Lyger

I will preface this saying i don't give a rat's ass where this winds up just so long as you remember who wrote this and give credit where credit is due. other tanks with more pro-tips are also welcome.

most of this i tried to convey as simply as i could for tanks who have literally no experience or may actually be new to the game so don't jump down my throat for it sounding too newbish because it is meant for newbs and even for the most hardcore players who might get something out of it(regardless of how uber they might think they are).

1. Pulling mobs:

learning how to pull mobs is the first thing a tank needs to learn. some dungeons and even overland zones have some tricky areas where mobs are cramped into and are "social" to one another.

first i will describe the word "social", tanks use the word social to describe a group of mobs who when attacked will call for help from their friends within a certain range. some mobs have a very small social aggro radius, think of it as having a weak voice so their friends can't hear their call and others have very long social range with a strong voice.

from pulling mobs you will generally see that when you inch towards a mob they will eventually aggro without you having attacked them, that is their aggro radius and generally from my experience aggro radius= social radius as well.

when you run up to a mob without casting or attacking them they will aggro you but they will not shout for assistance from their friends until they are attacked, this is why body pulling is important. anyone casting and even wards or reactives put on the tank from healers can cause the mobs to yell for social aggro before the tank has done anything at all. it is a groups responsibility to control this and not just the tank's.

2. Estimate your enemies:

before even attempting to body pull any amount of mobs you should always be aware of what you are pulling and how many mobs are going to be coming with the one you are focused on. of course social aggro can get you adds but you should know how wide spread a group of mobs is before you even pull them, blindly running into mobs is always a bad idea whether you target them before a pull or not (to save DPS from nuking early and grabbing additional mobs in social range).

when targetting mobs simply target one and look at the target rings on the ground, only linked mobs to your main target will have target rings on the floor. you can play with the options to suit you to help with this. linked mobs will of course aggro when you engage your target.

obviously you will react differently to a large number of mobs in a group than you will to a single mob. inherently large groups of mobs hits for far less and less often than a single ^^^ for example versus 3 ^ heroic mobs. both mobs generally put out almost equal damage but generally the groups actually do more damage than a single ^^^ will but not always.

always <TAB> target through mobs in an area before pulling or manually cursor target them to get a feel for the area, the more comfortable you become and confident in your ability the less you will have to worry about scanning over things before rushing in to destroy it.

remember the layout of mobs and when first body pulling remember how far it was before you got into body pulling range and use that as a basis for social range. you don't always have to body pull mobs but for warriors you really should get used to doing it, ranged or arrow pulling mobs is only really advised for seasoned tanks who know how to aggro mobs quickly, as you progress and fight higher level mobs getting to orange you will find initial aggro become more difficult as the mob outlevels you.

3. Targetting:

selecting targets is simple but not always as simple as you may think.. in EQ2 there is pixel planes than can block your line of sight directly to a mob so you cannot cursor target a person or mob, these areas you should remember because they can be very bothersome.

if you run into an area where you find your cursor not allowing you to pick a player or mob then you can fall back on using your tab and F1-6 keys and escape to clear target. everyone will learn which style they prefer to play in over time, i use a mix of tab and cursor targetting, others just tab to the nearest mob constantly or you can let the next mob in the chain hit you and auto target it.

once a mob dies the next to hit you you will target automatically but you will find high DPS classes grow restless if you leave gaps between targetting mobs. if you allow a space between targetting a mob before the last dies to the next then all those who are assisting you to kill the new mob will lose their auto attack "on" between mob switches, lowering your group DPS slightly and adding more work to maintain it on. it is just more of a nuisance than anything else so try not to slack off in that aspect.

zones like Veeshan's peak have horrible blind spots where tab targetting will completely break and so will cursor targetting. in cases like this you will have to resort to making targetting macros such as:

/tar a glimmering scale or /tar <insert mob name here>

put the macro on your hotbar and spam it when necessary to target a mob you otherwise would have difficulty targetting manually.

