Tanking for beginners

Hey everybody! I wanted to open up a thread dedicated to tanking and tanking discussions for beginners.

A few notes before I get started:
1) I'm still fairly new to this game and am still learning (as we all should be).
2) I'm playing a tank and am currently leveling up with a Mage buddy that is focusing on damage with healing side skills, so this is pretty much purely for party play but with the ability to also play solo if you don't have the option to consistently play in a party.
3) This will also include gear and where to find it or the materials to create it.
4) This guide assumes that you want to play the traditional "sword and board" style of tanking. There won't be any hybrid builds covered here.

Anyways, on to the good stuff!

Tanking in Toram Online is a very active role that requires pretty constant attention and proper skill and stat management. You'll end up taking a few skill trees and spreading the points out to only the most necessary skills for building your beautiful meatshield.

1. Skills and Skill Point Allocation
To start off, you'll want to get shield skills and knight skills (available at level 15). Max provoke nearly immediately. The higher your skill in Provoke the less mana you'll consume when using it, down to a minimum of 200mp. This ensures that any boss will stay focused on you while your party safely drops some major damage.

Next, I recommend maxing sword mastery and the skill after it. Sword mastery increases your effectiveness with all swords, which means more damage and a higher likelihood of keeping a boss focused on you. The skill after it increases your attack speed, which only serves to generate more threat. You can also put 5 points into Hard Hit to give yourself a disrupt early on, but I prefer to save those points for something more valuable later on in levels.

I also maxed Shield Mastery so that I could increase my attack speed even more.

My final ability that I have currently is the lower tree of shields, and the ability increases your physical defense of your whole party (I've forgotten the name). I have 5 points in it as of now, which essentially mitigates a large amount of damage from myself and the party member that isn't paying attention and gets caught in an AoE effect. I plan on taking the magic resistance ability as well and keeping these 2 abilities evenly leveled. My reasoning for this is situational. All of the bosses I've faced so far deal primarily physical damage, but with more updates being released we're bound to see more magic damage based bosses.

Once I have more skills unlocked I'll be updating this section.

2. Stat Points and Allocation
This is the part that most will debate on. You can do one of two ways for a tanking build, in my opinion.
1) Pure Vitality
--This build isn't recommended for those that want to solo play as well. Your damage will be negligible, however you'll basically never use a potion again for standard farming (Regera + Full VIT build = GG farming). This is probably also the more safe build if you have a slower phone, Internet connection or reflexes and happen to fail at dodging the red casting zones during boss fights. If you know what a meatshield is, then this is it. If not, Google is your friend.

2) Vitality and Dexterity 50/50
--This is the build that I chose and the one I recommend to seasoned tanks that are good at dodging poo zones and would prefer to play alone or like to farm a lot. With this build you'll be getting a lot more damage than the pure Vitality build, and you'll also have more versatility. You should split your points evenly between dexterity and vitality. No points elsewhere. There's no need when you build the way I have. Another bonus of this build is that dexterity increases your hit rate as well as damage dealt.

NOTE: You COULD take Strength instead of Dexterity for this build, but you'd be losing all of that super valuable hit rate. Besides, what I'm seeing is that Strength is geared more towards damage builds (2H swords or hybrid tanks) with little regard to hit rate or damage mitigation.

There are various ways to place your stat points, and ultimately it comes down to your play style and what you want to achieve, but keep in mind this guide is strictly for tanking.

3. Gear (Crafted and Farmed)
This section is the one that may need some help, as my gear is still currently lacking. However, with VERY basic gear (all found during farming and leveling) I'm still able to tank a level 40 boss while I'm level 30 with little trouble as long as I dodge red circles and kite when necessary.

So, I'll leave this section open to discussion until I get more solid information to put here. If you have recommendations, please post the gear, reasons for choosing the gear, and where to obtain it.

My current thoughts are all gear that the blacksmith can make. The reason I'm leaning toward these is because of the guaranteed success of obtaining them either through time and determination of farming materials, or because you have a bursting coin purse and can afford to buy all of the materials to make these.

