Focused Feedback: Tank Updates

[Myrmidon]

10 minutes ago, summers said:

 As for gigantic cone attacks, I just see this trampling over the damage that a Brute has.

I really can’t say anything about this part until I have tested more. I was only able to get seven different Tankers built today, with one quick test run (which I enjoyed). I play Brutes more than Tankers at the moment, so I will definitely be looking at this metric.

[Haijinx]

Most of the cones won't be gigantic, instead little cones will be more like good cones

 

That Shockwave tho ...

[Captain Powerhouse]

1 hour ago, Haijinx said:

I generally agree.  But it seems like its taken as set in stone somewhere.  

 

But its not really.  

 

If you do balance around SOs but allow IOs well then this is the kind of balance problems you will see.  

 

The Brute will be able to tank.  So i guess the Tank will have to be able to brute. 

 

There is a misconception here: the game is balanced in such a way that’s SO builds should be able to complete all non-incarnate content, solo or in team. This does not mean x8+4, though.

 

That being said, the devs kept spreadsheets that showed they always attempted to account for things like hasten running all the time, or having weave/tough/combat jump/etc.

 

They always thrived to make the sets “balanced” in an SO world but also at least tried (with their limited tools) to control what happened when other things came into play. Balancing towards SO does not mean ignoring IOs or pools.

[Captain Powerhouse]

45 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

Most of the cones won't be gigantic, instead little cones will be more like good cones

 

That Shockwave tho ...

That shockwave won’t be getting any benefit from this.

[Haijinx]

Awwww. 

[William Valence]

May want to check frost.

 

Is is supposed to have a 16 target cap? Looks like only Pendulum and Crowd Control should get that as cones.

 

Talking about Pendulum and Crowd Control. I didn't check because I'm feeling lazy, and don't really care that much, but it's still worth mentioning. Did their Damage and recharge get modified when their arc was reduced? 

 

 

[csr]

45 minutes ago, William Valence said:

May want to check frost.

 

Is is supposed to have a 16 target cap? Looks like only Pendulum and Crowd Control should get that as cones.

 

Talking about Pendulum and Crowd Control. I didn't check because I'm feeling lazy, and don't really care that much, but it's still worth mentioning. Did their Damage and recharge get modified when their arc was reduced? 

 

 

Let's see...

 

Pendulum - Yes.  Upped from 84.53 Live to 100.38 on Pineapple (per the character creation detailed info).  It only has a 10 target cap (up from 5).

Crowd Control - Yes.  Upped from 71.63 Live to 85.55 on Pineapple.

[William Valence]

2 minutes ago, csr said:

Pendulum - Yes.  Upped from 84.53 Live to 100.38 on Pineapple (per the character creation detailed info).  It only has a 10 target cap (up from 5).

Crowd Control - Yes.  Upped from 71.63 Live to 85.55 on Pineapple.

That damage variance is due to the Tankers new damage mod. It went from .85 to .95

 

Ha, and pendulum is only 10 cap, RIP. That should probably be upped.

[Redlynne]

On 9/10/2019 at 6:30 PM, Leandro said:

Damage Scale

• Tanker: Ranged damage modifier increased from 0.5 to 0.8, Melee damage modifier increased from 0.8 to 0.95
  • Bruise has been removed in favour of a flat damage scale increase

I'm honestly a more of a mind to think that this (and a lot of the other changes being tested/contemplated) are something of a mistake.  Here's my reasoning.

 

While the net effect of this type of a change (less resistance debuffing exchanged for more raw damage production) can effectively be made throughput neutral in a solo context, the simple fact of the matter is that in a group context there's going to be a net nerf as a result of this kind of a change.  I say that simply because everyone in a team/league gains the benefit of the Bruising debuff, in effect making everyone "hit harder" on whatever the Tanker has successfully inflicted Bruising upon.  In other words, Bruising is a "force multiplier" in a group context, rather than being a more "selfish" design point where only the Tanker is gaining the benefit.

 

So, on balance, I'm honestly thinking that this kind of change falls more on into the mistake bucket than into the yay bucket.

 

 

 

In fact ...

If you were to invert the thinking behind it ...

 

What if ...

 

 

 

Instead of having Bruising being something that's done ONLY by the T1 attack, and being something that can't be stacked onto a $Target ... what if the Dev team were able to leverage how Gauntlet works to make the resistance debuffing something that happens as a result of ALL Tanker Secondary attack powers, but not as a result of Tanker Primary powers, so as to keep the resistance debuffing "corralled" into just the Secondary powersets for Tankers (only, not Brutes, since Brutes have Fury instead).

