Advice for Tanking Captain

[dac123]

Hello. I'm working on a tanking captain spec with sights set on raiding (T2). Below toon (Lvl 115) is still a work in progress. Jewellery is 330 teal Ash Bane; gear is a mixture of Bane 330 and Abyss 337 (although I must admit I still have a couple Vanguard 330 gear). Below specs are unbuffed, with the exception of IDOME and Motivated. I'd like to know what stats my fellow captains think need to be increased or decreased. Is my phy mast too high? Resistance too low? How does my Block/Parry/and Evade look? Finesse? Should I pare back Crit Def? Thoughts and advice from other cappys would be greatly appreciated! Thanks for your time!

Vit 19,549 (136,970 Morale)
Crit rating 11,436
Finesse 59,174
Phy Mast 126,295
Resist 50,253
Crit Def 64,776
Inc Heal 17,191

Block 59,325
Parry 63,695
Evad 32,357

Phy Mit 77,296
Tact Mit 78,308

[discodanman45]

When I tank for T2 Abyss I use the following essences. I use 5 incoming healing essences and the rest is vitality. I ignore finesse and I am at 9000 I think. BPE is not very useful at all since you can't BPE boss attacks in general for raiding. BPE is useful for trash, but a guard will typically have that duty. Captain's are great single target tanks and it would get messy if you need to tank numerous mobs. I am sitting at about 200K morale as a captain and that is what you should shoot for once you get better gear. Just make sure you keep tact/physical mitigations capped. As a yellow captain your only job is to stay alive and make things easier for your healers. Ignore finesse, physical mastery, and have swap out pieces for BPE.

[MorningStarSE]

You know you can mix up pieces of gear/joolry from dps or tankish depending on how you want to look, it does not really matter really..


your tanky stats looks fine a bit better than mine actually, but i got 30k more morale than you in tank mode but as long as you, me (I), are able to live thru it, well its all right.. never seen someone complain.. err.. yeah maybe some #######. but i they didn't really know how to play in group so i dont give a peanut for them.(and they usually tell you how good you're a few days later)

[Spardaa]

More morale is needed you can barely survive a hit with that, dont slot bpe or crit d essences I roll over 200k morale in my tank build

[Knight.]

I opted for a hybrid approach to my current tank build (u21.3.3)
(2x raid armour for set bonus & finesse, 2x 337 ash gear for bpe stats, 2x Pel Armour for morale stacking)

Edit:: See a few post below for u22 build, comments in this post still apply

Notes / Considerations:

The numbers above can be misleading as for some passive or trait line benefits you will need to hover over a specific stat to see where it actually ends up falling.

Mitigations:
The cap for T2 physical & tactical mitigations is 77,840 so the trick is to get as close to this as possible.
I prefer to cap mitigations "at rest" with hope and scrolls because in combat you may need to drop your rotation in order to kite or put in a tricky rez.
My actual mitigations before sure strike buff are 76,684 physical mitigation (undercap slightly, no essences used) and 80,151 (overcap a little with 4 tact mit essences).

Morale
For raiding I would target 180K morale with anything near 200k being sweet.
I have 2 builds "morale & bpe" where I hit 222k morale and a "morale & incoming healing" build where I hit 204k morale.
There are some situations where morale stacking can work against you (damage based on morale) but in general you can avoid/reduce this with smart movement.

Finesse
In order for grave-wound to be reliable and for you to help with corruption removal I would target a minimum of 13% finesse with anything over 15% being sweet in tank spec.
At present the armour and jewellery mix I'm rocking gives 16.5% finesse with zero finesse essences. My grave-wound and corruption removals are very reliable.

Resistance
As long as you are using resistance food your stats should be fine on this.
My resistance currently falls at 31.7%.
With muster courage and fear resist legacy I can also get +70% fear resist for my fellowship for 30 seconds.

Critical Defence
You should be able to get a decent amount from gear, trait line and legacy.
My crit defence falls at 51% (44% from armour and legacy + 7% from trait line)
The legacy in question is the muster courage fear resist legacy which as an additional benefit also gives you and your shield brother additional crit defence.

