I was just reading a thread on the melee forum and thought I'd ask this here too. I don't know if anyone mentioned this already. Do warriors have a greater defense skill cap than hybrids? It seems to me that warriors should have a non trivial advantage in their defensive skills. Things like parry, dodge, riposte, and defense should be higher than a hybrids. I would even go further, because warriors give up all spell training to focus on melee skills, their offensive capabilities with weapons should also be a non trivial amount higher than hybrids. Is the game like this? Because if it is not, that's a big part of the problem right there.
They learned not to do those things back in GoD. It resulted in group events which were essentially only beatable by groups with warriors and disenfranchised Paladins and SKs.
If I put a level 50 paladin next to a level 50 warrior in the same gear, do we not essentially have two classes with equal fighting skill except the paladin has 50 ranks of spells? The warrior must have something in return for his focus on the melee arts shouldn't he? To put it another way, playing a level 50 warrior is just like playing a level 50 paladin who doesn't memorize any spells? Is this the way game is set up? I suggest that if a paladin or shadowknight gains 5 points in a melee skill per level then a warrior should receive 6 or 7 points per level to show something for his extra training.
Warriors used to have a significant advantage in melee skills, but these have all been eroded due to diminishing returns.
I was just thinking there should be something gain for giving up all of those spells and that advantage should be present throughout the warrior's career. Else, why would I make a warrior?
Warriors have a clear and significant advantage for tanking raid mobs. Paladins and SKs get to off-tank or kite raid adds. In compensation, the hybrid tanks get some advantages in the group game. EQ is fundamentally a large-raid game, that's what's unique and special about it. Grouping, leveling and exping are all essentially practice or work-out to get ready to raid.
Warriors have an innate 5% damage reduction that no other class receives (unless that was removed during one of my breaks from the game). Beyond that, the reasons to play any tank class over another have been slowly eroded over the years in the name of class parity.
Warriors do have higher mitigation and dps than other tanks. However, this only shows through in raids where hybrids aren't able to pop god mode for 2 minutes the way they're able to do for group content. It's a different way of playing, being passively better vs. being actively better while your cooldowns last.
You say higher dps but what is that based on? Duel wield? What gives them a higher dps? Where can I find information about the 5% mitigation bonus? If that is not documented somewhere then I'm going to assume that it isn't actually a game mechanic because I'm sure the game would highlight that if it were so. Wouldn't it? Surely that information would be available.
Not really in the slightest. There are a lot of small facts about the game that are hardly documented at all. They came from a dev conversation, patch note, player parsing, or other non-obvious source. And as far as DPS, they get a ton of abilities for DPS. Dual wield with double and triple attack is only the start. Take a look at their AA and you will see a bunch of nice DPS AA, such as an extensive flurry line. You are assuming, from the sounds, that warriors are basically an auto attack and your done class. They are not. Back in original EQ, that was much closer to the case. These days, they get a pretty nice selection of disciplines for offense and defense (not just Defensive and similar stances, but single shot debuffs, attacks, etc). Additionally, with the thousands of AAs available, lots of other abilities have come into existence that make warriors desirable. Passive agro is a staple of warriors, for example. With their volume of swings, their innate (AA) hate procs, dual wielding (more potential weapon procs), etc - they have a lot of hate without trying (not to say they can't get a lot more when they do!). The above players have boiled it down well in raid vs group game, though. Warriors take the best hits of any of the tanking classes, especially for raids. For groups, hybrid tanks tend to be superior because a lot of the group dynamic revolves around other things, such as self healing and utility outside tanking. Warriors hold their own, though, and are perfectly viable.
What are these people saying, do they play a Warrior? Our Warrior DPS is far behind all other Tanks and by quite a lot, Warriors no longer Dual Wield (except maybe in trival content) Warriors are not at all desirable for group content is an SK or Pally is around. The Warrior class has lost ground over the last 2 expansions and this ROF expansion has do little if anything to bring Warriors back to an exceptable level compared to the other Tanks. That is the truth plain and simple.
