First Life Iconic LH Raid Tank

[SpartanKiller13]

Hey all,

I'm looking for a viable LH tank for a first life iconic (so I can park it at 30 and TR my main). My guild is pretty casual about raids, so we're doing LN right now but I expect we'll hit LH shortly (considering I PUG LH).

From what I can see, the basic requirements for a low-effort tank are:

• Defender Stance (PRR/MRR/HP)
• Unyielding Sentinel
• Displacement on demand (first life, no item clickies)
• Self-healing (moderate)
• Heavy Armor (evasion/dodge tanks require a lot more stuff)
• Intimidate (not dealing enough damage to hate tank)

I'm considering a 11/5/4 Cleric/Warlock/Pally (shown below) and wanted your thoughts. Also not sure if I need to invest further into Intimidate, and if so what the best method would be. Build will have quickened Heal, 60s Displacement clicky, Shining Through and Brilliance along with Pally's Defender stance. It requires basically nothing in terms of gear or EDs (one T1 twist, four ED's maxed) and three Cannith Crafted items (which can be replaced by similar randomgen/named gear).

HP/Stat breakdowns shown, but I'm mostly worried about the Intimidate (~3k hp seems more than enough for LH Baba/Strahd etc).



Thanks for your time!

[Alled78]

I think u need to choose cleric /paladin/ then wizard for 10% ac or other 4 fighter for increased ca. In general u dont need tank in LH. It is useful from elite so start on working on it
5 lvl o n Pally for t5

[SpartanKiller13]

I think u need to choose cleric /paladin/ then wizard for 10% ac or other 4 fighter for increased ca. In general u dont need tank in LH. It is useful from elite so start on working on it
5 lvl o n Pally for t5

For a main character I'd agree, but I'm worried about the viability of a undergeared first life iconic (hence why I'm posting). I'm not concerned about elite because I don't run LE raids - my guild is relaxed, and I haven't seen a PUG for one.

10% AC probably won't help a lot when I'll probably be in the ballpark of 100-120 or so. I don't know that +12 AC is worth a wizzy dip.

Pally T5 gives 25 PRR/MRR, but Warlock is giving 19 PRR/MRR, so it's 6 PRR/MRR vs Displacement and 10x Con as Temps (Brilliance+Shining Through). What am I missing? The 50% to shield AC bonus?

Displacement's 50% miss chance will avoid more hits than a moderately higher AC, unless I'm missing something.

I could swap to Pally 5 Warlock 4, and trade Displacement+Shining Through for 25 PRR/MRR (while retaining Brilliance and the +19/19). Not sure that's worth it though?

Besides, a large part of Baba is DoT's and spell damage, which AC won't help against.

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Thanks for replying!

[Niminae]

10% AC probably won't help a lot when I'll probably be in the ballpark of 100-120 or so. I don't know that +12 AC is worth a wizzy dip.

[...]

Besides, a large part of Baba is DoT's and spell damage, which AC won't help against.

You're right about the AC. It's a "go big or go home" sort of thing, and 120 isn't big.

If you're running Baba's a lot then you'll want the Legendary Mirrorplate Tower shield for the MRR. It won't hurt at all against the brides in Strahd, either.

An LGS Legendary Affirmation weapon will help you out a lot with the temp HP. I'd go hamp/hamp/hamp or hamp/hamp/pos.

Your Intim looks fine, and you might even be putting too much into it with SF: Intimidate, ESF: Intimidate, and Epic Reputation. I didn't look to see what you might take instead, but that level should be fine for LH. Feargaze will help your skill. Nothing in Baba's except Baba can be Intimidated anyway, but it'll make you the center of attention while questing.

[SpartanKiller13]

You're right about the AC. It's a "go big or go home" sort of thing, and 120 isn't big.

If you're running Baba's a lot then you'll want the Legendary Mirrorplate Tower shield for the MRR. It won't hurt at all against the brides in Strahd, either.

An LGS Legendary Affirmation weapon will help you out a lot with the temp HP. I'd go hamp/hamp/hamp or hamp/hamp/pos.

Your Intim looks fine, and you might even be putting too much into it with SF: Intimidate, ESF: Intimidate, and Epic Reputation. I didn't look to see what you might take instead, but that level should be fine for LH. Feargaze will help your skill. Nothing in Baba's except Baba can be Intimidated anyway, but it'll make you the center of attention while questing.

