Paladins as Raid MT

[Lightning]

Originally Posted by Romm

Kal,
if we're talking about equality among tanks, then that avoidance tank may avoid 2 of those 1500 hits, while a mitigation tank may get hit 4 times for 750 each - both being able to do the job, but making wards more effective for the avoidance tank, and reactive heals better for the mitigation tank.

But the trouble with avoidance tanks is runs of "bad luck", you take those 1500 hits and BAM you're down, which goes back to the need for wards. The trouble is, while some players (yourself admittedly) enjoy the challenge this presents, most will gravitate towards the path of least resistance and go with a mitigation tank. I saw it in EQ2 in beta and it only got worse in live. "Monks can't tank! Go DPS!", it's why I rolled a Paladin...

In EQ1, when Paladins / Shadowknights were flavour of the month due to their agro lock, no one wanted a Warrior - I eventually rolled a Shaman because I was sick of sitting for hours at a time LFG.

While wards do indeed rock the big one (Paladin's in EQ2 can ward themselves and others, it generates a lot of hate and stops the healer / dps dealer who took agro getting beaten on while you get agro back) it does mean that you will need, in 99.9% of groups, to mate avoidance tank to ward healer. The average pickup group member will say "less options, less "perfect group" and therefore less XP/min = bad".

Players will almost always go with what they percieve to be the perfect group, even at the cost of turning down a "you can't tank / hold agro / your class sucks at tanking" tank and wait for hours for a "better tank". Sad, but accurate.

[TheDrunkenDwarf]

Lightning said everything that I had to say. You sure yer not gonna be an Inquisitor man, you read my mind!

The biggest problem with an avoidance based tank is that a streak of hits in a row is devastating... and a similar streak of bad luck on a mitigation tank isn't nearly as catastrophic.

Having healers use wards like the shammy in EQ2 works around this to a large degree, but like Lightning mentioned... you are then narrowing down your group options and that's never a good thing.

By the way... I'd just like to point out that although I disagree with him on the avoidance tank thing... Romm is one heck of a healer and I'm glad he's stopped by to chat. It always helps when the healers understand tank issues. I hope to see more of them dropping by.

[Lightning]

Originally Posted by TheDrunkenDwarf

Lightning said everything that I had to say. You sure yer not gonna be an Inquisitor man, you read my mind!

We Warriors have our secrets =^.^=

[Romm]

Pffft thx fer the healer compliment tdd, but you know i was supposed to be a bard LOL. If I remember right, i was probably the bard that pulled reparm from his castle to the bird spot for ye in your post on "What was your greatest tanking moment?" ahhh the fond memories of beatboxx...

anyway, i'm probably beating a dead horse here, but work's slow atm and i'm bored :P.

from what you guys are saying, it seems you agree in that:
1) avoidance tanks are broken cause they drop too fast, and
2) in general, people don't take the time to understand tank damage - if they see an avoidance tank take a 1000 hp hit and a mitigation tank take 900 in the same situation, they automatically assume the mitigation tank is better - even if the avoidance tank takes 20% less hits to compensate.

my example before (using the 1500 quad numbers) was kind of drastic just to make things simple. but suppose i take a warrior as avoidance tank (more likely to use a parrying 2-hander?), and paladin as mitigation tank (more likely to use a shield?).

I'm not saying the warr has zero mitigation, and i'm not saying the pally won't be able to dodge a mire bog. suppose the difference is 10% (pally mit is 10% more than warr's, and vice versa with dodge). it wouldn't be enough to say

you will need, in 99.9% of groups, to mate avoidance tank to ward healer.

but it does add another interesting difference - everyone likes individuality, right?

does it mean a reactive healer can't heal an avoidance tank? no, but it does dictate that you match ward healer with the avoidance tank for an optimum group, as well as making the non-ward healer switch his strategy around.

p.s. sorry for hijacking yer thread daragoth :P

[Lightning]

Originally Posted by Romm

I'm not saying the warr has zero mitigation, and i'm not saying the pally won't be able to dodge a mire bog. suppose the difference is 10% (pally mit is 10% more than warr's, and vice versa with dodge).

See, that would be fine - EQ2 took things to the extreme and broke monks into the bargain. "Avoidance + Mitigation" vs "Pure Mitigation" would be interesting enough to add flavour without bring unbalancing. Again, however, my concerns lean back towards player perception.

I don't debate it would make things interesting (and I am all for making healing interesting - I have tried it in EQ1 with my Shaman, I hate it - I'll slow, debuff, dot, patch heal and even tank, but I loathe being main healer) but I suspect the plans already on the table for Vanguard will make a healer interesting too

I have a lot of love for healers. As a career Warrior it is a close call between healers and enchanters for being my best friend

[Glauroth]

[quote="Kalas"]You can't make an avoidance take equate to a heavy tank.

If you make them dodge well enough to tank a raid boss, they will be way overpowered in groups. If they can dodge high damage hits (Quadding 1500) then it will overpower them. And vise versa, if they're tailored to groups, they'll get rocked against bosses?
quote]

Once again, avoidance is way too extreme. It either works way too well, or doesn't work well enough. If an avoidance tank had a bit of AC on the other hand...maybe if the monk had like some kind of weird ability that made his skin harder or something... but then, it only complicates the entire 'gear' aspect of the game.

I'm glad Vanguard is making crafters require gear, that was always the cheap and easy way to make alot of cash. I hope people don't inflate the economy as much as they did in EQII.

[Romm]

Kal,

I'm not talkin about monks, as i wrote a few posts back, but rather making warriors inherently dodge/parry (slightly) better than paladins, and vice versa with mitigation.

and why be happy about tradeskillers requiring gear? i had 3 high level tradeskillers in eq2, people call me crazy, but i liked making things to sell, especially when my regular xp group friends weren't online. Would it have made sense for soe to make me level up/outfit a different templar 3 times in order to make all 3 tradeskillers?

[Lightning]

Originally Posted by Romm

I'm not talkin about monks, as i wrote a few posts back, but rather making warriors inherently dodge/parry (slightly) better than paladins, and vice versa with mitigation.

I have been thinking about this, and were you to implement it it would be a fine balance between a "fluff" difference (insignificant, difference for the sake of difference - look, warriors and paladins are different) and running into the problems of dodge vs mitigation (unlucky streaks of hits, player perception that warriors are somehow weaker and therefore less desirable).

A difficult task for any dev team, I suspect.

[Glauroth]

I'm happy about tradeskillers requiring gear, because adventurers required gear. Tradeskillers had a simple way to outpace any adventurer as far as making money. It was just way too easy in EQ II to tradeskill. If they require gear, then...oh my, they have to spend some of that money they made. The first people with houses in EQ II were tradeskillers because they had alot of extra cash.

[Glauroth]

Originally Posted by Romm

Would it have made sense for soe to make me level up/outfit a different templar 3 times in order to make all 3 tradeskillers?

I'm not sure what you're suggesting here, but it isn't what I was.

In Vanguard Crafters will require crafting gear, and Harvesters will need harvesting gear. I think its great.