Weapon: Accordion Fold Sword
ATK: 1
Atk MP Recover +3
Aggro +30%
-Bat Wing x25
-Four Leaf Clover x1
-Cloth 50 points
-Metal 25 points
150 Spina

Shield: Kite Shield
DEF: 1
Guard Rate +10%
Guard Power +22%
Max HP +90
-Sturdy Fur x23
-Nisel Wood x2
-Cloth 25 points
-Wood 25 points
100 Spina

Armor: Plate Armor
DEF: 30
Max HP +10%
Aggro +10%
-Fiery Gem x1
-Iron x3
-Coal x5
-Metal 175 points
350 Spina

Additional: Iron Helm
DEF: 10
Max HP +5%
Aggro +5%
-Cracked Helmet x4
-Hematite x6
-Wood 65 points
125 Spina

Special: Magic Swordsman's Ring
Atk MP Recovery +10
Atk -25%
M Atk -25%
-Pebble x99
-300 Spina
OR
Special: Magician's Ring
MP +1000
Atk -25%
M Atk -25%
-Pebble x99
-300 Spina
--Either of these rings is a good choice for tanking, but I'd personally go with the Swordsman's Ring just for the increased MP gain per attack instead of the larger MP pool. If neither of these suits you then choose the one below, though the materials are a bit more difficult to obtain.
Hard Arm Guard
HP +400
Attack Speed -10%
-Minotaur Hoof x15
-Fluffy Fur x25
-Cracked Stone x25
-Cloth 50 points
-100 Spina

I'll update these materials with where to farm them as I figure that out, but each of these pieces is the easiest to earn while still providing great boosts to tanking. The only downside to the Accordion Fold Sword is that it only has a damage of 1. So I'll try to find something else to fill that slot.

I hope you all enjoyed this guide and I look forward to hearing your comments and feedback.

-Meddina

 

Very nice guide thus far. I have a couple of comments on the skills section and equipment that i'd like to add though.

On Equipment first. Since i'm sure you'll find out soon, the Brutal Dragon equipment is a game changing upgrade for Sword and Board tanks. It's additional 500 Attack Speed along with the bonus's of the Armor and Cape make for some drastic changes later on. I recommend obtaining the Armor from the Dragon's drop as the additional attack speed will be more worthwhile than the 200 hp boost in the long run. The Cape, will provide you with an additional 5% guard Rate, 200 mp, and 10% additional Aggro Generation. Of all of these the cape is the most worthwhile, with the Sword as the second, and the Armor as the third. The Plate Armor that you'll be able to obtain from Volg, the current end game boss, will provide you with 2 choices in stats. Either the Blacksmith versions 10% aggro, 10% max HP, and -10% Motion Speed (This is not attack speed, it is an increase to the skill animations). The dropped version provide 6% aggro, 6% Hp, and 6% str. Volg can be tanked as early as level 9 if you have emblem skills points and invest in maybe 5 or 10 potions while using a sub optimal build with alot of vit.

Between the Accordion Fold Sword and the Brutal Dragon Sword, it'll be a somewhat hard choice as they both depend heavily upon what equipment you use and if you have Quick Slashing or not. The Aggro generation set consisting of the Accordion Fold Sword, Plate Armor, and Brutal Dragon Cape (totals 46% or 50% aggro) heavily relies on mp recovery, but keeps aggro for long periods of time without skill spamming. This fits your current build in my opinion while the other side of the coin allows for more skill spam through the use of the Brutal Dragon Sword, Armor, and Cape. Neither is really better from what i've tried but vary more in play style.

Skills.
The skills listed now is a great and balanced build. I love that you are recommending Provoke at the very start, as it will be your most useful skill for a loooooong time coming. What I want to input is some skill information and some build ideas.

The first, is that Shield Mastery does not increase Attack Speed but decreases the Attack Speed Penalty of Shields. Each skill level Reduces this reduction by 10% or so from what i've seen and normalizes the attack speed to the attack speed you would have without the shield. Which makes it a higher priority I think than Quick Slashing. Otherwise everything else is good so far.