A major point of the build was to require few resources, and AC tanking requires a good setup and usually a bunch of gear/PLs.

Oooh, that shield does look very nice, especially with the Block Elements on top of the IMRR (plenty of elemental damage). Final Vintage isn't even a hard run, so I'll look to pick one up on my main before making this character.

I hesitated around LGS because I haven't even made my first item yet, and I don't want to be using valuable resources on a random off-toon lol. Although I agree it would be very strong, I don't know if I can afford it? Besides, part of the point of this build is to be low-resources, so friendly for newer players (or me) lol. Although I will look through my bank and see how far along in LGS I am (I have like 1500 Codex Runes so I figured it would be a while before I got to crafting LGS stuff).

I can't find Intim DC's listed anywhere, but I figured it was a lot better to invest too much than too little. A lot of people talking about Intimi-tanking Reaper etc have numbers more like 130, so I was concerned (it's not too hard to hit if you have tomes/PL's/gear, but not so easy on a first life). I'll definitely look for a Feargaze, but it's actually the same bonus as a Cannith Crafted item so it'll mostly be for the convenience and the Linguistics. Although the Knight of the Shadows set bonus is pretty nice too, so I'll likely aim for that as well.

I don't mind being the center of attention, I'm more worried about having enough DPS to actually make it to 30, let alone run RL content. I'll probably spend a bunch of time kiting through BB's and running EN dailies as part of a group. And trying to farm 400 Coin Lords favor for the +2 Intimidate lol, although doing most of that overlevel should help.

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Thank you very much for your response!

[Niminae]

I hesitated around LGS because I haven't even made my first item yet, and I don't want to be using valuable resources on a random off-toon lol. Although I agree it would be very strong, I don't know if I can afford it? Besides, part of the point of this build is to be low-resources, so friendly for newer players (or me) lol. Although I will look through my bank and see how far along in LGS I am (I have like 1500 Codex Runes so I figured it would be a while before I got to crafting LGS stuff).

Don't hesitate. LGS takes a lot less mats than you might think, and you don't need the 5k runes for anything other than de-poisoning your second and further accessories. Weapons don't need it at all, so just the 100 to make an item is all you'll use. If you have 1500 runes you probably have the mats to make any weapon you might want, although if all your runs were LN/LH you might be shy on the large mats.

I can't find Intim DC's listed anywhere, but I figured it was a lot better to invest too much than too little. A lot of people talking about Intimi-tanking Reaper etc have numbers more like 130, so I was concerned (it's not too hard to hit if you have tomes/PL's/gear, but not so easy on a first life). I'll definitely look for a Feargaze, but it's actually the same bonus as a Cannith Crafted item so it'll mostly be for the convenience and the Linguistics. Although the Knight of the Shadows set bonus is pretty nice too, so I'll likely aim for that as well.

Yeah, that's one place the wiki could use some help. There are a couple listed on the Intimidate page, but the list is short and really old. Feargaze is just a tiny bit better than CC values, but it saves you the mats. With the boosts to threat you'll have in US and SD you shouldn't have a problem, although no amount of bonus to melee threat is going to keep aggo if you don't do much/any melee damage. But in LN/LH you shouldn't have to be just an intim+block tank.

I don't mind being the center of attention, I'm more worried about having enough DPS to actually make it to 30, let alone run RL content. I'll probably spend a bunch of time kiting through BB's and running EN dailies as part of a group. And trying to farm 400 Coin Lords favor for the +2 Intimidate lol, although doing most of that overlevel should help.

Well if you're not soloing you can just run as a tank and your guildies should love you for it as you level. If you will be soloing then you can spec dps until you hit cap and park yourself for raid tank. But hey, if you're putting in the time and effort to be a raid tank for your guild, I'd hope that you'd get the support you need to get there without a lot of pain.

If you go Dwarf 11 AP will get you the Radiant Forcefield SLA.

[Enoach]

To be a Tank you need to make sure you can meet these items

1. Be able to grab the Aggro
2. Be able to keep the Aggro
3. Be able to survive the Aggro
4. Cost less party resources then if that aggro was spread out

My advice

Gear makes a large contribution. However, treat even armor "golf bag" style - have armor for specific purposes. Tanking is not the same for each situation. Fezzik said it best when he talked about how fighting a mob was different then fighting a single person. Keep that in mind with each "tanking" operation.

