purpose of warrior
 

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.