Real Life Gets in the Way

I apologise to the two people out there reading this Blog, but RL has thrown me a couple curve balls recently which have prevented me from adding the third part of my Guardian feat guide or any of my adventures in the realm of the AoC tank...

I should be back with a vengeance from next week and hope to publish it on Monday.

I am also starting on my journeys as a Dark Templar next week, with the forming of a weekly levelling group who will take one night away from our Guild activities to concentrate on levelling a balanced group of six players from the mid 50's to 80. I will try to keep you all informed of how this goes and any little issues I find with the DT class.

Feating a Guardian - Part 2: The Polearm Guardian

Following on from Part 1, which covered the survivability feats from the Juggernaut and Soldier, trees, Part 2 will cover what is required to build a Tempest Polearm spec capable of tanking any instance from Sanctum of the Burning Souls to the Tier 1 instances in Kyllikkis Crypt, Yahkmars Cave and The Dragons Lair (Vistrix).

Tier 2 is much harder to tank as a Tempest specced Guardian due to the nature of the encounters (large amount of movement and fears make it difficult to constantly have Guard active) but this build is great for everything else in the game.

Continuation of Feats...

31-34: Storm Blade (Tempest – Continue this ability which is required to go further down the Tempest tree)

Level 40 Build

35-39: Revenge (Tempest – Increase DPS from Guard combo attacks)
40-44: Power Sweeps (Tempest – Flashing Arc is the bread and butter attack of the Polearm Guardian)
45-45: Brutal Sweeps (Tempest – Increase Critical Strike chance of Flashing Arc. Procs often)

Level 50 Build

46-49: Redoubt (Tempest: Increase evade chance, good mitigation and procs often)
50-50: Relentless Assault (Tempest – Reduce cooldown of polearm combos)
51-51: Impale (Tempest – Charge with associated bleed)
52-52: Redoubt (Tempest – Fill out this feat)
53-54: Bleeding Revenge (Tempest – More as filler, can be replaced by Disarming Aggression)
55-56: Ability: Combat Mastery Stratagem (Tempest – DPS increase which can be used with either polearm of sword and board)

Level 60 Build

57-59: Ability: Combat Mastery Stratagem (Tempest – Fill out this ability)
60-64: Master Pikeman (Tempest – Increased DPS on polearm combos)
65-65: Defiance (Tempest – Healing on melee damage)
66-66: Volcanic Rage (Soldier – Temporary increase in DPS)
67-67: Ability – Cry of Havok (Juggernaut – AoE threat ability)

Level 70 Build

68-71: Ability – Cry of Havok (Juggernaut – Fill out this ability)
72-76: Sustained Rage (Soldier – Increased DPS)
77-79: Ability – Hateful Strikes (Soldier – Temporary 20% increase in hate generation)

Level 80 Build

Abilities

It is a must to keep the Guarded buff up at all times, so whenever it is off cooldown, you should be using the guard combo. The cooldown is 10 seconds less than the buff, so there is some scope for finishing off another combo, but keep in mind that it takes about 4.5 seconds to activate the Guard combo...

Otherwise, Flashing Arc will be your break and butter, with Reckoning used whenever it is available (after a successful Flashing Arc). Flashing Arc is on a short cooldown with the Relentless Assault feat, so you shoudl be able to cycle through your two highest ranks with an instant Reckoning in between.

Keep Disable and Stagger on your shortcut bar for that little bit of extra stamina or CC.

So you want to DPS...

For the DPS PvE Guardian, I would tend to remove some of the hate generation feats form the Soldier and Juggernaut Trees and place them in buffs for the Frenzy Stance. Something like this build is a useful DPS build while maintaining the ability to tank.

Feating a Guardian – Part 1: Survivability

The Soldier Tree

There have been a number of threads on the forums from both new and old players asking, “what is the best way to level a Guardian?”

Many people say that you should level as sword and board Guardian and some that a good polearm provides the better (i.e. faster) path to levelling.

