TSW Tanking Mega Guide

TSW Tanking Mega Guide by Ciritty

Hi, I’m Ciritty. I like pink, TSW and chocolate. That’s all yer getting out of me!

This guide will be aimed towards tanking in general in the Secret world, for both beginner tanks and End game tanks.

“What is tanking, in The Secret World?”

Tanks set the pace.

This does not always involve being able to take the most damage. While this is a traditional tanking role, being a tank in TSW involves adapting to the group, and the encounter.

If the group needs more damage (and they usually do), a tank will set exposed and affliction. If the group needs even more damage, a tank can set exposed even faster, or provide buffs that DPS often have no access to (such as Final Fuse).

Conversely, if the encounter calls for a more defensive tank to allow the group to out-last the encounter, they can do that too, using skills like defensive turrets and impairs.

If the encounter has special mechanics that need to be interrupted, or dealt with in some way via special positioning, the tank is the one who will generally handle the interrupts, and set the positioning.

The best tanks in TSW are those who are adaptable. Often, a good tank will have a wide range of weapons and abilities they are comfortable with using. In many cases, a tank in TSW wants a good mix between offence and defence, to allow them to set the pace and control the encounter.

The starting point to do this is to remove unpredictable spike damage. Read on to find out how.

Contents 

Understanding Tanking stats
– Tanking starts with understanding the stats!
– Proposed itemization
– Effiecently avoiding death
Setting up your Gear
– Gearing up for normals and elites explained
– Custom gear
– Signets and New York raid loot
Tanking Passives
– Suggested Passives
– Hate
– Exposed/Afflictions/Debilitate
– Defensive Passives/DPS Passives
– Yellow? (special passives)
Tanking Weapons Guide
– Sword/Chaos/Hammer
Other weapon ability suggestions
– All weapons that aren’t mentioned above!
Miscellaneous and Aux Abilities
-Survivalism/Subverse/Turbulence
– All aux weapons (Quantum remains pinkless)
Tips & Tricks
Mods
Heal Tanking 

Tanking starts with understanding the stats!

Primary stat:

Defence rating– while this stat has its uses in PVP, the uses of defence in PVE are very limited. Defence rating reduces the chance a boss will critically hit and increases your chance to glance attacks. Critical hits from bosses are rare, roughly a 5% chance, and deals 25% more damage.. This means that about 1.3%damage comes from critical hits. This stat locks you into using Swords as your tanking weapon for the SP passive Vigour.

When is defence rating useful in PVE? Defence rating can be used in Ankh as a replacement for Block, block doesn’t work on any of the bosses in Ankh and you will not be penetrated.

While defence itself is a pretty bad stat for tanking, glancing isn’t. By making use of martial discipline and or art of war you can glance abilities for a great amount of mitigation.

Evade rating– While Evade rating nets you a higher amount of mitigation then defence rating does, there is no reason to use it. You will evade for at least 5% less than stated in your stat tool tip and require a huge amount of rating for it to become effective enough to be used in PVE. It locks you into using Chaos as your tanking weapon.

Evade rating could be taken as third stat in place of penetration rating in hell fallen if you happen to have the gear but is in no way required and will lower your effective use of breaching signet should you own one.

While evade rating does not live up to the needs of a tank, evading is still great. Illusion and to a lesser extend smoke and mirrors are great actives for mitigation, even more so in Hell raised (Male bosses in hell raised gain a debuff after being evaded that reduces their damage output by 50%)

Physical protection– You need 1200 rating to reduce penetrating hits by 33%, and you’ll reduce normal damage taken by 30%. While this is the second best tanking stat it requires as you can see 50% more rating than block to gain roughly the same amount of mitigation but will never proc Major ward through the use of elite passives.

Now this is my proposed itemization.

750 Block rating
650 hit rating
650 Penetration rating

Why does my proposed itemization work?

This guide is written to help people understand the concept of tanking in TSW, in this guide I will teach you how to make use of the one thing that makes tanking in this game fun, versatility.

Tanks in TSW can change, adapt to literally every situation. In order to do so you will want to make use of your limited amount of glyph rating and need a greater understanding of the tanking mechanics.

How to avoid Spike damage

“I stacked on stats such as defence/evade and died rapidly!”

Penetrating hits hit you for 40-50% more than a normal hit would. This causes spike damage and will kill you if it occurs several times in a row.

How do we remove penetrating hits? By making use of Block rating, Block rating will effectively remove any spike damage that penetrating hits cause.

“Not enough, searing brand killed me!”

Bosses often use abilities that will hit for a great amount of damage or attempt to wipe the group with annoying effects such as resetting hate (threat).

How do we avoid this from happening? By making use of hit rating, by using hit rating you will be able to impair these abilities and remove this random event and increase your chance of winning tremendously. (Some/most of these abilities can also be dodged with proper timing see advanced tanking section)

“Part 3, my excuse not to give this a title”

And now we understand the main reasons of taking block and hit rating, this is not all of it.

Defence/Evade/protection requires a lot of your glyph points to work effectively and will keep you from using a third stat, diminishing your versatility while still not dealing with spike damage.

In addition to the damage spikes these stats require you to switch gear should you wish to be more versatile, they severely limit your damage output and lock you into either blade (defence) or Chaos (Evade).

Unlike Defence/Evade/protection block rating only requires 750 rating to ensure that penetrating hits will be nonexistent/too rare to occur often enough to take you down. This will allow you to make use of Penetration rating.

Penetration rating will allow you to make the most out of your glyph ratings offensive capabilities, since block takes so little (compared to other defensive ratings) Out of your glyph budget that you can take 650 hit and 650+ Penetration rating on top of your block rating.

How to Gear 

The gearing of normal and elite dungeons are both very forgiving, trying to optimize your gear for normal/elites if you intend to do nightmares would only hold you back PAX wise, For Elites try to get Block on the gear you acquire or Else glyph it. By using paradigm shift you will be able to get through stuff without hit rating until you can afford it.

(Normal) 

For normal get any item with health/attack rating, they’re mostly based on using defensive Cooldowns and your healer.

