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Guardian Tanking Discussion
massjamus
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users Posts: 0 Arc User
Hello! I'm a lvl 36 Guardian Fighter, and wanted to discuss mid level tanking and see if anyone had any advice or insight on how I'm currently running.
I've tanked in many different games, and I will say there are some mindset changes that have to happen in this one. First of all, I don't fight companions for aggro. If a tanking companion has it, let them have it. It's not on a squishy, so I don't really care. Using your few skills to try to pull of a companion is just a waste in my opinion.
For skills I use (forgive me if some of the names are wrong):
At Will: Cleave and Threatening Rush(charge at enemy, marks enemy and those around it)
Encounter: Enforced Threat (AOE Taunt + guard meter), Knight's Challenge (Plan on switching this for Into the Fray soon), and Frontal Surge (looks like 3 shields flying out and hitting everything in a straight line + a knockdown)
Daily: Terrifying Impact & Fighter's Recovery
The little ones next to Mark: Enhanced Mark and Shield Talent
My Build:
Toughness: 3/3
Strength Focus: 2/3
Armor Specialization: 3/3
Distracting Shield: 2/3
Potent Challenge: 3/3
Grit: 2/3
Weapon Mastery: 2/3
Pin Down: 3/3
Paragon
Plate Agility: 5/5
Shield Defense: 2/5
I already have some plans on changing some of these points. I'd really like to get Action Surge and Powerful Attack, but am waiting until I'm tanking more and questing less.
If I get to start the fight, I'll almost always start with a mark on the biggest long-term threat. I then follow it up with Frontal Surge knocking down as many as I can (this can be tricky). If it's a trash fight with more than one big mob, I'll also throw down a Terrifying Impact as they start to get back up. Then an Enforced Threat. At this time, the big mobs are pissed at me and I can hold them for about half the fight by just hitting Frontal Surge and Enforced Threat as they come up, using cleave, and blocking big attacks. In a decent group, but the time I can't hold them anymore, 1 or 2 of the big ones will be dead, and I can focus on holding a single one. Not bad.
In a boss fight, I'll often start out very similar, but I'll then hit the boss with my Knight's Challenge. This initial combo will allow me quite a while of holding aggro. I tend to use my Frontal Surge and Enforced Threat to pick off mobs headed towards healers, but I tend to ignore the small mobs and allow dps to just kill them. I make sure the boss stays on me and try to make sure the boss is facing in a direction away from the party if he has skills that would hit the party. I also don't rely on JUST block. If the boss has an AOE circle as he's doing a big skill, I back out of it. If he has a straight line skill, I move out of it. No sense in blocking what I can avoid (I just wish more of the party would avoid it as well).
I seem to be doing "OK" in aggro. I know many groups wouldn't agree as they feel I should be holding every mob all the time, but I don't think that's possible. I think my build needs some tweaking, but it seems to be working for now. This does seem to work for the most part. Of course, I haven't killed the lvl 35 dragon yet....so maybe I'm doing it completely wrong.
What do you guys think?
I've tanked in many different games, and I will say there are some mindset changes that have to happen in this one. First of all, I don't fight companions for aggro. If a tanking companion has it, let them have it. It's not on a squishy, so I don't really care. Using your few skills to try to pull of a companion is just a waste in my opinion.
For skills I use (forgive me if some of the names are wrong):
At Will: Cleave and Threatening Rush(charge at enemy, marks enemy and those around it)
Encounter: Enforced Threat (AOE Taunt + guard meter), Knight's Challenge (Plan on switching this for Into the Fray soon), and Frontal Surge (looks like 3 shields flying out and hitting everything in a straight line + a knockdown)
Daily: Terrifying Impact & Fighter's Recovery
The little ones next to Mark: Enhanced Mark and Shield Talent
My Build:
Toughness: 3/3
Strength Focus: 2/3
Armor Specialization: 3/3
Distracting Shield: 2/3
Potent Challenge: 3/3
Grit: 2/3
Weapon Mastery: 2/3
Pin Down: 3/3
Paragon
Plate Agility: 5/5
Shield Defense: 2/5
I already have some plans on changing some of these points. I'd really like to get Action Surge and Powerful Attack, but am waiting until I'm tanking more and questing less.
