Return of Reckoning

Hi everyone

im thinking of leveling a chosen but i have no idea how to play tank in this game.
can i get some hints and tips on good builds?

is 2h viable and how does such a build look like?

Generally speaking:

You want to practice guardswapping and HtL-dancing.

Guardswapping makes or breaks engagements - its pretty much the most important job of a tank.
Proper HtL-dancing will screw with rdps rotations alot and will take alot of pressure of your group, especially your healers will love you for aiding them in their resource management by doing so.

You want to get yourself a pocket m/rdps; at best a mdps and babysit him 24/7.

Later on down the road you'll be tasked to apply your CC to the best of your abilities - superpunts to strip guards, stagger to either enable uncontested bursts or to give your group opportunity to gtfo/stabilize, kd to aid your mdps in sealing the deal and snares to help your backline with kiting or to enable your mdps to stick to kiting derps respectively.
Additionally you want to work on your Taunt and Challenge game - that means you want to interrupt important casts with Taunt and mitigate bursts with Challenge.

Long story short: you will be the backbone of your group and make sure that your fellow derps have opportunity to perform their roles.

RoR.builders - Chosen - this is very much the foundation of every SnB spec. In regards to tactics you...well, you are better off with others actively playing Chosen than me trying to theorize based on retail experience.

As it comes to 2h loldps specs you want to keep in mind that damage is not what your class is for - you'll be able to assist your m/rdps, but you won't be the one carrying groups with your damage.

There is ultimately just one good and viable kind of 2h loldps tank: a 2h loldps tank that does not neglect his role; that actively guardswaps and CCs to the best of his abilities - a 2h loldps tank that unterstands that his damage is secondary to that of his actual m/rdps and the survival of his group in general.

I cannot provide a spec, or a foundation for one, especially since the latest changes to class - I don't know what people fancy at the very moment. In regards to rotations: ravage - others chiming in will elaborate on that.

Additional tips:
You want to get Buffhead, SwiftAssit(or a similar addon), Enemy and GES.

These addons will help you alot in getting a grasp of whats going on by displaying buffs/debuffs/immunities and guardrange, moreso they will provide you with a way to announce guardswaps and easily swap your assists around (the stock method of manually editing /assist macros is beyond tedious).

And last but not least to satisfy the pugshepherd inside me:
Pick up a group/guild as soon as anyhow possible - you won't enjoy WAR snowflaking around in the lakes or pugging scenarios.

Abbd.: Parry will become your best friend.
Abbd.: You probably noticed something already *cough*. Best of luck in your endeavours and alot fun!

E: Words and stuff.

thx for the reply.
i never intended to play a dps tank i just like the look of welding a 2h weapon.
i used to play a blackguard in retail so i was wondering which is better for tanking nowdays?

storhudas wrote:thx for the reply.
i never intended to play a dps tank i just like the look of welding a 2h weapon.
i used to play a blackguard in retail so i was wondering which is better for tanking nowdays?

Blackguard recently received some love - you might wanna give it a shot, feedback is always welcome.

Now, to the meat of the matter:
Uh, you can guardbot on both without any issues whatsoever - I'd personally opt for BG.
If not only for the style and the ability to run fun gimmick specs, or solo/duo/+ roam in the lakes in offpeak hours.

BG is probably among the most challenging classes to play in the game and has probably the best scaling
in terms of raw sustain. While CH relatively quickly turns into a snoozefest...
The new toys BGs have gotten are pretty neat aswell - however you will, for as long as no changes drop, bring
more utility to the table with a CH. Especially if you are on the lower spectrum of gear/RR.

I'd ultimately choose the tank that yields the most goodies for the format I am planning to play in.
CH currently excels in every format besides solo/duo/+ roam - BG, atleast in my opinion, has an easier time in scenarios than in large scale RvR, but then again excels in solo/duo/+ roam.

Here is me hoping more chime in to give a better rundown and point out the garbage in what I am suggesting ~ there are plenty of people actively testing the BG at the moment.

E: Words and stuff.

Played a Chosen for a LONG time, both on LIVE and ROR... recently the Crip Strikes nerf made it so 2H Chosen isnt really viable anymore... you used to be able to rationalize having one in a party due to Rending + high crit + Crip Strikes, now that Rending doesnt proc Crip Strikes, its pointless.

So I wouldnt bring a 2H chosen in a group if I had a choice of MANY other tanks.

