Strongest of Talithar – 13 – Artificial Incident

He doesn’t seem much of a tank so far, more like a “rock”. Tanks tend to use abilities to *make* themselves targets that cannot be ignored (such as crowd control, debuffs, or taunts).

No need to worry about who is being targeted when you are the only target.

As for other control and debuffs hard to say if he has tried either of them, not every game has those kinds of skills for the tanks, I can’t say with much confidence weather they are more common or not.

What follows this line is tangentially related rambling about my experience tanking in MMOs:

Closest I got to playing a tank was an off-tank Jedi Shadow in SWTOR back when it was new it has been years since I played and this is all from memory so I could be forgetting some nuances.
IIRC Most of the shadow’s tank skills were taunts, team buffs (for example take damage for an ally of your choice [the healer]) and area control. Basically most of the time my job was to collect the ads and keep them away from everyone else, with brief bouts of the bosses attention for healing/CDs.
All of that is to say that my tank build would have very little to use against a single target that is already targeting me, at least for the tank toolkit.
The shadow had some ranged skills sharing the base class with the sage (mage) if I wanted to root my target and keep my distance, but they focus on either stealth burst-melee-DPS or area-control & support tank.

It is important to note that I don’t think the shadow (assassin for Sith players) could ever have been a main tank for one very important reason, they are the only tank path in SWTOR that use light armour, the other two paths both use heavy armour. Basically you rely on extreme evasion to survive the ads and use powerful but brief defensive skills when taking the bosses attention for the times that is needed.

If all he has is taunts, then he should be a pushover.

MMO wise, I cut my teeth on Dark Age of Camelot, where tanks had shield-bash stuns, snares, plus the ability to pull out larger weapons when defense isn’t required.

Most MMOs that had some form of PvP tended to have these kinds of skills, and you see them in pen and paper games too. All too many times I’ve seen a player build “the perfect AC tank” in Pathfinder, only to have the monsters ignore them and kill their friends.

In other games, too, like SMITE, there are ways a tank makes sure that people will pay attention to them without needing a taunt skill.

He tried using a shield bash last page, calling out the skills name as he did so (Kaylin dodged and used the opening to attack).
He had some sort of electrical counter skill when Kaylin hit him last page.
He is also glowing, that is probably some sort of buff not sure what though.

He may have a snare skill but depending on how it works it might not be too useful in a duel like this.
(yes I know Nyna is there too but she isn’t as active in the fight yet)

An interesting note on tanking in PvP, in SWTOR when I was playing the DPS build on my shadow (did so basically from 1 to lvl cap) I did terribly in PvP, maybe it was gear maybe it was my build IDK probably both, probably some lack of skill too or at least playstyle issues.
As soon as I switched to the Tank build I went from bottom of the match contribution rankings, to the top, I got a lot of points from reducing damage that my team took (taking damage for the healer) and the AoE taunt gave damage & movement debuffs that would be good if the opponents are grouped enough kind of mild for one major threat though not useless. Even in a fight with just me and my buffed healer we could take 3 or 4 opponents without much difficulty unless they had a similar core, and I fared better in duels than before too, often winning 1v2.
The shadow has a ranged snare/lockdown but it breaks as soon as the target takes damage so it wouldn’t be too useful in a duel other than to get a free shot or take a breather.

Most of the game mechanics are going to mirror what I am most familiar with- which is certainly dated in many ways as there are reasons I don’t actually play MMOs anymore XD – but its also heavily based in D&D and if such a system was converted for a VR Simulation. Terminology should roughly mean the same thing as it does- but it seems some people are thinking that Tank means they don’t do damage. This confuses me. XD Tanks might not always have great burst damage, but they usually have sustained damage and are capable of taking a lot and negating a lot. So this guy has very strong attacks, but even stronger defenses, which is a bad match for someone who specializes melee and relies on heavy damage and effects caused by damage. Naturally- he doesn’t need to use any kind of taunts, because there is no one to pull aggro from.

