Alliance Francophone Interguilde Age of Conan

• TABLE OF CONTENT

• 1.into

• 2.Feat’s

• 2.1-depravity

• 2.2-Desacration

• 2.3-General NEW!!

• 3.AA’s

• 3.1 Explanation

• 3.2 Priorities

• 3.3 Alternatives NEW!!

• 4. Builds

• 4.1 PVP

• 4.2 PVE Tank

• 4.3 PVE Dps

• 5. Gear

• 5.1- First items

• 5.2- Melee Tanking

• 5.3- Magic Tanking

• 5.4- Dps

• 5.5- Final Setups

• 6.Combos

• 6.1- Explanation

• 6.2- Specific rotations

1 Intro

The Dark Templar is one of the Most complex classes in AoC, It is hard to master but above all hard to understand, Its a class that Tanks DPS’s and Heal, so to fully understand it you need to have a very wide domain of the game mechanics.

Im writting this guide to give a little bit of support to both old and new players. These reflect my views and my perspective. You can write your own view.IF you have the NEED to tell me I am wrong according to what you think, feel free to choke on natural fertilizer.

This Guide is Focused only on pve group play and Raid, which is pretty much where my time is spent, I wont Be posting any lvling up speccs or sologrinding things.
In the case of pvp, premade is pretty much a non-existing metagame, 95% of pvp is FFA frag fest and the other 5% sadly is chopping rocks. neither do I agree/support a K/d attitude from a tank in pvp. As in pve I am a firm believer that the Soldiers need to be the first ones to enforce tactical objectives in pvp. (carrying flags capping points)

If there is some incorrect data please feel free to point it out.

Strong points.
Insane damage scaling.
Insane Self Heal.
Deals both physical and magic damage (this is sometimes a Weakpoint).

Weak points.
Completely Gear+AA dependant. (does nothing till VOM and full gear but more on that later)
Short range.
Not 1 full immunity skill.
No Usable CC resists besides AA.

2 Feats

Key feats I wish to advice or clarify.

2.1 Depravity.

Soul barrier PVP+PVE

• This is the MVP of desacration. It pretty much creates a permanent bubble that absorbs dmg you take and converts it into mana damage. Its also a very phsycological feat, cause till your out of mana, people pretty much think you dont take damage.

Mind shatter PVP+PVE

• This one is by far the best CC Templars have access to. its a fast 1step combo, that stuns 360º everything in your weapon range.
  its pretty much deep into tanking tree. but its a very important tool.

Hex marked soul PVP+PVE

• The closest thing we have to a bubble. its a whopping +2500 protection. this looks like alot but when farm a protection set ur getting at best +15% mitigation for 8 seconds. Still a must have.

Invunerable soul AKA seal or yog. PVP+PVE

• Fully feated this improves you CoI by adding +5% protection to the covenant and gives you 5 stacks of 500 protection(that refresh every 10 secs). each time you recieve spell dmg, one of this stacks will convert into a Arcance Seal. you can have up to 10 Seals and when you use Seal of yog youll get a whopping 1% crit chance per stack and a your crits restore your mana.
  When you ‘burn’ your seals you also get a mana burn retributive buff. this buff’s base buff is bigger the more arcane seals you burn, however hostile spells will increase this mana dmg further up to five times, by +20/+40/+60/+80/+100 %.
  Id like to point out that this is by far the best PVP group tool we possess, it shuts down casters so fast it aint even funny. its hard to avoid AOE’ing Templars with CoI running, and supporting the COI drain with Mystical banes pretty much makes casters tottaly useless and a free kill. In a Siege for example a single DT can shut down a full row of SW’ing casters with mana drain.
  Also like to point out that this skill is a must for undergeared tanks, since decent protection pieces are hard to obtain, 500 free protection is a must.

Seal of Chaos PVP+PVE

• This 1 point wonder is simply a AoE aggro, thats increases heals on you by 20% + 2.5% per target (up to 4), HOWEVER by speccing other feats you passively adds effects to SoC.
  Cristalized Ether adds a mana regen dot on you per target affected, MAX 4.
  Consuming bulwak adds a hp regen dot on you per target affected, MAX 4, Can crit.
  Ether reap adds a unholy dot on targets around, MAX 4 targets, Can crit.
  As you can see SoC is a pretty sweet deal for 1 point. Its is a shame that its has a 60s cooldown cause versus the other soldier classes that have 25/20s cooldown, cause this is our second aggro tool, and in raid tanking that needs alot of aggro switching, using it is not so optimal. since the burst of threat is higher then of the other 2 tanks. And I state this cause currently, DT’s have highest aggro generation over time.

