Focused Feedback: Tanker - Archetype Inherent Changes

[Ratch_]

On 5/28/2025 at 3:32 AM, Kai Moon said:

To illustrate this, I used Claws Eviscerate on a tanker. The standard target cap is 5, the tanker target cap is 10. Tanker now deals:

• 100% (normal) damage to 5 targets
• 56% damage to a 6th target
• (56%)² ≈ 31% damage to a 7th target
• (56%)³ ≈ 18% damage to an 8th target

Presumably continue exponential decay for each additional "over cap" target.

/late

But my only concern is that Shockwave standard target cap is *10*. It's 10 on all melee ATs, on tanker it should have overcap on 11-16.

If you are seeing reduction past 5 that sounds like a bug to me?

[Maelwys]

11 minutes ago, skoryy said:

If we're basing off of clear speeds, the next question is how do tanker clear speeds on beta compare to brutes and scrappers?

Aside from BattleAxe and RadArmor powersets; Brutes and Scrappers are essentially unchanged from Live.
Tankers are taking anything from 30-40% longer than before.

Let's pick on Fiery Melee: ballpark times for a Trapdoor run on Live for it when min-maxxed are roughly ~5m30s on a Scrapper, 5m00s on a Brute; and 4m30s on a Tanker.
On Brainstorm; you'd only be adding an extra ~5-10 secs to the Brute and Scrapper (for the Critter Regen rate buffs) but the Tanker will now be taking longer than 6mins.

Tanker Pylon times are virtually unchanged. Tanker AE Farming (and "kill most ITF") times are now abysmal. Tanker regular Mission clear times are somewhere in between; depending on how many simultaneous mobs you're constantly fighting (because more foes = more impact from the overcap damage reductions and the reduced melee cone arcs) and how many procs you have (because more procs = more impact from the gauntlet radius changes).

As it happens, my (non-RadArmor) SuperStrength Tankers are hurting much less than the others (presumably because my procbombed Footstomp's base radius was already 15ft; so the biggest hit to them is from the "Overcap" damage reductions!) and from what I can see the reduced damage-buffage from Rage is practically unnoticeable.

[skoryy]

35 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

Let's pick on Fiery Melee: ballpark times for a Trapdoor run on Live for it when min-maxxed are roughly ~5m30s on a Scrapper, 5m00s on a Brute; and 4m30s on a Tanker.
On Brainstorm; you'd only be adding an extra ~5-10 secs to the Brute and Scrapper (for the Critter Regen rate buffs) but the Tanker will now be taking longer than 6mins

 

When I'm less groggy, I'll have to do some math.  I would've thought that overcap still gives the tanker the advantage over the brute since they're hitting more targets.

[Maelwys]

14 minutes ago, skoryy said:

When I'm less groggy, I'll have to do some math.  I would've thought that overcap still gives the tanker the advantage over the brute since they're hitting more targets.

Scrapper (and Stalkers) will outdamage Brutes on a per-hit basis; but Tankers only pull ahead whenever they can hit more targets with the same attack(s).

If you reduce the likelihood of the Tanker hitting more targets (Cone Arc reduction caused by the gauntlet changes) as well as reducing the damage that they actually deal to those targets (Base damage and Proc activation rate reduction caused by the gauntlet changes; plus the "Overcap" damage reduction) then Tankers will start lagging behind Brutes again pretty quickly.

Tankers still have a major advantage for aggro control on Brainstorm; even if the reduced Cone Arcs hurt a little bit there compared to Live.

_{(and again - just to preempt any squawking from the back row: I personally think that reducing Tanker AoE damage isn't a bad thing. But I also think that the combined effect of all of these individually quite reasonable + mechanically sound proposed changes is currently resulting in an overly harsh performance hit for Tankers on Brainstorm. So I'd like to see them implemented; but at a slightly lesser magnitude!) 🤞}

[Erratic1]

1 hour ago, skoryy said:

 

When I'm less groggy, I'll have to do some math.  I would've thought that overcap still gives the tanker the advantage over the brute since they're hitting more targets.

 They are hitting more targets but the damage falloff means the total damage past cap is greatly reduced.  So you hit 10 foes normally but the damage you do to 11-16 is not one-third of what you did on the first 10 but more like one-month (not a calculated number, but rather given to underscore the damage drops greatly).

[Kai Moon]

2 hours ago, Ratch_ said:

But my only concern is that Shockwave standard target cap is *10*. It's 10 on all melee ATs, on tanker it should have overcap on 11-16.