I’ve built Immortal builds in D&D, and I’ve built them in some MMOs- MMOs seem a bit harder to do a true immortal build because generally things get patched out if they are broken. D&D is balanced enough that true immortal builds are hard- but eventually the math can work out to an extreme level- for most situations. These often take advantage of certain rules though, and honestly tend to become unfun for long term play. One trick pony builds and such for D&D are best played in One Shots where you can have your fun doing your gimmick a couple times and then on to something else.

So basically- this means that in a game like Rune Aria – things have to be balanced out. You can have OP weapons and armor and abilities- so long as they have a proper downside. Even then, some stuff is too much and get’s banned never to be seen again…

Oh, for sure damage is always a choice for tanks to “make themselves a target”. And, yeah, Katelyn is going to have problems dealing with him because her burst damage doesn’t seem enough to deprive him of his HP before he’s going to beat her upside the head (common for tank vs rogue).

I guess she’s lucky he isn’t a heal-tank. I played a version of that (Valkyrie) in Dark Age of Camelot, and it was always hilarious when the enemy DPS train would ignore me, then when I started casting heal spells, charge at me to stop me casting.

I did a ‘tank’ in Pathfinder. There’s a fighter archetype called ‘Unbreakable’ in one of the later books. The rest of the trick was to really lean into Attacks of Opportunity: Combat Reflexes gets you more Attacks of Opportunity, and there’s a later feat ‘Combat Patrol’ that lets you extend the range of what counts as an Attack of Opportunity: you spend a full action setting it up, and then until your next turn you expand your ‘threatened area’ by 5 feet per 5 points of your base attack bonus. It’s great for pulling off the ‘you shall not pass’ of making sure that it’s impossible to get past you without being attacked.

Having a positive charisma bonus making Bluff and Intimidate useful is good as well.

this is interesting

Hah! I love this callback reference, and am curious if you were already planning this encounter when you made it way back when.

I find it interesting that the seeming leader of this nation would opt for a Tank role over something with more obvious sheer destructive power. Perhaps it’s a sign of how concerned he is about his own safety and survival over all else.

Or maybe their ‘benefactor’ is the actual DPS, and wanted a competent tank to soak hits for them again… so they built one. Watch for a sniper or mage in the shadows I guess, while ‘king’ here holds Kaylin’s aggro.

I’m going to assume it regards this comic: https://www.artificialincident.com/comic/a-new-age-05/
If so…Nyna is going to be known as the can-opener from now on :p

It’s unfortunately based on this one – https://www.artificialincident.com/comic/a-new-age-02/

Well, “tanks” are usually meant to draw in enemy aggression and take their hits to open them up so their allies can attack them and do some real damage without retaliation.
They usually do not excell at DEALING OUT damage, the case of the one guy dropping a giant i think would be more of a lucky crit than him being such a damage dealer. Or him just hitting a general weakpoint.
But since tanks are commonly physical damage, an anti-magic specialist like Kaylin is at a disadvantage.
Her best chance is to dadge and aim for things like joints, those are hard to protect and usually leave an opening for daggers and such, unless she carries a warhammer, then she could go for the head, because while the helmet will certainly soften the blows, you cannot avoid physical impact. That is, as long as there isn´t some kind of magic dampening it…?

oooh 2 vs one, so unfair !
(…but there should be more 😀 are they in other part of the castle still ? maybe freeing the prisoners)

As they said- the others are not in the castle at all. They are in the city cleaning up the locations out there and prepping evidence and information to distribute claiming the attack was divine judgement for the evil actions the nobles have been engaging in to turn the people away from their leaders without the need to wipe out the entire city.

Learn the boss’s movement patterns, got it!

Perfect comeback for Kailey “You say Adventurers abandoned those they swore to protect, so took to preying on those you swore to protect. That’s just SO MUCH BETTER, isn’t it?!”

Doesn’t really hit because he would just say he made sacrifices for the ones he has sworn to protect. He’s just venting his feelings on what he was told by his ancestors. “The great protectors of the world vanished, leaving us defenseless against the monsters.” Pretty one sided view point and enforced by his benefactor.