Cappy tank

[Tatuaje]

OK, I am a caster at heart, but rolled up a Cappy for something new to try. First melee toon in over 30 years of MMOs and RPG playing. I can buff and RC with the best! Other than that you would be best better served to hire a real Cappy for your runs.

So, we ran a 6 man Foundry T2C the other night mostly because I was bored and wanted to try something different. Three Cappys were from 75 - 84 and three at 85. I traited LoM to act as the tank (see above note concerning my skills as a melee type). What a blast. The foundry took 3 tries as I was trying to figure out my role and the stuns were insane without an LM.

Can anyone remember a good thread with Cappy tanking processes or can to post your thoughts? Prior to the foundry run I was traited LoM and was ripping aggro off the tank when I used cutting Attack followed by Improved Grave wound. I would hold agro exactly 10 secs. Very impressive combo. If I can get a bit better, I would like to try tanking a few 85 level runs.

[furtim]

Captain tanking is a lot of fun! It's one of my favourite ways to play, actually.

Here are two threads I found with decent Captank info. First one covers skill rotation, second one covers builds.

The build thread is fairly comprehensive, but the skill rotation thread is a little sparse. So here are my thoughts on skills:

First of all, power consumption is a real issue. If you can afford to build a dedicated LI weapon for tanking, you'll want the -% Melee Power Cost legacy on it. However, even with that legacy you need to be a lot more judicious about your skill uses than other Captains.

In general, you're going to use your Threatening Shout and your Cutting Attack/Grave Wound combo as often as possible. You need to keep your threat up, and Noble Mark isn't going to hold aggro off a respectable DPSer by itself. When you have a lot of targets, you should try to use Threatening Shout after Blade of Elendil if you can, but it's a bad idea to "sit on" TS when it's off cooldown. You really need it to keep generating threat.

The Battle- chain, on the other hand, is something you should be a little more judicious about. In a multi-mob fight, you will want to use Pressing Attack a lot, but keep in mind that running through this chain burns a ton of power. If you're lucky, you'll get enough defeat events for Rallying Cry to offset the power cost. In a single-target fight, I'd say you should save the Battle- chain mostly to keep the Light of Elendil DoT up.

As for your -Brother skills, you'll try to keep a 100% uptime on Strength of Will, but To Arms! and Inspire should really be saved for when you need them. Unless you're tanking without a dedicated healer (which is a legit way to play in 3-mans but not really elsewhere), you shouldn't use Inspire "selfishly" -- use it when other people are hurt as well, to help top them off. The healing aggro isn't big enough to justify the power cost of using it constantly. But that's just IMO, surely someone else will disagree. With To Arms!, you need to try to predict damage spikes -- if you're not good at that or the boss doesn't have obvious tells or whatever, then it's ok to just spam it as it's available.

When your threat skills are on cooldown, you'll mostly be spamming Defensive Strike. The power return isn't as reliable as I'd like, but you need it. Keep in mind, though, that you only get the power return when your target has the Light of Elendil DoT on them. So, until an enemy gets the DoT on them, maybe just use DS to refresh the armour/parry buff and spam Sure Strike instead.

The last thing to think about is targeting. Most of the time, as a Captain, you're just sitting on the raid assist target. As a Captank, though, you really need to spread the love around. Noble Mark goes on the raid assist, and it's a good idea to use your CA/GW combo on them as well. Other than those skills, though, you should be targeting adds to keep them from running off toward the healer. This is particularly true for Threatening Shout; outside of the obvious emergency situations, try to never shout the same target twice in a row.

Those are just my two cents, based on experience. I'm curious to see what other Captank aficionados think.

[timmyloo22546]

traited 4 LoM turns grave wound into a 10s force taunt.

Captains can make sturdy tanks comparable to guards and wardens. Unfortunately captains lack in threat generation, especially aoe.

[Dylbro]

traited 4 LoM turns grave wound into a 10s force taunt.

Captains can make sturdy tanks comparable to guards and wardens. Unfortunately captains lack in threat generation, especially aoe.

I actually find this to no longer be true now that you can trait routing cry to be an ae 4 target 10s force taunt and threatening shout to hit 3 targets and 6 if used after a blade of elendil strike. Couple this with noble mark and grave wound when needed a captain can fairly easily control 3-5 mobs at a time.

[Nascephor]

I actually find this to no longer be true now that you can trait routing cry to be an aoe 4 target 10s force taunt and threatening shout to hit 3 targets and 6 if used after a blade of elendil strike. Couple this with noble mark and grave wound when needed a captain can fairly easily control 3-5 mobs at a time.

I beg to differ. Grabbing multiple mobs is possible, holding it, especially without multiple defeat events to spam Rallying Cry, is not easy. You may hold the one with revealing mark and certainly the one with improved grave wound, but will be hard pressed to keep the 6 from BoE+Ts on you all the time. Routing cry cooldown is so long that you will use it as an emergency grab aggro skill instead of a hold aggro.

