What a GUARDIAN should be...

[spudsmckenzie2]

<p>   Guardians need alot of help right now so after playing warriors classes in eq1 and eq2 here's my idea of what they should be like. Guardian should be the toughest class and absorb the most punishment, hands down. we should have excellent aggro control, regardless of group makeup, whether it be single target or aoe and this shouldnt be dependent on our damage output. out of all the fighters it should be an easy and simple class to play. Guardians should have the least damage output of all the tanks- this being the trade off of being the most defensive tank in the game.</p><p>please feel free to post your ideas here to give soe developers ideas to fix our class....-ty</p><p>                                                                                                                                                              -alex</p><p>                                                                                                                                                              </p>

[RafaelSmith]

<p><cite>spudsmckenzie2 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Guardians need alot of help right now so after playing warriors classes in eq1 and eq2 here's my idea of what they should be like. Guardian should be the toughest class and absorb the most punishment, hands down. we should have excellent aggro control, regardless of group makeup, whether it be single target or aoe and this shouldnt be dependent on our damage output. out of all the fighters it should be an easy and simple class to play. Guardians should have the least damage output of all the tanks- this being the trade off of being the most defensive tank in the game.</p><p>please feel free to post your ideas here to give soe developers ideas to fix our class....-ty</p><p>-alex</p></blockquote><p>Unfortunately in EQ2 that "style" is no longer viable.  The game is entirely about DPS........DPS is King ..there is no Queen....DPS is aggro. </p><p>We currently are the lowest DPS of the fighters and since all that matters for aggro is DPS.....we suffer. </p><p>And without aggro.......a tank is not a tank no matter how "tough" he may be.</p>

[therodge]

<p><cite>spudsmckenzie2 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>   Guardians need alot of help right now so after playing warriors classes in eq1 and eq2 here's my idea of what they should be like. Guardian should be the toughest class and absorb the most punishment, hands down. we should have excellent aggro control, regardless of group makeup, whether it be single target or aoe and this shouldnt be dependent on our damage output. out of all the fighters it should be an easy and simple class to play. Guardians should have the least damage output of all the tanks- this being the trade off of being the most defensive tank in the game.</p><p>please feel free to post your ideas here to give soe developers ideas to fix our class....-ty</p><p>                                                                                                                                                              -alex</p><p>                                                                                                                                                              </p></blockquote><p>Do not get me wrong, Guardians need some love expecially in the aoe hate department, and maybe im misunderstanding you but from the sounds of it you want an easy button, the majority of guard issues can be fixed in a single spell,</p><p>New Guard aoe 01</p><p>max targets unlimited</p><p>max range 15 meters</p><p>cast time 2 seconds</p><p>recast 20 seconds</p><p>level 80</p><p>inflicts 2000-3500 damage aoe</p><p>if target is hit increase hate by 10,000</p><p>their ya go sure will a warlock in better gear still rip from time to time, you bet but that happens to all classess no one should have an easymode class not guards not sks not brawlers no one</p>

[Aull]

<p>I have heck holding aggro with my zerker even with hate mods/transfer on wizards and most definately warlocks. That being said I would hate to see how tough it is for a guard.</p><p>Honestly all fighter taunts are a joke and if we are gonna have them then SOE needs to increase the amount of threat that they do.</p><p>Sorry but a wizard/warlock spell criting and spell double attacking for 15k makes even rescue appear as a lvl 5 taunt.</p><p>When my zerker is at 100 points of hate on the meter and then the warlock nukes hard making my hate points at 40 and my grandmaster taunt only raises my hate points to 45 then there is no way I can keep aggro off the warlock.</p><p>I don't want any tank becoming a taunt bot, but fighter taunts need massive scaling up in threat, able to crit, and also double taunt. That would help big time.</p>

[Bruener]

<p><cite>spudsmckenzie2 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>   Guardians need alot of help right now so after playing warriors classes in eq1 and eq2 here's my idea of what they should be like. Guardian should be the toughest class and absorb the most punishment, hands down. we should have excellent aggro control, regardless of group makeup, whether it be single target or aoe and this shouldnt be dependent on our damage output. out of all the fighters it should be an easy and simple class to play. Guardians should have the least damage output of all the tanks- this being the trade off of being the most defensive tank in the game.</p><p>please feel free to post your ideas here to give soe developers ideas to fix our class....-ty</p><p>                                                                                                                                                              -alex</p><p>                                                                                                                                                              </p></blockquote><p>So let me get this straight.  You want Guards to take the most damage hands down, and you want them to have top agro (AE and ST) that isn't reliant on their personal DPS as well.  So, let me ask you this...what exactly are the other tanks going to get?  You claim that the other tanks would have DPS as the counter to this but unless those tanks are bringing T1 DPS why would anybody use them when you can take a tank that takes the hits better and holds the mobs..not needing DPS to do it.</p><p>You have half your wish already...Guards do take the hits better than any other class, and their ST agro is very reliable.  AE agro is slightly lacking.  Being the best to take hits is the balance for less agro control though....specifically on AE mobs.</p><p>I just don't get why you think that Guards should be the "one tank to rule them all"...</p>

[Kimber]

<p>I agree guards need some love in the AOE department but they should not be the top dog of AOE content.  IMO the following should be the "" hierarchy "" of tanks and such.</p><p>ST tanks should be as follows</p><p>#1 Guards</p><p>#2 Pally</p><p>#3 Monk</p><p>AOE tanks should be</p><p>#1 Zerk</p><p>#2 SK</p><p>#3 Bruiser</p><p>The above set up follows the idea that Warrior's should have the most Mit and the Crusaders who are a hybrid have less mit but gain surviability threw self heals and such and Brawlers with the lowest mit are avoidance tanks.  As things stand right now</p><p>SK rules all with Guard Pally and Zerk coming in 2nd 3rd and 4th depending on the zone/mob and the Brawlers at the bottom of the heap.</p>

[Midsong]

<p>The problem with the king of fighters model is how to make things hard and keep all tanks relevant?</p><p>DPS, HPS, Threat, and utility required to defeat encounters is balanced around this fighter. This usually leaves all other fighters out of the picture for challenging content (ie, not overgeared).</p><p>To remedy the imbalance of the king fighter, other fighters must be given gross amounts of dps to compensate (which leaves the king fighter very undesirable for anything other than when they are required creating a potentially devestating imbalance). Another option is to give all other fighters massive amounts of utility which causes just about anything to happen depending on the specific utility given. There are some other, more complex options like strong hybrids (weak hybrids really don't work in this style of game).</p><p>The only workable solution (well not the only...) is to make all fighters relatively similar in absorbing damage and generating threat (with possible tanking categories). This doesn't mean that all tanks play the same. There are many ways for tanks to absorb damage.</p>

[Gungo]

<p>I swore Sk were the king of agro in eq1. I remeber sk tanking tallon zek in eq1 because of his touchy agro.</p><p>Anyway while i found the best aoe st agro and best tank funny, i actually got a chuckle the most from him saving it should be one of the easiest classes to play as well.</p><p>Ya thats not asking for alot. Hey I want everythign but the best fighter dps and on top of that i want to do it while i surf the internet for [Removed for Content].</p>

[Midsong]

<p><cite>Kimber@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>ST tanks should be as follows</p><p>#1 Guards</p><p>#2 Pally</p><p>#3 Monk</p><p>AOE tanks should be</p><p>#1 Zerk</p><p>#2 SK</p><p>#3 Bruiser</p></blockquote><p>A break down between AoE and ST really has never made much sense to me.</p><p>It seems alright for raiding but it is downright silly for grouping. After the 25th+ time of running something people want to group with the people that make them go fast. The content is also likely starting to get trivial at this point (and possibly the 4th or 5th such dungeon) and the AoE tanks are of course going to make things go faster making them grossly more desirable.</p><p>It is a similar problem with having ST dps and AoE DPS specialists.</p>

[circusgirl]

The single-target/multi-target tank thing is hands down the single factor that did the most damage to the fighter revamp and resulted in its being squashed. First off, Paladins have fantastic AE hate generation capabilities, and the more overpowered their AE dps, the better it gets. They also have extremely good single-target hate generation (all you have to do after all is switch amends from the warlock to the assassin). Paladins are clearly a solid class, capable of instance grouping, raid MTing, raid OTing, and holding aggro in whatever setup they're going for. Trying to pidgeon-hole them into the Single-target role is frankly bull. Bruisers, on the other hand, have terrible AE aggro generation with the exception of Divide & Conquer, which is a lovely little spell that suffers greatly from most mobs being totally immune to it. Personally, I think the devs should make an effort to tune tanks to be more like the Paladin. Tanks should be able to deal with single-target or multiple targets and get aggro reliably. Personally, I think the fighter revamp should be brought back without the single/multi target divide and the buff consolidation, and we're golden.

[Nero]

<p><cite>Vinka@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>I think the fighter revamp should be brought back without the single/multi target divide and the buff consolidation, and we're golden.</blockquote><p>And we become same. Lesser Guardian.Yeah, yeah, Guardian must be always a king of fighters. I know, I know.</p>

[Aull]

<p>All fighters can be aoe tanks if needed. Some could do it through aoe threat/hate generating abilities and others could do it through a combination of aoe threat and aoe dps, or even lastly some could do it with just high aoe dps.</p><p>Best example that I can think of atm would be like a monks dragonrage being an encounter 10 ppm ability. It will use the threat portion for the encounter. Bruisers manhandle would be different in that it uses a combination of threat procs and dps procs to the encounter at 5ppm.</p><p>So even if some tanks are not listed as "aoe dps" they could still be good at aoe with aoe threat/hate abilities that generate only threat and not dps. In the end they could all be viable for aoe.</p>

[RafaelSmith]

<p><cite>Aull wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>So even if some tanks are not listed as "aoe dps" they could still be good at aoe with aoe threat/hate abilities that generate only threat and not dps. In the end they could all be viable for aoe.</p></blockquote><p>First they would have to change the game such that +threat actually mattered.  Its really telling to see how much a Slam effects the hate meter -vs- a Provoke....or Assault -vs- Guard.</p><p>I do not want to be an AE DPS class......but in its current form the game requires AE DPS to have AE Aggro.</p>

[Mosha D'Khan]

<p><cite>Kimber@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I agree guards need some love in the AOE department but they should not be the top dog of AOE content.  IMO the following should be the "" hierarchy "" of tanks and such.</p><p>ST tanks should be as follows</p><p>#1 Guards</p><p>#2 Pally</p><p>#3 Monk</p><p>AOE tanks should be</p><p>#1 Zerk</p><p>#2 SK</p><p>#3 Bruiser</p><p>The above set up follows the idea that Warrior's should have the most Mit and the Crusaders who are a hybrid have less mit but gain surviability threw self heals and such and Brawlers with the lowest mit are avoidance tanks.  As things stand right now</p><p>SK rules all with Guard Pally and Zerk coming in 2nd 3rd and 4th depending on the zone/mob and the Brawlers at the bottom of the heap.</p></blockquote><p>just wondering how are bruisers a AoE tank? we have no aoe taunt, 1 aoe with a 30 sec recast. and another with a 1min 30sec recast. and can get on through AA which is not any good and generates 0 agro. so again how are we a aoe tank?</p>

[Yimway]

<p>Sigh.</p><p>This thread again?</p><p>There are already other threads with much better ideas hashed out to the n'th degree.</p><p>Simply put, you can differentiate fighters by how they hold aggro.  When you accept aggro is a combination of dps + taunt your can make one fighter hold aoe aggro via 95% taunt and 5% dps, and another fighter hold aoe aggro via 95%dps + 5% taunt.  Its just a matter of making a sliding scale that rewards both evenly.</p><p>I recommend that those fighters that hold aggro via taunts vs dps should be the ones that get survivability bonuses, as your giving up something bringing them over one that holds via dps.  The Guardian / Zerker tradeoff holds to this model reasonably well.  The dps values may be off, but the basic trade-off exists. </p><p>That same paradigm can be expanded to more fighters.  One element that is key, is within each fighter management of his own stances and buffs may further manipulate these base %'s points.  Where the individual fighter can trade survivability for dps and vise versa depending on the group make-up and relative challenge of the content being taken on.  Just keep in mind, overall by class these boundries will be segmented, and what you can affect by gear and buffs is a relatively small deviance from where your class falls in (20% max adjustment either direction).</p><p>It is important that fighters always have the tools to do their job regardless of what stance they approach content with.  They might not be able to stay standing approaching medium challenge content with no survivability stance, a single healer, and no dirge, but with great healers and defensive buffers, perhaps even medium challenge content is approachable with out survivability stance.  Challenging content should and would always require survivability stancing regardless of fighter class.</p><p>Sure, you'll reach a point in this system that your guardian classes will become useless.  In that your next highest -dps/+survivability class will have geared far enough survivability to make the guardian no longer required and the party may prefer the small dps gain.  It wont mean a guardian is required for tanking whatever is the most challenging content for your raid, but it will mean a slight advantage to using that class when breaking into new content.  Once things reach farm status, any reasonably survivable tank should be viable.</p><p>Lastly, anyone rolling a guardian for any purpose other than seeking a MT role, should likely go re-roll, as the class has little use outside that role.  I do my best to set that expectation anytime someone asks me about the class, but rolling a guardian alt for instance tanking cause your impressed by your current MT's capability is only going to set you up for failure.  We rely too much on group setup, top gear selection, and just overall playtime for dkp to be remotely effective.</p>

[Aull]

<p><cite>Gaylon@Mistmoore wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Aull wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>So even if some tanks are not listed as "aoe dps" they could still be good at aoe with aoe threat/hate abilities that generate only threat and not dps. In the end they could all be viable for aoe.</p></blockquote><p>First they would have to change the game such that +threat actually mattered.  Its really telling to see how much a Slam effects the hate meter -vs- a Provoke....or Assault -vs- Guard.</p><p>I do not want to be an AE DPS class......but in its current form the game requires AE DPS to have AE Aggro.</p></blockquote><p>Well for anything to be done for the fighters will take change no doubt about it, but the change for the good is what we should be after. Yes I do agree that the current threat mechs are no where near capable enough to be as effective as they should be at lvl 80.</p><p>If it could be set up correctly AE hate (no damage just pure hate) would work just as well as AE dps for holding aggro is all I am saying.</p><p>The way it is currently if a fighter doesn't have ae dps for aggro then that class will not be sought after as much as one class that can.</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Mosha DKhan wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>{0} Important stuff omitted cause I wont change my forum name to valid characters only.</blockquote><p>Bruisers wont be aoe tanks, I'm fairly sure in whatever finally hashes out, that wont be happening.</p>

[Gungo]

<p>Here is the dilemma this game only can support at most 4 tanks in raids. Although if there were truly only 4 tanks heroic instances would be impossible to find enough tanks to do them.</p><p>After playing thsi game for 5 years. I realize there will never be balance in fighter classes to allow any  4 of the 6 fighters. Certain fighters will always be better.What the game needs to do is this.Make the 4 raid tanks the main raid tanks.Guardian will have the WORST aoe agro, good snap agro and the best survivibility.(fix unyielding will, increase thier aoe agro like the original fighter revamp had, etc. make thier tso taunts work, make the target lock in tso work as well turn)Of course sk, zerkers and paladins will have better aoe agro in different ways. raid will still use 2-3 of them.</p><p>Brawlers in raids are a different story. They still need tankability, especiall for heoric content, they still need slightly better aoe agro (and aoe dps), but what they really need is more raid type utility. Imho all fighter avoid buffs should go away. Brawler should have the only fighter avoid buff. This buff would allow other fighters to tank much better. (This buff should be improved and add damage reduction etc). Brawler dps should be closer to rogue dps in raids. Brawlers should be able to switch stances and grab raid mobs and tank them for short durations. But extended raid tanking should be avoided. Basically limited to tsunami type ability or short duration damage reduction buffs.I really didnt explain this idea fully here because frankly this has all been mentioned before.</p><p>Also anyone who said the fighter 1.0 changes pigoened holed fighters into aoe or single target tanks honestly has no idea what they are talking about. The fighter 1.0 changes actually gave single target tanks more AOE agro. Guardians actually had more aoe agro then they do currently on live. In fact they were better off for tanking heroic content. but the people who DIDNT test the changes cryed to much.</p>

[Gungo]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Mosha DKhan wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>{0} Important stuff omitted cause I wont change my forum name to valid characters only.</blockquote><p>Bruisers wont be aoe tanks, I'm fairly sure in whatever finally hashes out, that wont be happening.</p></blockquote><p>Except the developers had already said the oppposite.</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Gungo wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Mosha DKhan wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>{0} Important stuff omitted cause I wont change my forum name to valid characters only.</blockquote><p>Bruisers wont be aoe tanks, I'm fairly sure in whatever finally hashes out, that wont be happening.</p></blockquote><p>Except the developers had already said the oppposite.</p></blockquote><p>That was all scrapped, what is comming may or may not include any part of it.</p><p>Like I said, I'm fairly sure whatever finally comes around, bruisers aren't an aoe tank class.</p>

[Gungo]

<p><cite>Vinka@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>The single-target/multi-target tank thing is hands down the single factor that did the most damage to the fighter revamp and resulted in its being squashed. First off, Paladins have fantastic AE hate generation capabilities, and the more overpowered their AE dps, the better it gets. They also have extremely good single-target hate generation (all you have to do after all is switch amends from the warlock to the assassin). Paladins are clearly a solid class, capable of instance grouping, raid MTing, raid OTing, and holding aggro in whatever setup they're going for. Trying to pidgeon-hole them into the Single-target role is frankly bull. Bruisers, on the other hand, have terrible AE aggro generation with the exception of Divide & Conquer, which is a lovely little spell that suffers greatly from most mobs being totally immune to it. Personally, I think the devs should make an effort to tune tanks to be more like the Paladin. Tanks should be able to deal with single-target or multiple targets and get aggro reliably. Personally, I think the fighter revamp should be brought back without the single/multi target divide and the buff consolidation, and we're golden.</blockquote><p>Ya you do realise the fighter 1.0 changes actually gave all the so called single target tanks MORE aoe agro (except paladins).</p><p>I agree removing amends was dumb for paladins. Leave them alone they are not overpowered atm. They are actually fine and can use a few spell fixes.</p>