Dark Hand PVE+PVP

• This is pretty much a Spell does unholy dmg and gives you some HP back. it has a nice 20s cooldown, by itself, its not worth the 5 feat points HOWEVER, this spell interacts with 2 other. by itself it does around 400ish unholy dmg, but if the target is affect by '‘drain strenght’' this value goes to the 1000’s, the healing effect goes for 400’s and if you have '‘blood pact’' up it will heal up to around 1000ish.
  Never Take this feat. Number may look good but to get it you need to loose either a covenant or Ether Reap, either one gives you much more.
  Fiendish hand
  Last I checked (and I did) This dosent multiply the healing component only makes DMG aoe. what I mean aoe will mean dmg to mutiple targets but never heal from multiple targets, same with Hexes(further down).

Dread shadow PVE 100%

• Each templar receives a undead warrior from our super duper secret templar order. They are remains of fallen warriors collected from the vast territories of hyboria. Its important that you name your shadow and let others know his name. Mine is named '‘Roberto El terrible’' former spanish conquistador.
  At a heavy mana cost I can summon him, and not only will he fool whatever boss im attacking into attacking him(for 15s). he will also place a evil curse on his target making them suffer more from yours and your teams unholy and holy attacks (15% spiritual ruin). He tanks like a champ bieng only bested by enemies with very precisse and strong attacks(he got 100%evade+immunity can be oneshooted by higher lvl mobs doe to their natural hitrating bonus).

Stay away from:

• Warped dread end feat line.-The combo itself is not THAT bad. but dont fool urself it costs 11 Points cause both feats beneath are useless.

• Improved martydom-Total pointless feat. 5 feat points get 200 mana+stamina no ty. this was already bad, now we dont even need stamina.

• Vigor+ether leech-sure ull still see alot DT using this. you dont need stamina at all, and 6 points for 6% mana drain is pretty darn expensive.

2.2 Desecration

Bligthed Soul+touch

• This feat may not look like much, but it is. especially touch. Its proc a Aoe around you wich crit and has 4 extra dots of dmg if I remember right.

Covenant of Arm PVE+PVP

• DT’s main covenant, youll be using this 90% of time, pretty much when you dont need a defensive one. Does tons of DMG and approach to death is just icying on the top. A must on every build.

Pact of Malacodor PVE+PVP

• Imba Stuff, In DPS speccs this is #1 on your dmg done.
  only thing worth explaining is, the mana cost is not really a cost its a Drain part of the proc. What this means in a practical level is, This proc WILL ALWAYS proc regardless of how much mana you have.
  Reaper of malacodor PVE+PVP
  Aoeing this proc is not really a big deal but it dosent drain extra mana per target hit AFAIK. Worth the point.

The hexes PVE+PVP

• This is the only reason to even hold a tali, but its a good reason

  Hexes is pretty simple mechanic, they adds 100% bonus dmg on next hex. till a maximum of 300%
  There is 2 hexes
  Shadow=full dmg
  Blood=midrange dmg+midrange heal

  There have been reports of 20k dmg Hexes in t3 trash(have negative Invuls with debufs)

  Shadowed Blade Simply adds extra 5 procs per minute to your passive hits. They dont debuffs so you will rely on your hex spell in order for these procs to hit harder.

  Spreading shadows is bad. The aoe dmg it does is insignificant cause targets near main wont be debuffed, Its a small AOE. and it dosent Debuffs the targets it hits. And also Shares healing mecanic from dark hand, you dont get mutiple heals from hitting mutiple targets.

Ritualistic bloodshed PVE

• Redudant in groups, Imba Stuff in Raids. IF your doing a hybrid DS+tali build dont get this feat. mana cost is super heavy. good feat but only viable in full dps feats.