My personal view is that you should use both. It is not difficult to change between your weapon slots and unlike Raids where you are looking to get in some early DPS, with the new irritate ability, there is no real reason for a levelling Guardian to equip a crossbow (or other ranged weapon of choice). With the abundance of multi-action bar UI’s out there, it is also easy to set up your hot-keys for your preferred weapon and allocate a second row of buttons to your secondary weapon.

When I started thinking about playing AoC, I began looking for all the information available out of the beta testing and created my build as soon as the feat calculators were first released pre-launch. This build was focussed on where I saw my role to be – that of a main tank. This build was purely a sword and board build focussed on raid tanking and running instances whenever I was at the right level.

More recently, I have been enjoying tanking Tier 1 raids with a polearm and after a few re-specs; have found what I consider to be a near optimal PvE polearm tanking build. Note that there will always be preferred feats for those who like a little bit of PvP or who are more interested in running instances rather than raiding, but this build works best for me in raiding.

These two builds will be discussed further below, but the first thing I will stress is that in PvE, the soldier tree should be populated first for any of the soldier classes. The feats available through the soldier tree will determine your survivability and amount of down-time in levelling.
What you need for either path:

The first 31 points you will get should be put in your survivability feats. This will mostly target the Soldier Tree and will allow you to use either the polearm or sword and board as required.

While you will not be getting any direct aggro-building abilities, this build will also grant you some of the group tanking abilities you will need by the time you start running 6-man group instances (rather than public instances which can be run as a raid) at around level 30, when you start looking to run Borderlands, Outflow Tunnels and Black Castle…At the early levels, before you learn any Stances, Manoeuvres, Tactics, you will be tanking straight up in Neutral Stance. Most mobs you will come up against will be melee or bowmen, so health regeneration and armour will be your main goal.

01-05: Toughness (Juggernaut - Increased armour and natural health regeneration)
06-10: Recovery (Soldier – Increased natural health regeneration)
11-12: Improved Defensive Stance (Soldier – Required to get Lifesaver)

Level 20 Build

13-15: Improved Defensive Stance (Soldier – Required to get Lifesaver)
16-20: Iron Skin (Soldier – Increased armour)
21-23: Lifesaver (Soldier – Increased natural health regeneration while in Defensive Stance)

From this point, you will spend most of your time in Defensive Stance. While it does slightly reduce your DPS, it will also reduce your downtime and hence allow you to kill more mobs more quickly.

Level 30 Build

24-24: Storm Blade (Tempest - for the additional DPS)
25-25: Cunning Deflection (Soldier – Retaliatory damage for increased initial threat)
26-26: Stone skin (Soldier – Increased protection against magic)
27-27: Ability – Volcanic Rage (Soldier - Increased burst DPS for initial hate generation)
28-31: Stone skin (Soldier – Finish off this ability)From here, you will move away from the Soldier tree as you have all the skills from there required to tank any instance or other group situation.

Level 38 Build

The Choice…

At level 39 you will need to choose whether you go down the path of the sword and board or the polearm Guardian.

Polearm Guardians are capable of tanking all content through to Tier 2. All of the Tier 1 Bosses (Champion of the Honourguard, Kyllikki, Vistrix and Yahkmar) are stationary fights for the Guardian tank and therefore it is quite simple to keep up the Guard combo which is necessary to survive when equipped with a polearm.

Similarly, a vast majority of 6-man instance bosses are stationary targets once positioned. A polearm guardian using a sword and board can easily tank those who aren’t.

Only when you reach Tier 2 raids, with the random fears and a high degree of movement, will you start having trouble applying the Guard combo as required.

My recommendation is therefore to go down the Tempest Tree and keep a good sword and shield handy just in case.

The Polearm Guardian will be the topic of Part 2 of this series with The Sword and Board Guardian following up as Part 3.

Verrence.

Death of the Main Tank

In the beginning…

My first MMO was World of Warcraft back in 2005.

Initially I started playing a Paladin as a healer who was able to tank a little. After a little time (about 35 levels), I started a Warlock who was my first maximum level character and with who I raided through Molten Core, Black Wing Lair and into Naxxramas and An’ Quiraj.

