Steampunkette

Aggro is handled on the NPC AI side. The Live Deves put in the hard cap of aggro through NPCs throwing a global check pulse to find out how many people are currently attacking each of the Player Characters on their hit list. If Target A has 17 players it goes to Target B and if B has 17 players it goes to Target C and so on. There is no NPC AI Tag or Logic algorithm for "Is that a tanker in my Target A slot?" Trying to build such a check would be a MASSIVE clusterfrell and could result in lots of whacky AI behavior that even the Live Team didn't want to mess with.

Knock Toward is something that came up repeatedly on the CoH Forums. I'm Paraphrasing Castle's Response to the issue. And if it was a "Ton of effort" for the Live Team it's difficult. You're also right about the possibility of knock over or knock short. The Magnitude of any knock would be set beforehand, and result in some hilarious effects.

Cannot be done. Knock is a Vectored Affect. Knockback is vectored relative to the position of your character when the attack -hits- rather than when it's fired. But it only goes one way: Away. Knockup is a vectored function that pushes a character straight up and is a different mechanical effect within the engine's system. But knock-to would require either a new function (One that would take a -ton- of effort to create) or a sort of pseudo-pet kludge where an invisible NPC spawns in behind you and knocks you "Forward". But such directional spawning locations as "Behind" are tied to the NPC in question, not the PC. So if it specified "Behind" and the enemy was currently running away, it would just throw them further on their quest of getting away.

My husband made a Malta agent named November Black Eight. Well he tried. It was taken. Even the out there ones often get snagged.

Solo Tankers can already get through the game without much problem, similarly to Brutes but with less chance of dying. It's only really in end-game content that a Brute has all the Mitigation the Tanker does -AND- a huge damage increase over the Tanker.

How about giving Open World Enemies a global buff on kill to all Heroes/Villains within 40yrds. You beat an enemy in the open world, you get a 2% XP buff for 2 minutes. Stacking up to 25 times for a 50% extra XP bonus. Have it stack with the double XP bonus and suddenly you've got a nice enough incentive to beat up a couple large groups of enemies in the open world regardless of what other task you're doing. Heading into a mission? Beat up some enemies, first, for a short-term XP buff on top of your Double XP buff. Gonna whack a pile of Zombies or Rikti during an invasion? EVEN MOAR XP! It could work without being an overbearing level of improvement that way.

...

How about just increasing their damage buff cap to 500%? That way Brutes still get to be awesome at dealing damage, Tankers are great at survival, but at high end with a couple Fulcrum Shifts the Tanker kind of catches up a bit... But requires outside buffing 'cause they don't have a Fury Mechanic to start out on?

It's a frustrating thing, yeah. You either create a "See Saw" passive ability which increases melee damage when you make ranged attacks and ranged damage when you make melee attacks (Which has to be included power by power across every assault set since there's no "Melee Damage" or "Ranged Damage" function of the character) but that rewards cycling powers, not moving at range, and you're back to "Standing in melee, firing ranged attacks" You could add a Distance function to ranged attacks in the same way Savage Leap has, where longer range deals more damage, but that's liable to just make a weak blaster type who uses melee only when enemies get close... and still has to be coded on a power-by-power basis plus it makes the Real Numbers less visible. Part of why I went for purely tanking mechanics in this version of the Instigator. It doesn't declare you need to be X yards from your target or bounce between melee and range. Enemies -will- close. You'll get the chance to use melee, and then need to create separation for increased survivability. It puts half the movement onus on NPCs and lets the player do the other half.

And it isn't activated, yet. It's "Coming Soon" with no specific ETA.

