Thoughts on current tanking(and game play) in eq

I think tanks need some way of converting over heals into something as in a buff that heals us when we get 20% or lower or something. Plus warriors specifically need to lower the di roll from the max hit (which we are supposed to already) Because from them parses done vrs pets we are seeing way too many di 15+ rolls at this time.

Been saying this very thing for a long while now.

I miss the social aspect of the game and being able to communicate strategies etc.
Now it's a gigantic spam-fest, being ever vigilant in case the big spike happens. Don't scratch your nose... don't blink! It's like I'm driving home in rush hour all over again!... some relaxing hobby I have :\ lol.

i would LOVE if some of the umpteen activate-able abilities warriors have were re-tooled into passive mitigation of some sort. the ability bloat in eq got way out of control

I was actually wrong in my ac parse threads in a not insignificant way. I assumed that the furthest bar to the right represented a DI20 hit. This was true for all player characters parsed, but not true for the npcs tanking. As I was compiling the data on the SK class boards (evilgamer) I noticed my critical mistake - earth and beastlord pet never took a DI hit over DI17 (no 18s, 19s or 20s). Yesterday I ran 6 hours of parses to the tune of 25,000+ hits to get a very very long parse to even out the RNG - still no hits over DI17. That makes the comparative mitigation difference even more wonky. I'll be working on trying to get a good 10,000-40,000 hits later today just to make sure their chance of a DI18-20 are actually and truly for all intents and purposes zero - will be posted on EGN.

AC Stagnation: me at retirement vs me now

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HP/AC then: 25159hp / 4982ac
HP/AC now: 111184hp / 9893ac

442% increase in hit points
199% increase in ac

If ac inflation had kept pace with hit point inflation, I'd have 22,000 ac. Maybe then our healers (and us) wouldn't be having to play a fast paced game of whack-a-mole.

There already is a huge disadvantage to throwing on a 2hander, and damage dealers should get a huge survival increase from a shield, so maybe i am missing your point, or your just not making a logical one.

A shield providing HUGE increase to any classes surviability only makes sense... is what i was getting at.

Here's what will happen. 1. Shielding mods go in. 2. DB's get inflated. 3. Mobs more dangerous to non-tanks than tanks.

This is appropriate if mobs are becoming less dangerous across the board due to slowing down combat. For example:

If HP pools are raised for non-tanks, you could stack enough healers to beat attrition and anybody could tank.

Sorry but it doesn't work that way. Mob DPS simply has to go up with large leaps in healing power like that and this is exactly how we got to where we are today.

Question: Shielding mod2 has been capped at 35% for as long as I can remember. And while I cannot say anything about group gear, I am under the impression that groupers can also get 35% or more from their gear alone (someone who has a group geared tank would be better to ask).

Anyways I have thought maybe an increase to the cap could help tanks at least mitigate hits better? Maybe SK/paladin can be capped at 40% and warriors at 45 or even 50%? I know that the high spike hits seems to be what hurts the most, but would another 5-10% shielding help?

So a round of 40k 30k 40k 50k I believe would kill a tank. Would shaving 8-16k damage off that round result in living and not death? Just a suggestion is all...

Interesting. Does this mean that the druid debuffs were only shaving off an additional 2 DI intervals, rather than 5 as initially thought? It seems that the tankiest pets may have an innate DI shift downwards like warriors have.

Heck, if the earth pets and beastlord pets are coded as having the actual warrior class, that could be why you are seeing only DI17 and below - that's what you would expect from a warrior with Phalanx of One maxed out, after all, a passive -3 to DI overall.

Talk about class infringement...

A tank with proper AC and much higher levels of shielding would see significantly less damage from weak adds and better survivability for gaps in healing coverage. This advantage would be less pronounced when mobs have higher DI values or push hits toward the upper range (e.g. named). That kind of damage is better mitigated with activated abilities.

Contrary to popular belief warriors actually take 20 Damage intervals. The -1
DI takes some of the damage out of that DI but our max hit is still a DI of 20. If you're skeptical just go count the number of bars in the graphs for warriors - same as knights. Max hit is lower.

Pets in the parses don't see DIs because their armor class is stratospheric. They don't see them because it's basically a statistical impossibility.

That's the power of ac.

The problem is not what tanks can or cannot do.
The real issue is mob dps.
Tanks getting a big boost will be terrible for the game. It will only lead to mobs hitting that much harder.
And while a tank needs a healer to survive more than a round or two, non-raid geared casters/priests are in a much worse place. Stronger tanks will only make stronger mobs. And nerfing other classes will only get your class nerfed down the road out of reprisal.

