You already know this, but just to color this analysis: raids can't typically be reduced in such a way. Some can, but often an increase of the tank's DPS will confer a higher benefit when it's critical that a mob dies asap. This is often the case when tanking adds that, once dead, are no longer a threat to the raid. Or when you're bumping against an enrage timer where that 12s can actually be quite a lot of time. The MT grinding away on a boss that's largely ignored by the rest of the raid that focuses on burning adds, dealing with emotes etc gets much less benefit from extra DPS because it just means the raid starts at 95% health instead of 96%, or something. But when there is a critical time where DPS on a tanked mob really matters, a warrior being comfortable with switching to dual wield and coordinating their ADPS can be critical. That warrior that thinks their only job is tanking and keeps his shield while the raid isn't hitting a critical DPS threshold is foolish. Again, I know you know this and like you say, judge how you feel and how important your DPS is.
We are still talking about raid Warrior on the named right? not some off tanked add or group play. If the Warrior tanking is your critical step in getting to a DPS threshold, and beating an enrage, then you got bigger problems than I care to discuss here. A Warrior off tanking a named while adds are being killed is probably doing 90% of his dps just fighting off regen, if he happens to get a few ticks off the named, good for him but give me a break saying it could be critical to winning an event. I have yet to hear a raid leader saying "The named needs to get to 96% before we engage or we may as well gate!" Like I said I don't have any issue either way, do what you want but don't make it sound like the people that feel safer using a shield are doing something wrong. Especially for Warriors in guilds outside the top 20 or whatever number you want.
50 million raid DPS over a 10 minute stretch? If your four clerics just heal and do no damage at all, that means the other 50 players each must average 1 million over 10 minutes. Let's say your top 5 average 1.8 and your next five average 1.4 million. This means that the remaining 40 players in the raid each has to do 850k DPS each. How many guilds in this game is averaging 50 million over 10 minutes?
but what if just two clerics! in the one tank group where that warrior is wearing a shield, so that there's eight groups full of magicians? THEN that warrior's choosing to wipe his butt with a free 250k dps doesn't matter, see?
Now I wonder how much it would cost to bribe your RL to say this and make you tank to 96 % on Aten or some other such event
I used round numbers to make the point. I would assume the burn is higher then trickles off for guilds like ROI or SR. Do the math at 25 million dps and you see similar results. Now to kill the mob it takes 20 mins and the Warrior if he sustains his million dps saved the raid 20 seconds. Not game changing.
players who choose 200k dps over 400k dps have, and deserve, the company of other players that choose 200k dps over 400k dps.
I could care less really, I use dual wield 90% of the time but I can also recognize the need at times to pop a shield in. I can't tell what people are more mad about, that I don't agree with the statement "There's no use for a shield" or that I put a light on the impact they're having on overall raid dps/kill times of nameds by dual wielding. Like I said, knock yourself out either way.
Unless the tank that chooses 400k dps cannot survive the battle while tanking and dies, which leads to that individual now doing 0 dps and anywhere from 1-53 others also doing 0 dps within the next 30 seconds. Whereas if s/he had chosen the 200k dps option but survived the entire battle while tanking the named from 100-0, then that results in raid victory instead of raid wipe. As an outsider, DPS > all provided you can survive and live. And there are some tanks who have outstanding gear and augs and AA, with on the spot healing, who can 2h tank a named from 100-0 who can max their dps out. And there are some tanks not properly geared and augged, who don't receive adequate healing, who need a shield just to perform their tank role. Everyone should maximize their DPS, provided they are able to survive the encounter. For me personally, whenever Shield of XYZ fades I immediately recast it. Maybe I don't have to? Maybe I can just rely on my healer and AOE healing and live? And the time it takes to recast Shield of XYZ could be spent increasing DPS (especially on Primal Vampire)? I dunno. But I recast it every time, I live on all the events, and I do more dps than a caster merc on raids. I guess I am the tank that sometimes uses a shield /shrug
To be honest, no single thing in EverQuest is ever really "critical". Things do add up though. Like in isolation, if you have two parallel universes, one where the MT used a shield and one where the MT dual wielded and literally nothing else changed, then yea the outcome is going to be roughly the same. The real thing that I push back against, is the mentality that suggests that you should make any possible trade off you can for increased survivability, no matter the cost or how big the actual gains are, and to be honest this is true for anything in EQ, not just survivability. The reason that I push back against this thought pattern, is because something like wearing a shield is almost never the *only* thing someone does different. That mentality tends to lead to making additional trade offs, and then things start adding up. For instance, someone who says that survivability is all that matters is likely going