I already gave some ideas, but I'll give them again.
For me, thanes and other bodyguards won't be a good option as long as mages get powerful debuffs (yes, thanes are also bodyguards, even though their shield, weapons and ML line are quite forgotten in the dark age of melee). In my opinion, the one thing that harms thanes (but also valewalkers, wardens and partially paladins and heavy tanks - and obviously the melee dealing classes aswell) is that a good caster group will transform melee damage dealers into a non-factor, besides their interrupting potential.
Just do the calculus :
-haste & D/Q debuff should double your weapon swing speed (even more from healers, if it wasn't corrected ?)
-str & S/C, dex&d/Q should remove 140~ stats without debuff bonus
-pbt on top of the above will take every second styled hit on a dual wielder, and you don't wanna know what happens to two-handers if they don't get a good spec celerity (yes, SPEC, not CRAFTED)
-group heal procs, single and double-proc pieces wose value increases with every new patch also contribute to significantly lower melee damage.
All of these tools are inexpensive uncounterable : the debuffs usually last for 30-60 seconds at worst, don't leave any immune and are on a 5 second timer.
If you are still a threat after all of this (congratulations !), you will have to face crowd control, arti charges such as Zo², SotG, master level spells such as warguard, zephyr, phaseshift, realm rank 5 abilities such as ment's, eld's, RM's, sorc's, theurg's, wizard's, healer's, friar's, cleric's and I'm only talking about the common things.
In the end of the day, if you managed to grab more than half of the least fragging mage of your group, odds are that you are either the best frag-stealing asshole around, or your group had no mage, or you met only noobs in your journey.
To end on a happy note, bodyguard is the least of your problems, because if the enemy groups picked up someone that happens to be battlemaster, that person will probably value interrupting mages much higher than actually coming back to save his mages from the 10/20-second agony that they will endure if no healer likes them. They MAY however come back from time to time to style-snare or slam you IF it's too dangerous for them to stay in the frontline consistently (see article : horrible instant death by mages). But don't worry : often enough, there won't be tanks because mages have pets for such trivial things as interrupting other mages. Some of the pets do protect their mages from you, though.
I won't get in the ugly details of zerg and keep fights, that's where off-tanks usually end up rerolling.
...
Sooo, to come back to thanes : the best way of helping them in my opinion would be to nerf mages. When you don't care about having a meatshield or even someone coming back from time to time snaring enemy tanks, you should meet horrible fate in the hands of a frenzied merc/zerk/BM.
A good starter would be to remove debuffs altogether, or to make them last 15-20 seconds (post-resists) with 1-2 minutes RuT. Then you would add some dex/acu debuffs on offtanks, so that mages themselves don't benefit from this. Then maybe stopping or even reversing this crazy defensive proc arms race would help, aswell. Then reworking RR5's so that effect mages and tanks equally would be in order.
Once you're at this point, if thanes are still subpar, you may consider beefing them up (some style-procs along with a weaponskill upgrade to help them land blows on their newly found tanky enemies, for instance).
StanleyM84 posted:
Aboreal Spec is full of utility and all the meat is baseline... Thanes get nothing baseline. Nothing at all.
So let's look at what valers get :
-An abs & AF buff : well, yeah that's nice to wear reinforced instead of being completely naked. I wouldn't call it an asset of arb though, as that's a mandatory set of spells that had to be put somewhere
-an offensive disease proc (whose top level actually procs less often than the second best) and a defensive ablative procs. Neither stack with casted offensive/defensive procs, which means valers almost never used their ablative proc since ToA came out. The offensive proc is nice, even though it's availlable (let's be honest : with lesser proc rate) on a decently tempable artifact on any tank.
-Damage shield : If ever you decided this spell to be critical to the success of your group, it's availlable on almost every other caster on Hib.
-Damage adds : That's indeed good utility. I won't babble on how mids and albs get a better version for free, and focus on the fact that sadly, tank groups aren't common enough on hiberna to make this spell shine.
-Melee speed buff : This spell, which does not stack with druid's haste is mostly not even in a group valer's hotkeys, because 20% anytime is usually better than 34% for 30 seconds. Some hardcore players still use it and either cry for a rebuff (which they dont get) or use a haste charge (which means they can't use their timer for a crafted celerity or a ML10 cloak use) once it's over.
-instant DoT : a decent interrupt spell. But since everything comes at a cost, even the grey spell will sometimes not be resisted and give a free 24 seconds duration mez/root immune. Some people would also argue that it's 30s timer is quite long.
-Instant snare : we're coming to the few very good spells arb has, and this is one.
-AoE disease : A very good spell (although it's slow cast speed doesn't combine well with valers' low dex).
-IPBAE disease : never used it, because it's too high in spec, and it's insane cooldown makes the spec not worth it. May be useful in cathal.
-group-heal/lifedrain : A very good spell, which was given because Mythic cba giving a level 50 drain in the second lifetap line. When you think solo valewalkers are so good with their spammable drain, odds are most of the drains they casts are these 10sec-cooldown drain.
-Lifetap : Now we're on the controversial point : would you trade your 150 range, 0.1 seconds (meaning 5-10 more RA points to cap it) and 25 delve points for a lifetap effect ? For soloing, maybe. For a group character, I strongly doubt you would. Valewalkers' acuity buff makes up for the damage difference, but all of the damage in the world won't make up for the casting speed and the untemplated cast range.
So if you forget the shields, there are like 5 (?) interesting spells in the line, two ow which are baseline, two others being the mandatory instants hybrids get ? I wouldn't call that a full-of-utility spec, personally. But happily, VWs get the best weapon line in the game, which makes up for it.
, there would be a point asking. But all I see here is people trying to get some small things without any actual plan and without even knowing wether it will help their class or not. 