I found it hard to run a Guardian/Aegis Build myself, but tank are the only characters as of now that can supply the points for it. Since Supports and Priest have to few points as is. Please let us know how much of a decrease in damage you and your party take when you have these skills. I'd like to know as I haven't been able to really test them.

On some cases of build diversity, I suggest giving the Shield Bash Lvl 10 and Hard Hit lvl 10 combo a try. Shield Bash lvl 10 will provide you with the most consistent stun in the game. That hands you 5 seconds of stun time on demand outside of Stun Immunity, which last about 10 seconds. In between that, you can use Hard Hit to frequently interrupt undesirable attacks. Such as attacks the move the boss, or attacks that have an AoE your DPS or Supports aren't prepped for. It's a much more controlling way to tank as opposed to letting the boss do every attack in it's arsenal and relying on your Breaker or DPS to stop some of them. This build does not work as well for full vit tanks, and is much more advisable for builds with an investment in some dex. This build likely won't be able to support Guardian or Aegis yet as a trade off though.

Anyway, that's my additional info. Keep up the good work.

 

Hey! Thanks for responding!

I've done quite a bit of leveling, and I did end up making all of the gear that I have listed here, however I ran into one fatal flaw in the plan.

I literally only had enough MP to shield or do Hard Hit. I was unable to use provoke at all due to not having 200mp.

Sad day indeed. So I'll edit my original post to say that if you happen to have enough MP to cast Provoke and then Hard Hit (300 total) then you should be doing fine using the due to the massive MP return per swing. However, if your gear doesn't provide enough MP then it's probably best to go with the Magician's Ring for the 1000 MP boost it provides.

Also, thank you for clarifying the attack speed animation subject with the Iron Armor. Good to know that important bit of information. So the -10% motion speed actually reduces the time between me hitting Hard Hit and the move actually landing? Very useful. Basically guarantees locking a boss down as long as MP allows it. Or does this only affect auto attack animations?

After talking with guild mates and seeing different gear drops I do have to agree that there are better choices for tanking than the gear I suggested, however for a starting tank set those pieces seem to be doing wonders already. I can literally autoattack from the get-go of a boss battle and then just need to focus on dodging red zones and locking down movement abilities from the boss all while maintaining perfect aggro.

I also wasn't aware of the reduction that shields added. With this new information I would have to agree that the Shield Mastery skill becomes 2nd priority after maxing Provoke.

What are your thoughts on making a build with absolutely no use of Hard Hit and just going for passive increases to auto attacks while boosting as many defensive skills as possible and maxing Shield Slam?

Thoughts on Parry? Or the Guard skills that are relevant to upgraded armor from a BS?

Thanks for all the vital information. You're a real big help.

One last thing:
Guardian didn't seem to reduce damage on me all that much (Volg Boss was hitting me for about 85 damage without the buff and 60 damage with it), but the effect on my party members was invaluable. My mages that were trigger happy took approximately half damage from his auto attacks compared to when they didn't have the buff. The only downside is that he deals quite a bit of magic damage too, which was hitting me for almost 300 damage and causing ignite. With Guardian active it was pushing closer to 400 damage with a guaranteed ignite. With no ability to remove those buffs they almost become debuffs in that situation.

 

I'll edit my post and relay some of my thoughts on how you can make the build work with your current build. May require MP boost though.

I'll go with my thoughts on the no Hard Hit build though.

The build works perfectly fine as you'll have the defensive skills to make yourself and your party members immensely more tanky with Gloria from the Priest Tree and the Shield Auras. With all of those buffs, your party should be pretty happy in most cases as those reductions can help a lot in all aspects of the game. The upkeep isn't to bad as well if you assign your buffs to combo skills.

The only problem I have with it is the ability to control and negate most of the troublesome moves that would get you or your party in danger in the first place. As well as the ability to cancel out movement skills in general. This controlling aspect is almost exclusive to the tank as it's your job to do so. Hard Hit and Shield Bash combined allow for a lot of control during boss fights that negate damage to your team altogether but makes mistakes painful. Both builds will probably homogenize in the future though as we get more skill points.