Unholy empowerment PVE+PVP

• Makes all the magic dmg procs from desecration crit harder. Must if DPS

Shadowed Soul PVE

• pretty controversial about utility VS cost. Its it mostly used in pve dps feats In pvp you cant specc it cause you will loose too much survival to feat it along side dooming presence, also the cost is pretty much 11 points, 10% combo dmg is ok But touch of death is weak for 5 points.

Dooming presence PVE+PVP

• Just get it, highest dmg combo we own, easy to interupt but in pvp landing this gets you a frag.

Stay away from

• Devouring blood frenzy.-You dont need a minor healing proc when you are not supposed to have aggro to begin with.

• Sacrificial Fury-Only Time you even use martidom is when you do SoC, once per minute TOPS, and those 9 sec’s duration is barely enuf to get 1 decent combo out.

2.3 General

Hateful Strikes

• This is a major aggro boost, You don’t really need this unless you are starting out and play with a already geared group of friends. 3/3 it gives you 20% hate for 10 secs with 2 min CD, The most Efficient use of this buff is By either using it at the very beginning of a pull to generate the best burst on pull and everyone can immediately start nuking the target, or if you are confident wait 2 or 3 combos to have a good amount of VOM stacks running and then use it, therefore applying the 20% hate to a higher DPS compared, therefore generating a higher threat.

Burning Vigor/surging health

• The heal is actually ok, it goes for a bit over 250 hp per proc, This would almost be worth speccing if it weren’t for its abysmal low proc rate.

Counterstrike stance/ Antecipation

• Stay away from these 3/3 conterstrike gives you a mediocre 11 retributive damage for melee only, And if that wasent weak enuf, Anticipation gives you 50% chance of doing 23 damage when receiving damage from attack (not spells), The big thing here that makes these totally pointless is that nothing scales those numbers up, nothing.

  No they don’t Crit.

Goad+Goad mob

• They both have the exact same function, Goad is single target close range(very), while goad mob is Aoe (5mt). They both apply the Goad debuff on target preventing any other goad to be applied on same mob for the next 30 seconds.
  Goad’s function is pretty simple, It gives you the same threat as the #1 threat holder and gives you aggro. Dont be fooled tho, this is the thinnest aggro you can have, If you just lost aggro and ONLY use goad, you will loose it again very very soon, and for tanking purposes, If you goad a mob out of another tank, a simple irritate will return the mob to the previous tank.
  In order to be functional with goad you must always use either irritate or SoC right AFTER you have goaded, creating a nice threshold of threat to work with.
  Let me also State that there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to ever specc goad mob, Unless you skiped Goad, Since they both work the exact same way and you cant use both at the same time, Since goad has 1:30 CD and goad mob has 5 min, its pretty obvious you always go for goad.

Cunning Deflection

• This is the most important feat in general tree, the description is pretty accurate despite the fact that it leads you to believe that it reflects 50% of the damage it also mitigates, It dosent (anymore) It does from 200 to 400 damage back, It s not treated as retributive damage but as a proc, and since its physical damage (slashing) it will always hit the attackers armour, therefore making the damage range a bit spread.
  Now if you read the tooltip it says a interesting thing, it affects next attack and all the subsequent attacks in the next 1 second, is that you will take half damage and proc the damage back for each hit happening in that one second to every source. And this little detail is the reason why Assassins doing Grim corruption on your Cunning will suddenly loose a nice chunk of their HP. So its a pretty good counter for extremely fast combos in pvp.

3 AA’s

3.1.1 General AA’s
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I wont bother with many AA’s description cause most of them are straight up stats gain.

Elusive Nature PERK

• It increases your Chance to Mitigate critical hits from any type of damage. It is a Rating where 36.6 will add 1% chance to critigate.
  This feat you can neglect when you are starting, cause most likely you wont have so many critigation amount. however It increases you passive critigation chance so Its very important to have it maxed ASAP.

Empowered Mommentum

• First off, dont feat this till you got everything full It is a interesting AA and this is only reason why Im describing it to you.
  It adds a Slashing DMG proc to your Stun proc from Momentum, when you double tab foward for 5 secs for me it procs about 180 slashing dmg and it, is AOE like 90º 3mt cone(I didnt test these values just a rough estimate). the Stun proc can trigger more then once on those 5 seconds especially if you are hitting mutiple targes. As it is Aoe, It will proc the aoe each time any of your targets procs the stun.

