our raids its useally necros wizzards zerkers then monks/rangers who get agro right after warrior goes splat. but thats all irrelivant. rangers and monks both have their advantages to tanking trash/group mobs . i would rather have a ranger as a tank for the reasons posted before. they have superior agro tools even with out a sheild . they tank fine on trash/group mobs .a ranger useing a sheild is like a rogue useing a sheild just plane silly . if your ranger is raid geared he should have no problems tanking trash/group mobs with out a sheild. lotta silly info being posted in this thread .
i already have an excel program to do just that. Though i do make some assumptions, lv 100 toon, greater than 100 AGI, max combat stability, max Physical Enhancement, not drunk. I allow inputs to calculate from the start, or from shown AC with a few other inputs (class, sheild AC, HStr), though i need to tweak it so it pulls based off displayed AC better. If you read though the calculations Dzarn posted, your sheild AC is used three times, once in calaculating your total worn AC, once in calculating your sheild ac, and once in calculating your soft cap AC. So at the very least your sheild AC is worth twice as much AC as any other peice of gear, as it is added into your total AC then again when used to determine the soft cap for "real ac" or as Dzarn called it, migitation AC.
If monks have to try their little hearts out to take and hold agro and still can't reliably do it, then I see no need for them to take damage better than a ranger.
Absolutely wrong. What makes a tank is their ability to hold agro. Damage absorption is secondary - if your not getting hit, your not tanking. Rangers have far more than simply summers for agro. And all their agro abilities are reusable throughout every fight. I'm not underestimating the agro a monk can generate. You are overestimating. Can a monk hold agro against a necro who isn't fd'ing every 5 seconds? Can a monk hold agro consistently against a wiz merc on burn? Against a wizard twin casting? Nope, they cannot. Which means, monks are not a quality tank, because they cannot hold agro.
Rangers have 4 things to gather hate. Weapon swings (nerfed when using a shield), Summer's, Enraging Heel Strike, and Taunt. Burning as hard as I can (spamming Summer's and Heel Strike) and taunting when up I cannot keep hate off of wizards burning. And as has been said before we will be experiencing quite a bit of downtime regenerating mana. I really don't know much about how monks operate so I can't really hazard a guess about what they have to do whatever.
There is also angering shot. Plus, while summers makes us go through our mana, we can sustain it over several fights. I tank alot for a friends wizard. I only need to chain cast summers when he is burning. If he tries hard enough, can he pull agro? Yes, but a wizard can pull agro off a warrior or knight if they try hard enough too. However, the ranger agro edge is hugely greater than a monks. The rest of the tools (procs, poisons, ect) are available to both classes so are of course being ignored.
If you're dead you're not tanking either. Both agro and damage absorption are primary. Lack either, and the tank role is broken.
Funny you should mention that .. I've often wondered whether or not the minor dps loss from the off hand would be made up for by increased survivability by a shield if a rogue has to get into wild ramp range of a mob, bearing in mind that mos of a rogue's dps comes from backstab and not regular melee.
Angering shot is situational at best. Nice to have if doing nothing but humanoids or animals, but worthless on everything else which by far outnumber the other two types. Rangers have Devastating Impacts though it is not a reliable form of hate generation. As for poisons they are not innate to either class and cost plat which is why I did not consider them.
I personally believe that a tanks MAIN job is staying alive (mitigation tools) second is Agro. There is not a tank out there can can keep agro over a dps class on full burn right off the bat. If they do not give the tank at least 5-10 seconds to get agro click discs etc, and THEN the dps use their agro reduction abilities they will get agro and die. That is the way EQ works now, everyone has to use their tools to make the group work, not just "hey tank why can't you keep agro over my full burn whenever I want to use it."
Aggro is everyone's job, not just the tank's. The tank's primary role in my opinion is taking and mitigating damage. Aggro management is secondary.
Agro once was everyone's job..now only at engage, or if mobs have special abilities / moves. On a straight forward tank fight, no warrior who knows what he's doing loses agro now, they create way too much if they do it right. It's nobodies fault but his if he loses agro.
After reading and rereading Dzarn's post something that just kept jumping out was that Heroic Strength/10 is added directly to Shield AC. That's sort of a big thing isn't it? I recall that Brael on EGN said that it was broken but he'd also said that Iksar AC bonus wasn't real either and it turns out that is a nice 35 rAC right there. Maybe the way to test that is with nearly naked toons against test dummies so that only those can be tested. Of course I have no idea how you could isolate heroic strength
Technically, fransisco is right on this point. In order to tank you have to be able to hold aggro. Tanks receive abilities that allow them to hold aggro. To tank, aggro must first be obtained. What really makes a tank, though, is their ability told hold aggro and their supreme mitigation. What good is a tank that can't hold aggro off their dps? Fransisco isn't understating the paramount importance of mitigation, but the fact is that aggro, in a linear sense, would come first over mitigation; to tank you must first have aggro. I think what would have been a better statement is, and it is obvious to everyone, "What makes a tank is their ability to hold aggro and their greater mitigation." Both these properties are needed for a good tank (disregarding things like situational awareness in his example). If you can't hold aggro, you're not tanking. If you're holding aggro but have terrible mitigation, you're going to die. If a caster is in silent casting, and the tank has done one auto attack, or some aggro ability, then the caster can be in full burn from the start and the tank will retain aggro. The tank needs less than 1 second to get, and hold, aggro over a silent casting player, as long as the tank attacked first. Also, warriors can now produce a tremendous amount of aggro. It used to be that I would have to give a tank a few seconds before I hit VT, or my pet would steal aggro for awhile. Now I send my pet in, VT and all, from the start on burn fights and he never snags aggro from our warriors anymore.
