Impossible, I think not

Jetue - Harshlands

A couple of days ago I was looking for a tt squad (bored, as usual). I got invite to one, but there was not tank. I told them to call me back when they had a tank. 20 minutes later, I get called back, and still no barb, but there is a lvl79 BM in the squad that is planning to tank 1-2. Due to my boredom, and having 0% exp cus I just lvled, I decide to try it.

Chientien: Easy kill, Archer almost dies cus stole agro a few times.

Drum: BM, being sucidal as usual, runs in without telling me, and gets oneshot. After several more deaths, I finally get to explain the plan, and yell at the archers to wait for a long time to dd cus agro steal here is gonna be deadly. BB from start, veno pull drum into range, then tank (this is the point I realize that drum can no longer oneshot me in 1-2, sweet).

Passages after drum: BB at start, have veno pull into massive aoe fest around BB (2 archers and 2 bms with axes).

Soulgatherer: Decide to try for the heck of it. Use same method as for drum. Unfortunately, due to magic shell being bugged (rebuf doesnt reset the timer on it), that buff wears off right after I put up BB, and we get wiped. (res scroll #2 used). Move on to next boss.

Snake: Do problems other than having to res the silly archers a couple of times mid boss.

Dimentora: Easy time, except for the archers again. One steals agro, kills both archers, I res. Goin good for a while. 007, agro reset, archer doesnt pay attention, and gets agro again. However, being silly, decides to run toward me instead of dieing like a good little archer, I get oneshot by aoe. Res scroll #3 about 1 minute from being ready, so cant res yet. Squad wipe #2.

Lessons of the day:
1) yes, a BM can tank 1-2 at lvl79 with a good cleric
2) If bm is your tank, do NOT bring an archer anywhere near the bm's lvl
3) While it is possible, Its not really profitable to do this. Bm has to use a lot of pots or have a charm get ****.

Thanks to the crazy BMs out there, because of you, I have learned so much about the limits of solo healing (there aren't many for me anymore).

Kawakami - Dreamweaver

I shall be the first to say : no comment.

Kniraven - Lost City

Woot for me being able to tank everything up to 2-3 b:victory

(Yeah it requires event pots out the ****)

Anus - Harshlands

lol good job jetue, mind doing a TT1-2 with me as tankb:chuckle no archers..

btw grats on lvlb:victory

Jetue - Harshlands

Doing that requires a few things:

1- i'm bored out of my mind
2- i'm online for enough time
3- I'm really really bored
4- there are no barbs available
5- I'm about to go crazy from the crushing boredom


My boredom level is a large factor in the things I'm willing to do. Like soloing fb59 on a whim.

Joshcja - Sanctuary

bm CAN tank almost anything a barb can

it just takes a lot more skill on the part of the bm and the cleric since bm was not made to be a main tank but rather a "holy **** dead barb hold the boss till fluffles is rezzed then go back to my chearful DD'n"

so ya most squads wolnt touch us as tanks in harder instances simply because their to lazy to actually work

fists hold aggro agaist archers just fine

axes can even hold aggro in tt due to stream strike spam

King_Solomon - Heavens Tear

Joshcja - Sanctuary wrote: »

fists hold aggro agaist archers just fine

that's it!

needless to tell why axes are the worst choice for a BM to hold aggro.

Telarith - Sanctuary

Readin OP post makes me glad I can be both BM and cleric at the same time; don't have to worry about a **** up in either role, outside of a lag spike hitting both.

And axe tank is pretty bad, when we refer to them as spike type, we aren't talking about a guaranteed spike. They are counting on getting a couple berserk and berserk/crits higher than average in a 10 sec interval. They will fail more times than succeed, and use stun locks to try and get enough chances to succeed. Obviously not suited for DPS or tanking, unless your other DDs really hold up on their damage. A fist built HA BM can easily tank and hold aggro over even the archers. Unless they're running around with some obscenely boosted refines and shards on the other DDs.

Jetue - Harshlands

Yeah, the tank bm was using calamities. I said nothing, thinking either they would switch at the bosses (didn't), or would yell at me saying they didn't have those weps/skills. So I went with it just to see how far we could get.

@ Joshcja

"holy **** dead barb hold the boss till fluffles is rezzed then go back to my chearful DD'n"

lol, fluffles

_DarkSeph_ - Sanctuary

I did 1-2 at 84 to help get my gf's TT70. Squad was 1 cleric, me and my gf's veno. No charm, no deaths, all bosses killed. Took a while though.

Fist BM's do hold agro better, but they also die easier. A charmed axe BM will hold a boss in emergency (act as a back-up tank, like we're supposed to) far better than any charmed fist BM. But axe bm's can't hold agro for their lives. Neither fist nor axe are exceptional at main-tanking really.

Had an interesting run myself recently when our entire frost squad, bar me, wiped 4 times on Oceania Master. I ended up solo'ing and killing the entire boss alone, burned a gold charm and a half. Mebbe not that amazing an achievement, but does prove a BM can make a damn good back up in an emergency :P

King_Solomon - Heavens Tear

_DarkSeph_ - Sanctuary wrote: »

A charmed axe BM will hold a boss in emergency (act as a back-up tank, like we're supposed to) far better than any charmed fist BM. But axe bm's can't hold agro for their lives.

blasphemy! even my heavy veno tanks better than a bm with axes!

