So....... I am an old school warrior. I have been around many years. Raided everything from launch-tds....... the last couple years, I have noticed warriors changing things up a bit, everything from attitude, to skill, willingness to teach/help others. I have also noticed less and less guilds doing the standard practice of tank swaps on raids. I have not raided "hardcore" as I once have. But I have still raided with a handful of solid guilds who still do current content. And I just don't see it anymore. I'm curious if it's a Pride thing? Bragging rights? Laziness? Lack of ability and communication? Or is there a BENEFIT from not swapping. I've went through every scenarios in my head of everything I can think of. And none have gave me a satisfactory answer. I am hoping some of my hardcore warrior buddies out there can enlighten me. Please and thanks in advance. ~King Cerpox D'Agro, God of warriors-
everything in current can be single tanked, so no real need to swap. Also you save some effort on your healers by not swapping since you don't need to.
Many new events enforce tank swaps. The ones that do not, there are very few events where it's really beneficial to tank swap. The rest of the raid can focus their tank helping abilities on 1 tank, and we're not massively less powerful with defensive proficiency vs last stand. Sometimes the act of swapping itself unless your healers all nail the swap at the same time causes more trouble than it's worth. The last mob I can recall that hit hard enough that we even considered the idea of a tank swap was probably the rat raid. He was pretty spikey on damage. (Plane of health 1 in TBM). So we still swap ALOT, but it's generally not by choice now. And with raid design nowadays, really, you want your big boy buttons up for when you have to tank an add vs the nice cushy MT roll.
Tank swapping as in rotating I am assuming, hasn't been a thing for a long time outside of mechanics driven swaps. I can't recall outside of that being in a guild that didn't try and 1 tank events when possible. Maybe Underfoot? Think that's the last time I saw a rotation, and Fumerak in VOA. It's more efficient to eskew swapping, no target loss, no accidental miscommunication. Just one and done. Plus the fact content has been so Faceroll easy, why would you even need a tank rot, just pewpew no big deal.
Not beneficial to run LS with more helper discs, to minimize damage taken? To essentially negate any chance of tank death, which causes no endurance, plus one of each class to stop healing,dps, and whatever else to rebuff?. What I gather from that is most healers are trash.....? I announce I'm taking aggro, within half a second the mobs on me, with flash running.... at a minimum healers have 5 full seconds to target time and start healing. If that is trouble for them....... then that answers my question..... we stopped swapping because healers are BAD now. With how fast our stuff refreshes, and so many insta aggro tools, I see no reason not to eliminate every chance of a tank dieing. The full lineup stays buffed, endurance, nobody stopping what they are doing to Rez, rebuff, etc. save fort, for emergencies, and like u said with def pro. And staunch line, you can tank in event of an emergency. I just am not seeing a reason to Finnish events with capable warriors, not using their discs.
Our healers are amazing. And our warriors use their discs. If you die you stand up, hit breather, a few self clicks and you're good to go. If you get buffs great, but again, you don't need them to be the MT. Healers can keep ya up just fine once you hit breather so you have a little end to hold aggro. You're far more likely to die to trash or in an off tank role (there are a lot of those nowadays) than you are in the MT role.
You just said it causes problems unless healers nail the swap, which they have more than ample time to do. Made Me assume healers aren't able to swap and heal within that time frame. I must be misunderstanding. And if you one tank it, then the other 2 or 3 (I assume) warriors in the lineup wouldn't have used discs?... And I understand you CAN survive after a death with no buffs. I just don't see why you wouldn't want to use all the resources given....... It's like doing events without burning, it CAN be done just fine..... I just don't see a reason for it. I suppose to each their own, However I appreciate the responses, Appreciate it fellas
I'm not sure how others do it, but generally the 2nd tank would be fresh yet high on aggro. (especially on events with that stupid disc silence thing) 3rd would generally support the off tanks as needed slipping in his/her own 2h burn as the situation allows. It's been a long while since more than 1 tank died if any at all though. Maybe next expansion (or HH?) we'll get a real beater of a boss that needs tank swaps again just due to pure damage not due to hokey mechanics. That would be nice. I kinda liked Corrupted ToV when it was new, it had a few mobs like that. Very few mechanics but they hit hard. Although it was still a little too easy. A minor tune up and it would have been about right.
