Warrior Hp/AC vs Sk/pally

I'd say pick what you enjoy playing because the difference at least between either Hybrid is pretty much down to play style. Both SK and Paladins have no problem holding agro some in the thread would have you believe Paladins are superior at this. I will tell you that they are pretty much equal if anything I would give the tip to the SK's with the adjustments to the snare line/threat. Sk's bring the benefit of never having to watch a Mob run and cause a train and they easily out dps Paladins on all things except Undead again that's once AA's are in. Once mana regen issues are sorted Warriors have no way to keep up Dps wise with a Sk that lays on a few dots. Sk's are the go to for raiding guilds for snap agro and this comes from someone who mained a Paladin for 5 years. I played one from Vanilla to GoD in a major raiding guild. This time I chose to try out the Sk and I've been the MT for Inno/CT every time. Sitting at 403 ac and 3700+ hps and I'm missing only 2 planar armor pieces when we compare parses and dmg intake its a 1% difference between what the similarly geared Warriors take. Later in the game Warriors get better and become the obvious Raid tank, but again EQ is a very gear centric game.

Also while the FD for SK's might be a little slower then monks, this allows you to get places a Paladin/Warrior could never get to. Especially when it comes to group content, also being a very capable puller without whipping your group on a big pull if a lull/pacify fails and trust me they do at the wrong times. I also will say I love the Paladin class its still probably my singular favorite class in any game. Being able to spot heal, stun lock a mob to lower dmg out put, spot ressing on raids so much utility. But there is no way to quantify which one is better over all because they both bring different things to a group/raid environment. While monks make good pullers they still can't do some of the crazy things a skilled SK can do. Ever watched a Sk with a CoS snare/split/invis single pulls? its a thing of beauty that Monks can only do with other monks tagging off each other in raids.

In PoP, I'd say Paladins are better at holding aggro on multiple mobs due to casting fast heals on themselves for aggro.

You can check Resources/ACMitigation.txt now, WAR is class 1, PAL 3, SHD 5.

Just go paladin. Harm touch sucks in PoP but lay on hands is OP. Group heals with the 40% group heal aug from LDoN is nice.

This is so terribly wrong. Provoke and that skill line does nothing, absolutely nothing to 'bridge the gap' in this era.. I'm unsure about later, but I somehow doubt it.

Scenario: 2 mobs inc, I hit one of them and provoke (incite) the 2nd one, while the mob will likely get mad at me and hit me, as soon as I am healed, that mob is no longer mad at me. Provoke (Incite) does not hold aggro like a Paladin or SK.

What you are correct about is the DD weapon augs, however they are still no match for a SK or Paladin with aggro generation.

Even on Phinny and in PoP era, I will happily concede my spot as the group tank to a SK or Paladin (we really don't care about group makeup, so long as we got a healer.) and I'll help pull or just DPS. They can just hold aggro way better.

One thing to consider - In the Classic era, the Knights holding aggro and being superior to Warriors does come at a potential cost to the group. Warriors, so long as you have a good puller and some CC can keep a group rolling so long as no one is screaming for a med break. A Knight, is going to have to med at some point and stop production until they have enough mana to start holding aggro again.

I think all 3 tanks are fine, and that gear is probably the most important factor. Fearless is undeniably a big advantage for Warriors on the big Named mobs.

But, when clearing planar trash, I can't really cast any of my SK spells when my raid uses warrior tanks or I will take aggro and get yelled at. Only the healers can say for sure which class truly "tanks" better (ie, is easiest to heal), but I assume that if I have to limit my DPS as an off-tank, it probably means that other DPS in the raid are also forced to hold back. And that limits the entire raid's potential.

The need to med is a valid point, but with bards and chanters and pots, the need to med can be almost negligible.

Fearless discipline lasts long enough to avoid 2 fears. Saying this is a big advantage is ridiculous. Anyone who uses a warrior to tank classic content is severely handicapping their raid, and is quite frankly bad.

Rotating warriors has worked well for us. I'm an SK, and I'm not saying SKs can't tank the mobs fine, too. But I suspect fear is the biggest threat or dps crasher for a raid atm.

