In this day and age if all tanks are maxed out in raid gear, aa and skill, which is preferred in the raid game as well as group game? This is a serious question, not trying to start any drama or silly posts but I would truly like to hear what the general consensus is. As a raider leader, raider or grouper, which would you take if given all the above is on an even scale? I've heard so many conflicting things since returning, I honestly don't even know what to think. I hear people saying paladins are only good for splashing, others saying war need upgrades and when I look up previous threads I notice a lot of complaints from shadowknights themselves on things they feel their class themselves lack. My server lacks a true end game guild, what is the end game guild consensus on the premiere tank now?
I give it three pages tops before class warfare and certain biased posters start spouting their nonsense repeatedly.
Prefer warrior obviously. Have tried SK before, have access to a pretty well-geared one too and just can not get into it. Not a huge fan of spells and spell books. This is a question you should ask yourself as well. That being said, played at higher skill levels it is impossible to say "man x class is just superior". They all have their ups, downs and "holy god I'm invincible" moments. From a raiding perspective, given all classes played equally. I'd take 4 paladins, 2-3 SKs and 4 warriors. Paladins for splash/support healing/excellent tanks, SKs for adds and warriors for adds/named. In a group, honestly, I do not think it matters. I would take the first available tank assuming all are played equally well. In EQ, this is never the case though so I'd roll with the individual you feel is the most skilled.
Have also read the posts with opinions differing from class to class. Here are my thoughts. Shadow knights are the best class for grouping. Why? They bring puller to the tank role. In most cases, this eliminates the need for a puller and crowd control allowing more group flexibility. While in the raid game, shadow knights are primarily kiters/off-tanks. They have the fast re-use Argo abilities. Paladins are the best combination of both group and raid ability. The paladin in group content can pull with pacify and bale fire. The paladin can heal pretty well in the group game providing extra healing for tough encounters if not the main tank which they can perform just as we'll as any tank class. While in the raid game, they can perform the same role as the shadow knight but with a slight less efficiency as far as Argo. They bring the extra healing if needed. Warriors are the premier raid tank due to their tanking defensives. They can perform just as we'll tanking in group content but lack the utility that the SK and paladin bring as far as pulling and healing. Ryneis
If you're looking at a well played, well geared, well AA'd character.... Pulling is not involved. The tank will just bring 3-6 mobs to camp and tank them all. No reason to waste time FDing, pacifying, etc... This is true no matter which tank you're talking about. I would have favored knights until recently in most situation due to their ability to self heal, but with everything warriors can stack now, it's really evened out. They can almost just mitigate more than a knight could heal for up to any reasonable duration. Sometimes, I might even say unreasonable duration. You made the post open to idea's and opinions, but you didn't give any sort of guiding hand what that opinion was supposed to be based on. EQ has too many variables to allow for a single catch-all response. Warriors have pretty much the best single target aggro in game atm between the projections, the phantom, BoA, Roar's, Whirls, 30 second proc BP, Rage of Ral, Gut Punch Knee Strike, war only proc defined weaponry, passive defensive hate, passive offensive hate, passive rune procs off of defensive based abilities the list goes on and on. Used to be they could pop a couple things in a row and then run out of abilities for a few minutes. Now there are too many options to run out. They also have the benefit of being able to passively mitigate 10% of all incoming damage on top of having the innate ability of a warrior to drop any mobs DI-1. Basically, the mob can hit for a max, and a minimum. Based on the mobs lowest hit, more or less of it's highest hit gets shaved off. A group mobs lowest hit might be 500. A warrior passively mitigates say 50 points of damage off of that. If the mob is a raid mob, and the lowest hit is 12,000.... the warrior might see something like 1,200 off of the maximum hit. So before you calculate any gained AA's, any AC augs, any shield being equipped etc so on an so forth... a warrior is shaving off a very substantial amount of damage just for their class starting with a War, and ending with a rior. Paladins I say are the most self-sufficient. They can heal absolutely whenever they want to, they can group heal, they