Help with a tank build

Hello, Ive been playing this game for a while and I adore it, but its really hard to find information online about specific builds.

I wanted to play as a tank, but I kind of want to avoid traditional builds, and also remain somewhat optimal if that's at all possible. Ive been planning on either a Fire/Staff, or Fire/Shield build, but I'm getting a lot of mixed messages from people. Ive heard that Fire/Staff or Fire/Shield can be a decent tank build, but then I'm told by other people that Fire/Anything just isn't viable.

I understand the Power/Rage issues that go along with fire, but still seems like a lot of fun and there might be ways to sorta balance that out that I don't know of (Other than rage-reduction attacks, or power regen abilities). I do still want to be optimal though.

Just looking for some clarification on whether Fire/Shield-Staff is viable, before I start collecting an actual gear set at 70-80. Some ideas for other interesting tank build are welcome too, planning on Staff/Shield as my main recourse right now. Thank-you a bunch for any advice that you can offer me! I'm currently at 62/62 with Fire/Staff, and 63/53 with Fire/Shield

There isn't too much discussion about tanks because most people don't play tank builds, and many people have different ideas on what a "Tank" build really is. Tanking in Gorgon is especially confusing to a lot of people because it's not quite as straightforward as tanking in a lot of modern MMORPGs.

For example, you say you're building Fire magic as part of your tank build. While I believe that Fire Magic + Staff or Shield are both viable builds, I would not consider either one a proper tanking combination. Fire magic offers very little damage mitigation or tanking utility aside from its fire mitigation, which doesn't make it very good for tanking. However, fire magic + Shield/staff can stack a ridiculous amount of thorns damage, which can make you do a lot of damage when melee enemies hit you.

Tanks get hit a lot so thorns can increase a tank's damage output, but it doesn't actually make you a better tank. It doesn't make you live longer, and while it can be ok for maintaining aggro it doesn't help you pull aggro since you need to be hit for it to work. This is something a lot of players get mixed up and is most likely why you were receiving mixed messages on Fire Magic's viability as a tanking skill. Some people think "Wanting to get hit = tank" when really a tank is about being able to keep aggro and surviving the damage you take so the rest of your party can be as effective as possible. In fact, a tank should generally try to avoid taking unnecessary damage if there's the threat of dying.

So with that said, why were you interested in building Fire Magic? If your goal is to build lots of thorns damage via Moltein veins and Fireshield/Phoenix Strike and stall out enemies while doing heavy indirect damage then you're on the right track. However, if your goal is to increase your survivability and redirect damage to yourself to protect group members, then fire magic isn't very useful at that.

I mostly went fire damage because I guess I'm still in the wow classic, fury/prot mindset. Basically dishing out a bunch of damage to get really high threat/taunt, with some survivability with the Staff or Shield. Survivability was always kinda secondary for tanks in Classic WoW, damage generally came first. The lack of "taunts" for most skills also kind of worried me about holding aggro. This game is very different from WoW though, so I don't really know why I was thinking about it like that.

I definitely prefer the latter that you mentioned though, survivability and redirecting damage. Thorns seem like they'd be good for aoe tanking but not really what I'm going for overall. I also just prefer being active by using defensive CDs at the right time, stuns, etc.

Thanks for replying super quickly btw!

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Originally Posted by Brakor

I mostly went fire damage because I guess I'm still in the wow classic, fury/prot mindset. Basically dishing out a bunch of damage to get really high threat/taunt, with some survivability with the Staff or Shield. Survivability was always kinda secondary for tanks in Classic WoW, damage generally came first. The lack of "taunts" for most skills also kind of worried me about holding aggro. This game is very different from WoW though, so I don't really know why I was thinking about it like that.

I definitely prefer the latter that you mentioned though, survivability and redirecting damage. Thorns seem like they'd be good for aoe tanking but not really what I'm going for overall. I also just prefer being active by using defensive CDs at the right time, stuns, etc.

Thanks for replying super quickly btw!

