it is not 55 proc over 2 tics it is 338 in one single tic, the weapon augment has the 55 damage proc, such as the piercing and hth augment. shield and bow are different effects. and i am an sk
okay 4 things: 1. "AC serves no purpose exceeds it's utility if the Tank is going to live through the encounter regardless." This is 100% absolute rubbish, period, end of discussion. If you're in a situation where your incoming damage is that low, dual wield - or put a dmg aug in your 2h. Sacrificing shield AC for any reason whatsoever is completely unacceptable if you want to play this game as a tank with anything even resembling mechanical efficiency. 2. Furious Bash is effective non-existent, even when it's present. What it does is so close to approximating nothing there is no functioning difference. with FB 7 you will have an approximate 1 in 5 chance on a bash to generate 1-100 (random) additional hate. you could hit your disarm button and generate more hate more effectively. 3. procs are not dps. end of discussion. 4. "Is the Tank forcing DPS to throttle down on a much easier farm target. IMO, Yes." This statement is completely wrong on basically every level. if DPS is an issue, dual wield. if your gear is as at a certain point where SS makes your 1h/shield melee output higher than your DW melee output, put a dmg aug in your 1h. there is simply no excusable context to ever, ever put anything except the highest AC aug you can get in your shield, if playing EQ in a manner which actually follows its mechanical workings means anything to you. i mean sure, you could put a 10hp aug in a shield if you wanted to, nobody is saying you can't play the game however you want... but in terms of being tank and what that means, if you don't put your highest AC aug in your shield and call it a day, you're doing it wrong.
posting from work + not proof reading post + only having a half an hour to edit posts = fail. epic, epic fail. i am rather embarrassed by the typing I need a hug that is the above post. sorry about that.
There was no link to a shield aug at the time of my post. That's why I pointed it out. You can't dual wield and use a shield at the same time. You can't use a two hander and a shield at the same time. If a Tank is dual wielding or two handing, the aug in the shield in the Tank's backpack isn't being sacrificed. It's irrelevant. It's not even part of the equation. Take off all your gear. Run around the newbie yard naked and aggro everything. Put on all your gear. Run around the newbie yard naked. What's the difference? Nuthin. You will live either way. The AC of the gear has exceeded it's utility. I get your point. That's why I replaced "serves no purpose" with "exceeded it's utility." In the larger scope, moar AC is better than not. However, on a per encounter basis when survivability is not an issue, being concerned about AC simply for the sake of having AC is silly if the encounter is better served by switching to a DPS focus. This is on a generic basis, excluding the funkiness of having all shield specialist AAs and zero two hander AAs. This was poorly worded on my part. I wasn't referring to the Tank's DPS. I should have said DPS classes. It is true if DPS classes are having to back off due to aggro issues caused by the Tank turteling (turtling?) an encounter the Tank would live through regardless of shield use. One wouldn't make a very good Tank if aggro is bouncing all over 'cause the Tank read somewhere "Tanks use shields" and won't swap it out. Based upon the broken link, essentially I was responding to this . . . If the encounter is better served by the tank maximizing aggro in order for the group to light it up . . . Do so. If the encounter is better served by the tank using a shield for the group to even survive . . . Do so.
You either need the shield to tank or you don't. Putting a dps aug into a shield is counterintuitive to the logic behind equipping a shield in the first place. Proc DPS especially on a shield? I mean c'mon let's be real here. The words shouldn't even be in the same sentence. At no point should anyone ever be instructed to do this. Not even with multiple shields. If someone wants to roleplay this or just feels like doing it sure. But the entire conversation is a distraction from the relevant & useful information in this thread.
The proc is not from shield bashing, it is from casting spells that do damage. using a furious bash shield in conjuction just means bashing can randomly add some more aggro. As clicking a mithril breastplate adds a little aggro on demand.
In what situation would you want to handicap the rAC of a shield by not using a shield aug to gain dps in the form of a sympathetic proc? It doesn't change what I said. The link you posted does not show the damage you say, but rather 55/2 tics. I loaded up a parser and counted in a max burn 80 second fight that I got 32 nuke casts in including 9 disruptive persecution casts (aa nuke) and I'm not even sure if those 9 would count. Since you are an SK you don't even have the aa nuke. So let's go with 23 casts b/c of recast lockouts unless you plan on spam dotting but this is all hypothetical anyways. So 23*338 = 7784 total damage/80seconds = 97 dps. The average knight can do 6-14k sustained dps depending on gear. I'll cut that in the middle and call it 10k average dps. So if you used that ornament you'd do approximately 0.1% of that 10k. And for reference trash mobs in VoA have over 1 million hit points. If you can handle tanking a mob to the point that you don't need the AC on a shield, which is THE most important piece of gear for AC in terms of item ac and aug ac. Then get out a 2her. Whatever you lost on out on via that weapon proc you'd more than make up with the proc on the 2her, speed of the knight, blood thirsty blade, damage bonus, ratio rand better dmg aug. You are seriously almost in the range of an unparsable DPS difference b/c of RNG vs rAC on a shield. Like I said they don't even belong in the same sentence. PS. if that item is only 55dmg/2tic like that link you posted than it is even worse. I'm also horrible at math so some of this could be wrong but the overall point remains.
