purpose of warrior

[mystang89]

First things first-this is not meant to troll. It's an honest question.

I've never played a warrior before so I really don't know what they are for and just have the examples I've grouped with.

From what I've seen they aren't really meant for taking because they can't hold aggro. They're aggro seems to be dependent on procs, which is iffy at best. They have taunt, which any tank knows only works when you don't need it to. Most of the time I group with a warrior who is supposed to be tanking a healer or caster will take aggro and I'll have to snap aggro back because the warrioris waiting on a proc. I'm a 45 ranger BTW just so you know where I'm coming from.

Now when a warrior gets hit I've noticed they can take a bunch of dmg but it's all up to rng. (not ranger, random).

The thing is, most of these warriors I've grouped with seen like good people who know their class and are trying. So is there something that I'm missing?

[Caridry]

Warriors have the highest damage mitigation in the game, but when it boils down to it, to be a top end raider, they are very very very very very very expensive (proc item/weapons)

And to add: warriors don't get snap agro pre-50's imo... its very difficult unless you got a mallet or something.

[Daldaen]

Warriors were awful group tanks in classic for the reasons you cite.

They have no means of snapping aggro beyond taunt. Part of the issue I find with warriors, and tanks in general, is they will spam the taunt hotkey. This is a VERY bad practice for you to get in on a tank. I understand the necessity to skill it up, but doing it as a typical behavior 40+ is bad.

Taunt puts you at the top of the aggro list if successful. When you are already tanking, and at the top of aggro list it does NOTHING. The reason I stress this is you will see tanks spam it while already having aggro. Once they lose aggro to a wizard or a cleric or what have you, that is the moment you need to hit taunt and hope it works. The problem is if you are spamming it, the ability could be down for another 10 seconds while you have no other way of snapping back aggro on yourself other than keeping auto attack on.

Proccing on warriors increases with DEX/Gear which tends to happen in the high 50s when warriors get better DEX. Having haste and shaman DEX buff definitely helps them hold aggro better but they are best at holding aggro in long fights where they can continually attack a mob. Not 1-min fights that keep getting pulled in - IE typical grouping.

Unless you REALLY like warrior, I suggest against playing one with intention to tank in groups. Their main function is to tank on raids, solely because they have Defensive and Evasive disciplines.

Otherwise play a Paladin or SK (or try to invite those to tank for your groups) if the inability to hold aggro in groups annoys you.

[phacemeltar]

making a dps warrior is really fun, and zerker mode is (i think) the highest sustained dps in-game (other than rogue). combine this with the fact that they wont get 1-shotted when they pull aggro, and you have a pretty good reason to roll warrior. just keep an SK/pal around to stay at the top of the hate-list and you should be ok. also, taunt starts working once you hit 100 skill.

edit - im not sure if this was changed, but i was told that taunt will only work a certain number of times per mob.. so if you are not saving it for when u need it, then it probably wont be working when u want it to.

[Jimjam]

The group makes up for the warrior's 'lack of aggro'.

Rogues can evade, monks can feign death. Some will even give the warrior a moment to taunt before they ditch their aggro, which helps the warrior piggy back off the dps aggro.

Many classes (and earth pets) can root the mob, which forces it to attack the warrior standing on it's tippy toes.

As someone who has played a few warriors across several servers (sad I know), having someone that roots the mob at the start of a fight is really appreciated. It basically allows a warrior to use taunt and piggy back aggro from slows, etc rather than these spells causing problems.

As a ranger one way to play it is root the mob, cast flame lick and hope the warrior gets an aggro proc or successful taunt by the time your root breaks.

The reason I suggest to flame lick as well as root is it helps you (and the warrior) pad aggro in case of an early root break which could otherwise cause the mob to run to a more squishy class, such as an enchanter casting slow.

Other things group members can do to help warriors is if they take aggro to run the mob back to the warrior, not run the mob away from the warrior and out of taunt/melee range. Also, some spells can be used to minimise aggro gain, for example you can typically heal efficiently with the hp/ac line of buffs while generating much less aggro than using the equivalent heal spell.

[mystang89]

Thanks for the info everyone. I especially didn't know about taunt as I am one of the people who spam it right down the line with kick and disarm. I'll take that one off my rotation till I need it.

