"Best" untwinked tank choice?

[Insaiyan]

Hello.

I am wanting to play a melee class untwinked for the ultimate journey. I can't decide if I want to tank exclusively, but I decided to post here to ask the advice of which tank or melee character I should choose for my first melee -- untwinked.

I don't want to have to kite, I want to be able to stand toe to toe with and enemy and slash em Down. Is that possible in EQ?

So much of the solo advice revolves around kiting and charming while x does y for easy and quick exp and loot. Honestly I just want to crush things in the face and never have to run or move unless it's to save someone or chase down an enemy.

[Muggens]

Make a warrior and join auld lang syne

[beargryllz]

Warrior

[Phenyo]

untwinked warrior sucks, if you do decide to roll one you should consider joining ALS

[Insaiyan]

3 for warrior -- is that for my maximum pain or will this class satisfy my urge to never have to "kite" a mob and instead smash them down efficiently in the face? Thanks.

Leaning Troll Warrior

[Topgunben]

Shadow knight should be your first choice.

Warrior is the absolute last class in the game you want to play untwined. I know, because I played a barb warrior as my first character back before Kunark was released. Had I known better, I would have made a monk, shadow knight, paladin, or ranger. All of which melee better than a warrior untwinked for untwinked.

i know people might cringe with me throwing ranger in the mix, but hear me out. They can heal hemselves, buff, DS, DOT and DD. If there's an enchanter in the group, ranger like sk and paladin can benefit not just from haste but also clarity.

The other thing is that a warrior is a sitting duck. You are dependent on everyone else for just about everything. no ports, no sow, no fd, no healing, nothing nothing NOTHING. ALL YOU GET TO DO IS GROUP AND GET YOUR BUTT KICKED. Haha. Youre the first one to die. You always travel slow, you have to bind in cities and CRs are a nightmare because you don't have an ability to defend yourself until you get your corpse.

I could go on and on. In the end game though from what I hear, warriors are the most Bad A class in the game, having some of the highest dps stats in raiding

Back to shadow knight... with the ability to lifetap, you'll be able to regain health faster, you'll also be able to have better snap aggro than the feeble taunt skill. You also have one of the most game breaking abilities and that is Feign Death, albeit it's a spell in the case of SK.

To finally answer your question, no you won't be able to stand toe to toe with the enemy without a group behind you. Especially if your not twinked. A mob can easily do 500 damage to you in a fight in the mid 30s. That same 500 hp will take 250 ticks or 25 minutes to regain, unless your an iksar or troll.

[Danth]

Solo advice revolves around kiting or charming because monsters are generally stronger than players of similar level. A weakly-geared Warrior has problems solo'ing upper blue-con opponents, and in some cases even greens can pose a threat. That being said, if you're determined to level going toe-to-toe I'll toss in my thoughts:

Shadow Knights are poor since fear-kiting ranks as one of their major solo tactics, and you don't want to do that. Rangers are sub-par for the same reason (panic animal). Bards definitely won't appeal to someone who doesn't want to charm or kite. Warriors are Warriors, great for end-game, not so great for leveling and terrible if weakly-equipped. Rogues are awful for this purpose. Among the melee, that leaves Monks or Paladins. In weak gear either can solo (slowly), although Paladins probably have the easier time due to having healing ability plus Root from level 22. Iksar Monk offers the advantage of innate regeneration, so I'd recommend either some sort of Paladin or an Iksar Monk for this task.

That being said, none of the available options are great, and even a Monk or Paladin trying to solo toe-to-toe for experience while wearing low-end equipment will live a slow and rather tedious existence. It's doable, in theory, but doable doesn't mean "fun" and I don't recommend it. Melee are made for grouping, or at least duo'ing.

Danth

[Insaiyan]

Thank you for all your replies it gives me a lot to think about. Danth, thank you especially because I feel like you really understood that I do not want to fear, charm, or kite at all. My reason is mostly due to hand arthritis so I want something that's similiar to a sword and board playstyle -- a lot of defense, survivabilty, and capable of soloing stuff to level when I don't feel like grouping.

A paladin sounds like it might be fun. It has the defense and survival I'm looking for. Is the damage there if I keep my hunting areas catered towards the undead? Anything viable about a damage-undead-killing playstyle?