can cure, they can self cure, they can self buff, they can heal over time, the can defensively proc heals, offensively proc heals... they have their very own playground in any undead area to just wreak havoc on the locals--- with the ability to snare, stun (up to 3 levels higher than current level now too), slow, and debuff attack / resists through specialized spells... They can bring in a good constant flow of exp. Also, they have a fairly reliable set of root utilities which can actually CC to spread out incoming damage, as well as the ability to load 4 different stuns and cycle them. Also, their hate over time spell allows for a 10% incoming damage guard. Also, a lot of times there are mobs in game that have tricky damage shields that can do intense damage. Paladins have the clerics reverse DS line to drop those pesky spells. With the ability to fade now, and have limited forms of reliable AE aggro through group healing and Beacon, they are definitely a solid class. A few of their clickies give free AE heals, and a 60 second reuse rune, which is also AE aggro. I am obviously an SK fan. I am 2 kool 4 skool. Easiest tank to box, least work to manage adds by yourself. You will never have to target a mob except the one you're tanking, you won't have to ever target yourself to heal, you won't ever need to buff anyone else or even necessarily play your tank if you're pulling multiples. I personally like to pull between 3 and 10 mobs, AE hate about 666 different ways in a few seconds, pop over to my DPS and never look back. Repostes proc heals that help keep the SK alive, and aggro isn't going anywhere, even as you finish off the last mob. I can't cure myself whenever I want, and I need a target to heal myself. I mitigate this slightly by having an eye of zomm clicky to lifetap, but it's a long cast, and if anything AE's or AE ramps, or messes up your spell casting of the eye you're pretty much screwed. FD is obviously a crowd favorite. Granted, even that is passed out to everyone with a 1.5 min reuse potion that works successfully probably 70% of the time. It could go round n round. As Explicit said, all classes, all tanks, all archetypes have their ups and downs. Boils down to what you want out of the class. I used to be a warrior. I hated a lot of the small things involved in being one. I didn't like needing a lev clicky, I didn't like having to wait 2 seconds for a mount to cast, I didn't like having to use unreliable invis potions, I didn't like not being able to just FD and afk with no worries, and I absolutely hated not being able to go out and solo a LB mob in X current level exp zone without a merc (granted, you can blow a lot of abilities and kill a mob or two as a warrior solo, but, it's nothing even remotely sustainable). That was what I wanted in my main. If you're always raiding, always grouping, have buddies who invis and keep you moving fast, port you around, etc... your desires in your own class can be different. Really just gotta pick your poison.
Yes, Paladin DPS while holding aggro approaches zero. They can do a little damage to undead. SK does a ton of DPS swarming. Warriors are the highest DPS of the three against a single target. This will likely improve in the future when they fix dual-wield. Magicians are the highest DPS tanks at high levels. Caster mercs are the highest DPS tanks at low levels.
I hope this was tongue in cheek with regards to the tank classes because it is otherwise completely wrong.
Evening all. I actually wondered about all this too. I tried a Shadowknight up to 60 but wasn't really my cup of tea. I've recently rolled a warrior as a long term project. She's only 54 atm but I'm having a blast. My plan is to get her up to the level/standard the OP is asking about. My main's a 100 beastlord (although I'm considering this character as a reroll if all goes well) so up to level 92 I'll have no problem keeping her in the best group gear for her level and plan on maxing AAs every level I can - so by level 70 there's just a little over 1k with cutting out the innate stats and such. So going by the general consensus it looks like I'm not wasting my time at all then? Already at 54 she is sturdier than the tank merc, I have no concerns over that after grouping with both warriors and SKs in the HAs in CotF and looking at performance and squishyness of tank mercs compared. My main concern is holding the aggro of multiple mobs in the higher end of the group game, is this very achievable or am I going to be running into problems looking at single target aggro looks fine but at just 54 I can see a big disparity between SKs amd Warriors over holding aggro
Sk have the highest ae aggro hands down pals and wars can get by on multiple mobs but it isn't their forte. Single target aggro between the three doesn't matter, the only thing that matters is if the tank can keep aggro off everyone else - all three tanks are well equipped to meet this requirement.
