I don't raid and I certainly am not the top tank, still learning, myself. Some advice I've gotten is as follows in no specific order: Health, get at least 400k. 500k is better. You may have to put some health adorns in for now till your gear improves. Shop the market. It's ok to buy some good pieces. Sometimes an upgraded chest or belt can do wonders. There is now the new jewelry merchant in Vesspyr. If you have spare etyma you might look at his wares. Crit chance shoot for 600-650 range. Make sure your two weapons are for the same time (yours are four seconds so kudos. Some folks say they like six second weapons more but when you're starting out its about getting what you can and working with it.) As for learning to tank a zone, can you go through it on another class character and watch the tank as you do your bit? Also start the group if you feel ready to tank. If you tell folks you are just starting and are gonna do your best then most of the time people seem pretty decent about it. Run some Skyshrine groups as a tank. Learn to turn the mobs, see how you do with a ranger and a warlock firing away. How fast are you losing aggro? Is it a matter of timing your hate gain or more a matter of they are not allowing you a few seconds to get hate in the first place?
Your crit chance is fine up untill Dominion so dont increase that any further for now, U can even drop it to 550%. Have'nt you finshed epic repercussions for your mythical buff? Its a must have and seeing you only have 22% AE auto you either Forgot to cast it or you don't have it? Most heroic zones if not all will hold upgrades for your jewelry. Reforge about 20% of your current reuse into dps mod. Get more health, run the advanced solos and hope to get one of the Bolstered runes. Noose of the damned is a necklace dropping in one of the shissar heroics, it will increase the attribute bonuses of your deity pet by a lot and give you a nice chunk of Xtra stamina. That's where I would start if I were you.
I had recently redid my AA and all CA were off I have done epic repercussions and just now reapplied all my CA use defense stance. Also was thinking about doing HKC. As I was off the last few months prior to them adding this zone to game and just came back this month I have checked it out at all. Can I do this zone atm or how hard is it compared to say Dom?
It's as hard as Dom but different. I would not tank there until you are in mostly potent gear. You need to utilize your adorns. I put cast speed on almost everything I can and reforge it into dps mod. Put hate mod whites in gloves and maybe wrists. Use dps mod purples if you still need more dps mod. You could do with reforging, converting AB mod and cast speed and any AE auto on your gear to dps mod. Can you afford to buy some gear that would be over 1kpp each? I'm thinking of the following: Fabled earring of Arresting Earring of the dearly departed Gnawbone toothed choker Deathtouchers band All good mitigation tank stuff. If you can't, there is similar rare drops from HK and pickclaw, and basically other zones have rare fabled stuff with mitigation.
I can make any ToV adorns have all the spells bought and master adorner transmuter so anything that need di to make is np and can make any other adorns needed I can look into the gear see what avail and how much on my server and if needed use up some of my loyalty point for plat if I see a piece thats a nice upgrade I will check those item out.
I use the earring of arresting and highly recommend it, fwiw. So I can add my vote to the post Regolas made.
Ahh the age old problem. Cant tank zones to get gear, because you lack the gear to actually tank. I've worked out this problem years ago, and I've mentioned it already. Battlegrounds. x4 currency will let you buy the equivilant of 3 gemmed potant in 1/10th the time it would take to get etyma for green gems. And who cares if you suck in battlegrounds. Just get in there and get the armor. I need more scrubs for daily kill counts anyways.
Yes earring of arresting is very good, the proc is great on it. For the other ear slot you could run Fabled Den for the Fabled webbed earring, its got another +6% Mit, the proc isn't as good tho. The zone is very easy, My zerk and my monk can duo that zone except the last named with my ranger friend. Droll is right about battlegrounds, I recently discovered this and I regret I didn't know bout this earlier. You can get both gear and runes in there and its actually a lot of fun!