  Note that is Gets buffed by '‘75% spell dmg’' vom stack, but unfortunately It dosent crit.

3.1.2 Soldier AA’s

Resolve Perk

• When Equiped It gives you an ability with that removes wracks from yourself. In pvp wracks are 10% debuff to either elelemental/spiritual/physical Resists, However in Hardmodes they have varied effects and In most cases not removing it will have very big negative effects on The target, Either it is a high mmount of DMG or a really big debuff or even both. In HM’s you pretty much have to Have resolve to be able to tank most of hardmodes.

Forced Engage

• This feat is extremely important.
  First of It gives passive 20% Chance to critigate, this is Extremely important in pvp and Relevant in pve.
  Secondly it gives you an ability that will '‘Goad’' the target for 4 seconds, I cant even begin to explain how usefull this is, not only in HM’s but in raid aswell. Lets just agree to get this as soon as possible.

Empowered irritate

• IF you main tank this is a must. It double at least the effectiveness of irritate, As you know (or should) Irritate has 2 components, A flat threat injection on target plus additional threat that will disappear after ⅘ seconds. Sadly I dont have numbers or %'s to give you guys.

Rear guard Perk

• This is a cross archetype feat, It will boost all the priests in group with you. Each archetype boosts another, This will boost healers Heal rating which is pretty much meant to heal your ass, in addition also boosts their dmg a little bit. t may not look like a big increase but trust me when I say that a group/raid that manages these buffs will increase their overall damage alot.

Veteran+Warmaster

• I wrote these 2 together cause they dont require much explanation. Warmaster will give you 1% additional weapon dmg per stack after Sadism 5
  to a total of 5% at sadism 10.
  Veteran only Extends the Durations of each stack, making you keep them longer till you loose them. 1 aditional second per point.

3.1.3 Dark Templar AA’s

Void of Madness Major Perk

• This Perk Single handedly took DT out of the bottom of the underdog pit and made it the #1 tanking class and IMO one of the TOP performing classes in whole of AoC.
  My assumption on the Design of this perk was that FC was trying to address the situation where other melee classes with magic dmg sources would have the said sources scale their dmg with melee dmg modifiers, for example assassins miasmas scale up with +%Weapon damage and/or Combat rating(physical), It is also important to Note that none of the DT’s unholy magic damage sources Scale with either +%weapon damage or Combat Rating, DT however are special cause its the only non priest class that has a +magic damage modifier on Wisdom, that is clearly an indication that DT’s were meant to obtain Wisdom/magic dmg to Scale their dmg. However the first tiers of raid gear fail to have an adequate set that scales our damage, this was problematic for some time cause as DT’s Gear progression occurs, the magic damage simply didnt scale. (Later on with the first crafting Revamp we had a nice set to gem some magic dmg into). With all this happening and DT being THE underdog class at that time, came the expansion and AA’s, now DT’s Pwn.

  Most Classes need a combination maximum amounts of damage / critical rating /critical damage to Obtain their maximum dps output, This is Also true for DT HOWEVER VOM allows for the Dt to maximize performance by focusing on only Critical rating as part of their item budget, All the other stats become Secondary. make no mistake VOM would be a clear DPS tool however it plays a important role in survival because one of the DT’s main mechanics is also the life Tap(life leech), and that makes out damage output be directly connected to our survivability.

  Another curious aspect of VOM is its application, because Dt is probably the 2nd class that can perform more Crits per minute loosing only to necro, Dt have access to a severe number of hits that CAN crit and that makes vom very efficient in DT, as opposed if it were implemented on a Barb for example with a lower number of hits that can crit per minute.

  Lets get to the buff Itself.
  Void of Madness is a passive Ability which when you perform a critical HIT, will randomly give you one of the 6 following buffs:
  +35% weapon Damage
  +75% Base spell damage
  +250 magic damage Unholy
  Chance on Damage Unholy Magic damage Proc 15PPM
  Chance on Damage Crushing damage Proc 40PPM
  +125% Critical damage rating.
  Each of these buffs has a 10 seconds duration. Each critical hit will either give you a new one OR will refresh a current already running buff.

