the general tank - discussion

I'm not really sure if this has been posted before, so if it was, feel free to close this thread.

I've been playing a lot of aion lately, but it got boring (not used to grinding thanks to gw lol) so I played some guild wars again.

now, don't get me wrong, I've been playing this game almost nonstop since nightfall, and I think I know what I'm doing.
(and of course, people will flame at this by saying 'time spend ingame doesn't mean **** nub', but w/e)

I decided to delete one of my pvp chars and lvl it to 20 to have some fun running around with my leetsauce 100b build (NM) and things were going well.

then, the shit hit the fan.

I remember that back when Ray of Judgment just got buffed, I used to run 3x Mo/Me with RoJ, some smite support and energy management. the problem with that build was however, that it got fixed and that enemies started to scatter from it.

but since I came from aion, where everything (literally everything) is either solo play, or tank 'n spank, I thought it'd be fun to do some tank 'n spanking.

after all, I'm a tank, right?

so threw up some stances and dolyak signet for dmg reduction, running around stancing and balling stuff, after which I'd go stanceRED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO+dolyak and let my heroes run in, triple RoJ and own shit.

this didn't work, however.

why? -spells-
despite me wearing shields with +10 vs element etc. I still took pretty high numbers from them (HM I'm talking about now) not even mentioning the side effects (snares, degeneration, etc. )

so I think it's pretty ridiculous if I have to resort to Shadow Form to tank properly, since I'm supposed to be a tank, and a sin dmg.

blablabla Q.Q moar etc. \_/ care cup is empty, cool story bro

I know them all, but I'd like to hear your opinion on this.

what do you think? should the warrior go back to generic Attack Spammers with AP or should there exist a thing like tank 'n spank? of course you could argue 'just bring a mm, there's no need for warriors to run around balling shit' but I'm throwing this up here anyways.

I'd like to conclude with the fact that my mum doesn't think I'm nubsauce

Wars still pwn as a tank.

You just need to re-access your support if your face palming.

And dolyak...lol.Why bother with it when you can spam SY! and run around hitting stuff at the same time.

We all suck when we come back after a break.Give it time and good luck.

you're not getting my point, Dolyak was there for MY protection, because it takes my heroes about 10-15 seconds to get to me from their flagged position. besides, SY protects other party members, so I'm kinda guessing you're new to the game, as it wouldn't help me survive in any kind of way. it'd only get harder for me to survive once the party has arrived, because I'd be the one with the least amount of armor.

'you just need re-acces to your support if your face palming'

what the hell? if I seek contact with my backline then the enemies im currently balling up would aggro on them, effectively destroying the whole idea of tank 'n spank.
'we all suck when we come back after a break'.

I never quit, and you cannot generalize this bad without any evidence, it makes you look dumb.

If you don't think your party having SY! on them helps you more than Dolyak ever could that's your call.

I disagree.

Edit:

You stated:

I assumed you had taken a break and wished you luck on returning to the game.

No need to be rude dude.

I'm sorry, I'm just tired from work, had to get up this morning @ 6 A.M. contrary to the usual 11 A.M.

well anyways, the idea is that I run ahead of my party, ball shit up and let them RoJ the group. it seems to be more effective than regular balanced groups. (ofcourse, nothing can compete with discord / sabway, but I'll leave that out of the question )

I think you're starting from a bad assumption (warrior = tank).

Seems to me, A-Net deliberately made it so that GW wouldn't be just another tank-n-spank game. Hence enemy scatter, enemies ignoring "tanks" and running stright for the squishies etc.

You can still do the tank-n-spank holy-trinity thing, but it's probably going to be slower than other tactics.

meh, the speed I'm killing stuff is pretty fast, since I brought None Shall Pass, in combination with 3x RoJ @ 16 smiting Prayers.
that's 48x 5 x 3 = 720 armor ignoring damage, and if they kite, they get Knocked Down.
(720 armor ignoring damage from 3 skill slots. + other henchies)

I know the warrior is not a tank, but I wanted it to make it a tank, because mindlessly doing Enduring Axe/Scythe attack spammer is inferior to caster damage. especially in Hard Mode your auto attacks deal little to no damage.
ofcourse I could bring OotV or OoP and Strength of Honor, but then that damage comes again, from casters, which are using me to trigger their damage.
same with ranger dps in HM, little to none.