warriros are aggro monster on singel target fights. u can tell all yoru melee and casters to go full balls to the wall on any singel target mob fight right of the get go . if warrior is played right warriors will not even sweat it. no one comes even close to warriors on singel targets
so I did some small sample parsing in bloodfield.. i usually tank these multiple mobs at time Level 90 SK self buffed and merc buffed for all results 540 Agility planar agility rank 5 /GU Tanking summary for: Tornicade --- Total damage: 728970 --- Avg hit: 1541 --- Swings: 1261 --- Defended: 463 (36.7%) --- Hit: 473 (37.5%) --- Missed: 325 (25.8%) --- Accuracy: 59.3% --- Dodged: 147 (15.6%) --- Parried: 185 (14.7%) --- Blocked: 0 (0%) --- Riposted: 131 (12.2%) --- Absorbed: 0 (0%) 565 Agility Planar Agility rank 10 I had to use disc cause i had more adds at once on this one. so the hit % difference is skewed Nocs /GU Tanking summary for: Tornicade --- Total damage: 463284 --- Avg hit: 1504 --- Swings: 938 --- Defended: 383 (40.8%) --- Hit: 308 (32.8%) --- Missed: 247 (26.3%) --- Accuracy: 55.5% --- Dodged: 150 (21.3%) --- Parried: 133 (14.2%) --- Blocked: 0 (0%) --- Riposted: 100 (12.4%) --- Absorbed: 0 (0%) Kyv Swarm /GU Tanking summary for: Tornicade --- Total damage: 926336 --- Avg hit: 1445 --- Swings: 2041 --- Defended: 878 (43%) --- Hit: 641 (31.4%) --- Missed: 522 (25.6%) --- Accuracy: 55.1% --- Dodged: 295 (20.2%) --- Parried: 263 (13.3%) --- Blocked: 67 (3.3%) --- Riposted: 253 (14.8%) --- Absorbed: 0 (0%) These are singled mobs combined in Garden 540 Agi Wasp /GU Tanking summary for: Tornicade --- Total damage: 862496 --- Avg hit: 2263 --- Swings: 943 --- Defended: 334 (35.4%) --- Hit: 381 (40.4%) --- Missed: 228 (24.2%) --- Accuracy: 62.6% --- Dodged: 102 (14.3%) --- Parried: 121 (13.1%) --- Blocked: 17 (1.8%) --- Riposted: 94 (11.7%) --- Absorbed: 0 (0%) 565 Agility Heaps /GU Tanking summary for: Tornicade --- Total damage: 1077995 --- Avg hit: 2126 --- Swings: 1247 --- Defended: 461 (37%) --- Hit: 507 (40.7%) --- Missed: 279 (22.4%) --- Accuracy: 64.5% --- Dodged: 188 (19.3%) --- Parried: 162 (13%) --- Blocked: 2 (0.2%) --- Riposted: 109 (10.1%) --- Absorbed: 0 (0%) 565 Agility Snakes /GU Tanking summary for: Tornicade --- Total damage: 1072276 --- Avg hit: 2252 --- Swings: 1209 --- Defended: 473 (39.1%) --- Hit: 476 (39.4%) --- Missed: 260 (21.5%) --- Accuracy: 64.7% --- Dodged: 168 (18.6%) --- Parried: 175 (14.5%) --- Blocked: 5 (0.4%) --- Riposted: 125 (12.1%) --- Absorbed: 0 (0%) As i get more ranks . i hope we will see improvement in the hit % but there is definite improvement in the dodge.
exactly my point that people have to use their tools or the tank cannot keep agro properly. I did forget about silent on beginng as I do not play a caster, but melee have to be very careful, and give the tank at least enough time to build initial agro, which is only 1-2 seconds but they cannot be on burn right then without using their tools as well.
Your sample size is too small to mean anything, and the mobs you parsing against are not consistent. You're probably off by at least two orders of magnitude in the sample size, since constants (dodge/parry/riposte) are varying by several whole percents. Normal agi would be raising the Miss chance, not dodge. Edit: checking Miss rate would be easier if all dodge/parry/ripostes were purged out, leaving only hit and miss attacks.
What I find even stranger on the Heroic Strength front, is how Heroic Strength is on DPS centric augs. Heroic Strength augs have no AC on them 9 times out of 10. So even if a tank wanted to test Hstr, they'd be shooting themselves in the foot by auging themselves with pure HP augs that have no AC at all on them. With that said, a lot of DPS classes are Hstr hounds. So maybe one of them could somehow test it once its discovered how to test it? Monks, BST and Rogues are usually the classes that ive seen that go all out Hstr. In other words, the classes that go for Hstr, do not even use shields. Ive known some Monks over the years that pop a shield out at times for the extra AC if they are ramp tank, or during some extreme nasty pull when training. But yeah.
