[Tanking Guide] Your First Instance - Fort Rotulor

To join an instance just go to your Party Settings panel, select Fort Rotulor from the list and click apply. As you can see in the panel you can only do each instance a limited number of times per day. For example, Fort Rotulor can be done 5 times each day.

Fort Rotulor is your first instance. At level 15 you can go there and I recommend going there as soon as you feel ready. I did it at level 22 and it was just too easy. Although I would suggest going there with at least 3 items from the Defender Set (the one you get from Obsidian Shards) so you have some defense.

There's 2 bosses and only a large room with monsters. The last boss only shows up after a few minutes of entering the instance. There is nothing significant about the two bosses. A bit of AoE, specially from the last one. If you need more information on what to expect from the instance you can visit the Forsaken World Wiki which has a lot of information on this instance.

So since there is nothing to explain about the bosses I'm going straight for tanking basics. Depending on your level you'll be lacking on some skills. The first skill and most important that you will need on all instances is... a healer. I'm serious, you will need heals. If you have a Priest in your party then he is the best candidate but Vampires and Bards are good alternatives. Make sure you have a dedicated one which brings food and mana pots with him. If he starts asking for Mana Pots right after the first boss or if he keeps letting you under 50% on the first boss, then consider leaving that party and try another.

The other skills are the ones you learn from Cain, your trainer. The most important ones are:

1. Mental Focus.
2. Counter Strike
3. Blessing of the Stoneman
4. Hard Smash

Mental Focus

This is your most important buff. It grants you extra threat and has some synergies with other skills. Make sure you have this buff up all the time. If you ever start losing threat and your target starts focusing on other players it probably is because you forgot to keep Mental Focus up.

Another wonderful thing about this buff is the other buff (Fury) you gain by having it up combined with monsters attacking you.

Counter Strike

This is the skill I use most. Hard smash is good, specially if you have Mental Focus up and it's cooldown is reduced to 3 seconds but it's a bit of mana waste unless you are struggling with threat or want to do some DPS on a boss or something. For this reason only, I stick to using Counter Strike a lot more than Hard Smash. It has 3 main advantages over Hard Smash:

1. Gives you a free stack of Fury, which is great when you want to quickly build those 10 stacks of fury.
2. Does around 50% more damage than Hard Smash. Also, with talents, it has the same cooldown (3 seconds). pretty short cooldown.
3. Gives you another Buff: Guardian Mode. This gives you more defense at the expense of attack. It is a direct trade of X points of defense in exchange for X points of attack. Very much worth it and something to keep at 3 stacks when doing any boss.

For mana conservation I suggest using it when Guardian Mode is about to end.

Blessing of the Stoneman

This is your typical 30 minute buff. Gives you a bit more of defense and damage reduction. Make sure to have it up, specially before a boss fight. But apart from that it's not a critical buff, like Mental Focus.

Hard Smash

A damage skill. Nothing much more to add about it. Use it whenever you want to build some quick threat or when you want to bring a monster down faster.

A Last Note

Make friends with the good healers you find and also good and friendly players. Good Damage Dealers are hard to find too. They will be the ones you want to poke to join your party when you are online.