A Concern: Dread Knight Defensive Stance

[Eclipse]

Warriors will not deal more damage than us in a raid.
DC5 will make short work of that with the 15% increased damage buff.

I'm more worried about Warriors than DK or Paladin. If DK and Paladin can tank well, then it's the Warriors I feel for. As above poster said...what else do they have?

That's it for me in this thread. Too personal for my tastes, and this issue has been beaten to death.

Someone once said: If you want to play a Warrior, play one. If you want to play a Paladin play one. If you want to play a Dreadknight, play one. If all you want is to be sure that you are the MT...then don't login for 3 months after launch. Wait until someone tells you which one it is...then roll that one. Because we don't wanna hear about it before then.

I liked that. Play the class you like, and just have fun with it. Find a group of friends who don't care about 1-2% efficiency...not every endgame guild min/maxes. They just don't.

~Cevantez Kaervek, Dread Knight and Scion of The Seraphim
-Eclipse

[Hyatt]

As the above poster says, Warriors are the tanking class that currently do not bring anything else to the table other than their own meat.

It is Sigil's intention that all tanks will have equal roles, and if in the future there are numbers which show one tank is so clearly above the rest that no other protective fighter classes are needed, then I am confident they will resolve it quickly; if even they patched half as quickly as they did in the beta stage.

It is the secondary roles that are of less concern to the devs, and are what will probably separate out the tanks. Paladins and DKs have utility, Warriors are supposed to have DPS. Yet as it stands, Warriors cannot DPS in defensive stance, while the other tanks can use their utility just fine. Also, having played both a Warrior and DK, I can assure you that there is very little difference in DPS in offensive stances for both classes as well.

I was very impressed by the options DKs have available to them, especially as I am playing on a PvP server. They can shadowstep, DoT, Fear, invis/increase run speed, snare, lifetap, endurance-tap, stuns and word of doom to insta-kill if things look bad. Warriors have 1 guaranteed stun on a 1 minute cooldown. The rest of their time is spent bashing buttons hoping they crit. Since their DPS is not that different, why would anyone want to play Warrior in fact? DKs are a much better option with all that utility.

EDIT: Anyway, this is all off-topic. I agree that DKs get shafted much earlier on mitigation-wise, and it is unfair they have to wait until their 40s to get the same. I would suggest giving DKs 15% initially, then 20% at DC5, while giving the other classes an option to buff themselves to 20% as well.

Either that, or keep it as it is but only let the other tanks reach 15% mitigation at level 40 as well.

[Azgod]

Originally Posted by XeroKill

With all due respect to Xaices, he is but one out of what will eventually be thousands. His success and experience is not only in a very limited theater known as Beta, but it could also be a product of the people he hangs out with. His guild may not hold the same biases that 90% of the people in the MMO genre cling to.

I would love to sit here and believe that everything will be just fine, but I have been playing these games for a decade now, and I have seen this dozens of times.

The biggest problem that we have is that we not only have to contend with the ignorance that already exists about tanking (I.E. Warriors = TEH ALL!) but we will have to deal with the ignorance that the numbers will eventually generate. People have a tendency to look at the numbers and only the numbers to determine a classes value. We all know that no matter how hard Sigil tries, and how well they succeed, the populous at large WILL come to the conclusion that X class tanks better than everyone else. It is a fundamental truth, and although there will be a small percentage that will see beyond this bias, a good majority will cling to it with their dying breath.

I believe it will take about an hour of grouping with a DRK for most players to realise that all the utility a DRK brings to the table negates any advantage a warrior has in mitigation. Do you actually think anyone in a group besides a keen eyed cleric will even notice a 3% lack of mitigation until lvl 40, or do you think they will notice the mob is snared on incoming and the DRK has agro locked during the encounter? Warriors have thier bells and whistles but no where near the utility of a DRK, I am fine with having less mitigation for the utility gained otherwise everyone and thier mother will roll a DRK.

