Shin Magmus

Because that's what the HC devs wanted when they initially buffed Tankers, and still want even now in spite of the uneven and confusing nerfs. Their exact words in multiple posts are "AoE Specialists", Tankers are going to be better at using AoEs than the other ATs. Although if the AoEs do piss-poor damage, then that won't be enough. Tankers were buffed originally because nobody played them at endgame. Having the highest health and mitigation didn't matter, at all, to any good player. Brutes have the same caps, and could be buffed to reach those caps and hit the same mitigation as Tankers. Not only was that true in the past, but it will still be true after this patch goes through. This means that, despite what lower level and casual players may say, Brutes and Tankers have roughly the same survivability on end-game teams and especially on Advanced Mode team comps. So the choice between the 2 ATs really comes entirely down to which one does more damage, and that is why Tankers were not made and not played. Keep in mind that there are speedruns where the main tank is a Scrapper with Confront, and Brutes/Tankers are nowhere to be seen. The scale of this problem goes further than you might think.

Keep in mind that powers like Glittering Column basically have 2 powers within them, and allowing the set to slot Accurate Tohit Debuff sets may make one power enhanceable but the other not receive any benefit: worst-case example being that you slot Cloud Senses and it makes the Glitter Explosion debuff go up but fails to affect the Glitter Aura debuff at all. Set/Slotting related bugs like this are very common on HC, any time the devs change what kind of sets a power takes. This is still an issue on Fault even where it's supposedly WAI, where slotting TAoE sets does nothing to even buff the accuracy of the Stun/KD component of the power: which has lower than 1.0x base acc. That second power doesn't accept those sets, so your enhancement does nothing. You have to use more universal enhancements like Hamis to get around the issue. So yeah, if we allow Accurate Tohit Debuff sets in GC, please make sure they affect both debuffs: thank you.

It's conditional If:Then damage like most of Arse Control. This means that Vines won't deal damage to targets it can't hold, causing it to woefully underperform in every metric vs enemies like Cimerorians using their Mez Protection shout. Powers with these conditions become very very poor choices any time the condition can't be met, but fortunately most powers in the game simply try to apply all of their effects at once, without If:Then statements.

I solved Hami raids post-patch BTW, you have ONE Nature character helping babysit the main Hami Tank (using the entire powerset fully slotted for Healing), and the main Tank still heals themself as usual. Next assignment please.

Still time to realize the mistake of leaving Ground Zero's animation this slow, and dial it back since the powerset is being nerfed already. Needlessly long animations do not add "fun" to the game.

Gutted the power, it already has Panacea slotted. I'm done engaging with how much it was nerfed.

I really think that if you're going to post test times, it should be the same powerset but on different ATs: to assess whether the Tanker performs better or worse with Broadsword than the Brute with Broadsword etc. Also, you will never convince the dev team (or even Shin) that Tankers are in trouble just because their solo clear time is slower than the other 3 ATs, because Tankers are also tougher solo than the other 3 ATs. On large teams you have buffs flying left and right, so the main time that Tanker increased bulk is really noticeable is... on small teams or when soloing. The devs will see the tankiest AT dealing the least damage as WAI. You need something else to make your case. That's why I hone in on the AoEs because it is a literal quote from design statements and devs that "Tankers are AoE specialists", but the way I see them after these changes they are not... and in fact reduced to being AoE shittylists.

So how much damage are Tankers actually going to be allowed to deal with their AoEs after the dust settles, even on the same number of targets as other ATs: like hitting 3 enemies with a basic Cone attack?

Your bad-faith comparison unfortunately missed the original point I made, which is being referenced here. I'll copy/paste it: So... every time you use Black Hole it's going to give the targets one tick of Intangibility... more than 1 frame at 60 FPS but basically giving them brief i-frames? Doesn't that mean it's inevitable that someone is going to whiff their Benumb or Heat Exhaustion etc. into an unlucky Black Hole by their teammate? It's going to be infrequent, but statistically it will also be guaranteed to happen some of the time.

Please run through the cone attacks and remove the unfair extra damage penalties from them, since this makes the least popular melee attacks even more weak, while doing nothing to address how annoying they are to use. Guys, we just need to accept this will be the "massive" L part of the patch. Lots of other good stuff coming, but not this, and not just because Tankers are being nerfed. It's because the Tanker nerfs impact the enjoyment of the powersets that were buffed: only on Tankers. Tanker cones are forcibly being changed back from "actually fun and easy to hit with" to "there was no reason for me to have made this character a Tanker." I weep for fun powers like Tanker Frost; better get all of your fun out of your Ice Melee, Psy Melee, etc. Tankers right now before this update hits. I won't delete my Shield/MA Tanker at least, because they weren't made for the explicit purpose of enjoying a usable melee cone. Other people may reroll some of their Tankers after these changes though. I certainly won't be in a rush to make any new Tankers either, that's for sure...

Clair Obscur is literally an oxymoron that is basically Light Darkness. With all the popularity of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, I am a bit surprised this knowledge is still so... obscure. But yeah, I'd rather get all the numbers ironed out than try to fight with the dev team on a power's name this late in the game. Soul Sustenance has alliteration if we're changing everything.

So... every time you use Black Hole it's going to give the targets one tick of Intangibility... more than 1 frame at 60 FPS but basically giving them brief i-frames? Doesn't that mean it's inevitable that someone is going to whiff their Benumb or Heat Exhaustion etc. into an unlucky Black Hole by their teammate? It's going to be infrequent, but statistically it will also be guaranteed to happen some of the time.