And Jimjam mentioned something I learned from a higher lvl ranger, that rooting the mob helps the warrior keep agro too. I ended up pulling and rooting next to the warrior the entire time I was grouped. Of course it also helped I had Clarity on as rooting takes up a decent chunk of Mana on me when its used over and over.

This is my main character so I haven't been in any raids. If warriors really are better at maintaining long term battle agro then I can definitely see them being the best tanks for raids.

I still feel bad when I end up having to pull snap agro and tank the rest of the mob for the battle since, if I was playing the warrior, I'd feel like I failed my job. Maybe those first time warriors can read this and see where they're potential really lies! =D

Thanks for the info.

[Robbintha Hood]

If they are spamming taunt after lvl 40, they don't know what they are doing.

[Samoht]

Early warrior aggro is really based more on damage potential than anything else. Getting a good haste item and spamming kick on cooldown should be enough to keep aggro...

Except against bad DPS. That's really the most outlying problem in the early levels here. Monks that choose not to FD, rogues that choose not to evade, wizards that drop their biggest nuke on incoming.

It's almost as if they think they're playing World of Warcraft. Well, kids, this isn't WoW. This game is actually hard because EverQuest didn't give warrior tanks easy buttons like WoW did. Well, at least not until AA's and OoW disciplines, anyway. You have to show at least a little bit of situational awareness and not just go balls to the wall insane with DPS.

Yes, procing weapons can help, but they can be extremely unreliable until 150 or so DEX, so getting weapons that maximize damage potential like Staff of Battle, Wurmslayer, and Fist of Zek are really going to bet the best tanking weapons until 37 or even 46.

There is one exception, the Scorpikis Claw Impaler because poison procs are huge aggro. If you can stack some DEX on your gear, you should use two of those starting at level 30 and let us know if you see any difference.

But Brell help you if you rolled Barb, Ogre, Troll, Human, or Dark Elf.

[Jimjam]

Thanks for the info everyone. I especially didn't know about taunt as I am one of the people who spam it right down the line with kick and disarm. I'll take that one off my rotation till I need it.

And Jimjam mentioned something I learned from a higher lvl ranger, that rooting the mob helps the warrior keep agro too. I ended up pulling and rooting next to the warrior the entire time I was grouped. Of course it also helped I had Clarity on as rooting takes up a decent chunk of Mana on me when its used over and over.

This is my main character so I haven't been in any raids. If warriors really are better at maintaining long term battle agro then I can definitely see them being the best tanks for raids.

I still feel bad when I end up having to pull snap agro and tank the rest of the mob for the battle since, if I was playing the warrior, I'd feel like I failed my job. Maybe those first time warriors can read this and see where they're potential really lies! =D

Thanks for the info.

Some people will say it's not a ranger's job to grab snap aggro off silkies, but I personally disagree with those people. Especially going up the early levels to the 40s.

[mystang89]

Some people will say it's not a ranger's job to grab snap aggro off silkies, but I personally disagree with those people. Especially going up the early levels to the 40s.

Really? I guess it depends on the group make up but if there isn't a pally, sk or enc I can't see any reason why a class that is supposed to be a paper tank shouldn't grab aggro from the squishy. I feel it's my place to gethit before any other squishy. Well,actually even if there is another tank in the group I would still pull aggro. I don't see any reason not to.

[Raev]

With good weapons Warrior threat is actually quite solid on average; the problem is there are no good mid-level weapons in Kunark. An untwinked 45 warrior is probably using dual 9/25 yak clubs or at best a 9/20 sarnak warhammer; it gets much better with VP weapons (for example the 11/19 Howling Cutlass) but those aren't on the menu for non-twinks. Velious will help a lot here with Wavecrasher and Frostbringer.

But even with good weapons Warrior threat is quite inconsistent, and this effect is magnified by the short duration of fights at L45. As you get into the 50s, fights get longer and the warriors have more time to generate threat, whether its taunt, procs, or just swinging. It's still not perfect, of course: at 60 a geared warrior with a good group might be tanking 80-90% of the time, which compares favorably to the L45 warrior who struggles to tank even 50% of an encounter, but is still quite a bit less than the basically 100% of a hybrid.

