Here’s the problem though. The Great Axe and the Hammer are NOT TANK WEAPONS.
You see, in closed beta those two weapons, and the rapier, didn’t even have carnelian skill synergy to gain a taunt. They added that from closed to open beta.
You want to know what that is meant for? An off-tank, also known as a bruiser.
The great axe is a dps weapon, as is the hammer. The hammer hits harder, has hard crowd control, and nukes stamina bar while the great axe has self healing and heavy area control to keeps enemies in a location for others and themselves to burst them down. The two weapons are different sides of the same coin but they are by no means tank weapons
The rapier gained carnelian synergy for pulling aggro temporarily off someone like your healer.
The true tank weapons are the ones who had taunt in closed beta, sword & shield for main weapon, and spear for secondary to offer ranged pulling and heavy crowd control and disruption while maintaining an inherent taunt. The ice gauntlet is also great for pairing with sword and board due to it being a higber threat generation weapon with area control
Just because you have a big stick and can temporarily tank does not make you a tank. It makes you a bruiser and thinking you’re a tank without a sword & board makes you a fool right now.
I would like to see some more tank options in the future for sure. Perhaps splitting the shield into its own weapon mastery that replaces half of a weapons tree, and making 2-3 shield types that each do their own things. This would let you use a shield with things like the spear and hatchet, or other single handed weapons, which may create very interesting diversity options for tanks in general. THAT is what I would want to see.
Btw i have figured it out, and i am now a great tank, get friend requests and comments after each dungeon i do, thanking me for being a good tank (in there words “unlike all the other ones who dont know what there doing and cant hold threat”).
The gem is 100% required.
I now hold all threat no issues, and can even deal with the crappy extra pulls that range love to do.
However my original points mostly stand, the fact u need a gem to play a specific playstyle is beyond me, who ever thought of thats never played a game with RNG. Im still using level 28 weapon because i never get drops with sockets.
The level of ‘loss of control’ from enemy basic hits gets a bit insane sometimes and is just annoying for the healer.
You have to remember the combat was all laid in place before they decided on the holy trinity, which is why it feels weird and janky tanking.
But overall i am very much enjoying tanking now, i just wish it was polished and didn’t have any barriers to entry like every other class.
You can use faction weapons that all have a replaceable gen slot until you find a better one. Faction weapons are not perfect but they are certainly solid.
Carnelian or using a weapon with Hated will do a lot for you. I’m a dps build but if adds are on my healer I just swap off my great axe, drop an ability or two on them from my ice gauntlet (I have no points in Int and cleared depths when I was on last) then swap back to great axe and do some more dps to them. That is usually enough to pull aggro or slow the creatue(s) enough for my tank to regain focus.
Ice storm & that stun line (Gauntlet) combined with reap and gravity well (Great Axe) go a long way for lock down and threat generation.
As a tank I have to completely disagree with this.
The system is great and actually makes it rewarding for GOOD TANKS, you have to block, learn patterns and know when to attack to generate threat, yea its simple but also hard.
But what would be the point if it wasnt hard? Make tanking easy and the game gets boring, dungeons are already not that hard, but lets see what the future awaits us in terms of challenges.
I personally use only one of the taunt skills (the higher cooldown one) and i still get to tank every single mob coz i get to generate threat while the healer heals, when i have to single tank a boss while a team needs to clear mobs or something along those lines, i study its patterns and i learn when to attack, so do the same and you’ll see tanking is actually fun !
Tanking in this game especially later game actually takes some skill and you need to pay a bit of attention to what is going on. Something that people dont seem to know is that there is truly no good ranged taunt in this game so if you are running some of the higher level instances or open world content your healer especially need to keep close to you and not run with mobs or they will be toast.
Tanks are slow and we don’t really have good gap closures without taking Sword skill tree talents that actually lower our ability to tank and are more meant for PVP.
Ive found tanking in this game very refreshing VS any MMO ive played in years. Many hate on the combat in this game and call it boring and simplistic but tanking is very active and fantastic. I suggest anyone bored with the combat in NW to try to tank you will be shocked at the difference in the combat VS any other playstyle of weapons especially SS/LS tank.
