Boeroer

No, it's the other way round. Generally speaking low defenses, low health and low AR makes enemies target you more often. That's why enemies like to run past your frontline (it it has no engagement) and attack your glasscannons. The most effectve way to make sure that the tank is attacked is initiating combat with the tank and let only him unstealth. Then wait until most enemies gathered around him. During that time you can still use buffs or call summons - because that won't break the stealth of your party members (only attacking does). When most enemies have decided to attack your tank you can attack with the other party members. Engagement of the tank prevents enemies from just leaving him in order to attack your backline. There's no secret. You buff up and then either attack with a weapon or cast some spells. For example: Infuse with Vital Essence Spirit Shield Mirrored Images Lllengrath's Safeguard cast damaging stuff If you are a Bloodmage you could use Concelhaut's Corrosive Siphon a lot. Or Concelhaut's Parasitic Staff or Concelhaut's Draining Touch + shield in melee. You could also use a Pale Elf, Magran's Blessing and cast Fire Shield and after buffing cast Chillfog around yourself. With high fortitude and item that gives you resistance against Perception the Chillfog will not really harm you but be very effective against enemies around you. Or you get Rekvu's Fractured Casque and give yourself an injury (out of combat, cast Necrotic Lance on yourself until you go down: minor injury). That will make you immune to all interrupts. Now you can not only use the Grimoire of Vaporous Wizardry without any drawback but also cast Slicken on yourself. All enemies around you will get interrupted all the time while you are completely immune. If you also wear the Upright Captain's Belt you will be immune to push/pull effects as well - so your can also cast Pull of Eora onto yourself (and the enemies around you). You will mess them up pretty badly. Combine this with an item that gives you resistance to DEX afflictions and you can also cast Binding Web onto yourself. The combo Slicken+Pull+Binding Web is quite devastating for the plans of many enemies. Most of times they will just tumble around wihtout being able to move or do anything remotely effective. Then you can follow up with damaging spells if you wish. If you also wear Rekvu's Scorched Cloak you will heal from fire damage: just drop Fireballs onto your head and stand in your own Wall of Flames. They will heal you but damage your enemies. Plenty of fun options imo.

Well "tanking" isn't the most exciting job in the party in the first place. I don't exactly know what you expected. Also if a Wizard's gameplay seems boring to you I don't know if there's any other class that would feel less boring. Wizards are all about micromanagement and squeezing the most out of their (mostly awesome) spells. Maybe you got that feeling at lower levels though where spell uses are quite scarce. If you have problems with a Stalker tank's Animal Companion dying too much you are most likely not using it effectively. Instead of sending it in first in order to take the heat from you you should go in first. Use fat armor and shield. If you take the Bear + Resilient Companion you will have a high AR, very sturdy flanker which can help you to deal good damage (combined with your own damage which wouldn't be too good because you are slow and have a shield). If you take the Boar the AR is a bit less but he'll have constant health regeneration - the Boar does rel. low dmg though. If you have a Wolf you get the most dmg per attack but he's less sturdy than Bear or Boar. My pick would the Bear if I fear knockouts of my animal companion but still want it to do some dmg. You need to keep your animal companions near as a Stalker. That way you both get +1 AR (which is a very important bonus for tanking) and +5 defense (which is also good). So always act as a tag team, don't separate. That shouldn't be too hard as a tank since you won't move a lot. I would try to get Stalker's Patience asap so I could unlock the AC's Predator's Sense later at all times. Spears also give you more engagement. The shield, too. Which is also good to have a a tank. With Stalker's Link your pet will also have more engagement, so together you can bind more enemies. Before getting Stalker's Patience you can use a battle axe + Blessing Cuts modal to unlock Predator's Sense. You will still need to have some healing in your party for the Ranger himself - or use some regeneration gear. The pet can be healed by the Ranger. The good thing about a Stalker tank is that his defensive bonuses can't get dispelled by Arcane Dampener etc. They are all passive. The disadvantage is that he cannot achieve very high defenses. But in combination with good AR and two bodies it still works. Generally speaking multiclasses can achieve better tanking than single classes because there will be more defensive synergies.

