[sheerkya]

I recently came back to AoC after an extended hiatus and found the changes to tanking to be a bit confusing. There does not seem to be a good updated guide for guardian tanks, so here is my attempt at providing some basic and more advanced information.

I have a level 80 guardian called Rindchen. Important to note that I also have a level 80 Tempest of Set, Necromancer and Demonologist. I have played every class to 20 (I know, not a great feat) and all classes but Bear Shaman and Herald of Xotli to level 40. I am developing an understanding of game mechanics and class roles based on tested facts that I hope to pass along in useful guides.

Wrath and Vengeance are two inate abilities a Guardian has.

Wrath is created as a Guardian strikes an opponent and increases up to 20. Each point of the wrath counter adds .75% physical damage to the Guardian's attacks up to a bonus 15% damage at 20 wrath counter stacks. This buff lasts 10 seconds and refreshes with each strike.

Vengeance has a chance of increasing as someone in the group gets hit. I do not pay attention to this so I don't know the benefits of it fully stacked.

Basic Stats

1 Str = 2 armor and 2 stamina
6.67 Str = 1 non-combat health and stamina regen
12.2 Str = 1 melee dps excluding daggers
20 str = 1 natural stamina regen

1 Con = 8 health and 2 stamina
6.67 Con = 1 non-combat health and stamina regen
20 Con = 1 natural stamina regen

1 Dex = 2 stamina
2 Dex = 1 evade rating
6.67 Dex = 1 non-combat stamina regen
12.2 Dex = 1 DPS for ranged and daggers
20 Dex = 1 natural stamina regen

Regen Stats

Your stamina and health regen is broken into 2 pieces each. Your natural regen is your in combat regeneration. This is how much you regenerate during combat. It ticks every 4 seconds.

Your Non combat regen adds to your natural regen to provide more stamina and health regen while out of combat.

Damage Mitigation Stats

Armor is the physical protection someone has. Your Armor rating decreases the physical damage you take. For instance, Rindchen takes 44.7% less physical damage while in defensive stance due to his armor rating. One thing to note is that there are actually 2 layers here. Your armor rating mitigates damage at one layer and your invulnerability ratings mitigate damage at another layer. Your defensive stance impacts the invulnerability layer.

Evade is a chance to avoid all incoming physical damage. Rindchen has a 3.8% chance of Evading a physical attack.

Protection decreases the magical damage that you take. Rindchen decreases magical damage by 27.7% due to his Protection rating. Magic damage mitigation also has 2 layers. One is Protection, which is similar to armor rating except that it mitigates magical damage. The other is Invulnerability, which mitigates in the same way for magic as it does for physical damage.

Immunity is a chance to avoid all incoming magical damage. Rindchen has a .7% chance to avoid magic damage due to his Immunity rating.

Talent Guide

Here is a brief review of some of the guardian talents.

Juggernaut Tree

Toughness is needed to get to the other talents in the Juggernaut tree. Fully feated it is a 5% increase to armor and 72.8 increase to natural health regen.

Cry of Havoc is your AE taunt ability. It provides a taunt for up to 4 mobs within a 5 meter radius every 15 seconds. This is used to provide additional aggro generation. It does 170-174 instant damage for Rindchen...useful for additional DPS as well. Since it is an ability and not a combo or spell, it can be instantly cast, even when you are in the middle of a combo.

Savage Counterstrike increases the retaliation damage from your Counterstrike combos. Fully feated it adds 10% to your retaliation strikes. Retaliations from Counterstrike III and IV do 16 and 18 damage respectively. This would increase it by a whopping 1.6 or 1.8 points of damage, increasing them to 17.6 and 19.8 damage. IMHO this talent is not worth getting.

Battle Cry gives you a short term stamina regen buff. Fully feated at 80 it provides 181 stamina for 3 ticks for a total of 543 stamina every 45 seconds.

Ardent Battle Cry is an awesome ability. Fully feated it gives the team a 10 second buff to damage. Physical damage gets a 42% increase and spells get a 5% increase to damage.

Bleeding Counterstrikes adds a bleed effect to your Counterstrike Retaliations. Fully feated it gives bleed damage of 36, 40 and 44 for CS II, CS III and CS IV respectively. This is a big damage increase that helps you hold aggro. CS I does the same bleeding as CS II and they do not seem to stack. So you can stack CS II, CS III and CS IV.

