Party tanking for fighters - Updated

[AndyB]

Well I've decided to try my hand at writing a short guide on fighter tanking in parties. To most people, what I have to say is just general common sense but I've come across a surprising amount of comments in the game and out of the game about fighters not doing their jobs properly when tanking in parties.

If you use these tactics people will be more inclined to choose you over another fighter and using these tactics will ensure that people will actually want you in their parties.

These tactics are best used in a party with 3+ players. A cleric for healing, a fighter for tanking and a mage for damage dealing. This character mix is especially important when hunting in areas like the Prison or Goblin Camp.

Skills that should be used:

Snearing Kick also known as Taunt - fast cooldown

Mock(AOE Taunt) - slow cooldown

Bone Slicer - damage skill that slows down the targets attack speed. - slowish cooldown.

Stun - For those times when you need 1 less monster hitting you if you've been overrun by mobs.

Later on: Devastate - AOE damage + stun - Using this skill will mean that you cannot use your normal stun attack till the cooldown has worn off - Additionally this skill only works on the monsters in front of your character(semi circular).

When the skills should be used:

Taunt

If you're just dealing with 1 mob you can use the taunt skill to lure it away from other mobs so you're not getting overwhelmed, but this should still be used if there are not any other mobs around.

I'd like to add one thing, although Taunt was originally made to help parties and make sure that the tank stays the tank, Taunt also has its uses when soloing.

For those who didn't buy/use Snearing Kick (aka Taunt O.o): get it ASAP, even if you aren't partying. It's a highly useful skill, basically this is what makes you able to solo, since it's like a ranged attack - you can pull one monster out from an agro crowd with this, so you can stick to 1v1 fight instead of 1v3++.

The main reason for using it is to cause aggro, this means the mob will ignore all the other party members, even those dealing damage to it, and it will attack you. By casting taunt before the mob is attacked by the rest of the party, you ensure that it will stay focused on you as the designated tank and this will save you time as the rest of the party won't need to chase it down if it starts attacking your party mage or archer.

Taunt should also be used if a mob is attacking anybody other than the fighter(especially if a mob is attacking the party mage or archer), that way the healer only has to focus on 1 person, instead of 2 or 3. By ensuring that the healer only has to worry about 1 person party members will die less often.

If a monster attacks your mage or archer make sure you this skill on the monster attacking them. You're there to tank, they're there to deal damage, so use taunt so they don't have to worry about monsters attacking them.

Mock

This is used if your party gets overrun, as the normal taunt will only work on one monster. This should be used to it maximum effect as it has a long cooldown time so you want to try and get maximum results when using it.

As mentioned above with the normal taunt, use this to gain the aggro of all monsters, so your party healer only has to worry about healing you and the damage dealers don't need to worry about using hit and run tactics to stay alive.

Mock has a cap, the maximum amount of monsters affected is 5.

Bone Slicer

I use bone slicer on all mobs as it means the party healer isn't going to be wasting stones healing me, as bone slicer lowers a monsters attack speed. Its not necessary with just 1 monster but will mean your party can make longer trips.

Bone slicer can be a life saver if you've had to use mock(The AOE Taunt) to aggro 4 or more mobs, there have been a few times where just lowering the attack speed of 1 monster has saved my life as it meant the the healer had a little extra time to heal me.

This is also a "must use" against bosses, which can deal huge amounts of damage, your healer would otherwise not be able to keep up with if the boss is attacking at full speed.

Stun

Don't worry about using stun if you're only dealing with 1 or 2 monsters. The main reason for using stun is the same as bone slicer, it can save your life if you've got 4 monsters attacking you and you need to slow the damage down a bit.

This is another useful skill when fighting bosses as the healer doesn't need to worry about healing you if the boss is stunned.

Devastate(AOE damage + stun)

This isn't the most practical skill around, as it uses over 100 SP's even with 1 skill point in it to lower SP consumption. This can be used in conjunction with the mock skill.

If there are 4 mobs attacking the party use your mock skill. The monsters will attack you, don't use devastate immediately run away a few steps so that the monsters will chase you. This will ensure that they all gather in 1 place to attack you. By doing this you make sure that devastate will have an effect on all 4 monsters instead of ignoring the mobs that may have been hitting your character from behind.

An additional use for devastate is that it can be used to cause aggro on more than 1 monster if you're still waiting for your mock cooldown time to run out.

How Builds And Weapons May Affect The Damage Dealt and Received.

I dedicated my entire Closed Beta Fighter to test out the capabilities of all 3 weapon types, not just 2Hand sword and 1Hand Sword. When tanking, 1Hand swords are obviously more superior when compared to 2hand swords, and 2hand Axes. However, just how much of a difference are there between the 2Hand Weapons, and 1Hand Weapons in terms of damage output, and tanking power? Also, what's the difference between 2hand axes and 2hand swords in the same aspects? I focused my build around determining the differences between the weapon type, and hopefully coming up with a conclusion before the CB phase ends.

The following information is very rough, for I haven't put in the exact statistics as of yet. When CB2 comes, I'll be sure to post more accurate information.

1Hand Swords Vs. 2Hand Swords

-The Attack speed difference between the two is .3 seconds.
-The average damage difference between the 2 weapons are 20. The damage difference between the 2 can go as low as 10, and as high as 40. The damage tends to lean towards the "High" point usually, but the average remains the same throughout lvls 30-40. I'm not certain whether this pattern will stay through during the 50's and 60's, though I have a pretty good idea that it will.

The difference in damage received is around 30~40. Combine this with the "Toughness" skill of 1hand swords, there is a huge difference between the tanking capabilities of 1hand swords and 2Hand swords.

I've yet to determine the difference of average damage between 2hand swords and 1hand swords when taking Attack Speed into consideration. (In other words, which one will do more damage overall as time goes on? This little comparison will be the absolute factor in determining which build is the best against bosses)

-The conclusion I've come to so far is that the damage dealt, isn't enough to warrant the loss of such defensive advantages, at least for the levels involving 20~40. I'm almost sure that the statistics and ratio between the two factors will change dramatically, in the 60's. 2Hand Sword fighters doing really good, strictly depends on the Stat Build, therefore, won't show its true "potential" until in the later levels. However, this is pure speculation for I've yet to reach that said level. Hopefully, in CB2, I'll be able to make some final observations.

1Hand Swords Vs. 2Hand Axes

-The comparisons are pretty much the same, except it's even slower by .3 seconds. However, the damage is more unstable, and staggers a bit more with its min and max damage.

2Hand Swords Vs. 2Hand axes

-I haven't spent too much time comparing these two, for honestly, I'm not a fan of axes. However, I find myself doing better against bosses and high DEF monsters with an axe, compared to the 2Hand Sword, while 2Hand swords are more optimal against monsters that have less defense.

The Builds don't really play a big role in terms of tanking as of yet anyways. A good cleric is more important. I don't really see a big difference of change with different "Builds". I've experimented with the use of rings. However, I have a pretty good speculation that builds become really important near the end. For example, 2Hand Sword/Axe pure offense builds will start to see the fruits of their labor when the Dmg+ Starts to accumulate, and 1Hand Sword pure Tank builds gets a significant HP/DEF/Block boost with high END in conjunction with a high lvl toughness skill.

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Thats all i have to say on the subject although i might add more once i have access to more skills.

I know most of the stuff mentioned above is common sense but not all fighters seem to know this, so just thought I would put this together so people can't have an excuse for being bad or lazy tanks.

Big thanks to Claude(Stryfe) and Revy on their input.
Opinions or suggestions are welcome.