In PvP you are looking to build a bunker build. It’s essentially a tank in terms of survivability but instead of focusing on taunting you focus on avoiding or recovering from CC and being able to stay in one spot.
Your job is then to either hold capture points or use cannons (as the cannon will be under attack so anyone else will not live enough to use it), especially in offense where the cannon is likely somewhere easy to reach.
Bunker build characters are extremely important and organized war comps might have more than a dozen of them.
SUDDEN THOUGHT, at least slightly related to the topic of this thread:
It strikes me that there could be a way to adapt Taunt to a PvP environment.
In Dungeons & Dragons, there is no Taunt mechanic … so instead, some classes and feats give the ability to make attacks on anyone other than the character using that ability less effective.
So what if hitting someone with Taunt, made it so their attacks on anyone other than you were less effective in some way …? Then, someone specc’d for Tanking in PvE, doesn’t have to change out abilities / masteries when going in to PvP. Their Taunt may not force attacks to focus on their not-squishy self, but will still help protect their more-squishy allies.
To avoid having this get stacked up to the point an all-tank squad is essentially unkillable, have any given character only affected by the currently-strongest Taunt applied to them.
Tanks are good in war as you can stand on point longer than most. Especially if you got a few healers. Open world, not so much as you sacrifice damage output for survivability in most cases.
A very solid open world build “Looks” like a tank but isn’t.
Sword and Shield with Life Staff, in heavy armor.
Except you spec the sword and shield down the offensive line, and then gem it to work off of focus (if you have those lying around - it’s open world so it doesn’t even matter really).
This lets you be near unkillable and still do solid damage for open world mob grinding.
For group PvE:
I’ve yet to hit max level and put in that gem, so I don’t know if this makes for a viable DPS. But, by rank 10 of the offensive sword line - you are buffing your entire party’s DPS by 10%. So you could technically do 30% less DPS than them and still be valuable.
Like a ‘Dancer’ in FFXIV.
In group PvE, you might not use the Life Staff on off hand, instead use another strength weapon, so no gem need.
The top ability of the defender tree causes a circle around you that decreases the damage taken by anyone inside that circle by 30% when you’re blocking. It doesn’t matter if anyone is attacking you just have to have block up so it works for protecting DPS so long as they are close. You blocking also prevents projectiles from hitting people standing behind you.
Its a misconception, it simply removes 30% of your offhand base damage, converts it to nature damage, then scales that off of your focus. Which is handy for pve especially against corrupted. But negligible in most open world pvp. I’ve been experimenting with it. So you could spec a ton in foc/str, that still leaves you low on con. Which is the main point of a tank style build. Its decent, not saying its not. I simply slotted a t4 amber gem into a hatchet and respected str into focus, and ended up with 333 damage on offhand. I think its sitting at roughly 70 str, 100 foc, 70 con. 333 damage on the hatchet, 371 on life staff. I plan to pick up a 2nd sword to slot an amber in to see how it plays as well. The issue is you lose your threat gem. So you need a sword for tanking and a sword for everything else. Like I stated, I plan on further experimentation. Optimizing my other gear for improved con/foc. And spec points to find a good balance.
Im a sword and board main and i use it for PvP all the time. I am a Hybrid Spec i have put majority of my points into sword master to get the leadership trait. I use whirling blade, Leaping Lunge and shield bash as my skills. i have taken a lot of defender traits as well to reduce stam on block, and to take reduce dmg from ele and phys.
im looking at respeccing my attributes as i have dumped a lot into strength and not so much into con. Currently lvl 48 and have been a sword board mastery 20 since lvl 30. I use Majoritly heavy armour mixed in with some medium. and currently sitting at about 8k health. My offhand is a great axe with reap, charge and vortex for me to chase and hold. I dont have blood lust on it as its super cheese. but i will more than likely head down that path.
it is super useful in wars as u can body shot for the healers and lunge into the point and wreck havoc. i use it open world pvp all the time due to after my 3rd light atk it puts a slow on them so i can chase.
TLDR ~ Sword and Board is a super under rated pvp weapon that can counter most builds. And in the right hands it is bloody Deadly.
So far I’ve found you don’t really have to block every attack as heavy armor + defender talents will absorb/decrease the basic hits. It’s more a matter of knowing which big glowy attacks you can block and which you need to dodge. Managing stamina is defiantly an art and one of the things that makes tanking in this game not boring.
I have not really done much PVP in New World, it really does not appeal to me.
But when I was in warhammer online, I had a super stout Black Orc. He was amazing at holding things down. It was ridiculous how much damage he could take. I killed slow, but I stopped people from going through points (but he was kinda huge vs other players).
I would say a pvp tank has its role, but I think others above my post detailed this out much better than I could.
What I can say though, is that I loved my Black Orc…and I have never been a “tank” person.
If I could somehow recapture that here, I’d be on it like a fly on doo.
1h Sword DPS tree + shield stun and stagger with strength+Conc up to first bonus. 2nd weapon is a Life Staff that I only use to buff self and self heal. aka Paladin …