For SNB, you can have fun. The default spec is "Tri-spec" basically what was linked above. I prefer to snag the AP aura personally. Running AP/Tough/Resists - you obviously swap these around depending on comp and opposition (I.E. if enemy has 5 BWs and very little healing, you swap AP aura for Discordant Fluctuation so they take even more damage ontop of their mechanic when they attack you)

Just grab any old 1H and make sure you snag a solid shield! Its more important than your 1H. Youll want to get Ruin gear to start as its solid armor + parry% and block % on shoulders. With renown (at 40) youll max Block %, then likely grab rank 3 Parry % and rank 3 Dodge/disrupt.

When leveling, Id probably grab first two ranks of all three first as they give you the best return for least cost (12 points needed for rank 2 of all three)

th3gatekeeper wrote:Played a Chosen for a LONG time, both on LIVE and ROR... recently the Crip Strikes nerf made it so 2H Chosen isnt really viable anymore... you used to be able to rationalize having one in a party due to Rending + high crit + Crip Strikes, now that Rending doesnt proc Crip Strikes, its pointless.

So I wouldnt bring a 2H chosen in a group if I had a choice of MANY other tanks.

For SNB, you can have fun. The default spec is "Tri-spec" basically what was linked above. I prefer to snag the AP aura personally. Running AP/Tough/Resists - you obviously swap these around depending on comp and opposition (I.E. if enemy has 5 BWs and very little healing, you swap AP aura for Discordant Fluctuation so they take even more damage ontop of their mechanic when they attack you)

Just grab any old 1H and make sure you snag a solid shield! Its more important than your 1H. Youll want to get Ruin gear to start as its solid armor + parry% and block % on shoulders. With renown (at 40) youll max Block %, then likely grab rank 3 Parry % and rank 3 Dodge/disrupt.

When leveling, Id probably grab first two ranks of all three first as they give you the best return for least cost (12 points needed for rank 2 of all three)

First things first, I am not going to join in on the CS discussion.

Two questions:
Why would you swap out AP for DF and not T?

My take on it:
AP yields your entire group more uptime, running the AP instead of T would have you break even as it comes to the loss of T on the long run.
Healers healing more, dps throwing out more stuff and you'd have an easier time managing your ap for HtL among other things aswell.
If you consider T to be equivalent to AP then you might aswell not run DF at all, considering you cannot drop R under any circumstance - but maybe in an engagement that has you face mdps only, ofc.

Do you refer with "solid shield" to block rating by chance?

Genisaurus wrote:The equation is [BlockRating/(playerlevel * 7.5 + 50) * 0.2] = Block Chance.

This is the formula the character sheet uses, and it's only accurate for PvE.

The (level*7.5+50) bit is the equation for an NPCs stats at any particular level. That is, at level 40, an NPC has 350 Strength. Against players, whom have higher stats, the real block rating will be much less. As I often say, the character sheet lies to you 100% of the time, and you should never trust it. Always assume the player attacking you has a softcapped attack stat.

(BlockRating / 925) * 0.2 = Your true Block Rating at level 35.

Even if the above isn't entirely accurate anymore, you'd have to bring proper debuffing to have the enemies stats fall below your own strength to see any returns from block rating that actually make a difference - considering you'd most likely run some variation of deftrad spec (with relatively low strength) it wouldn't yield good enough returns to consider neglecting stats over block rating.
[Abbd.: Strike the above - for the most part. Turns out your own strength isn't factored in at all, I should pay attention. Block rating however will only yield you good returns against rdps (if rdps mainstats aren't contained in the checks at all) or <properly debuffed> mdps.]
[Abbd.: I've just remembered that guarddmg is dealt with as attacks with strength of 1 or similar, meaning the block rating could indeed make a difference in lower tiers, however I'd say just about any shield will provide in t4, given most shields have the same block rating. So disregard my gibberish here - my apologies for the mistake.]
[Abbd.: The part below stands, regardless - parry > block for chosen; ~70% parry will take care of guarddmg just fine.]


Guardbot chosen are generally better off stacking parry to deal with guarddmg whilst relying on r-avoidance (HtL+else) for the rest - given the incredible easy access chosens have via suppression and MD (which will still proc often enough with low block by virtue of guarddmg) in combination with parry from RR and various tomesets/gearsets.

Abbd.: In addition to the above I'd suggest reserving some RR for atleast R1 RD, otherwise you'll see yourself superpunted/kd'd/disarmed/stagger'd more often than not, losing the uptime on guard and access to your CC/HtL in crucial moments.

