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Basic Guide on playing Marshals (1-22) Updated 11/10/22

Asfastasican

New Member
Basic Guide on playing Marshals (1-22)

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I figured I'd write a 1-20 guide for Marshals, the black sheep class of Embers. Whether or not they will end up being the best or worst tank of the game remains to be seen, but some of this advice MAY help non-Marshall players in general or with other tanks as well. I was limited to 10 images even though I wanted to use more. I might add/edit things after I post this, if others or friends mention additions later on. I'll amend any additions to the bottom of this guide. Recent edits will be marked with purple font


Hot Keys

Make sure you hotkey all 8 of your skills. You can only have 8 skills equipped in this game. Toggle on "Leave Combat After Looting" the moment you start the game. Hotkey combat stance to something easy like the Q key. Hotkeying "target next" to E is a good idea to cycle through monsters while fighting. I suggest Z for weapon swapping, X for sitting, C for character/gear and B for inventory. You'll need a nearby key or mouse key to toggle auto attack while starting an attack while switching targets in combat on occasion. I'm mentioning all of these hotkeys because they are essential to core gameplay. You'll also need far off key for crouching only if you need to sneak for getting back to your bag.


Stat Advice

Generally speaking, AC is king. Do anything you can to push your AC higher. Save side-grade gear and constantly calculate weight/AC efficiency of new items. Mix and match to squeeze out as much AC as you can. General rule of thumb is that you want to be at 300 AC with your shield up at least before reaching lv 20. More AC is even better. Riposte will come if you bother using a polearm, but shouldn't be thought about much. Block is good and parry gets better late game as well, but remember that AC is always king. Physical damage resist is also very good and should be ranked higher than the other resists, with stun and daze resist being rated higher than their counterparts.

Penetration is very useful on weapons and maces in general. Maces are excellent tanking weapons and may end up being the best overall. Its worth mentioning that penetration does not directly increase your threat, but it does improve your damage. Hit is a good stat, but it remains to be seen if its the best stat while leveling. Hit does boost your threat, but moreso on mobs that are higher level then you. Different weapons shine in different tiers. For example, Ravenrock sword at lv 15 is a pretty solid weapon, but other maces at different level ranges can outperform swords at times. Still, you cant go wrong with most swords

+1 hand or +2 hand modifiers are actually % increases to damage from what we have seen. This means if you have an item that gives +5 1 hand dmg, it really means its giving you 5% more damage while using 1 handed weapons.
Flanking will also buff your modifiers, such as penetration. Always remember to fight mobs in front if you are off tanking with a 1 handed mace or attack from the back/sides if you are using another type of weapon. I'll mention which weapons are preferred in a section down below.

With all of that being said, stamina regen is crucial to every class in the game, but it helps tanks the most. This isn't a subject of bias. Generally speaking, many experienced tanks are all saying that healers and DPS are pushing themselves too hard in general and generating too much threat. "Bad tanks" or "Bad threat" isn't as simple as judging a player or what class they picked. There's currently many factors involved when determining why your tank is losing aggro. It's going to happen. I'll discuss the threat rotation in a section below as well, but for now, know that stamina management is pretty difficult for tanks. More stamina obviously means you have more energy to spare and allows you to use more skills more often. More skills means more damage and more threat. More threat means DPS and strikers can push themselves further. Basis MMO logic at work here.

Getting as much health regen on the side is great for tanks and any class too. Less downtime. That's a no brainer. But keep in mind certain types of health regen do not work in combat.

Every embers player will tell you that picking and choosing your armor to stay below or at your weight limit is a part of every class in the game. Tank can consider going a little bit over their weight cap in dungeons to maximize AC, but be mindful of the penalties that brings. You should always be under or at weight when solo'ing or traveling.


Trade Skills
You can pick any trade skills you want in Embers, considering this game encourages you to have up to three characters, having one of each role and being able to have access to all 9 trade skills. (3 trades per character.) I personally went armorsmithing with the aim of only having one main character, so assume this guide has that armorsmithing focus.