Layer your defenses
Find the balance that works for you with AC/PRR/MRR/Dodge/Ethereal/Concealment. As a note, this can be different depending on what you are tanking.

One thing to consider is that creating a couple swappable Tier 2 Smoke items will grant you 90ish seconds of displacement 2x for each item. So if you have access to grabbing Heroic shroud crafting ingredients this can give you a "miss" layer that works well when tanking against non-True Seeing types.

A little UMD can go a long way. Low level cloud spells that can be purchased provide a 20% miss chance that even true seeing cannot bypass. This can layer on your "survive aggro"

[SpartanKiller13]

Don't hesitate. LGS takes a lot less mats than you might think, and you don't need the 5k runes for anything other than de-poisoning your second and further accessories. Weapons don't need it at all, so just the 100 to make an item is all you'll use. If you have 1500 runes you probably have the mats to make any weapon you might want, although if all your runs were LN/LH you might be shy on the large mats.

I'll give it a shot then! Most of my runs have been LN/LH, but we're pretty good about trading Larges so I can probably get what I need in a few runs if that's all I'm short.

Yeah, that's one place the wiki could use some help. There are a couple listed on the Intimidate page, but the list is short and really old. Feargaze is just a tiny bit better than CC values, but it saves you the mats. With the boosts to threat you'll have in US and SD you shouldn't have a problem, although no amount of bonus to melee threat is going to keep aggo if you don't do much/any melee damage. But in LN/LH you shouldn't have to be just an intim+block tank.

Yeah, it's hard to find decent numbers aside from random vids of stuff etc. Feargaze has other useful stuff like Linguistics, but AFAIK it's +22/11 same as a ML34 CC; definitely worth saving mats though

I currently tank via melee threat (like +475% threat bonus in LD), but I don't think this build will have enough damage to matter - hence why I figured I'd use Intimidate. My estimated 116 Intimidate will set me higher than the highest aggro by the equivalent of 23k damage, so given the 5s window I think I'll be able to hold aggro pretty well even with some solid DPS coming from my guildies.

Well if you're not soloing you can just run as a tank and your guildies should love you for it as you level. If you will be soloing then you can spec dps until you hit cap and park yourself for raid tank. But hey, if you're putting in the time and effort to be a raid tank for your guild, I'd hope that you'd get the support you need to get there without a lot of pain.

True! Although you don't really need a tank outside of Reaper, I might be able to find a bunch of heroic reaper groups to tank for too
I'm sure my guild will support me a bit, but I often get gametime at odd hours so it can be a little awkward.

If you go Dwarf 11 AP will get you the Radiant Forcefield SLA.

Oooh, good call! I just figured an Iconic would get me to 30 faster and save a bit of the hassle of leveling (I'm a bit slow at that lol). Although if I started at level 1 I think I'd probably go with Aasimar, for +10% HP and +10 PRR/MRR for 16 AP. Also I could have wings which would be super rad.

I'm also debating taking Warlock 6 to grab Stanch? Not sure if I need quite that many temps though. 11 AP gets me Feigned Health and Stanch. Either drop a level of Pally (and drop the AP spent) or drop 1-2 levels of Cleric (mostly just costs Heal). Would also get Dark Delirium which can be nice to shut down an enemy temporarily.

Probably 9/6/5 Cleric/Warlock/Paladin, for +3 to saves from Pally. 34 AP into ES, 24 into SaD, 11 into Tainted Scholar, 11 leftover. Would go nicely as a Dwarf! Perfectly fitting in Radiant Forcefield.

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Thank you very much for your reply

To be a Tank you need to make sure you can meet these items

1. Be able to grab the Aggro
2. Be able to keep the Aggro
3. Be able to survive the Aggro
4. Cost less party resources then if that aggro was spread out

• Intimidate
• Intimidate
• Plenty of hp+temps, PRR+MRR, and heals.
• I think I can do it all myself so it will minimize resource cost.

My advice

Gear makes a large contribution. However, treat even armor "golf bag" style - have armor for specific purposes. Tanking is not the same for each situation. Fezzik said it best when he talked about how fighting a mob was different then fighting a single person. Keep that in mind with each "tanking" operation.