Darosh wrote: Two questions:
Why would you swap out AP for DF and not T?

My take on it:
AP yields your entire group more uptime, running the AP instead of T would have you break even as it comes to the loss of T on the long run.
Healers healing more, dps throwing out more stuff and you'd have an easier time managing your ap for HtL among other things aswell.
If you consider T to be equivalent to AP then you might aswell not run DF at all, considering you cannot drop R under any circumstance - but maybe in an engagement that has you face mdps only, ofc.

Do you refer with "solid shield" to block rating by chance?

Guardbot chosen are generally better off stacking parry to deal with guarddmg whilst relying on r-avoidance (HtL+else) for the rest - given the incredible easy access chosens have via suppression and MD (which will still proc often enough with low block by virtue of guarddmg) in combination with parry from RR and various tomesets/gearsets.

Abbd.: In addition to the above I'd suggest reserving some RR for atleast R1 RD, otherwise you'll see yourself superpunted/kd'd/disarmed/stagger'd more often than not, losing the uptime on guard and access to your CC/HtL in crucial moments.

Sorry, I didnt get to finish my thoughts as I had to go and just hit "submit" without adding more that i wanted - such as tactics and more options.

I dont consider AP to equal T I consider Resists > T > AP.

AP is good but not AMAZING... Its only like 5 AP/sec gained/lost. If you are going up against a BW heavy group (like I proposed) the AP drain is only locally, so it wont hurt the RDPS classes, but the toughness WILL make a big difference in how much damage you and your party takes, alone with DF creating their backlash making it MUCH more painful. Like I said - more a "niche" thing to use and not something I commonly use...

I should have clarified. A "solid shield" is basically any T4 shield. Block % and Parry % preferred (IMO). I get people asking questions like they are looking at epic weapon rewards and many SnB Chosen I see grab a 1H first, then upgrade shield later. All this meant to convey was to upgrade shield > weapon as your shield will impact more overall than your weapon will. So prioritize a good shield... Another example would be say you have 200 emblems and are debating between the 1H or the Vehemence Shield.... Get the shield... thats my point. The "damage increase" from a better 1h is nothing.

Yes parry is good though frankly I dont have problems with guard damage. Stacking block and parry up both - you should get about 20% block (i forget the exact #) with a solid shield + Ruin shoulders + RR block. You can get more going FULL Ruin but its not ideal IMO. With Suppression + weaponskill parry + RR rank 3 parry + block its more than enough for guard damage.

I would probably grab RD or CW with my next 10 RR points... But thats just me. With high block/parry you already stand a good chance at not being punted. But its up to the person. Personally I think armor is OP as FRICK and I would stack armor to about 4400ish and then with a 600 pot youll be at 5k. This will make nearly all phys damage you take (even after WS and armor debuff) VERY minimal. So your only in danger of being his with magic damage which is where you HTL and use Disrupt.

SnB tanks are already never focused down, nobody attacks them, so thats why I think using the rest of your talis for STR is fine - to moot out THEIR weaponskill parry allowing you punt easier.

There are many ways to play, as long as you dont go full STR stacking Focused Offense and ignore guard/Htl youll be fine... Its hard to NOT be atleast "decent" with a SnB Chosen because half your value is provided via auras + guard which you can get by just showing up and /follow a MDPS lol

th3gatekeeper wrote:

Darosh wrote:

Spoiler:

Two questions:
Why would you swap out AP for DF and not T?

My take on it:
AP yields your entire group more uptime, running the AP instead of T would have you break even as it comes to the loss of T on the long run.
Healers healing more, dps throwing out more stuff and you'd have an easier time managing your ap for HtL among other things aswell.
If you consider T to be equivalent to AP then you might aswell not run DF at all, considering you cannot drop R under any circumstance - but maybe in an engagement that has you face mdps only, ofc.

Do you refer with "solid shield" to block rating by chance?

Guardbot chosen are generally better off stacking parry to deal with guarddmg whilst relying on r-avoidance (HtL+else) for the rest - given the incredible easy access chosens have via suppression and MD (which will still proc often enough with low block by virtue of guarddmg) in combination with parry from RR and various tomesets/gearsets.

Abbd.: In addition to the above I'd suggest reserving some RR for atleast R1 RD, otherwise you'll see yourself superpunted/kd'd/disarmed/stagger'd more often than not, losing the uptime on guard and access to your CC/HtL in crucial moments.

