Armor enchant for tanky GF

krimbarbarroja · January 2014

Hi everybody:

I am a rather low-end GF who wants to play the tank/debuff/control role in PvE, and looking at the armor enchants, none of them seem terribly appealing to me...Negation gives some nice extra DR, but if it is up only 4/5/6 seconds per minute, it doesn't seem terribly useful. Barkshield, I can see the use in the first seconds, but as the fight goes on, it will become very hard to store more than 1 charge. Soulforged may also be interesting, but my (admitedly limited) experience is that if you die once, you are quite likely to die again very soon. Then again, it may be worth it just as a mulligan in case of a personal <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>-up.

So, considering I am with basic stuff (T1 epics, R5s, lesser plagefire, etc. Can't afford much more though I am earning now some good 15k diamonds a day), what would you recommend to be a more functional party member?

slushpsycho · January 2014

Lesser Soulforged.

End of story.

thestaggy · January 2014

I really can't argue against a Lesser Soulforged. I've had it come up clutch multiple times. Not always a guaranteed save, but it gives you a chance to pot and get back into the fight.

xxxerexxx · January 2014

If you aren't dieing much try out thunderhead (yay preview server for trying things out

) a regular or greater thunderhead should proc decently and helps a little with aggro/cc/dmg. I personally have my dr at somewhere between 47-50% and don't die much so I haven't found soulforged to be that useful for pve.

If you are dieing quite a bit soulforged is worth it. If you have fighters recovery handy, pop a pot and then recovery as soon as soulforge brings you back and you should survive.

charononus · January 2014

soulforged, even just at lesser. As soon as you get back up hit your pvp artifact for all that tasty hp if it's up, if not just hit a potion. Since you'll have good mitigation in theory you should be able to get your monies worth out of soulforged. As you go along in the game and level it, it gets even stronger as well.

inthefade462 · January 2014

Thunderhead is useless in pve mobs have less than 4% chance to crit a player and thunderhead is only x% chance on a crit.

chemboy613 · January 2014

I have wondered this as well.

I put a lsf on my timeless set, and I'm happy with that because you can get dropped in timeless.

I put a perfect eleven battle on my regent set, which is great for kiting, pvp or when your team is struggling, since if you are going down in regent, it is likely the team wiped already.

For the fomorian, which I only use for face tanking, I am using a lesser negation, which is underwhelming.

Thunderhead seems cool, but I already have a renegade invoker, which is somewhat similar. It's nice but not that impressive.

Has anyone tested frost burn? Seems interesting.

fondlez · January 2014

Barkshield is totally pointless on a GF in PvE since,

1. if you are not being hit as a tank, your reason to exist is gone,
2. any hits, even non-damaging hits, will eat through its charges regardless of whether your Guard is up, making it close to the worst enchant one could have on a GF.

Frostburn, not tested it, but,

1. mobs in PvE have few and very slow Encounters, and almost always never At-Wills.
2. it would scale badly with gearing because by the time most mobs get off one Power, they are either already dead or dead shortly after in higher group play.
3. even if the above were not true and enemies acted like Players, a 30% reduction to Recharge Speed Increase (RSI) stat from almost any value of Recovery stat rating would work out to between 0.5-1s. If Frostburn did act on RSI directly, then on a 10-second cooldown Encounter and a high 50% RSI, you are getting a delay of about 0.7s (even less with lower RSI values). These delay values are almost unnoticeable to an enemy and you would be getting them once every 60s.
4. it may not have a separate proc chance per target. So, you'd get it on one target once every 60s...

There's only really three viable armor enhancements known on a non-dps GF:
- Briartwine = threat
- Negation = burst damage mitigation
- Soulforged = free revive.

Of the three above, Soulforged is by far the most cost-effective, i.e. at Lesser rank. In fact, it is almost certainly the most cost effective enhancement in the game by a large margin.

If I were to go out of my way to test funky armor enhancement options, I would actually be looking at how the on-hit-taken Bloodtheft and Fireburst work with Villain's Menace and Supremacy of Steel for possible aoe burst procs of their effects...

krimbarbarroja · January 2014

Thanks for all the useful comments. I think I am going with LSF, and see how it works, i.e: If I get resurrected by it and we still win once in a while.

todesfaelle · January 2014

fondlez wrote: »

There's only really three viable armor enhancements known on a non-dps GF:
- Briartwine = threat
- Negation = burst damage mitigation
- Soulforged = free revive.

Of the three above, Soulforged is by far the most cost-effective, i.e. at Lesser rank. In fact, it is almost certainly the most cost effective enhancement in the game by a large margin.

This. I personally am a big fan of Briartwine. It gets rid of the problem that GFs have where they have to keep attacking mobs in order to maintain threat on some of them.

And Thunderhead is actually quite useful once you start getting the higher ranks. Even if mobs have a minute critical percentage, pool all of them together like GFs usually do and we'll be seeing a lot of crits. More chances of proc-ing the awesome control effect of Thunderhead.

Armor enchant for tanky GF

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