T-t-tank(cap 200 Tank build/guide)

So after some rather useless resets which turned out to be fine(since we got back the orbs used on the rollback period), I've finally finished my tank to a satisfactory level.
Its a very generic MTL tank with bunch of extras

Stats:
MTL>VIT

Here is the full skilltree.

Some explanation on notable skills:

Spoiler: Important skills

P.def(max)
Your main active defensive skill. Heals up to 2k HP, generates 100 base aggro+500 additional aggro, endures all damage, a godly skill and a main staple of masochists know as tanks
Decoy Shot(whatever lvl you want)
Decoy shot produces a decent party aggro and will give you a huge mp reserve
Berserk(max)
On top of the extra 1k+ aspd, it offers you decent amount of aggro generation with quick animation time, also gives you versatility in building your combos. Def/mdef reduction isn't much in the big picture
Warcry(lvl 5)
Same case with berserk, this would be your aggro generator with a quick cast time. The difference being it produces party aggro so you can lure all party's mobs. It also removes fear and buff up your party's atk(if you don't have other WC user).
Guardian
Gives damage reduction (around 45%) to your party members and gives them extra ampr. Plus it reduce your party mates' aggro. One of the benefits of pure tank. Since it reduces your atk its not really that good for ohs shield tank to learn. Close ranged players will love you for this.

So those are the basic skills you need before everything else, with combo openers you can officially become a decent tank.

Spoiler: Utility Skills

Here are some explanation of the skills that would do some extra stuff to help out your party aside from your aggro holding job.
Recovery
There are some nasty stuff that could harm your party members even if you yourself have 100% ailments resist. such as mana explosion or the sickness ailment.
Sanctuary
Reduce the damage taken by 90% if its under 10% of your max HP. So you can chill out and take all those smol magic/physical/fractional damages
Heal
Heals 3k+20% of targets HP at max level. Also reduces revive time by 30 secs, has 24m range, good stuff. Don't take first aid, this one's better for the job. It also offers you a guaranteed 20% HP heal so you don't have to pay attention to fractionals all that much.
Trigger Slash
Faster animation speed for the next skill, can fill some combos to make them 1mp without relying on smited finale
Aegis & Protection
More resistance is always better, plus its a party buff so your damage dealers won't be as squishy as mashed potatoes
Shell break
Sometimes you need the armor break ailment for certain bosses. If you don't have party members with zantei or snipe it might get troublesome. But, you will most likely have a tank on every party so get this skill for extra versatility.
Sonic wave
If you're constantly poor like me and can't afford stargems, you can take lvl 4 sonic wave to get a 1mp opener skill with 8m range. It could also be used on any weapon, be it ohs, bowgun, or knuckle
Shukuchi, Meikyo shisui
Shukuchi to close out on enemies, Meikyo shisui for a buff skill plus 30 secs of +40 crit buff. Can be used as combo ender to buff up your crit rate so you can ditch your toy hammer and use bunch of other weapons. With berserk+base crit+Meikyo you would have 90 crit.

I guess that's all for now, Impact might be good as magic proration, but for now, 22 sp is just too costly if its only for that. Shield cannon would be good to get at cap 185 so you can have a ranged, 100% proc rate interrupt skill in case its necessary

Next, the gears, you can use various gears depending on your need and preference

Spoiler: Weapons

Toy Hammer(100 crit)
Drill(100 crit)
Twin Eagles(100 crit)
Diver's Bowgun(100 crit)
Cone Horn III(75 crit)
Short Musket(25 crit)
Vulcan Staff(24% magic resist)
3rd anniv Sword VII(24%mag resist, 8%Hp, 10 ampr)
Butcher's Knife(20 ampr)
Festival Sword(500mp, 10% ailment resist)
Dark General sword(30% aggro, some Vit%)
Metal Bowgun(10% magic/phys resist)
Zahhak Sword(10%Hp, 10 crit, some fract barrier)

Spoiler: Shields

Dark General's Shield(30% aggro, some Vit%)
3rd Anniv Shield VII(21% aggro, 38% guard power, 4% fract resist, somw Vit%)
Vulcan Shield(12 crit, some aspd)
Imperial Shield(20% mag resist)
Esca Shield(30% aggro)

Spoiler: Armors

Lil Empress Garb(25% phys/mag resist, 500 mp, 15 ampr, -75% water resist, -15 aggro)
Jeremiah Mail(10% phys/mag resist, 5% ailment resist)
Mozt Armor(10% ailment resist)
Heaven Feather Garb(4000Hp, 30% light resist, 20% dark resist, 10% neutral resist, 400mp)

