Tank lover leaving WoW for EQ2, just had some quesitons

[select20]

<p>I've played wow since release. I played this game in beta/launch but friends went to WoW so I went too and I had a great time. I had a pally, druid and Deathnkight there for tanking and was working on getting a warrior to lvl80 to tank also. then it dawned on me. I've tanked through the end game content with muy 3 lvl80 tanks, why do it again?</p><p>So that brings me here. I just up and left WoW and I'm looking which class would be good to tank with. I'll be looking at tanking through out the content and my goal is to raid once I get to max lvl.</p><p>What is the tank of choice for most healers?</p><p>Can tanks in this game tank everything? or are there specific tanks that do some things better?</p><p>Are tank classes balanced right now?</p><p>I've look through my options and Pally's and Shadowknights stand out to me, mainly because in WoW i played a Pally and Deathknight the most.</p><p>Just looking for any and all input really. Is TD still the starting area of choice? Ummmm.... I haven't done alot of searching because I've just made the decision to leave wow last night and now I'm getting ready for church. Thanks again.</p>

[BChizzle]

<p>Just go SK make your life easy</p>

[Ambrin]

<p>All fighters are "tanks".</p><p>Guardians are able to mitigate more damage than any other class.</p><p>Guardians also have have the lowest amount of DPS and threat generation of any fighter.</p><p>There are two different categories of tank, "single target" and "AE". The single target tanks are of keeping a single mob attacking them, but can't effectively hold agro on multiple mobs. AE tanks on the other hand have no problem gluing any number of adds to them. Basically the single target versus AE tank mechanic is broken because both can hold one target on them, but only AE tanks are effective at holding multiple targets. Monks, bruisers, and guardians are single target tanks while paladins, shadow knights and berserkers are AE tanks.</p><p>Fighters are not balanced at the moment. You could make an argument that the plate tanks are relatively balanced, but brawlers (monks and bruisers) are currently behind all the other fighters in terms of survivability, and we currently do not deal enough damage or provide enough utility in return to make up for it.</p><p>Right now the over all "strongest" fighter is probably a shadow knight. They are capable of generating the most threat, and possibly the most DPS, of any of the fighters (on multi mob fights anyways) while maintaining high survivability due to their life taps plate armour. They are also a crusader, so they deal their maximum amount of damage while using a shield giving them a further advantage over the other fighters.</p><p>A paladin is not a bad choice either, they don't deal as much damage as a shadow knight (but they still do a good amount), but they also have higher mitigation levels, although not by a huge margin.</p>

[Gonzo550]

<p>My heart does go out to monks and bruisers to some extent. As a guard, I don't want more competition for spots in raids as it's basically hard enough to hold on with [Removed for Content] SKs being overpowered. The biggest thing that SKs get imo occurs at level 80, Bloodletter, and the new AA ward BS. Basically they can take health from their group to pop them back to life (in the case of bloodletter) or give them a ward and heal in the case of the totally BS ability. So to finally kill an SK in a raid, you have to do more than 70,000 points of unhealed damage to him. Meanwhile he brings to the table about another 15k dps. Bare in mind he will take more damage overall than a guard who has greater avoidance and mitigation.</p><p>The guard on the other hand finally got some love this expansion but not nearly to the extent to be greater than an SK; equal is still under debate. A guard can take a ton of hits without needing nearly as much healing. There are fights when my healer is afk or lost or something in a group instance that I won't wait. I'll just fly in hit some buffs and burn the mob down (having high dps classes around are a must for this tactic). We finally got a death save that works though it's no where near as good as bloodletter. With the proper gear, they can die twice. Our save is once, has a duration of 3 minutes (if you die in that time it functions) and has a 7 minute recast (though it can be done in combat). Bloodletter must be done out of combat but sits there and waits forever for you to die and has a 3 minute recast. Guards consider this spell largely BROKEN and it is what finally led to SOE giving us some form of a death save.</p><p>Agro is a big deal of course. Guards are single target tanks and put out about 10k dps. When I have ahold of one mob, it is mine. You are not getting it off - mostly. If he has friends, that's another story because we have two long-casting AEs that don't deal a lot of hate/damage. We've complained highly and gotten NO help from Sony. SKs do so much damage largely because of their many AEs - they have like 6 plus two spells that pull agro off just about anything no matter where they are on the hate list. This too has been called BROKEN by guards. Our best spell moves us up on the hate list one hit at a time and it is still possible to pull mobs off us. And yes, an SK can pull a solo mob off a guard with these cheese spells.</p><p>Which would I play? I hate SKs. sure they are good tanks these days but in general and because of the treatment guards have gotten from SOE, not one update in the entire beta process dispite our suggestions, I flat refuse to play one.</p>

