Viability of Lancer as a Tank?

[Montjuleant]

How good of a tank would a Lancer be in comparison to other classes, like Marauder or Gladiator?

Obviously, a Lancer couldn't compete against a Gladiator in straight-up damage reduction, due to the lack of a shield, but certain things like Speed/Life Surge giving a small, constant HP recovery, or Diversion allowing the Lancer to fully mitigate certain enemy skills can give an advantage. In addition, Speed Surge/Life Surge can be used as a sort of AOE taunt, since they seem to give a massive amount of aggro for whatever reason.

Let's have a well-mannered, civilized discussion on the merits of having a Lancer be the tank for a party, compared to a Gladiator, Marauder, or even Pugilist.

[Shampooo]

lancers break like glass on NM (among other things), surges wont give you enough HP to make up for the amount of dmg you'll take. you'll just be a mana sink. skills such as diversion are on too long of a cool down.

[Zkieve]

How good of a tank would a Lancer be in comparison to other classes, like Marauder or Gladiator?

Obviously, a Lancer couldn't compete against a Gladiator in straight-up damage reduction, due to the lack of a shield, but certain things like Speed/Life Surge giving a small, constant HP recovery, or Diversion allowing the Lancer to fully mitigate certain enemy skills can give an advantage. In addition, Speed Surge/Life Surge can be used as a sort of AOE taunt, since they seem to give a massive amount of aggro for whatever reason.

Let's have a well-mannered, civilized discussion on the merits of having a Lancer be the tank for a party, compared to a Gladiator, Marauder, or even Pugilist.

Lancers can not tank.Not better than an archer or a mage with some vit points.Lnc are heavy dd´s on par with archers.

[Aylis]

As a Lancer, each time I have personally tried to tank. The results have not been pretty. The other Lancers in my linkshell attest the same experiencing similar results reguardless of build.

[God]

+1 to Lancers are not tanks.

Move feint back to 250tp for lncr only and we could at least be that much better at soloing.

[Rentahamster]

Even with full plate armor, lancers still take loads of damage against hard mobs. Leave the tanking to the glads, pgls, and mrds if you have a choice.

Although, if you have all the defensive buffs from glad, pgl, and mrd, along with thm's emulate, you might be able to survive somewhat.

[Zarvlad]

Lancer can tank fine, but you need some cross class skills, which is the point of the Armoury system.

I can tank just fine with the proper Defense + HP armor and the Following cross-skills and traits:

Defender, Foresight, Featherfoot. Plus Jarring Strike, Fracture, Provoke/Taunt/Warmonger. And i mix a few more defensive abilities with some key lancer skills.

Then for traits equip Intimidate, Prime Conditioning, Driven by Faith and Complete Control (unless there is casters involved). I'd add Axemanship if i had it, for obvious reasons.

Then get a good thaumaturge to get transfer you DEF and EVA and you're set.


tl;dr : it's doable but requires some work and a good THM

[God]

That you don't have Emulate in there is just showing that lancer isn't a tank even with all those abilities. Can they keep hate is one thing can they mitigate all the damage they take? Nowai.

[Suirieko]

I think Lancers can possibly tank if they build up for it from other classes, maybe. I personally don't see Lancer as tank but as a DD jobs. The abilities that lancers have isn't good enough to support it to be a tanking class alone.

[Shampooo]

any lancer can "Tank" but your health pool is so low and you cant mitigate dmg like pug, gla or mrd.