I invite you to join the discussion of tanks of the sides of order and destruction

[BeautfulToad]

That was my experience leveling and gearing a IB, Knight, and SM. All of which are RR 80+ now. The IB in full Def Sov "feels" tougher than the others who are in a mix of Sov/Vader. All of the tanks have the Sent jewelry pce with +6 to block.

Speaking with players who gave up on tanks, they convey that it is just not satisfying to play a low dps class with non-commensurate survivability. It has to be acknowledged that Destro tanks are probably a little tougher with the tactics and abilities they can choose, which is not unreasonable considering that Order has Slayers with Numbing strike and Rampage.

Personally I find SnB tanks the easiest to level and gear. By conq or vanq, you are fairly strong and can hold off 6 mans for thirty seconds to a minute. Even before, you will normally have max wounds, and decent enough mitigation. If anything I find tanks too tanky.

Order has an issue with people not playing tanks. There's always composition problems in pug SCs and pug wbs. Maybe that's why you perceive them as being less tough. Certainly, I have encountered enough high level IBs and KOTBS to know that order tanks can be ludicrously tanky.

Tanks do die a lot, and if they are punished in bag rolls, that should be fixed.

[Marchmain]

I would say one of the most jarring things about playing a tank is that from levels 1-39 (if you have specc'd and geared properly) you feel like you can contribute because you are extremely hard to kill. You can capture points or hold off the enemy team from capping until help arrives, even though your dps is laughable you can kill any non healing dps (including two hand tanks) without too much trouble if you catch them one on one and even if they have backup and heals you at least can hound them and make their lives difficult all while staying alive. Much of the PvE content can be done solo and farming is slow but with little downtime and little threat of dying.

I pretty much always felt useful 1-39. (speaking more of scenarios and T1 rvr because I don't think you should be worrying too much about orvr contributions at low levels).

This all changes when you hit 40 and are still fairly low RR. Suddenly the witch elf/witch hunter that you could easily murder is two shotting you, suddenly you can't hold points for as long on your own, and the sorc/bw that couldn't hurt you kites you and kills you fast. It was the same in live (in fact that is why I ended up quitting) but IMO was worse because the grind was slower.

I asked the other day in advice if things would get better once I was rr80 and in appropriate gear and I got mixed answers but the other day I watched a black orc in full or mostly Sov hold off half a warband for a decent amount of time so I have hope and am sticking with my KotBS.
It doesn't hurt to have some dps alts to have fun with when you need a change of pace.