Sidar's DT guide

[Djain]

Gj on solo-tanking and pushing that amount of dps. Just makes you wonder if DT is balanced at all.. oh no, shouldn't have started that diskussion.

Ghola should know what DT is capable off. Both him and Thaan have topped (or being near top) in damage done/taken and healing done/taken at the same time in some T4 encounters.

I've personally seen Azi (Izkraticus) do 5-6k single target in pyjamas set - so ofc. 2.2K and tanking will be possible.

[Shax84]

Zodiac encounter is a bitch to parse correctly. Askii from our guild has written his own parser where he also can use selective parsing. The dps on his parse suffer from the constellation breaks between bosses so the numbers are lower. But as Boesch has done is the easiest way to do. Look at damage taken on animals and just calculate it from the duration of the fight.

[Korando-AoC]

Good job on experimenting and finding you could solo tank Zodiac fight with a similar build and correct group setup.
It's really quite impressive imo (solo tank with no Soul Barrier! ).

Anyway I think it's a very specific fight.
Probably it's possible only because you are supported by crazy high magic health taps due to near seasons (and one specific group setup ofc).
I really doubt you can tank many more fights in game with that build, especially if you need to switch (tank is not just go full out and solo-tank of course), cause I imagine that without taps you would go down very fast with no Soul Barrier (especially with the crazy DPS and hate you generate).
Still it's a very nice job imo.

What becomes evident anyway is that DT taps / damage with top gear (T4) and in specific circumstances scales in a quite broken way.
We already knew from Kithai (Scarle Circle set) how crazy DPS scales with wisdom gear, but now with T4 tank sets DT have enough survivability to open more fun tank scenarios.

I will have to wait long time anyway to test it, since I don't have a single T4 parton my DT QQ .

Really nice.
Experimenting with DT feat trees with T4 should be really awesome.
So bad that this class is VoM dependant and broken is some aspects though.

[Boesch]

Calore you should definitely experiment with desecration heavy builds, it's a bit of a myth that floats around that you need Dread Shadows or Soul Barrier. Soul Barrier is only a 'nice to have' ability once you have T4 gear (really just the chest) and you can comfortably tank any physical fight without it because the taps are just so high.

Example:

http://tinypic.com/r/8znp05/5

This is three phases of the Basilisk fight we did this week, with me on my DT (one phase was split from the others by ACT). He hits full T4 guardians for a little around 2300 - 2500 per hit. Red line = moving average DPS over the last 10 seconds. Yellow = moving average incoming damage over the last 10 seconds. Each bar is +2000 DPS. That's all that's really significant.

The first two phases were around 2000 DPS, fairly consistently, which means you're probably tapping around 400-500 hp/s. A lot of that damage being dealt is actually magic damage which has a lower tap % than physical, else you would tap a LOT more than what I just estimated (more like 800/second if it were somehow physical). Obviously if you can sustain 500 hp/s then you're probably not going to die.

Moving into phase three, the DPS was averaging around 3000 in defensive stance with a solid section over 4000, spiking to 5000. Remember that 5000 is actually 10 seconds of averaging 5000 DPS so it isn't just a single instance of damage, it is being sustained more than what might initially be suggested. At 5000 DPS you're more likely to be tapping approx 1000 - 1250 hp/s which basically makes you totally god mode, and Basilisk now can't even scratch you, nor can anything but a DT even imagine competing with you for aggro at 5000 DPS in defensive stance.

All of this is done in defensive stance.

In comparison, soul barrier protects you from a maximum of 120 per hit, and as a vague estimate you get hit every 2 seconds, so you could translate that to perhaps an extra 60 hp/s of tapping.

I would suggest that the bat-**** crazy DPS and taps more than makes up for the small survivability gained by soul barrier.

[Korando-AoC]

Calore you should definitely experiment with desecration heavy builds, it's a bit of a myth that floats around that you need Dread Shadows or Soul Barrier. Soul Barrier is only a 'nice to have' ability once you have T4 gear (really just the chest) and you can comfortably tank any physical fight without it because the taps are just so high.

That Dread Shadow is highly overrated I already knew, but it's expected from many raid leaders nearly as part of the tactic, and in many fights it's also for good reasons honestly.

Anyway I already tried to experiment with fun Talisman tank builds in Hard Modes, and I found that you can really tank almost everything with that kind of build.
There are some problems though:
- switching is hard, so if you can't solo tank you are quite f***ed.
- with only Kithai gear you are below the armor level that lock some build / gear combination (this is the biggest problem). So for example you can be forced to go for armor in General tree and not to use Tiger Chest or other DPS parts, lowering taps and DPS, etc.

