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[XB1]Indy’s “Team Player” GF PvE Build

Greetings. I’m Indy and welcome to my tank build. Without giving too much away, if you play my build correctly, you can say goodbye to all your healing cleric friends, and enter the world of self-sustained tanking. This build focal point is making everyone around you better, while ensuring you have an infinite health pool. cool right? lets get started. If you wanna be a tank, you better make him first:

Character Creation

Race – Halfling – i wont tell you the perks of being a human or dragonborn because next to 4% deflection (and the cute factor), they’re both lesser race choices. the metallic dragonborn may have a shot at being the best race because of the 3% hit points in addition to choosing your own stat bonuses.

Stat Roll – 18 Con, 13 Dex, 13 Str, 8 Int, 10 Cha, 10 Wis

Powers

Passives – Guarded Assault and Shield Talent

At-Wills – Iron Tide and Threatening Rush

Encounters – Knights Valor, Into the Fray, and Enforced Threat

Dailys – Villains Menace and Fighters Recovery

Passives – very straight forward here, guarded assault provides 15% damage reflect based on your max health. This is a large part of the build and i have never unslotted this. Shield talent is your other passive and there really is no substitute. iv tried playing without it but i always feel stamina starved until i slot it again.

At Wills – Starting with Iron Tide, its our “Stamina regen” at-will with a damage buff & debuff component (see feats). i try to throw this in anytime i see the debuff come off a boss. next is Threatening Rush, this skill is my MOST used skill. it is a mark/taunt, its aoe mark component will also trigger your weapon enchant on all surrounding foes. come mod5/6 when GWF’s become the kings of DPS, your job will often be marking with Rush, buffing with tide, and casting fray on cooldown. Other things to note are when using Threatening Rush to escape a red circle, if you don’t connect with your target before the damage hits the red circle, you will still take the damage so keep that in mind when using this as an escape tactic. you have 2 more at-wills i haven’t listed but we all have them, Shield Slam and Aggravating Strike are use more often than our actual at-wills and these are our true “spammables.” Shield Slam regens 5% stamina while guarded, with your artifact weapon maxed at legendary, this can go up to 15%, and the end result is infinite stamina while guarding. Aggravating Strike is our replacement for Cleave and our only true AOE at-will. learn the angles and how wide its strike range is to maximize the amount of targets you can hit with it.

Encounters – Knights Valor should never be turned off by you and is the reason you will die when you die. This isnt a bad thing because you probably just prevent 2-3 other deaths at the cost of your soulforge. The best way to use knights valor safely is always keep your shield up and block facing your teammates and the boss at all times. Side note – stuns will drop KV and put it on an 8 second cool down, your group mates should be aware of this and play accordingly especially during dragon fights. Into the Fray and Enforced threats are your only actual encounters. i always try to use Fray before Enforced Threat, especially on fights like Draco where movement is very important. also remember that if you use Fray first, it buffs the damage of ET.

Dailys – Villains menace is your situational daily, also good for aoe damage and when enforced threat is on cool down. Fighters Recovery has become the backbone of my build when i do dungeons with 4 dps. It allows me to keep standing in harms way reflecting damage, while still healing myself for the equivalent amount of damage taken thus always keeping myself topped off. The other really cool thing is once its popped your daily starts filling so you can take much bigger hits and get a bigger ap reward back. There are many situations in eLoL where i chain my fighters recovery into each other without losing hp for entire fights. **Id like to Add SoS here, i replace Villian’s Menace every now and then with SoS when im doing PvE such as Well of Dragons, it has amazing synergy with a perfect lightning enchant when trying to do daily quests solo.**

Feats

Feats Link: http://nwcalc.com/index.html#/x/gf?b=1oa5:k6rwk5:8dep:2et,1uj9i6i:100000:15u000:1uu551&h=0&p=ivn

Action Surge 5/5 – guarding is one of our 3 ways to gain AP, this must be maxed.

Toughness 3/3 – cant go wrong with 9% hit points

Shielded Resurgence 1/3 – this is where i put one of the points i found to be “left over” but at 1/3 it gives 2% of your hp over 10 seconds and 3/3 is 4% so for 1 point invested it seems worthwhile.

Distracting Shield 1/5 – 1% damage after you block an attack, another leftover.

Armor Specialization 3/3 – 15% defense and AC is a must.

Potent Challenge 3/3 – more threat is always great.

Grit 1/3 – another skill that’s not worth maxing but 1/3 is better than skipping it in my opinion. 1% of ur max hp as temp health after getting healed.

Weapon Mastery 3/3 – 3% crit for 3 points is too good to pass up even as a tank build.

Paragon Feats

Tactician

Fight On 5/5 – 10% off encounter cds is huge and cant be ignored.

Daunting Challenge 5/5 – 10% softer hits on ur teammates from marked targets means you’ll be taking less of that damage through KV

Inspiring Leader 5/5 – 5% extra damage bonus for your into the fray, sign me up!

