Best Tank?Follow

I've got a 17 dwarf war who I haven't played for awhile, but I'm in the mood to play a tank...I've read some of the recent posts on the subject and I feel like maybe I should scrap the warrior and start over with a pally or sk...My main concern is aggro management...I'm only lvl17, but thusfar my experiecne is that I can't hold aggro for squat, my only tool at this lvl is taunt, right? I've read about what taunt does and I understand so I'm not asking for an explanation... I know I get provoke at 20, but I'm not sure what that does, I've heard mention that stun abilities really gain aggro, but do I have any at this lvl? bash?

Bottom line... Should I scrap the war and start an sk or pally? or stick with the war? Give me the pros and cons of each decision, thx

Meh. What you meant to say is:

Warriors using 2 weapons with high dmg and low delay will almost never keep agro better than an SK or Paladin using a 2h weapon and spells.

There are lots of things you could have said to argue why a warrior is a better tank than a knight, but keeping aggro better is not one of them.

Warriors are the best tanks in terms of ability to avoid and mitigate damage. At higher levels, when they get the defensive discipline, they are the only tanks than can tank many of the higher level bosses. They are without doubt the best raid tanks.

In addition, the GoD expansion pretty much requires a Warrior to complete many of the trials, as the mobs hit very hard. In fact high-end Paladins are currently up in arms as they require charity to get through these trials.

For LDoN and your average experience group, knight classes are better tanks as they can bring more flexibility (pulling, ghetto CC, snares, buffs etc) to the group with their spells, as well better snap aggro.

One other thing to consider. Knight classes up until about level 55 have the option of soloing. Warriors do not.

Really there is no "best tank". They are different, and each is better than the others in different scenarios.

What type of weapon a paladin is using has very little bearing on aggro management for them. It's all about spells. If you have a paladin chain stunning a mob, a warrior has little or no chance of gaining aggro. And shadowknights are able to hold aggro even better than a paladin with thier spells.

As far as the question about which class to use as a tank, it's about what level you want to play the character to. If you're planning on getting your tank to the 60's and beyond, go with the warrior. Thier damage mitigation and high HP give them an advantage as a tank at high levels. If you don't plan on playing the character to high levels go with a paladin or sk, as thier spells are a huge boon with aggro management.

The choice between paladin and shadowknight is really one of preference. If you're more of a soloer, go with the shadowknight, if you solo rarely, then the paladin would probably be more your style.

Oh, and one little trick that not a lot of people know, is using disarm for aggro management. I'm not sure if you have the skill at your level, but if you do use it. It will never work on mobs that you get experience on, but it's a small boost in aggro every time you use it, kind of like a mini taunt.

Barto:

Those are very nice weapons but rather irrelevant to someone of level 17 looking to level up. With those I'm sure you keep aggro pretty well.

With a Lamentation and a Centi Shortsword it isn't quite so easy. Especially at the low level game where not only are idiots fighting you for aggro all the time but even the non-idiots are trying to raise skill on things like taunt and dual wield.

By the time you are using OSoW (required level 51 and No Drop off a god to boot) you are generally amongst people who know not to fight you for aggro. I'm sure that if a Paladin or SK really wanted to they probably could but it would be silly.

I think the simple answer is that for many levels it will be much easier finding groups as a paladin or SK than as a warrior. Suddenly at 55 warriors get /disc def and start to become essential for many encounters.

I have noticed warriors having less trouble holding aggro since the new disciplines but you will always have some daft ranger Flame Licking the mob to pull and then wondering why you can't get it off him.

[Edit: I realise that using the phrase "daft ranger" could be inflammatory and would like to emphasize that not only are some rangers not daft but that the class was picked out of a hat and it could have been any dual-wielding melee who can cast flame-lick]

Edited, Thu Apr 15 11:26:27 2004 by Cobra101

True enough.... It's been a long time since I played a toon under lvl 30, so my line of thinking was not what you were looking for... Sorry about that .... But I still think my warrior will out dmg most SK's or Paladins that are at the same lvl. Your warrior will get duel yield at 20, which is only 3 lvls away. Try out 2 low delay weapons and see what you think. For me, my warrior appears to do more dmg and keeps argro better with 2 1h weapons vs the slower 2h weapon. I could be off base here, since I usually 2 or 3 box with a shaman and a chanter, both of which can slow the mob and give me speed.

