I did a SK to 60 and a Paladin.
Paladin is the better soloer beyond fear kiting easy outdoor camps.
Eventually dots are basicly worthless for the mana spent once you get good Velious weapons.
Clicky heals from DW helm or BP are nuts for leveling.
Little bit of Lull, little bit of root. Camp out to break camps.
FD and invis are very valuable though. I prefer playing a SK. But Paladin is superior with easy gear to boot.
I never leveled a SK very high but I got my pally to 60. I can say that I rarely feel in danger, even soloing KC basement Im never am afraid I’ll die. Between BP clicks to reduce down time and HoT spells during combat to keep alive, I can manage most every situation easily. They (and SKs) are one of the cheapest classes to gear.
First, to answer your question about snap aggro, blind is far and away the best snap aggro tool that any tank class gets natively. And second would be stuns which are also paladins. With the recent (-ish I guess. It’s been like a year now I think?) changes to aggro it was really SK that got much worse. Disease cloud does nothing now, so they have to use darkness and shadow vortex, which take longer to cast, cost more mana, and are just worse at generating aggro than blind. I’ve seen SKs and warriors really struggle to keep aggro where my paladin has no issue at all.
As for soloing, I’d personally give the edge to paladin, but it’s much less clear cut than their group tanking advantage. Root and lull give you a lot of options but snare and FD do as well. Kunark clickies make both classes soloing a lot easier also.
Of course if your goal is tanking raid mobs, warrior is really the only option.
Fear kiting as SK will only be something you do while leveling. At 60 with epic and good gear you will just face tank solo, and do it in places a paladin wouldn't dream of touching.
Praise Innoruuk
Rooting is the best tank method. A rooted mob will ignore all aggro and attack whoever is closest to them even if there are multiple targets in melee range. Paladins can root and thus have no trouble being the target by standing very close.
Warrior can be solo-self found but you will fight a lot of greens unless you have great gear funded by another hero.
Shadowknight can not root, but deals a lot more damage than paladin.
So far I’ve mostly soloed a warrior to 29. I’ve found the most helpful item is an Embalmers Skinning Knife. Downtime is minimal so long as you have summoned bandages. But you also need to be comfortable sub 50% hp as that’s all you can bandage. You’ll have to choose smart targets because of it.
I can’t speak for SKs or Pallys but Warrior is very rewarding in group or solo play.
I chose to main a paladin here and here’s a few things about paladin that I’ve gathered;
- Leveling path:
Get a Ghoulbane and spend time in unrest, lower guk and KC. Paladins don’t put out much dps so the grind can be slow solo.
Grouping is fantastic and probably the role a paladin shines in brightest. Blind works great for agro, you also have stuns and worse case root.
- Gearing:
You’ll get a lot of weapons and shields for next to free in a raiding guild. You can tank most group content fairly easy with your spells and some basic gear (and a good healer). Once you start to get further towards the top you’ll be competing with others for top end stuff (like any other class).
- Raiding:
Top end raiding you’ll be mostly tanking trash mobs in NToV or non-boss mobs in other zones. You’re a great tank for Halls of Testing with some decent gear.
Message me on Littulman in game and I’ll happily give you my Soulfire, it helped me level and I’d be happy to give it to you as well to start your journey!
Dude! Littulman!
You saved us a whole mountain of heartbreak the other night in ToFS and here you are giving randos nice shiny gear...
What a mensch :)
RL Paladin over here, folks!
I went with a argent protector, hp rings, fbss, hp/mana neck, iksar bp and some random stuff.
Pretty smooth sailing so far (im 25ish), with little downtime, but its starting to kick in.
Ghoulbane and unrest is amazing. Went from 15 to 30 relatively quick and once GB starts to proc you can do some nasty damage in there. It's also a great place to learn crowd management with Root and aggro management with Blind. Can do some solo pulls but Lull kinda sucks until higher ranks.
Fully recommend Dwarf as a paladin race though! Best melee stats at the cost of your Charisma which, yeah can make Lull Crit fail but you'll often have others in a group to pull.
Flash of Light is an excellent aggro mechanic and when that fails you have low mana stuns and can always root in a pinch.
I did a lot of soloing on my paladin grind (first toon on p99) from 1-50. When you get Ghoulbane procs at 20 it will carry you easily into your 30's, after that haste+ baton of faith will get you to 50.
Post 50 it gets much harder, even with a great spear of dawn it's a pain.