[Gungo]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Gungo wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Mosha DKhan wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>{0} Important stuff omitted cause I wont change my forum name to valid characters only.</blockquote><p>Bruisers wont be aoe tanks, I'm fairly sure in whatever finally hashes out, that wont be happening.</p></blockquote><p>Except the developers had already said the oppposite.</p></blockquote><p>That was all scrapped, what is comming may or may not include any part of it.</p><p>Like I said, I'm fairly sure whatever finally comes around, bruisers aren't an aoe tank class.</p></blockquote><p>Ya, except they didnt add anything on a bruiser for aoe during the fighter revamp. (which was a complaint) We already had several strong aoe tanking abilites. Our aoe taunt is less then 10 sec recast currently. We have a 1 min recast perma aoe encounter lock w multiple hate positions. We have one of the largest aoe melee atks of ANY class on a 1 min timer. The only thing we were missing was aoe auto atk. Which they ARE addressing. Unless they completely revamp the class there is no way they can remove our aoe abilites with the coming taunt fighter changes. The fact is we are already an aoe class.</p><p>I am fairly sure you have no idea what you are talking about. In fact that whole "scrapped" comment was BS. Most of the fighter changes from fighter 1.0 are still coming. This I know as fact.</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Gungo wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>. We have one of the largest aoe melee atks of ANY class on a 1 min timer. The only thing we were missing was aoe auto atk. Which they ARE addressing. Unless they completely revamp the class there is no way they can remove our aoe abilites with the coming taunt fighter changes. The fact is we are already an aoe class.</p></blockquote><p>I wouldn't expect any of that to be wonderful at holding aoe aggro from real aoe dps classes.</p>

[Aull]

<p>Well if the revamp actually did go through bruisers would have gained a new blue aoe ability with the encounter one being much stronger. Couple that with faster reuse on our encounter taunt, new blue aoe ability, D&C, savage assult and bruisers would be better aoe than what we currently are.</p><p>So of the two brawlers the bruiser was intended to be the aoe brawler. It doesn't matter for now since those ideas are on hold.</p>

[RafaelSmith]

<p>I liked the idea of boosting taunts.....but from what I saw on the Test Server they were boosted too much.  Aggro should involve a mix of DPS and threat not one or the other.  From what I witnessed on test server the new system would have swapped everything from being all about DPS to being all about mashing taunts.</p><p>I like the idea of Taunt Crit.</p><p>Hated the buff merging.</p><p>Really hated the "must always be in D-stance to tank" concept.  </p><p>If they insist on the stupid ST -vs- AE seperation of the fighters then let it be in terms of DPS not aggro/threat.</p>

[therodge]

<p><cite>Gungo wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Gungo wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Mosha DKhan wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>{0} Important stuff omitted cause I wont change my forum name to valid characters only.</blockquote><p>Bruisers wont be aoe tanks, I'm fairly sure in whatever finally hashes out, that wont be happening.</p></blockquote><p>Except the developers had already said the oppposite.</p></blockquote><p>That was all scrapped, what is comming may or may not include any part of it.</p><p>Like I said, I'm fairly sure whatever finally comes around, bruisers aren't an aoe tank class.</p></blockquote><p>Ya, except they didnt add anything on a bruiser for aoe during the fighter revamp. (which was a complaint) <span style="color: #ff0000;">We already had several strong aoe tanking abilites. Our aoe taunt is less then 10 sec recast currently. </span><span style="color: #3366ff;">except ya know taunts are currently useless and for the fighter revamp although the aoe taunt was powerful it was still not primary threat generation</span></p><p><span style="color: #ff0000;"> We have a 1 min recast perma aoe encounter lock w multiple hate positions. We have one of the largest aoe melee atks of ANY class on a 1 min timer. </span><span style="color: #3366ff;">what aoe is this i have never seen a bruiser use anything stronger then smite evil which crits for me upward of 6k+, also in tso alot of mobs are immune to target lock.</span></p><p><span style="color: #ff0000;">The only thing we were missing was aoe auto atk. Which they ARE addressing. Unless they completely revamp the class there is no way they can remove our aoe abilites with the coming taunt fighter changes. The fact is we are already an aoe class.</span><span style="color: #3366ff;"> Bruisers are as much an AoE class as paladins are single target what do you have 2 aoes? my paladin has 8 sks have 7 and i beileve zerks have 4 or 5. on top of that the paladin gets holyground (top of the hate list every time you hit a mob for 12 seconds) sigil (aoe agro transfer that was 100% left alone in the fighter revamp) you simply are not a aoe class do you have a few aoe abilitys yes you do, you need those abilitys to tank if you do no aoe agro then you are useless so of course</span></p><p><span style="color: #ff0000;">I am fairly sure you have no idea what you are talking about. In fact that whole "scrapped" comment was BS. Most of the fighter changes from fighter 1.0 are still coming. This I know as fact.</span><span style="color: #3366ff;"> The fighter revamp was scrapped, the reason it was scrapped was for 1 primary reason, people didnt like 2 changes, The AOE ST tank BS which is a bad way to go around things trying to pigeon hole them, and the fact that offensive tanking was basically removed. that said even though all of the new changes have not been realesed the only things comming back from the original (that have been announced) are a few brawler improvments, and taunt increases, (and to be honest i dont remember taunt increases being blatently stated just heavily implyed) I would bet my account the aoe/st tank change will not be added nor will the removal of offensive tanking as these are what got it scrapped in the first place.</span></p></blockquote>

[Rahatmattata]

<p><cite>Bruener wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><em><strong>You have half your wish already...Guards do take the hits better than any other class, and their ST agro is very reliable.  AE agro is slightly lacking.  Being the best to take hits is the balance for less agro control though....specifically on AE mobs.</strong></em></blockquote><blockquote>(stupid browser doesn't play well with forums) Guardians lose their survivability edge when they have to tank in ostance. I like the guardian class, and my only real beef with it is threat control. I wan't to be able to hold aggro relatively consistantly in a raid with a templar, defiler, warden, dirge, coercer in dstance with a big fat tower shield. If I could do that, I'd have very few complaints about guardians.</blockquote><blockquote>Sustained aggro should not be the balance point. All fighters should be able to hold aggro consistantly in most any content if everyone is doing their job, relying on their own class. Maybe a guard should work harder on AoE content, but it should be doable without stacking the group and refusing to invite warlocks. Maybe a paladin should be able to lock up multiple targets, but have to work a little to control a single mob. The balance should be offensive vs defensive capability, and utility (not just buffs, but overall tricks and feats). For example a guardian should specialize in soaking damage and saving group members, and offer very little else. A bruiser on the other end of the spectrum, while not the most defensive, should be able to rip through zones with very high dps for a fighter, and have a bag of tricks that make them unique, and are useful. This in addition to the sore imbalances in solo and pvp combat would make rolling a guardian worthwhile, but not OP and top of the food chain. All fighters should have some sustained threat issues if a dps is going balls out and gets a string of lucky rolls with crits and double attacks etc, or if the dps is way overgeared compared to the tank, or if the group is stacked in such a way where the dps gets buffed, but the tank benefits very little from the buffs (like haste buff and monks/guards).</blockquote><blockquote>The AoE vs ST could work if it was balanced.... which it won't be because it's Aerilik we're talking about. Class A excells in ST, weak in AoE. Class B excells in AoE but weak in ST. Maybe the excell in one type because they do more dps, or more hate, or soak more damage when fighting many mobs vs a few... etc. The difference in threat snaps should be balanced but uniquely different as well. SK gets snaps that work well in AoE but not so hot on ST... for example a snap that equalizes the hate of your current target with all other mobs in PBAoE range. Kind of like Channel. Guardian gets ST snaps that are hard to use on multiple targets. It takes less threat to hold extra mobs the dps is not focused on, so AoE tanks could generate moderate hate on all mobs in the encounter (making them struggle a bit controlling individual targets) while ST tanks could generate high hate on a single target, but low on multiple targets (making them cycle targets [but fix targetting please!], and use ST snaps on loose mobs).</blockquote><blockquote>As far as the fighter changes, for guardian I wouldn't mind having the lowest dps of all fighters, with threat crits and agression scaling threat as strength scales damage. I wouldn't mind leaving the pure taunts alone basically, and adding threat to every CA & reducing the damage. Maybe just in dstance or something idk... it'd have to balance out. My 2c. And I probably wasted wear and tear on my keyboard cuz none of this really matters and the devs will do whatever the hell they want, and it probably won't turn out the way any of us hope tbh.</blockquote>

[RafaelSmith]

<p><cite>Bruener wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I just don't get why you think that Guards should be the "one tank to rule them all"...</p></blockquote><p>But its ok for SKs to be the "one tank that rules them all".?</p><p>-You do perfectly fine on single targets....doesn't matter if on paper the Guard is more efficient at it. You can lock aggro...not much more is really needed</p><p>-You blow us away on multiples.</p><p>-You take the hits just fine..ive seen it.  What little so called "disadvantage" you have is more than compensated by your crazy aggro.  Healers will gladly have to heal a little more if it means they only have to heal one group member</p><p>-Your DPS is much higher than Guards for not just AE but also ST.</p><p>-You can do all of the above without the perfect group.</p><p>Not much else left in the land of "tanking" to be ruled.</p>

[Bruener]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><strong>Lastly, anyone rolling a guardian for any purpose other than seeking a MT role, should likely go re-roll, as the class has little use outside that role.  I do my best to set that expectation anytime someone asks me about the class, but rolling a guardian alt for instance tanking cause your impressed by your current MT's capability is only going to set you up for failure.  We rely too much on group setup, top gear selection, and just overall playtime for dkp to be remotely effective.</strong></p></blockquote><p>This is exactly the problem.  To many people rolling Guards for playing out of their intended role.  In response to the poster previous to this one....SKs do have it good right now, but the extra agro they have is the make up of the less survivability they have.  You say SKs take hits fine, yeah but it is not the best.  Guards own that realm, always have and always will.  Guess what, I have seen Wizards that take the hits "fine".</p><p>Guards = great ST agro control, best survivability, lacking in AE agro control.</p><p>SKs = great ST + AE agro control...4th best survivability of plates</p><p>Can SKs tank everything in-game.  Yes.  Do Guards do it while absorbing more damage.  Yes.  Hell, a swash geared right and spec'd right could probably tank everything in this game...that doesn't mean you are going to use him though.  You are going to use the tank that can take the hits the best....</p><p>MT is the intended role for Guards, and they are still performing that role great.  Go look at raid rosters and check out the % of Guard MTs and you have your answer.</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Bruener wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>SKs = great ST + AE agro control...4th best survivability of plates</p></blockquote><p>I'd argue swapping an Guard/Sk/Pal/Zerker in the MT slot giving them equal buffs, etc, your going to find SK is 2nd on the list for survivability.  Bloodletter x2, Lifetaps, etc are pretty solid survivabilitiy.  The innate mitigation / avoidance potential is actually higher than a guardian.  HP, the guard eeks out a little.</p>

[Couching]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Bruener wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>SKs = great ST + AE agro control...4th best survivability of plates</p></blockquote><p>I'd argue swapping an Guard/Sk/Pal/Zerker in the MT slot giving them equal buffs, etc, your going to find SK is 2nd on the list for survivability.  Bloodletter x2, Lifetaps, etc are pretty solid survivabilitiy.  The innate mitigation / avoidance potential is actually higher than a guardian.  HP, the guard eeks out a little.</p></blockquote><p>Saying sk is 4th in survivability just because sk has few percentage less in mitigation and avoidance than other plate tanks is ridiculous.</p><p>In most cases, the death of tank comes from target control effects on healers such as stun/stifle/target lock, etc. instead of tank who has few percentage less in mitigation and avoidance.</p><p>Healers can make 2 mistakes and still keep SK up with bloodletterx2.</p><p>In the end, it's much easier to keep sk up than guardian or any other fighters in harder encounters with target control aoe.</p><p>Passive life saving tools will never miss or waste and they didn't involve any skill from players. They should never be better than active life saving tools that involve skills from players.</p><p>The biggest unbalance of all fighters in survivability is bloodletterx2.</p><p>Bloodletter should be changed to 30% hp or less instead of full hp recovery.</p><p>PS: The chance of bloodletter being canceled is tiny. Most raid targets can't do it.</p>

[therodge]

<p><cite>Gaylon@Mistmoore wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Bruener wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I just don't get why you think that Guards should be the "one tank to rule them all"...</p></blockquote><p>But its ok for SKs to be the "one tank that rules them all".?</p><p>-You do perfectly fine on single targets....doesn't matter if on paper the Guard is more efficient at it. You can lock aggro...not much more is really needed</p><p>-You blow us away on multiples.</p><p>-You take the hits just fine..ive seen it.  What little so called "disadvantage" you have is more than compensated by your crazy aggro.  Healers will gladly have to heal a little more if it means they only have to heal one group member</p><p>-Your DPS is much higher than Guards for not just AE but also ST.</p><p>-You can do all of the above without the perfect group.</p><p>Not much else left in the land of "tanking" to be ruled.</p></blockquote><p>no its not ok it shouldent be sks it shouldent be guardians it shouldent be anyone period any other argument is selfish to say the least</p>

[Kordran]

<p><cite>Kimber@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I agree guards need some love in the AOE department but they should not be the top dog of AOE content.  IMO the following should be the "" hierarchy "" of tanks and such.</p><p>ST tanks should be as follows</p><p>#1 Guards</p><p>#2 Pally</p><p>#3 Monk</p><p>AOE tanks should be</p><p>#1 Zerk</p><p>#2 SK</p><p>#3 Bruiser</p><p>The above set up follows the idea that Warrior's should have the most Mit and the Crusaders who are a hybrid have less mit but gain surviability threw self heals and such and Brawlers with the lowest mit are avoidance tanks.  As things stand right now</p><p>SK rules all with Guard Pally and Zerk coming in 2nd 3rd and 4th depending on the zone/mob and the Brawlers at the bottom of the heap.</p></blockquote><p>Right, Paladins with their 8+ AEs (depending on spec) make perfect sense as "single-target" tanks. It's a ridiculous classification unless you completely gut the class and remake it in the image of a Guardian with [Removed for Content] heals.</p><p>Edit: Unfortunately, too often these discussions devolve into a kind of "make my preferred class desirable by nerfing everyone else" reasoning.</p>

[Gungo]

<p><cite>therodge wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Gungo wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Ya, except they didnt add anything on a bruiser for aoe during the fighter revamp. (which was a complaint) <span style="color: #ff0000;">We already had several strong aoe tanking abilites. Our aoe taunt is less then 10 sec recast currently. </span><span style="color: #3366ff;">except ya know taunts are currently useless and for the fighter revamp although the aoe taunt was powerful it was still not primary threat generation. </span></p><p>Except we are talking about the fighter changes that made ALL taunts better.</p><p><span style="color: #ff0000;"> We have a 1 min recast perma aoe encounter lock w multiple hate positions. We have one of the largest aoe melee atks of ANY class on a 1 min timer. </span><span style="color: #3366ff;">what aoe is this i have never seen a bruiser use anything stronger then smite evil which crits for me upward of 6k+, also in tso alot of mobs are immune to target lock.</span></p><p>Dude bruisers dont have smite evil thats Paladins we have savage assault AOE which does ~7500-8000 self buff, non crit. Wrong class try again.</p><p><span style="color: #ff0000;">The only thing we were missing was aoe auto atk. Which they ARE addressing. Unless they completely revamp the class there is no way they can remove our aoe abilites with the coming taunt fighter changes. The fact is we are already an aoe class.</span><span style="color: #3366ff;"> Bruisers are as much an AoE class as paladins are single target what do you have 2 aoes? my paladin has 8 sks have 7 and i beileve zerks have 4 or 5. on top of that the paladin gets holyground (top of the hate list every time you hit a mob for 12 seconds) sigil (aoe agro transfer that was 100% left alone in the fighter revamp) you simply are not a aoe class do you have a few aoe abilitys yes you do, you need those abilitys to tank if you do no aoe agro then you are useless so of course.</span></p><p>3 aoe atks, fastest recast aoe taunt, and 1 min recast complete encounter lock with 2 hate positions and 10k+ hate.</p><p><span style="color: #ff0000;">I am fairly sure you have no idea what you are talking about. In fact that whole "scrapped" comment was BS. Most of the fighter changes from fighter 1.0 are still coming. This I know as fact.</span><span style="color: #3366ff;"> The fighter revamp was scrapped, the reason it was scrapped was for 1 primary reason, people didnt like 2 changes, The AOE ST tank BS which is a bad way to go around things trying to pigeon hole them, and the fact that offensive tanking was basically removed. that said even though all of the new changes have not been realesed the only things comming back from the original (that have been announced) are a few brawler improvments, and taunt increases, (and to be honest i dont remember taunt increases being blatently stated just heavily implyed) I would bet my account the aoe/st tank change will not be added nor will the removal of offensive tanking as these are what got it scrapped in the first place.</span></p><p>Again you are another person who has no idea what they are talking about the changes during the fighter 1.0 revamp on test. Actually made single target tanks better at aoe agro. Guaridans were better on aoe agro on test then they are NOW. People spent more time crying about the concept instead of seeing how it actually worked. The fighter 1.0 changes didnt make shadowknights better at aoe agro. it actually made guards better at aoe agro. Btw Off stance and def stance are still being adjusted in the current fighter revamp.</p></blockquote></blockquote>

