Welcome to the Sword & Shield Beginner Tank Build Guide for Throne & Liberty.
In this guide, we will explain how to create a simple but powerful Sword & Shield Tank build that is perfect for new or casual players. Our beginner builds are easier to create and play than our endgame builds (such as this Tank Build) because they have fewer essential skills and passives, and equipment that is generally easier to obtain.
It will take you considerably less time to set up and learn to play this build than builds intended for endgame, so this is the ideal starting point if you’re quite new to the game, or if you only intend to play the game casually and don’t want to put much time or effort into hard PvE dungeons or PvP combat.
Table of Contents:
Sword & Shield Beginner Build Setup for Throne and Liberty
In this section, we will explain the important components of the build, such as stats, passives, skills, and equipment. Keep in mind that gear isn’t that important until you reach the level cap. Therefore make sure to focus on your skills and passives. Equip whatever gear you find while you are levelling up.
Weapons Main vs Off-hand
- Main-hand: Sword & Shield
- Off-hand: Greatsword
Our main hand weapon is the Sword & Shield, and our off-hand weapon is the Greatsword. Keep in mind that our off-hand passives stay active even if we are using the Sword & Shield. Most of the skills and passives in this build are sourced from the Sword & Shield, as this weapon has the best options for survivability, crowd control and protecting allies.
If you’re just starting out then you can equip whichever Sword & Shield and Greatsword you find, and keep replacing them with better ones that you find when levelling up. You don’t need specific weapons for this build to work, but we will include a more precise equipment section later in the guide for players who already reached maximum level and want to put a bit more time into optimising their gear.
Stats
The most important stat for this tank build is Strength, which increases your melee weapon damage, health, and resistance, the latter two of these in particular are very important for tanks.
We recommend aiming towards a stat distribution similar to the one shown below, but don’t worry if yours doesn’t match exactly:
- 34 Strength
- 20 Dexterity
- 21 Wisdom
- 10 Perception
You can also put extra points into Strength if you’re struggling to stay alive – this will improve your max HP and make it easier to withstand enemy attacks.
Defence Skill
Each build in Throne and Liberty can slot one defense skill. Because we are using a Sword & Shield and a Greatsword we can decide between two skills:
- Sword & Shield: Shield Survival Technique
- Greatsword: Iron Point Parry
For our Tank Build we want to select the Shield Survival Technique to increase our defensive capabilities. This allows us to restore Health and increase damage mitigation. Additionally, it also provides us with a Shield that absorbs damage for us for a short time.
Active Skills
Below are explanations of the skills we are using for this Throne and Liberty Tank Build. We are mostly using Sword and Shield skills, as these skills are great for crowd control, protecting allies, and taunting enemies. However, we also added in DaVinci’s Courage from the Greatsword, which allows you to provide an important attack buff to your whole team!
Our endgame builds have more skills than what is listed here – since this is a beginner build we are only focusing on the basics. Once you feel comfortable with the setup below, you may want to begin adding more Greatsword skills, as these can help you even more with Crowd Controlling enemies.
Sword and Shield Skills
- Shield Strike – Deals damage to an enemy. Has a fairly small cooldown, making this a good damage output option when needed.
- Strategic Rush – Charge forwards and deal damage, with a high chance of pushing enemies back. If pushed enemies collide with a wall they are stunned for 2 seconds.
- Counter Barrier – Increase Shield Block Chance for a few seconds. When you evade an attack or perform a shield block, you counterattack, dealing damage.
- Chain Hook – Use this on mobs to pull them to you and reduce their move speed. Using it on monsters will pull you to them instead.
- Provoking Roar – Taunts enemies within 3 meters of you, forcing them to direct their attacks towards you. The effect lasts for longer against Monsters.
- Stalwart Bastion – Increases the damage reduction of you and allies within 10 meters for a few seconds. Has a long cooldown, so this should be used strategically in the times when your team is likely to take the most damage.
Greatsword Skills
- DaVinci’s Courage – Increases Max Health, Health Regen, and Attack Speed for every party member within a medium radius around you.
Passive Skills
Below are explanations of the passives, including how they can synergize with other passives and skills. The order in which you slot passives for your Throne and Liberty Tank build doesn’t matter.
Let us take a look at the Passives for the Beginner Tank Build and explain what they do. This is also the main reason why Sword & Shield and Greatsword mix so well. Greatsword has good passives that give you increased health and health and mana restoration as well as damage reduction.
And once again keep in mind that passives of both weapons are always active no matter what weapon you are currently holding.
Sword and Shield Passives
- Resilient Mind – Successfully evading or blocking an attack restores Mana and Health!
- Aegis Shield – Increases Defence by 6 for every 1% of Shield Block Chance.
- Spectrum of Agony – Damaging a Provoked target deals bonus damage to your other Provoked targets
- Gerad’s Patience – Each successful dodge or shield/attack block increases all CC Resistance for a few seconds. Can be stacked up to 10 times.
- Impenetrable – Improves your Melee, Ranged and Magic Defence.
Greatsword Passives
- Victor’s Morale – When you deal damage with skills, restore Mana and Health. This only works with direct damage skills.
- Robust Constitution – Big increase in Max Health and Health Regen.
- Indomitable Armour – Has a low chance to increase Damage Reduction by 23 for a few seconds, stacks 3 times.
