17 réponses à ce sujet

[Dblade]

I have just recently started playing again and have done some research and asked others about how to best enjoy the game. I used to play alot of mmo's and enjoy filling the tanking role of most groups. But as I went into the story of this awesome game I found tanking to be a little more difficult. I struggled to keep the threat mostly on my warrior pc and often found the enemies charging after my healer or my ranged rogue. Is there any advice or place I can go look to find out how I can better master the art of tanking? If so your advice would be greatly appreciated and wanted.

[Blazomancer]

Here are a few pointers that may help:

# If you are a defensive tank, then you'll primarily be drawing ability based threat rather than damage based threat.

# Generally speaking, it's not a good idea to start every battle with all your sustainables on. By doing this, you'll effectively be reducing your mana pool. So, it's better if you turn on the sustainables, after spending a bit of mana on activated talents after the battle commences. For example, 'Threaten' requires 35 mana as upkeep; so you may consider turning on 'Threaten' only after using up more than 35 mana out of your mana pool; that way no additional mana will be deducted. This will help a lot, if you are like me and spend most of your attribute points on dexterity and less in willpower.

# If you are not playing in nightmare difficulty, then armor rating plays a small (negligible?) part in initial threat addition. So, you may consider equipping your tank with massive/heavy/medium armor, and rest of your team in light armor and robes as applicable. But to be honest, the difference is only 5 threat, and it's really doesn't matter.

# Threat addition is initiated in the order in which the team members are perceived by the enemy. So, to take full advantage of distance based threat addition, consider leading your team with the tank, and revealing the tank first to the enemy.

# Run into point-blank range of as many enemies as possible to begin with, and use 'Taunt', the bread and butter talent of every warrior tank. Then as you find enemies swarming you, use 'Warcry' if you have specialised as a 'Champion'. If you are a 'Templar', you may follow up with a 'Holy Smite'. The point is to hit as many enemies as possible. Meanwhile, keep an eye on the cooldown, and re-use as necessary.

# Turn on the sustainables you want during the time your foes will take to pick themselves up. Before starting to actively use your blade, make sure to turn on 'Precise Striking' and 'Threaten'. With 'Blood thirst', 'precise striking', and 'Song of Courage' from your rogue, you'll be criting every once in a while providing a liitle boost to your damage based threat. Make sure you are changing targets frequently unless you are trying to get rid of a particular target as soon as possible. Use 'Shield Bash' on one, 'Shield Pummel' on another, and so on. By now, your AOE abilities must have cooldowned, so rinse and repeat. Guess you got the idea of it.

# If you are a Reaver, 'Aura of Pain' is great to damage multiple enemies constantly, more so, if a mage can stick an 'Affliction Hex' on a target. Of course, you'll have a diminishing health, but it's easily taken care of by a dedicated healer using 'Regeneration', 'Heal' and stuff. Also, the 'Frightening Appearance' talent passively augments 'Taunt', so it's nothing to be sneezed on.

# Inspite of all these, a few enemies will rush towards your mage or rogue no matter what. It's because the enemy AI is also governed by a tactical set up. But that number will be few and can be taken care of easily. Consider casting 'Glyph of Repulsion' on your mage or use 'Mind Blast' if your mage is surrounded, and change position immediately. A rogue can use 'dirty fighting', 'Distraction', 'Combat Stealth', 'Feign Death' to speed up threat decay.

# If you are playing a 2H or an Archer tank, unconventional though it is, the same notion applies; use all the talents available to you that focusses on AoE control and damage, large burst damage, such as Two Handed Sweep, Mighty Blow, Critical Strike, Scattershot, Arrow of Slaying, Pinning shot, and the like.

Hope this helps.

[keeneaow]

....And should that fail, make an Arcane tank and ignore the rest of the party,
they will re-surrect when you have beaten all baddies

[Dblade]

Lol that is funny keeneaow and I will practice what you have said Blazomancer. Any other tips you could think of?