It would come down to preference for now though. The build that revolves around Shield Bash I think would be favored by most and will more than likely save you and melee DPS more potions if they or you are constantly out of position due to lag or whatever. It also has a better safety cushion if you lose aggro or can't get it back immediately.

-Parry
I feel this skill is mostly for the 2 handed sword tanks to use. As you get more and more guard rate the skill will become more and more negligible. For a Two handed sword user though, guard rate is not easily obtained in high amounts, nor is guard reduction. If you're making a two handed sword tank/offtank and focus on higher HP and general defenses as opposed to guard rate, Parry will always be useful for melee damage reduction.

-Heavy Armor Mastery
This skill raises your guard rate noticeably. It feels like a 10% increase but I really couldn't tell you for sure. I'd consider getting Gloria first though. Just because the defense increases and guard rate give you a ginormous boost and your party members a ginormous boost.

-Shield Auras
I think shield auras go by their description of dropping your resistance to Physical or Magical attacks and raising the other. Resistances will likely be more helpful as we take more damage. Or in the case of your mages, it reduces alot of damage because they take alot of damage. Protection is more for your party then it is for you though. Aegis is more for you then it is for your party right now. The solution to ignite damage though, is to get vaccines and use them at the start of fights. They're cheap and take ignite out if you have the vaccine active. Reduces the total damage by alot.

 

Any thought on using claws instead of sword as tank? Would you share if you have tried it? Thank you so much!
One thing I have noticed is that I cannot use sword rage.

 

Rage Sword isn't to important. If you want to do damage and get aggro so that you don't need to use provoke, sure get Rage Sword. Otherwise, you're not missing much but by just spamming Provoke.

 

OK that is very good to know. tbh I am really confused. It seems sword can general more threat but claws surely can help with evasion.
I would like to know how important it is to have high damage. Is it possible to just deal 1 damage per hit but still be able to hold aggro with provoke?

 

I would like to ask you how much hp you can have at lv 50 if you went full vit? Thank you!

 

Thank you for providing such in-depth explanation - this is what most of us newcomers needed
I'm currently playing a SnS(1HSword and Shield) tanker (sort of?) and this is my first character.
Right now, I'm lvl 38 and wearing the following:
BD Sword / BD Armor / BD Cape / Kite Shield / Sofys Talisman (lol dunno what to get)

So far, I'm still learning how to tank properly without getting nicked too much.
I don't really care about my damage output, that's the attacker's job and not mine
What I really want to be is the guy that keeps the boss' attention while the others beat the bejesus outta them.
I'm having a hard time keeping my HP up (ran out of free pots) and only got lvl5 Bless to heal myself.
As for tanking, I manage to keep the aggro to myself for the whole duration of the battle.
Thanks to BD sword's aspd and of course, good timing to land cheap shots, I manage to replenish my MP.
Enough to keep Provoke ready when needed.
As for the stats:
DEX - 60
VIT - 38
HP - 1248
MP - 638
ATK - 198 (facepalm)
DEF - 118
HIT - 98
ASPD - 635
CSPD - 715

As for the skills:
Hard hit - 5
Astute - 10
Sonic Blade - 1 (out of curiosity)
Passive Sword Mastery - 5
Passive Quick Slash - 5
Provoke - 10
Bless - 5
Gloria - 10

As of now, I'm thinking about getting the shield skills as well but have no idea how to allocate them (how many SPs in total nway?)
What I'm sure of is Gloria and Provoke are the main, almost mandatory, skills of a tanker.
Just need your expert advice about my tank now, which skills to get rid of and which ones to keep.
Also, is there any other regeneration skills out there to help out with the healing "during" battles?
I would really appreciate a feedback from you guys

 

Sorry for not posting for a while. I've been focusing on maxing my Mage Farmer and Tank lately.

@Azloki
I'm not certain on the HP for a full Vitality tank. I decided against this build in favor of Dex to ensure my attacks were landing so I could maintain constant aggro. Currently I'm able to hold a boss against 20k dps from my party with little effort. I've noticed that Provoke doesn't actually rip aggro from a party member but instead causes a set amount of threat per use. So my solution to this was cast Provoke twice then smack them with a Shield Slam to lock them down for a minute. That puts my aggro at the top of the list, while my auto attacks continually generate more threat to ensure I'm staying at the top.