Gear is huge, but I'm trying to achieve it with a minimum required in terms of gear/XP/PL's/ED's/tomes etc. Not trying to do R5 raids or anything

Layer your defenses
Find the balance that works for you with AC/PRR/MRR/Dodge/Ethereal/Concealment. As a note, this can be different depending on what you are tanking.

One thing to consider is that creating a couple swappable Tier 2 Smoke items will grant you 90ish seconds of displacement 2x for each item. So if you have access to grabbing Heroic shroud crafting ingredients this can give you a "miss" layer that works well when tanking against non-True Seeing types.

A little UMD can go a long way. Low level cloud spells that can be purchased provide a 20% miss chance that even true seeing cannot bypass. This can layer on your "survive aggro"

• AC tanking at endgame is really hard (impossible?) on a first life toon that'll be undergeared. Takes a lot of effort to get useful numbers, although it's worth an investment regardless.
• PRR/MRR I think I should do pretty well, between Defender Stance, PRR from Heavy armor, +20 from ES, and SM/ISM/LSM on the Mirrorplate.
• Dodge is pretty easy to cap in heavy armor, slot it anywhere and you're done.
• Incorporeality I'll try for a Ghostly item, but again this is supposed to be a low-gear setup so maybe later.
• Concealment is a large part of the reason I T5 into ES - I'll have Extended Displacement as an SLA, so 60s for ~5 SP (epic SP reduction). Otherwise I'll have 10min Blur always up.
• Warlock who's maxing Cha/Con - I'll have plenty of UMD. Cloud spells will be useful vs TS. I'll keep a few scrolls, thanks for the tip.

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Thank you very much for your tips/advice

[Stormraiser]

Why cleric? There are multiple classes which offer more for tanking then cleric. Artificer, fighter, Paladin, wizard.

[SpartanKiller13]

Why cleric? There are multiple classes which offer more for tanking then cleric. Artificer, fighter, Paladin, wizard.

I already have Paladin and Warlock for tanking, and Cleric works well enough while allowing me to Iconic. Animal domain gives a bunch of HP, I get some nice healing via like Heal. Most of my AP and my T5's are spent anyway, so like what would be worth taking?

More class levels in Pally/Warlock could give higher cores, but I can't say that any of the ones I can access seem strong enough to be worth the investment. Cleric gives ~300 hp free... What split would you recommend?

Cleric 5 gives 216 bonus HP by itself. That seems pretty hard to top. More levels I can see an argument for, they only give ~15 apiece.

Edit: Numbers.

[Enoach]

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Thank you very much for your reply

• Intimidate
• Intimidate
• Plenty of hp+temps, PRR+MRR, and heals.
• I think I can do it all myself so it will minimize resource cost.

...

Just keep in mind that not every tanking operation can use Intimidate to grab and hold aggro. There are situations where either it is not enough or they are not influenced. In those cases you need to work on making your "Hate" higher. Sometimes that needs to be done without actually causing lots of damage. An example of this would be the Red Named Scarecrows in the Babba Raid.

[SpartanKiller13]

Just keep in mind that not every tanking operation can use Intimidate to grab and hold aggro. There are situations where either it is not enough or they are not influenced. In those cases you need to work on making your "Hate" higher. Sometimes that needs to be done without actually causing lots of damage. An example of this would be the Red Named Scarecrows in the Babba Raid.

Currently I hate tank things, but my main has plenty of gear/PL's/DPS and a decent hate multiplier so it works pretty well. This toon probably won't as much, even if I have a few multipliers around (+200% Pally Stance, +75% ES, +150% US, Incite items) I don't think I'll have DPS to maintain top spot if someone else is beating on my target. Intimidate gives +400% melee multiplier after succeeding on a check, so I'll be in the realm of x9 but still.

The Reds are so easy to kite or tank (at least on LH) that it's not really an issue for me. If I can grab aggro cool, if not someone can run in circles for a bit lol. I can even throw heals their way if it's an issue. I often end up puzzling anyway, so I'm not super worried about it.

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And now I'm considering 11/5/4 Warlock/Cleric/Pally. Still gets +216 from Animal Domain (loses ~100 hp total), still gets Improved Defender Stance, and now I get Evard's and two 3rd level spells (Dark Discorp + Stoneskin?). Mostly for Evards, but I probably won't have useful DC's. Would be easier to level with though.