If you are seeing reduction past 5 that sounds like a bug to me?

I think Shockwave may be a special case where tankers don't get an increased target cap. 10 stays 10. No exponential damage decay, though.

 

Edited Monday at 04:53 PM by Kai Moon

[skoryy]

28 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

 They are hitting more targets but the damage falloff means the total damage past cap is greatly reduced.  So you hit 10 foes normally but the damage you do to 11-16 is not one-third of what you did on the first 10 but more like one-month (not a calculated number, but rather given to underscore the damage drops greatly).

 

Right, but i also recall tankers have a higher cap than brutes and scrappers.

[arcane]

3 hours ago, Maelwys said:

Let's pick on Fiery Melee: ballpark times for a Trapdoor run on Live for it when min-maxxed are roughly ~5m30s on a Scrapper, 5m00s on a Brute; and 4m30s on a Tanker.
On Brainstorm; you'd only be adding an extra ~5-10 secs to the Brute and Scrapper (for the Critter Regen rate buffs) but the Tanker will now be taking longer than 6mins.

If I’m reading this right, it is suggesting that Tanker offense is now a hair behind Brute offense. Isn’t that what we want?

[Erratic1]

13 minutes ago, skoryy said:

 

Right, but i also recall tankers have a higher cap than brutes and scrappers.

 

Tankers and Scrappers both have the same damage cap of 500%. Brutes are at 700%--500% plus 200% so their Fury always contributes. Brutes used to cap at 770% iirc.

[skoryy]

8 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

 

Tankers and Scrappers both have the same damage cap of 500%. Brutes are at 700%--500% plus 200% so their Fury always contributes. Brutes used to cap at 770% iirc.

 

Target cap.  Or did they just get an expanded AoE.  It came with the big tanker buff patch.

[Maelwys]

8 minutes ago, skoryy said:

 

Right, but i also recall tankers have a higher cap than brutes and scrappers.

A power like Footstomp has a target cap of 10 on Brutes.
On Live that power has a target cap of 16 on Tankers... and it deals full damage to all 16 of them.
On Brainstorm; it has a target cap of 16 on Tankers... and it deals full damage to the first 10; then a lot less damage to the 11th, even less damage to the 12, and so on. The severe dropoff on targets 11-16 means that if you're surrounded by enough mobs to hit the cap; you'll see an overall damage reduction of about 32%.
It works out at a 32% reduction for 10-target AoEs like Footstomp; and a 46% reduction for 5-target Cones.

It's true that Tanks can still hit more targets than Brutes (or Scrappers/Stalkers) with the same AoE. But their base damage and lack of Fury or Critical hits means that they need to be hitting more targets than those other ATs in order to deal competitive levels of damage. Now there's an agrument to be made that Tankers shouldn't be dealing competitive levels of damage in the first place; and the sheer level of AoE damage output that a min-maxxed Tanker can currently generate on the Live servers in a saturated environment (like AE Farming or ITF runs) is IMO definitely unbalanced... especially whenever you consider that Tankers don't need to give up as much in the way of survivability in order to procbomb their attacks. However this round of nerfs on Brainstorm is IMO a tad too heavy; it'll hit traditional "regular" Tanker builds like Shag's pretty harshly; and offensive Tanker Powersets that rely on Cones are going to be disproportionally affected regardless of how many Procs they have slotted.
 

 

14 minutes ago, arcane said:

If I’m reading this right, it is suggesting that Tanker offense is now a hair behind Brute offense. Isn’t that what we want?

Tankers have always been well behind in terms of ST damage.
It's AoE where they've been excelling.

Personally I would like Tanker damage to be a hair behind Brute damage; yes... perhaps something in the region of about 5-10% less. Unfortunately those numbers show FM Tankers have gone from being ~11% Faster (4m30s) than FM Brutes to >20% Slower (>6m) overall; over the course of an average mission.
And I wouldn't call a difference of more than 20% "a hair behind".

If this goes live as-is... unfortunately I can foresee Tankers becoming the proverbial red headed stepchild again. At least for the "killspeed > all else" crowd.

[Erratic1]

13 minutes ago, skoryy said:

 

Target cap.  Or did they just get an expanded AoE.  It came with the big tanker buff patch.

 

Tankers have superior target caps.

