3 tank comparison?

[knytul]

I caught this thread on sony forums kinda made me laff. The funny thing is nobody picked Paladin for it:
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/posts ... _id=146813

[boukk]

Sorry, are you surprised?

[shiftie]

The community of people who can actually play a paladin to its full potential is small. So small in fact, it is not suprising that by and large the eq community perception of paladins is not very high. Since the world of eq is so dpscentric now most don't have the patience or skill to just grind a mob down. For those of us who have been paladins for so very long we can appreciate the dps gains the class has made, understand where dps increases could be improved but need neither to win.

As far as pulling is concerned if a boxer plays a mage, which is likely because most boxers do they would know that root pulling with shackles is superior to sk snare pulling any day of the week.

In conclusion do you really blame the group oriented player/boxer for wanting a gigantic dd with a dot attached readily available to nuke any named they are trying to farm? Out of the 3 tanks with the addition of mercs they now have the ability to FD and rez on a bad pull or a fight gone bad. What does a paladin offer in those 2 departments? Most all undead content can only be farmed for xp, there are little to no named undead camps, even frostcrypt gear was weaksauce and the drops of any value were found in other zones during tss. If I were a boxer and I didn't choose an sk, I'd go warrior also just because defensive trivializes nearly all content and of course as mentioned on that thread afk aggro with time to focus on the other bots.

I am most certainly not suprised by their choices, interestingly enough on the shaman boards here on samanna a thread was started asking what class is the best solo class of big targets or named and by a large margin Sk's were given that title followed by a raid geared cleric. I really don't have anything against the sk's, I have a lot of Sk friends so I am happy at their gains. I do however find it amusing that they are always cockblocking us from getting upgrades, but I guess that is in their nature. I find it even more amusing that a large portion of their outspoken people whine constantlly about how neglected the class is and still insist they need more. When choosing a tank groupers overwhelmingly choose an sk, when choosing a box most shaman choose an sk, who can solo the best.. that's right sk's... I think I'm for reals ignoring any more sk class balancing issues and I'm going to start being a greedy little bastard. I'm also going to ignore any sk complaints or whinefests - in their current rendition sk's are quite blanced if not tipped toward overpowered.

[Ughbash]

I would argue with the improvements made to them Ranger is also a perfectly viable plate tank now even if they do wear chain.

[knytul]

what i found funny, was no paladin had stepped up yet and countered the sk arguement.

[Achillez]

It doesn't surprise me at all that people prefer SKs.

- They can out dps us by a large margin.
- They can hold and control agro much better then us.
- They can pull with FD.

The thing is our special abilities are not really useful in a group situation anymore. Our group heal is never used (I only ever need to use group heal during raids that have big AEs) and our stuns only work on mobs up to 85. So what can we offer over SKs grinding in a group nowadays?

[Normy]

Hard to argue, If i wanted a box tank, I wouldn't choose a paladin either. I know that to be truely effective as a paladin, it pretty much requires constant attention. Sk's require less attention for similar effects, but have other benefits like DPS and the ability to pull if needs be. Warriors require the least amount of attention and have the most DPS and HP.

I can't counter that situation.

[Fornever_Stromm]

What I find truly amazing is that Sk's have been quite powerful for a long time. Yet we have never said anything because it seems its a constant struggle with the warriors. They want to Gank knights period so we team up and fight for our right to wear plate. Plain and simple fact is SK's are either A) waaay over powered or B) Paladins are waaaay underpowered.

We are supposed to be half cleric and warrior which would mean next to clerics we should be able to out heal any other class. Yet SK's get shrouds that perform lifetaps that can crit, AA's that have innate chance to perform a lifetap and can crit as well as a mini leechcurse spell. Not to mention a HT that does 24k plus a 12k DoT effect and a Leech Touch which is a 9kish lifetap.

A lvl 80 SK fully maxxed out in AA's of leech curse can non crit hit for 2200. That is a lifetap proc that is always activated. We get Blessing of life many many many expansion after when we should have gotten it that rarely goes off and hits for 313 non crit. Wheres the balance there?

They get AE agro spells, we dont even have a color flux.

This is getting out of hand. We need an upgrade.

[Achillez]

Wait they can innately proc a 2200 base lifetap meaning crit 5kish crit heal 10kish? That is ridiculous for 0 mana : x Our blessing of life should do about 4k base if that is the case lol

[boukk]

[Achillez]

I would give up slay in a heartbeat for a 1100dmg innate proc nevermind a 2200dmg one

[frocus]

the innate proc is a result of maxing out Soul abrasion which they got when we got slay which modifies innate lifetap procs(at the time was just their shroud line) then in PoP or maybe GoD they got Touch of the cursed the innate lifetap proc via aa. Soulabrasion goes 2,6,9,5,5,5 ending with a 251% mod to innate taps Touch of the cursed is 3,6,9,6,6,6 ending at a 175 base damage tap so with max on both non crit Touch should be about 614.(first 6 ranks in each can't find exact numbers for further increases)

Biggest double crit i've seen the heal land for is 10.3kish.