Rinse and repeat as needed.

@Threnody
If you're falling low in combat against Flare Volg then you need to dodge red stuff more. Have a brawler in the party to cause more flinches. Consider dropping Bless and Gloria in favor of Hard Hit (at least 5/10) and Shield Slam 10/10.

I maxed all of the shield skills and only maxed the passive Quick Slash to increase MP gain and threat generation.

Keep in mind a tank doesn't rely on damage at all, but instead on mitigation and attack speed. To increase mitigation consider maxing all defensive skills except in Support Tree (I don't have any here), get the skills in Survival that increase HP (+1000 at 10/10) to survive more hits (my VIT is also at 50 right now), and Reforge your armor to Heavy. With all of this, I'm currently sitting at 3400 HP in generic tanking gear from the BS npc and Flare Volg only hits me for about 80-120 per hit.

The issue I see with Bless is that you have to cast in order to heal, which leaves you vulnerable and not generating threat, it depletes precious MP that can be better spent on interruption skills, and it scales off of INT meaning you're getting hardly any HP return for the MP and time spent to cast the spell.

Hope this helps! Also, I'm running short on time (don't want to be late for work) so I'll have to post with a bit more detail later on.

 

I use two hand sword any builds

 

I understand that 2H is a viable tanking build currently, but it doesn't have nearly the mitigation that 1H has due to the lack of a shield. In the future we'll most likely see 2H fall behind when it comes to bosses purely because of the lack of shield skills and stats.

Why do you choose 2H for this? It might be good food for thought for some wanting to take an alternative approach with tanking.

 

My hopes with tanking are to see some AoE control skills, party threat reduction, and potentially buffs to increase threat generation.

As far as survival, I think things are just fine as they are.

 

I chose 2hd for the strength and I'm deciding to go 1hd and shield for the paladin class.

 

Paladin as in heals, AoE, and tank abilities? Or the one that's been previously posted in other threads?
A link to that thread would be awesome.

 

Salutations o>
Thank you for your feedback Meddina

an update on my new tank. From DEX/VIT, I went to FULL VIT.
Just a heads up, I am not a funded player, I jump for joy every time I earned 5k spinas from goblin farm.
And as a build with a pathetic damage output, you will rely on other players even when farming.
Please be advised that you will leech or collect articles just to level up.
Not a manly way to live an MMORPG life, believe me. Specially if most of your guildmates that lets you leech are in-game girls.
(no confirmation about them yet IRL, but we already assigned a special team to investigate)
It's not pretty, it's kinda degrading for me actually coz I'm a grind-till-kingdom-come type of player.
But after seeing the importance of a reliable tank, some of them offers to leech you even without asking.
Can't turn those down right? Of course in return, whenever they need a human shield, who they gonna call? That's right
______________________________________________
[Currently at Lvl 33 with 80VIT and 17 stat points available.
Saving these points due to lack of information for MDEF and the personal stat for status effects]
SKILLS:
- (shield skill) SHIELD MASTERY 10 (removes aspd penalty when using a shield)
- (shield skill) SHIELD BASH 1 (not enough skill points yet, but maxing this one out)
- (survival skill) SAFE REST 5 (Pre-req for HP BOOST)
- (survival skill) HP BOOST 10
- (knight skill) PROVOKE 10 (as per a certain bunny, "that goes without saying")
- (support skill) MINI HEAL 10 (replaced BLESS 10 as my save-your-own-ass skill)
- (blade skill) HARD HIT (default...lacks the financial capability to reset my skills)

1. Shield Mastery - it removes the penalty that you get when holding a shield. For me, its better than spending extra points
to reach and max QUICK SLASH. Also, the prerequisite skill SWORD MASTERY is, I think, highly unnecessary.
(damage is not really your forte, get over it)
2. Shield Bash - In my case, not just for breaking/interrupting purposes.
Since I use MINI-HEAL, that 5-sec stun is enough to cover you while casting. Needs to be aware of the 10-15 stun immunity.
3. Mini Heal - okay so I was using BLESS 10 before (62 per tick/total of 5 ticks, so that's around 300-ish heal at the cost of 100MP).
Then I saw this post -

