CoV Raiding Warrior Dual Wield?

Discussion in 'Tanks' started by Bederper, Mar 17, 2021.

  1. Bederper Journeyman

    Friends,
    After going to school on a few recent raid videos, it seems as though a couple of warriors are dual wielding as main tank in current content? Is this braggadocio? Or an effective way to gain and maintain aggro in a universe of dis-engaging mobs, aggro wipes, and rampant (passive ?) aggro generation?

    I ask coz I am really struggling with understanding aggro in general, and specifically maintaining aggro lock on Targets, moving mobs into position, pulling Crazy Ivans, aggro meter seemingly disconnected from targets target, adds aggro locking person X.

    From what I’ve read on Taunt,
    a) a successful taunt will not cause the mob to switch target. 4 are required?
    b) Proximity/witness aggro is a thing, so is being closer than 35 is better. True?
    c) Taunt only works up to 40, so best be pretty damn close. Where is it measured from? The 3D centre of its hitbox or the dragon’s nose ? Does this make Tantor a belly caster ?
    d) Is it better to pop blast of anger / ageless and then build threat, or vice versa ?

    Thanks in advance,
  2. Astteroth New Member

    DW is significantly better aggro generation than sword and board. You have more aggro procs, and more DPS. You do give up some survivability. I use both depending on what discs i have on rotation or where we are in the event. I always use DW at the start of an event because DPS is going to do everything they can to make sure their parse looks good.

    A) is just not true. One taunt puts you at the top of aggro, but you need to do something to stay on top. Taunting then using aggro generating abilities.

    B) in CoV that is not going to make much of a difference.

    C) I have never had taunting issues in CoV to include tantor. As long as you are landing melee hits, your abilities should be within range.

    D) It's always better to taunt THEN use aggro abilities. No point in using before if you are trying to tank whatever you have targeted.
  3. The real Sandaormo Augur

    Most tanks will always use dual wield on raid trash clears or if you have issues with early agro in a fight.
    1 hander and shield will always be preferred against the big hitters. That said the better your gear the more you can use dual wield if you want. Using DW will up your dps for sure but can be tougher on healers.

    Taunt,
    a) successful taunt will only put you on top, up to you to stay there, click your agro buttons
    b) Proximity/witness aggro is not really a thing since we got agro generating discs, aa's ect
    c) taunt works, also look at Unending and Ageless if you lose agro and want it back
    d) Blast of anger just adds agro, save ageless for when it swaps away and you want it back

    I would work on your agro management through building it from the beginning and staying out front.
    Taunt button should only really be used if you lose agro not if you have agro. If you have agro do not touch it.

    If you do get a Warrior that's "bragging" about dual wielding or using a 2 hander on raid nameds, that dudes a tool. Its not about how cool you look tanking, its how easy can you make it for your Clerics and getting the win. Don't get caught up in SoandSo does it so I have to too.
    Bigstomp likes this.
  4. sojero One hit wonder

  5. Tucoh Augur

    I view dual-wielding vs shield as being somewhat similar to my other defensive options. If I'm running hot with Dragonscales + others and need DPS / aggro while being relatively safe, switching to dual wield makes a lot of sense.

    Last parse I did dual wield does 90% of 2H damage and is close to sword/shield in survivability. It's a really good feature of warriors vs other plate tanks.
    Dre. likes this.
  6. Szilent Augur

    I dual wield nearly all the time tanking approximately everything. There are exceptions, but they are exceptions. Those exceptions hinge on factors like the irrelevance of damaging my enemy, the fight's duration, and the number of other tanks simultaneously tanking, not directly on the puissance of Defensive Proficiency.

    Versus a raid boss, equipping a shield brings no benefit via defensive "checks" like Parry, Dodge or shield block AA. Raid bosses Strikethrough all that.