Morale Boost gives your team part of the Stamina you steal with Plexus Strike: 75% when fully feated. This is about 450 stamina potentially every 45 seconds per mob affected. Important to note about Plexus Strike: it does not give you any stamina if the target dies due to the Plexus Strike. The allocation of stamina is after physical damage is assessed.

Momentum increases the damage of all your charge abilities and decreases their reuse time. I do not spec this cause it does not help with my basic tanking needs of damage mitigation and overall aggro control.

Bleeding Dulling Blow adds a bleed effect to your Dulling Blow combo. Fully feated at 80 it seems to add a Bleeding Effect that does 55 damage for 3-5 ticks. I have counted 3 ticks, 4 ticks, and 5 ticks of damage after using this combo. The additional damage is nice and will help you gain and keep aggro.

Readiness decreases the cooldown on all your sword and board combos by about 10%.

Stunning Charge gives you a charge ability that also stuns a mob. While this can be useful to stun trash or normal mobs, boss mobs are usually immune to stuns.

Improved Shield Bash adds a snare effect to your Shield Sweep combo. As I do PvE, this is not very worthwhile use of 3 points for me.

Prowess fully feated adds 5% increase to damage for your Overreach and Dulling Blows combos.

Brutal Blows adds a 2.5% increase to your critical chance for Dulling Blows and Overreach combos.

Stand Your Ground makes your group less susceptible to knockback effects but decreases their movement.

Forced March takes the movement impairment effect off the Stand Your Ground ability.

Drive Them Back gives your group a chance to knockback opponents when Stand Your Ground is active.

Improved Dulling Blows adds 5% (fully feated) to your Evade for 10 seconds after using the Dulling Blows combo. As Dulling Blow can be used every 10 seconds, this can be up all the time. Statistically speaking, this is like adding 5% to your physical damage mitigation.

Bloody Vengeance is a combo that does more damage based on how many points you have in the talent and how high your vengeance counter has gotten. Your vengeance counter goes up due to other people in your group getting hit, so this could be good to help steal aggro. However, Guardians have many aggro generating abilities and the 5 points in this talent can better be used elsewhere, IMHO.

Sacrifice is an ability that gives you a second chance to increase your vengeance counter when a team mate is being attacked.

Titanic Smash is a combo that does decent damage and ends with a knockback effect. The power of the knockback is increased if you have Juggernaut ability active.

Intervene increases the threat of the guardian for 1 minute with a 2 minute reuse time.

Strike and Guard is a combo that starts with a 5 second stun on the target. It bolsters your defense for 8 seconds by giving you 8 damage deflection, which is 8% damage mitigation.

Juggernaut is an ability that increases armor by 10%, weapon damage by 70% and protection by 300 for 20 seconds with a 90 second reuse time. The armor increase multiplies your armor rating by 1.1, so it does not add a raw 10% increase to your mitigation. For instance, if you have 40% physical mitigation, it would increase it to 44% (not to 50%). The 300 additional protection is about a 3.5% increase to magic damage mitigation, taking mine from 27.7% to 31.2%.

[sheerkya]

Tempest Tree

Stormblade adds a damage proc to your attacks, giving a chance of additional damage. I have never specced this so not sure how effective it is.

Relentless gives you fear and stun resistance, up to 10% when fully feated.

General Tree

Recovery fully feated adds 43.4 natural regen.

Stoneskin fully feated adds about 5% mitigation against magical attacks.

Improved Frenzy Stance increase the damage you cause in Frenzy Stance.

Hateful Strikes gives you an ability that you can use every 2 minutes that increases your Hate generation by 20% for 10 seconds. IMHO, best when used in conjunction with DPS buffs (Ardent Battle Cry, Volcanic Rage, Juggernaut) to "steal" aggro. For guardians who want to take aggro, I would recommend this with Overreach combos (provided directional shielding allows)

Goad is a single-target ability that can be used once every 90 seconds. It makes the target attack the guardian. This gives the guardian time to build aggro. It also puts a 30 second debuff on the target such that another Goad or Goad Mob will not work on the target. In most instances, you should not use this in Boss fights, you should be managing your aggro with other tools. I consider this a trash and group playing skill. When killing trash or playing in a group (not raid) then you tend to kill things quickly, without giving the tank time to build aggro. Goad gives the tank spot aggro to take the mob off the healer, cause we know a good tank will just let the rogue or mage die, as that appeases Crom!