If you want to be more self-sufficient, it's recommended to pick up the core gathering skills first BEFORE picking your production skill 3rd at tradeskill lv 12. in my case, its recommended you pick up hunting first (to make use of all of those kills you make on the way to level 10.) Once you get Hunting to 6, you can pick up prospecting. Once you get both of them to 12, you can tend pick up armorsmithing and use all of the materials to level that up higher. From then on you can work towards getting them both to tradeskill lv 20, hopefully around the same time you reach actual lv 20.

You should prioritize the ember fluxes towards getting better gear to constantly push your AC higher, then consider to have imbued tools made second. Is faster gathering great? Especially while dungeon crawling? Yes. But is it more important than maxing out your AC or having a solid weapon? Hell no. You can wait those extra 2 seconds. You are playing Grinders Adrift after all, so I don't want about you not wanting to waste your precious time. Using fluxes on jewelry can even take more priority than using them to have weapons crafted.

Threat Rotation

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I'm going to get this out of the way right now. Long story short, the three skills you will need to use very often or on cooldown to hold aggro in groups are Provoke, Threatening Strike and Sweep (yes even on single targets.) They are the TTT (triple threat trinity.) You should try to always start with Provoke at range then follow up with the other two. But for the sake of conserving stamina, you should stick to these 3 and only these three as the skills you want to use on cooldown. If you push things further and use additional skills, you will drain your stamina past a comfortable threshold. I prefer to start a fight by Provoking then smacking it with a Sweep, because it hits hard and has the longer cooldown to get it to refresh faster. It's worth mentioning that Halt and also Pursuit apply additional threat as well when you are in between cooldowns of the TTT skills or dealing with a mob outside of melee range. But I'll go into detail about these and other skills in the next section. You are always going to have Berserkers pulling aggro and you will always have to manage your stamina, but the TTT is the baseline of what you need to be a competent Marshall or a decent tank in general.


Skills Overview

Strike

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Your first skill and also your weakest skill. It will be the first skill you will replace or swap in and out at lv 18 when you get your 9th skill. Some players say its worthless and they aren't wrong, but Strike still does provide +2. Even after you replace it, it can still be used while solo'ing, burning your stamina to blow up mobs quick with 4 attacks (Strike, Threatening Strike, Pressure and Sweep.) I recommend replacing Strike with Resistant and keeping all other skills while solo'ing. Resistant is superior in group and tanking situations, whereas it doesn't help that much in solo situations where Strike is worth using. Every other skill is useful in all situations. You can also swap it out for Dodge if you aren't a fan of Dodge in Solo situations.

Threatening Strike (TTT)

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An excellent skill that's a part of your main threat rotation or TTT. The main reason why it's excellent is that the cost scales downwards dramatically as you level. If you don't mind generating threat on your target, you really can't beat using Threatening Strike to deal damage because its very stamina cost effective.

Provoke (TTT)

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Your typical taunt skill that's apart of the TTT. Has a somewhat low range but is the best skill to start a fight with a mob your group is fighting. You can use it or kunais to pull if a DPS in your group isn't on pulling duty. Always try to save some stamina to be able to cast this if you need to peel a mob off of a teammate. You don't have to use urine often, but you can toggle it on when you really want to try and save an injured teammate that has aggro. Its worth mentioning that you should always apply provoke on a CC'ed target while its incapacitated. If you don't, changes are the mob that was CC'ed will run straight at the teammate that casted it on them the moment it breaks. Poor Brigands.

Resistant

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Your first defensive cooldown. What makes this skill viable is its lower stamina cost later on. Try to weave this while you are tanking in a group when you know you'll be taking decent damage for the next 20 seconds or so to help your healer. Definitely worth using if there's 2 or more mobs hitting on you and threat is established. This skill or even dodge can be less useful in solo play, but its low cost still makes it competitive to put it into your 8 skill selection.

