A mini-guide to tanking YM, Greenrooms + Kam. All done

[Omnileech]

A lot of people don't know how to tank Yellow Maze very well. Here I'll show anyone interested in how I do it and hopefully it will make your crew experiences more productive. Yes, I know you can do yellow maze just fine without a tank in crew. I feel that it clears out yellow maze very quickly and as such is the most effective way to go. You're free to disagree of course.

Firstly here's my usual set for yellow maze. Shuriken also works well enough. Hot Foot works well because when raged debuffs dodge like adrenaline. Shuriken has a better dps. Any other attacks will work so feel free to experiment.



I usually go with 2-3 passives. In this set I showed off two. If you don't have Integrity then Fortune's Favor will do just fine. You can feel free to experiment with more attacks and less passives too. I've YM tanked with one passive and hack and mantis before.

For an attack I suggest a ranged one so you can attack enemies at distance outside of their AoE range and crewmates attacking the target won't get hit. Hot Foot is great because when you rage at r3-r4 you lower enemy's dodge likes adrenaline. Shuriken is good too because although the AoE is small, the DPS for shuriken is the best for any ranged ring. Other ranged attacks will work too so go with your preference. Melee requires more finess and better judgement because you have to be close to enemies and have to watch out for your teammates getting hit by the area of effect of their damage.

For buffs I usually go with Iron Will because it scales with level and I don't let my buffs expire and Iron Will is very important to have on at r4 at all times. It is also not an armor buff and I like giving those to people without healing rings so they can r4 their buffs more easily.

For ring assignments I leave Meat optional for most people. People lower than cl 10.5 should take it. Finally I ask that everyone have three attacks: hack, mantis, slash for the most damage. One adrener, one knifer, and empty spots be used for passives.

So a sample set of high level people might look like this

Person 1: Hack, Mantis, Slash, Teflon, Keen Aye, Fortune's Favor, Fitness, Adrenaline
Person 2: Hack, Mantis, Slash, Rock Armor, Divinity, Fitness, Fortune's Favor, Knife Sharpen
Person 3: Hack, Mantis, Slash, Pot Lid, My Density, Fitness, Fortune's Favor, Integrity
Person 4: Hack, Mantis, Slash, Improbability Sphere, Ghost, Fortune's Favor, Fitness, Bump (people without integ should get a 4th attack or a healing ring to help in a pinch. Bump is a good 4th attack)
Person 5: Hack, Mantis, Slash, Healing Halo, Coyote Spirit, Fortune's Favor, Fitness, Integrity


Tape is not needed and neither is Scaredy Cat. As long as the tank knows what they are doing they can survive yellows without need for crowd control and using it just slows things down.


Finally you're ready to start. When you get into yellow maze you want to have the Tank go in first. Then the Tank gets into position. You'll want to aggro most of the enemies.



Here you see me aggroing every enemy in the room. The crew should always go after the most convenient aggroed enemy furthest from the Tank, which in this case is that vampire furthest right.



Note that you need to be healing the crew as much as possible as well as yourself. You should be using your rage for r4 bandage and r2-r3 wish when needed. If you have full rage you should use it immediately because you'll be using r1 diagnose and r4 bandage for the most part and anything less is liable to get you killed. Remember that everyone's life is in your hands. Never let your buffs fall. Remind the crew not to let your buffs fall. A buff expiring in a room full of enemies can doom a run.



You'll have to move if the enemies get close enough to you that they hit the attackers with their AoE even though they're targeting you. It's the tank's job to move when needed and they need to act quickly sometimes the enemies will move to you for no reason and you'll have to adjust to keep your distance. This is why I prefer shuriken: I can attack without having to reposition again.

Night Fright and Big Dog tips

Night Frights are the most challenging things in yellow maze but as long as you know how to tank them they're not a problem unless you want to go fast. Here's what you do.

1) Enter a room and gain the Night Fright's aggro. Keep in mind where it originally was in the room when you entered.
2) Kite the Night Fright and reset it. Resetting the Night Fright is really easy to do in Yellow Maze. Just run from one side of the screen to the other and if you put enough distance between you and the NF it will stand still for a few seconds before returning to where it started when you first entered the room. Now that it is aggroed you can accumulate aggro from yourself by healing (since there's going to be a room of stuff attacking you).

