One of the worries I have/had leveling Samyus (if you don’t remember he is now my AC tank) is having enough Dps/hate to keep agro with out having to spam the Intim button. My first attempt to tank once hitting 20 was a normal tod, where I got to play the Sully tank. And it went very well. Think I did a run down a few days back, even. But there was an arty to make my Sword (eFang) good aligned (Slotting it with good is next on my to do list. I swear) and even though I spammed the intim button I didn’t think holding agro was an issue, but of course that was with arty help. However, on Saturday I got to tank Sully in Tod again. Once again lead by Tobril. But this time he didn’t get an arty, I felt a little hosed….

Lets skip to level two of this run down. We all get started on the boss, the kiter takes off and life it good for 30- 40 secs. When the kiter goes down. Tobril yells for the back up kiter to go and to make with the mass cures until the new kiter gets the shadows off us. Not sure what happened with the healing. There were 3 people with divine symbols and a bard. I know that what your icon is doesn’t mean a lot but come on you can heal some, right?

Anyway, half the part wipes. Let alive is the kiter, Tobril, myself and two of the three healers and I think the bard. Shadows are hitting me for about 103 a tick. At this rate I am dead real soon. But I drink a pot and swing, swing swing, pot and repeat. Meanwhile I am telling the healers to get it together, and through a mass or two. I am down to 110 hp when I finally get a heal and then people start getting raised, and a recovery happened. Think the bard was paying attention and ended up saving us. But were close to taking a ride on the fail train.

Mean while I noticed that I had taken agro of the main boss from Tobril. Kinda surprising as I know he is mostly geared out. But I don’t think he was trying to hold agro over trying to stay alive. My hate on the other hand just happens. My efang is fully powered with the dragon marks and being in stance makes a lot of hate, so other then swapping to a smaller sword (and lowering my AC in the process) there is not a lot I can do to lower my hate. And I really didn’t want to lower my AC just then.

Moving on to part three, I was worried that with out a good I would loose agro against some of the barbs and other fighters in the raid. So I kept power attack on with the bard buffs I want to say my AC was again in the 86 range. So I was good with that. This time I watched a lot closer to when I was getting heals and whatnot. Looking for how well my AC is working and instead of hitting the intimidate button for the extra hate, I let it roll waiting until I needed to intim to regain the agro if I lost it.

On the healing, I never had more then 100 points of damage when a heal was cast. Most of the time I was in the 20-30 points of damage range. Never missed the extra 5 ac from combat expertise. So Ac is working well enough for normals well enough.

As for Hate/Agro I never needed to Intim, even with my yellow numbers. Didn’t need to swap into my Swashbuckler for the extra double strike. Don’t remember seeing a Disintegration proc. So all in all hate was working. And am very pleased with how easy someone can build an Ac tank. Yes I gathered a few epic items, the sword and the Cavalry Plate, nothing super hard to get.

Need to do some testing against Tobril soon and I want to finishing slotting a few little things (Good on the sword at least, would like to slot Dex on my slayer ring).But I don’t want to go nuts before the new pack hits. I think there might be some real winners coming with the level cap raise.

❤