How would you nerf tankers?

[Uncle Shags]

In case you've missed it, there are changes coming to tankers in the next issue. You can check them out here:

Tanker Changes Focused Feedback

 

There are quite a few changes coming, but the big takeaway is that, when you add it all up, it will lead to a significant damage reduction. Please, feel free to copy your tanks to beta, do your own testing, and post the results. I've tested a few of my builds and it seems like time to clear is increased by up to 1.5 times. Or around a 25-33% decrease in damage.

 

This stings for me. Quite a bit. The builds I tested are ones that I've spent a ton of time designing and playing, and obviously I'm invested in them. When I go into beta and see the difference it's pretty depressing. It also seems unfair, because my tanks are already on the low damage side, so I'm having a hard time understanding the justification. 

 

But rather than rant, or rage quit, or wallow in pity (although I'm not taking those options off the table, lol) I've decided to appeal to the tanker community for help.

 

In order to stay organized and focused, I'll lay out my argument:

 

1. There are particular tanker powers and/or combinations of powers that interact with certain game mechanics that may be problematic. Gauntlet aoe, procs, rad/ss, etc. This should probably be addressed. 

2. The changes proposed in beta will effect ALL tankers, not just the ones doing big damage. Lower damage tanks aren't a problem, so why is their damage getting cut by a third?

3. The proposed changes will impact low damage tanks more, because of some principle of math someone might help me with. Basically, increasing kill times from 2 minutes to 3 minutes is different than an increase from 6 to 9. The former goes from super fast to still really fast. The latter goes from slow to abysmal. 

 

I think these three points are true. But maybe I'm wrong. I'm biased, I'm sure. It's definitely up for discussion. 

 

So finally, we get to the point. Big brains in the tanker community, what can be done? Is there a better way? How can the devs make adjustments to high damage tanks without harming the low damage ones at the same time? Also, feasibility and ease of implementation is important, as resources are limited. 

 

What say you? How would you nerf tankers in a fair way?

[Maelwys]

Honestly most of the proposed changes (reduction in damage buff numbers,  reduction in resistance debuff numbers, removal of radius global buff in favour of individual power radius buffs) are IMO comparatively fine and measured - they're effectively a tiny reduction in regular damage output (mainly due to reduced cone angles) with a bigger reduction in AoE proc damage output.

 

But there is one change that I think is very harsh - the introduction of reduced damage for "overcap" targets. At present the proposed damage reduction is a very steep curve; and as a result the 10th target hit by an AoE (or the 5th target hit by a Cone) will take orders of magnitude more damage than the 16th (or the 10th).

Whilst it still leaves Tankers better off than they were before their revamp several years ago, this is the change that will be causing severe reductions in Tanker mission clear times compared to Live (assuming that the Tanker in question tends to always keep a sufficiently high number of mobs around themselves instead of only fighting a few at a time!). 

IMO some level of reduced AoE damage is probably required as Tankers are currently streaks ahead of the rest of the melee AT pack for AoE mob clearing... and since they tend to do this by hitting more enemies than other ATs, reducing damage inflicted upon those additional enemies seems like a viable way to approach this... but I'd much prefer a flat reduction or a much more gentle curve (especially for Cones) than what's currently on Brainstorm.

[tidge]

Of the Tanker-focused, across-the-board changes, I agree that the reduced damage for 'overcap' is a bit of a head-scratcher. In practice: if my tanker is targeting bosses, then I'm slightly less bothered by minions taking less damage... but with PBAoE and some cone/AoE attacks I can't guarantee that I'm actually going to hit the Bosses in the first 5 (or 10) targets. It also feels like one more thing for RNG to mess up.

 

Radiation Armor (on Tankers) is going to take a little getting used to... I was mostly opting for Radiation Armor to use on characters which I didn't particularly crave loading up on offense from the secondary (early-ish in the build) because of the proc-ability of Radiation Therapy from the primary. It doesn't look to becoming a bad power for %procs, but the utility of it will diminish. I'm probably going to have to revisit my choices of Healing/Recharge in it and swap into Accuracy (while leveling, and I have at least one character that has slightly fewer ToHit and Accuracy bonuses that I usually opt for.

[baster]

Glad I didn't start rolling Tanks, was just planning some builds. 

Back to Brutes, Crappers and Sents I guess. 

