Crossroads for a Tank

[sephiroth1084]

I'm about to hit lvl 12 and am at a crossroads as to what two feats I should take and what sorts of weapons I should be going after.

I am currently Pal 9/Ftr 3, and will be taking my 4th lvl of fighter at 12 for the additional feat. I roll as a dwarven intimitank, with: 24, 18, 22, 13, 8(12), 20 for my stats, and Combat Expertise, Dodge, Improved Trip, Toughness, Weapon Focus and Improved Crit: slashing.

My options, as I see them are:

-Extend Spell to get some mileage out of my Divine Favors and maybe Angelskins
-Power Attack to be able to put up a little DPS when the situations calls for it
----Cleave, for additional crowd control, aggro magneting and spreading of special attacks (see further down)
-Force of Personality to give my Will save a big boost and further solidify my ability to be the last one standing in almost any situation (with a Raise ring standing by)

Part of the difficulty, is that I feel like the best period to be using PA has passed, and no I'm in the stage where having CE up as much as possible is the difference between invulnerability and death. Without PA, I have very little DPS, which brings me to my second puzzle:

Should I be going with DPS weapons primarily (X burst of pure good for example, perhaps in different flavors), or should I be going with more special qualities (banishing, vorpal, paralyzing, wounding, weakening, enfeebling, smiting, vertigo, etc...)? I lean more toward the DPS-style weapons, mostly because they are consistent, and I can often use them against many different enemies and against bosses, but then it takes me a long time to get through enemies where either the pace slows down when I am main tank and DPS, or my actually hitting stuff doesn't matter much in the cases where we have a barbarian or TWF ranger or rogue laying down the DPS. I've been trying a paralyzer but find that it doesn't activate nearly as much as I would like.

I want to be the guy that can stand in the middle of a group of enemies, hit intimidate, and pull aggro and hold it as much as possible so my party can wail away without fear of being harmed themselves. I wanna be the guy who survives the party wipes and picks up the pieces, I wanna be the guy who stands toe-to-toe with the bosses of quests and holds him on me so others can take care of something else (like clearing all the weaker enemies). And I would like to also control combat a bit (trip has been serving this purpose so far), and I feel that this is my strongest offensive feature--tripping oncoming brutes and letting the party work on the prone target while I move on to something else, or jumping past the front-lines to knock down a caster before he can do any/much damage. Because of this, a weapon with vertigo on it seems enticing, and paralyzers seem to do the same. Part of the problem I have is that I can't seem to get anything better than a +1 para, and that drops my attack bonus a bit.

This ties in with the feats, because if I go with a DPS weapon, perhaps I should take PA to get some unity there. If I go with special effects, maybe Cleave would be good. On the other hand, the added bonus of DF being up more of the time will mean my attacks land more often for chances to trip, paralyze or whatever. Paralysis seems like it could really help with survival, but as I said, it doesn't seem to stick much (might be because my first attempt at using it was in Tempest Spine on hard, and everything is a blackguard).

Should I bother with a wounding weapon? At what point do they become more worthwhile than simply dealing damage? What about a weakening weapon? It seems like hitting with one would help the whole party, since it reduced the likelihood of the enemy hitting anyone, and makes my own AC count for even more than it already did (low 50s when self-buffed right now, going up a bit when I hit 12 and get some items waiting for me).

[Forceonature]

I'm about to hit level 12 myself with my intimidate tank, but I had my build planned out from the beginning. A build like that takes a different frame of mind to play, as you can't just do the zerg and kill method. You have to think about how you're going to attack each mob. Sometimes, it's turtle-up w/CE and a tower shield and intimidate the mob while your teammates get their flanking bonuses. Other times, it's turn off CE, use a regular shield, and try to max out your damage. You're not going to do as much damage as a barbarian or DPS-spec'd fighter, but you can still be very effective. I basically have 3 modes:

1) Max-AC intimidate role: Intimidate w/CE on, a tower shield, and either a parry weapon or my best +5 elemental or holy weapon.
2) Effect fighting: CE off, heavy shield, and your paralyzer/vorpal/banisher/smiter weapon. Goal is to max out your to-hit to score a kill, depending on what your fighting.
3) DPS: CE off, shield depending on how well you hit your target, +x burst weapon or greater bane weapon. I have greater banes for giants and aberrations (for beholders). Goal is to do max damage to things that aren't affected by special effects weapons.

