My zerk is a 2 month old baby but I must admit I <3 the class. Sorc's love me, cuz i play like I'd want a tank to. Very similar going from my 10 year old wizard to 420. Pull everything in sight, Gibe, Adrenaline and outparse slacking dps classes. Aggro is 99% never a problem. Gibe locks down the mass pulls. Jeering locks down anything under 10. Sneering and cry of the warrior guarantee nameds stay on me even during EB/ FB/ LB/ Soulburn/ whatever. Insight and my draconic effigy are icing on the cake. The only time Ive ever had a problem would be in a group with no transfer, a decked out sorc and or summoner going all out. And even then I can only think of one time (conj). My little guy's gone thru zones with even Koncept (wiz) and not lost it once. We all know he dont mess around. You can look up Fourtweenty on eq2wire.com . Im always in dps gear cuz thats how zerker's roll, but I can put on the guardian swag and get my hp> 1 mill, mit > 17k and block ~ 90%. Havent had a problem with anything yet, but I have not been into MAW, and unfortunetly, no one lets me play anything but my wizard usually in raid. It's a curse. One day tho, 420 will be unleashed.
A lot of people leave posts and there doing fine because there walking around with a lot of swag at least there setup is much better than mine they have a hard time relating to where I am coming from. When my gear gets as good as there I am sure I being doing much better/great doing my job of being top dps and handling all the aggro those crazy wizard type can put out as well as making my healer job a piece of cake. But as it is I am someone who has soloed the whole game and had fun doing it that way.Now at 95 want to be a great group tank and hopefully great raider. I am not there atm so I am trying to figure out everything I can going forward to be able to stay alive and keep the caster and healers alive as well. I wish I was one of those people that just did not worry so much about doing a great job and just billed myself as the greatest ever and to that end I am sure I would have gotten better gear and learned the zones but I cant redo the game so I am trying to move forward from here and I would rather ask questions here than think I already have the answers and getting a lot of great info here imho.
You gear choices look to be pretty good, you need to get some reforging done though any gear with AE should be reforged to turn that stat into something useful. Your multi attack should be at least 116 at all times. Casting speed, reuse, and recovery should never be above 85% so those can be reforged as well. Judging from your Crit chance, I'd guess you haven't finished your ToV signature quest line yet, I would highly recommend doing that to get the nice crit chance boost from the mount, which will free up some more white adorn slots. Here is a basic group level stats to shoot for. DPS - 600 Attack speed - 200 MA -116 Casting speed 50% reuse - 85% recovery - 25% Your mitigation is good for grouping for. Remember that any armor piece you have with block on it, can be swapped for a WDB piece when you aren't using a shield. For purples, you will want bolstered endurance and bolstered attributes as they will make your HP shoot up a great deal. Purples for your armor pieces can be either crit bonus or DPS (flurry or block on your shoulders, mitigation on your chest) personally for my hybrid gear set I put DPS purples in head, forarms, gloves, and boots. Crit bonus in legs, mitigation in chest, and flurry in shoulders. Greens, you can either use Pickclaw Trickster's Gemstone, or Aerakyn Guardian Stone depending on if you want more stats for damage or for tanking.
Hey I hear ya. Gear can be darn costly to buy and sometimes you need better gear to run a zone only to find out it drops gear not high enough to run the zone. I think there are better charms than your golden one for sale that are too terribly priced. As for swords I believe you can buy ones with 500 ish stam on them, 4 seconds. Ambush is the name of the blade. It might improve your stats a bit and I don't think it costs too much. This may be bad form but when I start loosing aggro I will use a stone of detonation to refocus the mobs on me, it's like 550,000 damage in the area, so it's good to pop with a hate increase shout if I notice mobs drifting towards someone else in my group. You get that via ToV collections. Hope that helps some!
Dude I dont know if this is aimed at me or not but did you even look at me zerks' gear? Theres not one thing special there. Its basically all Heroic loot. You have 7+ excellent tools to get aggro. Gibe, Sneering, Cry, Rescue, Jeering on a short recast. Insight is TONS of threat. Get a piece with Virulent Wrath on it. Drac Effigy for Hate + DPS. Offensive stance. Keep aggro with DPS. Attitude is 50% of a good tank. Get one.
