• Lotro Guardian Class Slot List
• Lotro Guardian Class Slots

Blue Guardian Tank ‘Defender’ Build

By Araphorn

• Altogether, if you purchase all slots, you can have up to 5 Virtues at any given time. Many have a 6th or 7th they keep on standby for select raids to swap out as needed. Below is the best Virtue you should always consider for each class. Might is the best stat for a Beorning.
• That character's Class Trait Slots are all (so far - lvl 57) unlocked. I, then, bought The Quad Pack, The Helm's Deep, the new Class beorning and the Quest Pack Bundle a month ago to start playing again. So I decided to create 2 new characters and I see that their first (lvl15) Class Trait Slot is locked. My questions are.

Table of Contents

LotRO - Guardian Class Guide Skills Overview by Nicole163 on Sep 15, 2010 Follow Ten Ton Hammer. These go in the class slot on the character journal panel.

Welcome, here you will find a really good build for Guardian tanks, which is specifically tuned for high morale, which is needed for T3 Remmorchant raid. While Guardians cannot reach crazy morale pools like a Captain can, they can still pretty much exceed 600K morale when they are buffed and have a Captain in group, which is sufficient enough Morale to tank most bosses of the Raid successfully.

Guardians was once (and for a long time) the way to go class when the group needed a tank, there were alternatives but none matched a Guardian. It’s not the same now, as Captain tanks changed everything when Yellow Captain got a revamp a few years ago. However, Guard is still the best alternative when you don’t have a Captain tank available.

Guardian tanks can mitigate sustainable damage better than any other tank, they have the best aggro control (AoE and ST), have one of the best B/P/E and have the best burst self-heals compared to any other tank. They just don’t have the group utility/buffs which a Captain tank provides.

Stat Goals

*This applies to all levels, from 0 to 130.

Your primary stat as a tank is Morale, that means lots and lots of Vitality. In fact, Vitality is the only essence I use on all my gear pieces (along with 2 trigger essences). MM instance cluster is lenient on tactical damage, so there is no need to use any Tactical Mitigation essences.

Vitality > Physical Mitigation > Tactical Mitigation > Finesse

Take your Morale as high as you can, its the only thing which will save you. There is a hidden Mitigation Penetration on T3, so it’s not worth to use any Mitigation essences.

Lotro Guardian Class Slot List

• Morale at 600K+ (Self-buffed)
• Finesse at ~50K
• Physical Mitigation at 800K+ (you easily get this number by wearing T1 Raid armour)
• Tactical Mitigation at 450K+ (usually the default value with virtues)

* While you are gearing up, remove all Essences from your current Gear, and then slot Essences as per the Stat goals. After you have met the Stat goals, then place the right Virtues (more down on that down below). This way you can plan your setup better, and utilize Essences perfectly, and can dump the remaining Essences in Vitality or other Stat of your choice after meeting Stat goals mentioned above.

Gear

The new Armour Set from Remmorchant Raid for Blue Line Guardian, called ‘Unstoppable Juggernaut’ is Best in Slot. It reduced Juggernaut cooldown by 30s. It’s not the strongest set Guardians have received, and in fact it doesn’t really help them all that much in Remmorchant, but there isn’t anything else currently which is better.

If you don’t have that set, it’s fine, you can pretty much get by with using the tanking pieces from T1 Raid armour, or some of the high Vitality slice pieces from T3+ MM 6-mans.

This is the gear that I use. It includes 4x Blue Guardian Set, and 2x pieces from Shadowed King 3-man. The Cloak I use is from landscape Embers box (Will Selection).

Here it is in detail:

This is my Armour and Essences combination. By using this setup, I reach my Stat Goals, while having a very nice Morale pool.

Here are the Jewels:

1. Earrings: Shadowed King T5
2. Pocket: Thrang T2
3. Necklace, Bracelets and Rings: Amdân Dammul (New WotTP Raid)

Special Trigger Essences to use:

You need both of these, you can place them wherever you like. I have them on a Swap and use them for T3+ content.

Trait Trees

Trait trees for Guardian are pretty straight-forward (thankfully, unlike Captain). I get everything I need from just 1 tree alone.

This tree gives me all the important stuff which is required for all of the content. Majority of the points are spent in yellow due to War-chant targets, Thrill of Danger morale absorb and Redirect potency. They are all pretty important and must have.

Virtues

These are the virtues I use to reach the Stat Goals. You can play around with these to get the numbers you want, but I would not recommend using any Mits virtues (apart from Fidelity) as you don’t gain much from them. I use these 5 virtues on all my tanks, as I find these exact ones to be the best for tanks.

By using these Virtues, I reach my Stat Goals, while still maintaining a good Morale pool.