My 2 cp.

[Ralmeth]

I would be curious to know what other high level intimitanks think about this. I play an intimitank myself....My highest level is a 28 point 12 Pali / 2 Fighter, and my new 32 point intimitank is a 7 Pali / 2 Fighter, so I've been doing quite a bit of thinking about this. I can tell you that on my high level tank I went the cleave and greater cleave route to try that out. I thought it was okay, but not great. I'd rather spend those feats elsewhere.

I would probably steer away from power attack if I were you. You want to be able to hit things to gain their aggro, and with CE on the additional -5 to hit from PA would make that more difficult on top of the -5 from CE (do these even stack, or can you only have one turned on at a time?). I think PA is helpful for taking out the trash mobs a little faster, but the top end mobs that you have a tough time hitting you probably won't use it.

So as for what feat to go for...if you think your will saves are low and your getting held too often, etc, then force of personality may not be a bad idea depending on how much bonus this will give you in this department. Extend may depend on how well you like / you've adapted to the fact that casting a spell turns CE off. I found this annoying at first, but have since gotten around this by just knowing that I have to cast DV first and then turn CE on. Extend is still on my maybe list just to make life a little easier.

Another feat I was thinking about was stunning blow. I've not tried this yet so I have no idea how well this works other than what I've read on the forums. I have noticed that there is a bit of a delay between throwing out a trip and intimidate and before I can do one of these again, so this may be something to use for more crowd control and extra DPS (my understanding is that if your stunning blow lands the target is stunned for a short while and everyone that hits it gets an autocrit on it).

Lastly, if you're thinking of picking up 2 rogue levels for UMD and evasion you probably want to seriously think about skill focus UMD to max out your UMD skill.

As for whether you should go all DPS or specialty weapons, I would have some of both weapons around. Some mobs you will want to just DPS your way through and others where the fight would otherwise be long you will want the specialty weapons on. So I would plan on being able to do either, as the situation calls for.

[Dexxaan]

I assume you are currently 8/3 and about to hit Level 12.

'Cause if you are 9/3 and are going to hit Level 12 then I need a 2nd Coffee Mug and refrain from posting.....

Anyway, if you can tell me what your end-build at Level 20 is going to be, then you will probably get the best advice possible.

For now with what you've mentioned I'd drop force of personality (your will save is quite high as it is) and you could benefit from great cleave and be a mega-aggro magnet since they are on different timers.

Other than that maybe Khopesh?

[sirgog]

I concur with respeccing Force of Personality so you can pick up Cleave and Great Cleave, especially if you plan to use Paralyzing, Banishing, Wounding and/or Puncturing weapons with those feats. And do not forget Cursespewing - it's no easier to land than Paralysis, but after you hit once, it's like having +4 AC because the mob has -4 to attack you. Weakening of Enfeebling lands more often than Cursespew but takes more hits to get the mobs to the point they really struggle to hit you.

I'd also recommend holding onto a pair of Vorpal one-handed axes, so that in quests where you don't need to Intimitank (e.g. a 4-tank, 2 Cleric group in Running with the Devils), you can turn off CE, put the shield away, and take down endgame mobs fast.

[sephiroth1084]

Thanks for all the replies!

Not sure where to begin responding, so I'll jump around a bit.

No, PA and CE cannot be used together at the same time.

On the intimitank I rode to 1750, I found that Extend spell made a HUGE difference in the use of DF, because it went from being useful for one fight (often ending before the fight was done), and somewhat annoying to use with CE, to lasting through 1 or 2 fights (and sometimes 3 if they go fast), and being much easier to use with CE. It also meant that, if I hit DF and then someone realized they forgot to do something, I didn't completely waste the SP. I imagine some of these will be even truer now, since I have to no only juggle casting with CE, but need to swap in my +Wis item just to cast, and then pop it back out for my intimidate item.