With T4 gear I imagine it is for sure very fun though, I understand that.


The point where high taps granted by heavy Desecration > Soul Barrier is kinda a "broken" effect imo.
Fortunately any extensive use of this mechanic is evidently limited by some specific situations, and especially by the fact that you can't switch (= no taps you are dead, I can imagine it's like that).

[Boesch]

That Dread Shadow is highly overrated I already knew, but it's expected from many raid leaders nearly as part of the tactic, and in many fights it's also for good reasons honestly.

Anyway I already tried to experiment with fun Talisman tank builds in Hard Modes, and I found that you can really tank almost everything with that kind of build.
There are some problems though:
- switching is hard, so if you can't solo tank you are quite f***ed.
- with only Kithai gear you are below the armor level that lock some build / gear combination (this is the biggest problem). So for example you can be forced to go for armor in General tree and not to use Tiger Chest or other DPS parts, lowering taps and DPS, etc.

With T4 gear I imagine it is for sure very fun though, I understand that.

Agreed on everything you have said, though there's a few things to work in here. IMO always go full improved defensive stance and iron skin, even if that means you'll have more mitigation than what you need. For every bit extra (ie: most of it above around 54%) just trade away with accessories into magic damage / wisdom gear. I mentioned the T4 chest because the tigers is the only real option with good crit and it seriously lacks mitigation. The build truly 'matures' once you get good crit, good mitigation and can start pumping up magic damage.

Anyway, I updated my post to include a graph showing moving average DPS so people can get an idea of just how obscene the DT is.

[Korando-AoC]

Agreed on everything you have said, though there's a few things to work in here. IMO always go full improved defensive stance and iron skin, even if that means you'll have more mitigation than what you need. For every bit extra (ie: most of it above around 54%) just trade away with accessories into magic damage / wisdom gear. I mentioned the T4 chest because the tigers is the only real option with good crit and it seriously lacks mitigation. The build truly 'matures' once you get good crit, good mitigation and can start pumping up magic damage.

Yeah I kinda got that too, but as you already pointed out with Kithai gear (Tiger Chest), even if for HMs limit is around 50%-51%, you have not many margins to experiment: you are forced to go for Iron Skin (you can't choose if you hold a talisman with kithai gear armor) and if you use Tiger chest you can't swap almost any Strength accessorie for Wisdom / Magic damage ones (even Ibis is a bit a problem, since it has no Strength).

After my tests, conclusion was that with Kithai gear that kind of build is perfectly usable, but not much more efficent (a bit less efficient tbh) than standard old school build with shield coupled with magic damage accessories: similar damage (shield gives armor, which opens the use of magic damage accessories; so trade off was Talisman Mastery and a few more Desacration feats with tank gear vs Magic Damage gear.. not much difference), similar survivability but also dread shadow in old school build and also still a bit easier switch.

But I totally understand what you wrote about that build with T4 gear (I can imagine it at least), must be awesome, even if I still think that it is mostly usable only in solo-tank or very specific fights (at least without Soul Barrier, but I may be wrong).
Thx for posting this, I was very corious about it.

[Pondtus]

Well when Boesch and I were similarly geared (sadly I hardly see any t4 action) I would just go all out too and if it needed to be pulled spiking some damage and an irritate would often do the trick.
Also remember that a simple FE will make a big difference since those few seconds you will heal up quite a bit.
So if you have 2 DTs with the same or at least similar build you can dual tank quite a lot of things in the game.
The real killers for this build are high damage fights (Strom, Emperor, etc.) where lots of trading is a must.
Past that I would argue that DTs running a spec like this are quite an asset to a raid.

[Ocelotti]

I got a question about things "proven" in this thread.

Which bosses in T3 and T4 can be solo tanked by DT with setup like this?

[Rathothis]

#2 People's ability to justify anything... HEE HEE HEE. I know my actions are REALLY screwing the system and everyone else BUT IM GETTING SO MUCH!! Screw THEM!! Gotta protect a good while I have it going!! HEE HEE HEE.

All I see is you screwing up a very interesting discussion. Feel free to have another thread closed in General Discussion but don't troll the DT forum.

On topic (kind of), these figures are really impressive, but does any of you guys remember your setups for tanking Zodiac before you had T4 gear? I haven't really had the opportunity to try but does something like this make sense with Khitai gear only:

http://goo.gl/w0N4fU

Not sure about whether to go for Sustained Rage over Improved Def Stance, for example.

Would love to avoid Hexer's Might (useless), but going Tali is not an option.

Or simply let the guards tank it and go nuts in pyjamas?