captain tanking/off tanking

[spikethe3rd]

So I'm currently gearing to help support t2c raids, wether that be tanking stuff such as gortheron or a bunch of adds in poison wing to standing infront of durchest collecting threat debuff. Basically I'm new to the current server im on and a lot of the cappies here scoff that I have low morale and that their builds of 48k morale with no bpe, Just crit defence, stacking morale and incoming healing, losing set bonuses in search of more morale, is superior.

I will add screens of my gear and traits tonight as I am at work but currently stats are roughly around:

30k morale
25% resistance
26% block
28% parry +60% with fighting withdrawal
20% evade
25% inc healing + 15% from to arms and 30% from banner when needed at crunch heal times.
80% crit defence
63% phys and 57% tact mits with banner. I use the BB set for 73% on proc
25sec bubble

I know how to manage my buffs and -inc damage skills and banner and manage threat and pulls, shield brother and such


I still need essence trousers and I was thinking for the 4 slots. Morale, tact mit, evade and ?
Im in mostly 95 BB jewellery and shield. I also need crit def/ tact mit weapon titles and crafted relics.
I do only have 2k per minute, in combat power regeneration but I trust my Lm, blue cappy and mini and rk power hots to help aswell as me managing inspire and power pots as needed to keep me above half at all times.

However this build im working on seems to get scoffed at as I said even though no one else seems to be even wanting to tank t2c much less actually doing it.
Do I be cheeky and ask them to tank a t2c 6man and show me combat analysis for damage taken overall and taken per second. I do it with the same group and see which takes less etc?

Thoughts and opinions? Am I going about this wrong? What am I missing here.

[PerfectApproach]

I've never played a captain, and I likely never will. But I can offer this bit of advice: If you like playing with BPE as part of your build, play with BPE as part of your build. You see, the people who think you're "not a good enough tank" are only looking at one stat. They're using that one stat as a gauge to see how good a player you are. These are probably not the kinds of players I would group with anyway. One stat doesn't tell the whole story, and players like this often think their way is the best way, hands down. They are not open to different play styles.

I remember this same effect a few expansions ago on the RK. Everyone said "lightning is the best way to do it". I went against the grain and learned fire. I found that, despite their best efforts, I could out-DPS most other lightning RK's by miles. I was keeping up with hunters, back when hunters were hands-down the top DPS. Way before trait trees.

My recommendation would be to avoid players who think that your play style isn't "correct". In fact, it is entirely possible that you know something about BPE on a captain that other people haven't figured out yet. Maybe you've learned some skill rotation or something that depends on a lot of BPE. If it makes sense to you, and you're not having any trouble tanking, roll with it. There's more to it than just morale, after all.

[Warmutkan]

Worlds are down and I don't know my stats well offhand (nooooooob) so only some general thoughts:

I play on Withywindle and Meneldor and have never seen a 48K cappy, especially unbuffed. Good to know that they exist, but by far most of the captains I run into do not pour that much into their morale. Admittedly many of these captains are running DPS lines, so a lot of the time their morale is around 20K. My captain often traits tanking, especially because I'm in a kin that tends not to roll heavy armour classes. When traited yellow I have about 34K morale and ~5% less on mitigations than you do. Not sure how the other stats compare. The other tank cappies I see usually have slightly less morale than me - around 30K as you said.

I'm not the best captain and I'm not T2C snuff, but morale isn't the only stat on the table. Healers exist for a reason. If you can get a group together, coordinate, and run T2C as a successful tank/off-tank, then you've got the right build for your play style. No sense retraiting and getting new gear to roll a stat line you don't enjoy or that doesn't fit your focus.

[Giseldah]

I have a morale setup which can reach such high number. I mainly change a few armour pieces and virtues to switch between bpe and morale.

In your setup I would max tactical mitigation first as top priority and then put remainder in morale. Evade is fine as is (much less % from rating above 20) and morale is quite low.. try to get to +35k.

I didn't do much T2s, but in my experience bpe gets less effective, because mobs seems to get more finesse. That's why building morale gets more attractive, something which cappies excel in. Sadly they are at the low end with mitigations..

[SapienChavez]

but in my experience bpe gets less effective, because mobs seems to get more finesse. That's why building morale gets more attractive, something which cappies excel in.

i think this is the key to the issue right here.



oh, anyone that actually "scoffs" at you is not worth your time. from that one line alone, id find a new group. i aint got time for other peoples' insecurities being projected onto me, personally.

[Lobla]

i think the odd minstrel / healing RK might appreciate some incoming healing - from a quick scan couldn't see that mentioned.

Lob

[Lanelthan]

I think Captains are highly capable of tanking, prior to u15 I tanked the Gauntlet in BG with basic Vit gear and jewls and my DPS 2h Sword.

