Focused Feedback: Tanker - Archetype Inherent Changes

[Maelwys]

3 hours ago, macskull said:

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.

 

It might well be a (very poorly documented!) intentional change, but I still think it could also just be a byproduct of someone in the powers team bulk adjusting the radius values and either forgetting to renormalize the damage numbers afterwards or not realising that they needed to do so.

 

As has been pointed out in another thread, whilst the design formula for AoE damage includes area factor, if it's not recalculated at runtime then the base damage per activation of each affected attack could have been left as-is if all the Devs wanted to do was bump the radius. Given the amount of changes being made in this page and the other errors and omissions that have already been highlighted; I'm currently giving them the benefit of the doubt and not (yet) ascribing this one to malice. But IMHO if this particular change is staying in, then the patch notes 100% need clarified here.

[tidge]

5 hours ago, K26dp said:

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

 

Has the decrease in Tanker self-buffs extended to Inspirations as well?

[Erratic1]

31 minutes ago, tidge said:

 

Has the decrease in Tanker self-buffs extended to Inspirations as well?

 

Logged in and popped a small red. It gave its advertised boost.

[Maelwys]

31 minutes ago, tidge said:

 

Has the decrease in Tanker self-buffs extended to Inspirations as well?

Nope.

Inspirations ignore the AT modifiers, it's a flat bonus to everyone (like Call to Justice; and Assault Core Embodiment stacks)
Stuff like perfection of Body Stacks, Rage, Build Up (which all use the Melee_Buff_Dmg scalar instead of Melee_Ones) are affected. 

Brainstorm


Live

[Excraft]

13 hours ago, Erratic1 said:

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.

 

If the damage nerf numbers aren't significant and the change is meaningless, then why make it at all?

[Maelwys]

23 minutes ago, Excraft said:

If the damage nerf numbers aren't significant and the change is meaningless, then why make it at all?

My money's on OCD.

VEAT MeleeBuffDmg = 0.1
Blaster MeleeBuffDmg = 0.125
Scrapper MeleeBuffDmg = 0.125
Stalker MeleeBuffDmg = 0.1
Brute MeleeBuffDmg = 0.1
Tanker MeleeBuffDmg = 0.1

Heavens! We can't have a low-to-medium damage AT like a Tanker buffing their own damage by the same scale as a Stalker or a Brute, can we? That'd be sheer madness.


Similar deal for the -res scaling change.

VEAT MeleeDebuffResDmg = 1.0
Blaster MeleeDebuffResDmg = 0.7
Scrapper MeleeDebuffResDmg = 0.75
Stalker MeleeDebuffResDmg = 0.75
Brute MeleeDebuffResDmg = 0.75
Tanker MeleeDebuffResDmg = 0.8

OMGWTFBBQ it's 0.05 too high! All those oodles of -resistance debuffs that Tankers get access to are far too strong! WE MUST SMITE IT WITH THE MIGHTY NERF BAT!

_{...yeah, it's pretty pointless.} 🙄

[Erratic1]

1 hour ago, Excraft said:

 

If the damage nerf numbers aren't significant and the change is meaningless, then why make it at all?

 

Darn good question.

[StarkWhite]

So let me get this straight: y'all don't like small nerfs and would much prefer big noticeable ones?

[Maelwys]

6 minutes ago, StarkWhite said:

So let me get this straight: y'all don't like small nerfs and would much prefer big noticeable ones?

There's a Sir Mix-a-Lot song in there somewhere... 😜

I used to main a Regen Scrapper. I'm not exactly a stranger to nerfs.
Doesn't really matter to me if a change is Small or Large; but I much prefer ones that make sense to implement and are balanced properly.

[Excraft]

10 minutes ago, StarkWhite said:

So let me get this straight: y'all don't like small nerfs and would much prefer big noticeable ones?

 

No one said anything even remotely like this.  

[PeregrineFalcon]

23 minutes ago, Excraft said:

No one said anything even remotely like this.  

