Beginner's Guide: Tanking as a Knight

Hello there,

I was asked a bunch of times about how to play a knight or which knight subclass might be the best. Well, I don't think there is one "best" class existing, because the core mechanic of a knight is always the same. The difference is just the utility or support the subclass brings to the knight. But however, I just want to show you the very basics about the Knight class as a tank.

0. Introduction

In this guide you will learn how to play the knight on different ways. I played that class on several servers for quite a lot of years, mostly mid-content but also end-content. Today I'm Knight tank at Pulse in the very endcontent of this game/server.

Since the Chapter5 changes the Knight does not need to collect holy seals by whitehits anymore but by hitting the target with some specific skills like Holy Strike or Holy Seal. I will tell you later how to use them on the best way.

The following guide is my personal opinion, based on a long-term experience of successfully tanking operations. I never needed Physical Attack (Patt) for tanking, but this decision is up to you.

Also I know for the current content you might not need to follow all my mentioned tips, but this guide should be independant of the current content and any instances. I'm talking about the Knight as a tank in general. I also know, everyone plays differently, so I just want to share my playstyle and base this guide on that. If you have another way that works fine for you, this guide isn't helpful for you.

I. Attributes, Stats & Pet

Your main attribute is Stamina. So you need to choose stats which main attibute(s) is stamina. The other attributes might be Defense or HP. Some Patt attributes are also working for an easier way of trash tanking, but shouldn't be required.

1. Stats and Pet

I would recommend 2 different builds: Max-HP and Average.

Max-HP build takes 5 Protector (Sta/Sta/HP/Def) and 1 red Keeper (Sta/HP). If possible, use 6 Protectors. (but at this moment there are only 5 available)

Average build takes 4 Protector and 2 Endurance (Sta/Str/Patt/Def).

There is also the way of a budget build. For this you can use even yellow stats, but only use Protection (Sta/Def) to replace non-existing Protectors, because you need much more Def than HP for the current content as long as you don't go for a full Protector build.

In either way you should choose the highest possible stats you can get and effort. I would also recomment to use a Light elemtal Pet or magical Aurora (for additional wisdom). The more wisdom you have, the more is regenerated by Holy Power Explosion. But also a physical Aurora is possible for some more HP through the strength attribute.

Using a High-Patt-Build is nonsense in my opinion. No tank needs Patt to do its job right. It might be much easier but one day you come to a point to decide if you want to stand bosses or die because of too low defense. I saw tanks working with High-Patt but they always had been on a risk. And as a tank I do not take any risks. I would recommend not to go for a High-Patt build but the Average build with 2 Endurance stats is still okay.

2. Runes

2.1 Weapon Runes

- Wrath

- Fatal

- Raid

- Hatred

2.2 General Runes

- Ferocity

- Block

- Enchantment

- Tyrant

II. Skills & Cooldowns

1. Skills you always need:

1.1 Knight General

- Holy Strike: Your filler skill for main rotation

- Enhanced Armor: You always keep this buff up. If it runs out you probably die or take decent damage. Always take care of this!

- Defense Technique: Increases your parry which is very important. Parrys decrease input damage a lot and this is passive!

- Resilience: Since stamina is your main attribute, this is essential.

- Shield of Discipline: Your main defensive cooldown.

1.2 Knight Primary Only

- Holy Shield: Use this wisly. This blocks some event damage or protects the entire party (not raid!).

- Holy Seal: This stacks instantly 4 Seals on the target which can be used directly.

- Holy Power Explosion: This is used in burst and in combination with Truth Shield Bash.

- Whirlwind Shield: Your priority 1 skill. This is your core skill for main rotation and trash as well!

- Devotion: Inceases your light damage and MP.

- Threaten: Always click this before Whirlwind Shield for gain more aggro by it. You also want to activate this with 4 Seals on the target for the maximum debuff of 54% less Patt on the boss, which decreases his damage on you.

- Shield Mastery: More defense on shield (only white values, no stats/non-stats included!)

- Shield of Valor: Your secondary defensive cooldown which increases your parry by 50%.

- Truth Shield Bash: Only use it with Holy Power Explosion. Without it does not generate any aggro!

- Holy Strength: One of your burst cooldowns. Inceases Light Damage -> Aggro.

- Hall of Dead Heroes: Decreases input damage and speeds up the party.

2. Skills you can use:

- Disarmament: Debuffs the target, but Sapping Arrows of Scout/Rogue (Lv30 Elite) will overwrite this just as Druid's Seeds.

