Finally tried my hand at tanking as a Lancer on Classic, with a few rounds through everyone's favorite cultist-infested cavern network: The Bastion of Lok.
Whew boy, talk about a stark difference between versions...

Without any sort of offensive ability with built-in shielding on v32 (unlike v100 servers via Onslaught, Wallop, and Super Leap), it felt like all I could really do when pulling swathes of monsters was run into a corner, shout out loud for threat, then promptly park in place with my shield up.
Attempting to use attacks whatsoever, even Shield Bash->Onslaught for its +50% damage reduction every ~30 seconds or so, carried a pretty good chance of me simply getting knocked over. Assuming I ever had the MP to spare, which I very often didn't.

Bosses didn't fare much better, as I'd always find myself starving for MP; even when doing nothing but Shouting on-cooldown, blocking, and desperately animation-canceling the first three hits of my Normal Attack to scrape flecks of MP back inbetween assaults.
The final boss of Lok felt like a complete crapshoot, with him running all over the place regardless of threat, and hordes of monsters flooding in constantly.

I know this role gets better later on.
Quite enjoyed my time tanking on Starscape (even if I never brought my Lancer on that server to anything more complex than Draakon Arena), and my hazy memories of soloing overworld BAMs as a level 30-44 Lancer back in 2012/2013 assure me that this IS a fun class to play when you're up against the right kinds of encounters. But /man/...
The queue times are definitely what I'm playing this class for at the moment, above much else. Surely it must get better than this on Classic, surely.

>>1846969
If this is who I think it is, I'll likely be trying the latest GW2 expansion whenever it comes out in a few months. Maybe we'll run into one another there!
Psyched to see Paragon, Ritualist, and maybe even Dervish finally coming back, albeit as Elite Specs.