Half-Orc Tank: Just returning to the game, need some advice.

[CombatLibrarian]

So after a long absence from DDO, I picked up that half-orc pack and decided it'd be fun to make a tanking-focused fighter build with the half orc.

I did, and for the first several levels it was AMAZING. However, I took a stone, I'm at level 16 now, and my ability to survive is...well, lacking. I've never really done a tank build before and I think I may have made some major missteps. Going to probably do a LR but, I wanted to make sure I have all my ducks in a row here before I do that.

So, here's what I have right now:

Lawful Good Half Orc Fighter 16

Base Stats: STR 20, DEX 14, CON 16, INT 6, WIS 8, CHA 6

Feats: Power Attack, Toughness, Cleave, Great Cleave, Dodge, Mobility, Exotic Weapon Proficiency: Bastard Sword, Weapon Focus: Slashing Weapons, Greater Weapon Focus: Slashing Weapons, Weapon Specialization: Slashing Weapons, Greater Weapon Specialization: Slashing Weapons, Shield Mastery, Improved Shield Mastery, Spring Attack, Two Handed Fighting

Skills: Intimidate (Max Every Level)

Enhancements: Fighter AC Boost III, Fighter Armor Mastery II, Fighter Stalwart Defender II, Fighter Tower Shield Mastery I, Fighter Bastard Sword Specialization, Orcish Brute Fighting II, Orcish Extra Action Boost I, Half-Orc Melee Damage II, Orcish Strength II, Racial Toughness I, Improved Intimidate II, Fighter Strength II, Fighter Toughness IV

My thoughts on what I may need to fix:

INT high enough for combat expertise, and enough skill points to get Tumble high enough to tumble in Full Plate + Shield at the very least while retaining max Intimidate/level.

Also possible, bump up INT and DEX, trade the full plate for a Mithral BP, splash asap into 2 rogue and pick up Evasion.

I really enjoy my half-orc overall, I'm just to the point I want to make her the best possible tank she can be. Any advice on how to do this would be greatly appreciated.

[Clayness]

Tanks are incredibly hard to build, and incredibly tough to gear up to a point where they can be useful. Half-orcs are probably not the optimal choice for a tank to begin with, the slight increase in strength and the brute fighting enhancements might look tempting, but human, dwarf and half-elf all offer more substantial bonuses (no charisma penalty for human/half-elf, heal amp enhancements, intimidate-increasing dragonmarks for human and double intimidate for half-elf. Dwarves have shield enhancements and a better HP pool).

Looking at your feats it looks like you're trying to do too much. I would dump Cleave, Great Cleave, Spring Attack and Two-Handed Fighting to pick up Skill Focus Intimidate and more toughness feats. A good tank, in my opinion, should aim for at least 800 hitpoints at level 20, and more once you get into epic levels and have the heal amp to back it up.

A good tank needs the following things:
- Good Hitpoints (makes it alot easier on the healers)
- Good Healing Amplification (again, to ease the job of the healers)
- Good Intimidate (especially since Epic Elite Lord of Blades got bumped up to requiring an intimidate score above 100)
- Good Damage Mitigation (though shield mastery, AC, dodge and whatever other means you can achieve to decrease the damage you take)
- Good Threat Generation (if you have decent strength, weapon focus/specialization feats and most importantly, a good weapon, you should be able to keep agro with a sword n' board due to all the threat bonuses from stalwart defender)

Unfortunately, your current setup is lacking a bit in the first three categories. You will never be able to tank anything really hard with a starting charisma of 6, the people who are currently tanking the hard stuff in this game have higher starting charisma and often a barbarian past life (the active past life feat gives +20 hitpoints and a stacking +2 bonus to intimidate, so its basically a toughness feat with a free boost to intimidate).

If you lesser reincarnate, I have a radical suggestion - Unless you are really set on making a first-life stalwart tank, turn your half-orc into a dps toon instead. A THF or TWF Kensei is a great first-life toon, easy to make and easy to gear. You will be significantly more useful in parties and raids than a first-life undergeared tank. If you still want to make a tank, start gearing up for tanking as a kensei, consider getting a barbarian past life and consider your build more carefully. Because the sad truth is, there is nothing less useful in a party than an undergeared tank. And I am not just making this up, my main toon started out as a Warforged Stalwart Defender and he was pretty much a wasted slot in any party he joined. He has been TR'ed many times since then, into a far more potent unarmed build (or rather, unarmed builds since he's been through quite a lot of different ones over the years).

