Sometimes it seems like if you're going to tank you're expected to be a raiding MT before you're taken seriously in a random heroic PUG. A lot of that is just mistaken attitude problems with players. Given. But how is it different from a gear and setup standpoint? I understand that if you raid you're likely to be running with a group that has a dirge giving you more hate gains and stone skins. But nowadays you can just reforge into hate gain. Or am I mistaking the dirge buff for hate gain and they're different things? In any case, if you're not sure of the group structure, and want a general heroic setup, do you focus more AAs on the things dirges would be giving you? Or, when heroic tanking, is it just as advisable to wait for a dirge to join you if you're not raid geared? Is the reason that it seems so easy for tanks to hold mobs in heroic groups because actually they're slumming in between raids and their gear is miles ahead of others. (Again, given, in the last expac, tanks had a hard time in heroic groups, but improvements have been made on that.) Tanking seems to run together from "baby tank" to raid MT with no stops in between and I'm looking for the stop labeled "heroic." I'm also talking about level 100-110 now, not TLE, or low level grouping, which is a whole other animal. It probably isn't as hard as I think it is, it's just that I imagine it's hard. I could use some of the good old "it's easy...." types of responses you guys are so good at as long as you add info in between the jeers.
OK let's get it started from the beginning: if I'm MC geared, do you expect me using any tanking class, to be able to reasonably tank a PoP heroic? Should I expect myself to be able to do that wearing MC armor,jewelery, cloak, etc? Limiting to tier I? or 2 even? http://eq2library.com/pop/progression/#dungeons
You need your epic 2.0, tome of the ascended, sig line and all 3 factions done, expert+ abilities, as much fervor as you can get from orange adorns (last summer ethereal adorns + PGs), white adorns from PGs also if you can stand grinding them, and a decent AA spec to run heroics without pulling your hair out.
This is wrong my tank has no epic repercussions no epic 2.0 level 6 accession was full MC gear and was tanking T1 and T2 mobs fine and holding Agro off a really damn good conj my tank has no tome and no runes. No ethereal cloak or belt. http://u.eq2wire.com/soe/character_detail/2598475051846
I already went from KA gear to solo to heroic for PoP, everything cleared apart from that challenge event heroic, that zone seems to be setup as something for bored T1/T2 raiders to farm for something, does not seem casual friendly unlike the other 11 heroics. You do not even need MC gear to tank a good portion of those zones. Think about it, the regular heroics let people in at 103 or 105 only the EV require 110. Guess what kind of gear most people are wearing at those levels... anyhow the upgrade path is very linear and pretty narrow between say T0 (solo stuff) and T2 29 res, I mean it is significant, but it is not heaven and earth significant i.e. multiples. In any event you will be fine till the raiders get into T2 or T3 and up raid gear and figure out how to extreme dps again. You will have problems in full heroic T2+ gear with raiders pulling 3 billion plus sustained (spiking over 10 billion easy mid fight) on the boss fights that allow them to burn properly. (A lot of them have stone skins/temp immunity or some other script that makes it ill advised to DPS). That will mostly be down to them having the Double cast AND the Pot/CB/Fervor to just blow anything you do away, but then that is what snaps are for and them having restraint or just running with their uber guildies/friends and not in a PuG in the first place, it is their own stupidity if they choose to go all out and ruin the grp etc. Don't think you have anything to worry about, just get out there and play.
I like all the answers because you have the classic response, and the on the ground response. And some informed insight into how expansions tend to go over time. Everyone loves a raider in a PUG, except maybe the tank. This is why I'm thinking of being creative and running my Zerker, for more snaps. Both my Zerker and my SK have their epic 1, SK is closer to starting epic 2, but the difference is really negligible at this point. I'm done my first run through and taking a couple days to let my brain uncompress. Then it's back to the fun. In the end, yes, I do need to do the big quests that will make my tank better (epic 2.0, version 1 is done on all my 100s, I had one laggard but that's done now too). But the promise was, being able to alt more. If it can work with a tank, it can work with anything. I'm really encouraged right now. So I'm going to put that on my A list and see how it goes.
I've been running heroics nonstop with one of the best berserkers ever to play this game (which would be unanimously agreed by anybody that knows him) and mage dps pull aggro off of him a lot, even though he has all of those things. I hate to burst your bubble, but the conjuror you were with isn't that good if you were keeping aggro. Right now it's simply not possible for a berserker with no fervor because of a lack of all of those things to hold aggro. If you're on Maj'Dul I'd be happy to prove it to you on my wizard. You need fervor from every source possible or it's going to be a nightmare OP, plain and simple. You can take the hits just fine without all those things, but you better hope your mages can too. If you believe you're going to hold aggro off a T1 doing 2.5 billion zone wide damage or more while doing 350 million dps because your fervor is atrocious then prepare for repeated disappointment.
If you're talking about holgoo, I would agree. Hell of a tank. And my troub could rip agro off of the zerker he linked, there's no way he held it off a conjuror. Edit: No way he held it off of a conjuror that has their epic 2.0 and can press 1 button
Yeah and I can use a tinker item to FD and kill you all. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! But I don't because I'm a team player. Next gripe? My next gripe is that the only jewelery that drops in solos has Aggression on it. What a dumb thing to put on an item with doublecast! I'd rather keep my slightly better balanced Expert ring with lower potency. I think the issue is that people see potency and their brain goes to sleep while they imagine big big numbers.... oooo.... they're biiiig... They see Aggression on the same ring, and they think, pfft, let the tank worry about that. Big mistake. I haven't complained yet about it because I haven't had enough runs through the solos to tell you what the options are yet. But so far, all the jewellery has Aggression, and that's just wrong. Let me amend that... all the 105 jewellery that I care about bc I can adorn it.