So... Kind of. I wanna clarify that before WoW came along with it's "Holy Trinity" and kind of made that the standard there was, in fact, a four-role design setup with Control as a fourth Role for parties, sort of based in D&D Thinking with Cleric-Support, Wizard-Control, Fighter-Tank, Rogue-DPS mentality. CoH was built on -that- design mentality. In fact Everquest had a total of SIX roles, though some of those roles were handled by the same class. Tank, Healer, DPS, Crowd Control, Utility, and Puller. Bards were all about that CC and Utility, baby! Control is not a Support Role. Control is Absolute Mitigation where Support is Partial Mitigation. In Support you make people take less damage or restore HP to mitigate what is coming by a percentage. Control just -stops- damage. It's almost closer to Tanking than Support. I fully endorse and support the rest of your post (See what I did there?) If we stop making any AT 'til all those people are happy we won't ever make another AT. And no. I don't think it'll make a mess of Epic Proportions because the suggestion is a whole other kind of tank. One that -doesn't- have the same levels of amazing resistances and damage-buffing possibilities as the Brute. It'd be a different tank that is interesting but likely weaker, in end-game content, than the Tanker is. (Slightly better damage because their base is higher, but worse survivability, rather than better damage and equal survivability) Honestly, I wouldn't mind if the Sentinel had Assault Sets. I'd play the heck out of an Assault Sentinel... But it wouldn't be an Instigator. Even if you tossed a couple of Taunt effects on it's attack powers. It wouldn't have the survivability to be a viable Instigator style thing. If Assault Sets were proliferated, it would have to be as a straight DPS style port, not a Tank port.

I'm a roleplayer and the character is level 44 at this point. She's had about a month of consistent play of a few hours every day. Cyclone is just who she is, at this point. There's too many people around Paragon who know her by that name to make switching seem like an appropriate (And entirely random) decision.

... I feel like I've explained the feeling quite well throughout this thread, SRU. Repeatedly. A new playstyle in the form of an active and dynamic type of tanking archetype which cannot stand stock still in the middle of a group of enemies and take all of the hits forever. One which generates aggro not through passive means but active ones, and relies on movement and repositioning to most effectively survive and provide opportunities for their allies. One which benefits -particularly- well from teaming with Control and Soft-Control capable characters who can slow enemies down or immobilize them to reduce overall damage output (Leading to having some Support and Control powers in their Epic Power Pools) Mechanical considerations would be damage resistance caps being lower than Tanker or Brute, lower overall health than same (But more than a Scrapper), Strong enough defenses to effectively tank at lower levels, and both an absorb inherent (Allowing them to take Alphas) and an Aggro Generation inherent (allowing them to take Aggro)

It isn't. I put that into a spoiler. I'd like to ask that that information blurb be the last time we talk about the Tanker/Brute issue in this thread aside from vague references to the problem as regards the Instigator. This is not a "Tanking is Broken!" thread. This is an AT Suggestion.

Nah. There is no fix for Tankers. They just were not designed for a game with Inventions and Incarnates. To fix them you'd have to break the Cottage Rule so badly they would be nearly unrecognizable. The best thing you can do for them is create separate sub-mechanics to try and offset the differences between them and brutes, but any kind of -real- change is going to have a profound effect on their effectiveness at all level ranges. If we're not going to create any Tank ATs 'til Tankers are 'Fixed' then we'll never make another tanking type Archetype. Honestly, that's a bad idea. Better to add some variety to the field so we can create new niches for the Tanker and Brute to fill and help set them apart. I sent SRU a PM about this, the crux of it is: Threat is a mechanical function of AI, not tied to the player character in any way. We can poke the NPC's threat meter to get higher on it, but the limits and monitoring of Threat exist exclusively on the AI. Thus they cannot currently be used to affect player Power Values without some kind of data-mirroring effect that doesn't currently exist. And any such data-mirroring would need to apply to every NPC in the area, and report on all threat levels and do it to every character... it would be a kludge and a mess.

I think we could safely drop their res cap to 75, at this point. As to how to herd from range: corners and brief surrounded situations. But the intent isn't to make them awesome tanks that stand in one spot. It's to make the combat more dynamic and mobile for those who want it. If you're looking for the most efficient tank you'd need to look at a Tanker or a Brute for pure XP/Second by holding the mobs still in your AoE spam. Though toss a couple doms on the team and it's the same thing outside of AV fights or iTrials.

Everything Sniktch said with a little caveat: You can be on more aggro sheets than the aggro cap allows. You can run through 3 full spawns of enemies with a taunt aura on, and even though only 17 can attack you, the rest are aware and angry. As soon as one who is actively fighting you drops, others will run over to replace him. So any attempt to Aggro-Check could be cheesed by exceeding the aggro cap through multiple groups being 'aggroed' but unable to attack because you're at the limit, -if- such a pulsing check could be performed. Though, y'know, a Fury like mechanic for more Max HP could be pretty great...

