It hasn’t even been one year since I wrote a guide on how to tank raid with hammer, but now is the time to finally close the series with builds and rotations for shotgun and chaos tanking! These builds assume you have a weapon of Efficiency for the purpose of maintaining correct rotation timings. Passives also assume any shotgun or Dark Mysteries / Torturer’s Instrument chaos / hammer weapons.
We’ll start with shotgun. Shotgun is unequivocally the best option for tanking raid as it has several advantages over melee weapons, foremost of them being range, and a flexibility of taking an extra ability because of signature in-built taunt.
Let’s take a look at some example builds then:
- Default build.
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This is what most Shotgun tanks run, it provides the most mitigations, while still giving you great range and aggro with Rocket Pod.
Default Rotation (Numbers denote amount of stacks for timing purposes): USM + 60sec cooldown (Reinforce Shells / Invoke Self) + Sonic Blast / 30 Kneecapper / 20 Sonic Blast / 10 USM / On next rotation use alternate 60sec cooldown
Rocket pod is used alternating with Scattershot to keep aggro on boss as well as triggering Efficiency suffix on weapon (if applicable) and keeping up Reinforced Rockets passive stacks.
Alternate Rotation: Kneecapper+ USM + Sonic Blast / 25 Sonic Blast / 20 60second cooldown (Reinforce Shells / Invoke Self) / 10 USM
There is no discernable benefit to alternate rotation other than it being easier to transfer to a different tanking weapon since that’s how all the other weapons usually tank, with using elite on pull. The drawback of this rotation includes dropping like a sack of potatoes because Kneecapper is probability mitigation and does not guarantee you will mitigate anything, especially if you don’t have any other glance % buffs running. Using USM in conjunction with KC will mitigate but not completely remove this issue.
- Alternate Build
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This build replaces Rocket Pod and it’s passive with Evulsion and Invoke Self passive. This causes several differences that are both beneficial and detrimental.
Benefits are:
Being unable to reload into the wrong shell type by accidentally clicking into rocket pod reload option and switching your shell type. Since the only abilities that give you options to reload are basic and Kneecapper, you are always reloading into the shell type you want, be it AP for exposing or Anima Infused shells.
Having access to an extra ranged taunt makes some tricky situations trivial, such as grabbing hulks that have been attacked by a dps from a buff circle (dps from buff circle can crit and outaggro tank power abilities), switching stacks during personal space (you no longer have to risk being flattened due to having to move into personal and taunt), being able to use SB indiscriminately to provide extra mitigation as you don’t have to worry about it coming back off cooldown in order to swap stacks.
Drawbacks: This is not actually a drawback and is mostly irrelevant to most raids, but assuming you are either undergeared, or are running with very high dps (55k+), you might have issues holding aggro on hulks or 3rd bird without access to rocket pod if you don’t stagger taunts and extend their total duration to 10 seconds. Provided you do space taunts out and if you have high enough dps mobs will die long before taunts run out. That’s the only place where a small decrease in aggro of this build compared to default one is relevant.
Mitigation wise they are similar since you’re trading off one mitigation passive for another, more powerful one.
Weapon Options:
Shotgun:
- Bolstering Blaster - Greatest benefit of this shotgun is the lack of necessity to hit anything to proc cdr on elite. While efficiency affix will potentially allow you to fit two kneecappers into a rotation (shotgun CDR head signet recommended) it’s not really a great idea since you will have to open with kneecapper and there’s no control over when the 2nd one becomes available, so if you do attempt that kind of rotation you open yourself up to being gapped by stacks 25-15 for varying amounts of avoidable damage. At best it’s a rotation that you will have to improvise on the fly and is of any benefit only on paper. And if you use it with a normal rotation then Efficiency affix is functionally useless. Bolstering Blaster of Recovery is a much better option since it can help you recover up to ~100k hp and still be able to do correct timing. Restoration is a decent, albeit a slightly inferior, choice.
- Thundering Demise of Efficiency - you need Efficiency to do correct timings, and the useless Munition Expert passive takes away your ability to expose, but mitigation wise being able to fit an extra passive in place of All Eyes on Me provides, in my observation, the highest amount of potential mitigation through using displacement passive. Alternatively you can use Multidimensional threads to further reduce damage curve peaks.
- Redeemer of Efficiency - If used with blue shells for Exposing can add up to ~700k damage through the entire raid duration, otherwise acts as plain shotgun of efficiency
- Howling Dog of Efficiency - Super easy application of expose, team-wise the benefit is superfast pod expose since you can reach them with rocket pod easily.
Chaos:
- Dark Mysteries of Efficiency - Long Term Chaos is the only passive effect you’re getting from it in practice, but it’s a great one buffing your doubles’ health and increasing Aegis damage delay duration.
- Sanity’s Aphelion of Efficiency - if you are usingThundering Demise shotgun and can afford to manually run Long Term Chaos in place of All Eyes on Me, Aphelion becomes a compelling alternative to using Displacement passive since it functionally provides the same effect, but potentially doing it more frequently. The difference, naturally, is that the timing is random, as opposed to being tied to using Invoke Self, i.e. getting a 3rd double when you actually need it. Not really worth running with Non-TD shotgun as dropping a shotgun passive in favour of LTC is a survivability loss.
Now we move on to Chaos builds:
- Immutable Elite
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This is a better chaos build, as it provides more mitigation than an alternative build reliably. Big benefits include going up to 90% delayed damage and clearing 95% of it after Immutable expires. This essentially renders you immune to big damage spikes on pull and makes healing a smooth experience. Having access to ranged taunt also gives you some of the benefits listed above in shotgun section, except since it’s the only taunt you have to be mindful of when you’re using it.
Rotation: TF(Twist Fate) + Immutable + Agitator / 25 Twist Fate / 20 60sec cooldown (Invoke Self / Pain Supression) / Repeat using alternate 60sec cooldown on next rotation
- Anomaly Elite
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This build has Anomaly instead of Immutable which has a consequence of having less reliable mitigation (if you roll evades really good you can take absolutely no damage or all the damage in the world) and providing extra expose for the raid. Another drawback of this is that Anomaly is a channelled ability and if for some reason you need to dodge (like out of personal space or fist) you will interrupt it and lose mitigation which is not something you have to contend with if you run Immutable build. Generally I would consider this to be an inferior option.
Help! I don’t have weapon of Efficiency!
Well, in that case there are alternative rotations that you can use, and provided that you are maxed IP and have a competent healer it shouldn’t be a problem. Shotgun default build can accommodate non-efficiency weapon with just a change of rotation. Essentially it will look like this
Rotation: 60sec cooldown + Sonic Blast / 30 Kneecapper / 20 Sonic Blast / 10 USM. Repeat swapping Kneecapper at 30 for USM (Kneecaper won’t be off CD yet because of no efficiency)
For Chaos you will have to alter a build since you’ll have to drop taunt gadget in favour of USM for extra protections.
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Rotations:
1st: Twist Fate + Invoke Self + Evulsion / 25 Twist Fate / 20 USM / 10 Twist Fate
2nd: Twist Fate + Immutable + Evulsion / 25 Twist Fate / *20 USM / 10 Twist Fate
This somewhat compromises survivability compared to the optimal build, but it should still be doable, given maxed gear and competent healer.
Edit: Added visual representation of cooldown rotation with evaluation of when you can expect most incoming damage
