Tanks and you
Posted: Thu Mar 13, 2014 10:41 pm
So figured I'd give a brief comparison of the 3 tanks and advantages and disadvantages, but a lot is changed up in the patch as far as specifics. This is just a gist of what each tank excels at and where they are weaker. Once I finish patching and get to test the actual abilities I'll update the info.
Engineer - Range tank, but in many situations that is meaningless. There are fights where the range makes it easier to avoid telegraphs while tanking, but for the most part you'll be standing toe to toe with most fights. The abilities in the engineers repertoire feel better suited to enhancing the other tanks at end game, but they are perfectly fine at tanking. Unsteady Miasma created a chance to miss buff on the target and the Repairbot and Recursive matrix heal shields and increase deflect chance on the group respectively. The big draw is the innate that in the patch gives 5seconds of 55% increased mitigation which can help your healer catch up or to eat a large hit when you know it's coming.
The largest weakness for engineer tanks is mobility. The patch has removed the movement speed debuff, but engineers don't have much in the way of closing gaps or escaping telegraphs. This can mean you will take more damage in a lot of situations and need to strategically use cool downs when unavoidable telegraphs are coming
Stalker - Medium armor tank that uses high mobility to avoid damage. This class works very much like it's described. There are multiple abilities to close or create gaps with a higher deflect chance than the other tanks resulting in a spiky tank experience. There are amps with high cool downs that help minimize the RNG chance of taking a bad crit, but until the current patch these were broken and made stalkers almost unkillable. What isn't mentioned is that the stalker works very much like a lifetap tank a la Blood Dk's from WOW. Nano darts return 100% damage as health, but only hit a single target. The nano field heals a percentage of damage back each pulse and then 100% when closing the field rather than letting it fade. Personally I find leveling in tank stance very effective for stalkers as you can maintain full health quite easily with those 2 abilities alone. They also have buffs and debuffs and can be used as support tanks like the engineer, but the main tanking abilities don't offer as much group support.
Survivability is the biggest weakness. The stalker's medium armor can get them blow up if you don't dodge a telegraph quite easily. While the maneuverability is good it also makes the healers job that much more difficult. It helps to have a good understanding with your healers so they know where you are about to be.
Warrior - Feels like what most people would recognize as a tank. There's a mixture of defensive cooldowns and maneuverability that make warriors very tanky. What needs to be seen from the most recent patch is threat generation. Warriors had major issues gaining and maintaining threat. It was more effective to tank in dps gear and hold threat through increased damage in previous patches. I only played this class to 20 so I don't have much experience with max level builds on it.
I'll update this as I can.
Engineer - Range tank, but in many situations that is meaningless. There are fights where the range makes it easier to avoid telegraphs while tanking, but for the most part you'll be standing toe to toe with most fights. The abilities in the engineers repertoire feel better suited to enhancing the other tanks at end game, but they are perfectly fine at tanking. Unsteady Miasma created a chance to miss buff on the target and the Repairbot and Recursive matrix heal shields and increase deflect chance on the group respectively. The big draw is the innate that in the patch gives 5seconds of 55% increased mitigation which can help your healer catch up or to eat a large hit when you know it's coming.
The largest weakness for engineer tanks is mobility. The patch has removed the movement speed debuff, but engineers don't have much in the way of closing gaps or escaping telegraphs. This can mean you will take more damage in a lot of situations and need to strategically use cool downs when unavoidable telegraphs are coming
Stalker - Medium armor tank that uses high mobility to avoid damage. This class works very much like it's described. There are multiple abilities to close or create gaps with a higher deflect chance than the other tanks resulting in a spiky tank experience. There are amps with high cool downs that help minimize the RNG chance of taking a bad crit, but until the current patch these were broken and made stalkers almost unkillable. What isn't mentioned is that the stalker works very much like a lifetap tank a la Blood Dk's from WOW. Nano darts return 100% damage as health, but only hit a single target. The nano field heals a percentage of damage back each pulse and then 100% when closing the field rather than letting it fade. Personally I find leveling in tank stance very effective for stalkers as you can maintain full health quite easily with those 2 abilities alone. They also have buffs and debuffs and can be used as support tanks like the engineer, but the main tanking abilities don't offer as much group support.
Survivability is the biggest weakness. The stalker's medium armor can get them blow up if you don't dodge a telegraph quite easily. While the maneuverability is good it also makes the healers job that much more difficult. It helps to have a good understanding with your healers so they know where you are about to be.
Warrior - Feels like what most people would recognize as a tank. There's a mixture of defensive cooldowns and maneuverability that make warriors very tanky. What needs to be seen from the most recent patch is threat generation. Warriors had major issues gaining and maintaining threat. It was more effective to tank in dps gear and hold threat through increased damage in previous patches. I only played this class to 20 so I don't have much experience with max level builds on it.
I'll update this as I can.