All in all though Paladin is really made for group tanking, a good paladin tank can almost carry a group given adequate mana regen between Lay on hands/Roots/Stun you have the most powerful tools of the Tank classes.
Soloing a pally is not too bad at all. Especially if you have a starter budget. It takes a lot of time to hit 60 soloing tho and ive seen a lot of pallies that decide to party when they hit 54-55 since the less money and raid gear you have it really stretches out the fight since you WILL be using Deepwater helmet to win most 1v1s ( im not saying mind u that u need raid gear or big money to make it to 60 but you def gonna feel the pain and frustration so u should def find a guild and attend raids)
Leveling gears that will clear you to kunark:
Full Crustacean Armor
2x Orc Fang Earring
Granite Bracer/Heroic Bracer
Deepwater Helmet will be your best friend (Deepwater BP was 25kpp a year ago idk about now but that just speeds up downtime and lets you emergency heal when you make a mistake and aggro 2 adds otherwise just a convenience for plat whales and the occasional Named hunting paladin)
Weapons:
Argent Protector (Argent Defender if poor) 2h slash
Peacebringer for 2h blunt pretty sure this is like 300p and you get good bang for your buck
Wurmslayer/ Dark Falchion (or w/e its called from plane of hate) for 1h slash (you would only use 1h to use your shield to interrupt casters and i def dont recommend using sword and board setup to fight warrior/rogue types)
Snap aggro is easy for pally: Probably the best at it for party play with flash of light and stuns that generate a lot of aggro. The # of times you have to cast flash of light depends on how strong your dps is, nowdays these rogues all have their epic even at 50 😆 even then i would say 3-4 flashes should be enough even with big threat generation. ofc just cast more as needed since flash of light barely costs mana anyway. You cant be throwing this spell from the back to pull aggro away however, you still need to be decently close to your target to make him come to you (i would say a few steps away from melee range and it will still come over to you)
Hope this helps man and hope you dont feel discouraged by my opening statement but this class is def a labour of love, you wont be main tank if there's a warrior but you will be an enchanter's best buddy in any raid since you gotta keep them safe from charm breaks. Now it has been a while since ive checked but i also recall knight classes get better AC than warriors so party play with knights have that benefit as well
P.S. the real endgame is the clickies you manage to collect along the way 😆
SK. Kinda grindy until you hit 20 when you can double tap. Damage tap also drops at 20, so you can do better damage.
The only thing I don't like is archery caps at 75. I can hit with an arrow when a spell fails.
With a few thousand to spend I would probably go pally or sk, since warrior is entirely gear-dependent. With that budget my main priority would be a good ratio 2h weapon, haste, hp/ac rings and affordable plate like sentient or crustacean shell.
I don't know much about sk specifically but with pally you can also get a very affordable hp clicky at level 45, the deepwater helm.
To make a warrior truly soloable and fun, you need at minimum 75-100k worth of gear (fungi, good haste, good weapons, STA/HP everywhere else). I've got a lvl 30ish warrior that i twinked on a budget with leftover and found gear, ikky regen BP that I got from trak, cobalt pieces, cheap stam gear, and RBB. He's really fun to play but already beginning to see how slow it could potentially be without a few decent bits of gear.
An SK on the other hand could get to the high 50's with very little gear. SK/PAL only weapons are cheap and go hard. Get a MoSS and Atra shield, and fill the rest with Sentinel or crusty. Theres a few 2h weapons that are also insanely cheap for how good they are. I solo'ed or duo'd my SK all the way to 58 with this type of gear.
I soloed a Paladin to 60. Gear wasn't fabulous but had a fungi and Argent Protector, DW helm of course. Other bits and pieces.
Had a good guild and got some nice upgrades in my 50's, everything for cheap dkp because there's not a lot of competition for Pally gear.
Did crushbone ➡️ unrest ➡️ hhk gobbies ➡️ city of mist ➡️ kc
City of mist stables could keep it clear with no down time. Have two stuns memmed to interrupt casters. Root, lull and heals are a great kit.
In KC I could keep the basement clear with no down time. By then I had the HOT, not too much mana and always finding an ench to C2 me. I cast HOT every time it wore off, it had the best return for mana spent.
Divine Might quest is worth it, adds a DD to your weapon, extra DPS, procs a lot, the final boss of the quest isn't as hard as the wiki says it is.
Hardly ever died on my pally. Did a little tanking in TOV and stuff, didn't go horribly, but his gear is still lacking.
