Curse

Zodiac Meteor · Oct 24, 2010, 07:01 PM // 19:01

As homage to Ensigns extremely well done thread, Why Nuking Sucks, I’m going to explain why tanking sucks in Guild Wars.

Quote:

Originally Posted by What speedclears are

Speedclears purpose to to get to the end chest or reward of an area as quickly as possible. This is done by avoiding fights with mob of foes by using skills that make players nearly invincible. Teamwork, excellent builds, knowledge of the area and your build are the typical requirements to have a successful speedclear.
This is NOT TANKING. The idea of tanking is to absorb damage for other party members that can't brush off damage.

Overview:
Warriors, Assassins, Dervishes, these three classes are the prime frontline classes supported by infamous skills such as Defy Pain or Shadow Form. Little do players of Guild Wars know, these three classes are the strongest damage dealing classes. Not only is auto attacking grants these classes supreme damaging capabilities but they also have skills that can drastically increase damage. I will go into detail explaining why people ask for tanks, how is tanking inferior and why tanking is inferior.

Damage < Protection, inferior concept of Tanking:
A healer’s job is simple, keep the team alive. They are not typically asked anything more than that, however, their job can only have them go so far. The key word is energy, the longer the team is in battle, the less energy the entire team will have. It’s the tanks job to absorb damage from the enemy, allowing the monk to withhold precious energy. In other words, the less damage the tank gets the more energy the monk has for healing. This is where warriors bring skills like, Defy Pain, Endure Pain and other skills that boost armor and health. Giving the monk plenty of time to heal and plenty of energy as well.

This sounds like a traditional concept, pop quiz, where in the previous paragraph did I state the fatal flaw in tanking? Look hard as I never stated a flaws but the flaw is there.

Time’s up, the answer is, longer in battle. The melee classes are the highest damage dealing classes in Guild Wars, but if they can’t kill fast enough their monk is going to run into energy problems. What happens when the monk runs into energy problems, they would rather have a tank than a person that deals damage.

The stronger your team is the less time in battle and the more energy for healers.
The weaker your team is the more time in battle, the less energy for healers the more need for tanking.
There is no need for a tank if your team can hit hard and fast.

Why Tanking Sucks:
-Turning the Strongest Class into the Weakest-
I said it before and I’ll say it again, melees are the strongest classes in Guild Wars bar none. Why though?

Auto Attacking – In Ensigns Why Nuking Sucks thread, he went into superlative detail on auto attacking. Please go there if you want to know more on auto attacking and nuking.
Armor Ignoring Skills – Unlike all elemental damage in Guild Wars, attack skills get bonus damage on top of the regular damage. So if you’re Power Attack grants +35 damage, you’re going to see that extra damage.
Damaging Buff Skills – Melee have to overpowered skills that can be used at their disposal. Strength and Honor + Great Dwarf Weapon, these skills are beastly, depending on the attributes these skills can give +40 armor ignoring damage per swing. Combine with Power Attack (+35), the auto attack (+15) and the overpowered buff skills (+40) that’s 90 damage in one hit and a chance of knockdown, even if the next hit isn’t a skill that is still ~50 damage. The next skill puts the icing on the cake, Asuran Scan. This is the coup de grace for all the NPC monsters in Guild Wars. A high level Asuran Scan deals +70% extra damage on top of the theory crafted 90 damage. In one hit, that warrior took a ~3rd of a monster in HM total health. Yet, you want that damage busting warrior to tank?
Increasing Attack Speed – On top of the damage buffing skills you can hit much, much faster. Making them even more powerful than they already are.

-Monster AI is Apparently Smarter than you-
Guild Wars monster AI is no push over, if they see a better target with less armor and health they will attack it and most important class with the least armor is the monk. By tanking, you are giving that Burning Titan a priority to attack your monk instead of the tank. Not smart, let your damage busting melee take damage because it’s better them than the monk. You may expend more energy keeping that tank alive, but the fight will be over faster.

