Iron-Clad Tank
Iron-Clad Staff Build
The tank is a pivotal role in 5v5 gameplay, it is your job to control the flow of battle, relieve pressure put on your team, and help generate pressure on the opposing team. This build is here to react to, and counter the opposing team’s actions, and to proactively prevent the opposing team’s ability to work together by separating players, interrupting abilities and shutting down damage. This build achieves this through unparalleled displacement. The Iron-Clad tank works best with two Ranged DPS on your team, as it allows you to keep them safe by forcing back aggressors, or to isolate members of the enemy team, and force them to your backline for your Ranged DPS to put pressure on, or eliminate, with no risk of damage from the rest of the opposing team.
There is a key point in that notion of “controlling the fight”. Don’t just rush in and blow all your abilities on the enemy team. Patience is key, wait and watch the battle unfold, and use your spells at key moments to shut down the enemy team. How you do this will come with practice, and with experience on how you can use your spells to their best effect. Work with your team, peel for your healer by helping force back aggressors, shut down enemy casters or healers where you can, and don’t over commit. Stay alive, keep your healer alive, and do your best to move the fight in your favor with the amazing spells listed here in the build. More details on how below.
Cartwheel: This ability is a holy healer or crossbow player’s worst nightmare. A relatively short cooldown roll that causes you to knockback players by a minor distance when you pass through them. You can use this to cancel holy healer’s healing casts, or crossbow auto fire and other channels/casts. This can be used to devastating effect, and with practice on the build you will be able to almost completely deny a holy healer’s healing.
Stun Run: This spell will enchant your next auto attack with a stun on hit, and will increase your movement speed for a few seconds. This can be great at interrupting key abilities, and helping you get in the right position on the field. Rotating this spell with your other interrupts is where its real strength lies, allowing you to chain interrupt targets to shut down damage or deny healing.
Hurricane: Where to start? Wanna be a Beyblade champion? Enjoy fidget spinners? Like being incredibly obnoxious and having incredible ability to move players away from where you don’t want them, and put others when you do? Confused? Don’t be. When you activate the spell you will perform a channel with the weapon, spinning around and knocking back anyone you hit with the skill for the entire duration. This allows you to force back enemy players, whether that for moving them away from your team to keep them safe, or removing an enemy player from their team to score an easy kill. Use the skill with purpose, don’t just spin wildly to knock people back. Remember, control is key. Take your time and learn how to best use this spell to its maximum effect with careful timing and smart positioning. Using Stun Run can help you pick out a target to isolate or push back. You can also use your Forcefield spell on the fiend cowl to knock players back initially, following up with the Hurricane spell afterwards to keep push them again after they try use their mobility to return to safety.
Equipment abilities
Fiend Cowl
The fiend cowl is the main choice to help you deal with Bow’s or other strong damage dealers that rely heavily on their buffs to do damage (such as frost staffs with scholar robes or morgana capes). You can also use this to purge hellion jackets, defensives, or stacks on dangerous melee weapons. Overall though, you may want to stick on the forcefield spell, an instant cast ability that knocks all enemies away from you. Perfect for pushing back aggressive melees to peel for your backline, interrupt key casts, or help isolate enemy team members from their team.
Judicator Armor
The Judicator Armor is an amazing option to help with your teams recovery. Your Hurricane spell offers amazing peel by forcing back the enemy team. With having such a strong method of shutting down enemy team’s damage, guardian armor is less necessary. With that in mind the Judicator Armor is the perfect choice to allow your team to quickly heal whilst you force the opposing team back. When you see your team taking heavy damage, drop down the Judicator Armor for your team and it will create a bubble over an area, increasing the resistances and healing received for all players inside. Focus on keeping your team safe and they will be healthy in no time.
Fiend Sandals
An interesting shoe option, with a spell that allows you to instantly switch places with an ally, or enemy player, interrupting spell casting and also offering you a brief invulnerability frame to dodge damage. This can be used to great effect by either keeping it to cancel a healer’s cast, damage dealer’s channel, or simply helping you isolate an enemy player from their team. Don’t forget however that it can be used on allies, sometimes it may be advantageous for you to switch an ally out of a dangerous situation, putting you in harm's way as the tank and allowing you to instantly control those players that were pushing on your team.
Thetford Cape
Martlock cape is definitely the safer option, but a Thetford Cape just helps with the exchange of damage and increases pressure on the enemy team’s healer. If you don’t feel comfortable with pushing that damage, just take the Martlock to keep you safe, but remember that 5v5 boils down to an exchange of damage dealt, damage taken, healing done, and anti-heal applied. You want something that enables you to have the biggest impact on that equation as possible, and the thetford cape is what does that the best. Alternatively you could use a bridgewatch cape to apply a strong damage reduction on a longer cooldown.
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Passives
Energetic / Agression / Toughness on the Weapon, Cloth armor, and Plate armor respectively. This passive selection gives you a little more damage, something that helps add some respectable damage threat from the build. The toughness passive on the chest providing you with some much needed defense vs. players, especially combined with the bonus from your food.
Avalonian Pork Omelette
Because you are wearing two pieces of cloth, you are missing the two toughness passive defenses you would get from the helmet and shoe slots. This food choice increases your defense vs players, helping you take more damage up in the front, and making it cheaper for the healer to keep you alive. It will also reduce your cooldowns, helping you to keep better control of the fight by having your abilities and spells up more often.
Resistance Potion
The resistance potion is an important defensive as a frontliner to ensure you can cover yourself from focus, and buy your healer the time to pick you up. Remember, that there can be cases to use this aggressively, to allow you to push up to the enemy and pressure them, with the increased defense protecting you whilst you do it, possibly buying your team the time they need to recover before returning for heals.
Strengths
- Great counter to Holy Healers
- Strong counter to Casters / Crossbows
- Amazing defensive peel / Isolation
Counters
- Weaker vs Nature healing
- Knight Helmets / Robe’s of Purity