Gladiator End Game Builds

[Draven]

UPDATED: My original post consisted of a few skills that I stopped using, and didn't contain a lot of very useful skills that I had'nt discovered to be effective in tanking.
This post has been almost competely rewritten, now with better links and simplified into more of a list of things you'll want to consider for your tanking needs.




Topics this posts contains in the order they appear:
Skills, Traits, with brief notes on Point Allotment and Rotation.



Build Type: Paladin (Defense and Self Healing)
Main weapon(s): Sword and Shield
Sub classes to level: Pugilist (30), Marauder (30), Lancer (30), Archer (15), Thaumaturge (30), Conjurer (30), Sentinel (50), and of course Gladiator (50)


There are higher rank skills that are good past rank 30 for some of these classes. However, ranking up almost every job to 30 is enough for the average tank. I don't want to overwhelm people into thinking they need to rank every job to 50 to be a great tank. That's just not true. Ability and skill as a player is more important than the skills and traits their Gladiator has.

Many of these skills are situational. Meaning you may need them for one kind of battle and not for another. Depending on your battle, you'll want to swap in and out some of these skills. Please note that you DO NOT have to try and fit all these skills into your bars at one time. Know your fight and pick what you need.


Enjoy~


If you see these before the skill name, this is what I mean:
(E) Emnity Burst - Skills that can potentially gain you a lot of emnity.


Gladiator Skills:

Heavy Stab

Heavy Slash

Phalanx II

Spinstroke II

Circle Slash II

Howling Vortex

Luminous Spire

Rampart II

Sentinel

Still Precision II

Tempered Will

Obsess II

Provoke II


Sentinel Skills:

Shield Bash II

Outmaneuver

Aegis Boon II

Deflection

War Drum


Archer Skills:

(E) Raging Strike

(E) Hawk's Eye


Lancer Skills:

(E) Ferocity

(E) Comrade in Arms


Pugilist:

(E) Taunt

Featherfoot

(E) Accomplice


Marauder Skills:

(E) Bloodbath

Skull Sunder II

Defender

(E) Warmonger


Conjurer Skills:

(E) Profundity

Shock Spikes

Protect

Shell

Cure II


Thaumaturge Skills:

(E) Blood Rite

(E) Dark Seal

Stygian Spikes

Sacrifice II




Traits

Gladiator Traits:

Self-Preservation

Swordsmanship

Conjurer Traits:

Fastcast

Thaumaturge Traits:

Firm Conviction

Marauder Traits:

Intimidation

Pugilist Traits:

Prime Conditioning


Point Allotment

Our main purpose is to survive and so our number 1 stat of course is Vitality. This boosts our HP as well as increases defense. Now for me, I hate missing so my next point of interest is Dexterity for accuracy followed very closely by Strength. I've pumped my points into these 3 for the first 30 levels. Moving into 50 I'll place points into Mind for better healing from my Cures and Magic Defense.


Rotations

Rotations are going to hurt you more than help you. It's important to play and learn what works on your own. Every situation is going to be different depending on what your fighting. What works for one group of monsters could get somebody killed in another.


Game sure is changing a lot and I'll try to update this when I can with the new knowledge I've gathered from my experience and from the community.
Thanks for checking out this thread and I hope you enjoyed it. Pass this knowledge around to our fellow tanks so we can all benefit from it.

[Vasch]

I agree, I swapped over to Gladiator because I missed tanking more than I thought I would. Currently only halfway to endgame in the rank 20s, but it'd be great to know there was knowledge on endgame builds available for future use.

[Rydin]

Emulate... FTW

[ShimoMary]

Thank you for your build, I will use for my gladiator.
How should you spend your stat points for this gladiator build?

[Zephy]

Emulate... FTW

Seriously with Emulate and Transcendance you can get about ~40% mitigation versus mobs that are strongly biased toward one element, for 46s on a 1:06s cool down. Unfortunately because of how this is being abused (Thaumaturge can solo NMs) I don't think we're going to see it remain in it's current form for long.

[Falcus]

Featherfoot -> Jarring Strike and Foresight -> Fracture are also some good additions to tanking.
they give you an evade+parry and 2 weaponskills that both give enmity every 30-40 seconds.

[Shift]

Disorient is a very nice skill to have for tanking.

Marauder: Learned at Rank 18

Disorient
Action Cost: 3

Cast Time: Instant
Recast Time: 10 sec.
Range: 12
Flick dust, sand, or soil at an enemy, reducing the target's evasion and increasing enmity. Effect may stack up to three times.

[Falcus]

if you have any spare points, Ferocity can help generate hate as well, though it should be low priority and only used if you have spare action points/slots

[Jet]

I use Lancer's Feint all the time to pick up lost damage. Low stamina cost and fast cooldown.

[Smashington]

Is there anything that prevents you from getting Cure III or Sacrifice III, and using it on GLD?