Focused Feedback: Tanker - Archetype Inherent Changes

[skoryy]

1 hour ago, Maelwys said:

So I can foresee Tankers only getting a spot on many teams if the leader really likes the player and/or doesn't care about killspeed... which is unfortunate; because that means they'll have simply traded places with Brutes as the "pity spot" melee AT. 

 

A tank can still pull and survive more than any other class, so I'd think they still have their spot where pulling and survival are needed: Mosh pits, for one example.

[Gobbledigook]

2 hours ago, Maelwys said:

Aye those numbers look more like it now.

So purely with an AoE attack; when "Unbuffed" a Brute with Fury and procs has gone from dealing ~24.4% less damage than a Tanker to dealing ~21.9% more than them.
And at the damage cap, a Brute has gone from dealing ~32.6 less damage than a Tanker to dealing ~9.4% damage more than them.
That's a hefty difference to anyone who isn't being Fulcrum Shifted (or Active AE Farming + chugging red insps like candy) - and even then Brutes still "win".

And Tanker Cones are going to be even worse off than that... and Tanker Single Target damage has always been less than the others anyway.

Really not surprising therefore that folk are posting 30%-40%+ increases in Tanker mission clear times...

And that is at 75% fury, 85% is easily achievable in a mob.

[Erratic1]

5 minutes ago, Excraft said:

 

 

Sounds like an across the board damage nerf to me.  

 

 

The word "buff" means something. Are you continuously, 100% of the time under a damage buff you have applied to yourself, say like Build Up? 

 

Even if so, that is not base damage being lowered. It is not changing.

[dukedukes]

7 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

 

The word "buff" means something. Are you continuously, 100% of the time under a damage buff you have applied to yourself, say like Build Up? 

 

Even if so, that is not base damage being lowered. It is not changing.

Every tanker aoe attack that had its radius increase deals between 12% and 23% less base damage, this is the biggest across the board nerf tankers have received with these changes.

[Erratic1]

25 minutes ago, dukedukes said:

Every tanker aoe attack that had its radius increase deals between 12% and 23% less base damage, this is the biggest across the board nerf tankers have received with these changes.

 

 "Across the board" means everything. Not just AoE, and not "AoE" when beyond certain numbers of target" and not, "AoE past a certain number and only to those past that number."

 

"Across the board" is a plainly wrong claim.

[dukedukes]

13 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

 

 "Across the board" means everything. Not just AoE, and not "AoE" when beyond certain numbers of target" and not, "AoE past a certain number and only to those past that number."

 

"Across the board" is a plainly wrong claim.

Are you content with "across the board AOE tanker base damage reduction"?. I contextualized my statement by mentioning "tanker aoe attacks", unless we are writing law here I don't think arguing semantics is so interesting.

[Erratic1]

13 minutes ago, dukedukes said:

Are you content with "across the board AOE tanker base damage reduction"?. I contextualized my statement by mentioning "tanker aoe attacks", unless we are writing law here I don't think arguing semantics is so interesting.

 

You quoted my response to:

 

Quote

Limiting how procs can be slotted would be better than nerfing damage across the board in my opinion.

  

 

There was no context there. It is a flat claim that damage is being nerfed, " across the board". It is not. Period.

[ShardWarrior]

3 hours ago, Erratic1 said:

Are you continuously, 100% of the time under a damage buff you have applied to yourself, say like Build Up? 

 

Yes if you have built in enough recharge to be running perma Rage on a SS tanker.

[Erratic1]

2 hours ago, ShardWarrior said:

 

Yes if you have built in enough recharge to be running perma Rage on a SS tanker.

 

Something about selective quoting applies here. Almost like the following was not part of my post:

 

Quote

Even if so, that is not base damage being lowered. It is not changing.