I think he was trying to say that he likes big buffs.

[tidge]

10 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

I think he was trying to say that he likes big buffs.

 

I see what you did there.

 

The reduction in self-buffs isn't 100% overlapped with the changes to cones or the overcap reductions... but it does seem (to this guy, *points to self*) that there is probably one-too-many ideas being thrown into the pot of tanker-scale-back. It isn't as if the self-buffs somehow are negating the effects of the overcap or cone changes, are they?

[Erratic1]

42 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

There's a Sir Mix-a-Lot song in there somewhere... 😜

 

Oh my God, Becky...look at her nerf...it is so big.

It looks like one of those developers nerfs.

Who understands those CoH developers?

[MrAxe]

Gonna have to do some dual blades testing. Very concerned about lethal dmg + nerfs.

[StarkWhite]

32 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

I think he was trying to say that he likes big buffs.

I cannot lie.

[macskull]

9 hours ago, Maelwys said:

 

It might well be a (very poorly documented!) intentional change, but I still think it could also just be a byproduct of someone in the powers team bulk adjusting the radius values and either forgetting to renormalize the damage numbers afterwards or not realising that they needed to do so.

 

As has been pointed out in another thread, whilst the design formula for AoE damage includes area factor, if it's not recalculated at runtime then the base damage per activation of each affected attack could have been left as-is if all the Devs wanted to do was bump the radius. Given the amount of changes being made in this page and the other errors and omissions that have already been highlighted; I'm currently giving them the benefit of the doubt and not (yet) ascribing this one to malice. But IMHO if this particular change is staying in, then the patch notes 100% need clarified here.

Again, not a dev so I don't know the exact details, but the damage formula is not some dynamic thing where you plug in the power's base stats and it spits out a damage number. The damage formula is used to determine what a power's damage should be, but the actual final numbers are manually entered when creating or modifying a power, so it would not be possible for both the radius and the final damage number to change without it being an intentional act. Sure, a dev could have just bumped the radius and left the damage alone, but at that point you'd have almost every AoE power for an entire archetype ignoring the damage formula. Given the current dev team's insistence that everything follows the rules, I highly doubt this would have happened.

 

EDIT: I read your linked comment and it's saying the exact same thing. There is zero chance this was not intentional. I can also refer back to dev statements made during the original round of Tanker changes where they explicitly acknowledged having the radius and arc buffs added by a separate power after the fact meant powers would both deal more damage and have a higher proc chance than they'd otherwise suggest. It was an intentional change then, and the changes on test are an intentional change now.

Edited Wednesday at 04:56 PM by macskull

[Maelwys]

24 minutes ago, macskull said:

Given the current dev team's insistence that everything follows the rules, I highly doubt this would have happened.

Fair.
However regardless of whether it's intentional or not; if they're keeping things as-is then they'll need to be a damn sight more clear about it in the patch notes.

Because it's pretty clear that this: 

On 5/26/2025 at 12:53 PM, The Curator said:

• Removed passive global Arc/Radius buff
• Increased the radius and range of all tanker Primary and Secondary Cones by 50%
  • Cones no longer have their arc boosted
• Increased the radius of all tanker Primary and Secondary Sphere AoEs by 50%
  • The increase wont push radius above 15ft

just means "we've tweaked Tanker AoE radius a bit" to most people.

If the reader cares about min-maxing and/or is inclined towards using spreadsheets then they might realise that this will negatively impact proc activation likelihood... but I can count the number of people who have realised it means a reduction in AoE base damage on one hand. So far the rest have needed it pointed out and/or screamed at them.
 

[macskull]

3 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

Fair.
However regardless of whether it's intentional or not; if they're keeping things as-is then they'll need to be a damn sight more clear about it in the patch notes.

Because it's pretty clear that this: 

just means "we've tweaked Tanker AoE radius a bit" to most people.

