How to Tank build

THIS POST GETS LONG, THERE IS A TL;DR AT THE BOTTOM FOR A GENERAL GUIDELINE ON SKILLS!

IF ANYTHING IS WRONG IN WHAT I'VE SAID PLEASE CORRECT ME! FOR THE SAKE OF NEWBS AND NOOBS EVERYWHERE!
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There are several different ways to build your tank as of now.

In terms of stats the most popular stat builds I can think of are.

Dex/vit/int
Dex/vit/mnt
Dex/vit
And full vit.

The reason most tanks use Dex is due to the hit rate and damage you obtain from using the stat. In some builds, Dex is also used for cast time. The most important part for most builds is tge hit rate so you can hold aggro.

Do note that the skill Provoke will never miss and does not need hit rate to hit. Magic such as Wall, also does not miss as of yet and can hit for 1 dmg even with negative values of magic attack.

Other builds that aren't advertised as much are builds that include Str as a damage stat or mix dex/str. These builds are more versatile in the weapons available. This is due to Staffs, Swords, and 2hs getting damage from all of them in equal or greater value than dex.

Special staffs such as the Morning Star make very good use of the str stat and are still very viable with the new swords that are out.

Swords generally fit as a filler weapon to most tanks as of now.

2hs are viable if you're willing to learn hard hit and use Martial Art skills. These builds sacrifice a shield and are not as sturdy as a one handed weapon and shield build. They are still very durable when built currently though.

On skills, the rule of thumb right now is.

Survival Skill Tree
-Hp Rest - lvl 5 (pre-req for hp boost)
-HP Boost - lvl 10 (hp +1100 or so at lvl 10)

Knight Tree
-Provoke - lvl 5 ~ 10
Lvl 1 ~ 7 = 400 mp
Lvl 8 ~ 9 = 300 mp
Lvl 10 = 200 mp
I personally prefer Provoke at lvl 10 myself.

-Rage Blade lvl 5 ~ 10
This skill is your damage skill and a aggro generation skill. The aggro is not better than Provokes but it serves as a way to keep aggro and deal damage for Tanks. Builds that have invested in damaging stats will find tgemselves hitting hard with it. You'll still hit hard as a pure vit build as well. Albeit only about half as hard as damage invested tanks.

Keep in mind though, this skill only works with Swords.

-Assault
This skill is debatably useful or useless. At lvl it's almost useless but is much better and extremely advantageous at lvl 10. The skill causes you to teleport to the target and cause knockback with a chance to also cause the slow status. This skill is great for positioning on bosses and makes good use of Wall for some builds that choose to combo the skills together. This skill is not very damaging and is mostly for reposition/effect inflicting.
This skill works with all weapons.

-Parry
This skill acts like the Guard you have when using shields. It does not activate on shield procs however and only initiates for physical damage. Parry has no animation except for a white flash and does not cause your character to go into a guard animation that roots your character. It also does not work on magic attacks and is likely calculated into activating after guard does not. This skill does not replace guard but it does buffer you incase guards do not happen, it also works with all weapons.

Shield Skills
-Shield Mastery
Lvl 5 or max. All on you to decide on that. Some people don't mind the aspd decay, others do, but you need lvl 5 for Shield Bash.

Bottom Shield Tree Aura
-Protection and Aegis

These two skills are party buffs.
Protection provides def and reduces magic def and Aegis serves as the reverse of Protection.

These are your only form of support ability and are currently the only party buff outside of the support trees regenerative healing skills.

I have no idea how much of an increase either of these skills give or if they can be stacked at the same time. Or if stacking them negates the effect of the other. If you can find some that can explain just how much defense this gives overall, i'd love to find out.

As is though, they are your only party support outside on tanking so it's your choice on getting them for actual use or for pre reqs at lvl 50. General consensus is to get them at least lvl 5 as a safety net for future patches. I'm going to skip it and leave it for support characters to get myself.

-Shield Bash
Plz get lvl 10

I highly recommend getting Shield Bash lvl 10 from the Shield Tree when available. As the stun by itself reduces a ton of potential damage and saves time by keeping your target immobile for a lengthy period of time. I feel it's 5 seconds but i've never timed it. If you can't afford it in your build, find a way. It does no damage but I guarantee you won't regret it.

-Force Shield
Increase hp by a static (skill lvl * 50) formula with some defense tacked in when using a shield. It's a nice general boost, but I feel that 5 points is enough for the skill as a pre req for the future. Reason being that 250 hp and some def that is unmodified by vit isn't going to hinder you much now or in the future. Others will disagree and will swear by the skill. I recommend at least planning to get it in your build at some time though. Simply because it doesn't hurt your build.

Magic Tree

-Charge

I still find this skill more harm then good in most occassions but others swear by it for it's boss farm potential. I recommend you get it since i'm a black sheep in that regard.

Lvl 0 ~ 10

Note that this skill has reduced cast speed with staffs and magic tools. It is at it's slowest when not using a staff or magic tool. The cast speed is also unreducable.