[therodge]

<p><cite>Gungo wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>therodge wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Gungo wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Ya, except they didnt add anything on a bruiser for aoe during the fighter revamp. (which was a complaint) <span style="color: #ff0000;">We already had several strong aoe tanking abilites. Our aoe taunt is less then 10 sec recast currently. </span><span style="color: #3366ff;">except ya know taunts are currently useless and for the fighter revamp although the aoe taunt was powerful it was still not primary threat generation. </span></p><p>Except we are talking about the fighter changes that made ALL taunts better.</p><p><span style="color: #ff0000;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">in which it was still not primary aoe genration as in any class with a decent aoe (aka all classess minus maybe guards and monks have one) did it help guards monks and bruisers out heck yeah which is why the taunt increases is a needed change atleast for those three classess</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #ff0000;"> We have a 1 min recast perma aoe encounter lock w multiple hate positions. We have one of the largest aoe melee atks of ANY class on a 1 min timer. </span><span style="color: #3366ff;">what aoe is this i have never seen a bruiser use anything stronger then smite <span style="font-size: small; color: #0000ff;">evil which crits for me</span> upward of 6k+, also in tso alot of mobs are immune to target lock.</span></p><p>Dude bruisers dont have smite evil thats Paladins we have savage assault AOE which does ~7500-8000 self buff, non crit. Wrong class try again.</p><p><span style="color: #ff0000;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">I am a paladin i know who has smite evil i was saying i simply didnt know of a stronger fighter aoe</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #ff0000;">The only thing we were missing was aoe auto atk. Which they ARE addressing. Unless they completely revamp the class there is no way they can remove our aoe abilites with the coming taunt fighter changes. The fact is we are already an aoe class.</span><span style="color: #3366ff;"> Bruisers are as much an AoE class as paladins are single target what do you have 2 aoes? my paladin has 8 sks have 7 and i beileve zerks have 4 or 5. on top of that the paladin gets holyground (top of the hate list every time you hit a mob for 12 seconds) sigil (aoe agro transfer that was 100% left alone in the fighter revamp) you simply are not a aoe class do you have a few aoe abilitys yes you do, you need those abilitys to tank if you do no aoe agro then you are useless so of course.</span></p><p>3 aoe atks, fastest recast aoe taunt, and 1 min recast complete encounter lock with 2 hate positions and 10k+ hate.</p><p><span style="color: #ff0000;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">which is less the every other tank minus guardians and monks</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #ff0000;">I am fairly sure you have no idea what you are talking about. In fact that whole "scrapped" comment was BS. Most of the fighter changes from fighter 1.0 are still coming. This I know as fact.</span><span style="color: #3366ff;"> The fighter revamp was scrapped, the reason it was scrapped was for 1 primary reason, people didnt like 2 changes, The AOE ST tank BS which is a bad way to go around things trying to pigeon hole them, and the fact that offensive tanking was basically removed. that said even though all of the new changes have not been realesed the only things comming back from the original (that have been announced) are a few brawler improvments, and taunt increases, (and to be honest i dont remember taunt increases being blatently stated just heavily implyed) I would bet my account the aoe/st tank change will not be added nor will the removal of offensive tanking as these are what got it scrapped in the first place.</span></p><p>Again you are another person who has no idea what they are talking about the changes during the fighter 1.0 revamp on test. Actually made single target tanks better at aoe agro. Guaridans were better on aoe agro on test then they are NOW. People spent more time crying about the concept instead of seeing how it actually worked. The fighter 1.0 changes didnt make shadowknights better at aoe agro. it actually made guards better at aoe agro. Btw Off stance and def stance are still being adjusted in the current fighter revamp.</p><p><span style="color: #ff0000;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">I tested those changes your right in the effect they made guardians and monks better at aoe agro paladins lost aoe agro with the lost of amends, sks were largly uneffected via acual hate generation but their was also a nerf to sks aoes including doom judgement which is shared by paladins that said if you were paying attention you would realize aoe effects single target the same as it does aoe targets the only diffrence is it makes single taget just as easy to a aoe tank and agro more difficult then a single target tank just in case ill spell it out for you</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #ff0000;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">aoe tank= single target tank on single target</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #ff0000;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">single target tank =/ aoe tank on aoe.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #ff0000;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">and as for the offensive and defensive stance changes, your assumeing that its the same change all that has been announced is they want to get greater reason to go defensive, that does not include a offenive stance nerf, that said i did forget they have mentioned the buff concolidation which in my opinion is stil;l a rather bad idea. </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #ff0000;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">either way the fact still stands bruisers are not anywere an aoe tank do they have aoes yes but i guarentee i can run through the bruiser boards and find threads whineing about the lack of aoe agro, same as i can for guardians and monks. </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #ff0000;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">in conclution the fighter revamp was stopped for a reason, and it wasent just the vocal minority the public outcry both ingame and on these boards was enough for them to stop the revamp, this is significant concidering as far as my memory goes this was the first major change in either eqlive or eq2 that was stopped via the playerbase. if you beileve it will come back in the incarnation it was you are either wrong (most likly) in which it has no real effect or your right in which the result will happen exsacally the same with them scrapping it once again and further delaying the fix that both brawlers and guardians need.</span></span></p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p> Edit: for the record</p><p><a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?start=420&topic_id=440463">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=440463</a></p><p>amd <a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?start=45&topic_id=441917">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=441917</a></p><p>notice the threads start out positive becuase the changes sound good on paper but after testing its pretty obvious the fighter revamp was horrindously flawed</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Couching@Crushbone wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Bruener wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>SKs = great ST + AE agro control...4th best survivability of plates</p></blockquote><p>I'd argue swapping an Guard/Sk/Pal/Zerker in the MT slot giving them equal buffs, etc, your going to find SK is 2nd on the list for survivability.  Bloodletter x2, Lifetaps, etc are pretty solid survivabilitiy.  The innate mitigation / avoidance potential is actually higher than a guardian.  HP, the guard eeks out a little.</p></blockquote><p>Saying sk is 4th in survivability just because sk has few percentage less in mitigation and avoidance than other plate tanks is ridiculous.</p></blockquote><p>I find properly spec'd for the mitigation tap, the SK can get higher mit base than a guard.  Now few SK's understand the shaman dog is a valid target for this tap, but it works and provides them with a mit bump.</p><p>Add that they get to keep their higher dps potential while still using a shield for innate avoidance, its quickly becomes a no-brainer that SK is the better MT for most of the content.  Plain and simple SK gets more aggro control, similar survivabiltiy (some would argue more effective survivability) and the ability to get near capping offensive/aggro potential with none of the similar penalties of the warrior class (dual wield requirements). </p><p>I've not rechecked the math, but I thought crusaders also had a higher avoidance potential due to some innate shield effectiveness modifiers.  Is this not still true as well?</p>

[therodge]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Couching@Crushbone wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Bruener wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>SKs = great ST + AE agro control...4th best survivability of plates</p></blockquote><p>I'd argue swapping an Guard/Sk/Pal/Zerker in the MT slot giving them equal buffs, etc, your going to find SK is 2nd on the list for survivability.  Bloodletter x2, Lifetaps, etc are pretty solid survivabilitiy.  The innate mitigation / avoidance potential is actually higher than a guardian.  HP, the guard eeks out a little.</p></blockquote><p>Saying sk is 4th in survivability just because sk has few percentage less in mitigation and avoidance than other plate tanks is ridiculous.</p></blockquote><p>I find properly spec'd for the mitigation tap, the SK can get higher mit base than a guard.  Now few SK's understand the shaman dog is a valid target for this tap, but it works and provides them with a mit bump.</p><p>Add that they get to keep their higher dps potential while still using a shield for innate avoidance, its quickly becomes a no-brainer that SK is the better MT for most of the content.  Plain and simple SK gets more aggro control, similar survivabiltiy (some would argue more effective survivability) and the ability to get near capping offensive/aggro potential with none of the similar penalties of the warrior class (dual wield requirements). </p><p>I've not rechecked the math, but I thought crusaders also had a higher avoidance potential due to some innate shield effectiveness modifiers.  Is this not still true as well?</p></blockquote><p>you will have to check warriors  but paladins get a 24% sheild effectiveness bosst and i dont remember their being one in tso line but i dont beileve, unless sks have it in their tso line (which very well may be true) they dont have any)</p>

[Kimber]

<p><cite>Kordran wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Kimber@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I agree guards need some love in the AOE department but they should not be the top dog of AOE content.  IMO the following should be the "" hierarchy "" of tanks and such.</p><p>ST tanks should be as follows</p><p>#1 Guards</p><p>#2 Pally</p><p>#3 Monk</p><p>AOE tanks should be</p><p>#1 Zerk</p><p>#2 SK</p><p>#3 Bruiser</p><p>The above set up follows the idea that Warrior's should have the most Mit and the Crusaders who are a hybrid have less mit but gain surviability threw self heals and such and Brawlers with the lowest mit are avoidance tanks.  As things stand right now</p><p>SK rules all with Guard Pally and Zerk coming in 2nd 3rd and 4th depending on the zone/mob and the Brawlers at the bottom of the heap.</p></blockquote><p>Right, Paladins with their 8+ AEs (depending on spec) make perfect sense as "single-target" tanks. It's a ridiculous classification unless you completely gut the class and remake it in the image of a Guardian with [Removed for Content] heals.</p><p>Edit: Unfortunately, too often these discussions devolve into a kind of "make my preferred class desirable by nerfing everyone else" reasoning.</p></blockquote><p>I put Pally under ST for the simple fact that they tank ST better than Zerk and SK.  I am not saying by this list that each tank cannot tank the other content just saying that they are better at holding aggro or should be better at holding aggro in a ST or AOE stiutation than thier counter part.</p><p>1 Guard better at ST than Zerk at ST but Zerk better at AOE than Guard</p><p>2 Pally better at ST than SK but SK better at AOE than Pally</p><p>3 Monk better at ST than Bruiser but Bruiser better at AOE than Monk</p><p>I hope that breaks it down a little easier for you.</p><p>Edit to add</p><p>I play a Zerk and a Pally and I enjoy both very much and have all the AOE I can get on my Pally and tbh I have found that my Pally while it does pretty good at AOE it really is better at ST stuff than AOE but that is my exp and the exp of others could be diff. </p><p>Oh and both toons are on PVP so it could be that as on PvP we tend to spec a lil diff from PvE.</p>

[circusgirl]

<p>I think there are two ideas here that need to be dropped entirely:1) the idea of AE vs. ST tanks and 2)the idea that only plate tanks should tank on raids.  Both are terrible ideas.  Tanks need to be able to tank, period.</p><p>We should really be discussing ways to make all tanks effective at both surviving and holding aggro without destroying their uniqueness and differentness.</p><p>For example, image a situation in which waves of adds come into a raid encounter every minute.  A shadowknight could use their dps, lifetaps, etc. and hold aggro and tank the swarm.  A paladin might have amends on the warlock to do the same.  A bruiser would have more trouble via dps or straight taunts, but could use target locks to hold aggro just the same.  A zerk might rely on AE autoattack.  These are all very different methods.  Is it really so absurd that they could think of ways to give guardians and monks reliable means to generate AE aggro without homogenizing everyone?  And then give the weaker tanks the mean to survive and we can have 6 different tanks each of which can do the same job 6 different ways.</p><p>Doesn't seem like too much to ask for to me.</p>

[Farore]

<p><cite>Vinka@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I think there are two ideas here that need to be dropped entirely:1) the idea of AE vs. ST tanks and 2)the idea that only plate tanks should tank on raids.  Both are terrible ideas.  Tanks need to be able to tank, period.</p><p>We should really be discussing ways to make all tanks effective at both surviving and holding aggro without destroying their uniqueness and differentness.</p><p>For example, image a situation in which waves of adds come into a raid encounter every minute.  A shadowknight could use their dps, lifetaps, etc. and hold aggro and tank the swarm.  A paladin might have amends on the warlock to do the same.  A bruiser would have more trouble via dps or straight taunts, but could use target locks to hold aggro just the same.  A zerk might rely on AE autoattack.  These are all very different methods.  Is it really so absurd that they could think of ways to give guardians and monks reliable means to generate AE aggro without homogenizing everyone?  And then give the weaker tanks the mean to survive and we can have 6 different tanks each of which can do the same job 6 different ways.</p><p>Doesn't seem like too much to ask for to me.</p></blockquote><p>Finally a fair-minded player that isn't here to just flame.</p><p>Give everyone the same survivability through the said comments in this thread(to some degree) warriors=mit, crusaders=heals,lifetaps, brawlers=avoidance. Not to say by any means that the other archtypes can't have heals. The brawler heals are fine where they are. But as for a generic theme of each class, they are all dynamic in that fashion.</p><p>As for aggro. EVERY tank should be able to do EVERY content, no exceptions. Does anyone know of any non-raid content that isnt AE based??? If you grped at any time between lvl 1-80, did you not heap pull the zones??? If not, you should have, esp since they made all of non 80 content is cake now with the MC gear upgrades and the "smoothing out the experience from lvl 1-70". Heap pulling was necessary to actually take advantage of the healer you had in your grp, If you single pulled zones like nektulos castle, you wouldn't need a healer. And once you get to 80, It's TSO, all ae content.</p><p>The uniqueness about AE aggro needs to be in the form that they have it, but give guardians something like AE taunts, and no, I dont want them to get an easy button that does 10 k threat, but they should be able to do something even remotely close to crusaders and zerkers, so that the other tanks are keeping aggro by dps rather than aggro and we all know dps>aggro. As for the brawlers, man give them something for AE...ANYTHING. It's painful for them to be the least able to tank ae and the weakest of the fighters. Gaurdians have little right to complain when they look at a brawler. At least guards get 40% ae attack.</p>

[Mosha D'Khan]

<p>This would be a good idea, but currently that is the way a bruiser would hold agro and it does not work. we have multiple agro locks/drags that DON"T work. when sony came out with TSO they made mobs, not just herioc content but raid content immune to them. so this gives me 2 useless CA that dont do anything for me. giving me more does nothing also, the only way this could work is making the mobs not immune to this effect and keep it that way.</p>

[circusgirl]

<p>Target locks are currently broken, which is hugely damaging to both brawlers, yes.  However, that doesn't mean that they will always be broken, and I for one would like to see target lock immunities removed and this method of holding aggro made the brawler's specialty.  Given that they're planning to make epics mezzable again, I don't think its all that unreasonable to imagine target locks made viable again, ESPECIALLY since we'll probably be moving to a 1 dirge, 1 coercer system in raids so things like magnetic note and the coercer target lock won't be quite as overpowering.</p>

[Rahatmattata]

<p><cite>Vinka@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I think there are two ideas here that need to be dropped entirely:1) the idea of AE vs. ST tanks and 2)the idea that only plate tanks should tank on raids.  Both are terrible ideas.  Tanks need to be able to tank, period.</p><p>We should really be discussing ways to make all tanks effective at both surviving and holding aggro without destroying their uniqueness and differentness.</p><p>For example, image a situation in which waves of adds come into a raid encounter every minute.  A shadowknight could use their dps, lifetaps, etc. and hold aggro and tank the swarm.  A paladin might have amends on the warlock to do the same.  A bruiser would have more trouble via dps or straight taunts, but could use target locks to hold aggro just the same.  A zerk might rely on AE autoattack.  These are all very different methods.  Is it really so absurd that they could think of ways to give guardians and monks reliable means to generate AE aggro without homogenizing everyone?  And then give the weaker tanks the mean to survive and we can have 6 different tanks each of which can do the same job 6 different ways.</p><p>Doesn't seem like too much to ask for to me.</p></blockquote><p>This would not fix anything. If every fighter has the same survivability and threat control, then you just bring the one that does the most dps. IE: not guardian. Not to mention guardians would still be a pitiful solo class and pretty much suck in pvp compared to other fighters.</p><p>There is only one reason to roll a guardian over another fighter. Extra durability. It's ridiculous the amount of things guardians give up to have a very small boost in durability and saves... which only come into play when fighting a single mob that stresses your healers to their limit. Even then, any other plate tank can get the job done... you might just have to take a couple extra pulls, farm content for another week, or tweak the raid a bit. Any other encounter, a guardian is gimping your raid's potential. Take that away and there is 0.0 reason to roll a guard.</p><p>Oh, and guess what? You're monk, or bruiser, or whatever it is you play still won't get any tanking time when there is a crusader or zerker around that holds aggro through dps and has the same survivability.</p>

[Aull]

<p><cite>Vinka@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I think there are two ideas here that need to be dropped entirely:1) the idea of AE vs. ST tanks and 2)the idea that only plate tanks should tank on raids.  Both are terrible ideas.  Tanks need to be able to tank, period.</p><p>We should really be discussing <span style="color: #00ff00; font-size: small;">ways to make all tanks effective at both surviving and holding aggro without destroying their uniqueness and differentness.</span></p><p>For example, image a situation in which waves of adds come into a raid encounter every minute.  A shadowknight could use their dps, lifetaps, etc. and hold aggro and tank the swarm.  A paladin might have amends on the warlock to do the same.  A bruiser would have more trouble via dps or straight taunts, but could use target locks to hold aggro just the same.  A zerk might rely on AE autoattack.  These are all very different methods.  Is it really so absurd that they could think of ways to give guardians and monks reliable means to generate AE aggro without homogenizing everyone?  And then give the weaker tanks the mean to survive and we can have 6 different tanks each of which can do the same job 6 different ways.</p><p>Doesn't seem like too much to ask for to me.</p></blockquote><p>I think you have a good post but I don't feel that it could be possibly done with six fighters and still have uniqueness and differentness. Just to many to juggle around and keep from sharing abilities. That is what is going on now and I personally think it is a huge mistake.</p><p>Individuality was what made this game so great but now that is being lost. Monk and bruisers are the two that share so much alike that what is the purpose of have two of them? While these two are classified as brawlers they should both be vastly different. A good place to start would be a good aligned class has this while the evil aligned class has that. Brawlers will also continue to suffer the fate of jack of all trades master of none mentality until they are moved as either straight up tanks or straight up dps but not having a half xss mixture of both.</p><p>Guardians are great survivors for raids but wow they have the hardest time with all other aspects of the game. That is all i will say on that. Rahatmattata hit the nail on the head with his post on the guards.</p>

