Focused Feedback: Tanker - Archetype Inherent Changes

[PeregrineFalcon]

16 hours ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

We are not trying to hide this; I figured it was very clear in the notes: this is a reduction of effectiveness for tankers.

The patch notes for this issue/page (at least for tankers) were so UNCLEAR that this thread was started because people thought this was another BUFF to Tanker damage. And many people who did realize that it was a nerf didn't realize all of the various implications, reduced AoE damage due to increased AoE size, reduced proc rate, procs themselves also being affected by overcap diminishing returns on top of reduced proc rate.

 

So thank you very much for responding, and explaining things, and I'm not trying to give you a hard time, I just want you to know that your notes for this page have been supper unclear and difficult to decipher. Personally I'd thought you'd done it on purpose to conceal the damage reduction in Rage so as to not set off another forum flame war.

[Hogunn]

On 6/5/2025 at 10:25 AM, Uun said:

There's a display bug in the Staff powers that includes the extra damage from Fiery Embrace in the displayed total damage. This occurs on both Live and Brainstorm. You can see this if you compare the damage figure at the top of the screen to the damage details at the bottom. For example, Guarded Spin (live) shows 106.5, but when you look at the details it shows 6 ticks of 12.24 (73.44) plus 6 ticks of 5.51 (33.06) when using Fiery Embrace. (Note, the details for all the Fire attacks incorrectly label everything with Fiery Embrace, but the totals at the top appear to be correct.)

Damn. I’ll have to test that. Saw that when I was trolling around at Tank Secondaries. I got excited thinking I would finally roll a Staff tanker. So Sky Splitter isn’t doing any more damage?

[Captain Powerhouse]

1 hour ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

The patch notes for this issue/page (at least for tankers) were so UNCLEAR that this thread was started because people thought this was another BUFF to Tanker damage.

I will personally apologize for the lack of Design Notes in the initial posts and all throughout the last couple of weeks. I honestly thought they were there all along, and I know some of it had been posted somewhere, sometime during CB so not sure how that ended up not being added. It's at the end my fault, though. I could not find the previous writeup, so I had to take some time between everything else I was fixing to get these going, so double apologies for the timing. 

 

1 minute ago, Hogunn said:

So Sky Splitter isn’t doing any more damage?

 

The damage for Skysplitter should be up from live, the thing that was being mentioned in what you quote, I think, is that the AVG number on many powers with complex mechanics tends to be wrong, as it counts conditional damage as triggering 100% of the time.

[Uun]

Just discovered a few things:

• The radius increase and resulting damage reduction applies to damage auras in tank primaries. The target cap increase does not.
• The radius increase applies to Burn. The damage reduction and target cap increase do not.
• The radius increase applies to non-damaging PBAoEs (i.e., Evolving Armor, Oppressive Gloom, Power Sink, Energy Absorption, Invincibility, Beta Decay, Against All Odds, Rise to the Challenge). The target cap increase does not. Other than Against All Odds (due to change in self-damage buff), there don't seem to be any change in other stats.

[Maelwys]

1 hour ago, Hogunn said:

Damn. I’ll have to test that. Saw that when I was trolling around at Tank Secondaries. I got excited thinking I would finally roll a Staff tanker. So Sky Splitter isn’t doing any more damage?

AFAIK Sky Spitter itself isn't doing any more damage. But it is whenever you use it under 3 stacks of Perfection.
I'm getting ~415 on Live and ~495 on Brainstorm vs a Training Pylon (ED-capped damage with Musculature + 3x Perfection of Body stacks but no other Buffs/Debuffs)

The "bonus damage" is the third hit (ignoring the proc activations).
 

Edited 19 hours ago by Maelwys

[General Idiot]

What worries me somewhat more than just the damage reductions is that they're applied so incredibly unevenly. Sets that already had 15 ft aoes are doing the same damage they did before, while other sets have seen the damage of their aoes reduced. In the previous version this was accounted for by making some powers exempt from the radius buff part of the inherent, but in this version I feel like it's been ignored?

 

For example, the current version on live has both Super Strength's Foot Stomp and Ice Melee's Frozen Aura doing nearly identical damage, with Foot Stomp having a base 15 ft radius unaffected by Gauntlet and Frozen Aura having a base 10 ft radius buffed to 15 ft by Gauntlet. The current version here on beta however sees Foot Stomp doing the same damage it's always done while Fozen Aura now does approximately 77% of its previous base damage in exchange for a radius buff it effectively already had in the previous implementation. But now because it's part of the power rather than applied by the inherent it somehow justifies a severe reduction in the base damage?

 

If the intent was to have -all- tankers doing less damage with their AoEs, I wouldn't like it but I could at least understand the logic of trying to rebalance them as an archetype compared to brutes. But since it's applied so inconsistently it's not strictly a nerf to tankers overall but rather a nerf to specific tanker power sets while others remain untouched, in exchange for a radius buff that doesn't truly exist because the live version already had it. It coming from the inherent vs being baked into the powers directly is a change that to most players isn't a change at all, the end result is the radius when they activate their power is the same on beta as it is on live and for some but not all sets they just do less damage now.

