What Tanks do:

Getting the Enemy's Attention - A Tank’s job is to gain and hold the attention of the enemy in PVE, called “Aggro”. They do this by generating the most Threat in the entire party. In doing this, everyone in your party will know where the enemy is and provides a focus for the Healers.

Surviving the Enemy's Attention - Tanks need to get everyone’s attention because they have the best tools to survive the consequences. The terms Evasion Tank, Mitigation Tank, Soak Tank and TTK get thrown around, but in the end it’s all about Stayin’ Alive.

How Warrior Tanks do it:

Managing Resource: The ubiquity of the Warrior in games often leads to the assumption of having a bland playstyle. Perhaps that’s why Carbine seems to have designed the Warrior to have the most difficult resource management system in the game.

That resource is Kinetic Energy (KE). There are three considerations when managing KE:

1: Building Resource - Warriors start combat with 0 KE, so they must increase their KE with “Builder” skills that do just that. Nerds refer to this as a "back-loaded class resource mechanic".

2: Resource Decay - Unlike other class resources, KE decays at a constant rate, even in combat, unlike the Esper or Engy, whose resource resets to 0 when leaving combat. Not surprisingly, getting kited in PVP is a very, very bad thing. Latency and Lag will directly affect how much efficiency you get from your resource. Finally, it means that none of your skills are effectively “free”. Even your Builders have a KE surcharge as the Global Cooldown (GCD) cycles and your KE drops yet again.

3: Using Resource - Also unlike other class resource systems, KE isn’t consumed by “Finisher” Skills that have a resource requirement. Instead, certain Skills are unlocked at different KE thresholds. That means that if your KE is high enough, you can continuously spam Finishers until it eventually falls below threshold.

Juggernaut Stance: Warriors get +150% Threat on all damage while in Juggernaut Stance. Checking to see if you are in the right Stance should be the first thing you do when you step into a dungeon, if not before. BTW, this has never been a problem for me (cough).

Threat Generation Skills: On top of Juggernaut Stance, Warriors have Skills with the highest bonus Threat in the game.

HEAVY ARMOR!: Heavy Armor gives Warriors a higher Armor stat than other classes, which allows them to ignore a greater percentage of incoming damage. This damage-ignoring effect is what Nerds call "Mitigation".

Bulwark: Your "Ultimate" ability when in Juggernaut Stance on a 2m cooldown (CD). For 10s, your KE does not decay and you gain an insane amount of extra Mitigation and Threat. Make it count.

Skills:

Warriors have the most powerful tools amongst all other Tanks for doing their two jobs, but unlike those tanks, they can’t do both at the same time. Thus, the Warrior Tank must rely on more skills than other Tanks. These skills are considered mandatory in any Warrior Tank skill:

Note that Support Skill effects scale with the Support Power stat - even the damage.

Builder - Warrior Tanks have one Builder: .

Note that generates a crap ton of KE, unlike its Assault counterpart . That means that you won't be using it nearly as much. If you aren't spamming it then you won't be getting much use out of the Tier 4 Efficiency buff.

Threat - is your big Threat Skill. Like , it favors camping KE and them spamming it until the KE drops below threshold.

Mitigation - grants you an amazing 50% reduction in damage (Mitigation) at Tier 4. Like , it works best by keeping KE as close to threshold as possible (~300).

adds to your Mitigation once you’ve lost your Shield.

Proc - . Not nearly as useful as the proc skills for the other Tank classes, but still a core Skill. This skill needs more work from the devs.

“Oh, Sh%t!” - As Threat Tanks, Warriors should not expect to find themselves losing Aggro, but having a little insurance is always a good idea. is your emergency Aggro control skill. It's an emergency skill due its long cooldown. Its Intimidate effect works well with the Warrior's Threat skills to reliably transfer Aggro back to the Tank.

The other Skills:

- A great tool to pull mobs from range and make Stalkers cry in PVP.

- Warrior Tanks operate in melee range, so sometimes you'll need something to bring uncooperative ranged mobs into your waiting arms. Other times it's just for the lulz.

Rotation(s):

Because the Threat and Mitigation skills are so different in how they are best used, they require two completely separate rotations. This guide is long enough already, so i'll spare your the details as to why.

Threat - 3 x --> Spam until KE drops below threshold.

