So what are the current thoughts on the tank classes these days?

I have been away for a while and I am just wondering what people think about the current state of each of the three tanks classes these days.

I am not a min/maxxer and I just play for fun. I have played all three classes a little bit over the many years I have been on and off EQ. My highest toon ever is a 93 troll SK just as a reference.

I am just curious about what people like and dislike about the tanks these days. I am asking just because I enjoy learning about this stuff. For the discussion.

for grouping Sks are heads and tail the strongest, paladins also very strong but ot close to sks . warriors distant third

sks are so stong cuz they do damage at same time as they heal themself aswell as have strong aggro. so wile they dps they also recover life. have plenty of utility (fd/snare/self cureing ect)

paladins are strong healers but when they heal they dont do dmg slowing them down and if the mob aint dieing it continues to put out dmg, their aggro is weaker then sks , ae aggro spesificly. weakest tank dmg unless the target is undead. as alot of utility root/stun/off healing thers/cureing/rezzing

warriors are strong in bursts, they have alot of discs that stack together and if you roll face on keyboard and push all the bottons your basicy indestructble for a short time. but then you will be alot weaker when all your bottons are on cooldown. your allways dependent on others as you cant recover hp at all. warrior dps is fairly strong if you have a competent healer backing you up, your base mitigation is stronger then the other 2 tanks but dosent make up for the lack of synergy that self healing brings.

warriors are easyer to box as mitigation is allways on or discs dont requier attention after they are poped. wile both sks and paladins do req you to allways be casting for their self healing to be applyed effichently

warriors are easyer to get up to snuff as they get less aas to peak out. but once paladins and sks get their aas they will become alot stronger then warriors in the group game. (aslong as you play well)


all 3 are very gear dependent

all 3 are fun to play if you enjoy tanking and have weaknesses and strengths

Having played a Paladin for many years and recently a warrior, I was wondering about this comment. What does one mean precisely about tanks being "very gear dependent." Is it a concern about being an expansion or two behind in gear, the number and type of augments, or some combination of all. Leaving aside the issue of raiding and raid gear, what is required to be an effective tank in the group game?

For instance, if a warrior with about 14k-15k in AAs and Conflagrant gear wants to tank in a group, what zones would be appropriate? Does it depend on what augments the tank has? What AAs? If the tank is wearing Snowbound Tier 1, how does that change things?

Sometime earlier, a discussion was had that perhaps more important than gearing is understanding which buttons to press in situations.

Anyway, hoping for a more detailed understanding of the gearing requirement for tanks.

it means if you dont have most of the last expansions group gear. you will not feel very tankly . it means you have to constntly try to improve your set of gear to keep pushing your feel for the content your trying to tank . wile other classes can get away with collecting focuses and still do their job somewhat good wile tanks with outdated gear will not be tanking anything unless suported by strong players with vast knowlage of how to compensate

I don't play a paladin or sk so I can't comment on them except to say that paladins aren't "stronger" in ToV but everything is undead so they are just blowing stuff up.

I've got no complaints as group geared warrior that rolled into ToV and was pulling 10+ mobs at a time (accidentally... mostly) and surviving while putting out 400k DPS doing so.

If pal/sk are stronger in the group game than warriors, I'm OK with it. Though I do wish I could change classes for an expansion just to try some variety.

I have to augment thus a little by saying that:

• Warriors have so many discs that if you're not face-rolling the downtime on defensive discs is minimal in 2020, especially if you're not constantly fighting, this becomes especially true when you max out on AAs and can regularly pop dragonscale glyph on tough fights
• Warrior DPS is more dependent on ADPS members, not healing because A: dual wield is very good DPS (vs 2H) and very good mitigation (vs shield), and B: most of warrior DPS comes from auto-attack which is more heavily influenced by ADPS than skill attacks

Since SK can tank, self heal, and dps (and better than other tanks at all 3 imo), they allow you to run a dps or adps in place of a healer you'd need alongside a paladin or warrior.