Spoiler: Additional gears

Kitty Hat(15% ailment resist, 15%Hp)
Santa Beard(10% ailment resist, 30% aggro)
Mushroom Cap(20% ailment resist)
White Eyepatch(20% ailment resist)
Charm Belt(20% mag resist, 300mp, 30% aggro)
Jiangshi Hat(15% mag/phys resist, 300mp)
Circle of Order(20% mag/phys resist)
Yashiro Azuki Mask(5% mag/phys resist, 50% aggro)
Sakura Fan Hair clip(20% ailment resist, 10 crit)

Spoiler: Special gears

Dark fighter's bangle(25% aggro, 400mp)
Guidance Lantern(25% aggro, 500mp)
Toughness Bangle(20%Hp, 10% aggro)

Then, the xtals

Spoiler: Xtals

Evil Magic Sword(10%aggro, 5 ampr)
Hero Potum(10% aggro, 10%Hp)
Nightmare Potum(10% aggro)
Megiston the Champion(15 crit)
Zahhak Machina(5 ampr)
Boss Roga/Iconos/Ornlarf(1000/2000/3000 Hp)
Ifrid/Mom Fluck(600/700mp, some fract barrier)
Jade Raptor/Super Death Mushroom(some mp, some cspd)
Arcoiris(10%Hp)
Iron Empress(20%maxHP, 10%phys resist -300mp)
Dusk Machina(20%Hp, 10% aggro)
Candela II(20%Hp, 600aspd)
Yashiro azuki mom(10 crit,5% mag & phys resist)
Eerie Crystal/Tapir(5/10ampr)
Viscum/Deniala(some Hp/ampr)
Seele Zauga(15crit, 5%phys/mag resist)
Stone Mercenary/Memecoleous(some aggro, some guard rate)
Crystal Titan(10% maxhp, 1000maxhp, -5% crit damage)
Seraph Machina(3% ailment resist)
Carbuncle(1000Hp, some reflect)

As we can see, I put some crit xtals so you can have decent amount of crit while still be able to use weapons other than 100/75 crit weapons. Berserk will give you +25 crit, adding your base 25 crit you will have the default 50 crit, Seele Zauga with 15 crit and mekyo shisui's 40 crit would give you a total of 105 crit which would be good enough to prorate with auto attacks.

Spoiler: The Combos

Decoy combo(1mp):
Sonic wave>warcry(save)>Berserk(save)>Decoy Shot(swift)>p.def(no tag)
This combo produces lots of aggro plus re-new your decoy. Good to use in case you lose aggro.

Sanctuary combo(1mp minimum to initiate, 2mp overall cost):
Astute>berserk(save)>sanctuary(swift)>meikyo shisui(swift)
This one is an aggro maintaining combo, re-cast your sanctuary periodically, and enchances your crit for your auto attacks

Guardian combo(2mp):
Trigger slash>guardian(save)>meteor breaker(swift)
Use this at the start of battles to build up the aggro+guardian cast

I guess that's all for now, I might miss some stuff so feel free to give your input/suggestions

 

Revamped build for cap 200

The stat allocation is pretty much the same. I updated the gears and xtals and some addition in skills and combos.

List of the changes:

Spoiler: gears/xtals

-Switches weapon to NPC 4th anniv sword(16% maxhp, 30%magic resistance, 10 ampr)
-Sakura fan hair clip for 10 crit rate and 20% ailment resistance
-megiston the champ for either 1st or 2nd crysta of the weapon
-Iron empress(10%physical resist, 20%maxhp) and daddy finpen(6% mag resist, 6% maxhp) for armor crystas
-Yashiro azuki mom(10 crit rate, 5%mag/phys resist) for additional crysta. 2nd slot would be dusk machina
-seele zauga (15 crate, 5%mag & phys resist) for the ring. Crystal titan for 2nd slot of possible.

Spoiler: Skills/stargems

-reduced p. Def level to only 1
-added magic: impact for the aoe skill and proration
-removed meikyo shisui and shukuchi
-utility stargems are used: lvl 10 magic:javelin, lvl 10 sonic blade, lvl 10 sonic wave and smash.
-lvl1 ad-lib for combo opener
-lvl 10 spirited dance and lvl1 elegant poise.
-power wave is addes for long range auto attack

About the additional skills:
-elegant poise gives a long duration of invincibility frame after being hit. The hit itself will deal the damage, but the long i frame could be used to make you invincible to barrage of aoes.

-spirited dance gives 200mp for all of your party members including yourself if used when the time counter has reached 5 seconds and below, with the stack count of the skill at 5/10 and above. Initial cast will give you 5/10 stack by default and 100 mp recovery. If recasted too early, the stack count will drop and the amount of mp recovery will be reduced. The practical use of this skill is to enable you to make a 0 to 100 mp combo so you continuously cast your aggro combo without a single decoy/auto attack hit as a mean of recovering the mp.