Zerkers can get away with worse gear in most group zones than other tanks. Avoid HKC and Dom for now, spec into all your single target aggro AAs for now (you should be able to skip AAs made for AE aggro) such as: Executioner's Anger (Warrior tree - Str line) Experienced Insight (Warrior tree) Enhance: Raging Blow (Berserker tree) Shot of Adrenaline (Berserker tree - *See Adrenaline Rush) Enhance: Rescue (shadow tree) Sneering Assault (shadow tree) Saving Grace (shadow tree - at least 2 points) Aggressive Nature (shadow tree) Cry of the Warrior (shadow tree) Adrenaline Rush (shadow tree) Jeering Onslaught (shadow tree - I know this isn't single target, but its still an amazing skill) Enhance: Experienced Insight (Heroic tree) Enhance: Cry of the Warrior (Heroic tree) Skip: Intimidation (Dragon tree) Grandmaster your taunt for 95 as well. Now what everyone here has said isn't exactly bad advise, its just skipping steps. As a zerker, yes, you can skip gearing up so, you can tank anything below Halls/labs in quest gear easily in pugs if you are familiar with the fights already, last fight in halls can require a good healer but its still doable. The main thing you need to do as a tank, is hold aggro and stay alive. Mash your adrenaline every time it is up (so long as you aren't already running battle frenzy or dragoon reflexes) as it helps with both once you spec into Adrenaline Rush. Now obviously as you get better gear, and start being able to swap out tank pieces for DPS pieces, you wont require all these aggro AAs in your normal grouping settings, but I am of the opinion it is better for the tank to have high aggro and low DPS to start with, and then slowly scale things back as you become more comfortable with how things are going. As a side note about the mit discussion. Despite what droll might have you believe, block is not worthless. It is something you want to make your life easier in the top group zones. Will you need to use a shield in every single group zone? Of course not. Can you get away without it? Sure. Does that mean you should blindly stack mitigation instead? Nope. I was running in full gemmed potent gear the first time I was solo healed through rage fire, was around 14.5K mit, 17K avoid, and was a 1 pull kill, never even lost a death save. When you are building a full tank set of gear, basically once you get to 14K mit or so, start collecting block pieces for the rest of your set. As for normal grouping in non-HKC/Dom zones, I don't use a single piece of block or mit gear, I go full WDB, and AE proc gear because in those zones HP is the only important stat to you (and even that can be done away with if you pay attention). Just as an example of how you can cheat some zones, this was hive 2 days ago in pure WDB gear. (10:19) Name | DPS | HPS | Cures Necro | 3022K | 25K | 0 Srsbizness | 2272K | 68K | 24 Chanter | 940K | 0K | 2 Beast | 476K | 0K | 0 Bard | 463K | 2K | 0 Heals | 115K | 32K | 15
This is why I always view gearing my tanks as the hardest/slowest of all my characters. You need to balance your needs and have gear appropriate to the zone you are running. I tend to get as much "turtle" gear as possible up front and then back down adding more offensive or dps gear as it drops for me. That said, as demonstrated by BloodySky (Srsbizness) above and mentioned several times by Droll, you can get away with a lot less mitigation in the easier zones on a zerker right now in exchange for dps gear. For both dps and threat your jewelry can be a huge factor. Wonder-waggler ring dropped by Bolgin in Pickclaw has a positional taunt effect. Spiked Band of Anarchy isn't really my favorite item but it is dropped from one of the earlier namers in Stratum and has a very large threat proc. There are quite a few tankish pieces from the various zones that have %mit plus a sizeable damage proc. Roll on them. The only proc you definitely want to avoid is discombobulate off of Cerata's Wax Seal and the Fabled Ring of Farseeing. Those have large threat detaunts associated with their proc. There is at least one SK running around on Everfrost who has a horrible time with aggro management and continues to wear that ring despite having been told repeatedly to take it off when tanking.