[Atavax311]

<p>i love the challenge of tanking ae content as a single target tank. i love the challenge. i dont mind other tanks having ae threat, but please dont suggest making all tanks ae tanks. guardians are not undesirable because of their lack of ae threat, they are undersirable because their lack of threat period. tank make-up imo should be, single target tanks, should have no problem and need no hate buffs to hold aggro on single targets from dps with around their lvl of gear. they should need hate buffs to hold ae aggro well with equally geared dps; they should need hate buffs to hold single target dps from superiorly geared dps; and they shouldnt be able to hold against superior dps in ae zones without the dps holding back and doing the dps of what dps geared like the tank would have to. and then with ae tanks, it should basically be the opposite, shouldnt need any hate buffs to hold ae encounters from dps in ae encounters with dps their own gear lvl, but need hate buffs to hold on single targets well, ect.</p><p> i think the Brawlers armor makes it unrealistic to make him as desirable a mt as the others, so i would want to make them the bards or the chanters of the fighter class. give him the utility where he is wanted in raids and then when an encounter requires another tank, he is in the raid and able to tank that add. and then in 6-man content capable of being either the tank or utility/dps/offtank.</p>

[RafaelSmith]

<p><cite>Atavax311 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>i love the challenge of tanking ae content as a single target tank. i love the challenge. i dont mind other tanks having ae threat, but please dont suggest making all tanks ae tanks. guardians are not undesirable because of their lack of ae threat, they are undersirable because their lack of threat period. tank make-up imo should be, single target tanks, should have no problem and need no hate buffs to hold aggro on single targets from dps with around their lvl of gear. they should need hate buffs to hold ae aggro well with equally geared dps; they should need hate buffs to hold single target dps from superiorly geared dps; and they shouldnt be able to hold against superior dps in ae zones without the dps holding back and doing the dps of what dps geared like the tank would have to. and then with ae tanks, it should basically be the opposite, shouldnt need any hate buffs to hold ae encounters from dps in ae encounters with dps their own gear lvl, but need hate buffs to hold on single targets well, ect.</p><p>i think the Brawlers armor makes it unrealistic to make him as desirable a mt as the others, so i would want to make them the bards or the chanters of the fighter class. give him the utility where he is wanted in raids and then when an encounter requires another tank, he is in the raid and able to tank that add. and then in 6-man content capable of being either the tank or utility/dps/offtank. as for the Differences between Crusader and Warrior. i think that Crusaders</p></blockquote><p>In terms of threat.....I really do not care for the AE -vs- ST seperation because frankly one is the superset of the other.  If a tank can lock aggro on mulitples he by definition can lock aggro on a single.   Nobody can show me a ST mob where a SK struggles anywhere near as much as a Guard does on (insert AE encounter here).  There is no way to balance two things that are not on equal footing........ST aggro is a subset of AE aggro.   An SK can out-aggro me without even trying(i,e using positionals or snaps)  on singles and multiples.....so this so called single target speciality is a bunch of hogwash.</p><p>IMO Guardians need alot of help in the "maintaining aggro" department.........snapping aggro is no problem but really doesnt help much when you know within a matter of seconds you will lose it.   I spend my entire time tanking staggering my snaps so that I try to have one available for the next time I lose aggro....depending on the group makeup, the crazyness of the DPS....i may not have any available all the time. </p><p>Its extremely frustrating to be using everything ive got short of popsitionals/snaps, timeing my attacks as best I can and see the 2nd # of the hater meter continue to rise.  If I do not have a positional/snap ready when it hits the 90ish% mark....someone else is about to become tank and there is nothing I can do about it.</p><p>SKs and others can come here and argue all they want about the few % points of "surviveability" they lack but I stand by the fact that if a tank cannot hold and maintain aggro effectively his other stats mean nothing and he is useless.</p><p>Do I want easy-mode aggro?  No I don't.   I don't want any fighter to have that.  But something is way out of whack when a scrub SK that just made 80 simply breaths more aggro than I can generate trying as hard as I want.</p><p>I get to group/raid alot with one of the best SKs around on my server and while it frustrates me some...I fully understand and expect him to blow me away.   But when I group/raid with some new SK alt and I have the same problems with aggro.........something inheritly wrong with aggro mechanics.</p><p>When I play my Assassin I feel sorta like a traitor because I find myself refusing to group with Guards.  When my Assassin is grouped with a Guard my hate$ hovers around 85-90.......when grouped with a SK its rarely goes over 20%. </p><p>Guards need help with aggro...thats it....we are fine in every other aspect of tanking.........but without aggro those other aspects mean nothing.</p>

[circusgirl]

<p>Personally I think all tanks should have a kind of sliding scale between dps and survivability, so that we're all capable of pulling decent dps numbers when we aren't tanking, or when tanking trivial fights, but as more survivability is needed dps should drop significantly.  That way different tanks can at the very least differentiate ourselves based on how we choose to set ourselves up.  </p><p>As for monks and brawlers being similar, while we are perhaps closer than most other class pairs, as a supra-class brawlers make up for their similarity to eachother by being drastically different from everyone else.  I don't particularly mind the two classes being very similar, so long as there's a fair bit of flexibility in how the two can be treated.  Frankly, a dps-specced bruiser and a tank-specced monk are as different from eachother as a zerker is from a guard, though it is true that if you specced them identically the two classes can be virtually the same.  </p><p>As far as dealing with the needs to make the 6 tanks both unique and all effective, I think there's several means of doing this that could be easily made, especially with the new expansion coming soon.  For example...</p><p><ul><li>Give each fighter class a path to some sort of control immunity via AAs on the order of the crusader's fear immunity.  There's enough options here to give something unique to each class.  For example: monk:disarms, bruiser:target locks, guardian: knockback, zerker: root.  Alternatively stun/stifle/mez/daze/etc. could be used.  It doesn't really matter, to be honest, since such changes could be introduced with the new expansion and <em>content could be balanced with this in mind</em>.  Give 1/6th of raid bosses a constant, extremely annoying disarm.  Now this mob is best tanked by a monk!  Make another one that clears targets and then locks them, and this one is best tanked by a bruiser.  Some bosses could cast constant uncureable fears, in which case you'd want a paladin/sketc, etc. and you create a situation in which content can be used to make the tanks different and desireable in different situations.  </li><li>Get rid of the avoidance lends for warriors and crusaders and replace them with survivability lends of different (stackable) types.  For example, give warriors a mitigation lend that gives its target a high % chance to use the caster's mitigation instead of the targets.  Such a lend could be placed on a squishy to help deal with physical AEs, OR on the brawlers during those fights in which they need to tank to help a brawlers survivability as much as our avoidance lends help plate tanks.  Give the crusaders something else interesting--perhaps a healing lend (50% of incoming heals to the crusader are applied as a bonus to the target of the lend, including lifetaps and a paladin's heals).  Make these buffs a huge increase in survivability, like the avoidance lends of brawlers are, and increase the difficulty of fights to compensate, so that they are balanced around a raid containing at least 3 tanks (one of each type) with two lends on the MT to help them survive.</li><li>With the new, expanded AA trees, differentiate different, clear paths that are oriented very strongly towards EITHER dps or survivability, instead of mixing the two together as they currently are in AA trees.  This way a tank can spec for dps, or for tanking, and there are very strong tradeoffs between the two.  This doesn't increase the differentiation between the different classes, but does increase the variation within an individual class, which is equally desireable.  </li></ul></p>

[Atavax311]

<p><cite>Gaylon@Mistmoore wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>In terms of threat.....I really do not care for the AE -vs- ST seperation because frankly one is the superset of the other.  If a tank can lock aggro on mulitples he by definition can lock aggro on a single.   Nobody can show me a ST mob where a SK struggles anywhere near as much as a Guard does on (insert AE encounter here).  There is no way to balance two things that are not on equal footing........ST aggro is a subset of AE aggro.   An SK can out-aggro me without even trying(i,e using positionals or snaps)  on singles and multiples.....so this so called single target speciality is a bunch of hogwash.</p></blockquote><p>i think it is possible to make someone good at ae tanking and not single target. you can make some abilities scale with the number of mobs in the area. plus, while 5000 tps per mob in 10 mob pull is good, its pretty crappy on a single target encounter.</p>

[Atavax311]

<p><cite>Vinka@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><ul><li>Give each fighter class a path to some sort of control immunity via AAs on the order of the crusader's fear immunity.  There's enough options here to give something unique to each class.  For example: monk:disarms, bruiser:target locks, guardian: knockback, zerker: root.  Alternatively stun/stifle/mez/daze/etc. could be used.  It doesn't really matter, to be honest, since such changes could be introduced with the new expansion and <em>content could be balanced with this in mind</em>.  Give 1/6th of raid bosses a constant, extremely annoying disarm.  Now this mob is best tanked by a monk!  Make another one that clears targets and then locks them, and this one is best tanked by a bruiser.  Some bosses could cast constant uncureable fears, in which case you'd want a paladin/sketc, etc. and you create a situation in which content can be used to make the tanks different and desireable in different situations.  </li><li>Get rid of the avoidance lends for warriors and crusaders and replace them with survivability lends of different (stackable) types.  For example, give warriors a mitigation lend that gives its target a high % chance to use the caster's mitigation instead of the targets.  Such a lend could be placed on a squishy to help deal with physical AEs, OR on the brawlers during those fights in which they need to tank to help a brawlers survivability as much as our avoidance lends help plate tanks.  Give the crusaders something else interesting--perhaps a healing lend (50% of incoming heals to the crusader are applied as a bonus to the target of the lend, including lifetaps and a paladin's heals).  Make these buffs a huge increase in survivability, like the avoidance lends of brawlers are, and increase the difficulty of fights to compensate, so that they are balanced around a raid containing at least 3 tanks (one of each type) with two lends on the MT to help them survive.</li><li>With the new, expanded AA trees, differentiate different, clear paths that are oriented very strongly towards EITHER dps or survivability, instead of mixing the two together as they currently are in AA trees.  This way a tank can spec for dps, or for tanking, and there are very strong tradeoffs between the two.  This doesn't increase the differentiation between the different classes, but does increase the variation within an individual class, which is equally desireable.  </li></ul></blockquote><p>i dont like the first suggestion because the class make-up for raids and groups is already demanding enough; they need to make no single class needed in an encounter, not make people have to switch out after every encounter because i new class is needed for the next.</p><p>i dont like the 2nd suggestion because once again, we dont need to make any more classes absolutely needed in raids.</p><p>i dont like the third suggestion because it would make respeccing a must. you shouldnt need to respect for every encounter depending on how hard it hits. you should be abel to change from high dps tp bad survivability to bad dps and high survivability and many steps between without having to respec.</p>

[RafaelSmith]

<p><cite>Atavax311 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Gaylon@Mistmoore wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>In terms of threat.....I really do not care for the AE -vs- ST seperation because frankly one is the superset of the other. If a tank can lock aggro on mulitples he by definition can lock aggro on a single. Nobody can show me a ST mob where a SK struggles anywhere near as much as a Guard does on (insert AE encounter here). There is no way to balance two things that are not on equal footing........ST aggro is a subset of AE aggro. An SK can out-aggro me without even trying(i,e using positionals or snaps) on singles and multiples.....so this so called single target speciality is a bunch of hogwash.</p></blockquote><p>i think it is possible to make someone good at ae tanking and not single target. you can make some abilities scale with the number of mobs in the area. plus, while 5000 tps per mob in 10 mob pull is good, its pretty crappy on a single target encounter.</p></blockquote><p>Sure its possible but they havent done anything like that nor do they intend too.</p><p>And there is a meaningful cap on "tps".   If all that is required to keep aggro on a ST mob is X TPS then if the SK can do X TPS then its doesnt matter if the Guardian in the corner can actually put out more.  In fact since a large portion of the SKs TPS comes from DPS his is actually better since DPS serves two purposes.</p><p>I have yet to see any single mob where a AE focused tank like SK has any issues whatsover.</p><p>Im sure there is a post size limit so I wont post the AE encounters where single target tanks have issues.</p>

[Bruener]

<p>"What a GUARDIAN should be..."</p><p>SEEN but not HEARD. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/97ada74b88049a6d50a6ed40898a03d7.gif" border="0" /></p>

[circusgirl]

<p><cite>Atavax311 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Vinka@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><ul><li>Give each fighter class a path to some sort of control immunity via AAs on the order of the crusader's fear immunity.  There's enough options here to give something unique to each class.  For example: monk:disarms, bruiser:target locks, guardian: knockback, zerker: root.  Alternatively stun/stifle/mez/daze/etc. could be used.  It doesn't really matter, to be honest, since such changes could be introduced with the new expansion and <em>content could be balanced with this in mind</em>.  Give 1/6th of raid bosses a constant, extremely annoying disarm.  Now this mob is best tanked by a monk!  Make another one that clears targets and then locks them, and this one is best tanked by a bruiser.  Some bosses could cast constant uncureable fears, in which case you'd want a paladin/sketc, etc. and you create a situation in which content can be used to make the tanks different and desireable in different situations.  </li><li>Get rid of the avoidance lends for warriors and crusaders and replace them with survivability lends of different (stackable) types.  For example, give warriors a mitigation lend that gives its target a high % chance to use the caster's mitigation instead of the targets.  Such a lend could be placed on a squishy to help deal with physical AEs, OR on the brawlers during those fights in which they need to tank to help a brawlers survivability as much as our avoidance lends help plate tanks.  Give the crusaders something else interesting--perhaps a healing lend (50% of incoming heals to the crusader are applied as a bonus to the target of the lend, including lifetaps and a paladin's heals).  Make these buffs a huge increase in survivability, like the avoidance lends of brawlers are, and increase the difficulty of fights to compensate, so that they are balanced around a raid containing at least 3 tanks (one of each type) with two lends on the MT to help them survive.</li><li>With the new, expanded AA trees, differentiate different, clear paths that are oriented very strongly towards EITHER dps or survivability, instead of mixing the two together as they currently are in AA trees.  This way a tank can spec for dps, or for tanking, and there are very strong tradeoffs between the two.  This doesn't increase the differentiation between the different classes, but does increase the variation within an individual class, which is equally desireable.  </li></ul></blockquote><p>i dont like the first suggestion because the class make-up for raids and groups is already demanding enough; they need to make no single class needed in an encounter, not make people have to switch out after every encounter because i new class is needed for the next.</p><p>i dont like the 2nd suggestion because once again, we dont need to make any more classes absolutely needed in raids.</p><p>i dont like the third suggestion because it would make respeccing a must. you shouldnt need to respect for every encounter depending on how hard it hits. you should be abel to change from high dps tp bad survivability to bad dps and high survivability and many steps between without having to respec.</p></blockquote><p>The first option could be altered slightly by assigning immunities to class PAIRS (brawlers, warriors, crusaders) instead of to the subclasses so that an ideal setup involves just 3 tanks, which is perfectly reasonable in terms of raid slots and leaves a fair bit of flexibility in terms of setups--there are eight different tank combinations possible that match the requirement of one of each class pair (Guard/SK/bruiser, Guard/Pal/bruiser, Guard/SK/monk, Guard/Pal/Monk, Zerk/SK/Bruiser, Zerk/Pal/Bruiser, Zerk/SK/Monk, Zerk/Pal/Monk) which is QUITE a bit of flexibility in terms of setup.</p><p>The second is equally true--3 raid slots for fighters is by no means unreasonable, and there are many potential setups that meet this requirement.</p><p>As for the third suggestion, frankly, we shouldn't have both T1 dps and guardian-level survivability.  That would be overpowered.  However, it is important that tanks be able to dps, since in order to have space on raids for several tnaks there will inevitably be times in which they are not tanking.  Personally I think they should give us handheld respec mirrors and let us spec for what we need to do halfway through a dungeon if necessary.</p>

[RafaelSmith]

