There are many diffirent combination of weapons to use for tanking. This is something you will have to make a choise both on preffence and type of dungeon/mob you are going to tank. I personly use Shield and hammer in all forms simply because i belive its the best option. If you are looking for some more dps you can adjust.Tanking in New World is slightly different from the classic MMORPGS. It still maintains the usual mechanic of taunt and the main aspect of class role to keep the mobs focused on you.
The difference from the classic MMORPGS is that you don’t necessarily need heavy armour to tank or a shield. Still the best option is the shield and the heavy armour especially for a starting player, but you can also tank in medium armour and in some cases in light armour. The lighter the armour the more skilled the players have to be. Finally the shield is not a block all, hail Mary weapon.
There are many different combinations of weapons to use for tanking. This is something you will have to make a choice both on preference and type of dungeon/mob you are going to tank. I personally use Shield and hammer in all forms simply because I believe it’s the best option. If you are looking for some more dps you can adjust.
To tank and keep aggro you need to slot Cut Pristine Carmelian Gems onto your Weapons.
Some of the most common weapon choices include:
- Sword & Shield + WarHammer
- Sword & Shield + Hatchet
- Greatsword + WarHammer
- Greatsword + Hatchet
Some more interesting choices are:
- Sword & Shield + Spear
- Greatsword + Spear
Gameplay:
As a tank you will have to know the activity well. Where to position, how to avoid ranged or group them up. Learn the boss animations in order to block and / or Dodge in time. You can’t block everything. Mobility and switching weapons is a must for any class, so practise the weapon swap and dodging. The main thing you will have to deal with, is your cooldowns. It is important that you reduce those cooldowns as fast as possible to keep taunting and or dpsing to keep aggro. The dps will never stop. Look at some weapon choice with cooldown reduction or weapon skills that reduce cooldown. We will look at some later on.
Maintaining aggression:
Maintaining aggro is your main role and with trigger happy DPS it might be that easy. You only have two ways to get and maintain aggro on the mobs you are tanking. Taunt & damage. You will never out dps a pure DPS so what do you do?
Taunt is the best way to get the attention of all mobs but it is not permanent. Some taunts force the enemies to focus on you from 2 sec up to 8 secs, depending on the weapon you are using. During that time you need to do two things
- Reduces your cooldowns in order to have the taunt skill available again
- Get in as much DPS as you possibly can to build and maintain aggro.
You need to be aware of the fact that if you have a DEX DPS with you most likely they will be the ones that will get most aggro as the crit a lot. Critical hits build massive aggro. Don’t forget you also have more than one taunt. Some weapons have 2 taunts and you also have 2 weapons to switch between them.
Never (almost) never start with taunt. It is best to hit the mobs 1-2 times then taunt. IF your dps are smart they will give you those 2 sec to secure the focus and aggro so they can dps with no worries. IF not.. Oh well.. It’s their death.
Gear & Consumables
Gear you can find in many places both armour and weapons.
- Drops from random mobs
- Drops from dungeons
- Farm sets from world bosses and mobs
- Crafting
The gear will also determine what accessories you will need. IF your gear is full strength you might need to get a necklace and a ring with constitution or the other way around.
On weapons try to have single stats, only strength or only constitution or Dexterity. This helps to manage your stats better.
Consumables you will need to have at all times the following
- Healing potions
- Regeneration potions
- Honing stones (best you can afford)
- Coatings(ancient,corrupted e.t.c)
- Buff food (constitution or STR or DEX) depending on your stats.
- Regeneration food.
- Absorption potions (optional)
Weapons
The weapons in my opinion should have a refreshing move to reduce cooldowns if possible and bane (specific to each mob). This means you will need a good collection of gear and weapons to fight every different mob in the game.
Here are some of the weapons i use for tanking this far:
Swords:
Hammers:
One of the warhammer perks is that the cooldowns are reduced both by light and heavy attacks so refreshing moves are not as important as other perks. Nevertheless if you can have it, it doesn’t hurt.
Shields:
There aren’t any good shields in the game so you have some purple ones or craft a legendary. The purple ones can be very good from world mini bosses such as: