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Message: <blockquote data-quote="transtemporal" data-source="post: 6428150" data-attributes="member: 6777693">Tactics & PlaystyleYou want to find the biggest, nastiest melee creature on the battlefield, get in its face, hit it and stay there until its dead. Then move onto the next biggest. Let your skirmishers and ranged guys take care of casters and skulkers. Your job is to hold the line and prevent the brute melee from getting to your squishies. Once the brutes are dead,go to town on the back lines but make sure you don't leave your squishies exposed. Your tanking tools are the Sentinel feat, the Goading Attack maneuver,good AC and being the first guy onto the battlefield with the Alert feat. That last one probably sounds silly but the secret to tanking is being the first seen and the first targeted and keeping it that way. Then the battle will naturally congeal around you.Round-to-round,Goading Attack, Commanders Strike, Riposte and Action Surge are your bread and butter. You get superiority dice and action surge(s) back on a short rest so unless you're in one of those situations where you might not be able to rest, dump 'em on the big bad as quickly as possible. Once you gain the Sentinel feat, you can probably drop Goading Attack from the rotation and work in Menacing Attack instead. At high levels (especially when fighting CR21+ monsters) you will want to keep disadvantage on your current target any way you can. Without it, even with the best magic gear, you'll be taking quite a few hits.Menacing Attack is great for that if your party has no other way of applying it. Some advocate using Sentinel with the Dodge action to turtle up but I think this is really missing the point. You need to be enough of a threat that monsters can't afford to ignore you and that one reaction attack per round from Sentinel isn't enough. So don't mess around - the quicker you kill monsters, the less damage you take. Attack Profile by Level To be honest, I haven't measured the DPR of this build against similar builds, or proper DPR builds for that matter. I haven't factored in burst from Superiority Dice or Action Surges. I'm assuming the DPR is respectable but not amazing.[TABLE="class: outer_border, width: 100%"][TR][TD="width: 50"]Level[/TD][TD="width: 258"]Attack Bonus[/TD][TD="width: 243"]Damage w/ attack action[/TD][/TR][TR][TD="width: 50"]1-3[/TD][TD="width: 258"]+5 (prof+2, str+3)[/TD][TD="width: 243"]1d8+3[/TD][/TR][TR][TD="width: 50"]4[/TD][TD="width: 258"]+6 (prof+2, str+4)[/TD][TD="width: 243"]1d8+4[/TD][/TR][TR][TD="width: 50"]5-7[/TD][TD="width: 258"]+8 (prof+3, str+4, +1 weap)[/TD][TD="width: 243"]1d8+5/1d8+5[/TD][/TR][TR][TD="width: 50"]8[/TD][TD="width: 258"]+9 (prof+3, str+5, +1 weap)[/TD][TD="width: 243"]1d8+5/1d8+5[/TD][/TR][TR][TD="width: 50"]9-10[/TD][TD="width: 258"]+11 (prof+4, str+5, +2 weap)[/TD][TD="width: 243"]1d8+7/1d8+7[/TD][/TR][TR][TD="width: 50"]11-12[/TD][TD="width: 258"]+11 (prof+4, str+5, +2 weap)[/TD][TD="width: 243"]1d8+7/1d8+7/1d8+7[/TD][/TR][TR][TD="width: 50"]13-16[/TD][TD="width: 258"]+12 (prof+5, str+5, +2 weap)[/TD][TD="width: 243"]1d8+7/1d8+7/1d8+7[/TD][/TR][TR][TD="width: 50"]17-19[/TD][TD="width: 258"]+14 (prof+6, str+5, +3 weap)[/TD][TD="width: 243"]1d8+8/1d8+8/1d8+8[/TD][/TR][TR][TD="width: 50"]20[/TD][TD="width: 258"]+14 (prof+6, str+5, +3 weap)[/TD][TD="width: 243"]1d8+8/1d8+8/1d8+8/1d8+8[/TD][/TR][/TABLE]Defense Profile by Level This is not an exhaustive analysis. I simply took a cross-section of monsters with the appropriate CRs and took the attack bonus that seemed representative (dragons seem to be pretty consistent). The trend was pretty obvious though. At the higher monster CRs, even very high AC is not that effective. Personally, I think you want to mitigate 80% or more of all incoming melee damage to be effective as a tank. The reason for this is that bounded accuracy can make hordes of lower CR monsters deadly, whereas in previous editions, they weren't too much of a threat. As it is,you'll need to keep up disadvantage on monsters past level 14-15 or so as not to become a monster shish-kebab.[TABLE="class: outer_border, width: 100%, align: left"][TR][TD="width: 8%"]CR[/TD][TD="width: 33%"]AC[/TD][TD="width: 29%"]Monster  attack bonuses[/TD][TD="width: 30%"]Chance to miss (%)[/TD][/TR][TR][TD="width: 8%"]1-4[/TD][TD="width: 33%"]22 (plate, shield+1, class+1)[/TD][TD="width: 29%"]+3 to +6[/TD][TD="width: 30%"]90-75%[/TD][/TR][TR][TD="width: 8%"]5-8[/TD][TD="width: 33%"]23 (plate+1, shield +1, class+1)[/TD][TD="width: 29%"]+6 to +8[/TD][TD="width: 30%"]80-70%[/TD][/TR][TR][TD="width: 8%"]9-12[/TD][TD="width: 33%"]24 (plate+2, shield +1, class+1)[/TD][TD="width: 29%"]+8 to +10[/TD][TD="width: 30%"]75-65%[/TD][/TR][TR][TD="width: 8%"]13-16[/TD][TD="width: 33%"]25 (plate+2, shield +2, class+1)[/TD][TD="width: 29%"]+10 to +12[/TD][TD="width: 30%"]70-60%[/TD][/TR][TR][TD="width: 8%"]17-20[/TD][TD="width: 33%"]26  (plate+3, shield +2, class+1)[/TD][TD="width: 29%"]+12 to +15[/TD][TD="width: 30%"]65-50%[/TD][/TR][TR][TD="width: 8%"]21+[/TD][TD="width: 33%"]27 (plate+3, shield +3, class+1)[/TD][TD="width: 29%"]+15 to +18[/TD][TD="width: 30%"]55-40%[/TD][/TR][/TABLE]</blockquote>

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