Play tips for warriors or other tanks pls?

[Jupitus]

Hi - I'm a gimp, always was and always will be, but for the sake of those possibly grouping with me I'd like a few hints from players who might have played tank classes in the earlier stages of beta.

I'm roled as a warrior, but at a similar although slightly lower (ie 1 level max) level than casters in my group I am struggling to draw the aggro in PvE. A couple of questions come to mind:

1) Does the actual positiong of my character help, ie getting between the mobs and the player? (Might sound dumb, but it would be easy to assume it is the same as DAOC)

2) If the tank gets in with the first hit or two will it make much difference?

3) (Warrior specific) I got an axe drop with a much much higher DPS rating than the club I have been using. At level 8 I am contemplating blowing a bunch of silver on training in axe to see if this makes alot of difference to my ability to draw aggro... more experienced comments on this plan welcome

Errrm.... and any other useful information welcome!

Thanks.

[gia]

1) no
2) it helps if you pull, makes things less chaotic
3) it's up to you, though having a good weapon is important

Here's a few tips for aggro:
- be the one pulling and if it's multiple stuff use demo shout to grab some initial aggro on all the mobs
- if you're getting outdamaged and losing aggro, make sure you stay in defensive stance. Abilities and attacks while in defensive stance generate more aggro.
- taunt doesn't give you any additional aggro at all, if you use it on something that is already attacking you it does absolutely nothing. when you lose aggro on a monster and it goes for someone else, taunting it will put you back on top of the aggro list, immediately follow it with a sunder armor or other ability to establish the aggro and you should be ok.

Anyways to sum it up, use sunder armor, demo shout and rend a lot, make sure you are in defensive stance and you will have no problem. If it's a multiple pull, demo shout and then throw a sunder on each, if people are assising that will be enough to keep them on you and not the healer. If you have 2 damage dealers on 2 different monster though things will get a bit more messy.

Sorry for the confused rambling I'm in a hurry

edit: oh I noticed you're level 8, make sure you do the quest for defensive stance at 10 you should have all the abilities I mentioned by level 14 or so.

[Jupitus]

Thanks gia - I guess I'll likely have to wait for my caster/hybrid group-mates to get fed up of dying alot and settle down to the RPG-style 'someone pulls then you kill it' method as opposed to the 'lets all run around pulling whatever we see and hope we get away with it' method

[Vae]

That's the attitude Jup - Make sure you whip Raa into shape - he certainly needs it

[Lian]

Thunderclap is also decent to grab initial agro if you have rage built up.

[Shady-]

Demo shout draws agro from healers,works like taunt.You shall use it more often in instances.On named elites spamm taunt/shieldblock,surrander armor x5 and demo shout.Oh yes,use defensive stance all the time if you are maintank of fg ^^

[mr.Blacky]

Originally Posted by Jupitus

I'm roled as a warrior, but at a similar although slightly lower (ie 1 level max) level than casters in my group I am struggling to draw the aggro in PvE.

Jup is sooo slow :P

[Turamber]

Don't worry about it too much at this early stage, the casters are not as squishy as in DAoC and can generally handle one, or even two, mobs themselves. Problems arise when you start doing instances or if you are in the middle of a camp and the whole place spawns at the same time -- that's when a tank is worth his/her weight in gold.