-Body Block in PvE fails-
Another thing melee classes are good at is body blocking, allowing your squishy casters to stay monster free. This does not good work, at all. On top of monsters prioritizing targets, it’s no cake walk to keep a mob of Destroyers in front of you. If you expect to block your monk from that Destroyer of Flesh, then you’re a bad, period.

Food for Thought:
What class does the most damage in all of Guild Wars? The answer is the Ritualist. That’s right; the Ritualist can do the most damage in Guild Wars using Spirits Strength, Great Dwarf Weapon, Strength and Honor and Asuran Scan. My best damage in a single second was 594 with rank 0 Asuran. In other words, I could kill a level 24 foe in 1 second. Can anyone else beat that with a higher Asuran rank?

Conclusion:
Tanking sucks.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

Let me add some thoughts here:

I. Traditionally, tanking has served three purposes:

1. It mitigates damage by focusing it on a target that's coated in mitigation effects (and probably has an innate armor bonus to start with).
2. It solves the healers' attention/concentration and cast time/recharge time problems associated with needing to divide their heals between multiple people. (Though sometimes at the expense of creating cast time/recharge time problems associated with one target taking more damage/sec than the available heal/sec.)
3. It speeds up killing the monsters by increasing the leverage on AoE damage skills by gathering the monsters into one place.

Clearly, #1 is the most important purpose of tanking, hence the name "tanking."

II. Tanking has always carried certain costs with it:

1. Team fragility. If aggro gets past the tank, or the tank die in a bad location, the rest of the team is unlikely to function effectively, or even survive.
2. Decreased offense. An entire character slot is spent on a role that contributes basically nothing to the team's offense.
3. Limitations on the rest of the team (offense). Because it's not safe for them to stay within aggro range, the rest of the team is forced to rely on builds that utilize either (a) fire-and-(retreat-and-)forget offense (ex: Triple Heat, SS) or (b) instant-kill spike offense (ex: Cryway (outdated), Manlyway).
4. Limitations on the rest of the team (backline). For the same reason, the backline is forced to rely on things like maintained enchantments and costly and inefficient (given that they are only affecting one party member) party heals. This, in turn, sometimes leads to requiring an otherwise-useless "Battery" necro (see #2).

III. There was a time when it made sense to shoulder those costs in return for the benefits. Sometimes it was the only way to get those benefits. Sometimes it was the best way available when one weighed how well each option delivered against that option's drawbacks. However...

IV. The reason that tanking sucks in GW is that game updates have both introduced other, better ways to get the same benefits with fewer drawbacks and increased the costs of tanking.

