Tank (free-to-play)
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| Members | No | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Build type | Tank, Support, Multicombat | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Combat level | 60 — 75 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Primary attack style |  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Uses attack styles |   | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Max hit with boosts |
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 Example combat stats | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 70 | 40 | 50 | 80 | 60 | 60 | 43 | 72 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
A tank is a type of high level free-to-play combat pure account that prioritizes training defence over offensive combat skills.
When wearing high level armours such as the rune armour or green d'hide armour, they are notoriously difficult to damage. While not highly successful in typical 1-vs-1 combat, they are often used as team support or for activities such as ragging.
Skills
Primary
Tanks train defence without restriction.
Secondary
Tanks train attack to at least level 40 to be able to wield the rune weapons. Unlike most free-to-play combat pures, many tanks choose to train attack further in order to improve the accuracy against opponents with high defence levels.
These pures also train ranged and strength to improve the damage output. These skills are usually restricted in order to stay in a specific combat level range.
Additionally, they can train magic to the same level as ranged without affecting the combat level mainly to improve the magic defence. To minimize hitpoints experience, magic should be trained with methods such as splashing, curses, teleporting, enchanting jewellery and alchemy.
Equipment
| Anti-melee and anti-ranged | Anti-magic | ||||
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Tanks often use a combination of the rune armour and green d'hide armour pieces to minimize the incoming damage.
Since keeping the opponent busy is often more important for tanks that actually scoring a kill, they might not carry a knockout weapon such as a rune 2h sword at all. They will often switch between a maple shortbow and a rune scimitar to deal damage. A rune mace can be also considered instead of the scimitar, since it offers similar attack speed and has a prayer bonus.
Staves are often brought as a switch for their significant magic defence bonus. Magic staff and all basic elemental staves provide the same defensive bonuses. However, carrying mind runes along with a staff of air allows to consistently splash the Air Strike spell without any additional runes, which is very useful for boxing NPCs.
A regular crossbow or phoenix crossbow might be used for their significant range, the ability to use a shield and a very low usage cost. They both provide the same bonuses, but the phoenix crossbow is slightly lighter.
An amulet of power is often worn instead of an amulet of defence. It provides nearly the same defensive bonuses on top of additional accuracy, strength and prayer bonuses. A holy symbol might also be considered thanks to its significant prayer bonus.
God armour pieces can be used instead of the regular rune items due to their additional prayer bonuses.
Since the gold decorative boots are lost upon death beyond the 20 level of the wilderness, the red decorative boots can be used instead for deep wilderness trips due to their low price and notable melee defensive bonuses.
Training
Magic can be trained via methods that prevent from getting hitpoints experience to minimise the combat level. These methods include splashing, curses, teleporting, enchanting jewellery and alchemy. Magic should always be trained as high as possible without raising the combat level since it affects the magic defence.
Due to their significant defence levels, tanks can be train both melee and ranged skills on aggressive NPCs such as flesh crawlers or spiders in the Stronghold of Security. While the experience rates would be less significant than in case of more click-intensive training methods like those involving alts, training on aggressive NPCs requires minimal effort.
Combat style
Tanks are rarely used for arranged 1-vs-1 fights. They often participate in ragging or preventing other players from engaging in actual fights within the single-way combat player-versus-player zones.
They do, however, find more use in multicombat areas where they can deal consistent (albeit low) damage, and are extremely difficult to kill. When supporting teams of player killers, tanks can carry supplies and perform tasks such as scouting, world hopping and luring. In single-way combat areas, they can also interrupt fights of allies in danger to keep the opponents busy, as well as attack aggressive NPCs to prevent them from hijacking fights when chasing opponents. They are particularly well suited for boxing due to easy access to splashing and their significant defensive capabilities.
Variants
Tanks are often trained to be roughly on the same combat level as other accounts within the same clan or as other accounts of the same player. The actual levels of their combat skills will vary according to personal preference. In general, high levels of the offensive skills will ease training and make the tanks more effective in combat in general, but at the cost of raising the combat level or sacrificing defensive capabilities.
Attack
Since in case of this build achieving higher maximum hits is not as important as dealing consistent damage, tanks might train attack over strength even after achieving 40 level unlike most other free-to-play combat pures.
Strength
Strength tanks are a variant of strength pures. They do not train attack and instead focus on strength with access to weapons such as goblin paint cannon and rune warhammer. In contrary to classic strength pures, strength tanks also train defence to a higher level to gain access to the gold decorative boots and rune armour to make up for their low accuracy. Lack of attack and lower ranged and magic levels allow them to limit their combat level despite high defensive skills and relatively high maximum hits.
Prayer
Training prayer is optional, although both the defence boosts and the protection prayers significantly boost the defensive capabilities of such accounts. They are particularly useful when fighting in areas with prayer points restoration methods such as the altar or near the demonic ruins. 45 prayer level might also be considered for access to the Mystic Might prayer which raises magic defence.
Progression
Due to their high defence levels, tanks can be converted to mains by training the offensive combat skills. Other combat pure builds typically restrict the defence level, which does not leave a lot of options for tanks in terms of build switching.
See also
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| PvP gameplay |
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| Free-to-play combat pures |
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