Focused Feedback: Tank Updates

[Vanden]

3 minutes ago, Amarlex said:

I hope that means that Foot Stomp can still reach 15 foot radius, since it seems to have been changed on Pineapple to be a 10 foot radius PBAoE.

It seems like that's part of a bug with the real numbers tab, because the radius of Foot Stomp seems unchanged.

[Sovera]

I will say that... yes, turning a tanker into a brute by raising their damage is off. In the end just bring a brute then. But if a brute is selfish damage what about tanks contributing damage FOR the team, which is what the tank is about, what the players who use tanks tend to be and want to be about: being a team player. People don't make brutes *to* tank, they just incidentally tank. People who make tanks don't do it for the damage or to farm AE, they do it to be in a team and they *want* to have everyone safe and all eyes on them.

 

Something like every mob that is taunted by the tank receives a (I'm going to say a random number) -20% resist. So it's like, bring a brute for incidental tanking and for the brute's selfish damage, and bring a tank (perhaps not make the 20% stack) not just tanking and grouping up mobs, but also because the tanks would literally increase everyone's damage.

 

 

Another thing that might help make tanks more appealing is doing something similar to what Death Knights tanks in WoW have which is an AoE pull move. When a lot of the game is about getting packs grouped up for AoE and knockback is generally reviled to the point a specific IO set was invented to remove it, then bringing a tank that groups up annoying scattered mobs plinking it from afar in order to be AoEd them would make a tank as precious as DKs in Wow are where they are universally loved for their ability to group packs for the same AoE purposes.

 

Imagine Taunt not being a targeted AoE but a PbAoE that does knockback of... (random numbers again, bear with me) 10 magnitude, but MINUS 10! Horry sheet, tanks hitting that in a (random numbers, it's ya boy again) 20-25 radius and all mobs in that range hovered up would make them as precious as their weight in gold.

[Profit]

4 minutes ago, ShogunGunshow said:

You say this like it's impossible to tank with slightly lower resistance caps. Or like I was arguing that Brute shouldn't be able to tank. Which is not what I was arguing. I merely believe that there needs to be more, not less, differentiation in roles between ATs.

In an SO world, this is exactly what you want, more differentiation between the two ATs. And it's already there, these changes will generally only effect much higher level gameplay. They will have a marginal effect on SO gameplay, but not enough to disturb the current balance.

[ShogunGunshow]

Just now, Profit said:

In an SO world, this is exactly what you want, more differentiation between the two ATs. And it's already there, these changes will generally only effect much higher level gameplay. They will have a marginal effect on SO gameplay, but not enough to disturb the current balance.

Pre-IO sets, everything is pretty hunky dory, I'll agree.

 

But that's generally not what people plan for, or focus on.

[Captain Powerhouse]

4 minutes ago, Amarlex said:

What exactly does the "AoEs will reach further outside of their radius" thing mean? I hope that means that Foot Stomp can still reach 15 foot radius, since it seems to have been changed on Pineapple to be a 10 foot radius PBAoE.

As part of their inherent power, tankers get a buff that works similar to Boost Range, but it boosts Radius and Arc of powers. The arc of Cones gets boosted by +100% and the radius of PBAoEs are boosted by +100%.

 

This means a 90 degree cone will actually cover a 180 area, while a 10ft PBAoE will cover 20ft.

 

Any power that has more than 90 degree cone, or more than 10ft radius, is immune to this buff.

[Profit]

2 minutes ago, ShogunGunshow said:

Pre-IO sets, everything is pretty hunky dory, I'll agree.

 

But that's generally not what people plan for, or focus on.

Agreed, but that's where most balance is done at.

[Amarlex]

1 minute ago, Vanden said:

It seems like that's part of a bug with the real numbers tab, because the radius of Foot Stomp seems unchanged.

cool. hey, maybe that means other PBAoEs get to be 15-footers now. I'd love that for psi and radiation, since those always FELT like they should be foot stomp sized...

 

Also, giving tankers more damage is a perfectly nice thing and I'd never say no to punching harder, but I think if you want to give tankers an edge in *tanking* stuff you should raise their aggro cap above other ATs, if that's even possible. Not unlimited like the Olden Days, but something high enough to handle a x8 spawn and then some might be nice for keeping your teammates safe.