So Jimjam has the right idea; if the robes pull aggro, just root. Rangers are actually quite versatile!

[Danth]

Warriors are for main tanking raid named for which /defensive is necessary. That's their purpose in life and what most of the folks who make the class look forward to. With aggro-clickies like mallets Warriors do a good job of it. Within the tank role they're also important for doing a limited selection of content with unusually small numbers. Since Warriors deal more damage than the hybrid tank, they stack more usefully when not tanking than the hybrid tanks since damage always stacks. As a rule it's a class focused on the higher-end, and especially on raiding.

Warriors stink as tanks for normal leveling and experience groups for the reasons discussed. The worse the skills of the group, the more of a liability the Warrior's limited skill set becomes. Good groups can work around the Warriors' deficiencies (usually via root) but it's still more effort and risk than using a hybrid tank. Tanks in EQ are badly designed. Among the three tank classes, we have one with superb durability but poor and unreliable hate generation, then two with sufficient hate generation but ho-hum durability. No matter which one you pick you're missing something and none of the three are optimal for all content. That 10% of the time a higher-level Warrior isn't tanking is when the Shaman gets flattened by a guardian wurm or some such.

Warriors have their place, but it takes a long time to level up to the point of reaching home turf for the class. The 40's through into the mid 50's is probably its low point. Keep with it and eventually you'll be main tanking raid named while the hybrids stand aside uselessly.

Danth

[Wrench]

which compares favorably to the L45 warrior who struggles to tank even 50% of an encounter

this is not my experience unless you have stupid groups or stupid warriors

you cant be as lazy as when you have a hybrid class, but your group needs to learn to play their classes for endgame anyhow

other than whats already been mentioned, here are some other thoughts:

if your a caster, dont nuke above 70 or so
if your a melee, know how your class can lower its aggo
if your a healer, time your heals and avoid doing them on inc
if your a warrior, use assist msgs to tell people when to attack, and also give your chanter a few taunts on mezzed mobs before breaking

almost all shit people should be doing with any group anyhow, but the level of class understanding seems to be so low most of the time

[Danth]

your post serves to illustrate the weakness of the Warrior in experience groups. Get a hybrid tank and you don't need to do any of that. I disagree with the notion of expecting folks to play in a regimented, raid-style manner even in normal groups; that's not fun! After all, the purpose of the game isn't merely to defeat content--it's to have fun doing it. That Wizard who's gleefully blasting away, the Shaman who malos and slows at his own pace....they're having a lot more fun than terrified shell-shocked casters grouped with some inadequate Warrior, who have to hold back from using their abilities for constant fear of death.

Danth

[Sage Truthbearer]

I think that Warriors would have a frustrating time leveling in random pick-up groups. You're going to constantly have Mage pets breaking mezzes, Shamans slowing too early, etc. and no way to peel aggro quickly. You have to have a patient personality or a willingness to be bossy (politely and hope people have a good attitude about constructive criticism).

As a Paladin, I'm glad never have to deal with this. But Warriors that make it through get the last laugh when they main tank raids.

[Wrench]

would counter that an organized group can push the bounds of pulls and difficult content without a wipe better than a haphazard one, it doesnt matter who your tank is

i have more fun holding challenging camps than doing crs, but to each their own

[Legday]

This is why warrior is the most gear dependent class in the game. An appropriately geared warrior with a haste item, agro weapons, and spider net clickies is equal to an SK or Paladin in terms of holding agro.

It costs a ton of money, hence the gear dependency. Any other gear dependent class in this game is gear dependent on going from a good <insert class> to a great <insert class>. With warriors it either, you're poor and gimped or rich and OP.

[Raev]

but your group needs to learn to play their classes for endgame anyhow

So as the proud owner of a L60 warrior, I'm somewhat sympathetic to this, but at some point it becomes counterproductive: the overall goal is to kill NPCs as quickly and reliably as possible. I want debuffs on and rogues backstabbing ASAP so my group can kill stuff as fast as possible, and if that means I'm not tanking 100% of the time, my ego is just going to have to take it.