"As a side note about the mit discussion. Despite what droll might have you believe, block is not worthless. It is something you want to make your life easier in the top group zones. Will you need to use a shield in every single group zone? Of course not. Can you get away without it? Sure. Does that mean you should blindly stack mitigation instead? Nope. I was running in full gemmed potent gear the first time I was solo healed through rage fire, was around 14.5K mit, 17K avoid, and was a 1 pull kill, never even lost a death save." Now I dont tank raids... so i wont comment on that, but even hard heroics, like ragefire, or dominion, giving up mitigation or DPS for subpar avoidance, is counter productive. Many of our abilities require being hit. We do not have any abilities worth a damn that proc of an avoidance save the shared sta line. Will avoidance still make life easier for the healers? SURE! Of course it will. But would you rather have to keep your temps up 100% of the time by pushing a button every 30 seconds, or would you prefer spamming snaps every 5 seconds because you cant hold agro off that raid geared ranger, until you are out of snaps and the ranger dies? How much dps are you going to lose to get enough block chance for it to make a difference? You state that you had 17k avoidance and 14k mit. You are below the cap for mit against mobs your own level, in order to have mediocre avoidance. And when is the last time you fought a mob in a heroic zone that was your own level? Ragefire is what... level 103? ORANGE! You need more mit to even get close to capping mit against him. All that to gain the amount of avoidance my swashbuckler can get.... A paladin, in the same gear as you would likely be sitting at 19k avoid with 60% uncontested block. So for them, that avoidance is great. For you, it's better spent on something else. There are 3 total mobs in heroics that hit hard enough to actually damage you through Battlefrenzy. All of them in dominion. Every single other mob will provide a net benefit when they hit you with battlefrenzy active. Why would you want to avoid heals? Adrenaline, although it doesnt stop incoming damage, reduces it enough to the point that any scrub healer can heal what adrenaline and bloodrage do not. If you time a gutroar with adrenaline up, it basicilly becomes a complete heal (if you have enough mobs on you to proc bloodrage). So even out of battlefrenzy, I dont need no silly healers. Cycling these 2 abilities, adrenaline, Battlefrenzy, adrenaline, gives you 1.5 minutes of uninterupted "I dont need no stinking healers". You also get 2 casts of the purple group buff (forget it's name) to reset battlefrenzy in that time. So with a reset, you gain another 1.5 minutes. Without a reset, you may need to rely on some other temps, or maybe a healer in the group, to make up for no avoidance. If your healer cant heal you for 30 seconds out of every 3.5 minutes... well then, try a new healer. Or get him into voice chat so you can wake him up whenever your temps are down. Shields are for paladins and guards... because they need them. A well played zerk likes to get hit, and still requires less incoming heals than any other tank (except maybe a monk).
Tonight I will try to remember to log droll out in his defensive gear, so you all can have a look at what I gots for my "hard content" get up. Unfortunatly I havent tanked dominion in about a month because people stopped running it, since they can now just buy the eyeball.
I'm curious Droll. Do you go Left side prestige for Chaos reset of battlefrenzy a lot? I basically go right side as my normal spec, with left side for Dom/HKC only. But I don't need battle frenzy resets in any other zone. In fact I rarely use it at all. Dom/HKC are the only ones I'll use it regularly, and only to make it easier, it's still doable without. I do have a block set of gear, although it is purely just jewelry and charms to go with my mit armor. I will only use block stuff as a general rule if I'm wearing a shield, otherwise there's no point. The odd item (like WDB/+ hate effigy charm) I will use occasionally without a shield for the click, and I have a ring from stratum with block that I really should replace, but otherwise, there's obviously no point having high block and dual wielding. I do find in Dom that wearing a shield helps, due to the fact there's practically no trash to help heal, so avoiding a few hits, even with only 100 block chance fully blocked up, is nice to have. OP - you can tank any zone in 0/3 potent mit as a zerker, even Dom and HKC if you know your abilities. You'll find it easier with 3/3 of course, it's more stats, but you can do it all in 0 gem. Droll mentioned BGs for gear, it's definitely an option. The other two are using another character to run the zones and choosing the plate mission crate, or the final, slower option is starting with running just the zones that give you Arcane armor first, then once you have a full set of that, moving onto the potent rewarding zones. You won't get 3/3 gemmed very quick going the "traditional" route, but you get more shots at rare jewelry stuff and get to practice being a tank. You won't learn how to tank doing BGs.
I speced right side once when it first came out... ae resets are nice, but I prefer battlefrenzy resets. In case you forgot, I run at 10k mit so i pretty much need adrenaline or battle frenzy up for all but the easiest of zones. Not like it's hard to keep those up. Worth it to be parsing 2 - 4 mil dps... DPSing is fun!
My eq2u link doesnt seem to be updating, so here's a screenshot in my defensive spec with my defensive gear. 17371 mit. I didnt re arrange my hotbars for it, as i wouldnt use it for any zones today... and most of my defensive armor lacks gems. Mainly because I never use it. My melee stats suffer horribly, but I made up for it with twice the hate gain. 832k hit points is still too low for my comfort level, would be helped by some gems for sure. I just got too many toons that need upgrades too.
