After several nights of running around with the KOTBS in instances and getting to tank with them, I find myself wondering why there are so many complaints about their tanking survivability on the WarAlly forums. They are comparing them to IB's and various other tanks. I am not seeing this, largely because the KOTBS is still a new class and comparing them to ones that have been here since launch, and are better geared and in a lot of cases better understood seems to be wrong.
How I have started to spec my tank out in the following order based on importance:
Initiative
Wounds
Resistances
Toughness
I find that in instances that Initiative is hugely important because preventing being critically hit seems to be one of the best ways to mitigate damage. Normally I don’t die to normal hits; it is the crits that kill me. Couple that with the health buffer, wounds you have a nice amount of wiggle room for your healers to work with. Next would be resistances, I find these very useful since a lot of mobs in this game not only deal physical damage which is mitigated by our armor, but also elemental, corporeal, and spiritual. So the higher you’re magical resistances, the less damage you are going to take from these abilities and ultimately the more damage you can soke up. Finally, toughness, of all of the above stats, for PVE it does the least, but for PVP it does a lot. I still think it is good to have a nice buffer of toughness, but not necessarily having it as the highest stat.
Beyond that it is the usage of abilities, I find that I will use Vigilance a lot during fights to help mitigate burst and high damage mobs; additionally the usage of wards is critical for a tank. You will see your biggest damage reduction by the amount of wards you have. Tanking a zone with not wards means you are taking 200% more damage than someone with 5/5 wards. That is a lot of damage for a healer to mitigate, and in all honesty you are almost worthless to the group at that time.
Tanking as I am learning are a lot of various abilities coupled with skill, but he key is survivability. If you can survive and hold agro, not only do you make the life of your healer easier, but you also make an instance go hundreds of times smoother
Posted by
Enslaver
on
9:31 AM
Posts
2 comments:
Interesting point re Initiative. I need to think/research that a bit more. If you like tank in PvP, I highly urge you to try an IB. I've now played SM to 20 and IB to 20 and IBs were BUILT to do the tank job. Great survivability / buff ability / cc. Makes you a great damage spounge / protector.
On KOTBS, how do you deal with doing primarily physical damage while not being able to debuff armor? Do you focus on squishy targets?
TBH I played an IB during beta and I did not like the feel of them, hence why I waited a long time to make a tank, but I have amazing survivability as a tank speced pvp'er, so I can not complain on that end.
As for the:
"how do you deal with doing primarily physical damage while not being able to debuff armor? Do you focus on squishy targets?"
Never really had an issue killing tanks, since shield of the sun and on your guard are elemental damage that and I use my ability that ignores 25% armor to attack. Or throw on a lot of weapon skill, but I have yet to really run into a tank that has given me a ton of trouble.
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