Focused Feedback: Tank Updates

[General Idiot]

6 hours ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

That is the primary set. The engine enforces T1 only at creation for every AT secondary set.

With how hard it's been said to be to change that, I really want to know what the original devs thought was going to happen that they had to absolutely nail it down that you couldn't do it. Unless it's less intentional and more a symptom of ten years of spaghetti code stacked on top of it.

[mcdoogs]

10 hours ago, Myrmidon said:

To be fair, without perma-Rage (not stacking), Super Strength really is a pile of Bantha doo doo.

Foot stomp deserves better

[Replacement]

@Captain Powerhouse -- I try not to at you TOO much but I feel this is legitimate... How hard is it to copy/paste an entire AT?  I'm wondering how impossible it would be to have liveTanker and Tankertest as two separate ATs on Pineapple?

 

I feel like it's a really tall order but I feel I should at least ask, because I spent several hours trying to test number changes yesterday and all I really discovered is there are too many variables to keep track of.

 

I need the ability to auto-level live tankers, basically.

Edited September 22, 2019 by Replacement

[Myrmidon]

24 minutes ago, Replacement said:

@Captain Powerhouse -- I try not to at you TOO much but I feel this is legitimate... How hard is it to copy/paste an entire AT?  I'm wondering how impossible it would be to have liveTanker and Tankertest as two separate ATs on Pineapple?

 

I feel like it's a really tall order but I feel I should at least ask, because I spent several hours trying to test number changes yesterday and all I really discovered is there are too many variables to keep track of.

 

I need the ability to auto-level live tankers, basically.

 

Have you tried testing live Tankers on live and test Tankers on test?

[Myrmidon]

28 minutes ago, mcdoogs said:

Foot stomp deserves better

 

The entire set deserves better.

[Replacement]

10 minutes ago, Myrmidon said:

 

Have you tried testing live Tankers on live and test Tankers on test?

The problem comes when all the numbers I'm referencing are apparently level 50. 

 

What I'll do in the meantime (and if I even get another opportunity to spend hours on the test server) is cut out all data and tools that aren't combat logs, and make and compare level 1 tankers - live vs pineapple.  

 

I was trying to validate the epic number changes yesterday but instead got lost in the woods of t1s having unexpected values.

 

Unlike certain other posters, I'm not going to assume that means devs are lying to us about the intent of the changes (be wary of the feedback presented by anyone this willfully illogical), and will instead set to verify the numbers and report any failings.

[ZeeHero]

On 9/10/2019 at 8:07 PM, 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.

These changes make you better as a tank becuase you do damage. a good tank does damage. you wont do nearly as much as a brute still (brutes can be tanks as well though) so why worry?

[Heraclea]

On 9/10/2019 at 8:18 PM, Captain Powerhouse said:

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.

My fire scrapper would prefer everything to be a sword..... (Although breathing fire is rather nice).

[Myrmidon]

1 hour ago, Heraclea said:

My fire scrapper would prefer everything to be a sword..... (Although breathing fire is rather nice).

 I would absolutely LOVE to change the hammers from Stone Melee.

[Caulderone]

2 hours ago, Heraclea said:

My fire scrapper would prefer everything to be a sword..... (Although breathing fire is rather nice).

I would like it either/both ways.  Options for all no-sword and options for all-sword would be very nice.

[Vanden]

13 minutes ago, Caulderone said:

I would like it either/both ways.  Options for all no-sword and options for all-sword would be very nice.

This would be an area that my Equivalent Powers idea would shine. If you make the sword/no sword options into power customizations, the alternate animations have to match the timing of the default ones, both in total length and the point in the animation where the enemy gets hit. However, if you make them separate powers, that restriction is lifted, and there's more wiggle room to have the animations not be exactly identical. Plus, then you could make them do smashing or lethal damage as appropriate.

[siolfir]

5 hours ago, Replacement said:

The problem comes when all the numbers I'm referencing are apparently level 50. 

 

What I'll do in the meantime (and if I even get another opportunity to spend hours on the test server) is cut out all data and tools that aren't combat logs, and make and compare level 1 tankers - live vs pineapple.  

 

I was trying to validate the epic number changes yesterday but instead got lost in the woods of t1s having unexpected values.

 

Unlike certain other posters, I'm not going to assume that means devs are lying to us about the intent of the changes (be wary of the feedback presented by anyone this willfully illogical), and will instead set to verify the numbers and report any failings.

This is a sound a logical thing to do, but I think you'll find that at low levels it will seem like a nerf because the damage scales for the ATs aren't really finalized at that level. That's what I was referencing earlier - at very low levels all of the ATs are roughly (but not exactly) equal on damage modifiers, and the differences get sorted out through the teen levels.

