The state of tanking?

[Ricg]

I played rift from release up until HK and played a warr tank, then my friends left and i ended up leaving shortly after...However i always liked the game and with wow finally losing its luster after 6 years and with SL coming out, i re-subbed.

I picked up my warr tank again and it felt really off...so now i want to try other tank class

Are clerics or rogues viable tanks? what advantages they provide? Any info pertaining to the tanking field parity will be greatly appreciated.

R

[Antipathy]

Tanks have been "Normalized" in Beta, as in, they are now all equally viable.

Cleric Tanking has a nice burst of self heals (and Minor AOEHeals) that you can cast using convictions - which are gained by primarily through using life based abilities or generated when you block. If no self heals are needed, then the convictions can be channeled into either a ST damaging hit, or an AOE hit.

Cleric tanks rely on positioning the mobs quite a lot, - as most AOE abilities require that you face your targets in a cone (although I think I read somewhere that they are changing this so that AOE is now 360 degrees, but don't quote me on it)

I quite enjoy it, I find it a good mix of conviction management, coupled with managing the other tank aspects (mitigation, etc). some of the raid/self heals are actually quite nice and help out in those "OH CRAP" moments.

Just a quick overview, I'll have someone else explain rogue since I'm not very familiar with their tanking spec

[Ricg]

^ thx Antipathy Also, i noticed the cookie cutter templates the game builds for you...are these templates the "mandatory" builds now? or is it still possible to experiment with some out of whack builds and not hinder your party/raid?

R

[Antipathy]

No, the templates are just there as guidance and obviously to help out in guiding you on a potentially good setup.

Rift Devs have gotten a lot of feedback that the game can be quite intimidating, so they've introduced the templates as a way to explain the soul and guide you on what is the "right" way to play. think of it more as a "Soul Journal" that tells you how things work, but not necessarily how to best play them. you can opt out of them completely by pressing the weird icon that looks like a chart on the bottom left of your soul tree.

Never hesitate to experiment, remember that you have Chronicles and Instant adventures to check out how your build performs - I do that a lot when a wardstone goes up in Sanctum from the City Defence IA, and a whole bunch of elites charge at you, (as an example) you're usually in a group setting so you can get to see numbers, how well you hold aggro, what you are doing right/wrong, etc.

[Tankendog]

I find the order i enjoy my tanks to go Rogue > Warrior > Cleric.

Some people say warriors are way behind other tanks, but they are stil fun to play. Currently i run paladin, but hear void knight is really the way to go.

[Primalthirst]

Tanking is more evenly balanced now than it has ever been between classes.
I'm going to be working on it a bit over the next few days to give the devs the info they need to really fine tune their balance.

[Onorvele]

Cleric tanks rely on positioning the mobs quite a lot, - as most AOE abilities require that you face your targets in a cone (although I think I read somewhere that they are changing this so that AOE is now 360 degrees, but don't quote me on it)

Cleric tanking is now omnidirectional - at least, once you get 40 points in the Justicar tree. Your go-to AoE spam is Censure which does damage to 10 nearby enemies (no cooldown) and builds conviction, so pepper a few Doctrine of Loyalty casts in there to round up stragglers and you've got all mobs on you. For 5-man speed runs, there's no comparison.

I've only been warrior tanking with the recommended Reaver/Void Knight hybrid. Rather good on the AoE as well, with Plague Bringer giving you the ability to spread Reaver DoTs to 8 targets. My warrior is significantly less geared than my Cleric, so it generally feels harder and pretty weak vs single targets, but supposedly warrior tanks can generate the largest health pools.

Rogue tanking is still a mystery to me - mine is still not 50. However, 1.11 made handling adds a bit easier with Planar Splash, which is a new ability (as far as I know) that allows you to toggle between having your primary spams (Planar Strike and Phantom Blow) be single-target or 10-target hits.

[Tankendog]

When ever rogues use a plane shift ability, they do aoe damage that hits up to 10 mobs. If you keep this up, a rogues aoe is insane. That with their ability to let their builder hit 10 mobs, and an aoe finisher, they are just sweet. Their cooldowns are very useful as well, and mobility is un-paralleled.

[Fencers]

Tanking is in a weird place right now. A lot of the Warrior tank souls have been homogenized. They're all basically the same barring a useless gimmick or two.

Whatever adjustments made to threat are sort of wonky. What Trion did was build a lot of damage+ into the tank souls. Much more so than before. However, the threat generators are kinda inconsistent and the tooltip wording is very unclear.

Communication from the Warrior dev has-- in typical Warrior dev fashion, been terrible.

Cleric tanking is okay. They made it so you rely a lot less on healing to stay alive. But there is still healing as a component of their tank kit. Justicars are fairly tough too.