 

And then what's up with Spines? Spine Burst on live is 10 ft base, buffed to 15 by Gauntlet. On beta it's 15, but the damage is unchanged at 60.02 total. Why was this one power exempt from having its damage nerfed like the others? Or Fiery Melee, where Fire Sword Circle saw its damage reduced but Combustion didn't even though they both received the same increase from 10 to 15 ft? If there's logic there, I'm not seeing it.

 

This whole change feels very inconsistent in a way I'm not used to seeing from Homecoming. And I just can't help but wonder if the implications regarding balance between different power sets have actually been thought through all the way because that's the net effect here, relative performance from one set to another has changed. Changing the radius increase from being an inherent power to just increasing the base number doesn't actually change anything, at all. So from the perspective of the average player who might not even read patch notes, they've just decided for whatever reason to nerf the aoe output of some sets heavily, some sets more lightly, and a few sets not at all.

 

And again, none of this is even mentioning the overcap mechanic which quite frankly to me seems entirely overengineered for what it's trying to achieve. If you want to nerf tankers' aoe damage, just nerf tankers' aoe damage and be done with it rather than inventing a whole new mechanic for it. But even before considering that, if the intent is to rebalance the archetype overall and not specific power sets then whatever changes are made to base damage should be applied evenly to all sets rather than haphazardly a little here, a lot there, none at all over here.

 

 

And if, as I've seen some people speculate, these changes are really at least partly about adjusting the performance of IO procs in aoes for some sets.... just a crazy thought. Maybe we really need to rip the bandaids off already and actually do a proper rebalance on IOs instead of tinkering around the edges of all the problems they cause by being as horribly unbalanced as they are. I know that's not a popular opinion, but more and more I feel like its what needs to happen or these kinds of haphazard bandaid solutions to problems that don't exist on SOs are just going to continue to proliferate. But that's a whole other discussion that's likely beyond the scope of this particular feedback thread.

[KittyEater88]

Back from vacation and played my main and oldest character, a Firex3 Tanker. This feels so bad. What is the point of playing an offensive armor set on this Archetype now?
 

Why is an Archetype that was buffed 5 YEARS AGO now suddenly a problem, with zero measures taken in that time to reduce homogenization and enhance Archetype relevance and flavor?

[Maelwys]

38 minutes ago, General Idiot said:

And then what's up with Spines? Spine Burst on live is 10 ft base, buffed to 15 by Gauntlet. On beta it's 15, but the damage is unchanged at 60.02 total. Why was this one power exempt from having its damage nerfed like the others? Or Fiery Melee, where Fire Sword Circle saw its damage reduced but Combustion didn't even though they both received the same increase from 10 to 15 ft? If there's logic there, I'm not seeing it.

 

Combustion and Spine Burst both have a base radius of 15ft, just like Foot Stomp. (You can see this by looking at their stats on other ATs - like Brute Spines and Blaster Fire Manipulation). As such the Tanker versions didn't need their radius buffed and so didn't get their base damage reduced.

[ivanhedgehog]

Has anyone tried a beta tank teamed with a couple of stacked blasters? can the tank hold agro? try this at 30, 40 and 50? How will reduced damage effect agro control? I dont have a testing buddy so I cant do this. if someone has already done this, what were the results?

[Uncle Shags]

On 6/6/2025 at 8:53 PM, Captain Powerhouse said:

The feedback we got in this thread and on discord was that this just felt too harsh and complex, so we opted to change it to a flat 1/3rd damage on all powers, regardless of if they are cones or spheres. This should be simpler and easier to understand.

So you made it simpler. And more harsh. 

[FupDup]

I really feel like a simple reduction in the base melee damage modifier would've been way easier than all this stuff with overcapping and cone nerfs. 

[Major_Decoy]

20 hours ago, ExeErdna said:

From my time testing tankers I realized Tankers are melee controllers. So to me they either NEED to be able to sweep through mobs and soften them up for other players. Or IF their damage is low their debuffing/mezzing should be high. 

 

This is actually something about the initial design of tankers that was lost in the way the implemented new sets and later power set proliferation.

 

Tanker sets:

Super Strength has holds, stuns, and knockback.

Mace has stuns and knockback.

Axe has knockback.

Energy Melee has stuns.

Ice Melee has knockback, holds, (and some -recharge)

Stone Melee has knockback, holds, stuns

Fiery Melee only has extra damage.

 

But of note, Tanker sets are focused on the "classical elements" and tend towards having controls.

 

Scrapper Sets:

Broad Sword has -defense, some knockback, and parry

Claws has some -defense (not much)

Dark Melee has some -accuracy, an immobilize, and a heal.

Katana has -defense, some knockback, and divine avalanche

Spines has damage over time, an immobilize, some knockback, and some -recharge.

Martial Arts has stuns and knockback.

With the exception of Martial Arts, Scrapper sets tend to have more debuffs. (and no elemental sets)

 

And, I think, that where Cryptic failed with differentiating Tanks, Scrappers, and Brutes is where they succeeded in differentiating Stalkers.

The only real changes they made when proliferating sets is in changing out confront for taunt. This is probably budget and time concerns, but it's made comparisons as simple as "who does the most damage?" because there's not really any other metric to compare them on.