Spoiler:

Sorry, I didnt get to finish my thoughts as I had to go and just hit "submit" without adding more that i wanted - such as tactics and more options.

I dont consider AP to equal T I consider Resists > T > AP.

AP is good but not AMAZING... Its only like 5 AP/sec gained/lost. If you are going up against a BW heavy group (like I proposed) the AP drain is only locally, so it wont hurt the RDPS classes, but the toughness WILL make a big difference in how much damage you and your party takes, alone with DF creating their backlash making it MUCH more painful. Like I said - more a "niche" thing to use and not something I commonly use...

I should have clarified. A "solid shield" is basically any T4 shield. Block % and Parry % preferred (IMO). I get people asking questions like they are looking at epic weapon rewards and many SnB Chosen I see grab a 1H first, then upgrade shield later. All this meant to convey was to upgrade shield > weapon as your shield will impact more overall than your weapon will. So prioritize a good shield... Another example would be say you have 200 emblems and are debating between the 1H or the Vehemence Shield.... Get the shield... thats my point. The "damage increase" from a better 1h is nothing.

Yes parry is good though frankly I dont have problems with guard damage. Stacking block and parry up both - you should get about 20% block (i forget the exact #) with a solid shield + Ruin shoulders + RR block. You can get more going FULL Ruin but its not ideal IMO. With Suppression + weaponskill parry + RR rank 3 parry + block its more than enough for guard damage.

I would probably grab RD or CW with my next 10 RR points... But thats just me. With high block/parry you already stand a good chance at not being punted. But its up to the person. Personally I think armor is OP as FRICK and I would stack armor to about 4400ish and then with a 600 pot youll be at 5k. This will make nearly all phys damage you take (even after WS and armor debuff) VERY minimal. So your only in danger of being his with magic damage which is where you HTL and use Disrupt.

SnB tanks are already never focused down, nobody attacks them, so thats why I think using the rest of your talis for STR is fine - to moot out THEIR weaponskill parry allowing you punt easier.

There are many ways to play, as long as you dont go full STR stacking Focused Offense and ignore guard/Htl youll be fine... Its hard to NOT be atleast "decent" with a SnB Chosen because half your value is provided via auras + guard which you can get by just showing up and /follow a MDPS lol

Fair points alltogether - I just remembered the toughness rework as I've read your take on T, I do absolutely agree with you in hindsight.
I keep recalling live experience in regards to chosen which is arguably moot with all the changes in place, my apologies - todays not my day in general.

There is one thing I'd object to however, that is probably still preference afterall: the armor stack, I personally don't see a reason a reason to stack armor on tanks, all things considered - considering as you've stated, barely anyone ever will touch you/waste gcds/cds on you for as long theres still others around and your healers manage to top you off to avoid pugs smelling blood.
Abbd.: Not to mention the pug environment...
Abbd.: Actually, I am not even sure whether that supports my take on armor, given there are still people hammering into tanks as if there'd be no tomorrow. *shrug* Meh, it'd make for a bait, I guess.

The part with FO made me chuckle, I've just ran into one of these derps the other day on a healer alt of mine - it was an absolute nightmare to heal, lol. And, yes, its arguably difficault to not perform <good> on a chosen, almost entirely regardless off your setup.
Its about time the skillfloor is a bit upped on both dumbfire tanks...

Would you mind providing the OP some more specific specs via career builder? Im sure it'll help him decide what tank to play, especially alongside this discussion - the only thing missing is a BG to chime in and offer his perspective.

E: The words, dude... the words. Scoring edits in the 10s across the board on every thread today. >_<

The question for block or parry/dodge/disrupt is answered by a very simple tactic choice: Do you go for Destined For Victory?
Yes => go for block
No => dont go for block

It's basically as simple as that.

Next thing: stagger vs Ap aura?

Stagger has been nerfed to ****, so the AP aura although not overwhelming is still more helpful for you, your team and a quite good debuff for the enemy. And if it is just there to neglect To Glory! from the KOTBS it is worth it.

For tactics (im not gonna talk all of them):
I think we all can agree that Hastened dismissal is a core tactic in every pvp tactic set.

One thing that i really started to like is Unstoppable Juggernaut, with the massive order snare spam, this tactic has become also a core choice for me.