But then again, my eyes are brown, so I maybe full of sh**.

Hmmm, you might want to rethink your choice of class in the game. A MT's role in a group is not to deal damage. Any damage you get from them is just an added bonus. The REAL job of the tank in a group is to hold the mobs attention so that the true damage dealers of the group aren't constantly running for thier lives.

If you're that concerned about doing the most damage, I would suggest looking into a rogue, ranger or wizard. You'll be sorely disappointed if you're looking to brag about DPS as a warrior.

Thanks Dan. You have a good point. My warrior is an alt and very far down the list of the alts I normally play. Since I 2 and 3 box my warrior most of the time with a shaman and enchanter, it is important that my MT deals both damage and keeps the agro since things can get out of hand very quickly when you are playing on 3 computers at once. In all fairness, I guess my issues deal with how "I" play my toon, which might not be the same way Blacktharne wants to play his.

DW 13, DA 15

BTW its not the MT job to keep consistenly to keep agro...


Agro management is ment for everyone...

The best way to pull agro off MT is over casting stunning etc.

Taunt will be scapegoat for everything...

If pallies would wait to use stun tell the MT has generated enough agro it wont be a problem...

Or any toon that well can generate enough agro to peel off the target...

What it boils down too is that its everyone job to have agro management not just the MT job.

MT job is to ensure that he keep's hiting the taunt button every few sec's to put him back on the top of the agro list...

So everyone needs to think on when to use stun or hate producing weapons

As I said a few months ago when this subject was being discussed..

Best tanks are as follows.
WWI MkIII British
WWII Panzerkampwagon V auf D.
Korean era Stalin III
1960s M60
1970's M60a3 or the Leopard I
1990's M1 Abrams.

I agree with Tarv. It seems to me that the bulk of damage done to the tank in the higher game comes before slow lands, and a couple 5 or 10 second pally stuns can mitigate that damage much better than whatever ac/hp/mitigation bonus warriors recieve with the added bonus of aggro control when slow lands. Of course this only works on mobs 55 or less until AA abilities kick in.

just my 2cp.

I more or less agree with the sentiment of your post, but there are a couple things I want to clarify/correct:



Correct. It is the entire group's job. However, the *role* of MT is "the guy who the mob will be beating on". Thus, any amount of agro you can generate makes that easier for the entire group to do. If you have a choice as MT between doing more damage, or generating more agro, you should *always* chose the agro.

Your second goal as a tank should be increasing your AC/HP. After all, that's what makes you better at being "the guy the mobs beat on".

Finally. After you've done all that other stuff, you can worry about increasing your DPS.





Again. Sentiment is correct, but the specifics are wrong. There's a tactic called "agro pumping" (Ok. I just made up the term. I have no idea what it's called, but that's as good a name as any). The idea is that you want your warrior to tank, but it takes a warrior a bit of extra time to generate enough agro for debuffs (slows specifically) to land. A successful taunt gives you agro+1 over whoever's on the top, but the only way for that to gain you agro is if you're *not* currently at the top of the list. Obviously, you don't want to just let your shaman drop a slow and then hope you get a successful taunt to get it off him, so that's not that useful most of the time.

Enter a paladin (or to a slightly less effective degree, the SK). Pull comes in. Paladin drops a stun *immediately*. This generates enough agro for the shaman to slow immediately without gaining agro. Now, the paladin has agro, but the mob is stunned, so you've got 5 seconds to taunt it. Assuming you taunt immediately after the stun lands, and the immediately when taunt refreshes, you've basically got a couple shots at it while the mobs sitting there doing no damage to anyone. On the odd chance that you fail 2 in a row, the worse that happens is that the paladin (who can take damage almost as well as you can) is getting beat on by an already slowed mob.

