VoD: Hate or Intimi

[Ikem]

Just wondering what people prefer.

[cdemeritt]

Intim can work... as an intimitank, it is doable... however, depending on the tank, it can actually slow the raid down, and is not my preferred method... Hate tanking can make VoD go much faster... Especially if it is a WF hate tank.. (reconstruct isn't affected by curse, make for a faster easier run.. )

But a intim works well in a pinch.

[BurningDownTheHouse]

Most people prefer a wf hate tank for Sulo for obvious reasons.
Intimitanks are still good for orthons though, makes the run more orderly (but you don't really need a dedicated intimitank for those, any old high ac build with intim thrown in will do).

[Quijonsith]

A GOOD hate tank will speed things up, but I've grouped with alot of so called 'hate tanks' and the rest of the raid had to hold back our DPS and let them build aggro. We had to take off lightning strike, turn off power attack, and avoid smiting until the very end. An intimitank with enough intimidate on the other hand would have aggro and not lose it and the rest of the raid gets to beat at full power the entire time. 9 people hitting all the time is more damage than one person hitting alot of the time while the rest wait for aggro to be established.

If you're the one looking for a tank, most PuGs take what they can get. If you're looking to make a tank figure out which suits your playstyle the best and go for it.

Personally I prefer a good AC tank that needs less healing over a high HP low AC hate tank that makes our healers/arcanes burn through resources to keep them alive. Now if it's a DoS hate tank with AC that's a different matter, but usually when someone says hate tank it winds up being a no AC barbarian in my experience.

My last VoD the leader took a WF barbarian as tank over the human AC/intimitank solely because the barb was a WF (when your AC is high enough and you have DR and shield block you don't get cursed even on a fleshy). The barb didn't have silver/metallin of pure good or anything even close so we spent most of the raid watching and waiting. The barb said 'atleast I'm doing damage while I'm up here'. We as a raid would have done better to have the intimitank do so while everyone else, barb included, could damage the whole time.

This all of course is a matter of getting a good tank period, whether hate or intimitank.

[Clay]

Depends on what is there at the time. Rather than wait for an intim... just take highest DPS guy and tank him. If there is an intim available... it is my first choice, provided the intim is no fail and the ac is reasonably high. If the Intim is not no fail, it is better to hate tank him.

Higher difficulty settings like Elite, a good intim makes it all easy.

[Bloodhaven]

I prefer a 74+ AC <normal> 78+ AC <hard> 84+ AC < elite> Fleshie who is holding agro with DPS. 2-3 curses the whole run and easy to heal ..

I counted one run and it was 6 heals for the tank and no curses.... 6!! the whole run.

Also to make things run even smoother have the tank use a bow to pull sully when he ports away.

[Aethene]

i prefer the one that means i'm not waiting 30 mins for the raid group to fill

[HallowedOne]

No offense to hate tanks, but I hate healing the wf with 30 ac...

When I run VoD with my guildies I go with an AC tank that doesn't get a curse all the raid. We usually end it with the healers at 25% sp.

So yeah, wf may be faster but it can be way expensive.

[ArloOne]

In my opinion, I prefer ta have a WF Hate Tank, Being a wizard, it is simple to keep them up and running!

[-Satureon-]

Best solution is intimitank with very high ac, and with some addon dps. (less waste on resources)
BUT
lag makes harder the game as unnoficial content difficulty, intimidation not land always and can cause very bad suprises. (for example at ToD)

i say (thousand times):
- fix lag
- fix stalwart and other related hate aggro boosts which isnt work too
- fix the aggrobreaking situations due to the different effects (deception, teleports etc.)

[Maldavenous]

Best solution is intimitank with very high ac, and with some addon dps. (less waste on resources)

Intimidate is only useful for picking Sally back up. Outside of that using hate is the best option even for high AC tanks. For instance my 18/2 Pali/Fighter has 80+ AC buffed and also has ~60 intim. When I'm tanking on her I use my Smites, Divine Sacrifice as well as Divine Righteousness and Levik's set for picking up a lot of Hate. I've actually held hate on Sally using a GS MinII Scimitar in ToD while he has talking hits from an ESoS.

On my WF I simply use DPS for hate. Between WF Power Attack and having good weapons and an excellent attack rate I've yet to have someone pull Sally off my hate. If someone does then all they have to do is stop attacking for a couple seconds and we can continue again. The benefit here is that my WF has more DPS than my Intimitank does meaning that Sally will go down faster generally.

A very high AC fleshy TWF build generally works very well also. You just need to not get hit often and the raid will go smoothly.

[HallowedOne]

Intimidate is only useful for picking Sally back up. Outside of that using hate is the best option even for high AC tanks. For instance my 18/2 Pali/Fighter has 80+ AC buffed and also has ~60 intim. When I'm tanking on her I use my Smites, Divine Sacrifice as well as Divine Righteousness and Levik's set for picking up a lot of Hate. I've actually held hate on Sally using a GS MinII Scimitar in ToD while he has talking hits from an ESoS.