[Cecily]

It's really not that hard to root everything so that the warrior can prox agro. Only necessary if you're trying to slow mobs way early.
Don't put it all on the warrior. Ask yourself what can I do to make this group work better?

[ctre]

Ya, it is true.

All Warriors do have a hard time keeping agro in group's when comparing them to a SK or Pally.
You will notice that with any chump change SK or Pally, they will hold agro much better, and you can goto town just putting out damage as best you can.

I think a war that is in a highish group must have gear that helps sustain agro, (IE Gear... that does cost lots of plat). { the problem for all warriors.. gear }.

So as a rule for you , ( ranger dude ). With a warrior tanking, you control your dps output until you can understand your agro limits. Not all Warriors are the same, (ref above $$$plat cost for gear).

The advantage for any group. The warrior will cost the cleric less mana, (assuming all runs smoothly).

[Jimjam]

I think warrior's gear dependency is somewhat mitigated by not needing to buy spells, the fact that meditate classes don't tend to loot as much and the ease of acquisition of some decent AC items (banded, crafted, Jarsarth scale, cobalt).

Another bonus is the fact the rogue epic quest seems to be designed with providing the rogue's warrior pal in mind. It provides some reasonable aggro weapons (8/22 ykesha and 10/25 stun not so shabby). Thank you to the 24/7 Ragebringer Farm Corp!

Once you can get to the planes hate armour is decent enough and sky haste belts are easily attainable.

My first and favourite character on p1999 was a warrior, and he was entirely self funded, only equipping drop/vendor, quest and trade skill items. I don't think he has suffered too badly for it, certainly not as much as the group think on the forums suggested he would. Gearing up instead of starting with fungi/haste/etc made the character way more enjoyable (I fungi twinked a ranger on live, it was incredibly boring).

As a warrior main, I've always really (really!) appreciated having rangers in the group. Don't sweat a thing OP! Keep rangering, don't worry about making warriors sad. You probably make them happy!

[williestargell]

sky haste belts are easily attainable.

The 21% belt with minor stats is attainable. Very few people will get the big warrior haste belt from sky.

If you settle for 21% haste at high level as a warrior you've given away alot of opportunity for agro. Haste doesn't increase procs, but it does increase agro from swings which is very important. and it's guaranteed agro. All warriors need the ability to reach 100% haste between worn+spell haste. Spending the big bucks for a cloak of flames or minimum of RBB is pretty much a necessity to be a good warrior, unless you can loot a haste item while raiding.

[webrunner5]

Well when Velious comes out and fights last minutes instead of seconds like now, even for raid bosses, you will be a very happy camper to have a Warrior in your group.:)

Rangers need not apply to get hit a few times. That is when the Healer will want you booted from the group. And when the Rogue gets Jap Slapped a few times he might hit Evade a few more times also. :p

And if a Monk wants to take agro without FD have at it till you get the snot beat out of you. Mend is a LONG ways between being back up. :eek:

[Legday]

If you settle for 21% haste at high level as a warrior you've given away alot of opportunity for agro.

/agree

Haste is hugely important in holding agro. Do not underestimate it. It's why the high end haste items are so expensive.

An earlier commenter made a good point about not having to buy spells. A 60 shaman with Torpor and a 60 Shaman without Torpor are two completely different characters.

[Jimjam]

Good points on haste at high level, but remember the OP is a 45 ranger so is probably grouping with 40s, maybe low 50s at the very highest, at which point there is a little more wiggle room.

Sure a good warrior is level 60, 40% worn haste, high damage low delay weapons with a proc and big regen but he isn't going to be grouping with 'good' warriors.

I was trying to point out by this level a warrior isn't stuck with awful gear anymore, but has a few passable options.

[Muggens]

I cannot remember that the warrior was considered a poor tank for groups during the Live era(from the get go)... When I started my warrior a few months later he was reasonably twinked with FBSS, Lammys and later on Funghi/CoF, he never had trouble with keeping aggro, even with just FBSS, lammys and taunt. I've seen acouple of Tanks play on these Twitch streams now and to me it just seem like nobody now know how to use Taunt. They are all just spamming it continuously, ofcourse they will suck getting aggro then if they dont know how the taunt skill works.

