1. #1
    Deleted

    Guardian, preferred MT or OT?

    Hi MMO-Champ, a quick question regarding Guardians, since I couldn't really find any direct answer anywhere..

    Our raid group's tanks consist of me (Guardian) and a Blood DK.
    Gear, skill etc. cast aside, and ideally: which one of these classes should be the MT and which one the OT?
    I have zero clue whatsoever regarding which one should fill their respective roles.. Both seem like proper tanks for either job.

    Thank you all in advance (and sorry for my horrible English)

  2. #2
    As a Drood tank I hate to say it but, we are the worst MT this exp. If your DK tank is good enough for being MT, you should be OT. You can supp the raid better as a OT, such as doing massive amount of damage, HotW, u can mitigate tons of dmg on the MT with maul, use tranq without any worry...

    Although, you can be MT. It just requires more skill, more gear, but its worthless, a palatank, a warrior, ... everyone will be tanking less dmg than you with less effort. I'm quite disappointed with the drood this exp, but I'm MT of my guild, so, it can be done. I'm just 12/12 NM, I'll reply here when I test heroic modes

  3. #3
    Deleted
    There is no such thing as MT or OT roles any more

    Class mechanics and the type of damage decide who tanks what these days. Often even fights with adds require tank swaps to allow debuff stacks to drop.

    A dk is strongest as a single target tanking though, whereas a bear doesn't give up as much mitigation in order to control adds.

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by eranwe View Post
    As a Drood tank I hate to say it but, we are the worst MT this exp. If your DK tank is good enough for being MT, you should be OT. You can supp the raid better as a OT, such as doing massive amount of damage, HotW, u can mitigate tons of dmg on the MT with maul, use tranq without any worry...

    Although, you can be MT. It just requires more skill, more gear, but its worthless, a palatank, a warrior, ... everyone will be tanking less dmg than you with less effort. I'm quite disappointed with the drood this exp, but I'm MT of my guild, so, it can be done. I'm just 12/12 NM, I'll reply here when I test heroic modes
    I'll agree with Tyrantworm that there really isn't an MT/OT anymore, about the closest you get in current content is likely Tortos. Otherwise, most fights have boss mechanics that force tank swapping where each tank does exactly the same job.

    However, with what was quoted... you must have really horrible Guardian tank experiences. Even on heroic fights in current content, there's generally not much of a difference between what tanks you use. Using the damage a tank takes really isn't a metric to use between different classes, as each handles damage different. If you want to base things purely on anecdotal evidence, I've played with each class tank this tier and last tier on a myriad of fights, and as a Guardian I almost always take less/the same damage where the job is the same. Doesn't mean that the other tanks were necessarily bad, it just means they have a different way of dealing with mechanics.

    In my personal experiences, DK tanks take more damage than Guardians, but their active mitigation revolves around healing/absorbing based upon the damage that is taken (where Guardians revolve around avoiding/mitigating the damage, as well as directly healing up damage as an alternative). There is some inherent spikiness that may result from this DK tanking model (hence why Blizz increased the stamina bonus of Blood Presence partway through MoP), but this by no means makes DKs bad tanks in the least. Behind a good player with proper ability/cooldown usage, Blood DKs are perfectly fine to tank. Their nice assortment of utility spells is a nice bonus, as well.

    So I suppose my advice to you, Meerkat, is that when separate jobs are required of your tanks, consider the player first and class second. Again, drawing from my own experience, I was chosen as a full-time adds tank for H Horridon (25man) over the choices of a DK, Paladin, or Warrior tank... and the decision was purely due to the fact that I could personally control the adds better than the other players, nothing more. Ironically in the attempts leading up to this choice, I was taking the least amount of damage while tanking Horridon, but as I initially stated, it's not always about the damage you take.
    “Society is endangered not by the great profligacy of a few, but by the laxity of morals amongst all.”
    “It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights — the 'right' to education, the 'right' to health care, the 'right' to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery — hay and a barn for human cattle.”
    ― Alexis de Tocqueville

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Tyrantworm View Post
    There is no such thing as MT or OT roles any more
    Not true, they still exist and it varies on tank composition. While almost all of the fights have some sort of debuff that forces tank swaps, they all have varying uptimes and times between each application. Horridon is the first big example, it's completely unrealistic to have a DK tank him once Jalak is killed for more than 2-3 stacks, whereas it's entirely feasible for a tank like a Warrior to take 6+ stacks. Ji-Kun's debuff is also extremely similar in that regard. Megaera also has this issue as there's a very big difference between the varying head's damage, especially if you choose to ignore one type completely.

