Not having to fear getting stun/stiffled in some unavoidable way and have to worry aggro is lost during those times cause all the threat generation is junk for value and you have to hope the mob stays on you while you cant do anything. Adding the ability to control aggro outside of subtle strikes being on or off and having some dehate skills for when bosses decide to magically grab 100 aggro on me in subtle and im like /shrug i cant dehate i have only subtle.And no i shouldn't have to waste a adorn slot to have a dehate positional as a clickie like comon if i do thats just proving the point more. Removal of bulwark its just obnoxious ot have to focus on 8 other things and that also while dps can just faceroll keyboard and not do much else cept maybe joust or click something. removal of 1 shot auto atks or scripts that arent directly obviously spelled out. I can understand oh it was a joust det curse etc but when im blindly 1 shot and its just ???? is no fun having to be on the edge spaming temps hoping your timing it right to prevent a unforseeable 1 shot is bad basically all of what priorty said nails it
Priority pretty much nailed it. That said, let's also not dismiss DPS out of hand - but this is not (imo) a fighter-specific problem. DPS should maybe be doing 2x, maybe 3x on the higher end of a gear disparity, of a non DPS's damage in general. It's often closer to 10-20x, gear and class differentials pending, and that's just kind of absurd. I just wanted to get that out there as someone who tanks in several MMORPGs. That said, again, Priority basically nailed it.
I put the Guardian offensive stance master or GM on the broker early in the xpac for like 30 million. It sold in minutes. I scratched my head about that one for a while but the money was useful so I won't argue.
The only game in which I've ever enjoyed tanking (non-stop) is SWTOR, and that was with the Juggernaut class. In 4.0 - 6.0 it received a massive boost to its mobility, making it feel fluent, agile and acrobatic. Tanking in SWTOR is pure bliss compared to other games, because its design makes mob prediction and TAB-targeting easier. I wouldn't tank in EQ2 for these reasons: Skill bloating. Far too many situational skills, and can't simply macro them when you tank. When mobs aggro another group member, it's instant and without warning. The mob should turn away from you, then wait 0.5 seconds before they attack their new target, allowing you to intercept (The Intercept ability is worthless for this reason). I shouldn't have to play the UI, like the threat monitor. I should be allowed to play the game by using visual cues. I shouldn't have to play the UI. Too many massive cooldown skills. All classes are forced to be played this way. SWTOR allows Juggernaut tanks to play without worrying about cooldowns, and let's Powertech tanks be the class that has cooldowns like in EQ2, so that you have two different opposing playstyles for everyone to enjoy. All the tanks in EQ are cooldown based. 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes. It's impossible to play that based on instinct/intuition You have to stare at your hotbar to play tank. TAB-targeting isn't intuitive. You should be able to aim the center of your screen at the target, and it should figure out that you want to swap to that mob, instead of tabbing through 24 different mobs to get to the mob that has deaggroed. The Berserker needs to use a shield? Boooo! The shadowknight is the only tank I've played in EQ2, but that's mostly for solo stuff. Grouping up would be terrifying as I think it's impossible to keep control of situations. I definitely wouldn't tank in raids, because there's no visual cues to when stuff goes down. But all the AOE damage abilities are fun, though. Compare that to SWTOR where I've tanked every single raid on every single difficulty because it's just so... I don't know, I feel completely in control, even when the game tries to take it away from me with its mechanics. In EQ2 I'm just a sheep following orders, because the raid leader is watching a stopwatch or something for when lethal AOEs goes down. I hope I didn't go off-topic here. Just wanted to participate with what little tanking experience I have, albeit from a different game.
I may have bought this off of you. But it was probably not the first spell i would've bought though. That said, i have been using the offensive stance for years but never from day 1 in a new expansion and never all the time. The penalties are just too severe so its a situational swap for extra fervor primarily but the way things randomly one shot you, its not a smooth call to maje everytime. Swapping between stances works but with lag and frentic nature of fights you just have to be very sure to make it worthwhile. That said, its a far cry from what it needs to be but since the dps is the name of tanking in eq2, you take every little boost of dps you can find.
The problem with playing a tank as a "main" is that most raids do not require a lot of tanks. Raids have 24 slots but most fights require only 2 tanks so there is a lot of competition for those 2 slots. People who play tanks end up on the bench and eventually either quit or re-role another class. This leads to tank shortages when it comes to group content or the rare fight that requires 3 tanks. There is no tank shortage though. It is just illusion. There is plenty of tanks to go around. It is something that is the result of game mechanics that focus on dps where extra fighters are not needed in raid. I love playing my tank. There is just no real use for it anyone. To make playing a tank class more fun they should create more reasons to have extra fighters in raid. Back in the day there used to be a reckless stance that allowed fighters to do dps. They should bring that back or maybe add a utility stance that doubles fighter bonuses or something. They don't need to do any crazy revamp to tanking mechanics to make tanking more "fun." They just need to fix the imbalance of creating 24 man raids that only have use for 2 fighters and nothing for them to outside of being a meat shield.
While being in a raid is fun, the issue is folks with tanks or tank alts don't like to try tank zones for all the reasons given prior in this thread.
As a top 5 guild thats tried to recruit a tank for yhe last 2.5 years, there arent tanks. Your assessment is false.