[Jordan]

Dexterity, Strength and no Constitution.

[Dblade]

But wouldnt a high consitution help with staying alive? Would mean I could take more hits before I go down

[keeneaow]

It helps, but max out armor helps more, my fave are
gloves of diligence (whopping 6+armor)
blood armor plate (high armor + extra health, + extra sta/mana, + extra lotsa things)
warden commander boots (good armor, awesome 50 mana/sta boost)
Ignacio's dagger (OMG +12 armor +15 defense on a weapon, what's not to like ?)
Lifegiver ring (=3 health generation etc)
Bloodgorged amulet +12 constitution, (when you got enough mana/sta reserve by virtue of simply being high lv,
you see you get extra mana & life for free each lv)
Add rock armor to this and you end up with 80 armor, and have a laff when High dragon chew on you on nightmare solo
IMO shields is a joke in this game, no armor on a shield ??!!!

Modifié par keeneaow, 15 octobre 2012 - 08:40 .

[Blazomancer]

Not getting hit is better than getting hit after all. A high dex score will take care of that. Constitution just delays the inevitable. Even a single point in constitution is not really neceasary, even for a tank. With the fade bonus, gear, HP per level, and livegiver ring, constitution is basically more than taken care of.

'Evon the Great's mail', 'Cailan's greaves', 'Spellward', 'Cinch of Skillful Maneuvering' will amount to a 0.5 dodge chance, meaning you'll dodge completely one out of two normal attacks; and those that pass the dodge check, will probably have a hard time countering your high dex score. The few special attacks that hits you will be mitigated by armor. And well, your healer has regenaration and heal. A well built warden tank with support healing is practically immortal, more so if s/he has 100% spell resistance.

[Dblade]

I see, there is so much to learn. Wish I would have played this more

[keeneaow]

I can't recall what it was like to play with the team,
but i can tell you point blank that if you play solo on nightmare,
you will want a few extra points on constitution when you fight the mother of all evil spitting spiders,
either from armor or by allocating stats, or most likely both.
You see, when you are overwhelmed by her summons, you cant use health potions,
and her freaking poison is scary powerful, even AW isn't a sure bet in this fight !

ps: when you are in the deep roads, and a bunch of spiders withdraw up in the roof,
it's time to make a save called 'b4 holy ****e' or b4 corrupted spiderqueen or something.
Also take note that while more magic is great, it is also subjected to the rule of diminishing return,
adding another 3 points into power when you are at 30 nominal power is great,
but when you are already at 70 nominal power, another 3 points add little to any further damage output
percentage wise, at best 2% additional dmg.

Modifié par keeneaow, 17 octobre 2012 - 01:45 .

[Dblade]

Alright, this is as a arcane warrior?

[Blazomancer]

keeneaow wrote...

Also take note that while more magic is great, it is also subjected to the rule of diminishing return,
adding another 3 points into power when you are at 30 nominal power is great,
but when you are already at 70 nominal power, another 3 points add little to any further damage output
percentage wise, at best 2% additional dmg.

I don't think this is true. Higher Spellpower always means more damage. The damage output of every spell is directly proportional to Spellpower and is not subjected to any cap, whether hard or soft. This applies even to an arcane warrior using melee weapons; strength and/or dexterity is simple replaced by magic (or spellpower to be precise) for the calculation of Attribute based Damage.

[Dblade]

So higher magic means higher damage with melee attacks as an arcane warrior?

[keeneaow]

Yes, and i think anything else would stand no chance alone against her.
But i wrote power instead of magic because magic=strength for AW,
so you will experience diminishing return for a warrior too.
But in spite of that, it still pay off better ever so slightly than dex/constitution once the minimum dex/constitution is reached, which is around 30 dex and 20-22 constitution, after that i guess
its a up-2-you between slightly improve lethality or survivability, i tend to max out magic after this to overcome resistance against the only spell i cast, mana clash.
I use blood control against one of this spiders summons tho, she really is difficult,
and spell shield is a must for me here.

