GUIDE: A breakdown of what makes a good tank,and how to fulfill that role effectively

[skavenger216]

Hello everyone! This is my first guide, and a work in progress, so bear with me.

I have been playing SL since early beta, and PL since January. My main in both is a tank. After being asked by many ppl to teach them how I play my commando, I have decided to write this guide, in the hopes that it will help people understand their role as a tank. With that knowledge, I hope to also help them play their commando to its maximum potential.

As a tank, your main purposes are two things: crowd control, and holding enemies aggro so your squishier teammates can do their jobs. I will explain how to do both of these things later in the guide, but first, here is the build i recommend, and find quite effective at both maintaining aggro and dealing respectable damage.

Stat Point allotment:

Go with a mix consisting of mostly strength, with a little dex thrown in. At level 30, my points are distributed 111 into str, 42 into dex.

Skill Build:

Force hammer - 3 pts - useful for doing extra damage and helping maintain aggro on bosses, due to its taunt effect.

Singularity - 1 pt - I use this instead of neutron stomp for my knockdown, because when used after pulling enemies to a wall, the added pushback effect effectively pins enemies to walls. Also used to set up the self combo with back breaker. Only one point because I use it for its effect, not its damage.

Graviton Slam - 5 pts - one of the more important skills, does decent aoe damage along with taunting multiple targets.

Increase Mass - 4 pts - increases your defense for a bit, useful when pulling a large group, or when your health gets low on a boss, to give engineers time to heal you back up. I find even only at lvl4, it adds adequate armor for any area of the game.

Kinetic reservoir - 1 pt - use it when you run low on mana for a slight boost in mana regen. Also has a slight additional buff at the end of the mana regen buff.

Gravity Well - max, 6 pts - another hugely important skill, it pulls your enemies towards you. When used while standing against a wall, pulls all enemies into a clean group on one spot of the wall. Also taunts, helping generate aggro.

Nebula - 3 pts - does decent aoe damage, which helps hold aggro on bigger groups of enemies.

Backbreaker - max, 6 pts - does amazing damage, and when used while an enemy is knocked down ( from singularity or neutron stomp ) creates a combo, increasing its damage. Taunts also.

Skills not used, and why:

Neutron stomp - prefer singularity for my knockdown attack, due to its added pushback effect.

Vigor - unnecessary, imo. With a decent engineer, I rarely have to ever use a health stim. Points are better spent elsewhere.

Growing mass - with this skill build, you will do decent damage. Crit is unnecessary, you are there to take aggro and control mobs, leave the nukeing for the operatives, they are better at it anyways.


And now on to how to play this build. You will want to be in front of the pack, at all times. It's a lot easier to get the inital aggro and maintain it, than it is to let someone else get it and try to steal it back. Be aggressive, you have the armor for it! Also, use the heavy weapon that corresponds with your level. It seems like they do lower damage, based on stats, but it causes splash damage, damaging enemies near your target as well.

Here is how, ideally, a pull should go:

You, the commando, pop nebula and increase mass, and run into the group of enemies. Hit auto attack, and run to the nearest wall. The combination of nebula doing aoe damage, and your weapon doing aoe damage, should give you good initial aggro, causing enemies to fixate on you and follow you. When you get to the wall, use gravity well. When the enemies start being pulled towards the wall, step away from the group, and use graviton slam. This will give you tons of aggro on the mobs. IMMEDIATELY after using graviton slam, use singularity. This will knock down the enemies, and push them into the wall, effectively pinning them to it. When the enemies are knocked down, use back breaker, triggering a combo that should kill your target, if it isn't already dead! At this point, most enemies should be dead, and the remaining stragglers should be close to death. Leave your group to clean them up , and move to the next set of enemies. Rinse and repeat, and keep practicing, and you will start to get to a point where it seems like there is no crowd too big to hold aggro on!

With bosses, use a similar strategy, but mix in force hammer, doing this helps maintain aggro on the boss, along with doing some damage. When your health gets under 50%, use increase mass to boost your armor until an engineer can get you healed, or you can use a stim.

Before I end this, here is a couple more things to keep in mind:

If you have good aggro on a whole group of enemies, but there is one enemy that decides to run off and start attacking one of your teammates, manually target them and use force hammer. You should regain aggro on them.

Always, always pop nebula before pulling larger groups of enemies, as it will help you hold aggro on them much easier than without it.

Use kinetic reservoir whenever your mana drops below 75% for the slight mana regen boost.

I personally like to switch to a rifle when fighting bosses, as the higher single target DPS helps kill the boss faster, and maintain aggro better.


In closing, I would like to thank everyone for reading this! I truly hope you enjoyed it, and learned from it, and I am looking forward to your feedback! Also, if you need a guide for operative, be sure to check out Ebalere's amazing guide in the operative section!