If you focus on building to tank I think captains will make very viable tanks especially with max trait points at your disposal you'll have some heal utility as well if you dip into blue line

[spikethe3rd]

i think the odd minstrel / healing RK might appreciate some incoming healing - from a quick scan couldn't see that mentioned.

Lob

25% unbuffed currently. then to arms 15% and banner 30% etc

[bonefish101]

Solous,

I have seen you play out in the moors and so I know how good of a captain you are. Back when Asylum and others were raiding allot, I would often tank the t2c stuff. We never ran into a problem with me tanking and I usually ran around 30k morale and still used a 2 hander. I still hate going sword and board (bored).

I have seen a couple cappies who try to get to 45k and to be honest, I don't feel they are anywhere near as effective...I have watched them over and over get slaughtered....They get hit every time....If you bpe stuff you don't get hit...if you don't get hit...your morale stays high....well, you get the picture.

I have made essence gear with insane morale and I cringe when I see 20k and 30k hits from bosses. I'd rather cap mitigations and focus on BPE everyday.

Just my two cents

Iriddian

[Lanelthan]

Solous,
Right now with decent tanking gear, only 2 essence peices i'm sitting at the below stats.

27,274 Morale

Critical Defense - 68.8%
Incoming Healing - 5% (where we would need the most essence work)
Block - 24.2%
Parry 24.5%
Evade - 15.9% (Here as well)

Physical Mit- 60%
Tactical Mit - 57.3%

Keep in mind this is 2 Essence Pieces (ones i use towards Moors with 2x Supreme Phys Mit 1 Crit D 1 Finesse, and 2x Major Tact Mit 1 Crit D and one Morale. Those would be tinkered with.

Also have all lvl 100 Jewls from BBs with the exception of the Mitigation ring you get from new zone. Using the 3 set Mitigation bonus, rest of my gear is lvl 100 Teals Vit main stat with exception of one lvl 95 piece.

Also using a lvl 95 Emblem geared towards tanking with relics (not best in slot) and a lvl 100 2nd age 1h and shield. Sword has no relics and isn't finished.


ALl in all I think we have a ton of potential and would only need to work on a couple of stats VIA essences. Those being maybe 1 E Block/Parry, Stack some more Evade, and Def more incoming healing. After that I think the rest could go towards straight morale.


EDIT: For trait points I went 51 In yellow taking everything except Noble Mark, and Tier 5 of the banner. with the remaining points in blue line for Revealing Mark, Reversal, Skilled Hands. I'm torn between taking the good Incombat Cappy rez (Cry Of Vengence) Or going with Bolstered Resolve to help with heals. (Only missing 1 trait point)

[spikethe3rd]

EDIT: For trait points I went 51 In yellow taking everything except Noble Mark, and Tier 5 of the banner. with the remaining points in blue line for Revealing Mark, Reversal, Skilled Hands. I'm torn between taking the good Incombat Cappy rez (Cry Of Vengence) Or going with Bolstered Resolve to help with heals. (Only missing 1 trait point)

Sort of the same thinking here. I took all of yellow except bleed damage and tier 5 of the banner.
Got the 20% healing mag, Reveal mark and cry of vengeance from Blue. I also got the -10% attack duration from red.
Currently as I said 25% incoming healing unbuffed I feel is decent. My last essence piece im going to use 2 evade a morale and a tact mit.

Will test by tanking t2c 6mans over this weekend, with managing my -incoming damage buffs properly I think I can keep my damage taken per second fairly low and avoid most spike damage entirely. As irridian said bpe is king and getting hit for 30k and praying your mini heals you while you have that 19k left just doesnt feel good to me but that's the route people keep telling me to take. "You should speak to x, great cappy and will help you" when I wasn't aware i needed help and I thought I was doing well. Just throws a shadow of doubt so figured I would gather some knowledge is all.

So closing, this threads shown me the direction I'm headed is the right one. Just need to finish the build and get to it. Cheers

[tarpelion]

In case you're still interested...





Stats:

- Around 43k morale unbuffed ( could be 45k+ easily if i had all greater essences)
- Mits are capped
- Block: 25.3% Parry: 26.4% with tactic Evade: 20.4% ( Ideal stats without DR are 25/26-27 depening on li/20%)
- Crit defense: 64% ( 60% is enough for pve really)
- Inc healing: 13.4%, def don't need more with overpowered freep heals
- Resistance: 19.6% or 24.6% depending on wich virtue i slot, wouldn't care too much about this stat though.

Succesfully tanked BG t2c and OD t2c full, could hold my own too in erebor raids but kin had no interest for completing those raids so.

[spikethe3rd]

Cheers tarp. LI's, cloak and jewels are exactly the same pretty much its just instead of having so much morale essences ive through in some resistance a little more bpe and crit defence or incoming healing. Did you find the morale necessary or was it just a nice comfort cushion.
What sort of hits were you taking and did you solo tank through them or was there another to help on certain pulls where our 6 target taunt wasn't enough?