 

Rig it such that the Taunt AoE of Gauntlet also carries a resistance debuff effect in addition to the Taunt ... AND ... that the "amount" of the resistance debuffing would be keyed to correlate to the Taunt duration of the secondary power (so enhancing the Taunt duration enhances the "strength" of the resistance debuff during that duration).

 

Very basic idea here being something like (just for the sake of illustrating the concept) ... every 5s of Taunt duration delivered via Gauntlet also applies a -1 Resist (All) debuff for the duration of that Taunt delivered via Gauntlet (so 15s duration equals -3 Resist (All) debuffing).  You then add a Effect does not stack from same caster modifier onto each of the attack powers, so as to make each use of each power essentially overwrite themselves (but not each other!) for the purposes of how this would work.

 

The net result of such a change would be that using the fewest number of secondary attack powers in the shortest animation time span would not necessarily deliver the greatest amount of resistance debuffing, since using fewer attack powers in a faster rotation would produce a lower yield of debuff stacking.  Additionally, there would be a reason/return on investment to add Taunt duration to secondary attack powers so as to increase/improve the yield of resistance debuffing that could be produced.  And even furthermore, this whole thing would be orchestrated in such a way that you don't wind up with Tankers stepping on each other's toes in a situation where only ONE Bruising debuff can be on a $Target at a time and all of the others are wasted.

 

 

 

The main problem with Bruising, as implemented by Paragon Studios, is that it's done via Grant Power: Bruising ... meaning that the $Target casts the effect onto themselves and that there can only be ONE Bruising debuff (self) cast at any one time on any $Target.  This then enforces the idea that any Tankers beyond the first are "wasted" since they can't stack the Bruising debuff deeper than "once" between any 2+ Tankers in a group fighting the same $Target.

 

Change things the way I'm describing here and you make multiple Tankers per team a "viable" option, but you also open up a wealth of diversity of possible build choices ... not only in terms of what powers you pick (beyond the required T1 from your Tanker secondary) but also in terms of how (and what) you slot into those powers (and why).  You'd also be implementing something that would function a bit like an "anti-Fury" for Tankers in the sense that the more they use Gauntlet to draw aggro upon themselves (via Taunt), the less the affected $Targets are able to "resist" incoming damaging attacks from any sources because their focus on the Tanker is (in effect) increasing their vulnerability to being damaged due to their necessary focus of attention, to the exclusion of all else, onto the Tanker.  And the more the Tanker "pounds away" with a wider variety of attacks (so as to not become TOO predictable from moment to moment) the greater this vulnerability effect becomes via Gauntlet.  The very narrowing of focus onto the Tanker (what we Players call aggro) works against the $Targets affected by Gauntlet, lowering their survivability via resistance debuffing.

[csr]

24 minutes ago, William Valence said:

That damage variance is due to the Tankers new damage mod. It went from .85 to .95

 

Ha, and pendulum is only 10 cap, RIP. That should probably be upped.

0.8 to 0.95.  I forgot to factor that in.  So, no, they didn't get new DS calculated.

 

By my calcs Pendulum should be doing 117.47 and Crowd Control 100.11 with their new arcs (about 17% more damage each).

Edited September 13, 2019 by csr
Interrupted during original post.

[Mr. Igneous]

5 hours ago, Redlynne said:

I'm honestly a more of a mind to think that this (and a lot of the other changes being tested/contemplated) are something of a mistake.  Here's my reasoning.

 

While the net effect of this type of a change (less resistance debuffing exchanged for more raw damage production) can effectively be made throughput neutral in a solo context, the simple fact of the matter is that in a group context there's going to be a net nerf as a result of this kind of a change.  I say that simply because everyone in a team/league gains the benefit of the Bruising debuff, in effect making everyone "hit harder" on whatever the Tanker has successfully inflicted Bruising upon.  In other words, Bruising is a "force multiplier" in a group context, rather than being a more "selfish" design point where only the Tanker is gaining the benefit.

 

So, on balance, I'm honestly thinking that this kind of change falls more on into the mistake bucket than into the yay bucket.

 

 

 

In fact ...

If you were to invert the thinking behind it ...

 

What if ...

 

 

 

Instead of having Bruising being something that's done ONLY by the T1 attack, and being something that can't be stacked onto a $Target ... what if the Dev team were able to leverage how Gauntlet works to make the resistance debuffing something that happens as a result of ALL Tanker Secondary attack powers, but not as a result of Tanker Primary powers, so as to keep the resistance debuffing "corralled" into just the Secondary powersets for Tankers (only, not Brutes, since Brutes have Fury instead).