A. Better Alternatives
- 1. Mitigation
  Since around mid-Nightfall a-net started giving us a number of alternatives that mitigate damage as well as tanking does, but with cheaper drawbacks. A few examples:
  - "Save Yourselves!" Why tank with your face when you can tank with your lungs? Decent uptime costs only the secondary and 1 skillslot on any physical. 100% uptime costs either two physicals paying the above cost, or one dedicating ~1/2 his build to it, including elite.
  - TNtF. Only requires having a paragon in the party.
  - The ER ele. PS/ProtBond on everyone, plus Spirit Bond dispensed like candy at Willy Wonka's factory makes everyone into a "tank." And it heals too.
  - The ST rit. Keeps Shelter and Displacement (and Union if you like) in play with potentially 100% uptime.
- 2. Focus help for the backline.
  The same improved mitigation options also indirectly cheapen the relief from the dividing-heals-among-multiple-targets-induced cast time/recharge time problems that tanking gets you. The situation where you need to heal 5 different people in the next 5 sec can be avoided just as well by mitigating the damage well enough that they don't need the heal immediately as by focusing the damage into one place.
  (Also, the attention/focus benefits are sort of ersatz advantages in that a decent level of player skill serves just as well to avoid the problem. (ie Only bad players receive the benefit.))
- 3. Better rate of kill.
  AoE is not the only form of leveraged damage in the game. A number of other damage paradigms have emerged since the birth of tanking that kill faster than the AoE "spank" in most tank-n-spank setups under most circumstances. The packets + armor-ignoring buffs paradigm (aka "Physway") has received a lot of buffs lately. There's also a number of caster-based offenses that benefit from being able to continuously engage the monsters (ex: AP builds such as AP-MoP and AP-Sinspam, SoS builds, Glaiveway builds, etc.). (Also note that none of these offenses has the set-up time inherent in tank-n-spank.) In order for tank-n-spank to kill faster than other offensive options now available it requires both (a) really, really big balls of monsters (only available in a few elite zones), and (b) really, really quick and good execution on both the tank and the spank.
B. Increased Costs
- 1. Team fragility.
  HM and monster power creep in general have increased the consequences for letting monsters get past the tank and deliver their damage to the rest of the party unmitigated. In the old days, if your tank died or aggro broke, you could probably kite and eventually kill an aatxe or two, it just wouldn't be pretty. By comparison, the odds of surviving an aggro break/dead tank in, say, Duncan's dungeon or the cave in Gloom are pretty much nil.
- 2. Decreased Offense.
  Player power creep means that the potential offensive party member that you don't have because you have a tank instead is that much stronger than he used to be. So you are missing that much more than you used to miss.
- Limitations on the rest of the team (offense).
  Part of this is the flip side of point IV(A)(3). The better the forms of offense that are incompatible with tanking have become, the bigger a handicap it is not to be able to use them.
  Another issue is the improvements to monster AI over time (most notably AoE flee) that have lowered the offensive punch on many common forms of offense that are compatible with tanking.

V. Sum: The main reason that tanking sucks is that equal or better forms of mitigation with (much) lower costs are now available. On top of that, there's been a general erosion of the other benefits tanking gives vis-a-vis other, newer options, and a simultaneous increase in the costs of tanking.

tacotown · Oct 24, 2010, 07:49 PM // 19:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zodiac Meteor

My best damage in a single second was 594 with rank 0 Asuran. In other words, I could kill a level 24 foe in 1 second.

594 damage on what level/armor target? did you consider the damage would be far less if you hit a regular lvl 24? I think you need more math to prove you can 1-shot a lvl 24.

But yeah, I think I get what you're saying. In most situations, I'd prefer to have a damage dealin warrior rather than a damage soaking warrior.

matthijs123 · Oct 24, 2010, 07:53 PM // 19:53

OMG he convinced me :O go go DoA Trenchway without a tank!

What's the point behind your post anyway?

Hells Fury · Oct 24, 2010, 08:07 PM // 20:07

-Body Block in PvE fails-
Another thing melee classes are good at is body blocking, allowing your squishy casters to stay monster free. This does not good work, at all. On top of monsters prioritizing targets, it’s no cake walk to keep a mob of Destroyers in front of you. If you expect to block your monk from that Destroyer of Flesh, then you’re a bad, period..

Only on this i would have to disagree. Using a wall and a nice choke point W/D for example can deal more damage with scythe than chasing a single target. Also it allows you panic mesmer to be more effective.

Battle for Lions Arch.

Warvic · Oct 24, 2010, 08:10 PM // 20:10

Yeh ofcourse tanking su*s in GW. This has been proven numerous times before! no need to make a thread about it, 5.5 years after release, imo.
But tanking is still being used in alot of gimmicks, speedclears etc. So in a way, it doesn't su* entirely

Lishy · Oct 24, 2010, 08:16 PM // 20:16

Tanking sucks outside elite missions. I have no clue why there are warriors who insist on being Defy Pain, self heal RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOs.

Can anyone explain the psychology of that?

awry · Oct 24, 2010, 09:28 PM // 21:28

Well I don't tank myself, but I find it useful to carry at least one "tanking" skill. I just carry dolyak signet on my warrior's endurace scythe build because I find that at times my teammates will require me to ball some targets together for splinter, mark of pain or what not. Total tanking builds are dumb, but tanking as a concept isn't.

