I agree with the OP. I think it's common sense to change my play style to fit the group. I am a Druid, so I guess I do that almost by definition. If the tank isn't holding aggro, I may not be able to stack all of my DoTs. I don't blame the tank for not rocking the best gear.
Druids and rogues are not the same here. You can space out mana use or divert it into other things, being a bit of a hybrid caster. You can at least just nuke later rather than dot earlier, at the worst. A rogue who isn't attacking is useless. At this stage of the game class is borderline meaningless compared to gear when tanking, therefore, if the warrior has crummy agro they probably have crummy mitigation due to crummy gear. EVEN IF the warrior mitigates better, IF, there's still the issue of how much longer the mob is wailing on him because it's dying slower than if everyone just did max damage and the dps occasionally tanked! It's a general concept that goes beyond just this particular situation - you play to a group's strengths, not dumb everything down to its lowest common denominator. Having your twinked out dps do subpar damage because of one ill-geared warrior is bringing everyone down. Having the warrior focus on offtanking or pre-taunting CC'd mobs, ping-ponging agro so a backstab can be thrown in, or just pulling = much better!
Any rogue that knows what they are doing knows not to go full sail until good aggro has been established. Especially in this content. If some of you people making comments like the one above are playing rogues now, stop, please. You are giving the class a bad name, obviously. You should be concerned about glossing over the fact that rogue dps sucks in classic and not creating new reasons for groups not to group you by pulling aggro and blaming tanks. It's ridiculous especially when we are talking about a class that, if being played in this era, is being carried, pretty much. Again, aggro management is a group responsibility, not just the tank's.
I knew it was teh RBG. I wasted 20 minutes of my life the other night reading through that thread. That's how boring the real EQ forums are becoming.
If you manage to pull aggro as a rogue in classic with our current dps your tank is absolute garbage. That's some real talk.
If your group actually expects people to waste a half minute per mob watching the warrior soloquest first before anyone else touches it your entire group is absolute garbage. That's some realer talk.
Oh and in the meantime, nobody guessed at my last allakhazam post. Here's another one I think may be a bit easier and also more related to the discussion at hand... I Cant Belive my eyes ppl you have ppl freaking out over this .. war's are MADE to tank !! thats there Job.. im a lv 51 war on Strom and when i get on my first big raid and this drops .. if me or the other war's dont have first dibs on it il go nuts.. as it is i cant even hold enough agro for most of the group im in and im doing my best .. but as soon as a wiz drops a nuke that mob is all over.. you ppl that are crying over this sword bieng for a war First should quit EQ you ppl dont know nothing about bieng a war or even playing in a Good group when the war that is made to tank cant hold it down and sombody gets killed .. its My but.. ppl get nasty when your mob gets all over.. as far as a Sk and the other classes that want this.. your not made to hold down a Dragon .. or any god.. thats what a war is for.. take 2nd fiddel to the main tank and be happy with it.. as if you guys cant do enough damage already and now you want to single out the war and take his spot.. at level 51 im bearly hiting for 40-50 most of the time i hit 20-30 and i have decent weapons. .. i would give my left arm for this sword.. to be at the top of the hate list is a dream for a war and a nightmare for any other class.. and that is all i have to say about that atm!!
Carnage and War were the only two items I could think of warriors competing with other classes for with aggro lol. Never would have gotten the Shimmering though.
it's a new server, some classes don't really come into their own for an xpac or two... that being said, I will say warriors pretty much suck right now compared to some classes. on rage I could out tank my hubby's warrior with my battle shaman at 50, did I say he was a bad warrior? no, I knew the limitations on him despite having bis gear(oh and gee guess what they're fixing next content patch?). rogue, unless they were showing they could take the hits over the warrior, yeah not wasting my mana on you... same with anyone else who doesn't know their class or only wants to showboat by taking aggro from the MT. being a warrior doesn't mean you need to be MT, but if you're going to be the group MT, you better be the best on offer no matter what class you are.
I'd say one of the biggest issues is the relative level of your tank and the mobs you're killing. It's actually one of the reasons that I quit my WAR at level 18 and started up a PAL instead (the other reason being I never planned to play my WAR enough to tank raids, so I might as well be a more 6-man friendly tank). Even with FBSS, full crafted armor, dual yaks with stun aug on mainhand, I wasn't able to keep agro very well at all. The reason? Folks now are taking on yellow/red cons at bare minimum in a lot of groups. The DPS/Heals can support it, and the tank can mitigate the damage just fine... but not generate the agro to compensate. Taunt is horrific against red cons, and landing enough attacks to stay ahead of other classes is equally horrific. I got upset at basically not being able to hold agro in those groups despite us all being equivalent level within 1-2 levels This is "fixable" in the sense of staying 5+ levels above your group so all the mobs are blue cons and taunt and attacks land the majority of the time. But, it feels awkward when every other class seems content to XP off yellows/reds. I started up a paladin, and of course I have the same issues with taunt/attacks landing for yellows/reds, but keeping to places like Unrest/LGuk allowed my ward/expulse undead and stun attacks to compensate. I'm now L37 with my paladin and agro isn't really an issue even on blood reds like dar ghoul knights (L43+). My warrior, I imagine, would have no hope of holding agro for any period of time in that situation. Now if this thread is about tanks unable to hold agro to what cons blue to them.... then this entire post I made is worthless.
OP does not know what he's talking about. I was using double SBD with proc augs in both, Backstabbing on cooldown, and with my Backstab skill maxed out. Could not pull off a warrior using provoke under normal conditions. Now if Backstab hit for max damage more than twice in a row.. that'd be a different story. But that's what evade is for. Like literally that's why we have it. Now... here's the funny thing. If I'm using double SBD and the Warrior has FineSteel.. then I'll stop evading. Why? Because I have banded just like he does. I might as well tank since I can hold better agro and have the same armor. I know many of you are rushing to get the charts and spreadsheets to show that Warriors as a class have better mitigation by leaps and bounds over a Rogue. But its classic.. 2-5 damage more on average per hit isn't going to make up for a fine steel wielding warrior with no threat. Damage output in groups matters just a bit more than mitigation at this stage of the game.
this is why I end up off-tanking or even tanking with my battle shammie. I am very careful with my timing of slows, debuffs, dots, and heals etc it's still easy to steal the aggro(so I gear her to survive a little longer)... but warriors being warriors... without the right gear/augs or their diciplines, they haven't a hope of keeping the aggro and even when they do, someone can steal it by using procs or nuking repeatedly (seen it so many times and then the caster is going wtf? why am I getting aggro?! d'oh). at least they're finally fixing some of the diciplines and one more expac after this they really start to come into their own.
I'm sick of hearing about how rogue dps sucks. On caster resist mobs rogue are top dps in classic. Period. If you are a rogue and you aren't on top or near top dps on caster resist mobs, you suck, period. To touch on the OP's comment, rogues shouldn't be off handing a yak. But they should have DD gem in both slots in my opinion.
