What's the deal with Tanks?

[zendingo]

I didn't include tanks in my party much before now, I usually just had several melee dps guys who could split aggro between them and a healer to keep them up.

 

But recently I tried some runs with a tank, but just nothing compares to the undying titan build for survivability. And since that build dumps resolve to 3, has lowish con, and skips most tanky type abilities, it can be built to be rather offense oriented. I think if I did the build again I might gear it for more engagement slots, but I'm not sure they are really needed since the low resolve makes it pretty sticky on its own.

 

I compared this build to an unbroken/trickster build and even though it had the best tank gear it still would go down before the undying titan againt red skull enemies.

 

I will say that I only got to level 10 with both of these builds, so maybe things change later. But right now it seems like glass canon with 1 key ability out tanks pure tanks quite handily.

 

What is your experience?

[Boeroer]

The thing is: if you get hit with Arcane Dampener and similar effects which strip you off of healing, if you are weakened or enfeebled, if you get gunfire focused at you:

 

Undying Titan drops, high defense tank stays.

 

Arcane Dampener is a common tool of enemies in the later game. I always try to interrupt the guy who wants to cast it, but often enough they make it and stuff like Constant Recovery and Unbending is gone. At the same time a tank who relies on passive defense (like a Paladin with shield for example) can't be stripped off of his defenses.

 

A useful tank also doesn't just stand there. He should be able to contribute in additional ways. For example a Chanter/Paladin tank could boost party damage via Mith Fyr + Shared Flames. Or provide great passive party heals with Exhalted Endurance + Ancient Memory.

 

An Unbroken/Trickster or Paladin/Trickster can deal great damage to mobs that surround him while tanking and also apply afflictions. You can drop damaging reflex spells on him while he's surrounded: with thick armor and the Wall active + Adept Evasion he doesn't care at all while enemies get nuked.

 

And so on.

 

A pure tank who's just soaking damage is not super useful in my opinion. I'd prefer an offensive char with powerful self heals as well in this case.

Edited August 18, 2018 by Boeroer

[Dorftek]

Yes I don't really understand tho, an unbroken/trickster can press Unbending just as well as The Undying?

[Boeroer]

Sure.

 

But I think he meant the Undying Titan can survive damage very well while at the same time concentrate on dealing damage. And when you can eliminate foes more quickly it also means you get damaged less after some time. But of course an Unbroken/Trickster can deal damage as well. Automatic Sneak+Deathblows via Persistent Distraction is great.

[zendingo]

The thing is: if you get hit with Arcane Dampener and similar effects which strip you off of healing, if you are weakened or enfeebled, if you get gunfire focused at you:

 

Undying Titan drops, high defense tank stays.

 

Arcane Dampener is a common tool of enemies in the later game. I always try to interrupt the guy who wants to cast it, but often enough they make it and stuff like Constant Recovery and Unbending is gone. At the same time a tank who relies on passive defense (like a Paladin with shield for example) can't be stripped off of his defenses.

 

A useful tank also doesn't just stand there. He should be able to contribute in additional ways. For example a Chanter/Paladin tank could boost party damage via Mith Fyr + Shared Flames. Or provide great passive party heals with Exhalted Endurance + Ancient Memory.

 

An Unbroken/Trickster or Paladin/Trickster can deal great damage to mobs that surround him while tanking and also apply afflictions. You can drop damaging reflex spells on him while he's surrounded: with thick armor and the Wall active + Adept Evasion he doesn't care at all while enemies get nuked.

 

And so on.

 

A pure tank who's just soaking damage is not super useful in my opinion. I'd prefer an offensive char with powerful self heals as well in this case.

Some good points. I did some tests to see how bad these situations would be.

 

First I took my level 10 party to Splintered Reef. Arcane dampener definitely does shut down the self-healing, so I couldn't body pull the encounter with the Undying Titan and survive. But sending in a pet to soak the dampener did the trick and I defeated the Sea-lashed Crypt on second try with only my ranger dying. I used the Captain Banquet for this fight. There are probably other encounters where it would be worse. I'm not that famliar with the game yet.  

 

Undying titan should be immune to enfeeble, the build takes great care to have resistance/immunity to all affliction types.

 

Why does gunfire kill him? Low health total? I couldn't find a situation where this would happen. I tried hunting some high level ships but it's hard to tell whats going on with so many guys on the screen. His health never dipped below 50% though, and most of the time he stayed topped off.

 

I don't think Undying Titan is a pure damage soaker who does nothing else. He is able to focus quite a lot on damage dealing because he doesn't need a lot of defensive talents, stats, or gear. He just happens to be immune to damage most of the time from level 9 onwards so he can function as a tank by body pulling encounters and shrugging off focused fire like it was nothing while he otherwise plays like a melee dps.

 

Yes I don't really understand tho, an unbroken/trickster can press Unbending just as well as The Undying?

Sure, but if Unbending does the trick by itself, then what's the point of all the other defenses the unroken/trickster takes? Huge opportunity cost for no gain except in a few special circumstances like arcane dampener that you can't get the enemy to cast on a pet.

 

I'm not trying to over-hype this particular build. I also played an unbroken/trickster and I like it too. I've just been impressed by its effectiveness in actual game play up to this point.

