Focused Feedback: Tank Updates

[DreadShinobi]

3 minutes ago, Replacement said:

In addition to system-level changes, there were at least 30 powers modified in this update.  By definition, this was not "quickly slapped together." 

 

While I am mostly all for these changes, I do think there is some risk in going above 500% damage increase.  But given half a chance, I would probably up Defenders, Dominators, and any EATS to 500% as well (MMs and trollers effectively ignore their damage caps anyway).

 

Really, though, I think it feels wrong to balance around max damage multipliers.  Are you guys really running around with full time perfect Fulcrum Shifts?

 

 

This would be what I am getting at. Please also read my other post and the one on page 31. What was slapped on to this set of changes was the damage cap change and thats why that one thing in particular is being called out over and over again. I do agree that epic archetypes, dominators, and defenders could all use a higher damage cap, but for not one of these archetypes would I start by increasing it by 200% alongside a significant base damage increase. The damage cap change is being compared directly with brutes over and over again when all ATs should be considered for a change like that. The inability to regularly hit said damage cap is being used as justification for setting that number at whatever one pleases, and as shown was chosen in direct comparison to brutes. Brutes could honestly see their damage cap lowered but that is for another discussion, as is the damage cap change for tankers and any other archetype. I sincerely believe that the tanker changes should roll out without a change to the damage cap and that damage caps for all archetypes should be looked at collectively together for a separate patch.

[MunkiLord]

33 minutes ago, Trogan707 said:

 

I disagree with the sentiment here. While this game may not have 'enforced' the trinity...On live, especially in the early days - group composition was pretty important and somethign that was very common was people asking for tanks, healers, support, mezzes, DPS etc..... In fact thats what made the game great....So yes..there wasnt really a trinity (in the literal sense)...but there ABSOULTELY was thought behind group composition and synergy among team mates. I actually think thats why so many people love this game is because of the synergy /teamwork aspect....when that really cool group composition happens. In my mind we need to move more TOWARDS some thought and strategy/tactics ..and group compositions being something that needs at least a little thought into...rather than just a bunch of individuals running around nuking everything with capped defenses....who dont need anyone on their team...who are barely distinguishable from one another in terms of AT. Boooring....

I was recently turned down for a TF because the leader didn't want more CC(I was a Dom), they wanted support in the form of a Corruptor or Defender. No big deal, I said ok and did my own thing. Then after a few more minutes of asking in LFG they weren't able to find what they wanted so the person sent me an invite. I declined, not out of anger, but because I don't like teaming with people in general content that try to build specific team compositions. So for me and my tastes, I think the game is very much better off the way it's headed.

 

I don't turn down people because of AT because I think it's lame, it's first come first serve. But I'll be honest, I am never excited about a Tank wanting to join(but I always say yes). Them getting some more damage and more AoE has me interested and if these changes go live, I will look forward to a Tank joining my team for the first time in well over a decade.

[Sovera]

6 hours ago, Sovera said:

People keep going back to the 600% damage as if mattered. Begging the pardon of Captain Powerhouse the 600% damage is almost troll and is taking too much attention off the changes as people zoom in on that particular thing.

 

Spreadsheets come out, calculators come out, and omg, 600% means that blah blah!

 

In practical terms, what? People are worried that teams that have two kins, and the nukers in the team are careful not to nuke and kill all minions, will manage to cap a Tanker's damage? How is this a consideration?

 

I, personally, sort of want to /pat the poor kins I play with since they know their role and they want to give everyone omfgbbqsauce damage, but the first Blaster, or Sentinel, or anyone with a Judgement, that reaches the pack nukes it and the pack goes from 10-12 to 5-6 mobs.

 

I had just barely posted this and two or three posts below we get this:

 

3 hours ago, FUBARczar said:

I am totally amenable, and my hyperbole was sarcasm.  

 

I agree that this isn't black and white and the best fixes translate partly into feeling, a fun-factor, etc.  What we should be cautious of is making Tanks too offensive discarding a balance of risk vs reward., and encroaching too far into Brute territory.   I would hate to see any one AT completely dominate, I don;t want to see this turn into City of Tanks, even though I really like playing tanks.