You rotate tanks when fearless drops? Wow... How many warriors do you bring, and how long do your fights last?

Most of the guys in this thread telling you that knights are better tanks are from guilds that split vox/naggy with minimal numbers during classic, and didn't have four or five warriors in each split to even consider this as an option. I can guarantee you, vox and naggy can be handled just fine without the tank ever hitting fearless.

Yes, your 2nd paragraph is exactly the point. Fearless is not worth more than aggro. Warriors have absolutely terrible aggro. It is just awful. So using a warrior over a knight to tank raid content in classic is just a horrible decision and anyone who does it is handicapping their raid, as I said before.

So go ahead and rotate fearless warriors, but if you are already capable of rotating tanks, than it will be very simple to rotate to heal another tank should the main tank get feared. And your raid will be much better off using knights, and your DPS will thank you for it.

Make both paladin and sk
That's what I'm doing.

I can't disagree, cause I think I was in agreement already. I definitely think that more agro means more dps and that means better performance overall.

What is this called? Is it a raid drop or merchant?

It's a raid drop. It's called Geomantic Compact's Healing Gem.

There's a 40% single heal aug as well called Sharp-Edged Pearl Shard [Blessed Healing].

I was working under the assumption that you had a solid group and on multiple pulls I would assume that the enchanter would mez any adds right away so you could taunt the main mob and then slap a provoke on him. You are probably right that Knights are still better but Warriors aggro issues are minimal IMO compared to how they actually were in classic. I've been in groups with good warriors and noticed little to no difference vs having an SK/Pal tank.

Play one. You'll see.

And also, SK greatness has absolutely nothing to do with Feign Death. I think I've cast it less than 5 times on Agnarr. It's far too slow, IMO, to be useful most of the time. Can I use it to split pulls? Yeah, of course. But if I'm taking the time to split pulls, then the group is already too slow to be efficient.

As an aside, the reason you probably noticed poor SK/PAL performance in the Hole is simply because the Hole is Kunark level content, not Classic. Though it's released in Classic on these TLP servers, the Hole was not originally available until Kunark. The mobs in there will hit tanks noticably harder and tanks will also do relatively horrible damage.

Not technically true. Warriors get rampage which is an AOE attack and have Furious discipline, which ripostes all attacks for (8?) seconds. Rampage and AOE taunt re-use time get lowered with further AA purchase. An AOE Taunt/Rampage/Furious will build a bunch of aggro on multiple targets, plenty for slowing. Very slow reuse on Furious though. Rampage is 5 to 4 minutes. The part about "classic" is correct.

SK's don't really have AOE taunts, rather than lifetaps and some AOE DOTs that they probably don't load. I think there's a str debuff that, doesn't do enough aggro to account for a good sized heal. They do have several single target spells they can use (Plus weapon aggro), so they can hold aggro on multiple mobs easier, than say a warrior could via Proke Line + melee attack.

Paladins are the kings of AOE aggro because they have stun line spells (some insta cast with AAs) as well as self heals, which (often) work as AOE aggro.

Weapons with rune procs have AOE aggro value. Monsters hate rune casters with fiery passion for some reason. Alla's has a list of all the aggro procs.

There is a lot of misinformation here...

Warriors don't get ramp until Luclin (it's an AA) and it's a 10 minute refresh.
Warriors don't get AE taunt until Luclin.
Furious is 12 seconds and a 40 minute recast.

Those three points alone indicate war AE aggro is straight trash in Luclin and virtually non existent in Classic. Let's also ignore the fact for Furious to provide aggro, you already need aggro on all the mobs. Let's continue.

Furious only works on what would be successful mob attacks. It was nerfed and doesn't riposte all swings anymore. The usefulness was drastically nerfed. The aggro it provides is swing aggro (damage of wep + damage bonus + elemental damage). A single slow will generate more aggro than at least 2-3 riposted attacks.

Paladin stuns aren't ae aggro. Pallies are not kings of AE aggro. SKs are.

Lifetap aggro is only the DD portion. Not the heal.