Warrior Babes · Oct 24, 2010, 09:37 PM // 21:37

uh, do 'the deep' without a tank.. u finish in 30mins (or 1h.. dunno rly), do 'the deep' with a tank and u finish in 22min (and thats only for 2man?).
a warrior thats ''tanking'' isnt rly a bad thing, cus a warrior doesnt need any elite to tank.. giving him the choice to bring a damage skill like 100b. when ur tanking and u have 100b and wwa.. all u need is mop and stuff is dead

tanking in normal pve, like vq/missions/quest, no.. i would go pure melee, but i would still gather the agro and try to ''ball'' them abit, so my scythe, my hammer or my 100b and w/e the casters are using has a greater effect.
but rly making balls like in speedclears and tanking like that.. no, cus by the time ur done the foes should have been dead already.

conclusion:
normal pve: mindless c-space, balling abit for greater effect
speedclears: tank

Anime Divine · Oct 24, 2010, 10:15 PM // 22:15

I bet you havent done war in kyta dont ya where an single white mantle monk can out heal your whole 8 man team.
Why because by the time you reach the monk their frontliners and casters have killed you by then.
and if use choke point, bodyblock it makes it alot easier while your heroes can concentrate their entire arsenal on the ones im blocking. And i absorb all their incoming damage
And yes pretty dumb to waste a slot over defy pain

Carboplatin · Oct 24, 2010, 10:23 PM // 22:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zodiac Meteor

-Body Block in PvE fails-
Another thing melee classes are good at is body blocking, allowing your squishy casters to stay monster free. This does not good work, at all. On top of monsters prioritizing targets, it’s no cake walk to keep a mob of Destroyers in front of you. If you expect to block your monk from that Destroyer of Flesh, then you’re a bad, period.

mostly true, except this part. Body Blocking is very effective if you know what you are doing. HM DoA can be done with a balanced team like this. Even NM DoA can be sped up incredibly if you know how to do it.

Overall I agree with you, Melee are damage dealers, not tanks.

Chthon · Oct 24, 2010, 11:03 PM // 23:03

Let me add some thoughts here:

I. Traditionally, tanking has served three purposes:

1. It mitigates damage by focusing it on a target that's coated in mitigation effects (and probably has an innate armor bonus to start with).
2. It solves the healers' attention/concentration and cast time/recharge time problems associated with needing to divide their heals between multiple people. (Though sometimes at the expense of creating cast time/recharge time problems associated with one target taking more damage/sec than the available heal/sec.)
3. It speeds up killing the monsters by increasing the leverage on AoE damage skills by gathering the monsters into one place.

Clearly, #1 is the most important purpose of tanking, hence the name "tanking."

II. Tanking has always carried certain costs with it:

1. Team fragility. If aggro gets past the tank, or the tank die in a bad location, the rest of the team is unlikely to function effectively, or even survive.
2. Decreased offense. An entire character slot is spent on a role that contributes basically nothing to the team's offense.
3. Limitations on the rest of the team (offense). Because it's not safe for them to stay within aggro range, the rest of the team is forced to rely on builds that utilize either (a) fire-and-(retreat-and-)forget offense (ex: Triple Heat, SS) or (b) instant-kill spike offense (ex: Cryway (outdated), Manlyway).
4. Limitations on the rest of the team (backline). For the same reason, the backline is forced to rely on things like maintained enchantments and costly and inefficient (given that they are only affecting one party member) party heals. This, in turn, sometimes leads to requiring an otherwise-useless "Battery" necro (see #2).

III. There was a time when it made sense to shoulder those costs in return for the benefits. Sometimes it was the only way to get those benefits. Sometimes it was the best way available when one weighed how well each option delivered against that option's drawbacks. However...

IV. The reason that tanking sucks in GW is that game updates have both introduced other, better ways to get the same benefits with fewer drawbacks and increased the costs of tanking.