to choose to use brells over ranger buffs, even though brells is only ~5k hp difference from strength, so effectively a meaningless loss. Someone who says that survivability is all that matters is likely going to choose to stack hsta instead of hdex, even though hsta only adds something like 20-30k total HP, and hdex provides massive DPS gains. Someone who says that survivability is all that matters is likely going to choose playing in guilds that choose to have raid comps that are not there to maximize DPS, such as guilds that have rosters with 8-10 clerics in a raid, when you could easily do it with half that and have more DPS classes. Someone who is willing to give up a "free" 200k DPS, is also likely to play with other people who are willing to give up free DPS for a variety of reasons. Now will all of these things be true just because someone equipped a shield? No, of course not, but the same mentality that leads someone to regularly use a shield, also often time leads to other decisions like the ones above. In your post you mention the MT off tanking a named while adds are being killed. If I was that MT and there were adds that needed to die near me, I would swap targets and DPS the adds while the boss continues to beat on me, since adds are often times the most dangerous part of a fight since they spread damage and healing out, and getting them dead faster. My mentality is that a warrior is a tank who is also effectively a DPS class, so I'm focused on killing down whatever needs to die if I can. Obviously sometimes you simply can't do that, but when you start from the idea that one of your jobs is to maximize your dps contributions in addition to tanking, you start looking for ways to increase your DPS contributions, and that leads to larger gains beyond "just" the 200k DPS you can gain from a bando swap. Generally speaking, there's no cap to how much raid DPS is useful the more DPS you have in a raid (or group really) the better. There's not much in the way of diminishing returns on more DPS, outside of rare events where there's some hard coded timer that you simply can't get around. The same is not true for tanking or healing. If you never drop below 50% health for instance, then increasing your tanking isn't going to help you. You're already not dying. Likewise if 80% of heals are healing for 0 because they're all going into OH, then adding another healer isn't going to really help you. So there are effective caps for both tanking and healing above which additional gains get increasingly less useful. So for a warrior, the right (IMO) mentality to have is that you need to gear/play to have *enough* survival that you're not very likely to die due to those choices (healers getting silenced, forgetting to hit buttons, etc dont count) and then you've reached that effective cap, and then you should start gearing/playing to maximize your DPS. A "top" guild that regularly is pumping 50m DPS isn't doing so because they're geared so much better or they're pushing their buttons so much harder, or any other really such nonsense. EQ is a game with a very low skill ceiling and one where it's a game of incremental improvements that add up. Those 50m DPS raids are primarily 50m DPS raids because they're generally largely ran and comprised mostly (but of course not wholly) of individuals, regardless of class, of trying to maximize raid dps while performing any other role "good enough".
Feels like some people in this thread are far more concerned with promoting their thoughts and views instead of understanding the other side. Too many black/white thoughts on this- there is a grey area that seems to be ignored. Anyways, I hope the OP got the gear answers that s/he originally asked for.
20-30 k HP bonus is an advantage, calling it useless is like calling Growth spell cast by shamans / druids useless. Also, 100 k DPS difference between a HDex and a HSta warrior on a Griklor parse, in a tank group (real tank group, no ADPS in it), that's so massive difference lol.
I didn't call 20-30k hp useless, I said that people who choose to hinder their DPS by selecting shields will also often times choose to hinder their DPS in other ways, like picking 20-30k HP via hsta over increased DPS via hdex. The general thrust of the series of statements being that folks who use shields the majority of the time will give up substantial DPS increases for ever diminishing returns on Tanking increases. I think "real tank" groups are largely outdated holdovers from a different era of EverQuest TBH. We have like one or two of them, typically places to put hsta warriors since why waste an adps slot on them. That being said, why are you reaching all the way back to Griklor? A fight that isn't going to showcase the differences between hdex and hsta particularly well because you spend so little time actually killing things and not just standing around waiting for Griklor to come down, that you'll likely have MGB aDPS boosting your crit rate to the point even hsta warriors are high in crit. Also 5 levels and 3 expansions ago, so 100k in era was relatively more DPS than it is now. But hey, let's use your number of 100k, now let's add on the 200k from DW to shield. So now your choices have cost your raid 300k DPS. Each one of these choices keep stacking up against you. This is what I mean when I say nothing in EverQuest is critical, it's all a game of inches that slowly add up. Add in the severe diminishing returns once you have "enough" survivability that you're unlikely to die outside of someone making a mistake, that makes your "tanking" inches more like millimeters, while your DPS inches are still inches, and thus more valuable.