There was a fix of the template for shields as well (two variables were set as "string" - but string was too small in size for long item descriptions so it was changed into "wikitext") - but apparently is wasn't enough fixing and there's still something not right. Maybe one or two additional variable types have to be changed. Those three shields must share something that lets the generator bug out on them (e.g. text for aquisition is too long or something). I fiddled around but couldn't fix it. I contacted the dev again. I guess it will get fixed today sometime.

They are good. But the best ranged auto-attacker is probably Ranger/Ascendant or Ranger/Helwalker with Frostseeker. I also had great success with Berserker/Streetfighter using Essence Interrupter (insane attack speed). But you have to micro your health a lot so i maybe doesn't fit that well. Troubadour/Streetfighter with Red Hand (using upgraded Whisps to flank yourself and using Gunner, Maia's armor, Acina's Tricorn, Sure Handed Ila + Mith Fyr) is also very nice. But also a lot of setup needed. Frostseeker with Ranger/Helwalker needs very little micro and does tremendous damage (even better with Community Patch because it lets Turning Wheel work for ranged attacks again). A cheesy build is Ranger/Monk or /Cipher or even single class with enough Arcana to cast Avenging Storm - and then using Hand Mortar. The Blinding Smoke of Hand Mortar triggers Avenging Storm. It destroys mobs instantly - but is not that great against single targets. Frostseker it both good against single targets and groups.

Wasn't OP asking for single classes specifically or what does "SC Tank" mean? In that case (?) - and if we talk about relatively reliable tanking from level 1 on - I would say that Fighter or Paladin are the way to go. With a bit of effort also Trickster and Wizard right from the start. Stalker might work, too (if you are using the Animal Companion effectively). Even an Ancient can be used for tanking quite effectively. The Sporlings are pretty good in the early levels. One tier higher you can then use Wild Growth to give them +2 AR and endless regeneration. At the highest levels they gain very good health and a very long duration. With Wild Growth they can tank for a whole (normal) encounter. And of course by then you will have multiple other summons which can tank for you. Chanter also has summons which can tank a bit. The early ones are flimsy but you can recast as often as you like. The later ones can be very tanky. The Dragon is one of the tankiest summons because of its immense health pool. If you have a Chanter and an Ancient in the party you can cast Wild Growth on the Dragon...

I'm now in contact with a dev from MediaWiki who fixed the weapons' template. I'm sure she will fix the shield template as well.

Which ones? Edit: I miss that large gladiator-themed shield. What name was that...? Edit2: Bronlar's Phalanx...

Cool! Reminds me of the time I learned about type casting in C (what feels like a thousand years ago).

I am in contact with Tagaziel and he's looking into it.

The wiki generates those lists from datasets (it uses an extension called Cargo). Often the generation seems to have hickups. Sometimes there are multiple entries of one item, others are missing. Sometimes it can be fixed doing an empy edit (just so that that the list gets generated again properly). Often I can't change anything though. My knowledge about how that wiki operates under the hood is very limited so I can't really do anything without diving deeper into that software - which I don't want to do. But maybe if we tag one of the wiki guys here, for example @Tagaziel, they might be able to fix it...? Edit: several unique weapons also seem to have disappeared from other lists. For example Spearcaster is not only gone from the unique weapons list bzt also from the list of all arbalests. The wiki moved from gamepadia to fandom recently. Maybe that caused some problems, too?

Nope

Sorry, I meant you'd have summons on top of the robust AC. But as Elric said th Ghostheart's AC is a spirit. Wild Growth already works on summons (and only summons) - but only beast or primordial summons. So mostly Chanter and Druid summons, but maybe it also works on Xoti's Lashing Vines or Maura's Writhing Tentcles - but I never checked. It's cool on a Bellower's Dragon summon because it makes it even tankier and bigger than it already is.

