Stayin Alive – Tank specing your guildies

We have had a few new members of the guild and some older ones who were complaining about how squishy they were.

While I am happy to admit not being very knowledgeable about any class other than any own, I would like to think I have gained some insight into how to stay alive. So I decided to see if we could “tank them up”

The 2 guys in question were a BlackGuard and a Disciple of Khaine.

A mix of Annihilator and Sentinel pieces was available for both guys as well as some offset pieces. Both were cookie cutter builds so we didn’t change their mastery trees’

How did we pimp them?

First of all we took at a look at which pieces they had and tired to get the best combination of Annihilator and Sentinel looking particularly at the bonus on the sets. Pick the best combination of pieces gave some useful resists stats and the individual pieces have some reduction to crit. In the end they were both on 3 Sentinel, 3 Annihilator spread across the various slots or 4 Annihilator and 2 Sentinel depending on their preference.

We also reslotted some of their gear where needed, with the gems we had to hand, resists and wounds.

Both of them had very few decent accessories (In terms of survivability) so we started them on the quest for the Winds Impervious set. They are both also looking into getting Stryfe and Torment. The parry on the set is very useful. In the mean time they were able to pick up a few cheap wounds, toughness and initiative rings from the renown Vendor


We then had a look at their renown. It was respeced to provide a bit more focus taking an emphasis on toughness. Toughness comes into its own in pvp where you are being hit by a number of attackers. Taking wounds from your renown tree is not good value so we got our wounds up elsewhere.

By moving some gear around, farming some items and respeccing renown we were able to increase their survivability to a noticeable degree. As they gear up or become more comfortable they can reduce their emphasis on “Tanking” gear and spec and gear more liberally. But for now they don’t feel as if they are a free kill.