<- 100 raiding Warrior (obviously biased as is the 100 raiding Paladin above ) Raids - generally (there are perhaps as many exceptions as not) Warriors are responsible for the boss mob Significant exceptions - mobs that fear or stun Knights are responsible for ads, splits, mini's (while there's still a boss mob around), sometimes kiting. Paladins do some curing, group healing, and occasionally ressing in addition to tanking duties. Again, generally, it's a matter of tools, encounter design and it being to a guilds advantage to have a mix of tanks since you don't know what a given expansion is going to throw at you. Knights have faster refresh at-will aggro which is an advantage clearing and when there are waves of adds. And they have combat self-healing which makes them better suited for mobs other than the boss with them having fewer healers in their groups. Grouping - swarming isb't going to survive much loinger, but knights are better than Warriors at it. Warriors on the other hand might have a 2-4 mob muti-mob tanking advantage - at some point Warrior better defensive disks/greater resiliance pays some dividends. I wouldn't hesitate to join a group with any of the three tank classes tanking (with the exception of a Warrior trying to run a swarm group - IMO they aren't well equipped to do that). DPS - oh my. With two exceptions - a Warrior MTing a mob and getting a LOT of DPS support in his group and Paladins vs. undead (you've got to actively seek out undead, it isn't everywhere and seeking it out limits your targets) the three tank classes are at the bottom of DPSers. Not even close compared to casters and below all other DPS melee. I make a lot of effort to do decent DPS but it really is low enough I no longer check to see how I'm doing. What would I play if I were starting over? Warriors are highly visible. If you think you are or ought to be perceived as teh hero you might consider playing one (although how being a mob's punching bag makes one a hero escapes me). SK's might be the most powerful overall but require a lot of work to make it happen. They're highly technical. Paladins are well designed - warrior/cleric hybrid is a powerful combination and they cover a lot of ground. IMO Paladins are a lot of fun to play in the group game, not horribly complicated, and quite powerful. I'm simply not up to playing an SK and TBH Warriors are like a 16 key piano - you can get music out of one but it's not earth shatteringly good music - too limited.
What would be the best recommended tank for a largely caster group if you did not want to pet tank? My friends and I have been running a caster group, but it is sometimes problematic when we pull multiples. Would a SK be preferable for the AE agro or would the stunning/group healing utility of the Paladin be more beneficial? It seems like Paladin AE agro gets better with beacon later on. We also only have one healer in the group since nobody else likes to play a healing class except my wife.
Any of the tank classes are viable when well played. That said, a tank is a lot harder to build than any other type, due to needing gear/augs/AA to do the job.
In some events prior to permanent Fearless the ability to combat self-heal with half of a raid force running away caused some guilds to use knights vs. some boss mobs, Futher there are mobs like Bertox of PoTime and HoT's Root of all Evil event. And as we all know mitigation isn't healing. Melee mitigation reduces the rate your HP bar goes down in response to melee damage. There's other forms of damage and HP bar goes down without HP bar goes up (combat self-healing does that) gets you dead. Just sayin'.
All three tanks are immune to fear, although I think Warriors get the first (group) anti-fear at level 59. Then later on at 85 I think Pal/SK got self fear immunity, and Warriors got that at 95.
Wars get self disc at 40 knights at 54 and then knights get the aa at 59. I believe the comment was because bb said it was a knight advantage and purported it as though it still existed at end game.
Um what I actually said was, "Raids - generally (there are perhaps as many exceptions as not) Warriors are responsible for the boss mob Significant exceptions - mobs that fear or stun" When taking on mobs that Fear I have seen knights MT. When healers are feared and running there IS an advantage to being able to patch heal yourself. Fear immune tanks in isolation does not end the disruption fear can do in a raid. Surely Shiftee having soloed Mad Mary you understand there are advantages to being able to heal yourself and not just have superior mitigation. With mobs stunning, mezzing, banishing, killsOring one's healers it's sometimes nice to think "I got this." rather than type "Hep me, Hlp ne!! Hlp Hlp." "NM" Having done content (OMM Vox raid?, anniversary?, hardcore heritage?, T0?) sometime in the past year where players were in fact feared it might be true that being a little self-sustaining is of decreasing value in raids, but it's not something that never comes up. My bigger point was that there have been knight MT prefered raids. It's not the usual situation as I indicated but I'm think most guilds didn't use Warrior to tank Roots of Evil for example. Just sayin'. If one must tank big bad raid bosses, in general, Warrior is the class to play. My overall point is that although all three classes can tank they are different classes and on occasion a classes unique capabilities are an asset (SK FD pulling) or unique deficiencies a detriment (Warrior lack of combat self-healing). If one us satisfied with having crucial tanking duties in all content and enjoys outside of the tank archetype abilities too then either of the knight classes is a better class to play than Warrior. Of course I'm biased and think that sometimes being able to cure yourself or raise one's (or a Cleric's) HPs from 200 and falling to something reasonable is a plus.