If you consider that Echoing shout trait take the slot of Intimidation or alert guard, one must think a lot before trying to fill a role better suited for a warden. Or plot a plan that will keep you spamming rallying crys.

Heal aggro is the cornerstone of cappy tanking. You can switch to song brother inspire between shield brother uses to keep power up. I use with glee any chance i have to self heal, group heal etc, especially if holding aggro is key to the fight sucess, like BFE. BFE T1 when both tanks are cappys is a very fast run, because the raid gains effectively 2 extra dps slots.

I had said before that having some critical rating could benefit a cappy tank in treat generation. I stand behind my ideas. A good enough crit means more defeat events from DB and PA, and more crit HoTs, both of which improve my treat generation a lot.

[Tatuaje]

Thanks for some ideas. I am going to re-set a few skills on my bars tonight. Then I plan to "intimidate" a few kinies to run a few 6 mans with me and incur repair bills while I do a little training

Been exceptionally bored with Lotro lately, we seriously need some new raids and real 6 man runs. Bells is close but too short and the second boss (can we really call him a boss?) is a push over. The scaling was weak on older runs (could they have made SG any easier? It used to be a respected run at 65) and no decent raids from RoI on IMO.

Last night we did 6 mans with 3 wardens, 2 lms, and my Cappy..... Bells T2C and a few others. "True" Healers - not needed. If anyone lost more than 25% of morale it was only for a short blip. All I know and can say about wardens is, Conviction for FTW.

[furtim]

I beg to differ. Grabbing multiple mobs is possible, holding it ... is not easy.

This has been my experience as well. DPS/healing output has simply outpaced threat scaling across the board, it seems. The main tanking classes can handle it because they have more tools; we have to make do with less, so we've unfortunately been left behind.

[Dylbro]

I beg to differ. Grabbing multiple mobs is possible, holding it, especially without multiple defeat events to spam Rallying Cry, is not easy. You may hold the one with revealing mark and certainly the one with improved grave wound, but will be hard pressed to keep the 6 from BoE+Ts on you all the time. Routing cry cooldown is so long that you will use it as an emergency grab aggro skill instead of a hold aggro.

If you consider that Echoing shout trait take the slot of Intimidation or alert guard, one must think a lot before trying to fill a role better suited for a warden. Or plot a plan that will keep you spamming rallying crys.

Heal aggro is the cornerstone of cappy tanking. You can switch to song brother inspire between shield brother uses to keep power up. I use with glee any chance i have to self heal, group heal etc, especially if holding aggro is key to the fight sucess, like BFE. BFE T1 when both tanks are cappys is a very fast run, because the raid gains effectively 2 extra dps slots.

I had said before that having some critical rating could benefit a cappy tank in treat generation. I stand behind my ideas. A good enough crit means more defeat events from DB and PA, and more crit HoTs, both of which improve my treat generation a lot.

I agree with your analysis on healing, in tank mode I am still running at 20%+ crit chance and heal agro is good enough to hold onto all mobs that aren't the target of your noble mark or grave wound if your group is capable of assisting. I just have to completely disagree with the state of what is being said in regards to captains AE agro as it is vastly improved when compared to how it was a couple years ago.

Rally cry has a 6 second cool down if you have the appropriate gear so it is essentially always up and you are never waiting on it. Also, valiant strike is actually a better heal than rally cry in terms of threat generation and overall healing and something you didn't mention at all. There are add-ons that will confirm this. The 4 traits you should have while tanking are; Alert Guard, Echoing Shout, Improved Routing Cry, and Intimidation with the 5th being interchangeable. I usually use tactical prowess but any of the others can be used without changing how well you tank or hold agro.

I have both a captain and a guard and my captain is better at holding AE agro because he both now has numerous ae taunting skills in addition to the passive heal agro which guardians do not have. I will admit that I have very good gear and this is probably not always the case without as an equally geared guard should do better. The only time I have had issue with holding agre on multiple mobs is when people engage with AE attacks immediately without allowing heal agro to build or when they use force taunts. However, now that we have improved routing cry, a 4 target force taunt, and threatening shout which can hit 6 targets, even an over zealous group can be countered. A properly traited and geared captain can out agro any class, including wardens, in regards to a single target if it is alive long enough. It is only the initial minute that is trouble but you can use skills such as grave wound and improved routing cry to hold agro for 20s via force taunts which is usually long enough to have your heals and noble mark out pace the groups dps agro if not you will get it back very soon. Go run a sambrog run to test this as it is an easy encounter to have agro contests. A captain is not and should not be on equal footing as the tank classes. Guardians and wardens have similar issues in regards to over zealous groups who expect a tank to have immediate agro on everything.