armor actually should be really good, since more armor means less damage taken and less mana drained

This definitely needs another video. I would love to see full dungeons runs posted just to chill and watch while I'm working on the side during the day

Builds like this is what made me love ascension. Always wanted a caster tank. I loved an old video you made with a fire tank. Absolutely love those very hight fantasy. Deledrael - Al'ar

ya need dodge/parry even as a mana tank. anything to reduce/prevents dam before it even hits you (or in case of mana tank, draining mana)

Your videos the reason I started playing ascension. Keep up the good work and keep help building the community like you do. Chozen

Aye! I've been waiting for you to try out this build and put your own creative spin on it. Nicely done and keep up the good work.

I would definitely take Defensive Magic ERE with this for the dodges, parrys and block and go with shield for this build - Hoitsu, Alar

This was my first tank build on ascension and I gotta say you built it very well. Though I decided to go for a dagger and shield for threat generation plus I used the rare RE to increase threat generated through arcane damage by 30%. I also used some different talents with more dodge, parry, and block. Another video of this build would be amazing! Tyralon - Al'ar

If you aren't going to go for an avoidance I would run the RE "Mind over Matter" Which converts your int into defense rating which will help make you crit immune. Also your best defensive cooldown is probably dispersion, reduces damage and restores mana.

McDoubs rocking a new channel profile pic. Looks awesome man. 💖🌟✨💖

wow so cool :) im darthen in the intro

Feraenaturae- Alar - BBQ chicken build Forsaken - Victory for Sylvanas ! - Thank you for you content it has been a lot of fun to watch and has helped me transition from free build to draft which i am super addicted to now and i have even started pvp’ing. Thanks !

I love that they made caster tank, it is just something completely new to try out... One thing which you might consider (eventhough not sure how it works on Ascension) is to get Blade of Eternal darkness. It restores your mana and deals damange when you land a spell... considering you are spamming AE on multiple mobs, it should keep your mana really high... Also, not sure if viable, but stacking spirit could also improve mana reg (if you struggle with it)... also, arcane meditation does not return 25% mana of your spellcast, it just allows your mana to regen, cause while casting your mana regen is reduced... which considering you are doing instant cast AE, and utilizing barrage to have fast Arcane Missiles, is useless talent :) Mcdgw Al'Ar...

I hope we can see more tank builds, those are always fun to play/watch! - Ranex (Alar)

That's a sweet purple judgement helm, dig the look. -Cromgore

Ahaha that look really fun! Hope I will be able to see this video about the transmog contest! Chrimo

Spirit based. Unbounded Deathbringer. Defensive Magic. Shield & fast 1H (like a 1.40 dagger). Blessing of Sanctuary. Seal of Wisdom. Massive AOE like Hellfire. AOE+Heal like Holy Nova. Insta-cast single-target spell or something like Multi-shot. Cloth Armor with Green-numbered armor or plate. Max out block. Get stamina as high as you can. Pile on Spirit and Int. Then you can tweak the build as you like. Do this and you can solo normal dungeons. Heroics are a joke in a party, Mythics become easy. Git-r-dun. :D

I based a build off this, except i'm using hemorrhage, a dagger, shield, and meditate. So far you really can't die, especially since i've got honor among thieves. it opened me up for other LRE possibilities

Always looking forward for new videos. keep it up mcdoubles. best regards Corvinus

This is What i love about ascension. That you Can do so many different builds and make Them work. -Tonyfab

I recently did a mana-forged build, but with templar of flame. I went hard on defensive, 30% parry with ghostly strike and 15%+ dodge. I'm using innervate, judgement of the wise and spiritual attunement to keep my mana up

Mana tank, the hunt for water shield ™️ -Velens

Tanking Leo in SSC and Illidan on my Warlock in TBC was some of the most fun I have had in WoW. Alkri

You didn't mention it, so don't know if you saw it: seems like they changed Righteous Fury to also give Spell Power based on Stamina.

the most recent actual caster tank was mop with demonology. frost armor would be interesting if you can use it

The reason why you didn't get pushed by the imps was because of the clutch aoe silence by the boomie.

man this build was cracked, can't wait to see what's next. - Thatmans

I've tried doin a build like this for a long time but can never get the lucky rerolls you got. Keep up the amazing work bro - Twillipp

McDubs, I was checking out your build in discord, @32:30 when you started having trouble with aggro, if you had Pyromaniac in the mage fire tree, the capstone reduces your threat by 20% !! That's probably your issue.

I really enjoy your tank videos. I hope the mana tank arc continues. Molemanmole

I ran a similar build back on area52 when bc was introduced but instead of arcane spells, i went shadow with some aoe dots, the shadowburn heal legendary and i had the unbounded drain soul with that talent that gives back 20% of your mana when a target dies while on the effect of drain soul and it worked really good, never oom on aoe pulls, but on bosses it can be a little hard without evocation or any other mana returning spells.

I like my caster tank with the Templar of Flame re for instant flamestrikes and 8% damage reduction use blaze to spread immolates, use judgement as the mana regen, and searing pain for single target aggro. Btw the capstone on arcane fortitude hasn't worked for months so going plate is good. Prplebubl

I look forward to your videos, even though I am new to ascension. I have learned a lot from the videos!

