I have a question for Vanguard Tanks

[Tsuruchinite]

So, been meaning to ask this for quite awhile now. There is a post on the official RO forums about Vanguard Potential Point Builds. Several people in the thread say to not go defensive and go with a Strength and some Dex with low Physique and Spirit.

Faerlynn writes

You don't need strength to hold aggro. Holding aggro is easy. You need strength to deal damage and not just be a punching bag.

There are two builds you can go for, either a defensive build with a lot of physique and spirit to get tons of HP and defense, or an offensive build with low physique and spirit but focused on strength and some dexterity. You can mix and go for a defensive build with your potential points but seek offensive stats on your gear rather than defensive. Most higher level tanks will recommend to get offensive stats and/or build.

Highly defensive builds serve one purpose, you can go for prolonged periods of time without being healed. This is not needed if your healer plays well and if no one in your party takes more damage than necessary.

Merlyn writes

In the current content you don't need too much into Physique and Spirit and Offensive builds are much more useful later on.

I'm currently running
60 Physique
60 Spirit
50 Dex
Rest in Str,

With current gear I have over 20k hp unbuffed and between refines for extra hp and stats rolled from gear you'll get an extra damage mitigation and more Physique and Spirit anyways.

I'm sitting with around 30% crit to help clear the raids much faster and I have no issue running 3* Shrine. I will of course increase Physique and Spirit a bit later for the 59 and 69 content like I did in CN.

On a side note upon testing the offensive (crit) build which works fantastic for me, I have found the best stats you want to roll for are Physical Defense break and Crit Increment (Crit damage) to maximize your damage output.

An important factor I noticed MANY people didn't invest into was the PvE/PvP shards or use Q(Interrupter skill). These can help quite a bit as well.
I had around 5% damage increase from demon break and about a 10% damage reduction from demon guard and 5% of both from PvP.

All of this being said if you care more about PvP and Battleground don't go with this route I have a separate Stat spread for PvP purposes which you want a lot more Spirit and Physique. You will still go with more offensive skill morphs however because for PvP it's better.

My question is what do you think of this and is this the right thing to do?

 

[Taedalma]

When I was lvl49, I had about 100 in Str, 10 in Dex with the rest in Phy and Spr at a 2:1 ratio and I never had a real problem with that in Shrine 3* (main problem was running out of room to dodge and rolling into fires). The key point in my opinion for tanking is being able to dodge the bosses' attacks and know their mechanics. Being tanky helps when you misstep once or twice but with a good healer, you'll be full health again in no time.

When I hit lvl59 though in CBT 3, I bought the Premium membership and that allowed me to have a second potential point page. The 1st page I raised to around 200 Str and 50 Dex so I can do quest lines without being bored at how slow killing would be and the rest a 1.5:1 ratio of Phy:Spr for when I wanted to help others in Shrine 3* and my gear was good enough to tank for me. But for GB 2*, I set my 2nd potential page to 150 Str, 20 Dex, and put the rest into Phy:Spr. With this, along with my full lvl50 gear w/ gems and refinement, I had 30k+ unbuffed hp and could tank both the boss and some adds/mobs. This page also helped in PVP so you can jump in and not get instantly deleted before using the group pull ability.

To me, it's a matter of if you're confident in your abilities to read mechanics and boss tells (@LatestCrowd helped me a lot with this). If you can read tells, put some more into Str/Dex because you'll be the one constantly on the boss (the multi stabby stabby pokey pokey skill -- Broken Array I believe -- does a good amount of damage when it crits). The DPS's running with you will generally have to deal with other mechanics such as adds and maintaining their distance because of some range attack so at times their DPSing will fall of shortly while you get to be stuck to the boss.

At the lvl49 cap, I was generally number one on the damage board and dropped to 2nd/3rd at the lvl59 "cap" with only Swordmages passing me by 50%+ damage (they really do hurt) and I was on par with occ/gs or within 5%+/- their damage.

I believe @LatestCrowd and @Eric would also have some good ideas on what they did throughout CBT.

 

[Tsuruchinite]

kk Thanks alot with your input

 

[LatestCrowd]

I did the same on my first potential point page and I always felt like some thing wasn't optimized to where it should be because @Taedalma and @Eric were always double my damage and were tankier, the only saving grace I had was I could sometimes avoid abilities.


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[Demonskyfish]

i would put my input but i can't find my notes on vanguards.... so i defer to tae and crowd .... not eric .... eric got me killed too many times