Tanking, intim vs hate

[Rhysem]

A little background: I tend to play with a small group of friends (2 others, plus a third sometimes). We play as a group almost exclusively, we like doing elite content we probably shouldn't be able to. Currently we're approaching 20 with a fighter, ranger/rogue, and cleric. We're looking at true reinc and I'm thinking about rolling up a Paladin to be our tank. Right now our fighter is an intimitank build and it seems to work pretty good for us overall.

So the question for me is hatetank or intimitank? I've got a rogue 1/fighter 1/paladin 18 sword&board intimitank build I'm pretty happy with. I haven't tried too put together a DPS + ac build, which seems to be a bother. I'd like to keep UMD so even going to hatetank I'm likely to keep the rogue level.

Some other factors: we're new players since Mod9. We have good gear but not huge gear (no greensteels, only one or two +2 tomes available per person, etc). Our goal is to enjoy playing together and be successful at elites when shortmanned without hirelings (too stupid to tolerate), hit 20 and reroll again.

So I guess in a way the question is can a possibly under-geared paladin (pure or not) pull off hate tanking on elite on their way up to 20? I know I can do intim, there's enough gear I've already got stocked to keep my intim score competitive or better than what our fighter has had this go-round. Given that I could always build for DPS and fall back to intim+sword&board I suppose. Am I really going to generate enough hate like that in DoS stance + possibly divine righteousness? If not it seems S&B would be the much better plan from the start.

[Samadhi]

Currently, due to some bugginess with intimidate, hate tanking is far more effective IMO. Hopefully someday intimidating will be again. You can always keep intimidate maxed in case it is more useful again in the future - or for quick grabbing of trash mobs.

[Rhysem]

So if I'm going to hate-tank what's the plan for a paladin? TWF? That seems really spreading yourself thin on attributes with the dex reqs. THF would be easier to take but looks quite a bit weaker on a likely human paladin.

[Dr.Maul]

Currently, due to some bugginess with intimidate, hate tanking is far more effective IMO. Hopefully someday intimidating will be again. You can always keep intimidate maxed in case it is more useful again in the future - or for quick grabbing of trash mobs.

Whats buggy with intimidate? i find it ok

[Valezra]

Take a look at Valhelm's build in my sig. It is a TWF high dps Paladin build with intimidate, hate-tanking, and the ability to turtle up over 80 AC. Since you primarily run with just your group Intimidate will get used the most. On big end-bosses, hate-tanking is the preferred method.

With just DoS II I am able to hate-tank Suulo in VoD with little delay before the raid party can start unleashing fury. Makes things run fast and smooth. Intimidate on big fight situations like that seems to be buggy.

Val

[Bobbyearl]

I also run in a 3 sometime 4man.. we did tempest on elite at level 11 (with my gimped paladin no CE)

Intimidate works fine.

We run a Bard, Cleric/Rogue, and me pally fighter(18/2 eventually). We sometime have a DPS fighter with us and currently talked a new firend into playing TWF barb.

sooo... my advice to make it SUPER easy on your cleric is to dump tons of points in charisma for saves. (I currently have 32/27/26), and then max that AC I have 61 without pots or recitation at level 13. My intimidate is 42, and now that I have my heavy fort belt on... I am unhittable.

so sample of a typical fight...

I taunt, turtle, and everyone destroys the mobs. healer heals the others who accidently pull agro from me while waiting for taunt timer. Our healer mainly casts greater command/PW death/and stuff like that rather than heals, curing things like negative levels and such.

** edit ** as far as hate goes DOS helps with that, so just make sure you can hit the mob and you should be causing a lot of hate too. on my old paladin at 14 between hitting and taunting i was able to hold agro nonstop.

The only thing that stinks are the untauntable mobs. thankfully i slap on my two hander and between the 3 sometimes 4 of us we can kill things fast.

oh and Bard Blur is great for small groups, especially at the begining.

[Rhysem]

Okay, I'll probably tweak the build to try to push on a bit more DPS. I've certainly got the cash I could buy +2 tomes as needed to accomplish this. I'm just a cheapskate and so tend to not overpay for stuff to have it now now now.

I'll have to check with the other folks I run and make sure someone else has enough strength to be able to open valves in case mine ends up insufficient due to the changes since I suspect str is going to get shorted to get enough dex for TWF.

When we have our 4th we pick up an arcane caster and that helps with blur, heroism, etc.