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Need help with Tank build (Castle Never Problems)

spuratisspuratis Member Posts: 58 Arc User
edited May 2015 in The Guard Barracks
DISCLAIMER: I'm playing on Xbox One, but I want advice from the vets. I'm kind of stuck in an early module still since it's in Xbox One so keep that in mind. Thanks.

Ok, so I'm having trouble with the final boss of Castle Never. My feats are specced into Protector. My stats are specced into Dex and Con, I think that might actually be the problem. I have 15 str, 26 con and 21 dex. I am 13,734 gear score and have no trouble what-so-ever tanking ANYTHING up to the Dracolich. Me and my guild literally roll through every dungeon no problem and same for Castle Never.. then I get to the boss and I'm always told to run around in tight circles around the dragon and taunt adds and I seem to have trouble getting agro on them. Sometimes they just ignore my enforced threat completely. I use the Knight's Valor, Into the Fray, and Enforced Threat skills and Terrifying Impact and Supremacy of Steel as my dailies with Steel Defense and Enhanced Mark as my passives.

I just feel like I'm doing something very wrong. I had 0 Arm Pen. before today and just got that boon and put a 150 enhancement on my neck to raise that a bit so now it's at 350, I wasn't using Soulforge until now since people were complaining that I don't have it. I have never needed it before because I'm so tanky, I was just using Briartwine to do a little extra dmg and help build threat.

I've had people say that I'm not the problem and I sometimes feel that I'm not, but I need reassurance because I've had a few people yelling at me for not holding every single add at that boss fight which I'm finding nearly impossible. There really aren't any REAL good Tank builds that I could find on the internet other than the Iron Maiden build on MMOMinds that I kind of used a bit, but I typically just get ideas from builds and go my own way. I just need to know if I'm doing anything wrong.

Any and all help appreciated, thanks guys.
Post edited by spuratis on

Comments

  • icyphishicyphish Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,255 Arc User
    edited May 2015
    If you can stay alive and holds aggro well, then you are not the problem, period.
    Just make sure you avoid the big red circle towards mid-late in the fight, the claws from underneath can do serious damage.

    And yes, its ideal to have approximately 20% armpen to effectively deal damage, more dmg = more threat = better aggro! :>

    PS: This is the perspective from a GWF.... :x
    icydrake%20avatar2_zpsg7rp0xti.jpg

    Author of GWF Speed Demon PvP Build (Mod 11) <- Click to reveal the Speedy Beast! >:)
  • dfncedfnce Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 509 Arc User
    edited May 2015
    spuratis wrote: »
    DISCLAIMER: I'm playing on Xbox One, but I want advice from the vets. I'm kind of stuck in an early module still since it's in Xbox One so keep that in mind. Thanks.

    Ok, so I'm having trouble with the final boss of Castle Never. My feats are specced into Protector. My stats are specced into Dex and Con, I think that might actually be the problem. I have 15 str, 26 con and 21 dex. I am 13,734 gear score and have no trouble what-so-ever tanking ANYTHING up to the Dracolich. Me and my guild literally roll through every dungeon no problem and same for Castle Never.. then I get to the boss and I'm always told to run around in tight circles around the dragon and taunt adds and I seem to have trouble getting agro on them. Sometimes they just ignore my enforced threat completely. I use the Knight's Valor, Into the Fray, and Enforced Threat skills and Terrifying Impact and Supremacy of Steel as my dailies with Steel Defense and Enhanced Mark as my passives.
    To get more aggro out of ET you need use V/menace daily after ET or activate SoS second time to spread damage around. Also weapon enhancement placing dot (like PF or Flaming) combined with ET mark improves aggro furher. Another thing which increases ET effect is passive reflection damage - Renegate Evoker, Blacksmith companions and Guarded Assault feat in slot. Both companions are so useless in every other aspect, you can live without them.

    Unless your team is capable to kill Dracolic in 60 seconds, your tactics should rather keep dragon in one direction to avoid rotatation, and your team should pay attention on adds too, especially on red wizards. You may use Lunging Strike to get quick to dragon in expense of ITF, then use ET (plus AoE daily after it to increase aggro effect) almost at arena center, then retreat back to avoid red but still facing dragon.
    EX-DL-BtS / ITF-KC-KB / BF-HD-IBS / FtF-IT-ST-Dis / CA-GW-PG
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  • kemi1984kemi1984 Member Posts: 849 Arc User
    edited May 2015
    Well If I may say something...this game is not always about tank grabbing and holding ALL of the mobs.

    When I read that someone is complaining that tank is not holding all of the adds I just shake my head. Bear in mind that I'm talking from PC Mod6 perspective, where holding them all without a controll stuff from CW/TR is not possible.