  These buffs speak for themselves, getting high crit chance and keeping that insane crit dmg buff up will have a big impact on damage numbers. those unholy and crushing damage procs can also crit, therefore providing aditional PPM’s to feed the vom machine. And everything else is just gravy.

  Take note that +% base spell damage DOES affects friendly and hostile abilities that you perform independant of their damage or healing type, this information is very relevant cause it helps you determine the maximum potential of stuff like Dark Hand, Divine benediction or even the dot from Brutal Enraging strikes.

  I hope this wall of text helps you understand better the specc and gear decisions that I present later in this guide.

Scarab Knight Major perk

• 25 Seconds Buffs, while this buff is up your melee hits and Hexes will place a weapon dmg and magic dmg DEBUFF on target, this buff stacks up to 5 and at 5 It will do a 5mt Aoe unholy dmg, the dmg is quite significant, However the debuffs only work for PVP, they do absolutly nothing in PVE. After the fifth stack procs the target gets a 10 secs debuff that prevents you from proccing it on same target. I also worth noting that this skill has a 1 magic coefficient.

Blood Shroud Major perk

• The Stamina drain and the mana regen are % based, so getting a low stamina pool and high mana will give you optimal results, Dont take this as a advice to use this skill, cause its horrible. Its also worth noting that the deflection stops if your mana gets full.

Crimson Succor Perk

• New rank of Bfa, Gives you 100 mana back when you finish the combo (20 per rank)

Sanguine Infusion Perk

• Improves your Auras, by adding more procs to them.
  On Aura of dread fury, adds unholy dmg 10 PPM.
  The dmg is quite nice actually and it Outprocs unfeated AoDF.
  On Infusion adds 15% chance when hit to do unholy dmg to target and place a 6 secs small heal on yourself.
  More points increase PPM and % chance, AoDf gets 2PPM’s per point and Infusion get 3% per point.

Death lord Perk

• This is a very nice combo, new rank of Leech life, Does full unholy damage(Hello bells mirth!!) and on top of that gives you 15 secs buffs 13.5 life tap AND 7.5% base spell dmg, AND on top of that it places a 15sec debuff on target that removes 10% of each tap type.

Unwiling Sacrifice Perk

• Removes life cost from martydom, and instead give unholy dmg to 1 target in max 6 meters. It adds a much larger cooldown to the skill more points reduce this(but dont remove it)

Improved Covenant of Death

• It adds 1.5%(0.3 per point) to magical and physical Taps to both covenant on Pestilence and Invulnerability, Also Improves blood for blood.

  Blood for bloods is a Innate ability DT’s get a lvl50? from covenant of death, It gives you 2000 Unholy combat rating for the nex 3 attacks, when you perform a killing blow using Covenant of arms. Im not 100% sure on values but as far as I Remember blood for blood has a 20 sec CD to proc and each point reduces this by 1 second allowing it to proc every 15.

3.2 Priorities

PVE
The path to specc a New DT is pretty simple, for general AA you can put one point on 5 of either wards or precisse/pressing, for Archetype, Vitality invigorate and Empowered Irritate are your next choices with more then 1 point on each OR you can feat resolve in order to be able to main tank sooner, and after you obviously get Void of madeness.

What to max first:

Let me start by saying that what you max must OFC reflect your needs, some AA’s can be compensated by gear other cannot, one especific example is pressing(hit rating+crit dmg) you really want this for the Hit rating, however if you have access to some Tiger gear you can skip this and get holy protection if you have troubles tanking NYALTOTHEP(hope thats correct).
with this in mind when you read the order of importance remember to always compare it to what you actually need versus what you can and cant compensate be switching gear.

General

1. Decisive- Max that CRIT

2. Wards In no especific order Depends on what you are currenly farming (holy for you KK fans)

3. Elusive- Max that CRIT[size=-2]igation[/size]

4. Pressing- Max that Hit

Archetype

1. Resolve

2. Irritate- Max that hate

3. Forced Engage- Max that CRIT[size=-2]igation[/size]

4. Invigoration- Kite like a baus

5. Vitality- Survive like a baus

Class

1. VOM

2. CD reduction on ASFOF

3. BFA and MB feat at a equal scale

4. Improved covenants of death

PVP
Maybe one day.

3.3 Alternatives

You probably never need this, but its a fairly fun debate to have, What would DT’s use if vom was nerfed to the ground ?