[TerrorFirmer]

<p><cite>Armus@Crushbone wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>My heart does go out to monks and bruisers to some extent. As a guard, I don't want more competition for spots in raids as it's basically hard enough to hold on with [Removed for Content] SKs being overpowered. The biggest thing that SKs get imo occurs at level 80, Bloodletter, and the new AA ward BS. Basically they can take health from their group to pop them back to life (in the case of bloodletter) or give them a ward and heal in the case of the totally BS ability. So to finally kill an SK in a raid, you have to do more than 70,000 points of unhealed damage to him. Meanwhile he brings to the table about another 15k dps. Bare in mind he will take more damage overall than a guard who has greater avoidance and mitigation.</p><p>The guard on the other hand finally got some love this expansion but not nearly to the extent to be greater than an SK; equal is still under debate. A guard can take a ton of hits without needing nearly as much healing. There are fights when my healer is afk or lost or something in a group instance that I won't wait. I'll just fly in hit some buffs and burn the mob down (having high dps classes around are a must for this tactic). We finally got a death save that works though it's no where near as good as bloodletter. With the proper gear, they can die twice. Our save is once, has a duration of 3 minutes (if you die in that time it functions) and has a 7 minute recast (though it can be done in combat). Bloodletter must be done out of combat but sits there and waits forever for you to die and has a 3 minute recast. Guards consider this spell largely BROKEN and it is what finally led to SOE giving us some form of a death save.</p><p>Agro is a big deal of course. Guards are single target tanks and put out about 10k dps. When I have ahold of one mob, it is mine. You are not getting it off - mostly. If he has friends, that's another story because we have two long-casting AEs that don't deal a lot of hate/damage. We've complained highly and gotten NO help from Sony. SKs do so much damage largely because of their many AEs - they have like 6 plus two spells that pull agro off just about anything no matter where they are on the hate list. This too has been called BROKEN by guards. Our best spell moves us up on the hate list one hit at a time and it is still possible to pull mobs off us. And yes, an SK can pull a solo mob off a guard with these cheese spells.</p><p>Which would I play? I hate SKs. sure they are good tanks these days but in general and because of the treatment guards have gotten from SOE, not one update in the entire beta process dispite our suggestions, I flat refuse to play one.</p></blockquote><p>Bitter.</p>

[Gungo]

<p>Tanks are pretty much balanced more then they ever had been at the moment.Any plate tank can tank a raid. They are the best defensively. Guards are still preferred maintank.Shadowknights, paladins, zerkers and bruisers are all good AOE tanks. The plates all still take less damage.Monks/bruisers need the most help, moreso monks.Heroic tanking guards and monks have the hardest time with aoe content, moreso monks. But each fighter can tank heroic content.</p><p> There will always be players who want everything handed to them, but honestly tanks are more balanced then they have ever been in the 5 years playing this game.</p>

[Loxus]

<p>The best advice anyone can give you though is:  Forget everything you know or learned about tanking in WOW.  They are two entirely different animals.  In EQ2 the tank will, and can, and is expected to, hold agro on all mobs at all times.  There is no: Wiz freeze this mob, Hunter trap this mob, I'll agro and hold this one.  You, as the tank, grab and hold them all which makes tanking in EQ some much more fun then WOW.  </p>

[select20]

<p><cite>Loxus@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>The best advice anyone can give you though is:  Forget everything you know or learned about tanking in WOW.  They are two entirely different animals.  In EQ2 the tank will, and can, and is expected to, hold agro on all mobs at all times.  There is no: Wiz freeze this mob, Hunter trap this mob, I'll agro and hold this one.  You, as the tank, grab and hold them all which makes tanking in EQ some much more fun then WOW.  </p></blockquote><p>WoW used to be that way, it hasn't been since the last expac came out. Tanks aggro everything and hold it all. Same concept.</p>

