Armored Vanguard

Shadow Knight / Ranger / Monk

A tank and two strikers, a battering ram of a trio.

Tier C Score 72 Well-rounded build

Role coverage

Tank
81%
Heal
19%
DPS
95%
Utility
29%
Not a natural D4 raider yet. To make higher-difficulty content comfortable it would want to add a slow. It can still shine at lower difficulty, for leveling, or with a well-geared player driving it.

Strengths & watch-outs

✔ Strengths
  • A real plate tank (Shadow Knight) to hold aggro and eat the big hits.
  • Hybrid healing and lifetaps give you real sustain without a pure healer.
  • Heavy damage output, fights end fast.
⚠ Watch-outs
  • No slow, big single-target fights come at you at full swing speed.

How it plays

Lead with Shadow Knight to grab and hold aggro while the fight sets up. Ranger carries most of your damage; focus-fire one target down rather than spreading hits. Shadow Knight patches you up between pulls; without a dedicated healer, respect your downtime.

Suggested AA focus

From your Shadow Knight
Unbound Drain, Innate lifetap on hit.
Harm Touch (DoT ranks), Adds damage-over-time ranks to Harm Touch.
From your Monk
Unbound Alacrity, Innate melee attack-speed (haste).
Critical Mend, 5/10/25% chance for a superior Mend.
From your Ranger
Archery Mastery, +30/60/100% archery damage.
Endless Quiver, Never run out of arrows.

Signature class abilities worth prioritizing. Plan the full board on the AA guide, or wire it into a saved build in the Forge.

Gear direction

This trio wears Plate, Chain and Cloth. Stack AC and HP on your tank first. Melee want haste and DEX (for procs) once the basics are covered. See the gear-by-class guide and weapon guide for the specifics.

The score is a role-coverage rating (tank, healing, damage, utility), the same math the Build Forge uses. The tier layers in endgame readiness: S-tier is reserved for D4-ready builds (a tank, healing, and a slow), so an elite all-rounder that lacks a slow tops out at A. A lower tier doesn't put D4 out of reach, though, gear, resists, and +10 upgrades close the gap; the tier just reflects how much the build does for you out of the box. It's a model, not live parse data, so treat tiers as a starting point and confirm what works in-game. The level cap is 50.

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