What race for tanking?

[Vikkus]

What race do you recommend for a Tank build? Also, would you stay pure fighter till 20 as a Tank?

[sirgog]

By 'tank' I'll assume you mean tank in the WoW sense of 'take all the attention of the big boss' rather than just 'high hp plate-wearing melee DPS'.

Pure fighter is a good option; Ftr18/Rog2 is viable too; I prefer the former at current endgame but the multiclassed version is superior in Reaver's Reach content at least.

Humans, Dwarves and Warforged all have merit as tanks in slightly different ways.

[Feynt]

I would say the best of the lot is dwarf because of the armour mastery enhancements. A high Dex and both Fighter and Dwarven Armour Mastery will give you a lot of AC in full plate. Warforged are nice because the adamantine body will give some good early DR, and rather high DR will all the enhancements as you level, as well as boosts to the DC of your combat abilities. Humans get extra skills and a feat, and human versitility is nice, but I just think the other races have more to offer.

[Aranticus]

I would say the best of the lot is dwarf because of the armour mastery enhancements. A high Dex and both Fighter and Dwarven Armour Mastery will give you a lot of AC in full plate. Warforged are nice because the adamantine body will give some good early DR, and rather high DR will all the enhancements as you level, as well as boosts to the DC of your combat abilities. Humans get extra skills and a feat, and human versitility is nice, but I just think the other races have more to offer.

this post does not paint the full picture well enough. the best races are human, dwarves and warforged as sirgog state and in no order of merit. each have their merits and disadvantages. i will add in a little more detail suitable for the OP to be able to understand

humans: able to achieve the highest intim score for tanking purposes, can attain the highest str among the 3, can put 1 pt into 2 stats, extra feat, extra skills, healing enhancements

dwarves: can achieve the highest ac among the 3 with armor enhancements, 2 pts in con from enhancements, 2 pts to con in creation, shield mastery enhancements, free d-axe feat, axe enhancments, strong saves

warforged: can achieve the highest dr among the 3, con enhancements and creation similar to dwarves, arcane repair, great weapon aptitude, power attack enhancements. immunities

lets look at the disadvantages now

humans have nothing really special. while they are balanced in stats, dwarves and wf can get higher con which really works out for tanks. their redeeming feature is the versatility which other classes will find hard to replicate. the extra feat is extremely invaluable if you want to make a feat heavy build.

dwarves have a low cha which means it suffers in terms of intim and other cha based skills. the armor mastery are extremely good if you have a high dex, however, not many dwarves have enough dex to fill them out without sacrificing too much in other areas

warforged suffers from low cha problems as well. its hard to heal unless you boost divine healability with enhancements and items. docents normal provide less ac compared to armor. low wis makes it suffer in terms of will based spells like greater command

it really depends on what you want. if you want a tank which relies on DPS to hold agro, wf is the best for you. a defensive type tank will prolly see dwarves excel. humans if built well have the ability to do both well

[Roziel_Longblade]

this post does not paint the full picture well enough. the best races are human, dwarves and warforged as sirgog state and in no order of merit. each have their merits and disadvantages. i will add in a little more detail suitable for the OP to be able to understand

humans: able to achieve the highest intim score for tanking purposes, can attain the highest str among the 3, can put 1 pt into 2 stats, extra feat, extra skills, healing enhancements

dwarves: can achieve the highest ac among the 3 with armor enhancements, 2 pts in con from enhancements, 2 pts to con in creation, shield mastery enhancements, free d-axe feat, axe enhancments, strong saves

warforged: can achieve the highest dr among the 3, con enhancements and creation similar to dwarves, arcane repair, great weapon aptitude, power attack enhancements. immunities

lets look at the disadvantages now

humans have nothing really special. while they are balanced in stats, dwarves and wf can get higher con which really works out for tanks. their redeeming feature is the versatility which other classes will find hard to replicate. the extra feat is extremely invaluable if you want to make a feat heavy build.

dwarves have a low cha which means it suffers in terms of intim and other cha based skills. the armor mastery are extremely good if you have a high dex, however, not many dwarves have enough dex to fill them out without sacrificing too much in other areas

warforged suffers from low cha problems as well. its hard to heal unless you boost divine healability with enhancements and items. docents normal provide less ac compared to armor. low wis makes it suffer in terms of will based spells like greater command

it really depends on what you want. if you want a tank which relies on DPS to hold agro, wf is the best for you. a defensive type tank will prolly see dwarves excel. humans if built well have the ability to do both well This post does not paint the full picture well enough.

Humans can achieve the highest intim score but both WF and dwarf can acheive sufficient intim scores to tank adaquately. The additional skill points allows humans to train additional useful skills like UMD.

While special arrangements need to be made to take care of a WF tank many find its extra DR and immunities worth is. If you run with cc mages they make great healers when there are only red names left that cannot be controlled. You may want to bring your own wand to give to the arcane caster if you plan to tank in PuGs. I have heard that Will is the least used save in endgame so the loss of 1 Will save point should not offset the advantages of WF.