So consider this - Do you want to be "that guy" that joins an epic party/raid, runs around with a sword and a shield, hitting stuff without really getting any agro, not really killing anything, not really tanking anything and when you have agro, being a pain to keep alive due to low hitpoints and healing amplification?

[Miow]

Very good advice above.

[Lonnbeimnech]

snip...

Agreed.

I made the mistake of trying to make a first life tank as well, save yourself the frustration. Get back to it later, much later.

[CombatLibrarian]

Tanks are incredibly hard to build, and incredibly tough to gear up to a point where they can be useful. Half-orcs are probably not the optimal choice for a tank to begin with, the slight increase in strength and the brute fighting enhancements might look tempting, but human, dwarf and half-elf all offer more substantial bonuses (no charisma penalty for human/half-elf, heal amp enhancements, intimidate-increasing dragonmarks for human and double intimidate for half-elf. Dwarves have shield enhancements and a better HP pool).

Looking at your feats it looks like you're trying to do too much. I would dump Cleave, Great Cleave, Spring Attack and Two-Handed Fighting to pick up Skill Focus Intimidate and more toughness feats. A good tank, in my opinion, should aim for at least 800 hitpoints at level 20, and more once you get into epic levels and have the heal amp to back it up.

A good tank needs the following things:
- Good Hitpoints (makes it alot easier on the healers)
- Good Healing Amplification (again, to ease the job of the healers)
- Good Intimidate (especially since Epic Elite Lord of Blades got bumped up to requiring an intimidate score above 100)
- Good Damage Mitigation (though shield mastery, AC, dodge and whatever other means you can achieve to decrease the damage you take)
- Good Threat Generation (if you have decent strength, weapon focus/specialization feats and most importantly, a good weapon, you should be able to keep agro with a sword n' board due to all the threat bonuses from stalwart defender)

Unfortunately, your current setup is lacking a bit in the first three categories. You will never be able to tank anything really hard with a starting charisma of 6, the people who are currently tanking the hard stuff in this game have higher starting charisma and often a barbarian past life (the active past life feat gives +20 hitpoints and a stacking +2 bonus to intimidate, so its basically a toughness feat with a free boost to intimidate).

If you lesser reincarnate, I have a radical suggestion - Unless you are really set on making a first-life stalwart tank, turn your half-orc into a dps toon instead. A THF or TWF Kensei is a great first-life toon, easy to make and easy to gear. You will be significantly more useful in parties and raids than a first-life undergeared tank. If you still want to make a tank, start gearing up for tanking as a kensei, consider getting a barbarian past life and consider your build more carefully. Because the sad truth is, there is nothing less useful in a party than an undergeared tank. And I am not just making this up, my main toon started out as a Warforged Stalwart Defender and he was pretty much a wasted slot in any party he joined. He has been TR'ed many times since then, into a far more potent unarmed build (or rather, unarmed builds since he's been through quite a lot of different ones over the years).

So consider this - Do you want to be "that guy" that joins an epic party/raid, runs around with a sword and a shield, hitting stuff without really getting any agro, not really killing anything, not really tanking anything and when you have agro, being a pain to keep alive due to low hitpoints and healing amplification?

I believe your advice, just...wow. What a ****ing awful game design paradigm to have to TR once or twice to be useful at all in that role.

[Clayness]

I do agree that it is a bit annoying that its so hard to make a useful tank in this game, compared to making a useful healer or DPS. Additionally, very few raids, and virtually no quests require a dedicated tank, having melee with a fair hitpoint pool and good DPS is enough to get the job done in 99% of quests and raids.

I tried my best to make my tank useful on his first life, but even after gearing him up a bit he wasn't really useful anywhere except for one raid, Hound of Xoriat. I had nice guildies who let him come along in quests, even though his spot would have been much better filled by any barbarian or fighter randomly swinging a two-handed sword.

