Focused Feedback: Tanker - Archetype Inherent Changes

[ShardWarrior]

I have a question regarding these changes.  Are these in part due to wanting to make Brutes more attractive?  If so, then perhaps working on Brutes to give them more of a unique role or improving their ATO sets may be better than nerfing tankers? 

[ivanhedgehog]

On 5/28/2025 at 2:07 PM, Super Atom said:

It might fix a couple of tanker issues but im just gonna be honest, this made tankers less fun to play. 

 

I don't have specific numbers or powers that should be exempted for you. Just a generalized experience on a couple of my tanks. It's just less fun than before and will likely be the death of many of my tank toons.

 

I think this was just too much for some of the mid-range melee sets without them getting their own individual buffs. I have no doubt the top performing tank sets will still feel ok but lord did this X off like half the options.

 

 

Kinetic Melee has never been worse.  😭

Part of the problem is all they care about is nuking procs. They would do a universal proc nerf if they didnt think it would crater the game. They have said they have intentions of de procing the game. what is the point of hammering tanks? Is this all about 54x8 performance? At least 1/2 of the IO sets are garbage that are used to convert to something useful. If they were modified to provide some special effects or better bonuses, people would diversify and use them. Maybe use some of the low level ones to make lower levels worth using IOs.

[skoryy]

11 minutes ago, ivanhedgehog said:

Part of the problem is all they care about is nuking procs. They would do a universal proc nerf if they didnt think it would crater the game. They have said they have intentions of de procing the game. what is the point of hammering tanks? Is this all about 54x8 performance? At least 1/2 of the IO sets are garbage that are used to convert to something useful. If they were modified to provide some special effects or better bonuses, people would diversify and use them. Maybe use some of the low level ones to make lower levels worth using IOs.

 

There was just a huge thread a week or two ago that said that building for defense cap was out of date, and its all about building for procs.  If mobs are dying without even defense mattering, let alone control, then all the reworked IOs and special effects aren't going to matter when you can still procbomb your way through content.  

 

If damage is king and makes everything else irrelevant, there are two ways of fixing that:

• Nerf damage
• Tougher mobs

In this patch, we're getting both.

[Erratic1]

1 hour ago, ShardWarrior said:

I have a question regarding these changes.  Are these in part due to wanting to make Brutes more attractive?  If so, then perhaps working on Brutes to give them more of a unique role or improving their ATO sets may be better than nerfing tankers? 

 

I have routinely been informed, generally by Tanker aficionados, that Brutes are fine and their role is to do better single target damage than Tankers.

[ivanhedgehog]

On 5/29/2025 at 4:15 AM, Reiska said:

The core problem here is that there are four melee archetypes in a game that really only has firm concept space for three of them, and that truly fixing the melee AT imbalance is impossible without radically reinventing the gameplay role of Brutes, who were never designed (by Cryptic/Paragon) to exist in the same meta as Tanker and it shows in how they radically step on each others' toes.

 

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.  On Live, it was Tankers; now, it's Brutes, and by all impressions I've seen these partial rollbacks of Homecoming's Tanker buffs do not change that.

 

And even if Homecoming was willing to radically reinvent one of the game's most-played ATs and almost certainly piss off everyone playing it, what niche is there for them to occupy that doesn't instead step on the toes of Scrappers or Stalkers?

 

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.

on the other hand...Brutes are fun to play. a lot of people dont min/max

[Erratic1]

6 minutes ago, ivanhedgehog said:

on the other hand...Brutes are fun to play. a lot of people dont min/max

 

Are any of them Brute players. 🤣

[Uncle Shags]

2 hours ago, Max Firepower said:

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.

That would be a 40-50% damage nerf.

[Erratic1]

3 minutes ago, Uncle Shags said:

That would be a 40-50% damage nerf.

 

 

2m to 3m is a 33% damage reduction. 

 

2.5m to 3.5m is a 28.57% damage reduction.

[ShardWarrior]

1 hour ago, Erratic1 said:

I have routinely been informed, generally by Tanker aficionados, that Brutes are fine and their role is to do better single target damage than Tankers.

 

Scrappers and Stalkers already fill that role.  Brutes are essentially superfluous without any meaningful role in my opinion.  Not quite a tanker, and out shined by Scrappers and Stalkers. 