 

If tanks had actually been melee controllers, and scrappers had been melee debuffers, and brutes had been oranges on pogo sticks, we'd be having entirely different arguments now.

Edited 9 hours ago by Major_Decoy

[Major_Decoy]

So, with that in mind, what I'd do is something like:

 

Every Tanker should get one mag 4 stun and one mag 4 hold. Drop Build-up, give tanks a PBAoE Commanding Call or something like that, taunts the enemies and gives everyone a to-hit buff, damage buff, and +special, kind of like a combination Call to Justice and Power Boost.

 

Every Brute should get one mag 4 immobilize and one mag 4 fear. Drop build-up, give a PBAoE Battle cry with something of a reverse repel effect to draw enemies in closer. It should also increase the brute's accuracy and damage (but not as much as build-up) and reduce the brute's endurance costs.

 

Every Scrapper should get a -damage debuff and a -to hit debuff. I'd argue for somewhat powerful ones with short durations, so if you can time it right before big attacks you'll notice your difference in survivability. They could keep build-up, but since stalkers already have build-up, maybe give a power that leans more into criticals.

[Maelwys]

I'd go the other way; frankly.

Tankers = "hold aggro; more mitigation focused; inflict similar or very slightly less ST and AoE damage than Brutes but with the AoE damage spread out over more targets."
Brutes = "hold aggro; balanced between offense and mitigation; inflict decent levels of both ST and AoE damage."
Scrappers = "largely ignore aggro control; more focused on offense than mitigation; inflict slightly more ST and AoE damage than Brutes."
Stalkers = "inherently stealthy so completely ignore aggro control; much more focused on offense than mitigation; much more ST damage at the expense of AoE."

IMO there's no need for "hard" Crowd Control like mez effects outside of a specific powersets (like Dark Armor).

Scrappers and Stalkers are actually IMO currently both in a reasonably good place balancewise (aside from possibly requiring a slight ATO rebalance; but a general PPM mechanic rework would solve that). Tankers are hopefully likewise going to be in a good place after the intended effects of this new rework are realised (although getting the AoE spread balance 'just right' might take some followup tweaks in future patches - as we've pointed out previously the "overcap" damage reduction is currently a flat -67% which is overly harsh). Brutes' main issue is IMO their ATOs; which at present are both total cowdung and so add very little in terms of practical performance benefit; resulting in a major performance disparity between Brutes and the other melee ATs at level 50 whenever all of them are "optimized"... I've suggested some reworks to help resolve this issue before; but realistically one of their ATO procs/globals needs to give them a tangible increase in damage output (rather than an utterly negligible fury buff) and the other a tangible increase in survivability (like Absorb or +MaxHP/+Defence/+Resistance... rather than a virtually unnoticeable Regeneration Rate buff).
 

Edited 5 hours ago by Maelwys

[Videra]

On 5/28/2025 at 10:16 PM, AmrasNotHere said:

In short, after testing various combos, I feel this is a step backwards. I personally think focusing on improving brutes specifically would have been a better use of time and energy for all of us instead of targeting an AT that was already given a fairly positive change across the board.

 

This, basically.

[General Idiot]

14 hours ago, Maelwys said:

 

Combustion and Spine Burst both have a base radius of 15ft, just like Foot Stomp. (You can see this by looking at their stats on other ATs - like Brute Spines and Blaster Fire Manipulation). As such the Tanker versions didn't need their radius buffed and so didn't get their base damage reduced.

Okay so I didn't look at the versions on other ATs and you're right on one of them at least, on other ATs Spine Burst is in fact 15 ft. But on tankers, on current live Homecoming, it's 10 ft. I assume that was done at some point to account for the current version of Gauntlet buffing it back to 15 ft. Which honestly just adds more weight to my point of this change being only a change in implementation to no actual effect on gameplay as far as the AoE radius is concerned. So effectively it's just a very questionably justified nerf to damage on some powers.

 

Might be worth noting however, other melee ATs don't get Combustion. The only version of fiery melee that gets it is the Tanker version, and it has a base radius of 10 ft on live. Yet it doesn't get its damage nerfed for being changed to 15 ft while other powers even within the same set do. And yes, Blasters get it in fire manipulation and Dominators get in in fiery assault and it's 15 ft there, so maybe that makes some sense. But it's again quite dubious to balance a melee set based on ranged sets' version of the power.

[Uun]

1 hour ago, General Idiot said:

Might be worth noting however, other melee ATs don't get Combustion. The only version of fiery melee that gets it is the Tanker version, and it has a base radius of 10 ft on live. Yet it doesn't get its damage nerfed for being changed to 15 ft while other powers even within the same set do. And yes, Blasters get it in fire manipulation and Dominators get in in fiery assault and it's 15 ft there, so maybe that makes some sense. But it's again quite dubious to balance a melee set based on ranged sets' version of the power.

Prior to the Gauntlet radius changes, Tanker Combustion had a 15 ft radius. Not sure why they didn't leave it alone and flag it to ignore radius buffs instead of reducing it to 10 ft, but the current change just reverts that change.