Defensive spec Ie Tank

[Mahjong]

Do you guys see prospects for a tank spec in d3? In my experience it seems like D2 pretty much consisted of dps, dps, and more dps, and mayybe a summoner necro. But that might just be from like power levelling, and how hell was, i dunno. But this isn't WoW, I can't help but think that it would be too wild and fast-paced for a specialized pvm tank, as opposed to an extra dps melee guy. Maybe I can see it against bosses though, if he would outlast summons. And the Battlemaster tree looks like it opens up a tanking spec, or at least a Barb that heavily comrpomises damage output for endurance. Or is all that defensive stuff just some secondary stuff to choose from?

[Raging_Zealot]

I suppose it depends on what you mean by "tank".

If you mean a character that has more life/defense/etc. than the other classes, and is thus more resilient, then yes, absolutely.

If you mean an MMO-esk Tank/DPS/Healer type tank, that has defensive skills for pulling agro while other characters nuke it, then probably not. They have stated that Diablo III will follow the other Diablo games in that all character classes are capable of soloing all areas of the game. In one of the released videos the commentator even mentioned that there weren't set "DPS" characters, and that the Barbarian would be doing just as much damage, just a different style and with less "flash" than say, a Wizard. However, Diablo II's barbarian had some AI altering skills such as taunt, so it won't be totally unreasonable to think you might have some similar skills that can force the AI to target you over your squishier allies in perhaps a more limited way.

Technically speaking, depending on how many defensive skills there end up being, you could focus primary on them, while neglecting the more damaging skills, and build your own sort of MMO-style tank, but as I said, I'm not sure how many agro-pulling AI altering skills the Barb will end up with.

[nicro tower]

Taunt was more of a strategic way to lure the countess's minions out of her room, and for lowering their attack/defense. Meh faster boss-killing>outliving the boss in my opinion

[Mahjong]

Hm ok thanks for the clarification. But I can't help but think how the barb would be the most suited to deliberately take the hits, thus should take as much of the damage as possible, thus should be equipped to do so and survive...

I don't know, I guess summons and party size factor in. And monster difficulty and any inconvenience of dying...

[Akse]

They even changed WoW tanks.. the now do quite impressive amount of dps compared to what it was before. You can even level up as a tank and while doing it you can pull huge amounts of monsters at a time and nuke them quite fast while not getting hurt much at all.

That sort of tank I could see in D3 also, you sacrifce some damage for more defense and while doing that you would be able to whitstand some serious beating compared to other builds that would take more damage but also kill the monsters faster.

What I like about WoW warrior is that when I play as protection I can really see the effect of the defensive skills when the monsters cant do much to me.

It could be nice if we have some different kind of approaches to the builds in D3 too and by looking to the skills atm (which arent final) there seems to be quite a lot of different defensive skills.

[xpumafangx]

The two skills that I really saw going for the barb in d3 where. The one where he removed the sheilds of the monsters and wirlwind. I am going to say that he is going to be a dps and a tank as well. This is because in d2, barbs and druids where the only 2 classes that could get 10k hitpoints. And neather of them where lacking in the damage department as well. Even the paladin could get a good amount of hp in d2. But they could never touch the amounts that a barb or druid could get.

[BelushiEightyOneX]

I suppose it depends on what you mean by "tank".

If you mean a character that has more life/defense/etc. than the other classes, and is thus more resilient, then yes, absolutely.

If you mean an MMO-esk Tank/DPS/Healer type tank, that has defensive skills for pulling agro while other characters nuke it, then probably not.

Took the words right out of my mouth... er... keyboard...

[sicilian]

Well, assuming it's a similar system to D2, you can still create the tank/dps dynamic. It's just that the agro mechanics will be based around distance and not any kind of "threat" number.

For example, if you have a Barb specced for high defense, and a Wizard specced for his/her distance spells, you could let the Barb stand around the monsters taking most of the hits while the Wiz nukes. If the Wiz gets too close though, mobs are going to attack him.

So what you won't be able to have is any kind of Melee tank + Melee DPS combo, because if both are in melee range then both are going to be attacked.

[Akimbo]

We've yet to see the other classes yet, maybe one of those will be more suited to tanking than a barb.

[Echod16]

I'm fairly sure the tanking aspects will be up to the barbs discretion, but he will most definitely have the best ability to tank well.