Rogues, lolz. /spit

[Ricg]

Rolled a cleric to try them and hit lvl 20 and loving it so far. Tho the rotation feels simple (granted im only 20 lol) is engaging enough.

Was the threat modifier for all tank souls bumped to 500%? MoL at 500% feels overkill :-| i can literally auto-attack and AFK and still hold threat...i dont recall that being the case back in the day with my warrior.

[Fencers]

It was like that for Warriors back in the day, yes. Used to hit Spotter's Order [attack points didnt matter], Blood Fever or Sweeping Strike once and comfortably afk a pull.

I made a macro for 20s around March of last year that fires 3 aoes, then I would alt-tab to the forums or reddit. The Rift task bar thing blinks to let me know the trash is dead. :>

Warrior threat was pretty lolzy.

[Puremallace]

There have been some confirmed bugs with Cleric tanks making them threat gods that are being hot fixed. Warrior tanks have been all over the place. I have not touched it since 1.11 for the simple fact I am waiting for it to settle down.

Reaver is still m favorite with Paladin coming in right behind. If "Exodus of the storm queen" is any judge Trion is moving towards that snap threat model of needing to manage cooldowns and keep your big aoes in reserve. What was that instance in Dalaran during wrath??

Lots of mob pulls in a very short period of time.

[Fencers]

Violet Hold or something?

I hated that one. It was just a big room. -_-

[Puremallace]

Violet Hold or something?

I hated that one. It was just a big room. -_-

I used to love speed runs in there and the pace of it. If you look at t"Exodus" it is honestly shorter then Latern Hook, but do to creative NPC make up and boss mechanics it take awhile to get through even on normal mode.

[Fencers]

It's kinda just a lot of cutscenes though. You have to wait a lot.

[edgecrusher]

It's kinda just a lot of cutscenes though. You have to wait a lot.

Can you at least skip them? If not...I'll actually be kinda upset. I hate watching the same cutscene over and over and over again : /

[Puremallace]

Can you at least skip them? If not...I'll actually be kinda upset. I hate watching the same cutscene over and over and over again : /

We were talking about the pace on a WoW instance when it first released. Exodus kind of gave me that feeling of requiring snap aggro to manage more then 10 mobs. Violet Hold before everyone had super dps was tuned just right so one portal was appearing just as you closed another.

[WarpedAcorn]

I hate using this comparison, but...

Are there any tanking styles/souls that work similarly to a WotLK WoW-Warrior? I had the most fun tanking during that period, mainly due to having a heavy hitting ability (Shield Slam) that let me stroke my big numbers epeen while also maintaining aggro and mitigating damage.

I eyeballed a few of the preferred builds suggested in game and didn't see anything that stood out specifically.

[edgecrusher]

I hate using this comparison, but...

Are there any tanking styles/souls that work similarly to a WotLK WoW-Warrior? I had the most fun tanking during that period, mainly due to having a heavy hitting ability (Shield Slam) that let me stroke my big numbers epeen while also maintaining aggro and mitigating damage.

I eyeballed a few of the preferred builds suggested in game and didn't see anything that stood out specifically.

Well, sinking points into Warlord tree will give you some nice damage boosts (even letting you block with a 2H). I'm not sure about exact abilities, but I know Void Knight hits pretty hard their pact using abilities. Pleasantly surprised with how good the damage can be even with paladin as my second soul and 0 points in Warlord.

[Fencers]

Can you at least skip them? If not...I'll actually be kinda upset. I hate watching the same cutscene over and over and over again : /

No. They are in game cut scenes. Like you gotta wait for the NPCs to activate.

"They're attacking the door!" [wait 2-3 seconds]
*enemies burst in*

"You won't stop me Ascended!"
"Ya, we will."
"With the power of this mystic cogwheel and the might of the Ascended we will drive you back! Monster!"
*boss fight takes place*
"What is this? The power of Regulos..."
*blah fucking blah*

Its similar to the stuff they been doing in the latter raids/slivers where everyone is basically a Bond villain. Cackling at you just before running through an exact pattern of attacks.

I eyeballed a few of the preferred builds suggested in game and didn't see anything that stood out specifically.

Warlord, Paladin and Void Knight.

Can be played with or without shield.

You'd be able to tank with both builds viably for the most part.

Either build grants:

- A absolute shit-ton of AOE
- Pull in [think the Death Knight grip ability]
- Reactive DPS skills off GCD [Retaliation, Piercing Thrust, Backhand, etc]
- Mobility
- Ridiculous Threat
- An Execute
- Ranged damage
- Interrupt
- Heals
- Defensive CDs
- 100% uptime defense finisher
- No CD adsorb shield
- +block increase, bot passive and active
- Passive AOE
- 2 LOL CANT KILL ME BRO CDs