Creating a tank?

I am in the process of creating a tank.
I use swords at the moment and have the best armour available to me, yet i deal little damage and recieve high amounts of damage and lose my life quickly.

Any ideas on what im doing wrong?

what area you are in would be nice to know...as well as how you've allocated your attribute points.

I can get to Amnoon oasis

I have 11 strength
9 tactics
8 healing
7 swordmanship

Is sword the best weapon?

I personally (for tank) use three attributes. (W/R)

Axe 13
Strength 11
Wilderness/Survival 6 (for healing and psn damage)

With a major rune of vigor and 23 HP on my axe, I have 250 something hp. Add Edure Pain and Defy pain to that and I have 1024 (about). If I wanted to, I can have Symbiosis to add another 200 onto that (i think).

Axe is the way to go for tank. I use a Shocking Chaos Axe of Fortitude (6-28 lightning damage and 23+hp) and a Shadow Sheild (16AL - 9 Strength). Dishing out about 36-51 dam a hit to casters and 3-15 on Warriors (depending if they have 85AL armor or phy resist or absorb etc). But I rarely die in PvM. Easily my best character (also have Air Ele and Illusionary Warrior) for PvM and PvP. Plus, everyone needs a piece of meat for the enemies to bash on :-D

For some reason, the page isn't loading the editing button so I'll correct myself here.

I start out at 550 health, not 250. That would be sad.

Can you tell us what skills you usually use?

Also, tanks aren't really meant to survive for very long against mobs. Their job is to maximize the efficiency of Monk spells and make it easy to heal. If you've got crappy Monks, you won't survive long against harder enemies, regardless of what you do.

3 axe skill combo, Edure Pain, Defy Pain, Troll Urgent, Res signet and Secret Weapon which only me and a few close friends know I use