What makes a tank tick?

I'm looking to put together a melee tanking deck, I like to stand still, manage stacks and trade blows with my enemy. Could I get some advice?

I was wondering if anyone knew how to make a well put together tank, I have a basic outline of what I believe would make for a decent tank (Heavy, Life, Bludgeon, Shield, Focus, Tactics, Life, Earth though I'm certain that is a pretty thin spread.) but I lack both the knowledge and the levels (not to mention a serious lack of experimenting/respec gold!) to be sure.

for the record, I'm aware that melee in pvp is suicide; I intend to mostly pve.

 

Due to the combos I'd go with polearms instead of bludgeon.
Shield doesn't do much unless you need to cover for a soft team with extra aggro.

Then you can limit it to
Polearm, Earth, Life, Heavy + focus/tactics.
But you'd only get one AoE glyph from Polearm...

Are you in game now? I could easily give you some gold if you want to play around.
in chat use
/w Spoon, need gold to play with tank build

 

I would not say I am an expert, but I always use bludgeons. I love to play with big axes My set up is not perfect by any means, but perhaps you can get some ideas with it. It is a bit hybrid, more of a paladin type of build. I love paladins. So here is for ideas but don't necessarily follow it. I am pretty survivable in pve, I have to hustle sometimes though in huge upper level creatures and ghosts kill me. So that's why I was trying to get some life steal (death magic ) thrown in. Pure warriors don't have a lot of options against life steal at the moment and you can't outheal a ghost who is stealing your life. I know I have holes in my build some due to having heals. I find it helps when I'm helping others or trying to help others So combat is still in the works and changes a bit from release to release as it is fleshed out. So if anyone critiques my build, go ahead. I'm open to it and aware it's probably a mess lol

 

Personally, I would always use heavy armor and a shield.

Then you can use "Taunt" in the heavy armor tree and "Dig In" in the shield tree. I would also stack all +Strength buffs (remember increasing strength also increases hit points).

Remember, the tank doesn't need to be so concerned with dealing damage. If the tank has all enemies attacking only the tank and the group has a good healer, it will be extremely successful as it doesn't matter how long the others take to kill stuff.

Just my 2 cents.

 

Yes I guess I am not so much a tank type person, I just want a bit of it all, which spreads me too thin I know, but I've always lvoed playing a beserker type verses a tank. So good points Hraw.

 

Oh tank is my favorite role by far. Some games even give tanks love in PVP. For example, if a tank taunts an opponent, that opponent gets a debuff whereby they do half damage for 20 seconds (or whatever) when they attack anyone *other* than the tank that taunted them. I hope SotA does something for tanks in PVP.

Hauclir once you get the basics down, you can also concentrate on other buffs like increasing your block/parry/dodge so you take less damage for your healer(s) to have to keep up with. In some fights, the best tank will do absolutely zero damage and spend all effort on just being the meat shield for the group. If I was going to recommend a weapon tree right now (balancing and further changes may alter this thinking), I would do polearms (one handed spear for example) just for the Push and Spinning Attack skills (both great with the extra reach also). That way you can auto-attack and do at least a little aoe/cc when you don't need to self-buff or aggro something.