Long, long ago in a galaxy far away, warriors had higher caps in everything, by a lot. But, they could not cast spells, not even yellow mana ones. It's a very different game now. I don't think a return to the old system would be well-received by pure melee.
Perhaps not by pure melee mains, but bet boxers would love this! A return to rogues only having to use the backstab skill every so often, monks only using flying kick every so often, sounds good to me for running a box!
/agree Seriously, old paradigms are just that....old. The last few expansions have seen leaps and bounds for the other tanks. More dps, more agro, better tanking. Warriors have received: word that dual wield doesn't work as intended....yay us.
16 posts about warriors and no Battleblade comment? I'm flabbergasted! Why hasn't this thread been moved to the class boards already? If it was any other class it would have been. In fact there is another thread on warrior gear dependence on the Veteran's forum instead of the class boards. In reality warriors are still superior to ALL other classes at tanking. It is just that mobs have been brought back to respectable levels so that groups using merc tanks can survive. If you increase warriors more, you would not see any benefit because the mobs would still be hitting for the same damage. To see a warriors benefits in defense, a mobs damage output has to be increased and then ALL groups would be warrior dependent again, which is not healthy for the overall game. And to Hiby's comment " Warriors no longer Dual Wield (except maybe in trival content", you must be a terrible warrior to not use dual wield, unless you are tanking the toughest raid mobs. As a bard, I can tank most non-name mobs now with dual wield. Not using dual wield is a choice to your own damage output so you have a reason to complain.
Warrior's by their nature are defensive tanks. DPS is not their role. Knights are more offensive tanks (especially SK's). The problems that warriors have in group content has very little to do with that. Attack the Body of Many and you will learn the true weakness of a warrior tank in group content.
Our tiny tanking advantages are simply no longer relevant. A token amount of damage soak is greatly eclipsed by the ability to be your own healer. That advantage needs to be expanded on a massive scale. Dual Wield is by far our weakest weapon configuration from a DPS perspective.
It is documented everywhere; go look at all the older warrior sites. Look up the original Dev's statements regarding it, and I do believe in the early game manuals it mentions that warriors have an innate mitigation bonus. How this mitigation bonus works involves a little unpacking of game mechanics. When you get hit by a mob (before modifications like +Shielding % and other such things) the amount of damage that you get hit for is determined using one of the following formulas: Code: [DB + DI * X] = Unmodified Damage to Non-Warrior PC OR [DB + DI * W] = Unmodified Damage to Warrior PC Where DB is the damage bonus that the mob has (this is what is lowered by +Shielding), DI is the damage interval that the mob has (this is the smallest amount that one hit by the mob can differ from another hit, and X is a value that can range from 1 to 20 (this is determined based on your level, your mitigation AC, your CS AA ranks, your class, the mob's level, the mob's ATK, and the RNG). The Warrior Innate Mitigation Bonus affects the X variable; W = X - 1, unless X - 1 = 0 in which case W = 1. So let's say a mob has a DB of 100 and a DI of 500 while after the calculations the X is 20. Non-Warriors without any modifications will all be hit for 100 + 500 * 20 = 10,100; Warrior without any modifications on the other hand will only be hit for 100 + 500 * (20 - 1) = 9,600. Non-Warriors have 1, 2, 3, 4 ,5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20 as possible steps for the DI; while Warriors have 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 as possible steps for the DI. I'm tired and haven't slept since getting off work; I got sick of trying to find posts from years and years ago to "officially" cite all this. It is actually fairly easy to verify; just parse anything hitting a warrior, and then parse the exact same mob hitting any non-Warrior. The non-Warrior will have 20 different hit values while the Warrior will only have 19; but given that the parses are significantly long the Warrior's step 1 will equal the non-Warriors step 1 + step 2.
