Vinka@Antonia Bayle wrote:
Any class can dps if they want to. A defiler could dps if he decided thats what he wanted to do.
They just wouldn't do it well.
The issue with people calling us "dps" or "utility" is that we are pretty middle of the road for tanks in terms of dps on most encounters, and what they call "utility" tends to be what we call "holding aggro and not dieing" or "tanking." Can we join a group and dps if we want to? Sure! So could a shadowknight, zerker, bruiser, or paladin. DPS is all well and good, but its not enough to justify not being able to perform our core role well.
Assuming you are responding to me...
A defiler dpsing seems a rather extreme comparison, considering we are in the fighter forum in a thread about monks (or brawlers).
I can't speculate as to what other people mean by utility. To me, holding aggro and not dying is tanking, not utility. Our points of utility seem to be our rw buff and our avoidance buff. Our rw is pretty marginal anymore. Other tanks have avoid buffs, albeit not as good as ours. Therefore we have a bare minimum of utility.
I concede that brawlers have comparatively mediocre dps even among fighters, and that simply having more dps is still no consolation prize for lagging behind in the tank department.
However, my comments (except agreeing about needing more utility) weren't concerned with the ideal or where the class should be headed. They are concerned with dealing with the here and the now of what we have, and more specifically my situation of running PUGs a lot. If you're not stuck with PUGs, then feel free to ignore my comments related to them.