 

Rig it such that the Taunt AoE of Gauntlet also carries a resistance debuff effect in addition to the Taunt ... AND ... that the "amount" of the resistance debuffing would be keyed to correlate to the Taunt duration of the secondary power (so enhancing the Taunt duration enhances the "strength" of the resistance debuff during that duration).

 

Very basic idea here being something like (just for the sake of illustrating the concept) ... every 5s of Taunt duration delivered via Gauntlet also applies a -1 Resist (All) debuff for the duration of that Taunt delivered via Gauntlet (so 15s duration equals -3 Resist (All) debuffing).  You then add a Effect does not stack from same caster modifier onto each of the attack powers, so as to make each use of each power essentially overwrite themselves (but not each other!) for the purposes of how this would work.

 

The net result of such a change would be that using the fewest number of secondary attack powers in the shortest animation time span would not necessarily deliver the greatest amount of resistance debuffing, since using fewer attack powers in a faster rotation would produce a lower yield of debuff stacking.  Additionally, there would be a reason/return on investment to add Taunt duration to secondary attack powers so as to increase/improve the yield of resistance debuffing that could be produced.  And even furthermore, this whole thing would be orchestrated in such a way that you don't wind up with Tankers stepping on each other's toes in a situation where only ONE Bruising debuff can be on a $Target at a time and all of the others are wasted.

 

 

 

The main problem with Bruising, as implemented by Paragon Studios, is that it's done via Grant Power: Bruising ... meaning that the $Target casts the effect onto themselves and that there can only be ONE Bruising debuff (self) cast at any one time on any $Target.  This then enforces the idea that any Tankers beyond the first are "wasted" since they can't stack the Bruising debuff deeper than "once" between any 2+ Tankers in a group fighting the same $Target.

 

Change things the way I'm describing here and you make multiple Tankers per team a "viable" option, but you also open up a wealth of diversity of possible build choices ... not only in terms of what powers you pick (beyond the required T1 from your Tanker secondary) but also in terms of how (and what) you slot into those powers (and why).  You'd also be implementing something that would function a bit like an "anti-Fury" for Tankers in the sense that the more they use Gauntlet to draw aggro upon themselves (via Taunt), the less the affected $Targets are able to "resist" incoming damaging attacks from any sources because their focus on the Tanker is (in effect) increasing their vulnerability to being damaged due to their necessary focus of attention, to the exclusion of all else, onto the Tanker.  And the more the Tanker "pounds away" with a wider variety of attacks (so as to not become TOO predictable from moment to moment) the greater this vulnerability effect becomes via Gauntlet.  The very narrowing of focus onto the Tanker (what we Players call aggro) works against the $Targets affected by Gauntlet, lowering their survivability via resistance debuffing.

I Love this idea.  Tanks need to be tanks.  We need to be able to hold large groups with Taunt, and adding a -Resist (All) Debuff on actively Taunted Mobs would be fantastic.  This idea fits with what a tank should be much better than added damage.  Tanks need to be more resilient and differentiated in play style from Brutes.  Make the Tank version of Taunt at least 25 please!!  Brutes Taunt should not be as strong, say 10 or so.  Tanks are damage absorbers, not damage dealers.  We need the capability to hold large amounts of aggro, right now we can only hold a very small percentage of an 8 man teams aggro.  This makes tanking difficult on large teams.  However with IO's teams can also steam roll content, not really needing a tank most of the time.  This makes Tanks feel useless at times.  This is why many old Tanks rolled Brutes to feel useful.  Tanks need extra control and debuff capability not extra damage.  A team would much rather have a Tank on an AV with automatic debuffs from the Tank then have a little bit of extra damage from the Tank.  Don't turn us into Brutes.  Make us unique.  Could also make Tank Debuffs scale with team size, that would be awesome!  Encourage groups to want a tank.

[Myrmidon]

12 minutes ago, Mr. Igneous said:

This is why many old Tanks rolled Brutes to feel useful. 

 

Actually, I rolled Brutes because of the crap Tanker damage in comparison while solo. Brutes get to have offense while building their defenses early, unlike the current live Tanker build.

 

 

 

 

 

Also, the descriptive that you are looking for is “veteran”.😉

[Mr. Igneous]

2 hours ago, Myrmidon said:

 

Actually, I rolled Brutes because of the crap Tanker damage in comparison while solo. Brutes get to have offense while building their defenses early, unlike the current live Tanker build.