 

Also, I would point out that a damage buff is not the only buff that support characters have.

 

let's take a look at the damage.  Maybe I am looking at this completely wrong.   Is this not how it works?

 

Let's take KO Blow....

 

Dmg %	KO Blow	Damage	Scale
100%	Blaster	198	1
500%	Blaster Cap	990	1
100%	Tanker old	158.4	0.8
400%	Tanker Cap	633.6	0.8
100%	Tanker New	188.1	0.95
575%	Tanker Cap	1081.6	0.95
100%	Brute	148.5	0.75
775%	Brute Cap	1150.9	0.75

 

Just on the surface, does it make sense that a tank out-damages a Blaster, and nearly equals a Brute?  Maybe it does...

 

Either way after removing Bruising, a bump in the damage scale is certainly warranted.  As for the a dmg scale buff + a dmg cap buff, the latter seems a bit much.  Something less than or equal to 500 seems more appropriate.

 

100%	Tanker New	188.1	0.95
500%	Tanker Cap	940.5	0.95

 

I rest my case.

 

Has someone answered how often do Tankers reach this mythical 600% and the conditions for this to happen reliably in normal gameplay?

[Rylas]

14 hours ago, Vanden said:

I'm not sure this test means the buffs are over the top, since you specifically went out of your way to get more AoE attacks, and played on a difficulty that heavily favors AoE attacks (weaker, more numerous enemies).

It's certainly only one test to take into consideration out of many. I can take the same two and run them without the pool power attacks just to see if that makes a difference. 

14 hours ago, Myrmidon said:

Also, Rylas, the AoE radius boost is dropping from 100% to 60% in the next patch, so run those two again when that happens, if you would.

Will do!

[FUBARczar]

1 hour ago, Sovera said:

 

Has someone answered how often do Tankers reach this mythical 600% and the conditions for this to happen reliably in normal gameplay?

So why are you putting more energy into it?  If Tanks will almost never reach 600% then just cap it at 500% like a bunch of other ATs.  Done, now we can move on to the the arc and AOE increases....

 

[Replacement]

24 minutes ago, DreadShinobi said:

This would be what I am getting at. Please also read my other post and the one on page 31. What was slapped on to this set of changes was the damage cap change and thats why that one thing in particular is being called out over and over again. I do agree that epic archetypes, dominators, and defenders could all use a higher damage cap, but for not one of these archetypes would I start by increasing it by 200% alongside a significant base damage increase. The damage cap change is being compared directly with brutes over and over again when all ATs should be considered for a change like that. The inability to regularly hit said damage cap is being used as justification for setting that number at whatever one pleases, and as shown was chosen in direct comparison to brutes. Brutes could honestly see their damage cap lowered but that is for another discussion, as is the damage cap change for tankers and any other archetype. I sincerely believe that the tanker changes should roll out without a change to the damage cap and that damage caps for all archetypes should be looked at collectively together for a separate patch.

Ok.

 

...No really.  I can see the sense in this.  That said, it achieves the same thing to just get Tanker in a good spot relative to the other high performing popular ATs, then move onto other ATs in the next cycle.  As someone (EDIT: Haijinx) said a few pages back already, "get your buffs and move to the back of the line."

Edited September 19, 2019 by Replacement

[Haijinx]

10 minutes ago, FUBARczar said:

So why are you putting more energy into it?  If Tanks will almost never reach 600% then just cap it at 500% like a bunch of other ATs.  Done, now we can move on to the the arc and AOE increases....

 

There has to be some kind of fallacy that describes this tactic.  

 

 

[Captain Powerhouse]

I am in the middle of lot of stuff but a quick reply:

 

First of all, please, everyone, dont attack each other. If you feel someone else starts an attack, just dont reply or do your best to ignore that if you feel you still must reply to any point of their post.

 

Now, quick points i want to make:

 

Why the 550% (actual number for the next patch after revisions)?

First, a secondary tank brings little to the team other than more damage, and as a DPS, the tanker is the most sub-optimal choice to any team that wants more damage.