[skoryy]

2 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

A power like Footstomp has a target cap of 10 on Brutes.
On Live that power has a target cap of 16 on Tankers... and it deals full damage to all 16 of them.
On Brainstorm; it has a target cap of 16 on Tankers... and it deals full damage to the first 10; then a lot less damage to the 11th, even less damage to the 12, and so on. The severe dropoff on targets 11-16 means that if you're surrounded by enough mobs to hit the cap; you'll see an overall damage reduction of about 32%.
It works out at a 32% reduction for 10-target AoEs like Footstomp; and a 46% reduction for 5-target Cones.

It's true that Tanks can still hit more targets than Brutes (or Scrappers/Stalkers) with the same AoE. But their base damage and lack of Fury or Critical hits means that they need to be hitting more targets than those other ATs in order to deal competitive levels of damage. Now there's an agrument to be made that Tankers shouldn't be dealing competitive levels of damage in the first place; and the sheer level of AoE damage output that a min-maxxed Tanker can currently generate on the Live servers in a saturated environment (like AE Farming or ITF runs) is IMO definitely unbalanced... especially whenever you consider that Tankers don't need to give up as much in the way of survivability in order to procbomb their attacks. However this round of nerfs on Brainstorm is IMO a tad too heavy; it'll hit traditional "regular" Tanker builds like Shag's pretty harshly; and offensive Tanker Powersets that rely on Cones are going to be disproportionally affected regardless of how many Procs they have slotted.

 

Yeah, that's what I thought: Tankers got a bigger target cap.  Now I'm re-doing the math and either my numbes are wrong or brutes have been beating tankers out of the water on damage co-efficients if you give them both 100% damage buff and the brute 80 fury.  Somehow I remembered it being closer.

[Ratch_]

1 hour ago, Kai Moon said:

I think Shockwave may be a special case where tankers don't get an increased target cap. 10 stays 10. No exponential damage decay, though.

 

Noticed this as well on Throw Spines, I presume these are just special cases for these powers as I haven't found any other exceptions. 

(They both still get the radius/range increase)

Edited Monday at 06:22 PM by Ratch_

[Sovera]

4 hours ago, Maelwys said:

Let's pick on Fiery Melee: ballpark times for a Trapdoor run on Live for it when min-maxxed are roughly ~5m30s on a Scrapper, 5m00s on a Brute; and 4m30s on a Tanker.
On Brainstorm; you'd only be adding an extra ~5-10 secs to the Brute and Scrapper (for the Critter Regen rate buffs) but the Tanker will now be taking longer than 6mins.

 

This is what pisses me off about this. Not GREATLY pisses me because I haven't played in a while. But all my Tankers averaged 6 minutes. The 'average' Trapdoor time for Tanker is 4:30. Ergo Tankers 'need' to be tuned down because this is now the perception that has enveloped Tankers.

 

But anyone slotting 'normally' is not achieving 4:30 minutes. It takes 5-6 slotting damage procs and picking extra AoEs from the epic pools which not everyone will do.

 

Who is the culprit? The AT being overtuned? Or the damage procs? Empirically I'm going to say it is the procs. But those are untouched, the AT gets nerfed (granted that the major nerf has been the overcap mechanic which is bound to be tuned after this recent feedback backed by numbers), the people slotting normally get nerfed without even understanding why, and the 4:30 players just move back to Brutes leaving the regular players to pick up the pieces.

 

This is dumb.

[Erratic1]

18 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

It's true that Tanks can still hit more targets than Brutes (or Scrappers/Stalkers) with the same AoE. But their base damage and lack of Fury or Critical hits means that they need to be hitting more targets than those other ATs in order to deal competitive levels of damage.

 

Tanker base damage is higher than Brute damage, but not a lot. Base. Foot Stomp for a Tanker is 161 vs 146 for a Brute (City of Data). Slotting damage enhancers doesn't change this. Fury however quickly pushes the Brute ahead as that is even more damage enhancement.

[skoryy]

10 minutes ago, Sovera said:

This is what pisses me off about this. Not GREATLY pisses me because I haven't played in a while. But all my Tankers averaged 6 minutes. The 'average' Trapdoor time for Tanker is 4:30. Ergo Tankers 'need' to be tuned down because this is now the perception that has enveloped Tankers.

 

But anyone slotting 'normally' is not achieving 4:30 minutes. It takes 5-6 slotting damage procs and picking extra AoEs from the epic pools which not everyone will do.

 

Who's slotting normally and optimally, though?  Some of us are a little slow on the meta, but how much of the playerbase itself?  And brutes and scrappers are also going to be slotted 'normally'.

 

Its not a question of procs, its a question of should the archetype with the best defenses in the game have the highest clear speeds.  if not, how much behind the other melee AT(s) should they be?

