Section 1: The Need to Know.

As you probably know if you're reading this thread, there are three distinct paths to consider for your potential Chosen's career.They are:

Dread- A pure offensive tree, focusing on improving damage with greatweapons (2handers), critical chance, and adding additional abilities for the more aggressive minded.

Corruption- The tanker's choice, this tree is full of abilities to further strengthen your staying power in combat, long duration stuns, and should draw the attention of those looking to be a sword & shield tanker.

Discord- A tree full of abilities to counter enemy abilities. It includes healing debuff aura's, aoe knockdowns, as well spell disruption abilities. This tree is made for people who want to insure they have a trick up their sleeve for any offense targeting them.

Now, as you know, renown aside you have 25 points to play with amongst these three paths. The choice you then must make is dependent on your choice of playstyle. Decide on what you want your strengths to be, and pick abilities and tactics that further strengthen what it is you want to excel at. Most career builds tend to focus on one tree with another tree as a minor supplement to the main tree's ability and tactic choices. It's important to note here, that while there are a number of very powerful and useful tactics in each tree, you have a core set of tactics in addition that are rather potent in their own right. It's my suggestion to browse over the core tactics and find what you can't live without, or what you would want for a pve and rvr setup and plan what career tactics you buy accordingly to how many open slots you have left to play with.
(In addition, I think it's important to note here that using the wardb.com career builder, as well as the in game career training that you have to spend a point to buy abilities on the tree. You do not receive the ability simply by gaining enough ranks to light up the tier it is attached to.)

I can't say I'm knowledgeable with the playstyle of a 2hander focused Chosen. I don't like it in comparison to sword & shield setups. That doesn't mean I have anything against the decision to specialize in greatweapons.There are already a number of heated discussions on the topic in the Chosen forums, and I'll leave that subject to be debated there.

That said, I do have experience with the sword and shield focused play style, and this guide is devoted to detailing out what I've found to be effective in both pve and rvr situations.

Section 2: Tanking-A Guide to being beaten up! Productively!

To begin with, I want to describe the sword and shield playstyle to better explain how it works within Warhammer online. Unlike most MMO's, a shield does not add additional armor to your character's armor rating. Armor rating is exclusively what you have equipped on your character's body. In that regard, you will notice that for the Chosen, most pieces of equipment have armor ratings comparable to what your chest piece has. Far more than most traditional mmo's or rpg's in general would grant gloves, shoulder pads, helms etc. This means that a 2hander wielding Chosen is entirely capable of matching the armor class of a defensive sword/shield equipped Chosen.

That said, you may be asking yourself. "Well, why not use a greatsweapon Hexmaul?" The difference is that the greatweapon only grants the ability to negate attacks with parry, which to my knowledge is only capable of triggering in response to melee based attacks. A shield on the other hand, in addition to the same parry chance, has the ability to block ALL types of attacks at a significantly high rate. Yes, spells, special abilities, auto attack strikes, arrows, bullets, knives, pointed sticks. All of it. As far as block chance goes, properly equipped currently my Chosen is enjoying roughly a 19% block rate against incoming attacks. This is what makes a sword & shield setup shine, essentially a 1/5 chance that each attack directed at you will simply be blocked. With renown point upgrades, I'm confident that my example block rate could be at least 12% higher if you include the Defender tier 3 renown ability.

Now, a 1/5 chance to block still leaves a reasonable chance to take a hit, and that is where armor rating and toughness come into play. For a sword & shield setup, these stats are king. As toughness reduces the dps of all damage received, it is key to keep this stat as high as possible. At time's I've vouched to take a piece of armor with lower armor rating than what I had currently, simply because it granted a substantial amount of toughness.

Finally, wounds. What tank would hold their head high without an impressive amount of hp after all? Hp is important, yes, but not so much as it was in other games within the mmo genre. In previous games, HP defined the tank, followed by armor, and then any additional threat mechanics or boosts. However, it's my opinion that while a solid hp pool is important, it's priority has shifted with the mechanics in play for tank types. With that in mind, I've set a series of priorities as far as tanking potential is concerned that I think works well for the tank oriented Chosen.

Block>Mitigation>Health

The reason behind this is the way damage is or isn't taken. In most games, block chance was a somewhat common chance, but not very often. In that setting, hp and armor was king as I mentioned, and was more or less solely the reason that character could tank to begin with. Here however, the block rate is at such a high percent chance to successfully negate an attack, and any attack for that matter, that it has become an absolute top priority for any aspiring tank in my opinion. The higher your block rate, the more damage you negate entirely, and the more it takes to even hit you much less bring you down. So with that in mind, it is my strong suggestion that your shield be the first piece of equipment you upgrade at any opportunity to do so.

After your shield comes Mitigation. This is achieved through Armor and Toughness. Now Chosen benefit from wearing heavy armor, and lots of it. No other armor type will match the armor rating you will achieve as a tank. And our armor comes in all flavors of stat bonuses, and this is where you further define yourself as a tank. It's very important to make sure that what your wearing grants you the most armor and toughness possible for you within your range of options. If those renown boots have somewhat more armor than what you have now, but significantly less toughness or none whatsoever, I would lean toward passing on it. After all, what you need to do your job is lowered dps on you from your opponents, and that's exactly what armor and toughness does. It's also important to note that toughness reduces the dps from all sources, not just direct melee. That means in raising toughness, you're raising your spell damage mitigation as well.

Finally, Health! Yes I remembered! Health comes most noticeably with levels, and at max level you will have more health than those you're protecting at a base level, and any extra wounds you can get to increase that is all the better. I would not take wounds over armor or toughness, but if it comes with those stats or I have the option of trading a minor amount of toughness for a significantly higher amount of wounds in an armor slot... Sure, I'll take the wounds. But only in those cases. Mitigation and avoidance is the name of the game here, and I promise you we do it well. Wounds have become a topic of recent debate on the Chosen forums, with the current state of toughness and how it determines damage received, and many Chosen are now opting to focus on wounds for certain high damage situations where dps is coming in large blows versus longterm smaller damage. Time will tell if this setup is superior, or viable as the game and levels progress, and I'll do my best to make sure this guide reflects the best possible methods of stat stacking.

Now then.. The boring tank mechanics lecture is over! You made it through the novel so far and if you're reading this now I appreciate your endurance, you have the strong will to push through! That's the makings of a fine tank personality! On to the good stuff, the tactics, abilities and strategies specific to Chosen.