The Spirit Realm

Hello Knights!

We are currently attempting the Mindblight event, and we are using knights to offtank the blobs. They are getting eaten alive there - and I wonder why. I am not so much into the knight class and your AA's (Except that I am preaching CS/CA to everyone who will lend me half an ear)

Is it not possible for a 5.1k knight to offtank these in a sensible way ? I guess what I am asking is this:

Is it gear issues or AA issues? Would a 5.1AC knight be able to tank these comfortably given the proper AA's? Or do we need to work more on gear for these guys ?

I read the other post here, about what a paladin can do to help tanking - e.g. don't be a warrior, but use the abilities you are given - this goes for SK's too I guess - I know this is not an SK forum, and SK is the more DPS oriented tank - but I know SK's that outtanks several warriors in a heartbeat, so they must have some tricks up their sleeves too - anyone can enlighten me ?

Thank you

The Mindblight blobs are some of the hardest hitting mobs you will encounter in all of pre-UF EverQuest. The key to winning that event is to throw as much healing as possible on the blob tanks. You might want to use Warriors to tank em - remember, Mindblight doesn't summon until the blobs stop spawning - I think somewhere around 30% - and he's rooted, so when he's up you can have knights fight for aggro out of his melee box and have casters nuke the crap out of him.

Key to winning this event: keep blob tanks alive, and cure that snare. *cough* Splash! *cough*

Yep, basically what Balladish said, use Warriors to tank them, a Wizard going full blast nukes with voice of thule can "tank"(have aggro from range he doesnt summon until 30%), the only people that should take damage are the warriors tanking blobs and the occasional person who mindgnawers will hit until they auto die from mez.

I never have any issues off-tanking the blobs, but one thing I am quite sure to do (that I don't see the warriors take the time to do) is to continue to follow the emotes while dragging your blob around. If my group healer dies as a result of a stray mindgnawer, I can pop either H.Mantle or LoH for each of two blobs to survive on self-heals (and of course, deflection for a third if necessary). The penalty for not following the emotes is much harsher than the blobs dps output, from my experience.

5.1 is a tad low, especially if you mean buffed. Underfoot group gear (Vitallium visibles, Husk accessories) with Elemental source gets a bit over 5300 after augs, unbuffed. Any raid substitutions (especially shield) should improve an outfit from there.

If there are any AA issues at all, they're definitely what to focus on. Anyone trying to tank raid content without full Combat Agility, Combat Stability, Shield Block and hp stuff has no grounds to start looking at gear for excuses. Raids are an avenue for improvement above and beyond group things; group things definitely include the exp to fill out crucial AAs.

If you insist on having knights tank the blobs, then they need to go full on defensive/self-healing mode or they are going to get destroyed. After they gear up a bit it won't be so bad (obviously).

Hi Guys,


thanks for your replies and tips. I am talking about 5.1k unbuffed - might be a little higher as we speak, as I am not sure how updated the magelo's are. Some are higher, some might be lower.

Either way, I think I was sharing Brohg's sentiment below before I was posting - and I think I still am. Gear is not everything - AA's and knowing how to use your abilities are. Gear comes a close second, after the latter has been fullfilled. We are of course still farming the prior events to upgrade gear, but I think that a guild that has the prior events on solid farm for a while now (Except Mindshear, which is a new win, thus letting us in in the first place) should be able to engage the first tower target.

We use only knights to do the blobs- initially had alot of deaths but found that pairing up a paladin/sk on each (if available) and bouncing aggro between the two knights made it easier to survive.

Thought on that is that if you tie up SKs and paladins on blobs, you take the SKs away from DPS (SKs using HT when MB is up, or on the blobs themselves) and the paladins away from curing/healing (Splash rules for this raid).

I like to pair up pallies with another tank on this, let the sk or war tank the blob while pally patch heals / chains aurora. As long as your both quick about getting to the blob your first aurora should save them from the first spike off the mob, normally the first 2 rounds of melee from the blob decide if the sk lives or dies. Its pretty rare that I lose the offtank these days, my healing alone is nearly enough to keep them up, having the cleric is almost overkill, but were not tanking with 5.1 ac anymore either. It should work for tanks with 5k ac, the healing just needs to be tighter, that said id have your best tanks set to tank the blobs and someone to patch heal them, even if its a ranger. Keep them alive through initial aggro to give your cleric time to get to the wall and get heals going and your cleric should be able to keep em up from there.

We use a knight and warrior combo on the blobs as well and they put me in a hurt locker. Given I'm not the strongest in gear I don't feel I am severely lacking either.

We generally just serve as the backup tank on them. If the blob is loose and going for DPS and healers I grab aggro and let him take it when he can... or when the warrior dies. I can do 3 maybe 4 mobs like this but the only one that is truly a promise is when I use deflection. I have been spiked to death with LoH running and have even died discing if heals aren't coming in quick. We have also have rangers that end up WSing them if they need to and that is plenty enough for a single blob-single go-around.

We use wars and knights both as well with no problems. They aren't that bad.