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This is a little complicated, but I'll try my best to explain the current state of the game and why that shapes what you should be aiming for as a tank.

Many end-game elites die very quickly to a full group, mostly because burst damage from players can be quite high in Gorgon. This is why tanks aren't actually necessary for completing dungeons, usually players can kill an elite monster before it becomes too much of a problem. However, elite damage is actually quite high, so players can die very quickly when getting hit, especially because monsters can crit which can cause huge damage spikes, taking out a majority of a player's life pool which can be too much for healers to keep up with or even react to sometimes. This means that generally in a "Tankless" group, the party has to be careful not to pull too many enemies, because damage is too high to reliably have a DPS player take too many attacks, so they need to make sure combat ends quickly. This results in DPS players usually doing smaller, slower pulls with more deadtime between them (To let their cooldowns come back because they need them to make sure combat doesn't last too long)

What this means for tanks is that survivability is your biggest concern, because your goal isn't to just tank one elite, it's to tank multiple elites at once and they can hit very hard. DPS groups can already pull one enemy at a time just fine, so if that's all you're doing you might as well build full DPS at that point. You should be prepared to fight at least 3 enemies at a time to maximize AoE damage. At that point though you're eating tons of damage. A single elite can already potentially gib someone for more than half their life, so if you're fighting three you need to make sure you're tanky enough to handle that multiplied by the enemies you're pulling. What's even worse is that criticals are random too, which makes it hard to predict. A normal player can easily go from full life to dead before the healer has time to react when being hit by multiple elites.
Another thing is that healing in Gorgon isn't limited by mana, it's limited by cooldowns. In WoW healers can spam heals constantly, so as a tank you don't need to have that much survivability because as long as healers have mana they can typically keep you alive through most things. In Gorgon however, many healing classes don't have the ability to constantly pump out healing. Many heals have cooldowns between 10-30 seconds, meaning that once a healer spends their heals on you, they're done. This is why building survivability yourself is important, because you need to be tanky enough that you both boost the efficiency of those precious heals, and so you can continue fighting even when heals are on cooldown.

Your concern about the lack of taunt skills is very fair. For the majority of tank builds, you will be relying on some sort of taunt in order to ensure you have aggro. This is because DPS players can usually burst out a lot of damage very quickly, so you want to be able to have a taunt larger than their burst damage. You could potentially ask the DPS to slow down, but that will slow down the party so high taunt power is preferred so your DPS can go full speed. Furthermore in Gorgon your damage is not guaranteed because enemies can have resistances and immunities. For example the current end game dungeon has enemies immune to fire, so if your plan on getting aggro was using fire magic damage then unfortunately you'd be a dead weight against those enemies. Taunts ignore these resistances, which is another big reason why they can be helpful.

For gaining taunt, shield is by far one of the most useful. Not only does shield have multiple taunt abilities, including an AoE taunt, but take the lead gives a huge taunt multiplier (Which affects both damage taunt and flat taunting abilities). Usually when building tank or off-tank, this is your go to ability to turn a big damage nuke into a big taunt (Ex. Hammer/Shield take the lead -> Pound to slag). There is also a generic mod on gear which gives taunt so you could put it on any build potentially, but it's fairly low. After that you're relying on the taunts that come with your skill or maybe consumables that give extra taunt if you want to go that far (They can actually be quite strong, but they're a pain to collect or use).

I also want to state that while thorns can add good damage as a tank, generally thorns damage isn't that good versus elites. Elites don't attack faster than normal, so its damage doesn't scale very well, especially when they have so much health. Additionally, a ton of elites have non-melee attacks, so unless if you're using warden's privacy field they'll hit you while bypassing your thorns fairly often. Thorns can still be ok, but definitely don't expect it to deal very much damage compared to everyone in your group just hitting the monster. Fire magic is probably one of the few exceptions because Moltein veins can scale very high, but then you probably can't take enough hits to justify it. Thorns is really good when soloing (In fact tank builds can be great at farming because of thorns despite having lower damage) but against elites in group content it's more of a bonus rather than something to build around.