Block, Parry, Evade
There are two distinct approaches to this - some captains ignore it and purely stack morale, while others try to incorporate some within their builds.
After 200k morale I don't see the benefit of morale stacking as with reasonable heals, debuffs and cool downs you shouldn't struggle too much.
I therefore like to invest in damage reduction (avoid taking the hit or partial it to protect your morale pool) and incoming healing (useful to get morale replenished faster).
Currently with no bpe essences (armour, trait lines, relics) my stats are:
Block - 17.8% Block, 21.6% Partially Block
Parry - 17.9% Parry, 19.4% Partially Parry --> if you use your parry buff in combat you can get up to 78.4% parry
Evade - 11.9% Evade, 19.4% Partially Evade --> full evade can go up to 19.9% in combat with trait
I believe these are additive so in situations where bpe is possible this gives me 47.6% chance (55.6% if evade buff procs) to avoid an attack all together and 60.4% chance to partially reduce incoming damage from an attack.
I haven't included the parry buff from fighting withdrawal in these figures as that is considered more of a cooldown skill along with shield of the dunedain and last stand.

Incoming Healing
Although there is no specific need to stack incoming healing in the current raid it's definitely nice to have and will always be useful (provided you have enough of a morale pool in the first place).
There are passives, relics and shields which can grant incoming healing as well as festival food (took in the hole). Furthermore a lot of our skills in combat help us to significantly increase incoming healing for a short period of time.
I also have swap pieces for when I want to increase incoming healing at the expense of some morale and bpe, but this is situational e.g. 2nd & 3rd boss fights. I'm also hoping that with the introduction of gold essences in North Mirkwood I will be able to incorporate more incoming healing into my base build and do away with these swap pieces all together.
My base incoming healing is 14.1% in "morale and bpe" build (no incoming heal essences) and 32.9% with swap pieces and festival food.
In combat this can go as high as 92.1% using only my own skills (and even further if LM is throwing water-lore or mini buffs)

Hope that helps and all the very best in tanking those raids.

[Isilmacil]

Knight, your build is rather fascinating to me, and I would love to learn how you achieve some of those stats with the armour you mentioned.

Mitigations: I find that when I currently tank in T2 Mordath, I have to use around 4-5 tact mit essences in order to reach the 78k sweet spot. Based off your post, you are able to achieve the cap without any tact mit essences in armour. I would love to see what jewelry you have that allows you to reach this tact mit cap (I'll assume most virtues have physical and tact mit in them).

Finesse: I find with trying to get good morale and tact mit, finesse is very hard to get a decent number (I get about 30k). While this number is decent, I do find Grave Wound will still get bpe'd somewhat frequently, and corruption removal on 2nd boss can suck. But I suppose with 4 finesse essences (which should net you just shy of 40k if all empowered abyssal), and a couple of dps oriented jewelry to get you to 71k.

Morale: I find that with all buffs I currently reach around 195/196k morale when tanking. I use 1 piece of Pelennor armour for morale stacking, which has helped from a previous build. Again I would be curious in your jewelry to see where you get the extra morale to be able to reach 222k with having that tact mit and finesse.

BPE: I'd have to double check what I normally have in my tank build (as I have no BPE swap pieces currently). But those are nice values to see overall.

In conclusion, your build looks awesome from that screenshot, and I would very much like to replicate it for myself.

[Knight.]

Edit:: see few post below for u22 build

[CampbellCommunity]

Why do you stack so much vit essences?

[Knight.]

Why do you stack so much vit essences?

A tank requires a decent amount of morale to tank T2 content.
Most Guards are rocking 150k+ and most Capts 180k+

If I wanted to, I could achieve 240K morale by going all out morale build, but I do not like that approach.
I have instead incorporated a mix of mitts, morale, bpe, finesse and incoming healing by selecting certain gear pieces, legacies, relics and buffs.

[Knight.]

Just a note to say that I am currently reworking my tank build with U22 update, so information above is old / out of date.

[Sphenforthewin]

Just a note to say that I am currently reworking my tank build with U22 update, so information above is old / out of date.

As someone who's Cappy is only 60, and main's a 115 champ tank, I just want to say that I have learned quite a bit from this thread, and am loving keeping it saved. Thanks for the effort you guys put into sharing info.

[MorningStarSE]

Just a note to say that I am currently reworking my tank build with U22 update, so information above is old / out of date.

I'm doing it as well hoardig gear from what i can get out of U22.. Still working on rep to get these new essences >.> (i'm working the morale thing as well with the new gear).

[Knight.]

Edit:: I've been experimenting with additional builds and developed further. This information is now obsolete.