Improved Defensive Stance adds 3% more damage mitigation (both physical and magical invulnerability) to your Defensive Stance. The physical mitigation for this talent is at a different layer of defense than Iron Skin and is not additive to your armor rating. So you will not see a full 3% addition to your "real" physical damage mitigation, you will only see between 1.5% and 2% increase in your physical mitigation. Magical mitigation increase will also be less than 3% depending on your protection rating.

Iron Skin adds about 5% physical damage mitigation when fully feated.

Burning Vigor gives a chance of getting a health regen proc when you are hit by magical damage. Fully feated it is a 256 hp heal. The proc rate fully feated is 10% chance per magical hit taken with a maximum of 10 procs per minute.

Sustained Rage gives a 15% bonus to weapon damage when full feated. As more damage means more aggro, I use this talent.

Fully feated Counterstrike Stance does 11 points of damage to something attacking you while you are in Defensive Stance. It does not trigger Bleeding Counterstrikes. IMHO, a poor choice for spending 3 points.

Surging Health gives you a chance to get a health regen proc when you are hit by physical damage. Fully feated it is a 6% chance to gain a 256 hp heal with a maximum of 6 procs per minute.

Anticipation sometimes does 23 damage to mobs attacking you while you are in Defensive Stance. It does not trigger Bleeding Counterstrikes. Since Counterstrike Stance is a pre-req, I feel this is a poor choice for spending 4 points.

Guarded Frenzy decreases the penalty for Frenzy Stance.

Cunning Deflection gives you 50% damage deflection for one strike and does 100% damage back upon the attacker. The damage deflection reduces incoming damage by 50%, then your normal mitigation is applied.

Lifesave adds 52 natural health regen bonus to Defensive Stance at level 80 when fully feated.

Volcanic Rage is a 20 second ability usable every 2 minutes that adds 30% weapon damage.

Goad Mob is an AE spot aggro talent that supposedly makes up to 12 mobs within 5 meters attack the soldier. It has a 5 minute reuse timer and puts a 30 second debuff on the mobs such that another Goad or Goad Mob will have no affect.

Improved Goad Mob increases the area of affect by 5 meters, extending it to a 10 meter radius. If you remember your geometry, this increases the area of affect by 4 times.

My assumption is that aggro has some "givens".

a. 1 point of damage = 1 aggro
b. "a" is modified by aggro multipliers (both up and down)
c. combos and abilities have inate aggro (Ciderheim had a list of some values for guardian from 2008)
d. Aggro is accumulated. To take aggro, you generally need 110% more aggro than the person you are trying to take it from.
e. Aggro is temporeal? Not sure the decay rate on aggro or whether someone just does more cumulative damage to take aggro. It makes more sense for it to have decay given how Irritate supposedly works.

Soldier Class Aggro Tools

All soldier classes were given Irritate which is a single target aggro generating ability. The aggro from this ability decays quickly, so a tank needs to generate "real" aggro to keep aggro.

All the soldier classes can spec into an AE aggro generating talent that hits up to 4 close mobs. The mobs have to be within 5 meters. For a guardian, this is called Cry of Havoc. For Conqs it is Retaliation. DT's have Seal of Chaos.

Goad and Goad Mob put a 30 second debuff on the mob such that another Goad or Goad Mob does not affect the mob. During raid boss fights, these two talents should not be used in most circumstances. I feel these are trash mob talents and group talents. In both these scenarios, people tend to attack prior to the tank getting the mob aggro. These talents allow the group to kill quickly without a tank needing to build aggro.

Not sure what Taunt really does. Whether it gives a chance at generating more aggro or whether it generates more aggro per hit. For most abilities, 100 points is 1%, so 800 points in taunt is 8% of something. Maybe 8% more aggro, maybe 8% chance of more aggro. At any rate, my taunt is 800. At any rate, the Taunt skill is hard capped at 800 points (10 times your level). So if you put 800 points into taunt, having additional Taunt on weapons or armor is useless. However, adding bonus Hate is useful and I don't think there is a hard cap for Hate.

Conqs and Guards have other talents that can be used to modify aggro. Guardians have Intervene. Conqs have Mocking Sneer.

As a guardian, my main combos for keeping aggro are Strike and Guard, Overreach, Dulling Blow and Counterstrike. Then Guard Destroyer and Plexus Strike. I view Counterstrike (III and IV layered) as very important when I have aggro because of the additional damage it does over time due to having Bleeding Counterstrikes talented.

