Ftr Tank

S

Serien

New member
I have an old dwarven vanguard fighter I recently started playing again with a friend who has a Horizon Walker build. I wasn't getting any kills anyway so I switched over to StalDef and US and it's been working well with me holding aggro and him killing everything. Definitely better than before I respecced. We're getting ready to ER and work our way back through epics and I was hoping for some advice on how to be tankier. We've been running R3's at cap but I could definitely feel it get tougher in IoD and Feywild content.

I was hoping to get some advice on feat selection and whether I should dump str for the ER to see if we could push the difficulty any higher. Is TYWA worth it? It's a 3rd life toon and has +8 tomes.

Thanks in advance.
 
Djoe

Djoe

Active member
if you're a 3rd life character, you should be able to start 20 con, 18 str, and 12 in either int or dex. Throw your weight around is cool but it is Con to damage only, and if you aren't trying to kill things its not really helpful. The cores in the dwarven racial tree are good though, throw points into that if you have any left over. Going 12 points into vanguard for the 2 second deflect arrow and stunning shield ability is really nice, especially if you can fit in the fighter tactical ability feats and have a stunning item, you can take out specific high-damage champions and reapers.

For general tanking advice, getting sheltering and insightful sheltering items is a big deal, as im sure you might already know. Large shields are in a lot of cases better than tower shields because tower shields make you lose a lot of dodge. Since you're running mid-skull reaper, if you can fit the at least 22 points into the Legendary Dreadnaught epic destiny tree for the Untouchable ability, you will get displacement while actionboosting, which is something you should be doing during most encounters anyway.
 
Onyxia2016

Onyxia2016

Well-known member
Short answer? Huge HP pool, maxing CON where you can.

There is a much longer answer that gets into damage mitigation.
Heavy armor and get a refrigerator door size shield for protection/smash things in the face.
Pump up PRR
Get lots of Fortification to stop those big crits

Spell damage is the killer. It is to easy to get a false sense of security when you can take 10 melee monsters at once with barely a dent in you HP. Then comes a time you get blasted by 3-4 spell casters that are chain casting and your HP drops in huge chunks.
Pump up MRR and saves and have some gear pieces that swapped out to protect from whatever spell/element the current dungeon will be throwing your way.
 
A

Alco

Well-known member
What Onyxia said. Pale Lavender Ioun Stone, Mantle of the Worldshaper, Jeweled Cloak, 2 Handed Platinum Piece, etc. Get as many as you can and swap in when needed.
 
D

djaimgo68

Member
Here's a couple of other builds that I think would give you some insight into tank building as well. I tried to find the latest Updates I could on the old forums. There's a lot of good thinking to find in these as they lay out their builds -- or I found it useful at least.

Paladin (https://forums-old.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/531053-U53-Paladin-Tank), easy to port to Fighter
Ftr multi-class (https://forums-old.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/535618-Steelmaiden-U57-Update)
There's also an artificer based one that I couldn't find. Variant of Arti12/Ftr4/Pal4.

These are all raid-specific builds though. So, my suggestion would be to start here, adjust to what your gear allows, and tweak the offense you want/can add to your group.

The other build that's similar Kali's above is this one, https://forums.ddo.com/index.php?threads/kodewraiths-cha-pally-framework.533/. As a framework, it provides a good base to work from and you can again tweak up or down various aspects. The builder has good discussion around those options too.

Only other suggestion based on my experience is to keep some offense. It might not seem like its making an impact, but every little bit helps and in a small group with the right Hate gear your offense can hold aggro too. I'm a heavy Intim key smasher anyway, but on lower Reapers I would suggest it's better to build enough offense to hold aggro vs. the Intim/heavy duty tank version. YMMV.
 
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