I box 6 toons. I’ve tried Warr and Pally so far and I’m only 110 with the Pally atm and in Chardok, so nothing really challenging to say whether Pally stacks up. With the warrior I’ve boxed fell foliage and Trial of Three barely, before thinking this is not really optimal. Group always consists of a bard , cleric, MT, and 3x dps, the dps can be mages rogues necros; berserkers, I’ve boxed them all. My goal(s): basically continuing all progression through all xpacs, camp all rare items I’d want for all classes of the group. I rarely if ever raid so all gear will be group gear with the occasional chase loot. So different scenarios I’ll lay out. I’m in a pareticular camp that has a ton of phs for a ton of different named, I’m often in this scenario. Instead of pulling each ph 1x1 as is ridiculously easy to do with bard and how assist pulling works, which MT(at high level and geared) is very thee best at tanking say 10-20 mobs at once? I had access to a SK with 2.0 and mortal coil yearrrrs ago and iirc he was invincible on swarms of lt blues, would this work on current live with dark blues still? I have some experience with the warrior pulling crowds but it was just decent. Don’t feel I’m geared well enough on the Pally yet to try. Opinions on which MT is king in that scenario? To piggyback that, which dps is best at aoe dps, wizards or mages? The only other concern would be a mission that’s heavy on healing, I’d imagine Pally will shine there but is mortal coil enough to keep an sk up on a named while dedicated healer does all group heals?
It’s been a few years since I’ve last played and I’m just coming back to the game, but I’m pretty confident in claiming that the SK still reigns king in that scenario due to a bunch of its damage being converted into self healing. And potentially having the highest DPS of all the tanks in that scenario as well (thanks to Riposte with a 2hander).
Sounds like you have experience in quite a few classes and 6 boxing successfully. I'm a little confused as to the purpose of the question. There are three tank classes in the game, you already have two of them. You're asking if the third is any good after you already played one? If you've played an SK that was 'invincible', have two tanks already, and have several variations of box classes - you're obviously no stranger to starting new characters. So why on Earth are you on the boards asking instead of just rolling an SK and finding out for yourself? Seems absolutely redundant to my mind. To answer your question, just create the SK. SK are still kings of group tanking. If you take an SK to a raid, be prepared to be on add duty. While an SK or Paladin can tank raid named in a pinch, Warriors are still kings of single-target tanking.
I can understand the confusion, I’m a bit of a rambler I apologize. When I briefly played the SK it was years and years ago, I believe it was in Thallius? Not sure exactly but there were squid like mobs with robes on lol, and all light blue cons at the time. I would log in, pop lesson, round up as many mobs as possible and use the MC thing to get them all dead. So currently, I’m not sure if that’s a thing at all at level 110-120 and with dark blues as opposed to light blues. Of course I’ll have a 6 box team to supplement healing and dps but I’m just not sure if MC/2.0 is even working in 2022? I guess that’s my main question in regards this scenario. I really enjoy camping nameds and I’d like to be able to do 10-20 phs/trash at once to be able afk til repop. Aaand, also have that MT choice be viable in all progression missions that involve mechanics that require heavy healing.
SK is right up your alley then. Knights are even more gear-dependent than Warriors. Especially when your goal is to play them on the bleeding edge of performance (like swarm tanking current content). You'll find SK are a fun, engaging class that make a few compromises to be the best group tank. Their skills and spells are custom-tailored for swarm tanking for an AE group. Good luck!
You aren't likely to be pulling 10-20 dark blues and tanking through even with MC, and 2.0 running. 10-20 LB with a full group backing you up, absolutely still a thing with a SK. Overall it does sound like you are looking for justification to make a SK, just do it. Get your 2.0, and CoA BP while you are in Anguish (it is on a separate timer from every other BP). Couple other nice to haves are Jann's Veil, Blooddrinker's Coating.
With a cleric and bard backing your tank up the warrior and paladin will both do fine, with the warrior being superior. Shadowknights will likely always have an advantage due to DPG making them the superior class for lore reasons.
I've done a lot of 6 boxing in modern expansions with all 3 tanks, so I have some opinions here. Group progression can be easily completed with any of the 3 tanks. Warrior does require external healing, so if you're having issues keeping a warrior up with your boxing setup, a knight could be better. SK is the most hands-off at keeping themselves alive once you have MC/2.0 running. For group geared tanks, warrior is your best bet at handling 10-20 current expansion mobs due to their superior mitigation cooldowns. You'll need a lot of external healing and high DPS to chew through the mobs before the tank cds fall off though. Knight mitigation cooldowns have HP caps which means they're very unlikely to last full duration during a large pull. Knights might be able to keep up with dragon glyph, but I don't know that you'd want to be spending AAs just to do normal grinding. Fighting 10-20 mobs at once shouldn't really be a routine thing for group geared tanks - it's really not easy to survive and you likely won't gain enough killing power by setting up an AoE situation for it to be efficient. I also don't think it's a good strategy for a boxer because you're solely responsible for pulling/rounding up the mobs, stabilizing the pull, and providing all the DPS. Maybe with automation but I don't use automation and wouldn't recommend it. Now if you're talking older expansion mobs like light blues, then SK is probably your best bet. Not sure, but I'd recommend against pursuing an aoe dps playstyle for 6 boxing (unless you're looking at older expansions). This will depend on your gear and group setup. The most important thing to keep in mind for SK is that a large chunk of their healing is leech from auto attacks. That means if your group is caster heavy with no melee aDPS, you'll do a lot less healing. It also means you're always going to want to have a 2hander out which opens you up to getting spiked hard (1h dmg from auto attacks is horrible). For nameds, I'd imagine MC + a mitigation cooldown should be good enough for an SK to stay alive. In a mission though, you may not have mobs to proc MC from and would need to rely on 2.0, which won't have anywhere near 100% uptime. So I wouldn't recommend looking at the passive leech survivability as a good option for handling missions. Keeping up MC in group grinding can be an issue as well. I run SK in a sk/enc/dru/wiz/wiz/wiz team and it's hard to snipe killing blows from 3 chain nuking wizards. I find that keeping the SK tank up in this group is the hardest by far amongst my teams due to the group setup. I'm pretty sure paladin would have a better time since it's not dependent on killing blow procs or auto attack damage (so it's easy to just sit in 1h/shield mode and self heal). Pally is your best bet if you're worried about healing because they have good group healing options. 3 of my 4 groups run pally + (shm or clr) and that's more than enough to handle group healing needs. Pally tank is my general recommendation for an all-purpose box team because it offers healing redundancy which lets you handle missions with silence/cc effects easily (ie trial of three). I'd also say in general - if you're finding warrior or paladin to be difficult to keep alive in the group game, and are looking at SK as an option to ease that - I think your best bet will be to focus on improving your boxing setup, because all 3 tanks should be able to handle the group game without much issue. Swapping to an SK might make general grinding easier with the hands-off survivability through MC, but I don't think it'll help too much with the missions.
If you really want to AOE you may want to go with Mages. They'll do more damage and their spell lineup is really simple when using beams. Plus they can even help keep your tank alive if you get some remote healing augs. They can crit heal since they're a pet class and three of them together would add up to a decent amount. You'd be unstoppable!
Wizards are good traders and they can TL your other char's around without having to leave the bazaar.