A. Better Alternatives
- 1. Mitigation
  Since around mid-Nightfall a-net started giving us a number of alternatives that mitigate damage as well as tanking does, but with cheaper drawbacks. A few examples:
  - "Save Yourselves!" Why tank with your face when you can tank with your lungs? Decent uptime costs only the secondary and 1 skillslot on any physical. 100% uptime costs either two physicals paying the above cost, or one dedicating ~1/2 his build to it, including elite.
  - TNtF. Only requires having a paragon in the party.
  - The ER ele. PS/ProtBond on everyone, plus Spirit Bond dispensed like candy at Willy Wonka's factory makes everyone into a "tank." And it heals too.
  - The ST rit. Keeps Shelter and Displacement (and Union if you like) in play with potentially 100% uptime.
- 2. Focus help for the backline.
  The same improved mitigation options also indirectly cheapen the relief from the dividing-heals-among-multiple-targets-induced cast time/recharge time problems that tanking gets you. The situation where you need to heal 5 different people in the next 5 sec can be avoided just as well by mitigating the damage well enough that they don't need the heal immediately as by focusing the damage into one place.
  (Also, the attention/focus benefits are sort of ersatz advantages in that a decent level of player skill serves just as well to avoid the problem. (ie Only bad players receive the benefit.))
- 3. Better rate of kill.
  AoE is not the only form of leveraged damage in the game. A number of other damage paradigms have emerged since the birth of tanking that kill faster than the AoE "spank" in most tank-n-spank setups under most circumstances. The packets + armor-ignoring buffs paradigm (aka "Physway") has received a lot of buffs lately. There's also a number of caster-based offenses that benefit from being able to continuously engage the monsters (ex: AP builds such as AP-MoP and AP-Sinspam, SoS builds, Glaiveway builds, etc.). (Also note that none of these offenses has the set-up time inherent in tank-n-spank.) In order for tank-n-spank to kill faster than other offensive options now available it requires both (a) really, really big balls of monsters (only available in a few elite zones), and (b) really, really quick and good execution on both the tank and the spank.
B. Increased Costs
- 1. Team fragility.
  HM and monster power creep in general have increased the consequences for letting monsters get past the tank and deliver their damage to the rest of the party unmitigated. In the old days, if your tank died or aggro broke, you could probably kite and eventually kill an aatxe or two, it just wouldn't be pretty. By comparison, the odds of surviving an aggro break/dead tank in, say, Duncan's dungeon or the cave in Gloom are pretty much nil.
- 2. Decreased Offense.
  Player power creep means that the potential offensive party member that you don't have because you have a tank instead is that much stronger than he used to be. So you are missing that much more than you used to miss.
- Limitations on the rest of the team (offense).
  Part of this is the flip side of point IV(A)(3). The better the forms of offense that are incompatible with tanking have become, the bigger a handicap it is not to be able to use them.
  Another issue is the improvements to monster AI over time (most notably AoE flee) that have lowered the offensive punch on many common forms of offense that are compatible with tanking.

V. Sum: The main reason that tanking sucks is that equal or better forms of mitigation with (much) lower costs are now available. On top of that, there's been a general erosion of the other benefits tanking gives vis-a-vis other, newer options, and a simultaneous increase in the costs of tanking.

ruk1a · Oct 25, 2010, 12:34 AM // 00:34

5 years too late bro

Jeydra · Oct 25, 2010, 12:56 AM // 00:56

You probably want to define "tank", because my first reaction when reading the title was "tanking freaking owns, you have no idea what you're talking about"

MArcSinus · Oct 25, 2010, 01:24 AM // 01:24

I'll fix it for you,

ER infuse bonders have NO energy problems.

So you can take as many tanks as you would like or fight forever, there is no problem.

EDIT: Tanking sucks

A11Eur0 · Oct 25, 2010, 01:58 AM // 01:58

this writeup is horrible. Full of opinion rather than empirical evidence, full of grammatical errors that make me want to claw my eyes out with a rusty nail, and full of false statements stemming from lack of skill.

