Another Tank Question

Doing the scenarios a lot the last few days with my 40/48 KotBS I have noticed that though I have as many or sometimes more kills, and my kill blows are in line with others, but my damage is considerably down from most other tanks. Can some of you other tanks list your stats and/or tell me where I am lacking? (I know some of the stats make no difference as far as damage but am listing for comparison).

My stats are:

Strength - 546
Toughness - 571
Weapon Skill - 380
Wounds - 791

My primary weapon is a 2 hander that does 76.9 Dps

I'll go ahead and list mine again, I posted 'em up in the other tank thread: Strength - 765 Toughness - 665 Weapon Skill - 350 Wounds - 860 My main weapon is the Scalebreaker Waraxe from Lost Vale: 87 dps Something to consider is your Melee Power. Are you wearing the Land of the Dead melee dps cloak/jewelry set? That +90 melee power bonus is huge! It can really make a big difference in your dps numbers. An important factor in scenario damage is fighting style. Do you spam your Area Effect attacks as often as they're up, and while you're in the middle of a mob of destro? Doing that can really pad your numbers, and if added in to some other good AE dps from other players, it can help the group out as well. However, if you focus on single target damage, you might end up with lower damage overall, but still a decent number of killing blows. Edit: Thought of one more thing that makes a huge difference. Targets. If you're targeting squishies alot, your numbers will be higher because you hit harder. I've broken 200k damage in a scenario a number of times, and it's always when there's alot of squishies for me to beat on. Targeting tanks, or even some harder medium-armor targets like DoKs and the odd Marauder, can really hurt your damage numbers. Sometimes you don't have much choice, but consistantly making wise targetting decisions can mean the difference between 30k and 100k in a scenario.

» Edited on: 2010-03-01 21:53:47

Personally, I do not worry about damage numbers. They are nice to have, but kills are what get you renown and the victory.

On the flip flop if your tank 2 hander or not is topping the DMG charts unless you are pugging your group is doing something wrong. My goal is to deliever the package of a WH or other MDPS into the back lines and ensure he/she destroys everything. I like to be in the middle of the pack DMG wise and DB wise as well while my WH has like 17 plus with as little deaths as possible. As for stats I am similar to Korzak. I little more strength and toughness but I lose wounds.And I still don't have that damned purple 2 handed axe of that flaming Lizard! I have the worst PVE luck ever.

No Korzak I don't have the +90 LotD set as I have never gotten to do the things that give the Ankhs. I either never hear of the groups or they are full. I miss out on lots of the gear that way.

The key to getting the LotD ring/cloak combo (and I've done this for 4 characters so far) is to be prepared to drop everything when you hear the whatever it is that sounds when Order gets LotD access and get there asap. Then you start running towards the enemy WC as fast as possible and hope someone starts a group on the way. If you don't hear a group get started after about 3 minutes, you need to start one yourself to give everyone time to hook up with you and get organized. Lastly, always bring a couple of cannon b/c nobody else ever does. ;) I would guesstimate that I've had about a 70% success rate with finding/creating a WC party and taking the enemy WC.

You get the Ankhs for taking the enemy wc? I had no clue where I got the 4 I have. Is that the only thing that gives Ankhs there?

No the 4 tombs drop them when you kill the hero. So the wc quest and food for flies, and the 4 tombs give the Ankhs. Block has aquried about 40+ of them from quests and tombs. Fair if your in vent and hear us say land of the dead got to go, thats a good hint that the wc is up. Take in mind if your out there farming and it locks makes sure to see which side locked it. Just because it locked dosent mean the wc is up. It has to flip sides first for it to be up. So if we locked then it locks again and it was us that locked it, the wc will not be up.

» Edited on: 2010-03-03 11:15:09

Sooooo....what if you're a sword and board tank? (No offence to y'all, but I don't consider a 2H tank an actual "TANK" in the truest sense of the word. I consider that a DPS wanna-be. Yes, you may throw things at my head if you like. *grin*) What stats should I be looking at the most?

So OK... I volunteer to be the one to ask the stoopid noob questions: 1.) There's a quest for the enemy wc? I've been in several groups that took the wc, but never got any ankhs. Is that because I didn't have the quest? Where do I pick up the quest? 2.) "Food for flies" doesn't mean anything to me. Could you elaborate? 3.) I NEVER see any groups advertising they're doing anything other than TotVL or the PQ's in LotD. Do people not like the other tombs, or am I the only one on the server who doesn't already have what I need from them. ;-) That's all the dumb questions I have for now, but I'm sure I'll think of more! :-D

ok 1)The quest for the wc is given by the big at the table by the Healer. 2)Food for Flies quest given by the same guy that gives the wc quest, Something Goldbarrow, or something like that. 3) Alot of times people dont say they are doing the wc when it flips, some like to go and do the exploit on it.

