My Tanking ExperienceFollow

Good afternoon Zam!

http://i.imgur.com/y5vRbEx.jpg - High res screenshot

I wanted to post some of my findings on tanking, and see if we can get some conversation started around the issue, and see if my experiences were accurate to the rest of the tanks out there. I played a gladiator, heading towards being a paladin

The Good
1. As a person who as tanked in nearly every mmo out there, i found it easy to pickup and tank from the get go. Most of the time threat management and durability was good in the first two dungeons
2. Had no problems controlling threat from healer or melee DPS, found it easy to do
3. Love the targeting system. The numbers and do not attack logos are awesome
4. Loot system gets us tanks geared pretty quickly from the duty finder
5. Had an idea forever to have a separate box of the mobs your fighting to cycle through and see threat, this was an amazing feature. I didn't pay attention to it at first.
6. I LOVE how your character auto turns to attack. If you position them correctly in front of you, you don't have to turn left and right.

Meh
1. Didn't get much experience with using cooldowns like damage reduction or damage increase, never found a need so i saw myself forgetting to use it.
2. Only combo worth using is savage blade. It's a shame the other combo isn't worth it at this level. That said, Savage blade was an almost instant pull if anyone did sniff threat
3. Speed running but not even on purpose, healers never lose mana. Obviously these were starter dungeons

The Bad
1. Targeting by clicking is really not as fluid as i'd like. That said if you use the little box of mobs that are engaged, it's a cake walk, so it's a hit and miss, but generic targeting i felt like was off.
2. Tab targeting range is way to big. You have to run up to mobs, then turn and face to where you came from to use tab targeting effectively.
3. Didn't setup my mouse for quick presses on the mouse extra buttons, would have been nice (my fault here)
4. Archers seem to pose the biggest threat to pulling mobs off (was 3 level shigher than me too). Found them attacking as soon as i attempted to pull on multiple occasions.

Some interactions
1. Had one monk DPS try to tell me how to tank because they had three classes at level 20. Yelled at me for switching mobs while tanking to stack threat through the entire group. Same person said why am i not spam taunting.... good to know we'll always have dps telling us how to tank haha
2. Same person above was terrified about people rolling greed on items they needed...
3. Tank queing was very fast, love that!
4. Only died once in group, healer got attacked due to DPS pulling before i was ready and the healer and myself went down. Same person responsible as number 1 above lol.
5. Don't stand in red! =)

Overall had a lot of fun in beta, even though i had the 3102 error for all of Sunday. The extension was nice to get to play, however couldn't make it for the last 3 hours, was too tired.

One big issue I had in Satasha was line of sight. Healer would stand below some of the platforms and even though he could see me, he could not heal me. Died twice to situations like that. So as a tank or healer, try to stick together in close situations. Also, if you're an archer and you unload all your attacks before the tank is even within shield lob range, please don't kite around the room and take your beating like a man.

One more thing: I'd like to see shield bash off the global. It has a huge TP cost already and they could even put longer cooldown on it, but it's impossible to bash when you're in the middle of rotations. It's really unusable unless everyone is playing at a measured pace...and we know how well DD players like to take it easy on tanks. ;)

Edited, Aug 19th 2013 1:26pm by Krycis

Thoughts from a marauder:

-Getting Flash from Gladiator is an excellent idea. My basic rotation for pulling was Tomahawk > Flash (when all in range) > Overpower. At this point hate is pretty much locked down on all mobs. Then I go into normal heavy swing > maim, swap targets, heavy swing > skull sunder, swap, repeat mode. If a mob strays towards the mages, another tomahawk gets it back nicely.

-Second Wind and Internal Release from pug are great! Second Wind for those oh sh*t moments, Internal Release at the start of a large group pull or on a boss. Internal > Overpower > heavy > maim > overpower is crazy damage with all those sexy crits.

-Move the mob enmity panel to the middle of the screen. You can easily see your hate this way, and just click onto a mob to target it instead of awkward tab targeting.

-Tp and mp management are essential. With a limited MP pool and no way to replenish in combat, spamming Flash isn't an option for a MRD. Balancing your Flashes and Overpowers is the way to go for successful tanking.

-Don't forget about Foresight and Bloodbath! Foresight is a 20% defense boost, which is awesome on boss fights and big pulls. Bloodbath was MADE for large groups of mobs. Spamming Overpower while under it's effect can pretty much negate most of the incoming damage you take, especially with Foresight up as well.

-Fracture is unecessary on non-bosses. I mean, it's not BAD to use it, but I'd much rather be starting another heavy swing > skull sunder for added enmity or heavy swing >maim for added damage. On bosses I try and always keep it up however.

In almost every way, I found the controller superior. It's effortless to target with the d-pad and you can mark targets with X (on xbox controller, square on PS3).

Speaking from a Gladiator standpoint.

A) It's a balance of TP, MP, and Enmity. TP's gotten easier since incombat regen increased from 50 to 60 in open beta. MP isn't too bad with Riot blade once hate is established. Enmity's fairly easy if you read tooltips.

B) Going a bit into each of the melee classes to get their defensive cooldown (Foresight, Keen Flurry, and Featherfoot) makes damage intake incredibly smooth. The length of the durations combined with fairly short cooldowns made me just make a macro that lists them in order of Rampart > Keen Flurry > Foresight > Featherfoot and when one's down I it for the next cooldown. At most there's 15 seconds of just raw damage intake.

C) Bash is mostly pointless. The stun is on a hefty DR, the cost is astronomical, and it's not worth the GCD. You essentially waste 150 TP for an attack without any enmity bonuses on it. Unless it's an actual spell that's being casted that you know will hit ridiculously hard it's simply not worth using.

D) Provoke will make re-establishing hate a non-factor as it gives you the highest enmity value generated +1. It simply wasn't available in this push.

E) Savage Blade's and Shield Lob's Damagex3=Enmity and Rage of Halone's Damagex5=Enmity values will make future dungeons even more relaxed in terms of holding hate. Shield Oath for a double of all listed values of everything makes enmity even less stressful.

F) For some reason, and I can't figure out why, Conjurer's Stone generates a *massive* amount of threat compared to other damage classes. It's obscene.

G) Fight or Flight's really nice, especially when hate's established on a big pack or boss and you can switch to Riot for the extra damage.

H) You need a good weapon. When healing or dealing damage in dungeons you can almost tell, without examining someone, if they're using an outdated weapon or not when it comes to holding hate on AE packs. Flash's threat's based on WDMG, STR, and DTR, so slacking on weapons really hurts you against damage classes with appropriate weapons.



There's never any excuse to not push damage as a tank. Considering (with the only exception being Flash) your entire ability to hold hate is built around doing damage you're so wrong it's not even funny.

Edited, Aug 19th 2013 6:42pm by Viertel

If you're talking about the first boss fight in Copperbell with all the adds then there's no point in even trying to hold hate. They're fodder mobs like from outside that hit healers for 15~ damage and die within a few seconds. Better yet, if you have a THM in the group just everyone stand on top of him and tell him/her to spam Blizzard II and wait for the Gigas to come out.

Trying to AE tank there is a wasted effort.

It's an encounter to teach new players that sometimes you aren't meant to tank everything and to know when it's not worth wasting resources over.


Edited, Aug 19th 2013 6:47pm by Viertel

I'm glad we agree! That's exactly why I'd like it off the GCD:

"I would love to stop that mob skill, but I just can't because I was stuck in GCD. Luckily my party can do that, oh wait...they're in GCD too. Oh well, I hope the CNJ can heal through this."