Do Not Engage: Warriors Vs. PALs/SHDs

[Grod]

For your average player in your typical group an SK / Pally is the better choice but in a GOOD group that knows how to work together a Warrior is the superior choice, especially once Kunark hits.

All you have to do is have someone else load up agro (Rangers are good at this with snares and such) so it's ready for the Warrior to taunt and start with a good lead on the group so there isn't much of a threat issue at all and you simply end up with the superior mitigation. For example, if the Ranger pulls with snare he can snare it 2-3 times on the way into the group to build even more agro so when it comes in and the Warrior taunts he is very high on agro relative to the other dps and the casters can nuke right away and not pull off of him. Rangers have plenty of mana to do that, especially if they have clarity. It's basically just generating the threat lead for the Warrior that the other hybrid tanks have with the superior mitigation of the Warrior. If a 2nd mob is mezzed in the camp, the Ranger can toss a few snares on it and continue to build up threat so again once the taunt lands it's already on the Warrior.

Forgive me it's been over a decade but I think the way it worked was the Warrior would switch, taunt the mezzed mob (not breaking mez) then back to the mob the group was killing (assist was normally a dps and not the tank). If you lacked a Ranger, the Enchanter could throw a few extra tashes on the mob for the threat from taunt. Either way, the Warrior taunts it while the group is killing the other mob so that a successful taunt is already in after someone else generated a nice bit of threat on it. That way when the mob dies, the Warrior can immediately break mez and have agro with his taunt key already refreshed and ready to be used again if for whatever reason he loses agro. Pretty sure this started becoming really effective in Kunark, but it's still pretty effective now. There is no reason not to pre-taunt the next mob you are going to kill rather then make the group wait 10 seconds for you to try to taunt twice before breaking mez, it's about efficiency. I've grouped with Warriors that held agro as good as the Hybrids and I've grouped with Hybrids that sucked at holding agro. Of all tanks I've grouped with really only two have stood out, one was a Paladin and one was a Warrior. However, don't shoot me if my memory is incorrect on how it was done it's been a decade. All I know is I regularly grouped with a Warrior on live and never had agro issues.

Good Warrior >= Good Hybrid > Bad Hybrid > Bad Warrior.

[Wildas]

I love wars, but there's no content in Kunark where I'd rather one over a pal/sk for a single group. Slow and the increasing efficiency of CH more than take care of healer mana. Maybe if we were one grouping the Seb Protector, but that's it.

[Estu]

Originally Posted by YendorLootmonkey [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

For the answers of "this would require extensive parsing", the parsing for this was probably done 10 years ago by min-maxers that were trying to determine the best raid tanks and they came up with the same conclusion then that all your favorite min-maxers here are running with now based on 10 years of Everquest experience... SK/PAL tanks > WAR tanks for XP/trash in Classic, WAR tanks > SK/PAL tanks for boss mobs in Classic. Otherwise, if the opposite were true, there would be virtually no warriors needed for raid guild recruiting here. And WARs come into their own starting in Kunark with the taunt fixes, disciplines, and higher aggro weapon availability.

There are enough min-maxers around such that the way things are being done now are usually being done with good reason, as they've had 10+ years of experience with the parsing, mechanics, and content to know better this time around. Are there definitive answers for what you've asked? Yes, but they've been long forgotten and the data long buried away, and only the direct conclusions remain with no incentive to re-hash all the data just to come up with the same answers.

Interesting point RE the work having probably been done already. I am still curious if anyone has a link to some website with the analysis.

Originally Posted by Grod [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

For your average player in your typical group an SK / Pally is the better choice but in a GOOD group that knows how to work together a Warrior is the superior choice, especially once Kunark hits.

All you have to do is have someone else load up agro (Rangers are good at this with snares and such) so it's ready for the Warrior to taunt and start with a good lead on the group so there isn't much of a threat issue at all and you simply end up with the superior mitigation. For example, if the Ranger pulls with snare he can snare it 2-3 times on the way into the group to build even more agro so when it comes in and the Warrior taunts he is very high on agro relative to the other dps and the casters can nuke right away and not pull off of him. Rangers have plenty of mana to do that, especially if they have clarity. It's basically just generating the threat lead for the Warrior that the other hybrid tanks have with the superior mitigation of the Warrior. If a 2nd mob is mezzed in the camp, the Ranger can toss a few snares on it and continue to build up threat so again once the taunt lands it's already on the Warrior.

Forgive me it's been over a decade but I think the way it worked was the Warrior would switch, taunt the mezzed mob (not breaking mez) then back to the mob the group was killing (assist was normally a dps and not the tank). If you lacked a Ranger, the Enchanter could throw a few extra tashes on the mob for the threat from taunt. Either way, the Warrior taunts it while the group is killing the other mob so that a successful taunt is already in after someone else generated a nice bit of threat on it. That way when the mob dies, the Warrior can immediately break mez and have agro with his taunt key already refreshed and ready to be used again if for whatever reason he loses agro. Pretty sure this started becoming really effective in Kunark, but it's still pretty effective now. There is no reason not to pre-taunt the next mob you are going to kill rather then make the group wait 10 seconds for you to try to taunt twice before breaking mez, it's about efficiency. I've grouped with Warriors that held agro as good as the Hybrids and I've grouped with Hybrids that sucked at holding agro. Of all tanks I've grouped with really only two have stood out, one was a Paladin and one was a Warrior. However, don't shoot me if my memory is incorrect on how it was done it's been a decade. All I know is I regularly grouped with a Warrior on live and never had agro issues.

Good Warrior >= Good Hybrid > Bad Hybrid > Bad Warrior.

Cool strategy with having someone else build up aggro so you can taunt off them. Of course this wouldn't work for even-or-higher mobs in classic, so presumably in classic you'd still need to have the warrior let the monster beat on them for a while without letting anyone else engage.