Tanking 101 (Chosen)

[Typhon]

This guide is out of date and from closed beta. Haven't had time to recreate. (10/10/0

This is coming from a level 25 Chosen, I have no experience playing a level 40. This guide will slowly change, and the final draft will be post launch. This information is personal experiences so far in the game and will be updated regularly!

Page 1

1a. Twisting
1b. Common Abilities

2a. Stats
2b. Moral and Tactics

3a. AoE Tanking
3b. Single Target Tanking

4a. RvR Tanking
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Page 2
4a. Core Abilities
4b. Masteries - Tanking Mastery Explained

1a. Twisting

Twisting is probably the most complex thing a Chosen has in his arsenal. 3 may be twisted at once, they all linger for 12 seconds after deactivated. My goal is to help you do this well. There are 3 common tanking ones I use; keep in mind I am currently Rank 23 so I haven't gained my Masteries or higher Rank auras. Even still, I can see these 3 to be the most common for tanking. First is Dreadful Fear(STR buff, STR debuff), Corrupting Wrath (Toughness Buff, Toughness Debuff), and finally Discordant Instability (Resistance buff, Resistance debuff). More on tanking with these later.

How to twist? Simple, they all share a 5 second cooldown after activated. When you hit the first one, wait 5 seconds, then hit the next one, and so on. The problem is staying consistent with twisting 3 and generating a large amount of threat at the same time. It starts to tie up your hands. I personally mapped them on my mouse. In most cases I will pick 3-4 auras I want to use for any case. 3 of them ALWAYS go on my mouse, the other couple will be conveniently places near my threat generating abilities.

NEVER SPAM AURAS. You knock your rotation off or cancel an existing one, this is not a button mashing class. It requires quite a bit of focus. You have to use your aura's every 5 seconds to keep 3 up. Your 3rd aura will fade for a short amount of time before your cooldown is up again. I'm hoping they change it a bit so we can have 3 constantly, and not have to be so precise about it.





1b. Common Abilities


Enraged Blow - this ability is your bread and butter for threat, you use this all the time.


Guard- Probably one of my favorites: This ability is cast on a group member. 50% of threat generated by that member goes to your threat. This is great to put on high dps. Likewise, 50% of the damage they take also goes to you, so its just as effective if you put it on a healer.

Blast Wave- This has a 15s cooldown, added resistance debuff bonus on all targets within 30 feet if you have any Discordant type aura active. (refer to my explanation in 1a).

Taunt- Causes the target to focus attacks on you, can be resisted. 15 second cool down.
Challenge- an frontal cone taunt. Acts the same as Taunt, but on a 30 second cooldown. Works well when used in AoE packs.

Suppression - This ability increases your parry rating by 25% for 5 seconds, with only a 10 second cooldown.

(I demand destruction tanking icons!)


2a. Stats

There are 2 primary stats a Tank works on. This is Toughness (reduces incoming damage) and Wounds (hp increase). There is also 1 secondary stat you should keep in mind, and this is Strength - the more dps you can do, the more threat you can generate, but the margin isn't huge so don't ever be concerned with losing a bit of Strength.
Increments coming soon!

2b. Morale and Tactics

Tactics
By level 20, you should have 2 career tactic slots. For a defensive player Warped Flesh and Rugged are a good choice. Flawless Armor is also a good choice.

Rugged Increased Toughness by X.

Warped Flesh 25% of the time you are hit you absorb X amount of damage, cannot occur more than once every 3 seconds.

Flawless ArmorReduces the chance you are critically hit by 10%

Morale
As of now, I have only found 1 Morale that I use consistently. This Morale is called Shield Wall and is a Rank 2 Morale. Its on a 60 second cooldown and allows you to block 100% of the time for 10 seconds.

More added later.


3a. AoE Tanking

You can twist 3 auras at once as said previously. When pulling a large group, maybe a bunch of mobs from a PQ, for example. Start off with Discordant Instability, when you have this aura active it makes your Blast Wave ability lower resistances of all the targets as well, thus causing more threat. After your blast wave is popped start twisting other auras; preferably ones that will weaken the mobs particular class the most ( ie strength and toughness for melee). When your agro is solid you can go back to twisting 3 if you feel comfortable, just make sure every time Blast Wave is up you have a Discordant Aura going for the extra resistance debuff. Furthermore, make sure you have Guard on a group member. In AoE tanking I have Guard on the person I think is going to generate the most threat. For single target I have it on a healer.

I pulled 15-20 mobs using this method, had a Squig Herder AoE and a shaman heal. Rarely losing agro on any of them. Both the Squig Herder and Shaman are somewhere on this forum.

3b. Single Target Tanking



4a. RvR Tanking

As many know, there are additional features and benefits of having a defensive Chosen in RvR. On of the most interesting features is the ability to taunt players and encourage them to attack you. As a defensive tank, I keep my team buffed by auras, attempt to take damage for them, and try to serve as a wall that Order must break through. Being a defensive type tank in RvR also has its usefulness if you go a bit offensive. If you're always protecting healers and ranged dps, who's taking care of the melee? Running in and assisting, following aura buffs (strength, toughness, resistance - a common combination), and of course using your Taunts.



Taunt - When you Taunt player it encourages them to attack you, as technically its a debuff. For 15 seconds, they will take 30% more damage from you. They can break this debuff early by hitting you 3 times. I can see this being popular for people who decide to use a Great Weapon.