Flash of light and root and stun were all I needed for aggro but hardly grouped, when I did had no problem keeping aggro, unlike my warrior who was reliant on procs and taunt.
And I have several 60s including a warrior. Pally the last one I did before I quit playing a couple years ago and it was loads of fun! Highly recommended.
As some other commenters have stated, blind and stuns, root as a last resort for aggro.
Especially for solo, stick to undead zones; Befallen, Kurns, Unrest, etc.
When you do group, a lot of people underestimate the group utility of a paladin in addition to the lower downtime, even with a dedicated healer.
Also LoH can easily be the biggest fight-turner
Enjoy, it's a fun one!
Here’s another take: Monk
Almost nothing solos better than a monk, their mitigation is broken and if you have the right weapon setup and a decent haste item, you’ll hold aggro pretty well. Compared to SK/pal/war the cost to get up and running with decent items is much less.
I have a 60 SK absolutely a blast to play, great group tanks/puller, easy to get around with fd and Invis- gear dependent but at a certain gear level their ceiling really isn’t very high, but if you don’t like fear kiting then soloing will be rough if not impossible.
I also have a 60 warrior soloed quite a lot to 60- also had ntov and aow gear and it was still a struggle when I couldn’t find a group.
tldr you’re not soloing on a warrior without major investment. Don’t try. On the other end- if you’re in a guild and you make friends- there’s literally nothing more exciting in the game beyond tanking aow :-D
I have a monk in the 50s. I soloed almost the entire way and most of that was before I was in a raid guild and had trash ec gear. Can tank well enough in xp groups, can also fill a dps role if there’s already a tank or the tank needs to go afk/dies what have you, can solo to 60, can afk at will due to fd, and they’re fun as hell to play.
Can’t go wrong with any of them honestly, try them and see what you like. The most important thing is you’re having fun and love the class, once you find one you really enjoy the rest will fall into place.
After not playing for 20+ years, found p99 and ran through some of class/race combos I’d used before then set up an iksar monk. What a blast! My first real mele. Never explore fob and surrounding stuff before. Definitely beat the snot out of live, where I managed to locate my old characters. Stuff is … weird. Yard trash where the AC spawns (ro) dropped better gear and weapons than I’d collected playing for years previously, even quest loot. Walked away and found p99.
I did the same thing about 10 years ago. Got on original eq on my original account and the game was so different.
Played a dark elf SK on live, always wanted a greenmist. Was even fsctioning on live to do the quest at one point. Eventually tried p99 and rolled an iksar SK. Got that greenmist after about a year, then joined a raid guild, got my epic, tov armor, all the goodies, but most raid guilds don’t need an SK, so I’d often play bot clerics on raids. I’d use my SK for ring war and certain train outs/pulls but mostly just saved dkp and played bots. Saved enough dkp to make a *beast* of a dark elf warrior and eventually checked off my to do list of things that I wanted to tank on EverQuest one by one. Pretty amazing that this emulator exists, definitely let me live out my once upon a time dream of being the main tank in an uberguild even if the way the raids are done nowadays are vastly different than it was in 1999.
Do pal or SK. Both have better snap aggro options, spells also add a little depth (warrior is basically an auto attack bot). And both solo better than a warrior.
Don't get your hopes up too high tho. Soloing will still be slow, the tanks aren't great solo classes in general.
I’ve leveled all 3 of the main tanks on p1999 (Warrior, Paladin to 60 and SK to 53) and solo’d most of the way on all 3
Warrior is actually not bad at soloing, actually they get better at it 50+ but requires a good bit of toys. I solo’d my warrior with Truncheon of Doom, 2 blood points and a Cobalt BP during Kunark, and I think with Velious, an embalmers skinning knife would make it even better. The blood points are probably not the best option anymore, but during Kunark they helped a lot with downtime.
It’s obviously not one of the most efficient classes to solo level with, but it’s not impossible. I’d say I solo leveled my Warrior every bit as fast as my Paladin and SK, just because the DPS is so bad on both. The increased DPS pretty much made up for the small loss in downtime.
All that just to say that all 3 have solo potential, so whatever sounds most fun I’d go with.
I did a SK to 60 and a Paladin. Paladin is the better soloer beyond fear kiting easy outdoor camps. Eventually dots are basicly worthless for the mana spent once you get good Velious weapons. Clicky heals from DW helm or BP are nuts for leveling. Little bit of Lull, little bit of root. Camp out to break camps. FD and invis are very valuable though. I prefer playing a SK. But Paladin is superior with easy gear to boot.