 

To demonstrate, let's about Stalkers (1.0 melee) vs Tankers (0.8 melee), using Energy Punch because it's a scale 1 attack:

Stalker, level 1: 10 damage.

Tanker (live servers), level 1: 9.60 damage (Tankers already have scale 0.96 damage! 0.95 scale is a nerf! What are these buffs doing?!)

Tanker (beta), level 1: 9.90 damage (oh, wait... that is a little higher...)

Stalker, level 20: 28.39 damage.

Tanker (live servers), level 20: 22.71 damage... which is 80% of the Stalker damage. (phew, sanity is restored)

Tanker (beta), level 20: 26.97 damage, which is 95% of the Stalker damage - exactly where it should be.

 

It's not unique to melee, either: Blasters have a 1.125 scale ranged modifer and Defenders have a 0.65 modifier, right? So you would expect a Defender to hit for 57.8% of the damage of a Blaster, and Corruptors (0.75) to hit for 66.67% of the Blaster using the same power.

So let's look at Ice Bolt at level 1:

Blaster: 10.25 damage. 57.78% of that is 5.92. But...

Defender: 9.30 damage. That's 90.7% of a Blaster's damage.

Corruptor: 9.50 damage. Just ignore the fact that it's showing damage as if Scourge was always hitting (no idea when that bug cropped up, I remember seeing "if Scourge" before the shutdown).

 

So let's adjust the slider to level 20:

Blaster: 31.94 damage.

Defender: 18.45 damage. That's 57.76% of the Blaster's damage, which is close to where we would expect it to be.

Corruptor: 21.29 damage, which is 66.66% of the Blaster's damage.

 

So testing these buffs isn't going to be overly useful at low levels because all you'll be noticing is that you lost Bruising, because the modifiers don't take effect at the levels you're testing at.

 

As for trying to get a live tanker to sufficient level to do a direct before-and-after comparison... it's not that hard to get to level 20+ in a farm. Sadly you can't copy to beta, because this is where having it would shine, giving you the exact same character with only the code changes differentiating them.

Edited September 22, 2019 by siolfir
removing duplicate wording in first and second-to-last paragraph

[Leogunner]

2 hours ago, Vanden said:

This would be an area that my Equivalent Powers idea would shine. If you make the sword/no sword options into power customizations, the alternate animations have to match the timing of the default ones, both in total length and the point in the animation where the enemy gets hit. However, if you make them separate powers, that restriction is lifted, and there's more wiggle room to have the animations not be exactly identical. Plus, then you could make them do smashing or lethal damage as appropriate.

I think the problem with that is you create a kind of meta-gaming via costumes where you swap to smashing vs robots and lethal vs carnies or some such min/maxing when the cast times favor one power over another.

 

For someone like me, I think it's all win/win.  I tend to push concept over effectiveness...heck, I even currently have a Fire Brute who is a necromatic dragon who wields the skeletons of dragons as armor and shields (shield defense) and only has the sword fire attacks as kind of a necromancy magic construct...and as a dragon lich, he can swap out his throat to basically use any element of dragon breath (he's only got fire, ice and toxic breath though...lightning and wind breath don't exist in the game).  Needless to say, all his attacks are fire swords and long animating breath attacks (I'll likely be remaking him into a Tanker, TBH).

 

That being said, a meta-costume type feature could just be an aspect of those sets as I don't think Fire or Ice melee are particularly strong or weak that would push it beyond the higher performing sets.

 

EDIT: Also, give Stone Armor some better visuals.  Bone would be perfect 🙂 

Edited September 22, 2019 by Leogunner

[Haijinx]

3 hours ago, Myrmidon said:

 I would absolutely LOVE to change the hammers from Stone Melee.

Think this was a 60s song.

[Vanden]

22 minutes ago, Leogunner said:

I think the problem with that is you create a kind of meta-gaming via costumes where you swap to smashing vs robots and lethal vs carnies or some such min/maxing when the cast times favor one power over another.

If you actually took different powers to get the sword/no sword variants with different damage types, you wouldn't be able to change it with your costumes.

[Replacement]

2 hours ago, siolfir said:

This is a sound a logical thing to do, but I think you'll find that at low levels it will seem like a nerf because the damage scales for the ATs aren't really finalized at that level. That's what I was referencing earlier - at very low levels all of the ATs are roughly (but not exactly) equal on damage modifiers, and the differences get sorted out through the teen levels.

 

To demonstrate, let's about Stalkers (1.0 melee) vs Tankers (0.8 melee), using Energy Punch because it's a scale 1 attack:

Stalker, level 1: 10 damage.

Tanker (live servers), level 1: 9.60 damage (Tankers already have scale 0.96 damage! 0.95 scale is a nerf! What are these buffs doing?!)