Unlock breakdown before tanking or use escalation + intensity

While it’s possible for new tanks to tank with grand slam (Hammer primary) I do not recommend it until after you’ve gained experience tanking in TSW.

Recommended:

Cheap Blade/chaos starting build

http://www.badomens.net/calculator#0…bib84u4yb05200

Cheap Chaos/Hammer build

http://www.badomens.net/calculator#0…b6b8b26kb06m00

Alternatively use Hay maker instead of After Shock. (If you can’t afford it!)

Cheap Blade/hammer

http://www.badomens.net/calculator#0…bi6k4u4yb06m00

Alternatively use Hay maker instead of After Shock. (If you can’t afford it!)

(Elite) 

Try to glyph block, use paradigm shift for hit. This is the time to practice impairing abilities.

I also suggest you start giving shotgun some serious thought.
–
(Nightmare) 

Currently it’s possible to get 10.1 Gear pieces from Issue 6 and 7, they also come with 2 of your best Aux weapons. (Whip, Flamethrower)

As such it is highly recommended that you purchase these Issues. Should you choose not to that is fine as well, can work around it.

From issue 6 you will get Attack rating head, Attack rating necklace for merely completing the quest line. If you’d rather get a health piece for the time being that is fine but eventually you’ll need to have these 2 pieces Attack rating. Additionally you can purchase a kingdom signet which will aid you by giving you a much needed boost to your hit rating,

Initially glyph them with blue pure block glyphs. Disregard every stat but block, try to get to 600/700 block rating and then focus on getting at least 500hit, until you get to 650hit use paradigm shift. These drop pieces will help you as you wait for custom pieces, Finger [Scale of Zipacna – Darkness War 5 – 182 Block, 1982 HP] Occult[ Alloy Heart –Hell Raised 3 – 103 Block, 1274 HP] Wrist [Syn’s Rebuttal – Hell Eternal 3 – 180 Block]

As you start getting custom pieces, upgrade the glyphs and only the glyphs until you’re fully 10.0.4, the value of glyph rating is significantly higher than some HP and AR at this point. Avoid buying either a Major or minor talisman and use an HP piece until you get to the point that it’s your final upgrade.

Eventually you’ll want to have your stats like this as you finish glyphing.

Penetration Rating +648
Hit Rating +653
Block Rating +756

Note: This setup makes use of Transfixing glyph –http://img826.imageshack.us/img826/7935/9j04.jpg It’s possible and looks great!

http://joakibj.com/tswcalc/#weapon=4…,4,5,4,3,1,0,0

As you can see that is a lot of HP in 10.4.4, but 10.0.4 you’ll have

Hit points 8204

So before you decide what item (AR major/AR minor) to pick here is the end result. (Note the talismans both AR and HP have been decided based on which you’ll potentially replace for the same Rating piece in the ny raid)

Changing occult to AR

Hit points 7882
Combat Power 602
Attack Rating 2253

Changing Finger to AR
Hit points 7083
Combat Power 631
Attack Rating 2490

Hard to pick? As you near 10.0.4 you’ll have a better feel of how much HP is needed.

You will be able to beef up by getting Vigour signets/ Health anima if you feel like it’s too low, you can always carry around a health piece for harder encounters. A Veles signet and 2 blue Vigours will result in a 330+330+410 =1070 extra HP

In the end deciding how much AR you want will depend on the quality of your Ablation Signet, skill, build and your healer. With a decent Blood healer you can go as low as 5k hp and still not get near dying from Ur draug pens for instance.

Signets and New York raid loot 

This section will address which signets to take and will show you why it’s important to follow my suggested talisman setup.
The new York raid has a couple of talismans with build in signet effects that can’t be replaced nor do they stack with signets.

Note: These NY talismans cannot be upgraded to 10.5 (does not apply to glyph, these can be upgraded to 10.0.5 as normal)

Minor signet effects

Signet of Ablation: The quality of your ablation affects your effective Health immensely. Place in occult once decided whether it will be an AR or HP piece.

Signet of Salvation: Aside from Ablation your only other tanking minor that is worth buying! But will only last you until you gain the NY buckle and Tokens(AR) (luck talisman). (Slot in luck talisman until you win tokens)

There are 2 minor talisman drops in the NY raid that you want to obtain.

Subway Tokens(AR): Every 6 seconds, you gain a single stack of a beneficial effect that increases all damage dealt by 1% per stack. This effect is removed whenever you glance or the number of stacks exceeds 10.

Subway Tokens are the hardest to obtain piece of loot in the New York Raid, everyone wants it and pugs will hate you if you try to loot it as a tank (Loot it anyway this isn’t world of warcraft or any other class based MMO and it is the best offensive minor signet effect that you can get)

NY Buckle(HP): Every 6 seconds, you gain a single stack of a beneficial effect that increases your Physical and Magical Protection by 3% per stack. This effect is removed whenever you are penetrated or the number of stacks exceeds 10.

This is a more than decent talisman, far better than any other none listed signet, using a block anima in tougher dungeons will help you keep up some of these stacks, but investing more glyph points in block than suggested will hurt you more than it does you good.

Major 
Vigour/Violence: If you want to leech heal/dps with the AR pieces slot Violence, Vigour in HP pieces.

There is 1 useful major tanking Talisman
[u]Brooklyn Bracer:[u] Whenever you are attacked, you gain a single stack of a beneficial effect that increases your Evade Chance by 5% per stack. This effect is removed after you successfully evade. 6 seconds cooldown.

This major talisman is best used with low evade rating, no problem since you’re not supposed to have any if you’re following my guide! It will benefit you more than a purple vigour under most circumstances.

Head/Weapon
Order(head only)(Defensive): increases uptime of major ward and grants you 15/30/45% chance to block for 4 seconds after blocking an attack, this does decrease the chance to be penetrated during its duration.

Breaching(Head/weapon, Offensive): Will apply the breaching signet effect upon penetrating, which will increase the damage of all penetrating hits against your target.
Extremely useful, for optimal use you’d want it on your tanking weapon(s), but considering the cost for those that want versatility among tanking weapons(Or roles) head piece is recommended.

