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(GF) A Full Tank build
endofends
Member Posts: 12 Arc User
With the recent patch, GFs can now get threat a lot easier, and tank builds are far more viable than before. I've been playing this build for a while now, and have been told by (random) party members that they're now wanting to create the same build. So here goes:
First of all, this is a full tank build; this is what you should be doing in dungeons. Note that your damage will be very low in this build, the only reason we would ever go for any damage stat is to gain more threat from attacks.
Primary roles: Aggro enemies, withstand their hits, protect party members.
Secondary roles: Buff party members, debuff enemies.
Race and Ability Scores
This build will assume you choose the Dwarf race, and place 2 points in to both constitution and strength. However, human is also a viable option for a full tank.
Dwarf:
+2 con and +2 strength or +2 wisdom
Knockback Resistance
Damage-over-time Resistance
Human:
+2 to any one stat
3 extra heroic feat points
3% increased defense
Either way, you should be focusing on Constitution for your ability scores, with Strength as your secondary stat. Dexterity will be next in line, as it is good for providing additional deflection chance.
My current rolls (With campfire buff) are:
22 Strength
27 Constitution
16 Dexterity
11 Intelligence
13 Wisdom
13 Charisma
Equipment
Your priority in stats should be:
1. 4k Defense
2. 2k Deflection
3. 3k Recovery
4. As much health as you can get
Offense slots: No competition here, put Silvery Enchantments in for recovery.
Defense slots: If you're following this guide, Radiant Enchantments for health, as your gear will cover the rest.
Utility slots: Movement - The only one with any significant benefit.
Weapon enchantments: There are a few viable ones for this build, in order of what I've seen to work most effectively.
1. Holy Avenger (Increases allies damage resistance, and gives radiant damage, which helps build threat.)
2. Lifedrinker (Really nice for producing threat)
3. Plaguefire (Debuffs enemy defense, though is incompatible with some builds)
Armour enchantments: Only two viable ones here, and one is most certainly more effective.
1. Negation (Increases your own damage resistance)
2. Soulforged (Saves you from a death, however if you die, it's because everyone else has already)
Companion: I went with Ioun Stone of Allure to help stack recovery, however the Acolyte of Kelemvor or even the basic Cleric will work nicely with this build.
Equipment Set: In this guide, you should be using the Grand Regent set. While the set bonus isn't as appealing as some of the others, the stats on it are perfect for a full tank. If you get the full set, you will reach the soft cap in defense and deflection, and will then be able to focus your enchantments on health.
Feats
These feats are focused only on building your damage mitigation and ability to self-heal.
Powers
A lot of the powers for Guardian Fighter are near-useless for a full tank build, so it doesn't really matter what you choose outside of the ones listed.
At-Wills: Threatening Rush, Cleave. (These two combined are amazing for gaining threat)
Encounters: Into the Fray, Enforced Threat, Knight's Valor. (Party buffs and threat-gain)
Class Features: Ferocious Reaction, Enhanced Mark. (Threat gain and self-healing)
Dailies: Fighter's Recovery and Villain's Menace. (Villain's menace is the only daily that will reliably hit more than 5 targets, and gives a nice buff)
Playstyle Tips
Mark everything. Use your tab-mark to pull enemies off your allies from long distances, use threatening rush and enforced threat to AoE mark mobs.
In boss fights, keep the boss marked. It gives everybody 10% increased damage against it. If you can, slip in a few threatening rushes or cleaves to give allies another 10% damage against the boss.
While blocking, use the left-click move on enemies as much as possible. This ability generates a lot of threat.
Be on the opposite side of the enemy to your party members. This way, they all gain combat advantage when the enemy turns to attack you.
Always be the first to run in to packs of enemies. Starting off with threat makes it far easier to maintain it.
______
With this build, I'm currently sitting on 51.1% damage reduction, 27.2% deflection chance, 35.5% action point gain, and 35.5k health.
First of all, this is a full tank build; this is what you should be doing in dungeons. Note that your damage will be very low in this build, the only reason we would ever go for any damage stat is to gain more threat from attacks.
Primary roles: Aggro enemies, withstand their hits, protect party members.
Secondary roles: Buff party members, debuff enemies.
Race and Ability Scores
This build will assume you choose the Dwarf race, and place 2 points in to both constitution and strength. However, human is also a viable option for a full tank.