Destined for Victory is most likely the chosen tactic order whines the most about, but it is actuallly not that good. If you play with Immaculate Defense wich lasts 10sec wich means you have 50sec downtime and even with two tanks running this there is still a 40sec downtime window.
it is a nice thing to save your team for a moment, give them some breathing room, but what then? Order cant do anything during this, so they can also save their breath atleast on their DDs and then start bursting again. You dont win as much as you might think.
I run a different spec atm, wich makes a bit more use of Destined for Victory

Crippling Strikes was and somewhat still is the go to tactic for two hand tanks, but since 2h chosen was killed by the devs, it has a niche place. You have to get some crit, wich is actually something you dont really go for as SnB tank, to make use of it.

Darosh wrote: Fair points alltogether - I just remembered the toughness rework as I've read your take on T, I do absolutely agree with you in hindsight.
I keep recalling live experience in regards to chosen which is arguably moot with all the changes in place, my apologies - todays not my day in general.

There is one thing I'd object to however, that is probably still preference afterall: the armor stack, I personally don't see a reason a reason to stack armor on tanks, all things considered - considering as you've stated, barely anyone ever will touch you/waste gcds/cds on you for as long theres still others around and your healers manage to top you off to avoid pugs smelling blood.
Abbd.: Not to mention the pug environment...
Abbd.: Actually, I am not even sure whether that supports my take on armor, given there are still people hammering into tanks as if there'd be no tomorrow. *shrug* Meh, it'd make for a bait, I guess.

The part with FO made me chuckle, I've just ran into one of these derps the other day on a healer alt of mine - it was an absolute nightmare to heal, lol. And, yes, its arguably difficault to not perform <good> on a chosen, almost entirely regardless off your setup.
Its about time the skillfloor is a bit upped on both dumbfire tanks...

Would you mind providing the OP some more specific specs via career builder? Im sure it'll help him decide what tank to play, especially alongside this discussion - the only thing missing is a BG to chime in and offer his perspective.

E: The words, dude... the words. Scoring edits in the 10s across the board on every thread today. >_<

To each his own. I just like armor because it makes SUCH a difference on Phys damage. without going into uber detail (which I have done in other threads) armor gets better and better the more you have. You can use up 3-4 tali slots for armor - which would cost ~ 60-80 stat. So it wont "cost" that much to get, but literally those 4-5 talis (~375-500 armor?) will provide a significant boost in tankiness against Phys damage. Especially when you pair it with 2pc Ruin (Gloves+Shoulders) you can get 5k armor (after adding a potion) which really does make the phys damage you take NOTHING... Its really a joke and IMO armor could use a balance pass.

So for me, its cost/reward. The cost isnt huge and reward is great. Especialyl when you consider that its (ROUGH MATH) around 15 STR = 1% damage... or 600-800 HP... or 60-80 Tough... Just seems worth it to me.

As for specifics on builds... I think Tri-Spec is fine: Or you might opt for another Niche aura (D.T. - heal debuff).

Tactics - three "Must haves" are Rugged, Hastened, and Flawless. DFV is great if you stack block and for RVR, less important for SCs or solo play, so you might grab something else such as Mixed Defenses (of you want to spend mastery for it) or Unstop Jugger... Or if you have AP issues (if your not running AP aura) you could always grab Chaotic Advantage or Power from the Gods.

I am lazy and usually just run DFV because im too lazy to swap spec for RVR vs SCs.

Overall, I personally find Chosen rather boring. I think SnB is more fun than 2H (although I am very partial to 2H tanks and just love playing them LOL however 2H tank is very boring). Youll have a fun time using challenge, snares, HtL, staying in guard range, KD, Super punt, taunt (disrupt mainly) etc.

If you wanna go "pro mode" or "try hard" then you can slot Crip Strikes, try and get a little crit from gear and stuff (like Dominator boots) and then start going ham when you can to pop Crip Strikes on people... Personally, I dont bother with it with SnB. Low crit, and id rather put up some DOTs on players to hide better debuffs anyways - so ill use things like Seeping Wound / Touch of Palsy etc. Just dot stuff up, making it harder to cleanse some Sorc DOTs that are much more deadly.

But yeah, thats pretty much it. Chosen isnt overwhelming... As I said, youll do more than half your job just building like a brick wall, putting up 3 auras (which we covered) and following a MDPS around. Upgrading your play to HTL dance, DOT, and use your other tools like Challenge (is HUGE BTW), snares, punts, etc. etc.