Abuse/Aggression: More damage! Abuse out parses aggression by little more than over a percent for DPS but there’s also the matter of the paxmoney cost.. and the difference will be minimal either way. Aggression can be used for offhand as well (better than nothing, better than abuse).

Laceration Signet
In the case that you have a laceration signet in your dps head piece that you happen to share with your Tank gear it would make for a decent DPS boost under Deadly Aim, this could be further enhanced by adding in Elemental force. Would be a better alternative than buying abuse/aggression and result in more damage output depending on Deadly Aim uptime.

NY raid piece.
Ashes of Elder Things(Yes it’s called things): Whenever you penetrate, you gain a beneficial effect that increases your Penetration Rating by 25% for 15 seconds. The duration of this effect is not refreshed when reapplied.
Assuming you’re following my guide which you should! This will give you about 200 penetration rating. The uptime may not always be 90%.

Can be handy for getting more penetrating hits assuming breaching signet is on your weapon for the price of mitigation(order), the dps granted will not compete with purple abuse/aggression but more penetrating hits = more debilitate/breaching signet uptime and as such i value it above abuse/aggression.

Mark of the starspawn is far worse than any other option listed and is not recommended for my tanking setup.

Tanking Passives 

Suggested Passives (Therefore assuming you’re aiming for my suggested stats)
Agitator
Break Down/ Intensity(chaos)
Shoot ‘em up(Frenzy)/ Blood sport / perfect storm(Blade Torrent)
10.0.4 Dark potency/10.0.0(Hell Raised) Paradigm Shift (utility passive, replace when you want something else, a penetration anima will help you minimize the loss of pen rating)
10.0.4 Iron Maiden / 10.0.0 Defensive/ offensive passive listed below
10.0.4 12 gauge/ improved blasts Else 10.0.0 a defensive/offensive passive listed below
Cool, Calm, Collected

Hate (Mandatory, Every tank requires at least agitator) 
Agitator Mandatory.
You’re next Great passive, Helps immensely on initial hate and add management. Best used with hammer and or sufficient block rating. (700-800) Useful when lacking hate but generally not required.
Fuel to the Fire Very weak, do not use.
Intensity Extremely useful for beginner Chaos Tanks. (Less chance to glance on initial hits to make up for starting without resources)
Perfect Storm Seems to do more hate than any other affliction in the game. Requires Blade torrent (Sword users). Useful for adds/beginner tanks.

Afflictions (Mandatory, every tank requires at least 1 affliction) 
Blood sport Applies afflict through the use of any ability. Very useful later on.
Shoot em up Your strongest affliction until you switch to single target builders.
Flight of Daggers Stop using this as your only Affliction! It’s nice for additional DPS, combine with proper affliction.
Perfect Storm Seems to do more hate than any other affliction in the game. Requires Blade torrent (Sword users). Useful for adds/beginner tanks.

Exposed (Mandatory, every tank requires Exposed) 
Break Down Use this if you’re not a beginner chaos tank.
Intensity Only use this when you’re starting out as Chaos, mainly to avoid getting glanced. The additional hate isn’t a requirement.

Debilitate (By far the most useful debuff in the entire game) 
Debilitate adds 30% damage mitigation to your entire group, more accurately it reduces the boss output by 30%. It’s your single best mitigation tool. When gearing up you can apply Debilitate in 2 ways (also works when you’re geared). Either way will work and depends on if you’d like to use a shotgun or not.

Improved Blasts, with shotgun turret as consumer you can apply debilitate yourself with 0 penetration rating. Very useful, by getting used to shotgun you will be able to increase your win chance against Machine tyrant by another Clean up.

You can ask a DPS to slot 12 Gauge. Once you have about 400+ pen you can start slotting it yourself. (Clearing the path will help you apply it faster)

Defensive Passives (Optional, match with healers output and your overall mitigation) 
Cool, Calm, Collected (elite)Major ward 25% Damage reduction, only way to proc it outside of defensive cooldowns. And 8% Damage increase on critical hits (elemental force or during Deadly aim)
Burst of Energy Minor ward 7.5%(requires a burst ability)
Hard Case Adds 150 protection (4.7%mitigation)
Shadow Play 10% chance to glance (In nightmares this is up to 5% due to the hit rating of bosses, which translate into 5*0.6 = (a glanced hit mitigates 60%Damage)) 3%
Turbulence 150 evade rating 2.7% evade chance
Inevitability You have a 15% chance to proc a buff on being hit that provides you with a 10% chance to evade for 8 seconds. however the 15% initial proc chance followed by the 10% evade chance makes it too random to rely on for slow hitting bosses it’s far better against lots of little attacks because then the 15% proc is almost guaranteed. As such the value of this passive cannot be calculated. Far too random.

DPS Passives (Optional, more damage = more hate) 
Paradigm Shift10% less chance to glance (your attacks can still evade)
Dark Potency 150 pen rating (Blocking lowers your DPS, pens apply Debilitate Win!)
Elemental Force Forcefully Critical hits an ability every 8th hit.
Fatal Flourish Forcefully penetrating hits an ability every 9th hit.
Iron Maiden minor Pen chance 10% (In a way Mandatory)
Voracity Will lead to a better pen rate than dark potency but if you lack pen rating your consumers may end up getting blocked. Definitely slot this if using CtP or frenzy consumers.

Yellow? 
Yellow can be pretty cool too, while the colour yellow is inferior to pink, these yellow abilities are pretty awesome. They’re generally switched for dark potency, using a pen anima/fuses to get your natural penetration rating up is highly recommended before using yellow abilities.

Awesome alternative yellow Elite passives!

Flight of Daggers: Increases your dps, best used against groups/bosses with a lot of melee range up time (most of them).
Forged in Fire: Can help you against dreaming shroud in Ankh, overall not a passive you should slot over CcC.
Authority: Giving up CcC for 8% more Penetration chance on breaching shot or 5% more dmg on Short fuse can aid your group dps greatly.
Contortionist: Situational, but necessary in certain fights.

Awesome alternative normal passives! 