[tarpelion]

Cheers tarp. LI's, cloak and jewels are exactly the same pretty much its just instead of having so much morale essences ive through in some resistance a little more bpe and crit defence or incoming healing. Did you find the morale necessary or was it just a nice comfort cushion.
What sort of hits were you taking and did you solo tank through them or was there another to help on certain pulls where our 6 target taunt wasn't enough?

I wouldn't call it a necessity for BG or OD. In fact my first tanking build looked like yours until i saw the terrible DR on bpe ( i basically trade 2.5% bpe for an extra 12k morale). You might need some help with some trash pulls but that's only because of aggro, not really defences as this build is extremely tanky and can take on a lot of mobs with ease. I didn't see a difference in hits being taken at all between my first and this build ( wich is why i think 80% crit D is def not needed and 12k extra morale is always nice then) but cappies also have a lot of cds to back themelves up with. I'd recommend the morale build for bosses like Durins bane though as they hit pretty hard and the extra morale will help with that.

Now if you ever plan on running Bfe t2c, then yes i 100% recommend the morale build since the trolls ( with the damage buffs) hit extremely hard.

[SapienChavez]

Solous,

I have seen you play out in the moors and so I know how good of a captain you are. Back when Asylum and others were raiding allot, I would often tank the t2c stuff. We never ran into a problem with me tanking and I usually ran around 30k morale and still used a 2 hander. I still hate going sword and board (bored).

I have seen a couple cappies who try to get to 45k and to be honest, I don't feel they are anywhere near as effective...I have watched them over and over get slaughtered....They get hit every time....If you bpe stuff you don't get hit...if you don't get hit...your morale stays high....well, you get the picture.

I have made essence gear with insane morale and I cringe when I see 20k and 30k hits from bosses. I'd rather cap mitigations and focus on BPE everyday.

Just my two cents

Iriddian

i whole-heartedly agree.

to add to what youre saying, the morale is only good "once" until you are healed. making anything between your current morale and cap, "wasted stat points." BPE is never wasted. (assuming youre in a situation where you are taking dmg).

[came11]

So, i finally hit 100 on my captain (originally she supposed to be my new moors char since rolling there on warden now it's like pulling machine gun in a knives fight), get myself some gear, im almost done with virtues and now i have some questions about main tanking instances/raids. I figured that before i'll take her into moors i will try to get a grasp on every trait line in pve, learn some basics, get to know better my skills and possibilities and im kinda starting to like it, especially if you consider sorry state of pvmp on my server (zerg or nothing).

Survivability is great, with over 40k morale, nice avoidances and all the CDs staying alive is not the issue. Holding aggro in the other hand is. Single target tanking is ok, between threathening shout and grave wound i had no problem tanking BfE t2 troll the other night or Durins Bane couple nights back. I did have issues with multiple mobs pull however, in 6 man content it is not much of a problem, when i run instances like lost temple (lots of mobs with medicore dmg) i'll just ask champion or warden to pull, throw him a bubble wait few sec so they can dish out some dots/DC/AoE and then starting with challenge, works quite well so far if there is a non squishy class with aoe capabilities ofc, if there is not things looks more messy but with IhW and bubble it's still manageable.

Trash pulls in OD are other story and i would like to know how you guys do it, im not feeling comfortable with burning SoD and possibly other CDs only to establish threat lead which wont last long enough for challenge to go off cd (dps there not going to hold off, in kin run maybe but pug group just replace me with guardian/warden). I have healing legacies on my sword (aoe healing) and emblem (vocal/rallying cry) aswell as pressing attax max targets (no idea if it's helpfull, dmg is laughably low in tank spec/gear) and after second challenge my agrro seems pretty steady but before that...well, it's sometimes ends bad, usually for aoe dpeesers like champs/lms. Any advice how to deal with such pulls?

[ertr]

So, i finally hit 100 on my captain (originally she supposed to be my new moors char since rolling there on warden now it's like pulling machine gun in a knives fight), get myself some gear, im almost done with virtues and now i have some questions about main tanking instances/raids. I figured that before i'll take her into moors i will try to get a grasp on every trait line in pve, learn some basics, get to know better my skills and possibilities and im kinda starting to like it, especially if you consider sorry state of pvmp on my server (zerg or nothing).

Survivability is great, with over 40k morale, nice avoidances and all the CDs staying alive is not the issue. Holding aggro in the other hand is. Single target tanking is ok, between threathening shout and grave wound i had no problem tanking BfE t2 troll the other night or Durins Bane couple nights back. I did have issues with multiple mobs pull however, in 6 man content it is not much of a problem, when i run instances like lost temple (lots of mobs with medicore dmg) i'll just ask champion or warden to pull, throw him a bubble wait few sec so they can dish out some dots/DC/AoE and then starting with challenge, works quite well so far if there is a non squishy class with aoe capabilities ofc, if there is not things looks more messy but with IhW and bubble it's still manageable.

