If knights had defensive, would there be any reason to have warriors?

[greatdane]

Defensive disc should have just never been put in the game in the first place, but base proc rate should have been much higher. Outside of a select few utility weapons, and of course the fact that it's a warrior's only real source of aggro, procs are nearly worthless. Like 97% of procs in this game are irrelevant. You get some weapon from fucking NToV which has a damage proc, and it turns out that it amounts to half of 1 DPS because it procs like twice a minute even with max dex. What's the point? Some of the rarest and supposedly most high-end weapons in this game have procs that deal less than 100 damage. It's so pathetic, honestly.

I'm not calling for a change here, but the original developers were just so milquetoast when it came to this shit. There's like all of 20ish weapons in the entire game (during the P99 era) that have procs that really matter. Half of those matter because they happen to be warrior tank weapons, and it doesn't actually matter what the proc is, because it's often something completely meaningless like a -5 AC debuff or a stun that any endgame mob is immune to anyway--it just matters that it generates x amount of aggro. So dull.

But yeah, if knights got defensive, they'd be better tanks for anything except AoW and a select few other bosses who hit so hard that having marginally more HP and mitigation is important. For almost all raid content, being able to grab solid aggro from the first moment of the fight and hold it reliably forever would be worth far more than a tiny edge in raw survivability, because in all likelihood, any given boss fight never actually has a single moment where those 300 extra HP and 3% better avoidance/mitigation actually made a difference; but being able to DPS/debuff to everyone's full potential immediately when the fight starts makes a very real difference. That's why knights are vastly superior tanks for any content that doesn't call for the use of defensive discipline.

[Jimjam]

If we’re talking about fixing war aggro then they should have just adjusted bash to generate aggro similar to stun spells. That was the intended mechanic to push melees working as tanks to use sword and board.

[pasi]

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

Defensive disc should have just never been put in the game in the first place, but base proc rate should have been much higher. Outside of a select few utility weapons, and of course the fact that it's a warrior's only real source of aggro, procs are nearly worthless. Like 97% of procs in this game are irrelevant. You get some weapon from fucking NToV which has a damage proc, and it turns out that it amounts to half of 1 DPS because it procs like twice a minute even with max dex. What's the point? Some of the rarest and supposedly most high-end weapons in this game have procs that deal less than 100 damage. It's so pathetic, honestly.

I'm not calling for a change here, but the original developers were just so milquetoast when it came to this shit. There's like all of 20ish weapons in the entire game (during the P99 era) that have procs that really matter. Half of those matter because they happen to be warrior tank weapons, and it doesn't actually matter what the proc is, because it's often something completely meaningless like a -5 AC debuff or a stun that any endgame mob is immune to anyway--it just matters that it generates x amount of aggro. So dull.

But yeah, if knights got defensive, they'd be better tanks for anything except AoW and a select few other bosses who hit so hard that having marginally more HP and mitigation is important. For almost all raid content, being able to grab solid aggro from the first moment of the fight and hold it reliably forever would be worth far more than a tiny edge in raw survivability, because in all likelihood, any given boss fight never actually has a single moment where those 300 extra HP and 3% better avoidance/mitigation actually made a difference; but being able to DPS/debuff to everyone's full potential immediately when the fight starts makes a very real difference. That's why knights are vastly superior tanks for any content that doesn't call for the use of defensive discipline.

The game was 2 years old and most of even the hardcore raiders weren't 60 until Luclin. There was UO and EQ, so it wasn't like MMORPG design was fleshed out much either. The game barely attempted endgame class balance until PoP as well. Ergo, I don't think much thought went into this stuff.


Anyhow, even though most weapon procs in this era are milquetoast, this era tends to have a much higher number of unique procs than later expansions.

Off the top of my head: AE effects like Earthshaker, Rain effects like Bladestorm/PWC/SoS, SpinStuns (broken here), huge DDs relative to era like Dawnfire/Undead Legions/Ranger Shards, Epics in general, Razorfang of Xygoz, Bone Melt, slow procs, Theurg Star, etc.

Later on, procs seem to get more streamlined to things like hate, DD, stun DD, rune.

[Snaggles]

The OG devs assumed content would take longer to burn though. They weren’t prepared for people to hit level 50 in a week during the release.

To limit progression you make something hit harder, give it more hps, or mess with mechanics to make to a challenge. Best tank in the game with less than an ideal aggro lock means people need to be on pins and needles for aggro. So did they just flub it, did it on purpose, or saw the results and didn’t care because they were swimming in sub money that wasn’t being affected? Um, yes.

The original devs did not like knights or hybrids in general so far as the raid scene, we never used them to tank anything outside group content, 20 years later p99 and other sims have repurposed these classes. Burning more mana to heal a worse tank with castable aggro so you can slow faster and nuke harder would have broken most of their brains. AA’s fixed some things but I like the nostalgia from this era a lot.

[Raj]

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

Well in classic they are just straight up better than warriors at tanking. Kunark is where the pure melees get severely overcompensated.

[Atmas]

Warriors can put out huge damage with berserk, a good weapon, dps buffs and disc. It almost never happens on raids because they are always on stand by for rotating in as MT.

For pretty much anything that doesn't require defensive it's going to be more mana efficient to heal a Knight. Everything dies faster because DPS can jump right in without worrying about stealing agro. Things get slowed faster. The raid early slow/less rez metrics look a lot better with knights.

[Wychway]

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

100% success rate taunt (the AE part of it being icing on the cake). A single ability which guarantees the person goes to the top of the aggro list.

Equip earthshaker.
Train.
AE taunt
riposte disc
lolololololololololololololololol

[Jimjam]

Ripostes don’t proc. You gotta train rampage (well, that got nerfed not to proc either but it used to work). Iirc warcry was broke and worked like a second rampage too.

[Dulu]

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

Agreed, shieldblock would be cool, and imo if bash generated aggro as designed (similar to stun spells) proper sword and board tanking would get a proper look in (at a range of contexts - grouping as well as raiding).

I like it.

[greatdane]

To be honest, if bash generated aggro like a stun, holding aggro would be totally trivial and there would be even less reason to play a knight.