 

[Uun]

 There are two things going on. First is the transfer of the Gauntlet radius/range/target cap buffs to the powers themselves. Second is the damage penalty applied to over cap targets. Before you even get to the target cap penalty, damage is being reduced significantly due to the increased radius/range. The over cap penalty is then applied to this already reduced base value. Restating what others have said, I consider this penalty to be overly harsh. Using Staff Fighting as an example (assuming target saturation):

 

 

Note that for Guarded Spin and Eye of the Storm, the aggregate damage applied to the base + over cap targets on beta is less than the aggregate damage applied to just the base targets on live (for Innocuous Strikes it's slightly more). It would be more efficient to revert the radius/range/target caps to those used by other ATs and attack fewer targets at a time. Assuming there's been no change to Gauntlet's AoE taunt, there should be no appreciable change in aggro control.

 

Edited Tuesday at 08:32 PM by Uun
fixed error

[PeregrineFalcon]

I know that the proc rate is reduced because of the increased size of the AoEs. But is the -damage for Overcap being applied to the procs as well?

 

And if not, is this reduction in damage output affecting attacks without procs more than attacks with procs?

[skoryy]

44 minutes ago, Uun said:

Before you even get to the target cap penalty, damage is being reduced significantly due to the increased radius/range.

 

I think this requires a clarification,. Damage is reduced significantly depending on how many procs you're using.

[Erratic1]

42 minutes ago, Uun said:

Before you even get to the target cap penalty, damage is being reduced significantly due to the increased radius/range.

 

I had previously thought reducing the overcap falloff was called for. Reaching the point where the falloff should just be dropped.

[Maelwys]

55 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

 is the -damage for Overcap being applied to the procs as well?

Yes.

Any damage dealt to "overcap" targets, including proc damage, gets reduced by the (overly harsh!) overcap damage reduction curve.
See my post here which has a few relevant combat log snippets.

So you can't just procbomb an AoE attack to soften/avoid the damage reduction.

[Maelwys]

45 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

I had previously thought reducing the overcap falloff was called for. Reaching the point where the falloff should just be dropped.

Agreed.

@Devs: Please either lose the Gauntlet Attack Radius change, or lose the 'Overcap' Damage Reduction change. Don't implement both simultaneously.

Personally I'd actually prefer the Overcap damage reduction be kept and the Radius changes dropped... as that way Tankers with AoEs that are already 15ft in radius (like Super Strength) would still see a reasonable reduction in damage output. But I could go either way. (The Radius changes are lowering base damage across the board for AoEs with less than 15ft radius regardless of how many targets are hit, nerfing Proc damage on those same attacks and making Melee Cone attacks able to hit less things - but the overcap mechanic is already nerfing both Regular and Proc damage against any "extra targets" - which AFAIK is where the bulk of the Tanker performance disparity is coming from...)
 

Edited Tuesday at 09:49 PM by Maelwys

[twozerofoxtrot]

On 6/3/2025 at 1:50 AM, 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.

A microcosm of the Focused Feedback threads.

[Erratic1]

37 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

Personally I'd actually prefer the Overcap damage reduction be kept and the Radius changes dropped... as that way Tankers with AoEs that are already 15ft in radius (like Super Strength) would still see a reasonable reduction in damage output. But I could go either way.

 

My gut feeling was to go the other way as that keeps the proc reduction in place. Without falloff, you end up with just the reduction from the base, so Guarded Spin: 21%, Eye of the Storm: 23% reduction, Innocuous Strikes, 15% reduction. Is that still too steep? Let's say you're averaging 20% reduction across the various AoEs. If AoE damage is the primary mode of clearing trash, then you're looking at an increase in mission timers of 25%. So what took 2 minutes before will now take 2 minutes, 30 seconds.

 

 

 

[Uun]

1 hour ago, skoryy said:

I think this requires a clarification,. Damage is reduced significantly depending on how many procs you're using.

I wasn't looking at procs/enhancements. This is just base damage.

[Maelwys]

20 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

My gut feeling was to go the other way as that keeps the proc reduction in place.

Proc reduction is in place either way... the damage dealt by Procs will get reduced by the "overcap" damage reduction (at least to targets beyond the regular cap); and the likelihood of Procs activating in the first place will get reduced by the gauntlet radius changes (to all targets of an AoE as long as it has a regular radius <15ft).

