Some of the monk BIS velious gear is loaded in AC, resist, and hp. While I never recall my guild using a Monk to tank any of the main mobs, we used them to off tank all the time in Ssra/Luclin without a problem.

I recall some SK's tanking bosses specific bosses in Luclin from time to time, but it was more out of the ordinary then something you saw a lot.

Its hard to compete with the Warrior disciplines during the Velious era.

yes

I agree visibility is important for the mt, which is why we saw so many neon green or pink ogres once armor dyes became a thing.

As for race, it does not matter. Your tank will end up double shrunk and stuck in a corner anyway.

Nothing compares to Ogre until stun resist AA, which this server will never see. Not to mention the massive str and stamina difference, which is still hard to max even in Velious without raid gear or constant shammy buffs.

to reiterate, /disc defensive is absolute king in Velious. The Alpha and Omega. Gear, honestly, for raiding... barely matters. You'd rather have another subpar geared warrior to swap in with /disc def for another 3 minutes than a single super geared iksar warrior or monk.

dark elf style points wins them all.

Majority of the Warders, as you probably recall, can be done with two or three clerics and single tank, not needing to rotate Defensives. Very easy to slow, if memory serves we used a pause 80 CH rotation for the first three, and pulled him to a spot where everyone but the tank dodged the AoEs with simple '/gu GET OUT GET OUT' '/gu GET IN GET IN' macros etc. Very NToV-ish. Loot pinatas essentially, as I believe was the intent with lore to support.


It's interesting you bring up Dain though. Dain is a boss I remember fondly, despite getting real sick of killing him 3-5 times a week. He famously spawned as two different versions - one hitting much harder than the other. I believe the easy version quadded around 400 and the hard 650? He's not all that difficult, in fact he's one of the first "true" Velious raid bosses most people do (Klandicar and Wuoshi don't count:) and do very often because of his highly valued loot: head, hammer & to a degree, shield. it's kind of a shock to do at first because the fight is very lengthy, one of the longest in Velious, and one of the first mobs where you've got to deal with Rampage for a long time. It's also the first fight I remember doing with a "strategy" and the difficulties dealing with the fact he banishes every 30 seconds, rather than AEing, and so you had to pre-set Ramp targets and let your tank build a large aggro lead so he would be summoned back to Dain in the pit immediately upon banishment, rather than 32king or him turning and dunking hybrids and then summoning clerics upon MT banishment, and having to deal with an insta-repop linked add who CH'd him. Also the first raid boss I recall to use the "immune to attack speed slowing effects" tag. Maybe Derakor though.

I distinctly recall our initial Dain strat involved monks with Stonestance, and the first kill being nearly a half hour. Those were the days, truly. Many a Frostreaver handed to local appreciative raid loot garbage can and rival-guild tear collector, Gage.

Fucking Dain. Worst part was sitting around on your ass waiting for the pull team to get him down the hole.

The best part was giving him a pair of Velium weapons before a rival guild started their attempts.

This actually brings up a good point about Warrior race. The corner that my guild tanked Dain in was too small for anything but a Small race. If a fatty tank died and couldn't get a shrink before their turn was up again, they were basically useless. Something to think about when choosing a race, for sure.

AoN

Have you seen Cucumbers and Swage with their robes and lightsabers ? Pretty sexy imo