[Azgod]

Originally Posted by XeroKill

If no one is bringing up these things, how can they be changed. And I am sorry to burst your bubble but lifetaps are not nearly as significant as mitigation, they never have been and you know it. They are melee based or spell based which means resists, partial resists, and outright misses. You cannot count on a lifetap to save your life because it is fickle, especially against high level raid targets with stupid high evasion and resists. Mitigation is 100%, it is always there and the more you have of it, the better off you are. When was the last time in any other game, ever, did you hear the raid leaders deciding over who was going to MT? Do you hear questions like "Which one has the most HP/AC"? Or do you hear, "Well Joe does have the best AC and HP, but Johnny can Lifetap, and that should work a lot better"?

I know it sounds like the whining and crying I was so tired of hearing. I have already admitted that, so thanks for pointing it out again. This is going to be my final MMO, and I hate the fact that starting right out of the box we are seeing these kinds of difference. Believe me, I look forward to being proved wrong, I really do. But I can see the ignorance of the masses already, even in beta. I see some one shouting "Group LF Tank!" and I respond "Hey, I am a X level Dread Knight, can I come?" and on three separate occasions already I have heard, "Thanks but we are holding out for a Warrior." I have been in many more groups than I have been denied for, that is true... but in beta, to already see this kind of ignorance at work really pisses me off. I don't want that ignorance to be fueled by discrepancies like this.

AND! Even forgetting the raid aspect of it. Let us simply look at the logic behind it. At level 10 all the defensive fighters get a defensive stance... it makes sense. Every one but the Dread Knight gets to use their to their full potential right out of the box. Just on that alone, what is so effin special about the Dread Knight that they do not deserve the same mitigation on a uniform ability like our defensive stance?"

Logic, sincerly, if you are so concerned about mitigation then why not roll a warrior at release, you have no time invested in your character now. If you don't want to roll a warrior it is for a reason; it's not because as a DRK you can't be a certain race, or wield weapons, or wear plate armor. I suspect you CHOOSE to be a DRK over a warrior because you enjoy the UTILITY advantage a DRK has over a warrior. This advatage should have a price don't you think? Personally I think 3% mitigation is a pittance.

[Eclipse]

Don't make me pull out the Wow-leet kiddie responses on this thread!

:P

-Eclipse

[XeroKill]

Originally Posted by Azgod

Logic, sincerly, if you are so concerned about mitigation then why not roll a warrior at release, you have no time invested in your character now. If you don't want to roll a warrior it is for a reason; it's not because as a DRK you can't be a certain race, or wield weapons, or wear plate armor. I suspect you CHOOSE to be a DRK over a warrior because you enjoy the UTILITY advantage a DRK has over a warrior. This advatage should have a price don't you think? Personally I think 3% mitigation is a pittance.

OK, for one thing, this thread has been resolved for a while now. And secondly... FFS I am complaining about these things because I DON'T want to play a Warrior. If I wanted to play a Warrior I wouldn't post here all the time, and I wouldn't be doing all this research. I want to play a Dread Knight BUT I also want the issues that have plagued this genre since the dawn of EQ1 to fall to the wayside. This wasn't a matter of me wanting to be anything but as effective as the other tanks at what we do, and that is tanking.

Now, let me spell this out clearly, one last time. I saw what I perceived as a POSSIBLE deficiency in our class. I brought it up here so that it could be discussed, debated, and either buried if it was unfounded or forwarded to the management if it was found just. Last time I checked, that is why we maintain these types of communities.

Now this thread is done, because there was actually a logical response that quelled my fears, which is all I was looking for. I didn't want posts that relied solely on speculation, good intentions, pipe dreams or wishing on a star. I wanted concrete evidence that this difference in mitigation on a core tanking ability was not going to gimp us in comparison to the other tanks. Any one that has played the Shadow Knight in either EQ1 or EQ2 should be able to understand the reason I brought this up. That is all there is to it. So this whole "Play a Warrior if you don't like it" shit can be dropped right now, and so can this thread.

Moderators, this thread has outlived its usefulness. Unless it is your intent to maintain it for posterities sake, it could stand to be deleted.