Hey everyone, I played the first 4 years or so and have decided to return. I have not played a Guardian prior and am really looking to get a hand at a strong tank Guardian build and cannot find much out there at all on this topic. Can anyone point me in the right direction at all ?!? Thanks in advance!
Warrior Tree: AGI/STA/INT lines are the ones you want for tanking. The others are situation fill ins for missing stats such as Crit Chance or low Hate Gain. There is a topic on this forum to revamp the Warrior tree to better suit both classes instead of just defensive speccing. Guardian Tree: Early on I would recommend sticking with the self-helping ones. Ignore the +mitigation on Battle Cry it doesn't effect much later on. Definitely get cooldowns on your emergency skills (Tower of Stone, Guardian Sphere) and be sure to max out Unyielding Will to remove the death-trigger. Shadows Tree: Pet of the Gods and Hearty Constitution are the starters from there if you are lower level take one of your stance buffs. If you are higher take enhancing Overpower and Battle Hardened. From there augment Rallying Cry and Hold the Line. Take 5 points in the %mit to your defensive stance and as usual the tree-ender for each level. At the bottom augment Battle Tactics, Hunker Down, Reversal (strikethrough) once you have all those down its matter of choice. Heroic: For most heroic fights you can get away with Partisan Cleave though you NEED Perfect Counterattack for raiding. Body and Spirit and Lightning Reflexes are a must. Enhanced Experienced Insight gives you a nice amount of hate and CC immunity. You also should take the 10% DR on Hunker Down for reducing overall damage. Prestiege: Simply put left side for pure-tanking. Right side for pure-dps. Take both conversions for a balance (50/50). I hope that helps you, Guardians are the lowest parsing tanks in the game atm but we have many utilities for hate. They are hard but quite rewarding when played properly and I would argue are more difficult to play (outside of raid) well.
http://beetny.com/eq2aa/#GU65;9t014...05105@511t300a0a8a00a1t5330@412010230@33@3001 I am assuming you are starting out again, I am saying this because the game has changed a lot since the first 4 years. A few things to note: Crit chance, Multi attack, Crit bonus are now more important than ever for us. We generate 50% or more of our threat from auto-attacks. Gear acquisition would be first priority after you hit max level cap and AA. You will see a lot of stats on the gear now than you ever did before. Prioritize some stats over others at first and once you get the hang of it you can do as you please. About the AA spec, it is a fairly common setup. If you look at the warrior tree, Crit chance, Multi attack, Block chance and hate gain you can play around with when you have good enough gear to save points then you can spend them elsewhere if you want. Guard tree: The reuse time on Rescue, Reinforcement, Tower of stone and Unyielding will change depending on your re-use speed. I have, for now, maxed out those for you. If you look at the 4 endlines, all 4 are active. Got your back you can do without if you are not going to raid anytime soon. Shadows tree: Is very straight forward, not much else you would spend your points in. Heroic Tree: Again simple, you can shift points from re-use to bulwark if you so desire and change the end ability from counter attack to ae friendly partisan cleave. Prestige tree is relatively new in game: Left hand side group benefit, right hand side guardian benefit. Your call on what you want to do. For now i would go for that kind of setup.
Thanks a ton for the replies guys and yes I have noticed changed tons since my Brigand days. I am purely looking for end game tank/raid etc for when the time comes Appreciate the replies! Enjoying the game a lot once again
If you plan on raiding I would suggest picking up "Got Your Back" once your gear levels out and you can conserve some AA off reuse times. You want Tower of Stone and all stoneskins to be maxed (1 minute, 2 minutes and 2.5 minutes repsectivly to ToS, PCA and LMS). Till then I would say take the Right hand predigest AA for heroic content as it will help you hold hate with dps. As Arclight said the other 3 trees are pretty straightforward and I am glad he made a Beetny page for it, I keep forgetting that site. Raid wise the Left side benefits groups alot but I am debating its use in CoE, not many Death-shot type AE's that you would need group DR on.
You are more than welcome to check out my spec on eq2wire: http://u.eq2wire.com/soe/aas/450971862056 Mine leads heavily to raid tanking, with a few dps choices in there. I do keep fooling with dropping points that are in lines that lower reuse speed, as for example Guadian Sphere on the guardian tree for me reaches max reuse at 2 points instead of 5. And there are times I debate if the extra second duration from those 3 extra points might be better elsewhere. And I don't mean just on Guardian Sphere, but on MANY of those abilities that lower reuse but since they don't affect base reuse your spending points that put you over cap. Last I looked, Rhita was running an extremely defensive raid tank build. You could compare with his and make decisions. Ultimately gear, your CC, your MA, and reuse speed is going to make tweaking either of these specs needed to really maximize what you are getting out of your AA. But they should be good starts.
Curious as to why nothing spec'd on the Guardian tree into the Hate gain or shout abilities?! is keeping aggro not really a problem at higher levlels or a matter of knowing and telling raid when to start dpsing?
Atan you and I are using identical AA setups XD. I just recently flipped prestiege for Offense lines unless I really need the group DR only like 1 or 2 fights come to mind in CoE HM (Drinal and maybe Amalgamon).
Sry for double post. Like me Atan probably runs about 45-50% hate mod static so in raid he already hits 100% hate mod (the cap). For us we also do enough dps that we were able to spec out of increased hate mod.
hrmm hate mod static? how do you mean? sorry again new back to EQ2 heh. Stats on gear poured into hate?
Heh, that is exactly whats on my AA mirror. For now I'm staying defensive as we're working new CM content, but most of the time I'd be just fine with the offensive build.
Makes me wonder if AA are not really "Alternative" anymore. Seems like eventually many end up with 1 "right" build for their jobs. I guess it has to do with the sheer number of AA now. Just a question have you read the Warrior Tree change/feedback thread? It has some interesting points by myself and about 4 others. I still feel the Prestige lines are just a bit lackluster outside of there very specific purpose, but heck maybe that's the point of them.
Yeah, a bit from AA and the rest comes from gear/adornments. I have 4-6 hate mod adorns so I get 100% when I have a Dirge+Coercer. The only people who rip on me are other tanks. DPS only rips when the mob memwipes me to the 20-24th positions; Baelon I am talking about you!
You guys have it easy, our OTs all wear the old ST earring that procs positions. If you're leveling up, start in the warrior kos tree and go for multi attack, then crit chance, then hate mod, then haste. Start working on the guard eof tree after that.
Luckily I'm in a position to /kick OT if they wear said earring and stay on my mob =P I could tell a lovely story about Wiping to Berek at 5% and seeing the OT that pulled him over the raid was wearing said earring...
ugh don't get me started on Ire Tanks... worse than Reckless SK's for trying to keep Aggro-lists straight. I may not be the raid leader but I am the MT. We lost Borodass and Baelon last night at 2% because right as Verdict went in he AE-auto'd someone and got the 4th deathbuff. Best part in that fight is when he memwipes to someone on Borodass and takes 5 steps then runs like a goddamn train to the other side of the zone, 1 shots the offending mage and then leisurely walks back to where he auto-attacked the tank killing 6 squishies on an AE auto (I am pretty sure he has a 270 degree arc on that) and healed to 100%. Yeah Ire is a proc for weak tanks. Use it only in Heroic content or if the mob memwipes a lot and it doesn't matter who tanks it.
Yeah, that memwipe is 'special' I swear there is a 50/50 chance for him to wipe to one of the people we have on Borodass...