3) Heal yourself and position like normal but try not to get too close to the nf. Also be sure to heal the others if you need to. If you get too close to the NF because you have to heal or something just reset it.
4) Swap rings around for yourself if you want so you can get extra aggro points for yourself. The NF should be the last enemy alive in the room anyways.
5) Tell the attackers when you want them to attack. I go fast so I tell my attackers to R4 knife and adrenaline. Adrenaline to kill it faster and r4 knife so that if someone does steal aggro the nf misses a lot and I can heal the mob.
6) If someone steals aggro heal them. You are the tank and you need to insure that no one dies. This can be difficult if people don't have meat but still very doable.

Or if you want to take it safe swap your rings and heal for a few minutes. It's pretty boring and I like clearing rooms as quickly as possible.

Big Dogs
Big Dogs are really easy in most cases. They're slow and you can reset them. The only problem iis if they root the Tank then every enemy ignores the tank and goes after the other crew members. For that reason I like to either keep my distance from bds and let them reset if they aggro me or I tell my crew to mob the BD and keep within diagnose range of them and use all three heals to help them survive mobbing it. Pretty easy stuff.

I hope that helps. Any questions? I'll work on Green Rooms after I collect some images in my next crew.

[Omnileech]

Green rooms typically take crews a long time to do and that's usually because people have rings that slow down their progress, their team doesn't has assigned roles, or their tank is inexperienced. In any event most crews get frustrated because green rooms take them 3+ hours when it can be done much more quickly. First I'll go over two ring sets I have used to great success. First my favorite set for greens.



Although I've had luck switching out Integ for other rings. Switching out integ for a buff gives more space to your crew for attacks and passives.

This set looks a little strange because most people don't use sets and forget about their bonuses. On the right side I have the Pirate Set equipped and that gives me a significant armor bonus and that makes handling Blood Bats so much easier to do. It also has Slash: a great AoE ring and good to use on bats and wolves because they don't regenerate, Shark Attack which is not a great ring but deals a lot of damage in a single hit and can hit enemies without the enemies hurting the crew from their AoE attacks. Quicksand is really useful too, but what makes the set awesome is that unless there is a Big Dog, Night Fright, or Bloodbats in a room then do not have to kite at all and do not require any crowd control

For those of you without integ, fitness or sugar rush both work well too. Fitness isn't as good but you need the extra stamina. Sugar Rush doesn't give stamina regeneration but the extra speed does help initially for rooms that require kiting and does allow you to reset NFs and BDS sometimes. If you're confident in your abilities try dropping a passive altogether for a buff or an attack or wish. The goal here is to kite as little as necessary to finish the room you're in.

Your crew chasing after enemies does take time away from killing them so less the you move the faster the room is cleared.

Wearing this set you should tell you crew to kill enemies in the following order: Bloodbats, Wolves, Vampires, Bds or NFs.

With bloodbats dead you may not need to kite and wolves hurt a lot more than vampires. Big Dogs and Nightfrights are easy enough to kite so leaving them for last should be the general rule. Of course if there's a ledge of something and an enemy can't attack you then they should be killed last. Like a wolf off to the side for example.

The other set I've used, but not my favorite is this


Same general set but it allows you more freedom of ring choices. You can drop passives for buffs, an attack, or wish if you want to able to heal the crew more effectively. Turtle provides some invulnerability and that can help if you lag or have a lot of bloodbats in a single room.

Attacks that work well with this set would be either fire rain or dervish since you can run and not have to target enemies to attack. For this set you will probably want to have 2-3 people with tape in crew. That's why I prefer the Pirate set more: no tape.


Ring assignments for the pirate tanking set would look something like this

Backup healer: Bandage, Wish, Sweetheart, Iron Will, Hack, Slash, Meat, Integ (or fitness)
Bubu (backup to the backup healer): Bandage, Wish, Rock Armor, Halo, Hack, mantis,slash
Adrener: Hack, mantis, Slash, adren, Pot Lid, Coyote, passive, passive.
Buffer: Hack, Mantis, Slash, Sphere, Div, Density, bump, passive
Knifer: Hack, Mantis, Slash, Knife, Teflon, Ghost, bump, Passive

I give the Backup healer Meat because Night Frights usually try to kill the Backup Healer because quicksand doesn't generate any hate points from NFs and quicksand is where a large portion of where the Tank's aggro-building comes from.