<p><cite>Vinka@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Atavax311 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Vinka@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><ul><li>Give each fighter class a path to some sort of control immunity via AAs on the order of the crusader's fear immunity. There's enough options here to give something unique to each class. For example: monk:disarms, bruiser:target locks, guardian: knockback, zerker: root. Alternatively stun/stifle/mez/daze/etc. could be used. It doesn't really matter, to be honest, since such changes could be introduced with the new expansion and <em>content could be balanced with this in mind</em>. Give 1/6th of raid bosses a constant, extremely annoying disarm. Now this mob is best tanked by a monk! Make another one that clears targets and then locks them, and this one is best tanked by a bruiser. Some bosses could cast constant uncureable fears, in which case you'd want a paladin/sketc, etc. and you create a situation in which content can be used to make the tanks different and desireable in different situations. </li><li>Get rid of the avoidance lends for warriors and crusaders and replace them with survivability lends of different (stackable) types. For example, give warriors a mitigation lend that gives its target a high % chance to use the caster's mitigation instead of the targets. Such a lend could be placed on a squishy to help deal with physical AEs, OR on the brawlers during those fights in which they need to tank to help a brawlers survivability as much as our avoidance lends help plate tanks. Give the crusaders something else interesting--perhaps a healing lend (50% of incoming heals to the crusader are applied as a bonus to the target of the lend, including lifetaps and a paladin's heals). Make these buffs a huge increase in survivability, like the avoidance lends of brawlers are, and increase the difficulty of fights to compensate, so that they are balanced around a raid containing at least 3 tanks (one of each type) with two lends on the MT to help them survive.</li><li>With the new, expanded AA trees, differentiate different, clear paths that are oriented very strongly towards EITHER dps or survivability, instead of mixing the two together as they currently are in AA trees. This way a tank can spec for dps, or for tanking, and there are very strong tradeoffs between the two. This doesn't increase the differentiation between the different classes, but does increase the variation within an individual class, which is equally desireable. </li></ul></blockquote><p>i dont like the first suggestion because the class make-up for raids and groups is already demanding enough; they need to make no single class needed in an encounter, not make people have to switch out after every encounter because i new class is needed for the next.</p><p>i dont like the 2nd suggestion because once again, we dont need to make any more classes absolutely needed in raids.</p><p>i dont like the third suggestion because it would make respeccing a must. you shouldnt need to respect for every encounter depending on how hard it hits. you should be abel to change from high dps tp bad survivability to bad dps and high survivability and many steps between without having to respec.</p></blockquote><p>The first option could be altered slightly by assigning immunities to class PAIRS (brawlers, warriors, crusaders) instead of to the subclasses so that an ideal setup involves just 3 tanks, which is perfectly reasonable in terms of raid slots and leaves a fair bit of flexibility in terms of setups--there are eight different tank combinations possible that match the requirement of one of each class pair (Guard/SK/bruiser, Guard/Pal/bruiser, Guard/SK/monk, Guard/Pal/Monk, Zerk/SK/Bruiser, Zerk/Pal/Bruiser, Zerk/SK/Monk, Zerk/Pal/Monk) which is QUITE a bit of flexibility in terms of setup.</p><p>The second is equally true--3 raid slots for fighters is by no means unreasonable, and there are many potential setups that meet this requirement.</p><p>As for the third suggestion, frankly, we shouldn't have both T1 dps and guardian-level survivability. That would be overpowered. However, it is important that tanks be able to dps, since in order to have space on raids for several tnaks there will inevitably be times in which they are not tanking. Personally I think they should give us handheld respec mirrors and let us spec for what we need to do halfway through a dungeon if necessary.</p></blockquote><p>I am not too sure about this.  We already "can" DPS but we should never DPS enough to be brought on a raid for just DPS....There has to be a need or potential need for any fighter on a raid to have to tank something.......at which point whatever DPS we do is fine since that is not what we are there for.</p><p>Which brings us back to the whole discussion about fighters on raids.  They need to forget kludging up other things for fighters to do on raids and concentrate on ensuring all 6 are on a equal playing field when it comes to filling whatever tank slots may be required for a raid.   Anyone worth their salt that rolled a fighter did so because they wanted to tank and that is all that SOE needs to consider when balancing the archetype.</p><p>I don't agree with the sorta approach they are taking with Rogues/Summoners.  Taking something from one class and giving to another just so that the other now all the sudden feels raid worthy is cheap and lazy.  I surely do not want them to take that approach with Fighters.</p>

[Atavax311]

<p><cite>Vinka@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>The first option could be altered slightly by assigning immunities to class PAIRS (brawlers, warriors, crusaders) instead of to the subclasses so that an ideal setup involves just 3 tanks, which is perfectly reasonable in terms of raid slots and leaves a fair bit of flexibility in terms of setups--there are eight different tank combinations possible that match the requirement of one of each class pair (Guard/SK/bruiser, Guard/Pal/bruiser, Guard/SK/monk, Guard/Pal/Monk, Zerk/SK/Bruiser, Zerk/Pal/Bruiser, Zerk/SK/Monk, Zerk/Pal/Monk) which is QUITE a bit of flexibility in terms of setup.</p><p>The second is equally true--3 raid slots for fighters is by no means unreasonable, and there are many potential setups that meet this requirement.</p><p>As for the third suggestion, frankly, we shouldn't have both T1 dps and guardian-level survivability.  That would be overpowered.  However, it is important that tanks be able to dps, since in order to have space on raids for several tnaks there will inevitably be times in which they are not tanking.  Personally I think they should give us handheld respec mirrors and let us spec for what we need to do halfway through a dungeon if necessary.</p></blockquote><p>if you are so dead set on making classes required for raids, why not just make it mandatory to have one of every class and nothing more? making one warrior, one crusader, one brawler required doesnt add anything to game play and doesnt make classes balanced. it is just plain stupid. it just makes forming a raid with a propper make up even more of a paine in the butt. this game doesnt have a huge population that lets you have 20 options of competent players per class when you try to from a raid. you roll with the best people to can find with a make-up that works. what we should be striving for is to make that make-up loose by making classes balanced so that we can find a strong group easily.</p><p>as for the third suggestion, why do you insist on the change having to come from aa? you want tanks to be able to switch from between different lvls of survivability and dps; why do you need this to be an aa respec? if you have the abillity to change buffs,stances, and equipement inorder to accomplish it instead of respecs, how is one OP and one isnt? it isnt, making it so the change isnt through aa just makes it so that aa isnt trivialized into something like wow. where you respec every all the time, and it allows for a greater amount of customization instead of just 2 specs.</p>

[circusgirl]

<p>Actually, I don't believe it should be just AA at all.  I think whether a fighter is going for survivability or dps should be a mix of gear swaps (which requires making different gear for dps and tanking, not just one set of gear thats mediocre at both, which tends to be the trend for brawler itemization at least), stance swaps, and AA specs.  If you put on offensive gear, offensive spec, and offensive AAs, then you should be a sucky tank but quite decent dps, while if you're in defensive spec with offensive gear and spec you might pull middling numbers, and someone in defensive spec, gear, and stance should be solid as a rock.</p><p>Player choices should determine how far we go to either extreme, mixed and maxed as the individual prefers.</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Vinka@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Personally I think all tanks should have a kind of sliding scale between dps and survivability, so that we're all capable of pulling decent dps numbers when we aren't tanking, or when tanking trivial fights, but as more survivability is needed dps should drop significantly.  That way different tanks can at the very least differentiate ourselves based on how we choose to set ourselves up.  </p></blockquote><p>I've said this many times over already.</p><p>All tanks should be able to do the aggro portion of tanking regardless of content type.  Ie, all tanks should be able to control aggro on a ST vs AoE Targets.</p><p>We can differentiate them on how much of that control is via dps and how much is from threat generation.  A guardian might have little to no aoe dps with massive aoe taunt where an sk might have massive aoe dps with little aoe threat.</p><p>In the end, both tanks can do their job effectively.</p><p>One thing that needs to be addressed is the AoE dps classes dps potential on single targets.  With power being an unlimitted resource, the power consumption controls on ae dps abilities on st mobs is no longer a valid control mechanism.</p><p>What I think needs to happen is ae dps abilities need to be changed in that an aoe dd would hit for 500 x Y Number of targets hit, up to 12 targets.  So that AoE cast on a single target would do 500 dmg.  If it was cast on 12 mobs at one time, it would do 6000 damage to each mob.  The notion of doing a flat value to all mobs in essence unballances ae melee classes since in almost all cases an AE ability is still effective when cast on a single mob.  This is even true for some casters, but its particularly true of melee classes.</p>

[Aull]

<p><cite>Atavax311 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>i love the challenge of tanking ae content as a single target tank. i love the challenge. i dont mind other tanks having ae threat, but please dont suggest making all tanks ae tanks. guardians are not undesirable because of their lack of ae threat, they are undersirable because their lack of threat period. tank make-up imo should be, single target tanks, should have no problem and need no hate buffs to hold aggro on single targets from dps with around their lvl of gear. they should need hate buffs to hold ae aggro well with equally geared dps; they should need hate buffs to hold single target dps from superiorly geared dps; and they shouldnt be able to hold against superior dps in ae zones without the dps holding back and doing the dps of what dps geared like the tank would have to. and then with ae tanks, it should basically be the opposite, shouldnt need any hate buffs to hold ae encounters from dps in ae encounters with dps their own gear lvl, but need hate buffs to hold on single targets well, ect.</p><p> i think the Brawlers armor makes it unrealistic to make him as desirable a mt as the others, so i would want to make them the bards or the chanters of the fighter class. give him the utility where he is wanted in raids and then when an encounter requires another tank, he is in the raid and able to tank that add. and then in 6-man content capable of being either the tank or utility/dps/offtank.</p></blockquote><p>Sha-bang!! I agree and its a great post. The best players no matter what class they are playing are usually the ones who have been subjecting themselves to more challenging groups or least optimum group set ups for a given zone. I have a friend who tanks ae zones with his monk just for the challenge. With good group support they are successful.</p><p>Single target tanks in ae zones are situations where other players will either set up in their seat alittle higher and get off their a** and make it happen or the group will fail. Tougher situations are what makes novice players better. Ease mode really dosen't make great players.</p><p>I applaud all brawlers and guardians who are still taking the challenge. I would also say that if anyone wants to become better at their respective class to run zones with them and see what good you as a team can get done.</p><p>In order to play the hell out of a class and be good at it you must suffer hell to get there.</p><p>Most players however go for the ease mode to make things go faster.</p>

[Landiin]

<p><cite>Bruener wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>"What a GUARDIAN should be..."</p><p>SEEN but not HEARD. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/97ada74b88049a6d50a6ed40898a03d7.gif" border="0" /></p></blockquote><p>lol you made me lol u F'er..</p>

[Aull]

<p><cite>Gaylon@Mistmoore wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Vinka@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Atavax311 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Vinka@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><ul><li>Give each fighter class a path to some sort of control immunity via AAs on the order of the crusader's fear immunity. There's enough options here to give something unique to each class. For example: monk:disarms, bruiser:target locks, guardian: knockback, zerker: root. Alternatively stun/stifle/mez/daze/etc. could be used. It doesn't really matter, to be honest, since such changes could be introduced with the new expansion and <em>content could be balanced with this in mind</em>. Give 1/6th of raid bosses a constant, extremely annoying disarm. Now this mob is best tanked by a monk! Make another one that clears targets and then locks them, and this one is best tanked by a bruiser. Some bosses could cast constant uncureable fears, in which case you'd want a paladin/sketc, etc. and you create a situation in which content can be used to make the tanks different and desireable in different situations. </li><li>Get rid of the avoidance lends for warriors and crusaders and replace them with survivability lends of different (stackable) types. For example, give warriors a mitigation lend that gives its target a high % chance to use the caster's mitigation instead of the targets. Such a lend could be placed on a squishy to help deal with physical AEs, OR on the brawlers during those fights in which they need to tank to help a brawlers survivability as much as our avoidance lends help plate tanks. Give the crusaders something else interesting--perhaps a healing lend (50% of incoming heals to the crusader are applied as a bonus to the target of the lend, including lifetaps and a paladin's heals). Make these buffs a huge increase in survivability, like the avoidance lends of brawlers are, and increase the difficulty of fights to compensate, so that they are balanced around a raid containing at least 3 tanks (one of each type) with two lends on the MT to help them survive.</li><li>With the new, expanded AA trees, differentiate different, clear paths that are oriented very strongly towards EITHER dps or survivability, instead of mixing the two together as they currently are in AA trees. This way a tank can spec for dps, or for tanking, and there are very strong tradeoffs between the two. This doesn't increase the differentiation between the different classes, but does increase the variation within an individual class, which is equally desireable. </li></ul></blockquote><p>i dont like the first suggestion because the class make-up for raids and groups is already demanding enough; they need to make no single class needed in an encounter, not make people have to switch out after every encounter because i new class is needed for the next.</p><p>i dont like the 2nd suggestion because once again, we dont need to make any more classes absolutely needed in raids.</p><p>i dont like the third suggestion because it would make respeccing a must. you shouldnt need to respect for every encounter depending on how hard it hits. you should be abel to change from high dps tp bad survivability to bad dps and high survivability and many steps between without having to respec.</p></blockquote><p>The first option could be altered slightly by assigning immunities to class PAIRS (brawlers, warriors, crusaders) instead of to the subclasses so that an ideal setup involves just 3 tanks, which is perfectly reasonable in terms of raid slots and leaves a fair bit of flexibility in terms of setups--there are eight different tank combinations possible that match the requirement of one of each class pair (Guard/SK/bruiser, Guard/Pal/bruiser, Guard/SK/monk, Guard/Pal/Monk, Zerk/SK/Bruiser, Zerk/Pal/Bruiser, Zerk/SK/Monk, Zerk/Pal/Monk) which is QUITE a bit of flexibility in terms of setup.</p><p>The second is equally true--3 raid slots for fighters is by no means unreasonable, and there are many potential setups that meet this requirement.</p><p>As for the third suggestion, frankly, we shouldn't have both T1 dps and guardian-level survivability. That would be overpowered. However, it is important that tanks be able to dps, since in order to have space on raids for several tnaks there will inevitably be times in which they are not tanking. Personally I think they should give us handheld respec mirrors and let us spec for what we need to do halfway through a dungeon if necessary.</p></blockquote><p>I am not too sure about this.  We already "can" DPS but we should never DPS enough to be brought on a raid for just DPS....There has to be a need or potential need for any fighter on a raid to have to tank something.......at which point whatever DPS we do is fine since that is not what we are there for.</p><p>Which brings us back to the whole discussion about fighters on raids.  They need to forget kludging up other things for fighters to do on raids and concentrate on ensuring all 6 are on a equal playing field when it comes to filling whatever tank slots may be required for a raid.   Anyone worth their salt that rolled a fighter did so because they wanted to tank and that is all that SOE needs to consider when balancing the archetype.</p><p><span style="color: #00ff00; font-size: small;">I don't agree with the sorta approach they are taking with Rogues/Summoners.  Taking something from one class and giving to another just so that the other now all the sudden feels raid worthy is cheap and lazy.  I surely do not want them to take that approach with Fighters.</span></p></blockquote><p>I don't agree as well. Problem is if they actually go through with what they intend to do with rogues/summoners then who's to say that will not happen to other classes.</p>

[BChizzle]

<p><cite>Aull wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Atavax311 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>i love the challenge of tanking ae content as a single target tank. i love the challenge. i dont mind other tanks having ae threat, but please dont suggest making all tanks ae tanks. guardians are not undesirable because of their lack of ae threat, they are undersirable because their lack of threat period. tank make-up imo should be, single target tanks, should have no problem and need no hate buffs to hold aggro on single targets from dps with around their lvl of gear. they should need hate buffs to hold ae aggro well with equally geared dps; they should need hate buffs to hold single target dps from superiorly geared dps; and they shouldnt be able to hold against superior dps in ae zones without the dps holding back and doing the dps of what dps geared like the tank would have to. and then with ae tanks, it should basically be the opposite, shouldnt need any hate buffs to hold ae encounters from dps in ae encounters with dps their own gear lvl, but need hate buffs to hold on single targets well, ect.</p><p> i think the Brawlers armor makes it unrealistic to make him as desirable a mt as the others, so i would want to make them the bards or the chanters of the fighter class. give him the utility where he is wanted in raids and then when an encounter requires another tank, he is in the raid and able to tank that add. and then in 6-man content capable of being either the tank or utility/dps/offtank.</p></blockquote><p>Sha-bang!! I agree and its a great post. The best players no matter what class they are playing are usually the ones who have been subjecting themselves to more challenging groups or least optimum group set ups for a given zone. I have a friend who tanks ae zones with his monk just for the challenge. With good group support they are successful.</p><p>Single target tanks in ae zones are situations where other players will either set up in their seat alittle higher and get off their a** and make it happen or the group will fail. Tougher situations are what makes novice players better. Ease mode really dosen't make great players.</p><p>I applaud all brawlers and guardians who are still taking the challenge. I would also say that if anyone wants to become better at their respective class to run zones with them and see what good you as a team can get done.</p><p>In order to play the hell out of a class and be good at it you must suffer hell to get there.</p><p>Most players however go for the ease mode to make things go faster.</p></blockquote><p>The only thing I can really say for this is yes, the first time doing a ae target zone as a single target tank its cool, but after that it just becomes tedious and completely unfun.  So while you do get that reward of difficulty I think how difficult it is to hold ae agro as a single target tank needs to be scaled a little bit.</p>

[Atavax311]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I've said this many times over already.</p><p>All tanks should be able to do the aggro portion of tanking regardless of content type.  Ie, all tanks should be able to control aggro on a ST vs AoE Targets.</p><p>We can differentiate them on how much of that control is via dps and how much is from threat generation.  A guardian might have little to no aoe dps with massive aoe taunt where an sk might have massive aoe dps with little aoe threat.</p><p>In the end, both tanks can do their job effectively.</p><p>One thing that needs to be addressed is the AoE dps classes dps potential on single targets.  With power being an unlimitted resource, the power consumption controls on ae dps abilities on st mobs is no longer a valid control mechanism.</p><p>What I think needs to happen is ae dps abilities need to be changed in that an aoe dd would hit for 500 x Y Number of targets hit, up to 12 targets.  So that AoE cast on a single target would do 500 dmg.  If it was cast on 12 mobs at one time, it would do 6000 damage to each mob.  The notion of doing a flat value to all mobs in essence unballances ae melee classes since in almost all cases an AE ability is still effective when cast on a single mob.  This is even true for some casters, but its particularly true of melee classes.</p></blockquote><p>that would make every tank play the exact same. the only different would be the numbers you see yourself do. thats an aweful aweful idea. the st and ae tank are two very different styles of tanking. to get rid of st tanking is going to elminate the style, and is going to alienate just about every experianced tank in the game, but is also going to alienate people who roll cc classes.</p>

[therodge]