[SpartanKiller13]

Ok, so people have been asking for what my build is so I'm going to post the details here

Going to be a long post, sorry.

Objectives for this build:

• First Life Iconic
• Access to Quickened Heal/Rez
• Brilliance + Shining Through with 50+ Con
• Defender Stance +20% HP
• 120+ Intimidate
• Displacement constantly
• Decent numbers for HP/PRR/MRR
• Gear mostly from Ravenloft (easy to get)

Here's the build/feat order, as well as breakdowns for Con/Cha/Intimidate and approximate HP:


Here's the gear I used:


Enhancements:


ED+Twists:


ED Map required to get there:


Base Char sheet:


PRR/MRR stacked:


HP after first Stanch:


HP max:


Healamp:


Positive Spellpower:


Inventory:


Hotbars:


Cleric Spells:


Warlock Spells:


Objectives met:

• First Life Iconic - achieved
• Access to Quickened Heal/Rez - achieved
• Brilliance + Shining Through with 50+ Con - very nicely done, with 62 Con
• Defender Stance +20% HP - achieved
• 120+ Intimidate - currently at 129, will be 141 once I craft LGS/HGS
• Displacement constantly - from ES
• Decent numbers for HP/PRR/MRR - ~3k/280/200
• Gear mostly from Ravenloft - 3 CC, 2 potential GS items in the future, otherwise yes.

Brilliance mitigates a huge amount of DPS if you're constantly eating damage, and combined with Consecration + Sacred Ground you have AoE healing over time combined with AoE temp HP over time. For burst survival you have Shining Through (it's 8SP for ~500 HP), Stanch (3% max HP for ~1400 temps), US Undying Vanguard (once/rest for 10k temps), as well as Quickened Heal and two uses of Rejuvenation of Dawn to keep you healthy.

120+ Intimidate works for everything I've found, and with Linguistics you have it on ~5s cooldown. Note that it stacks, so if you keep Intimidating a boss you can build enough aggro to hold aggro for a while even if you run away.

Basic premise of this build is to run in, Intimidate everything, and shield block while throwing heals/rezzes as needed. Works pretty great so far, I'm loving it. Keep Quicken on during boss fights, so you can rez/heal etc without any issues. Use Mass Aid to stack with Brilliance, giving ~80 temps in an AoE for ~200 total which will eat a lot of splash damage.

For leveling, I'd recommend running as a Fire cleric (Wall of Fire SLA + Blade Barrier is amazing) and using your free HoW at 30 to respec. Leveling as a tank sucks. Make sure you have the appropriate ED's capped before respeccing, or you won't be able to get the right Destiny feats etc.

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Alternative options:

11/5/4 Cleric/Warlock/Pally - this gives you +6 Con, which is very nice, at the cost of Stanch. A little less burst survivability, but general QoL buff otherwise (126 HP, +12 temps on Brilliance, +48 temps on Shining Through).

I ended up with 190 AC which is a lot better than the 120 I was expecting, but it's far from enough to consider a Wizzy split IMO.

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Epic Defenses:

It's a trap. Costs you Brilliance & ability to heal others, and would require trading a lot of feats for DPS feats which I don't care about.

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Tips & Tricks:

• You can cure DoT's with Purge Dark magics - nice for Baba.
• Make sure Remove Curse is always Quickened. And keep pots on hand, for when Strahd gives you antimagic curse.
• Shield block is love. Shield block is life.
• In LH you can tank both Redname shadows + Strahd with a little help, or two/1+1 by yourself. Abuse this.
• In LN you can tank basically everything forever. Unless there's like 12+ skulls.
• For Baba, learn to puzzle so people don't complain about your terrible DPS during puzzle phases.
• Try to time Intimidate to grab spawning mobs, otherwise use it on cooldown.
• Swap off your Tower Shield before using scrolls etc with ASF - 85% vs 35% is a huge difference.
• Animal Domain gives 302 HP with 11 Cleric levels. There are alternatives, but consider the tradeoffs carefully.
• Every time you use any Turn Undead, you give +5 Con in an AoE for 20s - when possible, use this before Shining Through/Stanch or when you're expecting AoE/burst hits from an enemy.