Bryg: If you're a Sword and Board tank your primary goal should be finding a good 2hander and respeccing. But if you MUST use a tiny weapon and hide behind a shield like a weakling (coughblockandclancough) then for PvE you're gonna be looking for Toughness, Wounds, Initiative and then Strength and Weaponskill. You want to try to get to 0% chance to be crit (Initiative affects this), 10k+ wounds, and then stack your toughness about as high as it'll go. Strength and Weaponskill are important as well, since you need them to help hold agro. In PvP, well, you're going to have to chose if you want to kill people slowly and live a long time, or not kill people and live a longer time. Stats are pretty much the same as for PvE, but you can probably ditch Initiative for more Strength, Weaponskill or Toughness. Life is different behind a shield for each of the tank classes in PvP. Swordmasters tend to do the best, in my opinion, simply because their damage output can be solid and still have impressive survivability. IB's have it tougher, I think. The damage output difference between a 2hand IB and a 1hand IB is pretty crazy. I'm not really sure how great IB S&B survivability is, either. I know Block lasts a long time in a fight, definitly longer than me, but I'm not sure if it's quite up to par with the other classes. Knights have great S&B survivability, I'd say as good as Blackguards, and they seem to be able to maintain good damage output as well. Some even seem to do better numbers with a shield than with a 2hander.

On the whole 2 handers are not real tanks but lol DPS thing I would have to agree we are not real tanks but RvR is flawed when it comes to true tanking. As a "tank" your two most powerful abilities are Guard and Challenge and guess what you can use both with 2 hander and with S/B. The damage you take from guard these days with gear is a joke and that's why Bomb groups will forever be around. I was ful D=spec IB until RR60 but when you have pocket items that make your 50% Block chance go bye bye and 30 second immunity timers of GOD mode for all the DPS wailing on your healer based on a 3 second KD or a KB ( other than full hate BG KBs are a joke) it was time for a change. Hold the line is a great ability for Orvr Keep siege an stuff and someday I would like to go back to an RvR S/B but something will have to change before then. Again I agree with Korzak for the most but the one thing I would say for PVE is Armour > Toughness especially for Boss fights. Armour is easier to stack and scales your physical dmg reduction which is what your PVE boss are gonna be hitting you with. Aim for with a full tanking banner to get up over 5k armour and you should be good to go. Special attacks that are not physical are gonna hit you for such outrageous numbers that even having 1000 toughness is not gonna make to much of a big deal. When your toughness is mitigating 305 DPS and the boss's average hit is 3k plus its meh. Crit must be 0% for pve boss fights cause your healers can keep up with the attacks its the 1 shot crits that make it a done deal. Wounds is something you can adjust over time in PVE starting out get as high as you can but as your gear and your healers gear improves you can back it down. I tank LV under 10K so that I can stack up on more Str to help me maintain agro (the hate mechanic in this game is sooo bad, all my fellow tanks can feel me there).

Beetles you talk about a tanking banner, thats why i like the thron3 armor3 and toughness3, why the armor puts me above 5000, toughness 850+ and the thron3 to help hold agro. When that mob hits you and and is getting hit back well its kinda hard not to get mad. but i do agro with both you and kor, but i am just the type that likes to take a pounding and let the dps get the kills, yea i like the death blows and stuff, but if i can keep someones attion long enough for the others to kill i done my part. I like to be able to live thru the traps ben puts together. but i just depends on what and how you like to play.

It's not so much getting the DBs or Numbers its the fact that S/B or 2 hander doesn't seem to hurt how long I last in any given fight. Take that with a grain of salt to since I waited until RR60 to go 2 hander when I had the gear and points to back it up. I think all tank classes can agree that in a S/B configuration other than you, the tank not taking any damage, our utility via CC is a real joke in preventing much harm from coming our protectees way. Every bit of CC a tank brings to a fight another class can already do and in some cases can do it better. I still think thorn tanks are awesome and with a Slayer using shatter limbs is a decent Sorc bomb counter. But for over all utility 2 hander or S/B seem to be identical to me. Now I will say that a run more like a tank than DPS in my stats unlike some of the more "leet" IBs who get whopping SC numbers. I consider myself an escort for the MDPS an take pride in seeing my parcel be it WH or Slayer get a ton of DBs with as little deaths as possible. Like ya say Block everyone has to play how it makes them happy there is NO better than spec out there. And unlike several otehr classes most of the tanks have 3 viable mastery paths to play with. This is an IB to IB but don't you find it just silly that our best KD (cave in) requires a 2 hander? I used to run Furious reprisal for the cool down increase on each Shield of reprisal to pretend to slow down the Choppa train becasue 30 seconds of GOD mode after a lol 3 second KD is just annoying. Also FR used to stack with shatter limbs and made bomb sorcs a joke, I think they fixed that though. I will have to take a look at using Thorn on our tanking banner. We generally have Armour,Crit redux, and AP regen for the DPS.