Iksar monk sounds cool as well with the regen. But I'm still new to EQ so it might suck not being able to explore the world much without being killed everywhere I go. Dunno. Don't know what ya don't know, y'know?

[Danth]

I have to stress that EQ isn't a game where solo melee are really intended to go toe-to-toe with opponents. Go into it understanding it's going to be slow and difficult. Nearly all the newer online role-playing games are different in this respect.

Paladins do low damage against undead and terrible damage against anything else. It's the class's primary weakness, and will be compounded using level-appropriate equipment. There are gaps in the level range where it's difficult to find undead to fight. When P1999 was pre-expansion (hence there was no "twinking") I was able to solo on my Paladin if I needed to, but again it was slow and I didn't find it all that fun. However that's me, not you, and you might find the pace more acceptable. If you want to primarily group as a tank type while having at least some solo capability when you can't find (or don't want) a group, the Paladin can do the job.

The Monk will do the job also, exchanging the Paladin's heals and buffs in favor of higher damage output. They push fewer buttons and tend to die less often (feign death), but have fewer options of dealing with things like unwanted adds or whatnot without having to feign off aggro and start over. The use of in-combat bandaging can significantly improve solo capability, at the cost of some platinum and much button-pushing. Monk weight limit gets annoying when solo. Monks can act in the tank role if necessary, but few to no groups will invite them as such.....better like pulling.

If solo is of purely secondary concern the Shadow Knight might be worth a second look. Ignoring fear-kiting takes away most of this class's solo power, but they can still solo to some degree by spamming lifetap spells. Doing that plays away from the class's strength but it's possible; the benefit is that the class gets around the game world more easily than a Paladin can thanks to having feign death and invisibility. Note that those spells are obtained only at level 30, so the early-mid levels can be quite rough, and overall I'm not convinced it's the best choice for the job you want to do. I tossed it out there anyhow in the interest of completion.

In either case frequent downtime when solo, while bad for leveling rate, will give arthritic hands a break between pulls. For this same reason you probably want to avoid classes--Bard and Shaman in particular--which demand near-constant button pushing. You said you want to level un-twinked, but do you mean that in the literal sense (ie, you'll use only what you obtain in your travels) or do you merely mean you have a very limited budget? That's an important distinction.

Danth

[Topgunben]

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

Thank you for all your replies it gives me a lot to think about. Danth, thank you especially because I feel like you really understood that I do not want to fear, charm, or kite at all. My reason is mostly due to hand arthritis so I want something that's similiar to a sword and board playstyle -- a lot of defense, survivabilty, and capable of soloing stuff to level when I don't feel like grouping.

A paladin sounds like it might be fun. It has the defense and survival I'm looking for. Is the damage there if I keep my hunting areas catered towards the undead? Anything viable about a damage-undead-killing playstyle?

Iksar monk sounds cool as well with the regen. But I'm still new to EQ so it might suck not being able to explore the world much without being killed everywhere I go. Dunno. Don't know what ya don't know, y'know?

If the reason is mostly due to arthritis I suggest going wizard or mage. Literally all you have to do is push 2 buttons when your a wizard. That is the sit/stand and 1 for dd.

I really have to second what Danth said, Classic EQ is not the type of game that favors melee soloing and certainly not tank soloing. You will burn out extremely fast trying to solo as a warrior. Soloing as a warrior just doesn't exist outside of twinking. And even then you need to have 60k in gear including fungi tunic.

The main reason that warriors and tank classes can't solo all that well is simply because health regen in EQ is extremely slow. 2hp per tick is 20hp a minute. That's 200 hp in 10 minutes and 1200 in 1 hour. Do you want an hour of downtime at level 30 to regain all your hp.

Now compare that with a necromancer that can regen 1200 mana in 10 minutes. Even quicker with certain lich spells. That's about 6x faster than a warrior can get his health back, and effectively meaning a necro can solo exp at 6x what a warrior can. That's if you can survive the fight against a blue as a warrior.

It took me 1.5 years to get to 55 on my iksar necro, I imagine it would take me about 7 years to get to 55 as a solo warrior. I'm a casual scum though.