Its also easy to just look at all the classes that play... and see how many are tanks and how many are pet classes. Once you notice the difference in classes being played and the favortism for specific classes.. then you have to ask yourself if the system is broken.. or is it really that there are so few who can play certain classes.
Whew, that was a good laugh. Earth pet tanks 3 HA mobs at a time non-stop then the named then refuses the handkerchief offered by the spent Warrior. Scouting Ahead takes 30 minutes with named up, no raid gear, pet tanked. You blow all your discs then what? AFK the mission until they cool down or hope you have a puller to get singles? Mages don't use pullers for a reason.
The best thing about being a tank.. is watching yourself tank 2 mobs and with your clerics you are holding your own. But then looking over and seeing a Mage pet tanking same content and they have more on them and doing it with ease. Its aggrivating and ticks you off but.. I have gotten use to it over the past 13+ years its happened. You sorta get used to getting in groups and being told that the Pet will be doing the tanking....
Only 3 mobs at a time in a HA? Why so few? Most decent tanks can handle constant 3+ pulls as well, Hence the need for pullers is pretty much nonexistent in the recent 2 expacs. An SK or Paladin can basically be permadisced/Clickied A warrior has NTTB Honestly Any player tank will make your pet look about as good as a merc tank. You Pull 3, a Player tank can handle 5, Plus with a player tank you aren't alienating the majority of classes from joining the group and being productive. 30 minutes for Scouting Ahead? What takes you so long? Thats like 15 to 20 minutes work for an Sk/Monk Duo + 2 wizard mercs on burn < Thats with NO HEALER lets see you do that with your pet
As a rogue I will pick the player or merc tank over a pet. This is just a comparison of group geared tanks versus a pet vs a tank merc? Well, if you group tanks bothers to gear right, farm the augs and get the AA as well as learn what it all does, a real player tank will even best the pet. BTW, why not tell the truth about this and just call it "Another mage bashing class envy thread."
Because we can split pull? Lol. HA missions are a joke in terms of difficulty. And no, that isn't because I am an all powerful Magician with a pet that shoots laser beams out of its eyes. They are easy. EQ is going to a 'everyone gets a trophy' game design now, nothing will ever be really hard. With that said, classes that had an easier time during hard expansions will of course demolish an easy expansion that is just logic.
Force me to gear my pet with Vis/Non-vis/Augs and I along with 99% of Mages would gladly do it. But then you know we would have to be able to tank with people in melee range. Then what would tanks hold their hat on? Pretty funny how that argument gets brought up, and even if we were not given that liberty (pet tanking with players in range) Tanks would find another excuse to complain about. It would be the AA count next, then if we jumped that hurdle it would be that we do not control them, then of course if that happened it would be another thing. The issue is, group/undergeared tanks are very awful compared to Raid geared tanks. So naturally you boost those tanks, but what happens when those tanks become raid geared tanks? Well then all of those boosts they were given makes Raid geared tanks even better. Because there is no issue with Raid geared tanks, the issue lies with group gear. So SOE needs to find a power spike that gets entirely removed after a raid threshold gets hit. Otherwise all of the content gets beefed up even more (for all the new tank goodies), and you are essentially in the same spot just making everyone worse then they were. It is very much a game issue, with pretty much no easy workaround w/o SOE just giving tanks 5K AA and raid gear out of the box with augs.