[Muggens]

And yes sure, I've played on here now alittle also as a warrior and casters nuke right on Inc before the warrior have time to taunt, same goes for backstabbin rogues etc. I think it has most to do with the play style/timing etc of the folks here.

[Sylexis]

From what I've seen they aren't really meant for taking because they can't hold aggro. They're aggro seems to be dependent on procs, which is iffy at best. They have taunt, which any tank knows only works when you don't need it to.

Now when a warrior gets hit I've noticed they can take a bunch of dmg but it's all up to rng. (not ranger, random).

The thing is, most of these warriors I've grouped with seen like good people who know their class and are trying. So is there something that I'm missing?

There's a lot of things you're missing.

Aggro for warriors is based on a combination of potential melee damage and weapon procs, since monks and rogues can out damage the raw dps component of their hate, warriors have to compensate with spell casting procs. If the warrior is just leveling with a random pickup group it's anyone's guess who has the better weapons and aggro control.

The spikeyness of the tanks HP loss is about gear and AC, especially in Velious since most tanks are sitting around 1000 AC now and the softcap in velious is 1200, there's going to be a spike for a bit until the tanks get back up and geared to where they need to be for this expansion. Levels help a lot, but they don't solve everything, this is a GEAR based class.

And last but not least, grouping is a group effort in eq. I know! Who'd have thought right? So ban the idiot ranger who just walked into your group with two yaks and glare at the level 1 rogue with the purchased epic at level 5, but it's a team effort to make your group go efficiently.

[Sylexis]

For more info on the spikeyness and rng. This is what swinging with a weapon looks like in EQ:

https://web.archive.org/web/20110606161553/http://users.erols.com/aburner/eq/1hbgraph.gif

On that number line from 8 to 35, is the min to max of the weapon being swung. You see that sweet spot most hit for dmg of 25? That moves up and down the graph depending on how high AC is in relation to the opposing parties ATK. If your AC is higher than the mobs ATK, they'll swing on the low end of the chart more often, if you're AC is LOWER than the mobs ATK then they're going to hit more often on the higher end of the spectrum, thus more big hits, spikier damage.

Warriors melee hate generation is dependent only on potential damage, not how much the hit actually lands for, so their ATK is irrelevant in terms of hate generation, but the mobs ATK in relation to their AC is what effects how much they're getting hit for.

The spikey RNG you're seeing is when the tanks AC is likely below the ATK of the mob he's tanking.

Tl;DR
Focus on the ac softcaps and make sure you're above them for the content you are tanking
Create a weapon build to gain hate exponentially comparable to all melee dps in the group so you are constantly outpacing your dps at every turn for hate.
Have a backup plan in case of emergencies, buy root nets and keep them recharged and ready at all times. Treat taunt like a root net with a failure rate.

[Sylexis]

Someone just PM'd me with a question about exponential hate building, A fully buffed, epic'd and hasted monk at level 60 with a Tstaff should be pushing somewhere around 3150 hate per minute.

Teserrina's Whip / Frostbringer should generate just under 4k hate per minute, give you a slow proc with poison counters but no damage over time (so you aren't breaking mez's during crowd control fuckups) an AC debuff so you'll take less damage overall. Neither of these items require a raid to obtain and you will be outpacing your dps for hate generation the longer the fight continues, reducing the chance of a mob flipping during enrage.

[Deliverator]

Warriors are very good tanks. A lot of the problems you are seeing on P99 is that the vast majority of the people playing at lower levels (read not 60) are twinked alts or twinked friends being pulled into the soul sucking black hole that is everquest. When a new monk has a CoF, two jade mace, fungi, full dps jewelry package, etc he is going to out agro a warrior with two fine steel long swords every day of the week.

As has been said, warriors are incredibly dependent on their gear. Any group members need to learn how to play their classes rather than trying to min-max for ultimate DPS. Back on live when I first played a warrior I never had trouble maintaining agro and grabbing snap agro from casters when they decided to nuke at 90% rather than waiting for 50-60%. But on P99 everyone knows how to maximize their damage and the market is flooded with high end twink gear.

[Deliverator]

Someone just PM'd me with a question about exponential hate building, A fully buffed, epic'd and hasted monk at level 60 with a Tstaff should be pushing somewhere around 3150 hate per minute.