- Shackles of Light: This roots some trash for 6 seconds. Can be used tactically for CC issues.

- Resolution: Inceases your maximum HP and restores some health. It's a good defensive cooldown but not a must-have.

- Charge: This stacks directly 2 Seals on the target and stunns it for some seconds. Do not use it to charge on mobs/bosses because you loose one global cooldown if you do.

3. Skills you never need:

- Punishment: Does some damage but you are tank, you don't deal damage. Also it consumes all sigils which is just bad. As Knight/Warrior with its Lv70 Elite, this skill becomes important for debuffing reasons.

- Shock: Same issue as Punishment. Only stunns target (no bosses) and consumes all Seals. Maybe it can be used to stun a single target in trash or interrupt it. Otherwise you can use this for pulling mobs away from healers, because its damage is mostly higher than heal aggro.

(End of Part 1)

III. Rotation

If you buff your food and pots for bust (See VI. Boss and Trash Tanking for further information) you need to run through this rotation for the maximum of aggro you can get.

O stands for "Opener" and R for "Rotation". The openers are used to open up the fight and the rotatiors are used sequently repeating in the given order.

O1: Explosion - You need the %Aggro bonus and buff for Truth Shield Bash.

O2: Holy Seal - You need this to set 4 Seals on the boss for Threaten.

O3: Threaten - as an opener to increase your aggro.

O4: Truth Shield Bash

O5: Whirlwind Shield

As an alternative you can also use the Holy Seal for the Truth Shield Bash:

O1: Explosion

O3: Threaten

O2: Holy Seal

O4: Truth Shield Bash

O5: Whirlwind Shield

Now you don't debuff the boss for about 6-8 seconds which might be okay if you pull some more of your defensive cooldowns, e.g. elite skills or Shield of Discipline. Otherwise you will receive clean hits from the boss that are not debuffed by your Threaten.

Let's continue with the real rotation (R).

R1: Holy Strike - You need to stack up to 4 Seals again for Threaten and use it as a filler while cooldown.

R2: Threaten - Increases aggro for Whirlwind Shield and following Holy Strikes.

R3: Whirlwind Shield

After R3 you need to spam your filler Holy Strike till Threaten is ready to use again. So you hold Threaten on cooldown and if you do so, Whirlwind Shield will always also be ready after Threaten because of its shorter cooldown time.

It might be helpful to order the skills on the action bar like that but other orders also work. I would recommend not to click Threaten by mouse because if your gear isn't that optimized, you need every second and feel every lost one in your and party members' aggro.

IV. Gearing

You only need plate armor. You do not need chain armor for Patt or Crit, but it's nice to have. Plate armor is more defensive and I would always recommend to max out the defensive ability over offensive ones. Means max Stamina, Defensive Power and Parry.

I would always recommend to stat all your gear except your weapon. Tier your weapon crappy as high as possible. Only stat your weapon if you can effort it and handle a lesser burst aggro, which requires more skill, management and timing. I always tiered my weapon, never statted it, but do whatever you like to do. I would always recomment to put aggro above endurance and a higher tiered weapon increases your aggro a lot. Also you are useless if you can't hold aggro with a statted low tiered weapon. Keep this in mind.

1. Best in Slot Gear

Main Set: ROFL (Red or Gold)

Offset: ROFL (Red or Gold)

Weapon: Golden 1h Sword or 1h Hammer* (if subclass is Champ)

Shield: Aldo or new Worldboss? (not released yet)

*Don't use an Axe (with warrior subclass) since your weapon level can't be high enough.

2. Budget Gear

Main Set: ROFL Red

Offset: ROFL Red

Weapon: Gorge Sword or 1h Hammer from merchant inside custom instance, or Golden one

Shield: Aldo

If you can't effort a golden weapon, use the Gorge weapons from the merchants at the entrance of custom instances. However, a golden wespon is pretty cheap and t12 might be enough for the start.

V. How to generate Aggro

You generate aggro by using +X% Aggro buffs and skills with aggro multipliers and also damage increasing stuff. Knight has some different aggro multis around x10. You can calculate your dealt damage x aggro multi and the result is the generated aggro on the target. Of course there is something more behind damage calculation and such, but that's too deep at this point.