Mitigation - 1 x ---> .

Use and as they become available. Since these skills generate KE, they can be used in the stead of a as part of your rotation.

Opener/Upkeep - Pull with and use in between rotations when available.

Tactical Tips -

The most straightforward approach to managing rotations is to simply start with your Threat Rotation, then your Mitigation Rotation twice or thrice and repeat. While easy and reliable, it’s not exactly optimal. Competitive tanks will want to try to select their rotations for maximum effect without wasting KE, which is where the skill cap lies.

Just like so many other MMOs, it’s recommended that DPS hold their fire until the Tank gets enough of a head start in Threat (aka, "The Two Sunders Rule"). In this case that would be when the Warrior Tank stops using on their first rotation. Stalker and Medic DPS, take note!

AMPs -

Tier 1 -

Charged Sword - Mandatory. Gear accordingly.

Deflect Critical Hit - Recommended. You and your Healers will not appreciate you getting punched in the junk. However, Mastery is not recommended as you will rarely spend time sitting on 500+ KE.

Imposing - Optional. When the Threat generation on your Threat Skills is (150% + 130%) 280% and (150% + 200%) 350%, another 6% isn’t exactly going to make much of a difference. Still, more Threat is more Threat.

Full Force - Optional, for the same reasons as above.

Tier 2 -

Physical and Tech Resistance - Optional. Its specificity and 1% increments limit its utility. Probably best suited for PVE Instance tanking where Physical damage is dominant. If you do invest in this branch, go to Mastery.

Health Regeneration - Recommended. Warriors don’t have self-heals in their skillset, so this gives them an additional capability. Mastery is Optional, as no one should be within 8m of you while you tank (except the Medic and Offtank)

Vigor - Poor. If you are getting crit often enough to make this AMP useful then you are a very unlucky Tank. If you are that unlucky, no amount of healing buffs are going to save you.

Grit - Mandatory, if only because the alternatives aren’t that great. Mastery is optional, as does its job just fine and Warrior Tanks don’t have much flexibility in their builds. As an alternative build, swap out with and spec it to Tier 4 at the expense of . This is useful in PVP where Threat is a non-issue.

Shield Capacity - Mandatory. Go to Mastery, which stacks with Shield Restore skills like .

Leadership - Poor. is a Utility skill with a 2m CD, for Gods’ sake! It’s like putting an AMP that buffs in the Assault Tree. Hey, that’s not a bad idea...

Support Power - Optional. Useful but boring. Lack of Mastery for a Tier 3 branch is conspicuous.

Tier 3 -

To The Pain - Poor. Maybe most useful after you’ve already blown your Innate. Seriously handicapped by how its effect degrades over time and the scarcity of self-heals. Its 5m CD is the final nail in the coffin.

Impenetrable - Optional. Only useful for PVP Tanks, for whom this becomes very useful.

Health Sponge - Optional. Synergizes with Health Regeneration, which is good.

Conclusion:

The Warrior has the best Tanking tools in the game, but the need for separate rotations and a tricky resource result in the Tank class with the highest skill cap. You have been warned!

Notes -

Warriors are classified as Threat/Mitigation Tanks that depend on Mitigation Boosts and Shield Restore. The other Tank classes in WS do not have these characteristics and use other tools to get things done.

Warrior Tanks deliver most of their damage as Tech damage.

Warriors have half the Deflect coefficient of Stalkers and they have no other way of increasing their Deflect outside of , which is on a 20s CD and has to be at Tier 4. No other Skills, Tiers or no AMPs. This means you won’t be Deflecting as often as the other Tanks and so won’t get as many procs from your proc Skill as the other Tanks. You will also come to appreciate the Blunder debuff that Engy offtanks bring with them.

It needs to be said that the Warrior as a class still needs a lot of work. I have tons of notes on this subject, but this is not the place to post them. That said, this build is aimed at getting the most out of what is available and this guide is aimed at explaining the design philosophy of Tanks in general and the WS Warrior Tank in particular.

KE threshold AMPs suck, yet the Warrior AMP Trees are littered with them.

Threat is useful only when two conditions are met:
1: In PVE
2: In a group.
Given how situational Threat generation is, it should not count towards the Skill budget of Threat Skills. PVP Tanks will be grateful.