Pet vs Tank

https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/...maybe-or-maybe-not.208633/page-6#post-3061287

Breaking this out into a new discussion per Dzarn. Is there an update on this? (2+ weeks old)

I would also like to know what the high-level "vision" is regarding power of NPC tanks vs player tanks, in order to identify whether things are working as intended.

Meet the new thread, same as the old thread,

Won't get fooled again !

My only issue is that they typically don't increase, but instead nerf. I'd rather see all tanks be given a mitigation increase to where they tank as well or better than pets, than to have pets reduced.

They typically don't increase because that risks unbalancing classes and content. Nerfs only effect one class and no content making it vastly easier and it takes a fraction of the time. The devs always take the easy route unless they have absolutely no other choice. Anyone that has been around for any amount of time knows this. So whenever people make any kind of comparisons or calls for change they are in effect always calling for nerfs to another class or archetype.

Slippery slope.

Still looking for update on quoted item in first post.

I am getting absolutely sick and tired of this topic.

Tell you what, how about this: Daegun, particularly, but any warrior that would dare do this... how about we compare apples to apples?

I want a warrior, activating all their tanking stuff: Blade Guardian, Brace for Impact, Third Spire, Hold the Line, Mark of the Mage Hunter, Resplendent Glory, Warlord's Bravery, Warlord's Resurgence, Warlord's Tenacity, Armor of Stalwart Runes, No Time to Bleed, Imperator's Charge, Imperator's Command, Gut Punch, Knee Strike, Fort disc, Last Stand, Warrior's Auspice, Warrior's Perception, Warrior's Instinct, Steadfast Defense, Field Outfitter, Commanding Voice, Flash of Anger, Shield topple, Guardian Circle III clicky, Armor of Experience, and whatever else I'm missing, I'm sure is more (never played a war, myself)....

THEN COMPARE YOUR TANKING ABILITY, with all that activated, vs a MAXED OUT magician earth pet.

You will blow the pet away, as far as mitigation and avoidance, and you know it.

As a magician, I have absolutely no problem with making my pet have the exact same mitigation factors as a player tank. Just give me even half of what player tanks can activate for their activated tanking abilities.

Dre is simply re-opening a post that was already closed in this forum and still remains active in Veterans Lounge. Why not re-open on the casters forum as well Dre, with the same copy past from Dzarn as you had in all three at one point. We get it, you want Dzarn to address pets. But yet in the other thread you claim you are not fishing for anything in specific. Class envy much?

Let me tell you a little secret then. While Warriors have lots of buttons to push, most of those buttons are quite ineffective and are just there to give you the illusion that mashing more buttons will make you survive longer. Half of the abilities you listed either don't stack, have no (measurable) effect on tanking, have short durations, are not available to everyone or have long reuses or even reuses measured in hours.

Blade Guardian - A chance to get a parry increasing buf when you almost certainly gonna die -- when you almost dead, a small chance to parry is not gonna help you.
Brace for Impact - A VI, 3% better than cleric VI, but only lasts 12 seconds.
Third Spire - A button that gives you the feeling you might tank better.
Hold the Line - Increases healing that lands on you, useful, if not overhealed, but won't make you mitigate better.
Mark of the Mage Hunter - A rune vs. spells, high re-use time, usually will run out before whatever requires it is dead.
Resplendent Glory - Another healing buff, for a whopping 1-15%, lasts 1 minute, won't stack with hold the line; I don't bother hotkeying this.
Warlord's Bravery - Reduces melee damage by 14% for 15 hits, long reuse.
Warlord's Resurgence - Proof that warriors can self heal, every 30 minutes, for 300 hp / tick. Not hotkey'd.
Warlord's Tenacity - Highly useful, increases our base HP, does nothing for mitigation.
Armor of Stalwart Runes - Haven't found any use for this disc. Not hotkey'd. Won't stack.
No Time to Bleed - Not bad, as long as mobs don't hit too hard. Don't use on hard hitters or you'll just make damage intake even more spikey, assuming you have another Vie running.
Imperator's Charge - Increases spell haste (but doesn't stack with Cleric spell haste) and melee haste, by 35%, but won't stack with other haste. Not hotkey'd.
Imperator's Command - Doesn't stack with cleric buffs.
Gut Punch - Nerfed, should help against mobs that use blunt attacks.
Knee Strike - Has no impact on tanking.
Fort disc - High reuse time, short duration
Last Stand - The most useful button a Warrior has, works just as well as the level 55 disc (ie, it was never really upgraded).
Warrior's Auspice - Will last about 5-10 seconds before poofing.
Warrior's Perception - BP click, detrimental if used when tanking heavy damage and you have Cleric vie.
Warrior's Instinct - Same as above, shares the same timer.
Steadfast Defense - Cannot be used with other disciplines, barely parseable improvement -- its main function is to look pretty and make it hard to switch to another Discipline.
Field Outfitter - Good AC boost on this
Commanding Voice - DoDH discipline, nerfed by stagnation, everyone has Dodge clickeys now.
Flash of Anger - Very nice emergency, that parry's everything for 6 seconds (unless in Plane of War).
Shield topple - A "DPS" disc, has no effect on tanking -- or on DPS for that matter.
Guardian Circle III clicky - I suppose we could drop one ineffective Aura (Champion's Aura) for another ineffective Aura.
Armor of Experience - A 24 hour reuse veteran reward -- very powerful, mainly because it partly works like Aegis of Caliav line... short duration.

