HI All I have finally got my monk caught up to lvl 125 after being out of the game for few years. My question is : Tanking for groups in heroics. Do you tank in def stance and help the healer by using all the dam reductions etc and if so what generates your hate ? your taunts, dps or buffs from others and deaggro from others ? Or do you tank in Off stance and reply on healer to keep you alive. If thats the case does your damage output help keep hate or is it again down to buffs. I do have the plus hate / agression temp scrolls Many thanks for anyone who takes the time out to help
After BoL I was almost permanently in defensive stance. Dipping below that 70% uncontested block by going offensive really wasn't compensated for by any little boost in dps. Before RoS I was tanking in raids in offensive stance with pact of the fire tyrant on and with my wife's channeller in group I was basically indestructible outside of fail conditions and sitting at number 2 or 3 on the parse lol. Monk was silly powerful back then. Basically tanks got a heavy dps nerf in VoV. It started in RoS but it really hit hard in VoV. At that point, imo, offensive stance became pointless for most, and certainly for monk. You don't gain enough dps by using it, and monk is now a highly defensive class, which when played right and paired with decent healers & utility, is extremely solid. Hate gain scrolls are a good idea, I always used the best ones I could get. Also the white hate gain rune (hands?). You should be able to maintain close to 100 hate gain, which isn't quite guaranteed easymode, but it makes all the stuff below actually work.. Make sure you've taken the AA which adds a hate component to Dragonfire, make sure you're using Dragon Rage and Hostility, make sure you've taken Ancient Advance in Dragon tree. Dragonfire needs to be ticking on all your targets as much as possible, reset it with Rising Dragon every time it's up. Spam taunts, AoE's and if you're struggling, rotate your positionals like Rescue, Peel, Sneering Assault, Hidden Openings, and use Clinch sensibly too as it's pretty useful for grabbing aggro too. All the time you're doing that of course get into the rhythm of having death saves/stoneskins/DR's etc all on a neat rotation with ready up because if you're just relying on your healers, you're going to be a bad tank. If you're not absolutely sure what your defensive AA spec should be (for monk there is one right way to spec and many many wrong ways), find out who mains monk for the best guild on your server (or any server I guess) and look them up on EQ2U. Genuinely good players will leave their profile open to help others. If you're playing monk, doing all the above and struggling for aggro, it's most likely an issue of gear and stats.
Offensive stance is a death wish. I only ever use it when part of a raid where I am neither the main tank or off-tank. You won't have the defenses to even survive by heals. Defensive stance is actually needed for other players to apply certain buffs, for you to apply certain buffs and reactives (stoneskin for example) and the added threat management the stance gives you. It's not like offensive adds that much more DPS or that defensive removes much.
Tanto and Cusashorn Thankyou ever so much for taking the time out to reply.. You have both restored my faith in these pages