Often. Multiple things can be true at once. I will often start the fight with a shield untill boss is debuffed thats like 2 seconds or whatever och will use a shield when theres alot of mobs needs to be tanked at same time. Just like i will use my 2handers when im under defesive cuz the high mitigation im unders. As others have said eq is a game of inches AND choices. I can use flash on cooldown and get a better mitigation/Tanking parse, or i could use it in pre planned moments when i know im in risk of dieing due to chaos. It all depends like so many other things in the game. The dex and the stam arguement is the same. Normaly the ppl that go stam they do it cuz of prgression it gives them the highest chance to live thru breaking thru progression when gear and aas ect isent maxed out or your unsure of all the mecanics when you first beat the events . Ill be the first to admit that i do use hstam cuz my primary function at progression is stay alive and keep the baddie hitting me, as gear becomes more avilible i should prolly farm another set of type 5s for dex but no not doing it only to switch back again for next progression. As a rule of thumb you should be useing the weapon configuration you do the most dam with as long as you feel comfble that it wont kill you. And if you feel you cant use a 2hander then duelweild ect. As sadanso said things arent so black and white there has to be room for greyscale not everything fits so neat in to pre made boxes
You realize that this not a binary world : Warriors using shield and HSta doing no DPS VS warriors using DW and HDex lol, you know that wearing a shield doesn't warn you to click DPS discs right ? Same for your wonderful theory of a warrior that MT a raid boss with a shield is infecting the DPS of his guild that are doing subpar DPS and all these people play in low tier raiding guilds. So, the RoI warrior that is MT raid bosses with a shield, and going HSta, is in a low tier raiding guild DPS wise ? lol. That's cool that you have 9 bards to fill all your raid groups, but this is a minority of guilds. I'm going to repeat it again : personal warrior DPS is low this is just ADPS that enhances it, once you have used your big DPS discs, you can just auto attack and it will look great because of the ADPS, that's all. Even so you would not have 9 bards, that raises me a question, why are you putting your warriors in DPS groups ? You don't trust your melee DPS classes to do DPS ? Your first reaction when someone presents you something, is to try to discredit it. This is the latest parse on these boards that showed the difference between a HSta (me) and a Hdex warrior (Szilent) in two different guilds : But here you go, on longer durations fights, the 100 k differences remains from Szilent parses And no, things aren't linear and you start to add apples and oranges (100 k, 200 k there) lol There is never enough "survivability". Bad moments can happen anytime, a big AE couple to big melee rounds might kill you while you DW while I will survive it because my added HP from HSta helps me to soak this AE and my shield has blocked fully a melee hit. Same when your healer has to run away and die there, or die in raid due to something, for more than 6 sec, so flash doesn't cover it, a successful shield block might save ya. There is no millimeters, and I consider that covering these situations is more important than winning 10 sec on an raid event.
With raid mobs not being at 100% strike through in tol, doesn't that make for an even stronger argument to go hdex instead of hstm? Even if you use a shield?
not really cuz stam isent just for melee hits its also adds in to things like bad AEs and or frontal ect. the xtra 25kish from stam can help edge off a death if you add it together with short term buffs and aas ect as a raid tank you never fear the consistant dmg , you fear the sudden spikes or bad timeing or if someone screws up and you happen to be clipped by something you shouldent . haveing any xtra life lines at them moments is whats gonna make or break you. i cant tell you the amount of time i "happened to also pick up and tank adds as i was tanking a named for a bit cuz someone went LD or lagged out" it happens and the added hp and the shield sure came in handy then. or when tanking named on the primal vampire and a tick latches on to a healer due to someone dident use blood bags properly and i could shield them and take half of all the dmg they toke wile also tanking the named the dex and stam arugument can go either way theres no argument that haveing stam at the start of the expasion is higher value then at end of the expasion. and dex makes you do more dmg they are both valueble in their own way the wole i might block somethign with my shield thing thats just total hogwash the odds of you shield blocking a named hit when it matters is next to nothing. however the ignore softcap ac and the added mititgation you get when you put the shield on is real and can be messured
But has the extra shield ac -been measured- accurately at any point? Taking into account the insane number of variables with damage mitigation and rng of everything going on? Is completely avoiding a possible max melee hit with hdex that you might not with hstm at the same time as an unfortunate ae not also going to protect you in the same way a few more hp is? I'm not taking either side of the argument at this point in time just pointing out that lots of people are making baseless arguments without taking into consideration the math and science that would "actually" solve the debate.