Teserrina's Whip / Frostbringer should generate just under 4k hate per minute, give you a slow proc with poison counters but no damage over time (so you aren't breaking mez's during crowd control fuckups) an AC debuff so you'll take less damage overall. Neither of these items require a raid to obtain.

I don't seem to have any information on a "teserrina's whip" what exactly is this?

[Sylexis]

I spelled it wrong.

http://wiki.project1999.com/Tserrina%27s_Whip

Slow proc with two poison counters but no over time damage, you can thank Samarhad of Divinity for pointing it out to me, i didn't know it existed.

There are other weapons, several actually that you can obtain in a non raid environment in Velious for tanking, I don't use this whip myself but it's one of the few high hate procs without damage over time.

[Samoht]

I'm pretty sure that's a snare and not a slow.

But the aggro should still be pretty good because of the poison counters.

[Sylexis]

Level 60 warrior, capped str and haste:
7/22 + Proc

7(weapon dmg) + 11(dmg bonus) x 55 (swings per minute) = 990 hate from potential damage per minute

550 (slow proc) + 250 (poison counter) + 250 (poison counter) = 1050 hate per proc

Standard proc of 2 per minute + hate from damage per minute = 3090

It's going to be a bit spikey at first considering just how much of the hate is coming out of it's procs alone and not it's melee based hate generation, so you'll have to compensate with an extra 2-3 seconds of melee generation before calling assist, but after the first proc you're pretty much done with controlling aggro for the fight.

[Sylexis]

I'm pretty sure that's a snare and not a slow.

But the aggro should still be pretty good because of the poison counters.

Whoops I need more coffee or I need to lay off on the cold medicine for the day.

You're right, so it would be 400 + 250 + 250 so a 900 hate proc not a 1050 - totalling a 2790HPM weapon.

[Kutsumo]

Warriors in groups represent a trade off. You get more DPS and better damage mitigation than you would from a knight, but you need to help them control agro. It's very rare to build a group which doesn't have a class that can root. Especially being a ranger, the best thing you can do for that warrior is root the mobs and stay at max melee range so the warrior can hold agro.

[Taminy]

Those who can't group with warriors are LAZY casual scum*. There are lots of ways to counter poor aggro for warriors. Procs are useful yes, but there are times where you don't proc (and really most of the time I find ONE proc is enough to hold aggro so even different levels of aggro aren't a huge deal. Other classes should be dumping aggro anyway).

Anyway if you're grouped with a warrior: root, root, and more root. One caster needing to use root is probably a better potential group with a warrior than with a knight and not needing to use root - provided the mobs are not high level compared to the caster or highly magic resistant (lots of root breaks).

If you have a warrior and a knight in a group (not ideal, but groups rarely are) you can do two things. Have the warrior zerk and do dps or have the warrior tank by stealing aggro off the knight. Knight disease clouds or blinds and warrior successfully taunts? Well, no one is getting aggro off the warrior anymore. Similar can go for things like slow. Save taunt until slow lands and the shaman or enchanter gets aggro. Boom. Can also let a ranger aggro with snare and then steal aggro there too.

Warrior + shaman is also a very, very good duo. Pretty much as good as monk + shaman duo, provided the warrior can stay zerk and you don't need FD splitting.

*being silly, calm down.

[Celatus]

Warriors are still the best group tanks imo. They mitigate the best for less mana usage. They do the most dps which helps efficiency of the group. Sure they don't have the aggro of a pallly or sk but what they bring more than makes up for it. At lower lvls even a cloth wearer can take quite a few hits if something goes wrong and at the higher end warrior aggro is pretty insane with good procing weapons.

[Spyder73]

Warriors are still the best group tanks imo. They mitigate the best for less mana usage. They do the most dps which helps efficiency of the group. Sure they don't have the aggro of a pallly or sk but what they bring more than makes up for it. At lower lvls even a cloth wearer can take quite a few hits if something goes wrong and at the higher end warrior aggro is pretty insane with good procing weapons.

Step 1) get Shaman to slow

Step 2) get Bard or Monk as tank

Step 3) ???

Step 4) Profit