Halt

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Probably your class defining skill. Just like it other mmo's, damage will break its effect. It has many uses and is very powerful in all scenarios, even when you have careless teammates. I'm going to list a number of caveats and things you should know about this skill below:

- In groups, its recommended you Sweep first before rooting, as long as you or your group can handle a couple of hits while you cast both skills. It generate helps keeping them focused on you.

- This skill generates threat pretty well on its own and can be used as a pseudo-aoe taunt. You can still apply provoke on a target afterwards to increase threat on it without breaking your root.

- Want to handle one mob at a time in any situation with multiple mobs? Just root and step aside. You can then focus on the kill target.

- While main tanking or off tanking, you can aoe root a pack of incoming adds to help the healer out. Marshals can main tank, but the ability to root makes you a better off tank, considering you can root and kite mobs away or just root and buy everyone time.

- Need to gather materials in the open with a mob attacking you? Just root, collect the materials and keep going.

- You rarely need to use Tar, but using Tar does help in a number of ways. If you toggle it on, your roots will do additional damage. The damage is small BUT it helps generate threat on all of those mobs. Also, it increases duration, meaning you should consider toggling it on in urgent group situations. Using Tar also helps a lot when dealing with diminishing returns. Root tends to be more lenient with diminishing returns, but longer roots means less DR overall.

Pressure

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A fun skill to use, but still overrated. It's great in solo play and a fine defensive-oriented attack, but it's main issue is its high stamina cost. If they are planning to buff Marshals, they need to lower the stamina cost or have it start at 10% stamina instead of 12%. This skill is meant to shine in group or raid situations as a tool for something even off tank Marshall can contribute. The problem is stacks of pressure are all consumed when an enemy attacks, as opposed to just one stack being used. It's high stamina cost should discourage you from using it a lot in group play and its a major reason why it's not a part of the core tank rotation. Only use it in group play if you have stamina to burn to deal a little more damage.

Pursuit

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A versatile skill with many subtle uses, all of which I'll list here:

- In a pragmatic sense, this skill CAN be used to generate threat. If a mob is still at range after you use Provoke, use this. You can also weave it in between other skills if you have stamina to burn.

- You can use this to escape fights you can't win, because it slows down the mob AND speeds you up as well. Makes it very easy to disengage and pick your fights.

- You can use this to kite mobs and save teammates that are running. Feel free to tell them in chat that you snared the mob to let them know.

- You can actually use this to min/max and speed up travel time a little bit by using it on mobs you pass by.

- You can also remove this skill from your bar in rage after realizing this game doesn't have PvP and you won't be able to grieve players by snaring them.

Sweep (TTT)

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A really awesome TTT skill that you can and should use against single mobs as well. This isn't just a cleave. It hits hard and also generates threat. As mentioned before, you should try to use this before you plan on casting Halt shortly after, to generate a bunch of aoe threat on a pack of rooted mobs. It's obviously worth using on 2 or more mobs just to deal damage as well.

Parry

This is a brand new skill that just got added and it looks really good. Dodge was fine but Parry has more uses and should be better overall. Plus Parry makes Polearms more effective for tanking and solo'ing, because it allows you to riposte after a successful parry more often. I now always prefer using this skill over Resistant if I'm using a polearm and only want 1 defensive cooldown. And that is common considering Quick Strike is very useful with two handers. Resistant still has a lower cost, but being able to parry more often to negate damage is useful with every weapon while tanking. It's still RNG based so keep that in mind. Resistant is not chance-based at all.

Quick Strike
It starts at a high 13% stamina cost, but it's a fun skill that hits hard. Its only character flaw is the long cooldown but its no biggie. It's a must have when off tanking since it doesn't generate bonus threat and is decent when used along with pressure. The +22 is nothing to sneeze at so if you want your next cooldown to do the most damage, use this first. Not much else to say. I typically swap out Dodge for this in most situations, but it really depends on your playstyle and if you don't care about equipping defensive skills like Pressure, Resistant and Dodge.


