Focused Feedback: Tank Updates

[vonBoomslang]

I'm not a fan of the enforced T1/T2 swap. That's a big enough change that I might have to call for cottages. I had a /stone on Live whose concept build was not to take any hammers - what if I made him /fire or /ice with no sword? This would be easy enough to fix by letting tankers pick either attack, though.

 

One other change I don't like is /stone losing Fault for a whole 15 levels. It's an extremely important power to the feel of the set, offering a shitton of CC and giving it  identity and I'd rather not lose it like that.  I don't, however, see many better swaps.

[Veracor]

I disagree with making Tankers deal more damage.  I rolled a Tanker to be the best tank for my team, not to be a Brute.  Offensively, I want to enable my team to do more damage, not do more damage myself.  I don't want to see tons of DPS players and farmers rerolling to Tanker just because they're now super good at dealing damage.

 

I want to be a tank.  That's all I ever wanted to be.  If you want to buff Tanker damage, I would highly suggest taking an active buff approach based on how much aggro they redirect away from teammates.

[Brutal Justice]

3 minutes ago, vonBoomslang said:

One other change I don't like is /stone losing Fault for a whole 15 levels. It's an extremely important power to the feel of the set, offering a shitton of CC and giving it  identity and I'd rather not lose it like that.  I don't, however, see many better swaps.

Fault to 35 is a nerf for stone melee!

[Vanden]

2 minutes ago, Veracor said:

I want to be a tank.  That's all I ever wanted to be.

Then what's the problem? These changes do nothing to make you a less effective Tank, and in some cases (higher AoE caps) make you better at it.

[Rooks]

Tanks getting their own, larger agro cap would be awesome, if it were possible. I dont know how viable that is in terms of coding though

[VV]

I'm not sure if I'm reading this right. Am I to understand that they are BUFFING tanks? Being as a tank is one of my mains, I'm not upset, but it seems like it's unfair to all the already inferior classes.

[MechaMarshmallow]

I like these changes, by and large. I especially like the T1/2 swap - being forced to take powers that were often invalidated completely by the 30s and better replaced by the second power in the set was always a bad feeling.

 

I'll have to play around with the AoE changes to really get a feel for how I like them.

 

Buffing tanker damage seems fine, but bringing them closer to brutes rather than doing something different with them feels like a missed opportunity. I do appreciate that a lot of players of CoX see damage output as the highest priority on teams after player skill because it allows for faster completion of content, so I understand that improving tanker damage may be an obligatory part of bringing them more in line with other bulky ATs for a lot of players.

 

My own playing around with ideas of how to buff tanks led me to the thought of their bruising being replaced with a proc that would radiate buffs and supportive effects to teammates as the tanker attacked, inspiring them to fight harder as they lead the charge into battle in a passive thematic with characters like Superman who the tanker is designed after. It could effectively increase team damage without putting the tanker themselves into a more damaging brute-like role.

 

I'd love to see tankers be buffed in a less brute-like direction, but failing that I think these proposed changes are also compelling.

[Profit]

14 minutes ago, Crimsanotic said:

Increasing their damage cap -is- an offensive buff though, since that means a tank can spam yet more reds than they could before, or benefit from Fulcrum better, or literally any other damage buff. And in addition to treading on brute territory, buffing tanks offensively gives them overlap with even scrappers.

There is no way a tank can eat enough reds, or generate enough insps to combine, to maintain the full damage cap when their initial starting point is so low and the cap is so high. I can barely get the damage cap on my brute farmer and can only maintain the damage cap on my farming blaster for minutes at a time. It's just not gonna be as big a deal as you might think.

[ShogunGunshow]

2 minutes ago, Vanden said:

Then what's the problem? These changes do nothing to make you a less effective Tank, and in some cases (higher AoE caps) make you better at it.

I believe the issue is that this shifts the focus of the AT away from that role, and becomes more homogenous with the much-mentioned Brute with a focus on dealing more AoE damage.

 

Unpopular opinion: most of the issues here stem from the fact that Brutes can do too much. They should not have tanker caps, and should scale slightly less from Fury than they do now. 

[macskull]

11 minutes ago, honoraryorange said:

Speaking purely from a grouping standpoint (think max buffs, Fulcrum shift, etc):

 

Sometimes people will ask "What is the point of tankers?" when they have a bunch of Brutes around.

With these changes though, "What is the point of Brutes?"

 

As others have said, making them more Brute-like, but with way better taunts, is not the solution.

 

I feel like this is WAY too sweeping of a change to the Archetype. It'd be much better served with maybe 1/4 of these changes going live and seeing how things settle.

 

Also, what is the point of the 120 base Endurance? I don't think any of my tankers have had real endurance issues except maybe in the pre-30 timeframe.

Even with the changes to Tanker damage modifiers and damage cap, a Brute at its damage cap will still do more damage than a Tanker at its cap, and can reach that cap more easily. When I'm farming on my Brute reds don't drop fast enough (unless I'm solo) to keep myself at the damage cap, and I'd need 8 more small reds every minute to keep the same damage on a Tank.

Edited September 11, 2019 by macskull

[Wompy]

Scorch > Fire Sword

[Profit]

11 minutes ago, Rooks said:

 brutes share tank hp

Minor point, brutes do not share tank HP. Tankers have higher HP all around naturally and afaik a higher hp cap.

[Amatyr]

12 minutes ago, vonBoomslang said:

I'm not a fan of the enforced T1/T2 swap. That's a big enough change that I might have to call for cottages. I had a /stone on Live whose concept build was not to take any hammers - what if I made him /fire or /ice with no sword? This would be easy enough to fix by letting tankers pick either attack, though.