Joshcja - Sanctuary

b:chuckle ya theres a reason i always carry dews

and yes a high vit bm will stay alive longer than a fist but not by much when the boss is hitting for 4-5k damage with spells

best main tank bm IMO is single sword decent dps + stream strike holds aggro decently and they can afford a little more vit than we fisties can

but bm was never ment to main tank

X_Boot_x - Sanctuary

_DarkSeph_ - Sanctuary wrote: »

I did 1-2 at 84 to help get my gf's TT70. Squad was 1 cleric, me and my gf's veno. No charm, no deaths, all bosses killed. Took a while though.

Fist BM's do hold agro better, but they also die easier. A charmed axe BM will hold a boss in emergency (act as a back-up tank, like we're supposed to) far better than any charmed fist BM. But axe bm's can't hold agro for their lives. Neither fist nor axe are exceptional at main-tanking really.

Had an interesting run myself recently when our entire frost squad, bar me, wiped 4 times on Oceania Master. I ended up solo'ing and killing the entire boss alone, burned a gold charm and a half. Mebbe not that amazing an achievement, but does prove a BM can make a damn good back up in an emergency :P

I have to disagree about Fist BM's dying easier. It all really has to do with hp, gear, and how you use your skills. I have 5300ish hp and I regularly tank since there aren't Barbs about a lot. I've seen axe BM's drop like stones long before me...but I think that's because they are all PvP build. *shrug*

Lingtong - Harshlands

HeHe

Being an epic fist/axe bm myself i have to say
keeping aggro with axes isnt as hard as you guys make it out
i can tank TTs with my axes or fists with no problems (going all the way back to my 80s)
but fists are a much better tank

Kisho_Seiko - Heavens Tear

The weapon itself doesn't particulartly matter in a BM-Tanking. Especially since at higher levels we typically branch out from one type.

Typically I find myself switching from axe to sword if I'm tanking something. MSS to keep me alive and for a quick agro boost, and if I can afford it HF to give myself a big damage spike (Since other people typically react to HF, whereas BMs should plan for it).

It's a very rare occassion for me to lose agro (unless some idiot hits it before I do) or to die. Especially since I received this nifty little demon spark. I use it when I have the sparks (thank you venos) and I've not lost agro, even with higher-level squishies hitting it.

Michael - Harshlands

Actually holding aggro has alot to do with if your DD's control their damage a little till you have built up an effective buffer zone. Smart DD's let you build the buffer before they start going insane on DPS. I personally will never use heavens flame while tanking because the people I party with have very high DPS themselves and I would lose aggro so I save all my chi for demonspark.

Normally I do HH with other level 100's (+8 lunar bow archer, +10 rank 8 mage) these DD's have so much damage that its almost impossible to hold aggro without having a short amount of time to build aggro before the tanking begins (usually 1-2 demonsparks is enough to give me a buffer zone)

If I went a DPS build with the lunar claw (stacking -interval equips) holding aggro would be significantly easier. Holding aggro is easier with faster weapons for 1 reason only DPS. The weapons DPS is all balanced (unsharded and unrefined) shards and refines give a significant boost to the faster weapon (as for a fist you get 1.43x shards+refine bonus for axes you get 0.87x shards+refines).

Tanked pretty much every boss now except 3-3 final boss.

Kisho_Seiko - Heavens Tear

I thought that much was obvious. If they start hitting the boss the same time you do you'll have trouble keeping it. Even if archers do nothing but regularly shoot at it, their crit rate can tend to steal it from you if they get "lucky".

But, as a rule, BM tanks need at least a little bit to get a bit of a buffer when it comes to agro. We're not barbs, after all.

Kniraven - Lost City

_DarkSeph_ - Sanctuary wrote: »

A charmed axe BM will hold a boss in emergency (act as a back-up tank, like we're supposed to) far better than any charmed fist BM.

Had an interesting run myself recently when our entire frost squad, bar me, wiped 4 times on Oceania Master. I ended up solo'ing and killing the entire boss alone, burned a gold charm and a half. Mebbe not that amazing an achievement, but does prove a BM can make a damn good back up in an emergency :P

Well going off of that first part, a sword BM can hold that role better than either for that brief period of time. Myriad's Atk debuff FTW.

And on the second part >____> I did the exact same thing. lmao.

King_Solomon - Heavens Tear

Kisho_Seiko - Heavens Tear wrote: »

I thought that much was obvious. If they start hitting the boss the same time you do you'll have trouble keeping it. Even if archers do nothing but regularly shoot at it, their crit rate can tend to steal it from you if they get "lucky".

But, as a rule, BM tanks need at least a little bit to get a bit of a buffer when it comes to agro. We're not barbs, after all.

with a barb tanking all DDers must be careful with crits. most archers prefer not to use skills because of it... wizards don't use debuffs. a BM with suitable weapon for tanking draws enough aggro to keep boss safe even when all DDers are giving everything they've got. as you say, a few seconds before DDing are needed for safety.

Divine_Death - Dreamweaver

Jetue - Harshlands wrote: »

1) yes, a BM can tank 1-2 at lvl79 with a good cleric

A BM in my faction was tanking 1-2 at lvl 70 during 2X drops O_o. Think he had 2 clerics but still... b:shocked