Indirectly, that nets about 2.5 x the dps of a warrior or paladin when you include subbing out a healer for pure dps.

War and pal have their strengths, but at least in group game, SK >> all, esp when dps is a concern (everywhere?). And that's before we consider SK's clearly superior pulling utility.

This argument suffers from some pretty glaring issues. First of all, how can you argue that the SK replaces a healer while a paladin does not? Secondly, I don’t know what exactly you mean when you say “group game,” but it is not uncommon for group members to need healing, which the SK doesn’t really do. Lastly, this argument ignores the fact that many healers can do a non-insignificant amount of damage.

I have a 110 War and SK, both in Conflagrant. The Warrior is max AAs and the Sk has 21k. The SK tanks better so far on the dozen or so mobs I've tried with each in Eastern Wastes.

@israfel
Just my observations. Paladins cannot self heal or tank as well as equivalent SK. If there is AOE, you'll likely need a real healer (and that can include paladin).

A paladin tank still needs a real healer to tank anything difficult. An SK does not.

Paladin utility and heals are amazing. But that doesnt change my assessment regarding tanks, and indirect dps due to group comp changes with SK tank.

Pretty sure the answer is yes. Augs, side quests, all those little Special AAs that add up (Fortitude AAs etc), all seem to make a huge difference to a character that is just starting out IE Conflagrant, 15kish AA etc. By the way I say that playing a paladin who is definitely in the "just starting out" phase, despite time played, because I only played up until Underfoot before taking a break and coming back just a couple of months ago. These things are all magnified in importance on any one of the three tank classes.

Can't speak to warrior, but as a paladin I'm level 104 and am just breaking into TDS / TBM and haven't even tried anything more recent. Gear matters more on a tank class than any other class, but so do all of the other small improvements that can be made to a character that all add up over time.

When I get to level 106 and Conflagrant gear I expect I'll be good to go for EoK and previous for the most part (maybe there will still be some missions that I find too difficult). And Conflagrant is RoS gear .. but I'll be waiting a bit before trying RoS +.

Level 110 and Snowbound Tier 1 will help, and I expect I'd be able to tackle some RoS with that, but I will still need AA, augs, and all of the side stuff that adds up to make a character more powerful and better able to handle more recent expansions. So I'm not even sure I'd be able to handle TBL with Snowbound gear without any of the other stuff. So .. I'm guessing the new gear will let me catch up to a couple of expansions behind without any of the other things added. It will make it easier to do those things though, so helping me to get caught up faster that way.

I think I could press all the right buttons at all the right times and still not be able to handle ToV stuff with Snowbound Tier 1 gear if I'm missing all the recent AAs, still wearing RSS augs, don't have any of the "progressive AAs" (not sure what to call them), etc.

By the way finally upgraded my RSS augs in the last week or so! Woot .. lol! Yes, I get laughed at regularly for my augs situation. My paladin isn't a heroic so I didn't even get those augs / that boost.

So, maybe a group or an under-geared Warrior you could call a distant 3rd. A raid geared Warrior blows through this content with no issue and would have to say as well if not better than any tank class.

Problem with Warrior is perception, people think they can jump on and play cuz its so easy.
That's true if you are boxing and you want to just turn on attack and drop a couple agro disc's.
If you want to be thought of as something different than that, you have to work at it.

a raid geared warrior does blow thru group content but not as well as a raid geared sk or paladin

this is why i dident bring up gear lvls cuz as strong as warrior get with raid gear sks and paladins gaint that gear str as well not only that they will scale even more with heals with the new focuses they get with raid gear

I am currently working on leveling up a Paladin, and am finding much of this 'tanks are so gear dependent' stuff is... greatly exaggerated.