    If a player can't manage to dodge, kite a single add moving after him...no words...
    As for the aggro, you can go out of your skin and still someone will out aggro you with massive DPS.

    Since I remember, DPS is the biggest aggro magnet, and holding and mantaining aggro of all mobs was never easy if even doable.
    Nancy - Dragonborn, SM Guardian Fighter
    A proud member of "mythical horde of DPS GFs"

    1). Is SW more dps or tank based?
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  • xd108xxd108x Member Posts: 142 Arc User
    edited May 2015
    Well, firstly I would say people telling you to run in circles around the dracolich should not be listened to, as that is something of a bad thing to do with enemies like dragons, since it would cause their tail and/or head to turn into people and hit them. From someone who has had a fair amount of tanking experience in this game and another well known MMO I find it better to try and the dracolich pointing the same direction the best you can, this will allow the rest of the group to position themselves to its sides.

    For all those who say you need 16k+ GS blah blah to do this boss, I would disagree, as that is simply the player mentality of instead of using skill, thought and teamwork to overcome a challenge to instead try and outgear it and nuke it.

    So more for dealing with Dracolich. I find Knight's Challenge is a good skill to use on bosses like dragons due to their ability to hit the entire party for damage and this will cut that in half. Other than that Im sure you are aware of what good skills/encounters might be for such fights, e.g. Tide of Iron or Into The Fray (optional imo). Last I knew on that fight also however that dracolich was the exception to the rule that knockback can be prevented somewhat by blocking, which means you will get knocked back too and take full damage from it, therefore I find Bull Rush or Lunging Strike helps here too.

    As for dealing with adds, which can be the harder part of the fight you're two best options are Enforced Threat and/or Knight's Valour. Like others have said Enforced Threat as u know is a very important skill for tanking and will help keep the adds under control. Knight's Valour can be a risk but it is also very good for as well redirecting threat from enemies attacking someone else to you (so long as that person doesn't attack back too much) along with of course reducing damage everyone else takes. Lastly I found that as in most fights and I'm sure you know, using Enhanced Mark is also helpful in ensuring that enemies stay focused on you.
    However unlike what someone has told you, handling the adds should not[ be just down to you, as for a start you won't be able to take that much damage for long without assistance, and also several of the adds in that fight will likely be out of range of things like Enforced Threat. Therefore you ideally need a class like a CW to help with something like Singularity to pull them to on top of the dragon near you. Then the rest of the group can use area damage attacks and control spells to help kill the adds while also hitting the dragon, which is the key to winning this fight I would say.
  • odd111outodd111out Member Posts: 173 Arc User
    edited May 2015
    The hardest thing for us is that your Mod 5 will always be substantially different from our Mod 5, as in ours a lot of people had been around and were rocking pretty high enchantments and Devoted Cleric sigils by then.

    As for your Guild, if they honestly need you to run Knight's Valor in Draco, they are not skilled/geared enough to be running that boss fight.

    I would guess that you are Protector Swordmaster? If you were Iron Vanguard, you could feat into Trample the Fallen, and use that to hold agro against Control Wizards. I would say in this that you need to either drop Knight's Valor or ITF. You can even let your party decide which.

    Then slot Bull Charge. You need to focus on two kinds of mobs. The really tall Golems with the Swords that lunge (use Tab Mark on them, THEN Enforced Threat or Cleave to hold them). The seconds kind is the Red Wizards. You will get some that spawn and move to the outside of the general AOE of your DPS classes. Then they rain fireballs down on your party. You need to Mark, get to them, then use Bull Charge to punt them like a football into the center of the ring so Oppressive Force can kill them. Take care not to punt them to the side because they will not come to you like the Golems. If you were IV, you could just use Frontline Surge instead.

    You don't need to concentrate on Armor Penetration, since it won't counter the agro generated by immense critical damage. Most protectors I knew in Mod 5 did only about 500k damage for Draco, where the average CW did millions. Even if you have 24% Armor Penetration, what's that on a 10k Enforced Threat? You need to use Mark to place you by default on the top of the agro table. You will (until Mod 6) get bumped back down, but you can keep using Tab to get back on top.

    Posters above also had a good point that it's far more important to keep the dragon stable than to allow him to turn.
  • spuratisspuratis Member Posts: 58 Arc User
    edited May 2015
    Alright everyone, thank you for the responses and sorry for my delay to respond. I am specced Protector Swordmaster so I feel I may be missing a few good moves like threatening rush, but I'm not that gimpy. I just got out of Castle Never again. It was my first run since making this topic. We DESTROYED the dungeon, literally smashed to the last boss with no hiccups, the first three bosses probably lasted 20 seconds. We fight the Dracolich once and get him half way, cool practice run, best I've done so far. Second time, we get him down to 1/8 left... 3rd, not so lucky. Adds don't despawn and have to start the fight with them there. It goes on like this the rest of the time, so we never beat him. We have 2 control wizards, me, a good cleric friend of mine and a mean Rogue laying down some serious single target DPS. It got real laggy and we just couldn't do anything. I think the Xbox Servers might be a bit <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>. Even friends who were in our chat that were doing quests to level up were getting lag spikes when we were complaining about it, but yeah...

