God-tank build

[LordDestrox 0]

Alright, now I know certain issues have been brought up so far but none as serious as this one. Like legit this is the most overpowered thing I can specifically spot out simply looking at the skills. I happen to be an avid Dungeons and Dragons player 3.5 and pathfinder being my main systems. These systems are known for abusable builds which is mostly why I can spot these things within a day or 2 of being here. (I noticed my first day but am posting it now.)

Now, lets start this off by what a tank truely needs.
 

DEFENSE

Now I have looked around and the best defense in this system is to go for heavy armor and shield sure you cant straight up ignore damage using evasion but you reduce it...by a lot...So get yourself the best armor you can get and enchant it with damage mitigation... Simple enough eh.

Now get a shield I will discuss possibilities for enchanting this somewhere later on.

Obviously you want to max out the both of these skills because more damage mitigation the better. This should cap you out at around 120+9(enchant) alright so 129...thats not so bad I am sure people have spotted stuff like this already...

Now get parry, nothing says you can't block and parry. It litterally has nothing currently written actually stopping this. Parry reduce all incoming damage by half and lets you stun the target.

Congrats, combine this with any food or potion you can manage to find yourself and you now take half damage and reduce it by a lot...

Accomplishing without putting anything anywhere else whatsoever you have spent exactly 60 SP so far.

AGRO

Fighting spirit and howl...duh...everyone knows the hate system if you don't I question how long you spent actually building your character...

This puts you up to 80 for the build.

CC/SURROUNDED

Just get yourself battle healing. feel free to get a lot of it but I suggest only about 3 or 4 ranks as face it by then thats gonna be healing more damage likely than you are taking...

Afterwords do the quest for meditation. Get 1 rank and you should be good.

100 build

STUNZ 4 DAYZ

Because now that you have so much tank you can focus on the best type of sword arts...stunning. Get yourself a hammer. Do all the stuns, now not only are you taking half damage that is reduced, you also are stunning them stopping them from doing damage this is one of the only ones capable of group stunning.

WEAPON AND SHIELD ENCHANT

Go for thorns 2 to do 6 damage back when they hit you nicer since they do so little damage eh. For that third slot go for regen, it will help.

For your weapon go for 2 paralyze and 1 bleed. Because why not.

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Now lets wrap this up explaining the whole build in short for lazy people.

 

129 damage mitigation, take half damage, return 6 damage per hit thats not a crit, stunz 4 dayz, and bleed incase the enemy has regen.

 

it requires 105 to 130 skill ranks but provided you don't push it in the order I listed it you should be fine making it to the end. The extra 5 to 25 obviously for your hammer.
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Early on I suggest starting with armor (5 skill points) and getting a friend to help with combat. Your next couple of SP into your weapon (5+5=10 skill points) to start soloing. Go for your sheild. (10+5=15 skill points) Grab another in armor (15+5=20 skill points) Go for parry (20+10=30) then alternate armor and sheild as you see fit. Combat regen (30+5=35) and now you should just grab what you think you need at the time you should be tanking enough to ignore a smallish militia.

Edited October 15, 2015 by LordDestrox
To clean it up a little

[Tristan Delaney 0]

Bear in mind if paralysed or stunned you cannot Parry and that stun on parry uses the same cooldown as weapon stun, along with Riposte in first place requiring you to hit. Also note that while mitigation is nice, you cannot get +evasion and evasion debuffs such as in Lord of the Seas would still affect you. Also note how damage is piss poor, for example i do max roughly 12 and bleed or 24. Zelrius on the other hand can go above and beyond that and actually be useful in a fight XD.

Also are you sure your costs are right? It costs 50 to max one skill so the math seems off in places. I only say this because Im one of the top tier tanks myself at 108 SP and am nowhere near that tanking level.

Also bear in mind for meditation you need to invest SP in it.

You will also notice that several bosses have an ability called "Phase", which is to partially or even fully bypass damage mitigation. It is also part of the unique skill Darkness Blade and in the future will be an enhancement on some unique weapons.

[Life 0]

I wouldn't take paralyse as a tank. You want people to hit you, that's how you kill stuff.

[LordDestrox 0]

@tristan

I may have some of the costs slightly wrong being new here. It was my assumption that 5 sp is what it costs to go up a single rank but the cost may go up as the rank increases. As I am not that far along I would not have looked fully into that and do apologize for any mistake.

Obviously bosses would be a bit more trouble they are bosses they have unique stuff that make them stronger than players.

If your blocking you can't evade in the first place and if your using a shield why are you not blocking.