If I get to start the fight, I'll almost always start with a mark on the biggest long-term threat. I then follow it up with Frontal Surge knocking down as many as I can (this can be tricky). If it's a trash fight with more than one big mob, I'll also throw down a Terrifying Impact as they start to get back up. Then an Enforced Threat. At this time, the big mobs are pissed at me and I can hold them for about half the fight by just hitting Frontal Surge and Enforced Threat as they come up, using cleave, and blocking big attacks. In a decent group, but the time I can't hold them anymore, 1 or 2 of the big ones will be dead, and I can focus on holding a single one. Not bad.
In a boss fight, I'll often start out very similar, but I'll then hit the boss with my Knight's Challenge. This initial combo will allow me quite a while of holding aggro. I tend to use my Frontal Surge and Enforced Threat to pick off mobs headed towards healers, but I tend to ignore the small mobs and allow dps to just kill them. I make sure the boss stays on me and try to make sure the boss is facing in a direction away from the party if he has skills that would hit the party. I also don't rely on JUST block. If the boss has an AOE circle as he's doing a big skill, I back out of it. If he has a straight line skill, I move out of it. No sense in blocking what I can avoid (I just wish more of the party would avoid it as well).
I seem to be doing "OK" in aggro. I know many groups wouldn't agree as they feel I should be holding every mob all the time, but I don't think that's possible. I think my build needs some tweaking, but it seems to be working for now. This does seem to work for the most part. Of course, I haven't killed the lvl 35 dragon yet....so maybe I'm doing it completely wrong.
What do you guys think?
Post edited by massjamus on
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I use a similar power set (with Into the Fray) except I have Tide of Iron on my left mouse button and Threatening Rush on right. My main attack is stabbing with my shield up (for the taunt effect), having Tide of Iron means I automatically start regenerating my guard meter with it when my shield goes down as I'm holding down left mouse button to stab. Also I've found the debuff pretty good for increasing overall damage on a target.
For my dailies I use Terrifying Impact and Villain's Menace. I really like Villain's as it has the immunity to control effects and helps lots with damage.
Passives, I use Enhanced Mark and Ferocious Reaction. Ferocious I see as a good 'Oh s**t!' power and it has a lot of good effects compared to other passives.
I start off by popping Into the Fray, then I run in and use Frontline Surge, Threatening Rush to chase up, Enforced Threat, then block and stab, using Tide of Iron when I see a good opportunity to do so without losing the mark on my main target or when my guard meter is empty. Then I just keep using my encounter powers and dailies as they recharge and re-apply the mark on my main target with Threatening Rush whenever it drops. Obviously Threatening Rush is also used chase anything that is causing the Cleric trouble. Also move out of red marker attacks instead of blocking them.
I've had pretty good success with this so far, I'm at lvl 41.
Maybe I'll go ahead and burn a re-spec. Although it pains me to do so knowing that I still have like 25 levels to go and might change my opinion as I level. I wasted some spec points on some skills that I thought were passives, but of course only work when slotted w/ mark.
And I agree on Fighter's Recovery, I just had it because I wasn't using anything else. I've read good things on Supremacy of Steel, so I want to check that out in a few levels.
I agree on the one point in Into the Fray. I can't see it being worth more for just 4% run speed. But I'll see when I get the points spread out.
I use
AT WILL
Threatening Rush and tide of iron
PASSIVES
The shield buff (forget what its called) and enhanced mark
ENCOUNTERS
The dash one, Enforced threat, and EITHER the one that negates 50% damage from my alies (for trash mobs) OR Iron Warrior (for the bosses)
Basically I just go up to a pack, use my dash to get in there and enforced threat asap. they all turn to me so i charge into one of them with threatening rush (which marks + enhanced marks them all) and then use the 50% thing, throw up my shield and smack from behind my blocks. Once your team takes down most of the weak guys you'll probably have lost threat and the bigger dudes will run around, so i just charge/threat rush at them to gain threat +mark on them. Typically at this point if there were multiple bigger dudes, the healer or CW that they were chasing runs near enough to me that i can re-use enforced threat. And for these bigger baddies I will use tide of iron to get that de-buff - which is a crazy damage increase to my party. If you ever run out of block meter you just smack something with tide of iron, go behind your shield and use tide constantly - its faster while you are behind the shield.