Right now, tanking takes skill and the cooperation of the dps, which is fine. DPS need to wait for the tank to get the mobs attention and wait a second or two. But if they decide to let fly before you even reach the mob it’s not a tanking problem, it’s a dps problem.
Hi, I did not read all the comments because that to boring to me.
Talking about PVE tanking :
First i want to say is that my experience is that there are not many skilled tanks. I had to take over tanking many times because the tanks could not take agro or tank properly. Tanking in this game is skills. Doing trash mobs with light armor suits me better because i can quickly move around and dodge while damaging the mobs. Using Aoe taunt for larger packs and shield slam or bash for single. Tanking single target should mostly be done with heavy armor.
Tanking bosses like the last bost in the DEPHT dungeon is a skilled base tanking process that require also a skilled healer that needs to regulate his healing toward precision. I am glad this game has a more skilled based system that needs for people to think on there feet instead of rushing in and tank spank the hell out of it. ( which is still done tbh ). Nevertheless i think some tweaks should be done. Maybe the Aoe taunt CD reduce because that CD is to long if you ask me. Maybe some more damage reduction with heavy armor ( but only if that does not influence pvp to much ). I think also for tanking weapons that they should have Threat generation mandatory and not with gems only. Maybe make them as new weapon or sort so the one handed weapon perk can still be active.
One think i find truly annoying as a tank is the constant banging around when you are a tank. You sometimes get his to many time with knokbacks / slam’s or Dashes that you just can not do anything. You get full force slammed around the dungeon. Many times cant even take potion or agro because i get interrupted all the time. Maybe 10 second Fortify with knockback resist for 5 or 10 seconds something like that fill in the gap…
Bosses like Thorpe from The Depths are hitting way too often to leave room for threat generation. He does 5-6 consecutive hits. Blocking an attack should generate threat in my opinion, because that’s what you do as a tank for the most part.
ah yes…tanks feeling like they need to do dmg instead of actually tanking and using their shield makes perfect sense to me…sorry for you healers out there that have to actually heal and use heavy attcks on allies to remove debuffs and lose dmg on enemies and use heal ablities and lose dmg…im sorry man but if you want to tank then tank if you want to dps (which it sounds like you want to do) then dps. Like this is a pointless complaint i am lvl 56 been in tons of groups and unless im doing a super low lvldungeon with a low lvl tank threat is never an issue. There are not even dps meters im going to tell you no one cares how much dmg your doing as a tank if im getting hit as a dps that is when im going to start caring.
This. As soon as you see mobs I almost always see a Life staff or a staff orb go flying in and mobs come rushing at the group. Its so easy to tell people who have limited MMO experience that are playing this game because Ive had so many pulls turn into a complete cluster **** because people just dive into mobs like its the random trash mobs they zerg into out in the world.
What I cant stand about tanking is how group members will force push you into a wall and body block you into a boss and they dont seem to understand moving and mob positioning is how tanking works. the just run at things bashing away and its infuriating.
I just did depths and between all the dungeons ive done so far, I feel like tanking works fine. I use S&S/Hatchet and rarely lose threat. Defiant stance is my main AOE taunt, and when im not blocking or tauting, I just run around and smack everything to keep threat on me. The 1 or 2 stray mobs that gets away is generally ok and the party can handle it. If I need to, then I can target a taunt with shield bash. If I get in a bad situation, then I always keep my hatchet on standby with beserk for a backup AOE taunt.
My biggest issue is trying to get to a mob while fighting with 4 melee and not being able to get through my party members.
This leads to my skills missing the target and me being unable to even hit the mobs as I can’t push through my teammates.
Maybe increase hit range and make more skills radius instead of frontal cone.
I’m not a tank, I have no skills in that all. I have healed in EVERY MMO i played but my 5 cent is that aggro is skewed. I get insane amounts of threat as a healer and it just doesn’t seem viable. I think that for pve content there has to be some more threat generating functions cause it’s a bit painful for both the healer and the tank as it is.
I actually LOVE the threat generation of this game. It makes logical sense to focus the casters and the healers so your tanks actually need to actively do things to keep aggro off you and your dps need to learn to stop hitting the boss, and hit the trash that’s killing your healer if that situation arises.
I play D&D and if you see an enemy tossing heals, that is the one you need to handle first. It’s just common sense and seeing that in the AI code is absolutely wonderful.
