The Art of Tanking

[Meficio]

The Tank.

In DDO, many roles are clear. The Healer, the Crowd Control, the Trapper, etc. However, the role of Tank is often confused with the role of DPS among the players population.

This thread is a work in progress where I'll try to clearly identify differences between melee types and explain what a Tank is and what it should be in simple terms and images.

The Offensive Champion.

Imagine you are a big ugly nasty 9 feet tall troll and 4 armed warriors engage you into battle. What are you gonna do ? You are gonna try to kill first the one that harms you the most. This is what the Offensive Champion is. Its the character that deals the most damage and that also has the highest threat. That way the monster attacks this attacker and all other weaker warriors step behind and are free to attack the enemy without really fearing retaliation.

One can have high dps output with no hate or have low dps and plenty of hate, it dont matter. In the case of the hate tank. The one that has the most of both wins agro and is the one the mob will be attacking.

This is why people love Hate tanks. Its the tough guy, the protector because he is strong. They are fun to play because it allows you to compare your characters dps output to others in the group to find out who is the Dps Champion in the situation that all push their characters to the limit to try and take over agro. Moreover, the offensive champion has interest in having a high intim skill to get the monster's attention faster and receive a bonus to threat generation for a certain amount of time. Also, any front row dps that will take damage should aim to get the best healing amp he can. Healing amp should be a priority before threat gear for melee characters.



Now, lets take a look at what a tank really is and at its definition. A tank is an heavily armored combat vehicle armed with cannons and machine guns. So when comes the time to make a comparison with modern mmo-action-rpg, we are referring to a tank for his big artillery power on one hand and also to the concept that it is heavily armored.
What we see here is that in the case of the hate tank. the fact that it is heavily armored or not matters very little.

The Defensive Champion

The defensive champion is a warrior that is oriented towards resisting to massive amounts of damage. Lets come back to the Troll example and push it further. The offensive champion receives all attacks from the angry troll. What happens is that he gets hurt and take damage. In real war, when a weapon gets damaged, it usually decreases its efficacy and its damage output. Yet, the same does not apply to DDO most of the time. Healers heal the champion and he continues swinging. But what happens if the enemy is too powerful? The Champion knows he cant attack all the time else he will die. He needs to defend himself and while he does that, he loses dps compared to the other players that arent attacked.

This is the case of the new raid The Lord of the Blades on elite and epic difficulties from the information I have seen thus far. The Warforged god attacks are so powerful that if you dont assign a specific defensive tank to have all his attacks centered on him your party is gonna take massive damage and it will require massive resources to keep the raid party alive.

The way dps is calculated when you use a defensive-intimidate tank is much more complex then the basic law of the strongest. The tank should use intimidate skill, to help become the monster's center of attention faster and to receive a timed bonus to his threat generation. He has to attack enough to generate dps and have his hate produce results. He also has to block incoming attacks that are deadly and that can proc special effects that blocking will prevent. He has to do all of this at the same time, stay alive and keep the monster's focus. Obviously, he cant be the one that deals the most damage. Defensive tanks are build around high HP, high saves, healing amp, damage reduction from feats and/or shield blocking and armor class... balanced with decent dps output, really high threat generation and really high intimidate.

Thus when you are using that type of tank in a raid, all other melees need to be attuned to the tank and make sure that they are at their best damage output without stealing the attention from the tank. If they do, they will most likely die fast and the tank will regain the boss aggro. This is why people are using threat reduction items or no threat item at all in a raid like this one where its impossible to ask a tank to be as good defending from attacks as well as being the one that deals the most damaging attacks. Its simply not realistic too. I've heard Tank types were better defined in other games then in DDO, I cant tell I've never played WoW and such. Thus far in DDo the only quest that seem to require a defensive type of tank would be elite and epic Lord of the Blades, where any time a character die, there is a 1 or 2 minute penalty before he can be raised from the dead. Under those circumstances its important to minimize the number of deaths in the raid.

Remember, Hate doesnt add to your damage output. It is a percentage value added to your dps to account for the hate the monster has for you. You will still do 100 pts of damage a swing even if you have 100% hate generation. The only difference is that the monster will consider you have done him 200 pts of damage instead but you will still only have taken away 100 pts from his life bar. Thus the only reason why melee could wear hate items in raids is because melee should always have more hate then casters. Whenever a raid team uses a defensive tank, the best dps in the group is the player that has the more interest in getting threat reduction gear to go unnoticed. Artificers use threat reduction sets. Casters and rogues have threat reduction enhancements... and melees, Dps types of toons should also adjust their threat generation depending on which raid they play or which strategy the group is using.

