Thanks Faku1810! But upon all the feedback I received from different people and by reading this forum, I came to idea that if we're persuading the endgame objectives, aka ML grinding and possibility to raid for the best gear, we are supposed to play BM if we want our own tank, and SM because that's what makes life easier, and there will be huge threat problems otherwise.
I hope you'd check that forum branch once again, so you could clafiry me whether I am right or wrong.
We recently started yesterday, and I haven't even touched my long-time-abandoned sorc, we rushed into leveling and had lots of fun, to be honest. At the same time, we were warned that with our group composition (potentially hybrid tanking or full tanking warrior, not decided yet, priest healer, cres and ranger +1 person we'll get from group finder chat), we won't be able to go far, due to the fact that eventually on grinding, on last 10 MLs, warrior tank would be rubbish and might have problems with aggro with priest and cres doing damn big numbers, and therefore priest would cause troubles with that as well(and we would need to reroll to SM and BM, respectively, to not to let the team down). I am already regretting idea that I decided to tank for our group(wanted to play knight first of all, because dude with shield feels legit as a tank, but oh well mighty balance makes warrior look better in everything except 1shot Boomerangs in pvp), since everyday there are 10000 arguments about total BM domination on both grinding and raid boss farming, and I'm not really into playing a polymorphic type of character. Am I seeing things in a very negative spectre, or warrior priest would legit need to reroll to damage dealers if they want ML35 and don't wanna cause troubles to group?
I'm not really in a position where i can talk about the last 5 levels of grinding. But I've been through a number of grinding parties on my way to ML30.
Let's see... To make it short: yes, BM+SM would definitely do well as a tank healer combo in any party. But this is due to different factors, for example, BMs are (or feel, not sure) kinda slow while walking, but can attack enemies easily while running so luring with aggro is easier (less chance of a mob suddenly resetting and attacking the ones behind you, which i've seen happen a lot with knights and warriors that prefer to just run, which is imo a very half assed way to lure). Plus, the high HP allows them to take on a beating without too much worry, the only down is that the DPS of bears isn't high to begin with, so you'll depend on the other members for the damage part. Knights and Warriors have a higher damage rate when they invest in INT, due to broken tactics. So getting crits with Brandish Storm is enough to kill the whole lure. This means that parties with them are usually faster, since you don't waste too much time in each spot. (Sadly, this has created a lot of "dumb" tanks that run ahead, forgetting they can die, and blaming the healers they left behind for not healing them).
This is where SMs have a somewhat advantage over other healers, Cure is OP, and lasts for 30 seconds. And it can be used from a higher distance compared to a Renovatio for example. Some soullinks are pretty nice, but in parties where you have to move often, they're not that useful (osiris for example). Also, SM can make most of their skills into AoEs, so they can use the time between Cures to deal some damage too.
Priests on the other hand, are very limited in range, and also limited on heals. The issue here is that heals turn 25% of the heal amount into threat (the total shown in combat log, not the amount of HP you actually restored), this is particularly deadly with skills like Highness Heal that can crit for 70k+ thanks to a sort of "battle tactics" that priests have (increases the value of crit heals). Keep in mind this rule affects all the individual heals, so if you happened to crit heal 5 people in a party... well, you see.. That's why you'll see many priests that are either DPS oriented or focus on Renovatio and Blessing only. I was told that Coluceo Heal is better than Highness Heal precisely because it "restores to full HP", so the threat would actually be 25% of what was healed, so if you really want to go with Priest, you have to keep those things in mind.
I haven't been in many parties with Sorcerers, sadly. If i remember correctly, they depend mainly on LoR and have a HoT that's chance based, so they can't easily keep you healed while you lure. They have buffs for defense and to boost their heals, though, so that sort of compensates. I say "easily" because they actually can use direct heals on the tank, but here again you gotta keep threat in mind, because fun, they have the same sort of crit passive that priests have. And i'm not sure about the range. You also have Deluge that boosts HP + heal, but it has a long cd and long animation, so you gotta prepare in advance to use it if you think you'll need it.
So as I said, it's mostly about knowing your class and learning how to use them well. If you play smart, and your teammates play smart too, then none will cause trouble to the group. This is very important for tanks, because for them, it's all about threat generation. If you think that a tank is just running around to get the monsters attention and then bring them back, then you're failing as a tank. Chances are that you'll either lose their aggro while running, or you'll come back and the DPS will steal the aggro on a single attack before you start attacking. Or even worse, you come back hurt, healer heals you, and they grab all the monsters (my Sorc friend died once in the 5 minutes it took me to get a drink because my "replacement" lured monsters in Tiger form and brought them back to her, not even switching back to attack). So you have to know how to keep threat high, either by using potions (except Explorers, any heal potion causes threat), using Mass Provoke/Beast Roar, etc at the right times. Using stun pets, or boosting your party's strength in other ways. I'd even go as far as "training" to know when you shouldn't do something if you know it can outthreat the tank and get you killed.
After all, that's what this game should be about, teamplay and knowing how to boost your team's good points and counter the downsides.
I'm really sorry about the wall of text >_> if you're interested to take a deeper look in how healers work in this game, take a look at Tou's guide : http://forums.warppo...ng-class-guide/
She's still posting it, but it should be a good reference since it's mainly oriented to Grind Heals.
Edited by faku1810, 21 May 2015 - 06:30 PM.
). However, the grind-heavy nature makes Monk a bit boring to grind due to slow AOE damage. Personal ranking for grinding is BM>Warrior>Knight>Monk. With high investment in armor refinement, many other classes tend to cross over into the tank category (the game is a bit too easy due to power creeping).
Play something that is fun for you, not to fit the mold of others. Enjoy!
and I wasn't able to handle the entire lure on my own, since nobody else was around to help either.