About the damage obviously its not focused for damage but if you think of it in a pvp stand point. There is a sword art that does 11 hits by then your base damage at max per hit is gonna be around 10 for 110 damage, you mitigate a good bit of that assuming they have something to ignore some of the damage mitigation and reduce it by half also note that with thorns that they take 6 per attack now I am not certain how that translates into a sword art that does multiple attacks it would be 66 damage. so if they do even 110 damage ignoring damage mitigation reduced by half being 55 damage your still doing 11 more plus your attacks.

Meditation it says works like combat regen except for status effect by focusing your mind you can end them nothing limits you from doing this in combat nor does it specify the type of action it is that I noticed.

@life

The stun is more to give you time to simply wait for your combat regen to heal you so you can do your best to keep health topped off.

[Tristan Delaney 0]

"If your blocking you can't evade in the first place and if your using a shield why are you not blocking." Block is a passive bonus, simply having a shield in your hand increases your mitigation. However you are also more likely to be hit and still suffer evasion debuffs, so you can have -2 evasion and be hit more, yet never bet +1 or more evasion.

Skills do in fact increase in cost as listed in the skill guide. To be exact on 5 rank skills the SP costs are 5, 8, 10, 12 and 15 from ranks 1-5.

Thorns can work well but does not activate on a critical, so be careful about relying on it.

Meditation is simply focusing your mind. It does have a chance to heal and negate effects based on your craft dice roll, however is a post action, so you wont be attacking or parrying etc.

[LordDestrox 0]

Effect: Increase mitigation by the same amount each rank as the armor skills (5/15/25/40/60).  Reduces evasion to be always ≤0.  Requires an equipped shield.

Description: Defend with your shield, deflecting an opponents attack.

 

It does specifically state evasion is always equal to or less than 0.

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As for the ranks thank you, I will update the total cost of the build later.

 

Meditation can still be used instead to help you get out sooner.

Also I do want to be clear it may be called god tank build but there will always be a counter to any build.

High damages are squishy, evasion tanks could be done in by a stun on a lucky hit, a support could end up targeted first etc.

I personally was more thinking in say right now it is the strongest tank that stands out to me. It can ignore a lot of damage and reduce it by half. Where as an evasion is dodging hits but if they are hit it is more devastating.

[Tristan Delaney 0]

In a nutshell.

[Takao 0]

Block is a passive bonus, simply having a shield in your hand increases your mitigation.

I still think this is kinda weird, considering Kayaba had to use Cardinal to move his shield to block Kirito's attack in their first duel.

[LordDestrox 0]

 Thats anime vs this, its easier to implement static bonuses for defense. I know of only one pen and paper rpg that does not use static defense and it is a completely unbalanced system. If we implement things like rolls or abilities that block for us(unless its pretty high level or rare gear)  then its going to serve to start to unbalance an already incomplete system.

One thing that could be done is depending on the level of the skill discerns how many attacks the damage mitigation does apply against as a way of implementing a way of balance against a faster or multiple enemies. However also add an enhancement that increases this as well say 2 attacks per rank with an extra 1 per enhancement bonus. So at max sheild rank and enhancement bonus you could black about 13 attacks in a round. It would make boss strategies and raid bosses more important because now you gotta keep weak shrimps off the main tanks taking hits from the boss monster.

Edited October 16, 2015 by LordDestrox
To fix stuff

[Takao 0]

I wasn't talking about rolling for the usage of block, just that apparently you don't need to actually block in roleplay with your shield because it provides a static defense boost. That's pretty weird from an in-character perspective, especially in a game based around realistic fighting and in a series where it's explicitly demonstrated that using your shield to block is necessary. (also the skill description on the site is literally "Defend with your shield,")

I did make a suggestion a while ago that the mitigation bonus you get from block should be negated if you're paralyzed or stunned, due to being unable to actually being unable to move and therefore unable to block, but it was shot down pretty quickly.

[LordDestrox 0]

Its not like a person would be hitting your sheild when your stunned...they can move behind you or target your neck...So it should be negated when your stunned.

 

Later on there will be no downside to getting a shield with any one handed weapon later on in that case. Even if you use evasion you could use it if say your against something that ignores or lowers your evasion...

Also lets talk about light armor and heavy armor giving the same damage mitigation from what I saw...like wtf...

Edited October 17, 2015 by LordDestrox

[Tristan Delaney 0]

If you don't use a shield one handed with Martial arts can get an extra sword art.

They dont. Heavy armor has a cap of three for damage mitigation while light only has two.

In SAO Hollow Fragment equipping a shield boosts your defence at the cost of evasion and being stunned or such does not affect this, so is the best evidence I have to go by.

Edited October 17, 2015 by Tristan Delaney