Updated Build with U22
Note: This information is now out of date

Self buffed w/ sure-strike and duty bound + food, hope, scrolls
i.e. in combat starting off stats before usage of additional skills



Key Features:

• 244k Morale with 254 LoE and over capped mitigations in combat
  (at rest mitigations 76,942 phys / 78,654 tactical. T2c mitigation requirement is 77,800)
• 14.1% incoming healing before usage of skills (swap pieces available to cap incoming healing)
• 16.5% finesse for reliable grave wound and corruption removal
• Full BPE with no essences: 17.8% / 18.4% / 11.9% to 19.9% (evade buff) ~ 48.1% to 56.1% full bpe chance
• Partial BPE with no essences: 21.9% / 20.8% / 19.5% ~ 62.2% partial bpe chance
• Crit Defence: 51.3%

Gear



Swap Pieces

• Incoming Healing --> increases to 35%
• Morale --> decreases to 224K
• LoE --> decreases to 218 LoE (current raid only requires 200 LoE)
• BPE --> slightly reduced due to bracelet swap

[Hisp]

First of all, thank you for the great information Knight. I learned quite a lot about Captains thanks to your different posts.

Could you also show the virtues and class traits that you are using?
This would be interesting as well.

I can't wait to start tanking the raid with Captains

Again, thanks you for the contribution to the Captain thread

[Damgorn]

A thank you from me as well. I just got back in the game after a long break, so this was very helpful to me. Sadly I can't get half your gear yet as I don't think people want Cappys in their raid with 0 essences, but i'll get there eventually. I'm just going for the full set from Erebor at the moment.

I'm just curious why you have the Westemnet Gem of Faith. Is the new gem with crit def on it not better so you can spend your trait points elsewhere?

[Knight.]

Thank you all for your kind words - as always I run multiple builds and my thinking changes with different patches, instances, situations, fellowship or raid composition etc.

For example you may be called upon to run a hybrid build where you are 50% tanking and 50% buffing, be expected to self heal or find yourself in a situation where bpe, critical defence or morale stacking isn't very useful etc. and want to adjust accordingly. In this thread I've posted a generic multi-purpose build that will serve you well in current end game instances and raid.

Could you also show the virtues and class traits that you are using?

AoE Tank Spec


Edit: please see note a few posts below regarding Elendil's Fury still being broken (u22.3)

Single Target Tank Spec


Edit: please see note a few posts below regarding Elendil's Fury still being broken (u22.3)

I'm just curious why you have the Westemnet Gem of Faith. Is the new gem with crit def on it not better so you can spend your trait points elsewhere?

Both are nice - the latest one giving you vitality & crit defence and the one I use giving you partial avoidances. Since I already have enough morale and can get to around 50% crit defence with gear, trait points & legacies it made sense to invest in another form of damage reduction i.e. partial avoidances / mitigations. Combined I then end up having the best of both worlds. Also as a side note as I understand it, if you partially evade, block, or parry an attack then that attack by default cannot be a critical hit.

[Damgorn]

Both are nice - the latest one giving you vitality & crit defence and the one I use giving you partial avoidances. Since I already have enough morale and can get to around 50% crit defence with gear, trait points & legacies it made sense to invest in another form of damage reduction i.e. partial avoidances which are not too easy to get as a captain especially in full percentage values. Combined I then end up having the best of both worlds. Also as I understand it, if you partially evade, block, or parry an attack then that attack by default cannot be a critical hit.

But it doesn't increase your partial avoidance chance though, does it? I think it just decreases the damage of a partial avoidance. Still nice to have of course. I still have it on my LIs, I'll have to see how much crit def I get from the rest of my gear first.

[Knight.]

But it doesn't increase your partial avoidance chance though, does it? I think it just decreases the damage of a partial avoidance. Still nice to have of course. I still have it on my LIs, I'll have to see how much crit def I get from the rest of my gear first.

Yep - sorry you're right, the percentages are mitigations and not reduction chance. Have amended statement above.
Same thinking still applies though, if you have enough morale and crit defence it's a different way to reduce incoming damage.
Also the block rating + might (albeit incredibly small) is nice, both of which contribute towards full & partial block chance.

[Knight.]

Edit:: I've been experimenting with additional builds and developed further. This information is now obsolete.

Made some slight adjustments to the build posted above:

First of all incorporated Thrang gear into the build (finesse now up to 17.5%, morale just over 250k in base build, increased bpe):



Secondly I stopped using the Osgiliath bracelets and changed my incoming heal swaps to the below (have 2 sets of these - one all vitality essences, one all restoration essences). The reasoning behind this was that with Osgiliath bracelets you lose a lot of vitality and bpe stats and in some cases even though you receive more heals you also take more damage. With this adjustment you now get the best of both worlds. Furthermore rather than completely cap static incoming healing to 35% (with food + man bonus) I have now opted for 30% when using these swap pieces which gives you a significant boost to static incoming healing, whilst also leaving you with a very respectable 225k morale buffed

[WhiteGoliath]

A thank you from me as well. I just got back in the game after a long break, so this was very helpful to me. Sadly I can't get half your gear yet as I don't think people want Cappys in their raid with 0 essences, but i'll get there eventually. I'm just going for the full set from Erebor at the moment.