    Wearing a shield to use Defensive Proficiency II does two core things - raise AC, and provide 12% spa168 protection. With raid buffs on (didn't activate guild trophies for this quick look. didn't get Group Armor from paladin.), changing from dual swords to shield raises my AC from 11047 to 11876. Not nothing, but also not defensive laser eye beams. It's a lil more than activating Courageous Defense at rk3. Wearing a shield for purposes of raising AC isn't terribly motivating to me for the same reason Courageous Defense isn't considered a premier defensive ability: raising AC doesn't change max hits, and only has a marginal effect on average hits when your enemy has very high Atk (as raid bosses do). High AC is incredible mitigation when enemies don't have overwhelming Atk, but the normal situation is that those enemies aren't dangerous to begin with.

    The other half, the spa168 protection, is for sure more interesting, but is entirely useless for the duration of Ultimate Stand (45% spa168 instead) and, I find, superfluous when the very strong spa451 protections are on from Composite Shielding, Roaring Shield, Warrior's Rampart, or Glyph of Dragon Scales. It does stack with those, which is real nice, but in practice I only care about that when I need "extra" protection, as when healing is poor due to being spread thin.

    When mobs are absolute thrashers? Sure, shield. When dps doesn't matter, or is even bad? I shield then, sure. When there's more (dangerous) enemies than there are healers, then, sure, I turtle up. Otherwise, I have the second sword out. The agro is night & day; you're either making agro like a knight or you're making agro like a warrior. The dps is, similarly, night & day; it's dps bought with attentive rotation of other defenses, bought with the quality of your healers. +150-250k dps that's lost when shielding up, with hella rare compensation in the form of a missed death.

    I was enthusiastic about sword+shield for the couple years that underlying mechanics supported it. It very much made sense to me that EverQuest's premier tanking class equipped itself as a matter of course for tanking. Those underlying mechanics were gutted seven years ago; Shields and the Defensive Proficiency that comes with them are relegated to a specialized tool for when normal warrior play is insufficient or entirely disincentivized (and when a paladin isn't handy to step into a role that their class is clearly more suited to).


    Total aside : Taunt button makes agro for warriors, via 15k Sneering Grin AA procs. With a 3s cooldown on the button, not-pressing it while tanking is very silly.
    Tucoh likes this.
  7. p2aa Augur

    I use DW in two cases.

    First when I'm the first MT on a raid boss. Just before triggering the boss, i click composite shielding so that the 100 % aggro mod start asap when I awake the mob, then fortitude, then mob awake, then ageless enmity in case someone manages to turn it to him, then the aggro maintainers and rage of rallos zek. DW + rage of rallos zek, multiply by the 100 % aggro mod, is your best burst aggro tool to hold aggro over big melee DPS aggroers burning from start. Rage of rallos zerk ends usually when fortitude does too, so in the last tick of fortitude or so I swap to 1 hander + shield. And I start my defensive disc when composite shielding fades.

    Secondly, when I'm ST on a boss, I will be DW on it, to add aggro and DPS, but also in case the tank before me dies suddenly, i can still use flash of anger which allows me after this to swap to 1 hander + shield.

    If you are tanking actively a raid mob, be it add or boss, there is no reason to not use a 1 hander + shield. The aggro output is much less than with DW, but then Warlord Fury clicking when it's up helps you there (don't click Warlord Fury while Composite Shielding is running, or you waste some aggro mod) to maintain.

    The AC advantage of a shield is still making some difference, we are talking of 800 real AC , not the older 800 fake AC on displayed stats. Yes, you can probably tank this same mob DW, but think of your healers, who are yet very busy healing other tanks in your group too likely and you want to try to reduce the healing load as you can.
  8. Gazzi New Member

    As p2aa mentioned, 800 shield AC is not comparable to 800 displayed AC of Courageous defense by example. Last one's is soft capped of .35 so your 800 shield AC means 2285 displayed AC. We all know ( Attack - mitigation AC ) skews the distribution of the random DI variable. As Szilent says, as raid mobs have high Attack, that skews is maybe not much at the end and most reduction is coming from the 168 of shield stance. Anyone of you guys ever parsed the difference of dps taken under Compo by example of the 2 stance ?
  9. Szilent Augur

    No, there is no mumbo jumbo with displayed AC now. real AC is displayed. rk3 Courageous Defense is 7734 base AC in its spell data, it increases real AC by 677 after going through all the calcs. Once it does, that calc is *done*, there's no more comparing or math to be done on it.

