GastonPhoebus

I have been levelling a Guard to tank instances for guildies as our raid mt can use some relief to the nightly calls to run Maidens for the 10,000th time, lol. I have no plans to tank raid content at this time.

I have read as much as I can on these boards and know that Buckler is probably the best spec for instances but I am really fond of tower shields and just respecced Str (4-4-8), Agi/Int to see how this works. Only lv 74 at present so not quite there yet, but is there anything I should know specifically to maximize the benefit of this spec? I'll admit to only being a fair tank at this point since I have solo'd and duo'd pretty quickly to 74.

I'd love to get some specific advice now so that I can prepare to start running CoA, Vaults, etc.

I hope this isn't too vague. Looking for tips on CA order, Guard AA spec maybe, skills to master in order to be an accomplished instance tank specced for a ts.

Oh, and what's the best Tower Shield obtainable outside of raid zones?

Thanks~

Skel

Im not even going to bother bitching at you... but why use a tower?

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Judist

LootDB.com | EverQuest II Item Database - Royal Argent Aegis
\aITEM -318867969 -73746846:Royal Argent Aegis\/a

Anyways, go buckler. Sure it feels nice to /flex superior avoidance, but in all honestly you wont need it in any instance. Plus buckler is supreme when your grouped with no utility/hate gen. It much better than having your DPS throttle back because your tankin tower.

STR 4-4-8
STA 4-5-8-8-2
INT 4-4-8-8-2

NahteEvo

FNG here, so I apologize for the noobness of my post: My friends and I started playing EQ2 again (we're in our upper 50's low 60's) and I'm playing a guard (currently 56) I know I'll get my extra 20 pts once I hit 70 for the ROK Xpac, but I was wondering what made the buckler/Sta line better than the Agi line. At what point should I consider the swap and should I have anything special for a buckler before I do so.

I'm currently spec'd:
AGI: 4-4-7-8-1
STR: 4-4-6-8-1

Wearing all crafted (I'm an armor smith, friends are weapon smith and jeweler)

Any suggestions would be welcome as I have much to learn. I usually play the healer but after 9 years of healing I wanted to try the other side

Skel

Uh, well hitting things twice is good as compared to hitting things once. Just a thought

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Pinski

Not to mention, what group mobs are in this expansion outside of Overking and the 1-group in PR?

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Calaglin, Former Illusionist/Guild Leader of Dissolution on Nektulos
Calaglin, Former Illusionist/Guild Leader of Confirmed on Unrest

Chumann

Well the OP did say he wasn't raiding and was just lvling up a guard to tank instances, so this point is a little moot. The AGI line in t8 is actually very valuable if you just do instances. But I agree the buckler line is still superior.

Shinzul

Besides the actual overking fight itself, there's that group of 5 or 6 with the two namers in kor-sha.

But yeah, other than that... pending avatars?

NahteEvo

If by "twice as good" you are referring to finesse having a chance to double attack - is it really that much better than attacking up to 4 mobs?

Keep in mind it will be a while until I'm worried about raid content - we'll just be questing and we've had several times where we have multiple mobs at once.

Does the double attack happen often enough to outweigh x4 targets?

My aggro issues are usually caused by the over nuking wizard so I'm trying to find ways to control aggro on the entire encounter or often enough we have multiple encounters at once.

Is the buckler approach more of a raid setup than a group/quest setup?

Conqueror_Beld

What he's saying is that there are not many encounters in T8 that have multiple mobs. So, the 40% AE auto attack is fairly useless once you get to T8. Raids were mentioned, but heroic instances are in the same boat. CoA has 0 multiple mob encounters. VoES has maybe 4 multi-encounters. MC has maybe 3. CoK has ~3 encounters that have 2 mobs in them.(Dog+Handler)

So 65% DA on every fight >>> 40% AE attack on ~8 fights