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Tyrantworm View Post
    There is no such thing as MT or OT roles any more
    They exist if you want them to exist. It's not uncommon for top guilds to designate one tank as the MT and one tank as the OT. The main tank focuses more on survivability and tries to take to do the bulk of the tanking wherever possible/reasonable, and the OT focuses a bit more on damage dealing and is mostly used for taunt swap mechanics or other mechanics that require two tanks.

    In that regard, Guardians are definitely more suited to the OT role.


    Druid / Demon Hunter SimulationCraft Maintainer

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by aggixx View Post
    They exist if you want them to exist. It's not uncommon for top guilds to designate one tank as the MT and one tank as the OT. The main tank focuses more on survivability and tries to take to do the bulk of the tanking wherever possible/reasonable, and the OT focuses a bit more on damage dealing and is mostly used for taunt swap mechanics or other mechanics that require two tanks.

    In that regard, Guardians are definitely more suited to the OT role.
    With the way Vengeance is scaling on fights where survivability really matters, a tank is only going to do a good amount of damage when they're actively tanking something. HotW for Guardians is about the only thing that puts out semi-decent damage while not actively tanking (and I think Guardians likely put out the most non-Vengeance damage albeit not much more than other tanks), yet it really pales in comparison to damage while tanking something that yields a semi-decent amount of Vengeance. Now, I'm coming from the perspective of 25man, which I think tank damage values "scale" differently than 10man. While I could Wrath spam on 10man and wreck the other tank's damage when I'm not tanking, the Vengeance difference jumping up to 25man may just wipe out the difference completely. So perhaps in a 10man environment you could get away with having a Guardian as an "OT" doing extra damage while not tanking the brunt of the fight, but I haven't found it to work to an appreciable amount in a 25man environment.

    That being said, MT/OT concept has generally always been where the tank is literally two separate jobs (since that means there will likely be a noticeable difference in damage input/output), and there aren't many fights in current content that require two separate jobs. Even more, I believe that fights are more prejudiced towards certain tank classes depending on your strategy. Therefore, who would be your "MT" and "OT" will likely change every fight since certain active mitigation abilities will trump any gearing choice. The furthest I'll give is that perhaps you could have an OT for when you're using more than 2 tanks in a fight, and his/her only job is to support the normal tanks... but even in those scenarios (heroic Horridon comes to mind), the lines get blurry if everyone is rotating through the same job.

    Perhaps I'm still brushing off the old stigma of "druid tanks = OT for life" that's been around since BC, but so much as changed since then with tanking classes and the game that a full-time MT/OT position really doesn't exist outside of extreme situations. There's a reason I'm always referring to our other tanks as my tanking partners, and it's because as tanks were completely interchangeable for the most part.
    “Society is endangered not by the great profligacy of a few, but by the laxity of morals amongst all.”
    “It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights — the 'right' to education, the 'right' to health care, the 'right' to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery — hay and a barn for human cattle.”
    ― Alexis de Tocqueville

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by Pacab View Post
    Not true, they still exist and it varies on tank composition. While almost all of the fights have some sort of debuff that forces tank swaps, they all have varying uptimes and times between each application. Horridon is the first big example, it's completely unrealistic to have a DK tank him once Jalak is killed for more than 2-3 stacks, whereas it's entirely feasible for a tank like a Warrior to take 6+ stacks. Ji-Kun's debuff is also extremely similar in that regard. Megaera also has this issue as there's a very big difference between the varying head's damage, especially if you choose to ignore one type completely.
    There are MT/OT roles on specific fights because of mechanics specific to that encounter, it's not like it used to be where they were two quite clearly defined roles and this applied to basically every fight in the instance.

  9. #9
    Deleted
    Here is some info from the best of the 10 raiding scene has to offer.

    http://www.paragon.fi/forum/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=4265

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by Pacab View Post
    Not true, they still exist and it varies on tank composition. While almost all of the fights have some sort of debuff that forces tank swaps, they all have varying uptimes and times between each application. Horridon is the first big example, it's completely unrealistic to have a DK tank him once Jalak is killed for more than 2-3 stacks, whereas it's entirely feasible for a tank like a Warrior to take 6+ stacks. Ji-Kun's debuff is also extremely similar in that regard. Megaera also has this issue as there's a very big difference between the varying head's damage, especially if you choose to ignore one type completely.
    Err, our DK tank tanked up to 11 stacks because our Warrior died and we didn't have any combat ress left during one of our Heroic kills. Guess you've simply played with bad DKs.

