Polearm Tank: Is it possible?

[Texan615]

I guess they don't even try then...

For me it's not common and that guy was always at 100% health and writing pms at the same time, so I thought it was cool

I think you misunderstood my comment.

For a kiter to need a healer makes no sense and is not needed.

[Misiuggah]

I think you misunderstood my comment.

For a kiter to need a healer makes no sense and is not needed.

I understood it perfectly. I know that you can avoid Volley completely and Poison Arrow does almost no damage to a tank. Also when you have a healer, you could just stand in one place and tank the boss.

So you either don't have to kite or you don't need a healer. It's obvious if you'll think about it for a moment, but I guess people don't spend much time on it

[Chillee]

It's much easier to pole tank if you have a t3.5, t4, or crafted polearm. You're handicapped with t3 or lower polearm.

But if you don't have one or can't get one of those, it's still doable, although you'll be a bit behind. You're going to struggle with aggro against well geared DTs on many fights.

Get DPS/crit rings. The tricksters charm and cang jei, until you can get t4. Get the t3 dps necklace. Get the Vile strength cape, or at least t3. Unless it's a really hard hitting boss or Louhi/TA, get and use the Tigers chest. Get LL Hate pants and helm, or fort helm. Or any other str/crit gear I may have forgotten.

With that, you'll have a lot of crit/dps to help make up for the lack of it on your polearm.

When it comes to a hard hitting magic boss like TA, you're going to have more survivability as s&b. As someone said before in thread, getting the vengeance debuff on boss is good, but its nice to have a couple of s&b guards to soak up damage too. With the feats and s&b stats, you're going to have higher prot and con on S&B. Most raids will do better with a mix of both.

Best advice for everyone is to become good at both. Makes your raids better, makes you a better player, and makes the game more fun.

[UrZhu]

I'm looking for a build / advice specifically for tanking K6's with polearm.
My guard is very fresh, and the builds I've been seeing for pole tank seem to be based on a certain gear threshold.

A little help with rotation would be nice too, and any tip pertaining only to K6 would be great.
Ty warriors.

[Harcesis]

Tanking with stick build

Both Iron Skin and Stone Skin from General tree, for more protection and armor.

Picked up a couple of agro-tools:
Cry of Havoc from Juggernaut tree and Hateful Strikes from General tree.

Rotation:
Storm Strike (SS) - Reckoning - Flashing Arc 8 (FA8) - FA7/FA9 - Disable

If you want to grab agro, use your tools right before combo finisher.

You could also use Guard-combo for more armor

[UrZhu]

Tanking with stick build

Both Iron Skin and Stone Skin from General tree, for more protection and armor.

Picked up a couple of agro-tools:
Cry of Havoc from Juggernaut tree and Hateful Strikes from General tree.

Rotation:
Storm Strike (SS) - Reckoning - Flashing Arc 8 (FA8) - FA7/FA9 - Disable

If you want to grab agro, use your tools right before combo finisher.

You could also use Guard-combo for more armor

Thank you ~ I had seen this build in the other thread (thx for that too!) and wasn't sure if it would be different for a low gear guard. Much appreciated.

Someone had mentioned only feating one of the "skins" depending on if the boss was physical or magical.
Do you know which of the K6 bosses are phys and which are magic?

For example, RoF boss I believe is physical, but then he throws out the magic fire damage. So does it make sense to feat both skins for most K6's or can I swap those 5 points out for more damage. (Fortitude or battle cry)?

[Misiuggah]

Thank you ~ I had seen this build in the other thread (thx for that too!) and wasn't sure if it would be different for a low gear guard. Much appreciated.

Someone had mentioned only feating one of the "skins" depending on if the boss was physical or magical.
Do you know which of the K6 bosses are phys and which are magic?

For example, RoF boss I believe is physical, but then he throws out the magic fire damage. So does it make sense to feat both skins for most K6's or can I swap those 5 points out for more damage. (Fortitude or battle cry)?

Obviously you need only one skin on most bosses - check cins post on dungeons, IIRC he mentions boss damage types.

If the boss is physical, but has one magic attack - just time CD or StA (if you solo-tank). Points saved on one skin can only boost your aggro or dps, so if you don't have issues with those you can feat both skins to be on the safe side.

[Harcesis]

Thank you ~ I had seen this build in the other thread (thx for that too!) and wasn't sure if it would be different for a low gear guard. Much appreciated.

Someone had mentioned only feating one of the "skins" depending on if the boss was physical or magical.
Do you know which of the K6 bosses are phys and which are magic?

For example, RoF boss I believe is physical, but then he throws out the magic fire damage. So does it make sense to feat both skins for most K6's or can I swap those 5 points out for more damage. (Fortitude or battle cry)?

You're absolutely right! I'm still having the mindset of just having 1 feat build, sorry for that.

Polearm tank - Armor (Physical)
Polearm tank - Protection (Magic)

If you feel like you're taking too much damage, you could also try feating Improved Defensive Stance, like this:

Polearm tank - Turtle Mode (switch skins for armor/protection)
__________________

Flame: Boss do most physical damage. Don't mind the fire spell on the ground - you're up on the pillars when he cast that spell anyway!

Vortex: A mix of magic and physical. Need someone else confirming this.

Palace of Yun Rau: Mosly magic

KK:
Necropolis: Mostly magic
Malice: Physical - all shields to the right!
Enigmata: Mostly magic

Pagoda:
Po-sha (fat guy): Physical
Adds (for HM): Magic

Mines of Chosain
Abyss: Mostly magic
Den of Crowmen: Physical

Hope this helps

[Misiuggah]

If you don't want to buy a 3rd spec, then having one tanking build allows you to have a dps build

[kalston]

Tanking with stick build

Both Iron Skin and Stone Skin from General tree, for more protection and armor.

Picked up a couple of agro-tools:
Cry of Havoc from Juggernaut tree and Hateful Strikes from General tree.

Rotation:
Storm Strike (SS) - Reckoning - Flashing Arc 8 (FA8) - FA7/FA9 - Disable

If you want to grab agro, use your tools right before combo finisher.

You could also use Guard-combo for more armor

Why not just FA8/9 + SS? Disable does poor damage (even when it crits) and I don't think it generates much aggro (not really a pve combo). FA7 does less aggro and damage than both 8 and 9. And if you play with CW then just SS+CW+FA9. One important thing is to always make sure in your rotation that you can use reckoning after SS since that's when it will do the most damage (and will be AoE on top of that).

And of course you should always keep the guard's buff up when tanking physical bosses (the small retributive damage also adds some aggro). No need to spam the combo itself, just renew it when it's about to expire. DO NOT switch weapons even if you feel the temptation to use guard destroyer, that will remove guard's armour buff. Better let other classes debuff the boss for you (they do it better anyway).

And some errors in your list: Vortex is purely physical unless you tank the adds, same goes for Yun Rau (only frost whip is magical and with 20% protection you can tank it by timing CD or STA - that's what I do anyway, that way I don't need to move at all and can just keep pushing dps and aggro) and Abyss is mostly physical (the magical things he has are not really dangerous for tanks).

Other than that I don't have any issue with your specs.