[twozerofoxtrot]

Just now, baster said:

Crappers

 

🤣🤣🤣

[twozerofoxtrot]

I agree with everything @Maelwys posted. I'd proffer that even with the drastic damage drop-off in the higher OverCap numbers I don't think this is an over-reaction in adjustment to Tankers. Yes, I'd rather have a flat or more graduated curve like what they suggested. But even if we don't get that, in concert with the Gauntlet and AoE changes, it's an elegant way to dampen how Tankers were leading the pack on maxed mission clear times without bludgeoning their single or low-cap target damage which would impact their ability to hold threat in longer, higher-end fights (think Magisterium, UG, etc). 

Personally, even though these changes have already caused me to start planning reductions in my tanker roster, I'm pretty good with them. Tankers had literally 5 and a half years of disgustingly high damage output and survivability. That's a long, long time for them to be at the top of the mountain; longer than half the time Live was up. 

This is okay.

[Groovy_Ghoul]

I have never understood nerfs in PVE. So what that Tankers have great damage. It's a 21 year old game that us old nerds love to play because we crave escapism, being powerful and saving the day. It's fun being totally awesome, that's the point!

 

Give me a better reason to play a Brute. How about fixing their less-than-stellar ATOs? Elevate Brutes, don't bring down Tankers.

[Uncle Shags]

8 hours ago, twozerofoxtrot said:

Tankers had literally 5 and a half years of disgustingly high damage output and survivability. That's a long, long time for them to be at the top of the mountain

It's statements like this that has me scratching my head. Where is this coming from? Who are you even talking about?  It's like there's this monolithic player in the game named 'Tanker' that has taken over the game, making every other choice obsolete.

 

I'm quoting you, but you're not doing anything unique. It seems nearly everyone is doing the same thing - referring to this as an issue of addressing this mythical OP tanker that's terrorizing our neighborhoods, stealing our candy, and ruining the game. 

 

I've just been genuinely confused, because it's so disconnected from my own experience. I play this game a LOT, as tanks, and with other tanks, and I'm not seeing what everyone else is talking about. My tanks aren't OP. They're really tanky, yes, but they're damage is crap. And the ones I see in game are either doing okay, getting in the way, or make me want to get back on my tank. But they're not making the rest of the team obsolete. 

 

But I've finally got it. I've had a eureka moment! I think I understand. I don't farm. I play PUG mission teams. And this is about farming! Tankers are the best farmers. Tankers are the kings of the farming world and now there's a reaction to it!  I finally get it. It all makes sense now. 

 

These OP Tankers aren't a thing in non farming content because their damage is a joke compared to a well built dps AT, and a good support team can make even a blaster into a tank. It's just solo farming where you need the ability to survive and do enough damage yourself!

 

So here it is:

The devs are making sweeping changes to an entire AT because of farming builds.

 

Every tank I have and run with in the "normal" game is getting nerfed because OP farming builds have pissed people off. 

 

How disappointing... 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited 14 hours ago by Uncle Shags

[twozerofoxtrot]

1 hour ago, Uncle Shags said:

Where is this coming from?

 

Objective proof from clear times in strandardized tests by players who put a lot of effort into their work.

 

Also my own subjective experience playing melee ATs.

 

1 hour ago, Uncle Shags said:

Who are you even talking about? 

 

Primarily @Ston, but also I think @SeraphimKensai and @Bopper whi did a lot of work showing how effective tanker build utilizing procs could go both before and after the tanker buffs in late 2019.

 

2 hours ago, Uncle Shags said:

I've just been genuinely confused, because it's so disconnected from my own experience.

 

And yours from mine. Yours is not more valuable than mine, and vice versa.

 

But...

 

2 hours ago, Uncle Shags said:

It seems nearly everyone is doing the same thing

 

Time to consider if your view may or may not be entirely parochial, then. 

 

2 hours ago, Uncle Shags said:

These OP Tankers aren't a thing in non farming content because their damage is a joke compared to a well built dps AT,

 

Can see the proof of this? Because solo tankers setting clear records in trapdoor and other runs beg to differ. And this is documented in our forums.

 

 

Finally,

 

Look. I love tankers. I have a stable full of them. My main is a vet 5k+ fully badged Inv/SS. I don't want to see tankers nerfed.

 

But even with my biases in place, I think this is a fair shake.

[Videra]

2 hours ago, Uncle Shags said:

It's statements like this that has me scratching my head. Where is this coming from? Who are you even talking about?  It's like there's this monolithic player in the game named 'Tanker' that has taken over the game, making every other choice obsolete.

 

Have you tried looking at the actual evidence? Enjoy! Learn with your eyes! (Welcome to HC, by the way! This will not be the last seemingly absurd Power Dev choice you observe.)
 