Trash pulls in OD are other story and i would like to know how you guys do it, im not feeling comfortable with burning SoD and possibly other CDs only to establish threat lead which wont last long enough for challenge to go off cd (dps there not going to hold off, in kin run maybe but pug group just replace me with guardian/warden). I have healing legacies on my sword (aoe healing) and emblem (vocal/rallying cry) aswell as pressing attax max targets (no idea if it's helpfull, dmg is laughably low in tank spec/gear) and after second challenge my agrro seems pretty steady but before that...well, it's sometimes ends bad, usually for aoe dpeesers like champs/lms. Any advice how to deal with such pulls?

Holding aggro against multiple opponents is a weakness of captains. Your dps'ers need to be careful with their AoE attacks, and if they aren't it is their fault if they pull aggro.

[Laubgaenger]

In Yellow you create aggro by damage x3 [Edit was: x1,5 (imo)] + Healaggro
So hitting Enemies with Pressing attack will bind them to you.
The Bleed (with the Axe Symbol) will force aggro if you lose one.

Make youself as targetgiver an place the Tankmark on the enemy.
With the shouts they should stay next to you.

Singletarget tanking is no problem. In Large groups it depends offten on the doing of the stickthrower :-)
You crys have a range the bows have a much more greater range.

[Edit: the Aggro becomes 300% while in Yellow. https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...-Threat-in-HD]

[came11]

In Yellow you create aggro by damage x1,5 (imo) + Healaggro
So hitting Enemies with Pressing attack will bind them to you.
The Bleed (with the Axe Symbol) will force aggro if you lose one.

Make youself as targetgiver an place the Tankmark on the enemy.
With the shouts they should stay next to you.

Singletarget tanking is no problem. In Large groups it depends offten on the doing of the stickthrower :-)
You crys have a range the bows have a much more greater range.

Well, what can i say, thanks for trying .

[Maelon]

I'll echo the notion that captains can have aggro issues in multiple mob fights. In skraids having a few stray mobs often doesn't matter, but it will in other instances/raids. One thing I do is swap (between fights, as we can't armor swap in combat) between an essence piece with 4 supreme mights and another with 3 greater morale and 1 incoming healing. In pulls where the threatening shout won't grab everything, I'll use the might armor piece if I think I can survive using it. I also tank with a greatsword for the extra 2H DPS, and trait enough red for the -% attack speed. It's not perfect, but it helps.

The other, riskier option you can try is to ask a yellow champ or LM to be an aggro generator for you. Hold off on using Threatening shout, and ask your guinea pig to shing shing all the the AOE they can at the start of the fight. Set them as Shield Brother, Fire off Shield of the Dunedain and To Arms on the champ/LM as they start their run, and let them rake up a big aggro head start and ball up all the mobs around them. Then use Threatening shout to aggro copy +20% off their threat. At that point, you should be 20% ahead of the guinea pig and miles ahead of everyone else. Ask your guinea pig to let up for a few seconds, and you should stay ahead of them the rest of the fight.

[spikethe3rd]

I'll echo the notion that captains can have aggro issues in multiple mob fights. In skraids having a few stray mobs often doesn't matter, but it will in other instances/raids. One thing I do is swap (between fights, as we can't armor swap in combat) between an essence piece with 4 supreme mights and another with 3 greater morale and 1 incoming healing. In pulls where the threatening shout won't grab everything, I'll use the might armor piece if I think I can survive using it. I also tank with a greatsword for the extra 2H DPS, and trait enough red for the -% attack speed. It's not perfect, but it helps.

The other, riskier option you can try is to ask a yellow champ or LM to be an aggro generator for you. Hold off on using Threatening shout, and ask your guinea pig to shing shing all the the AOE they can at the start of the fight. Set them as Shield Brother, Fire off Shield of the Dunedain and To Arms on the champ/LM as they start their run, and let them rake up a big aggro head start and ball up all the mobs around them. Then use Threatening shout to aggro copy +20% off their threat. At that point, you should be 20% ahead of the guinea pig and miles ahead of everyone else. Ask your guinea pig to let up for a few seconds, and you should stay ahead of them the rest of the fight.

Been using this little method a while now for large aoe pulls such as the trash in Ivar or being able to pull the whole zombie room in BG and it really does help.


Has anyone else noticed any power issues. I can usually do just fine managing inspire, power pots and the captain consumable pots for -70% power costs. Some fights however I find myself a little low at times without an LM. I don't really want to resort to sticking fate in essence gear. I have all the fate tomes maxed out and of course Eat food prior to a fight.