Edit: ToTC seems to be fairly consistant in it's 25 damage increase in the proc per level and once into later ranks SA seems to be 17% increase to base damage per rank so end result of 12 points of SA and 18 of ToTC would seem to be +353% to innate taps and base damage on ToTC of 475 yielding a base tap of 2152. believe max destructive fury is basex2.4 for crits which makes dd crit 5164 not counting spell damage etc and 10328 for double crits for max amount healed minus mod 3's. These numbers mesh pretty well with what I've seen.

[Sylvia Sunhair]

[Normy]

Not trying to start an arguement, but how many here have actually played a SK? I just seems like alot of people are over-estimating just how powerful they are. Yea, they can get some pretty cool crit heals once in a while, but it doesn't scratch what I can self-heal myself for. That was one of the reasons they were so upset when their lifetaps were all linked together. In todays game when 30-40k is possible buffed up in group gear, a 5k proc that you can't immediately recast doesn't really cut it for real healing. Its just a band-aid between real heals.

I mean, so people have seen a 10.3k crit, I've seen a 12k crit on my burst and I can rely on a 13k heal from my AoM. As for the 0 mana deal, true thats pretty cool, but I wouldn't trade with them.

This debate will rage forever, and there are some good points, there are a few things that SK's can do that I can't imagine doing on my paladin, but I don't want to be an SK. We do need a few upgrades, but lets keep it reasonable. A lvl 80 pally with maxxed out AA's of our healing will tank unaided significantly longer than the lvl 80 SK with maxxed leech curse.

About the only point I can really agree with is that their DPS is substantially higher than ours. And I don't want that nerfed at all, I just want ours brought up some. I don't even want to be on par with them, just higher than we are now. In my opinion, they should be higher DPS than us. As long as they can't heal like us I'm ok with it. But its out of whack right now.

[frocus]

I play an SK alt. Alt might be a bad term for my SK as I play it on a different server and just use it to have fun on. I just wanted to provide a bit of clarification for those spouting hte numbers tho about how many aa's need to be invested to attain these 10k crit heals on the proc. its somewhere in the 240 aa range just off the tap buff proc and tap proc modifyer aa's. In order to max the spell crits and destructive fury is more aa's and then buying hte aa to allow crit heals is another animal.

These lines are the reasons I recommend a soul abrasion line aa and a dd innate for us to help with the afk swing balancing between us. Giving us a non aggro spell on same timers as crush/stuns that is 1800 base damage would be another recommendation. Sk's when they want to do dps drop everything in order to load up 3 or 4 dots 2 taps and spear only leaving room for fd and 2 other spells with 10 total slots and one of those usually goes to bites to aid the group and maybe 1 terror but why have a terror loaded if you aren't tanking and aren't needed to kite or something if they go for dps they go for dps.

Edit: this won't allow us nearly their numbers dps wise but would provide a decent boost to paladins without necessitating a nerf to slay.

[Fornever_Stromm]

[Kneesmasher1]

SKs are vastly superior tanks to Paladins these days....unless we are in stunnable content. If stunnable, and the Paladin is diligent enough to stun consistently ad nauseum, then we hold our own. Otherwise, from a pure tanking perspective, the SK wins hands down. From a DPS standpoint they win hands down unless the content is undead. From a Pulling perspective, they win without any competition at all. From an AE aggro standpoint where there are multiple mobs in camp, they win without even trying.

It's all true. Paladins are last. Simple as that. Rather than boost our DPS, I'd much prefer the ability to tank significantly better. More AE aggro capability, more AC buffs, more slef healing capabilities.

[Normy]

[Fornever_Stromm]

When you have the chance to play a high end SK do it. I want you to pick a mob and start attacking the lifetap procs go off at such an insane rate that it makes them almost not need a lifetap spell up. Epic 2.0 makes them do more damage and proc more. Most 2 handers increase the rate at which they proc and you can call bullshit on that if you want, but considering i own both toons and i can turn attack on the SK and never look back. Point of the matter is any newby can start playing an SK and not have to pay half as much attention as we do.

[boukk]

[Normy]

Ok, well I still haven't been given any solid example of how SK's are superior tanks. And I do have access to a high-end SK that I've played in the group game. Didn't blow me away, I was still reliant on a healer but I had no ability to save other group members if they went low health. Epic click is awesome though.

But obviously people here are convinced they are just that uber. /shrug. I don't spread the SK's around in my raids to keep groups alive though. And I've already admited that on the group game they are doing better than we are thanks to advanced DPS and the option to pull.

Thanks for the responses though, I am really not trying to fight over it, I'm just not understanding is all. I guess I could try raising my own SK alt, but I don't think I have the energy or time to raise another character at this point so I'll just have look from the outside in on that one.

[Drazeena]