A few friends of mine have recently let me talk them into trying out EQ. I am going to be tanking for our group and am a bit uncertain which class would be best. We won't have raid gear, and will be progressing pretty slowly as we want to take our time and enjoy the entire game, not just the high level content. I played a SK for many years, and had a paladin alt to try to learn the class. I have never played a warrior so do not have much information on them short of watching them during raids. I have however heard the warriors have gotten new tools since i have last played so they are more than auto attack, taunt, kick, bazu, afk until next mob. I am open to play whichever class would be best for my group of friends to progress through the game without too much hassle. If anyone has opinions, pro's/con's of the classes, or experience playing the group game with no raid gear, I would love to hear it and suggestions on which class would be best. A little more information I feel will be important, we will eventually go back and do old raids for class specific clickies, epics, etc but we will never have gear that is actually worth wearing for stats. We will have an actual healer, not a merc and not a boxed healer. We will have a puller and snares, so that will not be a factor for the sk. I do not plan to solo at all, so the ability to solo will not be important in my decision. Thank you for any help/information that people offer.
care to elaborate on what would make a warrior a better choice over a knight? I am aware of warriors better mitigation, discs, etc. but having the ability to heal myself when it hits the fan is a pretty big crutch that I am used to having, and wouldn't want to give it up without having all the facts.
In group content I think you'd be better with an sk or paladin especially if you're healed is new to eq like I think you said in one of your other threads.
Warriors are the best tanks, hands down, and there is simply no debate to be had. You have the option of sacrificing some tanking ability in exchange for some other utility though. And that might be important -- your play style, what you like to do, any roleplaying inklings, what your expected group make up is going to be, etc. And all of that should be more important than choosing the BESTTANK~OMGZ!! It's a game after all, make sure you have some fun yeah?
In grp content, even a warrior will pull away from the pack. What makes warrior class the raid tank, makes them unstoppable in the group game (even in group gear). 30% mitigation buff that lasts 10 hours and No Time To Bleed Disc at level96 lops another 3.2khp(or so) damage from every incoming hit. Don't need heals when you don't take damage ! muahaha At level 96 my warrior was tanking level 105 Heroic Adventures in his level 85 heroic gear no sweat. An equally geared SK or Paladin would get their face kicked in.
If you want the best, go Warrior. They just simply take damage better in all situations. If you want the most utility, go SK or Paladin. Both will get the job done in the group game in any and all situations. It will mostly depend on which YOU enjoy more. Knights are going to have way more button mashing and "stuff" to do if that type of thing floats your boat.
It depends on your full set of goals and what the rest of the group looks like and when you plan to do stuff. As a person who is a warrior main, for most group applications I wish I had made a knight instead. I truly shine with a good healer, but most healers are not so good...my box cleric is way better than most mains I come across. The reliance on others is not something everyone will love. Also some raids and events will spell slow or silence healers... you will want to have some secondary healing in the group if you are talking about versatility in all group aspects. If you generally have a pre made group and don't box warriors are fine and you can pop a cleric merc for those times you are roughing it on your own. But solo wise I still give knights the edge since they have a wider assortment of tools. Also remember that many of warriors best tanking skills arrive after level 100 so there are rough patches in the leveling that are noticeably less for knights in the leveling process. That said I love warriors for the raw tanking power and when paired in a good group can quite handily plow though content in some exhilarating ways.
As much as I want to say Warrior (I love my war, he crushes it), since you won't be rushing to higher end content, there are quite a few spaces in the earlier levels that are pretty tough going for wars. Things really start to get better 85-90+ and take a huge turn for the better at around 100+. I'd have to recommend a knight if you're spending a lot of time in the lower/mid levels. Their ability to lock down aggro on multiple mobs fairly easily and self heal fairly well outshine a warrior's better single target aggro and higher mitigation for quite a while. I'd likely lean towards paladin since you're not worried about solo ability, and your own personal DPS won't factor in as much since you'll mostly have an actual group rolling with you. If you're willing to tough it out for a while, go warrior. The innate DI-1 roll, plus the bonus of NTTB, Defensive Proficiency, Defensive disc line, expanded aggro discs/aa's, and the rest of the war arsenal really come together to make an extremely powerful tank.
How hard is it to get gear at higher levels? Right now I have a 90 warrior, 86 magician, 82 paladin and a 40 SK. I was thinking about an enchanter box. I was going with SK due to their class identity more than a utility base, but when I did research on the various forums... it is mostly grass is greener stuff compared to warrior/paladin's self healing, utility and melee dps output. I went to the beta forums and there are some huge posts asking about lifetaps being updated even though its not within the scope of the feedback that daybreak wants. I also scrolled through the melee patch update and SK's were indicating that they did not receive the full benefit compared to other classes since melee dps is a smaller portion of their total dps. I also saw this dude named elric who was an SK and is now a paladin.
Warrior's self healing and utility ? lol it's equal to 0. If we don't tank, we can try to bring our dps, who is "' compared to a pure dps class (like it shall be imo). DPS output overall (so not melee dps only) between the 3 tanks classes is equal. I suggest you to test things on your own, and not focus on feedbacks only in these threads.
That's weird because I distinctly remember healing myself last night when I was on using items I obtained in game or abilities that I have.
Honestly by doing lots of heroic adventures which currently is the most efficient way to level 90-105 imo you gain marks of valor currency. You can buy the first tier of cotf group armor and gear which is around 2500-2700 hme a piece. From there on out you may want to look at taking you box team (once they are maxed on the 100+ gear) to tds and do t1 and t2 progression. It's not too hard to find people wanting to do hunters on my server either. The t3 tds group gear is mostly on par with rof t2 raid gear, and is what groupers aim For if they don't have access to cotf+ raid gear.
Oh yes, and it makes you a self healing god, compared to paladins heals and SK lifetaps,both at will... As an example, Oh yeah Warlord Resurgence (right now in TDS expansion) healing 300 HP per tick yay, we are uber, and it's only 10 min refresh haha.
SK lifetaps at will.....rofl....it is obvious you have never tried to cast a 1.5 sec cast time spell while tanking.
So how feasible is it to take a 105 war with 6k AA and horrible gear (think ROF group 2k gear at best and heroic AC augs) into COTF/TDS HAs for maintanking? I am sure he could handle singles but multiples? Asking because my SK had problems tanking multiples (even with epic) until he started getting raid gear and the nice AC augs but this was at 100. That 96 war tanking 105 content in heroic gear sounds incredible.
with very short reuse disc its very doable to tank multiples for a warrior in bad gear doing those ha's at 105 they get a 15s iirc reuse flash of anger (short duration fort disc) for spike moments on top of no time to bleed and a few others you can cycle through. tds yeah youll want to get better gear but thats for any tank youll want (not really need in all cases) current group gear to tank current group content
Flash of anger has a 1 minute and 30 second (Can't remember exact time off the top of my head) reuse.