On a side note if your crewed is skilled you don't need a knife in crew and you don't need the BUBU to have bandage. Replacing them with attacks and passives will help speed up runsimmensely.

Roles and what they are to do in greens.

Backup heal focuses on keeping tank alive. Attacks when they can.
Bubu: Assists the Backup Healer though focuses more on heals for the crew if they need it. Attacks when they can.
Adrener: Kills bats then acts as targeter for crew. Everyone needs to look for the adren sign because that is what should be killed. Adrener should target one thing at a time after bats are dead. With bats alive just kill them as quickly as you can.
Buffer:Attacks as hard as they can also keeps their buffs up.
Knifer: Knifes BDs and NFS and Counts when the time comes to kill them. Also attacks as hard as they can. If no knife in crew then just another attacker.

Assuming everything goes well you should average at least 5 minutes a room. You should be able to clear every green room in under 2 hours if it comes to that. Wipes for the crew slow you down so the tank needs to be good the entire run. I'll talk about what the tank has to do for every room next.

If you add more attacks, drop knife, and drop bandage for the bubu and take two buffs as tank then you should be able to finish a room in 3 minutes or less. On my fastest run in Green Rooms we completed 16 rooms in 49 minutes.



Here's a typical Green Room. First of all the Tank should be the first one to enter every room. There's a grace period for every room that lets the tank move to a spot they want to go to or act before the enemies do. First thing a tank wants to do is r1 quicksand and slash. It's why I keep them next to each other on my ring slots. Enemies will instantly attack and you should begin healing and kiting.

Those yellow circles I put on that picture are quicksanding spots. When I look in a room I want to try of a few spots I want to let enemies mob me for a split second, quicksand them, then move to another spot. If I have the extra stamina I use an r1 slash there too, if not quicksanding works just fine. Healing should consist of r1 diagnose and r4 bandage but if your crew is dying you can run near them and rage a diagnose. Most people play using just their keyboard. Don't when kiting. Click a spot on the map you want to run to and start raging your heals if you have rage for bandage or diagnose. By using the mouse you can change direction or change destinations without interrupting your rage meter as you would if you moved via keyboard keys.
If you want to quicksand and then move just outside Blood Bat range that will help your crew from chasing you through the room; you want to avoid that.

In this room in question you should keep running around quicksanding until the bats are dead. You don't want to get hit by the Big Dog and rooted because everything in the room will likely try to kill your backup healer while you are under root's effects. It's important to quicksand as much as possible to keep enemies still.

Never run back through a group of quicksanded enemies. It's a great way to get killed when they attack you all at once. I just have a habit of keeping my next quicksanding point in mind when I quicksand a group so I don't get myself stuck in a corner faced with the prospect of running through a bunch of quicksanded bats to escape whatever is attacking me.

Once the bats are dead you can afford to stand still unless the Big Dog is nearby in which case you want to run.



This a typical NF room. As typical pick your qsing points and kite between them. Be careful of the nf, who may go after your backup healer and they may have to kite too. Make sure the NF is the last thing you kill and killing it is really easy once you get to that.

One thing to consider when tanking a room is that when anyone attacks a NF or BD near the tank or whoever has aggro then it will immediately attack. People with AoE rings should try to be careful as to not accidentally hit the BD or NF. People with bump can always try to bump the NF away from the tank so the NF never reaches the tank.


HPR is really easy to do. Kill bats and fight counts one at a time. Make sure everyone has full buffs and mob the count. R4 knife the count if you have and heal the crew with raged wish and diagnose and bandage. Anyone with healing rings should use their rage on r2-r3 wish. R4 adren makes it a short kill too so make sure you r4 adren and make sure it doesn't fall off the Count.

[Omnileech]

By now I hope you know which coffins you can attack without aggroing Kam. This isn't for that general stuff.