For a DPS approach the obvious choice is Sanguine Infusion(dread fury) + Death Lord, they work pretty well together. I pretty sure these 2 minor perks are substantially more efficient then Scarab knight, however Scarab knight may be a interesting feat for a full + magic damage build due to its damage coefficient (1).

For a Tanky approach to things, I would go Sanguine infusion(infusion) + Crimson Succor/Death lord. Crimson succor In a attempt to maybe do a specialized Pve build with less Mana regen feated and freeing some points for other stuff.

Its kinda sad but Blood Shroud and Unwilling sacrifice don’t really find a usable slot, I don’t mean that they are pointless(blood shroud is totally pointless) but in a late game perspective you will equip these perks zero times.

4 Builds

Now that you know a bit more about what you tought you knew, Imma give you some Builds and talk about them a little bit. Consider them a Base to work with and not the DT build. overall we have more good feat’s then we can actual use points, and you will also need to adjust what you prioritize and dont. Just remember to try alot of things and read ALOT of parses.

Also regarding Multi-specks, remember, as you progress you may encounter one or two situations that will require more out of your toon, I usually shift around gear to compensate, but using multi-speck is also proves to be efficient to squeeze the maximum performance out of your toon in regards to compensating a lack of DPS or mitigation you might encounter.

4.1 PVP

My pvp Build

I havent pvp’d at all for quite some time now. This is my Sword and shield Build, There are some good Tali build around but I have not pvp’d with Tali so I Cant really advise one.

I can tell you this much tho, Sword and shield DT has probably the best DPS/mitigation Racio ingame atm. where we lack with CC resists and bubble we make up with survival and really good support CC’s.
This build allows you to be a threat in frenzy, and quite tanky in defensive.

4.2 PVE

Beginer Tank specc

this is pretty much all you need with a bit more mitigation to help you out while you gear up. once you get some better items switch to this.

General tank Specc

That last one is the specc I currently use to tank full T4. You can Ofc specialise general tree by removing either Stone skin on Iron skin for defensive stance, but you dont need to.
The speccs are all pretty similar. They max out the usable PPM’s so we get the maximum ammount of crit’s per minute to make your vom feed you the Max dps it possibly can.

4.3 PVE Dps

Pve dps specc

I Tried a couple of these out, There is a couple of bossfights you can actually full nuke and dont worry about aggro, And this was what I found to work the best.
The Combo rotation of this build is BFA3+BFA4 Thats it.

I tried out trying to take advantage of Touch of death even with devourers Might, you simply loose DPS. Desecrated blood simply makes BFA too good to do any other combo. I tried using BFA1+2 cause it was the best option to outproc our stuffs, but atm the combo DMG of rank3+4 just pays off more, Rank 5 is just too slow. regarding Unalowed blight (the debuff combo) If you have a Sin or pom debuffs for you, dont bother even doing it. And if do, use highest rank.

For this build You go FULL magic dmg. with maxximum ammount of minus hate possible even at the cost of a little(not alot) of critical rating or magic dmg. When those hexes start hitting for 3k, tanks will have a REALLY hard time keeping aggro. the only way you can do effective DPS is if you dont need to stop Hitting.

There is another Pve+dps build build.

DPS + Roberto el Terrible

Now this build is REALLY interresting, and fun, I recommend this build for Startup DT’s.

You will DPS like a pro, can offtank a little and also use your Dread Shadow to offtank (I hope If you read this long you named it by now).

The combo rotation Changes ALOT, you use LL on CD to keep the Gluttony up for its dot, and you will need to use MB’s to keep your mana up. Again, your combo rotation will need to prioritize shields but more on that later.

On both builds (or any dps) NEVER do any DPS in defensive. you should switch to neutral if you can tank for a bit and keep hitting, switch to defencive only if you stop completely. BFA is your imba dps combo, but its also our aggro combo, and If you do it in defensive stance you will inject additional aggro on boss, and we want none of that. Minimum threat, maximum damage.

Also on this build try and use some Wisdom around 200/300 for the extra mana/magic dmg. 200 wis will give you 600 mana wich helps alot to use Pet+hexes without constraint . Use drain essence instead of drain life aswell.

5 Gear

5.1 Starting Items and intro

This is why DT is fun , you need tons of loot, go go buy those item shop bags give FC some money.