So, what could we stack to actually improve mitigation for a minute or more:
- Last Stand (95% effective, if you only want to press 1 button)
- Field Outfitter (maybe another 1%)
- Champion's Aura or Guardian Circle (or both)... maybe another 1%
- The BP clickey and/or NTTB, but only if tanking trivial stuff otherwise you make it worse
- Gut Punch

On top of that, you could use other things that don't do anything for mitigation:
- Warlord's Tenacity
- Hold the Line
- Third Spire (listed here because it sucks)

All the rest is either short duration, severely hit limited, won't stack with the above or has high reuse time.

Even then, with those discs, AA and aura's all stacked, we'll still not come close to a DI curve as good as the Earth pet gets, which basically is 80% DI 1 hits with maybe 1% DI 20 hits. In other words, our damage intake will still be less predictable.

cause a tank giving himself carpal tunnel mashing buttons none stop is apple to apple against a mage pet told to attack.

As far as I know both the group level warrior and the raid level warrior do not have any problems tanking current content. I understand in comparing pet vs real tank if the real tanks had any problems in tanking current content, but these types of jealously posts will only bring down the nerf bat on the pet classes, it will not do anything to the tanking classes.

For 3/10 minutes.

It is incorrect to assume that anecdotes of success imply everything is working perfectly.

just as it is equally incorrect to assume that anecdotes of failure imply everything is horribly broken.

Ranpha,

Imperator's Command boosts my hp pool running full raid buffs, including Rampant. I normally utilize this with Tenacity+Hold on heavy-hitters like Galenth when i could expect bad rounds. Its a situational hp boost i typically keep running if im up tanking - What part isn't stacking, exactly?

Given we single tank almost every event beginning to end now - I sparse out the short durations as transitions between Clr 3rds or other places I expect spikes. I wouldn't say any are game-breaking, but still situationally useful for the raid tank.

Edit: Not to detract from your pet tanking thread. I just think the abilities are being downplayed a bit more extremely than needed. I'm sure all of us use the short duration or hit limited on expected spikes as needed to stay up. I could care less if the pets tank better, honestly. A player needs to be in there to render melee valuable and we have absolutely no issues with current content, even without discs. The pet tanking scenario only comes into play in rare situations that requires range. The only event that comes to mind is *possibly* Nightmare Devourer, which is easy to tank anyways. Seems like more effort than its worth.

TL;DR - I ain't mad. Its more trouble than its worth for this weak content.

I think his data on stacking of imperators is out dated. When it was originally released it would not stack with the certitude line.

Hey Pwn, I was going to stay off this thread because nerfs suck, but have a few questions. Are you in the top 5% of geared warriors? How much gear does a pet need to tank close to you? And do you think a group geared pet class's pet can tank better than a similarly geared warrior? I am a group geared warrior with good game knowledge and average to above average skill, still shaking the rust off, and I have seen pets of players with similar gear as mine out tank me hands down. If I could tank as well as a pet I probably would have killed Roon instead of getting him to 81% when NTTB wore off yesterday. That is my challenge to kills things I have trouble with... to get better gear... to kill harder stuff, to get more aa, to get better...but a small part of me is irked because I feel like my class is the red-headed stepchild of tanks.

Did you have Last Stand running?

In 3 minutes of Last Stand, your group should have killed Roon no problem. If you only got him to 81% in 3 minutes, that's your problem, lack of DPS.

Yea was 3 boxing a 96 shammy and 100 druid, with a healer/wiz/wiz merc. It was a bad round that got me, was trying to stagger defensive abilities.

With 2 dps mercs roon should die before last stand wears off.

LOL what? Had 2 priests, plus cleric merc?

You're definitely not boxing your priests correctly...

Was your druid's heal weave sunbeam blessing > vivification > adrenaline rush > sterivida and shaman's similar?

I.E. their twinheal nuke, fast cast heal, fast cast heal, slow heal?

1. Top 5%? Of Raid Warriors? All Warriors at 100? Here is the thing - there are over 40 guilds who have beaten all CoTF content to date, and our gear is all the same. Everyone is one piece of loot away from jumping +/- 10 spots on Magelo at any given time. I'm in one of the few guilds that has done every achievement pre-nerf and earned our raid titles as well. My gear is good enough to single-tank every raid boss in the expansion. Aside from measuring 'epeenz' by HP or AC, there really isn't a difference between any of us in livability right now. Tacking an extra 3k to my hp isn't going to do much, and I think you'll find that to be the consensus. On magelo, overly simplified, i'm #100 worldwide in hp. That'll probably go higher tonight. /shrug

2. Probably with the pets, yes. What I mean by that is that their sustained tanking is much more fluid than ours non-disc. They don't spike like we do - the damage they receive is fairly predictable. The problem is that pets are meant for a small subset of groups. If you want a Bard, Rogue, Berserker, Beastlord, Paladin, Warrior, Shadowknight, or Monk in your group, you pretty much can't pet tank. To run a pet group, you need a specialty group dedicated to ranged damage. They're not a substitute for a real tank unless you exclude half of the classes in the game and try to build a pseudo-group just to focus around the non-spikeyness of a pet. Doesn't seem worth it to me, but more power to them if they want to.

3. Warriors out-tank the other tanks hands-down. I never realized exactly how much until we rolled into pre-nerf Commander Galenth and we used a few knights as buffer material before resuming the warrior line. Paladins and SK's are exceptionally valuable, but blow for blow, they simply don't do as well as we do. Its the benefit we receive of being the tank class with no extra utility - we take a few more hits.

Let me end on this note: Blastnastie is my fiancee and next to me, with her worldwide ranking around #20 right now. I can testcopy over, spawn mobs in the arena, and run a parse of me over ten minutes versus an EM-XX pet and post the results. That'd settle the raid vs raid question. I also have an old test-copy of my warrior before the server transfer that is in group gear, so I may be able to run that as well with group focus. Pets will never replace real tanks in most situations, though, so I find the conversation somewhat moot.