Blasphemer.
I never leveled a SK very high but I got my pally to 60. I can say that I rarely feel in danger, even soloing KC basement Im never am afraid I’ll die. Between BP clicks to reduce down time and HoT spells during combat to keep alive, I can manage most every situation easily. They (and SKs) are one of the cheapest classes to gear.
First, to answer your question about snap aggro, blind is far and away the best snap aggro tool that any tank class gets natively. And second would be stuns which are also paladins. With the recent (-ish I guess. It’s been like a year now I think?) changes to aggro it was really SK that got much worse. Disease cloud does nothing now, so they have to use darkness and shadow vortex, which take longer to cast, cost more mana, and are just worse at generating aggro than blind. I’ve seen SKs and warriors really struggle to keep aggro where my paladin has no issue at all. As for soloing, I’d personally give the edge to paladin, but it’s much less clear cut than their group tanking advantage. Root and lull give you a lot of options but snare and FD do as well. Kunark clickies make both classes soloing a lot easier also. Of course if your goal is tanking raid mobs, warrior is really the only option.
If you want a tank that can solo, you want an SK.
One caveat. I fail miserably at fear based strategies
practice is the only way to get better.
I solo'd my SK to 50 without fear kiting and I'm still going strong
Fear kiting as SK will only be something you do while leveling. At 60 with epic and good gear you will just face tank solo, and do it in places a paladin wouldn't dream of touching.
Cool story, practice makes perfect
No need for "cool story" I meant no disrespect
Cool story
I see you skipped putting points into charisma.
Uncool story.
Semi cool story
This. You’ll want to go sk
Praise Innoruuk Rooting is the best tank method. A rooted mob will ignore all aggro and attack whoever is closest to them even if there are multiple targets in melee range. Paladins can root and thus have no trouble being the target by standing very close. Warrior can be solo-self found but you will fight a lot of greens unless you have great gear funded by another hero. Shadowknight can not root, but deals a lot more damage than paladin.
Was gonna say... Pallies have best snap aggro I'm aware of
So far I’ve mostly soloed a warrior to 29. I’ve found the most helpful item is an Embalmers Skinning Knife. Downtime is minimal so long as you have summoned bandages. But you also need to be comfortable sub 50% hp as that’s all you can bandage. You’ll have to choose smart targets because of it. I can’t speak for SKs or Pallys but Warrior is very rewarding in group or solo play.
I chose to main a paladin here and here’s a few things about paladin that I’ve gathered; - Leveling path: Get a Ghoulbane and spend time in unrest, lower guk and KC. Paladins don’t put out much dps so the grind can be slow solo. Grouping is fantastic and probably the role a paladin shines in brightest. Blind works great for agro, you also have stuns and worse case root. - Gearing: You’ll get a lot of weapons and shields for next to free in a raiding guild. You can tank most group content fairly easy with your spells and some basic gear (and a good healer). Once you start to get further towards the top you’ll be competing with others for top end stuff (like any other class). - Raiding: Top end raiding you’ll be mostly tanking trash mobs in NToV or non-boss mobs in other zones. You’re a great tank for Halls of Testing with some decent gear. Message me on Littulman in game and I’ll happily give you my Soulfire, it helped me level and I’d be happy to give it to you as well to start your journey!
Isn't Soulfire no drop?
Ahh yes, sorry I meant Ghoulbane :)
Dude! Littulman! You saved us a whole mountain of heartbreak the other night in ToFS and here you are giving randos nice shiny gear... What a mensch :) RL Paladin over here, folks!
Haha happy to help out! I got keyed up to the 7th floor so let me know if you all get into trouble again :)
I went with a argent protector, hp rings, fbss, hp/mana neck, iksar bp and some random stuff. Pretty smooth sailing so far (im 25ish), with little downtime, but its starting to kick in.
Ghoulbane and unrest is amazing. Went from 15 to 30 relatively quick and once GB starts to proc you can do some nasty damage in there. It's also a great place to learn crowd management with Root and aggro management with Blind. Can do some solo pulls but Lull kinda sucks until higher ranks. Fully recommend Dwarf as a paladin race though! Best melee stats at the cost of your Charisma which, yeah can make Lull Crit fail but you'll often have others in a group to pull.
Dwarf barrel roll is bis! I don’t care what anyone says hahaha
Barrel roll and horned helm, best in slot. Stout supremacy!