4. Soloing:

since it is very likely you will be doing this quite alot... i put it high on the list. zerks are a very capable solo class, not the best but we can hold our own.

self buffs are important, make sure you always are buffed when soloing because a good chunk of our DPS comes from our buffs proccing. temporary potions and stones are also useful if you have extra money to spend. health potions are nice to have for a little bump to help keep you alive on a tougher mob. oilstones and combative/tactical elixirs(when you get to the appropriate level to use them) help improve your solo DPS to help kill the mob quicker.

you will find that more often than not you should ALWAYS be soloing in offensive stance, as zerks we have always lost far too much of our offensive prowess to change to defensive stance and still be effective. in other words you must kill the mob before it can kill you, if you lose too much of your Damage Per Second(DPS) on the mob then you will die before it does. in short our damage output in offensive outweighs our damage reduction in defensive, always has. this will not apply to all mobs obviously but for solo you will find it to almost always be true.

choosing a combination of gear can be tricky but generally i always try to look for gear that has a mix of offensive AND defensive stats on the same piece, this allows for alot less gear swapping to try and maximize your toon for what you are trying to do, you will really only find this type of gear in some of RoK and in TSO and beyond however. previousl tiers had very simple drops for fighters with simple stats.

i will give an example of soloing a heroic zone to give you an idea of what you should be doing as you progress. in Karnor's castle for example on the first mobs in the zone, there is a ^^ and a ^^^ linked at the bridge. cast up turmoil, open woulds, anarchism and hold rage before engaging. i lead off by arrow pulling the ^^ and focusing on the weaker of the 2 mobs first, leading off with bloodshower to knock them down then stunning bellow to stifle them once they are in front of me and then intrusion by spamming all three as fast as they come up to avoid losing auto attack damage. after that initial footwork to bring them down a notch in health focus on the ^^ you are looking at, cycle in your knockdowns/stuns/stifles between each Combat Art(CA).

spread your attacks out evenly, and also toss in defensive abilities like gut roar(EoF achievement tree) as often as they are available to absorb an attack (the final TSO 2 hit stoneskin isn't effective in this zone so don't bother hitting it, if you need it you can't effectively solo the zone anyways). as soon as your 2 temp defensive buffs are down then hit wall of madness, continue using your AE abilities as well as often as you can to slow the mobs down. if you are having difficulty near the end of a fight you can save and pop Adrenaline to finish the mobs off, only use it towards the end of a fight and not the start because if you are out of power half way through the fight then you WILL not be effective at killing the mob the rest of the way down. adrenaline only costs power once it has finished its cycle so use it at the end of a fight to be more useful.

as you progress through KC you will see the mobs tend to be more single target than group, the singles are actually less difficult to kill so if you can kill the 2 mobs at the gate then you will be fine through the rest of the zone with the exception of the named stifles/stuns. when you come to any of the named in the zone simply focus mainly on interrupts (Mock) as often as you can hit it, this will help prevent the nameds from completing the cast on their stifle abilities which can put you down quickly due to your lack of ability to cast temp defensives and deal offensive damage.

check for areas where you can use an invisability totem (totem of the chameleon) to pass by without having to kill anything such as the skeletons just past the rhino pens after the bridge where Rainbrittle spawns. you can use invisability to body pull mobs out of invis areas without adds as well with some practice. with your invisability up simply body pull the mob by moving to its aggro range and move out as quick as possible, your invisability won't break until you get hit by the mob or cast something, you should be well enough out of the area by then that the other mobs haven't seen you.

some players obviously won't be able to do this until they are well geared enough to, i would guess you could solo a zone like that with T2 TSO shard armor and some decent legendary jewelry with the majority of his masters, having the mythical weapon also will greatly help on the linked mobs of 2 to kill them quickly before they can kill you.

when soloing some of the most difficult mobs you will literally be using every ability you have, i have 7 hotbars full of abilities and most of them are used constantly. also when survivability is also in question ALWAYS kill the weakest mob first and as quickly as possible, the less mobs you have beating on you the less damage you will take. burning down the stronger mob first may work well in groups with no survivability in question because it helps kill the encounter quicker by allowing the AE damage to kill the group evenly.

for reference to the T8 versions to lower tiers you can use the list here:
Category:Berserker Spells - EQ2i


this is the end of installment one, more to come later.

pro-tip for today is: "adorn your shit!"

as soon as you have an upgrade piece of gear worth keeping be sure to adorn it. adornments are the final touch to being the best you can be by adding those little finishing touches to your toon.

use this handy tool for quick look ups of adornments for each slot:
http://adornments.h0b0.net/

for a tank in TSO the most important thing to focus on is health/stamina, you can gain a BIG chunk of both via adornments.