Willpower is only a constraint at lower levels, as you gain more mana reserve for each lv,
blood armor is quite a beauty here

[Blazomancer]

Yes, precisely Spellpower (Magic - 10) is used for calculation of the Attribute based Damage. Of course, other factors contribute to total damage, such as base weapon damage, character bonuses from specs, bonus for each level, armor and weapon bonuses, passive bonuses from talents, on hit effects from runes, coatings, poisons, and armor penetration, and so on.

[keeneaow]

Blazomancer wrote...




I don't think this is true. Higher Spellpower always means more damage. The damage output of every spell is directly proportional to Spellpower and is not subjected to any cap, whether hard or soft. This applies even to an arcane warrior using melee weapons; strength and/or dexterity is simple replaced by magic (or spellpower to be precise) for the calculation of Attribute based Damage.

No, it's magic that count on melee dmg, it makes no difference boosting with wisp here.
What i mean with percentage wise is, add 3 points to magic when you got 30 magic, and you boosted 10%,
but add 3 points when you have 100 magic and you boosted 3%.
In reality it is only half of that though: take a look at weapon damage, which on the sword might be 50.3
and on dagger 28.7,
add 3 points when you got 67 magic already and you may end up with 50.7 & 29.1,
-a near undetectable difference in dmg output,
but it may give you another second to get up from an overwhelm and heal up from that draconian poison that the mother of all scary spiders spit.

Ed: Flaming weapons dmg are boosted by spell wisp & might when you switch it on tho, ( as in spellpower)
so that will make a difference, but once you are at 60 magic or so and had flaming boosted by wisp & might at acticvation,
it hits the max dmg output, you cant get more out of flaming weapons,
typically 22-24 fire dmg, but depending on Tree's or Golems etc, it can reach 29 or go down to 7

I wonder one thing about AW: does cunning make any difference with regards to critical hits ?

Modifié par keeneaow, 20 octobre 2012 - 06:16 .

[Blazomancer]

keeneaow wrote...

No, it's magic that count on melee dmg, it makes no difference boosting with wisp here.

Did I say about boosting spellpower with Spell wisp and Spell might? I meant that spellpower which is (Magic-10), the magic on the attribute screen. The game engine doesn't take into account the increase in Spellpower by buffing for melee weapons because of the way the game engine treats the damage calculation of melee weapons. Since Warriors and Rogues have no talents that increases their strength or dex when sustained, the same method is applied for mages wielding melee weapons(with combat magic).

What i mean with percentage wise is, add 3 points to magic when you got 30 magic, and you boosted 10%,
but add 3 points when you have 100 magic and you boosted 3%.
In reality it is only half of that though: take a look at weapon damage, which on the sword might be 50.3
and on dagger 28.7,
add 3 points when you got 67 magic already and you may end up with 50.7 & 29.1,
-a near undetectable difference in dmg output,
but
it may give you another second to get up from an overwhelm and heal up
from that draconian poison that the mother of all scary spiders spit.

When I add 3 points, I end up with about 2 more points of damage, no matter what is my magic before adding. Just toggle your weapon sets to see the increase.

Ed: Flaming weapons dmg are boosted by spell wisp & might when you switch it on tho, ( as in spellpower)
so that will make a difference, but once you are at 60 magic or so and had flaming boosted by wisp & might at acticvation,
it hits the max dmg output, you cant get more out of flaming weapons,
typically 22-24 fire dmg, but depending on Tree's or Golems etc, it can reach 29 or go down to 7

Correct, but well elemental resistances can be reduced even further with hexes, and hence the elemental damage output. And btw, stone golems are highly resistant to fire, not vulnerable.

I wonder one thing about AW: does cunning make any difference with regards to critical hits ?

No, it doesn't. Critical damage is calculated as "Critical damage modifier * (base weapon damage + attribute based damage)". The critical range is 1.5 base and can be increased to 3.5.

[Dblade]

So much to learn lol