Most Difficult/Least Forgiving Tank Class in any MMO

valarouko

I'm curious what ya'll consider the least forgiving or most difficult to play tank class that is in a production game.  This is for PVE only (as for my curiosity).  Please take the following into account:  Survivabiilty, Reliance on gear, Timing of ability use/Twitch needed, Lack of or complex tanking CD's, and whatever else you want to use.

If anyone has a write in, please put it in.

jesad

I picked the Guardian from EQ2, specifically when EQ2 was new.  The class was based almost entirely on being defensive and combat for it consisted of slowing down the damage that was being done to you long enough for your totally weak attacks to whittle away your enemy's health.  If you didn't know what your attacks did and when you use them that was it for you, you would not survive.  It was brutal.  And by the time you got to around level 50 it was basically un-soloable without the use of some pretty powerful potions and/or clickies, which were also not highly available.

It was so bad that most of the community thought it was broken until they started to use it to raid (you know the dps generation) and a lot of the time it would be the Berserker that would get the main tank spot, the theory being that the guardian could not do enough dps to hold aggro, while the guardian sat on the sideline.  Then the they got to the really heavy hitters and a tank with dps just wasn't getting it done.  A guardian with the proper taunts though?  End of story, your mob was dead.

Over the years though, the class has become more forgiving.  After my return about a year and a half ago I was able to solo my guardian to max level.  Damage was increased greatly while armor class and the way his attacks worked were changed in order to lessen survivability (the tradeoff).  I was still able to take him into Kael Drakkel and do things with him though, and anyone who knows what that is knows that doing things in there solo was just about out of the question.  Nothing was as hard as that first round Guardian though.  Even the SK, which could basically lifetap you into submission, could not take the outright punishment that the guardian could take against those very first raid mobs.

I think that if you took that old guardian into the current Kael he probably still wouldn't be able to get anything done (simply because his damage was too low.  But I bet if you took him in there with a full group behind him they would have to rebalance the entire thing just to slow down the shredding that would occur.

In those first days of EQ2, with a guardian on the front line, fights were just explosive.  You would ram him in there, take all of the aggro, and things would just fall because everyone could just spam their damage and the healer (if you knew what you were doing)  only had to toss you a heal every once in a while.

Getting it to that level though, without any friends to assist you, was damn near impossible.

And for the record, I have played a lot of those other types of melee's listed.

Alders

Ninja from FFXI without a doubt.  

An evasion tank based around keeping your shadows up and timing your casts between boss attacks.  You were on the verge of getting 1-shot every single second if you messed up since armor meant absolutely nothing in that game.  I absolutely loved that but it was also stressful as hell.

The class was extremely reliant on group buffs, and mobs debuffs to even stay alive.  A well played one was pretty overpowered though but rare as well.

I'm also not sure why SWTOR and Rift classes are on your list since they don't even compare.  They were all relatively easy, and in Rift's case, the preferred tank.

Swids2010

You should remove the SWTOR tanking class because they are some of the easiest tanking class to learn and master. Off your list I would say Tera initially because I had never played a evasion tank before but like I said only initially once you get used to it you feel like a god.

Akulas

Did a raid zerker in EQ2. It gets pushed to a dps spot which can be better filled by a say wizard for example. SK was fun. I'd say dodge tanks eg: dodge rogues, dodge monks, ninja's etc are the most unforgiving as you rely more on evasion as opposed to damage mitigation and if you got hit that was it. So, for that reason the FFXI ninja would be the most unforgiving.

Kazuhiro

You failed to add an "OTHER" option which is mandatory for so many choices and yet you give so few.

The most difficult and perhaps just plain awful example of a tanking class I ever played was Warhammer Online's Chosen. The reason it sucked or was borderline impossible to play to any level of effectiveness in general was that the class's appearance was CRAZY popular, hell it's still the best looking class ever put in a mmo to date, it was like getting to play some endgame evil boss appearance wise. Because of that, the developers made it play like SH*T, to offset it's appearance and popularity. And it worked, eventually noone played it anymore, except the sadists.

In more specific reasons why it sucked/was hard to play. They changed the fantastic aura bonuses from a one at a time toggle, to where you had to continuously spam multiple of them to make them work along with tight cd's. This was so bad in fact, that a "almost" official BOT script was added by players to automate this tedious task, but it still interefered with other abilities cd's.

Then of course the class was 110% dependent on gear for survival, dps classes ignored 80% of it's armor rating anyway. And it died faster than most dps classes due to a lack of decent skills. It was bar-none the worst tank in the game, and in my opinion, the worst one I've ever played in a mmo to date. (Not that I normally play a tank. Since I like pvp, and in almost every mmo tanks are garbage in pvp, and used for pve exclusively.)

I suppose this one sticks out the most as well because of just how AMAZING the class looked compared to just how AWFUL the class played. The dev behind the gameplay part of that class should be removed from the gaming industry forever.

PS: You can remove the "warden" from your list, I know that LOTRO changed the class balance recently, but as of 4 months ago, that tank class is to date the most overpowered and downright godmode tank class to ever be in a mmo, and is the only class I've seen singlehandedly kill a 24 man raid boss by itself. Hell it's even on youtube.

valarouko

I should have put in an other option. My bad on that. I find it interesting to hear about some other people's experience when it comes to classes in mmos. I played an enforcer in ao, a sk in eq and eq2 (more dps'y in eq tho) and quite a few other tank styles. Ive always considered enf the most difficult ive playef because of how new I was to mmos. That and when ao first came out...it was not exactly the smoothest game out.