The hints, tips and experiences thread.

[Magentix]

Hi, I thought it might be a good idea for a thread where all guardians share their experiences on tactics, stat prefer and other meat-shield topics

I'll start off by adding a few of my own experiences.


Trait - Harasser vs Skill - Shield Taunt

I find that tanking multiple elites becomes an easy job once you get the harraser trait. Just run in, body-pulling, and when they have surrounded you, take a step or two backwards, so they are standing close to each other.
Then one vexing blow, and you're off for a good tanking.

If your party knows how to assist, the AoE vexing blow effect will generate enough aggro on all targets for the minstrel not to gain aggro, while you can create massive aggro on the main target.

If your party gets jumped, or a boss spawns adds, Shield taunt is your friend and ally to get all mobs on you for a short time. Which will be just about enough to use the above strat to generate some AoE aggro.

The low cost of vexing blow and an occasional shield taunt should prevent you from having to use high-cost AoE attacks to keep aggro on multiple targets.


Heavy Shields

Since (afaik) we're the only class able to wield these, I am proud to wiled this huge piece of blocking I find the huge armor and ranged damage "immunity" awesome, but the downside (-2.0% evade) gets countered by our class passives later on anyhow, and agility and some cloaks will add evade anyhow.

I'm eager to hear some counter-arguments from tanks on regular shields.


Requests

Your view on traits: which to go for?
Your view on shields: Heavy or Regular?
Your tactics in certain situations: Especially power management!

[Norfair]

It all depends on how you want to progress, for fast and efficent leveling use a 2hander with high Agility bonus for heavy crits. If you want to gain experience as a Tank then bite the bullet and level with heavy armour, high armour bonuses such as vitaility and morale and get stuck in.

I'll be leveling as a 'Tank' per-sé. Besides, techincaly once you've played 'tank' in one MMO the gist is more or less the same in all, bar a few skills differences.

[Evilive]

this is gonna be a very helpful thread for me..first time tank here..but i love defender classes plus dwarves are way the coolest race in lotr

So all the hints and tips to play one to its best will be great

[Magentix]

"Macros" and group handling

How to manage your group, you ask. Well, here's how I (try ) to do it.

Step 1: Spammable macros

Basically you need a handful, but these 2 are the most commonly used for me:
*** ENGAGING ENEMY, PLEASE ASSIST! ***
*** SWITCHED TARGET, PLEASE RE-ASSIST! ***


Now, how to make these spammable? Simple!

/alias ;engage /f *** ENGAGING ENEMY, PLEASE ASSIST! ***
/alias ;switchtarget /f *** SWITCHED TARGET, PLEASE RE-ASSIST! ***
This will set the texts to the desired "handle"


Assigning the handles to a space in your hotbars:

/alias shortcut 72 ;engage
/alias shortcut 71 ;switchtarget
This will set ;engage to the last slot on bar 5 and ;switchtarget on the second last slot on bar 5
Note that bar 5 is default invisible, and we'd like to keep it that way


Assigning hotkeys to the commands:

Open options -> key mapping -> shortcut bar 5 keys
Assign slot 12 and slot 11 on bar 5 their corresponding keys.


Now you can spam the keys you just assigned to show the messages in the fellowship chat



Notes:

"/shortcut 72 ;engage" also works, but doesn't change along with the handle if you'd alter it later on.
To assist by default, a party member has to press G while having you selected.

[Armour Maedo]

A heavy shield is the logical choice, in role-playing terms or real life numbers. Think about it;
At level15, a heavy shield gives an extra 120 or so armour. Combined with the level15 heavy armour which you will have bought/made by then, that's around 300 total (I'm not sure on the numbers, it could be higher or lower than that, maybe by a lot). That means 40% of your armour is made up of your shield.
You lose 2.0% on evade.
Compare the percentages.
.
..
...
I thought so.

And the ranged damage resistance doesn't hurt either.

[Hex Caliber]

I have to agree with using a heavy shield, it does make a noticeable difference even for my low level (17) Guardian. With a standard shield ranged attacks just do too much damage, especially if it comes from a late add when my energy and morale are starting to show the strain. It could turn out that at higher levels equipped with decent gear a standard shield could be more than enough for most encounters but only time will tell. For now, I am sticking with the heavy shield unless I find a standard one with a large enough morale or might bonus to help offset the loss in ac.

[Know]

At the moment I am experimenting with the setting that lets you auto run to enemy.

So if someone generates more thread then you and the enemy starts running from you, you run after it. It has some drawbacks, it you have selected an enemy you only start running when you first hit him (here maybe throwing axes can be handy). But a bigger problem is that if a enemy is killed then you start running to the next one, last time I almost was running in a group of 5 enermies. Think it has to do with auto attack.