Surging Tide – 10% damage debuff on targets you hit with iron tide. Survivability!

Martial Mastery 1/1 – the tactician capstone is incredible. This not only unlocks our 3rd form of ap generation (unblocked damage) but it also increases its value based off your damage resistance. This capstone is the ONLY reason your defense should be higher than 5k and even now im having a hard time justifying it because im not sure how much of an impact its having.

Protector

Plate Agility 5/5 – 5% deflect. Gotta have it.

Shield Defense 5/5 – 5 AP. another solid choice to increase defenses even further

Boons

Form of the Dragon – 800 Hit Points

Power of the Dragon – 200 Deflect

Will of the Dragon – 200 Defense

Spirit of the Dragon – 200 Life steal

Soul of the Dragon – 15% Healing

Gear

My armor set is 2 pieces of Timeless Hero for 450 Deflect and 2 pieces of Grand Regent for 450 Defence, **this set has now become a temporary stepping stone in my gear’s progression. with the release of tiamat i plan on upgrading into a full draconic templar set to decrease my enemies damage resistance**. I use a legendary main hand with the 10% Stamina bonus for Tide of Iron. If you dont have access to this weapon at at least epic quality, i advise using the Draconic set > CN set > T2.

Jewelry is rings of evasion and a necklace of shielding (all drops from eLoL and quite common).The only upgrade to these is the Personalized rings and necklace from Jewelcrafting lvl 20, they’re a must for everyone. My belt is a Plated Band Of Con, with the release of Tiamat i have considered working in a Lathander’s Set which has a nifty set bonus that grants immunity to injury and heals your teammates for 50% of their max hp when you get low. i love the idea of this set bonus but in practice (outside of pvp) if you get low, then your team shouldn’t be low thanks to KV, i will probably test out this set down the road once the artifact becomes available but for now, con belt is my recommendation, the +con and raw hit points are exactly what we’re looking for. Gemmed epic shirt and pants are also BiS so get those when you have the AD or craft them yourself.

The artifacts are Blood Raven Crystal from pvp (24k glory) and it has been in my primary slot since i got it. Very useful when you get caught in a bad spot or after a soulforge. My secondary artifacts are oghmas and a Waters of El’zahad. Heart of the red dragon is good for those lacking in alot of raw stats, but its not worth worth considering as a final artifact.  another artifact i want to talk about is the eye of Lathander. this artifact isn’t released yet but like the other components of the set i mentioned above, this artifact’s ability allows you to revive a teammate or companion from a distance. I’m on the fence with this like i am the rest of the set because if this set or its bonuses become useful, you’ve already found yourself in a dire situation, where  a more consistent loadout featuring things that will benefit you all the time, may have helped you avoid those sticky situations all together? food for thought, there will be more on this in the future.

Enchants are where you and i may differ depending on which stats you’re lacking. I use Radiant in all defense slots, Silvery in all offense, Dragon Hoard in utility. Armor enchant is lesser soulforge. I use lesser because the upgraded versions simply don’t justify the upgrade cost. For weapon enchants we have a few options, i personally use a perfect lightning because it procs off seemingly everything and builds me threat on anything in 30 yards with its chain bounces. The other option which is the one i upgraded from was a greater plaguefire. Nothing wrong with it but i felt it was unnecessary because every trickster seems to be running it and every group seems to have a trickster lol. Iv also heard flaming enchant can work well or holy avenger for more group mitigation but i have no experience with them personally so i can’t comment.

Reinforcements are something iv seen a lot of players overlook. As tanks we have the option to go with +400 hp or +100 defence on our legs, arms, chest and head. As well as +50 regen for our rings, necklace, and belt. These are all quite pricey so make sure this is going on gear you intend to keep for a while.

Companions

Ioun Dragon Stone – 165 Deflect / Lifesteal – this is one of two ioun stone options we have, i chose it because i favor the stats over the 5% stamina regen that would be gained from. Pick it up for 60 dragon scales.

Blacksmith – On Damage Taken 15% chance to reflect 10% of damage taken. If the same target is hit 4 times it will reflect 3 times the damage taken. – super awesome tank pet. For all that incoming damage you plan on taking, this guy gets ALOT of bang for your buck.

Skeletal Dog – 300 Life steal – another easy way to get some more valuable stats.

Cave Bear or Iron Golem – 1200 Hit Points – another solid chunk of hp. the iron golem starts at epic, where as the cave bear starts at green.

Dread Warrior – On Damage Taken 10% chance to become enraged, increasing threat generation by 15% This guy is my ideal 5th companion. Sadly hes not available on xb1 yet but keep an eye out.

Priestess of Sune – 300 Deflect –  as this is deflect based build, this pet fits in perfectly. she recently showed up on the zen market, i mention her over portal hound because she can be purchased at blue quality instead of green.

