will the GWF be a tank? off-tank or striker?

[volcxxx]

GWF is pure dps. No tank at all. There is only one tank - Guardian Fighter.
100%

[gatorflash]

I dont completely agree volcxxx. Im sure in a pinch, the GWF could off tank. Say in a group if the guardian goes down... He certainly would be a better choice than a cleric in my opinion, who would probably need to focus on healing the GWF. He is a "fighter" after all and can certainly take a lot more punishment than the rogue, who is "pure dps" by your standards.

[vagrantzero]

GWF is pure dps. No tank at all. There is only one tank - Guardian Fighter.
100%

No I'm pretty sure I saw screenshots floating around showing a tanky tree for the GWF.

Edit: Found a link that shows at a bare minimum the GWF can spec to be an off-tank.

http://www.tentonhammer.com/neverwin...weapon-fighter

Definitely not just pure dps. So you were 100% wrong.

Now if GWF can be main tanks remains to be seen. I really hope so. I want to be a party main-tank GWF.

Edit2: For those of you that are too lazy to click or can't for some reason here's the meat of it:

You believe that shields are cumbersome and deter your ability to fight. Your innate instinct allows you to drive your weapon deep into the hearts of your foes with deadly precision and timing. In the heat of battle, your versatile combat ability allows you to perform different roles within the party. While your defender absorbs the brunt of the damage, you fight to protect your other party members from ambush. And if your defender is down, you are the first to absorb incoming damage keeping your allies from harm.

[cerek2]

The Great Weapon Fighter falls into the same Defender role category along with the Guardian Fighter. This is why we are in the same forums. The GWF, in basic terms, is a secondary tank to the Guardian, because he's not able to tank the same as the Guardian due to the lack of the shield. Instead, the GWF obviously focuses more on offense by having the Great Weapon. However, the GWF has abilities to knock opponents away, slow them down and even has an ability to significantly buff his defensive capabilities based on the number of opponents nearby and the strength of those opponents.

What I did was I simply reviewed what Cryptic wrote about the GWF in their introduction video and write-up. I read about the GWF in the DND 4e wiki sites. I then went and used the pause button to review the GWF class abilities as seen in the German gameplay video. What I found is a pretty good balance of offensive abilities and defensive abilities.

Basically, the GWF is meant to fight and tank. He's just not the best at either due to not having the fire power / range of the Wizard or the shield of the Guardian Fighter. But that's ok, it what makes the class pretty unique.

[zavon01]

Yeah, they said in that preview that the GWF job was to be both a bit of a striker and an emergency defender. In fact, the special mechanic is supposed to be something along the lines of "sprinting" to endangered party members and off-tanking.

That may make a lot of folks upset, who want to be a pure DPS-- but personally, I love the idea of being a situational awareness type class.

[firesnakearies]

Both get plate. They are the same class albeit different weapon focus and feat/skill selection. Heavy armour proficieny is a foundational thing to fighters. It will be thoroughly disappointing if Cryptic mess with that.

In 4th edition, Fighters start with proficiency in Scale. Only Paladins start with Plate proficiency. Fighters who want to wear plate have to spend a feat on it.

Cryptic didn't mess with that, Wizards of the Coast did.


Edit: I'm talking about the first 4E Player's Handbook. Later on, in Essentials a different kind of Fighter, the Knight build, was released that does start with Plate proficiency.

[arythor]

Since Great Weapon Fighters are still considered defenders due to being a Fighter, they should be able to tank to some degree; naturally, it is expected their damage absorption and mitigation will be less than that of a Guardian Fighter, but their increased offense will balance that.

I suspect that, like in many MMORPGs, a Guardian Fighter tanking will make a dungeon easier to complete, particularly in the first few attempts, but a Great Weapon Fighter tanking will make it faster to complete, particularly once the dungeon is mastered. It all has to do with the best tank giving a party the most time and margin of error to deal with encounters, which is great when you are figuring things out. Once figured out, you just want to blitz through, and if you can do it with a tank that can put enemies down faster, that is the more optimal choice.

Anyway, while the second beta weekend will not feature Great Weapon Fighters, I hope (and suspect) that the third one will, and all of the speculation can be laid to rest then.