Immortal tank

[jafh123]

the answer is IB and it's not even close. the idea is to stack seasoned vet, shield master and hardy concession to achieve about ~30% dmg res after a block. thanks to recent changes where you get block from toughness, this is basically 100% of the time even with shield master as your only block investment

then you dump everything into regen and toughness. with the new tactic giving 80 tough you can reach around 1125 tough even with full regen gear which puts you near the softcap after most debuffs

it's actually a pretty fun build because it's so active, ie. you're not just unkillable by default, you have to use your abilities to correctly defend yourself and make it all work. and ib has a lot of abilities

no other tank even comes close, bg looks nice on paper with hardcapped toughness but in reality you die to 1 WL rotation before you even get enough hate to get the terrifying foe buff up

you could try the warlord detaunt proc if you want but i've found it unreliable and you're giving up regen

chance to be crit basically doesn't matter, i've put it into the dmg calculator every which way and no investment into it ever pays off. dps are running around with so much crit than giving them another 10% for free means nothing, and the investment to get it down low enough is too much. don't even bother with futile or ini

So chance to be crit is a waste of renown points then?? This would open many other options...

[RORquest]

2024 people still saying IB when his core function of buff stacking still and will never work on here lol.

[zulnam]

I mean it's pretty close. The main thing making you immortal is the gear, not the abilities. Every tank has mitigation and if played well can be a boring nightmare to kill.

What every tank doesn't have is a baseline 40-50% block chance that they can then improve with abilities/tactics along with 1k toughness and wounds.

Block is always what you want to prioritise since block mitigates everything. parry only handles melee; disrupt&dodge only ranged. but block can stop everything.

then toughness and wounds. finally you look at group utility. remember you're a tank so you bring utility enough through challenge, guard, M3 and M4, but each class has it's unique group buffs/debuffs that give it an extra edge; more for some than others.

[tazdingo]

the answer is IB and it's not even close. the idea is to stack seasoned vet, shield master and hardy concession to achieve about ~30% dmg res after a block. thanks to recent changes where you get block from toughness, this is basically 100% of the time even with shield master as your only block investment

then you dump everything into regen and toughness. with the new tactic giving 80 tough you can reach around 1125 tough even with full regen gear which puts you near the softcap after most debuffs

it's actually a pretty fun build because it's so active, ie. you're not just unkillable by default, you have to use your abilities to correctly defend yourself and make it all work. and ib has a lot of abilities

no other tank even comes close, bg looks nice on paper with hardcapped toughness but in reality you die to 1 WL rotation before you even get enough hate to get the terrifying foe buff up

you could try the warlord detaunt proc if you want but i've found it unreliable and you're giving up regen

chance to be crit basically doesn't matter, i've put it into the dmg calculator every which way and no investment into it ever pays off. dps are running around with so much crit than giving them another 10% for free means nothing, and the investment to get it down low enough is too much. don't even bother with futile or ini

So chance to be crit is a waste of renown points then?? This would open many other options...

we need to specify exactly what scenario we're talking about because people i think are discussing different things. what i was talking about was running around solo as a tank and surviving vs multiple groups for the sake of backcapping or just being a general pain in the ass

in this case chance to be crit doesn't matter at all because it's never worth the investment. neither does block because you're completely surrounded with everyone trying to hit you in the back

[tazdingo]

2024 people still saying IB when his core function of buff stacking still and will never work on here lol.

they work fine and exactly as expected

base hit - 37
sm - 35 (5%)
sv - 31 (15%)
hc5 - 31 (15%)
sm + sv - 30 (19.25%)
hc5 + sm - 30 (19.25%)
hc5 + sv - 26 (27.75%)
hc5 + sv + sm - 24 (31.36%)

[tazdingo]

sry to necro but i've been playing around with these sorts of builds again with all the recent tank changes and have come to some very different conclusions. what's already been discussed is probably useful reading for anyone hopping in

so i was wrong about it being ib. mainly i was wrong about chance to crit not mattering (i always forgot to factor in crit dmg multipliers) but i also undervalued absorbs. my current list from worst to best:

BO - worst by far. self heals and aoe str debuff requires hitting which breaks warlord detaunt. absorb is weak. block channel gets interrupted, breaks detaunt and now has cd. no useful morales

BG - not great, especially after losing heal. absorb isn't that strong and it being 10 sec means it just gets constantly severed if you're getting beat on. avoidance tactics don't matter in this context. mid 13 is alright but it's just gonna get severed. m1 is good. main trick is terrifying foe which with the gear you're gonna want to use will get you to around 1280 tough (you hit 1050 unbuffed, so 1050 + (472.5/2)) which is def nice that's around 20% less inc dmg vs 1050 tough. remember you're gonna be perma debuffed though

IB - no more grumble but otherwise decent. can hit around 65% flat dmg reduction with a block proc (detaunt, hc, seasoned vet, shield mastery all multiplicative). free 80 toughness from tactic is great. init and parry buff that doesn't require you to hit is nice and has a great m3 but you can't pump to it so it's only every 90 sec. 2nd jug is great in this context

SM - great absorb in vauls buffer and lots of healing though it all requires you to be attacking (so breaking detaunt on 1 target). this isn't that bad if there's a tank in the attacking group and you wanna keep eagle's flight up anyway (for proccing vauls buffer). raking talons is also good for an extra 10% dmg reduction (multi with detaunt, not additive) from their melee at least. m3 is garbage as it will mass break your detaunts but the leap is really good, can jump to a ranged guy, jug and buy yourself a good amount of time to regen before the melee catches up again

knight - emperors ward is top of class of survivability tactics. vigilance eats a lot of initial pressure and can help you stabilize, long term it can be seen as ~8% dmg reduction. aoe str debuff that doesn't require hitting is ~10% dmg reduction (vs melee at least, but you're spamming htl for sorcs anyway). tough aura lets you run -crit% lini. heal aura is good, 50-60/sec for free. as you're gonna be spamming htl anyway as knight doesn't need to attack you can take the disrupt tactic for 60% disrupt. suns blessing gives you plenty of ap to do this and you have the free tactic slot. m1 is good.