3 things you will want:
Full Melee Tanking full set.
Full Protection Tanking set.
Full wis/magicdmg DPS set.

If you got access to Tier4 Fearless souls+ minor courageous, is all the options you will ever need.
Imma give you some Options available in 6mans and give you start priority for different functions.

By order of importance the stats you want on Gear is:

• Crit

• Hate

• cons

• Mitigation(armor/prot)

• Hit rating**

• crit dmg rating

*The % mitigation Values in Raid instances, need to reach a certain threshold, what this means is that if you dont reach a certain ammount of mitigation you will receive a higher amount of damage. I wish I had specific numbers but I don’t, I keep my mitigation on the 55% area and when that is reached I try to scale my damage instead.
**The hit rating value for hardmodes/t3 should be between 10% and 15%,Tier4 15% and 20%+,Old world stuff just the 10% will suffice. you may need more on a Specific boss so remember to keep an eye out for dmg numbers.

Startup Items

• Eye of the watcher + Unholy magic dmg gem

• 2xDreamer keepsake + Magic dmg gem

• Black Phalanx Shield + unholy magic dmg gem

• Blue Iron hammer + Bels mirth

• Regarding armor just go and Take those khitai blues every always leaves in the boxes.

Weapon
Get ibis or Stick with blue iron hammer.
for Dt there is 3 weapons wich are good, everything else is '‘ok’'

• blue iron hammer

• Ibis

• Azure Dragon (tier4)

Bels mirth makes even a weapon like Blue iron hammer outperform most raidweapons besides t4, and let me tell you also that Tier4 is a slight upgrade to Ibis.
Sure you can get a Str+crit weapon. It wont be a bad thing, Once you parse and compare your hit ull understand why bels mirth (even post nerf) is a great thing for DT. just make sure ur not parsing bels mirth on a straw man, cause its one of the few targets where it dosent matter.

Just a side note into my choice of weapons since there is some debate about it, Str+Crit+Hate is a very good combo, for any tank. Those stats are present on the Guardians Raid swords, DT counterparts miss the hate component.
There are 2 things you must Take into consideration: Fist The biggest Upgrade from any of these weapons is their base DPS and that my friends dosent really scale on a DT. The Second factor is that DT to be efficient needs to be a bit horny when it comes to DPS, Hate, Hit, Str and cons, and things you can get on several other pieces of gear, in the same amounts (if not higher), then on a weapon.
I take these 2 things into consideration and, Try to always get the most functional thing for my toon and if I lack on a stat like HP ill simply try and compensate on a belt or shoulders.
If you want to be a bit bulkier or simply dont agree with my POV, here is a list of str based Epic weapons you might wanna check out.

• Tier4 Guard sword for hate+crit

• Any Tier DT weapon for crit+cons

• Blossoming Death (yellow priests)

• Pain’s Edge (AoK)

If you dont wanna spend time farming lower tiers and cant afford a Ibis, blossoming death is a pretty good choice.

5.2 Melee Tanking

Full Armor Set you want:

• Last Legion hate head(rares)/fort of ardashir (drops from last boss in HM)

• Tiger’s Chest(rares)

• Last Legion Hate pants(drops in yag/ai or rares+moa)

• LL hate shoulders(Cavern of malice)

• LL hate wrists (moa)

• Tiger gloves (Pillars of heaven)

• Wolves Belt (Reliquary of Flame)

• Wolves Boots (moas) / Tiger boots (moas)

• Kakaba guide - Hyrkanian Necklace/ Amulet of asshuri (Rares+moas/iron tower)

• Death ward - Brittle blade Ring (rares+moas)

• Milestones str reward ring

• Str or hate cloack from house of crom

• you can use the shield that drops in Yag/aok or keep the crafted.

Adding that Fort is a wonderfull place to start gearing up a DT, and its also a good place to be a weak offtank, cause you can. The chest and legs that drop there for tank, have perfect stats for DT, the values are low tho.

