Return of Reckoning

Hey! I am a new player and I had some questions regarding tanking.

1. Should I be sticking with the melee DPS I am guarding no matter what? Even if they dive super far or don't follow the Warband leader?

2. What should I be doing during sieges? I kinda just stand there until they break the door, then either guard a melee dps or attack while trying not to die.

3. Is the crest gain slower for tanks? I played healer for a little bit and felt like I was getting way more crests. I played for about 4 hours today and only got 138 crests, and a lot of that was from the rewards sent in the mail for hitting certain renown levels.

and finally, I wanted to ask for opinions regarding being a low level (23) melee character in general. I struggle with staying alive at the front lines, especially if I am guarding a melee dps. If I just hang back and not attack I feel like I am not getting any crests or really helping out. At my level I have 1 aoe skill on a 15 second cool down, should I just run up and use that real quick, then retreat? It seems I just die so quickly.

If your a melee dps, can you do more damage than a regular dps? I have seen some tanks do very well, but if not i suggest you seriously consider taking OR Dps. otherwise you will be just bad at both. Understand your class, sometimes you can be a dps and do a lot of de buffs to enemy and not score high but still bring value with punts and crowd control. For most, learn to tank.. then once you learn class mechanics you can start understanding how dps fits into the mix. Hope this helps.

for an answer to your first question, normally you try and stay within guard range of your mdps, a lot of times they pounce, or charge way ahead of you and the rest of your group, and warband, at times its ok to just leave them to die if they overextend to far, and if there`s no way for you, or the rest of the warband to follow. easier to rez them on counter push, or let them respawn, and catch up. Most of the time tanks will die while allowing the rest of the warband to escape, which is fine.

if you haven`t started using it yet Tether addon, is a good addition as is think out loud for announcing skill use like challenges, guard swaps etc. also you can set up guard swap on click cast through enemy addon, that along with tether will show where your guarded target is in relation to you.

As far as what to do during sieges try and cast modify war engine if you have to place an absorb damage on the ram, also try and be somewhat central located with your group so you can swap guard to one if they are taking damage from ranged on walls, pre push, if you are attacking stay to the side after oil is killed, and use throw axe to help build morale's before push is called, when push is called have a coordinated call with tanks in group for morale 4 use, and try and move forward, while wiggle left, and right to help bypass collision on push. Also coordinate challenges, and try to angle your challenge to the side so you hit some of their dps classes behind the tanks. Challenge is a forward cone debuff, so try and hit some of the players behind the tanks , Also use hold the line now and then if you have a shield, if you use hold the line on the push, only cast it for a couple seconds, and then cancel it, as it slows your movement, I rarely use it on the push, mostly pre push only

If you are defending if you have champ challenge, slot that in M 1 , and when they finally push , have a tank in front, the one you were throwing axe at for morale, you can try cast it on him as he pushes in perma rooting him in the doorway, killing their push, while the other tank in group uses bellows or m4 . Be sure to coordinate Challenges with the other tank in your group, and try to angle challenge to hit their dps pushing behind the tanks. also if you are on dest its ok to stand in the napalm ground fire same as the purple magnus mist , it is low damage per tick, long duration, easy for healers to heal through, and will help you build morale's faster, also use hold the line now and then if you have a shield.

As far as crest go, it used to be really slow years ago getting crests as crests were tied to group that got the kill, and based off damage, now loot rolls on crests are shared with the warband, so it`s a little faster.

For being low level, also wear the armor and talisman close to your actual level to get the most out of bolster, as a tank, a mix of wounds, toughness, and are good, for renown try and get at least 2 or 3 ranks of futile strikes to lower chance to be crit, then it depends are you using a shield get block, 2h get parry, however even as a shield tank, parry is also useful, as parry help mitigate guard damage . just like armor is nice but was nerfed last patch, but toughness is still good , as it helps mitigate all damage from attackers .

If you haven't looked at the forums much, there is a section titles the New player Toolkit, in there are two threads near the top , one is titled the Cheat sheet, lots of really good info in there, and the other is titled gearing up from level 1-40, check out those two, There is another found in the General section titled The Warcamp. great thread for improving in game play, fps etc.

Hope this helps some. Welcome to the Server

1. Depends on the context. You should not be diving far at 23 anyway; you won't make it. And if they simply detach from the main blob by like 30 yards to maybe hit from flank absolutely you should follow them. If they are at a different BO, no, unless specifically told to do so.

2. During siege you stick to your WB. if your WB is at main gate, you sit in front with Hold the Line (applies to everyone behind you, including people outside WB). You can keep an eye out for oil and when it pops start spamming deflect oil while also slowly moving back (don't just sit it in; it's meant to give tanks and other mdps a chance to get back, not face-eat the oil)

3. It depends a lot on your luck and the efficiency of your party. Last I checked, crests are now split per party instead of per warband. So if your party is getting no kills (or even assists), you are not rolling on crests. and if they are then you have to win them. But generally it is easier to gear healers in RvR, yes.

At 23 it's normal to strugle in RvR, even as a tank. You have outgrown your crests set bolster but are not high enough rank to start buying even the green 25+ gear. Also you have less than ideal tactics slotted regardless of class.

Expect to be squishy until Vanquisher, with bursts of true survivability around rank 29 and 35 With Devastator and Annihilator/Ruin sets respectively, mixed with the bolster (make sure to use talismans!)


If you want to increase your odds of surviving ever so slightly while also exploring more of the Warhammer Online world than just the RvR lakes, what you can do is:

- Epic Quests, which often give some decent weapons for their levels (see each chain's page at the bottom for a command to inspect rewards in game). They're also very fun and take you through most of the zone so it's best to do them closer to the max lvl of the zone (29-30/39-40)
- Accessory Unlockables via tome; these are jewel sets which offer quite good bonuses especially for new players; for example the Winds Impervious is a good alternative to rr40 jewel set if you are saving the currency for your subjugator weapons first.

Awesome. Thank you everyone for the advice and explanations to things. Appreciated. Hopefully this helps out other new players too.