<p><cite>Atavax311 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I've said this many times over already.</p><p>All tanks should be able to do the aggro portion of tanking regardless of content type.  Ie, all tanks should be able to control aggro on a ST vs AoE Targets.</p><p>We can differentiate them on how much of that control is via dps and how much is from threat generation.  A guardian might have little to no aoe dps with massive aoe taunt where an sk might have massive aoe dps with little aoe threat.</p><p>In the end, both tanks can do their job effectively.</p><p>One thing that needs to be addressed is the AoE dps classes dps potential on single targets.  With power being an unlimitted resource, the power consumption controls on ae dps abilities on st mobs is no longer a valid control mechanism.</p><p>What I think needs to happen is ae dps abilities need to be changed in that an aoe dd would hit for 500 x Y Number of targets hit, up to 12 targets.  So that AoE cast on a single target would do 500 dmg.  If it was cast on 12 mobs at one time, it would do 6000 damage to each mob.  The notion of doing a flat value to all mobs in essence unballances ae melee classes since in almost all cases an AE ability is still effective when cast on a single mob.  This is even true for some casters, but its particularly true of melee classes.</p></blockquote><p>that would make every tank play the exact same. the only different would be the numbers you see yourself do. thats an aweful aweful idea. the st and ae tank are two very different styles of tanking. to get rid of st tanking is going to elminate the style, and is going to alienate just about every experianced tank in the game, but is also going to alienate people who roll cc classes.</p></blockquote><p>Acually that was the orignal vision of the game all tanks could do all content exsacally the same just useing diffrent tools to do so, this is balance nirvana, also every experienced player in the game knows cc is basically useless in the current system</p>

[Atavax311]

<p><cite>therodge wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Acually that was the orignal vision of the game all tanks could do all content exsacally the same just useing diffrent tools to do so, this is balance nirvana, also every experienced player in the game knows cc is basically useless in the current system</p></blockquote><p>you're saying the original version of the game was all tanks were ae tanks? in previous mmo's i've played, the original tank is typically the st tank, then people qq about not enough tanks, so they make ae tanks that are easy mode, so that the tank population will increase. most experianced tanks are used to the single target model. to get rid of the single target model is to alienate most experianced tanks.  but i agree that in its current version cc is faily useless; but that wasnt always the case.</p>

[Midsong]

<p><cite>Atavax311 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>therodge wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Acually that was the orignal vision of the game all tanks could do all content exsacally the same just useing diffrent tools to do so, this is balance nirvana, also every experienced player in the game knows cc is basically useless in the current system</p></blockquote><p>you're saying the original version of the game was all tanks were ae tanks? in previous mmo's i've played, the original tank is typically the st tank, then people qq about not enough tanks, so they make ae tanks that are easy mode, so that the tank population will increase. most experianced tanks are used to the single target model. to get rid of the single target model is to alienate most experianced tanks.  but i agree that in its current version cc is faily useless; but that wasnt always the case.</p></blockquote><p>Seems like you are talking directly about WoW in which case the warrior was an AoE tank at the games inception compared to the other two tanks (or not tanks since there was zero raid level gear and minor missing mechanisms mechanisms for years). Good warriors could hold 4-5 mobs on them at once. Paladins could hold one easy and druids a couple.</p><p>AoE tanks for the most part are not always easy mode from a class mechanics standpoint but easy mode through elimination of the interclass dependencies that single target tanks rely upon in the form of CC and in eq2 case threat transfers. Transfering tanks to AoE tanks is not just about raising tank populations but also about eliminating the need for their support classes or players that are actually capable of providing the support certain classes offer (like CC). It is certainly about making the game easier for better or for worse.</p>

[Atavax311]

<p><cite>Midsong wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Seems like you are talking directly about WoW in which case the warrior was an AoE tank at the games inception compared to the other two tanks (or not tanks since there was zero raid level gear and minor missing mechanisms mechanisms for years). Good warriors could hold 4-5 mobs on them at once. Paladins could hold one easy and druids a couple.</p><p>AoE tanks for the most part are not always easy mode from a class mechanics standpoint but easy mode through elimination of the interclass dependencies that single target tanks rely upon in the form of CC and in eq2 case threat transfers. Transfering tanks to AoE tanks is not just about raising tank populations but also about eliminating the need for their support classes or players that are actually capable of providing the support certain classes offer (like CC). It is certainly about making the game easier for better or for worse.</p></blockquote><p>single target tanks dont rely on a form of cc. and only rely on threat because of the big guardian nerf.</p>

[Midsong]

<p>Meh, above post changed.</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Atavax311 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I've said this many times over already.</p><p>All tanks should be able to do the aggro portion of tanking regardless of content type.  Ie, all tanks should be able to control aggro on a ST vs AoE Targets.</p></blockquote><p>that would make every tank play the exact same. the only different would be the numbers you see yourself do. thats an aweful aweful idea. the st and ae tank are two very different styles of tanking. to get rid of st tanking is going to elminate the style, and is going to alienate just about every experianced tank in the game, but is also going to alienate people who roll cc classes.</p></blockquote><p>The other sollution is to just remove ST tanks and only have AE tanks, as there just isn't a need for ST tanks with AE tanks can build just as much aggro on ST.</p>

[Atavax311]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>The other sollution is to just remove ST tanks and only have AE tanks, as there just isn't a need for ST tanks with AE tanks can build just as much aggro on ST.</p></blockquote><p>just because you are too stupid to see more then two solutions, doesnt mean there are only two solutions.</p>

[thial]

<p></p> <p>I say forget the ST vrs AE as the balance/distinguishable factor, It should be offensive vrs defensive(as it used to be just needed some tweaking not a overhaul)...Where each tank can hold there own but one does it via taunt and the other via dps but in the end it gets the job done. IMO the st vrs ae idea went out the window with the fighter update, correct me if I'm wrong but that was when it was first "officially" announced.. Thats not saying it wasn't apparent before it just wasn't a official form of balance or distinguishable factor.</p> <p>If it needs to be ST vrs AE than the AE tanks need to struggle vrs single target mobs just as the ST tanks struggle against the encounters one way to do this would to make it so that tank AE's will only take affect if there are 2 or more mobs. (awful idea I do admit but it's more balance than what we have currently)............or the ST tank should have enough AE agro to sustain an encounter (consistently) but the AE tank's AE's should out way the "ST" tanks AE agro allowing the AE tank to yank all mobs off the ST tank accept for the ST tanks main target, making it more obvious which tank will handle "ae" encounters better. Still a ST tank should be able to handle an encounter as a AE tank can handle a single mob...or nerf AoE dps across the board....or give all AoE dps a 19% hate transfer...</p> <p>Right now ST tanks suck for encounters but AE tanks can hold there own ST or AE it doesn't matter and there is no class defining skill that even remotely makes this fair or balanced.</p>

[Atavax311]

<p>its very simple. theres tanking where aggro isnt an issue and theres tanking where aggro is an issue. some people support having ae tanking where aggro isnt an isisue and claim that SOE supports this. if theres gonna be easy aggro for ae tanks; how can st tanks that have a certain minimum difficulty, still be a desirable class. there are two very obvious answers that dont involve eliminating the class or turning the class into an ae tank. you make the single target threat so high for single target tanks, that switching through targets allows aggro of ae encounters on par with ae tanks; and then the other solution is to make st more survivabile, to make it easier on the healers, if a st tank is tanking; or ofcoarse a mixture of these two solutions could also work. the obvious problem with the later is that if st tanks are easier to heal, they are gonna be the mt of choice and ae tanks are going to qq. so my question is when people rolled ae tanks, what were the hoping for? were they expecting to be raid main tanks? why would they think with the ease of aggro ae tanks have, that they wouldnt have to suffer any disadvantages compared to st tanks?</p>

[thial]

<p><cite>Atavax311 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p> you make the single target threat so high for single target tanks, that switching through targets allows aggro of ae encounters on par with ae tanks;</p><p><span style="color: #0000ff;">I don't want to be a tab bot and neither do the lazy assisting DPS that are used to the lazy assist tanks..</span></p><p>and then the other solution is to make st more survivabile, to make it easier on the healers,</p><p><span style="color: #0000ff;">Thats preaty much the way it is suposed to be now and it's failing</span></p></blockquote><p>Both those ideas are how it preaty much is now and it is just one epic fail so no its not as easy as you claim, sry to tell ya.</p>

[Atavax311]

<p><cite>Jdark@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Atavax311 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p> you make the single target threat so high for single target tanks, that switching through targets allows aggro of ae encounters on par with ae tanks;</p><p><span style="color: #0000ff;">I don't want to be a tab bot and neither do the lazy assisting DPS that are used to the lazy assist tanks..</span></p><p>and then the other solution is to make st more survivabile, to make it easier on the healers,</p><p><span style="color: #0000ff;">Thats preaty much the way it is suposed to be now and it's failing</span></p></blockquote><p>Both those ideas are how it preaty much is now and it is just one epic fail so no its not as easy as you claim, sry to tell ya.</p></blockquote><p>guardians are not easier to heal and they have inferior single target threat, let alone ae threat through single targets. and thats why its failing. they took away any advantage we had. crusaders have better death saves and comparable mitigation and avoidance. neither of those suggestions are being done. if SOE made guardians clearly have better survivability and better single target threat; i think the vast majority of Guardians would be happy. thats not the case.</p>

[thial]

<p>If soe was to actaully deploy that idea correctly than yea it could work. But the way soe is making this game is so that all tanks can MT raids and heroic content so unless the AE tanks can accept that they are inferior as far as surviability when it comes to raid encounters than the single raid MT can not exist.</p>

[Atavax311]

<p><cite>Jdark@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>If soe was to actaully deploy that idea correctly than yea it could work. But the way soe is making this game is so that all tanks can MT raids and heroic content so unless the AE tanks can accept that they are inferior when it comes to raid encounters than the single raid MT can not exist.</p></blockquote><p> what did people have in mind when they rolled AE tanks? that they would have equal survivability to the single target tanks, and have equal single target threat, and be totally overpowered? no. they assumed from the start that they would be lesser main tanks, that they wouldnt have the guardian's survivability. also, its very doable to make guardians clearly have better survivability, and yet make it so all plate tanks can mt, without making it easy on the healers.</p>

[Atavax311]

<p>just double the cooldown on every ae tank's death saves; halve the cooldown of every st tank's death saves, and remove shield penalty from tos so they dont go through 20 shields in an hour; and buff guardian single target threat so that its not inferior to ae tank's single target threat, and you've got class balance, while both ae and st tanks can mt raids. see how easy that is?</p>

[Atavax311]

<p><cite>BChizzle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite></cite></p><p>The only thing I can really say for this is yes, the first time doing a ae target zone as a single target tank its cool, but after that it just becomes tedious and completely unfun.  So while you do get that reward of difficulty I think how difficult it is to hold ae agro as a single target tank needs to be scaled a little bit.</p></blockquote><p>i have tanked many ae zones. and it can get tedious, but i think that mostly happens with bad players. when i group with competent players its fun. it can be alittle demanding, and i definately couldnt tank for extremly long stretches in just ae zones. i also think that if Guardians were buffed in survivabilty, they would become people common and more dps would become more adept at how to work with a guardian in ae zones.</p>

[Rahatmattata]

<p>Threat control should be relatively equal among all fighters.</p><p>Fighters should be balanced around dps, survivability, solo ability, and utility (and possibly pvp). Since having the most survivabilty is key to playing a tank (leaving threat control out of it), then survivability should weigh more than other capabilities.</p><p>So...</p><p>Low dps, high survivability & high dps, low survivabilty.</p><p>DPS can further be balanced between aoe and single target, as is already done with sorcerers, predators, and rogues back in the day.</p><p>Naturally the higher dps lower survivability tank should be better at soloing and pvp.</p><p>If guardians had highest survivability, which they should, then they should have the least dps, the least solo ability, and the least utility, which they do.</p><p>If bruisers had the lowest survivability, they should have the most dps, best soloing, and medium utility.</p><p>If paladin had medium survivability, they should have medium dps, medium soloing, and high utility.</p><p>The differences in capability don't have to be large, but it would give each fighter a specific playstyle. If you want to be pure tank, pick guard. If you want to do a lot of aoe dps and mass pull be a zerker. That's the way it used to be, and SOE should take it back to that.</p><p>The only other option is to make all tanks have the same threat control, the same survivability, the same dps, the same amount of utility... to make all fighters precisly equal in every way, and try to make them all different at the same time. Well I shouldn't say the only other option... because there is also the option of leaving things retardedly unbalanced, which SOE does seem to favor that option.</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Atavax311 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p> what did people have in mind when they rolled AE tanks?</p></blockquote><p>That would depend entirely on the date they rolled them.</p><p>Since TSO, they rolled AE tanks to MT.</p><p>I'm not sure its a valid question to ask in terms of what balancing needs to happen for tanks.</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Atavax311 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>just because you are too stupid to see more then two solutions, doesnt mean there are only two solutions.</p></blockquote><p>I'm still waiting for the alternate sollution to be proposed that actually holds water.</p><p>Fact is, all tanks need to be capable of doing thier primary role.  A tank that lacks aggro tools for any content type in the game is a tank that is only situational.  Situational tanks could be ok, if you could actually say an AE tank would be as inefective on ST mobs as a ST tank is on multiple mobs.  I don't suggest this sollution as I don't see with current mechanics that you could get it to work that way.  I also don't favor making tank classes that situational.</p><p>Instead, I said make all tanks capable of generating aggro for all content types.  You turn around and call me stupid for suggesting it, then you turn around and say make ST aggro so high that they can tab build aggro on many mobs.  So you turned around and suggested exactly what I was suggesting.  Doesn't matter if the ae aggro from ST is generated via ae taunts and no dps as I first suggested, or via such insane single target generation that they can tab that around if the net result is aggro control in both situations.   My point is the ability to impact aggro in a meaningful manner on both content types needs to be in every tanks arsinal, exactly how they accomplish it should be different between each class.  Just as how they mitigate damage and how they increase thier survivability should be different between each fighter.</p><p>I don't particularly like your model for ST aggro potential for being so high it could be shifted to maintain 3+ mobs.  The reason being, on single mobs you would just go to sleep and tank.</p>

[Bruener]

<p>Its funny because I just read thread after thread about how it "should be"...and most of the time you guys are listing how it actually is.  For those that don't think Guards have the edge survivability-wise you guys really need to wake up.  Guards have the most abilities to soak damage and they are all on faster recasts...that is their edge.  That is the reason that 90%+ of raiding guilds still use Guards as MTs.  If it was any other way or if the gap was so small not to notice it than Guilds would use other tanks as MTs...Guilds progress and they use the best at the job, period, so stop deluding yourselves that everybody has the damage soaking capabilities of a Guard.  Furthermore, Guard ST mob control is better than anybody elses.  Again see having the most snaps with the shorter recast.  Maybe they don't have the "best" all out agro but that is not what control is about...not since just about every mob can mem-wipe in this game.</p><p>To the one asking what AE tanks thought when they rolled a tank...well when I rolled my SK at launch there was no idea of AE v ST.  There was the idea of offensive v defensive...something that fails since raids will always use defensive tanks to tank and DPS classes to DPS.  So to help balance things it was the idea of AE v ST.  AE tanks were the offensive tanks and could hold a lot of mobs a lot easier than ST tanks (although SKs lacked quite a bit in this department compared to the other AE tanks).  An AE tank needs to be able to hold agro extremely well on all mobs, and if they made it so they couldn't control ST mobs well than nobody would use AE tanks for anything except the very few fights that have AE mobs, and even then burning through the adds would cause a lot of trouble for the raid.</p><p>Personally I think it should move to DPS based v Taunt based tanks.  The DPS based tanks being the AE tanks and the Taunt based tanks being the ST tanks.  (I talk about plate tanks btw here, Brawlers completely different beast and I really don't want to go there since Brawlers can't even decide what they want.)  So you have the DPS based tanks being the AE/offensive tanks that hold agro through DPS and you have the Taunt based tanks being the ST/defensive tanks.  It would mean giving defensive tanks stronger taunts for AE, but not going to do the job that DPS could do.</p>

[Landiin]

<p><cite>Bruener wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Its funny because I just read thread after thread about how it "should be"...and most of the time you guys are listing how it actually is.  For those that don't think Guards have the edge survivability-wise you guys really need to wake up.  Guards have the most abilities to soak damage and they are all on faster recasts...that is their edge.  That is the reason that 90%+ of raiding guilds still use Guards as MTs.  If it was any other way or if the gap was so small not to notice it than Guilds would use other tanks as MTs...Guilds progress and they use the best at the job, period, so stop deluding yourselves that everybody has the damage soaking capabilities of a Guard.  Furthermore, Guard ST mob control is better than anybody elses.  Again see having the most snaps with the shorter recast.  Maybe they don't have the "best" all out agro but that is not what control is about...not since just about every mob can mem-wipe in this game.</p></blockquote><p>You are correct guards do have the edge on survivability but it so small it don't really matter on 99% of all raid content. Poorly skilled SK's may have trouble but the ones I know tank things just as well as I do if not better with all the deaths saves you guys get and 100% aggro lock.</p>

[Atavax311]

<p>the only time when guardians have better survivability is when we're in defensive stance. inwhich case, our single target threat is a tiny fraction of all other tank's threat. even in defensive stance, our survivability is sometimes inferior to that of crusdaders depending on the encounter.</p><p>as for guardians as main tanks. i imagine most guilds arent going to throw away some main tank with loads of experiance for some newb that hasnt main tanked a day in his life. especially when at any moment the newb's class could get nerfed, and at any moment the guardian's class could get buffed.</p>

