even applying serious amounts of damage. If you're a Warrior/Monk, relying on enchantments is obviously not the way to go, especially as you'll have to spec points into healing. Though, as negative as i've painted a Warrior/Monk, it DOES have strengths as well. One is a permanent res, something not too shabby. Just be sure to not combat res your buddy straight into the action. A Warrior/Monk can also deal with hexes and conditions himself without having to rely on a monk to do that. So if you're finding yourself permanently blinded and screaming at your monk to mend that... mend it yourself, you don't even need any points in those skills to remove hexes or conditions. And if your build is not energy reliant, you could also bring Succor. Sacrificing one pip of energy to give another person an added Energy Pip. Not too shabby if you ask me. But seriously, unless you're farming or really, REALLY know what you're facing, don't rely on Healing Prayer Enchantments to keep you alive. Going Warrior/Ranger Someone who goes Warrior/Ranger has chosen to combine the two professions with some of the most powerful stances. A ranger is also quite powerful when it comes to selfhealing without having to rely on enchantments. Both of these abilities make for a nice asset on a tanking character, under certain situations. One example might be: Quote: Strength: ~15 Wilderness Survival: 9 Points Weapon mastery: Weapon based 1. Weaponskill 2. Weaponskill 3. Weaponskill 4. I will survive 5. Melandru's Resilience [E] 6. Troll Unguent 7. Dolyak Signet 8. Res Signet This build utilizes our good old Dolyak Signet once more. Under the right conditions, this build will keep you alive for a long long time. This condition is, well conditions. Both, I will survive and Melandru's Resilience give a nice Health Regeneration when suffering from conditions. If you're facing hexes, Melandru's Resilience becomes even more powerful. Troll Unguent might prove a bit tricky at times, due to it's long activation time. You'd be best adviced to cast it pre combat to intercept the first few hits. And as a tank, the first few hits are normally the most important ones. Going Warrior/Necromancer The necromancer line has some powerful spells to weaken the enemy. So it is no big surprise that Warrior/Necromancers can be powerful tanks. While the Warrior/Ranger Example above was geared around dealing with conditions, the Warrior/Necromancer is focused on dealing conditions. No "with" inbetween. Example Build: Quote: Death Magic: 8 Weapon: Weapon based Tactics: 10 Strength: Rest 1. Virulence [E] 2. Condition Inflicting Attackskill 3. Attack Skill 4. Attack Skill 5. Bonettis Defense 6. Healing Signet 7. Plague Touch 8. Res Signet Your first goal would be to apply a condition. As soon as you've done that, you hit Virulence and let the action begin. Your direct target will now suffer from Weakness, Poison and Disease plus your initial condition. As disease spreads from one target to another if it is of the same race (don't use it when facing humans...), allmost all your enemies will now suffer from Disease. Whenever you get a condition that is troubling you, plague touch it onto the enemy. You're lacking Armorbuffs in this build though. Don't use healing signet when you're not under the influence of Bonettis Defense. Another build might be: Quote: Curses: 10 Rest accordingly 1. Attack Skill 2. Attack Skill 3. Attack Skill 4. Enfeebling Blood 5. Shadow of Fear 6. Bonettis Defense 7. Plague Touch 8. Res Signet This build is geared towards handling large amounts of physical damage. Both Enfeebling Blood and Shadow of Fear will cut the damage you receive down by large amounts, though both are quite energy intensive (thus you should bring Bonettis Defense to fuel your energy). A melee enemy suffering from Weakness and 50% Attack Speed is basically doing nothing. Plague Touch is just too good to not bring, and as your Elite Skill is still unassigned you can include some damage based elites. Going Warrior/Mesmer Another one of those powerful combinations. A warrior choosing mesmer as his secondary is trying to prevent and reduce damage, instead of pure outhealing. Due to the nature of the mesmer class, all of their skills come with a twist and need some brain to pull off. One example: Quote: Illusion: 9 points Weaponskills: As you see fit Strength: As you see fit Inspiration: What's left 1. Attack Skill 2. Attack Skill 3. Attack Skill 4. Attack Skill or an Armor Buff against general or physical damage 5. Elemental Resistance 6. Ancestors Visage 7. Sympathic Visage 8. Res Signet This build is basically a trap. Once enemies start to hit you, they quickly drain away their energy and adrenaline. 9 Points in Illusion help to keep Visage active for 15 seconds with a recharge of 30 seconds As both Visage Spells have the same attributes you've got a 100% coverage by alternating these two spells. As you've now effectively crippled the damage thrown at you melee wise, the only thing you've got to worry about is spell damage, thus elemental resistence is there to reduce this damage as well. You can also use visage to drain casters dry, simply move close to them and wait for melee mobs to hit you. With so much defensive power, you can almost risk to not bring a self heal as the damage you will be taking is minor. Going Warrior/Elementalist A warrior going Warrior/Elementalist either looks to boost his damage, or boost his defense. While both give a quite nice boost to your Armor Level, the disadvantage is that every single buff the elementalist line can provide is enchantment based and as such, suffers the same problem as the Warrior/Monk. You're way to reliant on not getting your buffs removed. No need to give builds as they really mostly only include one or two Elementalist Enchantments and put the rest in your average warrior build. Going Warrior/Assassin Nothing i can advice you. Assassins are based upon Movement, a tank is based upon the absence of movement. I'm not quite sure if these two worlds can be combined in a way to enhance tanking. Vermilion Okeanos and cellardweller later on provided a bit of insight on the whole Warrior/Assassin Combination: Quote: Originally Posted by Vermilion Okeanos As for the warrior/assassin section... Assassin 2ndary are the best to coop with doyalk signet, as those shadow step allow you to still be on the offensive and move almost as normal with doyalk on. Generally, doyalk is out of the question for me unless enchantment removal were common. When facing mobs with enchantment removal, you should hope the mob remove your team mate's enchantment. In my opinion, warrior should be rank upon how well they coop their IAS with their tanking, hence, IMO w/me with physical resistance etc is out of the question. Quote: Originally Posted by cellardweller Sounds like you haven't discovered the beauty that is Death's Charge. W/A is my new favorite tanking build simply for this magnificent aggro management tool. DC into the middle of an enemy mob and you WILL grab every single piece of aggro right off the bat, even with 7 henchies. Going Warrior/Ritualist You may want to chose weapon spells to augment your tanking ability. Resilent Weapon or weapon of Warding. Though those require you to keep on spamming to be effective. Another alternative might be to bring Vengeful was Khanhei. I've obviously not yet tested this and can't advice a build either. Reminder! Keep in mind, that these builds are just meant as basic hints and pointers. They're not perfect, they're sometimes flawed (though i've noted their weaknesses). I've posted them to give you a basic idea of how to skill your character. In reality you will have to accomodate your build to each area you're facing. Lots of Melee Mobs? Sure as hell you're not bringing Elemental Resistence. Lots of Mesmers? Forget about Enchantments. Lots of Necromancers? Deal with Conditions. Mixed? Try to balance your build. If you develop a build of your own, keep in mind that people basically expect two things from you. Deal damage and deal with damage. Damage comes in many forms and types. Armor ignoring, Armor reliant, Degeneration, Hexes, Conditions, etc. Once again, keep in mind, thats just heavily based upon personal opinions. |
|  |
| Sponsored Links |
| |
|
| Bookmarks |
| Thread Tools | |
| Display Modes | |
| |
Linear Mode