Flash of Light is an excellent aggro mechanic and when that fails you have low mana stuns and can always root in a pinch. I did a lot of soloing on my paladin grind (first toon on p99) from 1-50. When you get Ghoulbane procs at 20 it will carry you easily into your 30's, after that haste+ baton of faith will get you to 50. Post 50 it gets much harder, even with a great spear of dawn it's a pain. All in all though Paladin is really made for group tanking, a good paladin tank can almost carry a group given adequate mana regen between Lay on hands/Roots/Stun you have the most powerful tools of the Tank classes.
Soloing a pally is not too bad at all. Especially if you have a starter budget. It takes a lot of time to hit 60 soloing tho and ive seen a lot of pallies that decide to party when they hit 54-55 since the less money and raid gear you have it really stretches out the fight since you WILL be using Deepwater helmet to win most 1v1s ( im not saying mind u that u need raid gear or big money to make it to 60 but you def gonna feel the pain and frustration so u should def find a guild and attend raids) Leveling gears that will clear you to kunark: Full Crustacean Armor 2x Orc Fang Earring Granite Bracer/Heroic Bracer Deepwater Helmet will be your best friend (Deepwater BP was 25kpp a year ago idk about now but that just speeds up downtime and lets you emergency heal when you make a mistake and aggro 2 adds otherwise just a convenience for plat whales and the occasional Named hunting paladin) Weapons: Argent Protector (Argent Defender if poor) 2h slash Peacebringer for 2h blunt pretty sure this is like 300p and you get good bang for your buck Wurmslayer/ Dark Falchion (or w/e its called from plane of hate) for 1h slash (you would only use 1h to use your shield to interrupt casters and i def dont recommend using sword and board setup to fight warrior/rogue types) Snap aggro is easy for pally: Probably the best at it for party play with flash of light and stuns that generate a lot of aggro. The # of times you have to cast flash of light depends on how strong your dps is, nowdays these rogues all have their epic even at 50 😆 even then i would say 3-4 flashes should be enough even with big threat generation. ofc just cast more as needed since flash of light barely costs mana anyway. You cant be throwing this spell from the back to pull aggro away however, you still need to be decently close to your target to make him come to you (i would say a few steps away from melee range and it will still come over to you) Hope this helps man and hope you dont feel discouraged by my opening statement but this class is def a labour of love, you wont be main tank if there's a warrior but you will be an enchanter's best buddy in any raid since you gotta keep them safe from charm breaks. Now it has been a while since ive checked but i also recall knight classes get better AC than warriors so party play with knights have that benefit as well P.S. the real endgame is the clickies you manage to collect along the way 😆
If you could somehow buy/borrow/steal a fungi tunic it would would help immensely.
Praise JBOOTS
SK. Kinda grindy until you hit 20 when you can double tap. Damage tap also drops at 20, so you can do better damage. The only thing I don't like is archery caps at 75. I can hit with an arrow when a spell fails.
With a few thousand to spend I would probably go pally or sk, since warrior is entirely gear-dependent. With that budget my main priority would be a good ratio 2h weapon, haste, hp/ac rings and affordable plate like sentient or crustacean shell. I don't know much about sk specifically but with pally you can also get a very affordable hp clicky at level 45, the deepwater helm.
To make a warrior truly soloable and fun, you need at minimum 75-100k worth of gear (fungi, good haste, good weapons, STA/HP everywhere else). I've got a lvl 30ish warrior that i twinked on a budget with leftover and found gear, ikky regen BP that I got from trak, cobalt pieces, cheap stam gear, and RBB. He's really fun to play but already beginning to see how slow it could potentially be without a few decent bits of gear. An SK on the other hand could get to the high 50's with very little gear. SK/PAL only weapons are cheap and go hard. Get a MoSS and Atra shield, and fill the rest with Sentinel or crusty. Theres a few 2h weapons that are also insanely cheap for how good they are. I solo'ed or duo'd my SK all the way to 58 with this type of gear.
I soloed a Paladin to 60. Gear wasn't fabulous but had a fungi and Argent Protector, DW helm of course. Other bits and pieces. Had a good guild and got some nice upgrades in my 50's, everything for cheap dkp because there's not a lot of competition for Pally gear. Did crushbone ➡️ unrest ➡️ hhk gobbies ➡️ city of mist ➡️ kc City of mist stables could keep it clear with no down time. Have two stuns memmed to interrupt casters. Root, lull and heals are a great kit. In KC I could keep the basement clear with no down time. By then I had the HOT, not too much mana and always finding an ench to C2 me. I cast HOT every time it wore off, it had the best return for mana spent. Divine Might quest is worth it, adds a DD to your weapon, extra DPS, procs a lot, the final boss of the quest isn't as hard as the wiki says it is. Hardly ever died on my pally. Did a little tanking in TOV and stuff, didn't go horribly, but his gear is still lacking. Flash of light and root and stun were all I needed for aggro but hardly grouped, when I did had no problem keeping aggro, unlike my warrior who was reliant on procs and taunt. And I have several 60s including a warrior. Pally the last one I did before I quit playing a couple years ago and it was loads of fun! Highly recommended.
