Tanks

[Intrikat]

I noticed both the Cleric and the Warrior have Tanking options, how does the Cleric stack up to the Warrior?

[Puremallace]

http://forums.riftgame.com/rift-gene...rsion-3-a.html

This guy sort of breaks it down. Be warned there is alot of math. This is just a excerpt from this thread.

Magic damage and Resistance
First of mitigation talents stack additive and resistance stacks multiplicative with that reduction so currently cleric tanks can get 28% magic damage mitigation (15% from Shield of Faith, 3% from Thick Skinned and 10% from Thorvin's Law) and as a result our magic tanking capability's are lower then that of other tanks.
For comparison a warrior tank can have up to 52% magic damage reduction (57% if the target has mana) and as a result takes 50% less magic damage.

For those wondering why having 52% vs 28% is 50% less damage taken
Lets look at a magic attack that would deal 10000 damage.
A warrior will take 10000 * ( 1 - 0.52 ) = 4800 damage.
A cleric will take 10000 * ( 1 - 0.28 ) = 7200 damage.
( 7200 - 4800 ) / 4800 * 100%= 50.0% more damage taken

Now I didn't take resistance from raid buffs into consideration so lets add that.
That's 30 from planar protection and 40 from bard/archon buff for 70 resistance to all schools.
70 resistance = 10.45% less damage taken.
So a warrior now takes 1-(1-0.52)*(1-0.1045)=57.02% less magic damage.
And a cleric now takes 1-(1-0.28)*(1-0.1045)=35.52% less magic damage.

That same attack now hits for the following
A warrior will take 10000 * ( 1 - 0.5702 ) = 4298 damage.
A cleric will take 10000 * ( 1 - 0.3552 ) = 6448 damage.
( 6448 - 4298 ) / 4298 * 100%= 50.0% more damage taken

This is a bit more up-to-date for 1.7

http://forums.riftgame.com/rift-gene...ecs-1-7-a.html

[Fencers]

Rouges, Warriors and Clerics can all tank endgame content. Each does about equally well all in all. Simply go about it in different ways- avoidance, mitigation and absorption respectively.

[Primalthirst]

Puremallace's post is incredibly misleading as there are a lot of Cleric tank buffs arriving in the 1.8 patch this week.

This quote comes directly from the Cleric developer:http://forums.riftgame.com/rift-gene...ml#post3725987

A Warrior in Infernal Dawn gear has a 72.71% reduction from Armor. A Cleric in Infernal Dawn gear has a 75.53% reduction from Armor. (EDIT: FYI, those values are after taking into account the reduction in effective Armor due to the level difference between you and the monster.) The Armor reduction is multiplicative with the Block Reduction as it happens earlier in the damage calculation. The Justicar also has a higher Block Reduction, even with the caps fixed.

In equivalent Infernal Dawn gear:
On a normal Physical hit, a Justicar takes >5% more damage than the Warrior.
On a Blocked Physical hit, a Justicar takes <2% more damage than the Warrior.
On a normal non-Physical hit, a Justicar takes <3% more damage than the Warrior.
On a Blocked non-Physical hit, a Justicar takes <1% less damage than the Warrior.

As a tradeoff, the Justicar has a lower average DPS taken due to their superior avoidance (<5% better than the Warrior's), but 4% less health. That's completely ignoring HPS offerings, off-tanking advantages, or DPS differences in either party's favor.

The meat and potatoes of it is: Clerics take slightly less damage than Warriors overall due to higher avoidance, but in response take slightly more damage on unavoided hits. Both are completely viable in all situations in-game currently.

EDIT: To be clear, Clerics aren't avoidance tanks, they are mitigation tanks with higher avoidance than Warriors, the other mitigation tank.

[Fencers]

That has actually been the case since like 1.2-3ish actually. When we broke Zilas it was with a cleric tank and we noted via ACT the average damage the cleric took versus me [warrior]. I could actually take the beam hit and not die.

[Khelendros]

Rogues aren't probably going to be able to tank in ID inititally. While rogues generally can tank well in most situation the problem with rogue tanks even with the changes made and being made is that they are still at core more avoidance than warrior or cleric tanks. And if you get hit in ID you will probably be hurting at the start. Once geared rogues I think will be just as good (and probably desirable in some situations).
Tanking in this game is very much situational but unless you are doing progression raiding I suspect cleric or warrior will do just fine in tanking even in ID and it probably won't take much for rogues to catch up (they are far more reliant on deflect than on pure avoidance as they once were). Since deflect is a stat, alot of the really major issues with rogue tanks are far less dire than they were in say HK when it was launched. It may even turn out that rogue tanks can go straight into ID and tank effectively. Its really hard to say definitively without having seen the encounters. But this much I can say, a good rogue tank can tank anything CURRENTLY in the game effectively.

[Deleted]

Rogues aren't probably going to be able to tank in ID inititally. While rogues generally can tank well in most situation the problem with rogue tanks even with the changes made and being made is that they are still at core more avoidance than warrior or cleric tanks. And if you get hit in ID you will probably be hurting at the start. Once geared rogues I think will be just as good (and probably desirable in some situations).
Tanking in this game is very much situational but unless you are doing progression raiding I suspect cleric or warrior will do just fine in tanking even in ID and it probably won't take much for rogues to catch up (they are far more reliant on deflect than on pure avoidance as they once were). Since deflect is a stat, alot of the really major issues with rogue tanks are far less dire than they were in say HK when it was launched. It may even turn out that rogue tanks can go straight into ID and tank effectively. Its really hard to say definitively without having seen the encounters. But this much I can say, a good rogue tank can tank anything CURRENTLY in the game effectively.

1. Most leather tanking gear now sports deflect. Previous tiers of gear changed.
2. Riftstalker crystal changed
3. Bladedancer changed forcing rogue tanks to go bard as 3rd soul

All the above will buff rogue HPs to nearly warrior level, will reduce avoidance by ~7% and will greatly increase deflect.

Conclusion, rogues will be tanking ID fine and so will every other calling. If you want to roll a tank roll anything you like, calling doesn't really matter anymore. Sure, some fights might favor a calling over another but overall tanks will be very balanced.

[Primalthirst]

Harby is correct, Zinbik said that Riftstalker and Justicar are being balanced around Reaver in 1.8
So if your Warrior is tanking in anything else then they're doing it wrong and you should swap then out for someone.

[Radak]

With the coming of patch 1.8 cleric and warrior tanks will be really equal when it comes to tanking and both have a few advantages and disadvantages.

Warrior:
Much higher health pool
Higher passive mitigation (less damage on unavoided hits)

Clerics:
Battle res
Some AoE healing
Higher avoidance and block resulting in slightly less damage taken overall.

Overall they will be really equal and you can expect to see both of them tanking ID progression raids.

As for riftstalkers I unfortunately don't know enough about.

Kind regards,
Radak a.k.a. Alovnek (yes the guide writer)