So to be clear that we are on the same page #1, 14K is above the cap for mobs lvl 95, #2 go ahead and look over some mitigation parsing such as Mitigation actual cap ?. As you can see, there is so little difference between 17K and 20K mitigation that its pretty funny when you talk about how I am wasting stats to get block while you are basically gearing yourself to a point where the extra temp buffs and group buffs you get make a >1% difference, while I use those extra mitigation pieces towards something that is actually useful for tanking (certainly less useful than other classes, but there reaches a point where its simply no longer effective to continue stacking mit). I easily reach 17K+ mitigation in groups between temp buffs, group buffs, and gear procs. Having 20K+ mitigation is 99.9% pointless in group content, and if you are building defensively you should be tossing in block gear after 14K because you will always temp/group/proc buff up above 17K. Now, I was not suggesting that the OP never build DPS, what I said was that its not a great idea to start there until you are comfortable with the class, but that if you ARE going to build defensively going pure mitigation like you were suggesting is quite frankly wrong and anyone that spent a little time actually doing some research and testing could tell you that. Sorry but please stop giving advise to new players as though your word is law, because it is not and I simply couldn't watch it go on any longer.
I'm pretty sure it states right there... damage is being reduced all the way to 23k. However, My original point was that, I dont go that high for anything but Dominion, which I havent done in a month. I go for DPS.
I love the numbers that can help me play this game. There effectiveness there caps the starting amount of a stat to be effective and stat priories along with CA and AA rotations for different roles so I see 3 sets of stats needed until I have equipment that is so bad *** I can use one setup. I know my first priority gear wise is still being effective tank but any advice on your dps solo be interested in seeing as well.
It shows a less than 1% difference between 17K and 23K mitigation, and you are going to get more than a 1% benefit from getting some block chance into your gear, I don't really know why you are still pushing your mitigation stacking point. Tips for increasing your DPS vary greatly depending on how many mobs you are fighting. Your Auto Attacks will end up being between 40% and 50% of your total damage (when duel wielding weapons), and perhaps when using a 2 hander as well, although its been so long since I used a 2 hander I can't actually remember so crit bonus is always a good choice. I don't really know what your plat situation is like, if you are flush you may want to look into just buying some weapons or jewelry from HKC. I do highly recommend getting the Fabled Webbed Earring from Fabled Den, as the effect Burst does good damage when fighting lots of mobs, and has mitigation so its pretty well rounded. Fabled Earring of Arresting from Fabled Sanctum is also a good choice for your second ear. I use Draconic Effigy from Halls for both the aggro boost, and the WDB boost to give a nice bump to DPS, both of which are nice to have. You are going to eventually want to either buy or farm a number of jewelry items from HKC, as there are a number of pieces that have mit or block as well as nice damaging effects, a few of which are even AE based such as Invader's Bracelet and Earrings of the Dearly Departed. Weapon wise, I use 6s (mostly because I wanted to use the ethereal 1 hander), but I think most duel wielders go with 4s as the faster your swing the more often you can do damage or get lucky procs to snap aggro back if you lose it by mistake. You can either buy or farm nice weapons from HKC eventually to replace what you got (but no rush there). For most zones, your mitigation is high enough where it is (although you still will want to finishing collecting items for a full defensive set in order to do Dom, hkc, or when you have a particularly crappy group you are trying to push through a zone like Halls), so you can focus on getting some WDB pieces to swap in for any armor slots you plan to use block items in (while you aren't using a shield). When I was first doing all my reforging, basically you can drop your MA down to 116 in order to get your attack speed to at least 200, and DPS to 600, after that, you want your reuse to 85% (gets to 100% with temp adorns), I personally go low with cast speed and recovery, but thats more of a personal preference than anything. Obviously any AE stats (like on your hammer) can be reforged into other things that you need to raise. Good luck.
All right I finally had some time last night to logon and I swapped a couple of quest pieces I had with the exchange merchant and I bought a few mit pieces of gear off broker for upgrades and I would like to see what you think of the stats I have now. What should I be adding for adorns have a few pieces of gear with adorns missing and want to add right items? Like to get recommendation on green adorns as well nothing to expensive but I can make them as well if I have recipe and mats and I can make any ToV items adorns needed I am max skill adorner and transmuter.