1. Aggro Multipliers

Some skills have in their description: "Each skill level adds to aggro." This means, they got some hidden aggro multipliers. If I remember correctly and nothing has changed here, Whirlwind Shield has a x10 multi. Truth Shield Bash has a x10 multi as well, but only while active Holy Power Explosion! Holy Seal and Holy Strike have a x2.5 Multi. All other skills have a x1 Multi (no multi exists if you multiply something by 1). The Seal's DoT has no multi afaik.

2. Damage = Aggro

Through your +X% aggro buffs as Threaten or Explosion you increase your aggro dealt with all of your skills. Also +X% damage or attack speed is (more or less) equal to +X% aggro. So if you increase your damage or attack speed, you also increase your aggro since you are a kind of a physical damage dealing class too with physical damage calculation.

3. Sumarize

So all your buff food and pots as Strong Simulant increase your aggro as well. That's why you need to get sure to use all bonuses on atkspeed, damage and aggro to incease your dealt aggro!

VI. Boss and Trash Tanking

1. Trash tanking

This is your basic rotation. With a specific subclass, there might be some more skills you could use, but I will not mention those at this point.

R1: Threaten

R2: Whirlwind Shield

R3: Holy Strike

Always use Threaten first on any mob to trigger the aggro buff on yourself for a stronger aggro of the following skills, such as Whirlwind Shield. While Threaten and Whirlwind Shield is on cooldown use Holy Strike as a filler and tab though your targets while doing this to generate more aggro over all mobs. Never only use Whirlwind Shield without Threaten unless you can hold aggro whithout it.

2. Boss tanking

If you activate a countdown macro (or AU Countdown), you have some time to prepare yourself for battle. Use this time efficiently! You need to activate all necessary buffs, renew bufffood and such. Here is a recommendation for the buffs and cooldowns you gonna pull while cooldown ticks:

1. Caviar Sandwich or Prime Rib Slice - increases Critrate and Crit Damage by 10/14%

2. Hall of Dead Heroes - increases movement speed and decreases input damage (you need as much movement speed as you can get).

3. Spellweaver Potion - increases movement speed as well.

3. Strong Stimulant - increases atkspeed -> dmg -> aggro

4. Potion of Annihilation or similar one - increases critrate

5. Holy Strength - inc. light damage -> dmg -> aggro

6. Shield of Discipline - decreases input dmg

7. Defense Potion - inc. parry (maybe save this for specific situations)

8. Start with Opener Rotation. Use Holy Power Explosion while running towards the boss. Be aware of its global cooldown!

3. How to actually tank bosses?

After the 8 steps above, your Rotation starts (See Chapter III again). You always need to run at a boss, don't use your Charge since this triggers a global cooldown. By that you would loose 1 second of tanking and might loose your aggro against fast hitting range Dps classes. So just run and instantly start your rotation. But always keep and eye on your own health, use Potions if the healers can't hold the damage, use your utility cooldowns to decrease your damage input and to help the healers. Play events, but always check if your skills are ready to use and prioritize them as mentioned.

VII. Buff-Food

Just a quick overview, you might look in the auction house or itemshop for the stuff you need, or ask a crafter for equal food and potions.

Egg Rice Dumplings: Max Def.

Aged Realgar Wine: Some Patt - I mean, it doesn't matter if you use it, so just go for it, some patt might be ok in trash mobs.

Surprise Cake: Use this if your Def is lower or there are more %hits in an instance.

Atlas Special Pie: Use this if your Def is high enough and there are less %hits.

Jungle Dinosaur Leg: Max Dmg. Don't use Patt Food, since you need Dmg more than Patt.

Hero Potion: Max Attributes.

Transformation: Use something with Stamina, either Wisdom or Strength.

Scarlet Love: Get this from your housemaiden, increases your Def.

Wedding Food: Increases several attributes and dmg.

And always keep up your Enhanced Armor for Max Def.

VIII. Practice > Theory

All that knowledge is just theory. How you manage tanking by yourself is up to you. A wise man once said: "I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it." So take your time, test your rotation and buffing while countdown is running, test on dummy or in pvp, run lower instances to test on bosses and argue yourself with your own class.

If you have any questions, just let me know, also I'm always up to help other knights ingame and improve their gameplay. Just give me a wisper ingame.

IX. My Kitty / Macro

DO - NOT - USE - KITTY or any other combat engine, because tanking as a knight is not only spamming a rota, it's more like pressing the right skills at the right time. And that timing is something you can never ever include in a macro/lua/kitty. Only an advanced and highly experienced tank could simplify his rota on that way, but in my over 10 years as a tank I never used a macro for my rotation or any buffs. And I would never recommend to use any.

