Probably a horse beaten to oblivion and back, but gotta ask. I have been tanking since early on in Tigrah's career. Recently it has occured to me that the capability of Bsty to mitigate damage may be why we have so many shields we could use. My questions are as follows
Bsty tank: 1 Hb + shield?
if so...
what 1Hb would b best for stun/lifetap proc combo at 85+
what shield would b best defensively at 85+
This guy drops a nice 85+ stun 1hb
http://hot.eqresource.com/named/dyalgem.php (http://hot.eqresource.com/named/dyalgem.php)
Is that a raid mob, or group?
If you want to tank, then first off you need to be getting all the AC you can. Best AC on armor, best AC on augs, and you will want to load up on HDEX. You want to get the highest AC shield you can use and put in the highest AC aug you can fit into the shield.
Don't get hung up on procs to hold aggro. You are much better off with lifetap procs. If you are remember your ABCs (always be casting) you won't have a problem holding aggro with your DD spells.
A shield is not suddenly going to allow you tank something you can't tank now. Equipping a shield does provide some benefits: 1) You swing less because you only use one weapon. This is helpful on mobs with high riposte rates. (2HB also works in this case) 2) Minor benefit from the shield block AA. (We need more tiers of the AA) 3) AC in a shield is allowed to go over the cap and provides more benefit then the AC in any other slot and helps to smooth out the damage spikes.
Downside of using a shield is that you lose 30% of your DPS and fights take longer so you have more opportunities to die.
Quad lifetaps are the way to go, plus the heal proc on the pet, and a J5 merc and you can handle almost all trash mobs and some named.
If you are fanatical about lifetap procs, then you know you can get a 1hb weapon called a snowball in Velious that can go in a ranged slot and hold a sympathetic lifetap proc aug. Makes me wonder if it would be better to have a sympathetic lifetap aug in the shield versus an AC aug.
-Z-
Quote from: Tigrah on February 11, 2016, 04:36:30 PM
Is that a raid mob, or group?
If you are still interested in this weapon, the named is a group mob. He is in the zone called Fear Itself in HoT. There are several named mobs that spawn here and they drop some nice HoT T3 equipment (85+) which will be nice for you until you get to 90th and go for HoT T4, or even wait until you are 92 and go for RoF T1 equipment. Fear Stained armor from RoF T1 is a big leap in stats from the previous gear. I would consider skipping VoA armor, it costs too much plat.
Riposte, btw, hasn't been an issue in many expansions.
The new riposte is the insane DS some mobs get. Less swings is less DS damage.
-Z-