Dwarf:
+2 con and +2 strength or +2 wisdom
Knockback Resistance
Damage-over-time Resistance
Human:
+2 to any one stat
3 extra heroic feat points
3% increased defense
Either way, you should be focusing on Constitution for your ability scores, with Strength as your secondary stat. Dexterity will be next in line, as it is good for providing additional deflection chance.
My current rolls (With campfire buff) are:
22 Strength
27 Constitution
16 Dexterity
11 Intelligence
13 Wisdom
13 Charisma
Equipment
Your priority in stats should be:
1. 4k Defense
2. 2k Deflection
3. 3k Recovery
4. As much health as you can get
Offense slots: No competition here, put Silvery Enchantments in for recovery.
Defense slots: If you're following this guide, Radiant Enchantments for health, as your gear will cover the rest.
Utility slots: Movement - The only one with any significant benefit.
Weapon enchantments: There are a few viable ones for this build, in order of what I've seen to work most effectively.
1. Holy Avenger (Increases allies damage resistance, and gives radiant damage, which helps build threat.)
2. Lifedrinker (Really nice for producing threat)
3. Plaguefire (Debuffs enemy defense, though is incompatible with some builds)
Armour enchantments: Only two viable ones here, and one is most certainly more effective.
1. Negation (Increases your own damage resistance)
2. Soulforged (Saves you from a death, however if you die, it's because everyone else has already)
Companion: I went with Ioun Stone of Allure to help stack recovery, however the Acolyte of Kelemvor or even the basic Cleric will work nicely with this build.
Equipment Set: In this guide, you should be using the Grand Regent set. While the set bonus isn't as appealing as some of the others, the stats on it are perfect for a full tank. If you get the full set, you will reach the soft cap in defense and deflection, and will then be able to focus your enchantments on health.
Feats
These feats are focused only on building your damage mitigation and ability to self-heal.
Powers
A lot of the powers for Guardian Fighter are near-useless for a full tank build, so it doesn't really matter what you choose outside of the ones listed.
At-Wills: Threatening Rush, Cleave. (These two combined are amazing for gaining threat)
Encounters: Into the Fray, Enforced Threat, Knight's Valor. (Party buffs and threat-gain)
Class Features: Ferocious Reaction, Enhanced Mark. (Threat gain and self-healing)
Dailies: Fighter's Recovery and Villain's Menace. (Villain's menace is the only daily that will reliably hit more than 5 targets, and gives a nice buff)
Playstyle Tips
Mark everything. Use your tab-mark to pull enemies off your allies from long distances, use threatening rush and enforced threat to AoE mark mobs.
In boss fights, keep the boss marked. It gives everybody 10% increased damage against it. If you can, slip in a few threatening rushes or cleaves to give allies another 10% damage against the boss.
While blocking, use the left-click move on enemies as much as possible. This ability generates a lot of threat.
Be on the opposite side of the enemy to your party members. This way, they all gain combat advantage when the enemy turns to attack you.
Always be the first to run in to packs of enemies. Starting off with threat makes it far easier to maintain it.
______
With this build, I'm currently sitting on 51.1% damage reduction, 27.2% deflection chance, 35.5% action point gain, and 35.5k health.
Post edited by endofends on
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Comments
Con and ????
Str??
<Edit: made a mistake and removed it>
For your own gear though it seems like you have more than these two totals, especially in Deflection. Out of curiosity, what are your actual stats?
In hindsight, it may be worth testing lifesteal on the companion rather than just stacking more defense and deflection.
Here's the real numbers:
At 4000 Defense you get 0.00579% mitigation per point (e.g. 4001 Defense would mitigate 0.00579% more damage).
At 5000 Defense you get 0.00439% mitigation per point (24% less)
At 2000 Deflection you get 0.00354% mitigation per point
At 2700 Deflection you get 0.00262% mitigation per point (26% less)
So your Defense is stronger AND scaled better than Deflection, go figure.
Life Steal and Regenerate have a complex relationship with your play style and how good your healer is. Do you tend to block a large portion of incoming damage? How good is your healer (pro guild, or erratic PUG)?
I generally run with healers from my guild, though I haven't experienced overly incompetent clerics in my PUG runs yet.
Damage Resistance 54%
Recharge Speed 24%
Action Point Gain 41%
Deflection Chance 26%
Critical 11%
30k HP
Not sure if i should use Stalwart Bulwark set for full tank build. Maybe i lose some stats but i get a lot of Power...