 

 

 

 

 

Also, the descriptive that you are looking for is “veteran”.😉

Well, at least you read that far...Veteran Tank. 

 

Although many of us played in Live Beta 15 years ago.  Some of the people playing now were not even born yet.  Mmmm....Old may be a decent descriptor after all! Ye Old Fogey Tank from Live Beta, YOFT for short.  Now there is a desriptor!  All tanks from Live Beta shall now be known as YOFT!

[Cutter]

9 hours ago, Redlynne said:

...

Rig it such that the Taunt AoE of Gauntlet also carries a resistance debuff effect in addition to the Taunt ... AND ... that the "amount" of the resistance debuffing would be keyed to correlate to the Taunt duration of the secondary power (so enhancing the Taunt duration enhances the "strength" of the resistance debuff during that duration).

...

I've had a similar thought in the past, but in my head I was trying to tie set-appropriate secondary effects to Gauntlet rather than simply proliferating -res. Your way is much cleaner. +1.

[Captain Citadel]

I wouldn't mind seeing Tanker damage output get a lot closer to Brutes, but I agree with the suggestions posted about making Bruising more potent and propagating it to the Tanker's entire kit, rather than one power. Tanker damage is (IMO) too low, but I would rather see it increased a bit less (leaving Brutes at the top because that's what they do) while giving Tankers more support utility. Hulk is a Brute, he doesn't really do team support, but I rolled a Tanker for team support. The suggestions involving a Tanker spreading their defense/resistance buffs to their teammates seems rather redundant because other support ATs are already doing that sort of thing directly, (and really, if the Tanker is doing their job, does the rest of the team need better defenses?) but a -Res debuff seems very thematically appropriate for Tankers. They're heavy melee hitters but they don't directly bring the damage, they make the team more effective because the bad guys are too busy focusing on the Tanker's hits to defend themselves. The -Res debuff is like a flanking maneuver.

[Haijinx]

The fact that bruising benefits the whole team makes balancing it harder though. 

 

And expanding it multiplies that issue.  

 

Adding damage to the tank does little to overall team balance, since all other melees already do more damage than the Tanker. 

 

Turning bruising into a aoe resist debuff would make them force multipliers like defenders. 

 

Not saying that is necessarily a horrible idea, but it could actually change the game more than the propsed changes.

 

[Snakebit]

The only way I'd be happy with a bruising mechanic would be if it scaled proportiante to the tanks current versus max hit points, and of it were auto pbaoe. Otherwise its too strong, and the idea of having multiple stacks of it from other sources is farcical.

 

I think what's on Beta is a better direction and I'm excited to see the results. It might get me to play Dark/SS.

[Captain Powerhouse]

There are many reasons I dont want to expand the bruise to every power, from personal to actual balance.

 

From a personal point, going all the way to launch, I didn't roll a tank just to debuff things so others can kill them better. I rolled a tank to punch things in the face, while i get punched in the face and my team mates are mostly safe.

 

From a balance perspective, it still means a second tank is the least optimal party member you can bring aboard. Allowing it to stack is also problematic in it's own ways. A thing I am considering to do, though, is to increase some of the modifiers used by power pools like Leadership, allowing for some tanks to opt into more support-oriented builds on an individual basis, instead of the AT as a whole being shoe-horned into a new support role via global mechanics. Between Leadership and epic pool powers like Darkest Night or Melt Armor, a tanker could build for more support.

[Seph]

On 9/12/2019 at 5:24 PM, William Valence said:

But the majority of powers will have the ability to hit 60% to 100% more targets, for that much more damage output.

 

Seems like I'm the only one that cares though, so probably time to bow out and stop repeating myself over and over.

I care, I tried to voice my complaints as well.

[Haijinx]

I think if we didn't have some unhappy brute players posting as a result of increased tanker damage, then the change wouldn't be any good. 

 

 I would expect the reverse in a thread about increasing brute survivability. 

 

 

Edited September 13, 2019 by Haijinx
Shoes

[Sniktch]

@Captain Powerhouse - a compromise suggestion.  Keep the AoE size increase, the END buff, and the changes to Taunt.  Keep parity between melee and ranged scalars and the tweaks to APPs - but keep the tank melee damage scalar at AT MOST .8.  And give tank debuff and Leadership buff scalars the difference, possibly a bit more.  Tank debuffs benefit from the AoE buff as well, making the two most common applied effects - -Def and -Tohit - hit more things, and hurt them harder; Leadership and things like Grant Cover protect the team better from incidentals and let them take advantage of the distracted enemies.  It doesn't 'force' Leadership usage - and the wider-and-stronger effecting debuffs won't hit controller/Defender levels - but the AoE increase will up tanks' overall damage while not making them out-brute brutes.  Yes, you can make a Tankfender with Dark and Leadership under this idea - but it's a wibbly outlier at best, with its own limitations, most notably Dark's lack of baseline AoE.  And I'm sure there are other corner cases, but it's better than over-pushing Tanks into best survivability AND best AoE killy.