Tanking does suck, in most aspects. But when you have unbalanced quests/missions that throw eleventybillionandahalf level 28's at you at once, I don't think you're going to get far without a dedicated damage-sponge.

**Marty Silverblade** · Oct 25, 2010, 07:19 AM // 07:19

Traditional elements of tanking are fine so long as they result in an overall increase in killing speed. This is evident in speed clears. Other than that however, body blocking (which is definitely possible) and balling (possible to a degree with PS/SB and SoA) allow you to kill much faster through AoE. If you don't waste time/attributes/skill slots on this then only fail Wars would ignore them.

PS: Actually if I did fully intend to body block a Destroyer of Flesh, I could certainly do that reliably.

PPS: The OCD freak inside me is angry at you for using 'class' rather than 'profession'.

PPPS: That Rit damage is beatable.

PPPPS: A high level AScan gives +75% damage, not +70%.

Life Bringing · Oct 25, 2010, 07:54 AM // 07:54

Yeah...this is kinda of a pointless thread. The point you are trying to make is that a *dedicated* tank sucks, meaning the entire skill bar is devoted to tanking. Not only is that statement not entirely true(ohaider speedclears), a tank doesn't need to devote any skills on his bar to tanking except in certain areas. In most cases, a simple copy of prot spirit and the odd SoA allows a melee to "tank" a mob and either wall block as much of it as he can or absorb the initial AoE onslaught so his team doesnt have to deal with it.

Take for example EFGJack's hero build. It's entirely based upon tanking a mob and then making it explode. It also happens to be one of the most, if not the most efficient hero team out there.

Quote:

A number of other damage paradigms have emerged since the birth of tanking that kill faster than the AoE "spank" in most tank-n-spank setups under most circumstances.

Name one relevant area in which this holds true.

Quote:

Player power creep means that the potential offensive party member that you don't have because you have a tank instead is that much stronger than he used to be.

This is another statement that is somewhat useless. The entire point of a tank(and im talking a real tank here, not however pugs choose to use their tanks), is to ball up foes so that your damage is multiplied by insane amounts. Using a tank to ball 15 foes means that one random aoe spell is going to vastly outdamage anything that is lost by cspacing without a tank.

Quote:

-Body Block in PvE fails-
Another thing melee classes are good at is body blocking, allowing your squishy casters to stay monster free. This does not good work, at all. On top of monsters prioritizing targets, it’s no cake walk to keep a mob of Destroyers in front of you. If you expect to block your monk from that Destroyer of Flesh, then you’re a bad, period.

I once again refer you to EFGJack's hero bars. Those along with personal experience with bodyblocking effectively shows that you have no idea what you're talking about. Its really simple to get monsters to stay on you, and it has to do with the concept of settled agro. If you have your party within range while the destroyers are running at you, of course they're going to prioritize them over you. However, if you allow the destroyers to settle on you before your party comes in to attack it, it will stay on you so long as it doesnt get hit by aoe for an extended period and so long as you dont move.

Quote:

I. Traditionally, tanking has served three purposes:

* 1. It mitigates damage by focusing it on a target that's coated in mitigation effects (and probably has an innate armor bonus to start with).
* 2. It solves the healers' attention/concentration and cast time/recharge time problems associated with needing to divide their heals between multiple people. (Though sometimes at the expense of creating cast time/recharge time problems associated with one target taking more damage/sec than the available heal/sec.)
* 3. It speeds up killing the monsters by increasing the leverage on AoE damage skills by gathering the monsters into one place.

Clearly, #1 is the most important purpose of tanking, hence the name "tanking."

Not really. I would say that in the current state of the game, #3 far exceeds #1 as a reason to use a dedicated tank. The amount of defensive options in the game that can be taken without losing effectiveness of the party as a whole are extensive enough that a dedicated tank purely for damage mitigation is pointless. Note that a melee with PS+SoA taking the brunt of the agro is not a dedicated tank.