I take you use TWF? If not that's good news for me, I thought S&B would never be able to get aggro hate of him

[sigtrent]

Not sure I have a preference, whatever works...

Its interesting no one has a WF intim... its assumed they are a hate tank. I suppose thats the norm but you certainly can have a WF intim tank.

The problem with hate tanking is you still need to be specced for it or you need to be way more awesome than everyone else. The later... not a great way to do tanking I think. The specced defender types seem to do well with it. I've not gotten to see many Barbarian hate tanks so I'm not sure how that goes. Certainly I've seen specced defenders out hate raging frenzied barbarians so I tend to suspect the specced hate tanks are better than ones simply running on DPS. If your hate tank requires you to hold off beyond a few initial seconds to establish agro.

Intim is more predictable in some ways since you are the only one competing for agro in that space. If you hit your intim you will get agro, if not you will loose agro. This makes intim more of an all or nothing kind of deal, either you can or you can't and its simple to know that if you have determined what intim mark you need to hit for agro.

Of course intim tanking is better for groups of monsters, dps has a hard time holding them all reliably.

Hate tanks probably do more damage both since that is their spec and they don't have to stop and hit intim often. But... intim tanks may help party dps because you don't need to wait for them to establish agro before diving in. The moment you see the heads up you can dive in full bore.

[Bilger]

Both are nice hate or intim.

Hate is harder to do like others said have to be able to out dps the rest and have right set up.

Where intim if specced for and have high enough intim will never lose it unless lag or something but can gain back quickly where if hate tanking if lose it everyone has to wait while it is rebuilt.

Personally I like intims better may take longer but is more reliable, but a good hate tank is awesome if done right.

[Clay]

Not sure I have a preference, whatever works...

Its interesting no one has a WF intim... its assumed they are a hate tank. I suppose thats the norm but you certainly can have a WF intim tank.

The problem with hate tanking is you still need to be specced for it or you need to be way more awesome than everyone else. The later... not a great way to do tanking I think. The specced defender types seem to do well with it. I've not gotten to see many Barbarian hate tanks so I'm not sure how that goes. Certainly I've seen specced defenders out hate raging frenzied barbarians so I tend to suspect the specced hate tanks are better than ones simply running on DPS. If your hate tank requires you to hold off beyond a few initial seconds to establish agro.

Intim is more predictable in some ways since you are the only one competing for agro in that space. If you hit your intim you will get agro, if not you will loose agro. This makes intim more of an all or nothing kind of deal, either you can or you can't and its simple to know that if you have determined what intim mark you need to hit for agro.

Of course intim tanking is better for groups of monsters, dps has a hard time holding them all reliably.

Hate tanks probably do more damage both since that is their spec and they don't have to stop and hit intim often. But... intim tanks may help party dps because you don't need to wait for them to establish agro before diving in. The moment you see the heads up you can dive in full bore.

i have a WF intim. The last sentence is very true... no waiting or worry about bringing all the heat.

[BurningDownTheHouse]

No offense to hate tanks, but I hate healing the wf with 30 ac...

When I run VoD with my guildies I go with an AC tank that doesn't get a curse all the raid. We usually end it with the healers at 25% sp.

So yeah, wf may be faster but it can be way expensive.

I resent that!
My wf barb's ac is in the low 20's fully raid buffed and raged.

That said, none of the vod runs he's tanking (almost all), turns out to be expensive. Maybe I'm just lucky.

[Forzah]

I've tanked him plenty of times with my dwarf barb. No problems holding aggro (I think I've only lost aggro once or twice in about 20 runs) and I'm using no incite gear at all. When I get really low health I just turtle up and shout curse :P.

[Quikster]

Both are nice hate or intim.

Hate is harder to do like others said have to be able to out dps the rest and have right set up.

Yes and no. When you put it like this (or the way some others in the thread have put it) it seems a bit misleading to me. You only need to out dps the rest of the group individually. If your have good dps, solid weapons, and any hate generation at all its really not that hard. Paly or wf'd hate generation work very well for this.


I have both, I do both, honestly it depends on the group most of the time. If I have 3 arcanes and 1 divine healer, usually id rather have a big dps wfd tank.

But if I only have 1 arcane and 1 divine Ill go with high ac most everytime. I usually try to fill and get in fast, so i try to play to the groups strengths when possible. What i do enjoy is when in a pug my ac tank says he can tank (fleshy) and the leader prefers to go with a wfd tank that ends up sucking pots from the arcanes inventory

[FluffyCalico]

Just wondering what people prefer.

WF barb on the boss and intimitank on the orthons.

[Sanadil]

Personal preference, AC Intim Tank. The person needs to know what they are doing though....Suulo...wait 1 second after timer up...Horoth... 1/2 second after timer up.. etc etc.. Just spamming intim never works as eventually, they will ignore it.

Hate tanks... Yeah, never have liked them. Typically (not always) resource usage does go up, alot.