Lancer


 * "Steadfast defenders, fearsome attackers."

The lancer is a heavily armored class which specializes in a lance with melee defensive capabilities.

The lancer wields a large shield alongside its lance, which it can use to fend off most attacks. After fending off an attack, the lancer can counterattack with shield and lance.

Official description
"Stand fast at the heart of the storm, roaring defiance into the wind. Shield your friends and smite your enemies. Pin down your foes and laugh as they try to knock you down. As powerful in defense as in attack, the lancer’s role in a fight is at the head of the formation. His heavy shield absorbs damage, while his lance provides striking power that’s targeted yet effective against multiple foes. Numerous skills for drawing aggro let the lancer take the heat and give his party members more opportunities. Lancers can minimize damage to their own party and help them devastate the enemy."

General
One of the original classes of TERA. Lancer is called "mitigation tank". This means lancer is meant to stand fast, keep boss' attention and block incoming damage.

Equipment
The lancer is equipped with metal armor for great increase on the defense lines. Being of the rare classes to wear the metal equipment gives the lancer a big advantage, especially when the shield enters the scene of play. Although not the fastest of attack speeds, the Lance is a great weapon which fends off enemies in a direct cone of sight of the attacker toward the enemy, dealing massive damage to anyone within that range.

Skills


Lancers are capable of an incredible amount of defense power thanks to their defending skill. When the enemy is vulnerable after a successful block, the lancer will abuse the chance and. Shield Counter can only be activated after successful block. It has high crit chance and lancer only take half damage while using the skill and also gets high resistance to knockdown and stagger. Blocking damage also gives lancer stacking buffs to their crit factor and power that last unless knocked down.

While enemy is not attacking, lancer should actively attack them to do damage. Doing damage also guarantees lancer retains aggro from monsters. Basic damage skills are,  which hits twice and. Spring Attack does nice damage but must be comboed after other skills. Spring Attack gives about 1/3 or lancer's DPS. has lower damage and should be only used as filler skill, if its effect to slow down enemy is not needed.

The best lancer damage skills are and. Both have 2&times; crit change and both also block all damage from front while attacking. Onslaught activates somewhat slowly and should be comboed after or. These skills also have longer cooldowns.

Much power of lancer comes from skills that support other party members and increase their damage. Strongest lancer buff is that gives straight damage and attack speed buff. Skill should be used with other buffs active while boss is enraged to gain maximum damage burst benefit. Other lancer damage buff is which has longer but has weaker effect and also gives defense buff.

All tanking classes have also skills to debuff the enemies. Lancer's  gives enemy -12% endurance debuff. This debuff should always be kept up.

And if the enemy decides to change their mind and target a different group member, the lancer will pull it back easily with, and if one leash was not enough,  will chain 6 enemies and pull them together and stun them. This skill is especially powerful in PVP and if you have fellow sorcerer or archer who can use their hard-hitting AOE skills like Meteor Strike or Rain of Arrows.

As tank class lancer has few special skills to improve their survivability: outright restores over 1/3 of lancer's own health. creates personal mini-shield that absorbs about 32&thinsp;000 HP for 10 seconds, or about 1/4 over lancer's own health.

Apex changes
After awakening lancers gets three most active skills and several passives. New passive skill Stronghold Shift allow lancer move slowly while holding block. Lancer can move forward and backwards and turn, but not sidestep.

New passive Unwavering gives 20% resistance to knockdown, stagger and stuns from monsters. Also while casting Challenging Shout lancer is immune to knockdown and stagger.

Super Leap is high and long jump that deal damage and throws enemies into air on place when lancer lands. Also their attack speed and movement speed is reduced. While fighting monsters this skill should be used after Changing Lunge or Wallop. When cast after these skills lancer doesn't jump over enemies, but hits target in front. It's basically a second, high damaging wallop.

Guardian Barrier is alternative block, that reflects damage on attacker. It can also be used to give allies behind iframe protection against attacks. It can be used to cheat some dungeon mechanics, like AOE stuns, or even wipe mechanic.

Divine Protection gives lancer and party members 5 seconds protection from all damage. It has significant cooldown of 8 minutes.

