are fighters intended to be meatshields for rangers and mage who do the real damge, or is the fighter the mad damage guy with the rest being enemy distractors?

Both. Depending on your build. You could go for the mad damage Fighter with no better Endurance than the average INT Mage, or you could be the Tank doing decent, steady damage to mobs and soaking up damage while the mages and rangers blast the mobs to smithereens.

I have a lvl 37 fighter atm Darkfigher he is both a meatshield and does decent dammage. I have played a lot of games and while Tanks are not suposed to go around killing everything they are supposed to take a decent hit. While I can do some damage at the expense of some Endurance, Armor class, and defense raiting. I make sure that I keep up with my weaknesses by chuging a lot of pots if i get hit thus keeping me alive and not letting the mobs hit the guys who stand behind me. BTW tip to all who fight in group with a Fighter stand behind him mobs have less of a chance of going around him then to just turn around and swing at you.

I do group a lot with Mages and Rangers in Farming situations I realize with out a doubt they are out Dpsing me. But if they stand up the whole fight i have done my job let them kill him i'll just be a human shield, that still has a couple spikes left on it.

If alone though with curent build i do well enough damage wise to solo farm easily.

Me (Swiper) and DarkFighter pwn stuff regularly to keep our blades from getting dull.... Rotty especially dislikes seeing us come running down the hallway towards him in the last week.

Sometimes we let others watch so they can learn how real fighters jump in and take it on the chin too...

Then some mage shows up and blows everything up before we can get close to it, LOL! Funny when they get mobbed though and we're "too far behind"


Seriously though, I tried the "tank"/endurance build fighter and disliked it vs. the balanced fighter build with speed and dps as a focus. I cut through mobs faster, spend less time in general getting to goals/levels, and although I probably definitely spend more money on pots and hammer away at skills faster - I spend WAY less time doing farming runs and grinding. In the end its more satisfying to me to have ludicrously hacked through a horde of mobs, than to simply be a "neat shield," but that's IMO of course. Since the game is balanced well and kinda focused for you to be able to do it yourself (i.e. without the need of specific classed chars in a group such as healers and aoe mages) the normal "tank" build that people think of is kind of out of the normal scope of DR for the most part it seems.



Edited by Teclis (03/04/08 10:14 PM)

It really depends. With the balanced system that Dr has, a fighter can be a whole lot of things, especially when you consider all of the classes that are kind of like fighters. I know of a battlemage on W7 who is pretty much and AOE machine because of his build but he is definitly a tank as well. My mage happens to be a pretty nice tank for abby runs and such, not the best tank out there, but I've been a meat shield for heards of rangers on a number of occasions with no complaints.

On the other hand, it seems that fighters have a harder time dealing out more total damage than rangers or mages, but the are equal or even better in certain situations at concentrated damage. That said, it depends on what you like, and what works for you