How do SKs rate as MTs now?

[Spangles]

<p>OK, I hit lvl 80 and got Bloodletter.  I have 131 AA points so far and have maxed out all three SK lines so have increased hate and Pools of Blood (?) giving me lots of hate, Reaver and a bigger unconscious health pool.  In the Crusader tree I have maxed STR and WIS to give me more aggro and the 10 sec immunity, along with the obligatory 448 in Int.  I have all fabled or RoK legendary items giving increased defence, aggression or parry and I am well on my way to having all Ad3 or M1 combat arts.  Basically, I consider myself to be tank specced but can still easily appear on damage parses when I swap stuff out and go offensive.</p><p>Given this sort of set-up, how can we expect to fare as MTs on raids?  I MTd quite successfully in KoS zones and haven't really tried EoF zones, but I want to know, given we can now stack these useful tanking tools, if we are going to be any more attractive as a raid tanking option.  I have no issues whatsoever in solo or group situations, but our guild is not ready for T8 raids yet (I don't think) and would like advice from those who may have had a go in T8.  How do we shape up in the MT role now?</p>

[Xiziz]

MT raiding not so good . Not that we cant do it , Most would rather put a Guard up front . In all the instances we perform great

[CHIMPNOODLE.]

<p>All EoF and prior would be cake for you to tank. No problems with RoK content either if geared/specc'd as such, at least up to Tier 2.</p>

[TheSpin]

<p>I believe that at least 1 crusader is good to have along on a raid.  Things like fear immunity is becoming more important.  We were having a harder time in Tomb of Thuuga (T1 raid instance in RoK)  with a guardian tank than a pally tank with some of the trash mobs because the pally was immune to fear and when the MT was feared it made the mob turn and his frontal aoe attacks starting taking people down.</p><p>Bloodletter is also really nice to control spike damage etc, it's one of my favorite new abilities for any class.</p>

[rabid.pooh]

<p>We're best in an off tank role.  We can MT, however we overall take more damage then a guard, where we can now handle some big spike damage, we can only do that once <img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />, (or twice if your spec'd STA for DA).  However the guards still have more abilities to handle that spike damage, and they also refresh faster.</p><p>I also find when Main tanking a raid when you bring out your tank gear you move further away from the stats SKs need to flourish, when I'm in my heavy tank gear I loose lots of int, and the heavy tank gear doesn't have spell damage or spell crit type abilities, it's all mele based.  Now pretty much all tanks as they switch to there heavier tanking gear sacrfice on the DPS gear, still it hurts us a little more as we have to give up that int which is also our power pool, we also have to struggle a lot more to get our avoidance up.</p><p>Instance tanking is a lot more fun, as you can get kinda stupid with your gear.  For instance I have a spec called 'come on hit me', which is based on using gear that procs when your hit, eg I have one piece in this spec that is a chain BP that procs a DD when I'm hit (500ish damage I think + spell crit), add in the spike adorns for your shoulders, shield, reactive procing jewlery amongst other stuff it's pretty fun.  Your DPS fighting groups spikes even more <img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />.</p>

[MaxDaft]

<p>Ok dont usually post on these forums, I visit a differnt forum if you know which one post this thread there if not pm me and I will tell you. Flame me all you want.</p><p>Ive recently taken over shadowcraft, and before hand as an officer and compitent tank I ended up being the mt atleast for the time being at that point to carry us into t8. Ive done a few 3 group test pulls in throne room of executioner, and thugga, Actually have cleared all trash to named, lacked the dps and cooperation to kill named, but had no problem staying up, and thats with a templar and mystic in group w/ dirge. </p><p> Ive heard a few horror stories about guards and any other tank class being one shotted. Honest I have bloodletter m1, that with a defiler, warde, templar, dirge, swash, and depending on opinion:</p><p> Conj for mit, assasin for more hate imop not needed I hold it fine without. or a coercer/illy if you can spare. Hate again is not an issue for our class imop, so if you have a spare illy rock on the swash/[Removed for Content] will get IA or you will and rapacity vice vs. Mt group will create plenty of dps and hate remember your hate buff from sk tree = 3% per person in group, on top of dirge/swash xfer and hate gain.</p><p>Ill keep the community up to date of how it goes when I reach t2, t3, and someday t4. I think we can hold our own against guards in a more sk friendly raid setup with open minded folks. The spec I currently have is:</p><p>crusader tree:</p><p>str 8,8,6,0,1sta 8,4,8,8,1Int 4,4,7</p><p>I dont see the need for passive hate gain at all as if you are hurting to hold aggro with ad3's their is an issue, can toss in coercer/dirge for gain and be overcapper or near it, in turn making passive hate gain useless reduced timers help dps/hate as well esp if you get lucky enough for time complression, but usually not.</p><p>SK tree</p><p>All of hate line maxed minus rescue buff up, completely pointless w/ a good hate gain and ad3ness you should be able to bounce right back to 1st place esp w/ fd and dtouch, rescue, goading gesture.'</p><p>Reaver line max everything except coil, to small a return for raid setup vs points spent. and mana sieve avoid it points better spent elsewhere everything else max out.</p><p>Decay line can go 2 differnt directions honestly my first favorite is what Im running now:</p><p>base taunt debuff boost, doomrays boost, faster aoes are good for dps debuffs, and aggro. aguish/agony buff the more anyone can debuff a mob the more dps sticks to it and hits harder for the other points I decided that buffing despoiling mists/despoil is better can get the recast timer back up before it expires meaning on avg this will cause more dps from raid on mob and more mit on you in general esp in multi mob enc's. of course pools of blood duh.</p><p> The only variation for me would be depending on zone and mob counts per encounter to switch the debuff for the siphon mit from another fighter, upto 555mit that stacked with another crusader giving up almost 4-500 mit depending on level of spell is nice. This also means you have to drop something and it would look to keep the tree going on to that , you would have to drop doomrays buff and pickup siphon vitae, which adds hp's non stop since you can recast as fast as it comes down if not faster with the reduced timers. Its really personal preference. Ive tested the first setup and dont really plan on trying the other, more debuffs are good, less are bad.</p><p> You can look up my sk on eq2players im sitting withoutusing a potion at roughly 11.2k hp with 3 healers I should be around 16-17k+best potion 18k ish, couple this with bloodletter m1 which is the 1:1 hp ratio when you reach 0hp it takes it from the whole raid, 1:1 hp is very nice even in pickup raids I hardly notice it hit the raid when it does. This with our ability to rank on the heal parse without reactives, wards, and lifetaps makes us a venerable MT. 18k x2= 36k hp + tinkering death prevention 40% of the time 40% heal/mana, coupled with pools of blood, although i dont rely on this, but is a nice second chance, with say if it still exists altruism, or some other death prevention on top of our dps/hate ability makes us atleast a decent candidate for mt.</p><p>After all this is said 99% of people prefer guards as its the status quo. I think each plate tank class brings to the table differnt options for differnt situations. I still honestly believe that sk's can tank 99% of the content in game just as well as the rest of the plate tanks. The last 1% is really tough no matter who you are. Maybe in the next couple of months I will have some fraps to show this. If not flame on.</p>

[jagermonsta]

Thanks for your input Max.