Support Tank - Thoughts?

[Sicarii]

So I am thinking about rolling up an enchantress support tank character. I want to know your thoughts about the build. Here it is...

Goal: To be able to survive and maintain aggro while healing, buffing, and debuffing

Stats:
Int - 11 (for m/s)
Str - Heavy armor reqs
Dex - the rest

Skills:
Heal - 5
Shield - 5
Nightmare - 5
Weakness - 5
Firestorm - 5 (for kickback effect + dam when it gets hairy)

BoV - 1
BoM - 1
Revive - 1
Ice Storm - 1 (for rooting runaways and setting up firestorm combo)

My hope is to have the heavy armor and shield to be able to stand in the thick of things, while keeping my team alive via heals and boosting their damage spikes via buffs and debuffs. Is it viable?

[Xanthia]

I have played the Heal/Support role for 10 years in MMO's primarily as the MH. I am doing exactly that in this game as well, I love to see other enthusiastic players about healing! Hopefully we can get the DEV's to listen and make more classes and make a Healing Class. That being said. *Steps off Soap Box*

You have intrarole conflict in your statement, you want to be a (Healer - is someone who purports to aid recovery from ill health.) and a (Tank - tanks focus on large amounts of health, armor, or both and direct all damage toward them)
Both of these roles are full time jobs and you can't maximize either role trying to preform both at the same time.

So I will present two options:

1. If you want to be a healer then, do not waste skill points in Firestorm or Ice Storm at all. Healing is a full time job, even so in this game, especially if you are playing with a tight group and you are pulling 30+ mobs at a time. You will want to have BoV, BoM, and Resurrect at 3 Skill Points. You current skill bar should have starting from the top. (Magic Shield, Weakness, Nightmare, Heal) Spells in your spellbook should be (Blessing of Might, Blessing of Vitality, and Revive) Those are all the skills you need to master the art of Healing. Now just go out and practice. Also, I would advise changing your stat distribution to 93 in Int and rest in Dex, this is so you will be able to wear Enchantress gear which should get your H/S to 9 or 10 and M/S to 8.

2. Re-roll a Warrior and read Warrior Forum Posts :)

Thanks, Have a good day! Hope this helps

[Sicarii]

Hmmm... Ok, correct my thinking here.

I was under the impression that BoM, BoV, and Revive do not really do anything worth dumping more than 1 skill point in. They just lower mana cost, yes? And they will be used so infrequently (2 min recast for the buffs, ideally the relatively rare occurrence for revive...) that the mana cost should not play too much of a factor. My biggest mana drain, if my thinking is correct, would be spamming heal...

That leaves 6 points to do something with. The thought for ice and fire as a skill dump was mores for crowd control, but i am open to reallocating them elsewhere, as that placement is predominantly because i have 6 extra points that need a decent place to go... Lol

As to stats... I was under the impression that int gives very little returns for the price. Hence why so many enchantresses right now are going dex builds. Could i not get enough m/s off of +m/s warrior gear, and thus also have the armor for survivability? My hope is to have a character that sacrifices dps for high survivability, and can therefore also keep his group alive.

[Splurd]

Hmmm... Ok, correct my thinking here.

I was under the impression that BoM, BoV, and Revive do not really do anything worth dumping more than 1 skill point in. They just lower mana cost, yes? And they will be used so infrequently (2 min recast for the buffs, ideally the relatively rare occurrence for revive...) that the mana cost should not play too much of a factor. My biggest mana drain, if my thinking is correct, would be spamming heal...

That leaves 6 points to do something with. The thought for ice and fire as a skill dump was mores for crowd control, but i am open to reallocating them elsewhere, as that placement is predominantly because i have 6 extra points that need a decent place to go... Lol

As to stats... I was under the impression that int gives very little returns for the price. Hence why so many enchantresses right now are going dex builds. Could i not get enough m/s off of +m/s warrior gear, and thus also have the armor for survivability? My hope is to have a character that sacrifices dps for high survivability, and can therefore also keep his group alive.

Int gear has more m/s so a int char will have more mana regen.