As a group geared SK this is something that I have been following and reading up on for some time. Let me give some back history on my situation. Maybe someone can help me get better at playing my SK. I came back to EQ summer of 2012 after a long break. When I played back in the Kunark-PoP era I played a monk; and that was the only class I have every played. I made a SK and Shaman and 2boxed until level 75ish. So far no problems, nothing was hard, and I was having a blast. I thought about adding a 3rd toon to my group. I logged into my old account that my first toon was on. Sure enough, there he was my Monk at level 65 with full time gear on. I got all 3 toons to level 80 and grinded out about 2K worth of AA. Then leveled up to 85 and got J5 mercs. I had bought VoA T1 vis and HoT T1 non-vis gear for all toons. I then tried to group in Ferrott2. I could kill trash, but it was very slow and hard. I knew I was not ready for the content. I then stopped playing my Monk and Shaman, just focused on my SK. Got 2.0, worked on some AC augs and just grinded (slowly) out levels and some more AA. With the help of some friends and people I meet along the way I got to level 100/4K AA and some pretty good gear (at least it looks good to me). I got a lot of rots and lived off of other people's scraps for some time. I went back and fired up my Monk and Shaman again. Started boxing HoT progression. I didn't care about exp. I just wanted to enjoy the game. And I really do enjoy the story of these quests. I got half way through HoT T3. My Monk and Shaman were level 91 at this point. That's when I stopped and went to do some AC aug camps. I knew I needed to upgrade some of my older augs (and I still do). Now nothing in HoT is hard. It's a joke how easy it is now. Started doing some VoA AC aug camps. T1 and T2 is easy enough, nothing too hard. T3 and T4 has given me some problems. First time facing a named I always end up wiping, even after reading up on what the named does. I regroup and adjust my strategy, then take out the named. The Conductor is one that took me some time finally kill; luckily the aug dropped first time. RoF T1 named are easy and I haven't found one that has given me any problems. I have always gone into these fights blind (not knowing what they do). I find these named a lot easier than anything in VoA T3 or T4. My Monk and Shaman are 94 now with exp on 50/50. My SK is nearing 5K AA. I need a lot more AA and about 6-8 more AC augs. As I am right now I'm worried about moving further into RoF let alone CotF. I don't think I can handle that stuff with my box crew. Maybe once all boxes are at 100. I'm not that great of a boxer to begin with. Because of that I'm not playing any one of my toon at their full potential. I'm using cleric merc and 2x rogue mercs in my group. Cleric merc is never below 90% mana on anything, including named fights. Merc just doesn't heal fast enough on the harder named is my problem. I do backup heal with my shaman, but because my Shaman is 94 I'm not healing enough. Monk is almost always just auto attacking; I don't have time to play focus on him during a hard fight; and that's a lot of wasted dps. I have found most of the time I need to out level and out gear the content I am fighting in order to box it successfully. If I was just playing my SK and I was in a full group with real people playing and healing, I'm sure I could do anything in the group game easy. That's why I will always drop a merc and/or box for a real player every single time. That's my take on current group content. Boxing vs Grouping. I can't box well enough to do it; grouping the stuff isn't a problem. Boxing = Lost potential Mercs = Can't adjust mid stream to what's going on Real People = Unstoppable Mage pet tanking. No clue. Don't care either way. Doesn't effect me. Merc tank. Again, no clue, don't use them. Don't care if they were removed from the game. Doesn't effect me at all. Though a lvl 94 rogue can take a round of hits from RoF T1 named (usually before it's slowed) and be fine. That doesn't last long as I snap aggro right off of them. There are some better optimized tank items I could get. I know there are better AC augs I need. And I know I need more AA. It's a long process to become a good tank. I have recently learned of this self and guild tribute that adds AC. I need to look into that as I'm not using it right now. I also need to look into those trophies that add AC. Anything to help me play better.
FYI it isn't smart to block all vies a lot have a higher percentage but are situated on a different slot. While you won't gain double benefit as they are not additive as the highest vie gets eaten it will fall to the lesser vie until the better can be reapplied. Also I agree that all 3 tanks are viable, I will also agree that Mage pets are probably too strong, they always are. Tanks require a decent amount of game knowledge but it has been since GoD that there is group content that can't be done by your average group and underfoot was close... Compared to that recent expansions have been fairly easy.
They could make tank gear more common. They could make tank preferred augs more common as well. I don't mind camping items, but when a class (not just mages) can either get by with lower tier gear and do just about as well, or get one item in a weeks time and I spend over a week just camping one aug...and then have to go get augs for the rest of my slots as well and the most current gear and a laundry list of AAs just to be relevant, there is a problem. They could increase bonus experience on AA/exp gain on tanks as well if they wanted to. They could increase shield AC. It isn't that hard to fix, they just need to finally get up and actually do something rather than thinking about the issue for 10 years. Tank classes just take more effort and work than any other class in the game and the devs seem to not care that there are other far easier options than making a decent tank. More than likely, they'll just further nerf other classes, because that's easier than having to do what is needed. That certainly isn't what I want.