Since GW doesn't have any type of hate or threat AI, there's really no such thing as "tanking" in the sense that you're talking about (where a warrior or other high-armor character gets preferential targeting). Mobs just tend to sprint for the squishy folks in your party.

I guess they could've included some sort of aggro-drawing taunts in the tactics line, but decided not to for whatever reason.

Hammer + Earthshaker+ AoE hammer attacks = tank

after reading your thread i assume you want to tank in general PvE.
If this is the case I suggest you don't do it like you know every explorable has different foes and you have to adapt you'r build to all the new situations each time. Also you have to ball them up nicely and ofcourse make sure you don't die in the meanwhile this generaly takes longer then just the normal kilroooooy stonekin way of play.

If u still incist of doing tank and spank for you'r general PvE..... you have to counter the spells with something examples : Spellbreaker, Shadowform , Mist form , Vow of Silence. Most of these won't be effective for you'r warrior anyway VoS = mysticism Spellbreaker = divine (Hero can cast it on you) Shadowform woul'd probaly be to much of an energy issue to maintain altough you could try to ball the mob up in 1 cast.

If you wanna do some nice tank and spank though try to find some nice people who would like to do The Deep with you war's tank just fine there because there isn't much danger from spells there.

tank n spank doesnt quite work as well as it use to. too many things have changed. give up the H/H style of play if you insist on tank n spank. H/H AI is not smart enough for it. you may get it to work some in NM as the enemy AI doesnt scatter as fast as they do in HM from AOE damage.

go go defy pain + elemental resistance!




>_>

Tank = Get hero to cast PS+SoA on you

Tanks are a very weak and IMO pointless mechanic in GW.

The AI does not attack the strongest party member, and there is no method of making the AI attack the tank.

A warrior with Earthshaker and even None Shall Pass is far more useful for reducing damage the party takes, add to that the party wide shouts - SY, and Shields Up help so much more than having a warrior with self survival / armor skills.

The mistake you've made is trying to put the tanking skills on the tank. As Klance said, the skills required to tank live in the backline.

Warriors are still the most effective "tanks" in the game because they are the ones best able to take advantage of being adjacent to the ball. Thanks to things like 100blades, Earth shaker, whirlwind etc

Just run Dragon Slash, SY, FGJ, blah blah blah. Now your whole team can tank

For that sir you are a true hero

But back to the tanking topic, I agree in a way, I reckon there should an easier way to tank instead of balling, wallblocking etc etc. I think it should be a bit more like wows tanking system NOT EXACTLY like it just in some aspects, in wow the tanks have skills that increase they're threat level (can't remember exact name of it) which make all the enemies attack them instead of the healers who won't be attacking them anyway therefore the tanks take practically all the damage, I think if they reworked tactics (again I know...) so that each level makes enemies 5/6/7/8/9/10% more likely to attack you it would allow actual tanking instead of exploiting dodgy game mechanics.

... or instead of adding mechanics making the ai even dumber than it is now they could fix the ai's pathing so that wallblocking exploits are removed

thank you all for replying just noticed this page is on the main page as well..

well anyways, the idea is not general tanking, the idea is balling up and Nuking the crap out of enemies..

I know it's not viable etc, and that SY! spam protects your party better, but I just wanted to not go generic FJ SY spam because it's boring as RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO, and besides that as a warrior your not really contributing to your party in any way except providing +80AR for party members.

anyways, the build I was running was something like this.

12 Shadow Arts
11+2 tactics
6 or so strength

Shadow Form
Shroud of Distress
Caltrops
None Shall Pass!
To the Limit
Soldier's Stance
Shield Stance
Bonetti's Defence

with 3x generic RoJ, with one carrying Balthazar's Spirit to cast on me.

this is the generic idea:
*Click*

I apologize for being uncreative and picking this from guildwiki, but I tried to make one with ms paint but the colours got all mixed up in the .gif