5.3 Magic Tanking

Protection Items you want:

• Yagkosha Barb protection head(rares)

• chest

• Legs

• LL protection shoulders(den of crow)

• Wrists yagkosha barb protection (moa)

• Gloves yagkosha barb protection (Pillars of heaven)

• Belt yagkosha barb protection (Vortex)

• Boots Yagkosha Barb protection (moas)

• T3 Reward neck

• Death ward - Brittle blade Ring (rares+moas)

• T3 reward (wisdom) ring (if you REALLY need it, I suggest keeping a dps one)

• Black dragon cloak / amras pride

• HOC shield (forgot name) drops on fist boss.

*There isnt really good options for these slots for a DT in khitai. I suggest keeping the melee tanking pieces with crit/hit. I didnt really wanna go in T3 stuff but those quest rewards are easly obtainable.

I really wanted to avoid getting into ‘raid’ Gear here, but in the case of protection, it’s just impossible, the black dragon set and the acessories are just too good.
I also want to add that for chest/head if you can, get black dragon especcially the head, that head is still the best(even vanity) head
for any tank ingame atm.

If you need some fast protection you can either get craft rings which is are a bigass boost, OR you can go AOK and get those blue protection rings/neck with hit rating and crit but low protection, I suggest the later.

5.4 PVE dps

DPS items you want:

Before I start lett me just Say that DPS DT means going full magic DMG, melee dmg dosent really scale, and magic dmg does, ALOT.
Keep in mind im not posting a MAX dps Setup, it is instead a Setup which you can Actually DPS with.

If you wanna know more about the procs and the DMG numbers there is a great guild by -tul- and reposted by Kourose here

• Fort of ardashir head

• Scarlet circle (SC) chest (rares)

• SC legs (yag/ai or rares+moa)

• Yun priest shoulders (Pillars)

• Yun Priest wrists(moa)

• Yun gloves/SC gloves (den of crow / copice)

• SC belt (Flame)

• SC caster boots (moas)

• Amulet of souls/Lost soul of jovus (Iron tower last boss HM/crow’s nest Q.reward)*

• Milestones double wis Ring.

• wakening mightmares/ Valkas wrath (AI/HOC)

• wis shield from Shadows of jade.

• Ancient Sands (fort of ardashir)

This might be an unusual List, I Prioritize Hate decrease over magic, cause you pretty much have to. I know there are ALOT better gear to improve dmg numbers, but what I want here is maximum actual DPS not burst and stop. The more Hate decrease you have the more dmg you will be able to do without taking agroo. For full DPS just get full SC,keep mage boots tho.

5.5 Final Builds

As any tank you need alternative Sets to adjust to whatever you are doing, As a DT you need even more.

The Setups im About post are Generally the best option Ingame atm. Not saying other pieces arent important, and ill add a list of few items that you will need in order to Adjust for maximum performance. As with everything these are indicative, adjust to what you need/prefer.

Tank-melee

• Head- Fearless

• Chest- Fearless

• Legs- Fearless

• Belts- Courageous

• Boots- Courageous

• Shoulders- Courageous

• Wrists- Courageous

• Gloves- Indomitable

• Neck-T4

• Back-T4

• Ring-Str T4 ×2

• weapon- Azure

• offhand- T4 DT shield

Head- Indomitable for max DPS and less aggro then fearless
Rings- Death ward, Coil of jiang.shi for max HP
Cloak- SC cloak/hoc.hate for even Extra HP

Tank-protection

• Head- Fearless

• Chest- Fearless

• Legs- Fearless

• Belts- Fearless

• Boots- Fearless

• Shoulders- Fearless

• Wrists- Courageous

• Gloves- Fearless

• Neck- T3 Quest reward

• Back- Amra’s pride

• Ring- Deathward+Band of khan

• Weapon- Azure

• offhand- T3 craft shield

Rings- Double T4wis for holy/unholy mitigation+dps
Ring- T3wis reward Ring for max mitigation
Neck- T4wis for holy/unholy mitigation+dps

Dps

• Head- Dragon king

• Chest- Dragon King

• Legs- Dragon King

• Belt- Dragon King

• Boots- SC cloth

• Shoulders- Yellow priests

• Wrists- Yellow Priests

• Gloves- Dragon king

• Ring- Double T4 Wis rings

• Neck- T4 Wis neck

• Back- T4 Wis back

• weapon- Azure

• offhand- T4 divinity Serpent talisman

SC wrists and shoulders for total max Dps
T4 Dt talisman for max dps