Is warded gear a Must for tanks?

General Discussion General Discussion
47

If you really feel the need to do no ward go for it, my guild and i all completed m10 with voidbent on launch week so its doable. I was tank specifically, the mutations were all meh even at 10, none of them are really concerning for a tank who knows the mechanics. Some of the newer mutations take some getting used to tho.

The theory at the time was you needed heavy armor, a couple weeks later some testing was done and our guild mates proved light armor was viable and better overall. I think we thought heavy was necessary because we were doing 622-623 gs runs with no ward. Once we got to 625 we started changing builds up. A lot of the timing issues to gold an m10 were no longer a problem, the only diff was we didnt have ward yet. One of the biggest things i found to help me on mutation launch week was to swap from defensive formation to leadership, given that our dps was medium/heavy we just werent pumping out enough dmg.

Those days were fun, shame the devs killed off mine and countless other guilds tho. I just realized we have companies in nw not guilds lol, long time since ive actually been in one.

48

Toxic as always, im sure theres plenty of people in this thread who did m10 without ward. Its not hard just took experience, something new raiders lack because they dont do the m1-10grind, most just skip the early mutations bcuz of the shard diff.

49

Nothing toxic about my statement.

The majority of players aren’t skilled-enough to clear the content without ward. There’s a reason those of us that were doing it were in the minority. It’s not easy for most people to do. Almost all random pug groups will fail hard in a no ward group.

If you guys are premading with friends, wear whatever you want. If you’re in a pug, you should probably wear ward, even if you’re the best chad out there.

I’m one of the best PvE players and I wear ward. There’s just no reason not to.

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50

While I agree wholeheartedly with your statements, I think what added to the “Mutation Minority” was the initial implementation of the Orb system. Many players simply could not afford them or were put off by the idea of having to “pay” for content and as a result, never did expeditions. AGS really created a huge gap by making players pay gold for content. In other MMOs everyone runs dungeons, even players that only pvp because its free to enter and you may get that one fabulous drop. AGS messed up big-time with that move.

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51

“Self proclaimed best PvE player”

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52

I agree. The orb system was really gate keepy at its launch. It defnitely contributed to people not being able to easily play the content, and larger PvX companies won big because they could just buy unlimited orbs.

What they did, addong orbs to faction vendors, I think that was the right move and preferred that version of orbs to this new 25-run stuff. With the faction vendor selling orbs, everyone had an acceptable supply - and the people who didn’t want to use them could sell them.

It beats me how they could make a crappy system, fix it so it’s actually good, and once players are happy, scrap it and give us the terrible gatekeeping system we have now.

53

200 con tanks have been meta since release. Generally tanks with more than 200 con just haven’t figured out that they’re doing it wrong yet.

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54

I was the first person to clear an m10 as a 5 con light tank. I was doing it back when people didn’t think you could tank in light, let alone with no con, and sharing full videos of it.

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Tanking is not about having high health. Your health doesn’t really matter, unless you’re making mistakes and eating damage. Having high health is great in two scenarios only:

  1. War, and you’re a point tank, so you’re running 500 con.
  2. PvE content, and you’re new to tanking or the current dungeon, and you’re learning it, so you may need the extra health to survive the technical failures you’re making.

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Eating damage doesn’t generate threat.
Blocking attacks and hurting enemies generates threat.

If your con is too high, your ability to generate threat through attacks is greatly-diminished, and you are forced to rely on taunts and blocking.

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If you’ve mastered the content or can simply play masterfully, that extra con isn’t necessary; if you dodge at the right times, block at the right times, and attack at the right times, you can tank with no con, at any armor level.

A tank is simply the person who holds threat and absorbs the damage. Run only as much health as you need to; the less con you have, the easier it will be for the healer to top you off and the less work maintaining your lividity it will be for the healer.

In PvE, you want to be able to assign as much attribute points to non con as you can, to min max your runs.

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When I run anti-Paladin Tank, I role with SnS/VG, with 300 str, 150 dex, 50 int, 5 con in light. If I’m a dps, I do 250 str and 200 dex, instead.
Fortifying shield rush on the shield for 33%.
Defiant Stance (or Leaping if DPS)
Reverse Stab, Shield Rush

The only thing to remember if you are trying low con is that some ultimate attacks when not dodged will one shot you if you have no fortify active.