 

Edited 12 hours ago by Videra

[Snarky]

As a long time Brute player, who weathered a few reaaalllly harsh nerfs over the years.  (NOT balancing passes, flat out nerfs)  Then, on HC saw Tanks just be handed increased AoE (with PROCS magically not noticing and triggering based on original power footprint) and other shinies.  Just wanted to say, in the spirit of camaraderie, and like a true brother:

Edited 11 hours ago by Snarky

[tidge]

3 hours ago, Videra said:

 

Have you tried looking at the actual evidence? Enjoy! Learn with your eyes! (Welcome to HC, by the way! This will not be the last seemingly absurd Power Dev choice you observe.)

 

 

These show different 'times' on the order of a minute or less between Scrappers, Tankers, and Brutes. And IIRC (without reopening the builds) the various builds don't rely on what I'd consider typical for those AT... from memory, and I could be wrong because I don't use MIDS, but I think the Fighting Pool's Cross Punch was leveraged.

 

Ston's work was interesting, and necessarily somewhat niche, but it is  IMO showing neither a big difference (even if measurable) nor one completely applicable across all content and player builds.

[Warboss]

1 hour ago, tidge said:

 

These show different 'times' on the order of a minute or less between Scrappers, Tankers, and Brutes. And IIRC (without reopening the builds) the various builds don't rely on what I'd consider typical for those AT... from memory, and I could be wrong because I don't use MIDS, but I think the Fighting Pool's Cross Punch was leveraged.

 

Ston's work was interesting, and necessarily somewhat niche, but it is  IMO showing neither a big difference (even if measurable) nor one completely applicable across all content and player builds.

 

I don't see Cross Punch in the builds but they do have Vengeance (no idea if that factored into the numbers/times). All tests (Brutes, Scrappers, and Tankers) were with Will Power as the Armor set, and the majority of the attacks were slotted with 4 procs. So I would say these were probably not representative or most Tanker builds. (I could be wrong, I might be the only Tanker not proc bombing).

[Maelwys]

1 hour ago, tidge said:

the various builds don't rely on what I'd consider typical for those AT... from memory, and I could be wrong because I don't use MIDS, but I think the Fighting Pool's Cross Punch was leveraged.

 

Cross Punch and Epic Blasts/Snipes both tended to be included in Ston's Single Target chains IIRC (the "Pylon" times)

Not sure either was very relevant (if present at all) for their more general mission times e.g. Trapdoor or the mission simulator.

 

I also don't recall Ston being involved in any Farming build compilations/leaderboards. That's more AmericasAngel's territory. "Active" Farming has indeed favoured RadArmor Tankers for years (the moar procbombed high-DPA AoE and PBAoEs hitting the moar targets the better!!) and yes, that's going to be changing. But most existing Farmers (including myself) largely won't care, and the folk that really like being bleeding edge will simply spend a few hours getting whatever new AT + Power set combo becomes king kitted out.

[Erratic1]

What is this? ALL Tanker vs Brute discussion is SUPPOSED to occur in the Brute section!!!

 

The Tanker subforum is not to be sullied with Brute discussion!!!

[Warboss]

3 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

 

Cross Punch and Epic Blasts/Snipes both tended to be included in Ston's Single Target chains IIRC (the "Pylon" times)

Not sure either was very relevant (if present at all) for their more general mission times e.g. Trapdoor or the mission simulator.

 

 

Cross Punch isn't listed in the builds supplied under the thread regarding the test. If it was, then the builds included are not representative of the testing done.

[Uncle Shags]

4 hours ago, twozerofoxtrot said:

And yours from mine. Yours is not more valuable than mine, and vice versa.

Yeah, but my experience isn't leading to a 33% nerf of yours.  And I don't think your use of the word "elegant" in this scenario fits. Elegance involves minimalism, simplicity, precision, exactness, grace. This is not that. It's a bull in a China shop, dropping multiple changes at once to fix a problem I would argue could be fixed with much more precise adjustments. 

56 minutes ago, tidge said:

Ston's work was interesting, and necessarily somewhat niche, but it is  IMO showing neither a big difference (even if measurable) nor one completely applicable across all content and player builds.

Bingo. They are also tests basically custom made for tanks with aggro auras that keep everything in melee to die.  On a whim, this morning I ran the 0x8 test on my boom boom spits death blaster just to see if I'm taking crazy pills. Nope!  First shot without practice I did it in under 3 minutes, which is faster than the top time. But here's the key caveat, except for a few runners.  To get 100% clear without taunt auras I have to chase down tons of stragglers, which isn't a problem for tanks. So this is how we decide to balance?! 

