Hi guys, I'm currently boxing a ranger, shaman, bard and thinking about adding a tank into the mix, so I don't have to deal with the merc. I'm curious what others have found the most useful/manageable in similar situations. The paladin seems kind of uninteresting but the SK, warrior, or mage for pet tanking all sound interesting; I'm just not sure which would best fit my situation. Any suggestions or comments would be greatly appreciated, thank you.
It's according to how you play. If you are exceptionally lazy and want to shoot with the bow, melody with the bard, and not really worry about aggro just do the mage pet thing. If you want to work at your tank, the next easist is gonna be sk. They have the easist aggro + the most passive self healing procs etc. Warrior is going be the most solid tank but it's going to require more work than that. Warrior have some nifty instant stuff though, so you can push a button and tab back to others. For me? I'm lazy. I'd go with the earth pet.
Silku pretty much got it if you want your own personable tank, but to be able to watch your tv shows at the same time, then mage is the way to go. I'm biased and am going to tell you to pick the SK. SK will have no problems holding aggro. Use the SK to pull so that way you're not flipping through all your characters, grab aggro, swap to ranger and do what you do, put bard on auto attack and sit on the shaman to heal/slow/dot/nuke/proc as needed. Rinse repeat. Then there's also the option of having the SK to swarm for AAs while bard is on /melody. Wont be as efficient as a mages beam kiting at 100, but you can still swarm every other level up to 100 where as I'm not sure if a mage can. Biased opinion, I admit, but there's my reasoning lol
Agro frankly isn't an issue for any tank anymore, so I wouldn't worry about that. Warrior - easier to get up to snuff through boost to innate mitigation, and since it's a pure melee, few AAs are needed relative to hybrids. It's the most gear dependent of the three, though. Stacks nicest w/ the shaman and bard for dps. Paladin - easiest to have up to snuff for stunnable content, not so much otherwise. Great group healing, but you don't need that w/ the shaman. SK - hardest to get up to snuff for tanking (lots of AAs sunk into the self-heal procs). Good utility, but w/ the bard it's pretty redundant for you. Can be reasonable dps but it takes a lot of casting to get there. Mage - pet tanking ability is more developer-dependent than the others (i.e. pets can be detuned where tanks generally won't be), and forces the ranger into an almost zero dps role outside of burns. The mage would make your ranger a fairly pointless addition to the group, honestly. I'd go with warrior if I were you.
Thanks guys, I really appreciate the responses. The mage tank is the most attractive in terms of ease and utility with coh, but as Khauruk points out I'd have to exclusively range attack. I'm still debating, but you've all given me a lot to think about. Im somewhat familiar with the sk from many years ago, but I know little about the warrior and how he builds aggro; does it require a lot of button pushing and monster selecting when establishing aggro for multi pulls or is this mostly a passive process?
Warrior doesn't have that many tools for agro on large pulls that won't use a lot of your time - SK is still the boss at that, and paladin is pretty good. Warriors are better than they've ever been at it though, and agro is far far far easier than it ever was for a warrior.
ignore Warrior. Go Shadowknight for Snares, FD and what not.. or if you want to ranged fight all the time. Go Mage. They both are gunna take hard work to get to the point they can tank for you. But hey. I only have a 100 SK and a 98 Mage. Im an Enchanter. Mage fits my bill just fine.
The SK offers no new utility over his current toons - he has snares, he has amazing pulling ability, etcetera. Area agro is a plus, but boxers don't do that much w/ big pulls usually. Frankly none of the tanks offer utility that he needs over his current toons - he has heals, cures, pulling, snaring, etcetera.
Tank with Bard turtle and add a wiz for dps and ports + 2 merc dps or 1 cle on named if Bard don't have right AA.
I am playing SK+Enchanter+Wizard atm with friends on Bard and Cleric (almost level 90). SK really needs to work on aggro a lot to hold aggro on wizard and merc (in burn). So even with the supposely easiest tank its a lot of attention. If I set merc balanced and nuke less with the wizard its very easy on the aggro but the dps is extremely slow (only 2 dps in the group). I have access to a 92 mage and it makes things very easier. You cannot set merc to burn and the bard cant melee but the mage + pet dps a good chunk more than the SK. At higher level of content and gear the SK may (I hope so at least!) overtank the mage pet.
Wow, the mage pet is that powerful at higher levels? I'm 72 and right now my SK can out tank my mages pet, but your saying things change?
Thanks guys, a lot of great information and suggestions. In my particular situation where im using a ranger, bard, shaman, and tank, would a mages dps most likely make up for the rangers inability to melee based on using a mage pet? I don't expect to ever get raid gear on an SK or warrior, so the mage is looking more and more appealing. Another option would be to use the mage pet in addition to a tank merc for when the merc decides to do his own thing; I'm not sure if this would depress dps to much either though as I know little about how the end game plays out in the higher lvls.
Yes, in fact, you would have a large net DPS increase, because your Ranger can use his Bow. and Rangers best DPS Burn is with the bow. You wont have to worry about running him into combat, either. /autofire on .... nuke nuke nuke...... =D Hope that answers your question
Great that helps a lot. As much fun as the sk sounds, for practicality I think I'll go with mage. Thanks all for the help and input.