You can see my informative build videos and some of the runs at twitch.tv/exskyelighter

55

Allow me ask question little outside of topic
How does Corrupted Rage(ancient ward)
Harbinger(AA ward)
and Avenging (Corrupted ward)
armor/pieces stand? Are they good? Worth upgrading to 625?

56

It depends on a multitude of factors.

Can you do it without? Definatley. I healed a tank in an M5 recently with no wards and they forgot to gem. Was a 6x multiplier Gold.

I am also a 625 healer and over geared for M5.

As being over geared jas become more common the gear makes up for alot of mistakes.

But more people you have mechanically challenged or even just above recommended the more unforgiving it becomes.

95% of players likely will benefit from wards.
50% need them.
25% need them from day one
100% believe their the 5% that dont need them.

If your a tank you will need them so why not put the shards to use in a ward set to begin with.

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57

Youre average at best, your ego is insane tho ill give you that, a lot of groups completed without ward, it wasnt rare nor was it an accomplishment. You might think that bcuz nobody plays this game, if people could actually progress m1-m10 like we all did on launch pugs wouldnt need wards at all. Its either m10 or bust, thats why ward is necessary, not because of skill just inexperience.

Your 5 con isnt an achievement either, the reason paladin is an option but not the meta is because 4 dps healer was found to be effective.

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58

I was there for the early days.
Yes, plenty of us cleared it without ward, but most of the players struggled without ward or didn’t clear it at all. Those who did were premades. Very rarely did no-ward pugs clear the content.

Ward makes it infinitely easier and there’s no reason not to run it. There’s no reason to tell players who are inexperienced, new, or struggling, that they should expect a fun or good time without ward. If you’re not a veteran of the content who has run the dungeons dozens of times, these dungeons can be difficult.
For everyone starting out or struggling, you’ll absolutely benefit from running at least a few ward pieces, and it’ll make learning the content and pug groups less rough.

It’s interesting that you would attempt to talk about my skill level when the one time I was invited to a group you were in, you were a one-target tank.

Maybe try learning how to hold threat before commenting on someone elses abilities, or attempting to give tanking advice. If you were clearing it without ward, you got dragged across the finish line by some kind teammates.

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59

Lol youve got some bad memory then, all i remember is you planking on the ground multiple times as was common by you at that time. You frequently would die by mechanics that specifically target healers and didnt dodge so you died, the rest of our team was fine, (if the dps was fine but you werent then how did i have threat issues lol) but you sure loved looking at the ground. If anything you were quite literally dragged across the finish line by our group because of how many times you died and we had no healer but still stayed alive lol. (Again i and the dps never died that raid but you went down over and over and over and over) You were still using defensive formation at the time and i told you i used leadership. The only conclusion i came to was that youre a griefer. But as hes a massive narcissist im sure he’ll just twist his memory to match his delusion.

Seriously you struggled with genesis for the longest time and you still try to push your useless pally build, its not meta and never will be. 4 dps healer will always be meta, and you call yourself a speedrunner, its laughable. Theres a reason people would mass report you, youre one of the most disliked players in the game, biggest ego by far. Go back to selling shards

All you do is run with premades while i just ran with pug groups, the pug groups were never as bad as you claim, just nobody wanted to tolerate your massive ego. Even when you post a speed run with a “pug” group its obvious its a premade, you just lie your ass off and dont even realize it.

60

4 dps or 4 hatchets ? Lmao that’s a defy death différence nothing else , stop with the cope « speedrunning genesis »

61

I mean yea hatchet is busted for pve, and 4 dps is used outside of genesis but the specific example of when i raided with skye was genesis.

62

I mean 4 dps/ healer wouldn’t be a thing without hatchet , let’s be clear here

63

Well yeah, spear has great abilities but nothing can beat the bail out mechanic that hatchet has. Dynasty is possible without a tank, you mostly use a spear but that hatchet comes in handy lol, things just busted.

Im just sick and tired of that paladin shitting on players when all they do is post mediocre times for genesis. Never see them running the harder dungeons as paladin. Even when they run dynasty its slow af but hes still bragging about it and shitting on everyone else at the same time.