That leads to a possible argument of letting everyone pick 1st/2nd for their secondary. Which, I think, would generally be OK - I believe the old argument against it was that Stalkers could self-gimp by missing out on Hide, but really, if someone goes and screws up that much I think it's on their shoulders...

[Rooks]

2 minutes ago, Profit said:

Minor point, brutes do not share tank HP. Tankers have higher HP all around naturally and afaik a higher hp cap.

Tank base hp and def/res modifiers are higher, but the caps are all identical to brutes. It's just easier for a tank to get to theirs. Stuff like Frostwork can bridge the HP gap no problem tho

[Captain Powerhouse]

Increased target caps don’t just mean more damage, it means all your secondary effects hit more enemies. More knockdowns, more -def, more -ToHit, etc. and of course more taunted enemies.

 

I’m paying attention to the notes on level changes, making both powers available at level 1 is not an option, the game has hard coded validations that prevent this, and it would have to be a game wide change, not just for tankers. I understand concerns with themes and being forced to take the elemental weapons, I may look into offering raw melee/weapon free themes for these powers.

[@Ghost]

21 minutes ago, Rooks said:

I did quite like the bruising mechanic though, it was a fun addition to the overall tank playstyle imo. As a team centric AT, it's nice to have a two-fold reason to spam T1s about the place. Making stuff hit you instead of squishier teammates is one kind of value, incentivising teammates into attacking mobs that are already agrod to you in the form of extra damage from the -res made it even more valuable. I liked the depth it added over other melee characters whose primary job it is to spam as many DPAs into whatever enemy looks like it most needs dying at any given time

Yeah, in terms of preserving the "flavor" of what being a tank really means, I feel like the ideal direction would be to build more around the idea of mechanics like bruising. I think the damage boost is really relevant as well, but I like the concept of "having a tank on the team make's everyone's life easier" being expressed through the taunts, native res debuffing or some other soft control, etc.

[ShogunGunshow]

e: i r dum, need moar reed

Edited September 11, 2019 by ShogunGunshow

[Vanden]

Now, personally, I like the T1/T2 swaps (except for the sets where it puts the weaker attack first, like Katana).

[Profit]

6 minutes ago, macskull said:

Even with the changes to Tanker damage modifiers and damage cap, a Brute at its damage cap will still do more damage than a Tanker at its cap, and can reach that cap more easily. When I'm farming on my Brute reds don't drop fast enough (unless I'm solo) to keep myself at the damage cap, and I'd need 8 more small reds every minute to keep the same damage on a Tank.

@macskullis completely right on this. This isn't a damage buff like you guys are thinking it is. It will result in a minor, very minor damage increase when solo or in teams that don't have damage buffing capabilities or smallish buffing capabilities.

[Veracor]

2 minutes ago, Vanden said:

Then what's the problem? These changes do nothing to make you a less effective Tank, and in some cases (higher AoE caps) make you better at it.

 

The only change I am against is making Tankers do more damage.  If anything, it should be only when they redirect aggro from non-Tankers, i.e. being an actual tank in a team and not Brute 2.0, or via a teamsize-related buff like Defenders have.  I don't want to see 16 Tankers on my league all fighting for aggro when the itrial boss just needs 1 specific repositioning done to it.  The aggro changes are good, the damage change is not.

 

Buffing Tankers is just going to make DPS players reroll to Tankers for damage purposes (Over some of the DPS ATs with these tentative numbers) and that's not healthy for AT balance, Tanker-arguments aside.

[Rooks]

1 minute ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

Increased target caps don’t just mean more damage, it means all your secondary effects hit more enemies. More knockdowns, more -def, more -ToHit, etc. and of course more taunted enemies.

 

I’m paying attention to the notes on level changes, making both powers available at level 1 is not an option, the game has hard coded validations that prevent this, and it would have to be a game wide change, not just for tankers. I understand concerns with themes and being forced to take the elemental weapons, I may look into offering raw melee/weapon free themes for these powers.

In my head I'm imagining some sort of "Fire Slash" or "Fire Swipe" where it's like some kind of bare handed swipe. Like your hand becomes a plasma cutter and you Qui Gon vs Door on your enemy

[J-Naught]

Ooh, this makes tanks a good AOE option because of being able to hit more things. Brute hits hard, tank hits wide. Brutes remain a DPS, for hard targets, tanks deal with minions.



[MechaMarshmallow]

Just now, Vanden said:

Now, personally, I like the T1/T2 swaps (except for the sets where it puts the weaker attack first, like Katana).

I'm confused by this - Katana's current T2, gambler's cut, is stronger than the T1 - and recharges faster to boot. 

[ShogunGunshow]

1 minute ago, J-Naught said:

Ooh, this makes tanks a good AOE option because of being able to hit more things. Brute hits hard, tank hits wide. Brutes remain a DPS, for hard targets, tanks deal with minions.



And stalkers do massive single target, and scrappers are just ... just kind of there, I guess.

[Profit]

1 minute ago, Veracor said:

Buffing Tankers is just going to make DPS players reroll to Tankers for damage purposes (Over some of the DPS ATs with these tentative numbers) and that's not healthy for AT balance, Tanker-arguments aside.

No, this won't happen. These changes aren't the drastic increase they are being made out to be. Damage will still be blaster > scrapper > stalker > brute > controller > defender > tank .

 

Trust me guys, this isn't as high an increase as you think.