[Amarlex]

1 minute ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

As part of their inherent power, tankers get a buff that works similar to Boost Range, but it boosts Radius and Arc of powers. The arc of Cones gets boosted by +100% and the radius of PBAoEs are boosted by +100%.

 

This means a 90 degree cone will actually cover a 180 area, while a 10ft PBAoE will cover 20ft.

 

Any power that has more than 90 degree cone, or more than 10ft radius, is immune to this buff.

HOLY FUCK THAT OWNS LMAO sorry for the double post but that's so fucking exciting, I love this

[Seph]

3 minutes ago, Rooks said:

IOs and a thermal and or Cold can get you pretty far. FS is good at damage capping and Frostwork is also good at HP capping

So investing heavily in IO's, and teaming with 1-2 buffers will get you there? That was my point...

 

Brutes also need to fuel fury, in a group you will usually sit around 50-60 fury on average in fights. Making tankers hit a damage cap that rivals brutes with one power from one character WILL make brutes "worse tankers"

[ShogunGunshow]

1 minute ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

As part of their inherent power, tankers get a buff that works similar to Boost Range, but it boosts Radius and Arc of powers. The arc of Cones gets boosted by +100% and the radius of PBAoEs are boosted by +100%.

 

This means a 90 degree cone will actually cover a 180 area, while a 10ft PBAoE will cover 20ft.

 

Any power that has more than 90 degree cone, or more than 10ft radius, is immune to this buff.

Jesus.

 

Dark Melee shadow maul here I come.

[Profit]

4 minutes ago, Sovera said:

Something like every mob that is taunted by the tank receives a (I'm going to say a random number) -20% resist. So it's like, bring a brute for incidental tanking and for the brute's selfish damage, and bring a tank (perhaps not make the 20% stack) not just tanking and grouping up mobs, but also because the tanks would literally increase everyone's damage.

@Captain Powerhousealmost literally what you did. Except instead of increasing everyone's DPS, that tank DPS increased marginally to compensate for the same thing. And not only that, with the higher cap and a team willing to funnel into the tank, the DPS can increase farther resulting in a higher team DPS overall. So exactly the same thing.

 

I kinda feel like I'm the only one on board with these changes. I got your back CP.

[Haijinx]

Balancing around IOs is nearly impossible.

 

So we probably have to accept there will always be some brute/tanker overlap.

 

These changes at least should both reduce brutes overlap into tanker territory by buffing the tankers ability to grab more aggro, and increase the tankers overlap into brutes damage territory. 

 

Which  tbh is fair, since right now it was only the tanker getting overlapped.

 

Still seems like a lot of changes all at once though.  

[ShogunGunshow]

6 minutes ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

As part of their inherent power, tankers get a buff that works similar to Boost Range, but it boosts Radius and Arc of powers. The arc of Cones gets boosted by +100% and the radius of PBAoEs are boosted by +100%.

 

This means a 90 degree cone will actually cover a 180 area, while a 10ft PBAoE will cover 20ft.

 

Any power that has more than 90 degree cone, or more than 10ft radius, is immune to this buff.

Does this apply to non-damaging powers like Ice Patch?

[Seph]

1 minute ago, Haijinx said:

Balancing around IOs is nearly impossible.

 

So we probably have to accept there will always be some brute/tanker overlap.

 

These changes at least should both reduce brutes overlap into tanker territory by buffing the tankers ability to grab more aggro, and increase the tankers overlap into brutes damage territory. 

 

Which  tbh is fair, since right now it was only the tanker getting overlapped.

 

Still seems like a lot of changes all at once though.  

While I agree that tankers should get some kind of damage boost a cap of 600% seems very excessive.

[Haijinx]

Even though it seems like a lot of changes, the individual changes seem kind of cool.

[Captain Powerhouse]

9 minutes ago, whorlbinder said:

Also, pitching in my voice to say I won't be missing Bruising much. Literally, folks, it was added to help Tankers do more damage (with a side benefit of helping their team a little as well). Rolling it into a base-level buff to Tankers' damage seems completely appropriate.

