SW:ToR Tanking and the Assassin

Now that I have my term paper completed for my graduate class, I can sit down and do some warrior discussion for those that are interested. I'd like to kick this blog off with a quick synopsis of the warrior souls and which you should look at for each role. I won't be going into great detail concerning each of these just yet, but check back later since I plan to go through each Role and why I picked what I did for mine.

Tank
So you've decided that you want to be the one to go toe-to-toe with the big nasty PvE bosses. You have a few options for tanking souls as a warrior, which is better than the other 2 callings (rogue and cleric).

Reaver - This is your aoe DoT tank. The reaver is specialized in debuffing their oponents and siphoning their life essence to help heal themselves. Note, however, that the amount of life you get back from these dots is minor and I would merely consider it a buffer that supports your healers. These guys are the AoE kings; they can spread high-threat diseases to up to 6 targest at a time. I highly recommend this spec for AoE trash packs and/or a leveling tank spec.

Paladin - Your meat and potatoes tank tree. This is the most robust tank tree we've got and should probably be the basis for any serious tank spec (i.e. the tree with the most points in it). The pally tree focuses on blocking and mitigation, and talents higher in the tree allow for healing from blocking (which should get more and more powerful the better your gear becomes).

Void Knight - This soul is fairly unique to Rift in that this is your magical mitigation tank tree. A lot of the talents are highly specialized for dealing with mana users and, as such, it has become a very powerful and very viable PvP tree. As of right now, I don't know of any bosses that are primarily magic-based, but this is definitely a viable option for a second tank spec.

Warlord - This is our support tree. Besides adding to our avoidance and mitigation, this tree has a ton of goodies to make your group better. Pretty much every finishing move in the warlord tree will lead to an overall group dps increase. The tree also offers other perks like group mitigation talents along with a group "last stand" for those of you that come from WoW.

Personally, when picking a tank role I would start with Paladin as my basis and then pick a secondary soul depending on what type of tank I would like to be. I will go into more detail on exact specs later.

DPS
Okay, so you want to do damage in PvE! In creating a pure DPS spec for dungeons/raids I highly recommend that you choose only from the list below. Taking a tank tree will greatly reduce the amount of damage output that you do in addition to causing you to output much higher threat due to the nature of the abilities in those trees.

Beastmaster - Here is your iconic pet class. The spec focuses on physical damage and bleeds in addition to having a pet. This soul can do a lot of damage if paired correctly, the only major drawback is if you lose your pet you lose a good portion of your damage. Weapon selection should be based on whichever secondary souls you choose as this spec does not buff anything besides bleed damage.

Champion - While mostly considered a PvP soul, you can absolutely use this tree as a secondary soul if you wish to play as a two-handed warrior. Skip the obviously PvP talents and focus on the ones that increase your damage. Also note that this soul is a burst damage soul and, as such, is less likely to sustain a good amount of DPS for longer fights.

Paragon - This is your dual wield spec and has a lot of talents that can only be used if you are using 2 weapons. There are, however, enough general talents to use it as a backup tree if you so wish. Personally I have found that this is a fairly good sustained damage tree. The interesting point to this tree is its follow-up attacks: off the global cooldown, these attacks can (and should) be used immediately following an attack point generating ability.

Riftblade - This is our magic damage spec. Yes, you heard me right.... warriors can be "casters". A lot of the abilities in this tree have a 20 yard range and most, if not all, of them are considered magical damage. Currently, some of the core abilities of this spec scale poorly with gear level (meaning that this spec can be incredibly powerful at low levels but falls off quickly as you get to end-game).

PvP
If monsters aren't your thing then you might consider jumping into some player-versus-player combat in the warfronts. Most of the souls can be used in combination to create some pretty powerful PvP specs. The ones you choose will be based around who your chosen enemy player is.

Champion is a solid tree with a lot of crowd control abilities and quite a few anti-cc for themselves. This is also your burst damage spec. You can pair it with Paragon to create a bursty crittastic powerhouse.

Beastmaster has some PvP talents that are kind of decent: pet stealth detection, snare reduction and stun reduction. Unfortunately hinges on your pet being alive and within range of you and your group. Luckily, I have found that most players don't actually kill pets.

Riftblade is great as it has a lot of ranged attacks that allow you to still do damage while being kited. Rift surge is also an amazing ability that causes your enemy to take damage every time they use an ability. Slap that on a cleric at low health and watch them heal themselves to death. Has quite a few CC abilities including a blink that teleports you to your target. Coupled with voidknight this spec becomes the caster-killer.

Void Knight specs are highly competitive in PvP as the anti-caster spec. These guys take reduced damage versus magic and can suck the mana out of a caster faster than you can think. They generate pacts from doing and taking damage that they can then discharge and use against their enemies

Any of the trees that I didn't mention here I don't particularly recommend for PvP, although other setups are viable but don't generally fall into the 'amazing' category. Your best bet, however, is to pick 2 souls that complement your playstyle the best and reserve the 3rd for your Vindicator PvP soul (if nothing else for the 0-point 5 minute CD cc break).