Dragon's Immortal Tank (Updated for 1.2)

nice guide :)

i actually made a charc similar to yours way before reading this guide (duelist though not maur), but using facebreaker instead of a weap. i was happy with the dps and tankability, but the desync irritated me so much i swapped IB out for cyclone and stayed with it since. huge irony was cyclone was supposed to be king of desync which was why i went for IB in the first place, but apparantly IB desyncs even more than cyclone for me. (not just desync, but wierd delay, like hitting a target which dies in 1 hit but it takes 1-3 secs to die and explode. basically the whole mob of say 10 monsters should die in 1 sec since they should all explode with the first kill, but there is huge delay before my IB registers and the explosion of mobs occur. this results in the mobs having 1-3 secs more time of hitting me and i'm unable to leech life, when they already should be dead.)

using multistrike didnt appeal to me, because i killed most trash mobs in 1 hit, hitting air for a consecutive 2 hits got irritating. using it for desync sounds interesting, but i'm not sure if it would help with the desync/delay i experienced above. /oos works well for cyclone desync, hopefully it'll help for IB desync as well.

at any rate while i'm satisfied with my facebreaker cyclone duelist, i'm underwhelmed by my LS 1h tank maur, and with bringer of rain helm and the upcoming free respec, i'll most probably respec my LS maur to IB since i cant really think of any other melee skill that would really benefit from bringer of rain.

just hoping desync wont kill the fun for me again :(

Edit : with the clarity buff (although nerf to inner force might offset whatever increase patch will bring), and since i have 2% mana leech on gear rather than life leech, i'll probably not use BM gem, freeing up one additional gem slot for more dps.

Update the guide to look nicer and more Patriotic ^_^ (mostly to piss Vic off)

I think the key is going to be how much the life nodes get nerfed. Since we use it for BM, that's gonna be important. But then almost *all* melee builds use some form of BM, so if they drop it too much, every melee is going to be up their ass about it.

The small buffs to both Melee Splash and MultiStrike should help nicely tho...along with the general damage buff. More damage = more life leech with should help counter having less life for BM.

Also, depending on how much armor is improved, there are 2 armor clusters with 50% increase each right on the path of this build, so it might work to sacrifice somewhere to add that armor.

Just thoughts.....

With the nerf to IF, I have been thinking about dropping it and the hp cluster directly above it to allow 10 points to be spend elsewhere. I am fairly confident that just 1 point in one of the new buffed physical damage nodes will provide more damage for this build than all 3 points in IF.

But again, we just have to wait and see ;)

One thing I am pretty sure of is that this will remain the core of the build. Which will leave only a small amount of points to really deviate from the original build.

WOW! That is the best Tank build I have seen so far! I'm not fond of the shield and one handed weapon style tanking BUT with the build you made I would very much make the sacrifice! Do you think that this build would work with the upcoming patch? I would like to try this build on a marauder if you wouldn't mind?!

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kitkatluv wrote:

WOW! That is the best Tank build I have seen so far! I'm not fond of the shield and one handed weapon style tanking BUT with the build you made I would very much make the sacrifice! Do you think that this build would work with the upcoming patch? I would like to try this build on a marauder if you wouldn't mind?!

This build will absolutely work with the upcoming patch. It just may need some tweaking depending on the numbers after patch.

Hey Dragon,

I have a lvl 45 HC Mara following this build and so far, so good. I am going to be a bit liberal with some nodes as I want to also up my damage with fire trap, molten shell, and maaaybe detonate dead, but I just wanted to chime in and say thanks for actually maintaining/updating your thread and answering questions!

This build is a lot of fun to play and feels much much more melee than GS or LS.

Dragon you are amazing man, you take so much time to explain things in detail and keep people informed about your opinion.

Keep up the good job and lets wait the patch to arrive and discuss from there.

Cheers

+1!

Thanks for getting back to me so soon, Dragon! Your help is much appreciated!

Thanks guys. Careful though, I just might end up with a big ego if you keep this up. ^_^

With armor becoming more effective in the upcoming patch, do you see this build using determination?