Tanking 3

The reason there are so many jobs mentioned that can somewhat tank or handle themselves alone in different situations is that I want to encourage diversity in play style, having a group with no multiple target tank and use several characters with jobs that can handle single or few targets on their own will allow you to go through levels that has several targets that needs to be taken down at the same time. Another option would be to use several “summoners” such as Beastmasters, Rangers, Hunters, Warlocks, Necromancers, Mages and Druids to let all their pets handle the tanking and only use your characters to do damage. The most obvious way to do it would be to have one of each tank style in your team and perhaps a fourth hybrid tank to handle situations that grows too big, for example a Warrior, a Barbarian and a Fencer for the main situations and a Swashbuckler for the little extra. It will always be a balance of tank, healer and damage though and perhaps that balance means there should be 5 of each in a team of 15.

Barbarian

Barbarians’ high natural resistance makes them very suitable to handle magic casting enemies. While they only wear leather armor Barbarians does not have high enough armor to handle a lot of physical damage, but this gives them both resistance and mobility enough to avoid a lot of attacks as well as mitigate much damage from casters. Fast running and jumping they can quickly close in on range targets and are particularly efficient against clusters of these with their short range are of effect and multiple hit attacks.

Too low armor to survive for long against frequent physical attacks Barbarians can’t handle multiple physical targets or fast hitting enemies. They can also get rather healer dependant.

Barbarians are still as tanks high in damage and will build threat mostly through keeping this damage up, they have skills for area of effect with their dual wielding weapons or can strike out on multiple or single targets with heavy hits. They have no specifically defensive skills.

Swashbuckler

Swashbucklers are the one fencing style job to use shield, for a tanking Swashbuckler’s armor will be upgraded for additional armor and with shield Swashbucklers are able to handle themselves rather will in both situations with several physical enemies and with single hard hitting enemies where avoidance is important.

Swashbucklers’ largest weakness is against magic users as they have low resistance when upgraded to chain. Too many targets will also be a problem as the mitigation is too low but since avoidance is very high at least more than a few can be managed.

The shield is the Swashbucklers’ main mean of building threat and avoiding damage, they have skills to do hard shield attacks (and as smaller shield do more damage but has less armor and block this damage will generate high threat, and as a skill they can also make their shield be a full avoidance instead of a mitigation which makes the Swashbucklers get the highest effective avoidance available, for multiple targets they multiple target attacks with both weapon and shield.

Pirate, Privateer and Corsair

Fencing classes with different level of armor these three are with armor upgrades (through talents) suitable for different tanking situations but in the same general style. They all use fencing weapons and are high on parry and dodge together with a gun through which combination they can keep up threat on both nearby and distant enemies.

As a range of armor level Pirates are weakest against physical and strongest against magical, Privateers are well balanced and Corsairs do best against physical.

Dodge, shoot, parry, strike and fence is the general style and even though most active skills are offensive these jobs can with correct talent build handle themselves as tanks.

Acrobat, Rogue, Assassin and Ninja

All high agility jobs will also have high dodge, if it is high enough they will most likely be able to avoid all attacks from slow hitting enemies, giving them at least a chance to hold their own in fights.

Beastmaster, Hunter and Ranger

Beastmasters, Hunters and Rangers do not tank on their own but through the force of the animals that they have summoned and control. As with the Animagi the ability to tank and what to tank depends on the beasts but in general beasts will only survive single target tanking, however, strength is in their numbers and with enough beasts under control they should be able to handle nearly any situation.

More on beast tanking later.

Musketeer tank

Another semi tank Musketeers can handle themselves in most one on one situations mainly through avoidance but can take a hit or two as well. As Musketeers aren’t truly tanks they will have problems to hold agro from others when they tank.