[Dorftek]

Because a swashbuckler deal more dmg and have more resources then a singleclass fighter? I dunno I might be missing something cause I've never played a singleclass fighter, but on paper a trickster/fighter should have both more defense, one more engagement and more offense then a pure fighter.

Edited August 18, 2018 by Dorftek

[Dorftek]

Sure.

 

But I think he meant the Undying Titan can survive damage very well while at the same time concentrate on dealing damage. And when you can eliminate foes more quickly it also means you get damaged less after some time. But of course an Unbroken/Trickster can deal damage as well. Automatic Sneak+Deathblows via Persistent Distraction is great.

Exactly, even if u wanna stay with the poleaxe ud have toxic strike to use on multiple targets if there are beefier ones. If the goal is to soak dmg while killing asap with the polaxe and relying on Unbending a monk/fighter with swift flurry and drumming is sick as hell.

 

Edit: it's still early here, so I didn't notice at first that OP only played both examples to lvl 10, so yeah no doubt that the singleclass fighter was sturdier who gets unbending at lvl 9

 

The Undying Titan is a cool build and I'm sure it works great, but it works just as well and in some cases probably better on multiclasses too, now if Toughened Fury wasn't just a measly 10% chance on receiving crit it would have been a different story, but 10% chance to receive 1 discipline when receiving a crit is just not enough on such a resource hungry class as the fighter. One disciplined strikes + unbending + sundered strike and ur almost out of resources already

Edited August 18, 2018 by Dorftek

[mosspit]

@OP

 

Patch v1.2 changed most (if not all) wizards to prioritize Arcane Dampener in fights. I believe I also experienced some that can cast multiple times in the same fight. It might be special circumstance where only wizards do this, but there are are enough wizards in encounters throughout the game that it can be considered as quite a common occurrence.

 

Like it or not there are some healing effects that are definitely much more effective than others. Unbending is one. Barring Death's Door and Salvation of Time will also completely remove the need for healing. For me, it is mainly because those abilities were just ported over to Deadfire from PoE1 without much thought of the new context. In any case, if they are too powerful you can choose to avoid using them? After all, not everything has too be completely and utterly balanced. Where is the (subjective) fun in that?

[Boeroer]

I don't think Undying Titan is a pure damage soaker who does nothing else.

No, of course not. He's the damage dealer with powerful self heal (I was speaking of ) whom I would prefer over a pure tank as damage sponge.

Edited August 18, 2018 by Boeroer

[Teclis23]

@op

 

What difficultly are you playing on?

 

Any build can be very effective on the lower difficultys

[Theosupus]

The Iron Hammer does a better job of locking down masses of mobs for my AOE'r to kill than anything else I've tried.

He is not the build who will live the longest under sustained assault or soak the most hits from a boss, and that's OK.

I think it's pretty cool how there isn't a one class combo to rule them all.

If the term "tank" to you means it's the guy who can take the most punishment and not die then you are probably looking for a Herald.
If the term "Tank" means distract the mobs and hold aggro long enough for my dps to wipe the floor then the Swashbuckler is the way to go IMO.

 

I do concur that with the current difficulty level you don't really need a tank though. You can just out dps every encounter as long as you know it.

 

[Boeroer]

Not really if you like to tackle enemies whose level is way above you. For example I'm currently grabbing Rekvu's Scorched Cloak while being lvl 9. Without a tank I would be screwed. A can't kill the Nagas quickly enough because they have 13+ AR and I don't have enough PEN yet. I need time - and my "tank" (funnily enough a Warlock) takes all the heat while the rest whittles down the enemy. I don't have summons and don't use figurines. Those could of course play the role of damage sponges as well.

[zendingo]

@op

 

What difficultly are you playing on?

 

Any build can be very effective on the lower difficultys

I should have said this already, but I play on PotD. I haven't even tried any other difficulty since that is what I played in PoE1.

[1TTFFSSE]

Even PotD you don't need a supertank paladin/unbroken or whatever. It's overkill defensively if you have a healer. A soft tank works very well like a devoted/streetfighter, a cantor or even a howler to keep engagements, do some damage and debuff. 

As for solo sure Heralds can't die but neither can Holyslayers or decoted/trickster swashbucklers and the later two put out more damage. 

[Teclis23]

Yeah best advice i could give is dont build pure tanks, they just arent needed even on potd.

 

Build some dps capabilities into your tanks. The game will be alot more fun this way.

 

You will get focus fired with guns on the boat fights if you board them and that is where the pure tanks come in handy the most. You will find ways around this. You mighy have to wait until you hit medium levels before boarding boats. Apart from this issue pure tanks arent needed.

Edited August 19, 2018 by Teclis23

[Lampros]

Even PotD you don't need a supertank paladin/unbroken or whatever. It's overkill defensively if you have a healer. A soft tank works very well like a devoted/streetfighter, a cantor or even a howler to keep engagements, do some damage and debuff. 

As for solo sure Heralds can't die but neither can Holyslayers or decoted/trickster swashbucklers and the later two put out more damage. 

 

Yes, this is true. I've ran the entire content with 4 DPS characters (albeit none of them glass cannon) and 1 support.

 

But I am going to run with a tank now to see if that is more efficient and even less micro-needy!