New to EQ - I want to tankFollow

Race only matters a tiny bit at the beginning of the game, towards the middle/end it means abosolutely nothing.It all depends on how you want to tank. All of the fighter classes can tank at least fairly well.

Guardians are the classic definition of Tank. Heavily armored, great defensive buffs and abilities and in most cases, if you're doing things right, you can get aggro easily and not lose it for the entire battle. The trade off is that you do basically no damage.

Berserkers are also heavily armored and have some nice def buffs and abilities but they get and keep hate mainly due to their damage. They also get some nice reactive buffs that help them keep hate. If you want to do damage but like being a heavily armored tank, go with zerker.

Paladins also can use plate armor, but they function best as ward and resist tanks. They do good damage and get a few heals as well, so they function pretty well as a jack of all trades. Their ward ability is what really sets them apart as tanks.

Monks can only wear leather armor and mostly rely on not getting hit. They have high avoidence and do the best damage of the fighter classes. They're hate control is not as good as the other classes, but its not completely non-existant as some would have you believe.

For just starting out I would go with a Zerker. Good damage output, good hate control, can wear the heaviest armor and, IMO, the easiest to learn.


Edited, Dec 15th 2006 5:06am by TheDakster

Im also going to be rolling a tank class and am curious about a few things, first about the zerker and guardian, do they mitigate damage the same and the main difference is the way they hold aggro? That would obviously make the zerker better for the group as they're doing damage as well. It would seem as the guardian would be better for mitigating dmg, does it matter though? Can berserkres tank raid bosses or do they get hit too hard?

Second about Paladins, do they generally tank any type of mob that deals magic damage then? Thats the impression I get from saying they are heavy on resists, can guardians have resist type armor?

Alot of folks that are new to the game confuse tanking with beating the heck out of the mobs. The damage per second (DPS) that you do as a tank is not as important as your ability to hold aggro and keep the mob from skipping over to a wizard in your group and smacking them down. It is pretty much an age old argument on the forum boards as to whether a bezerker is a better tank than a guardian or a paladin or a monk but the key thing as you rise in level as a tank is that you be able to hold aggro. In groups of six, I have seen paladins do a great job. In small raid groups, monks seem to do fine as long as the nukers don't go nuts immediately. For large full group raids, zerkers and guardians seem to normallly get the job.

But whatever class of tank you chose, understand thoroughly what spells/attacks allow you to build hate (e.g. increase the threat towards you)with the mob or group of mobs that you are attacking so that they aggro on you and not other members of your group. Also get to know how to use spells to "rescue" a group member that suddenly gets the attention of the mob or mobs that you are tanking.

By the way, higher level groups and raids often use a "parser" program to record how much damage per second is done by group members. The tank classes normally don't come close to doing the damage that a wizard, assassin, ranger, or assortment of other "dps" classes can do provided that the tank is performing their role correctly.

Good hunting and keep building that hate!

All the tank classes play a little differently, and each has it's strenghts and weaknesses really.

Any of the 4 plate classes make fine raid or group tanks if geared/specced for it, and played well. There are situations that favor each of them more than the others, and the days of 1 tank fits all situations *best* are gone.

Brawlers got a nice tweak recently as well, but are still having some issues on the tougher Epics. Their survivability has gone up noticeably I find though.

I wouldn't worry about race though. The difference long term is negligible.

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