Who's the true tank?

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I've read in several places the weapon specialization table in the manual was wrong -- although the only one I can list for now is the Dan Simpson FAQ. Either way, an extra hit point of damage isn't much.

 

Hmm, checked the 2DA file and you were right. You also get another -2 bonus to speed factor for the fifth point, making it -3 total. I guess even a veteran can learn things.

 

So by just putting two points to two-handed weapon style, Sarevok has a speed of ZERO for Gram the Sword of Grief and the Psion's Blade with +10 to hit, +15 damage...wow. One more point in Halberds and Ravager +6 has a speed of 1. Plus that deathbringer assault of his (IIRC 5% change of 200 hp damage).

Court is adjourned -- Sarevok wins.

 

3% chance for 200 extra damage plus stun for 12 secs

 

Only %3? But then again when it happens it ends the battle completely. Nasty that! Sarevok is definitely dangerous in combat!

 

I remember once I wanted to see how much damage Sarevok can do against my ranger/cleric with 80% physical resistance
The fight went something like that
5 damage
5 damage
5 damage
deathbringer assault 40 damge
5 damage
deathbringer assault 40 damge
my char dies


don't mess with Sarevok

 

A tank is somebody who can stand at the front of your party and take on any fight pretty much at any time. This means they are usually a fighter. They can give and recieve hits while others support them. Sounds like this translates the same into MMORPG's.

Haer Dalis doesn't count unless you want to rest every bit and memorize every ambush point. But still in a true sense he's not really tanking. Just taking advantage of the system. Try going fully into combat and having him stand on the front lines taking hits while Combat has already started. until you can do something like Chain Contingency Protection from Magic Weapons with Iron Skin and mirror image all in one. He's not going to make the battle. Even with his defensive spin. HIs problem is if somebody hits through it they damn near obliterate him in one hit. Two good hits from anything you really want protection from and he is often toast. Not to mention that those same types generally have either a way to bypass things like non-physical hits from magic or they strip magical protections. Specially when it comes to certain Mods.

A Tank is an all around package. They don't need to do devestating damage to stay alive. These are characters you would consider toe to toeing with a spell casting mage until said protections go away if you have to. There are very few characters that will do this just at any possible time. Equipment is an added factor. But none of them are things that need to buff up. Spells do change the equation a bit. But if you need to spend several rounds of combat to get your tank ready. Then somebody is going to have to stand there and take the blows until you do. Occassionally tanks will get into trouble or have something that can seriously hurt them. That's why it's good to have two of them. One drops back. The other fills the gap while you heal and deal with the problem.

magic classes are massive damage dealers at higher levels. If they have time and preperation they can stand up to something until their spells run out But these are not true tanks. Back in my MuD days we called this "playing tank" because few could do that at any time. And even fewer could do it for very long.

Defensive spin is nice and a real bonus. But it always seemed to be my biggest hindrence in the fights that really mattered because something would be able to hit through it. This take Haer Dalis out of the race. He can't take hits. Unless your fully prepared your scrambling to heal him or just pray it ends before he is dead so he can run away or hope you have a spell that can mitigate the damage a little longer. And none of this takes away from the fact that to cast several spells upon him you need several rounds.

Constance tests for the best tank were fair. They just need repeated a few times to show an overall average. Though as she has said and others have said in this thread and others. The Equipment means a lot.

People complain that Viconia needs a strength item which is easy to get early on. But I never hear people complain that Jan Jansen needs a strength item to carry other thing than his own damned starting equipment and if you make a few bruisers then you can't even carry those. Jan Jansen has the lowest strength in the core characters and doesn't even get a single stat for his own classes at a maximum rating when he is a prime choice to show off the special nature of gnomes if he had an intelligence of 19 to go with that low strength. his only real bonus is that the other three thieves in the game either are mediocre or die horribly half way through. That really sucks as a selling point if you ask me.

 

Thank you starwalker for that explanation. I was beginning to think that the term 'tank' had changed in meaning from when I first came on SP. The way I was taught was keep your spellcasters back and your tanks in the front.

 

Your welcome. I used to love to Mud and i love spell casters most of the time. The hardest problem was always the roaming monsters that were never in the same exact place unless you got real lucky and could run across you the way you would over a Mob(monster). The Aggressive ones were the worst. Because you either had your protections up from what you were doing already or you ran the hell away and hoped it didn't chase you down and kill you.

The Tanks would just cut them down as long as they weren't too far over their power level. Few casters were capable of that. The support chars were in between the tanks and the the casters in ability. But they were the ones that worked best in backup roles. They'd help fight well but they'd heal or provide other support to make fights easier and keep the tanks doing their job quicker, longer, better.

Many of the support guys were downright dangerous themselves. They never quite matched a tank but they got really good at running things on their own a lot faster than the casters. Some of them would even get so big that they'd just outright become tanks themselves or they were mixed with tank types to get the best of both. This applies to Anomen really. He's got the tank in the fighter. The support and protection from being a cleric. But he never does hit quite the level of the nastiness of the full on tanks which is often how it goes. But he's certainly got more than any support class.

Jaheira is also of this group but luckily she gets the benefit of the full fighter powers. She just doesn't get the levels. Otherwise she would deal as much damage as any of the fighters and do a fair ammount of her own support work at the same time. Her classes just need to manage to keep up with the rest to manage it. Which means a lot more work.