Without sounding like a broken record: I do think Tankers are doing too much AoE damage; as they hit more targets than Brutes or Scrappers do with the same attack. "Radius and Base Damage/Proc Activation" adjustment is certainly one way to go about that; and "Damage reduction to anything beyond the regular target cap" is another. But a good few AoEs exist where the radius is already 15ft (like Footstomp, Axe Cyclone, or Spine Burst; or Tremor) and those attacks won't be impacted by the radius changes. Footstomp in particular is very, very good when procbombed and quite honestly it needs to have its damage reduced for targets #11-16... hence my preference for leaving the overcap reduction in place.

[EDIT: Perhaps the gauntlet radius changes could be kept in and the overcap reductions could be left in place for ONLY AoEs with a regular radius of 15ft... but that might be more trouble than it's worth?]
 

Edited Tuesday at 10:57 PM by Maelwys

[Uun]

1 hour ago, Maelwys said:

Agreed.

@Devs: Please either lose the Gauntlet Attack Radius change, or lose the 'Overcap' Damage Reduction change. Don't implement both simultaneously.

Personally I'd actually prefer the Overcap damage reduction be kept and the Radius changes dropped... as that way Tankers with AoEs that are already 15ft in radius (like Super Strength) would still see a reasonable reduction in damage output. But I could go either way. (The Radius changes are lowering base damage across the board for AoEs with less than 15ft radius regardless of how many targets are hit, nerfing Proc damage on those same attacks and making Melee Cone attacks able to hit less things - but the overcap mechanic is already nerfing both Regular and Proc damage against any "extra targets" - which AFAIK is where the bulk of the Tanker performance disparity is coming from...)

Not sure I understand why cones/AoEs increased from 5 to 10 are penalized 44% per additional foe compounded but those increased from 10 to 16 are only penalized 25% per additional foe compounded. I think the penalty should be at the same rate for both types (and should be more like 15-20% compounded).

[Erratic1]

14 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

You might be right about that, but Tanker self-damage buffs, like Build up and Rage, have also been nerfed in this patch.

 

I never said otherwise. 

 

Build Up has a 90s base recharge rate and you can at max reduce it to 18 seconds. With a 10s duration, that is what...10s up and 8s down? So 180% damage for 10s and 100% damage for 8 on live, for an average of 144.44% versus on test having 170% for 10s and 100% for 8s, for an average of 138.88% or a reduction of 4%. And that is if you maintain maximum recharge reduction, with the loss being lower the less global recharge you are maintaining. Allow me to suggest that is basically a meaningless change.

 

Rage applies on one, and only one powerset--Super Strength. You go from an 80% (or 160% double stacked) boost to 70% (or 140% double stacked). That is a 5.5% drop. Again, not that meaningful.

 

I leave Follow Up as an exercise for the reader.

 

In terms of what is causing tanker mission time clears to leap as much as they have, this is about as much of a non-factor as the new opponent healing factor.

Edited Tuesday at 11:06 PM by Erratic1

[skoryy]

37 minutes ago, Uun said:

I wasn't looking at procs/enhancements. This is just base damage.

 

I'm missing something then. How is damage down per target with the new range / radius?

[Maelwys]

11 minutes ago, skoryy said:

I'm missing something then. How is damage down per target with the new range / radius?

The base Areafactor of an attack affects its base damage.
You can see this demonstrated for Dragon's tail in my post here - hitting a single target with it (unprocced + unenhanced) on Brainstorm does less damage than on Live.

It's up in the air whether this side effect of the radius changes is intentional or not as base damage reduction is not expressly mentioned in the patch notes.
I've asked them for clarity in the Build #4 thread.
 

[macskull]

3 hours ago, Maelwys said:

It's up in the air whether this side effect of the radius changes is intentional or not as base damage reduction is not expressly mentioned in the patch notes.

It is absolutely intentional. The patch notes only say what the change is and not necessarily what the actual effects of the change are, which is pretty normal for patch notes - it’s just that the Tanker changes are kind of abstract so it’s not immediately obvious from the patch notes what the change actually accomplishes.

[K26dp]

The Build-Up nerf doesn't seem to do much except make fights against Boss/Elite Boss/AVs even more boring.