Right! You're getting smashed over and over and nearly dying, that's a great example because Life Steal is doing nothing for you but Regen might save your life. Give me a rough estimate of how many seconds it takes for mobs to kill you in this fashion and I'll give you an estimate of how valuable Regen was vs. your Defense and Deflect. ^_^
It varies depending on the situation, but it takes around 15-25 seconds in a normal situation full of control effects to die (without being able to use a potion/block)
The Stalwart Bulwark set is just a GS-buffer for a tank, nothing else. The grand regent set is far more practical because it gives you the stats you actually need.
20 seconds for Regen, factoring in the way it regens health lost rather than total health, and your 35.5k HP:
4750 Defense = 0.00469 per point
1300 Deflection = 0.00470 per point
1650 Regeneration = 0.00462 per point OVER 20 SECONDS
0 Bonus Health = 0.00282 per point
A rough evaluation of +Maximum Hit Points on gear is that it's 0.4 of the cost of the other stats, and therefore quite valuable as a stat.
That's for panic scenario's where you can't block. Does the mitigation from Defense and Deflect affect how much you can block? Does max health factor in? I'm not real clear on the block mechanics so I can't give you numbers for normal situations where you're blocking correctly....probably you're not going to die in these situations regardless.
It's worth noting that at 35.5k health 1650 Regen is almost as much healing as hitting your potion on cooldown, so long as you're below 50% health.
I think tanks in NW are currently designed to shield single targets from the group and you don't need to go full tank to do that.
EDIT:
I wrote a big post but the dumb forum cutted everything, idk why.
Conlcusion: go to conqueror build, this build is broken.
My conclusion from this quote is that the 3 full tank builds you tried simply stood there taking enemy hits and doing nothing else. You can be efficient for your party (outside of simply tanking) if you:
Mark bosses, giving allies +10% damage.
Hit bosses 5 times, giving allies another +10% damage.
Position enemies so they're facing away from your allies for another +25% damage.
Spam party buffs like Into the Fray and Knight's Valor, as well as giving buffs from enchantments.
You're giving all of your allies an additional 45% damage, and buffing their movement speed, AP generation and damage resistance, and tanking all of the mobs/bosses on top of that. Can you explain to me what you think is broken about that?
Do you mean from the last feat of protector with this? Because that isn't a damage increase to target, but a damage decrease from target. (so you receive 10% less damage from target instead of dealing 10% more)
Frozen heart - Pure single target DPS required and zero tanking needed
Spider - A mix of AOE /Single target dps burn instance....not much tanking needed - a taunt for when BM's spawn is enough
Spell Plague - End boss needs a taunt and not much else. I Fray + taunt adds with my CW, you could dps the boss but again NO tanking required
Pirate - AOE DPS instance
Karundax - AOE dps instance
Castle Never - Mix of tanking control / single target dps on last boss, rest of instance is AOE dps if you dont knock a lot off.
No offense but people who make these tank builds are the reason that GF's were excluded from groups for so long.
Iron Guard reduces the damage from the boss, not boosting your party, right?
Every build should effectively Mark bigger enemies it is not on and I don't see how common trash mobs live long enough that a well positioned tank could really help the party with combat advantage. There are mostly 1-2 advanced enemies that need special attention but then we're talking about single target tanking, which can be easily done via pure DPS, (Enhanced) Mark and maybe Enforced Threat.
And no way any build can tank the adds in a boss fight long enough, it's simply too much at any time. So tank takes the boss, CWs do CC.
If you are tanking the mobs and facing the AOEs away from your party why are you using Knights Valor your party shouldn't be taking any damage.
People pointed it out already there is nowhere that you need to actually tank in this game. DPS is just better because you kill what you need to kill just that much faster. What tanking does allow you to do is carry the weight of of those people who don't know how to play their own class or are still in the tank and spank mentality. Doesn't work on bosses though. Basically If you Pug spec Tank if you guild run spec DPS
I can honestly say I've done every instance in both Tank and DPS builds and the difference is noticeable. There is nothing a tank spec can do a DPS can't do just as well while still dealing more damage. I've looked at every tanks spec's stats and they are not that much higher in DR and Deflection than I am but my power is a fair ways higher and so is my Armor Pen. It's the way the current content is. Hell the worse thing is the competent players still don't bring GF's since a second CW or TR makes the runs go faster.
I recommend you buy the (expensive) set of salwart( that gives you 5x5% HP as power ) when you go to conqqueror build.
And get some critical strike ( something near 25% )
in dungeons i can easly kick rougue *** with my dps, plus have some control of adds or tanking single targets
edit: not need to mention how good is this class at pvp