Great Weapon Fighter (as a tank or offtank)

misterfrenchie

Hello all, seeing how this was my first beta weekend with Neverwinter I did not get a chance to fully experience the Great Weapon Fighter. However, I did notice a paragon path that included various threat building and damage reduction skills. As a person who typically plays tanks in MMOs this was a very interesting find for me. I am aware of the threat issues currently but I was wondering if anyone has any knowledge on the viablity of the great weapon fighter as a tank or even off-tank.

kotli

The GWF is a tank and a striker in game depending on feats and gear.
If you want to tank you want to get the defensive focus gear IE high Deflection and other defensive stats a long with the tanking feats and skills.
The Striker build should have more Crit and armour penetration on gear with the offensive feats and the big damage skills.
In any case you want CC skills IE the Roar skill to interrupt mobs, mega hit incoming dodge or Roar.

misterfrenchie

I agree that is how you would want to gear yourself out, however I was asking if anyone has successfully tanked with a GWF. (even with threat kinda broken)

lanessar13

misterfrenchie wrote: »

I agree that is how you would want to gear yourself out, however I was asking if anyone has successfully tanked with a GWF. (even with threat kinda broken)

My experience was mediocre, so I can't really comment on this yet.Tank-spec seems to mitigate a lot of damage, sort of an evasion tank, but that's my experience in solo content (not group). Asking if you can tank with threat/healing aggro broken is sort of futile.

Like asking if that plane missing the wings flies well.

kotli

Well can it tank seems to how well it tanks without the agro bugs is anyone guess.

misterfrenchie

Thank you all for the responses. I am sure the aggro issues will be fixed, as the devs have posted many times.

argantis

I did a run with 4 GWF and one Cleric. All of us GWF also had a cleric companion. The run was... errr.... thinking here.... I think the Travan Blackdagger instance. It was so so smooth. No one really tanked and yet we all tanked. I generally was the first into combat, sometimes another. On the boss whoever had aggro on the big guy just kited a bit at times, it was usually me for some reason, I guess I was just doing more damage than the other guys. Not a single death, only had to pot about 10 times the entire run, mostly on the end boss, and pretty much chain pulled the entire instance.

I will say that I think any GWF that wants to tank or OT will need high damage to keep threat. That was not a problem in my group since there was no rogue and the cleric was not doing a ton off healing, so not a ton of heal hate. However if a rogue was there, there would be no way I would keep threat off them. I consider myself to be a pretty good player and most times I lead damage on whatever character I play. Maybe 1 in 5 or less times someone else would beat me but it would be close. My GWF, not a freaking chance to keep up with a rogue. They pretty consistently did about 33% more damage than I did. Meaning if I did 120k, they would do 180k. COntrol Wizards I could beat pretty regularly.

I think though that I was learning and refining my play skill a lot and if they did like I suggested and made master strike a better version of sure strike, that actually did splash AoE dmg, in small amounts, that it would add a lot of viability to have a 2nd at will that actually could do some damage. As it is now, I had to master strike, two other strikes, then refresh master strike. The 300 damage that master strike did at level 47 was a freaking joke and a crying shame. Sure strike put it so shame, and badly. Pretty much every other at will put it to shame damage wise. I just used it to stack damage combos on my 3 encounters, dailies, and sure strike. That came out to more damage for me than having a legit at will there to replace master strike. It is like it is the best of a bunch of really bad choices. That AoE swing, the first at will you start with is another viable choice too if your not into the stacking combos of master strike. I just seemed too boring to me and master strike did slightly more burst single target damage used well. Though I did sacrifice significant AoE damage in the process.

