Focused Feedback: Tanker - Archetype Inherent Changes

[aethereal]

1 hour ago, Auroxis said:

The changes in this patch basically do away with the increased damage scalars on the AoE's, but keeping the AoE aggro machine alive and giving Tanker an identity that doesn't clash with anything other AT's have to offer.

 

Does it in fact do this?  @macskull earlier asserted that the overcap mechanic scales down punchvoke in the same way it scales down damage.

 

I'm not honestly sure how that plays out in practice.  What does "punchvoke * 0.58^2" or ^3 cash out to in terms of keeping aggro?  It'd be interesting to hear reports on the holistic experience of tanking in a group with these changes: do people notice a difference in aggro control?

[Lunar Ronin]

2 hours ago, Reiska said:

The unfortunate reality is that Brute's design was a mistake all the way back in October 2005, became more of a mistake in July 2007, and has never stopped being a mistake.  But it's a mistake we're stuck with.  And I say this as someone who likes the AT and played it extensively on Live.

 

The mistake was letting people play blue side ATs red side, and red side ATs blue side.  They should have stayed with their original faction.

[Maelwys]

30 minutes ago, aethereal said:

  What does "punchvoke * 0.58^2" or ^3 cash out to in terms of keeping aggro? 

 

Unless they've secretly radically overhauled how the taunt effect functions in PVE, it is heavily weighted in favour of duration (not magnitude!). IIRC one of the major components of the targeting subroutine involves multiplying your damage output by several other factors like distance, etc... and one if those factors is essentially ten times the remaining duration of the currently active Taunt effect.

 

So assuming this new scaling works by reducing the duration of the punchvoke taunt then if you're competing against a non-taunter (like a Blaster) for aggro then you might need to dish out some more damage than before. However if you're competing with a Brute then as soon as your Punchvoke's Taunt duration gets reduced below 50% of theirs it'll become extremely likely that their Taunt effect will suddenly become the active one and as a result they'll pull aggro off you.

[Erratic1]

3 minutes ago, Lunar Ronin said:

 

The mistake was letting people play blue side ATs red side, and red side ATs blue side.  They should have stayed with their original faction.

 

The mistake was (and is) continuing to proliferate every power between melee ATs. At one point, if you wanted to play Dark Melee or Energy Aura, you couldn't do it on every AT, you had to choose the AT(s) which had it. Want to play SS/Energy Aura? On live, you can only do that on a Brute, but come this the next patch...well.

 

Honestly not sure why they didn't proliferate Super Strength to Scrappers and Stalkers at this point. I suppose on the upside, someday a Ninjitsu Brute and Tanker will be available.

[Kai Moon]

Quote

OverCap mechanic implemented

• In powers that had their target cap increased from 10 to 16, each target above 10 will take 25% less damage than the previous target
• In powers that had their target cap increased from 5 to 10, each target above 5 will take 44% less damage than the previous target

This description better matches what I observed (at least with the 5-to-10 on Claws Eviscerate).

 

That said, I don't really play tankers, but the tanker mains I play with both found the "OverCap" terminology confusing.

 

Apparently, to tanker mains, "over cap" already means something specific. It means the situation where they've alerted more mobs than the hardcoded aggro cap (17? 18? I don't know, but tanker mains do).

 

So my two tanker-main buddies both thought "OverCap" meant their attacks will do less damage to mobs they've alerted but aren't actually aggroed because they're over the aggro cap.

[skoryy]

4 hours ago, Reiska said:

Even as Homecoming is willing to go a bit further with sweeping gameplay changes, I suspect it's a bridge too far for them (for good reason), but the consequence of that is that either Brute or Tanker will end up being strictly non-optimal to the hardcore optimizer crowd.

 

I think that's key. My beta testing was probably slower than what it would be on live, but also I'm not timing or spreadsheeting so it doesn't feel different. It's still the same tanker experience in roughly the same amount of time.

[Max Firepower]

I understand the desire/need to reduce damage buffs to tankers - I do love me some tankers! - but this may have gone a bit too much?

 

Made a L50 Energy Aura/WM Tanker, slotted to the gills with Superior sets, full sets, etc, way more than I often do - and I have some pretty decent franken-tankers.

 

I pulled 2 large groups of L53 Rikti in RWZ took a *ridiculous* amount of time.  Like early Steel Canyon career time with Jab and Brawl and maybe something silly like Flurry.  I think it was at least 5-6 minutes to take them down.  I wasn't in any danger, it was just a slog.