I've got a max aa group geared sk (maxed out on available gear) and a 5500aa group geared warrior (not yet maxed out on gear). Neither of them have problems in group content with a single healer. And yep, I've been lazy so far. My warrior has augments in just over half his gear ... the rest are still un-augmented.
Could raise the hard/soft cap on AC on tanks a randomly determined number, like 30 ac. Would be one way to boost real player tanks without dealing with mercs/pets.
Merc tanks are terrible, there is no competition there. Pet tanks I feel are fine. Yes, vs a single target they are going to give you rock solid survivability, but it comes at a cost. Melee characters can't do their jobs with a pet tanking, and dealing with adds and multiple pulls as well as positioning with the pet poses it's own challenges. A mage earth pet and a necro warrior pet should be viable for tanking everything in the group game. Period. Warriors could do for a little bit more of a "tanking" edge over their knight counterparts still, but Paladins and SKs are doing just fine right now. No time to bleed really helped warriors, but the lack of utility and self heals should be offset by a bit more full time "turtle power" when not in disc and perhaps a bit more damage output. Group geared tanks on the whole are perfectly fine right now. A group geared tank is only going to run into problems if they overextend beyond their aa-count, aug set, and gear. A 96 tank with craptastic gear/augs/aa should not expect to have an easy time in CoTF heroic missions. This was a level 100 expansion. If you're beneath that level and don't have at least RoF t1 group with a reasonable set of augments, you should expect to die frequently.
I stopped bothering to read arguments about who was mixing or not mixing incorrect data somewhere back on page 4, but in the pages I did read, it seemed like the only real example given was the captains in the Dead Hills mission. Are there other examples? If not, wouldn't it be a better idea to try and have the damage output of those specific mobs and their adds fixed to be in line with the content rather than calling for game-changing mechanics modifications? I managed this mission twice using a mercenary tank and it wasn't fun. It was definitely the most damage I faced across all of the HAs or really any other mission/task in the expansion. It was also substantially harder than the other potential steps that can be present in that HA. I can absolutely see how group-geared tanks/healers/groups may have issues with them; not that they can't be overcome, but they are fairly out of sync with the rest of the surrounding content. Perhaps a message to the developer who created the HA (those details are around somewhere, no?) may help get this in without having to call for core mechanic changes. If there are other examples in these missions that show a need for this type of change, where are they?
The captains and disciple guardians in the last arc of Dead Hills are by far the most damaging creatures in that zone. I pity the merc that has to tank those.
Why give pet classes warrior/tank archetype pets that can't function as tanks? I have not pet envy. Using a pet tank comes with measurable drawbacks not quantified in 1v1 survivability terms. My only gripe would be that alert can tank without active intervention on the part of the pets master. Ie in the right group (range dps only) the mage/necro can cover tanking duties while still dpsing normally (pet understandably doing less damage than a dps oriented pet, but that's minor). Tank archetype pets have always been in game, and they should be viable.
The damage output on the captains isn't even that bad on a 8800 unbuffed AC tank with 325hdex/300hagi they put out about 6800 to 8800dps. The adds + The captain though can overwhelm the unprepared pretty quick. I've never paid attention to the mechanics on the captain, but aren't the adds either time or % health based? If your having trouble figure out which then boom on the adds as they pop? T2 ROF named and T3 ROF named are arguably harder The cyclops in WK put out more single target DPS (by about 20% based on my logs) Also lets get serious about our HA examples earlier... Trash mobs in VOA (2 year old content!) are tougher then the trash in Any of the Dead Hills HA's. Sure it would be cool to tank better overall, but really thats probably not how this would play out. They would kick Necros/Mages in the Teeth again and bump pets down and leave group tanks where they are. Now had Pre Nerf Neriak (how it was in the first week of Beta) gone live... Id say some of you had a point maybe.