Like I said, master strike really needs to become a better version of sure strike. That way if a GWF wants to build for single target dmg they can rival a rogue, if they want to build for AoE dmg then they sacrifice some single target ability. Personally I would love to be single target for PvP and a hybrid of balanced damage for PvE.

enoch

When I was playing the GWF, I had no problem being the off-tank, often bringing a sense of control to the fight that the group would not have without it. I was able to move quickly from the main boss of a dungeon, to the mobs fighting my teammates, and was able to keep most of the bosses focus, and my teammates an easier time staying alive. Now, this game does not do control like earlier MMOs, it's a lot more chaotic, like (dare I say it) D&D. If you ran a PNP fight in real time, people wouldn't be controlling anyone for very long, you interrupted their spell, you want more? A lot of opinions Ive heard of how healers should be, or tanks should be, only work at end game when everyone has godlike powers, at lower levels even the simpler games aren't that easy (with regards to aggro). So many times I remember hearing people complain about how low level peeps they are grouped with can't hold aggro, or the healer isn't healing well enough, and that the complainers should be able to unleash their full fury on the enemy and the tank and healer should have no problem keeping them alive (almost as though they are more important than the tank or healer to keep alive), other than games end-game, when is this ever true? I've played about a dozen mmo's and none of them are like that unless someone is twinked out with gear everyone else can't afford I blame the "experienced" players of WOW (since they are the majority, but it's any mmo) who were brought to max level with a high level friend and never had to hone their skills until they pvp'd. Those players suck in low level dungeons in new games, and often even in the games they have "mastered" And to end my rant, I can't count how many times I've been in a game where a maxed level player asks a noobie question about how to play their toon... It's an epidemic and it needs to be considered when requesting players' opinions. They make up a decent number of players.

axer128

I played one up to a about lvl30, and for all content up to there - yea they can function as the parties tank easily enough.

But it's mainly because none of the content is hard enough to warrant a guardian.. They definetely cant survive the same kind of odds as a guardian, but do enough dps that they really dont have to.

But despite that, you simply wont get a chance in any dungeon/skirmish due poor game design:
The dungeon finder requires at least 1 tank, 1 healer and 1 dps to work.. And yea the only class flagged as a tank atm, is the guardian. (Clr being healer, and any other class dps i believe).
So yea its not possible to even get a chance due to that. And with guardians have so many agro skills and GWF having none, youll have a hard time (tho if you severely outplay said guardian, you can still take on the role to some degree).

Even if you manually formed a full party without a guardian and walked up to the cloak tower door - it still won't allow you in.. Pretty dumb imo... Forced to use the queue thing and if you do use it with said party, youll just see there indefinetely as the game will deny you due to party setup.

I believe i saw a taunt skill you get at very high lvl for the GWF, but I dunno for sure.. Doesnt seem like they are intended to be tanks by the devs.

Armor kinda points to that too:
Early on you get fullplate, generally the exact same stats as the GF FP (tho class restricted despite that fact)..
But by lvl20ish, all your armor becomes medium (chainmail/breasplates), and has signficiantly less defense rating (tho similar AC).. While the guaridan retains fullplate. Kinda a strange design, but yea.

axer128

argantis wrote: »

I did a run with 4 GWF and one Cleric. All of us GWF also had a cleric companion. The run was... errr.... thinking here.... I think the Travan Blackdagger instance. It was so so smooth.

Not sure how you managed that, as every attempt I made to enter a dungeon sans GF met with failure.

Havent ran that particular one tho, so I guess it might be different then the lower lvls ones. Does it use the finder?

volcxxx

hm... GWF can spec to be tank, sure
but his "tanking" will look like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zRT-LvJUuQ

gariel7

axer128 wrote: »

Armor kinda points to that too:
Early on you get fullplate, generally the exact same stats as the GF FP (tho class restricted despite that fact)..
But by lvl20ish, all your armor becomes medium (chainmail/breasplates), and has signficiantly less defense rating (tho similar AC).. While the guaridan retains fullplate. Kinda a strange design, but yea.

I wonder if the developers realized that fighters do not use heavy or plate armor in 4th edition and so decided to change it but only at level 20. Although it makes me wonder what they are doing with Guardian Fighters.