so if it's irrelevant, why even discuss it? if you're going to dps, dual wield or use a 2h. if you're going to mitigate damage, use a shield. under no circumstances ever would it be appropriate to put anything besides an AC aug in a shield. using anything except the highest possible AC in your shield negates 2/3rd of the entire point of using a shield (the other 1/3 being shield block). which again reinforces that if incoming damage is not an issue, dual wield or use a 2h. there is no scenario ever where putting anything but the highest possible AC aug in your shield is valid. in the same way that not being on fire is 'better' than being on fire. this is redefining the context of 'better' to the point of the meaning effectively no longer existing. and in every single case of this happening, one would dual wield or use a 2h, full stop, end of discussion. bringing a shield into a DPS scenario is like bringing a 1973 Buick Skylark into remodeling your bathroom. your wording is irrelevant because your point is still completely wrong. let me break this down for you very, very simply. if we for the sake of bug-fornicating insanity consider putting a non-AC aug into a shield and also sure why not add FB7 on it as well, this is what we accomplish: 110 damage per aug proc times let's generously say 12 casts per minute = 1320 hate. you can bash 10 times a minute, at a roughly 20% chance to fire, for a (1-100) hate proc, average of 50, means FB7 would be about 100 hate per minute. 1320 + 100 = 1420 hate. at current game game group content gear, 1420 hate is approximately 8-10 melee swings. if we assume for the sake of averages that a tank with a shield will swing 3 times per round, for a war that would be about 1.6ish seconds per round, and 2.5ish for a knight, so 4.2 seconds vs. 7.5 seconds of melee to do the same amount of hate. you are suggesting that 4 seconds of melee worth of hate out of every 60 seconds is worth sacrificing 30-40 non-softcap AC. there is no context or possible scenario within the mechanical considerations of how combat in EQ works that this proposition is not pants-on-head developmentally challenged. and, as before, this statement is rubbish.
I don't know. I have absolutely no idea why you posted it. That's what I said. Thanks for agreeing. I said twice there was no aug linked. This is the third time I've said it. You're debating a point never made because it didn't exist at the time of the post. I even clarified the position I was responding to. I suggested nothing of the sort. See above . . . If my perspective of the Tank taking action to best serve the encounter is rubbish, your perspective would be, what . . . for the Tank to take action that would least serve the encounter? I'm not sure what point you're debating or whom you're debating it with. Flimsy LoN aug notwithstanding, we both made the exact same point, dps if you can. Shield tank if you can't. Apparently the point is only valid if you type it out. I concede. You've won the debate with yourself.
based on this last response here i'm just going to say i think it's entirely possible that i was completely misreading you and drop it.
if you are of level that you actualy get damaged in a newbie yard as in 1-20 your severly capped on all stats including AC and mitigation.
Tried to fix the link but edit must have failed me, http://legendsofnorrath.station.son...large/Guard-of-the-Fallen-Dragon-Ornament.jpg It was these fallen dragon ornaments i was referring to, not dragorn. http://legendsofnorrath.station.son...s/large/Bow-of-the-Fallen-Dragon-Ornament.jpg I realize the links i had up were 55 damage 2 tic dot augs, when looking for the link i had seen dragorn and mixed it with dragon, these DRAGON augs have a single tic 338 dd proc that goes off randomly whenever a spell is cast that does damage. I understand that everyone reads tank forum and immediately thinks warrior, these augs used as i described would be great for an sk. i get free proc damage x2 chances when using the shield and bow. knights get great 1handers, in fact several are better dps than other 2handers of the same level. as someone else mentioned, simply having a shield in hand gives you chances to block with the right aa skills. and the ac from a shield and 1hander is roughly the same as a 2hander if not a littlebit more when you dont aug for ac. there comes a point when you are so well geared for your level, that when you arent fighting red cons it becomes trivial. at that point having an ac aug in a shield is not as good as additional aggro/dps from procs. I am level 81 and i believe that i can molo the garbage wolf in tosk, i got him to under 20% just me and my cleric, because the beastlord with me had his back to the named when it popped (just as he arrived) and he got one rounded. and when someone says they are tanking, it does not necessarily mean they are tanking in a raid setting and that only raid setting rules apply to every tanking situation. in the past i have mostly used 2handers even tanking hard raid targets. and if i am just dps or offtanking, 2hander works fine. i have always considered aggro to be the number one job of a tank, sure you got to have enough hp, or enough ac, or enough aa to survive, but if you dont have aggro then healers, support classes, casters, or dps will draw it and die. i laugh when i hear warriors say well that dps or that caster was over nuking or overdps and thats why i lost aggro and they died. aggro is the tanks main job, if he cant do it, let someone else Btw, using ranged item and shawl quested you can have 2 more sympathetic proc chances.