No I did not aim my comment at anyone in particular SacDaddy420 I was just speaking in general that the way my gear is atm and I believe I have 100% great attitude! Are you saying I dont. The whole reason for making this thread is to get myself informed and my comments are about end game for my zerker and thats all about getting better gear for him. With ToV you need to be able kill a lot harder mobs from once your doing that content than the rest of the game. I am just looking at game from when we get to level 95 and start doing advanced solo and heroic content. The stats we need to do level 95 content and beyond pretty much make game gear wars where need to have right gear to play and better gear mean we progress easier and can do harder content. Yes the thread started by me asking how to be effective aggro tank which is including setting up my CA AA and gear properly which is why I got mitigation gear and as my starting gear main focus. It helps to see the better gear out there to see how to progress my gear too. And now I seeing I want to know how to setup for dps tank as well and be able to transition to raiding too which if was to able rename this thread it would be "how to build a better end game zerker". I realize there's lot of overlapping info here for the other tank types which will hopefully this thread will help them also but main focus is to build a better zerker and let the other tank types start there own thread if it not relevant to the zerker. Even if I disagree with someone I try to keep my opinions to myself and as long as there trying to adding there good input to the discussion than thats great. If someone I think is trying to attack me personally I have no problem defending myself but I hope those posting here will refrain from that. Everyone here that has better gear than someone else worked for it and I respect that and I want people to respect other posters. I am learning a lot from these posts but I hate the newbie term let just call me a work in progress. Try to remember that you too are a work in progress and when AoM comes will will all be learning new tricks and zones to get to level100. Also earlier on my server was trying to get into a HKC group and they were looking for dps. I was thinking great here my chance to check out zone due to my guild is dead and I am looking for another so there no guild group action going on there for a long time so I offered to myself as 95 Zerker wanting to go reckless and join group so I could check out the place. Was not invited so did a LFG with the same request and was bombarded with people unhelpful negative comments.There was one person who was having a field day at my expense saying how he did not why tanks have problems playing there class and he never had these problems. So using in game browser and with to EQU looked him up and lets just say potent gear was his weakest gear. Checking adorn he had raid adorns and fully setup with best you can make or buy. So thats the type of stuff I had to deal with every time I try to get something going. I need to know my stuff going in and that np. When I get into another guild then I know I will learn a lot from them but I have not found new guild yet. Also I heard that reckless and aoe not good to use in HKC from some of those comments I just get annoyed at the grievers but there not going to keep me asking questions or from stating my opinions and my viewpoints.
I am sorry people were cruel to you on your server. It is something with the anonymity of being online that seems to make people feel it is fine to be condescending and unkind, to say things online that they would likely never say aloud in real life, or they would at least say it with more tact. Truth is most people don't like a dps tank in groups, they don't like running with two tanks for the most part in a group. Unless you are in a group where you have trust and friendship and everyone puts fun first and group build second, running as a dps tank will be hard as you learned tonight from those harsh comments. If you were on my server I'd group with you and let you run dps everyone has to learn, and we were all new to the game and our class, once. I wish for you the ability to find the right guild of friends to help make this transition period for you a happy and exciting period, and I commend you on your bravery. It is not easy to put up your eq2 wire link and ask people what's wrong with it. It's cool you want to learn your class enough to risk critique. I respect that.
oh ok well i dunno man i read the op and a few here and there, I thought you were mainly concerned with holding aggro, which really isnt a problem given the amount of tools we have. Snaps lock it to you, taunts and dps keep it there. Mit means nothing if you aint got aggro. In these year old Heroics, you dont need defense. Blood Rage, Adrenaline, Gut Roar, Chaos, Wall, Battle Frenzy and the 100% parry one are all you need to stay up. Healers are for the rest of the group. In raids yes go defensive. Use a shield and get that mit and block chance up there.
Ty for the CA info and my gear now has changed a lot from first post spent like 3k on upgrade that were available on my server. I wish I had old get gear setup link but I dont. I just reforged all my AE today mostly adding dps and some multi to start beefing that up. I will check your setup on aggro and prob be fine with it but as there are people who want me to do my job without helping me I will be spending time doing more advanced solo of the ToV zones so I know my way around without asking for in group help. I just posted that I want to use this thread also to setup for doing all heroic zones esp DOM and HKC so thats more than my op was asking about but I figured this would be a good place to prepare to gear up to do it all with raiding being last on my list unless get into a guild that can use me for that.
This about covers it all, the temp rotation on the zerk is very solid and will make up for lacking the gear. Knowledge and timing comes first and then gear. First thing I do on a pull I know deeps is gonna go all out on is popping expirienced insight-battlefrenzy-get in berserk and pop juggernaut then go all out dps. When experienced insight is down use adrenaline instead but don't use battlefrenzy at the same time.
Well, there might be ONE thing special there. /steals the Eye and runs. Otherwise, I'll admit to being a bit surprised at how "heroic" your character was. I expected a ton of alted raid loot tbh. You guys have inspired me to play around with just how much defensive gear I can swap out for offensive stuff.
So today they made me tank AS. The snake at the bottom of the elevator. First pull, I tossed on all my "mit" armor. Adds didnt die fast enough, raid blew up. (only 3 groups) Me 866k dps 109 hps Second pull I went for my standard set, only BP legs and helm as mit, rest WDB. Stayed in defenive stance however. Still had a couple add explosions but enough aoe blockers to keep most alive through them, for the win. (05:06) Kaasssrelik the Afflicted: 17959853 necro-Soulburn-5899262 swash D 2555840 H 527 necro D 1953820 H 5159 assasin D 1932763 H 137 swash D 1881595 H 3144 necro D 1869451 H 5655 necro D 1850940 H 2163 lock D 1189202 H 1179 Droll D 991388 H 101658 lock D 868124 H 492 dirge D 824319 H 8019 dirge D 765168 H 13764 SK D 392649 H 33352 defiler(sk) D 349343 H 71099 defiler(me) D 231018 H 57694 warden(me) D 173435 H 69748 healer(grp3) D 89005 H 44744 healer(sk) D 41794 H 57010 I topped the heal parse. My dps wasnt horrible, we won. Screw you're shields in raids even!~ Both sets of tank healers healed about the same, even with me taking more damage due to no avoidance. I easily made up the slack. First pull I did get charmed, then proceeded to start ae'ing my raid... good times. No charm (on me) for second pull, and tanked named as well as adds when they were up, let the sk keep agro if no adds.