Mostly incorrect. Average DPS is significantly eclipsed by average heal/sec. With enough HP, tanks would never die until healers went OOM. Add another healer and with enough HP nobody would die.

Mobs are always going to hit harder. That train isn't getting derailed anytime soon.

Agreed, but that's somewhat outside scope of this thread. Casters can be given tools to weather incidental contact with mob melee damage.

Crying wolf again?

^ This dude Kind of has a point. The larger the gap between tanks and non tanks, the more screwed they are IF/WHEN they get aggro.

The problem definitely is what tanks can not do, take hits like a pet. When Jabner and friends are unmatched in their ability to survive the most brutal battles, the warriors raison d'etre has been out. Which leads to any warrior asking what is the point of choosing a group dependent, gear dependent, AA dependent, and therefore a time dependent class. Compare this to one ear ring that can be bought in the bazaar. I suppose if warriors could get a bazaar bought aug for their weapon that quadruped their dps no pet class would bat an eye......

There used to be a time when if a caster got agro, they were expected to die /shrug. I know, I played a warrior pre boc lol.

There is no way we could go back to the way things were. It was so much more simple back in those days. Far less abilities for one and you could chit chat while doing everything you had available to you. Mobs and PCs were much less complex statistically speaking.
They game has watered down. If there is anything SOE could do to take things back to what you remember then they would return classes back to their specialty. You know there is something wrong in todays game when the paly dies and the wizard spends the final 25+ seconds finishing off the final two mobs during a dead hills HA. I remember a time not to long ago when silkies got agro for more then a few seconds it was game over for them. Currently playing in PoWar has brought some of the oldness back into this game.
I would not be calling for nerfs for any class when I say return classes back to their specialty. What I would recommend?
1st make mobs churn out more DPS (increase the tank archetype abilities to compensate). This would make things more interesting for non tanks and actually make other classes afraid of getting hit. Like the good ole days
2nd make mobs tougher to kill. In end game end zones I would rather have fewer tougher mobs then many weaker mobs. Only boost true DPS classes abilities (zerker, wizzy, rogue). That's the only thing they really bring to the table so let them shine by themselves in this category.
3rd Utility needs to become important again. Now days anyone can fade pull. Buffs have become more and more optional. With #1 and #2 above I would increase the potency of buffs across the board. Make them truly desired again for the end game people. With mob difficulty increased the desire for better pullers/crowed control would be almost a must. Give us utility that means something. Let the pacifiers/stunners/snarers/mezers....the list of abilities goes on and on....truly mean something again.
1-3 is how the game use to be. A long time ago. In short, increase the mobs difficulty substantially. Then only increase each class to compensate according to each classes original EQ intent. Then it would feel more like old EQ.

Still might not be enough to pass them, so perhaps they wouldn't.

Yea maybe . So say octupled dps then did do you think warriors reply "I don's see the problem. We can't aoe damage, and have to be in melee range, and our bows can't be equipped with the aug, and this is a silly argument, how am I suppose to kill a mob if I can't dps?"

That is the way it should be hate management is the entire group and raids job. People should not be able to out dps and still tank npcs when there are already 3 classes 1 more so then others intended to do nothing other then mitigate damage.

Here we are again, with another hijack of a thread that could divulge real information. Instead we are back to mitigation. There will be a few that have heard this before, mitigation does not = tanking. Maintaining aggro would mean you are tanking, can we all agree? Why aren't the raid tanks I frequent with flopping in raids, and why are pets never saving the day in those raids? If the picture that was trying to be drawn in threads that are already closed were true, every raid would be set up without melee and the entire dynamic of eq would have already changed. We are a community of min/maxers when it come to raids. If the argument of pets enters this again, I will squash it, because pets can't tank like PC toons, stop posting this misinformation. People have parsed and shown pets mitigate better, ok you win eq. Tanking is maintaining aggro, and having a group or raid kill a mob. Because if you want to argue things, there are classes that root/rot much more efficiently solo than other classes solo things. Is this class envy? For some I will say it is because they can't get over a single integer to an equation. Apples and oranges, all day, quit bringing a broken argument up in every thread you feel you can slip it into. The only thing you are going to prove is that you wished you could face roll your keyboard for the win. Do you really want EQ to be like that game you didn't leave it for? I apologize for those who don't understand of what I am speaking of, but there are people here that believe their "empirical data" had something to do with what tanking and how other classes are balanced has anything to do with an afk parse thread that was shut down. Don't continue down that road please, for my mage is not the only raid toon I play. Tanks are not broken, do you really want easy mode now and broken content later. If you wish to play the easy MMO's, which this is getting close too, please do. Should tanks get some love for AC returns, absolutely, but in no way large returns or it will wreck the next set of content.