[ivanhedgehog]

53 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

 

Scrappers and Stalkers already fill that role.  Brutes are essentially superfluous without any meaningful role in my opinion.  Not quite a tanker, and out shined by Scrappers and Stalkers. 

What good are defenders? bad damage compared to corruptors and defender buffs are not that much better. Defender inherent isnt as good also.

[Camoron]

On 5/28/2025 at 3:54 PM, macskull said:

The fault with this logic is that the Scrapper version of melee and armor sets is often at least a little different than the Tanker and Brute versions, and Scrappers have an entirely different playstyle. For the most part, Tanker and Brute powersets are identical, their playstyles are identical, and they fill the exact same role on a team.

 

Sure, Brutes technically have an edge in single-target damage, but the difference is extremely small and it’s often not worth losing all the benefits of a Tanker. You buff Brutes by making them different from Tankers enough that people no longer feel the need to compare them side by side.

Take that up with the original developers of City of Villains, I guess. Heroes and Villains were never designed to be played side by side on teams together, and Brutes reflect that. Once those floodgates were opened, the comparisons became inevitable, and even though AT is long since not tied to which side you play on (and even that doesn't really mean anything anymore), nobody dares make too much of a change to either Tankers or Brutes to make them stand out from each other because *someone* would surely complain.

Edited yesterday at 04:10 AM by Camoron

[Erratic1]

On topic, I would like to ask what is the purpose of giving Tankers increased area of effect and then making damage fall off as quickly as it does? Great, you can hit 16 targets but anything past 12/13 is basically not gaining you anything for being hit.

[Parabola]

14 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

On topic, I would like to ask what is the purpose of giving Tankers increased area of effect and then making damage fall off as quickly as it does? Great, you can hit 16 targets but anything past 12/13 is basically not gaining you anything for being hit.

When the original tanker aoe buffs were made there was some mention of it being to increase a tanks ability to aggro more enemies. Of course given that damage dealt is a part of the threat equation this scaling back of damage would seem to be working against that aim.

[ExeErdna]

8 hours ago, ivanhedgehog said:

What good are defenders? bad damage compared to corruptors and defender buffs are not that much better. Defender inherent isnt as good also.

I unironically see defenders are better than corrupters. Corr's main ability comes online too late so with all the AT's that can "crit" they're the worse. Defenders simply having more debuffing across the board are more consistent.

Which is where the issue from Tanker and Brute is. Brutes are great for the "double aura" setup while tankers are basically melee controllers. This is using Dark armor as a baseline. Brutes can use their set to keep cooler overall with less debuffing and resistance while doing more dmg. Tanker is the other way around. Yet personally the hit to Tanker's damage isn't good .85 is too deep of a cut. dropping off 5% sure yet that 15 hurts them while Brutes can really ramp up their damage. 

[aethereal]

1 hour ago, Erratic1 said:

On topic, I would like to ask what is the purpose of giving Tankers increased area of effect and then making damage fall off as quickly as it does? Great, you can hit 16 targets but anything past 12/13 is basically not gaining you anything for being hit.

According to @macskull the Tanker inherent taunt does not drop off, so you can control aggro pretty effectively even if you're doing lousy to your last several targets.

[Crimsanotic]

On 5/26/2025 at 6:53 AM, The Curator said:

---

• Self damage buff lowered from 1.0x to 0.875x.

 

But why?

 

I know I won't get an answer (from the HC team), but what is the thought process for this change in specific? And why was this deemed the best course of action?

[skoryy]

1 hour ago, Crimsanotic said:

 

But why?

 

I know I won't get an answer (from the HC team), but what is the thought process for this change in specific? And why was this deemed the best course of action?

 

Because tankers are overperforming since the tanker buff, and Rage is really overperforming which has been known since the last time they tried re-working Rage years ago.

[Crimsanotic]

7 minutes ago, skoryy said:

 

Because tankers are overperforming since the tanker buff, and Rage is really overperforming which has been known since the last time they tried re-working Rage years ago.

 

Yes, I am aware of tanks overperforming. But why lower the buff of things like BU, etc? Also, is SS really overperforming? It does good damage, to be sure, but it also comes with a very hefty price (Rage crash) that other top tier sets, you know, literally don't have to deal with.