For bosses though, its a bit different. I 'tab' them from a little distance, they usually just do some AOE move and I run around that while running at them, smack with my tide of iron for that debuff and wait for the adds to spawn in while smackin the boss. Once the adds get in you do the same as above, except you use Iron Warrior first BEFORE enforced threat.
Honestly Iron Warrior is a crazy good skill....your guard meter can sustain WAYYY more damage - especially if you have all the feats and the set bonus from Indomitable Warrior PVP gear
Same deal for PVP really, I use Iron Warrior to boost my guard meter by a heck of a lot and just take a beating on the point until more people come and help me. I've saved a lot of points from being lost that way.
While I agree with this in theory, I always find that companions have mobs facing in the most awkward directions (ie. directly facing the ranged allies). I want to ensure that mobs are facing the most ideal direction and tank companions really hinder that.
I'm only at 31 right now but does there come a time where you can trust that people have more than one companion and ask them to change to a DPS or healer companion before starting a dungeon? I don't want to be annoying about it or expect people to have second companions when most people don't so I'd welcome advice from others at higher levels.
I am right there with you. I really don't like when people have the tanking companion out because it screws up both stacking for AOE and directional attacks all the time. However, since most of the groups I'm in are pugs, I don't really feel it's my place to tell them what companion to use. After all, they don't know me and have no idea if I completely blow as a tank. It's a tough call. I haven't yet asked people to store pets though....
I thought that until I got threatening rush. The aoe mark ability and a gap closer you can spam seems to be a pretty useful skill. I re-spec'd last night and I'm still getting used to having the 2 shield abilities on my at will, but it does seem to work.
Personally I use cleave / Threatening rush on everything except bosses. Bosses I'll change cleave to Tide.
I hope I can learn a lot from this thread!
Speaking of Threatening Rush, when I levelled (finished today, so awful at times when solo -.-) I looked at the Threatening Rush and thought "Wait, this is an At-will? Wow, that's strong".
Now, since I haven't had the chance to go into a dungeon with my guild yet due to maintenance, how often do you use the rush?
Once per group to charge into them?
Until your Guard-meter needs refill via Tide of Iron?
Comming from WoW (7 or 8 years, Tank and DPS), the tanking at first felt god-awful. The groups just went cray cray on everything, so I stopped doing them at around ... 24? But since I'm now max. level, I feel like i am lacking a bit of experience.
My current skillset looks like this (it's from the top of my head, servers down):
LMB Tide of Iron, RMB Threatening Rush
1. Encounter is Frontline smth. smth.
2. Encounter is Griffon's Wrath
3. Encounter is Knights Valor
1. Daily is ... ... ??? Upheaval
2. Daily is Villain's Mennace
Passives are Shield Talent and Empowered Mark
Is that a useful combination? I am mainly looking for CC/counter-CC and (AE)-Threat. I know my guild, and they are quite capable of dealing tons of damage and reasonable good at controlling minions. (We have few GWFs, hence our AE is pretty much limited to CW and DC and the occasional skill a TR throws in.)
I am a somewhat hardcore theorycrafter, so if I am confusing someone, tell me so I'll try to use less abbrevations and more clear words
On a sidenote:
Could we get a free respecc at 60? Pretty please?
Unlike WoW for example there is no min-range on rush. You can be in a mobs face and use it to reapply AoE marks. TBH its the best way of applying mark.
As for power selection, that depends on how your specing / gearing. I use a hybrid build so I dont really guard alot (hence I dont use Tide except on bosses) and I move from bad. You can keep aggro on minions pretty easy with DPS alone. Tougher mobs generally have very slow attacks which are easy to avoid so I'm very mobile when tanking.
Other people prefure to take a more turtle like approach, snap aggro with Rush then shield up and stab. If thats your style then you'll want to take all the guard+ feats and keep tide slotted full time. You'll also want *Into the Fray* as an encounter power. Its silly good for that playstyle. It increases movement and gives temp hp but also recovers guard meter. With half decent recovery you can get it a ~50% uptime. Griffons is not that great for a turtle type playstyle. Enforced Threat may be a better choice since it restores guard meter as well as taunts and does AoE dmg. Frontline is win and never comes off my bar whatever spec I'm toying with.