Now I am contemplating on turning him back into a tank at some point, but that is mainly because:

- I have other capped characters I can bring to quests that don't require a tank (i.e. 95% of quests and raids)
- I have some past lives on him that would bump him up into the useful category, tank-wise
- I have a good collection of gear that he can use

If you only want to have one toon, or if you want to cap a toon and keep it at 20 while levelling other toons, I would suggest to go for DPS. They're usually alot more welcome in quests, alot easier to gear and alot easier to build.

[FrozenNova]

I believe your advice, just...wow. What a ****ing awful game design paradigm to have to TR once or twice to be useful at all in that role.

This is an overstatement. Tr'ing in terms of stat points gives you at most another str bracket, con bracket, or some cha for intim. In terms of past life, the stacking 2 on barbarian active is certainly nice to have, but it's not mandatory, even looking at the mad DC for Ee LoB. The difference between a first life tank and a 2x tr'd tank is, in practical terms, tiny.

The bigger problem is that half orc is a difficult choice for a tank. The int and cha penalty means their natural strength bonus is somewhat wasted by having to dump points into cha and int in order to qualify for expertise and sufficient intimidate. This is an area where the extra TR points would prove helpful, moreso than other races. They get only two racial toughness enhancements and, more importantly, no healing amp. What they do have going for them is Brute Fighting.

[unbongwah]

I disagree with the conventional wisdom here. Making an endgame-worthy tank is hard and requires tons of gear etc. Making a "leveling" tank to teach yourself how to tank and acquire the gear for when you TR into said endgame-worthy tank is much easier, unless you're insisting on elite-streaking the whole way to cap or whatever. The hardcore "if it's not minmaxed it's C**P!" contingent is focused on Epic Elites; they occasionally forget that mere mortals are sometimes content with dialing it back a notch or two.

That said, what I suspect are the issues here are (A) a lack of lvl-16-appropriate gear due to Stoning yourself up and (B) lower INT & CHA & lack of heal amp make HOs less than ideal as tanks, despite their threat amp & STR & 2H dmg bonuses. But I don't consider it unsalvagable, esp. if you haven't used your free LR yet. Do you have tomes you have or can throw at this build to improve it?

[CombatLibrarian]

I disagree with the conventional wisdom here. Making an endgame-worthy tank is hard and requires tons of gear etc. Making a "leveling" tank to teach yourself how to tank and acquire the gear for when you TR into said endgame-worthy tank is much easier, unless you're insisting on elite-streaking the whole way to cap or whatever. The hardcore "if it's not minmaxed it's C**P!" contingent is focused on Epic Elites; they occasionally forget that mere mortals are sometimes content with dialing it back a notch or two.

That said, what I suspect are the issues here are (A) a lack of lvl-16-appropriate gear due to Stoning yourself up and (B) lower INT & CHA & lack of heal amp make HOs less than ideal as tanks, despite their threat amp & STR & 2H dmg bonuses. But I don't consider it unsalvagable, esp. if you haven't used your free LR yet. Do you have tomes you have or can throw at this build to improve it?

I'm probably going to go the DPS route. Honestly, I would have liked for them to be a solid tank but I'm also fine with 2hand cleave cleave whirlwind etc. Sadly, despite what the CMs have said on the matter, right now characters rolled after the update don't get a free LR, so the character is currently shelved until I get some spare cash for a lesser wooden heart, or get my artificer on that server (currently 7) high enough and try and pull one from a chest or something. I don't really have any tomes I can use.

[unbongwah]

Well, you can see my take on U14 THF Kensai here: DPS mixed with Tactics. Dwarf instead of HO so needs a little tweaking, but it gives you the gist of the idea.

[emptysands]

I believe your advice, just...wow. What a ****ing awful game design paradigm to have to TR once or twice to be useful at all in that role.

It's possible to tank at normal difficulties with a first life, but to do EE you'll need the gear and TRs.

TRs are a big part of DDO. It seems reasonable that in order to archive the peak of the game they may be required.

[TEcarson]

I have some tomes sitting in the bank, including multiple sets of +1's.

I am on Thelanis. Reply here or send me a PM.

Cheers.

[CombatLibrarian]

I have some tomes sitting in the bank, including multiple sets of +1's.

I am on Thelanis. Reply here or send me a PM.

Cheers.

As it looks like my half orc is just really disadvantaged in the tanking department, I may just have to wait until I can get my hands on a lesser heart and reincarnate-fix. Thanks for the offer though!