I like the way the game is changing. I like the way mentalities are changing. I like the way people evolve and become more knowledgeable. The Times they are A-changin and if The Myths have pulled Epic LoB this week, its because they used 2 great defensive tanks.

I hope I helped clarify some things for people that asked about tanking lately. This is a first draft and I may adjust it this week and try to ad more stuff.

This thread is dedicated to Tank build toons. Everyone is welcome to ad their own input about tanking in general, tanking the Lord of Blades, tanking Horoth etc.
Congratulations to the Myths for being the first to complete epic LoB on Orien and congratulations to Over Raided for creating healthy competition and sportsmanship by completing the first epic MA a few hours later.

[eclipse668]

Hey Faulken, I like what you did there. Lots of players start thinking of building 'tanks' with the recent buffs to defensive stances and the horror stories from LoB beeing passed around.
Most of those players approach their idea for a build similar to your outline. They have a certain 'archetype' in mind and try to min-/max- out the respective traits and flaws (as you stated, will not repeat that part).
That is why most get stuck with either a cookiecutter build from the forums or build something that does not work well for them and they can't quite put their finger on the 'why'.

I'd like to try and formulate a different aproach to building a 'tanky' toon. first lets introduce some vocabulary: 'avoidance' and 'mitigation'. Avoidande means your toon will avoid blows or spells directed at him and the incoming damage will be 0. Mitigation means your toon will get hit with spells or attacks but the incoming damage will be reduced (greatly in an ideal setup).
You already formulated some cornerstones that you need to adress for a tank-toon but you miss some of the rather important ones.
You need to balance out the following attributes with your build: Threat, Hitpoints, Healamplification, Saves, Avoidance and Mitigation.

I'll try to give some examples and goals you should strive for when designing your toon...
Threat: intimidate, incite, dps. Your goal is to be ontop of the list. Always! If you want a pure hate tank be pretared to compete with epiced out damagedealers that wear a 20% bonus to incite (you basicaly need a damagedealer with comparable gear that manages to squeeze in some more incite somehow).
Hitpoints: You want a good buffer to give your healers a way of managing heals and not spam mindlessly because you might die with the next hit. Those hitpoints should be sustainable throuout a fight (e.g. madstone boots provide a nice buffer of Hitpoints but they are not very reliable).
Healamplification: You will be the person with the most Heals thrown at. Healing amplification helps your healers top off your hitpoints. there is nothing worse than a 800-900 HP tank that needs multiple maximized, empowered heals to top him off. Healers will love you if they can scrollheal you throuout a fight and save their bluebar for those 'o****-moments'.
Saves: build your toon for good saves. you still fail your save on a roll of 1 but that is what your HP buffer is for. failing saves on more than a 1 is taking damage that could/should have been avoided and will make your healers grumpy. For certain situations of tanking your life is made easy with evasion/improved evasion. You should make up your mind before building your toon if you want/need that feat.
Mitigation: Some classes come with a tiny build in mitigation. Favored souls can have more significant values of 'DR'. Builds that carry a shield can attain high values but you have to get that in line with your threat generation and the overall availability of feats and enhancment points. With the recent modification of earth stance monks also posess a tool for situational DR if specced for it.
Avoidance: AC, concealment and shadowfade. Any tank can and should benefit from concealment given by a 'fog' placed ontop of your hard hitting target. AC is extremely powerfull if done right for most of the content, but also very demanding on the gear you need to obtain. AC becomes less significant for epic raids sadly as the 'to hit' ability of most bosses is extremely high. Monksplash builds that skilled for ninja spy 1 have the ability shadowfade that gives a 25% avoidance due to beeing incorporeal. Very nice to have but equaly hard to fit into a build as you have to be centered to use it and dedicate alot of lvls (monk6) and enhancment points to get it.

The challenge when building, modifying or fixing an existing toon is to ballance all of the above in a functional concept.

Be prepared to adress even more fiddling with the above variables when you start to equip your toon. The equipment for a tank is very demanding and you will be limited in the choice of gear and the available slots.

When done right you can create a wonderfull diversity of 'tank-builds' that work very well. To give some examples: a tanking (selfhealing, facemelting) Sorc (limited to shorter fights due to spell point issues), the tanking FVS (selfhealing, very high mitigation, somewhat low threat and limited to its sp) or tanking monks, bards and rogues in certain setups/encounters. or go and multiclass all the treats you want and like into a single toon......

I know alot of ppl out there disagree with my point of view and prefer to use the 'archetype' aproach. Thats perfectly alright, if the product is performing to their needs.

/salute, E-