-ad lib is used as a 1mp bar combo opener, similar to reflex, but without the defense reduction.

-impact is used as a primary aoe skill, due of it being able to be casted anywhere withour the need of having the target in front of you.

-sonic blade is used as a replacement of shukuchi, the max range is 24m for ohs at max level. It has similar effect to shukuchi, but faster due to it having fixed animation time regardless of range.

-power wave is used to do long range auto attacks for proration and auto attack mp recovery purpose.

 

Do you have combo suggestion? Ty

 

Ahh, I forgot to put that. I'll add it. Thanks for the reminder

 

hard.hit > warcry(save) > berserk(cons) if the opponents have low evasion rate or inflicted by 'dizzy' (and/or inflicted by 'paralysis') may be a good interrupting-combo.

 

I usually don't put interrupt skills in a combo. For example sometimes you need to use 2 interrupts consecutively, it'd be inconvenient if you're getting caught in combo. Plus I avoid unnecessary interrupts since some bosses are sensitive to a certain interrupts, or generally I dont want to change the attack pattern too often. Its also best to use less skills and do more auto attacks to prorate

 

yep, not for every situations.
bosses have a different 'cast time' for their AoEs. (you'd prefer to prorate during that time, judging from your comment).

that combo is as short as all your three combos, so you will have as much time to prorate as you have with the other three.

only if the hard hit lands successfully(refering to low evasion rate or dizzy), the 2sec from flinch will be enough to cover the rest skill' animation and you will be ready as boss starts its next attack. that time you will be able to do auto.attack and/or p.def(full MTL takes care the ailments).

and ofc only interrupt a serious attack such as big fractional laser/bombs. i know you are aware that letting bosses doing a cheap attack is better than interrupting them.



the main reason is to draw extra 800aggro while boss is flinched. if aggro is not the problem then yes, you should leave hard.hit alone without a combo as you usually do.

 

Which is why my main combo is the sanctuary combo and I focused on mag/phys resist and max HP from avatars and food buff. The sanctuary's always intact, meikyo buff up, and a generation of a base 1200 aggro. I also changed my play style a bit by using less p.def for HP recovery & aggro and rely on Heal, and only when its necessary to do so. That way I spend more time on auto attacks overall. I also spend quite a lot of time on healing party members and use recoveries so the less combo I use, the better.

 

Do you think toughness bangle is not a good pick for special gears?

 

Ahh, it looks like might be a good option. But you really need mp xtals to compensate the lack of MP. Ill add it to the list though, 10% aggro isn't too shabby, and that 20 % max HP is huge, that's about 3k HP with 217 Vit. Thanks for the input

 

What do you think about bowgun tanks using cf to get aggro? (among other skills, of course). Out of the few bowgun tank videos I've seen on youtube, around half has cf in their combo to generate aggro. However, some of my friends have said that cf is useless for taking aggro. What are your thoughts?

Also, any recommendations for increasing attack speed? My tank only has 597 - I want to get it to 1k.

 

You can get aggro from any skill, but Cf seems like a waste of sp unless you're also going for snipe's armor break. You can take quick aura or just use speed pots to get 1k+aspd, berserk duration with Bowgun is too short

 

Ahhh, thank you!

 

About the sanctuary explanation, is that the only thing Sanctuary does? Reduce damage if it's under 10% of my max hp ? And if it's not under that then it won't do anything?

 

Nope

 

Isn't that kinda useless ?

 

Its regarded as a party buff if you have party member within the area though

 

Even tho, 10% of their hp, let's say their HP is around 6k, what kinda boss do 600 damage?

 

Bosses that do 10% or less fractional attacks, like what most spikes aoe do

Also what I meant as a party buff, is that the aggro will apply to all the mobs including the one that doesn't target you. Just like warcry

 

Here are my combos:

hard ht> meteor(save)>guardian(swift) // generates lot of aggro for masskill //1mp
shield bash> berserk(save)>decoy(swift)>p.def //1mp. When berserk ends, i know i can stun the boss again
// I use bitter gelatin from the sykea jelly mobs. Gives 800CSPD for decoy
sonic wave> berserk(save)>rampage(swift) //1mp combo and really fast animation to get 1100 aggro


I still don't use sanctuary because my HP is low. When i reach lvl 160-170, I will change the third combo to
sonic wave> berserk(save)>sanctuary(swift)>backstep or p.def
Also, I don't plan on wasting 27 SP for magic impact. I don't recommend it either. Instead, learn Force Shield and Magical Shield : HP +1000, 10% Physical and Magical Resist