Weapon Choices

Mace and Board
The overall best all-purpose weapon choice for Marshals. Can be used to tank, grind and even solo granted your weapon is solid. Dmg might be a little slower than others but losing less health means less downtime and more mobs killed before you have to rest. Swords can be used as well to increase your Hit rating against higher level mobs.

2 Handed Mauls
Best for DPS'ing in a group. Some also prefer using this to Polearms, but it still only shines in group play where you can actually back attack. 2 handed weapons can be great for pushing threat higher and getting bigger aoe's, but its very common to ping pong threat under certain circumstances, especially when there are multiple tanks in a group, due to 2 handed weapons having a strong back attack modifier.

Polearms
The best for solo'ing. Parrying means less downtime and riposte also provides more possible dmg while taking hits. The only downside is that flanking gear has zero effect on your Polearm usage. On an unrelated note, the flanking stat does help your effectiveness a little bit with other weapons, but NEVER sacrifice AC for more flanking when deciding on what to equip. Polearms work well in group play if you are confident you will be taking all of the aggro as well as not take too much damage to burden your healers. Polearms are also more effective now with Marshals because of the new Parry ability in both solo and group play.

Weapon Discussion
As people are leveling, they are discussing what weapons are best to use while tanking and leveling. While I recommend having all weapons ready (for fun and to be ready for any situation) it's worth mentioning several fey factors:

- When generating threat in group play while using multiple weapons, you typically want to bring our your 2 hander when you are casting your abilities. Skills allow you to swing your heavy slower weapons more often, meaning you can get more threat. But when you are not using skills or when you are low on stamina, its best to bring out your 1 handed weapon with shield, due to its faster auto attack speed and gaining more defensive stats with the shield out.

- Strike is pretty worthless, but as mentioned before, it still has a use in solo play, especially when using a two hander. Even though its not very efficient, it still allows you to swing your two hander with +2 in 1 second, meaning you can burn your stamina to kill a mob faster if you want to.

- Hit rating is good for threat, but if you have enough of it, it's not very useful to get more. Other stats provide more damage overall. It's hard to say what will happen in the end game, but in keep in mind you can get hit on other slots like jewelry and gloves, meaning maces and slower weapon will push your damage harder. Certain swords are just not as good as their counterpart. Ex. imbued Highlands Copper Mace > Imbued Zink Sword.


Leveling Advice

Carto Boots
You can complete the map quest that starts at the southern tower by running around uncovering the Valley's map at a low level. You'll get the Cartographer boots that are lv 5 required. Don't accidently sell them because they will give you a movement speed boost and last until you can get Pond Treaders from Aqua at lv 17+.

Urine
Bears are the first animal type to drop urine which can improve your taunts if you hotkey them then left click to activate. Roll need on them and farm them as early as possible.

Ancient Bear
You can get into an AB bear group or have someone kill AB for the quest credit. You have two options.
1. If you are lazy just pick the AB quest reward mace because its a solid weapon and move on. Supposedly this weapon has also recently been nerfed*
2. The bear shield is the best shield until you can get a T2 imbued tin heater shield (lv 10 required.) If you do that, you can consider getting into a knave/misha group, killing their 2 chev and 3 chev PH's respectively. Misha drops a bear mace that will last you until lv 15 and also drops Misha's Warmth, a sexy looking chest piece that can last you until your teens.

Only Solo animals if Hunting
If you do pick up hunting, try to only grind creatures you can skin while solo'ing. Pick spots where these animals are that also have materials to farm nearby (Or crocodiles later in Meadowlands for the notorious croc teeth quest.) This way, you'll have a better chance not to fall behind with your hunting skill.

Mistcrawlers in Northreach
Even those spiders are the first to drop Tar, Mistcrawlers are an interesting camp with the heavy fog being a part of it, but they also drop Tar. You can do this camp as much as possible to get a huge head start on Tar.

