Borgeo’s Chosen Tank Guide V1.0

Borgeos Chosen Tank Guide – PvE

Hi guys,  first off why am I even writing this guide?  Well ive been a tank on most MMOs and have played a Chosen extensively as my main in this one and I have seen the occasional scrub tank.  This guide will be aimed at Chosen but im sure Blackguards and Black Orcs may be able to take certain things away from it.

 What is a Tank

A tank is, I would say, the most important member of the group, without a solid tank you will be going nowhere fast.  You have to be unselfish in that you must forgo seeing the “big numbers” for the greater good, that being the ultimate destruction of your foe(s).

Coming from Everquest I have the old school mindset of tanks that I am the leader, the pace setter and the mediator for the group.

The first thing I will say is that if you are going to tank anything, at least have the decency to check up on it first.

There is nothing worse than a tank whos first time it is in the instance who hasn’t bothered to even read up on anything to do with it, be it looking at a map, checking boss tactics or special trash events (LV)

Obviously guild and alliance runs are more forgiving on pace but a standard PUG who have done the instance multiple times will be looking for a tank who can accelerate them through it.

 What is my role

I apply these rules whilst tanking:

1)      Keep the mobs beating on me

2)      Stay alive or 1) goes out the window

That’s it, if the mobs are on you, you will win.

There are a few ways to sustain 1, and some to help 2

First off ill show you the new Chosen tank spec, this is a recent (as of last patch) spec which cuts away some of the talents from the corruption tree in favour of some discord.

http://www.wardb.com/career.aspx?id=13#7:128:7:128:9:512:25:8353:504::8362::::8371:8372:8373:613

(This is at RR0, at RR40 stick the point in quake, Im a biff and cant remember how to get the career builder to do it.)

Bit of a weird spec and only 8 points in our tanking tree!!!!  I can explain!

Back in the day a heavy corruption build was the way forward, Oppression mixed in with Crippling Strikes led to a lot of reduced damage however the bonuses no longer stack.

Therefore it was my decision to lose out on Oppression to keep crippling strikes and the bonuses to the Dread Auras.

A quick explanation of tree choices:

Crippling Strikes: I opted to keep this over Oppression as it appears earlier in the tree for a flat 25% reduction when I crit, I hover my crit around 10% when tanking so this is up more or less when it needs to be.

Mixed Defences:  Chosen are a parry tank at the end of the day, this is one of the better tactics we have, with this and suppression, your parry will be boosted very high.

Quake:  The staple crowd control knockdown, still too useful to pass up.

Tactics

Crippling Strikes: See Above

Mixed Defences: See Above

Menace: Tanking rule 1 applies here, more threat = more mobs beating on you!

Flawless Armour:  In the past ive lambasted this talent for not doing what the tooltip says.  Guess what?  Its fixed.  It is now a 10% decrease in chance to be crit.  The tooltip is still bugged but it works. 

The synergy between these tactic choices is immense, the only real downside is the lack of Power from the Gods which means you really do have to manage your AP.  However your morale choices cushion this a bit.

Morales

My choices for morales are the following:

 1: Inevitable Changing

2. Tzeentches Amplification

3. Sprout Carapace

4. Immaculate Defence

Now some of these are questionable over others so feel free to swap them out, in particular 2 and 3.

1. Take for the AP refill only, very helpful
2. Either Shield wall or this, however I prefer this as if you aren’t taking damage you aren’t getting the aggro from guard, id rather take a massive 8k heal as that’s more threat for me!
3. Again taken for the AP regen, however you might want to consider taking the 50% damage reduction instead
4. Quite simply the most amazing Morale ever.

Auras

I use twister to help me twist 3 auras constantly and I would recommend getting it as Chosen are ALLLLLLL about the auras.

The three I pretty much twist without change are:

Dreadful Fear: More Str for me, less for them

Discordant Instability: Resists buff/debuff

Dreadful Fear: Constant AOE damage = constant aoe threat.

Some may argue over using Corrupting Wrath but honestly its not worth it and ill explain why in a moment.

Tanking Stats

Of the normal stats only two are overly useful for the tanking Chosen in PvE.

Wounds and Initiative.

But Borg! What about the tanking stat!! Toughness! 

I say screw your toughness, it’s a great stat in RvR where your average person is putting out 250dps and you can reduce that by 100dps actually making a dent.

Against a boss hitting you for 5k, its not worth it, better off being at wounds cap and having enough initiative to not be crit than reduce his dps by 100 (when its around 2.5k already)

Other stats to stack:

A bit of melee crit for crippling strikes procs.

Block!  Honestly, ive currently got my block just over 30%.  Reason being is you want those mixed defences procs,  at least that way you can easily have 90% block+parry.

Parry: Anything left can go here.

 

How to Tank Trash

Im not going to teach you to suck eggs but ill let you know my rotation for Trash.  Most of the time ill take out Flawless Armour in favour of Power from the Gods, the extra AP is needed for holding aggro on Multiple mobs.

Ok usually I will target the mob I think I need to build most threat on, most of the time this will be the mob that needs to get burnt first.

Open with a taunt on this mob, wait for the whole pack to close distance then Quake, hit Blast Wave, and start cycling auras.  Hit challenge to hold them all.  Use Supression on the main mob, then tab through each hitting ravage for extra threat.  Refresh each AOE as they come up.

That’s really it.

 

How to Tank Bosses

Some bosses have crazy mechanics where you need to hold things back, but a basic tank and spank boss I use this rotation.

(Flawless Armour now slotted so low AP regen)

Open with Taunt, hit Blastwave then Supression.  If melee dps are in the group hit Tooth, if not wait out Supression again, keep cycling auras and refresh Taunt.  

The key thing to keep up over everything else is Suppression, an extra 25% chance to parry is huge.

Closing Points

The Key things in my mind when building a good tank suit is that you have enough HP to survive (aim for 10k with liniment as a base) and that you can become uncrittable with Flawless Armour.  Be sure to ask any Zealot you group with for the Init buff and not Str (doesn’t stack with aura anyway)

The main thing killing tanks in instances are crits, I used to get crit a lot!  And it was the crits taking me out when they shouldn’t, this puts undue pressure on your healers.  With this new spec ive been told its so much easier to keep my ass up.

Don’t get disheartened by the class and think that Chosen are useless tanks, ive solo tanked everything in the game so far (Sure Nkari isn’t dead yet but im still solo tanking her) so anyone saying Chosen are gimp tanks can go take a running jump.

Ill also add that the tank spec is god damn awful for PvP, get used to respeccing…..