Judging from what you said you're looking for, shield is definitely a skill you should be using, since it offers a lot of tanking utility. It has stun, knock back, temporary damage mitigation bonuses (Although it lacks a real panic button) and even a tanking stance if you're into that sort of thing. Otherwise for your second skill you should probably limit yourself to either Unarmed or one of the tanking skills that recently got buffed, which you should be able to spot pretty easily in the patch notes. Basically Unarmed used to be the only proper tanking skill because everything else was either way too limited by cooldowns or was outright terrible for not dying, so the devs are currently looking at buffing other skills they want people to tank with. They are still in the process too, so you can expect some skills which are terrible for tanking right now to potentially be useful in the future.

With all that said, if you want to try and tank with something a little unusual, then I highly support trying out your own creative ideas. Tanking is fairly unexplored territory in Gorgon so I encourage experimenting if you'd like. Tanking can feel pretty restrictive in a lot of ways because it takes a lot of factors to build a good tank, but there's also room for interesting niche tank builds which specialize in certain ways.

Brakor: At the highest levels, levelling Fire becomes very difficult and expensive too.

I wouldn't worry too much about the cost and difficulty of leveling skills. If that's a concern, then we would have a totally different conversation.

I think it's fairer to assume we compare builds with max level, all abilities acquired/researched, and gear good enough to have the skill-defining mods. If you can join Aurest Mission group in the Wintertide, and I don't see why not, you can pretty quickly get purple-strength gear, or even yellow. On average I get at least one yellow per run (but I tend to get to a lot of chests, so maybe my groups are above average for this).

However, something I've never checked is whether Fae Navy gear (or other gear you find there) is good for tanking.

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Originally Posted by Niph

However, something I've never checked is whether Fae Navy gear (or other gear you find there) is good for tanking.

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Tanks generally aren't as concerned with getting the maximum number of mods compared to DPS builds, so good base properties on gear are more valuable to them, especially because some of them can be better than many mods for tanking. Because of this an optomized tank build usually uses a mix of found gear and crafted gear. Furthermore, if you really want to tryhard with tanking, then you'll generally want to gear swap to fit tanking certain enemies better. For example something like the Hunter's Breastplate is really good vs cold and fire enemies (10% resistance) but worse vs other enemies due to its lower level.

That said when it comes to Wintertide, the Fae Navy Communicator is very valuable for 20% stun resistance. Stun resistance is very useful for tanking because aside from keeping control of your character, it also prevents the flatfoot debuff and knockdown effect some enemies like Trolls have.
The Fae Navy Jumpsuit is a bit niche but it gives 10% darkness resistance which is good versus Ensigns. It might become more useful in the future because of its demonic resist.

It doesn't really count as found since its crafted, but the Position inferencing ring is also great for its +15% projectile evasion, which is a really beefy amount. I would say swapping it with the Zuke ring depending on what you're fighting is very effective.

Fire/shield might work because shield in and of itself is pretty op right now (no skill should have that much mitigation to one damage type, elemental AND single handedly solidify hate), but bulwark will neuter everything you like about using fire magic because it's straight up *.5ish on your damage after mods. Further, you might have issues with physical damage. Traditionally, this has been used as a damage return build (molten veins + fire shield); it was actually the best thorns build before warden. This is a great "solo tank" build.

Fire/staff might have enough mitigation in GK (but not parts of wintertide). You'll also have a hell of a time keeping agro. Traditionally, this is a dps build with defensive capabilities; in the pre-tank 70 days, this was one of the better options. You could just pop blocking stance to survive whatever hate you got because it was too hard to legitimately hold hate as the "tank".

I would honestly do fire/staff to 70/80 first, then use that to support shield/staff. The problem with tank builds is that they have absolutely no utility outside of larger parties, so most people need / could use a dps to farm skins/whatnot.