Racial traits
Being able to pick between one of the seven races proves to be a tough choice. Each race has their own unique racial traits that can effectively improve the gameplay of the lancer, depending on race choice:
 * Amani have a lot of defensive capabilities coming from, and  which can greatly increase their survivability chances, although has a smaller hitbox compared to Baraka, but is negligable.
 * Baraka have, a healing ability that can fully recover all health, and more mobility coming from , and which gives them more health than any others, only when they constantly die. The Baraka also has the biggest hitbox, making them the easiest to target when being healed.
 * Castanic have which increases their running speed during combat for dodging magic circles, and  which gives them a higher chance to shoot a critical hit from the back.
 * High elves have which completely recovers their mana, and  which restores an amount of mana upon revival to get back into combat quickly.
 * Humans have and  which greatly increases their defense when facing enemy players, aside from that, they got  which restores an amount of health upon revival to get them back into combat quickly.
 * Poporis and elins have nothing that could assist a lancer in combat. Instead, they get multiple abilities for non-combat situations such as swimming and movement speed outside combat. Also, their hitboxes are the smallest, which for healers are more difficult to target.

Generally two races are favoured for lancer: Elin, because their animations have longer reach, and some skills move them forward more. Elins also have wider block radius to compensate their small size. However, some boss attacks can hit you from behind even though you are blocking due the size. High elf male is favoured due fastest animation on Shield Barrage, a key lancer skill. Amani have average animations and reach, but best racial traits. It's possible to get over 90% damage reduction when on low health with Amani race passive. Amani male has faster animations than female.

Importance of hitbox
Lancers have the unique ability to block attacks for those standing in front of them. They block attacks with their shield, and is based off the size of the model's hitbox. Hitboxes are based on race size, but have been "normalized" (slightly reduced for baraka and amani, and slightly enlarged for elins, poporis and castanics). Even after being "normalized" Baraka have the largest hitbox and elin have the smallest. When choosing a lancer race it is important to take the size of the hitbox into account as this will determine how much damage you will block for people behind you as well as how easy it is for the healer to target you.

Playstyle
As said before, the Lancers are unique in tanking. Warriors are also capable of tanking, but are based on evasion rather than tanking head on. In dungeons against bosses, lancers are always preferred over warriors.

Lancers have a rather low damage output. Instead, their skills are mostly focused on stunning the monsters, holding aggro and taking all the blows that enemies throw at you while taking the least damage possible, if any at all.

Lancers are very possible to play solo, but they level much faster in a party. When grinding BAMs, there are three things a lancer has to do.
 * 1) Keep the boss in place. The DPS characters should be behind the boss while you take the front. Of course the BAM will jump around a bit, but you shouldn't move if the BAM doesn't.
 * 2) Hold aggro! This can't be stressed enough. Melee DPS characters have crystals which make them stronger when they attack from behind. If they put out too much DPS, the aggro may switch and the BAM will turn around. This is the moment you use your skills (Challenging Shout) to regain aggro; you'll want to use that skill every time it's off cooldown.
 * 3) Block everything! There's nothing worse than a dead tank. If the BAM is new to you, and you aren't familiar with its attack patterns, you'd better play a bit more passively than wait until the last moment to block.

Gearing and Attributes
Lancer's damage blocking capability depends on their lance. The higher item level the lance, the more damage absorption it has.

When "bleeding" damage or missing a block, armor comes into play.

Lancer uses tanking Weapon Crystals: Wrathful, Focused, Pounding, Pounding. If crit rate is low, Pounding can be switched to Carving. If tanking for better equipped player, Threatening crystal is recommended.

General weapon rolls are Damage vs. enraged monsters; Damage vs. enraged monsters; Flat 6% damage, More damage vs. monster with highest aggro on you and Cooldown reduction. With low gear that has only 4 enigmatic lines pick cooldown reduction as first roll. Many high-end lancers also run double cooldown reduction. Standard chest line for lancer is increased damage from Spring Attack.