    Anyways, I typically run cleave, tide of iron, villians menace, supremacy of steel, ITF, KV and ET. I really like this set up and has served me VERY well up to this point. I'm happy with my stats right now but I'm tempted to change to Vanguard. Not sure if Swordmaster is the way to go though I'm not sure. I thought for sure we would have killed this Dracolich tonight but it didn't happen. First I agro'd him (and held it) and took him to the wall.. this was good at first but then I was pinned and couldn't see much so red rings killed me. We then tried the circle tactic and we took him to 1/8 health so we continued to try this over and over, but lag finally beat us and we gave up. Oh well. Maybe it wasn't my build or stats, my friends and even the pug that was with us tonight said that I was good, he was even saying that Soulforge was dumb to have on Tanks which I believe is true and kind of reconfirmed how I felt about it to begin with.. oh well. I'm tired, thanks again guys I'm still open to any words of advice..
  • grimahgrimah Member Posts: 1,658 Arc User
    edited May 2015
    spuratis wrote: »
    Alright everyone, thank you for the responses and sorry for my delay to respond. I am specced Protector Swordmaster so I feel I may be missing a few good moves like threatening rush, but I'm not that gimpy. I just got out of Castle Never again. It was my first run since making this topic. We DESTROYED the dungeon, literally smashed to the last boss with no hiccups, the first three bosses probably lasted 20 seconds. We fight the Dracolich once and get him half way, cool practice run, best I've done so far. Second time, we get him down to 1/8 left... 3rd, not so lucky. Adds don't despawn and have to start the fight with them there. It goes on like this the rest of the time, so we never beat him. We have 2 control wizards, me, a good cleric friend of mine and a mean Rogue laying down some serious single target DPS. It got real laggy and we just couldn't do anything. I think the Xbox Servers might be a bit <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>. Even friends who were in our chat that were doing quests to level up were getting lag spikes when we were complaining about it, but yeah...

    Anyways, I typically run cleave, tide of iron, villians menace, supremacy of steel, ITF, KV and ET. I really like this set up and has served me VERY well up to this point. I'm happy with my stats right now but I'm tempted to change to Vanguard. Not sure if Swordmaster is the way to go though I'm not sure. I thought for sure we would have killed this Dracolich tonight but it didn't happen. First I agro'd him (and held it) and took him to the wall.. this was good at first but then I was pinned and couldn't see much so red rings killed me. We then tried the circle tactic and we took him to 1/8 health so we continued to try this over and over, but lag finally beat us and we gave up. Oh well. Maybe it wasn't my build or stats, my friends and even the pug that was with us tonight said that I was good, he was even saying that Soulforge was dumb to have on Tanks which I believe is true and kind of reconfirmed how I felt about it to begin with.. oh well. I'm tired, thanks again guys I'm still open to any words of advice..

    You have to be actively hitting hte dragon, enhanced mark along wont keep agro against focused dps. Just facetank everything at the face, use your stab, iron warrior(or into the fray)/enforced threat should give you enough stamina. If you have the artifact weapon that gives stamina on bash thats even better. the only threat you will have are the hands coming up around you, so just manevuer for them.

