Hi Guys I'm coming back to the game after a long break, I'd made a low level guardian and paladin and was soloing with a mercenary but of course no groups to tank for, so mainly solo. I'm back and bought the latest expansion and I realise things can change over time, just wanted some feedback from those tanking at maximum level about how these two classes are fairing. I remember the guardian was high threat, single target and physical mitigation and the paladin was more area of effect, had group heals and amends. A realistic target is once at 125 I'd do heroic dungeons eventually, cant ever see myself raiding. Thoughts and advice from lv 125?
If you are still low level, I would suggest rolling another fighter class as your low level grind will become a less of a chore. In any case, the old definition of guardian still holds true to some extent but there are few caveats you need to be aware of. All max level fighter classes require stats that you must have in order to tank effectively. There is a massive grind awaiting you at max level, with stats tied to RNG/p2w mechanics so you need to bear that in mind if you intend to stick around and be an endgame tank - regardless of which tank class you play. Hate generation is heavily tied to how much dps you can do so keeping that in mind, having low stats when compared to your group/raid members on any tank class would just become an uphill struggle when it comes to holding aggro. Long gone the days where you could be adequately buffed and use your skill to rotate combat arts and tank decently. Auto attack does not work as it used to where a guardian's parse would consist of 50% auto attack damage and be the best source of aggro generation. Defense mechanics are broken/disabled/neglected/ignored/forgotten (take your pick) - mitigation and block chance means nothing for a fighter these days. There is absolutely no point farming for mitigation/block items. The scripts are designed very differently to how you remember them years ago. You would get 1 shotted on any tank class because they are designed to kill you and not something you reduce by having better defensive stats (my mit/avoidance on guardian since beginning of this expansion has not changed much and hovers around 20k and 13k, respectively and have tanked everything up to endgame). Your priority stats are all dps based and these are: potency > crit bonus > fervor > abilitiy doublecast > cast & reuse speed. The first 3 are based primarily on having the best armor/jewellery, mount, familiar and mercenary. ADC, Cast & reuse speed also can be obtained through gear and also your AA/buffs, adornments etc. as well. All fighter classes will go for the builds that maximise (where possible). In addition, maxing out key abilities to celestial (every class have a few) - note, if you don't have the base stats, a celestial ability will not do much on its own. Now keeping all of this in mind for all fighter classes, the conventional class breakdown still remains somewhat the same, where: Zerk/bruiser/sk being AE based classes Paladin/Guardian/Monk being more focused on single target But all classes can effectively do single target fights with varying degrees of accessibility when it comes to AE handicapped classes (e.g. guardian). That said, there is little to no content where you would really need to have an AE tank. All tank classes can do everything. If you keep stats and skill level the same, some fighter classes will far surpass inherently low dps tank classes as it always has been the case but given the explosion of bloated stats, this gap has widened significantly so in the end it becomes your own preference. Lastly, if you have managed to hold interest after reading all of this and still want to play a tank in this game then all the best. There aren't many endgame tanks left, let alone new ones, so you will be certainly an anomaly.
Paladins, SKs, and Monks are at the best spot for endgame at the moment as far as tanks go. I wouldn't torture yourself by playing a guardian. That is only for raid MTs.
Defensively things are in a weird spot. The strongest defenses are far and away temp buffs that overshadow anything from gear, and as mentioned above a lot of scripts aren't actually damage and are just instant kills. However, I disagree about defenses not being relevant since well built and played tanks can do crazy things like tanking through damage very obviously designed to be wipes or punishment mechanics just fine, so it isn't really uniform and is more case by case.
