What is Tanking?
First things first, a tank is the player in the group designed to hold threat (get the mob/boss to focus purely on them) by doing this it means other players in the group aren't getting smashed in the face, and the task of a healer is to heal the tank. Now in most mmo's there is a tank class, one that will generate threat (more threat means more focus from the mob/boss to the player) and ensure that the attention is on them. A tank is designed to be able to sustain larger amounts of damage than any other player on the team.
No longer solely about hitting a taunt button, how can you maximize your tanking ability?
A common question that people ask is, how will tanking work in an action based Role-Playing Game (RPG)? In traditional style MMORPGs, as most of you know, it involves tanks that build threat, hate, enmity, whatever… using their attack and taunt skills. As a result of this, the mob focuses on that player, and in most situations, everyone else is pretty free to do as they please aside from dealing with positional Area-of-Effects (AoEs) or mob adds. TERA does have the traditional aggro and taunt systems, but what about special attack patterns, target switches and projectiles in an action combat system? What can you do beside relying on building and maintaining a numeric value?
Players are able to make use of collision or body blocking, to actually get in the way of attacks, to assist in defending your team. Additionally, due to manual blocking and evasion, you must learn the proper cues and develop reflexes to optimize your damage avoidance, mitigation and positional team defense. Not only do these higher demands on player skill add interesting dynamics to PvE game flow, but it enables a much larger potential for PvP tanking than seen in traditional systems. No longer do you need a pillar to hump (a common arena or battlegrounds tactic from other games which involves getting line-of-sight by repeatedly shuffling around a pillar often just shortened to “pillar humping”) you could use your friendly local lancer.
No longer solely about hitting a taunt button, how can you maximize your tanking ability?
A common question that people ask is, how will tanking work in an action based Role-Playing Game (RPG)? In traditional style MMORPGs, as most of you know, it involves tanks that build threat, hate, enmity, whatever… using their attack and taunt skills. As a result of this, the mob focuses on that player, and in most situations, everyone else is pretty free to do as they please aside from dealing with positional Area-of-Effects (AoEs) or mob adds. TERA does have the traditional aggro and taunt systems, but what about special attack patterns, target switches and projectiles in an action combat system? What can you do beside relying on building and maintaining a numeric value?
Players are able to make use of collision or body blocking, to actually get in the way of attacks, to assist in defending your team. Additionally, due to manual blocking and evasion, you must learn the proper cues and develop reflexes to optimize your damage avoidance, mitigation and positional team defense. Not only do these higher demands on player skill add interesting dynamics to PvE game flow, but it enables a much larger potential for PvP tanking than seen in traditional systems. No longer do you need a pillar to hump (a common arena or battlegrounds tactic from other games which involves getting line-of-sight by repeatedly shuffling around a pillar often just shortened to “pillar humping”) you could use your friendly local lancer.