Did you post in the wrong thread? because this has nothing to do with the discussion of how to gear a heroic tank in PoP, it's general griping. If you provoke, then expect to get consequences.
I originally tried to help you and responded to some dude calling me a liar. But with your tenuous grasp on logic and inability to follow a thread's train of discussion, as evidenced by much of the stuff you post all over these forums, I'm not sure why I tried to help. Some people just can't be helped. Maybe next time just say thank you instead of derailing your own thread by acting like somebody that has no common sense. I told you how to gear up for heroics and why that stuff is necessary. You're welcome. And "expect to get consequences" is just lol worthy. Unless the consequences are me being forced to read incoherent ramblings, of course...
It's sad to see someone so invested in the old outdated mantras of the previous expansion that they ignore what the current expansion is offering. My tongue in cheek post was supposed to make you realize that anyone can troll a tank/dps/healer situation. It doesn't take an Epic 2.0 to prevent people with bad attitudes.
So I'm trying to follow you here... You made a thread entitled "Heroic vs. Raid Tank" and asked how to gear for heroics so you could discuss players with bad attitudes? You're all over the place. Seriously dude, I give up. Maybe somebody else can make sense of all this. Good luck.
I have not read what others said so you may see some commonalities. No one is expected to be a raid tank when they join a heroic group as a tank. Raid tanking is entirely different from heroic content. Just based on the length of encounters you can sum that up. If anybody wants a raid tank to tank heroic stuff then they should really advertise for that but I don't I have ever seen that in a channel. However, if you are in a raid guild then people assume you may be a raid tank and if you have never tanked in a raid then point it out when you join just to clear any false expectations. If anybody ever says that: You are a tank and therefore you must have raid experience" is not aware of this game works. For raid/heroic zones, just reforge to 100%. You don't need a coercer/dirge hate and frankly how often you come across dirges anyway these days. As tank with the right gear you will be more than capable of handling any heroic content without dirge buffs. You can have the best gear in the game and know the class inside out and if you end up with lesser geared/less experienced players then you will struggle. You can carry a group but sometimes you just simply cannot because your group is holding you back. This equally applies to a tank as well sometimes when you have a decked out group with high dps players and a below average tank with mediocre gear for the level of content. You will see aggro rips, defensive fails etc. Spec your AAs to what suites your play style first and what benefits you as a tank. Don't rock stuff that gives you a smidgen of solo dps at the expense of your defensive buffs which will make or break your survivability etc. In short, there is no hard and fast rule for tanking. What works for one tank may not work for another. I would say that heroic content is a good starting point because you will learn the dynamics of your class and other classes, learn when to use stuff and when not to. Unless you are in a , to use your analogy, "baby" guild and everyone is at same level then you can get away with jump starting your raiding career as a raid tank, otherwise not recommended. You can be a tank in any group/raid force but to be good, you need to put in time/effort to learn how to play. Remember a tank is the first point of contact with the enemy so it carries the most responsibility and therefore rightly put under a lot more scrutiny then your average joe dps who can be carried.
You don't need to be a raid tank to run the heroics. I haven't got a single piece of raid gear- I just took the approach of wearing mastercrafted till I get 26 res gear, then 26 till 29. Potency moves up as resolve increases, DPS increases with resolve and potency, and threat increases with DPS.
Thanks guys, that really helps. I always worked on my tanks solo because I've been playing since around 2010 off and on. Also I didn't play mmo's before EQ2, so it was a long time before I got just normal things like MC is sorta like heroic gear but not quite. I've been planning this move for a while now. I was in a great guild but like all great guilds people aged out or left for other reasons. I actually feel more confident now that it's quieter. I realize I'd been talked out of tanking before, not cruelly, just people having unrealistic expectations and/or just throwing unrealistic expectations at me. I never really believed it was as hard as they made out, but I was happy to go with the flow and play scouts, mages, etc... anyway they were fun too, and SK's hardly need help anywhere solo, even back then. Around level 35 my Zerker blossomed into a dps machine and I loved him after that. Until then, it was rough. Anyway they're both 100 now, and I'll decide who's who in a few days and see how it goes. I really appreciate the feedback. I appreciate the classic view also, but I think if the developers are making an effort to help us alt more, then this is the right time to try this. If it fails, so what? I learned something. But I doubt it will fail. I was in a Sol Ro PQ this morning with a Zerker tank wearing all quested gear and a Tome (those are pretty easy now with a little work), no Epic 2. The other 5 in the group were mages and he had the mobs the whole time. Once he died because he was in a ring, but of course, no healer and it seemed like he was lagging so maybe didn't see it. No healers available that time. None of us got stomped as long as we stayed near him. In the end I think tanking is all about confidence and the first person who needs to have confidence in me is me.
If you conj I’m talking about does 5bil zonewide easy your dps should help with Agro control to not just the tank. And I’m sorry but if you are a zerker with everything and only parse 350mil you need to rethink your class. Zerker is not my main by far. It’s basic game knowledge and knowing the dps your going with and timing debates with snaps. It’s not that hard tbh if you Are good at the game. And I know the zerker you speak of. May I ask who is your wizzard? I’m sure I put parse you as a illy?