Lyger

5. Choosing the right gear:

at low levels gear choice is not of great importance, just grabbing gear with basic tank stats (defense, strength, stamina, agility and health) is all you basically need. as you get towards level cap and beyond into raiding you will find you will have to have varying pieces of gear so when looking at drops you always have to keep in mind that you must be an offensive fighter as well as a defensive one.

at times you should always consider picking up even chain and leather pieces of armor regardless of whether you may think you will need them, most of the time i find myself in a situation where hate is not ideal for a group so going a bit more extremely offensive is required to manage hate better. in groups say where there is no hate transfer but 2 healers and overzealous casters then i don't hesitate to put on leather armor and my choker(jewel of animosity).

after testing with the actual choker from shard of fear i noticed little to no gains from it over fighter DPS neck pieces, even over the ganak's torque from vaults, everyone will have varying results but honestly don't waste your time getting the choker because i feel it's not worth the small DPS gains in swapping to a less survivable role.

a. mitigation:
plate armor mitigation does have its benefits but for more casual heroic groups basic plate armor is all you really need, i have found that changing gear from 5k mitigation up to 8k there really is no noticable difference in heroic zones. against epics the checks are slightly different so mitigation still has some value. mitigation is a contested value against the con of a mob you are fighting, so green con heroics are far different than an orange con epic. as offtank even against heroic and X2 orange con epics i usually wore a piece of chain and leather while dual wielding with a solo healer and had no issues with avoidance as low as 35% and mitigation in the neighborhood of 4300 for example.

b. double attack:
double attack has a hard cap of 100%, there is no avoiding that. also remember you can only double attack on your target, our mythical 100% frontal AE hits the closest 4 mobs in range of you and double attacks only hit your target. as you will likely soon notice, most gear has melee crit more often than double attack so always keep that in mind when trying to balance the gear you are picking up along the way. melee crit is much more frequent where double attack is more of a commodity to be constantly looking for.

melee crit is an arguable contested offensive skill, meaning against higher con mobs you will notice that even at 100% melee crit your attacks will not all crit 100% of the time. say against a training dummy or green con mob you will more than likely see either 100% or close to it. against orange con epics i rarely saw my crit rate go up when getting the skill much over 130%, i generally try to shoot for 100% static(before engaging a mob) melee crit %, procs will put you near your cap against the mob so overdoing it isn't going to gain you much.

both melee crit and double attack are equally important stats to look for. many people have claimed that double attack is superior or that melee crit is, the truth is neither is superior without the other. when wearing gear you should always try to even both of these stats out while leaning just slightly more onto the melee crit since it is contested.

c. DPS and haste mod:
DPS and haste mod, haste is an easy commodity to come by because there are numerous classes that buff it and a properly specced warrior can get deep into diminishing returns fairly easily. DPS mod is not such an easy stat to hard cap even on raid unless you have classes that can buff you for it, the main classes you usually will have that buff it is a dirge, inquisitor and coercer. soft cap for the skill is 73 mod where beyond that point you will see a diminished return, hard cap is 200. at 200 mod you will gain 125% weapon damage(DPS mod) and 125% faster attack speed on your weapon.

d. dual wield:
most warriors often look for an offhand weapon because dual wielding is necessary at times because it is still superior for hate generation. first rule is generally to keep main hand weapons and offhand weapons equal in speed delay, if you have the speeds varying between the 2 then you will be losing too much auto attacks due to variances in timing. while dual wielding you will lose 33% attack speed on BOTH weapons equally, this nerfs the damage on both weapons so that dual wielding auto attacks are not overpowering. attack speed on a weapon is capped at .7 seconds delay after haste modifies the speed of your weapon. generally speaking the higher the delay on a weapon the better it is, to a point. if you have a weapon with a 4 second delay you can get in 2-3 combat arts before each swing, if you have a weapon with a 1 second delay then you will be missing alot of swings, if you have a weapon with a 8 second delay then your swings will be VERY powerful but you will not be generating hate quickly between attacks allowing other nuking classes like wizards to possibly pull hate often. a good round number to shoot for is a 3.5 second delay, our mythical is a little fast for most people's taste but it is still the best weapon we can use for all around gameplay.

e. shields:
shields can be tricky to judge, looking at the agility and base shield protection level it is difficult to judge exactly how much avoidance a shield will give you. often it is a good idea if you are unsure that a shield is better than your current one due to similar stats roll on it to see exactly how much avoidance it will offer you. shield are contested avoidance buffers for plate tanks, without it you will notice you lose a big chunk of your avoidance. the level of a shield and its quality(treasured/legendary/fabled) all have a big hand in how much avoidance it will give you. in TSO the Savage wall (an easily acquired shield from Tomb of the Mad Crusader raid zone) gives the best avoidance of the shields i have seen in this expansion, perhaps there are better but they do not drop at least until you are very far into the expansion or killing avatars(the most difficult encounters in the game).


as a general rule i ALWAYS look for items with mixed offensive and defensive stats such as defense/parry and double attack on an item, they are few and far between but they are out there and allow you more freedom to not have to switch gear to suit a certain group makeup. hard caps on avoidances is 80% so too much of either avoidance is unnecessary and you should move gear around to be more offensive if you find yourself getting close to or beyond those caps. even if we are tanks it is always our duty to still do the most we can without being wasteful.