Pseudodragon – 20% chance to gain stamina from attacks – this is not a pet i use, but its proven very effective for tanks who haven’t gotten their legendary MH artifact yet. the stamina from stabs behind your shield really helps your longevity.

Synergies

Here id like to outline how and why everything falls together. So with this build your target stats are 4000 Defence, 3500 Recovery, 3000 Deflect, 50,000 Hit Points, 1,000 Regen and 1,000 Lifesteal. **i have changed my mind on this as my build progressed, i feel at lower GS 1000 lifesteal has its purpose but at 16-17k+ you can drop this to 500 and redistribute points as you see fit**. This gives you a deep health pool to support your KV, but also 50K HP means your guarded assault can reflect up to 3000 damage in a single hit. Next you have the lifesteal to back up your fighters recovery that will allow you to become a self healing group buffer. The high recovery is to ensure quick ap generation aswell as keeping the cooldowns on your encounters short so you have maximum uptime on into the fray for your team. And finally the deflection is the other part your threat which supplements guarded assault. This will be the hardest part to get used to if you are coming from a dps/tank build. The way we keep our cycle of fighters recoveries and high damage reflects going is by bathing in red. Litterally. Anytime you pop your daily its your job to take any damage the enemy is dealing and maximize the amount of damage you can reflect back to get the most out of your healing. This damage is being instantly healed and is also refilling your AP bar, and thus the cycle continues. To safely keep this up you need to rotate in enforced threats and iron tides to keep your stamina bar up. Always watch your enemies and learn their attack patterns to figure out when its safe to buff and when you need to block for an extended period of time.

Added Info: as iv continued to play my build and tweak my play style, iv noticed a few changes i made myself without adding it here. A big thing iv started doing is learning when to cancel animations for abilities that i cast. Fighters Recovery is the main skill that you should NEVER see. you can cast it and go back into guard without ever seeing the animation cast, your daily bar will simply empty and it’ll look like you never stopped blocking. to achieve this you will have to practice dropping your guard, popping your daily, and raising your guard all in one quick move. this is very helpful on fights like dracolich without a cleric when you cant stop for much more than a second or you will be flung into a volly by red wizards. Another skill which can be cast near instantly is into the fray. this skill does have a small .5 second cast time and can be canceled if you attempt to guard or break your cast too soon. Enforced threat feels painfully long compared to your other 2 casted spells but its alright because it can also double as a heal when hitting 5 or more enemies after you’ve gotten your fighters recovery up. other things to mention are villians menace gives you an immunity to stuns, knock backs and prones. use this on the platforming parts of lostmauth to make it look like a cake walk.

More Info: For those tanks who have been following my build closely, you’ll quickly notice the major change iv made is that my AP is now at 1068, and i will push it till roughly 1300~ for the 24% armor pen (11% from dex and 13% from the stat armor pen), this was a recommendation from a PC player and I’m currently in the testing phase with it and haven’t formed my own conclusions about its viability. other than this, my next target stats are 60k HP, 4000 recovery, 3000 deflect, 2000 regen, and all left over points will go towards defense to further increase the damage buffs from Fray and the AP regen from Martial Mastery.

Another Chapter: So welcome back, iv pushed far beyond my goal of 60k HP and am currently sitting around 65k, now what this means in conjunction with 1927 regen i gain 4403 hp every 3 seconds. that’s basically a control wizards full health pool every 15 seconds. but with incredible gains come tolerable losses, im talking of course about deflect, we lost 1100 of it, and i don’t seem to mind it. since i went with halfling im still sitting at a comfortable 33.3% chance to deflect. but now that im happy, im unhappy. optimization will go on, il try throwing out 2 brutal rank 8s iv hand lingering in my rings, replace them with silvery enchants, upgrade to all rank 9 radiants across the board to ofset the hp loss and see how i feel with around 2300~ deflect and if that brings a noticeable difference. other new things im sure many have got their hands on is the artifact shield, the 15% stamina bonus is extra icing, and gaining 300+ regenerationfrom the artifact bonus really helped with the loss of grand regent. damage resistance is now up to 56% for martial and fray, im curious what it will take to get it to 60%. now for the elephant in the room, and his name is recovery, as im nearing 4000 again i will reduce it to bring my crit to 1000. thats all for now, thanks for reading.

Conclusion

Id like to note i did not play on PC so any info above is gathered mainly through my personal experiences tanking on xb1. If you have any questions or suggests id love to hear them as I’m always looking to improve my own build further. I know many players will always have more questions for me than those i can manage to answer in the comment section. The best way to contact me is join me live at www.Twitch.tv/indygoinlive from 6PM PST week days, and 4PM PST on Weekends, hope to see you and happy tanking!

 

Edit: Spelling, and some other minor changes

Edit2: Added more info to synergies and low quality SS of stats page, will add more screen shots and details soon.

Edit3: added more content in various places, updated the screen shots.

Edit4: new screen shots and another update on build and stats

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