Fatal Flourish:If you’re rocking a breaching signet this passive will proc it reliably every 9 seconds, Do not waste resources to try and force this hit to occur on a consumer, change “rotation” accordingly. (Example, 2 builders consumers, 5 builders, consumers(fatal flourish).

Elemental force: Keeps up the 8% damage bonus from CcC, enables critical penetrating hits.

Twist the Knife: In slaughterhouse/facility and not enough hit to keep up lethality? TtK to the rescue.

Double Dash: Lowers the cooldown of every single dash by 25% Surging blade, dashes that impair such as Helter Skelter, teleports such as Spiral of Death and Flicker, and even backwards dashes such as kickback. But most noteworthy, It lowers the cooldown of RAZORWIRE.

Rocket science and Double Dash now work properly!

Tanking Weapons Guide 

This guide is intended to encourage people to use other weapons, sword/chaos/hammer is great for starting out, but you shouldn’t have to give up on your favorite weapon. So here’s a summary of every weapons use, their strengths and some general recommendations.

Note, while most weapons work for every tank out there best results are met through the use of Block and Penetration. If you for some reason dislike block/pen as tank the recommendations in this guide may be off. The suggestions will be making the assumption that you’re 10.0.4 (unless stated otherwise) and have roughly the stats suggested prior to this section.

Weapons
Every slot can have multiple abilities assigned as they work differently under different circumstances.
Tank Weapons
Sword Template

Blade Torrent (high hate)/Grass cutter (DPS) (Builder)
Crimson Theater /Clearing the Path /Dancing Blade (consumer)
(Secondary Consumer)
(Utility)
(Utility)
(Utility)
(Elite)

Useful abilities 
Spiral of Death/Surging Blades (Mobility)
Martial Discipline (Defensive Cooldown)
Trial by swords. (Impair)
Chop Shop (Focus consumer, can be used for add management especially powerful combined with elemental force/ Fatal flourish passive)

Useful Elites 
Stunning Swirl (Low Cooldown AoE Impair.)
Art of War (45sec Cooldown, Force Taunt, the impair can miss/be glanced (“Recent” Change!))
Master’s House (DPS)

Beginner Tanking: Blade is an excellent starting weapon for people new to tanking; it provides a consumer (Crimson Theater) that doesn’t suffer too badly hate/damage wise from the lack of stats a starting tank will have to deal with. Blade comes with 2 elite impairs, which you’ll learn to love and swap every now and then. Art of war is handy in several ways but comes with a longer Cooldown, Art of war can be used as a group taunt, it also mitigates the next 2 attacks made against you per target hit, by forcefully glancing them (your solution for Ur Draug), while Stunning Swirl will allow you to impair every macro shock.

Advanced Tanking: Blade provides incredible personal DPS, while the tanks job is providing utility that allows the group to function optimally, the DPS provided by Blade generally doesn’t give up anything the other tanking weapons give up for higher personal DPS. By making use of a single target builder (Grass cutter) You increase your DPS by a significant amount. Combined with proper use of Elemental force + Dancing Blade you’ll likely be putting DPS to shame while still providing, Crack/exposed/Debilitate. Clearing the path instead of Dancing blade will allow you to apply Debilitate faster, Commonly used with 1 resource to stack Debilitate even faster.

Hammer Template
Grand Slam(high hate)/Grand Slam(builder)
Razor Shards(hate)/After Shock(Minor Ward)/Bone Breaker(DPS) (consumer)
(Secondary Consumer)
(Utility)
(Utility)
(Utility)
(Elite)

Useful abilities

Ground Pound (Only recommended for picking up adds with an initial hit if hammer is your only tanking weapon)
Beat Down (Impair)
Trucker (Stonewall with a shorter Cooldown, Take a step away from your target to activate it)
Stone’s throw (Great initial hate ability, bonus stacks of Debilitate and has comical and useful functions when thrown at adds that are running for your healer)
Stone Walled (Defensive Cooldown, take trucker if you have to pick between Cooldowns)
Molten Steel (DPS, use with Elemental Force or don’t use at all)

Useful Elites
Unstoppable Force (Can’t be stopped, defensive elite Cooldown)
Raging Volcano (Greatest add control ability out there, 100% block for 6seconds renders you immune to penetrating hits and forces every enemy within 10m to attack you)
Shockwave (Impair)

Beginner Tanking: Hammer is great, likely the best tanking weapon to start out with but with one major weakness. No high hate PBAoE ability. It’s not impossible but it’s already a big problem to learn tanking with a PBAoE builder for beginners, I highly recommend using a second tanking weapon (blade/chaos), At least until you’re more familiar with the dungeons mechanics. Hammers main strong point is its many active defensive Cooldowns, Hate control and applying Debilitate.

Advanced Tanking: Hammer remains a solid choice, combined with momentum, EF and Molten Steel you can dish out a lot of dps/hate. Stone’s throw/trucker can give you a head start with mitigation by applying Debilitate or major block. In addition blocking will reduce Damage taken by a larger amount than without a hammer, If you don’t care to deal with elemental Force use Bone Breaker/After Shock instead of molten steel.

Chaos Template
Escalation(high hate) /Hand of Change(DPS) (Builder)
Consequence (minor ward, expose)/Reality Fracture/Pulling the Strings(Minor hit chance) (consumer)
(Secondary Consumer)
(Utility)
(Utility)
(Utility)
(Elite)

Useful abilities
run rampart(evade rating, Debilitate, DPS(short fights))
Helter Skelter (impair, tricky, great add control)
Chaotic Pull (single best impair in the game as of yet)
Discord Rising (Initial Damage, Expose)
Smoke and Mirrors (Defensive Cooldown, limited use long Cooldown)
Illusion (Defensive Cooldown)
Karma (consumer, Useful for add control, it provides okay healing and does okay damage.. Doesn’t particularly shine but could be useful while gearing up)

Useful Elites
Domino Effect (Impair)

Beginner Tanking: Chaos Is great for beginner ballerinas, Escalation will fill your team mates with pride. Aside from the turning around in circles chaos also provides the single best impair (Chaotic pull). Unlike most defensive Cooldowns; “Smoke and Mirrors” and illusion stack additively,granting you 75% evade chance, optimally you will want to spread them out trough out the fight in most cases (or replace smoke and mirrors for something with a lower Cooldown). Helter Skelter is a great impair for groups but can be hard to utilize against some bosses (or not at all possible).