[Loxus]

<p><cite>select20 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Loxus@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>The best advice anyone can give you though is:  Forget everything you know or learned about tanking in WOW.  They are two entirely different animals.  In EQ2 the tank will, and can, and is expected to, hold agro on all mobs at all times.  There is no: Wiz freeze this mob, Hunter trap this mob, I'll agro and hold this one.  You, as the tank, grab and hold them all which makes tanking in EQ some much more fun then WOW.  </p></blockquote><p>WoW used to be that way, it hasn't been since the last expac came out. Tanks aggro everything and hold it all. Same concept.</p></blockquote><p>Ahh Cool, sorry for the mislead then.  I guess I dated my Wow exp.</p>

[Pyra Shineflame]

<p>Putting in a healer perspective. As an inquisitor, my heals are triggered only after my tank has taken damage. This makes me biased towards plate wearing tanks, as opposed to avoidance tanks (monk and bruiser) because my reactive heals only wait around to proc for 30secs. And when the tank gets hit, my heal has a set amount it heals. A brawler may avoid damage for a minute, but if he gets hit, he gets hit HARD, and I am ill equipped to deal with that. Not to say I can't keep him up, but a lot more of my attention has to be on him rather than the group.  (and if he loses aggro on anything, that just makes it worse) Monks are better at not getting hit, bruiser is better at not losing AoE aggro.</p><p>My preferred tanks are Berserker and Paladin. Shadowknights are a close second. Berserkers have two death saves and in my experience, don't get hit as often as a guard, but mitigate close to the same amount of damage. The Pally is a god send, imo, for the lapses in my slow casts. Nothing says my tank loves me, like popping a group heal just because. More I don't have to heal! Not to mention the ward and immunity.</p><p>SKs take the most damage of the plate tanks imo, and catch an SK with AoE's down, they lose aggro EXTREMELY quickly and can't get it back in time to prevent a death or two (usually mine). The life taps are nice for sitting back on easy to medium content, but don't make that much of a difference on hard stuff. I do <3 Bloodletter, when it is maxed out or something. It's a bit weird, some SKs will nearly kill a group when they die, some do half damage, some none, so I assume its an AA thing.</p><p>For raiding, guardian, hands down.</p>

[select20]

<p>Thanks for the replies, this really helped me out. I'm going to go ahead with a Pally. Probably lvl a bruiser too just for fun.</p><p>Thanks again.</p>

[Lillith]

<p>I'm a bit on a noob really but I LOVE tanks. The drummers of the rpg world we hits things......ok don't lynch me I know there is a lot more to it than that.</p><p>I haven't got to the raiding stage or over L40 yet with anything but I am learning atm so these are my thoughts</p><p>Anyway I have tried all the tank classes except the monk and palidin, so - Sk is fun, they get some nice abilities and the AA tree is brilliant. The guard is a good group tank but I dont like them for soloing. The serker I got bored (bad reason for not liking them i know, did I mention I have the attention span of a goldfish?). I'm loving the bruiser atm, high DPS and I love the fightling style, it looks good <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />.</p><p>One note though, the best way I found learn is to find an awesome and high level long suffering healer (anyone who knows one hold onto them, they are golden) and a couple of mates with slightly higher than you DPS casters and go through places 1 level or so above yours. You WILL learn to manage aggro that way cos the higher L toons will tend to pull it off you and you will have to get it back/work hard to keep it. Also if you make a minor oopsy they should keep you up and do enough DPS that you don't get wiped.</p><p>Oh and turn the graphics to raid settings even for group dungeon runs if your puter is a bit slow at times. The WORST time to lag is when you were creeping forwards to body pull the singles arround the linked mob and suddenly you judder in the middle of them all.</p>

[Darkonx]

<p>Ward proc gear vs ST mobs is mostly junk, but AE pulling, it enables you to solo ungodly amounts of mobs at a time. (think, 60-75 ^^^ yellows)</p>