If I want to steal aggro, I use Overreach, Strike and Guard, Dulling Blow and Plexus Strike, depending on the shielding. Overreach generates the most aggro. So if the mobs shielding allows for it, spamming Overreach IV and III generates the most aggro.

I do not use the low level combos that all soldier classes get except when I want to maximize Fatality chances in a group. I use the fast striking single stage combos to time killing blows.

Remember to have tons of potions. MT's drink healing and stamina pots like ale. You can buy crates of healing/stamina/mana pots from the Merchant vendor outside the trade area in Old Tarantia.

I welcome your feedback and corrections to my information. Would be nice to have this a stickie so it stays on top.

[sheerkya]

I plan to provide additional information after getting feedback on this thread. This is to be use for expanded info.

[Bullvie]

Originally Posted by sheerkya I recently came back to AoC after an extended hiatus and found the changes to tanking to be a bit confusing. There does not seem to be a good updated guide for guardian tanks, so here is my attempt at providing some basic and more advanced information. I have a level 80 guardian called Rindchen. Wrath and Vengeance are two inate abilities a Guardian has. Wrath is created as a Guardian strikes an opponent and increases up to 20. Each point of the wrath counter adds .75% physical damage to the Guardian's attacks up to a bonus 15% damage at 20 wrath counter stacks. This buff lasts 10 seconds and refreshes with each strike. Vengeance has a chance of increasing as someone in the group gets hit. I do not pay attention to this so I don't know the benefits of it fully stacked. Basic Stats 1 Str = 2 armor and 2 stamina 6.67 Str = 1 non-combat health and stamina regen 12.2 Str = 1 melee dps excluding daggers 20 str = 1 natural stamina regen 1 Con = 8 health and 2 stamina 6.67 Con = 1 non-combat health and stamina regen 20 Con = 1 natural stamina regen 1 Dex = 2 stamina 2 Dex = 1 evade rating 6.67 Dex = 1 non-combat stamina regen 12.2 Dex = 1 DPS for ranged and daggers 20 Dex = 1 natural stamina regen Regen Stats Your stamina and health regen is broken into 2 pieces each. Your natural regen is your in combat regeneration. This is how much you regenerate during combat. It ticks every 4 seconds. Your Non combat regen adds to your natural regen to provide more stamina and health regen while out of combat. Damage Mitigation Stats Armor is the physical protection someone has. Your Armor rating decreases the physical damage you take. For instance, Rindchen takes 44.7% less physical damage while in defensive stance due to his armor rating. Evade is a chance to avoid all incoming physical damage. Rindchen has a 3.8% chance of Evading a physical attack. Protection decreases the magical damage that you take. Rindchen decreases magical damage by 27.7% due to his Protection rating. Immunity is a chance to avoid all incoming magical damage. Rindchen has a .7% chance to avoid magic damage due to his Immunity rating. Talent Guide Here is a brief review of some of the guardian talents. Juggernaut Tree Toughness is needed to get to the other talents in the Juggernaut tree. Fully feated it is a 5% increase to armor and 72.8 increase to natural health regen. Cry of Havoc is your AE taunt ability. It provides a taunt for up to 4 mobs within a 5 meter radius every 15 seconds. This is used to provide additional aggro generation. It does 170-174 instant damage for Rindchen...useful for additional DPS as well. Since it is an ability and not a combo or spell, it can be instantly cast, even when you are in the middle of a combo. Savage Counterstrike increases the retaliation damage from your Counterstrike combos. Fully feated it adds 10% to your retaliation strikes. Retaliations from Counterstrike III and IV do 16 and 18 damage respectively. This would increase it by a whopping 1.6 or 1.8 points of damage, increasing them to 17.6 and 19.8 damage. IMHO this talent is not worth getting. Battle Cry gives you a short term stamina regen buff. Fully feated at 80 it provides 181 stamina for 3 ticks for a total of 543 stamina every 45 seconds. Ardent Battle Cry is an awesome ability. Fully feated it gives the team a 10 second buff to damage. Physical damage gets a 42% increase and spells get a 5% increase to damage. Bleeding Counterstrikes adds a bleed effect to your Counterstrike Retaliations. Fully feated it gives bleed damage of 40 and 44 for CS III and CS IV respectively. This is a big damage increase that helps you hold aggro. Morale Boost gives your team part of the Stamina you steal with Plexus Strike: 75% when fully feated. This is about 450 stamina potentially every 45 seconds per mob affected. Important to note about Plexus Strike: it does not give you any stamina if the target dies due to the Plexus Strike. The allocateion of stamina is after physical damage is assessed. Momentum increases the damage of all your charge abilities and decreases their reuse time. I do not spec this cause it does not help with my basic tanking needs of damage mitigation and overall aggro control. Bleeding Dulling Blow adds a bleed effect to your Dulling Blow combo. Fully feated at 80 it seems to add a Bleeding Effect that does 55 damage for 3-5 ticks. I have counted 3 ticks, 4 ticks, and 5 ticks of damage after using this combo. The additional damage is nice and will help you gain and keep aggro. Readiness decreases the cooldown on all your sword and board combos by about 10%. Stunning Charge gives you a charge ability that also stuns a mob. While this can be useful to stun trash or normal mobs, boss mobs are usually immune to stuns. Improved Shield Bash adds a snare effect to your Shield Sweep combo. As I do PvE, this is not very worthwhile use of 3 points for me. Prowess fully feated adds 5% increase to damage for your Overreach and Dulling Blows combos. Brutal Blows adds a 2.5% increase to your critical chance for Dulling Blows and Overreach combos. Stand Your Ground makes your group less susceptible to knockback effects but decreases their movement. Forced March takes the movement impairment effect off the Stand Your Ground ability. Drive Them Back gives your group a chance to knockback opponents when Stand Your Ground is active. Improved Dulling Blows adds 5% (fully feated) to your Evade for 10 seconds after using the Dulling Blows combo. As Dulling Blow can be used every 10 seconds, this can be up all the time. Statistically speaking, this is like adding 5% to your physical damage mitigation. Bloody Vengeance is a combo that does more damage based on how many points you have in the talent and how high your vengeance counter has gotten. Your vengeance counter goes up due to other people in your group getting hit, so this could be good to help steal aggro. However, Guardians have many aggro generating abilities and the 5 points in this talent can better be used elsewhere, IMHO. Sacrifice is an ability that gives you a second chance to increase your vengeance counter when a team mate is being attacked. Titanic Smash is a combo that does decent damage and ends with a knockback effect. The power of the knockback is increased if you have Juggernaut ability active. Intervene increases the threat of the guardian for 1 minute with a 2 minute reuse time. Strike and Guard is a combo that starts with a 5 second stun on the target. It bolsters your defense for 8 seconds by giving you 8 damage deflection, which is 8% damage mitigation. Juggernaut is an ability that increases armor by 10%, weapon damage by 70% and protection by 300 for 20 seconds with a 90 second reuse time. The armor increase multiplies your armor rating by 1.1, so it does not add a raw 10% increase to your mitigation. For instance, if you have 40% physical mitigation, it would increase it to 44% (not to 50%). The 300 additional protection is about a 3.5% increase to magic damage mitigation, taking mine from 27.7% to 31.2%.