To build on Priority's point - it's been really hard to maintain 4 active fighters on raid teams (at least on Skyfire). Even the best of them tend to get burnt out over relatively short periods of time too. I do think adding more force-targets to taunts will make it a bit easier on tanks. Perhaps some additional self-aoe block abilities/side effects would also help as off-tanks could be "in" a bit more on certain raid scripts. I'd also like to see more priest abilities/maintained effects apply to fighters.
Been a tank for 17 years and raid tank for 12 or years. I remember tanking the dragon for the prismatic sword back when I was 50 - my worries then - surviving and holding aggro Threat worked back then - now LOL. Now - my things I have to worry about are a bit over the top - sigh.
I really like this idea. Maybe they could add "Makes caster and target immune to indirect AOE. -If fighter -If fighter" (basically meaning they both become immune to indirect AOE if their avoidance is on a fighter, and obviously if one of them is tanking, they still get hit by the AE). Adding it to the evasion buff would also prevent more button bloat.
Having 4 fighters on a raid force - would require: 1) Subtle Strikes stopping all snaps (not just threat) 2) way, way, way more dps for Guardian, Bruiser and Pally.
Subtle strikes was the by-product of how they messed up the Reckless stance and even now they did not fully get it right. We are fighting an uphill battle at two fronts a) one being the tanking mechanics themselves spread across each tank class and b) utility of a tank class in a raid setup when they are not tanking. An extra stance or a buff is not going to solve either of these issues unless they peruse through the years of data/suggestions we have put on here and then take a deep dive into the mechanics and come out with a solution where, within reason: 1. Fighters main function is to solely tank based on their hate/threat based abilities w/o needing dps. 2. Fighters providing ample utility across the board to benefit the groups in raids when they are not tanking, so for example; a) warriors give defensive buffs (to raid and group) -- so if you have group w/o wards or solo healer, stick a warrior in there b) crusaders give offensive buffs (to raid and own group) - so stick a crusader in a defensive group to improve overall group utility in the raid c) Brawlers give individual offensive/defensive buffs (to raid and own group) - few buffs that increase individual offense and defense but not at the same time. 3. Fighters own dps increases their utility when not tanking, i.e. e.g. in offensive stance where they can do more more dps w/o having any aggro and improve their group utility offensively or defensively depending on which fighter class it is. Secondly, i do not think for a second that having more dps on any tank is the way forward because they will just keep snowballing the bad mechanics into oblivion where people will eventually stop playing tanks altogether (i think they have already for some years now) and all you will have left are the disgruntled tanks who have had over a decade's worth of experience tanking and are refusing to let go off the game (myself and few others here included). That said, if they are to keep with the current stream of bad tanking mechanics, an easy fix would be to boost the dps for the lowly tank classes but I am sure they will mess up other tanks in the process where Zerks/Monks will be here talking about the same issues again. Given how far in we are with this mess, I would actually not even mind a class consolidation at this point, for fighters anyway. Warriors (guard/zerk) become one Crusaders (sk/pally) become one Brawler (monk/bruiser) become one Of course they will find some way to screw this up as well..
Without more dps - how does a tank keep up with the exponential increases in Scouts/Mages dps ? When Threat does NOT do much to help. Threat generation and it's effect have been ineffective for years. Threat Transfer, Snaps and Tank DPS hold aggro - not Threat Generation these days.
LOL why not 1 tank class, 1 scout dps class, 1 mage dps class, 1 support class (Regen) and 1 healer class I mean alot of folks like the class that they play and that they have put time into. The only folks I know that change classes with the favor of the month/year - would really want a consolidation of classes.
The point being they move away from dps=hate mechanic and tie the tanks to hate/threat only to sustain aggro.
My Warlock has a hard time shedding enough aggro. Even with a Paladin's Amends on her, a good Fading adorn on her hands, using Ethereal Chains and Arcane Bewilderment, and even a chanter Severing Hate or using Peaceful Link, she can get aggro and it can be really hard to get it off. That's probably because 'Locks don't have enough Hate Transfer, everything she casts has a nox DOT ticking, but most of all because the tanks can't taunt the mob off. And believe me, I really do pay attenton to my aggro on the 'Lock and start trying to deaggro early and often! When there's a tank swap, aggro bounces all around the place before the tanks get it nailed down. Mem blurs are even worse. Tanks run out of snaps! Taunts should work properly again.
Taunts should have 3 to 5x the amount of threat that they do now (imho). As a Guardian - I generally do not use snaps to hold aggro - I use my snaps for mem wipes. But this expac - I have to use snaps to get the name off the BL or warlock or ... - well you get the picture. When I have a good threat transfer (like a really good swashy we have) - holding aggro is not bad. But I don't always get that transfer - that is when it gets very very dicey.
What you are describing isn't a fighter but a punching bag. You have to understand that kind of play style will only ever appeal to a very small segment of the player base. BUT that is okay because we only really need one MT and one OT. The other fighters would have other responsibilities. I won't comment on your solutions on point 2. But for point 3 I think DPS is a bigger part of the solution than you realize otherwise it will be better to just bench the extra tanks and recruit more T1s. Class consolidation could be part of the solution but not like that. Ideal class consolidation would be done through stronger versions of the ascension classes. This way all 26 classes can remain in the game for "Lore" reasons but their abilities would basically be fluff compared to what the ascensions give. For example Geomancer could get a taunt that is ten times more powerful than any class taunt.