For First Form it shouldn't take more than 40 minutes to do and I'll show you how to do it.

The sets shouldn't be that different from the Green Rooms sets I announced above if you want to go fast. The Tank however REALLY needs to get Wish so you'll need to null and change rings.

A set I suggest for the Tank is...

Diagnose, Bandage, Wish, Meat, Hack, Buff, Passive, Passive.

Your focus is healing but you need to be able to attack coffins or enemies if need be. You can drop another passive for a second attack too if you like but you'll use more superchargers for sure. If you're ok with that then I suggest HWB, Mantis or Slash as your second attack.

Half-tanking, though, is the best way to speed your way through green rooms.
Diagnose, Bandage, Wish, Meat, Hack, Mantis, Slash, Buff. This way you can mob coffins and spawns as long as there are not too many enemies on screen at a time.

You can also have your backup healer drop meat without a problem.

Anyways to do first form you need to lure as many enemies as you can deal with as a time by standing adjacent to the screen where Kamila is when coffins spawn enemies. The first screen if you went to get rings then all the enemies will have already spawned and you'll have to lure. The tank should do that job then but be carful not to aggro Kam.

Anyways tanking first form enemies isn't much different from Yellow Maze except you have more enemies to deal with. First you need to have your positioning down and second you'll have to make sure your backup healer is healing you or else you will be overwhelmed.

*Don't walk off screen if you're fighting enemies. Walking offscreen resets your aggro to zero and your crew will be under attack.*

The kill order should be vampires before bloodbats because bats don't do nearly as much damage here as green rooms and vampires are more troublesome.

Aside from that it's just dealing with Kamila. There are 5 enemies per coffin or 20 per screen. As long as your crew can kill them quickly you shouldn't be overwhelmed.

In summary here's what you do.

1) Kill all enemies from upper right screen (probably will have to lure them off screen)
2) Kill coffins.
3) Hurt Kamila until she flees.
4) Stand directly adjacent to the screen where she runs to.
5) Most if not all enemies will come to you. You might have to lure stragglers.
And then you're back to killing coffins. Rinse and Repeat.

Kamila's not unlike tanking a vampire. Some things to consider when your crew attacks her.

1) Unless you let her attack you for minutes at a time and heal yourself you'll get aggro stolen. Rather than waste time doing that I suggest you just mob her once someone steals her aggro. Stand next to the crew and spam Diagnose and rage Wish.
2) Your crew's survival depends on your backup healer spamming bandage and raging with too. Direct them to use their rage on that.
3) Knife at r4 makes the chance of anyone dying much slimmer. Direct the knifer to keep knife up. You don't need to have knife to do Kam and it's easy enough to kill her without people dying if there's knife up. Feel free to give it a shot.
4) Adren at r4 can make each Kamila fight brief.

With those things in mind killing her isn't too difficult.

To speed things up even more you should pop on screen near a coffin when coffins spawn. If you're next to an active coffin you can attack that with r1 hack, r1 mantis, and raged slash to hit enemies nearby or r4 the coffin with hack. The goal is to kill the coffin before it is done spawning because that means it won't spawn any more enemies. If the coffin you're on is not active then kill the enemies but be wary of knockback because you absolutely do not want to ever aggro Kam until you're ready.

[Omnileech]

There's not a whole lot a Tank can do for Bloodlust other than surviving and possibly attacking but you do need to know how to lessen your aggro during batwaves to keep bats off of you.

You can tank without Sweetheart in crew but it's much, much harder to do. Same with tanking without integrity but integrity makes things much easier.

As far as ghi boosts go you'll want major health, willpower and dodge to make things as easy as possible.

If you can have someone else take Sweetheart then by all means let them so you carry no buffs. If not? Take Sweetheart if you own it.

If someone else has sweetheart you can make this your set.

Diagnose, Bandage, Turtle, Meat, Shuriken, Integrity, Fitness, Sugar Rush.

Or if you prefer a stronger AoE to help with bats take Hot Foot instead of Shuriken.

The distance one needs to be from Kamila is about 3-4 avatar lengths away.



