Paladins as Raid MT

[Romm]

ahhh ok, i misunderstood your post. i thought ye were trying to tie tradeskill level max to adventure level max.

what you're saying makes sense. to make that purty mithril breastplate, an armorer would need a fancy mallet, right?

[Glauroth]

Yea, if its too cheap, people will get in ahead of the patches and come out way ahead.

[Tazzrin Jaegernaut]

I agree with a lot of what has been said here. Earlier it was stated that certain tank classes will be better tanks for that encounter. I can bet that this will most likely be the case. In past games we were used to named encounters being hard hitters and higher-end nameds having some pretty damaging AE's. What was our solution? Just get the meatiest tank out there and spam taunts and spam heals.

Well, I can see the choice of tank being picked depending on the type of mob. For example, we have an undead caster named encounter to take care of. Pallies may have the best saves and openers for undead encounters (not to mention possible specialty undead taunts), so of course we would have the pally tank. So on and so forth.

[Xabassis]

my best friend is neither healer nor enchanter, my best friend(s) are all the people that don't expect other people to do their jobs so they compensate =P as a career war i was saved more than once by ninja healing rangers because stupid noob cleric 01 started his cheal 3 seconds to late, or by the shamans patch healing, i was even purple clubbed in potime by a *NECRO* who did one of those wierd give his hp to me things just in time for a < shaman > to quick heal me in time for < damn cleric > to cheal me .....
but.. if i had to pick a best friend, it would be a shaman....much love for patch heals, and being able to slow the mobs down because being quadded back to back sucketh very horribly.

but ... the point.. anyways.... i believe that tank types should have say maybe 5% mitigation and 5% avoidance base, or maybe 10% of both whereas rogs / monks / etc should have 10% avoidance ... but im just a noob so...yeah....
just my 2cp

[Apostle]

The biggest problem with the avoidance vs mitigation tanking is that any healer or tank who was ever in a high end raiding situation can attest to this:

It is not total ammount of damage that kills the MT.. its SPIKE damage. Thats the whole concept behind "Defensive" that warriors got in EQ1, and subsiquently why non-warriors were not as effective as MT's. The avoidance tank will suffer far more to spike damage and therefore will inherrantly be a less effective MT because of it.

Now...having said all of that, you also have to take into consideration that we are taking all of our preconceived ideas of how this will work into our thinking. VG is not out yet, so we are just going to have to 'wait and see'. Yes...it stinks for those of us not in the know, but I am kinda looking forward more to the idea of off tanking being more important since "boss" fights might not be about one uber mob but more of a controlled chaos of fighting lots of mobs at once. I just dont want the pendilum to swing so far the other way that we only see this kind of fight.

Apostle

[Nueinx]

Hmmmm, I'm a noob here, but here's my two cents... and please forgive the length=P

Personally, I have no problem with saying that one of the 4 tanks better than the others.... given the situation. I hate to play the "Back in EQ..." card, but here goes another version of it that most people didn't point out. Let's say you have 3 seperate groups back in EQ. One is MT'd by a pally, the other by a SK and the third by a Warrior. 9/10 times, the pally is going to be the fastest out the gate in aqquiring hate.... in fact I'd bet my lvl 70 pally on it. The SK is going to hold aggro tremendously well in the long run due to their inherent DoT and general "Over Time" abilities. So given those two situations, what does a warrior really have to offer?

Increased HP for (as someone above pointed out) handling SPIKE damage. That was the TACTICAL side of choosing who to tank what in EQ... you know mob X avg hits for 200 but spikes 2k, (using random numbers) a 5k warrior versus a 3k paladin is a better bet. Because of this, it forced paladins/SKs to find other ways to help their groups, and in addition the MT (e.g. Raid mob is 'rooted' by placement, spells, etc, Pal using Flash of Light = MT never loses aggro). It promoted the idea of EVERY class having something to add to ANY encounter. My concern with 4 equal tanks is that it becomes a situational thing to eliminate a particular tank because it's 'not efficient.' Hopefully that won't happen.

[Deadjester]

Actually Wars in EQ didnt become the always wanted prime tank till EQ messed up and came out with Disciplines.

In a very old post they admitted that it was implemented wrong and of course players used it in a way that they had not ment. Just like with Corpse Summoning and Feign Death, etc.

So it set a pace that was to late for them to change and forever changed tanking.

But aside from that, the idea of having any one tank tank better then all the other tanks in every situation just doesnt work.

Players who pick a tank of any type normaly want to tank and tank the best they can and be proud of it.

Any one tank out of many tanks made to be the best for Raids normaly has a roll down hill effect on just simple grouping that can be over powering cause grouping/raid grief for the other sets of tanks.

Then you might as well have just one tank period and have all the other classes with special abilities to fill in any gaps. But then you would hear the one and only class of tank cry up a storm about how cookie cutter they are and how much competition they would have for groups/raid spots.

So I am all for multi types of tanks with different uese and them having different abilities and for the most part tank equally well. But each has a prefered area of tanking for certain situations/mobs.

Haruchai

[radhazg]

From the looks of the newsletter, they seem to be right on the ball with the whole different flavor, same base ability thing. Really looking forward to seeing what the other classes bring to the table and how they do it.

I was GREATLY dissapointed to find out that the pally in WoW couldn't keep tanking after they hit 60, I made a def. pally from the start w/ the idea of being a great tank pally. Got screwed in the end, but I'm fixing that this time around with VG. I know and believe IMHO that sigil will get the different but equal thing down, but I've been messed over twice with hybrid classes and sworn them off. I have nothing against them, but I personally just want to get away from em for a while. Hence my warr choice this time around. (and switching to a 'lock in WoW.)

[Tharian]

I have played EQ1 from day 1 way back when as the first Paladin on SolSek Ro server and then in EQ2 . I have seen this story before and have always been disappointed in the end how Paladin's take a second or third class seat to other tank classes as MT. I will give Vanguard the chance to prove they can do it and really hope they can come through on this issue...

[Agraza]

I really don't want equality anymore. Just let Paladins have their turn. Dread Knights and Inquisitors can MT in Vanguard 2, and Warriors can ride the back of the bus for once.