 

IMO Farms and tests designed by and for gear head min/maxers aren't what game balance should be based on.

 

The OP Tankers are proc bombed niche builds. This is my point. Again, why are they nerfing ALL tank damage when it's not ALL tanks that are a problem?  

 

I'm going to take a shot at my own question. How would I nerf tanks?  Address individual powers, perhaps like Ground Zero. Change tanker aoe code to reflect the actual area, like they're planning. Stop there. See if that brings the OP proc bombing builds in line. It may be enough. This is a 20 year old game. Swinging the bat this indiscriminately, this hard, at this stage, is ridiculous. 

[MTeague]

<shrug>  I think the upcoming changes are just fine. 

• Tanks still hold threat like a champ.
• Playstyle for teams should not be impacted. On a team, the other players still melt enemies just as fast.
• Soloing medium sized groups is not greatly impacted, because you won't have overcapped numbers of targets anyway.
• For the most part, kill speed seems to be only meaningfully lowered when you are soloing +4x8.
• Even then you can still DO it, it just takes a bit longer to wear them down. 

Maybe I would care more if I cared about clear times, but I don't, and I never have.  When I play a Tanker, what I care about is feeling unkillable, and the flow of the game. Whether a fight vs an individual spawn takes 30 seconds or 90 seconds, I do not care.

[Maelwys]

38 minutes ago, Warboss said:

 

Cross Punch isn't listed in the builds supplied under the thread regarding the test. If it was, then the builds included are not representative of the testing done.

 

Look at the first set of charts (Pylon Test Results) and note how many if the listed chains contain "CP". If memory serves it's considerably more than half for all the ATs.

[Uncle Shags]

1 hour ago, MTeague said:

Maybe I would care more if I cared about clear times, but I don't, and I never have.  When I play a Tanker, what I care about is feeling unkillable, and the flow of the game. Whether a fight vs an individual spawn takes 30 seconds or 90 seconds, I do not care.

I agree with most of what you said.  I build tanky for teams and damage is a bonus.  Before this I had never done a clear speed test because I didn't care about it. But for some reason I decided to check how much my tanks would be impacted.  Maybe because there are times when I do want decent damage. If odds stack up and I recruit a team full of lowbies, for instance. Or if I zig and they zag and I'm stuck on my own. Or there's a wipe and I have to last man it while the team recovers. Or if there's some solo content I want to tackle.  Or if I want to see the health bar move when I punch something. 

 

So I got on beta and tested. And it feels like crap. And I actually used a stop watch to verify. For me, it's too much. And now I'm stuck with asking why. 

 

I can understand your stance, but I'm going down swinging. 

[Erratic1]

I am going to make a few observations and am not making judgements.

 

1. I believe Ston's goals were to test the limits of what was possible. To the extent that Tanker builds are not what would be observed in the wild, neither were the Brute builds. Cross Punch is probably used to eek out extra global recharge reduction. So artificial but if it is being done on both sides, not necessarily a stretch. Procs however, regardless of what one might argue, are far, Far, FAR more prevalent in at least discussion in the Tanker subforum than Brutes because Brutes do not have the luxury of their maximum survivability as easily as Tankers do.
2. We do not know what drove Developer consideration for the current changes. Neither do we know what testing was done by the developers. What we do know is what is on Test. And that is what it is, a test. Go, document the impact between Live and Test and present the results in the appropriate Feedback thread. Previous Test iterations have been modified due to reasoned and researched results. 

 

As we are in the Tanker subforum and discussing Tanker potential changes, I am going to note I am definitely not seeing the overcap damage fall-off, at least at its current values, as a good thing. The curve should be more gentle than it is. 

[Yomo Kimyata]

How would I do it?

 

I'd ask myself (and a wide variety of other players):  What makes each AT unique, and why would someone choose to play one versus another?

 

With respect to tankers, they are an armor/melee AT, like brutes, scrappers, and stalkers.  I would consider those four ATs to be similar in play, and I see there "should" be a gradient of increasing damage and decreasing safety from left to right.  I'd also consider stalkers to be a bit of a fringe due to aspects of their uniqueness.  Why play a tanker versus a scrapper?  You prefer more safety over more damage.  Why play a scrapper versus a tanker?  You prefer more damage over more safety.  (Yes, I'm leaving brutes out in the cold here.  I love brutes, but I can't figure out a way to make brutes unique.  I'd love to see something change about the inherent.)