[Atavax311]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Atavax311 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>just because you are too stupid to see more then two solutions, doesnt mean there are only two solutions.</p></blockquote><p>I'm still waiting for the alternate sollution to be proposed that actually holds water.</p><p>Fact is, all tanks need to be capable of doing thier primary role.  A tank that lacks aggro tools for any content type in the game is a tank that is only situational.  Situational tanks could be ok, if you could actually say an AE tank would be as inefective on ST mobs as a ST tank is on multiple mobs.  I don't suggest this sollution as I don't see with current mechanics that you could get it to work that way.  I also don't favor making tank classes that situational.</p><p>Instead, I said make all tanks capable of generating aggro for all content types.  You turn around and call me stupid for suggesting it, then you turn around and say make ST aggro so high that they can tab build aggro on many mobs.  So you turned around and suggested exactly what I was suggesting.  Doesn't matter if the ae aggro from ST is generated via ae taunts and no dps as I first suggested, or via such insane single target generation that they can tab that around if the net result is aggro control in both situations.   My point is the ability to impact aggro in a meaningful manner on both content types needs to be in every tanks arsinal, exactly how they accomplish it should be different between each class.  Just as how they mitigate damage and how they increase thier survivability should be different between each fighter.</p><p>I don't particularly like your model for ST aggro potential for being so high it could be shifted to maintain 3+ mobs.  The reason being, on single mobs you would just go to sleep and tank.</p></blockquote><p>st tanks would be capable of generating aggro for any content if they had more single target threat.</p><p>and you suggesting making all tanks ae tanks, and thats why i called you stupid. i did not suggest the same thing that you did.</p><p>"<span >We can differentiate them on how much of that control is via dps and how much is from threat generation.  A guardian might have little to no aoe dps with massive aoe taunt where an sk might have massive aoe dps with little aoe threat." </span></p><p>that sound familiar? you said it.</p>

[Bruener]

<p><cite>Toran@Oasis wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Bruener wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Its funny because I just read thread after thread about how it "should be"...and most of the time you guys are listing how it actually is.  For those that don't think Guards have the edge survivability-wise you guys really need to wake up.  Guards have the most abilities to soak damage and they are all on faster recasts...that is their edge.  That is the reason that 90%+ of raiding guilds still use Guards as MTs.  If it was any other way or if the gap was so small not to notice it than Guilds would use other tanks as MTs...Guilds progress and they use the best at the job, period, so stop deluding yourselves that everybody has the damage soaking capabilities of a Guard.  Furthermore, Guard ST mob control is better than anybody elses.  Again see having the most snaps with the shorter recast.  Maybe they don't have the "best" all out agro but that is not what control is about...not since just about every mob can mem-wipe in this game.</p></blockquote><p>You are correct guards do have the edge on survivability but it so small it don't really matter on 99% of all raid content. Poorly skilled SK's may have trouble but the ones I know tank things just as well as I do if not better with all the deaths saves you guys get and 100% aggro lock.</p></blockquote><p>See, the numbers do not support this at all.  I am sorry but you Guards that are "having trouble" are not correct.  If SKs could do it better for 99% of the content than SKs would be MT 99% of the time.  Its simple, raids adjust to the encounters and use the best people for the job through progression.  It just is not happening and there is tons of support by the use of guild rosters and what raid guilds are using for MTs to show you wrong.  People don't just stick with a certain class because they were good in the past.  They change and 9 months into an expansion rosters are easily adjusted to show the difference.  Example, look at the lack of Brawlers and Necro's on raids at the moment because raids adjusted their rosters.  Look at the amount of Chanters and Bards on raids atm because people adjusted their rosters.</p><p>The edge on survivability is large enough to make a difference throughout the entire raid scene.  I would suggest concentrating on your own skills and strengths since you obviously aren't making the difference you should.</p><p>Group level, well that is an entirely different ball game.  As somebody mentioned earlier if you rolled up a Guard not hoping to MT than you are going to be disappointed...just like if you rolled up a Crusader or Zerker expecting to MT you will be disappointed.</p>

[RafaelSmith]

<p><cite>Bruener wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Toran@Oasis wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Bruener wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Its funny because I just read thread after thread about how it "should be"...and most of the time you guys are listing how it actually is. For those that don't think Guards have the edge survivability-wise you guys really need to wake up. Guards have the most abilities to soak damage and they are all on faster recasts...that is their edge. That is the reason that 90%+ of raiding guilds still use Guards as MTs. If it was any other way or if the gap was so small not to notice it than Guilds would use other tanks as MTs...Guilds progress and they use the best at the job, period, so stop deluding yourselves that everybody has the damage soaking capabilities of a Guard. Furthermore, Guard ST mob control is better than anybody elses. Again see having the most snaps with the shorter recast. Maybe they don't have the "best" all out agro but that is not what control is about...not since just about every mob can mem-wipe in this game.</p></blockquote><p>You are correct guards do have the edge on survivability but it so small it don't really matter on 99% of all raid content. Poorly skilled SK's may have trouble but the ones I know tank things just as well as I do if not better with all the deaths saves you guys get and 100% aggro lock.</p></blockquote><p>See, the numbers do not support this at all. I am sorry but you Guards that are "having trouble" are not correct. If SKs could do it better for 99% of the content than SKs would be MT 99% of the time. Its simple, raids adjust to the encounters and use the best people for the job through progression. It just is not happening and there is tons of support by the use of guild rosters and what raid guilds are using for MTs to show you wrong. People don't just stick with a certain class because they were good in the past. They change and 9 months into an expansion rosters are easily adjusted to show the difference. Example, look at the lack of Brawlers and Necro's on raids at the moment because raids adjusted their rosters. Look at the amount of Chanters and Bards on raids atm because people adjusted their rosters.</p><p>The edge on survivability is large enough to make a difference throughout the entire raid scene. I would suggest concentrating on your own skills and strengths since you obviously aren't making the difference you should.</p><p>Group level, well that is an entirely different ball game. As somebody mentioned earlier if you rolled up a Guard not hoping to MT than you are going to be disappointed...just like if you rolled up a Crusader or Zerker expecting to MT you will be disappointed.</p></blockquote><p>Ok but those numbers you are looking at only represent a small fraction of the player base.   I am not just talking about Raiding -vs- Grouping........it goes beyond that.....its between top-geared raiding -vs- everyone else.</p><p>Mid-tier raiding.....low-tier raiding.....grouping.....thats where the obviously broken mechanics show....and where its clear which fighters are not balanced and which are frankly 'OP' given what they can do with minimal experience and minimal gear. Ive witnessed 'lowbie' SKs lock aggro against well geard, top parsing DPS classes....thats broken.</p><p>Honestly in raid the problems I have have nothing to do with my class whatsover......it has to do with the fact my raidforce lacks the proper roster to support a Guard as MT.  Thats mostly our fault...not the games.</p><p>But while you may care less about anything happening outside of top-geared raid players.......most peope do.</p><p>Outside of well formed raiding.....I as a Guard have to give every tiny bit of that so called 'advantage' you keep throwing out and even still I am lucky to achieve a fraction of what a SK in far less gear and with far less experience can in terms of perfoming that tanks #1 job.....KEEP THE AGGRO.</p><p>We understand you being defensive anytime discussions like this happen.....its a natural reaction.</p>

[Aull]

<p><cite>Rahatmattata wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Threat control should be relatively equal among all fighters.</p><p>Fighters should be balanced around dps, survivability, solo ability, and utility (and possibly pvp). Since having the most survivabilty is key to playing a tank (leaving threat control out of it), then survivability should weigh more than other capabilities.</p><p>So...</p><p><span style="color: #00ff00; font-size: small;">Low dps, high survivability & high dps, low survivabilty.</span></p><p><span style="color: #00ff00; font-size: small;">DPS can further be balanced between aoe and single target, as is already done with sorcerers, predators, and rogues back in the day.</span></p><p><span style="color: #00ff00; font-size: small;">Naturally the higher dps lower survivability tank should be better at soloing and pvp.</span></p><p><span style="color: #00ff00; font-size: small;">If guardians had highest survivability, which they should, then they should have the least dps, the least solo ability, and the least utility, which they do.</span></p><p><span style="color: #00ff00; font-size: small;">If bruisers had the lowest survivability, they should have the most dps, best soloing, and medium utility.</span></p><p><span style="color: #00ff00; font-size: small;">If paladin had medium survivability, they should have medium dps, medium soloing, and high utility.</span></p><p><span style="color: #00ff00; font-size: small;"> </span></p><p>The differences in capability don't have to be large, but it would give each fighter a specific playstyle. <span style="color: #00ff00; font-size: small;">If you want to be pure tank, pick guard. If you want to do a lot of aoe dps and mass pull be a zerker. <span style="color: #ff0000;">That's the way it used to be, and SOE should take it back to that.</span></span></p><p>The only other option is to make all tanks have the same threat control, the same survivability, the same dps, the same amount of utility... to make all fighters precisly equal in every way, and try to make them all different at the same time. Well I shouldn't say the only other option... because there is also the option of leaving things retardedly unbalanced, which SOE does seem to favor that option.</p></blockquote><p>I think that it should be as you have described and this in turn allows for individuality. If soe makes all six tanks equal in all departments then the game will loose its luster.</p><p>A big "Amen" to your post!</p>

[Bruener]

<p>Agro control while not dying is the number 1 job.  And unless you are an under-geared Guard in your raid-force this is something that they do the best on STs.  And yes I am defensive, because I see it.  Similar geared players in raid content are going to have an easier time keeping a Guard up.  Mid-tier raiding DPS is doing less DPS and healers are doing less healing so Guards work well still.  The only time you have a problem is like I said, when as a Guard you are under-geared or the raid-force is well beyond the capibilities of the current zone...example being if you have a descent set up raid force with close to max AAs raiding Thuuga or something.</p><p>Yes I am defensive when it comes to the bogus arguments b/c numbers don't lie.  Group play is a completely different ball game and if you want help specifically in that department than the argument needs to be laid out that way, but if it comes to OP'ing Guards again than I am against it because they had it way too good for way too long.</p><p>The fact is that Guards still are the number 1 choice in the duty that they are designed for.  Maybe minor tweaks here and there, but honestly things are working much better than a lot of you posting here make it sound.</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Atavax311 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>st tanks would be capable of generating aggro for any content if they had more single target threat.</p><p>and you suggesting making all tanks ae tanks, and thats why i called you stupid. i did not suggest the same thing that you did.</p><p>"<span>We can differentiate them on how much of that control is via dps and how much is from threat generation.  A guardian might have little to no aoe dps with massive aoe taunt where an sk might have massive aoe dps with little aoe threat." </span></p><p>that sound familiar? you said it.</p></blockquote><p>Yes I did, and what is the difference if you can build hate on 4 mobs with a single ability that is 100% threat and no dps, or have such ludicrous st hate generation you can tab shift and keep aggro on 4 mobs?   Your still controlling aggro of 4 mobs, your just haggling over the details of the ability.</p><p>Again, if ST aggro generation is a high as you suggest to make this possible, it would turn all single target boss fights into something far too trivial,  I don't feel its the best answer.</p><p>Some cry ability that generates hate over time in area of effect that is then suplimented with target swapping I think is a much more reasonable sollution for the guards.  Zerkers would have a cry with a dps component and some hate, sk's might have an aoe dps ability with a tiny amount of hate, and paladins could honestly stay mostly the same using different amends targets for their 'cry' ability.</p><p>In effect, all 4 plate tanks can then tank any heroic content reasonably, they all have tools they can min/max for raid tanking, and they are all still distinct in playstyle and how they approach those roles.</p><p>In regards to other posters, I don't agree that Guard is still the best choice for the MT role they were designed for.  We have an equally geared SK, and he is a far better choice for most of the content we play.  Simply put his aggro potential allows for things to die faster.  Dieing faster makes encounters easier, and his bloodletter, riposte, and being paired with good healers is enough to kill any mob we currently kill.</p><p>Had he been equally geared when TSO launched, we'd have retired the guard from MT much earlier.</p>

[RafaelSmith]

<p><cite>Bruener wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Agro control while not dying is the number 1 job. And unless you are an under-geared Guard in your raid-force this is something that they do the best on STs. And yes I am defensive, because I see it. Similar geared players in raid content are going to have an easier time keeping a Guard up. Mid-tier raiding DPS is doing less DPS and healers are doing less healing so Guards work well still. The only time you have a problem is like I said, when as a Guard you are under-geared or the raid-force is well beyond the capibilities of the current zone...example being if you have a descent set up raid force with close to max AAs raiding Thuuga or something.</p><p>Yes I am defensive when it comes to the bogus arguments b/c numbers don't lie. Group play is a completely different ball game and if you want help specifically in that department than the argument needs to be laid out that way, but if it comes to OP'ing Guards again than I am against it because they had it way too good for way too long.</p><p>The fact is that Guards still are the number 1 choice in the duty that they are designed for. Maybe minor tweaks here and there, but honestly things are working much better than a lot of you posting here make it sound.</p></blockquote><p>Well I actually do agree that the problems are not has as "big" as reading some of these discussions might indicate......or mroe specifically how SOE seems to think considering the sledgehammer overeaction that was the scrapped fighter revamp.</p><p>There are countless minor tweaks and there that I believe would greatly help Guards in areas of gamplay many currently find theirselves in. </p><p>That said....I try as best I can to look at the whole picture.....every aspect of the game and ever aspect of what I think makes a tank a tank.  As much as I hate calling for negative adjustments.......the simple truth is SKs need to some minor adjustements as well.   The ease by which SKs even new undergeared ones can pump out aggro and lock down encounters even grouped with much better geared and higher DPS classes.  Its having a negative impact on everything else.....Ive seen it on my Guard and now on my Assassin.......DPS classes are being spoiled which is manifesting itself negatively on raids where all the sudden no matter what MT you have......you have to play smartly and manage your aggro.   Ive lost count how many times ive ended up having to MT for people that have always run with a SK and they simply don't know what to do..get [Removed for Content] because they die or they can't burn up the parse with ease.....or get mad because I am actually haveing to pull slowy and carefully because I need to minimize the # of mobs.</p><p>You don't want Guards made OP......despite what you want to believe neither do I.</p><p>I want a fair level playing field where if I suck and dont have the gear or knowledge then I fail no matter what tank class I may be playing.</p>

[Atavax311]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Yes I did, and what is the difference if you can build hate on 4 mobs with a single ability that is 100% threat and no dps, or have such ludicrous st hate generation you can tab shift and keep aggro on 4 mobs?   Your still controlling aggro of 4 mobs, your just haggling over the details of the ability.</p><p>Again, if ST aggro generation is a high as you suggest to make this possible, it would turn all single target boss fights into something far too trivial,  I don't feel its the best answer.</p><p>Some cry ability that generates hate over time in area of effect that is then suplimented with target swapping I think is a much more reasonable sollution for the guards.  Zerkers would have a cry with a dps component and some hate, sk's might have an aoe dps ability with a tiny amount of hate, and paladins could honestly stay mostly the same using different amends targets for their 'cry' ability.</p><p>In effect, all 4 plate tanks can then tank any heroic content reasonably, they all have tools they can min/max for raid tanking, and they are all still distinct in playstyle and how they approach those roles.</p><p>In regards to other posters, I don't agree that Guard is still the best choice for the MT role they were designed for.  We have an equally geared SK, and he is a far better choice for most of the content we play.  Simply put his aggro potential allows for things to die faster.  Dieing faster makes encounters easier, and his bloodletter, riposte, and being paired with good healers is enough to kill any mob we currently kill.</p><p>Had he been equally geared when TSO launched, we'd have retired the guard from MT much earlier.</p></blockquote><p>there is no content any tank can not tank. st tanks can tank ae areas. the differance between st and ae tanks is not what they tank, but how they tank. one relies mostly on single target abilities the other relies mostly on ae abilities.  i have tanked coa befallen, guk1, guk2, pof, no problem. never attempted guk3, never had a reason to, but im sure i could tank that if i had a good group.</p>

[RafaelSmith]

<p><cite>Atavax311 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Yes I did, and what is the difference if you can build hate on 4 mobs with a single ability that is 100% threat and no dps, or have such ludicrous st hate generation you can tab shift and keep aggro on 4 mobs? Your still controlling aggro of 4 mobs, your just haggling over the details of the ability.</p><p>Again, if ST aggro generation is a high as you suggest to make this possible, it would turn all single target boss fights into something far too trivial, I don't feel its the best answer.</p><p>Some cry ability that generates hate over time in area of effect that is then suplimented with target swapping I think is a much more reasonable sollution for the guards. Zerkers would have a cry with a dps component and some hate, sk's might have an aoe dps ability with a tiny amount of hate, and paladins could honestly stay mostly the same using different amends targets for their 'cry' ability.</p><p>In effect, all 4 plate tanks can then tank any heroic content reasonably, they all have tools they can min/max for raid tanking, and they are all still distinct in playstyle and how they approach those roles.</p><p>In regards to other posters, I don't agree that Guard is still the best choice for the MT role they were designed for. We have an equally geared SK, and he is a far better choice for most of the content we play. Simply put his aggro potential allows for things to die faster. Dieing faster makes encounters easier, and his bloodletter, riposte, and being paired with good healers is enough to kill any mob we currently kill.</p><p>Had he been equally geared when TSO launched, we'd have retired the guard from MT much earlier.</p></blockquote><p>there is no content any tank can not tank. st tanks can tank ae areas. the differance between st and ae tanks is not what they tank, but how they tank. one relies mostly on single target abilities the other relies mostly on ae abilities. i have tanked coa befallen, guk1, guk2, pof, no problem. never attempted guk3, never had a reason to, but im sure i could tank that if i had a good group.</p></blockquote><p>Curious.......would you agree that as Guard wanting to take a group to a zone like Guk3...or even CoA befallen.......you have to be way more careful about what classes you bring with you? </p><p>I ask because that is the dilema I face everyday in game.  While it may not be an issue in a large top-geared guild that has available a good roster of classes......it is for mine.   While our SK likes to maximize his groups he does have the luxury of being abel to do just about any TSO instance outthere without really be anywhere near as careful about group construction.</p><p>It makes a huge difference in the 'enjoyment' of the game.</p>