Since this power currently only accepts basic enhancements, it would probably be a better solution and use of dev time (and player slots), to just make the strong single target Immobilize effect on the primary target of Black Hole have correct flags: ignore enemy level difference, etc. They can scale this effect up since it is unenhanceable, and not tie it to the Intangibility side-version of Black Hole. Both the Trawl Black Hole and the Intang Black Hole should reliably Immobilize a boss or lower, for a base duration of like 30s. I think what's going on here is that they've split the effects of the power in 2 but tied both to the Immobilize duration, so the Immobilize is short because the Trawl is short. You absolutely do not want the enemy to be mobile at all during the Trawl. And if the enemy can move to mess up the effect, it also stands to reason that they can be moved by others to mess up the effect. Full suggestion solution: primary target of Black Hole should instantly be affected by both an unresistible Immobilize and a 10,000% resistance to all KB, both of which ignore enhancements and level differences, for at least as long as the maximum duration of the Trawl effect. This is to ensure that the target cannot be moved during the Trawl to cause unintended wanton chaos and enemy scattering.

Count me in the "why do these 3s animations even exist?" camp. So many overly long animations have been trimmed down over updates on HC, from Rad Emission toggles to Ice Patch to Full Auto. Leaving a power like Ground Zero this slow even after nerfing it doesn't pass the consistency sniff test, and reads more like some people just don't like the power.

Since we're probably nearing the end of these potential changes, I'm just chiming in to say that it might be time for Dark Regeneration to also get some ToHit Debuff resistance, if we're giving it to Obscure Sustenance. One of the weirdest and least thematic things about Dark Armor is that it has never had resistance to the primary debuff of all Dark attacks in the game. This has been a fan-favorite request for many years, make Dark Armor be much better against hordes of Dark enemies such as Spectral Demons. You can still keep Obscure Sustenance as it is, but maybe add a scaling resistance to ToHit Debuffs to Dark Regeneration, per target hit, for 30s (or 60s) as well. I feel like the player choice should be on which type of Healing / how much End sustain you want, not whether or not you get access to basic thematic debuff resistance.

I just went ahead and swapped to Melee Hybrid preemptively to not die after Rad Armor gets nerfed, and also accepted the need for another outside AoE, changed the proc-slotted Rad Therapy to 5pc Panacea.

My AR Defender can't take Beanbag till lv16, so I guess it is mathematically never good.

I'm glad this thread was made, because it revealed very publicly that the overcomplication of the Tanker nerfs was so shockingly-poorly handled that players thought the numbers changes were buffs instead of nerfs. This thread needs to be archived, maybe even pinned, so that it may be studied and referenced in the future. Thank you to everyone, but especially to Snarky.

Why? Explain why without saying "one specific abuse in one speedrun"? Give feedback, in the feedback thread.

Snarky has the right of it. I just want to add that I hate the intangibility as well, and seeing a teammate inflict that on enemies would stall all of our progress and... dare I say... halt all of our fun! You have the exact feedback thread here where a Beanbagger could say "akshually, I like the intangibility" and you can see unanimous opinion that nobody likes that part of the power. Black Hole has been used to grief Hamidon the way it is now. BLACK HOLE HAS BEEN USED TO GRIEF HAMIDON THE WAY IT IS NOW. This is a feedback thread, I'm now speaking to the devs: why even let that power's extreme potential for misuse remain in the game? Do we, as a community, really need to use a flimsy justification like the cottage rule to leave in tools that are almost solely negative, with significantly more potential for harm and malicious intent than for benefit? If you're already changing the power, then just remove the problematic part of it entirely.

This part is just straight facts. The nature of most of these Tanker nerfs is that all Tanker AoEs are going to both perform worse, and feel worse, any time you have to use them against a smaller number of enemies. As soon as you have to use an unfairly nerfed 16 target cap AoE against 4 or 5 enemies, it will now be **significantly worse** than the same AoE used by a Stalker, Scrapper, or Brute. So Tankers aren't actually AoE specialists; They're AoE shittylists.

It is genuinely shocking how poorly these Tanker nerfs were both handled by the devs, and received by the players. Was it really that hard to just reduce their damage scalar slightly, rather than try to invent 2 new formulas and a new mechanic exclusive to Tankers: overcap? There were multiple easier, simpler ways to reduce the damage output of Tankers. Knowing that Tanker AoEs are basically getting triple-nerfed just makes them extremely unappealing to take as powers, but if the Tanker's identity was being an AoE specialist and now the AoEs themselves are unappealing, then literally all that's left is their increased bulk. That's not enough, it was never enough, which is why Brutes were better than Tankers for so long and why Tankers were originally buffed. It's sad I have to point this out.

Scrap Brain Zone can't be a Cone!

Sounds like hot garbage, lol.

Just the fact that Seeds hits 16 enemies means it isn't explicitly a death sentence to cast it first now, which will be a huge improvement for a lot of players. Can lead with Seeds but probably still want Spore Burst as well now, and might still use it first depending on the situation. Someone will need to test if Fly Trap and Spirit Tree survive better now, but you also need to like play poorly on purpose in order to leave un-CC'd enemies free to attack your pets in order to test this. Maybe some set spawns like small groups of Cimerorians on the wall would be good to throw the pets at?