You daily choices are solid although you may wanna play with Supremacy of steel along with upheaval. Menace is a solid choice with the impairment immunity though.
The sticky here has links to the popular builds. Rokuthy's Hybrid Tanking Build and Envy's DPS Guardian are great places to start if your not so much into the Turtle playstyle. My build is more similar to Envy's than Rokuthy's and it works for me. Take alook at thier posts and then try some stuff out.
When I first picked up Neverwinter I jumped straight on GF since I've always played a tank. I spent 60 levels (the last 10 or so OMG horrible) gearing and specing threat / Mitigation as I have in many other games as a tank. After leveling from 50-60 I was convinced I was doing something very wrong, it was painful to level and watching every other class mow through quests I came to the forums and started reading up.
Envy had just posted his first build around that time and after a quick respec I was much happier. I did'ent follow Envy exactly, its tailored to my playstyle but his premiss is solid. You really have to pick a direction though and stick with it. Gearing is different for each playstyle and gearing as a turtle with a DPS or Hybrid spec will leave you sub-par in both areas.
Over all I enjoy my GF alot more now and although I'm running 10.3K gear its still not where I want it to be and I'm working on it. (GD Bulwark pieces need to start dropping !!)
Don't tank the boss. It's big, slow, everyone can dodge it, and some tank pet is already holding it in a stupid place and a stupid direction.
Instead debuff everything so that dps can kill it. Hit things with Threatening Rush and get the feats that increase damage to things you control and decrease damage to your allies. Then hit the main things your dps is killing with Tide of Iron. You can also tab mark things that are far away.
It seems like the Guardian Fighter can be a dps support or a dps. As a tank it's just kind of taking up a party slot and slowing down the group progress.
I would mostly agree, buut ... "everyone can dodge it" ... ahem ...
It might be true that a pet can tank the boss, but in all honesty that'S not worth the hassle. And I think pets don't have as much mitigation as I have.
If a pet truly could tank, then there wouldn't be a GF.
Usually they do it all, knock everything away from you right after you managed to collect the mobs, then send their tanking pet in to taunt a mob so it doesn't come back to you and possibly even pull aggro and start running away so you can now choose to help your cleric/wizard and loose aggro to the melee for the mobs that are still sticking on you or let them run circles a while longer.
Either way, tanking is a pain thanks to other players retardedness ... and I do have a CW. Knocking mobs towards the tank, dodging towards the tank or aiming your daily power on the tank to bunch up everything is anything but rocket science.
Putting some heroic feat points into minus-threat as a cleric might also be a smart move that eludes many people.
/edit:
Almost forgot. The choices in skills is terribad for guardian warriors.
The paragon class is an atrocity and adds absolutly nothing and I fear that once they release a proper one we'd have to reroll our character to actually benefit from paragon classes. -.-
I ran across and charged an elite mob (who then happened to fly into the abyss) right as our rogue did his teleport behind the back skill.
Rogue went into the abyss too.
Hahah
I'm sorry but you are giving Cryptic the benefit of the doubt in this.
You could also say "Since we have feats we wouldn't have them unless they worked" but we know that is untrue.
The fact is, I have still seen companion tanks in tier 1 dungeons and they are tanking just fine.
Of course, when I was leveling my GF and was frustrated that the stupid companion was tanking stuff, everyone said "just wait until you do epic dungeons, they will die right away." Well, now I am doing tier 1 epic dungeons and the stupid companion is still there.
Guess I gotta wait till Tier 2 Epic dungeons before the companion will die.
Obviously ... as wizard the tank companion is ridiculous to say the least, so I can understand why people start playing with them.
1. The protection you gain doesn't outpace the damage you will be taking. A lot of boss abilities in end game stuff will basically one shot your Guard meter from full to nothing.
