Today I wanted to give Tanks out there a few tips on how to make doing content more fun and enjoyable for you as the Tank in New World. If you’re an experienced Tank, feel free to share any tips you have for inexperienced Tanks in The Tank Club Discord! Our aim is to help improve the Tank community in New World together!

Ok so lets be honest, Tanking is such an unappreciated role. It’s the highest pressure role and requires the most mechanics knowledge and encounter experience. There is a massive lack of Tanks in New World which isn’t dissimilar to most other MMOs. One of the big reasons for this in New World is other players making it not fun or enjoyable, and not allowing newer Tanks the chance to learn, with pressure on performing at the highest level expected almost immediately.

If you haven’t done a certain Expedition before, it’s going to be generally hard learning it from a Tank perspective on the fly. If you join a lobby, contact the lobby creator before you go into the Expedition and just be honest and let them know that you’re not experienced in this expedition – if they want to keep you in the group and help you out then great, if not then you leave because it won’t be a good environment for you to learn and understand anyway.

Point the cursor at a location on the screen and click the middle mouse wheel to place a ping marker (can be adjusted in settings under “Ping”).

One of the fastest and most reliable ways to let your group know what you plan to do is to place ping markers. Let your group know at the start to “follow the markers” so they have an idea where you plan to stack the enemies, where they need to stack, and what everyone is doing.

New World Tanks are required to take more of a leadership role for Expeditions to make them run more fluid. If your group don’t stack then you will have a tough time keeping aggro of enemies, the healer struggles to keep people alive and enemies don’t get aggroed, so it’s in the best interest of group members to follow the markers and follow your lead.

Fed up of people running ahead or ignoring your instructions? Setup your own groups!

The lobby can be a daunting place. If you join random groups you often don’t know what you’re going to get, but from my own personal experiences I rarely get a group I enjoy running with when I apply to join in a random run.

Setup a group of your own and write a custom title explaining what type of run it is.

Message the players who request to join your lobby and let them know what the run is about so it’s really clear. Letting all the group members know for example that you are doing a M3 clear but not gold

“This is a progression/clear run not a speed run M3” you’ll get likeminded people join who are not expecting the greatest run but will be more inclined to be more patient and won’t leave after the first add pull. If people run ahead and behave poorly, block them so that they won’t be able to see your lobbies in the future. Thanks to Björn from The Tank Club Discord for that tip!

It’s common to want to progress quickly and get through content in New World.

I would really suggest not to go running into M3 Expeditions as soon as you’ve completed M2 for example, as it’s not a good indicator for how hard the next difficulty will be. There are big difficulty spikes between M1 to M2 and M2 to M3, and quickly jumping up to the next stage straight away is not advised. Things that don’t kill you on M2 might kill you on M3 and so you need to take your time to learn.

• Complete the regular Expedition once or twice to get a feel for the boss attacks and the layout of the expedition.
• When moving onto M1’s you need to do that a few times until you have picked up on the mechanics and learnt the sound/animation queues for major boss attacks, along with knowing how to pull each add pull and where to stack it.
• Moving onto M2 the damage you take will drastically increase so now this is where you take your mechanics knowledge and you need to apply your knowledge of Tanking to sustain and survive, effectively buff and debuff enemies to and complete M2. You’ll need to have really good use of abilities and your rotation and on add pull be able to keep them aggroed and almost permanently crowed controlled so they can’t hurt your team.
• Moving onto M3 is currently the real PvE endgame and they are harder than the previous M10 expeditions. You need to be hugely prepared and know everything about the expedition including how to aggro all enemies, where to stack them, when to dodge, how to play mechanics and have good awareness of the expedition, your team and especially the healer and where the healing is being placed. If you don’t know pretty much everything about an expedition you shouldn’t really be attempting M3.

As you progress through the content in New World you need to optimised your weapons and shield especially because there are a number of critical buffs and debuffs provided by these such as Fortifying Shield Rush as a Shield Perk and Sundering Clear Out as a perk for a Hammer. Having optimised gems and jewellery is also really important, allowing you to gain increased durations on your Fortify and Weaken, improve you Max Health and incoming Healing, reduce the potion cooldown and more.

You also need armor that’s is at least decent. Any armor that has 2 really good perks is useful, but if you haven’t quite upgraded to get a perfect 3rd perk it’s manageable to complete content with 1 lesser perk on your armor as long as it’s still a useful Tank perk.

Using Shield Wards and Amulet Protection perks is really useful for harder content and you should use them in the relevant places (see our Ward and Protection Guide).

Make sure you have ward potions, coatings, honing stones, housing trophies and for emergencies things like blight potions, gemstone dust and oakflesh balm. All of these are really important and you need to make sure you use food, honing stones, ward potions and coating at the start of every expedition. All of these things buff you and improve a range of different things to improve your ability to Tank.

To keep aggro and do everything you need to do in the most efficient way, you need to rotate your abilities, sometimes in a priority order while not burning through your cooldowns too quickly, space out those skill casts!

You need to figure out the priority order of skills, and make sure you do not go into combat using taunts first in most situations, you need to build some initial threat with basic attacks and none taunt abilities before activating a taunting skill.

For example you would go into combat, on a War Hammer using Clear Out to crowd control, debuff enemies and give your group Fortify, allowing your group to get into a good position without them taking too much damage, you get into position and then hit Shockwave to AoE debuff and taunt, hit some light attacks before using the next ability, spacing them out enough that you can keep hitting another ability every few seconds.

These tips are designed to enhance your Tanking experience in New World, making it not only more enjoyable but also fostering a supportive and collaborative community. By following these guidelines, we can work together to bolster the Tanking community and ensure that Tanks are appreciated for their vital role in the game. So, whether you’re a seasoned Tank or just starting out, remember that with cooperation and communication, Tanking in New World can be a rewarding and fulfilling role.