Monday, March 21, 2011

Rift Cleric Tanking

I've started playing a cleric tank a little bit more.  I'm liking the soloability and of course the ability to tank an instance.  I've only done the first instance "Iron Tomb" on my cleric, but other than being a little squishy for the second half trash I've been going ok.  I like that I've been through the dungeon as DPS first, no responsibility other than pew pew and learning the instance.  Now that I have the responsibility of being the tank it's not so stressful.

The cleric Justicar soul gives you all the tools to tank, it works and IMO it works very well.  My other souls are the melee DPS cleric souls of Shaman and Druid, some of their early tree abilities benefit a tank with some endurance and damage reduction.  About halfway up the  tree there are a number of abilities that help with block or give you an ability when wielding a shield.  From what I've seen  the benefit to using the shield doesn't seem to outweigh the additional DPS, though perhaps when instancing the loss in DPS wouldn't hurt as much.

Cleric shields don't get as much armor or tanking stats as Warrior shields, they are also missing the spellpower that you would get in other caster off-hands.  It just seems that using a shield as a cleric is a net loss compared to other options.  Currently my tree is avoiding the shield talents and I just whip around a staff catching up to 5 mobs in my path with "Even Justice".  I've made sure to have the pure damage reduction 3% per point spent in the Justicar and the 3% for 3 points in Shaman.  Perhaps when my cleric gets to Deepstrike Mine I'll experiment with a different role using the shield and get some feedback from the healer to my survivability and from the DPS regarding my aggro control.

Has anyone else seen any discussions regarding this point?

P.S.  Vacation for me starts tomorrow, I'm going away so updates or comments may be sparse for a week or so.

9 comments:

  1. Well I'm back from vacation but not yet ready to post anything new. What I was able to do was find some discussions in Rift's forums about cleric tanking, and it seems like my position on shields differs greatly from the community there. Since I'm so very early in levels on my cleric tank I am probably going to look closer at using a shield, at least for instances.

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  2. Yea so far I'd have to agree with you for the most part as far as using a shield with cleric tanking. currently I am using a shield just because but other than that armor bonus for tanking there is not a lot of benefit to blocking with clerics. I think one good solution to this would be to have a threat gen bonus implemented with precept of refuge. Other than, justicar survivability is pretty solid. One question I had for you though was what stats to stack primarily? I guess my question would be for example would you use an item with more endurance over items with more wisdom? Also, since chain mail really doesn't come with any real tank stats do you look for gear with tank stats or just go primarily with what the average chain mail offers?

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  3. My selection of equipment hasn't been huge. I know that I've seen the "of the Fortress" drops here and there but I haven't been going out of my way to acquire it.
    I assumed that the standard cleric gear would cover me, making sure as much as possible to have endurance with the wisdom. I still haven't gotten to 30 with the cleric yet and most of my experience is with soloing so having a mana pool and damage has been more of a priority over survivability.
    I assume the gearing game changes at lvl 50 though.

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  4. I've been tanking from creation of my Cleric..I use a shield and spellpower mace. Currently 34, the ultimate complinet was when this cleric in the run I was tanking said "hey dude, y they hell did you ninja my boots". I said, "don't mean to be mean, but its a huge up for me". He started to spam in the lvl channel, and someone I've tanked for previously said.." he's a tank..a cleric tank and a very good one"...the dude ended up saying " sorry man I thought you were a warrior"...lmao, now he asks about my build and tanking rotation..I advised him of the such, and provided my tanking macro. I love clerics, only wish we had more AOE threat so I wouldn't have to burn so much mana. But I'm not gonna quit over such a small issue. I hope clerics getbuffed in the future. -Five

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  5. Why do people think cleric tanks are warriors. Happens every run I do. I lost a damn shield because of it. LOOK TO THE RESOURCE BAR

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  6. It's my Personal Preference, using a shield. I Love the +ac, mix in STALWART CITADEL(+30% Block from Spellpower), PRECEPT OF REFUGE(15% block), Safe Haven(+5%block) Equals out to 50% Block -in combat- from just a couple Branch choices. Factor in your Additional AC, throw around WIS, and those values Rise.

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  7. missed a few things, we have a large threat gen from Mein of Leadership(Threat Generation +300%, End by 90%, AC+100%+1% point per in he Just Tree) it reduces Heal/Dmg of NON Justicar abilities by 40% but a rotation of Even Justice/Maelstrom should help a bit. I'm testing a few different things today. Will post anything interesting I find, if you all wish it.

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  8. Any more tips, Maes? your comments have been very helpful :)

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  9. I didn't notice how much traffic I've been getting on this post. Thanks to everyone for your comments and discussion.

    I've got my cleric tank to lvl 34 but I haven't done any more instances with him. My most recent post was about my warrior tank that I've been playing with my wife. Keep up the discussion and any links to other cleric discussions would be great as well.

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