Advanced Tanking: The minute you step foot in “fast” runs you’ll want to start using Discord rising, Discord Rising combined with Break down will add 4 Exposed per hit, Adding a significant amount of DPS to everyones initial consumers(also good for adds) and following hits for the price of a single active slot.Run rampart while providing Debilitate slightly faster and providing 150 evade deals a low amount of Damage, and because damage = hate you may end up not doing enough initially.

Other Weapons 
Fist – Running Wild 
Useful consumers
Tear ’em up(DPS)
One two (Burst of energy passive for minor ward)
Wild at Heart (DPS)
Berserk (AoE)

Useful Abilities
Bush Whack (Gap closer, impair)
Muzzle (Ranged impair, travel delay)

Useful Elites
Go for the Throat

Fist comes with fairly interesting consumers, mainly because they cause pain. Both Tear ’em up and Wild at Heart cause excellent damage to your target, and while I normally don’t advocate AoE abilities Berserk works quite well when dealing with an excessive amount of adds ( and your group has issues with adds, else take single target)

Fist also benefits from having impairs. Quite a few! 25 seconds Cooldown Elite Impair or the ranged impair Muzzle that sadly suffers from a slight delay, Bush Whack requires you to step back a meter or 2 but is instantly applied.

By making use of one two’s sub type (Burst) You can apply Burst of energy for minor ward with a 100% up time.

Shotgun – no nonsense Damage mitigation. 
Useful consumers
Defensive Turret (High uptime defensive Cooldown for the cost of shotgun resources)
Raging Bullet (DPS)
Shotgun Turret (Debilitate)

Useful Abilities
Flak Jacket (Defensive Cooldown, Is actually 30%,15% to you and 15% to the group)
Breaching Shot (Offensive Cooldown)
Heavy Recoil (Could potentially use it to dodge casted abilities)
Kickback (Heavy recoil, longer Cooldown, costs no resources)
Point Blank (Impair, 1sec cast requires point blank range)

Useful Elites 
Clean UP (Cleanse)

Shotgun, the extremely useful support weapon.
Clean up,when you lack shotgun users for Machine tyrant. You can pitch in, (Or generally for purges/cleanses just because you use a shotgun anyway!)

Damage reduction, Flak Jacket 30% Damage mitigation on yourself 15% on the group, Shotgun Turret allows for low penetration Debilitate and 6.3% damage reduction from placing a turret (SP passive) or Defensive Turret, giving you 3% damage reduction per resource spent + 6.3% damage reduction from placing a turret (SP passive). Make sure to target yourself!

Heavy Recoil– A backwards dash with 10 seconds Cooldown. Useful for bosses that use dodge able abilities treat as utility not as main consumer.

Kickback–A backwards dash , Useful for bosses that use dodge able abilities use with caution, longer Cooldown than heavy recoil but does not consume resources.

Pistol – Why drop and roll if you can cleanse yourself with water pistols. 

Useful consumers
Shootout (Elemental Force)
Big Forty Five (If you don’t want to use a focus of 2.5seconds)
Cleansing Drone (Cleanse, cleanse, cleanse, combine with other pistol consumer for optimal use)
Bond, Strong Bond (Cleanse, can’t do that while impaired)

Useful Abilities
Win-Win (cleanse, can’t do that while impaired)
Deadly Aim (offensive Cooldown)
Shake and Bake (Dash, impair)

Useful Elites
Dirty Tricks

Since 1.7 an excellent boost to your DPS(hate) Combining Elemental Force withshootout, pistol has a lot of abilities that cleanse yourself or your group.

Cleansing dronewill take resources but cleanse everyone near your target several times, treat it like utility not your secondary consumer, using more resources only increases its Damage output.. can cast it with 1 resource. Win –Win is for winners, low Cooldown, cleanses 2 afflictions on the entire group.

Bond, Strong Bondis a consumer good enough to be your secondary consumer when you constantly need cleansing. Neither of the previous mentioned abilities can be used while you’re impaired. Be warned. (Could cast cleansing drone before getting impaired.. tricky not recommended)

Pistol provides Deadly Aim, Useful offensive Cooldown, fist healers will benefit greatly and as such it can be used as defensive Cooldown as well.

Dirty tricks will only impair small mobile targets; do not attempt to cast on Ur draug.

Shake and Bakewill only impair small mobile targets; do not attempt to cast on Ur draug.

Assault Rifle – The Reaper 

Useful consumers
Three Round burst (DPS)
Anima Outbreak (Major hit )

Useful Abilities
**RAZORWIRE (Mitigation, slow)

Useful Elites
Reap and Sew (Mitigation, group wide)

Assault rifle brings 2 of the most interesting Cooldowns in the game, Reap and Sew and RAZORWIRE.

RAZORWIRE, can slow the boss for up to 10 seconds, rendering him incapable of hitting you. RAZORWIRE is one of the most useful abilities against targets with a fixed movement pattern. (Example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slRd9qeIe-8)

Reap and Sew, this ability will gives your group a 27.8% Leech effect, assuming you’re geared and using mainly single target abilities this will keep you up at 100% hp for the entire duration of the ability, else order your dps to target you (or have a leech healer).

Anima Outbreak(Major hit), use in HR, tell people to stand in melee range behind the boss. Note, low damage output, Low hate.

Blood Magic – Keeping yourself alive through self inflicted harm. 
Useful consumers
Bloodshot (DPS)
Exquisite Corpse (50% Damage reduction on the next hit received)

Useful Abilities
Anaesthesia (Impair, long Cooldown)
Liquidation (Any add that walks over it will be stuck to you like glue or chewing gum in your hair)

Useful Elites
**Cardiac Arrest (impair, travel time)

Honestly, while Exquisite Corpse Damage reduction (50%) Is quite exquisite.. The 2 resources spend to cast it cause you to spend several global Cooldowns on your mitigation rather than dishing out Damage. It’s not something you should take without another consumer, and use it strictly for slowin coming attacks or it won’t be very effective. Blood shot is the only effective (DPS) consumer.

