Frankly, tanking is pretty unpleasant on this server. The plate classes kind of all play the same: activate aggro buff, run in, aoe, repeat. For bosses it's activate aggro buff, run in, hit stuff, repeat.
Knights suffer from this the most. Plate gear is strikingly indiverse. They're tank only. The classes basically play all the same, apart from maybe one exception, that being the kn/wd, due to weapon swapping.
Plate gear isn't worth much for that reason. You have 0 damage potential and all you have is aggro-multipliers - which, in a world where DPS get more and more options to deal damage tanks are left behind and struggle for aggro at times unless you're overgeared to all hell. The solution: Just play chain (or right now also cloth), have a 400-500k dps with a slightly lower aggro multi.
To remedy this, there's need for certain things to happen:
- Diversify the plate classes. Make them play completely differently from one another and give them differing functionalities. One should be offensively oriented, one should be supporty, one should be extremely defensively and so on.
Who the hell plays wd/k? wd/ch? k/s? k/p? k/w? Why would you play classesthat do literally the same as the k/m in their functionality but so much worse? - Give plate some non-tanks, please? Healers can swap in lower instances to dps and are primo supports, mages can swap to a heal and a tank now (cause that's fun) and chain is flick of the wrist tanking with champs. Its time the scale will be tipped again, giving plate gear some viable DPS (that actually wears plate!) to create some more viability.
Just turn some of the useless tanks right now into actual damage classes, hell, even turn the kn/m into a mDPS if needed.
Versatility becomes immensely important in the midgame and doesn't stop being important in the late/endgame. Plate can not hold a candle to it. - Make (more) buffs raid wide. Lower geared tanks (and for that matter, I mean tanks with "just" red rofl gear) can barely hold aggro during dps burst, even then they themselves "burst". How again are 50-60k dps plate tanks supposed to gold the aggro of 35kk+ DPS at bosses? It's by all means literally impossible. Chaining taunts and praying that the DPS can stand a hit or two? This can't be the intended way to play tank when one starts out, right? The learning curve is steep, yet the mastery curve is really flat. Doesn't make much sense.
Excluding the second group and by proxy always the tank isn't fun for anybody and doesn't make any sense at all in a world where group switching macros and addons exist - especially when you consider that the competitive nature of buffs in the first party cripples the viability of some otherwise pretty nice classes (looking at the warden and his nature crystal specifically for this.)
Something has to be done.