 

This tradeoff between safety and damage has pretty much gone the way of the dodo.  It's why sets like dark melee and kinetic melee were designed with less damage, since those sets provide safety (accuracy debuffs and damage debuffs to enemies), but under Homecoming it's irrelevant.  Safety is easy to come by, and damage kept getting amped up over the years since SCORE came out of hiding.

 

In my opinion, this safety/damage balance was real on Live, but went away when the game went private because the powers that be didn't care about balance.  I see the changes in tankers a mea culpa of sorts and they are clawing back some of the incredible damage buffs that were given the tanker AT.

 

Now, I realize that one's opinion on this may depend on what you have experienced and what you are used to.  If all you know are tank-mage tankers from Homecoming in the past few years, then yes, this feels like a horrible unfair nerfing since tankers are "supposed" to be immortal AND do great damage.  If you played Live and had a conception of what tankers were "supposed" to be (immortal and not so great damage), then you might say, "huh, yeah I guess it makes sense to bring back some sort of tradeoffs."

 

There are 13 ATs right now, and each one has its uniqueness, but tankers, brutes, and scrappers are relatively interchangeable in my eyes in terms of fundamentally what they do.  Personally, I think tankers were ridiculously buffed because the directors of Homecoming really *liked* being immortal AND doing more damage.  I don't have any problems with pulling some of those buffs back, mainly because I am not pegging my concept of "tanker" as "tank mage".

 

 

[Warshades]

On 5/31/2025 at 7:07 AM, Uncle Shags said:

So finally, we get to the point. Big brains in the tanker community, what can be done? Is there a better way? How can the devs make adjustments to high damage tanks without harming the low damage ones at the same time?

 

The answer to this will depend on everyone's perspective on what a tank should be. @Yomo Kimyata brings up a good point that for anyone who doesn't remember tankers from when CoH was live, they may feel this is a massive nerf.

 

Personally I agree with others that a tankers main role should be to tank and be able to soak up/hold aggro. The issue with these changes is that it affects every secondary melee set on tankers. The sets that already overperform like SS, fire, axe, etc will be fine. It's the sets that underperform that will get truly killed by these changes. There is to big of a disparity between the top and bottom damage dealing melee sets and I would've preferred that they worked on closing the gap by increasing the performance of some of the weaker sets before scaling back damage output the way they are.

 

I think there's also a legitimate question of why to even run tanks if scrappers/brutes can hold aggro and take alpha strikes while doing higher damage (haven't actually compared to damage output to brutes on test server just yet), similar to the current situation of brutes not having much of a niche when tankers are more survival and had better AoE damage and close ST dmg performance. One thing they can consider doing is maybe increasing the aggro cap for tanks so that they can do so against a higher number of enemies which would fit the theme of a tank.

[tidge]

56 minutes ago, Warshades said:

 

The answer to this will depend on everyone's perspective on what a tank should be. @Yomo Kimyata brings up a good point that for anyone who doesn't remember tankers from when CoH was live, they may feel this is a massive nerf.

 

I don't think i28p2 is a massive nerf to Tankers. I do remember Live, and Tankers were more-or-less made irrelevant by Scrappers, especially when levels 41-50 (and all the extra slots) became available. The one thing I remember Takers could do what Scrappers couldn't do was herd entire maps at once.

Edited 2 hours ago by tidge
esplling

[twozerofoxtrot]

4 hours ago, Uncle Shags said:

And I don't think your use of the word "elegant" in this scenario fits. Elegance involves minimalism, simplicity, precision, exactness, grace. This is not that. It's a bull in a China shop, dropping multiple changes at once to fix a problem I would argue could be fixed with much more precise adjustments. 

They literally could have just reverted all the changes they made to Tankers in late 2019. Right back to where they were at i24. 

What would you have called that? In comparison to this?

Are you even aware that a player who only runs SOs at +0/1 will likely notice not a single difference in their play with these changes in effect? 

Edit: I just checked and saw you joined us in 2024. I can understand where you're coming from if you're this new to the history of Tankers on HC. 

 

4 hours ago, Uncle Shags said:

Yeah, but my experience isn't leading to a 33% nerf of yours.

This honestly just comes off as you not being very good at playing or building Tankers. 

 

 

2 hours ago, Uncle Shags said:

So I got on beta and tested. And it feels like crap. And I actually used a stop watch to verify.

Post video.

 

Edited 2 hours ago by twozerofoxtrot