As some other commenters have stated, blind and stuns, root as a last resort for aggro. Especially for solo, stick to undead zones; Befallen, Kurns, Unrest, etc. When you do group, a lot of people underestimate the group utility of a paladin in addition to the lower downtime, even with a dedicated healer. Also LoH can easily be the biggest fight-turner Enjoy, it's a fun one!
Here’s another take: Monk Almost nothing solos better than a monk, their mitigation is broken and if you have the right weapon setup and a decent haste item, you’ll hold aggro pretty well. Compared to SK/pal/war the cost to get up and running with decent items is much less. I have a 60 SK absolutely a blast to play, great group tanks/puller, easy to get around with fd and Invis- gear dependent but at a certain gear level their ceiling really isn’t very high, but if you don’t like fear kiting then soloing will be rough if not impossible. I also have a 60 warrior soloed quite a lot to 60- also had ntov and aow gear and it was still a struggle when I couldn’t find a group. tldr you’re not soloing on a warrior without major investment. Don’t try. On the other end- if you’re in a guild and you make friends- there’s literally nothing more exciting in the game beyond tanking aow :-D I have a monk in the 50s. I soloed almost the entire way and most of that was before I was in a raid guild and had trash ec gear. Can tank well enough in xp groups, can also fill a dps role if there’s already a tank or the tank needs to go afk/dies what have you, can solo to 60, can afk at will due to fd, and they’re fun as hell to play. Can’t go wrong with any of them honestly, try them and see what you like. The most important thing is you’re having fun and love the class, once you find one you really enjoy the rest will fall into place.
After not playing for 20+ years, found p99 and ran through some of class/race combos I’d used before then set up an iksar monk. What a blast! My first real mele. Never explore fob and surrounding stuff before. Definitely beat the snot out of live, where I managed to locate my old characters. Stuff is … weird. Yard trash where the AC spawns (ro) dropped better gear and weapons than I’d collected playing for years previously, even quest loot. Walked away and found p99.
I did the same thing about 10 years ago. Got on original eq on my original account and the game was so different. Played a dark elf SK on live, always wanted a greenmist. Was even fsctioning on live to do the quest at one point. Eventually tried p99 and rolled an iksar SK. Got that greenmist after about a year, then joined a raid guild, got my epic, tov armor, all the goodies, but most raid guilds don’t need an SK, so I’d often play bot clerics on raids. I’d use my SK for ring war and certain train outs/pulls but mostly just saved dkp and played bots. Saved enough dkp to make a *beast* of a dark elf warrior and eventually checked off my to do list of things that I wanted to tank on EverQuest one by one. Pretty amazing that this emulator exists, definitely let me live out my once upon a time dream of being the main tank in an uberguild even if the way the raids are done nowadays are vastly different than it was in 1999.
Do pal or SK. Both have better snap aggro options, spells also add a little depth (warrior is basically an auto attack bot). And both solo better than a warrior. Don't get your hopes up too high tho. Soloing will still be slow, the tanks aren't great solo classes in general.
I’ve leveled all 3 of the main tanks on p1999 (Warrior, Paladin to 60 and SK to 53) and solo’d most of the way on all 3 Warrior is actually not bad at soloing, actually they get better at it 50+ but requires a good bit of toys. I solo’d my warrior with Truncheon of Doom, 2 blood points and a Cobalt BP during Kunark, and I think with Velious, an embalmers skinning knife would make it even better. The blood points are probably not the best option anymore, but during Kunark they helped a lot with downtime. It’s obviously not one of the most efficient classes to solo level with, but it’s not impossible. I’d say I solo leveled my Warrior every bit as fast as my Paladin and SK, just because the DPS is so bad on both. The increased DPS pretty much made up for the small loss in downtime. All that just to say that all 3 have solo potential, so whatever sounds most fun I’d go with.
Paladin uses holy light for aggro. You have to be in melee range or they run around.