I could. I haven't looked at it for the last couple of days though. Would need to clean it up first I think. And also need to find the file where the echantment descriptions are.

Yeah... I prefer a Debonaire/Wizard and a separate Beguiler in the party. Although Desintegrate + charm should work nicely. It should give you a lot more duration. The Debonaire crit conversion is a bit botchrd though it seems. Looks like you have to have some other form of conversion in order to "register" it properly. Like Dirty Fighting. I tested this after release of the Debonaire and conversion wouldn't happen if I didn't also take Dirty Fighting. But then it was 100%. The combat log always said it was DirtY Fighting that did the conversion though. My suspection is that the game just takes an existing conversion and sets it to 100 against charmed enemies. But if you don't have any conversion to begin with it may be that it then fails to do so. Maybe. Would explain my weird test results.

Let's not forget Buttercut! : Thinking about Rodriguez/Ramirez I have to laugh again. Who was that user (or his autocorrections) who gave him all that hispanic names? I think he's not active anymore.

But I missed that the initial target gets hit twice. What a fail...

Too bad stuff like Nature's Terror, Ryngrim's Repulsive Visage and Relentless Storm etc. are not implemented as beneficial effects on the character.

Puppet Master + Forbidden Fist attack + Lingering Echoes + 10 INT-> very long lasting minions for pretty cheap. Also works with Forbidden Fist + Whisper of Treason of course. Only that you have to do it the other way round and that you can't reapply FF because alignment will flip back. So Puppet Master is better imo. It's a bit work but you can switch a lot of enemies in a rel short time. In between cast some Phantom Foes stuff to gain some focus. At the start I like Secret Horrors, too. With Instruments of Pain you can do it from rel. safe distance, too. Add Dichotomous Soul on top for even more minions. Call it "the Forbidden Fisper". Or the "Banned Hand Puppeteer". Edit: now imagine those puppets where you put your hand through their... you get the picture... :

It would have been so cool if Wild Growth (of the Ancient) worked on Animal Companions... You would have had a nice nature-themend build focused around the Animal Companion. DoTs for Predator's Sense, healing, buffing and a neverending Robust inspiration and a huge pet. Summons, too.

Great catch with the armor's buff! Combine with Bloodmage and Wall of Draining maybe (as you suggested)? Add Mask of the Weyc (stacks with everything except Arcane Veil) and Magnificent Escape Cape (stacks with everything except Escape, but only castable when bloodied - combine with Llengrath's Safeguard?) and the usual wizard stuff as well as Zandethu's Draconic Fury and you should have stellar defenses, nonstop healing as well as good dmg output. And your Spiritshift won't end like you said. Druid's healing easily counters Blood Sacrifice. Bear form with Llengrath's Safeguard could be awesome AR with 9 recovery. Lots of buffing and micromanagement though. Regaining the tier-7 spell slot alone to be able to cast WoD and then Draconic Fury... I like @thelee's idea of combining "spells" from Trickster with Shifter. Furrante's Breastplate could be cool there as well, stacking with Mirrored Images and all. Might carry you through the first phase of the encounter until you killed some enemies and things become less tense?

Look at that green little fella!

True. But at the same time it turns the game into something else. A sneaky thief game. You have to have patience, do a lot of rinse & repeat and also be a little bit of a one-trick pony. I guess not everybody likes that (which is okay of course). Also it's not great for party play. Your party would have to be all Rogues (or Priest of Skaen or Wizards) or just get parked outside the encounter.

Haha, thank you. Funnily enough the day I'm getting the odd but also welcome compliment that I'm not an ass is also the day when it was discovered that I have kidney stones. That explains the really, really bad last two nights I had. Seriously: I don't wish that pain to anyone. Not even to Megabosses...

FoD does work while you are shifted.

Whirling Strikes I assume. It's very good. Better than Barb's Heart of Fury.