As it stands, Burtes have the same resist/defense caps as tankers, even with SOs, if they get the correct team mates, they can achieve 90% the survivability of a tanker. The 550% allows tankers to get to 90% the damage output as a capped Brute.

 

 

Why not just expand Bruise to every attack, and make it stack-able?

For one, having every single attack sustaining stack a -20 res with no effort is already too much power. Even buff/debuff sets need to take zero damage actions to apply most of their debuffs, and pay attention to refreshing them. Allowing it to stack from multiple tankers is even more problematic. That would easily result in a situation where multiple tankers immediately and unconditionally become the most optimal damage combo in a party, while also having near immortality. The tanker AT is too survivable to also instantly turn it into an extreme stack-able damage multiplier.

 

 

Nerf Brute instead?

I will not do that.

 

 

Increase the aggro cap?

Even if it became technically possible to do this, it only makes secondary tanks even more meaningless.

Edited September 19, 2019 by Captain Powerhouse

[FUBARczar]

1 hour ago, Haijinx said:

There has to be some kind of fallacy that describes this tactic.  

 

 

perhaps, but there is also logic in not making Tanks outliers.  

[FUBARczar]

1 hour ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

I am in the middle of lot of stuff but a quick reply:

 

First of all, please, everyone, dont attack each other. If you feel someone else starts an attack, just dont reply or do your best to ignore that if you feel you still must reply to any point of their post.

 

Now, quick points i want to make:

 

Why the 550% (actual number for the next patch after revisions)?

First, a secondary tank brings little to the team other than more damage, and as a DPS, the tanker is the most sub-optimal choice to any team that wants more damage.

As it stands, Burtes have the same resist/defense caps as tankers, even with SOs, if they get the correct team mates, they can achieve 90% the survivability of a tanker. The 550% allows tankers to get to 90% the damage output as a capped Brute.

 

 

Why not just expand Bruise to every attack, and make it stack-able?

For one, having every single attack sustaining stack a -20 res with no effort is already too much power. Even buff/debuff sets need to take zero damage actions to apply most of their debuffs, and pay attention to refreshing them. Allowing it to stack from multiple tankers is even more problematic. That would easily result in a situation where multiple tankers immediately and unconditionally become the most optimal damage combo in a party, while also having near immortality. The tanker AT is too survivable to also instantly turn it into an extreme stack-able damage multiplier.

 

 

Nerf Brute instead?

I will not do that.

 

 

Increase the aggro cap?

Even if it became technically possible to do this, it only makes secondary tanks even more meaningless.

all makes sense

[DreadShinobi]

19 minutes ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

Why the 550% (actual number for the next patch after revisions)?

First, a secondary tank brings little to the team other than more damage, and as a DPS, the tanker is the most sub-optimal choice to any team that wants more damage.

As it stands, Burtes have the same resist/defense caps as tankers, even with SOs, if they get the correct team mates, they can achieve 90% the survivability of a tanker. The 550% allows tankers to get to 90% the damage output as a capped Brute.

Should those two things really be considered in a vacuum when tankers will have significantly higher upfront damage, higher impact from each red inspiration used, and higher base survivability allowing for more build flexibility and team flexibility relying less on team members to make up that gap, and 20% more endurance? When you have the survivability of a tanker or brute you have the flexibility to start every mission or tf with a stack of 20 red inspirations. Will other archetypes that are suffering from the same damage cap as tankers be addressed including kheldians, arachnos ATs, dominators, and defenders? 

 

Night Widow damage cap for example has a 400% damage cap:

My night widow looks at this:

100% base

100% enhanced value

40% set bonuses

30-90% follow up

Gaussian proc

Can't use red inspirations

 

Edited September 19, 2019 by DreadShinobi

[Haijinx]

3 hours ago, Replacement said:

Mad props to you for this.  Definitely reaffirming why I've always loved the community.

 

This is a valid concern.  I feel I should mention it's also an edge case (Blasters are always getting high amounts of +damage, Brutes obviously moreso; Tankers are only getting it in parties that lack real damage dealers because those slots were replaced with Kins).