Dwarves seem to have few weaknesses in terms of being an intimitank. They have the option of pushing AC higher while also getting axe enhancements to boost a solid one hand weapon while intimidating.

[Yargore]

The best race would be dwarf.
Fighters doesn't have very good saves, so the +5 to all saves from dwarfs is really useful. You can also gain some extra AC

Humans biggest advantage, a free feat means little on a fighter.


Go pure fighter and take the khopesh prof feat, even as dwarf.

[jmonty]

Humans biggest advantage, a free feat means little on a fighter.



is the human healing amp enhancements not worth taking?

[Anneliese]

is the human healing amp enhancements not worth taking?

Its awesome, but its also very expensive. Tier 1 should fit in most builds, tier 2 maybe, tier 3 probably not.

[Feynt]

Go pure fighter and take the khopesh prof feat, even as dwarf.

Why would you ignore dwarven axes? They're dwarven axes! >3

[Aranticus]

will base spells are by far the most detrimental. Symbol of stunning, blesphemy, greater command gets more players than the other spells

to add on to the intimidate comment, when the cap was at 16, the most notable boss that can be tanked is suulomades (xyzzy presents a different situation) with a no fail score of 56 before size modifiers. a typical tank will have 19+15(item)+5(2 feats)+2(hofg)+4(ftr enh)+6(shroud)+4(GH) = 55. bard songs can push this up to 57. if the dwarf dumped cha, 14 cha will give +2 more for 59 total. what does this mean? on elite, it is going to present some problems for dwarves or wf to have 100% no fail intimidate unless they are willing to spend some points on cha. humans can make up this deficiency simply by taking an extra feat

in the present mod, we can potentially get +7 or +10 to the score for kensai and defender respectively which will bring up the total to 62/65 for a 10 cha toon. horoth is reputed to have 66 no fail score. its certainly enough to intim it with a low cha dwarf/wf but what does this mean for human? this is where that extra feat comes in handy. they can use it to open up deneith intim and with 1 AP get a total of +3 to the score so that a cha item is not needed, or they could forgo the fighter intim tier II-IV (3 intim) which will cost 9 APs saving 8 APs total to free up points for enhancments which will improve other aspects (especially DPS). an additional point to consider is that kensai dwarves/wf will have a harder time tanking (but this point is not as significant since if you are interested in tanking, you would not be a kensai)


This post does not paint the full picture well enough.

Humans can achieve the highest intim score but both WF and dwarf can acheive sufficient intim scores to tank adaquately. The additional skill points allows humans to train additional useful skills like UMD.

While special arrangements need to be made to take care of a WF tank many find its extra DR and immunities worth is. If you run with cc mages they make great healers when there are only red names left that cannot be controlled. You may want to bring your own wand to give to the arcane caster if you plan to tank in PuGs. I have heard that Will is the least used save in endgame so the loss of 1 Will save point should not offset the advantages of WF.

Dwarves seem to have few weaknesses in terms of being an intimitank. They have the option of pushing AC higher while also getting axe enhancements to boost a solid one hand weapon while intimidating.

[Yargore]

is the human healing amp enhancements not worth taking?

If you are human then you should take atleast 2 ranks of the healing amp.


Why would you ignore dwarven axes? They're dwarven axes! >3

Because they suck :)

[Feynt]

Because they suck :)

Blasphemy! They're awesome and one handed and stuff! ^.^

For kind of the same reasoning on my paladin, dual wielding khopeshes will do a lower average damage than dual wielding dwarven axes with racial bonuses to damage. I'm pretty sure of it. My paladin's doing the rapier thing though rather than the khopesh or dwarven axe thing (drow paladin).

[Yargore]

Blasphemy! They're awesome and one handed and stuff! ^.^

For kind of the same reasoning on my paladin, dual wielding khopeshes will do a lower average damage than dual wielding dwarven axes with racial bonuses to damage. I'm pretty sure of it. My paladin's doing the rapier thing though rather than the khopesh or dwarven axe thing (drow paladin).

Well, you are wrong.
It's been proven over and over.

Rapier is however a quite good weapon for a paladin.

[Vengenance]

Another comment on the WF tank especially at end game is there ability to be healed by both arcanes and clerics. The healing penalty for healing WF is not nearly as bad at end game especially if the WF has 1-2 levels of Healer's friend, the bracers from the hound, or other healing amplification (finger necklace). What is also very nice about WF is they can be reconstructed even if they are cursed like in VOD or the new TOD raid.

Personally, I think it boils down to Dwarves or WF. Both races get bonuses to Con, which means more hit-points. Both races can make excellent tanks, but my personal preference is WF.

[hydra_ex]

Because they suck :)

Just because something is slightly less optimal does not mean it sucks.

There I said it.

What really suck are light hammers.