    Equipping my shield raises my AC by 814 because my shield is 780ac and has some hStr on it. Shield AC is uncapped, so 1=1. That's all. It doesn't "mean" 2k or whatever you're doing there.
  10. Bederper Journeyman

    Thanks all. Wealth of information here, really appreciate the insights.
  11. Darchon_Xegony Augur

    150-250k DPS lost when shielding... What sort of ADPS is in this group where switching from 1h/shield to dual wield grants you an additional 150-250k?

    I know I am still just in ToV on Phinigel but my warrior is max AA, has hDex focus on type 5s, has ToV crafted warrior 1h and TBL crafted warrior 1h from raids, and his dual wield is about 225k and 1h/shield is about 105k. So I guess that 150k value is sort of reasonable but 250k sounds crazy. Maybe with Shaman/Bard group or something?

    Having more than 1-2 clerics on a raid would be nice to allow for this though!
  12. Gazzi New Member

    I just checked and you are right. Soft cap is taken into account into displayed AC now.
  13. The real Sandaormo Augur

    I assume I dual wield as much as the next tank for most things except the biggest of the big hitters on raids. This is mainly to help healers when they are spread thinner than normal.

    Also:


    Shield Block: this ability grants you the chance to fully block an attack when using a shield. Increased ranks improve the chance to block attacks. If you can block even a small percentage it helps. Spent a lot of AA on it if its not working.

    As for agro with a shield in , you have enough agro modifiers and buttons to push to get WAYYYY out in front of your agro and not lose it.
  14. Szilent Augur

    You haven't successfully Dodged, Parried, or Shield Blocked a raid boss without the aid of a +10000% disc (Fort / Flash) since CotF. If it's taken you seven years to be made aware, then it's taken seven years for you to be made aware.

    "enough" is relative. There's a enormous difference in agro, an enormous difference in the speed with which one gets "WAYYYY out in front".
  15. The real Sandaormo Augur

    Bought more levels of Shield block in EoK up to level 23 I think, I would like a refund if the 25% better chance to shield block that was promised is not working.

    At work but will be interesting to check parses.
  16. Szilent Augur

    :rolleyes:

    now ask for a refund on your Parry skill and Dodge skill and Commanding Voice and Myrmidon's Skill and Improved Dodge focus and Stone of Judgement and…maybe the technical aspects of tanking just aren't your forte, eh?

    Nothing's changed about Shield Block, or any other defense skills, the past 7 years. They don't work versus raid bosses, raid bosses strike right on through.
  17. FranktheBank Augur

    We just ridicule our warriors that equip shields (outside of particular circumstances) until they start DWing :)

    +1 vote for 2h tanking as well.
  18. Gorgasm Journeyman

    I think the only thing I use a shield in CoV is tanking one of the initial 4 Vulak dragons, just because my DPS when I'm off tanking it is basically meaningless. I suppose if I was tanking a Defender's dragon that wasn't the first one to die it might make sense there too.

    2H tanking is dangerous enough that you (obviously) only do it for things you have comfortably on farm, and in cases where you have sufficient back up tanks in case of death. Nice to get some extra DPS out of tanking though.
  19. Tucoh Augur

    This parse against raid boss mobs is basically the only way to evaluate the impact of shield vs dual wield and getting a parse from it is nontrivial because:
    1. It's hard to get 100% uptime on AC buffs and atk debuffs, so getting enough data is difficult.
    2. It's hard to find a boss that will just let you tank it without a raid to do the other events. And even if an event had a super boring start that let you do this, who is to say that boss has the same attack as another one?

    When i parsed the value of attack and defense against trash mobs i found that at some point the effect seemed to saturate to where additional attack or ac didn't make much impact. Whether the attack on bosses is tuned to be high and low enough that the shield ac has a big impact is unknown.
  20. Triconix Augur

    I think you're also overlooking the fact that DW Prof also provides 6% SpA168. So the benefit from DW to shield is only a 6% difference, not 12%.
    Tucoh and Szilent like this.