The reasons why warriors are such good tanks is they have iron blood. without that skill, they'd would not be such good tankers.
Sure you have mana shield but its not good enough and you take massive amounts of damage.

@Xanthia While I think a mage tanker/healer build has alot of flaws, I disagree that healing or tanking is full time role. It is possible to be a multi role char, just that you usually wont be as good as a single role character. He is not trying to "maximize" each roll, he is simply just trying to make a char which can do a ok job at both roles.

It is possible to be a support tank, just that your tanking abilities will be really bad. you cant hold aggro, and you take too much damage, and you cant stun lock mobs.

[Azrael]

Actually combining mage shield (which gives another 12 armor anyway) with weakness (aoe debuff) makes for a solid tank. The damage a mage takes becomes negligible. I find it easy to solo MMMU doing this combo for instance, and my mage uses cloth armor. With a mage with plate armor it would be even more effective in terms of survivability. In lost expedition however you will have moments when your spells are down and damage will get through on your mage. If you want to try to do a tanking role though, you will need to be a damage mage as well in order to be able to get the aggro in the first place. My two cents is that being a tanking mage and being a damage mage at the same time is very doable, but you are going to be using mana pots constantly. Also there is a misconception that mages are either healers or damage or debuffers buffers. The reality is that it takes only 6 skill points to be a healer and 2 points to be a buffer. Every enchantress should have 3 of the 4 types of spells available to them. The game just didn't design the enchantress class to only be healers.

So here is a build for you:
5 heal
5 mana shield
1 revive
5 weakness
5 lightning storm or nightmare (more damage vs more debuff)
5 flameblast
1 icestorm
1 BoM
1 BoV
Edit: pretty much the build you were thinking of now that i look at it :)! Just note that weakness is more effective than nightmare for damage mitigation.

Combine that with plate and and LOTS of mana pots, and you will be able to tank and heal, using the damge to pull the agro, though it won't always work as well as a warriors beckons and stuns. And not for nothing, this build is pretty much the best possible build available give or take a few minor switches, regardless of what armor you wear. My mage uses lightning storm instead of nightmare, and 2 points in icestorm for a longer cc rather than BoV. i don't use plate because i want regen and long range auto attack, so i use cloth/staff... and maybe one day the devs will actually make int effect the damage on spells... /cry

Sooo i half agreed with splurd, and disagree with xanthia.

[Xanthia]

Also there is a misconception that mages are either healers or damage or debuffers buffers. The reality is that it takes only 6 skill points to be a healer and 2 points to be a buffer.The game just didn't design the enchantress class to only be healers.




It is possible to be a support tank, just that your tanking abilities will be really bad. you cant hold aggro, and you take too much damage, and you cant stun lock mobs.


@ Azrael, I believe that there are 2 types of Mages, DPS or Heal/Buff/Debuff. There is no way that being a Heal/Tank Mage is remotely possible to be better then a 30 tank with the weakest gear, as you said that there is no HEALER Mage well there is DEFINITELY not a Tank Mage.

@ Spurd, What is the point in making the class then, it would be the worst of both classes and not hold aggro, and wont be able to debuff as well, and because your wearing Plate armor your M/S will be less then if you wore cloth and you could reach +8 M/S.

[Splurd]

@ Azrael, I believe that there are 2 types of Mages, DPS or Heal/Buff/Debuff. There is no way that being a Heal/Tank Mage is remotely possible to be better then a 30 tank with the weakest gear, as you said that there is no HEALER Mage well there is DEFINITELY not a Tank Mage.

@ Spurd, What is the point in making the class then, it would be the worst of both classes and not hold aggro, and wont be able to debuff as well, and because your wearing Plate armor your M/S will be less then if you wore cloth and you could reach +8 M/S.

The point is, you get a character does half a tanks job and half a mages job.

A character which has high defence and can take damage, and at the same time heal.

Its not a DO EVERYTHING char.

It it a tanking healer.

[LordRaid]

The point is, you get a character does half a tanks job and half a mages job.

A character which has high defence and can take damage, and at the same time heal.

Its not a DO EVERYTHING char.