I'm just curious why you have the Westemnet Gem of Faith. Is the new gem with crit def on it not better so you can spend your trait points elsewhere?

Hey knight, there's a little mistake in those builds. It's about the elendil Fury, but I'll post this later for you. Elendil Fury is a broken mechanic and I'm also gonna tell you why you shouldn't trait it in the first place, even when your elendil Fury isn't bugged.

Atm on phone so can't fully explain in detail.

[Knight.]

Hey knight, there's a little mistake in those builds. It's about the elendil Fury, but I'll post this later for you. Elendil Fury is a broken mechanic and I'm also gonna tell you why you shouldn't trait it in the first place, even when your elendil Fury isn't bugged.

Good point actually.

I remember reading the discussion on it here.
Will test later today and update - thx for bringing it up.

Update

So I tested this today and can confirm that Elendil's Fury is indeed still broken (u22.3)

Elendils Fury Tiers up correctly and when fully tiered Blade of Elendil can be used to grant you a defeat response associated to Elendil's Fury

This defeat response shows up as a buff but

• a) does not bring up rallying cry / routing cry in the auto skill bar as with regular defeat responses
• b) when the defeat response is consumed by rallying cry does not trigger the +5% damage buff associated with Rousing Cry trait
• c) when the defeat response is consumed by routing cry does not trigger the -15% attack duration buff associated with Penetrating Cry trait
• d) when the defeat response is consumed by routing cry does not Stun Targets as it should do if Terrifying Bellow trait is equipped.

I fully appreciate that unless removing corruptions/making use of Elendil's Boon in general you probably want to avoid using Blade of Elendil when tanking, as it consumes battle hardened state.

However, if Elendil's fury was working correctly I'd still be tempted to spec it as I would probably still find some use for it considering it only costs 1 point: whether it be to hold a defeat response up my sleeve for extra CC via a well timed routing cry stun or for supporting buffs in hybrid tank / buff specs before returning to battle hardened state.

As it stands right now though, you are right, there is no real benefit to putting a point into Elendil's Fury when tanking.

[WhiteGoliath]

Good point actually.

I remember reading the discussion on it here.
Will test later today and update - thx for bringing it up.

Update

So I tested this today and can confirm that Elendil's Fury is indeed still broken (u22.3)

Elendils Fury Tiers up correctly and when fully tiered Blade of Elendil can be used to grant you a defeat response associated to Elendil's Fury

This defeat response shows up as a buff but

• a) does not bring up rallying cry / routing cry in the auto skill bar as with regular defeat responses
• b) when the defeat response is consumed by rallying cry does not trigger the +5% damage buff associated with Rousing Cry trait
• c) when the defeat response is consumed by routing cry does not trigger the -15% attack duration buff associated with Penetrating Cry trait
• d) when the defeat response is consumed by routing cry does not Stun Targets as it should do if Terrifying below trait is equipped.

I fully appreciate that unless removing corruptions/making use of Elendil's Boon in general you probably want to avoid using Blade of Elendil when tanking, as it consumes battle hardened state.
However, if Elendil's fury was working correctly I'd still be tempted to spec it as I would probably still find some use for it considering it only costs 1 point: whether it be to hold a defeat response up my sleeve for extra CC via a well timed routing cry stun or for supporting buffs in hybrid tank / buff specs before returning to battle hardened state.

As it stands right now though, you are right, there is no real benefit to putting a point into Elendil's Fury when tanking.

exactly, no need to explain more, you did realize in time ^^


sidenote, I highly recommend tanking captains to get a basic swap emblem



not so much work to get, you also see my time of need switch and extra pulses legacy, for if you play redline too.

the reason I got time of need on an unimbued swap is because time of need damage bonus isn't working as intended. it's broken, there's also another issue with time of need overlapping the penetrating cry def event buff.

[Harigrim]

The important question is: do you have a lossoth pet?

[WhiteGoliath]

The important question is: do you have a lossoth pet?

no, you dont, after I told you 1 year ago

and for you trollish attitude ingame, git gud m9 zS