Friday, February 12, 2010

Tank Progression

So I was thinking the other day about tank progression in MMOs.  The tanks are the ones that need the gear the most out of anyone else.  Tanks are the ones that need the gear first because they are the ones that need to progress the most so the whole group can.

Without the tanks getting gear there isn't a way for anyone else to progress in the game as far.  At least in WAR tanks need to be fully warded for every instance they do.  Well at least the main tank does.  While every other person in there can be 3/5 wards and still be able to do it.  Without the tank being fully warded it makes everything that much more difficult.

This is where I think WAR has had trouble with in the beginning and still does for new up and coming guilds.  With there random loot drop from the higher dungeons it is hard to gear up a tank.  I remember when I was in League of Light my guild was waiting on me to finally get fully warded to run LV.  We had the dps and the healers ready but not the tank.  Because I couldn't finish my set.  I know this has been a problem with other people to waiting on there tanks to get warded enough to run the instance.  Now it isn't as much of a trouble with how easy it is to get invader tokens but it still can be a problem with some guilds.

I am not sure how it is other MMOs and if you could post a comment about how important it is for tank progression in other MMOs I would appreciate it.

2 comments:

  1. I think that some equipping for tanks is getting easy in WAR as you have two ways of getting the wards.. RvR and PvE, so you are not solely dependent on drop-luck.

    Besides that..the Conquerer and Invader gear (at least for IB's) isn't too bad for tanking. Sentinel is ok..but I dropped it with my low-rr IB for some purple drops from ldt, which I got when I was there with my Runepriest.

    So I agree with you that tanks have to be fully warded, so that they are able to do the job, but up until city step2 instances it's somewhat easy to get at least the wards. So you are only screwed equipment-wise if you want to do warlord or king instances.. I'm not sure if this is some sort of comfort for tanks ;)

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  2. I'll agree with Zizlak, with having multiple ways to obtain the early wards (even the invader level) as well as the de-coupling of wards to armor piece, it's made the stringent gear requirements far more simple.

    That said, I played a tank in both EQ2 and in WoW. In EQ2 I was more of an OT as a shadowknight, and gear was important, but not as cripilingly so as the ward system here in in WAR. In WoW, it was just as important, but for more contrived reasons. Unless you told your group that you had "x" block rating, "y" dodge, and "z" parry they wouldn't take you. Oftentimes the numbers were not a hard-and fast rule, but they were meter sticks to make you uncritable, or uncrushable, or what-have-you. Noone wanted a tank that didn't mee thsoe qualifiers.

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