It it a tanking healer.



Splurd brings up a good point in that this enchantress is a tank that can heal. One or two AoE skills up the sleeve can't hurt, and the enchantress can fulfill the tank role while healing with relative ease, if I'm not mistaken.

I agree with Xanthia on the part in which he pointed out that healing is a full time job. I'll agree with this simply because in later dungeons high leveled monsters that swarm will force even the greatest of tanks to take a step back (then stomp/firestorm the holy **** out of them......) while the healer gives them a small boost in health to rejuvenate the tank, which may be in this case the enchantress tanking healer.

I recommend not putting the 11 points into int. Dex and Str should be your greater priorities, and just find armor that'll give you hp regen, while M/s boosts should go to a total of 2-4? Nothing too extravagant, unless you wish to have more M/s and heal yourself the way through. Just keep in mind that the skill has a cooldown time.

[Azrael]

@ Azrael, I believe that there are 2 types of Mages, DPS or Heal/Buff/Debuff. There is no way that being a Heal/Tank Mage is remotely possible to be better then a 30 tank with the weakest gear, as you said that there is no HEALER Mage well there is DEFINITELY not a Tank Mage.

@ Spurd, What is the point in making the class then, it would be the worst of both classes and not hold aggro, and wont be able to debuff as well, and because your wearing Plate armor your M/S will be less then if you wore cloth and you could reach +8 M/S.

It might not be this way in pvp, but as the game stand now gold is plentiful. My characters easy have access to 1000 of pots and i still have about 50k gold. Mana is simply not an issue when gold is so easy to acquire and pots can be spammed.

And again Xan, i disagree but to each the own. As long as the enchantress can hold the aggro and not die, that mage is a tank. I think the lack of distinction between the classes is lame, but thats just how it is. A fully equip warrior will tank better sure, but saying a warrior with bad gear could do it better anyway isn't accurate. Have you even tried tanking with plate and this build as enchantress, or have you played a level 30 warrior? On top of that this isn't WoW or any other MMO. The instances are so easy to complete in this game and the bosses are killed quickly. You speak as if the mage tank is going to have to go tank Onyxia with a 40 man raid...

And why do you think that there are only two types of Enchantress anyway? the 2 builds that were posted clearly include every type of Spell, and the only thing the enchantress has to choose from is Lightning storm or nightmare. losing one spell and having all the others hardly amounts to a mage not doing everything. Once pvp is released mana will be an issue and the builds will change, but right now an enchantress can and should have all the spell types. The only thing thats up for question is play stye and armor/weapon choice based on stats.

[Violentsaint]

i copyed pixxies paladin build

Base stats (without gear or buffs)
95 str
53 dex
7 int

5 heal, 1 rez, 5 lightning, 5 fire storm, 1 frost storm, 5 nightmere, 5 mana sheild, 1 BOV, 1 BOM

http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/3397/photoeu.jpg (http://img218.imageshack.us/i/photoeu.jpg/)

62 DPS 68 ARMOR

* note due to int being low my mana regen is zero, so i spam alot of mana potions during combat, but besides that, everythings sweet!

[Azrael]

looking good violentsaint.

[Violentsaint]

thanks i saw how cool ursan warlord armor looked on mage and i was like HOLY CRAP RESPEC!!!

and i caved in and bought flaming sword of blood, i dont think u can loot itunes items anymore :(

i spent the last 2-3 days farming LE for it and killed almost 2000 enemys and gave up...

[FeralDruid]

thanks i saw how cool ursan warlord armor looked on mage and i was like HOLY CRAP RESPEC!!!

and i caved in and bought flaming sword of blood, i dont think u can loot itunes items anymore :(

i spent the last 2-3 days farming LE for it and killed almost 2000 enemys and gave up...

I saw u in game last night, I "lawled" at you. Now I'm intrigued...

I prefer playing Hybrids, I was an OT/O-SH*T healer in WoW with my Tauren Druid. In PL I was stoked to be a tank because it was a bear, just like WoW. However play mechanics wise, I miss having heals and such. May roll a caster this weekend.

ign: Glavius