    Proof: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/8...?s=2596&e=3295
    Last edited by Fluorescent0; 2013-04-08 at 10:21 AM.

  11. #11
    Deleted
    Paragon has Sejta (bear) as OT and Fraggoji (protadin) as MT to maximize strengths of their classes - dps and utility vs survivability. But I assume you are not close to that level, for ordinary good raid group you can ignore MT OT terms and just share the damage as encounter needs.

  12. #12
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Fluorescent0 View Post
    Err, our DK tank tanked up to 11 stacks because our Warrior died and we didn't have any combat ress left during one of our Heroic kills. Guess you've simply played with bad DKs.

    Proof: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/8...?s=2596&e=3295
    And I tanked Horridon HC as warrior last 35% or so, ending up with 13 stacks. Our bear died on that try. Block tanks are VERY strong on high hitters. GJ your DK did that as well ofc.

    Think I have proof too, should be this kill: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/c...?s=3314&e=4014

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by Meerkat View Post
    Our raid group's tanks consist of me (Guardian) and a Blood DK.
    Gear, skill etc. cast aside, and ideally: which one of these classes should be the MT and which one the OT?
    Same composition in my raid group; well, we also have a prot warrior and the three of us share tanking duties. We don't really have OT or MT roles, all of us tank just as much as each other. The only time one tank might be preferred to as a 'main' tank is when specific mechanics make a specific tank better or worse at certain bosses, but the only one I can think of like that at the moment is Tortos (we're not onto heroics yet).
    Blencathra <Hexx> - Guardian Druid - Chamber of Aspects

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by Fluorescent0 View Post
    Err, our DK tank tanked up to 11 stacks because our Warrior died and we didn't have any combat ress left during one of our Heroic kills. Guess you've simply played with bad DKs.
    Not sure how anecdotal evidence disproves me, both Warrior and Paladin are superior to DK's in every regard when tanking Horridon.

  15. #15
    Deleted
    Depends on the Tank, the Tanks skill with CDs and the Fight.

  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by Pacab View Post
    Not sure how anecdotal evidence disproves me, both Warrior and Paladin are superior to DK's in every regard when tanking Horridon.
    It doesn't disprove the fact that Warriors and Paladins are better, it does however disprove your statement of it being unrealistic to tank more than 2 or 3 stacks on Horridon with Jalak dead as a DK. Infact, to disprove that statement you only need ONE example where one tanked 4 stacks, which I've provided.

  17. #17
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    Let's stay on topic. The OP wasn't asking about which classes were the best tank, just which role guardians generally fulfilled.
    Sunfyre | @FoGSunfyre

  18. #18
    Maintaining the OP topic integrity, specifically concerning Guardians, I believe being in a 10man or 25man raiding environment will highly change how you approach the role of said Guardian.

    Since I run multiple druid tanks, I've been able to raid on 10man and 25man, and not surprisingly there is quite a bit of difference. I've found that Guardians in a 10man raiding environment make a MUCH larger DPS impact in an encounter than 25man. This is likely why Paragon was using a Guardian tank as an "OT," because you can get away with it and it works in 10man. While I don't want this to degrade to a 10v25 (I honestly like doing both), I've personally been able to get away with more DPS-oriented tanking in a 10man since the damage while tanking is generally lower in a 10man and some mechanics in encounters allow for more damage output as an OT in 10man. That being said, tank killers are generally more dangerous in 25man vs 10man, so survivability may be more pertinent in 25mans... of course, everything is dependent upon your specific group, but all things being equal, things hit harder in 25man. Therefore, I've found myself gearing more towards DPS on my 10man Guardian and survival/EH on my 25man Guardian.

    Don't get me wrong, tank DPS in 25man is still important, but tank DPS in 10man is likely much more important and effective even just from a proportionality standpoint. Guardians are likely the best class to offer this "OT" position, if you want to thinking of it as a tank with DPS benefits.
    “Society is endangered not by the great profligacy of a few, but by the laxity of morals amongst all.”
    “It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights — the 'right' to education, the 'right' to health care, the 'right' to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery — hay and a barn for human cattle.”
    ― Alexis de Tocqueville

  19. #19
    How you choose to gear your bear is, and always will be entirely depedant on what kind of content you are doing. I've said this from the beginning.

    10m should lean more towards DPS since the EH requirements are lower than 25m. 25m should lean more towards EH (Read: Stamina) since the EH requirements are much higher. Always consult your healers when deciding what gearing strategy to use and/or if you need to adjust what you are doing.

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