Its not about nailing the swap, its just a part of a raid that is unnecessary, there are no benefits you just gain a new part of your raid that can mess up (sometimes spectacularly). The other tanks in MTO will burn dps discs and just keep defensives ones always ready.
If the other tanks aren't dpsing to fill their time. Then that is the biggest misuse of resources, not the lack of using defensive discs.
Making a class only able to function (like a tank, only being able to tank) if/while its cooldowns are active is Bad Design. EQ helped figure that out seventeen years ago in Kunark and Velious
Since the addition of some survival abilities, you can tank now without defensive disc, but using your other survival stuff accordingly. It's more interesting imo, because during the timeframe of defensive disc being down you need to spend more time timing your abilities so that you can spend the most time alive. Using your survival skills at your disposal has imo more impact on your survival than tank gear, AC, heroic numbers. And even if you would swap tank based on defensive disc, you aren't excluded to still die on this boss mob. During the learning phase of the new expansion for harder raids, boss MT can die much more, therefore you end with most or nearly all wars tanking the boss because former ones died. In EoK, Karzok raid is one of them from my memory, and Ancient Dragon was not bad too in this domain. Not because their melee DPS is insane, but because there are these other big AE / mechanism that make the tanks take more dmg and coupled with the boss dmg it makes a lot of dmg. Once the expansion is on farm, then things settle down better, healers know the raid mechanism and can heal more reliably, and tanks can one tank a raid boss. But still it happens that we need 2 MT sometimes to end the raid boss because the first MT died.
the real reason why there isent any tank swaps is cuz the bosses themself just dosent hit hard enough. most the events in this expansion where designed with the boss as a secondary objective. the main objective to most the EoK fights are how do you deal with the adds in Triton for example there isent a singel boss in this expansion that we dont one tank. and we basicly done that all along . and the learnign phase of most the fights that was somewhat challengeing was to deal with the adds. the boss are just gaints sacks of hp that sometimes in a blue moon happens to land their melee rounds at the same time as the big AE goes off and only then will my hp move. all in all they (Daybreak) underestimate just how much healing and dmg absobtion stacks and prevents dmg makeing it almost impossible thru attrition to kill the mana pool of healers . with glyph of lost secrets and the mana return and focused paragons and mod rods and normal pargons . other then stright up killing the healers or giveing them a 15k manadrain dot (that will screw over all the mana useing dps folks) going out of mana for a well played cleric/druid/shaman is almost impossible. and becoz of that if the boss cant one round the tank he simply will not die. meaning the tank rotations are a waste of time when the tanks in line can use their offensive resources to contribute to dps without mutch fear for locking out any defensive timers. they can with moderate confidance apply dps at a pretty safe gamble so to anyswer your Q:n you gain some dps by not rotating tank discs
I disagree about Daybreak underestimating anything. In the rest of that paragraph, you describe the coordinated effort of a fully staffed, diverse and well-played raid force, backing up the toughest tank that can be arranged in EverQuest. That's exactly the scenario that should make tanking look easy. Indeed it would be outrageous if tanking weren't secure when so arranged.
It interesting how diffrent we look at things. What i discribed there is the very basic of teamwork. If that is the new advanced raiding condition, that whould be a concern imo. The devs must expect that you bring the most basic of every major buff/debuff. If they dont then they will allways produce content based of bad and poor teamwork , if thats the case then whats the point of raiding/teamwork.
Thank you lol. There's the best answer I have read yet, lol. You gain dps! I appreciate the responses. However, most were basically telling what was already stated..... and I realize there isn't a NEED, but I was looking for the benefit...... although I will admit I said "the last couple years" rather than "a long time" which is what I was meaning. So anyhow. Thanks y'all, I guess we shall continue to 1tank stuff and get some More dps.
They are expecting that. And when that is what you bring, then you get to win. That is the point of raiding/teamwork.