Skills and Passives Upgrade Priority
| Skill | Upgrade |
|---|---|
| Shield Strike | Uncommon > Rare |
| Robust Constitution | Uncommon > Rare |
| Shield Survival Technique | Uncommon > Rare |
| Counter Barrier | Uncommon > Rare |
| Strategic Rush | Uncommon > Rare |
| Resilient Mind | Uncommon > Rare |
| Provoking Roar | Rare > Epic |
| Robust Constitution | Rare > Epic |
| Shield Survival Technique | Rare > Epic |
| Shield Strike | Rare > Epic |
| Chain Hook | Rare > Epic |
| DaVinci’s Courage | Rare > Epic |
| Strategic Rush | Rare > Epic |
| Counter Barrier | Rare > Epic |
| Resilient Mind | Rare > Epic |
| Victor’s Morale | Rare > Epic |
| Aegis Shield | Rare > Epic |
| Spectrum of Agony | Rare > Epic |
Equipment for the Sword & Shield Beginner Tank Build
When you are levelling up this build don’t worry too much about gear. The gear itself only becomes important after level 50. Therefore make sure to simply equip whatever you find and focus on leveling up your skills. Make sure to read our Throne and Liberty Equipment Guide to understand the basics of how gear works. Additionally, we also recommend reading the Throne and Liberty Gear Enchanting Guide to get an understanding of how you can improve your gear and why it is important.
Please note that since this is a beginner build, the gear mentioned below is just a guide – you can get by just fine if you decide to use a different gear setup than what is mentioned here. You can click on the items in the tables below to find out more about them.
How To Obtain the Gear
The easiest way to get the beginner gear is to do as many daily quests as possible. That way you can farm “Contract Coins”. You can pick up daily quests in Kastleton at the Contract Manager Noss at the townsquare. The Daily quests often reward you with things like:
- Quality Lithograph: Weapons
- Quality Lithograph: Accessories
- Quality Lithograph: Armor
With these Lithographs you can then craft your starter gear! Sometimes the Contract Manager might not have the Lithographs, you can try to refresh the page and new ones will pop up.
Contract Coin Merchant: Next to Noss you can also find the Contract Coin Merchant Kail who will sell you these Lithographs directly (scroll down to the bottom of his list) for 100 Contract Coin each. However, we recommend just doing the dailies to get the Quality Lithographs because the coins are better spent on other items.
Now you can simply move up the stairs and you will find the Weapon Crafter Ragere, Armor Crafter Rachel and Accessories Crafter Marianne. With the green Quality Lithographs you can craft any of the green items they offer. Of course, you will need some crafting materials, but you often get those by simply doing the dailies. Otherwise simply click on the crafting materials icon and click on “how to acquire” and it will show you where to find them.
Weapons
| Weapon Type | Weapon |
|---|---|
| Main Hand: Sword & Shield | Field Soldier’s Sword |
| Off Hand: Greatsword | Charger Broadsword |
Armour and Accessories
| Item Type | Item |
|---|---|
| Head | Retainer’s Visor |
| Cloak | Shaman’s Cloak |
| Chest | Guard’s Plate Armor |
| Gloves | Holy Knight’s Plate Gloves |
| Pants | Holy Knight’s Iron Gaiters |
| Boots | Holy Knight’s Combat Boots |
| Necklace | Crude Wave Necklace |
| Bracelet | Crude Conquest Bracelet |
| Ring 1 | Crude Stone Band |
| Ring 2 | Crude Stone Band |
| Belt | Crude Meditation Belt |
How to Play the Tank Beginner Build in TL
In this section of the Throne and Liberty Beginner Tank Build, we are going to take a look at how we intended to play the Tank Build.
Beginner Tank Build Defense and Healing
The main point of the Tank Build is to be tanky and take aggro over the enemy monsters. That way your group members can deal damage without getting hit (most of the time). Your defensive skill Shield Survival Technique has a short cooldown and doesn’t cost much. If you successfully defend against a Fury Attack you also restore Health and gain a Magic Shield that absorbs damage for you, that way enemies won’t damage your health.
Activating DaVinci’s Courage increases your Max Health and Health Regen by a lot, if the skill is already upgraded it also boosts the Attack Speed of the whole party. But be wary when you use this skill, it has a long cooldown.
The Counter Barrier is a great defensive skill for our Throne and Liberty Tank Build because it increases our Shield Block Chance by a lot. If it is upgraded to higher quality the cooldown is also fairly short.
The Fortress Skill has a huge cooldown, make sure to only use it when you need it. The skill applies Damage Reduction in a circle around you for yourself and your party members.
The Robust Constitution passive boosts our Max Health and Health Regen permanently. Indomitable Armor also increases our defences by a lot. That is one of the reasons why Greatsword works so well as an off-hand weapon for our Tank Build. Resilient Mind lets us restore Mana and Health as well.
We could go on but you get the idea of how the build gets great defense capabilities with all these Skills. Read all the tooltips carefully to understand what each skill does.
Beginner Tank Build Rotation
Tank builds don’t have a real rotation, you need to react to whatever comes at you accordingly. The important takeaway is that you use the defence Skill Shield Survival Technique when an enemy hits you with a Fury attack to restore health and gain a Magic Shield to absorb Health. Also, don’t immediately trigger all your Skills, make sure to have the high cooldown Skills available when you are in a tricky situation.
Tank Tips & Tricks
- Don’t focus too much on gear early on. Gear farming only becomes important after you hit max level.
- Get equipment that gives you extra Max Health, Endurance or Evasion.
- Always keep track of your cooldowns, especially on the high cooldown Skills.
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