Liquidationis a strong affliction placed on an infinite amount of targets that walk over it, very useful in DW.

Elementalism – Buffbot 
Useful consumers
Fire Manifestation (DPS/Buff)
Lightning Manifestation (DPS/Buff/Purge)
Blaze (DPS)

Useful Abilities
**Flicker (Movement, cleanse)
Short Fuse (Offensive Cooldown)

Useful Elites
**Molten Earth(ranged impair)

Manifestations increase damage done, casting it while targeting your leech healer will result in more healing and more damage done. Casting it while targeting your melee dps will result in a faster boss kill.

Flicker can be used like a dash to avoid dodge able abilities)

Molten Earth will only impair small mobile targets; do not attempt to cast on Ur Draug.

Elemental is great for one thing mainly. Final Fuse, combining Final Fuse(Passive) With Authority (elite passive) Your Short Fuse will give the group a 30% damage increase (Manifestation for your favorite player for 37% awesomeness)

Lightning Manifestation can also purge abilities from targets it hits when combined with the passive lightning in a bottle.

Unlike other manifestations, Lightning and Fire Manifestation will not only Add a 7% dmg buff to your friendly target, they both provide you with an extra chance to proc CcC 8% dmg bonus or apply debilitate. Lightning hits once per second while fire hit’s once per 2.5 seconds. I recommend Lightning manifestation despite the DPS difference.

My personal advanced build “Buff bot”.
http://forums.thesecretworld.com/sho…&postcount=645

Miscellaneous 

Miscellaneous represents the green bars next to your main weapons in your ability wheel.

They have useful passives/actives and not so useful ones. I will list them all.

Survivalism :

• Sleight of Hand – Renders you immune to CC (And damage applied by effects that CC you) Handy in specific encounters.
• Unfair Advantage – Sounds okay, not really something you want to spend a passive for.
• Turn the Tables – Too low healing for a tank, do not use.
• Cannonball – Minor ward is okay, activating it with dashes not so much
• Speed Freak – Long cooldown for its limited use.
• Tenacity – Needs heal rating, and even then very weak.
• Last Resort – Better tanking elites out there, very long cooldown.

Subverse:

• Confuse – Useful for killing your best friend/annoying pug nothing else.
• Subtlety – [Blank]
• Mass Confusion – Useful for Tank swapping (NY raid)
• Under the Radar – [Blank]
• Misdirection – Useful for killing your best friend/annoying pug nothing else.
• Kill Streak – Not really useful for dungeons.
• Do or Die – Don’t do it, there may be instances you’d want to use it as offensive cooldown as DPS tank without blade, but i do not recommend it.. better tanking elites out there.

Turbulence:

• Provoke– Useful in instances where aggro resets are inevitable or where taunts are required for your survival.. generally not required. Puts you on top of the hate list.
• Agitator – Mandatory,refer to my list of hate passives.
• Mass Provocation– Useful in instances where aggro resets are inevitable or where taunts are required for your survival.. generally not required.
• Fuel to the Fire – You don’t need this, refer to my list of hate passives.
• Mockingbird– 200 hate per hit is a lot less useful the further you progress.. this ability serves no purpose for now.
• Resilient Defender– Needs heal rating, so not useful for tanks outside of PVP.
• Stoicism– Very useful Elite, helps with initial hate and survivability.. A great low cooldown defensive cooldown. Generally good but mostly goes unused because of elite impairs.

Aux Weapons – Does not need to be written in an Italic font. 

Rocket Launcher 
Death From Above (AKA Rocket Jump)– Often overvalued, a very good ability mainly for starters. Every single fight can be done without it, but it’s a great ability for when things don’t goas planned. Use with Rocket Science. (Lowers the Cooldown, and no other useful alternative)

It’s effectively a dodge/dash so you can avoid getting hit by dodge able abilities.

Flamethrower 
Dragon’s Breath– Add control, extremely potent with the signet Augur (hits up to from 5 to 10 targets). Use with Viscous Accelerant. Which will reduce the movement speedof your targets to less than your own allowing you to kite them and avoid most damage you would receive while you’re able to keep hitting them with yourPBAoE builder.

or Assiduous burn, as that increases affliction duration and reduces the Cooldown, Dragons breath hits targets every 0.4second so can apply the afflict tomore than just 5-10 targets.

Cremate– A 1 second cast ranged impair that sets stuff on fire, not a recommended ability. But it’s there if you want to put stuff on fire. Use with Assiduous Burn for Cooldown reduction (60 to 37 …. unless the boss uses active dodge that is) Does not impair immobile or large enemies.

Chainsaw 
Hurly-Burly– Decent add control. Only use when you’re having trouble with adds, use with Revved Up (more damage, minor hate difference compared to no love lost)

Diamond Grit– Reduces Damage taken by 50%. Sounds useful enough, better options out there for better purposes (Impairing reduces Damage by 100% so does dodging)

Whip 
Crack– no not that kind of crack. Increases group dps significantly; this is the single best Aux ability for tanks. Use with the passive Whiplash and the signetbinding, The signet binding will increase Damage taken by targets hit by Crack by 1.5/3/4.5% for 3 seconds. The passive Whiplash will reduce the targetsresistances by 200 for 7 seconds. Which increases the damage done to said targets by approximately 7.5% Additional damage (total of 12%for 3 seconds, 7.5%for additional 4 seconds.)

Whippersnapper– amazing impair with the lowest Cooldown, not being able to bring Crack is the only drawback (Get it?). Use with the passive Jones in the Fast Lane, this will reduce the Cooldown from 45 seconds to 22.5 seconds.. Or whiplash for 8% dmg debuff on the boss for 7 seconds
Caution: Difficult to use when there is more than one target in your vicinity.

Quantum
No, not a single useful ability for tanks. Therefore doesn’t get to be pink.

