Questions about tanking.

[blademyth]

First, which is the classes is the better tank out of the 4 melee, I've seen people say saves from paladins make them good tanks, while a fighter has better mitigation overall.

Second, are there any specific feats I should aim for? Obvious ones like toughness I understand.

Lastly, are there any specific weapons/shields and armor I should be aiming for at a basic level? I assume Mithril Full Plate is my best option but I'm not 100% sure.

[elg582]

This is a pretty wide open topic. I guess the easiest way is to break it down by class:

Fighter: Your standard tank. Stalwart Defender line requires toughness and one of combat expertise, shield mastery, dodge, diehard, or least dragonmark of sentinel. Other important feats include the weapon focus and weapon specialization lines, toughness, improved sunder, toughness, exotic weapon proficiency (khopesh or bastard sword, usually), more toughness, TWF or THF feats for DPS mode, yet more toughness...

Paladin: Similar to fighter, but with less DPS. Feats are much scarcer, and you'll need to spend one on combat expertise, tower shield proficiency, shield mastery, or diehard for the Defender of Siberys line. Starting ability scores can be difficult to balance since they need at least some investment in 4 different abilities, 5 if you want combat expertise and any kind of skills.

Barbarian: Strength. Constitution. Big weapon. Hit stuff. Keeping aggro usually isn't a problem; surviving aggro sometimes is, and clerics hate it when barbarians tank.

Monk: Tanking monks are sort of a different breed; it's hard to get a pure monk over about 600 hp, which leaves you vulnerable to extremely high damage no-save spells and extremely bad lag. That being said, a strength-based dark earth monk in full cry is perfectly capable of holding aggro from anything except an indiscreet caster.


Gear you'll figure out as you go; mithral full plate is a good place to start, and look through the wiki at the different named armors you can find, many of which are bound to account, so you could trade them over.

[smithj_2020]

That's a good breakdown by the above responder.

With right gear tanking is easy on anything, depending on if you a new player or not. If you are I say best, simplest easiest class is fighter and go stalwart. So many feats to choose from and can make a good tank.

Barbs need the right gear, such as heal amp gear.

Never played a pally so can't help ya.

I say go fighter and stalwart

[nibel]

About gear, there are few armors in the game that can be aimed as your final armor: Epic Cavalry Plate (only up when crystal cove is around), Epic Red Dragonplate Armor (grindy), and Dragontouched Fullplate (grindy to get it "right").

Basically, a +5 fullplate have +13 armor bonus and +1 max dexterity (+3 on mithral). The above armors are the heavy armors in the game that are better than this: Cavalry tier 3 and Redscale are +16, and DT is +15. Cavalry have 3 max dex (but is medium armor, so benefit only from stalwart 3), Redscale is +2, and DT is +1.

Dragontouched actually isn't the only +15 armor in the game, but is much, much easier to get than Epic Stonemeld, or Epic Vambraces.

In the last updates, the game has been awesomelly tank-friendly on gear. Bracers of wind are easy to farm and you can get up to 4 AC from a single slot. Crafting superior stability on your shield give you +6 AC and Saves (do not stack with protection +5, resistance +5, or shield of faith, which is a good thing). Stalwart III or Defender of Siberys III gives 4 free AC from stance (and Stalwart gets +3 just for selecting it).

It's not hard at all to get your AC on the high 60 while using heavy armor and tower shield.

[Enoach]

This is a pretty wide open topic. I guess the easiest way is to break it down by class:

Fighter: Your standard tank. Stalwart Defender line requires toughness and one of combat expertise, shield mastery, dodge, diehard, or least dragonmark of sentinel. Other important feats include the weapon focus and weapon specialization lines, toughness, improved sunder, toughness, exotic weapon proficiency (khopesh or bastard sword, usually), more toughness, TWF or THF feats for DPS mode, yet more toughness...

Paladin: Similar to fighter, but with less DPS. Feats are much scarcer, and you'll need to spend one on combat expertise, tower shield proficiency, shield mastery, or diehard for the Defender of Siberys line. Starting ability scores can be difficult to balance since they need at least some investment in 4 different abilities, 5 if you want combat expertise and any kind of skills.

Barbarian: Strength. Constitution. Big weapon. Hit stuff. Keeping aggro usually isn't a problem; surviving aggro sometimes is, and clerics hate it when barbarians tank.

Monk: Tanking monks are sort of a different breed; it's hard to get a pure monk over about 600 hp, which leaves you vulnerable to extremely high damage no-save spells and extremely bad lag. That being said, a strength-based dark earth monk in full cry is perfectly capable of holding aggro from anything except an indiscreet caster.


Gear you'll figure out as you go; mithral full plate is a good place to start, and look through the wiki at the different named armors you can find, many of which are bound to account, so you could trade them over.

While this has a lot of good information I would like to add a few comments.

Paladin - Its not that Feats are scarcer, in fact Paladins have more feats up until Level 18 than fighters. The difference is that all but 7 Feats are pre-chosen for a pure paladin. While paladins do come in with less DPS than a fighter as fighters have enhancements like haste boost and ability to have more feats specifically geared towards DPS. The paladins advantage comes in the form of self healing/saves/and bonus hate generation.

Barbarian tanks - reason why most people in the tank healing role, prefer something other than a barbarian tank usually comes down to having to heal someone that always takes damage (even if it is reduced with DR) vs someone that takes damage less often. In tank roles where AC can matter it is a significant reduction in resources expenditure. On the flip side, when AC doesn't matter such as EPICs the barbarian is a good option due the DR, but is limited by Rage Duration. Once they are out of Rages they have lost their biggest boost. This is not common except in long drawn out situation. I've seen barbarians run out of rages in Raids like VoD (not so much but it can happen), MA and LoB.

[Kinerd]

The goal of a tank is to make the group easier to heal. To do this they need to:

1. Be the target of as many boss attacks as possible. (Ideally 100%.)
2. Be easier to heal, by either (or ideally both)...
a. Taking less damage. (Ideally none.)
b. Having heal amp.
3. Survive long enough to be healed. Death always results in loss of aggro and in some raids has additional and significant penalties to completion.

Barbarians and fighters do enough DPS to hold aggro with threat gear. Paladins and monks aren't hugely far behind in DPS and have insane threat enhancements. As such, any of the four can satisfy condition (1).

Condition (2) is more complicated, because caught up in it are traditional racial and splash choices. A human barbarian with 2 rogue levels does very well for this condition, but you will go a long time before you see such a build. What usually happens is the player of a pure half-orc gets caught up in their own hype and thinks their build makes as good a tank as an evasion SD with 80 AC and enough healing amp to kill a horse.

This also makes it impossible to answer your specific questions. An Epic Chimera's Fang is a great weapon for a sword and board fighter, but a terrible weapon for a monk.