As the title states, after 13 years of off and on play time, I finally rolled a warrior and am having a tremendous amount of enjoyment. Not only did I drink the Kool-Aid but had Pixie dust thrown in my eyes as well. I know what you are thinking "13 years and never played a warrior?" Allow me to explain, my brother and I have played for this period of time and he would always play a tank/melee class, where I would play the caster/priest class. We had a variety of characters during those days but one our favorite group was him SK/Rogue and me Enchanter/Cleric. When we did not feel like boxing, we ran a Monk/Shaman combo that was a lot of fun. (of course those groups were before mercs came into existence) Unfortunately, he does not play anymore and I took advantage of the free heroic 85 character and made one on each of our accounts. Right now I am rolling with a War/Ber/Ench/Bard with a healer/wiz merc. I have focused my efforts on the War and is currently at level 92 with full Fear Touched gear. I have been running Gribbles on a consistent basis to earn Marks of Valor and to learn the War/Ber in a quieter environment compared to a Hot Zone. I am very familiar with the Enchanter class and the Bard sings a melody while on auto follow. In reality, I am simply three boxing, via Alt+Tab on one computer, with a primary focus on the War. I have found myself, intentionally making bad pulls or as I call them "warrior pulls" to include at least three mobs to test my newly acquired skills/discs. I no longer have the urge to mesmerize and instead focus on agro, slow, position Ber to DPS, rinse and repeat. Ultimately when the dust settles, I gaze upon the dead corpses and start going through their...err my, loot. I will not raid (been there, done that) and merely want to slowly adventure through Norrath at my own pace. Right now I am focusing on AAs and not levels since I want to learn as I go and not wait until level 105 to find a new button to push. After all, it is an endless obsession to find better equipment/spells/AAs/etc., so why rush it. So now to my question. I am considering dropping the Enchanter for a Shaman and would like feedback. I love how the Enchanter is essentially a "reset button" when things go south (which has occurred more times than I care to count). The Enchanter can Mez/Beguilers Direct Banishment and/or Memblur the mobs in camp and save me a run back to the zone. But the Shaman provides more melee friendly buffs as well as back up heals and some CC. (I have a 95 Shaman with 10k AA that I can transfer to a different account, if needed.) I do not have EoK, yet. I have up to TBM expansion and plan to go there at some point (maybe level 100) to equip the Warrior and then the rest of the group. Lastly, I want to thank you all for the posts since they provided edification on the Warrior class. Unfortunately, I won't have a full understanding of some of the abilities until more AAs and levels are achieved.
The pathway to learning to tank is best learned through "Hold my beer I've got this" type decision making. So you are on the right track. Have fun out there. Just a thought though. You are looking at the enchanter all wrong, they are not there as a safety net, they are there to amplify the level of "Hold my beer I've got tgis" you can accomplish. Granted a shaman can do that too, to a degree, but not like an enchanter can. Take the same concept you are applying to the newfound warrior skills your learning and take a look at what the chanter spells/abilities do. With a little ingenuity and maybe a few questions to point you in the right direction, there won't be much you won't be able to do with a warrior and enchanter centric team. Also the wheel of balance is about due to turn back to favor casters, so you might as well be prepared for that
At high levels, the shm CC tools Virulent Paralysis, Paralytic Spores, Paralytic Spray, Spiritual Rebuke, Spirit of Urgency can fill in quite a bit for enchanter abilities. With limitations. A player healer of any stripe is very powerful paired with a player tank, for tackling difficult content. It's difficult to describe succinctly how bad mercenary healers are when the rubber truly hits the road.
Best feed back is just to bring 2 warriors. It's simple mechanics... if the warrior can handle 3 mobs... the shaman / enchanter / berserker can handle 1... Why bring any other character class?
I box a war/bard/ber/cle/mage, my advice is only for level 105. My opinion is that if you want to heal, adding a priest to your team can dramatically increase your versatility and survivability. It'll also increase your DPS because your "warrior pulls" will go from 3 mobs to 6 mobs (or whatever) because the healing throughput of a properly played real character dramatically exceeds a player merc. However, it is a large increase of responsibility and effort. When you've already got a berserker (which requires a lot of effort), it shouldn't be done lightly. Programs like I S Boxer make it easier and are highly recommended if you go that route. If you don't want to heal and are looking for ADPS / DPS, I think a ranger may be a better option. They are relatively easy to box and provide good melee buffs and ADPS (auspice of the hunter). I'm actually in a similar position as you are, and am considering replacing my cleric for a shaman and my mage with a ranger to have a more melee focused group.
The importent part of playing a tank. Is to keep track of your beer aswell as knowing how much time it takes for you to get a new one
A shaman would be better than an enchanter, because you have a melee centric group, and the war and zerker will benefit well from the bard and the shaman. The bard can also pull and mez stuff if need be.