The point is, that there can always be fail pulls or situations you need a specific skill, but your macro can't know that and either your skill is not available by cooldown, or you need to execute many other skills before. Also the Holy Seal management needs timing and practice, no macro can ever know when to use which skill on your seals. These are decisions that can decide over wipes of the entire raid, as a good tank you know that and be aware of this. I mean, you can play however you want, but you will never learn the class by using macros. Never... any class.

Addition: Item-Set Skills

I'd say, there are many not very useful skills and only few that are really good. Unfortunately there are some skills that are deprecated by better versions from higher instances. So I decided to order them by quality: "Best in Slot" contains the skills you definitely want to use and "Budget" contains the cheaper ones or which are easier to farm. Yes, there are some more existing, but I just gonna list the viable ones for tanking.

1. Best in Slot ISS

Level	Name	Image	Effect	Comment
104	Honorable Guard		Decreases incoming magical damage by 30%	passive
95	World Domination		Increases Aggro and crit	passive
90	Howl from the Deep		AoE taunt with 30s cd	can also be used on bosses to taunt them or increase your total aggro by 15%
80	Tsunami		Aggro AoE with 8s cd,	similar to Whirlwind Shield, must-have for any tank
65	Arching Chop		Non-Aggro AoE with 20s cd	I really very rarely use it, but it shares no other cooldown, so it's nice to have if you need an additional aoe without aggro multiplier.

2. Budget ISS alternatives

Level	Name	Icon	Effect	Comment
100	Heroic Spirit Guard		Decreases incoming magical damage by 20%	deprecated through Honorable Guard
80	Protection of Twilight		Decreases incoming magical damage by 15%	deprecated through Heroic Spirit Guard
70	Wicked Backfire		increases aggro and crit	deprecated through World Domination
67	Lanaik's Roar		AoE taunt with 2 min cd	deprecated through Howl from the Deep

Conclusion

Yeah I know, sorry about my long post again, but better having more and needing less than having less and needing more Feel free to find all my (maybe) perfectly hidden typos and mistakes and to ask me ingame if you have further questions.

Version: Patch 10.0.4.2014

Quote from xLutinex

Why additional wisdom? Wisdom for a knight is like dex. You don't need it. You will only regenerate more mana with more wisdom by Holy Power Explosion, because it will regenerate 3% mana. But the main mana regeneration will come from healers which are healing you while you have Holy Power Explosion active.

Yep, that's correct, but if you decide weather to go for useless strength/dex pet or wisdom/int, I would say, the magical Aurora is better just through the fact, wisdom is a little bit more useful. That's all, but as mentioned, both are viable, doesn't really matter. I'm also using a physical one, so as I said, it's just a tiny advantage.

Quote from xLutinex

Having 2 Endurance on each item on your full gear with the runes you listed is waste if you do this for the physical attack on the Endurance. The physical attack is still so low (I am only speaking for highest instances. On lower instances it might be pushing your aggro), that your aggro is the same like with full protector build.

On bosses yes, Endurance is useless, but with some specific combo, you can have enough patt in trash mobs so that patt matters a bit more. Also it's just a beginner's guide, which can also be scaled down for lesser requirements, I think. I mean, from our perspective tanking is just easy and doesn't need any requirements, but if you're new to the game, some basic patt might matter in trashes, even if you buff for patt then... I guess

Thanks for the kind words! melodic

Quote from melodic

One correction though: Shackles of Light do not stun for general Knights, they only root. This makes a major difference.

Thanks, just corrected this.

ISS will follow tomorrow (if I have enough letters left in the post, i almost had to split it into 3 pieces ) I also wanted to create another special guide for Knight/Champ and Knight/Druid, which are the two "new" tank combos and those I like most overall. So if I don't have enough space left in this guide, I gonna shift that topic to the new guide and link it or something

Quote from xLutinex

Hi,

this ISS is a taunt btw. So it is not as useless as you think

From my experience it just hit and increased my aggro, but did not actually taunt the target like other skills did. I've used this for a long time until I realized the mob turned to me when hit, but immediately turned back afterwards.

*few minutes later*

So now I just tested this a bit and seems you're right. I could tank without any weapon, maybe using it in rofl feels a bit squishy sometimes Gonna remove the part from the guide

EDIT: @Mods: Just realized I can't edit it, since the cap of 10k letters is even reached without the entire paragraph. So that should be your job I guess