Tanking Made Easy – Ashes of Creation Beginners Tank Build

Tanking in Ashes of Creation 

The following article is a written guide to accompany the latest Nyce Gaming Tank build. 

You can find Nyce’s channel here along with his video Tank Guide below:

Tanking 101 in Ashes of Creation 

Today we will be discussing tanking in MMO Ashes of Creation and providing an overall guide for the tank archetype. We’ll cover everything from active skill selection, leveling, early game, combat mechanics threat management, universal skill trees, weapon choice, weapon procs, crowd control, status effects, interrupts, and more. Do keep in mind that this game is currently in its Alpha 2 phase and is a work in progress and thus things are subject to change

The Tank Archetype is as it’s name suggest, the main tank of this mmo. Using its abundant amount of threat generation and aggro to draw the attention of surrounding enemies. Not only does the tank archetype of MMO Ashes of creation have a lot of mitigation to best survive against multiple attackers, it has a kit that helps make it a true guardian or protector via absorbing and redirecting damage from allies to ensure their survivability.

What is Threat? 

Threat is the amount of attention your character builds in battle based on a varying amount of actions that determines if an enemy chooses to target/focus you. As you do various actions you essentially build up this threat/attention on an invisible hate table which can be simplified as a priority list and each enemy has their own individual priority list. Threat is built primarily by damage done, but can also be built up by healing done. So do keep in mind that your clerics healing you are also building up threat on surrounding enemies.

Skill Tree 

Giving that it’s still in Alpha and max rank is 25, the following details are only a place holder until the level cap is raised. That being said, here some of the following skills which would be optimal to choose for your tank: 

• Shake It Off – Unyielding 
  • Shake It Off breaks all disabling effects on the caster.
• Inciting Strikes 
  • Slash twice in an area in front of you, dealing damage (50%) physical damage damage per hit. Generates 400% Threat.
• Forceful Tremors
  • Tremoring Bellow’s Snare last twice as long. Tremoring Strike’s Knockdown lasts 1s longer.
• Extended Protect
  • Your protected target can be 10m further away before the link begins to break.
• Tomahawk
  • Throw a Tomahawk at target enemy, dealing (100%) physical damage. Deals 50% more damage to targets hit from behind.
• Taunt
  • Taunt target enemy, generating threat equal to two times your maximum health and applying Humiliated.
• Intimidating Aura
  • Emanate an aura around the caster for 8 seconds that deals (10%) magical damage with a 10% chance of applying Staggered every 0.5 seconds. Generates threat equal to 30% of your Maximum Health every tick.
• Charge
  • Channeled Ability: Charge forward in the direction you are facing. Enemies you collide with take (50%) physical damage damage and become Staggered. Charge will be canceled if another ability is activated or if the Charge key is pressed again.
• Slam
  • Deal (200%) physical damage to targets in front of you. Generates 300% additional threat.
• Supernatural Grit
  • Grit also increases magical mitigation by the same amount.
• Grapple
  • Take aim and hurl a chained javelin at your target, damaging the first target it contacts and immediately pulling them to the caster. The target suffers a tapering snare for 3 seconds. Cannot be used on boss enemies.
• Fortify

  • Consumes all Courage to reduce damage taken for 10 seconds.

    Damage taken is reduced by 20%, and increases with Courage spent at a rate of 1% per 5 Courage, up to a total maximum of 40%.

    Duration is increased by 1% per Courage spent, up to a maximum of 20 seconds.

    While active, the rate of Courage gained from damage received is increased.

• Aegis

  • Create a protective dome around the caster for 15 seconds, transferring 20% of all damage received by targets within the area to the tank instead.

    Can be toggled off early to cancel the effect.

• Reflect
  • You brace for the next hit, doubling your block mitigation rating. The first incoming attack within the next 3 seconds is reflected back to the attacker, dealing (100%) physical damage plus additional damage based on the amount of damage taken by the deflected attack, up to a maximum total of (100%) physical damage. Generates 200% additional threat.

Skill Tree Unlock Order: 

Theres no right and wrong answer for which skills to take early game and you should try everything your self as it can come down to your personal opinion, feel, and group comp. Early game I like to first take shielded assault, then shake it off, followed by tremoring strike, super natural grit passive, then the upgrade to tremoring strike for stun duration. Afterwards you get access to the next section where i go for intimidating aura, grapple, then taunt. Heres an example of my first 10 skill choices shown using ashes codex.com, but id say its very flexible outside of the first 5 skill points.

Weapon Skill Tree 

Now we will discuss weapon choice. While any archetype can use any weapon, the tank archetype was made for the one handed weapon and shield combo if you want to be as tanky as possible. Each one hander offers different weapon proc choices with some overlapping. Mace for stagger is good although this is technically already in the tank kit. So procs like dazed from mace, wounded to reduce enemy healing, or even bleeding or snared from the sword is useful. I think snared is perhaps the most useful as a melee combatant and as a tank. and you always want to prioritize weapon proc chance and proc duration as to ensure the proc uptime better. There are main passives at each level. For example in the sword we will take snared, but at the next level you will notice something awesome in ‘ward’ 5% block chance which is awesome. You then have sub passives. Here the two best are perhaps critical hit avoidance disable duration.

Im currently testing both setups see what I prefer but will likely play it safe with critical hit avoidance. Go with your strongest weapon or whichever feels best. As soon as you hit level 10 buy a new shield from a vendor with more block chance.
Your ranged weapon choice however is the difficult one. The long bow is a great tool but only can do staggered which we have enough of or wounded which reduces enemy healing which isnt too bad. However I think the short bow having a snared proc is much better. Slowing melee enemies is a huge bonus for u and your allies. Leveling the long bow is your safest option. however, the spell book has some secret tech and if you can you a spell book with some physical power I think this thing is ridiculous. The chilled status seems to be incredibly more powerful than just snare. Chilled status that we get as our first proc with the spell book reduces movement by 50% per stack and last 6 seconds and up to 15 seconds with consecutive applications. This can eventually make a target undergo the frozen status which completely roots them in place for 4 seconds which is insaaane. So being a spellbook tank especially in a group where multiple people are running chilled can legitimately make melee mobs a non-threat. Also mages in your group will love this as they can benefit from the shatter status effect which occurs when you deal lightning damage to a frozen target causing a huge burst of damage. snared from the short bow appears to stack as well but doesnt compare to chilled in my opinion. however short bow will be asier to find with physical power so do with that information as you will. I often solo grind when im waiting for guildies to get online and the chilled status is critical against enemies like bears who are melee only. When they do finally catch up to you can just trip them and continue making distance with a dodge roll or s keying away. about 2k xp makes it worth it while u await your group.

The following is the most optimized abilities to choose for the one handed weapon skill tree: 

Universal Skill Tree 

Lets now talk universal skill tree. This one is easy. Start with the tree from active block as currently you must select all under it to get to the big final passive at the top and you get one per level. After block effectiveness i’d move to roll doge effectiveness. You have benchmarks every 5 levels with a great one at level 15 with an additional 5% block mitigation.

For more Ashes of Creation content, check out the home page here: Ashes of Creation Ultimate Beginners Guide To Alpha 2 and maybe check out the Archetype overview page here: Ashes of Creations 64 Classes and how to play them?