Right now, my Mini Heal is 520 to myself at the cost of 300MP.
Some will say BLESS is better since its cheaper MP-wise. If you wanna do the math - You get a total of 900-ish BLESS heal for that 300MP used.
I agree. But you see, my primary directive as a tank is to act as a meat-shield when hunting Bosses/Mini Bosses.
In addition to those redzone attacks, they have "guided" attacks that will always hit (unless they miss) even if you're out of range.
If you're running low on HP due to those consecutive guided attacks, you can't really rely on BLESS' regeneration effect.
Either use a potion, OR have MINI HEAL for a large amount of heal in an instant.
But again, that's just me, and so far - MINI HEAL saved my nuggets a lot of times and I'm better off using it instead of BLESS.

That's about it, as usual, I'm requesting for constructive feedback from you guys.
Oh and the other reason for posting, just wanna ask ;

- how to increase MDEF? Is it based on INT?
- The personal stat for abnormal status - does it reduce the duration of status effects, or provides a chance to avoid them?
- Requesting for a verification : From what I've experienced, MP still recovers even if the actual attack missed.

 

How much your hp if pure vit type ?

Note : im int and vit type ( 1h sword ) . Int for boost m.def its very important for tanker. For me higher hp is useless without def and m.def, and skill im just use magic arrow

 

Is force shield an magical shield necessary an how much def mdf does it give max.

 

I have firce shield maxxed and it gives about 17% boost to def and 500hp.

Im assuming m.shield also give about 17%?

Imo force shield/m.shield is a better hp boost passive then survival skill tree's hp boost.

 

I agree and disagree. M. Shield isn't imperative right now. We need to see more magical attacks from bosses that aren't able to be dodged in order for this to be more desirable. Until we see that, the flat 1000 HP from HP Boost in the Survival Tree is more suitable. However, I agree that Force Shield being maxed is a necessity. It reduces my damage taken from Flare Volg Boss's auto-attacks by 75% for my build. Although I've changed my gear up a bit since I created this post, I still have approximately the same stats except more guard than before.

I've been telling people that ask me questions in-game or in conversation on the forums that passives and gear make the tank. As a tank you should really only have 3 skills currently: Provoke, Hard Hit, and Shield Slam. Anything above that is personal preference. Some people like Rage Sword. I personally don't ever have issues keeping bosses locked on to me, so I skip it and place my points elsewhere.

Personally I recommend:
Hard Hit 5-10/10
Sword Mastery 5/10
Quick Slash 10/10
Shield Mastery 10/10
Shield Slam 10/10
Force Shield 10/10
Safe Rest 5/10
HP Boost 10/10

With these skills you have 65-70 Skill Points being used. You'll have a few extra points to place after these essentials, and that is purely up to you where to place them. I'd recommend saving them until further level caps and content are released. You could also just spend 1 point in 2 extra skills (Rage Sword 1 and M. Shield 1, for example) in order to unlock your combos if you don't have them already unlocked from other characters.

Also, with stats I recommend never going full vitality unless you plan to just be a meat shield for your group. You'll have very little damage output or anything else besides insanely high health. A good rule of thumb is to keep your 1/4 of your total stat points in Vitality and the rest wherever you see fit.
Dexterity increases ASPD, ATK, and ACC
Intellect increases CSPD and MRES
Strength increases ATK and ASPD
Agility increases ASPD

As you can see, Dexterity is excellent for tanks that want more versatility. If you plan on being a meat shield only, then I recommend taking equal amounts into Vitality and Intelligence. If you want to add some damage to that then do 50% of your total stat points into Vitality and Intelligence split evenly and the rest in Dexterity. As far as the extra stat goes, Mental is the only useful one for tanks, though placing any points into it right now isn't really recommended until we get bosses that inflict status effects that are unavoidable.

Hope this helps and clears up any questions you asked or may ask.

-Meddina