Tanker (beta), level 1: 9.90 damage (oh, wait... that is a little higher...)

Stalker, level 20: 28.39 damage.

Tanker (live servers), level 20: 22.71 damage... which is 80% of the Stalker damage. (phew, sanity is restored)

Tanker (beta), level 20: 26.97 damage, which is 95% of the Stalker damage - exactly where it should be.

 

It's not unique to melee, either: Blasters have a 1.125 scale ranged modifer and Defenders have a 0.65 modifier, right? So you would expect a Defender to hit for 57.8% of the damage of a Blaster, and Corruptors (0.75) to hit for 66.67% of the Blaster using the same power.

So let's look at Ice Bolt at level 1:

Blaster: 10.25 damage. 57.78% of that is 5.92. But...

Defender: 9.30 damage. That's 90.7% of a Blaster's damage.

Corruptor: 9.50 damage. Just ignore the fact that it's showing damage as if Scourge was always hitting (no idea when that bug cropped up, I remember seeing "if Scourge" before the shutdown).

 

So let's adjust the slider to level 20:

Blaster: 31.94 damage.

Defender: 18.45 damage. That's 57.76% of the Blaster's damage, which is close to where we would expect it to be.

Corruptor: 21.29 damage, which is 66.66% of the Blaster's damage.

 

So testing these buffs isn't going to be overly useful at low levels because all you'll be noticing is that you lost Bruising, because the modifiers don't take effect at the levels you're testing at.

Thanks for that. You've definitely cemented how much I wish we had 2 versions of Tanker on Pineapple.

2 hours ago, siolfir said:

As for trying to get a live tanker to sufficient level to do a direct before-and-after comparison... it's not that hard to get to level 20+ in a farm. Sadly you can't copy to beta, because this is where having it would shine, giving you the exact same character with only the code changes differentiating them.

Unfortunately, my immediate and vehement response to that is a "hell no."

[kenlon]

3 minutes ago, Replacement said:

Thanks for that. You've definitely cemented how much I wish we had 2 versions of Tanker on Pineapple.

 

You know you can view the stats of any power at any level you want in the game already, right?

 

Go into the enhancements screen, bring up the Show Detailed Info on a power, and play with the slider. 

[Replacement]

That's what started the never ending parade of inconsistencies. I'm sure I just should have been taking notes but it went from "I can't trust mids" to "I can't trust non-50 scales" to "I can't trust in-game tooltips."

[Myrmidon]

3 hours ago, Replacement said:

Thanks for that. You've definitely cemented how much I wish we had 2 versions of Tanker on Pineapple.

Unfortunately, my immediate and vehement response to that is a "hell no."

 

Well, that’s only 5 or 6 DFB runs if you don’t want to join a farmer.

[Haijinx]

so the premise in this current argument against the proposed changes is that Capt PH can't do math.  

 

🤔

[StratoNexus]

Overall, I really like the tanker buffs. Soloing mid-level tankers was always frustrating and boring. I am not in much danger, so I want to turn up the difficulty in order to need to pay attention, but turning up the difficulty makes defeating the foes annoyingly slow. Of course, I usually solve this problem by teaming, in which case I always felt fine and had fun. That said, it makes sense to me that brutes and tankers can handle the same job, so there is no reason the tanker AT should be saddled with such low damage when brutes are not so limited. I had a few brutes in the old days, but have yet to make one here. I do have two tankers, a 42 Rad/TW/Earth and a 25 WP/WM/(planned Earth).

 

I think granting extra endurance to the tanker does make some sense for the AT, and would make a lot sense for when they were at a significantly slower kill speed. My experience on test seems to indicate that my higher damage and more efficient AoEs combined with the significant endurance bump might make end management a bit too free. More testing is required before I can say for sure (especially with the smaller AoE buff), but I already barely need to watch my green bar (and at base difficulty I really never need to, unless I artificially increase difficulty by gathering). Now I barely have to watch my blue bar. My bigger AoEs allow me to more easily generate threat. Even my small, fast recharge attacks have a 10 foot gauntlet range rather than 3, 4, or 5 feet, so I am easily and quickly generating hate. This leaves significantly less room for player skill to matter. We still have positioning and good Taunt use to make enemies move toward us, as well as seeing those times when multiple spawns are near each other and reacting to that based on how the team is playing. But hate generation is very automatic now (which I generally like, but as a game, I think there needs to be some resource I am concerned about and managing). In short, higher damage and more efficient AoEs already make me more endurance efficient. Adding to base endurance is a triple threat solution and might be too much when combined.