2. Recovering Guard Meter is virtually non existent. You have 3 main abilities to gain back guard (Tide of Iron, Shield Slam, and Iron Guard) and a variety of other aiblities (Enraged Threat and Into the Fray) that restore a very VERY minor amount of Guard back. The only thing that's really a surge of Guard meter is with Iron Guard but that's fairly temporary, has a huge activation time, and generally doesn't work out very well in practice. This makes getting your Guard bar one shot even worse.
3. There are many encounters with infinite adds where even if the DPS gets on them, they instantly respawn and go after the cleric. This means the Cleric will be kiting and doesn't really have the time to micro manage your Hitpoints.
4. There are many abilities in the game that can't be blocked and you will get CC'd as a result if you try. Think of the "Eye of Grummish" that drop the sword down and leaves you prone or later the Firesurgers that do a blow up that knock you into the air regardless of blocking. These all have to be moved out of, which means you need to keep mobile and not get hit at all by them.
5. The guarded At-Wills don't apply the Protector Capstone -10% damage debuff. This means you have to hit them 5 times unguarded for it to work.
All of this leads to basically the scenario where you can't really tank damage even if you wanted to. The guard breaks too quickly and can't be recovered. The healer won't keep you up cause he's busy kiting adds. It makes much more sense to go towards a hybrid DPS style build because offer you more mobility to manually dodge while keeping threat through high DPS abilities in between.
Don't get frustrated , it's an Action mmorpg you can use potions to heal yourself too . Most of the abilities you're just supposed to dodge and block IF possible and IF you have guard meter .
You can't just go in and stand in 1 spot and tank
Now to be honest most groups won't even pick GF in T2 dungeons as they will prefer having 2 clerics + whatever dps .
I'm not saying that end game GF tanking and off tanking is not viable , but in such type of games ( there are other Arpgmmos as you know ofc ) people tend to lean on support + mechanical skill versus the mobs , so tanks are not kinda " meh no dmg " in people's eyes .
A good tank that provides usefull buffs and debuffs for the group and snap aggro from time to time for end game is still better option in my opinion . Ofc everyone can make their own setup and beat the game , what matters is the loot at the end right :P
SO to my fellow GFs , keep your heads up our time is yet to come as they release new content . This atm is just a mere taste of what the end game will look like
P.S. in the meantime work on understanding the mobs mechanics - time their attacks predict what they will do and who will they jump on when they spawn , use the time to learn how your character reacts it'll all mechanical skill - once you get good you'll be MVP in any group .
It increases the duration of the buff, which includes the other effects as well. Unfortunately the tooltip should just say Duration: +1 Sec to avoid confusion....sigh.
Putting heroic feat points into minus threat, and using the minus threat passive might be a smart move, other than it having almost no effect on the sheer amount of instant aggro clerics get when mobs spawn in. Admittedly I do survive a bit longer when using that passive (and having the minus threat feat of course), but that's not worth much when you die in the following instant spawn while people are still handling the first.
This is an open beta. Start treating it like one.
This kills me. Cleric stacking is silly OP atm with 2 AS down.
ATM in the current state of the game T2's are just so much easier with 2 clerics stacking AS. I'm hoping that this will be fixed at some point and its what keeps me on my GF. AS does not need a nerf, I'm not saying that, but only 1 should effect the target. Two clerics would still allow you to put down AS just in different locations (covering the melee and ranged for example) The current "stack 2 AS and everyone stand in it for lol's" method of T2 running sickens me.
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Enforcer's Threat does NOT recover guard.
Iron Warrior does NOT recover guard.
Into the Fray does NOT recover guard.
Threatening Rush does not always apply mark on hit.
Lunging Strike sometimes catches on easy terrain.
Terrifying Impact does not function properly with vertical axis.
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I find encounter abilities not recovering guard meter to be one of the largest crutches to "Tanking". Guarding as is will never make it possible to hold 10+ mobs constant like a traditional trinity MMO.
I'm not saying a Guardian Fighter cannot hold 10+ mobs. I'm saying you cannot guard against those 10+ mobs without break.
Guard blocks UN-mitigated attacks. No matter how much you put into it you're not going to get much more mitigation than others get with a dodge. The difference is the mob stays still. Is it a fair trade? In PvP sure. In PvE, hell no.
P.S. Deflecting fall damage is silly.