That was not even the goal. The first thing I did when that feature was added was give Castle a huge spreadsheets of numbers proving that it would rarely, if ever, translate on any significant damage boost. I was told that actually was the goal, it was not intended to increase damage, it was intended to make the use of the T1 power, that on almost every case was the worst power in the set, not be as terrible of a choice. It gets worse with the purple patch affecting Bruise. Against a +3 foe, bruise just applies a -13% res, -9.6% against a +4. Even on a team setting, in most content you are better of not bothering applying it.

[Captain Powerhouse]

7 minutes ago, Amarlex said:

HOLY FUCK THAT OWNS LMAO sorry for the double post but that's so fucking exciting, I love this

BTW: this also applies to armor auras.

[Rooks]

11 minutes ago, Seph said:

So investing heavily in IO's, and teaming with 1-2 buffers will get you there? That was my point...

 

Brutes also need to fuel fury, in a group you will usually sit around 50-60 fury on average in fights. Making tankers hit a damage cap that rivals brutes with one power from one character WILL make brutes "worse tankers"

Keeping up 500% external damage boost is just as hard as boosting a brute up to survivability caps (or buffing them enough to cross the threshold into 'won't die', seeing as survivability is much more of a binary thing than damage dealing; either you survive or you don't*). And if the brute deals more damage than tanks no matter how much dmg buff they are at, how are they worse? In what universe does more = less?

 

Also if you are capped out defensively (or even just survivable enough to stay up) you can just jump ahead to keep fury high. That's what I do on my brutes in large teams. Its antisocial but it's the most efficient thing to do. And most teams just wanna run through content as fast as possible. Brutes are really really good at that.

 

*in fact with IOs you could argue this survivability threshold is much easier to hit with buffs on brutes than 500% damage boost is on tanks.

Edited September 11, 2019 by Rooks
Grammar

[Haijinx]

1 minute ago, Seph said:

While I agree that tankers should get some kind of damage boost a cap of 600% seems very excessive.

Considering their scale also went up.  I wonder if 600% at 0.95 scale is better than 500% at 1 scale (stalkers) 

 

Seems like it should be 500% tbh.

[ShogunGunshow]

If those range changes apply to Burn and Ice Patch... Man oh man, I'm rolling the fudge out of that.

 

What is old is new again.

[Haijinx]

1 minute ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

BTW: this also applies to armor auras.

Including the non damage ones?

[Seph]

1 minute ago, Haijinx said:

Considering their scale also went up.  I wonder if 600% at 0.95 scale is better than 500% at 1 scale (stalkers) 

 

Seems like it should be 500% tbh.

500% would be a good middle ground.

[Meddo]

Tankers should protect their teammates more than Brutes does. Here's an idea, make Gauntlet a big visible circle around the Tanker, those that are fairly close to the Tanker gets a third or fourth of the big mans resistances. Combine this with the increased cap on both taunt/aggro and target/radius on their AoE's and there you go. People now have a real reason to pick Tankers besides the little bigger but alot lesser dmg AoE's and aggro they have compared to Brutes. Both Brutes and Tankers will be viable at the same time. Do you want to be like Hulk, deal alot of damage, be tanky and make chaos? Go for Brute. Do you want to boost your teams morale, give them courage, stand close to you and make hell go loose on all those enemies that you hold from them? Go for Tanker. Easy!

Edited September 11, 2019 by Meddo

[Gorgar]

2 minutes ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

BTW: this also applies to armor auras.

HFTO, again.

 

This makes me definitely want to revive a couple of tanks I was redoing as brutes.  It's not raising the aggro cap, but it should make it a *lot* quicker to *reach* that cap.

[Captain Powerhouse]

19 minutes ago, EmperorSteele said:

I feel like this is in response to all the data mining the HC team has done, only to find out that Brutes are the most popular AT, with Spines/Fire Broots being more popular than many entire ATs by themselves! Clearly, this is an aberration, and they feel the need to take some corrective action. I'd probably feel the same way. And I appreciate the restraint they're showing by not just nerfing Broots into Oblivion. But... I don't know if buffing the heck out of Tanks is the way to go.

These changes have actually been brewing for years now. It was at least partially tested various years ago. HC data-mining didn't really impact this design.