Quote:

In one hit, that warrior took a ~3rd of a monster in HM total health. Yet, you want that damage busting warrior to tank?

Yes. Bringing up what Babes already said, a warrior can tank while still retaining its ability to use Hundred Blades and WWA. The real question here is why wouldn't you ball foes if it meant your damage could be increased by such a vast amount? I've already had this debate with you and excluded on pvx and you refused to listen there. Just because you choose not to use certain aspects of the game does not mean that they are bad. It goes hand in hand with splinter being superior to GDW. Just because you choose not to set yourself up to abuse splinter weapon does not automatically make GDW the superior choice.

Just my thoughts. Some of the language is probably a bit confusing because im referencing multiple types of tanking depending on the situation, so if i accidentally swapped shit, blame it on lack of sleep.

PS. This could potentially be useful if you specified that having a dedicated tank purely for damage mitigation sucks, which is true. This would require you to remove certain points, but honestly any points that would be removed by narrowing it down to this level don't belong in the post anyways.

The Drunkard · Oct 25, 2010, 08:28 AM // 08:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zodiac Meteor

[/FONT] The stronger your team is the less time in battle and the more energy for healers.
The weaker your team is the more time in battle, the less energy for healers the more need for tanking.
[FONT=Comic Sans MS]There is no need for a tank if your team can hit hard and fast.

If tanking correlates to weak teams, then why are there so many SF tanks in speedclears?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zodiac Meteor

Armor Ignoring Skills – Unlike all elemental damage in Guild Wars, attack skills get bonus damage on top of the regular damage. So if you’re Power Attack grants +35 damage, you’re going to see that extra damage.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Mesmer

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zodiac Meteor

Damaging Buff Skills – Melee have to overpowered skills that can be used at their disposal. Strength and Honor + Great Dwarf Weapon, these skills are beastly, depending on the attributes these skills can give +40 armor ignoring damage per swing. Combine with Power Attack (+35), the auto attack (+15) and the overpowered buff skills (+40) that’s 90 damage in one hit and a chance of knockdown, even if the next hit isn’t a skill that is still ~50 damage. The next skill puts the icing on the cake, Asuran Scan. This is the coup de grace for all the NPC monsters in Guild Wars. A high level Asuran Scan deals +70% extra damage on top of the theory crafted 90 damage. In one hit, that warrior took a ~3rd of a monster in HM total health. Yet, you want that damage busting warrior to tank?

Put HB on a tank with whirlwind and a MoP support necro, it puts power attack to shame.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zodiac Meteor

-Body Block in PvE fails-

It doesn't if you put the effort foward trying to find situations where it's useful and where it's redundant.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zodiac Meteor

Another thing melee classes are good at is body blocking, allowing your squishy casters to stay monster free. This does not good work, at all. On top of monsters prioritizing targets, it’s no cake walk to keep a mob of Destroyers in front of you. If you expect to block your monk from that Destroyer of Flesh, then you’re a bad, period.

You don't seem to fully understand the concept of a tank in a group, so I'll go into a bit of detail.

Tanking in Guild Wars is a bit different than in other games. In Gw because the AI is so horrible, a tank balls up a group of foes well outside the rest of the team's agro range and the rest of the team comes in and spike. The End. If the spike fails one of two things will happen; either the team will have enough killing power to kill a few stragglers from the spike or the mob will leave the tank and procede to roll over the rest of the team. In situations where a tank isn't needed, it's more likely that the first result will happen.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zodiac Meteor

What class does the most damage in all of Guild Wars? The answer is the Ritualist. That’s right; the Ritualist can do the most damage in Guild Wars using Spirits Strength, Great Dwarf Weapon, Strength and Honor and Asuran Scan. My best damage in a single second was 594 with rank 0 Asuran. In other words, I could kill a level 24 foe in 1 second. Can anyone else beat that with a higher Asuran rank?