My pally is currently level 113, less than 4k AA on top of the autogrant ones, and started ToV in conflagrant gear, with just conflagrant Augs, and 2-3 other AC augs, and that's it. Several pieces still have zero augs in them, only a few have both slot 5 and 7. No epic, no special anything. PL'd to level 110. I just found out a couple days ago that pally does get an aura to increase incoming heals, lol... Still need to get that...

I tanked several ToV T1 named with no problem, in that gear.

Have since finished hunter in GD, CC, mines, and all but 2 in EW, equipping as got drops, so is almost completely in T1 now. This is as a BOXED pally, and my first attempt ever at playing a tank of any kind past like level 60, and I'm sure very poor use of discs, spells, etc...

Have since switched to 2h sword, and have tanked many named in 2h, without shield. And still, missing many augs.

What I do have, is a real cleric spam healing good heals, promised interposition and shining bastion always on, real cleric auras, etc.

To take on 10+ trash mobs at once, like several talk about, and I've seen 'uber' raid geared tanks do, or to live through 3-4 trash mob pulls with zero heals, then sure, I'd have to guess that is very gear dependent. However, for the average person, taking on 1-2 mobs at a time, a paladin (and I suspect all tanks) is not as gear dependent as most seem to believe.

Tanks being very gear dependent "when using garbage healer mercs" though... that may be more accurate.

Try doing that exact same thing doing TBL progression in the gear you started with and then re-evaluate your position on tanks not being gear dependent.

ToV, especially T1, is more like a catch up, T2 not much more difficult. TBL was a lot more difficult, especially if undergeared (see the many posts about smoke trials)

also 4k aas at lvl 113, turn on auto grant and relog. so you get the basic aas

He actually has autogrant already. He stated, "My pally is currently level 113, less than 4k AA on top of the autogrant ones..."

I have played SK and Warr through multiple expansions completing all quests on both. Warrior feels hands down more tankier then my SK with a shaman in group, On named its not even a comparison when the Warr pops discs. I felt sometimes the SK can run out of stuff if DPS is lacking and youre squishy for awhile. Only thing i really prefer my sk for is the pulling options, FD , and aoe aggro. Warrior does just feel like easy mode though. SK requires you to press a lot of buttons all the time if you want to play the class properly.

Pal, SK, and WAR are amazing classes. They are all basically different flavors of the same thing. They all can tank. How well you can tank, depends on your skill using your discs at the right time, and if you are a Pal or SK, healing yourself with your discs or spells. If you have a real cleric or healer in the group, tanking is not too difficult.

Warrior is the best for pure tanking purposes, assuming the heals are coming in, Warriors have the best defensive stats and defensive discs in the game, and they have so many discs they can tank better for longer. SK is the best all around, good damage, tanking and healing himself. Paladins defensively are amazing with burst heals/group heals and all the passive heals from AA's and spells, on top of Lay on Hands, Hand of Piety and other AA heal clickies, armor of inquisitor and group armor of inquisitor adds a huge % to heals so any heal that hits you or your group becomes a bigger/full heal. If the mobs are not immune to stun a Paladin can tank a mob hardly taking any damage. Paladins also get a really nasty burn that lasts for 2 minutes when they stack pureforge/valor rage/inquisitors judgement and a few other clickies. They can chew through a bunch of mobs or a named with a 2 hander during that time with good DPS.

Honestly it depends on what you want, raid gear enhances them all and they get tankier and put out more damage. Its 90% player so pick your class and enjoy it.

Tanks are always front and center taking the beating. So you want to have current or near current gear, aa's, augs etc. every other class not so much long as they can survive mob ae's and such they don't need the stuff as immediately. A cleric will never run out of mana lol unless they die. Same with shaman and druid unless that druid is dotting. Tank dies none of those other classes matter at that point short of the few freaks of nature I know =)

So much bad info here.

Paladins can spot heal and bring more utility to raids.
SK's, after their many nerfs, are a bit better solo and in lower group content.

For raids or new content where you may need extra heals, roots, etc - Paladin all the way.