WildStar Engineer Tank Guide For New Level 50s

WildStar Engineer Tank Guide For New Level 50s by koticgood

I was reading a post in another thread about taking too much damage as an Engineer tank. As a main-spec DPS currently tanking adventures/dungeons for my guild, I ran into similar problems as you when I first started tanking on my engineer. However, a few people helped me a lot (Dartos’s stream especially), and hopefully passing it along will help a few people.

Firstly, there’s a bit of misinformation about Engineer tanks, especially concerning how to build one when you’re just starting out. The main two are:

–Unsteady Miasma. Tiered up, this thing gives 32% increased chance to miss for the mob. Some people read that as you get 32% more deflect. That’s not the case. The blunder it applies increases the chance for a mob to miss. A mob’s chance to miss is (player deflect% – mob strikethrough%). As you can imagine, that value is pretty low for a tank looking to gear up. So a 32% increase in a small value won’t help you much; you’ll deflect an extra attack every now and then, but you won’t mitigate anymore damage. There isn’t much to spend volatility on, so you can still run it if you prefer, but certainly don’t tier it up.

–Shields. This is where I made my biggest mistake when I was starting out tanking. I was tricked by “shield mitigation” and the shield spec that most raid/end-game tanks run. DO NOT GO FOR SHIELD CAPACITY. When you have a medic healer that can crit shield surge you for 15k shields, and when you can run around with 30k shields, then the shield spec can be amazing. That requires a lot of gear, and unlike in a raid setting where you can have a dedicated medic healer at all times, you’ll be without a medic healer more often than not in adventures/dungeons.

The ONLY thing shield mitigation does is increase the amount of damage that is applied to your shield. Base shield mitigation is 50%, so 50% of the damage is applied to your shield, and 50% to your health. When you’re starting out tanking adventures/dungeons, getting shield capacity won’t do you any good. Repair bot and disruptive module restore the same amount of shield regardless of how much shield capacity you have. The reason the shield spec is so good is that with t4 shield surge (+25% shield mitigation), you can get to 100% shield mitigation while disruptive module is active, and 90% with just repair bot + shield surge. Again, though, this requires a medic. Without a medic, your shield will deplete, and all the healing you received during that time will be 100% overheal and pointless, and once depleted, which will happen quickly, all your shield cap becomes worthless. You can restore it with repair bot and disruptive module, but there’s no difference between 10k and 30k shield in that regard. If you are in a guild and you can always have a medic healer, then by all means, go for shield spec. But if you’re grouping with a lot of different people, don’t try it!

I’m not saying to avoid disruptive module and repair bot. By using those abilities, if your shields are depleted, you’re essentially spamming decent sized absorbs at a consistent rate.

Now, with what not to do out of the way, lets focus on what you should be doing, in terms of gear, amps, and abilities.

–Gear Armor is inherently tied to item level, so the first step in gearing up is to get all level 50 blue tank items. Having grit/health on the gear is nice, but any level 50 blue tanking gear is fine. It should be pretty clear if the piece is designed for an engi tank (heavy armor, tech/insight, grit/deflect/deflect crit). Between the grimvault rep vendor, crafted items from the AH (galactium protoweave is lvl 50 starter crafted tanking gear, and comparable or better than adventure blue), BoE items from the AH, and a few adventure pieces, it should be relatively simple to finish a level 50 set.

–Runes Runes are expensive as fuck. I love the system, especially the randomness of the slots, and once you’re fully runed with a good set of gear, putting runes into the occasional upgrade won’t be that pricy. But damn, the initial process of getting a full set runed is crazy. Look for slots that you can put phys resist/health/armor into, and just fill them up with basic green runes. The extra armor is a huge boost. To put it into a perspective, a single armor rune is more than double the armor bonus that going from an adventure epic to a Genetic Archives epic. Most of the time you run into issues where you’re taking more damage than you should, it’s from autoattacks. A rune of phys resist will do even more than the aforementioned armor, so phys resist runes are very important. In general, health > phys resist > armor.

–Amps/Abilities There is a lot of flexibility when it comes to abilities and amps. There are a few vital of each though. This build shows the barebones “required” amps/abilities to take. Here is an example of a full build. Shatter impairment is great; there are a lot of scenarios, especially in dungeons, where a CC break is awesome. And, on fights without CC, it’s a relatively short cd decent-sized absorb shield. Repair bot adds some mitigation and group shield heal. Obstruct vision lets you interrupt a mob with 2 interrupt armor by yourself, which is what many bosses have. Interrupts are the king of dungeons, and being able to interrupt a 2 interrupt armor boss or trash mob by yourself is a huge deal. I’ve been in groups where the tank has only had 1 interrupt, or even 0, arguing that they’re the tank and don’t need it. That’s just crazy. Take t4 zap, and give Obstruct Vision a try as well. You’d be amazed at how much it can help a group.

As I said, there is a lot of flexibility, and that’s why the barebones build I listed was so minimal. There are plenty of other options, but they are a preference and/or on a per-fight basis. Recursive Matrix gives some deflect, and at t4, which you have plenty of ability points use on, gives a good-sized group absorb shield. There are a lot of fights where it’s hard for the healer to keep up with group damage, so the absorb shield is nice. And the way threat works in this game, the absorb shield actually generates a bunch of threat. Disruptive module is nice; it gives you self-mitigation and volatility, as well as shield-mitigation at t4. Code Red is a large AoE taunt that you can use if you are running into threat issues or are in an area with particularly chaotic fights, and as another source of group mitigation. Shock Pulse/Flak Cannon can be swapped for Ricochet if you use Volatility Rising, since you’ll actually gain volatility while casting it. It’s a threat loss, but if you’re lazy like me, Particle Ejector and Hyper Wave (amazing intimidate) is enough for threat. Some people might recommend you to use t8 feedback. The only reason for this is a bug. I think that’s cheesy, and would recommend not relying on something that will hopefully be fixed soon.

tldr; Get level 50 gear. Get health/phys resist/armor runes. Get the vital amps/abilities. Bring interrupts to dungeons.