[Reiska]

2 hours ago, Lunar Ronin said:

 

The mistake was letting people play blue side ATs red side, and red side ATs blue side.  They should have stayed with their original faction.

Yeah.  Granted, that only compounded the problem; it was a problem on some level as soon as co-op existed (July 2007, as mentioned). 

 

Of course, it's well documented (or used to be; I admit to not knowing if the receipts are still around anywhere) that CoV AT design was ... something of a mixed bag and that there were some fundamental disconnects between what Cryptic intended with the AT designs and how we actually ended up playing them.  (I remember seeing, for example, at one point - I think Jack himself said it - that Masterminds were supposed to be the relative "tank" class of CoV, not Brutes.)

 

In a vacuum CoV's ATs are better designed than CoH's, but - somewhat intentionally given CoV's underlying conceit - less consideration was given to how they perform in a group setting with each other, and of course none was given whatsoever to how they perform alongside CoH ATs, and 20 years later, there's a lot of baggage inherent in that.

Edited Thursday at 02:12 PM by Reiska
added a bit

[macskull]

3 hours ago, aethereal said:

 

Does it in fact do this?  @macskull earlier asserted that the overcap mechanic scales down punchvoke in the same way it scales down damage.

I said this because that was the information I had from the lead powers dev at the time. Apparently this is incorrect, and any taunt from Gauntlet maintains its full strength.

[skoryy]

1 hour ago, Max Firepower said:

I pulled 2 large groups of L53 Rikti in RWZ took a *ridiculous* amount of time.  Like early Steel Canyon career time with Jab and Brawl and maybe something silly like Flurry.  I think it was at least 5-6 minutes to take them down.  I wasn't in any danger, it was just a slog.

 

How long does it take you in Live?

[Psi-bolt]

3 hours ago, Lunar Ronin said:

 

The mistake was letting people play blue side ATs red side, and red side ATs blue side.  They should have stayed with their original faction.

 

Honestly, there was never a scenario where that would have held up.   There is too much incentive for developers to allow people to play all the ATs on both sides.  It's free content and MMOs always eventually need that.   As bad as folks might think it is here, it's incredibly silly in games like SWTOR where you can have Jedi Padawans running around using force lighting with no one batting an eye.

 

FEEDBACK INCOMING

 

I do not play hyper optimized characters.   I usually don't play +4/x8, usually do the x8 but somewhere at a lower level.   These changes seem fine to me and a decent first step towards bringing Tankers in line without destroying the AT.   With the changes to Tankers made by Homecoming they are just far and away better than Brutes and they are premier AoE characters.   This hasn't changed in my estimation.   I took a Regen/EM Tank into groups of enemies, didn't die and killed them in short order.   It would almost certainly be quicker on Live but it wouldn't necessarily be easier.  The AoE damage has been calmed down and I don't have a problem with it.  Now EM isn't the best test platform for this and I intend to play other characters during this test, but I'm fine with the changes right now.

 

I would say that this devalues the sets that have the large 15ft AoEs because pretty much all Tanker AoEs are pretty wide.   SS has to wait a long time to get their AoE and I'm not sure about playing the set now between the Rage nerf (justified as stated above) and that other Tanker sets get their AoE much quicker. 

[TygerDarkstorm]

2 hours ago, Max Firepower said:

I understand the desire/need to reduce damage buffs to tankers - I do love me some tankers! - but this may have gone a bit too much?

 

Made a L50 Energy Aura/WM Tanker, slotted to the gills with Superior sets, full sets, etc, way more than I often do - and I have some pretty decent franken-tankers.

 

I pulled 2 large groups of L53 Rikti in RWZ took a *ridiculous* amount of time.  Like early Steel Canyon career time with Jab and Brawl and maybe something silly like Flurry.  I think it was at least 5-6 minutes to take them down.  I wasn't in any danger, it was just a slog.

Keep in mind that changes were also made to mobs that increased their regen, which is contributing to the slower feel of killing arresting mobs.

[Uncle Shags]

I did the Clear Speed Test AE mission at 0x8 on live and on test with my SR/DM tanker. Twice each.

 

Live: 6:05

Test: 8:35

 

If you look at the thread linked below you can see other times. 6 minutes is really low. So I guess my question is, why is my damage getting nerfed by 40%? It was low already, now it's going to be pathetic. I can understand why a build that beats out other ATs for damage might need to be addressed. But what's that got to do with me?

 

Can't we address the problems directly instead of hammering the entire AT indiscriminately?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited Thursday at 05:26 PM by Uncle Shags
Ran both again same times

[skoryy]

1 hour ago, TygerDarkstorm said:

Keep in mind that changes were also made to mobs that increased their regen, which is contributing to the slower feel of killing arresting mobs.