1. Loyalty (Number 1 virtue for Morale, for any class)
2. Fidelity (Number 2 virtue for tanks, gives decent Morale + Tactical Mits)
3. Honour (Very good virtue for Morale, also gives decent Tactical Mits and Critical Defence)
4. Fortitude (Very good for Morale and solid Critical Defence, also gives some Resistance)
5. Charity (Gives a nice amount of Vitality, but is primarily used for Resistance, which is super good for tanks in Remmorchant Raid)

If you don’t have these virtues, here are some alternatives:

Lotro Guardian Class Slots

• Tolerance
• Innocence
• Compassion

Legendary Items

Guardian tanks just require 2 LIs for tanking, and they can have an unimbued Belt swap for Challenge targets (although not really required for most content, but good to have).

I find these legacies to be the best for Tanking Guard.

Swap Legendary Items

You need 2 Swap LIs for Guardian.

1. Weapon is used as a swap for the following skills:
   • Charge duration, comes in pretty handy.
     
2. Emblem is used as a swap for:
   • Force taunts (Fray/Challenge), helps with targets and duration of taunts. Good for 10+ mob fights.

Rotation

Here is what I do on Guardian Tank.

For AoE aggro control:

1. I will try to bunch up as many mobs as I can take, usually around 7 to 10. While I’m running to collect them up, I use Shield-swipe and Shield-taunt (along with Guardian’s Ward for the buff), and some Retaliations if I receive Parry responses. I don’t use War-chant unless I know it will hit all my targets, or I use it only if mobs run after someone else.
2. When I have all the mobs lined up in one place, I quickly use Redirect (use a Whirling Retaliation if you don’t have it open). This allows me to absorb lots of damage and saves me from using a cooldown. I follow the Redirect with a War-chant after.
3. After Redirect, I do a shield rotation, which is pretty simple, Shield-swipe – Shield-taunt – Shield-smash. If you don’t have a initial block response, use a Shield-blow first to start the shield rotation.
4. After Shield rotation is done, I use another War-chant. This pretty much keeps all the mobs on you, but if your group DPS is too high and they steal some mobs, you are safe to use a Challenge now.
5. Use Catch a Breath on cooldown pretty much if your morale is going down.
6. Keep War-chant on cooldown also so your cooldown of Redirect and Catch a Breath gets reduced.
7. If you are still receiving too much damage after Redirect expires and Catch on Breath on cooldown, you can pop one of your other cooldowns. Start with Thrill of Battle first. Then eventually proceed as needed, Juggernaut/Pledge/Warrior’s Heart. But you generally don’t need all those cooldowns for just 1 trash pack, save other cooldowns for the remaining trash packs.
8. You can cut Shield-smash animations with your Stamp skill to speed up rotations a bit, but keep an eye on your power pool if you do that.

For Single-target aggro control:

1. This is generally pretty easy and nothing hard. Start the fight with Fray the Edge.
2. Wait around 6-7s and use Engage. Wait another few seconds, around 5s to be safe and use Fray the Edge again. You can pretty much go afk after that as far as aggro is concerned.
3. Keep Redirect on cooldown for the damage absorption buff. Keep doing Shield rotations also, and War-chant on cooldown.

Fortification Buff explained:

1. You get stacks of a buff called Fortification each time you use a Shield Skill.
2. You can gain up to a maximum of 5 stacks of this buff, with each stack giving +2% mits (physical and tactical), and up to +10% mits maximum.
3. Shield skills have a 25% chance to apply a stack of this buff.
4. It is very important that you build this buff up really fast by just focusing on a Shield rotation (Shield-blow – Shield-swipe – Bash – Shield-smash) for boss fights. Faster you have a maxed Fortification buff, better your chances are to survive boss hits.
5. Don’t worry too much about the Fortification buff for trash fights, you will eventually build the buff, focus on holding aggro first on all mobs, then do a Shield rotation on trash packs for the buff.

Smashing Stab CJ (Guardian’s Fellowship Maneuver) Explained:

1. Guardians have a neat utility to CJ targets from Smashing Stab skill, which comes in very handy. It just requires Guards to use 2 certain skills before being able to make Smashing Stab do a CJ.
2. In order to do so, you have to hit the target with a Shield-swipe (which requires a Block response).
3. Next, you have to hit the target with a Retaliation (which requires a Parry response).
4. It doesn’t matter which order you hit the target with those 2 skills, you can do whichever one first.
5. Now that you have hit the target with both, Shield-swipe and Retaliation, you can open a CJ.
6. Use Smashing Stab whenever you want now to do a CJ, there is no time limit.

Consumables

There are the consumables I use on Guardian:

1. This an important consumable for Guard, it helps with Aggro control.

And this is the food I use:

Use the yellow food first, then purple, that way it all stacks and you just lose the 3.4K Might rating bonus, which you don’t need while tanking.

Updated as of U28.

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Items that can be equipped for use in combat are broken up in the following categories:

(Additionally, Cosmetic Items, which do not effect combat, may be equipped to customize the appearance of your character.}

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