One thing that I loved about the warrior class was their ability to dual wield. They were not a knight. They were a warrior. However, I see in streams that high level warriors are now using the sword and board as the mobs hit very hard. Why have the dual wield ability at all then if down the road you have to use a shield to survive mobs? In my opinion something needs to change to enable warriors to be able to dual wield again. That is the way they should be.
It's not exactly new. Warriors were already tanking with sword and board in GoD after you established some aggro with dual wield. It's just that not everyone knew how important shield AC was yet. EQ later made up for the aggro loss and DPS loss of using a shield. That's when everyone else jumped on board, but it was already standard in high-end guilds before due to the AC bonus. I don't like sword and board for the simple reason EQ has no shield mechanic except for spamming bash, so it's incredibly boring. The /shield mechanic should have been exclusively tied to the use of a shield and you should be able to perform perfect blocks by timing it right like in many other MMO. The shield is just boring in EQ. EQ isn't a very dynamic game, there's not a lot of interaction with the mobs really, especially not as tanks.
You don't. I dual wield (double warrior-only swords) 100% of the time in group content, including NoS named and missions, and only break out the shield if I'm tanking a raid boss.
There's not a lot of reason to use a shield anymore for a warrior. The shield AC bonus is negligible these days (hot take, I know), and the benefits of the Shield stance are overwritten by your Last Stand disc (or whatever it's called now). Outside of Last Stand, there may be some marginal value to the mitigation from the stance, but that's about it.
It was known, the issue was a certain mindset that pervaded HP biased warriors of the era. The data and info was shared on TSW in particular as the years rolled by. What a fun time that was!
The use of shields to block, do perfect blocks, chain offensive abilities from perfect blocks and the fact you can break your shield in combat if you get it wrong, is why I enjoy Vindictus. The fact you can just shield bash at random as a tank in EQ annoys me, because it's not fun. Bash is not fun when players just put it on /autoskill and forget it. You should only be able to bash with a shield within a time window after a successful shield block. Just randomly bashing and kicking makes no sense, and should be punished, because it should leave you vulnerable to attack. But EQ developers made it really hard to implement fun combat mechanics for tanks, because EQ doesn't see attacks as individual events, it is just a flurry of spam that you can't build interesting combat onto for tanks. In Vindictus I feel like I am actively mitigating damage, it is highly interactive and fun. In EQ tanks are too much like static damage sponges that depend highly on gear, and very little on skill. In EQ it is your gear against the mob's damage. In Vindictus you can do events naked, with just your shield and weapon, if you get good at them, because you learnt the event, and evasion and blocking damage is not about gear, but about timing and skill. That doesn't mean I ever felt that EQ should be entirely skill based, but EQ is far too much about gear and progression. It's your HP bar against the mob's damage. It rips the fun out of a game, because the only way to improve your character in EQ is grinding loot to get a bigger HP bar, there's no opportunity to get better at the game because the amount of damage you can mitigate is not related to your skill, but to your gear.
If you think this could be implemented as you think it means you don't really understand EverQuest and how old it is. Probably a system like this could be implemented in a way like: if you get hit you get a buff with a charge that you have 1 server tick to spend by using a bash or if you use Shield flash and it is spent under X condition you get another buff that does Y. We have bosses that do frontal, side, back AE that you can Avoid (or do something about if it you are MT). I think that this is all dynamic combat mechanics that you'll get. And even if they wanted to implement dynamic combat mechanics like this, there would be other 131313123 more important and relevant to implement first, like dynamic movement raid mechanics over our current ground auras.
I wish warriors could dual wield 100% of the time without loosing definsive proficiency. Its just way more fun to do a bit of DPS, even while tanking on raids.
Dual wield is one of the biggest advantages the warrior has over its knightly brothers, conferring nearly all the offensive benefits of 2H while retaining nearly all the defensive benefits of holding a shield. A few years ago i parsed it as 93% the auto attack damage and i heard that gap is even closer. I only switch to 2H to use rampage and only to shield when i don't need DPS or realllly need every bit of mitigation I can. I can't comment on raids with any authority but I'd wager in many cases the impact of warrior's dps on the boss is negligible and not worth the small risk of death caused by switching to dual wield. However I'd recommend that warrior's push the boundaries of their class and consider switching to dual wield in different encounters.
Conclusion: All combinations do have their purpose and their tactical use does depend on the situation. Even when playing my rogue (molo) I often had to use a shield when tanking difficult named mobs. The AC bonus and the Shield Block AA are noticeable but I think that shields could receive a buff.
I like that there are situational reasons to use different combinations on the classes that can DW, use a 1-hander, and use a shield. I'm not a fan of using a shield on my characters who can DW, but when some situations call for it, I do, and then go back to DW for everything else. I jsut have to remember to upgrade my shield (and other not used as often weapons and other stuff) when I level up and look for upgrades still when I am current max level (and also remember to update bandolier!).
We can, when the heals are tight enough. Should always be gauging heals, your own discs/abilities,etc, how other tanks are doing, general health of the raid and bandoliering as necessary. War is about playing with a level of efficiency.. and a willingness to adjust is key otherwise you're usually just making something harder for others. As much as people love to gravitate towards a one size fits all mentality out of sheer laziness it's not optimal if you're striving to play as good as you possibly can 100% of the time.
Warriors get the choice. Knights do not. So there's that. Also, not all raiding warriors are min/maxers. I know of at least a few raiding warriors who don't have all their augmentations, heroic AA, quests (like gnoll totem and Zek ear), and these warriors could need sword/board to survive. It could also be that those raid streamers you were watching were short on healers. So using the best possible defensive gear helps keep them upright. Those warriors who have all the things done are quite comfortable dual-wielding on raid mobs.
I'm only about six months into actively learning to play my warrior alt, and I keep forgetting to swap to the shield when the stand discipline is down. It's been answered in this topic already, but that's the answer I got when I asked too. I'm not sure if that's even more true in group gear. My warrior was showered with rotting raid gear so it's not exactly a good way to learn. Some things can still hurt if messing up and leaving windows without protection though. EverQuest isn't an action RPG and I don't particularly think it should try to be one.
I mean is 5% from dw to shield a game changer outside of primary discs? 5% at the expense of dps and free aggro... Especially when you take into account the amount of overhealing.
