>See.. I was thinking exotics with the hour legacy would make
>him a very good tank... Especially when I later fought
>Abernyte's? fire giant exotic user who tanked Nefla better
>then anyone (I caught him AFK once, and still almost lost).
>Obviously I overestimate the defensive portion of hour.

I think to a degree Hour Past based warriors go in the same bin as dagger warriors -- due to a combination of their offensive and defensive strengths, they're pretty good PK tanks, but not really on the class to tank down a mob with thousands of hit points.

I'm not 100% sure how the trade off of giant (and weapon resist) vs. an Hour Past build with a race with some dexterity shakes out. I think they're pretty even up for a lot of things, but maybe not raiding so much once you look at everything.

>I tried to keep some wood/non-metal weapons on me for the
>Spirit, but frankly, even with divine saves, I lost the
>malediction battle more times then not... He was probably the
>worst tanking character I've ever played, and then I see very
>similar builds in battle or whatever tanking much better. I
>guess weapon practice would have helped a lot with him, but I
>suck at it.

Probably if you'd kept going with him, those skills would've gotten to the point where the tide turned just from playing. I'd assume your spec weapon skills would be at 100% just from levelling up? Not too much else that's relevant there...

>I wasn't expecting much in guardian/mob fighting, but I also
>wasn't expecting the complete beat down that divine
>retribution dished out to this character. Some of that could
>have been saves and low level, but I'm thinking it's more how
>divine ret is set up (which I don't fully udnerstand) and how
>this characters pk's went.

Lots of good PKs hurt there. The balancing factor is that usually the players that are racking up a lot of PKs are also the players that have the assorted knowledge to manage a paladin with that spell or the Watcher, but not always.

Maybe not. I'm starting to realize that there's not as much correlation as I'd thought between who the best PvP players are and who the best PvM players are. To give another example, I've seen some of the best PKer paladins die and die and get allies killed like crazy trying to get Defiance, and I've seen terrible PKer paladins repeatedly solo-get (and quickly lose) it without incident. Different kind of thought process and planning, I suppose!

>I agree... Mind sharing what kinds of character you tend to
>play that have good success vs. guardians? It seems to me
>that other than something with a large amount of innate
>healing ability, you're really going to struggle vs inners,
>but then what do I know?

Healing ability can do it, as you allude to -- I've never had a ton of problem with any guardian as any of the communing classes. (I grant you, it's long ass boring solo raiding with a healer unless your solo includes some NPC help.)

Better tanking warriors tend not to have too much problem, depending a bit on the guardian. For Empire or Tribunal how well you tank is of immense importance; for something like Scion or Nexus or Outlander, not quite as much.

I pretty much always struggle with thieves and rangers, except in the odd case of rangers raiding Outlander. Usually I need two runs unless I want to really press my luck, and that's even with stupid good gear.

Assassin I haven't personally struggled with, although really some of the assassins I've played would, just due to the way they were built/geared/etc. -- but those were also assassins that didn't really want to solo raid, so...

Bard I've never had a problem with a cabal.

Orcs I haven't gotten into hero range since Bully came in, which would change that dynamic considerably. Before that, raiding was kind of a beating for them, now I think it could be doable.

Shifter I haven't had big problems with, but a lot of that is foci choice and form draw. Certainly I've had shifters that with different forms would PK more effectively but raid worse. I've seen people make it work with forms I don't think I could, though, so probably they know something I don't.

Transmuter, like bard, is largely doable but sloooow. Invokers I never have problems with (once upon a time, the limiting factor for invokers for me was not hit points but enough mana to get the job done in one go...). Necromancer's easy and fast, *if* you've got an army built up and are prepared to lose some of it or have it beat to hell vs. some guardians. (Without an army, it plays sort of like bard -- you're going to get it done, but damned if that's not going to be a long, slow fight as you whittle it down, healing yourself at need as you go.) Conjurer I struggle with a bit because I tend to gear/conjure/build in a way that suits PK better than raiding. A-P can struggle to raid a bit early in life, but once they hit their stride really nothing else competes for raiding speed/ease.

Did I leave anything out? Were you looking for more information there anywhere?