 

Bruising. I know this was kind of slapped on and to many felt like blah. But I always loved this both when playing a tanker and when playing with a tanker. The concept of knocking off armor or distracting the enemy so a weak point faces the team works great for me. Additionally, since the tier one powers in many cases are damage light so they can recharge fast and allow continuous threat generation even under slowed scenarios, it was a nice little extra for those powers, that really worked for an AT that was mostly team based (but could solo safely, albeit slowly). I will miss it.

 

.95 scale. A large part of me screams it is too much, however .80 is too low. I enjoyed the .95 and did not feel like it was even close to overshadowing scrappers or blasters. There is a part of me that feels tankers and brutes both have too much damage for the levels of survivability they can attain on test, but at the same time, they need the survivability in order to fulfill their team role and they need the damage in order not to be boring. This is not really a dichotomy that can be overcome without deciding to nerf something and I don't really want Brute survivability nerfed, even though I think an 85% resist cap makes more sense for them. I am OK with both tankers and brutes being able to easily step into the tank role (I also like that many scrappers can step into that role as well, and if they can do it at 75%, brutes should be able to easily handle it at 85%, but meh, not dying at 85% means I see no reason to step on the 90% toes, because not dying and not dying both equal not dying, so why create a firestorm).

 

I think the AoE/Arc increase as is now on test is just about perfect, some individual powers may need refinement. I like the Taunt cap at 7, 10 was too much. Gauntlet from each single target power being consistently 10 feet is good and balances the powersets better (it always annoyed me that War Mace and Battle Axe were disadvantaged in gauntlet range compared to some other sets).  If it were me I would probably set the damage scale to .88. I would have both the tier 1 and tier 2 attacks each grant a -7% resistance debuff (call one bruise1 and the other bruise2, so they could stack with each other, but not with themselves). They should also stack from multiple tankers, just like Corrosive Enzymes from multiple Nature Affinity users stack, but one user cannot stack it. I think a 10% buff to tanker base damage with the alteration to Bruising is a better overall target then just the straight ~19% increase to base and removing bruising. That also keeps the extra 20 endurance as making more sense, since kill speed solo would drop some.

[Leogunner]

Messing with my Bio/Fire Tanker.

 

Was Breath of Fire increased?  It feels very short range.  Even slotting up range barely gives it the something I can use with my other breath attacks.  Was the arc improved?  I'll have to keep playing with but it feels as narrow as it's always been.

[Griffinmills]

Been dutifully reading this thread since its inception.  Lots of good stuff posted on all changes on all sides.

 

Regarding bruising, it struck me that maybe the wisest thing, if not the smartest or most mathematically correct or perfectly balanced thing, would be to simply leave it in as it existed on Homecoming before these tank updates were being tested while still moving forward with all the existing changes/buffs.  Some people who side in favor of its removal have put forth variations of the argument that it was already pretty minor or a consolation prize, etc. in an attempt to convince fans of keeping or expanding Bruising that they are being myopic or foolish or fear change, etc.  If they are correct in this (that it is minor) then just leave Bruising in, as is on live and in addition to all current changes, and not worry about a, to whatever degree more or less minor sized, balance issue.  Seems a decent compromise between those that want it expanded/improved and those that want it gone entirely without throwing away all the rest of the updates and we don't lose a minor but historic aspect of Tankers.  All at the cost of just being the bigger person and being tolerant of a little balance/imbalance.

 

I'm sure somebody will now post how Bruising is game-breaking-ly amazing in some excellent way! 😁

[Sir Myshkin]

Given I'm in, slash was already prepping to be in the process of, significant testing on Tanks before these changes rolled out, I've spent some follow up time with a specific Shield Defense/Radiation Melee Tank both pre, and post alterations on the Test Server, and I can say that the alterations have made a pretty significant impact, bruising is not missed, and bruising should definitely not be added back into the mix in the realm of trying to patch up hurt feelings given how significant the shift has become in just being made stronger collectively.

 

Also, characters that were created during the  T1/T2 swap are now perma-altered into a T2, no T1 build, doesn't seem to break the game in anyway. Definitely did not attempt to do any kind of respec since testing as built pre-and-post was super important and didn't want to change anything in that regard.

 

Given all that, for those that want, may be curious, or generally would like to dig through some logs on how the changes have impacted things, here is a SD/RM/Soul knocking down a Pylon in 3:20. Previously this took 10:30 without Incarnates or Tank alterations, and it took 13:09 when the Pylons were bugged at 54. This is the stabilized variant of the Pylon, and it absolutely melts to this version of Tanks.

 

 

Also, random fonts are bugged to be larger than they should, and outlined as if comic-graphics are turned on, it's super weird to see pop up.

[Auroxis]

I think that proccing out RM does way more to help your DPS against a Pylon than these changes (which negatively impact proc builds). RM's top time is 1:47 on Scrapper so reaching 3:20 minutes on Tanker shouldn't come as a complete surprise.