Helpful tips and tricks 
Consumables

Recommended potions:
* Leech Potion
* Barrier Potion

Barrier potions are useful for minimizing the next hit you take but only absorb a limited amount of damage, leech potions replace these entirely once you get some custom gear together.

QL 9 leech potions will work just as good as QL 10 potions and are significantly cheaper, QL1 leech potions barely cost you anything and the difference between ql1 and ql9 leech potions is only noticeable at lower gear levels, QL9 potions are recommended for hard hitting bosses as the difference of healing from your next attack may safe your life if the next hit would otherwise be fatal.

Stimulants and kickbacks
Block stimulant & Block kickbacks are useful while gearing up (lack of pen to trigger pen stimulants or effectively make use of pen rating). They will provide you with Block to mitigate damage trough both Major ward and block.

Penetration Stimulant and penetration kickbacks are great for applying debilitate and is recommend for fully upgraded tanks(glyph wise).

Penetration kickbacks are both Penetration/Penetration and Penetration/Crit power.
Which one to use and when? Penetration/penetration kickbacks are best used when you have no Breaching shot, Penetration/crit power stimulants are best used when you have DA and Breaching shot mainly for DPS and the lack of need to penetrate more.

If you are unsure of how to craft any of them i recommend visiting this page.This one! click me! 

Ambrosia
Ambrosias can be bought at a Council of Venice Envoy in Transylvania (QL7) for 1400 pax each
Ambrosias provide an immediate 5 resources for whichever weapon the consumable states.

This can be helpful for multiple situations:
– regaining hate after failing to impair hate resets (Get more hit rating!)
– Initial hate: Only melee weapons(not Chaos that is magic) start with 5 resources, while in normal groups/build setups you shouldn’t have issues with initial hate sometimes you do.. ambrosias help.
– DPS? Numbers are awesome, increase your e peen for the price of 1400 pax!

List of abilities that can be used for impairing (Interrupting spell casts) bosses
Some of these abilities do not state that they impair (Interrupt), but roots and abilities that force a target to move generally cause targets interrupted and temporarily stunned.

Melee: 
Fists: Go for the Throat, Muzzle, Bush Whack
Note: All these impairs merely stop the boss from attacking for a second, the boss will still move around. Muzzle is a ranged impair, Bushwhack is a charge and will bring you next to your target.

Hammers: Shockwave, Eruption, Beatdown
Note: Simply stunning.

Blades: Stunning Swirl, Art of War,Trial by Swords
Note: Stunning Swirl has a lower cooldown than Art of war, but Art of war allows for 2 glances per target it hits, useful for slow hitting bosses!(Or multiple). Trial by Swords has a short delay before activating, impair early!

Ranged: 
Assault Rifles: N/A Rifles do not impair, they don’t.

Pistols: Shake and Bake, Dirty Tricks, Sticky Drone
Note: These abilities only impair small mobile bosses, do not attempt to use on Ur draug. Sticky drone will apply vigour twice, not recommended. Shake and Bake and Dirty Tricks are AoE impairs.

shotgun: Point Blank
Note: One second cast and requires you to be really close to the boss, not recommended.

Magic: 
Elementalism: Molten Earth, White out
Note: White out is an AoE impair, do know that elemental impairs only work on small mobile bosses.

Blood Magic: Cardic Arrest, anaesthesia
Note: Cardic arrest has a travel time, but is a ranged impair. Anaesthesia is an impair.

Chaos: Domino Effect, Chaotic Pull, Helter Skelter, Prisoner of Fate
Note: Chaotic pull may not indicate that it impairs, but it happens to be the single most versatile impair. It will not pull bosses towards you (does impair their cast), but you can use it as ranged impair/pulling adds from great distance. Helter Skelter Aoe impairs/dash, needs some practice and can’t be utilized against all bosses. Prisoner of Fate will lock you into attacking for 5 seconds, but does impair instantly.

Aux impairs:
Chain saw: The Carver’s Art, will impair but you can’t move for 3 seconds.
Flame Thrower: Cremate, impairs small mobile targets do not use against ur Draug
Whip: Whippersnapper, Impairs the nearest (only 1) target. Difficult to use when there are adds.

Other impairs that i do not recommend using: Power Line, Four seasons, Overload, Black Hole, Strange Attractor, Left hand of darkness.

These abilities are not to be used for regular impairing during normal circumstances. Some can be utilized as impair but are too tricky to recommend. Feel free to play around with them and see if you can make it work for yourself, most of them are too slow to be used effectively. Four season is an excellent tool for applying debilitate initially if you do not have to impair a boss often.

Add management: How to effectively keep hate while minimizing the damage sustained while tanking adds.

The trick to dealing with an excessive amount of adds while minimizing your damage taken is a combination of DPS and movement.
By maximizing the damage you do by hitting an add once you will ensure that an add will be unlikely to switch targets even if you stay out of its attacking range.
Afflictions are extremely helpful here, shoot ’em up, perfect storm, bloodsport. Load em up.

Alternatively Dragon’s breath + blood sport is your best friend if you have access to it.

Movement: Keeping on the move is important to hit all adds at once, because your skills will choose the closest targets to hit, and moving ensures you keep attacking new targets.

Bring a Dash, especially potent ability “Helter Skelter” will help you exponentially at avoiding having to take any unnecessary hit. Dashes can be further Enhanced by Double Dash(passive)

Active dodge can be used to avoid unit collision, unless an add/boss has a fixed movement path it will not be capable of moving trough other enemies/players and as such can be used to avoid taking hits. It can also be used to get a few meter distance between the enemy and yourself keeping them from hitting you for a brief moment.

Advanced Tanking 

Dash

Dashing is basically dodging, some abilities can be interrupted by being out of it’s range. Dodging also allows you to completely avoid unit collision.

By making clever use of Dashes/active dodge you can avoid taking damage from dodge able abilities.

To name a couple of such events in the earlier dungeons.

Polaris
The Varangian

3 abilities.