This is a great post. I salute you for taking the time to post opinon based on fact.

I also run a S/B guard and was thinking about how I should redo my talents. The above will help. More info is welcome.

[darkaxxe]

Sheer, fantastic info!!!

Thanks from 65 guard, just back to game after 1 yr away

[DareDelvis]

Great post!

I am by no menas an expert guardian. I have used mine mostly as support for the guild in Pve.

I like Bloody Vengenceance, though.

With the counter at 10 it hits fo 1200->2000 easily and it is a fast one step combo available every 5 seconds.

If I am the only one getting hit, it is harder to get the counter up, but it is great for regaining agro and as an off tank ability, not to mention its utility in group pvp.

[sheerkya]

There seem to be quite a few posts asking about talents lately. This is a great summary for Juggernaut talents.

[Irishmettle]

Good post. This should really get a sticky so new guards can check it out.

When doing open world PvE I also switch stances when doing my final blows with overreach to kill mobs faster. So, stay in defensive stance and do the first two hits in overreach IV then switch to frenzy for the final blow then switch back to defensive.

Timing your stances in general PvE and PvP is very powerful. During raids and epics you should always be in defensive stance the entire time though to maximize your hate.

[Ivilborg]

Stickied!

/10char

[Hilamonsta]

Goddamn, can someone go post a version of this in the Barbarian forum? I've been scribbling down calculations for a week now trying to figure out the formulas!