Relleona - Alar Thanks for all the great content, been watching more and more

Keep up the good work always look forward to seeing them! Dwarfaoe

Awesome Video! At the moment im taking a break from tanking and went back to dps ( wanna try a CS Build). I dont know if its just me but it started to feel a bit stale and boring and besides the corrupted bear tank theres not alot of other stuff that sounds fun for tanking. I hope we will get New and fun tanking Re's in the future. Wrizzla-Alar

I've met a bunch of American friends thanks to ascension and your videos definitely play a part in keeping me interested in the server itself so thanks for that bud - bandanabob

That's a pretty sick build! I always liked the idea of a mage tank. I know that Rift had a neat version of one. Thanks for all the great videos! -Darcblaze

Really made me want to make a mana tank now haha. Great vid as always :D Ciphur - Al'ar

Love the tanking content ! Would also love to see some ascended raids some time! Name: Lyner

Another great video been watching for awhile never played Ascension till yesterday still confused with everything but hey is what it is - Drright -Al'ar

your vids are always fun. your joy when something goes right^^ Painstopper

Looks like fun, maybe int tank will be the way to go for me. So annoying that the parry talents and REs are limited to single 2h rather than no shield, then you could do DW tanks and even get swashbuckler tanks (which I was trying to make but... yeah, its too limiting.) - Matsuri, Al'ar Edit: do your auto attacks do anything? You don't attack while casting so seems a little weird to spec for it I think? Edit2: Do you not use the epic that allows you to dodge/block/parry while casting? or the one that increases defense by 100% but cant mitigate? they might increases your survivability a bit more.

You really made me like this game again

"I have almost nothing on" Yeah I am getting a big boon too!

Thank you for showing the mana tank. Working on my own version with huge mana pool but your REs are probably better. - Jely

last time you could play a caster tank was when they gave warlock the dark apotheosis glyph in MOP which made them a metamorphosis tank. then they took it away because it worked too well, and they they gave meta to demon hunters. the end.

Ok you say that "everyone wants to be a caster tank" and I've never had that urge. But i kinda wanna play a caster tank now. -Tanksy

Keep up the content man, been seeing loads of manaforged tanks recently ING Pawsmack

magic defender RE for dodge and block made a HUGE difference in my end game content with this build. also having invocation and evocation both are effective defensives. its a lot of fun love the build envenem

@mcdoubles At 13:00 you talk about wanting the fastest Attack Speed Caster Dagger. They're actually bugged though, the Mythic and Mythic+ ones are! They're all 1.8 Attack speed when they should be 1.5. That's a 20% difference, absolutely massive. It's a super simple fix I'd imagine, should just be updating a few values on the Devs side. I and many others have submitted bugs for it and they keep closing them without any response. This slower attack speed severely hurts many underplayed and unviable builds. There shouldn't be any harm in buffing those daggers I'd imagine. If there's some super OP spec I don't know of perhaps they should fix that one instead of hurting all the rest. Anyways it'd be cool if you could bring up that question at some point. Maybe the devs just need a louder voice to actually warrant a reply.

So glad ur vids Brought me back, I love spirit caster atm or fire frozen chaos. Keep it up - chizzy al’ar

MFB is an okay tank, they nerfed it which means it either build very tanky and have no threat, or be less tanky than a Shield Tank and have okay threat. The devs kinda went a little too hard on it, imo.

I made a Thunderslam tank build and its been a blast - Narggles

Every Tank ive seen all day is Mana Tank....LOL Ur a freakin Trend Setter!!!!! Maybe Boom Chicken for bonus damage and armor????? -Hurikane

Looking good! Love the build Gnovaa

I like the Holy 2h parry divine storm spam mana forge I tried out a lot better than the arcane stuff. Will of Light (I think) and the stagger buff/debuff makes divine storm proc like crazy, emanating light, heavy into judgements and holy damage. Took all the talents to buff INT that I could without gimping damage. Went whatever gave more INT. Ghostly strike, Judgement. Also the judge jury RE for the combo points from judgements and I rolled meditation, so more passive mana regen. It’s been fun spec for farming that’s for sure.

There's a ton of different ways to build MFB tank. Basically if you can think of a caster build, you can alter it to tank. This one is very remeniscent of mine from MalGanis era where it was arcane with arcane explosion, starfall, and starfire and moonfire as my single-target. However I've never gone for eldritch knight. I typically build fairly defensivly int stacking with Mind Over Matter epic and using mana cooldowns as my defensive CD's. So evocation, innervate, the like. A huge one I picked up at 70 here on alar though was Dispersion and shadowfiend. Even with the absolute worst boss to manaforge tank, that being Omor in HFR I can keep my mana up as long as the DPS can pump before I run out of cooldowns. And yeah, that Alembic Trinket is BiS. Had a healer say I shouldn't get it as a tank and all the DPS were like "bro he's manaforged though it's so good for him" -Yarkarano

Could argue that shaman tank in classic/vanilla was a magic tank. Throw some lightbulbs and Schock people for burst threat. Was solid and much fun!