 

I'm liking this.  In the discussion of "Tankers need some amount of increased damage (and damage potential)," we stumble on a metric that functions as something of a pivot point: Can the Tanker be allowed to do "the adults are talking" levels of damage, and how much actual party damage does it require you to sacrifice to hit that point?  I don't know these answers, I just think it's a good note to keep in mind.

 

I wanted to run another scenario, swiping your format:

 

 

Dmg %	Ball Lightning	Damage	Scale
100%	Blaster	63.81	1.125
500%	Blaster Cap	319.05	1.125
100%	Tanker Old	45.38	0.8
400%	Tanker Cap	181.52	0.8
100%	Tanker New	45.38	0.8
575%	Tanker Cap	260.94	0.8
100%	Brute	42.54	0.75
775%	Brute Cap	329.69	0.75

 

Ball Lightning was designed for Blaster as much as KO Blow was designed for Tanker, so these are opposing in their biases and we need to recognize that.  But this is often a "bread and butter" skill for brutes regardless.

 

Assuming I did my math right (and I strongly suggest someone check it; I'm just using Mids and multiplying by max damage), you can see the Blasters and Brutes were maxing out at just about double what a Tanker was doing.  And with their far superior access to damage buffs, even the starting damages are worse than they look

 

Anecdotally, my experience has been that as blaster who isn't even paying attention, I tends to hover around 30% damage buff (83 damage Ball Lightning) from Defiance, and that a Brute with plain IOs can get roughly 60% damage buff (68 damage Ball Lightning) from Fury within the first half of the first pack they come across.

 

I feel like we need to launch to Live servers with a waiver message that pops up whenever you try to roll a tank that says "hey, this might get nerfed later on and you waive your rights to complain about it by choosing to create this character."

One thing to note, Ball Lightning for Brutes and Tankers has a much longer recharge than for Blasters.  

[Leogunner]

1 minute ago, Haijinx said:

One thing to note, Ball Lightning for Brutes and Tankers has a much longer recharge than for Blasters.  

A product of the baked in nature if primary/secondary pools vs basic power pool/ancillary/patron power pool. 

[Bopper]

20 minutes ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

Why not just expand Bruise to every attack, and make it stack-able?

I agree on not allowing it to be stackable. But why not allow Bruising work on all powers? Tanks can optimize their attack chains without having to use their T1, and Bruising could be applied on entire mobs with AoE, benefiting the entire team. It's not world breaking, and it's easier than tweaking the entire construct of tanks. 

[Vanden]

1 minute ago, Bopper said:

I agree on not allowing it to be stackable. But why not allow Bruising work on all powers? Tanks can optimize their attack chains without having to use their T1, and Bruising could be applied on entire mobs with AoE, benefiting the entire team. It's not world breaking, and it's easier than tweaking the entire construct of tanks. 

Because either you make Bruising stackable, which like Captain Powerhouse says would make teams of Tankers the most gamebreakingly ideal composition by far, or you keep it unstackable as it is, which keeps the status quo that multiple Tankers are a waste on teams.

[Replacement]

6 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

One thing to note, Ball Lightning for Brutes and Tankers has a much longer recharge than for Blasters.  

Thanks, good catch.  It's 32s on the melees vs 16 for blaster. But also, KO Blow is 25s on the melees and 40s on blasters, so distorts that comparison as well.  These are definitely "biased" skills, which is inevitable when trying to compare a tanker to a blaster -- we will mostly resort to attacks designed for one AT being used by the other.  I suppose I should put together who Flurries best but I'm super not-gonna.

[Bopper]

1 minute ago, Vanden said:

Because either you make Bruising stackable, which like Captain Powerhouse says would make teams of Tankers the most gamebreakingly ideal composition by far, or you keep it unstackable as it is, which keeps the status quo that multiple Tankers are a waste on teams.

I am not talking about stackable at all. I'm talking about allowing any attack to apply Bruising. Subsequent attacks would just refresh its duration, and AoE attacks will apply Bruising on each target hit.

 

As we have it now, the weakest attack power (typically single target) is the only way to apply bruising, making it a limitation for tank effectiveness. My suggestion opens up that effectiveness without patching 5 or so different things.

