Shadow Knight Viability
 

Never played an SK in EQ1 before. Is it a viable tank class for end game or is Warrior the only way to go?

What is your definition of end game? If you mean doing Seb / planes / sub-20 man raids, SK is fine. They're great pullers and have a lot of utility.

Tanking big giants and dragons will usually fall onto warriors though.

Sorry. Should have been more specific. Can they handle 6 man content all the way through Velious. And have any chance of getting in to raid content, even as an Off Tank.

That is 100% where SKs shine. They are fantastic group tanks, both full and small, they're great offtanks for raids, and they can tank the majority of raid content pre-Velious.

I've raided on Sk/Pal from Classic->Velious. They can definitely handle 6 man content, even better than the warriors.

SK's can pull if they are just plain better players than the monk, but why didn't I just roll a monk?
Paladin's can heal group members when they get hit by AOE's, but why didn't I just roll a cleric?

If you really want to tank on raids, roll a warrior.

Edit: Just noticed Tenlaar's post above me. He might be right, I just never seen or heard of SK/Pal tanking on raids unless they were extremely overgeared.

Outside of the age old specialist composition fallacy, a person who wants to tank, but have the ability to heal, because they like a little bit of both, should probably play a Paladin.

A person who enjoys tanking, but also using magic, and having really fun utilities and tools for aggro management and feign death, should probably play a Shadowknight.

If a person wants to tank only the biggest baddest monsters in the whole game, but never be able to heal outside of bandaging people minorly, and having some interesting clickies but not much else, should play a warrior.

Consider the whole package, because Knights have really, amazingly fun and useful packages. Mostly trying to do more with less people, since when you have an infinite capacitance of player participation, you will win the day with all specialist classes, but if your cramming only up to 6 people into something, a hybrid can be and even often is a perfectly fitting piece.

I don't know why I added that quote and it makes it seem like I wasn't agreeing with you when in fact I am.

P99 is before the mitigation nerf that was funded by Red Warriors. SK’s are great tanks for this era.

Shadow Knights (and Paladins) are fine for all group content in the game at any level, 1 through 60. They're also fine as tanks in lower-end raids. They will not generally be used as the primary tank against high-end raid bosses, although they can be used as off-tanks in many situations. Whether they ARE is dependent on the culture of various guilds and the need to integrate oneself into a given guild's "tank corps."

Long story short, if you want to mainly do group content and maybe lower-end raids, the Knight classes will give excellent service. If you have dreams of main-tanking high-end raid bosses, make a Warrior.

Danth

Describe the low end raid vs a high end raid