64

For Genesis weeks, I generally have 2 or 3 random pugs in every group and am rarely blessed with 4 hatchets with bane, rogue, and keenly empowered. In an ideal world, you’d run a pure healer with those dps, but when pugging any members, I run the paladin just so there’s a tank, because it’s just safer than no tank runs.

Paladin+4dps is my go-to, because you don’t have to slot 4 hatchets. We often pug two dps and one ranged, usually a FS, and then I don’t have to be the agro for the roomba. It’s slower than healer+4 dps, but I think safer because you have a tank and a healer in one role, so you’re an agro magnet, and you can control the field better. With 2 or 3 of the group premade and 2 or 3 pugs, we do 12 to 15 minutes clears and I think that’s perfectly-acceptable. Having a Paladin is a little more forgiving, too, I think, so the skill ceiling for the faster runs is a lot lower with the build present.

Hatchets are still very-much OP… Defy Death is literally a free life that lets people forego mechanics, completely.

That being said, you can do paladin+4 dps of any composition in all of the content except for the depths Thorpe fight and the Lazarus Cilla fights (maybe you can, but I’m not good enough for those two fights as the light version of the build) and clear them in respectable times.

I still think that for most groups, running it fast or trying to break records not being the goal, that running 3dps, a tank, and a healer are the best way to go. Your healer should be generally 200 int and 200 to 250 focus, and dpsing when they aren’t healing. Your tank shouldn’t spec more than 200 points into con, in order to invest in their weapons primary, not because the tank needs to be a dps, but because you never want your dps to have to hold, and damage scales with the carnelian and other threat generating perks in terms of how much threat is generated, so that you aren’t relying on artificial threat from taunts to hold threat, because that environment causes random people to pull threat, randomly, often at the worst times.
You can have everyone in the party contributing to damage, and do fast runs without having to compromise control or increase risk factor. Standard holy trinity groups do quite respectable. Even groups running off-meta dps do fine.
I personally run sns/vg 266str 200dex 50int 5con light dps, and 300str, 150dex in the tank version, and full pugs clear in 25 to 30m for dynasty this week.

As long as you have fun and learn something, time is irrelevant, but ward gear is the best gear for learning. As a tank, you can run 6 ward, which is a 29.4% damage reduction. With Ward, you can take points out of Con and put them somewhere else, because your mistakes won’t mean instant or near- death.
Ward is minimal effort, maximum result.

Is Ward required? No.
But nearly 30% free damage reduction is hard to say no to, and with how cheap and easy it is to obtain starter Ward gear, it’s hard to understand or justify not using it. If the problem was umbral shards, you earn those at a fast- enough rate that they can easily be upgraded so you can get into m7 to m8, and easily grind your way to 625. For pug groups, Ward is often the difference between gold and anything else.

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65

How did people complete M10 before ward gear was a thing?

No one said ward gear was not good thing, it’s just not absolutely mandatory.

Truth be told if you don’t have ward gear and the party has an issue with a boss, you will get blamed for not having it.

Its par for the course with MMO’s. People will insist a that you have the best kit. Is not a NW2 thing, you will get the same in GW2 fractals and WOW etc.

Doing mutations within a company will give you a little more wiggle room, PUB groups you will just get the man babies etc. :stuck_out_tongue:

It’s just harder to “get gud”, if your not up against it at times if you think about it.

66

Yeah definitely not mandatory for standard tanks and people running heavy with the correct gems. I do think DPS/Healers in light/medium will start to really struggle but I’ve accidentally ran the wrong ward gear as a healer which is essentially light, no wards, no relevant perks and have done M10 Gold. It’s not impossible but highly recommended depending on the gear you use.

It’s unfortunate that healer that gets the rough end of it all because they are forced into light. I’ve wondered if you could try a non-ward generalist medium set for people without the shards to do multiple ward sets, but never really tried it out. I was lucky to do full heavy void healing my way through M10 Golds before heavy healing nerfs. So even then non-ward was plenty fine. I think people really fall back on it too hard and set too many rules for themselves.

Then again I can’t change the MMO culture that has been around for ages now. There is a strong push for optimized gear in any MMO. I’m too casual to follow any strict meta. I say do what you want and enjoy what you want. If it means finding a cool company to run with, then do that.