My problem with the weapons is that I never seem to pull any of those very awesome ones, and don't have the cash to plunk down on too many of them. My current suite of weapons: +3 acid dwarf ax of pure good, +1 paralyzer, +3 ghost touch of pure good, +2 weakening of pure good, +1 undead bane club, +1 frost heavy mace of greater construct bane (a gift). I've enough gold at the moment to plunk down on very nice weapon. So, I was trying to figure out what the best route would be. I got the paralyzer because it seemed to fit with my "protect the part schtik". because of the monetary issues, I'm trying to pick up 1-3 weapons that will be useful as much of the time as possible. I like having utility weapons, and can switch quickly (using a gamepad, I have 8 weapons allocated to the D-pad of a quasi-PS2 controller for swift switching).

Yes, I meant 8/3 not 9/3. I hope to end as Pal 16/Ftr 4 in all likelihood...the 4 fighter lvls are for the 3 feats, armor mastery, +1 Str, and +2 to my trip DCs.

My starting Wis was an 8 (didn't like the idea, but so many were doing it, and it allowed me to have a higher starting Cha), but now that I have it so low, I find I am pressed for item slots (Chaosgarde, Minos Legens, +x protection item, +x resistance item, +str, +dex, +con, +cha, +wis, +11 intimidate item, PoP VIII or Bat in the trinket for the time being, and eventually a Chattering Ring hopefully). So, Wis is an 8, while Cha is a 20 currently, meaning the Force of Personality feat would bring me up 6 points on my Will save. I like seeing saves at 20+ across the board. Yeah, for a lot of fights, I rarely fail a save, but then I roll a 5 or 6 and fail a mindblast, and the party wipes. A 1 obviously can't be helped, but the less I fail saves, the less likely we have a TPK. Haven't taken the feat yet, and can wait on it/be convinced otherwise, just putting down my reasoning. Plus, the high Will saves will allow me to solo more content.

While I am trying to be a max AC build, I have stayed away from grabbing a Parrying weapon only because there seem to be so many better things to go in that slot for the time being. Currently I am wearing +4 mithral FP of lesser false life, and a +5 HSS, but at lvl 12, I will inherit my first tank's +5 mithral tower of blinding. I also carry around about 20 barkskin +3 pots all the time. Use them sometimes when in a full party, and all the time when solo'ing if monsters are the heavy hitter sort (just about solo'ed the Titan flagging quests...my group was AWFUL and dead 90% of the time).

One of the problems I have with DPS, is that I am often the main melee damage-dealer in a party, and sometimes, it just takes forever to drop something (i.e. end Golem in Haywire's Foundry on elite took close to 10 minutes I think), but that in those cases, I need CE up anyway, so PA wouldn't be useful then anyway. That was pretty funny though...had a party of 2 clerics, a ranger, a rogue, and a wizard...ranger and rogue kept dying if they got into melee and didn't have any ranged weapons to use on the guy, wizard didn't have any spells that worked here, so I stood in the doorway with CE up and my greater construct bane weapon out, hit auto-attack, and put my controller down. The clerics each ran through a mana bar healing me, but my high AC and HP meant that I was going down in single-big hits when he'd connect instead of dropping to 0 almost instantly like my squishy compatriots. I was very tempted to go get a sandwich, but figured that'd be rude, and realized I might need my LoH ("Oh sh** button"). A high DPS barbarian with some AC would have likely cut the time in half, AND would have (maybe) saved the clerics some mana.

[Ralmeth]

Thanks for your thoughts on extend! I think I'll pick that up when my new intimitank hits 12th level. So based on what you mentioned it sounds like your choices are between extend and force of personality. Both sound like they have merit...You could always get one at 12th level and the other at 15th I would just get whichever one you think is going to benefit you more right now.