6. forming a group:

forming a group can be a daunting task because you may not always have the ideal classes available but i will start by giving examples of a more ideal group makeup and then list desirable classes and roles for definition.

in most cases you will find the ideal group for heroic zones to be something like the following. templar= group immunities to control effects for a short duration. dirge= stoneskin, offensive group buffer, buffs tank hate. brigand= stuns, moderate DPS, debuffs mobs so that they die faster. coercer/illusionist= power regen, crowd control, defensive/offensive buffs, moderate to high DPS. assassin/swash= assassin swash are hate transfers while the assassin is high single target the swash is moderate to high AE DPS but is average on single target.

you can always toss around some classes like in the group i gave above you really don't need a hate transfer class like assassin/swash and can toss in a high DPS AE class like warlock or more single target oriented like wizard. summoners CAN be high DPS classes as well when played well, they also do not generate nearly as much self hate as a sorceror can because their hate is split between the caster and the pet, they also have high self power regen rates so they rarely require power feeds to maintain long duration fights.

there is other high DPS classes when played well such as rangers but their downside is they have zero hate transfer ability much like a sorceror(although sorcerors can transfer 4% with master ability, it is marginal to say the least), rangers offer almost no utility to buff others in group so they are more of a standalone DPS like sorcerors.

almost any type of healer will do for a heroic group, healers are fairly well balanced in the grouping aspect of the game. the least desirable raid class the warden is actually one of the strongest group healers when played well. some of the most aggressive fights i have ever pulled off have been with a solo warden healing the group, they also can buff offensive attack skill which i will explain a little later. templars offer more defensive oriented abilities to sustain a group on top of strong healing ability. inquisitors offer slightly more self DPS and offensive group buffs at the sacrifice to defensives and heals. shamans ward players effectively increasing their health pools before health is taken off of the player, some mobs have attacks which go straight through wards making them slightly less desirable in some occasions, defiler is slightly more defensive oriented where mystic is slightly more offensive. druids have faster heals than most where the fury is a bit more offensive than the warden, fury is the higher DPSing healer of any, wardens are semi stuck in limbo but can still be quite effective as a defensive healer.

power regen is a very important aspect of building a group, dirge/troubador can put up power regen but are nowehere near as effective at it as a mythicalled chanter(illusionist/coercer). troubadors have the ability to decrease hate gain from the group except for the fighter, in caster heavy groups the troubador is a much better buffer and more desirable.

secondary fighters like brawlers can do average DPS as well as offer some utility such as group FD or single target FD when things get ugly. their group buffs aren't as bad as most make it sound, monks buff cast haste for the group and bruisers buff melee offensive skill(not sure which that currently is, used to be DPS mod). both classes can make it quicker for a group to train through a zone by following the brawler and FDing at a safe point to avoid unecessary fighting.



tip for today is:

don't underestimate the usefulness of making macros. macros are useful for switching to dual wield or back to tower and 1h weapon in the press of a button for additional DPS or avoidance. macros are also useful for letting others know when you are doing something that is noteworthy, just don't overdo it like some players who macro every ability and spam chat with unecessary bullshit. macros for abilities like adrenaline to send tells to chanters in raid is useful to keep yourself from running out of power or to let other tanks know you are casting an AE + hate positional taunt so they can be ready.

will update this again with the next section soon.

Icebane

I thought you retired your tank fool. Hows things going Lyger?

Lyger

i did, and seeing the tank shortage in this game and how new tanks are treated i figured it couldn't hurt to write down some stuff. everything's going alright, just getting pretty dead on MM lately.

Odii

Another suggestion i like for tanking is under Options - Controls - View Options Enable target nearest with autoattack.

so if you turn on autoattack with no target, you auto target nearest mob

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Odii
Darknessfalls

Grymmstone

OMG... I had a hard drive failure a month back, and when I got my Laptop back and reloaded with UIs and such I haven't been able to figure out how to turn that back on... THANK YOU!!!

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Lyger

updated second section, hopefully i can squeeze the last bit into the third.

Naeca

i thought u were better than that lyger =(

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Lyger

because there is another thread on the same subject? oh well, i had planned on doing it for a while.

Naeca

nah because you had to go back and edit, you were supposed to be flawless =(

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