There are brackets between the skill levels that reduce cast time of the skill. The level of the skill also increases how much mp will be gained.
I believe the formula is (200 + (skill lvl * 10)) to get you 300 mp at lvl 10 and 210 mp at lvl 1.

I haven't tried to look at the skill level by level in awhile though

After those your skill points are free to save or use in about any place you can think of. Other users may be able to give a better idea of what to do from here.
Tl;Dr

Skills
Hp rest - lvl 5
Hp Boost - lvl 10
Provoke - lvl 5 ~ 10
Rage Blade - Lvl 5 ~ 10
Shield Bash - lvl 10
Force Shield - lvl 5 ~ 10
Aegis - lvl 0 ~ 10
Protection - lvl 0 ~ 10
Charge - lvl 0 ~ lvl 10 (prefered lvl 1)






I forgot to put Parry I think. lvl 0 ~ 10

I agree with not maxing Aegis or Protecting. Not because of the third skill though.

As I said before, I view these skills as most combatible with a support character. I don't support getting the skills because of that. I can't veto it out if someone does want tge skill though. If you do get the skill though, I have a problem with not knowing how benefitial the skills are to me and my party. We don't know how much our defense increases/decreases. We don't know if they stack and without that information we can't assertain as to what a third skill would be. If the values give higher increases than decreases so that you effectively neutralize the decrease and they are allowed to stack, then we have the third skill your guessing upon. For example

Protection
50% def increase, -25% mdef decrease
Aegis
50% mdef increase, -25% def decrease

Let em stack and we have a 25% increase on both defenses.

If the skills work like that and the third skill is a overall def skill, you may as well max them all. If they don't stack and it's a overall defense increase then you're just filling in filler points. Problem with the filler idea is that almost every active skill in this game becomes amazing in some way when maxed and rival higher level locked skills. Or they diverge from the skill entirely and have a very different effect.

Hell, if the level cap was at 29 for the start of Beta, would you have guessed that after Knuckles knockdown blast, that we'd get a AoE stop? I doubt it, so i'll keep my guessing at what comes next to a minimum in that regard. (>~> my bet is on status resistance though)

Lvl 5 would be the safest bet for anything though. Lvl 0 if you don't care for it, and lvl 10 if you can afford it or believe it helps. So still lvl 0 ~ 10 would make the general consensus, since there is no reason not to do what you want if you want the skill.

I agree with Provoke maxing, because it's so good at max for mp and the stupidly high aggro generation. Some like having it at 5 though so they can afford something else because they believe that Rage Blade is in end all to be all aggro maker. I disagree vehemently, but I haven't tested enough builds (char 18 in the making) to say otherwise. It may work for some people, but I HATE not having lvl 10 provoke.

Shield Bash does almost no damage at all, the point of the skill isn't the damage though, it's the rediculous utility. That reliable interupt and the 5 seconds of pure lock down due to stun. Yes Astute does damage, but it doesn't make you nearly as effective, tanking wise imo.

Not that it doesn't have it's place, Astute is a great damage option of course, but I feel that any tank character will be thankful for 5 seconds of immobolized enemy every now and then. If you have hard hit and shield bash you have pretty much immobilized the target from doing any red mark attacks. Which means that anything that could potentially do damage can be interupted if you have a reliable flinch and shield bash. You can even reposition monsters away from your team easily. Astute gives damage, which is important, but doesn't top those points for a tanky character to me.

Also, it's pretty affordable in most builds and doesn't overlap with knuckle users much at all. That's a discussion for another day though.

If u hate keeping aggro from provoke , use long combo"s and put trigger slash at end of combo"s , put the mp save skill "dayum i forgot the name again" to make all the skill cost 100mp only . u"ll regen mp fast this way with auto atck , just watch out for the red area atck and time ur combo . hope this helps a lil

Thanks for the suggestions. Seems like combo is my way out.

That raised 2 questions:

1) I'm full VIT, so the damage of my combo output could be 143... 250... 68... 111... Similar to other people's regular hits, or possibly worse, will that keep hate? I bought knight tree for 6.4k just for provoke and it seems a bad choice ^^

2) I'm confused with how to unlock combo. I've read different things. Unlock 10 skills. Fully max 7. Which is it? Or either or?

Thanks for all the info. I will have to re roll it then. But at least, this time, you gave me all the info I need to do it right.

Appreciate it.

As a tank I wouldn't chain so many skills in one combo. It keeps you locked in the animations which in return is bad for a tank who is supposed to react fast to the boss. That may be a moot point with the majority of bosses right now but expect to die alot if you can't outrun or stun an AoE (best example: Brutal Dragon) in the future.

Yeah all bosses iirc have a attack that deals fixed damage based on your max hp. Back in Alpha I though it was a bug but now I've just come to accept it :v
Annoying to be 1HKO by Kaiser with 4k hp... q.q