Oh come on, Paladins were not the best raid MT (or a raid MT period) at any point of Everquest's history unless the mob had an unresistable fear (aka two bosses in PoT). The only way a Paladin was ever a MT for a guild is if he was the fucking guild leader, and said guild was sure as hell not on leading edge of progression. Defensive broke the game and everything had to be tuned for it. The pissant shit they tried to add to knights over the years as a "weak but situationally useful!" alternative was a joke.
But yes, SKs can be the most useful group tank if you're willing to work at it and don't care that some named will stomp a hole in your ass. And soon they will have a tool that should fix that. But most of the time its just a hell of a lot more button smashing to accomplish the same aggro and dps (questionable) a warrior can do by turning auto attack on. And no group or raid will want you because there are eleven billion SKs who spent all their time swarm-kiting in Vergalid and likely have shit gear and no clue how to actually play the class in a group or raid. They have the same stigma that any of the solo-friendly classes have had in EQ over the years.
Paladins are still worthless, you give up a shitload of damage for extra heals and cures, whoopie. You don't heal mobs to death. Their abilities are weak and redundant if there's any kind of healer present, even a merc. Paladins have no reason to exist. I suppose a non-boxed Paladin can be preferable in a raid group to some guy's alt shaman that he only brought along to cast DPS buffs and heal himself. (which describes most of the healers in any given raid) But in that case, the person should just be playing a real healer.
Anyway, my 90 warrior was awesome. But I didn't get far into HoT - like so many others I realized paying for 3 accounts to sit there by myself playing EQ with no end-goal in mind was pointless. I'm playing a rogue on Vulak now and borrowing the boxes I need.
And Flight, lol, nothing makes me laugh harder than warriors complaining about S&B doing more damage than dual wield. You know what I call doing the same damage a monk while also having shield block and shitloads of extra AC? Fucking awesome, that's what. Also, look at it this way: With shield specialist you only need one tank weapon and one dps weapon to bandolier, instead of two tank weapons + two more ranger swords or a 2H for dps. What a pain that was. Remember, before shield specialist, knights actually had a bit of EHP advantage outside of /disc defensive. Knights had shields for extra AC and, for one (or two?) glorious expansion(s), the extra advantage of shield block without giving up as much DPS. Shield specialist took that advantage away.. and warriors are the ones complaining because they think it somehow hurts their position in the DPS parse. What a joke. What they really want is for dual wield to be buffed beyond what S&B is doing so they can parse higher - when what SOE hears is "well, I guess they want us to nerf shield specialist so that it won't outdo dual wield" - the end result being you will do less damage than before. Good plan! This is SOE, be very careful what you ask for.
And there's no way merc tanks are better than a real tank unless you are WAY behind in tiers on gear. As in still wearing defiant.
Of course the real answer to all this mess is forget having a tank at all and play mage + shaman + whatever non-melee.