I feel like it IS the correct way to play. i24 added Bio Armor and Savage Melee. Both create some significant choices for you to make, and those choices aren't without a cost. You can play Bio Armor without Adaptation, or only ever use the Endurance version... But the Offensive Adaptation gives you a juice Damage Boost at a cost of defenses. And the Defensive Adaptation is the same in reverse. Savage melee makes you choose when to use "Finishers" or even -whether- to use them. That Savage Dominator I mentioned? I often sit at 5 stacks of Frenzy without touching any of my spenders because I like the Recharge boost and the Endurance Discount. They both play well into a Click-Power heavy character and help me get Domination back up, faster, to boot. That said... Sure. Hit me with some Life-Steal. I'll eat it up. (Pun intended!)

Firstly, I like Assault, not Manipulation, for this design. And there's some significant differences between the two and the resulting survivability of them. They're not interchangeable, even if both of them use powers lifted from other sets. And Manipulation would -never- work as a Primary. Especially not after the Homecoming Changes. Secondly, I like Assault because it combines Melee and Ranged attacks. That's it. There's a lot of superheroes that use their powers both up close and personal and also at a distance, but it's very hard to do that in City of Heroes unless you're a Dominator or Level 50. Characters like Captain Marvel or Deadpool who mix it up. It's not that I'm looking for "A Diverse Set". It's that I'm specifically looking for Assault powersets. A combination of Melee and Ranged attacks. I'm afraid it can't be done. Aggro isn't handled on the player's 'Sheet' essentially. Aggro exists as a function of an NPC. The game would have no way to check how many characters are aggroed on the Instigator at any given time. There's no "Real Number" for "Current number of people who want to hit me". You could do it in a manner similar to Defiance kinda? So that every attack you use grants X amount of Defense, Resistance, or Regeneration for a few seconds at a time, but I'm not sure it's a viable option.

I don't know about Controllers... But Control Radial is -amazing- for Dominators! My Dark/Savage/Soul dom opens fights with a fear affect, then moves in to use other powers. With a nice long-lasting fear you can suddenly stack fears every time you land any hit. And if the target is also stunned, it stacks Fear AND Stun (Or at least it seems to). The more controls on a target the more chance they'll get shut down. And the additional damage is swank, too. I've only done that on Justin, though. The Dominator will be using it in another 6 levels on Live! 😄

Try this on for size, @oldskool! Definitely going for Spectral and Intuition. Maybe I should do Assault? Judgement will probably be Void Radial for theme and the 50% damage debuff. I'm never sure what to do with Destiny but I feel like Ageless could be good, here? She's going to be End-Heavy, after all, and more recharge means more Blackstars.

As someone who loves Savage Assault on her Dominator: You should never be exhausted. Pop your stacks at 3 or 4, guys. That's how it's meant to be played. The ring is misleading because it's a warning rather than a queue to use that power.

Mostly I run duos and small teams, really. Very rarely do I solo or hop on 8 man steamrollers. Thank you for this helpful advice!

So I should Rebuild into a Recharge Build? With Darkstar's ridiculous -ToHit it really seems like a great idea... The only question I have left is: Target cap? With 10 targets hit by Blackstar, that still leaves almost half a spawn of enemies who aren't debuffed by 35%. How do I offset those enemies and their high chance to hit me? Is that just where Darkest Night comes in?

I recognize that Dark/Dark doesn't Synergize as well as, say, Dark/Ninja. But for theming of this character I wanted to try it. So she's not going to be perfect. I didn't even get halfway to Softcap though Darkest Night will put her up 12% against those who don't resist ToHit. She'll be open to Defense Cascades dropping her to nothing, her Energy Damage Resistance is a suck... But she's got capped Smash/Lethal damage and near cap on Psionic meaning she'd be fairly great against Carnies, I think. Which would make her my ONLY good Carnies-fighting character! She's also got some decent resistances to Dark, Fire, and Cold meaning she should be solid against Circle of Thorns and Banished Pantheon in Dark Astoria. Tsoo, too. ... I just realized that it's mostly magic groups that use Fire/Cold/Negative/Smashing while Tech Groups do Lethal/Energy/Toxic... Huh. Do you all think this build is a viably strong one or am I overestimating the value of the spread I have, here, and need to get back to the drawing board?