While these were all 40-player raid instances, I soon found that while there was usually a large number of Warriors (who were really the only viable raid tanks at the time) there was always one Main Tank whose responsibility it was to tank the Boss. All the other tanks were there as off-tanks to pick up adds or tank trash mobs, but these very rarely saw the boss up close and personal.

On hearing of the release of Burning Crusade, my wife and I lost some of our interest in raiding. Our general view was “why bother getting Epic gear when it would be replaced by Uncommon gear in the new questing zones” and we had fairly much been as far as we were likely to in the existing raids. At this time, we started to level a Warrior / Priest combination of players. Before the release of burning Crusade, these characters were at level 57 (level 60 being the pre-expansion level cap) and we soon stopped playing them and returned to levelling our main characters so as to start Burning Crusade end-game content as soon as possible.

After some time, we realised that there was a distinct lack of tanks and, with our Guild tanks all leaving for real life reasons, I looked to get my Warrior up to level 70. Once I started raiding, I found that being a tank hadn’t changed at all. There was one Main Tank, whose responsibility it was to tank the boss and one or two off-tanks who could manage adds or trash. The worst part was that these off-tanks didn’t need to be tank specced characters - there were a number of times that my wife, on her healing specced Paladin, off-tanked in Karazhan and Zul’Aman.

While we never really got past Gruul’s Lair or Magtheridon’s Lair, these instances were very similar in that one tank would hold the Boss and there were a number of off-tanks who were responsible for managing the adds and tanking trash mobs.

When did the change start?

When I first started to investigate Age of Conan, I entered the game with the mentality that I would be speccing for tanking and, in particular (somewhat arrogantly), main tanking in raids. My tanking build was worked out before the game was even released and I religiously worked my way to the build I used for almost 10 months of raiding.

When my wife and I started raiding, raids were generally bugged and again, there was little need for more than one main tank assisted by one or more off-tanks.

I found that the forums continued referring to a main tank and, with gemmed mitigation tanking suits, all raid instances could be and were tanked by sole main tanks.

The first signs of change really started in Patch 1.03 when they significantly reduced the effectiveness of mitigation gems (resistances went down by 80% on each gem) and now after Patch 1.05 with the bosses hitting harder and the healers healing for less.

And now?

Age of Conan has now redefined tanking.

Since Patch 1.03 and more recently Patch 1.05 there are very few raid encounters which can successfully be done with one tank on the boss and even fewer which do not require a number of off-tanks. We now have encounters where there need to be two or three tanks on the boss and who now need to work together to keep each other alive by sharing the damage from the boss.

Even the entry level Boss, the Champion of the Honourguard in Kyllikki’s Crypt, now requires two or more tanks capable of withstanding high amounts of damage and with the ability to work together to swap hate between them.

Yes, there will always be a position which will still be referred to as off-tank, that of managing adds and tanking trash mobs, but given the design of current encounters, there will never be a single tank who is able to solo-tank every boss in the game.

Some of you may have read some of my input on the official forums and may have noted that, apart from some early posts, I have now re-defined my role as lead tank and I hope that the rest of us will start doing the same.

Now is the age of co-operative tanking, and while there will always be one tank responsible for initiating an encounter, we hope that Funcom (and other developers) continue recognising that co-operation between the tanks and the ability to work together makes the game more interesting and makes raid encounters dependant on more than just a main tank / main healer combination.

So please join me in wishing a fond farewell to the main tank and welcoming the tanking group and lead tank to our fold.

Welcome

Welcome to my new blog, The Hyborian Soldier.

Since release of Age of Conan, the number of blogs targetting the game have dwindled to an extremely low number (at the moment, I am aware of only one which is regularly updated) and none of these revlolve around the life and times of the Soldier class and their role in the game.

While I will be focusing on the Guardian Class, I will provide input through the levelling process of my Dark Templar and, later on when I start my 10th character, the Conqueror. You may note that by this statement, I have 9 existing characters. You may therefore find me providing some insight occasionally into my adventures with each of these as well...

Hopefully I will be able to provide a fun and interesting read which will keep you all coming back for more as I and my Guild on the Gwahlur server - The Mist Wolves - progress through endame in Age of Conan.

Verrence.