Challenge - This ability is great to gain an edge in RvR, large scale or small. Everyone in front of you will deal 30% less damage to everyone but you for 15 seconds. Or until you're hit by the debuffed player(s) 3 times.

Hold The Line! - This ability gives everyone behind you a 15% increase chance to Dodge and Disrupt, this will effect players up to 40 feet away. I use this ability if its Ranged vs. Ranged going on for the short moment, or if theres others behind us getting hit by melee - its quite situational.

Guard - This ability can be dangerous when you use it in RvR, I usually give it to a healer just so I can take some of their damage from them.
(More to come, off to work)

Auras - I would make a list of auras that are useful in RvR, but thats pretty much all of them. I switch mine up depending on how the battle is going. I may be running strength, toughness, and AP drain for a while; but if we happen to run into more casters, or more casters join the battle, I'll switch out strength for resistance, and maybe toughness for the backlash (Fluctuation) aura.

If there are any suggestions for this guide PM or post, any question PM or post and I'll add it to the guide.

[Typhon]

4a. Full Core Ability List
Wardb has a great list of Morale, Abilities, and Tactics listed. But I uploaded a file listing all the Chosen's trained abilities. One is viewable when you click the link, the other is a link to download it. Please keep in mind that all abilities scale as you level, there are no purchasing higher rank abilities. The Core Abilities section are what they look like from a Rank 1 character. For example, if you look at Enraged Blow at Rank 1, you will see it is 15 damage. At Rank 20, it is 50 damage. I don't have the time to put together the math of how each ability scales as they all scale differently. At Rank 20, it lists Enranged Blow as Rank 15, so theres clearly a Rank when a specific ability scales up. At Rank 40, it'll be a lot easier to do.

Viewable:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/5319605/Chosen

Download:
http://www.2shared.com/file/3846379/...f1/Chosen.html



4b. Masteries

Chosen have 3 different paths to take. These are Path of Discord, Path of Corruption, and Path of Dread. Every tree has abilities useful for PvE and / or RvR. You can simply pass an ability to save a point and grab the next one. Which is great if you don't plan on doing any PvE where you're going. The plus side to adding more points into a specific tree is that it buffs 6 specific abilities. These abilities are listed above, and are in Italic and different colored.

I have a list of different specs I plan on using and seeing which are the absolute best. Each are for a different purpose.

RvR Debuffing Tank: 6/15/4
http://www.wardb.com/career.aspx?id=13#5:32:13:8200:3:8:25
This spec is weird, and is why I like it. You may be thinking "WTF?" This spec allows you to have a good amount of defensive abilities including Oppression. You will also have an aura from Path of Dread that drains Action Points from multiple players. Furthermore, you'll have the tactic Dire Shielding to help in the defense of your allies. Putting 4 points in the path of discord gives you a great mobility tactic, which is the only reason I grabbed it.

Discord RvR: 0/7/18
http://www.wardb.com/career.aspx?id=13#0:0:5:40:13:10912:25
Another build I came up with. You have the ability to delay their cast time and healing on you is 15% more effective. This spec is for bigger groups, as many of the abilities you gain are AoE type.

Heavy Dread: 21/0/4
http://www.wardb.com/career.aspx?id=13#15:43680:0:0:3:8:25
This is just a build I was messing with. It is very heavy in dread, very offensive, and your survivability is still decent.


If anybody has any builds they would like to submit, or recommend, please feel free. I'd like to add more.

[Typhon]

Reserved for Masteries maybe?

Rank 40 I'll start number crunching, else theres one around here?

[Browncoat-WHA]

Typhon, good stuff. I would recommend using a couple different colors of bold in the rank listings to make them stand out, perhaps bold red for the ability title for example.

[Astinos]

nice write up

[eltacho]

Very nice guide indeed!
I need to setup those Auras as macros so i can do it faster :P .

[Farao51]

twisting actually dont seems so bad here
Instead of spaming 123456123456123456123456 etc. etc. you can actually do something while still having to keep your mind focused on auras.

However, this seems really focused around PvE tanking.
Anything on PvP tanking?

[Typhon]

Originally Posted by Farao51

twisting actually dont seems so bad here
Instead of spaming 123456123456123456123456 etc. etc. you can actually do something while still having to keep your mind focused on auras.

However, this seems really focused around PvE tanking.
Anything on PvP tanking?

I can add it

[Farao51]

could you add a review on the mastery abilities and something about pvp tanking?

its -26 days since i got the game and I STILL dont know in detail what to specc

[lochness]

nice one

Just wondring... I seen Chosen uses 2h weapons... any good setups on that?

[Zotar]

Very nice work on the specifics of a Chosen ) Since this will be my main, I really appreciate it

[Dragonblade]

Excellent writeup, and valuable information, Typhon.

Thanks for doing this.

The number-crunching will come with time from likely many, many sources, but it gives a great idea of the tanking mechanic for this class in the game. Looking forward to seeing it revised.

Thanks again,
-Dragon

[Stigus]

Great write up bro excellent info

[Typhon]

I updated it a bit. Made some changes. Will be working on it off and on, I've been pretty busy lately.

[tadhg]

Awesome! I'll most definitely add your experiences (as well as this thread) to my bookmark and keep your opinions in mind. Thank you for taking time to create this guide.