Make the strongest Tank possible to survive the longest
Tanking can be one of the most demanding builds you can make. Not only does every Fellowship need one, but they are key in keeping the enemies away from your healers and other supporting classes. They are always on the front lines and use taunts, buffs, and other attacks to weaken your foes and strengthen your allies.
With high morale and heavy damage, there are three classes that stand out in the crowd for tanking: Guardian, Warden, and Captain.
1. Guardian
Guardians are exactly what their name suggests: they keep others safe. They are also unrivaled with their tanking ability, especially with the blue and yellow trait lines. You will focus on keeping the threat level up, which keeps the enemies on you and debuffing to weaken them. Defense and stamina are your most valued skills, to keep you alive and attacking for as long as necessary.
What is awesome about this build:
- High morale gives you a longer life, allowing you to do extended damage
- Taunt to force the enemies to focus on only you, where you can attack your foes head-on and allow your Fellowship to both heal and deal damage from afar
- Nearly all types of weapons are available to Guardians, including one-handed, two-handed, daggers and bows
- Heavy shields are only available to this class, the strongest shields in the game
Build Details:
- Blue Line: These skills are ideal for heavy tanking in raids with plenty of taunts, mitigations and higher block responses.
- Yellow Line: When you play a DPS role, the Yellow line skills work best with two-handed weapons and strong AoE skills
- Fray the Edge, Engage, Challenge, and Improved Challenge are the primary taunts to increase your threat level, drawing enemies away from your Fellowship and towards you. These skills also give an opening to your Fellowship to complete a Manoeuver.
- Shield-Swipe, Bash, and Shield-Smash will smack your enemy’s face to stun them in response to a successful block.
- Mitigations are what make you a tank. Physical mitigations decrease the amount of damage you take from physical sources, like blades. Tactical mitigations reduce the damage you take from sources like lightning and fire.
- Legendary Weapon: You’ll want a weapon with Legacies like Area Effect Skill Damage (increase AoE damage and use Shield-Smash) and Vitality.
- Armor: A great combo of armor would be the Thorin’s Memory armor, which includes Distressed Chestplate of Thorin’s Memory, Engraved Pauldrons of Thorin’s Memory and Burnished Greaves of Thorin’s Memory. The more Vitality and Might you have, the better equipped you are in a raid.
2. Warden
This damage dealer can be great for taking on the tanking role. In the lore, they are primarily protecting the lands from ferocious animals and other foes. This goes hand-in-hand with tanking in raids. While you won’t have as much damage output, the blue line gives you buffs to make you stronger. Just like Guardians, morale is high and defense is key.
What makes this build awesome:
- Buffs. This class only uses medium armor, but the buffs are what gives you the edge.
- Self-heals boost your morale when needed. There’s less reliance on your allies to heal you so they can focus on DPS.
- Light-damage is the main skill used for increasing threat levels. Unlike the Guardian, there are very few forced taunts with the Warden.
- Bonuses for using clubs, spears, swords, and javelins. Javelins are especially useful after level 20. Adding oils to your javelin can change the damage type your weapon does, making it stronger against vulnerable enemies.
- Gambits build up your attacks for increased damage.
Build Details:
- Blue Line: The skills in this line are made for tanking. Buffs like Shield Mastery gives increased block and evade. For the Free Peoples gives buffs to your entire Fellowship through your Gambit use.
- Focus on increasing your Vitality through weapons and armor to boost your morale rate.
- Agility is also important, as it increases weapon damage, tactical damage and healing ability.
- Gambit builds are incredibly important depending on the enemy. Certain builds can not only do damage but also buff you and your Fellowship at the same time. Gambit builds with more Gambits are generally stronger than those with less.
- The Javelin Gambit system is only available through the Assailment stance, which boosts your ranged damage.
- Legendary Weapon: For a javelin, Legacies such as Defiant Challenge Damage Return (imbued legacy to increase damage output of Defiant Challenge trait) and Shield Gambit Line Healing (higher healing rate using Shield Gambits) are useful.
- Armor: The Juggernaut set gives a great boost of morale and increased damage for more items worn. The Stalwart set is also a good choice, with increased Physical Mastery and Finesse.
3. Captain
As the most versatile class, it makes sense that the Captain would fall in the Tank category. They are considered leaders in the lore and focus on strengthening their allies. For the tank, the yellow line (Leader of Men) is the skill tree to focus on, with increased resiliency and better blocking and parrying.
What Makes This Build Awesome:
- Play any role in a raid. If there’s a missing healer, tank or a need for more DPS, you can fill any spot.
- Heralds give different buffs and can do different kinds of damage. They are the Herald of War (2% increase in melee, ranged, and tactical damage), Herald of Hope (3% increase in physical and tactical mitigation), Herald of Victory (10% reduction in the cost of power) and Herald Archer (ranged combat using a bow). All but the archer carry your banner.
- Focuses on buffs to increase damage, blocks, and defense. This is what keeps you alive longer.
Build Details:
- Yellow Line: The skills in this line are designed for tanking. It pulls enemies towards you to protect your Fellowship and increases your parry rating. On Guard can reduce power costs and the amount of damage you take in. There are a few traits in the Blue line (specifically Double Resurrection and Revealing Mark) that will also be helpful.
- Elendil’s Fury can be used to force a target to attack you, pulling them from your Fellowship. This requires 30 ranks in the Leader of Men line to unlock.
- Heralds have 50% of whatever your Captain’s morale is. They can fight alongside you with either a one-handed weapon or a bow, depending on the Herald you choose.
- Steeled Resolve in the yellow trait line boosts your maximum morale with every rank up to 4% with the highest rank.
- Battle cries and shouts are important for increasing the threat level to pull enemies and buffing your allies. Threatening Shout forces an enemy to attack you.
- Legendary Weapons: Legacies like the Defense Strike Armor Buff and Battle-Hardened Outgoing Healing on a sword work well for a Captain in the Yellow line for tanking. Captains who use two-handed weapons are able to block incoming attacks in the Yellow line, but it is still recommended to use a one-handed sword and shield.
- Armor: Boosting your Vitality and Might are key for your armor. Choosing one of the Anvil-Forged armor sets (Anvil-Forged Helm of Fortitude provides additional vitality with more pieces worn) increases might by nearly 2,000 and vitality by 1,300. Adding jewelry with physical and tactical mitigation will aid with reducing incoming damage.
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