The Easiest Tank Build in Throne and Liberty: The Templar Sword and Shield
Stat Distribution: Maximizing Survivability
The first step in creating the ultimate Templar tank build is setting up your stats. Strength should be your primary focus. This stat not only increases your physical defense but also boosts your max health, health regeneration, and overall survival. Aim to invest up to 30 points in Strength through raw stat points and gear pieces with the Strength bonus. The more strength you have, the more damage reduction and health you gain, making it the most important stat for any tank setup.
For your secondary stat, invest in Wisdom. While this stat doesn't directly boost your defenses, it increases your mana pool and speeds up mana regeneration, allowing you to use your abilities more often. With just a small investment (around 30 points), you’ll have more than enough mana sustain for your healing and utility skills. Finally, any leftover points can go into Dexterity or Perception, depending on your personal playstyle.
Gear: Focus on Health and Defense
When it comes to gear, prioritize items that increase your Max Health and provide resistances. The key pieces you'll want to aim for are armor with high melee defense, ranged defense, and max health. These stats will ensure that you can absorb the damage without putting yourself at risk.
· Weapons: The sword and wand combination is essential for the Templar build. Early on, any sword and wand will do, but at level 50, aim to acquire the CarX Netherblade from the Death B dungeon. This weapon gives you a nice bonus to both Max Health and Strength, which significantly boosts your survivability. For your wand, the Wand of Skyward Blessing or Proximate Remedy are excellent early-game options. The wand functions as a stat stick, offering bonuses like extra Mana efficiency or Strength.
· Armor: The Armor of the Resistance set, obtainable from completing the main story, is an excellent starting point. It provides solid defensive stats and is a good foundation for a tank build. Once you’re in the 50s, consider farming the Gloom Guard Set for additional strength and evasion, which will further improve your tanking capability.
Defensive Skills: The Core of the Templar Tank
The most important skill for this tank build is Shield Survival, which grants you a powerful self-heal whenever you block attacks. This skill allows you to survive through tough fights and makes you extremely self-sufficient, especially in group content. Combine this with Provoking Roar, Shield Throw, and Strategic Rush to maintain aggro and control the battlefield. These taunts and gap-closers will keep enemies focused on you, preventing your squishy DPS allies from taking damage.
Here are some other useful defensive skills:
· Shield Throw: A ranged taunt that lets you grab the attention of enemies at a distance.
· Strategic Rush: A mobility skill that also stuns enemies when they’re pushed against walls, allowing you to interrupt dangerous boss abilities.
· Chain Pull: Pulls enemies towards you, generating maximum aggro—useful for emergency situations.
Healing and Buffing Skills: Stay Alive and Support Your Team
In addition to your defensive toolkit, the Templar build is equipped with several powerful healing abilities that make it fantastic for group play:
· Swift Healing: A quick, efficient heal that can be cast multiple times, allowing you to recover health quickly in tight situations.
· Fountain of Life: A group-wide heal-over-time that you can drop on the ground. This is especially helpful in group content to prevent your healer from having to focus on healing everyone.
· Clay's Salvation: An emergency group heal that is perfect for large damage bursts from bosses. Cast it quickly to restore the health of your entire group.
These healing abilities ensure that you're not just tanking damage but can also support your allies in critical moments.
Offensive Skills: Deal Damage While Tanking
While tanking is your primary role, the Templar build allows you to contribute some offensive support as well. Piercing Strike (morphed from Shield Strike) functions as an AOE taunt that applies a debuff to enemies, forcing them to focus on you. Witty Strike and Annihilating Slash are both offensive skills that help you deal decent damage while also generating Mana and Stamina.
· Witty Strike: Deals light damage but more importantly, recovers Mana based on the number of targets hit. This makes it an excellent tool to help sustain your abilities in longer fights.
· Annihilating Slash: An AOE skill that debuffs enemy movement speed, making it easier for you to control positioning and group mobs.
Passives and Specializations: Boost Your Tanking Power
For your passive skills, focus on the Sword and Wand trees. From the sword tree, Skillful Evasion increases your ability to dodge attacks, especially when you’re close to provoked enemies, while Resilient Mind will help with Mana sustain. On the wand side, Vampiric Contract provides self-healing based on damage dealt, and Devotion and Emptiness will boost your healing during the day and reduce cooldowns.
For specializations, you’ll want to specialize into the Boss Skill Tree for Sword Master to gain Max Health, Stun Resistance, and Damage Reduction against bosses. For the Wand Mastery, go for the Recovery Tree to increase your healing capabilities, Cooldown Speed, and Evasion.
How to Play the Templar Tank Build
Playing the Templar build is straightforward but effective:
1. Maintain debuffs on enemies, such as Time for Punishment and Piercing Strike. This reduces their resistance and makes them more likely to focus on you.
2. Use taunts like Provoking Roar, Shield Throw, and Chain Pull to keep enemies on you, especially in group content.
3. Heal yourself with Swift Healing and use Fountain of Life to help sustain your team during fights.
4. For boss fights, keep an eye out for dangerous AOE attacks and use Strategic Rush or Clay’s Salvation to interrupt or heal through these mechanics.
In group dungeons, your job is to keep enemies focused on you, mitigate as much damage as possible, and provide healing and buffs to your team. With its strong self-healing, defensive abilities, and ability to buff allies, the Templar build makes tanking in Throne and Liberty an absolute breeze.
Conclusion
If you're looking for the simplest, most effective tanking build in Throne and Liberty, the Templar with Sword, Shield, and Scepter is perfect for you. It excels in both solo and group content, with tons of self-healing, aggro control, and healing support to support your team. With the right stats, gear, and skills, you'll be ready to take on the toughest dungeons with ease. Finally, if you're looking to take your Throne and Liberty experience to the next level, consider buying TL Lucent through MMOexp. Lucent gear is one of the best ways to boost your character's power, and with MMOexp, you can get your hands on top-tier Lucent items without the grind. Happy tanking!