General Discussion - Best tank character? - Forum - Path of Exile (2024)

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Valenty87 wrote:

Good evening, I would get an opinion from you about the characters, just let me know which is the best tank. I started playing recently and I have only tried the wizard.
Thanks to all!

Im guessing a shield user going heavily into armor/hp/evasion etc. Diminnishing returns, scaling and so on basicly means stacking one defensive attribute isnt going to cut it. Im betting there is a high correlational increase in going multiple of resist/armor/hp/evasion/block etc.

The problem is nodes. You can make an incredible tank but it will hurt your DPS immensly.

As for starting class it doesent matter much. Starting class only gives a small bonus to an attribute or two.

Templars who go sword and board have great options for anti magic, lots of resists and spell blocking not to far from the starting position. With skills like Tempest Shield or Molten shell you can also deal good damage back onto your attackers without needing a strong weapon or offensive passives.

Marauders have the strongest life regain and life steal and their magic resist is nothing to laugh at either. Most Marauders will want to take blood magic (you will have life to spare and with enough regain its practically free anyway) and maybe Resolute Technique since damage wont be a priority anyway.

Duelists are capable with a shield but don't have nearly the options. Theoretically with a duelists attack speed and some good life on hit and maybe a cleave skill you could get some sustain that way but it would certainly still be a more offensive tank than the Marauder or Templar.

Ranger would certainly be unconventional and probably not well optimized, however they do have A LOT of evasion potential and some degree of shield use. Combine that with the passives nearby that allow you to ignore status effects like freeze and shock and maybe the Acrobatics Keystone (A dodge calculated separately from evasion) and you might be able to make something.

Shadow and Witch are ill advised for tanking but hey you could certainly prove me wrong

Overall Marauder and Templar are the best equipped souls for the job but PoE is all about the unconventional. Also remember that any class can easily dip into other parts of the tree what I mentioned here is merely what they start out near.

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Ouroboros226 wrote:

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Valenty87 wrote:

Good evening, I would get an opinion from you about the characters, just let me know which is the best tank. I started playing recently and I have only tried the wizard.
Thanks to all!

Im guessing a shield user going heavily into armor/hp/evasion etc. Diminnishing returns, scaling and so on basicly means stacking one defensive attribute isnt going to cut it. Im betting there is a high correlational increase in going multiple of resist/armor/hp/evasion/block etc.

The problem is nodes. You can make an incredible tank but it will hurt your DPS immensly.

As for starting class it doesent matter much. Starting class only gives a small bonus to an attribute or two.

Most of this is false ...

There is no diminishing returns to armor/evasion. You may seem to witness it when watching your damage reduction or evasion % but each point of armor always gives you the same increase to EHP.

And yes starting class matters plenty. Proximity to nodes on the skill tree is very important. A marauder has much more acces to life and life regen nodes than a Witch for example.

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Kojira wrote:

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Ouroboros226 wrote:

Im guessing a shield user going heavily into armor/hp/evasion etc. Diminnishing returns, scaling and so on basicly means stacking one defensive attribute isnt going to cut it. Im betting there is a high correlational increase in going multiple of resist/armor/hp/evasion/block etc.

The problem is nodes. You can make an incredible tank but it will hurt your DPS immensly.

As for starting class it doesent matter much. Starting class only gives a small bonus to an attribute or two.

Most of this is false ...

There is no diminishing returns to armor/evasion. You may seem to witness it when watching your damage reduction or evasion % but each point of armor always gives you the same increase to EHP.

And yes starting class matters plenty. Proximity to nodes on the skill tree is very important. A marauder has much more acces to life and life regen nodes than a Witch for example.

Although it's true armour has no diminishing returns (its EHP scaling in 100% linear), Ouro is right that going for multiple defenses is usually better, because the various defenses stack multiplicatively. For example, if you already have enough armour to double your EHP, you could either go for more armour to triple it, or go for evasion to maybe double the double (4 times the EHP).

However, evasion does have diminishing returns, the equation involves (e/4)^0.8, where e is evasion. For example, if you have 128 evasion, that expression is equal to 16; if you 4096 evasion (32 times as much), that expression is equal to 256 (16 times as much, so a 50% pentalty given the input). While it doesn't quite advance linearly; however, it takes huge upscaling (32 times as much) to get huge diminishing (half), so it's still mostly linear and I wouldn't be too overly afraid of it.

However, the best tank in the game is a character built around the Aegis Aurora unique shield. Its key ability is "Whenever you successfully block, gain 4% of your Armour as Energy Shield." Combined with very, very high armour (good on its own, but also giving massive ES heals when you block), maxed block rate, and spell blocking conversion (there is a 12% passive and a 50% unique amulet), you have a build that literally heals itself when monsters try to attack it.