If the reader cares about min-maxing and/or is inclined towards using spreadsheets then they might realise that this will negatively impact proc activation likelihood... but I can count the number of people who have realised it means a reduction in AoE base damage on one hand. So far the rest have needed it pointed out and/or screamed at them.

I can't remember if I've already said this here or if it was somewhere else, but when they post patch notes they just post what the change is instead of what it actually does and that second bit is what's not immediately obvious for these changes. Hell, even I immediately realized it would affect proc rates but didn't put two and two together with it also reducing base damage until someone else pointed it out to me. There should probably be a "design note" in the Tanker section of the patch notes for this update.

[PeregrineFalcon]

26 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

So far the rest have needed it pointed out and/or screamed at them.

I agree that "this will reduce the damage of Tanker AoEs" should be in the patch notes somewhere when the patch finally goes to the live server.

 

I doubt that the min/maxers who 3 or 4 proc every attack will need to be told that it will reduce proc rate. Even I realized that and, as we all recently saw in another thread, - not gonna say which one - my math skills have definitely dropped considerably over the years. However, I think that the fact that proc damage itself is also subject to the overcap diminishing returns is something that may not be immediately apparent, and it should also be explicitly mentioned in the patch notes.

 

Finally, I'm actually quite shocked that no one's flipped out about the nerf to Rage. So good job there!

[Super Atom]

1 hour ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Finally, I'm actually quite shocked that no one's flipped out about the nerf to Rage. So good job there!

 

Pooping on poo is just more poo for the pile. - sun tzu

[Maelwys]

39 minutes ago, Super Atom said:

 

Pooping on poo is just more poo for the pile. - sun tzu

 

 

[Nevli]

With the information laid out by others, specially at the fact that the Baseline AoE changes would affect damage (New knowledge every day), I would personally also give an opinion that perhaps something should be done with the Overcap damage reduction.

 

Tanker definitely at Live does far more AOE damage compared to Brute, even at low target counts, so it makes sense to reduce that as best one can. However, as the data shown, Tanker doing *Less* than a Brute at their target cap, also feels bizarre. 

Ideally, I feel that Tanker at their new target cap, like 16, should be really doing the same OR slightly more than a Brute does at theirs, like 10.

 

Brute, with just the area factor math changes, alone already will be doing more damage per target than Tanker. With that, Tanker doing the same amount of overall damage, but on more targets, just seems to be a proper balancing point. Less targets, Brute wins out, but more Targets, Tanker is either more efficient or even slightly better... And as enemies die out or smaller groups are engaged, Brute starts to pick up wind.

 

That be my two cents at least from the info I seen on the thread so far. :0

Reducing Overcap reductions or even removing it, all so Tanker has EQUAL damage to Brute on target cap AoE scenarios, even if the target caps are different.

[ZemX]

3 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Finally, I'm actually quite shocked that no one's flipped out about the nerf to Rage. So good job there!

 

Well the one good bit of news for SS fans is that Foot Stomp is only getting hit by the diminished returns nerf, not having its base damage also reduced like all other Tanker AoEs.  It's base damage has always violated the standard damage formula.  It has a 15ft radius but does damage equivalent to a 10ft radius PBAoE, for all ATs that have it.

 

Hand Clap has also not been nerfed!  So that's TWO pieces of good news, actually!

 

...

 

Right?

[Warboss]

Isn't it still affected by the overall damage reduction? And would Hand Clap be hit by the proc nerf?

[ZemX]

48 minutes ago, Warboss said:

Isn't it still affected by the overall damage reduction? And would Hand Clap be hit by the proc nerf?

 

Both Hand Clap and Foot Stomp are 15ft radius on Live already, hence they are not getting bigger.  So damage on FS is not changing (or hasn't yet judging by what's on Brainstorm now) and proc rates for both don't change either, though that's because they were ALREADY worse than 10ft Tanker PBAoEs embiggened by Gauntlet in other powersets.

 

The only damage nerf for FS and for procs in both powers is the diminished returns for hitting over 10 targets, same as everything else.