purpose of warrior

[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.[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

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. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

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. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Legday]

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

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]

Originally Posted by mystang89 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

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:

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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.