I am very ignorant to the state of tanking and roles of the hybrid tank in EQ, beyond Sacrs of Velious. I'm coming from P99, so my understanding of the tanks my not align with live servers. Here are my questions: From my understanding, SK's and Pally tanks cannot be main tanks in current raids through Velious. Is that accurate here? After Velious, do the hybrids become viable raid tanks? If not, what is their role? I understand that rangers become a big DPS force in Luclin. Do they do so from a melee perspective or do they become snipers? Of these three classes, is there a greater need for one or the other on Agnarr? Thanks in advance for any relevant input.
Pretty much. Hybrids will off tank adds on raids but thats generally where it stops, OoW you see a lot more knight tanking outside of adds management. In Potime we had our knights tank Inny in time because of fearless aa. You'll see paladins do a lot of ramp tanking especially in luclin, because they get a nice shiny hammer that proc's a DA. You'll also see them DA pull some raid targets (I think this was more of a PoTime thing) to help with early positioning. But thats generally it. Things might have changed. I haven't played a tank/offtank past Luclin on TLP in awhile now. Mostly been the filthy shaman getting rolled after slowing a boss. If you are planning to group exclusively I would say pick a knight. If you dream of bigger things like raiding, a warrior is the way to go. As far as knights go, Paladin's seem very underrated and don't have much of a showing, I would start there.
Knights make better tanks than warriors during classic, yes even on raids. The agro and not even having to attack to hold agro more than make up for the 5% DI advantage warriors have Once kunark come and warriors get defensive it's a different story, tho knights still can tank, just not near as well as a defensive warriors
Thanks for the feedback on the tanks. I played a Pally on P99, and was leaning towards an SK, which I think I will continue to main. Just curious about Rangers post Velious. Do they remain melee oriented or do they go ranged for DPS? I'm thinking about alting one but I'm probably the odd ball, who wants to keep it melee.
Jumping in on this... SKs make the best group tanks for now I think. Their offensive spells allow them to get agro much better than a Paladin's defensive spells or a warriors taunt. And lets all be real, taunt at skill 60 is pretty much a hail mary lol. That being said, I am playing an Erudite Paladin... cuz I hate myself ?_? or something. I really enjoy teaming up with a SK. I can go lull pull and support the healer while the SK stays with group and grabs agro. Is a fun combo at low levels while we can mass murder things.
Rangers go ranged in Luclin, where they are top DPS, or at least in the top all the time. They lose the top spot in PoP though to monks, and with BiS weapons and full AAs melee starts to pass archery or at least be on par with it. Archery is still very viable in PoP though and rangers make a great DPS box in Luclin+ because of archery.
I disagree rangers pick up hard in PoP. Probably one of the better DPS classes. Velious / Luclin rangers lose most of their ability to tank but thats about the time the class starts go to HAM with range dps.
You disagree with what? I never said they lost anything in PoP, or didn't "pick up hard", whatever that means. All I said is they lose the top spot to monks, which they do. They still do very good DPS with their bow in PoP.
Rangers are still one of the top DPSers in pop. The monk weapons are good but it's not enough with how much more 54/30 2hb for monks is nice, your best h2h (unless naked fists scale higher) is gonna be shinai / xeg (quarm hammer) which is 23/20 + 26/24. With Rangers you'd most likely be using (they are newish to me to bare with me here) Timespinner 23/22 and again quarm hammer 26/24, Bow of Tempest 43/36 Skill Mod: Archery +5%, EOE could be a runner up I guess 20/20 w/ Timesnap. As far as AA's go. They both get CA, CS, CF, Destructive and Ambidexterity. Monks get - Return Kick, Ferocity, Ingenuity, Punishing Blade, Technique of Master Wu. (they get other more utility things crit mend, rapid fd and ect) Rangers get - AM, EQ, HAP, GotF, Ferocity, PB, HS. Fury of Magic (basically just ingenuity for casters I guess) The tools are close, are either classes gonna beat good casters probably not, when I was last raiding potime on my monk back in 2004/6 or whatever, dates not important or important enough to understand I played before all the big changes that we have now, cause I left to go play WoW at that time and only came back for Sleeper/Combine TLP. We had a mage named Gungabob, that was on just about every fight was top dps. He knew how to min/max and pick up the right foci, ending up being highest hp caster in our guild, so any class is gonna be rock solid in PoP. Which is why I think pop is so popular to begin with because everyone had their moment. Some classes had it a bit rougher, then others but it wasn't like classic where I felt like one class was blatantly bad. I should add though, talking to a friend he said rangers mostly melee'd in raids/group content there wasn't enough ranks yet in range aa's to be worth while outside of casual bow kiting.
You're all over the place. Top DPS spot can be debated ad nauseam every expansion. The OP asked this: I understand that rangers become a big DPS force in Luclin. Do they do so from a melee perspective or do they become snipers? And then this: Just curious about Rangers post Velious. Do they remain melee oriented or do they go ranged for DPS? I'm thinking about alting one but I'm probably the odd ball, who wants to keep it melee. I was using raid parses to answer which was probably the wrong thing to do. The nice thing about alting a ranger is that you can easily just stay ranged with them and their DPS doesn't suffer that much. Especially in PoP, you can get a featherwood bow very easily and it will out DPS all but BiS melee weapons in PoP. And even then you need a lot more melee AAs than ranged AAs. You only need about 40 AAs in Luclin and 75 total in PoP to max your relevant ranged AAs. I still stand by my statement that they top DPS parses in Luclin from a ranged perspective, but in PoP you can choose ranged or melee, but only if you have BiS melee weapons, and they are no longer topping the parse.
I don't see how I am all over the place, I'm comparing a class (monk) I know well, to a class I am playing now and using the advice of a friend who has played a ranger at a raid level. The only reason I added a mage to the conversation was to show that really any and every class is gonna do well. The gear/aa's was to simply show that the gap isn't as big as one might think. Every class is gonna have its moment to shine and dps is gonna very based on each fight. Especially with the MOTM.
