A ranger's main duty is damage dealing! Doing that efficiently will get the mob's attention plenty, probably more than you'd really like. Letting a mob pound on a ranger for extended periods will burn thru your cleric's mana in a big hurry. Additionally, for anyone except a straight warrior, a well placed spell will get that mob right back on you.ДЄbsorbing damage is not a one the ranger's main duties. A slow weapon might slow you down getting a mob off your caster, but doing alot of damage will keep it from agroing your caster to begin with. The best way to do that is deal alot of damage and hit the taunt button. Warriors especially but also shadow knights and paladins (plate mail tanks) first duty is to keep the mob on them and off the others. I have to disagree with your theories on tanking. Hit attack, pull out a notepad and find formulas based off of log parses - a warrior's life. god knows they have nothing better to do with their time =P. and i don't know whether the delay on slower weapons or the 2hander rebalancing makes STR more effective, but it does seem like str hardly improves dualwielding dps, yet has a noticable effect on 2h weapons (and ATK is just as effective on either).ДЇor better info, post questions at The Steel Warrior - warriors are too mathy for their own good. your weapon skill along with the ac and relative level of the mob you are attacking will affect hit distribution, and skill will also affect max damage. that doesn't increase your max hit at all, but if shifts your hit distribution upwards - you'll be hitting for higher dmg more often. 100str is roughly a 5-7% dps improvement. the % increase in max hit does not parallel the % increase in dps. now let's say we increase your str by 100, and your max hit becomes 120. whatever your % of hits for each hit #, that's your hit distribution. and maybe you'll hit for 70 surprisingly often - 12% of the time (if it was purely random, you'd hit each number 5% of the time). for example, maybe you'll only hit for 100 on 2% of your swings that make contact. based on calculations only the designers know, you will hit a mob for each of those numbers a certain % of the time.

and that you only ever hit in 5% increments of your max hit (5, 10, 15, etc. Let's say that your max hit with your weapon is 100. i'll try to give a simplified model of what EQ uses. So, since your min hit remains the same, a much higher str will stretch out your damage table. but as you might notice, you hardly ever hit for max damage. my max hit with a weighty polearm (29/34) and a str of 106 at level 52 with max 2hs skill is 130. the higher you str, the higher your max hit is able to go. putting it simply, your STR affects your max hit. because of the proc.ДЇor the guy with the question about strength: a WoFS (80 dmg proc) will consistently out-aggro the GBS.ДЄnd a SSoY, though a pinch slower, will do the same to an EBW.

and Wakizashi of Frozen Skies (6/22) will not have as much melee aggro as Glowing Black Sword (9/22).Д«ut warriors depend on weapons with procs to hold aggro, because proc aggro is immense. however, lammy will yield much superior aggro, because rate of attack is higher. for example: in primary hand, wurmslayer (25/40?) and lamentation (9/19) do almost the exact same damage between level 30 and 52 (lammy improves more as you increase level and primary hand dmg bonus). melee aggro is based on # of attacks and damage done. stats would then be the deciding factor.ДЇor tanking classes (warriors in particular): for strictly aggro, SSoY > EBW. in your offhand(which has no damage bonus), a 10/20, 15/30, or 20/40 weapon would all do exactly the same dps. this is not the case for 2h weapons with a delay greater than 28. for those of you not math inclined, it makes the faster weapon better in your primary, because the the damage bonus is not affected by weapon delay. if X represents your damage bonus, they become 10+x/20 and 20+x/40 respectively. let's say you have 2 1h weapons, a 10/20 and a 20/40. for any 1h weapon, it makes speed an important factor.

Clearing up a few things here, the posters below seem a tad confused.ДЇor dual wielders: you get a primary hand damage bonus.

Wakizashi of the frozen skies