I will rephrase and go into a bit more detail since its not just a yes/no question Of the 3 tank types the Warrior the Paladin and the Shadow Knight,only one of those is considered a DPS class the Shadow Knight. So Warrior and Paladins should have an AC aug there no matter what. SK's may want that tiny tiny bit of extra DPS but is it really worth giving up any mitigation? Thats for each one to decide on their own since they know what sort of role they want to play in a group or raid. are you back up support a puller or a main assist or main tank ect ect. Bottum line is the more you mitigate the less your hit for and the more clerics love you.
I agree with you, I would just like to add that i have alot of situational gear. Just because im hot to trot about this augment now, and just because i use it as a standard setup, does not mean i dont have a shield with more base ac and a larger ac augment on it than the rest of my armor. Years ago blessed shard was the best ac aug i could get my hands on, and i used it in my ikkinz shield, sadly that shield along with the augment have long since rotted on my corpse (deleveled purposefully, long story) Right now im looking for players who want to do some ldon raids with me, if not for the banish n such i would solo for the 35ac type 7 aug. I also started the bayles questline today toward that aug. Im interested in begining the akanon strike force aug, and i have quite a few bic parts and would like to finish that aug sometime as well. Anyway, hit me up on bertox if you want to go hunting, anyone from 71 on up to 95 can group with me as i am 81. ps, i may be on my enchanter, also in the iksarian brood
"Of the 3 tank types the Warrior the Paladin and the Shadow Knight,only one of those is considered a DPS class the Shadow Knight." Considered a DPS class by who? When the 2H damage bonus was changed, devs pointed out that this change would primarily benefit knights. However Warriors and other pure melee would continue out damaging them. Less melee damage was one of the consequences of having a spellbook [BA: and significant outside of the tanking/fighter archetype capabilities]. An early guiding principle was that Warriors were the baseline from which other classes DPS was determined - 120% DPS classes, 100% Warriors, 75% knights. True, later devs frequently put knights in the position of having Tank Parity and spellbook superiority in group content without necessarily taking into account a Tank melee ought to out perform a tank/cleric or tank/debuffer/puller hybrid in fighterly capabilities. Absent the Paladin is the survival tank, SK's are the DPS tank, and Warriors are intended to be inferior in every way tank stuff we still have the OP's post/question. As Shiftee observes: Tank - survival and aggro are #1. If a different aug would provide more of either than the one you are using and either more aggro or better survivability matters in the content you are doing, you're doing it wrong. Tanks (all 3 classes) should put a AC aug in their shield. If content is trivial enough that an SK doesn't need high survivability, they should be weilding a 2Hander.
When an sk stacks dots, uses ht and lifetap ht, pops ds aa, pops unholy aura and starts chain casting lifetaps between 2hs swings, the sk will do more dps than paladin or warrior ( as far as i know, 4yr ago ) The paladins spells are more defensive and group beneficial in nature, such as a paladin stopping to heal himself where an sk will just keep on fighting and doing lifetap dd's for heals and damage combined. The warrior doesnt have spells, the war discs can take his melee dps over the top of sk or paladin, but without spells he rely more on the group to augment him. *personally the best dps weapon i can use right now, that i own is the jumping axe, i have a good 2hander but i will not be able to use it till 85. So using jumping axe and a shield even without ac aug in it is still my best dps setup with the gear i have to work with.
Battleaxe I find some of your information to be very ut dated and some what confusing, Was most of that from an old source? or am I just not following.? I do know for certain warriors start with the highest mitigation of any class period. So for warriors AC aug in shield.
Battleblade has become exceedingly good at the same speech, he has been doing it for 10 years. Everquest has evolved past those stereotypes, and quoting them for new players is just biased. Each tank offsets damage in different ways, one passive heals, one active heals one passive/active discs.
EverQuest has occasionally wandered away from still existing class descriptions. Quoting them reminds us what was meant to be and fair. When things wander too far from base principles (green pet pulling for example) they are often adjusted. The tank class and the two hybrid tanks handle damage almost exactly the same. Our skillcaps, effective AC returned after the softcap, shield AC not subject to the softcap, Shield Block and other skill related abilities are nearly identical. Knights however get cast spells and passive heals beyond sharing almost all Warrior capabilities. (And in fairness for three minutes out of ten Warriors have superior mitigation). This being the case, all three class benefit from AC augs in shields which they use when tanking non-trivial content (and knights use when swarm tanking IIRC). The only evolving that's occurred is shields becoming more practical for Warriors - which should have always been the case but wasn't.