Are you using the alembic epic enchant? If you are i probably missed it. I had an arcane mana-barrier tank, but i used only spells so i got mana fiend LRE for extra int instead. Nice vid. -Mobiusdicken (A'lar)

Feriss-alar My tank alt USA mana tank. I'd highly recommend that you try out scorch or any other spell that can be changed to be castable while moving and the epic RE that turns int into defense. You spam cast filler spell to maximize power surge which stops you from avoiding damage so the re really helps. I use moveable consc prepull and arcane explosion on pull for snap threat then let power surge carry from there. Since I'm running perilous touch I also run the fire spell threat RE and the holy one too

The RE Mind over Matter lets you just stack INT, since it gives you a bunch of defense (miss chance for the enemy). If you wanna tank any "high tier " content you should probably take it. Erzmagier Alar

I can't believe the grunt did so well XD -Tatsumi

Awesome video. I enjoy your theory crafts. Peezly on alar

I am actually trying to shift from FFXIV to WoW and I find Ascension way more funny than normal WoW, I've always played tank and I love this build, any tips for a new player? What to do first? What to focus on? Thanks

was in a dungeon grp with a manaforged barrier tank as i watched the video :D -Katoritas

I can remember a tank priest and wl in my guild, i am not sure if this was in tbc or wotlk, but it was funny as our maintank startet crying because he cant tank

Fun video, definatly gonna give this a try! Thanks for showing us how fun ascention can be! much love! Kayora - Al'ar

Thank you for making these vids. Btw if you have trouble downloading your vids in not higher than 720 p you can try copying the video link and adding SS on the link of the vid. Then paste it on your browser. Also I'm now thinking of making a mama forge barrier tank with fok

So, as regards to the VOD of the stream, I'm assuming you use OBS, and you could have also recorded it locally.

@mcdoubles you ran into the current issue for all Mana-Forged Barrier (MFB); threat generation. It is a real shame because Irrelevant the best MFB tank on Mal'Ganis is not able to play MFB on Al'ar in our Ascended groups due to the lack of damage/threat. If you wish to revisit this build, and want a pocket healer (and possibly dps) to see how it'll preform; please message Paczek on Al'ar.

I hope my gifts are you going to help you/ motivate you to keep making content man, I love the videos and I want to be able to watch the for a long while !

Great video as always! Al'ar - Pizzanature

I've been using mana tank for prestige runs, super easy. Probably the easiest tank for lower levels if you get invocation and a bit of AoE. Keep up the vids. - Rira

Build was definitely interesting but idk if it appeals to me. Have you ever considered doing a mana fiend build w/ deconstruction? I gave it a try on Area 52 and it was enjoyable. Just a suggestion though IGN- Mackado

Sunfire could be even better than Lunar, immediate aoe and more damage from the moonfire. This was probably one of my favorite specs to try myself, glad to see you trying it IGN: Brybread

Because of you i quit warmane and started ascension -Lowlyou

I think you need an re to block dodge and parry while casting! Could be wrong doe, great video anyway!

Love the videos McDubs -Papermate

I love your videos and I love watching you theory craft would love to see more healing builds -stompingmad (this character is leveling with thunder slam from watching your videos now he can be called stompingmad for a reason)

Love the vids, Koalabjorn.

If you want to try another tank I've been having an absolute blast with Templar of Flame. Every build i saw at first was just bear druid with it, so lame.. but I did finally come across a build named The Malding Flame for a 2h tank version. Dude does a great job talking about possible skills to roll for.

The water shield def should've showed back up. You got screwed.

Fishnets for life Holmes - Leanae

I've had a few MFB tanks in my 1-70's and they're always super dope. Awesome to see you try it and I may have to try it myself - IGN Frothed

Only thing I haven’t seen is a ranged tank I could see it happen with like illusionary workings -Kiryama

There was warlock tanking for twin emps in AQ40 in classic.

i made a 2h parry tank with 30 sec tranq i was running mythics with was helariously easy was up almost every pull i would triple if not quadruple the healers heals loved it

Let the reroll commence!!

It might be broken lowlvl but few ppl can do it at max. Theres more then 1way to build it.. titansgrip with staff and shield, voidwalker and so on, still feel like mind over matter is meta, but u can do defense magic and get blocks 2 im guessing fun video ingamename chunkina

Could you do an arcane build? With those moonfires and missiles? I was trying to find one without the ranged weapon. - Korolyn

Haven't played ascension in a long time. This makes me wanna dust off my unbound drain life tank lol

I figure you definitely already did have it, but I saw an enchant a while back that said arcane damage deals 40% extra threat, but I can't remember what it was called. kek. ~Barishir

ascension deserves more love. -scubasnacks(alar)

You should make a pure shadow bolt spec. I was lighting people up yesterday.

Abiding Fel Energy build when? also thoughts on Debbie Downer(RE)? -Pendanser

Another Banger vid bro, -NottheBrave

It's time for that BME- Big Mcdoubles Energy

looks fun, Duriana on Al'ar

When i decided not to play tank again now you made me want to xD Bloodalfa - alar