First you need to build aggro to build a lead over the rest of the crew by raging bandage at r4 and use diagnose at r1. Use your attacks if you have stamina and use superchargers for health and stamina.

If you direct other people to "G" on the backup healer you can be within range of an r3 diagnose. Tell everyone to swap rings and you only need to aggro for 3 minutes to get a decent amount of aggro.

5 minutes is a decent time to build aggro just healing yourself an attacking.

Bat waves are at 113k, 99k, 85k, 71.5k, 56k, 42k, 28k, 14.5k unless you have a wave of 12 in which case the last wave won't happen.

Bats have their own seperate aggro system so when they appear on screen heal and attack as little as possible. I suggest healing first with a supercharger after a hit to keeop your health up followed by r4ing turtle. That should give your backup healer enough of a lead to keep bats off of you for a little while then you can heal yourself like normal.

If you're confident with yourself and in your backup healer you can drop turtle and pick up a second attack to speed things along. A good combination for attacks are Shuriken and Hot Foot or Hot Foot and Heavy Water Balloon.

Other than that there's no much to tanking Bloodlust. Keep in mind that no matter how good a tank is the crew determines how successful a run will be.

[Omnileech]

Other guides

How to be an exceptional DMS player

How to beat Green Rooms and Kamila

Credits

I can't really say I've come up with everything here and I can't say someone has taught me everything I know either. Everything I've come to know about the game has been from sharing methods, watching people do things their way and taking ideas I like from them, people letting me experiment with my ideas. And trying new tactics with patient crews. There's also people who challenge me to improve my existing ideas to be better than I was before.

I should probably put in a good word for people who have helped me out in ways both large and small in no particular order. It's a lot of people.

Proletariat Porno, Archaic Tragedy, Aplcor, Sweet Sugar Delight, Luze, La Skullette, PJ, RevvRaptor, BlueO2,Blitz Jax, Poyudi Hytori, Prizzly,Free Epiphany, Yum Moon, Orpheus Elysium, Monkeyshiz of Steel, captain croissanto, Yureineko, melpy, Kayi Laa, Angelic-pulchritude, theivoryrabbit, tonkabean, Fleur-Elise, HCTotorro, -Abilify-, Daoine Maithe, Darc Nightgale, QuiteAmazing, Pirate Captain Sushi, luhft, Gay Crayon, Eternal Rain, Owlie, beckygrendel, vivietta, FaiMaxwell, Darth Daddicus, reavertheoriginalplayboy, sephira yamishi, XxskyggenxX, ValKyrie Ragepunk, esima sama, Alcestice, Iwuvu_hellokitty, Mademoiselle Kit, Dustin H3art, XxXShadowsXxXxX, Spifficated, Nymph of Spring, orryman97, Monoxide Filth, solomon-hellwing, princesa angelei, Heaven Lock, Rin-Okumura-1, MJxD2, OMFG Taylor, .~.Lady_Aji.~., tripel c, twilightreaperX, RafiCat, rebe-chan, Aseres, L3g3t, Lux Fortuna, Zurch, Killer Penguins, RafiCat, WideEyed, Scobre, kandykahne, Starshine, uSuk Plz Stay, Akimi_Fuyoko, Dris Shalee, Mastrophobia, Lost in rhythm, silent hart, Pepperdy, FMFM The Pirate, Mage Ragepunk, Ginnjii, Kitana Hiki, Livin Tranquilized, Nocteur, Mrs synster gates, Vanilla Vampire, apple flavoured fish, Digitalgod17, Zzyli, mlos, Nightmare Katana, OMG Tain, Red Kutai, ryry Kenny_McCormick ryry, ccatman, P a r a d o x x x x x, Ruike Raka, Myrielle, .

[Proletariat Porno]

Wasteland!