10-15 Objectives
Other than Mistcrawlers, Exiles camp is good to start at 10 but be careful when tanking and pull back to designated pull spots. Bunnies in Meadowlands is good from 13-16 (less so till 17.) But the best advice that I can give is enter CV2 asap via the spider cave in Northreach and start tanking CV2 as much as possible. Golden spider drops the Silk Cuirass that has 126 AC. The sooner you attempt getting it, the less chance you'll end up suffering in CV2 as a higher level getting crap exp. Golden Spider also drops Silk Faulds which are great as well.

Obtain a set of Jewelry
Once you get into the teens, make an effort to either make your own set of jewelry (Necklace, 2 earrings, 2 rings,) or have another player make one. An entire set should go for no more than playing 10s to the other player. Also you can consider using your flux to make the neck more effective or even the rings, especially if you can't get the Sunken Locket*

Leveling at lv 17
Before you get to 17, questlines involving or leading into Ravenrock in Northreach can provide you with nice rewards like the Ravenrock chest piece and the Ravenrock mace at lv 15 as well. Later on, you can do Aqua in Meadowlands at lv 18, which can get you a pair of Blackened Iron greaves but more importantly the Sunken Locket off of the Mire named (which provides high stamina regen AND stun resist.) Don't bother going in Aqua any sooner than lv 18. Maybe 17 with an overleveled group. You can do wolves in the SE area of Meadowlands starting at 17 for great exp and also Zinc farming. Don't bother doing the mistcrawler quest in Meadowlands until you are lv 20. Any red con mobs give crap exp thanks to recent changes and you won't be able to hit 90% of red cons in this game. So its a waste of your time.

You can start wolf camp in meadowlands at 17 the earliest and the front of the cave provides 20+ prospecting ore to be gathered. You can go deeper into the camp at lv 19 to kill higher level wolves that provide 20+ hunting skinning for T3 leather. 20+ you can handle spiders more effectively and even kill a named spider on the spider side that drops Chithorn's Pauldron and you can get two of those to equip with a weight/AC efficiency of 5. You can do ant hills in Dryfoot at around 21 or so with a group that give some more spare materials and drops. Plus there is the new basilisk Ember Vein dungeon as well.


Amendments

Swords and Hit Rating
A poster below mentioned that swords like Ravenrock sword are great in group play. Originally I didn't want to say that Hit rating isn't useful. It is strong. I just felt that penetration is pretty strong and may even be stronger. Having a high HIT modifier can help land more attacks for threat, but typically having a higher level helps your accuracy on its own. In general, Swords will help you tank high level targets but Pen allows you to hit harder. Also, imbued crafted rings should provide you with extra hit rating on their own if you decide to get some. It's hard to say what the meta will be like at max level. It's possible we may fight against or raid against monsters with levels 3 or 4 levels above ours. In that case, Hit would be clutch, but this is a guide focusing on the first 20 levels and quite frankly, content in drybone and beyond is still in flux. It's worth mentioning that maces also have high modifier values, meaning if you decide to use a piece of Chitin armor or take on penalties on purpose, it doesn't really affect the mace's effectiveness as much as it would a 2 hander maul. Es. Losing 2 points out of 20 pen is negligible compared to losing having your +2 mod dropping to 0.
 
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Great Guide. Thank you for putting time into it.

I am 100% in agreement with you on Pressure. It costs too much stamina and it is very underwhelming in my eyes. I honestly hope they rethink its design.
 
Great read TY so much!...was helpful as I am still trying to figure out best uses for Marshal skills. I was wondering why the pressure debuff was falling off so quickly. But if its duration is linked to Mobs next attack that explains it.
 
I can't say I really agree with the mace being the KING weapon of choice for tanks. I'm playing marshal and I've not been able to hold agro in groups well enough especially if DPS is higher level than me. I've been able to hold agro with my ravenrock sword though. I've managed to hold agro with a level 20 DPS in my group and I'm lvl 14.
 
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