 

Where is this in the patch notes?

[Max Firepower]

3 hours ago, skoryy said:

 

How long does it take you in Live?

Testing that (hopefully) tonight with a few different tankers on Live, then on Test.  

I had initially been testing general durability of Energy Aura but noticed the almost controller/glacial pace and commented on that.

[Lazarillo]

22 minutes ago, skoryy said:

 

Where is this in the patch notes?

Under "Powers and Gameplay adjustments"

 

  

On 5/26/2025 at 7:22 AM, The Curator said:

Critters Only:

All -regen debufs (not flagged to be irresistible) should now be resisted by magnitude, not duration
Reduced the magnitude of many (not all) low recharge -regen debuffs with magnitudes greater than -100%

All critters now regenerate health 5% of their health every 12 seconds (does not include GMs or AVs)

 

[csr]

2 hours ago, TygerDarkstorm said:

Keep in mind that changes were also made to mobs that increased their regen, which is contributing to the slower feel of killing arresting mobs.

 

Because of this it might be useful to do an OB v Live time-to-clear comparison for something that wasn't changed (a Brute, for example).

Edited Thursday at 06:58 PM by csr
Grammar, clarity

[TygerDarkstorm]

1 minute ago, csr said:

 

Because of this it might be useful to do a OB v Live comparison for something that wasn't changed (a Brute, for example).

Likely. I suspect, as I've seen others mention, high damage AT's that already have little trouble killing things likely won't notice much of a change, but others that have slower rates of killing will.

 

I find this mob change introduced at the same time as sweeping AT changes is poor timing and makes it hard to know how to report the changes--e.g., are the tanker changes actually bad or do the mob changes need tuning and the tanker changes are mostly fine?

[Uncle Shags]

Fire/BA tanker

 

Live: 4:00

Test: 5:35

 

Tanky Crab (should be no change other than regen changes on mobs)

 

Live: 5:00

Test: 5:05

Edited Thursday at 09:28 PM by Uncle Shags

[ApolloInferno]

@macskull

Has their been any tank testing 4star mobs with the critter + Aoe damage changes?

 

I suspect the changes are going to affect the ability for them to kill LT mobs.

 

Also Titan Weapons seems to be extra low due to the AoE changes

[macskull]

58 minutes ago, ApolloInferno said:

@macskull

Has their been any tank testing 4star mobs with the critter + Aoe damage changes?

 

I suspect the changes are going to affect the ability for them to kill LT mobs.

 

Also Titan Weapons seems to be extra low due to the AoE changes

I haven’t tested personally but my feeling is these changes won’t affect a 4* team all that much since the Tanker isn’t really the primary AoE damage dealer on those teams anyways.

[Erratic1]

4 hours ago, Uncle Shags said:

Fire/BA tanker

 

Live: 4:00

Test: 5:35

 

Tanky Crab (should be no change other than regen changes on mobs)

 

Live: 5:00

Test: 5:05

 

 

It is taking 39.58% more time for your Tanker to clear. It would take roughly 96 seconds for an opponent to heal that much. From the moment you started damaging targets, they would have to be living more than a minute and a half for their regen to account for that time difference. So, it does not strike me that health regen is the causative factor, or even necessarily a major portion of that increase.

 

 

 

[Gerswin]

These changes don't effect 4* or most speed teams at all. There is a minor effect on tank fire farmers. They hammer the 'All melee KM ITF' and tank tf soloists the most. I just find it amusing the types of gameplay that the devs feel they need to nerf.

 

Overall, I like the new content but I am disappointed in all the changes that make me respec 100+ toons with dev statements that more changes are coming that will necessitate even more respecs. I guess fine balancing details are important to some people but I just want stability so I can dust off an old toon without having a frustratingly obsolete build.

[Uncle Shags]

Inv/SS

 

Live: 6:00

Test: 8:00

 

Has anyone else done any testing? Replication would be nice.

[Max Firepower]

On 5/29/2025 at 12:45 PM, TygerDarkstorm said:

Keep in mind that changes were also made to mobs that increased their regen, which is contributing to the slower feel of killing arresting mobs.

I am guessing my slotting for that original tanker didn't have much +Dmg that contributed to the slow grind.  Last night, I ran my Rad/SS - knowing that would be affected by power changes to Rad Armor - and it was around 2 to 2:30 on Live for 3 large groups of Rikti, and about 1 minute longer on Test.  An Elec/SS Brute had a similar time delta.  About 20-30% slower on test.