[Crysis]

17 hours ago, skoryy said:

 

There was just a huge thread a week or two ago that said that building for defense cap was out of date, and its all about building for procs.  If mobs are dying without even defense mattering, let alone control, then all the reworked IOs and special effects aren't going to matter when you can still procbomb your way through content.  

 

If damage is king and makes everything else irrelevant, there are two ways of fixing that:

• Nerf damage
• Tougher mobs

In this patch, we're getting both.

 

There's a third way, but I doubt it will be any more popular.

 

Remove Tab-to-Target mechanic entirely.  Force manual targeting (click to target or similar) and decrease the base accuracy/to-hit across the board, forcing everyone to either dramatically increase accuracy slotting or look for external damage buffs (eg; Kin or -RES powers).  

 

They gave us tougher mobs, MUCH tougher 4-star content, tougher zones, etc.  Everyone clamors that the game is "too easy" but then clearly avoid all the built-in "difficulty sliders" you can apply in-game.  

 

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

[arcane]

1 minute ago, Crysis said:

Remove Tab-to-Target mechanic entirely.  Force manual targeting (click to target or similar)

 

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

As someone who is absolutely terrible at first person shooters, I am offended and challenge you to a duel IRL.

[skoryy]

21 minutes ago, Crimsanotic said:

But why lower the buff of things like BU, etc?

 

Because sets with Build Up won't get dinged nearly as much as SS (and probably DM) will.  And again, tankers were overperforming anyways.

 

22 minutes ago, Crimsanotic said:

Also, is SS really overperforming?

 

Yes, yes, it is.

[Uncle Shags]

31 minutes ago, skoryy said:

Because tankers are overperforming since the tanker buff

This is the part I take issue with. I think the more accurate statement is, "some tankers are overperforming."

 

By lumping all tankers together as a homogeneous unit it legitimizes a broad sweep damage reduction, rather than changes that target the problems directly. 

[StompyOne]

Can someone help me with the Proc math?

 

I get this part:

 

Where 16 targets at 100% damage (1600%) is being reduced after the first 10 to a total of 1247% damage.  A straight reduction of 22%-ish damage against the max of 16 targets.  Proc damage apparently will likewise be reduced.  I'm with it so far.  I don't think I'm a fan, but I feel like I understand.

 

Where I'm in over my math-brain's head is how often procs trigger because of the increase in AoE size.  I tried understanding from Bopper's old thread, but the more I dug into the thread the more confused I got.

 

Using an example like Blazing Aura with an 8' radius, that will go by 50% up to 12', how will that affect the number of proc triggers in that power?  It feels like this will hurt procs against even low numbers of targets.  Dumbing it down for me, can someone explain how many times a 3.5ppm proc currently triggers, vs how many times it will trigger after the changes?

 

Thanks.

[aethereal]

1 hour ago, StompyOne said:

Using an example like Blazing Aura with an 8' radius, that will go by 50% up to 12', how will that affect the number of proc triggers in that power?  It feels like this will hurt procs against even low numbers of targets.  Dumbing it down for me, can someone explain how many times a 3.5ppm proc currently triggers, vs how many times it will trigger after the changes?

 

Thanks.

 

8' radius autopower/toggle with 3.5 PPM proc rate:  31%

12' radius autopower/toggle with 3.5 PPM proc rate: 25%

 

(Chance is checked every 10 seconds in each case, and it's per target.  So approximately 1/4 of your targets will be hit by your proc every 10th second, rather than a little less than 1/3rd.)

Edited 17 hours ago by aethereal

[StompyOne]

9 minutes ago, aethereal said:

 

8' radius autopower/toggle with 3.5 PPM proc rate:  31%

12' radius autopower/toggle with 3.5 PPM proc rate: 25%

 

(Chance is checked every 10 seconds in each case, and it's per target.  So approximately 1/4 of your targets will be hit by your proc every 10th second, rather than a little less than 1/3rd.)

Thank you!  So another 20-21ish percent reduction across the board (be it 1 target or 16) for damage procs.  There's even more math for the -Res procs because of that change.  That's a very serious kick in the short pants for Tankers.

 

Ok, definitely not a fan...