By the way, no making fun of some of my raid's poor numbers! It's an alt guild that raids twice a week.
"I topped the heal parse. My dps wasnt horrible, we won. Screw you're shields in raids even!~" Case closed! lol
I grouped with Bashem last night in Hive. (I was the tour-guide warlock.) All went well. I didn't put 2 and 2 together until just now. Kind of responding to the part about others being jerks on the server. Everfrost generally seems pretty benign to me in the chat channels. However, just on Saturday morning I noted 2-3 folks were being absolute dicks to another player in chat from something that started as a tanking/aggro discussion devolving into childish nonsense. Wondering if you got into the crosshairs of the same few. I also would have to say I'd be reluctant to bring another tank in a pug in most cases. Particularly for a more challenging zone. (Guild group is a different story.) It just always seems to be more trouble than it's worth for little return. I only know of one exception to this really on Everfrost with one Guardian who is spec'd and geared for dps and does a ridiculous amount of damage in that role. If you have another 95 alt such as dps or utility you might first try HKC on that character. It can be fairly challenging if you don't know what you are doing down in there. That said, I was in another PUG in HKC where the tank had never been in the zone before just this weekend. One of the others in the group was very familiar with the zone and just talked the tank through the pulls. We had some wipes but cleared our weekly quest so it definitely can be done. It's a fun zone but can be unforgiving at times.
So all your dps gear added 130kdps and no difference to hps? You beating that fight had nothing to do with you, it was the rest of the raid pulling their fingers out a little more than the first pull.
LoLwut? No, it was ALL me. Everyone else in the raid was there to help ME win!~ First parse was circa 30 seconds. Not easy to compare the armor switch changed on dps comparing 30 seconds of combat to 5+ minutes... My guess, is I would have been around 600k by end of fight in mit gear. My shaman's and my own heal parse likely would have been uneffected, by my warden's would have lowered with me having increased mit.
^^ this. I really don't know what point you are trying to make. #1 You clearly do understand that when you get charmed and wipe on the first pull, its silly to act as though both pulls can be compared. #2 yes, screw shields if you do nothing but stack mitigation (which is how you build your zerker) instead of getting the block stats that make having a shield completely worth it #3 your three group raid had to have over 175K more HPS to keep you and your raid alive than the last four group pick up raid I did, for that fight #4 on that pick up, our tank took 73.5K DPS, I would love to hear how much DPS you took So really, I don't get what you are trying to say? If you are just trying to say that it is possible to tank AS without wearing tank gear, then yes, it sure is. There is still no point for it unless you have top end jewelry. You got 100K DPS out of your character while making your healers work extra hard and as a result probably costing them well over 100K combined DPS because they had to heal you more, that's not really a good trade. And before you say "It would have been 600K DPS if it had gone the full 5 minutes this was our fully defensive (with a shield) zerker tank on that same fight. Zerker | DPS 929K | HPS 27K Quite a bit lower HPS, because he didn't need the healing, which is why our druids were able to do over 1 mil DPS as well as heal. Look, I don't think anyone on here is trying to say you should just build a zerker with just pure tank gear (whether pure mit or a mix), but for someone that is just coming here for advice on how to play a zerker, what it seems like you are doing is stroking your ego about how you were able to tank AS without tank gear, and that really isn't helpful or informative to someone trying to learn how to build their zerker, and in fact is just a bad way to start learning the class. Frankly I hate tanks that refuse to wear tank gear in order to get every last 5K DPS out of their character at the cost of the group's DPS because the healers have to go full heal mode to keep them alive (which would total up to be much more group wide DPS) because they've seen more experienced players with the same gear setup do it. Until the OP understands the balance you have to ride between survivability and damage (which is something that we get from just doing it a number of times) I think its a poor idea to give the impression that simply because you CAN do something, doesn't mean its a great idea. Anyways, to the OP, I didn't realize you were on EF, I will keep an eye out for ya and we will run some zones and can answer specific questions if you have them.
I wouldn't say that 70k'ish HPS is working it hard tho. Just saying.. I won't speak for raids because I haven't raided in a long time. But when doing heroic runs there's usually just one healer and one tank and from my experience tanks usually tend to out dps the healers, wich is good as it gives em more hate. So trying to max out your dps and still being able to do the job is a good thing, its called balance. And if everyone tried to balance their role in grps everything would work better. Most healers put out crappy dps parses cuz they only wanna focus on one thing, same goes for tanks. Those two classes are 33% of the whole grp, and if that 33% of the grp are playing their classes to its full potential then there's a big difference in grp total dps. Sure, if you get stuck on a fight cuz the tank is being hit too hard then bring out the shield and the defensive spec. But as long as its working, max out your dps.