[abonai]

Bloodsword is a good 4th attack. emotion_dowant

[Little Miss Fortune]

Thank you for this. I've always wondered what the aggro person is doing during that time when they go onto the screen before the rest of us get there sweatdrop

I still don't feel like I'd really know how to do this myself, though. Like do you just shuriken each of the enemies once to get them to attack you? And then once the rest of the crew gets there, do you just heal the whole time, or do you also keep attacking the monsters? Sorry, I just would really like to know how to do this on my own because I feel bad always having to say I don't know how to do aggro >.<

[Malefic Nite]

This helps alot; thanks

[Omnileech]

Little Miss Fortune

Thank you for this. I've always wondered what the aggro person is doing during that time when they go onto the screen before the rest of us get there sweatdrop

I still don't feel like I'd really know how to do this myself, though. Like do you just shuriken each of the enemies once to get them to attack you? And then once the rest of the crew gets there, do you just heal the whole time, or do you also keep attacking the monsters? Sorry, I just would really like to know how to do this on my own because I feel bad always having to say I don't know how to do aggro >.<

I only use shuriken a few times on a few enemies when I enter a room to get them to aggro and then keep or steal back aggro by healing myself and crew. I wouldn't have enough stamina to attack and heal the entire time so I heal most of the time.

[Zzyli]

Little Miss Fortune

Thank you for this. I've always wondered what the aggro person is doing during that time when they go onto the screen before the rest of us get there sweatdrop

I still don't feel like I'd really know how to do this myself, though. Like do you just shuriken each of the enemies once to get them to attack you? And then once the rest of the crew gets there, do you just heal the whole time, or do you also keep attacking the monsters? Sorry, I just would really like to know how to do this on my own because I feel bad always having to say I don't know how to do aggro >.<

Zzyli - Zzy as in Xylophone, Li as in leaf

Aggro works because each of the monsters uses a hate points system where you gain hate via a few methods.

The first person each monster sees gets one point on their list. After they've seen someone, crew members get one point for each HP they damage the monster, and half a point for each HP they heal someone the monster hates.

So if you have one healer, their hate points quickly outstrip everyone else's.

A pretty effective thing is for the aggro/healer to go in first & get everything (or if a lower CL, a manaegable amount of things) to see it, and start a couple of hits. Then the rest of the crew follows them in & starts killing a target.

It's then just a question of positioning yourself so that the ranged attacks are only hitting the aggro & not the rest of the crew. If aggro shifts, it's easy enough to regain it by a few raged Wishes (they heal everyone within a certain radius, and Wish is ranged). As aggro, you only attack on the rare occasion when everything is under control. Most of your stamina is spent healing yourself & others, as healing cumulatively will get you a lot more hate points than ranged attacks.

Of course, in higher CL crews, having a dedicated healer is optional. It's possible to do it smob style (with less AoE), where everyone dispenses with CC rings & just heals one another as needed. Of course, actually getting people to heal can be questionable at the best of times in random crews blaugh

Omnileech

Nice guide. I'd suggest maybe sticking a big arrow on you in those screenshots, because you're kind of hard to see. blaugh

Maybe you could pop in a link to OMFG Taylor's Aggro guide or pop in a quick explanation yourself of how aggro works? Because it's not always a natural concept to people, and I think for some, the word is as comprehensible as wgstfl.

Accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative...

[Little Miss Fortune]

Thanks, both of you. I think I'm starting to get it. It's just too bad I can't really go practice by myself because I'd probably die before I could even do anything XD

[SmallTownGuy]

I've crewed with Omni a few times, and always been impressed with his/her/its (I'm not sure) skill as an aggro/healer. I've also used that same set when I run as a healer - using a 3rd passive instead of shuriken - and liked it.

But even with that set, I can get into trouble if I aggro 4 or more at once. How do you do it?

[ryry Kenny_McGroot ryry]

i'm interested in learning more efficient bloodlust-tanking techniques- the last time i tanked bloodlust it took well over an hour @__@ i don't think i'd be willing to do it again till i learned some faster techniques sweatdrop

[Mage The Red]

SmallTownGuy

I've crewed with Omni a few times, and always been impressed with his/her/its (I'm not sure) skill as an aggro/healer. I've also used that same set when I run as a healer - using a 3rd passive instead of shuriken - and liked it.

But even with that set, I can get into trouble if I aggro 4 or more at once. How do you do it?

I'd suggest that if you aggro too many mobs, ask your crew to pick off a few first, then deal with the others accordingly. I'd say that I could actually handle 4-5 myself, but I don't take all 3 heals when I Tank.