[Atavax311]

<p><cite>Gaylon@Mistmoore wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Curious.......would you agree that as Guard wanting to take a group to a zone like Guk3...or even CoA befallen.......you have to be way more careful about what classes you bring with you? </p><p>I ask because that is the dilema I face everyday in game.  While it may not be an issue in a large top-geared guild that has available a good roster of classes......it is for mine.   While our SK likes to maximize his groups he does have the luxury of being abel to do just about any TSO instance outthere without really be anywhere near as careful about group construction.</p><p>It makes a huge difference in the 'enjoyment' of the game.</p></blockquote><p>in every zone i do, i have to be fairly concious of the make-up i make. but for ae zones im alittle more picky. basically, you want a bard, and a chanter. and then basically depending on your confidence with the zone, you decide what other dps to let in too. for example, my first run of guk2 ever, i decided to have a fairly conservative group, i had a corc, illy, troub, templar, and defiler; it went very smoothly despite me having no experiance in the zone; a healer said it was the easiest he ever saw it done, ect. it wasnt the fastest clearing of the zone, wasnt at a snails pace either. you gotta accept your first clearing of these zones arent going to be super fast  but once you're familiar with the zone, you might be able to get away with high dps using a warlock or wiz or summoner, ect. like coa befallen im happy as long as i have a chanter and a bard.</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite></cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Atavax311 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>there is no content any tank can not tank. st tanks can tank ae areas. the differance between st and ae tanks is not what they tank, but how they tank. one relies mostly on single target abilities the other relies mostly on ae abilities. i have tanked coa befallen, guk1, guk2, pof, no problem. never attempted guk3, never had a reason to, but im sure i could tank that if i had a good group.</p></blockquote></blockquote><p>Group your guard with 2 ranger, warlock, illy and a mystic all similarly geared and see how well you handle aggro.  It can be done if all these players accomidate the weaknesses inherent to your class, or they can get a crusader and go all out.</p><p>Which boils down to why ever bring a guard to a heroic zone if you have a crusader as an option?</p><p>You can expand that to WoE as well.  A mediocre sk can single tank this zone, it takes a very well geared guard to do the same, and even then, its going to require group/raid built around thier deficiencies where an sk in t2 gear, 3-4 healers and any dps mix you like can trivially complete it.</p><p>Then expand to something easy like the first 2 x4 in ToMC, bring just a guard and have aoe dps go all out on the 3 mob pulls, see how well that works for you.   Then try the same with a crusader.  The difference in the gear and group makeup to make each of these happen are large.</p><p>Now, a similarly geared sk can do all of these things with little skill.  A ST tank requires much gear and skill to attempt the same thing, so why exactly roll a ST tank under this system?</p>

[RafaelSmith]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite></cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Atavax311 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>there is no content any tank can not tank. st tanks can tank ae areas. the differance between st and ae tanks is not what they tank, but how they tank. one relies mostly on single target abilities the other relies mostly on ae abilities. i have tanked coa befallen, guk1, guk2, pof, no problem. never attempted guk3, never had a reason to, but im sure i could tank that if i had a good group.</p></blockquote></blockquote><p>Group your guard with 2 ranger, warlock, illy and a mystic all similarly geared and see how well you handle aggro. It can be done if all these players accomidate the weaknesses inherent to your class, or they can get a crusader and go all out.</p><p>Which boils down to why ever bring a guard to a heroic zone if you have a crusader as an option?</p><p>You can expand that to WoE as well. A mediocre sk can single tank this zone, it takes a very well geared guard to do the same, and even then, its going to require group/raid built around thier deficiencies where an sk in t2 gear, 3-4 healers and any dps mix you like can trivially complete it.</p><p>Then expand to something easy like the first 2 x4 in ToMC, bring just a guard and have aoe dps go all out on the 3 mob pulls, see how well that works for you. Then try the same with a crusader. The difference in the gear and group makeup to make each of these happen are large.</p><p>Now, a similarly geared sk can do all of these things with little skill. A ST tank requires much gear and skill to attempt the same thing, so why exactly roll a ST tank under this system?</p></blockquote><p>Wow its like reading my daily EQ2 diary. =P</p>

[Atavax311]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite></cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Atavax311 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>there is no content any tank can not tank. st tanks can tank ae areas. the differance between st and ae tanks is not what they tank, but how they tank. one relies mostly on single target abilities the other relies mostly on ae abilities. i have tanked coa befallen, guk1, guk2, pof, no problem. never attempted guk3, never had a reason to, but im sure i could tank that if i had a good group.</p></blockquote></blockquote><p>Group your guard with 2 ranger, warlock, illy and a mystic all similarly geared and see how well you handle aggro.  It can be done if all these players accomidate the weaknesses inherent to your class, or they can get a crusader and go all out.</p><p>Which boils down to why ever bring a guard to a heroic zone if you have a crusader as an option?</p><p>You can expand that to WoE as well.  A mediocre sk can single tank this zone, it takes a very well geared guard to do the same, and even then, its going to require group/raid built around thier deficiencies where an sk in t2 gear, 3-4 healers and any dps mix you like can trivially complete it.</p><p>Then expand to something easy like the first 2 x4 in ToMC, bring just a guard and have aoe dps go all out on the 3 mob pulls, see how well that works for you.   Then try the same with a crusader.  The difference in the gear and group makeup to make each of these happen are large.</p><p>Now, a similarly geared sk can do all of these things with little skill.  A ST tank requires much gear and skill to attempt the same thing, so why exactly roll a ST tank under this system?</p></blockquote><p>"why ever bring a guard to a heroic zone if you have a crusader as an option?"</p><p>in the current form, there isnt much reasons to bring them; basically because the average guardian is more experianced and competent then the average sk.  or for the challenge of grouping with a guardian, and experiance tanking with a guardian because most raids still use guardians as main tanks because of their experiance. if ae and st tanks were resonably balanced there would be other reasons, higher single target threat would mean faster burns for most bosses; and better survivability means the healers have to do less work.</p><p>"A ST tank requires much gear and skill to attempt the same thing, so why exactly roll a ST tank under this system?"</p><p>if you are trying to complete a zone with as little effort as possible, or as quickly as possible, i agree, in its current form, there is little reason to roll a st tank. however, for the pure fun of tanking, the st is much more involved. i would compare st and ae tanking to manual and automatic transmission in cars. if tanking or driving is simply to get from point A to point B, then AE and automatic is the way to go. If you're driving or tanking inorder to drive or tank, manual and st are superior. making the guardian AE, is like making the mustang autmatic only; you're going to alienate every car/tank enthusiast. yes, soe wants all tanks to be able to get from A to B; but you dont need to alienate enthusiasts to do so; just leave one model, one sports car, for us to enjoy. the Guardian doesnt need to be made automatic; it is just dated and needs new breaks and suspension for the speeds enthusiasts will drive it.</p>

[thial]

<p>I am a wall of steel. No harm shall come to those I defend.</p><p>                                                           Captain Tilmar Drayvus, the Qeynos Guard</p>

[Kimber]

<p>I have to laugh at some of the stuff above esp the part about Guards being easier to heal than an SK.  Evidently some of yu have to been in a group/raid with a T2 Armor Guard and a T2 Armor Sk cause all gear being equal as things stand right now it is far easier for the healers to keep an SK up than a similarly equiped Guard...</p>

[Rahatmattata]

<p>I was just browsing through the shadowknight's issues/suggestions thread and there were many lulz. Here is a small sampling:</p><p><span>Tap amount raise.Trigger amount raise + base amount of tap should be greatly increased to match raid content.Since SK missing any incomming dmg reduction and taps are not contested to incomming dmg SK is getting,should have more equipement than warriors which adds more tanking survibility.</span></p><p>Blood Oath = Stone Skin + Reflect DamageThe caster deauthorizes the given damage and further reflects the given damage to the mob in 10 seconds.This spell has a merit that scales naturally by the types of the mob(solo, heroic, and epic).Maybe, overpowered. But this curse spell fits SK's image.</p><p>Grim Reaper FormNecromancer can transform to Lich. I thought up Grim Reaper as the Lich of Necromancer which fits SK.When SK transform to Grim Reaper, SK is losing 1% of max HP per 6 seconds like Reaver.In Grim Reaper Form, the almost all abilities of SK increase. Melee crit, double attack, haste, spell mod, spell crit, vs mental, mitigation, block, parry, aggression, STR, STA, AGI, WIS, INT, even the amount of lifetap and so on.The amount of the increase of the abilities rely on quality of spell. Adept I = 3%. Adept III = 6%. Master I = 10%.Maybe, this is overpowered, too</p><p><span>Bloodletter should have triggers more than 2.It has 1 trigger now.But 1 trigger is so weak.Bloodletter has been nerfed very much.</span></p><p><span><p>Enhance: Hateful RespiteIt increases number of times of stoneskin.</p><p>Enhance: ReaverIt increases the amount of heal and spell damage.</p><p>Enhance: Pool of BloodIt increases the amount of unconscious HP.</p><p>Enhance: Divine AuraIt erases the requirement of "under 50% of HP" and increases the time of Divine Aura.</p><p>Enhance: Death MarchIt changes Death March to raid wide spell, increases the time of "On The March", and increases the amount of hate of Death March.</p><p><span>I would like to see Death March upgrade include +crit mods and base damage along with what it currently has.  Raid-wide would be nice.</span></p><p>At least there is finally in the works a fix for the pressing issue of missing fluff for SKs:</p><p><span ><p><strong>Q:</strong> Will Shadowknight's pet be back?</p> <p><strong>A:</strong> It is being returned in the form of a pet that doesn't provide any DPS.</p><p>I guess being the best fighter for soloing, pvp, heroic zones, holding aggro, dpsing, and being able to tank any mob in the game is not good enough anymore.</p><p>One last thing... asking for more threat is dumb guys. When you already have a trivial aggro lock on however many mobs you feel like pulling... MORE threat is not helping your class. It won't make you dps any better or boost your survivability at all.</p></span></p></span></p>

[Bruener]

<p><cite>Rahatmattata wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I was just browsing through the shadowknight's issues/suggestions thread and there were many lulz. Here is a small sampling:</p><p><span>Tap amount raise.Trigger amount raise + base amount of tap should be greatly increased to match raid content.Since SK missing any incomming dmg reduction and taps are not contested to incomming dmg SK is getting,should have more equipement than warriors which adds more tanking survibility.</span></p><p>Blood Oath = Stone Skin + Reflect DamageThe caster deauthorizes the given damage and further reflects the given damage to the mob in 10 seconds.This spell has a merit that scales naturally by the types of the mob(solo, heroic, and epic).Maybe, overpowered. But this curse spell fits SK's image.</p><p>Grim Reaper FormNecromancer can transform to Lich. I thought up Grim Reaper as the Lich of Necromancer which fits SK.When SK transform to Grim Reaper, SK is losing 1% of max HP per 6 seconds like Reaver.In Grim Reaper Form, the almost all abilities of SK increase. Melee crit, double attack, haste, spell mod, spell crit, vs mental, mitigation, block, parry, aggression, STR, STA, AGI, WIS, INT, even the amount of lifetap and so on.The amount of the increase of the abilities rely on quality of spell. Adept I = 3%. Adept III = 6%. Master I = 10%.Maybe, this is overpowered, too</p><p><span>Bloodletter should have triggers more than 2.It has 1 trigger now.But 1 trigger is so weak.Bloodletter has been nerfed very much.</span></p><p><span><p>Enhance: Hateful RespiteIt increases number of times of stoneskin.</p><p>Enhance: ReaverIt increases the amount of heal and spell damage.</p><p>Enhance: Pool of BloodIt increases the amount of unconscious HP.</p><p>Enhance: Divine AuraIt erases the requirement of "under 50% of HP" and increases the time of Divine Aura.</p><p>Enhance: Death MarchIt changes Death March to raid wide spell, increases the time of "On The March", and increases the amount of hate of Death March.</p><p><span>I would like to see Death March upgrade include +crit mods and base damage along with what it currently has.  Raid-wide would be nice.</span></p></span></p></blockquote><p>Gratz, you proved you are a troll.</p>

[Rahatmattata]

<p><cite>Bruener wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Gratz, you proved you are a troll.</p></blockquote><p>No, you.</p>

[Landiin]

<p><cite>Bruener wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Gratz, you proved you are a troll.</p></blockquote><p>Grats, you proved you are a highly skilled troll..</p>

[Lord Hackenslash]

<p><cite>Rahatmattata wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I was just browsing through the shadowknight's issues/suggestions thread and there were many lulz. Here is a small sampling:</p><p><span>Tap amount raise.Trigger amount raise + base amount of tap should be greatly increased to match raid content.Since SK missing any incomming dmg reduction and taps are not contested to incomming dmg SK is getting,should have more equipement than warriors which adds more tanking survibility.</span></p><p>Blood Oath = Stone Skin + Reflect DamageThe caster deauthorizes the given damage and further reflects the given damage to the mob in 10 seconds.This spell has a merit that scales naturally by the types of the mob(solo, heroic, and epic).Maybe, overpowered. But this curse spell fits SK's image.</p><p>Grim Reaper FormNecromancer can transform to Lich. I thought up Grim Reaper as the Lich of Necromancer which fits SK.When SK transform to Grim Reaper, SK is losing 1% of max HP per 6 seconds like Reaver.In Grim Reaper Form, the almost all abilities of SK increase. Melee crit, double attack, haste, spell mod, spell crit, vs mental, mitigation, block, parry, aggression, STR, STA, AGI, WIS, INT, even the amount of lifetap and so on.The amount of the increase of the abilities rely on quality of spell. Adept I = 3%. Adept III = 6%. Master I = 10%.Maybe, this is overpowered, too</p><p><span>Bloodletter should have triggers more than 2.It has 1 trigger now.But 1 trigger is so weak.Bloodletter has been nerfed very much.</span></p><p>Enhance: Hateful RespiteIt increases number of times of stoneskin.</p><p>Enhance: ReaverIt increases the amount of heal and spell damage.</p><p>Enhance: Pool of BloodIt increases the amount of unconscious HP.</p><p>Enhance: Divine AuraIt erases the requirement of "under 50% of HP" and increases the time of Divine Aura.</p><p>Enhance: Death MarchIt changes Death March to raid wide spell, increases the time of "On The March", and increases the amount of hate of Death March.</p><p><span>I would like to see Death March upgrade include +crit mods and base damage along with what it currently has.  Raid-wide would be nice.</span></p><p>At least there is finally in the works a fix for the pressing issue of missing fluff for SKs:</p><p><strong>Q:</strong> Will Shadowknight's pet be back?</p> <p><strong>A:</strong> It is being returned in the form of a pet that doesn't provide any DPS.</p><p>I guess being the best fighter for soloing, pvp, heroic zones, holding aggro, dpsing, and being able to tank any mob in the game is not good enough anymore.</p><p>One last thing... asking for more threat is dumb guys. When you already have a trivial aggro lock on however many mobs you feel like pulling... MORE threat is not helping your class. It won't make you dps any better or boost your survivability at all.</p></blockquote><p>I think you might want to check the dates on those posts. Most if not all of them are from before our class revamp.</p><p>Some of those were made irrelevant years ago.</p><p>Some players regardless of class will always want more. You can find Assassins complaining about dps if you look and Templars complaining about healing if you look at thier forums.</p>

[Boli32]

<p>Actually I did look and saw that someone was asking for a sacrment increase as it "did not generate enough hate"... tbh I almost [Removed for Content] myself laughing at that one.... this was AFTER you got the increase.</p><p>Honestly off-hand the only thing I can think of that SKs need right now is the aiblity to recast bloodletter in combat; that and maybe the myth clicky to become unresitable/quicker cast time (same issues with pally myth also :/).. and I'm not even an SK <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" /></p><p>Anyways... back to the thread where guardians what to be able to do everything and be the best at everything .. I need a laugh <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Boli32 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Actually I did look and saw that someone was asking for a sacrment increase as it "did not generate enough hate"... tbh I almost [Removed for Content] myself laughing at that one.... this was AFTER you got the increase.</p><p>Honestly off-hand the only thing I can think of that SKs need right now is the aiblity to recast bloodletter in combat; that and maybe the myth clicky to become unresitable/quicker cast time (same issues with pally myth also :/).. and I'm not even an SK <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" /></p><p>Anyways... back to the thread where guardians what to be able to do everything and be the best at everything .. I need a laugh <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></p></blockquote><p>The _only_ sk issue is bloodletter casting when you have 3 sk's in raid.</p>

[LygerT]

<p>i giggled a little when i did a pickup group in HoF yesterday and the group leader sighed and said "we need an SK to do this zone". i chuckled as i pointed to the paladin, we started out with the guardian tanking which didn't go too hot. course i was the AE DPS on my second alt wizard so the zone didn't go too hot. course i was bashing my brains to the keyboard when we got to the crawler and the noxious dot was left on for like a minute, as i watched everyone run out of power.</p>

[Rahatmattata]

<p><cite>Melina@Splitpaw wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I think you might want to check the dates on those posts. Most if not all of them are from before our class revamp.</p><p>Some of those were made irrelevant years ago.</p></blockquote><p>The first 4 were from before TSO. My bad. Hardly "most if not all."</p>

[Nero]

<p><cite>Rahatmattata wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Melina@Splitpaw wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I think you might want to check the dates on those posts. Most if not all of them are from before our class revamp.</p><p>Some of those were made irrelevant years ago.</p></blockquote><p>The first 4 were from before TSO. My bad. Hardly "most if not all."</p></blockquote><p>He who hates Peter harms his dog.</p>

[Landiin]

<p>lol <NM> Might of been taken wrong..</p>