Also lancers need attack speed. There are several ways to achieve this. Picking +9% attack speed as first weapon roll is cheapest. More expensive alternative is to use double high-level Energetic etchings on weapon and gloves.

With level 70 patch Exodor gear lancer uses gear with physical amplification: Dauntless Azart or Annihilation gear. (Crystals, rollable weapon lines incl. double cooldown and chest line are not available on Exodor gear level 68/69 gear or on new level 65 Exodor Scout gear.)

Correct crit rate and power/crit ratio for lancer is open to discussion. Some lancers use all crit rings, earrings and necklace and underwear. Others go for mixed build using one power ring and earring and rest crit. As lancer attacks enemies from front, stacking crit factor is of lesser value since lancer doesn't get 1.5 crit chance from back attacks. Also most lancer skills have low crit chance. As tanks also get lower crit power from front than other classes, some guides state that rolling your rings as 4 power and 0.04 more crit power gives bigger damage increase than usual 4 power and 4 crit rate rolls (Note: possibility to roll 0.04 on rings was removed at some point).

With patch 93 passives many lancer skills scale with physical resistance stat. This makes gear with defensive rolls and underwear very good investment. Passive Shield Mastery raises most damage skill's damage by 1% per 4,000 points of physical resistance.

Glyphs
Specializing in glyphs like all classes means a great deal to customization. Lancer doesn't have large number of usable glyphs and glyphs are quite expensive. Notable glyphs are:

These are buffing your main damage skills.
 * Powerlinked Stand Fast: Increases skill damage of Shield Counter by 25% for a few seconds.
 * Empowered Spring Attack: Increases skill damage by 30%
 * Empowered Onslaught: Increases skill damage by 30%
 * Carving Onslaught: Doubles the change to crit.
 * Empowered Wallop: Increases skill damage by 25%
 * Carving Wallop: Doubles the change to crit. (Apex superior glyph)
 * Blazing Shield Bash: Speeds casting of Onslaught by 25% for a few seconds.

These are defensive skills.
 * Reinforced Stand Fast: Increases maximum RE by 500.
 * Affirmative Backstep: Reduces RE cost by 100.
 * Warding Iron Will: Increases damage absorption by 25%
 * Energetic Second Wind: Decreases cooldown by 25%

Challenging Shout casts bit slowly. This helps.
 * Hastened Challenging Shout: Speeds casting by 25%

Other quality-of-life improvement. Debilitate is low damage and this means it can be used less.
 * Lingering Debilitate: Increases effect duration by 100%


 * Swift Adrenaline Rush: Increases attack speed by an additional 10%

This is probably your most powerful skill in PVP.
 * Energetic Chained Leash: Decreases cooldown by 20%
 * Lingering Chained Leash: Increases effect duration by 50%

This mean lancer can keep single target stunned possibly forever.
 * Persistent Master's Leash: 30% chance to eliminate cooldown.

Enhancement Points
Strengthen Offence:
 * Mighty Attack, always max this first
 * Shield Counter Fatal Blow, very good
 * Stand Fast Vengeful Pummel


 * Adrenaline Rush Constancy, Force, Extra Force

EP Damage is useless.

Speed Increase:
 * Stand Fast Speed Skating: Retribution
 * Onslaught Velocity

Resource Recovery: Iron Will Recovery is not so useful due very low HP recovery Backstep Reload simply does not work, use waster points.
 * Iron Will Recycle, useful, learn to use this skill
 * Retaliate Turning Tables, useful in PVP
 * Shield Bash Reload, marginally useful, moreso in PVP

Defense/Special:
 * Mighty Defense, max this
 * Mighty Phoenix, spend 1 point here
 * Challenging Shout Amplification, spend 1 point here
 * Debilitate Insult, spend 1 point here
 * Second Wind Purification, it can save your life, but you can't trust on this

Skill Advancementment
Stand Fast: Defense Tactics or Retribution for PVE. Refer to advanced guides. Stand Fast: Light Shield is very good for PVP.

Adrenaline Rush: Strenous for general use. Adrenaline Rush: March for PVP.

Crystals
Special Weapon Crystals for tanking, including Wrathful and Focused crystals.