    With a cleric you shouldnt have a problem surviving everything, aim for 1500-2000 regen and 1000-1500 lifesteal and you should be fine.
    Creator of the featured survival horror foundry: "The Silence of Haydenwick" Video Review
    and also the featured satirical comedic adventure "A Call for Heroes".
  • query523query523 Member Posts: 1,515 Arc User
    edited May 2015
    OK. this is not class mechanics so muchas the social hack. Somepeople think that tanks are magical characters that can fix everything wrong with a party. This is not the case. On draco your job shold be holding aggro and keeping Draco's attacks pointed in the same direction so that you and not your party will have to deal with them. Anything past that is you being generous and carrying your party. Not that that is a bad thing I used my GF to rescue many stranded parties. But take care of that priority first amdconsider everything elseyou beinganice guy and helping them out. Trust me if you do not draw that line they will expect you to carry the entire party through the entire content. Which, honestly, a goodGF can do. Butagood GFshould also knowthat such performance is aboveand beyondtcall of duty. Anda party composed of decent players should acknowledge that and act accordingly. So congradualtions! if you arecapableofholdingaggro andpointing rao forward or left you have dobe what shoud be expected from a tak. If you can accomplish more thanthis congradualations yet again. You are a solid tank that can manage a boss and and adds thereforea legitimatelary capable of carrying a party of incompetants...
  • xd108xxd108x Member Posts: 142 Arc User
    edited May 2015
    Ehe sadly I remember in Mod 5 a lot of people expected GFs just to act as 'buff bots' i.e. follow them around with Knight's Valor on and use Into The Fray, while they mindlessly zerg/rush into enemies. Then on fights like dracolich they simply expect to be able just to nuke the boss while we as tank players are expected to run around trying to pick up adds, which is made even harder when people are running all over the place. Really hoping people can't get away with that in Mod 6.
  • discoricediscorice Member Posts: 371 Arc User
    edited May 2015
    spuratis wrote: »
    Alright everyone, thank you for the responses and sorry for my delay to respond. I am specced Protector Swordmaster so I feel I may be missing a few good moves like threatening rush, but I'm not that gimpy. I just got out of Castle Never again. It was my first run since making this topic. We DESTROYED the dungeon, literally smashed to the last boss with no hiccups, the first three bosses probably lasted 20 seconds. We fight the Dracolich once and get him half way, cool practice run, best I've done so far. Second time, we get him down to 1/8 left... 3rd, not so lucky. Adds don't despawn and have to start the fight with them there. It goes on like this the rest of the time, so we never beat him. We have 2 control wizards, me, a good cleric friend of mine and a mean Rogue laying down some serious single target DPS. It got real laggy and we just couldn't do anything. I think the Xbox Servers might be a bit <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>. Even friends who were in our chat that were doing quests to level up were getting lag spikes when we were complaining about it, but yeah...

    Anyways, I typically run cleave, tide of iron, villians menace, supremacy of steel, ITF, KV and ET. I really like this set up and has served me VERY well up to this point. I'm happy with my stats right now but I'm tempted to change to Vanguard. Not sure if Swordmaster is the way to go though I'm not sure. I thought for sure we would have killed this Dracolich tonight but it didn't happen. First I agro'd him (and held it) and took him to the wall.. this was good at first but then I was pinned and couldn't see much so red rings killed me. We then tried the circle tactic and we took him to 1/8 health so we continued to try this over and over, but lag finally beat us and we gave up. Oh well. Maybe it wasn't my build or stats, my friends and even the pug that was with us tonight said that I was good, he was even saying that Soulforge was dumb to have on Tanks which I believe is true and kind of reconfirmed how I felt about it to begin with.. oh well. I'm tired, thanks again guys I'm still open to any words of advice..

    Try running steel defense with fighter's recovery. focus on gaining AP. use the Sigil of the Devoted artifact, attack with your guard up constantly, use items and armor reinforcement kits and jewels that boost AP. Pop Fighter's Recovery every time your daily comes up in boss fights. Iron Vanguard, while fun, doesn't have steel defense (which is a real shame). With Steel Defense, a few seconds of immunity to damage intermittently and a ton of self healing on damage dealt will keep you upright through some pretty hairy fights. Try running shield talent as your second class feature on those boss fights. I usually run guarded assault for everything non-dungeon, because I have decent deflect and designed my build for lots of reflect damage. Throw something like iron warrior, enforced threat, and either ITF or KV on there, you will be the adamantine elephant in the room. You can still get overwhelmed if adds aren't dropping fast enough or you get caught with your shield down at the wrong moment, but this is a particularly strong combo.

    Also consider swapping out cleave with weapon master's strike. it has much better range, a wider arc, and better damage. When in a non-dungeon environment, if you have points in the paragon feat that reduces enemy's mitigation against your encounters after getting hit by WMS, it will help you blow through most things a little faster.

    Additionally, consider the Seladrine artifact set. With the full set equipped, when you get hit for more than 10% of your max HP, you heal for 2% of your max HP. Activates once per second. Consider running that with negation or even elven battle.

    Okay I'm done now.
    Fear Of A Disco Planet
  • guille23mxguille23mx Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 340 Arc User
    edited May 2015
    Use this Build... shouldnt have any problem surviving anything in pve or pvp (its ins russian but u can still figure it out....)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hpAf-jsmuM
  • pointsmanpointsman Member Posts: 2,327 Arc User
    edited May 2015
    Well, I don't play a GF, but I did go to CN many times on my CW, and the key to the final fight is to have solid CW's and DPS. You have to kill the adds before they grow too numerous and swamp the entire team, leading to a party wipe. You can't just run around in circles kiting them because the number of adds grows and grows if they aren't killed quick enough, and become too much to handle no matter what spec you are as GF.
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