90% of the time, the end result of this is a nice big agro lead for the warrior. By letting the paladin generate a bunch of agro right off the bat, you can use taunt to leapfrog yourself to a huge agro lead over everyone else in the group. Since that paladin is using a slow 2h weapon and doesn't have DW, as long as he doesn't do anything else, he'll never catch up to you. You'll start with an agro lead and keep it for the rest of the battle. Using combat abilities to push it even more is just gravy at that point.

It is *not* wrong for a paladin to drop a stun before the warrior had built up an agro lead. When I play ST in a group, I stun at three points. Beginning if we need it to generate an agro lead for the warrior, random times to interupt spells, and at the end in case someone forgot to snare the mob (or the mob is trying to gate).

Most of the time you should work this out with your warrior, but it's a pretty accepted deal. I was in a group in PoV last weekend where every single pull went the same way: Ranger pulled. Warrior grabbed agro. I assisted warrior. Mob then made a beeline for shaman when slow landed. I dropped stun on mob as soon as it turned. Warrior used taunt to pull mob back on him. No other agro problems for the rest of the fight. I could have *not* used my stuns, but then it'd be the shaman getting beat on instead of me.


Oh. One more thing. There is another more subtle advantage that warriors have. It's probably not super apparent, but it's there. Everything else being equal, a warrior will tend to have better gear then a knight. Unless you are twinking to a point where you can afford any level of gear available in the game, this will pretty much always be true. Most players have some sort of "budget" they have to keep. Knights have to worry about more then just their AC/HP/weapons. Post 60, spells alone actually start to get pretty expensive. I figure I've spent probably 30-40k on spells, and I'm still missing a couple. Sure. That's not a lot from a pure caster's point of view, but that's money that I didn't spend on upgrading bits of armor, or weapons. It all adds up...

Edited, Thu Apr 15 21:20:53 2004 by gbaji

Blacktharne;
Good choice to play a warrior I think and a Dwarf one at that. Don't worry about choices for aggro. Each will have their own advantage in certain situations. Your job is to get the aggro and then Take the hits. Keeping them occupied allows the rest to do their jobs. You can at lower lvls out damage many other melee classes but not at higher lvls. AND at higher lvls you will rarely ever be the one doing the pulling. The Puller's sole job is to bring that mob to you and then hop around getting whacks in and when the mob is low on health abandon the fight and search out another likely candidate for you. Pallys and Sks are good at snap aggro to get a mob OFF a caster or someone who is about to go into HP aggro. If they are smart, they will only hold aggro until you recover enough to get it back. They cannot take damage for sustained periods of time like you will. They SHOULD know this and play accordingly. Ask a Cleric which He / She prefers taking damage and they will answer you honestly. More than likely they are thinking in terms of mana management, C-Healing a Pally, Ranger or Sk 3-4 times a fight as apposed to C-Healing a warrior 1-2 times a fight actually helps them conserve mana and not be so apprehensive about whether or not they will have enough mana to keep people from bitin' the dust. If caster are good they will with hold UBER NUKES until you ( once you have gained aggro from the puller ) have the mob to less than 95% health then slow 1st, Dot 2nd and then apply the UBER NUKES. Remember, though, that in higher lvls you will almost always lose aggro to a Necro, Wizzie ect... at least once. Do not be discouraged about your ability to hold aggro... A good Necro can judge whether or not he needs to kite a mob off you to alow you to recover and a Cleric to heal you, as well as, allow the Cleric to regain a sufficiant amout of mana to continue the healing. In places like PoV this will happen frequently. And I for one am glad to have THINKING people by my side and backing me up. Playing a warrior is a challange unlike any other. As long as you remember it is NOT your job to kill the beast but to occupy him so others can kill it you will have the self satisfaction that " I did what I was supposed to do. " People LOVE warriors. I have been in fights where I was not the main tank and enjoyed every minute of letting somebody else take 3 times the damage I did. I assure you that Rangers will love you, Pallys will love you, SKs will love you, Bards and Rogues will Love you for it. So NO don't delete your warrior. Sudlaceu Warrior 55th degree.