[Auroxis]

4 minutes ago, Vanden said:

Because either you make Bruising stackable, which like Captain Powerhouse says would make teams of Tankers the most gamebreakingly ideal composition by far, or you keep it unstackable as it is, which keeps the status quo that multiple Tankers are a waste on teams.

Stackable bruising definitely won't make Tanker teams gamebreaking, not sure how we reached that conclusion considering the tanker's damage being below average and -20% being an average resistance debuff.

[William Valence]

6 minutes ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

Increase the aggro cap?

Even if it became technically possible to do this, it only makes secondary tanks even more meaningless.

Question:

 

If there was a variable AT aggro cap, and a damage proc for tankers that was variable depending on the number of targets attacking them, would that fit your goals of off-tank team utility?

 

Example:

 

Tankers given 24 aggro cap. When 24 enemies are attacking them they do .8 scale damage. With no targets attacking them they do, say, the .95 scale damage you've tested to be within 90% of brute damage.

 

This would very likely test the versatility of the lua integration, but would it fit with what you are trying to implement?

[Captain Powerhouse]

12 minutes ago, DreadShinobi said:

Should those two things really be considered in a vacuum

 

They are not being considered in a vacuum, those are just limits teams (or insps) can take you to. The game is not balanced around inspiration usage, at any level. If it was, the point that it's easier to keep a brute def/res stacked with the same stack of inspis you entered a mission with would be even more problematic. You need 15 red inps to go from SOs to 550% damage cap for 60 seconds as a tanker. How many minutes of inspiration orange and purple would that budget a brute?

[Captain Powerhouse]

7 minutes ago, Replacement said:

Thanks, good catch.  It's 32s on the melees vs 16 for blaster. But also, KO Blow is 25s on the melees and 40s on blasters, so distorts that comparison as well.  These are definitely "biased" skills, which is inevitable when trying to compare a tanker to a blaster -- we will mostly resort to attacks designed for one AT being used by the other.  I suppose I should put together who Flurries best but I'm super not-gonna.

 

The rule of thumb is that Epic pools are 2x the recharge, but that rule is of normal attack balance. KoB on Super Strength suffers a 5 second recharge penalty, because... Super Strength.

[Replacement]

2 minutes ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

because... Super Strength.

This is just about meme-worthy at this point.

[Vanden]

5 minutes ago, Auroxis said:

Stackable bruising definitely won't make Tanker teams gamebreaking, not sure how we reached that conclusion considering the tanker's damage being below average and -20% being an average resistance debuff.

If you had three Tankers on a team, everything they’d fight would have -60 resistance. A full team of Tankers would be fighting enemies at -160 res. Absolutely nothing can compare to that level of damage output.

[DreadShinobi]

5 minutes ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

 

They are not being considered in a vacuum, those are just limits teams (or insps) can take you to. The game is not balanced around inspiration usage, at any level. If it was, the point that it's easier to keep a brute def/res stacked with the same stack of inspis you entered a mission with would be even more problematic. You need 15 red inps to go from SOs to 550% damage cap for 60 seconds as a tanker. How many minutes of inspiration orange and purple would that budget a brute?

Considering them side by side, if you're using those inspiration slots for purples/oranges then the tanker will be dealing more damage than the brute, with more flexibility to bring red insps where a brute would need to bring oranges, purples, or even possibly blue insps with wider aoes and better endurance management. The damage cap is being set so high with team buffs and inspirations in mind so it should be a factor. 

Edited September 19, 2019 by DreadShinobi

[Captain Powerhouse]

8 minutes ago, Auroxis said:

Stackable bruising definitely won't make Tanker teams gamebreaking, not sure how we reached that conclusion considering the tanker's damage being below average and -20% being an average resistance debuff.

 

Multiple tankers that have to do nothing but use their best attacks. 3 tankers instantly do more damage than 3 equivalent scrappers, and they would be nearly  undefeatable while doing it, AND have -range equiped AoE taunts to herd a map around quickly.

Edited September 19, 2019 by Captain Powerhouse