[Erratic1]

18 minutes ago, Sovera said:

Who is the culprit? The AT being overtuned? Or the damage procs? Empirically I'm going to say it is the procs. But those are untouched, the AT gets nerfed (granted that the major nerf has been the overcap mechanic which is bound to be tuned after this recent feedback backed by numbers), the people slotting normally get nerfed without even understanding why, and the 4:30 players just move back to Brutes leaving the regular players to pick up the pieces.

 

Procs are not untouched. Making the areas larger as opposed to the increased area coming from Gauntlet means fewer procs as those are penalized for radius.

[macskull]

On 5/31/2025 at 11:08 AM, Crysis said:

Take away trivial targeting and actually make selecting the correct target and hitting it count, you'll see systemic challenges across the entire playerbase.

I think at that point the biggest challenge the game would offer would be finding teams, since I would expect a ton of people to leave over something like that.

[Neiska]

5 hours ago, Warboss said:

Go for it. It would be funny to see the response.

 

Without opening a whole can of worms that is the Farming/AE topic, all I will say about it is that the big brains in the farming community have already figured out how to farm with each AT. And that most of us no longer share or report tricks/op/broken things we find, mostly due to the heavy handed-ness of whoever makes decisions. It's very much a "if you know then you know" sort of situation now. Luckily my favorite "broken things" remain to this very day. So I do get to enjoy those gems in light of what I consider over-correction/nerfing.

[aethereal]

1 hour ago, skoryy said:

 

Yeah, that's what I thought: Tankers got a bigger target cap.  Now I'm re-doing the math and either my numbes are wrong or brutes have been beating tankers out of the water on damage co-efficients if you give them both 100% damage buff and the brute 80 fury.  Somehow I remembered it being closer.

 

The gap narrows a lot if you increase the damage buff (because Tankers get more per percent of damage buff), and especially if you give them both procs.

 

But the big juice for Tankers in terms of damage comparison with Brutes isn't in apples-to-apples comparisons (150% damage buff + 2 procs each, say).  It's that Tankers have a (much) easier time fitting more procs in their attacks while hitting any given durability goal.

[Excraft]

Quite a few people have already covered what I would've posted here.  I'll summarize by saying I don't like this change and think it heavy handed.

[Uun]

On 6/1/2025 at 4:16 PM, Uun said:

Ran the "Prove Yourself to Borea" mission on my Fire/Fire tank at +2/x8 on both live and beta servers. Same map for both runs. Didn't clear the map but cleared the same groups on both runs (cleared to objective). Took 10 minutes on live and 14 minutes on beta (29% decrease in performance). This is a largely non-proc build (1 proc each in Fire Sword, Breath of Fire, Burn, Fire Sword Circle, Incinerate and Greater Fire Sword). 

 

Also did paired runs on my SR/Staff tank, but didn't get the same map on both runs. Clearing to objective took 12 minutes on live and 16 minutes on beta (25% decrease in performance), with the beta run reflecting the buffs to Staff. Also a largely non-proc build (1 proc each in Precise Strike, Eye of the Storm, Serpent's Reach and Sky Splitter).

For comparison, I ran the same mission on my Stone/Elec brute on beta at +2/x8. Same map as the Fire/Fire tank runs. Completed in just under 10 minutes. 

[Uun]

22 hours ago, Uun said:

Ran "Borea - Defeat the Rikti Leader before he attacks" set to +2/x4 on live/beta with my Fire/Fire tank. At x4 there's only 1 boss on the map and all the spawns are smaller than 16. Ran 2x each as the maps were all different and just defeated all. Average time was 6:07 on live and 5:44 on beta. I think it's safe to say that overcap changes were the cause of the performance drop in my previous runs and that mob health/regeneration changes aren't resulting in a material change in performance.

Did some additional runs on my SR/Staff tank (average of 6:44) and my Stone/Elec brute (5:35). See previous post for the comparison runs at x8.

[Gobbledigook]

2 hours ago, aethereal said:

 

The gap narrows a lot if you increase the damage buff (because Tankers get more per percent of damage buff), and especially if you give them both procs.

 

But the big juice for Tankers in terms of damage comparison with Brutes isn't in apples-to-apples comparisons (150% damage buff + 2 procs each, say).  It's that Tankers have a (much) easier time fitting more procs in their attacks while hitting any given durability goal.

Scaling proc damage per AT may have helped with some issues. Helping some AT's more whilst restricting others some.