 

 

*addendum*

As a side note:  Brute main - first 50 on Live, starting at the first anniversary was a Brute long after Villains launched; altitis was a chronic disease 😛  Still a brute main.  And I have to honestly say...if you have to move things this far and hard to bring tanks to relative parity with brutes....you're honestly looking at changing the wrong AT.  I love my Brutes...but having actually had a not-fully-slotted /Fire brute 'tank' a red-con ambush while I was AFK out in Potter's Field - and not die, with my associate on a level 6!!! mastermind - says their survivability is too high.  I love having those caps.  But 80-85% Brute caps would be better for the health of the game.

Edited September 13, 2019 by Sniktch
Adding addendum

[Golden Azrael]

52 minutes ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

There are many reasons I dont want to expand the bruise to every power, from personal to actual balance.

 

From a personal point, going all the way to launch, I didn't roll a tank just to debuff things so others can kill them better. I rolled a tank to punch things in the face, while i get punched in the face and my team mates are mostly safe.

 

 

And there we have it.  *(Goes off to Beta Server to do the same.)

 

Golden Azrael.

 

PS.  I think it's quite simple in the damage debate: Tanks vs Brutes.

 

Tanks use sustained damage (eg. Rage.)  Brutes using a Fury mechanism for damage building.  One has a lower damage cap.  One has a higher damage cap.

 

One can hit hard.  The other can, ultimately, hit harder.

 

One should have a 'Rage' button press for 2 mins.  The other has a builder bar.

 

Tanks can hit harder wider.  Brutes can hit harder single target.

 

So, I'm down with tanks on 8.5.  And a brute having melee damage of 9 or 9.5.

 

Higher base damage (which was pretty dreadful for tanks on tiers 1, 2 and 3 soloing....) makes sense.  Higher base end (instead of dreadful damage exacerbating an end problem meaning you hit mediocre damage and empty your end bar because you can't hit hard enough or last the fight...) and Acc Taunt Voke off attacks make absolute sense.  And the icing on the cake?  Your AoEs hurt as you radiate 'controlled' rage further.

 

Rage button?  Democratise it to all tanks.  So they can have a high sustained damage output like SS tankers.  Ice/en and stone would be transformed as would their t 1, 2 and 3 attacks from 'meh' to: 'Gott roll me a tank.'

Edited September 13, 2019 by Golden Azrael

[Solar Eagle2]

Switching the tier 1 and 2 attacks is unnecessary and will force everyone to respec all their tanks.  Respeccing in this game is still unpleasant and I'd like to be able to play my characters without it being a requirement.  Tanks are easy to level up and by the time I hit 50 I'm not using the early attack much anyway.  Battle Axe had it's tier 1 and 2 switched long ago for valid reasons, I'm not a fan of going back. 

The biggest problem this game has is that incarnates are too overpowered for most of the content.  Tankers need a reason for their tremendous defenses to be valuable over other archtypes, not a switch of a couple of powers.

[Odhinn]

53 minutes ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

"From a balance perspective, it still means a second tank is the least optimal party member you can bring aboard. Allowing it to stack is also problematic in it's own ways. A thing I am considering to do, though, is to increase some of the modifiers used by power pools like Leadership, allowing for some tanks to opt into more support-oriented builds on an individual basis..."

I Really like this idea as it fits so well and feels right thematically. When I tank I tend to be the one leading the party, I let the team know when and where (or if) I am pulling, I am leading the charge. In game Statesman is the leader and likely a tank.

[ajlee209]

25 minutes ago, Odhinn said:

I Really like this idea as it fits so well and feels right thematically. When I tank I tend to be the one leading the party, I let the team know when and where (or if) I am pulling, I am leading the charge. In game Statesman is the leader and likely a tank.

I agree.  I feel like you only need one tank a group regardless.  Whenever I team with another tank, whoever gets the lead is the important one.  The other just hopes to do well enough.  A good tank will get the aggro of the entire group and not die regardless.  What is the other supposed to do? be a weak scrapper?