Well, in a sense, yes. For me personally open-ended games like EQ are all about setting personal goals and then trying to achieve them. This is especially true when the current expansion, EoK, is pretty easily streamrolled by a coherent team in group gear from the last expansion. One of my current goals now consist of trying to reach an average 500k DPS over an extended period of time in T2 EoK zones with my group-geared team. This is abusable since I could easily achieve that by OHKOing a light blue mob in chardok with my zerker and then going afk for an "extended period". But, assuming I'm pulling as fast as I can and killing as much as I can I'd say it's a good goal. If I cared more I'd probably set a static damage value to reach, ex: 1.5 billion damage over an hour to reach, but truth is I haven't thought about it much until now and the community discusses damage in terms of dmg/sec instead of dmg/minute or dmg/hour. Right now I'm somewhere between 300-400k depending where I'm hunting, so I've got a lot of ground to make up. I've got a few things I'm working on to get there, but like you say I don't think I'll be able to reach that without I S Boxer because I simply don't have enough APM to hit the skill cap on my 5 characters.
And that's why healers wait till the last moment to heal, to get that sweet unconscious HP. "I want that purple stuff."
Thank you all for the responses. Yes, I was viewing the Enchanter as more as a life preserver compared to a Shaman. However, when you compare the two there is not a lot of fundamental differences when you get down to the essence of it all. Both have forms of CC directionally pushing, aka "punting", mobs out of the camp, as stated by Brohg. If presented a situation where "punting" is not an option the Enchanter has the unique ability to Mez and/or Memblur a mob taking them out of combat, i.e. pause button. Compare that to a Shaman who can heal the Tank/Group which keeps the battle going. Either way, the mob is not going to mystically vanish. It will have to be dealt with now or later. I am going to go the Shaman route. While I love the Enchanter class, I believe the Shaman would be a better fit for my melee oriented group. I am not a fan of any type of software and prefer my Alt+Tab method. Here is how I roll. The Ber auto follows the War. The Bard auto follows the Enchanter. (all but the War, have a /autofollow macro that I select when moving through zones) The War will volley an arrow at the intended target; when the mob is in melee range, I click Bazu and Knee Strike to stun. I then click Battle Leap. While the War is flying to the mob, I being spinning him around to face the stunned mob (if not immune to stun). After he lands and when facing the mob, I push Press the Attack; essentially pushing the mob away from him and in melee range of the Ber. Then Throat Jab, Bash, Shield Topple, etc. I then Alt+Tab to the Ber and begin his macro of /assist, Energetic Axe Throw, Shared Brutality, Overwhelming Frenzy, Cry Havoc, etc. I then Alt+Tab two (2) times and select the Tash/Dreary Deeds macro for the Enchanter. Alt+Tab two (2) more times and I am back on the War, checking his agro meter and mashing his macro. Alt+Tab once back to the Enchanter to begin nukes. Alt+Tab twice to the Ber and hit another macro and the mob usually is about dead. All players have identical, custom UI and keybindings. Granted, if multiple mobs are incoming, I use my "Lets Rock" macro of Area Taunt, Flash of Anger, Field Outfitter, Commanding Voice, Staunch Defense. When Flash of Anger subsides, then Battle Leap to position the Ber on my current target. If someone has a better method of positioning, I would love to hear it. On a different note, I am considering putting points in the Stoicism AA, but at 85 AA per pop....ouch. At this time I may get a better bang for my buck on something else like Combat Stability/Combat Agility/Planar Power. Yes, I have consumed copious amounts of alcohol while playing but have yet to so with the War. Instead, that is when I break out my Shaman to go root rot.
no stun in those abilities Staunch, Commanding, Field should be on all the time. They're not crisis things, they have full uptime. Stoicism keeps you from being pushed around by melee, but does nothing to boost your actual defenses. Combat Stability, Combat Agility, Armor of Wisdom, Physical Enhancement are for sure higher priority.
Brohg, I stand corrected. I did not mean to imply Bazu was a stun, but I was under the impression that Knee Strike was. I assumed based upon the animation of a successful strike, where the mob doubles over, that it was a one (1) second stun. I did use Staunch, Commanding and Field on a consistent basis but found myself running low on Endurance half way through Gribbles. I would use Respite and Fourth Wind when able. Now I have spent some AAs on Heightened Endurance and will use them in my rotation. Thanks for the feedback.
I think, and other warriors who can look at their screen or don't have gaming sites blocked by gubment networks double check on this for me, but I think that you can extend out your staunch and field with AAs under the Focus tab, that way you aren't having to pop them every 45 seconds or so. This dramatically helps with endurance management while keeping these abilities active. At 105, I have Stout II and Field Armorer II extended out to about 3.5 minutes (still haven't finished the AAs for both), but I think you can get them up to 7+ minutes when you finally have all the AAs purchased.
Stout, Field, Commanding voice stay up 10 minutes with maxed AAs. Brace of Impact/Blade Guardian stay up 18/20 minutes with a 10/15 minutes cooldown.