Theory-crafting=/=pratical situations. You should know better than that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zodiac Meteor

Conclusion:
I need to invest a lot more time into understanding the concept of tanking and its pratical situations before I try to generalize it.

Fixed.

cellardweller · Oct 25, 2010, 10:44 AM // 10:44

Your primary mistake is assuming that "tanking" and "damage dealing" are mutually exclusive. A 60 AL clothie with all offensive skills can stand up to full aggro thanks to SOA/PS.

Zodiac Meteor · Oct 25, 2010, 09:19 PM // 21:19

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Originally Posted by The Drunkard

If tanking correlates to weak teams, then why are there so many SF tanks in speedclears?

PFFFF HA HA HA HA, SF tanks, funny. Why are there so many?
1. Dungeons has lots of mobs.
2. Activate god mode.
3. Run to boss.
4. ??????
5. Profit

They run straight to the boss, kill it and loot the end reward. There is no tanking, it speedclearing. If you actually speed cleared you would know that.

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http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Mesmer

Yep, they deal damage, a lot of damage? Yes, but fails in comparison to any kind of melee.

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Put HB on a tank with whirlwind and a MoP support necro, it puts power attack to shame.

It was an example of the most basic DPS skill on the warrior. Power attack sucks in builds that doesn't have Warriors Endurance. It's a basic skill for a basic example. Read Food for Thought, managed to get a guildy that did 600+ damage in 1 second, that's insta-kill most foes in all of Guild Wars. That's without cons.

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It doesn't if you put the effort forward trying to find situations where it's useful and where it's redundant.

It doesn't work good anywhere, not a single area in Guild Wars requires a tank.

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You don't seem to fully understand the concept of a tank in a group, so I'll go into a bit of detail.

Tanking in Guild Wars is a bit different than in other games. In Gw because the AI is so horrible, a tank balls up a group of foes well outside the rest of the team's aggro range and the rest of the team comes in and spike. The End. If the spike fails one of two things will happen; either the team will have enough killing power to kill a few stragglers from the spike or the mob will leave the tank and proceed to roll over the rest of the team. In situations where a tank isn't needed, it's more likely that the first result will happen.

AI isn't that stupid, their stupid when tank-n-spanking because their is only 1 foe within range. But do an mission/VQ HM and the tanking becomes pointless as your monk runs around panicking.
Tank-n-spank tactics, their slow, dangerous and just plain bad. Urgoz, DoA, UW, Deep, Slavers doesn't require tank-n-spank or speed clearing. It fast and more efficient NOT to tank-n-spank. If you can't kill a mob without tank-n-spank your team structure is flawed.

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Theory-crafting=/=practical situations. You should know better than that.

What theory craft? If you played the warrior properly then you should know how it works. There is no theory, it's a fact.

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this writeup is horrible. Full of opinion rather than empirical evidence, full of grammatical errors that make me want to claw my eyes out with a rusty nail, and full of false statements stemming from lack of skill.

Tanking does suck, in most aspects. But when you have unbalanced quests/missions that throw eleventybillionandahalf level 28's at you at once, I don't think you're going to get far without a dedicated damage-sponge.

Do I need to post screenies as evidence, what about a video? This info is 5 years old yet some people can't believe their eyes.

False statements my butt. If you played warrior or any melee properly, you should know dealing damage is better than absorbing damage.

Damage sponge? Really? Oh yeah, you can get far, but it will take an extra 2 hours that it should. Where in the game has a ton of high levels that DOESN'T die if you breath on them?

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PS: Actually if I did fully intend to body block a Destroyer of Flesh, I could certainly do that reliably.

Would you A, body block it with the elite Defy Pain or B, body block it with the elite Earthshaker? Regardless of your build, body block it just one build out does the other.

Deep without any tank-n-spank slow tactics. Without any speed clear mob control tactics, we gone in, killed everything and moved on.

I can post Urgoz but I'm missing the end because Fraps lags up Guild Wars.