• Mjolnir’s Echo
  Charged Hack (can be dodged)
  Deep Blast. (can be dodged)

By using a dash/dodge right before Varangian uses Charged Hack you can now get by with just 1, 35 second cooldown impair. Alternatively you can impair Deep blast for dps/or to avoid having to move out of melee range before doing any damage on him when he re appears and instantly casts Deep blast.

While there’s no threat of him going to 3 rising vigour this is a good place to practice dodging/dashing.

Hell Raised
Traumadriver

• 3 abilities
  Searing Brand (can be dodged)
  Molten Metal
  Strip mine

This boss frequently casts abilities, it’s very much possible to reach 3 rising vigour and it’s most certainly possible for him to cast 4 spells within 35 seconds.

With a dash/active dodge it’s possible to completely lock him out from casting spells removing potential deaths from strip mine or from people being too close to him when he casts Molten Metal (and removing it’s initial damage and that of life burn entirely)

Hell Eternal
Brutus, my dashing experience on this fight has been minimal as drink deep doesn’t really do any damage/healing (yeah i face tank for the sake of keeping aggro/Doing DPS on 3 targets sometimes! :P) until Brutus is completely alone.

Anyway Dashing on this fight can be used to avoid drink deep entirely, without spending impairs on Brutus allowing you to impair every Black Iron Bulwark (Which should always be impaired, it will make your run a lot faster and safer as icarus won’t be chaining on putting people ablaze when dead)

New York Raid Tactics 
http://forums.thesecretworld.com/sho…85#post1655485

Mods 

Viper’s CastBar Relocator 

This mod is invaluable, the default placement of abilities that are being casted do not allow you to track stuff that is happening around you. There are 2 mods i can’t live without this is one of them.

http://forums.thesecretworld.com/showthread.php?t=41833

Valet, an outfit manager 

Every dungeon requires different outfits, fashion is important. If you die a horrible death do you really want to be wearing your undies from last Thursday?

Best results are met by wearing Blue outfits in Pol, gray in DW, red in HR, obviously yellow in HE.. etc.

There are 2 mods i can’t live without this is one of them.

http://forums.thesecretworld.com/showthread.php?t=55243

Eth’s Buff bars 
Extremely useful for tracking buffs
For tanking early on it’s main purpose will be for Machine tyrant, tracking the time on “Anima Depletion”

Useful buffs to track
Buffs on Player
Whisper of Darkness

Buffs on offensive Targets
Anima Depletion (Machine Tyrant, )
Heat (Third boss Hell Eternal)
Debilitate
Immune to CC
Rising Vigour

Buffs on defensive Target
Whisper of Darkness
Seeping Terror

http://forums.thesecretworld.com/showthread.php?t=48900

Vipers resource hud 
This allows you to place your resource indicators elsewhere, preferably somewhere that doesn’t keep you from looking at what kind of sneaky things the boss is up to while doing so.

http://forums.thesecretworld.com/showthread.php?t=62566

This heal tanking build, and the theory behind it is entirely a W.I.P. and the goal is to create a self sustaining heal tank setup. No debilitate from DPS, no reliance on DA/drones purely self maintenance and aggro control while still providing the necessities of a tank. (survivability, expose, afflict) 

Weapons: blood/chaos
Heal tank Deck

Actives
1. Blood Shield
2. Exquisite Corpse
3. Escalation
4. Discord Rising
5. Helter Skelter
6. Chaotic Pull
7. Cold Blooded
8. Death From Above

Passives
1. Mad Skills
2. Brawler
3. Sanguineous
4. Agitator
5. Shoot ‘Em Up
6. Breakdown
7. Coagulation
8. Rocket Science

http://joakibj.com//tswcalc/#weapon=…4,1,0,4,0,3,88

Going to cut it short as i need to sleep, Riora and i have been going through some Heal tanking crafting, and these are the stats and build setup that seems to perform adequately.

We’re starting off with the finished 10.4/raid gear product just to show the intend behind the gearing process. As of now our tests have been too limited to work it out for less than 10.4 gear but it’s a W.I.P.

The suggested stats on gear are as followed
– 750block
– 500 crit rating
– 300 crit power
– 650hit
– 429 Physical prot

How to reach 650 hit, by making use of chaos impairs and escalate for exposed, only the chaos weapon benefits from hit. By putting hit on the chaos focus you don’t have to miss out on 320 glyph points for your blood healing. On gear you will end up with 600 hit unless you reglyph your crit minor to 3/1 crit/hit or use a fuse, you can get by with 600 but your impairs or discord rising may glance.

Why 750 block and not 700 or 800: From our tests in HE with 700 block the pen rate will be about once every 23 hits I.E 4.5% chance, while block will be around 9%. This is without order, with order this number will be boosted to about 14% block, not good enough. The 50 rating added brings the block rate up to 17-18%, (as is the number i suggest for normal tanks).

It also reduces penetrating hits to the point that ny buckle is effective during normal circumstances.

500 crit rating, we found this number to be sufficient when boosted by mad skills + anima, crit rate will be around 19%-21%

429 Physical protection, now here’s the deal! Physical protection is there to make up for your inability to apply debilitate (you can ask a dps to do it but that would be cheating!).

430phys prot is about 14.5% dmg reduction,
NY buckle boosts it to about 500 on average which is 17.6% dmg reduction.
If Broadway Charm procs you will have a whopping 900ish prot, with this amount of hp it should proc fairly frequently and reduces dmg taken by about 26%

Choice of signets:

Weapon: Blood/ Temperance, Chaos/Interdiction
Both supply you with a bit of healing and a severe lack of alternatives made us decide on this. (Riora and her crazy interdiction idea) Interdiction since chaos will be primarily used to impair.

Head: Order
Straight forward, improves your block rate by 35/40% lowers the amount of penetrating hits you might take.

Ablation:
Pure win, will be up a lot, will mitigate a lot of damage pretty much mandatory.

All the physical testing and the entire initiative of bothering with heal tanking is entirely thanks to Riora, big thanks to her! 

Note: There is more, i will explain the choice behind the abilities (unless Riora beats me to it)
And deal with the signets!

For now thoughts, idea’s all welcome. Enjoy.

Heal tanking!