chosen - the king. warped flesh does a huge amount of work when you have some regen behind it, remember absorbs "eat" crits (little more complicated than that but broad strokes), stack together and use toughness. 3 sec refresh means severing is much less of a worry vs 10 second absorbs. flawless armour is 10% dmg reduction (if you consider the most dangerous dps as having an average 100% crit multi.) str, tough and regen auras all the same as knight. m3 is amazing and you can pump to it - in practical terms, you get a free extra health bar every 60 secs as this build only goes to about 8k wounds

--------------

this is just a few months of playing around with them alongside endlessly putting stuff in the dmg calculator. gear for everyone looks like this:

helm, shoulders, gloves, belt, boots, cloak, jewel 1 - warlord (detaunt proc)
body - grimshimmer
jewel 2, 3 & 4 - tough/hp fleshrender
wep - tyranny/glory (regen)
shield - fortress (absorb proc - 3% doesn't sound like much but if you're getting hit by enough people for any of this to matter it will be up all of the time. beats the regen shield)

renown is full futile and fortitude except ib who takes hc instead of fortitude

all talis are toughness

pots are -crit and armour

if anyone thinks i've got something wrong or has any other ideas please jump in, this is all just from toying. a lot of this is based on the following suppositions:

10 toughness = 1% dmg reduction
1% crit reduction = 1% dmg reduction
wounds don't matter cause it's all about making every hit point count
armour doesn't matter that much because so many people ignore it
resists don't matter at all as they all get debuffed to 0 anyway
melee avoidance doesn't matter that much as people just hit you in the back or ignore it (you get enough free from shield block rating now to perma-proc stuff like chosen/knight regen, so don't need any investment)
ranged avoidance is alright but htl provides enough

in game it's just too chaotic to get any solid numbers but these seem about right.

remember aoe root + jug to lose pressure and regen for a few secs. idk if fleeing is worth is especially as chosen, you really just wanna keep building to m3

save your heal and absorb pots for post-morale bomb (you usually survive thanks to the scaling changes.) if you force an organized group (or 2!!!) to coordinate a morale bomb solely on your dumpy ass just consider it a victory

remember procs will kill you anyway because they're stupid un-fun garbage that shouldn't exist as they do

this is all way easier as destro in general as you're not dealing with witchbrew and sorc st

happy not dying

[tromat]

knight - emperors ward is top of class of survivability tactics.

Hey i always liked this tactic but heard it was bad. After testing it yesterday, seems improving tankyness a lot. Why did you choose it in the first place and what did you test ?

[tazdingo]

knight - emperors ward is top of class of survivability tactics.

Hey i always liked this tactic but heard it was bad. After testing it yesterday, seems improving tankyness a lot. Why did you choose it in the first place and what did you test ?

in this situation it has 100% up time and can be seen as 125hp/sec (if you have some actual regen behind it), but actually a little better due to how absorbs nullify crits (if they take the entire hit, whatever gets through will still crit)

so say you have 300 left on an absorb bubble and a sorc with 100% crit multi crits you for 700. the initial hit was 350 so the bubble eats 300 and lets 50 through which crits for 100. you just turned 700 incoming dmg into 400. this is why small duration absorbs work so well here

your flat dmg reduction (warlord detaunt, hardy concession, seasoned vet, etc.) and toughness are also applied before the absorb, so the combination of all 3 means you're constantly turning really, really big hits into tiny ones

people say the tactic is bad on knight because you wanna max knights group support tactics in regular play, remember this is just a dumb experiment for the most part

[what63]

BG - not great, especially after losing heal. absorb isn't that strong and it being 10 sec means it just gets constantly severed if you're getting beat on. avoidance tactics don't matter in this context. mid 13 is alright but it's just gonna get severed. m1 is good. main trick is terrifying foe which with the gear you're gonna want to use will get you to around 1280 tough (you hit 1050 unbuffed, so 1050 + (472.5/2)) which is def nice that's around 20% less inc dmg vs 1050 tough. remember you're gonna be perma debuffed though

You won't actually gain much/any mitigation from the toughness tactic in that scenario. Toughness is effectively capped by enemy mainstat, it's far better to run a different tactic if you are softcapped to begin with, or to lower you base to a point where you land at around softcap with the tactic active. You waste hundreds of statpoints by significantly overcapping. The tactic is mostly a good opportunity to socket more resist or armor for example.

[tazdingo]

BG - not great, especially after losing heal. absorb isn't that strong and it being 10 sec means it just gets constantly severed if you're getting beat on. avoidance tactics don't matter in this context. mid 13 is alright but it's just gonna get severed. m1 is good. main trick is terrifying foe which with the gear you're gonna want to use will get you to around 1280 tough (you hit 1050 unbuffed, so 1050 + (472.5/2)) which is def nice that's around 20% less inc dmg vs 1050 tough. remember you're gonna be perma debuffed though

You won't actually gain much/any mitigation from the toughness tactic in that scenario. Toughness is effectively capped by enemy mainstat, it's far better to run a different tactic if you are softcapped to begin with, or to lower you base to a point where you land at around softcap with the tactic active. You waste hundreds of statpoints by significantly overcapping. The tactic is mostly a good opportunity to socket more resist or armor for example.

as far as i can tell toughness also works agains +power