 

Korgan's the best pure tank all other things aside, because of his rage ability, he simply eats non damage dealing spell effects like maze, hold person and the such. Big scary Kangaxx and his unlimited Imprisonment? No problem for Korgan. Annoying Vampires and their level drain/domination? No problem for Korgan. Shadow Dragon and its level draining breath attack? Well you know...

I love Korgan for his high HP, low saving throws and the ability to make himself immune to most "Oh Crap" spells/abilities.

 

Let's be blunt: the only reason people believe fighters are the only true tanks is because it's a mindset. If you're fighting something with a THAC0 equal to or lower than your AC, you will be hit every time, which means that your fighter's tanking ability extends to their maximum HP and that's it.

The best tank in BG2 (no, I don't care about MUDs or other games or whatever) is the one who never gets hit. That's a magic-user. You don't need to memorise every ambush point or spend round upon round buffing up. You don't need to rest constantly, not that a fighter who takes over two hundred damage per fight would fare much better in that regard. Keep stoneskin up at all times, it lasts eight hours; cast mirror image at the start of the fight, and with that you have a better tank than any pure fighter could ever be. Those two spells plus protection from magical weapons as a panic button, nobody will even come close to killing you. I would never consider using a pure fighter to tank if my protagonist was a fighter/mage.

I'm constantly in situations where my magic-user is being attacked by four or five enemies at once. If Korgan or Anomen were in the same situation they'd be chopped into kibble. The ability to survive overpowering odds in this game is in magic, not some one-trick-pony pure fighter.

 

Prine, see starwalker's comment about "playing tank".

... then either you're playing a very messed up game, or you don't know how to handle tanking. Insane difficulty is just that; insane. I play on core because it's the way it's meant to be played. You've got a point about the F/M - Stoneskin and such are great for a tank - but AC is (or at least should be) a factor. When you've got someone who's barely getting hit at all without spells (buffs), that's your tank.

On a personal note, I'm getting rather disgusted at how un-tank even a high-level monk is. Sure, he can dish out the damage like nobody's business, but even at level 20 (AC -8) he's getting smacked around a bit too much in the Underdark by all those high-level drow with +5 weapons. So far I haven't had to have Imoen "play tank" to save his a$$ even when he's taking on five at a time on his own, and hopefully I won't have to. I just can't wait to get out and start doing all those quests I left behind to get to Imoen quicker.

 

AC is a chance to avoid damage, whereas defensive spells are guaranteed protection; that being said, characters like Jaheira or Haer'Dalis or a fighter/mage have access to both, anyway.

But the reason I consider magic-users so much better at tanking than fighters is because, practicably speaking, their ability doesn't decline. A tank who depends on AC gradually gets hit more and more as the THAC0 of whatever they're fighting increases. A magic-user can slough off the physical attacks of an orc or a dragon with equal ease.

 

I typically find when I have my mages wasting spells on defense, I'm doing something wrong. Mages provide much better defense for the rest of the party when they don't waste time memorizing defensive spells. Stone Skins, Mantles and the likes are much better when they're turned into Greater Malison, Emotion Hoplessness, Mordi's Sword, Projected Image, etc...

 

A dead mage isn't much use to anyone.

I don't use tactics or anything quite that nasty, but even UB's elementary improved targeting means that I can't count on my mage never being attacked. No way I'd leave a mage unprotected, even if he were watching the battle through binoculars from half a mile away.

 

I rarely ever let myself get caught in the open (and those fights where you are tend to be rather easy). I operate by clogging doorways with summoned monsters (or using them as mage fodder) while my mages blast away. Once the summons go down, I clog the door way with my melee bashers, that allows for Nalia, Viccy and Imoen to cast unmolested and allows for the fewest monsters possible to concentrate on my fighters (against strong melee fighters I make every use of slow and defensive harmony).

Nalia usually carries one stoneskin for cheese tactics (like against the Iron Golem in her keep) or to defang backstabs.

 

Ah, but a fighter doesn't have to "slough off" an orc's attacks at all; he can just avoid them. Meanwhile, the mage's Stoneskin is getting battered by the puny wretch's feeble attacks the same as if it were a dragon clawing at him. No matter which way you go, it's a double-edged blade. I just happen to think that a warrior can wield that blade better than a mage.

Man, I know what you mean. I just did the Beholder city a few hours ago, and they were shooting rays through walls to Imoen at the entrance while Chavesh (my monk) took them on all the way across the map. I'm just glad I saw it and stuck the Cloak of Mirroring on her in time. Still, fat lot of good it did me to try to keep her out of harm's way.

 

how do Beholders shoot rays through walls? That seems to take a lot of the tactics out of strategic positioning. I like to cast mass invis in Beholder areas and then just have whoever has the Shield of Balduran go "exploring".

 

You got me. All I know is that one of the rays shot west-by-northwest when my monk was right on top of the beholders. Then I see "Imoen - Save vs. Spell", and I watch the next one that shoots off to nowhere through three walls and equip the CoM just before it hits Immy.

And the SoB (hehehe) isn't an option when my party consists of only Immy and a monk.

 

Yeah, this is true. Makes logistical sense to use AC when possible, but you understand my point about how indiscriminately powerful defensive spells are.

If there's a doorway between you and your enemy, you might as well just toss a death fog into the room and shut the door. But most of the fights in the game don't have convenient doorways. Beholders, demons, dragons, etc.

The spellcasting-through-terrain targeting thing is a stupid bug that I can't really figure out. I've seen beholders do it too, and it happens elsewhere. There's a trapped room in the Spellhold maze where you get locked in with umber hulks, if you cast knock on the door your character will instead fire the spell off into the northern wall. I don't know.