How would you nerf tankers?

[Erratic1]

1 hour ago, Ukase said:

In my game play, and that's the only situations I speak of, when I build a tank specifically for teaming, and taking the hits - this is true for me. My dark tank missed Dark Consumption before tackling Trapdoor, and I couldn't kill him. Even my defenders, controllers and Sentinels pre-change could kill trap door. 

Conversely, if I build them for solo play and dps, it's not a problem. Some of this is no doubt my own problem for trying to create one build for a purpose, rather than a more generic build for more utility. 

These changes...they are not made keeping the casual player in mind. Maybe the casual player wouldn't even notice. No idea. But this is a change that most folks don't want to think about when making and playing a character. I won't pretend to be smart enough to know a better way. 

 

My guess would be that building to play exclusively on teams or only solo would be the far less common way to build a character, but heck if I know how to substantiate that.

 

What I don't get, is why one would do so given every character has the option for multiple builds they can swap between every 15 minutes. So even if focusing on a style of play is what one wants to do, you can still have one character who can change their style.

[Soulsifter]

 Is this a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to tankers being prime farmers now? Seems so. In order to get them that way they are niche in that they would be "ok" on teams but not optimal. Too much "grass is greener (meaner)" meddling because of a vocal minority is the downfall of many MMO's. Regardless of this being a "free" game, it still relies on fan support to operate. Alienate them and you are now the caretaker of an MMO grave plot. 

 

I'd hate to see something I've rejoined after a long hiatus die the death of a thousand cuts. Sometimes, near enough is good enough.

[tidge]

18 hours ago, Soulsifter said:

 Is this a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to tankers being prime farmers now? Seems so. 

 

I think it is impossible to say, although there have been changes targeted specifically at 'farming'. I'm more inclined to believe that there were a few devs and dev-adjacent folks that were probably surprised that Tankers matched (and in some content, *1) exceeded the performance of Brutes... and of course the Brute champions have been very vocal about this. The scale-back of the way the Gauntlet radius buff interacts with PPM makes complete sense, but everything else feels like "putting Tankers in their place (according to somebody's vision)". 

 

The Controller AT changes and Tanker changes really ought to have been in different "pages" IMO. I don't think anyone cares if Tanker/Scrapper/Brute times-to-complete (for full builds) are within a minute of each other... unless there is some abstract argument about someone else needs to be 'best' (per that metric). I like Controllers a LOT, but solo leveling can be a real slog at times, in way that isn't (currently, pre-p2) for the melee classes (or Blasters).

 

(*1) I can't even imagine which content the devs are focused on for their swings at (re-)balance. Not everyone rushes to 50, not everyone farms, not everyone does 45+ content, not everyone uses IOs, not everyone plays the new HC content. If it were up to me, I'd focus on bringing the low-performers (in terms of mission time completion) up, rather than knocking ATs down. Specifically over-tuned powers deserve taps from the Nerf bat (ehem, Seeds of Confusion) when they get in the way of balance considerations for new sets.

[Uncle Shags]

Well, it's been quite a roller coaster over the last two weeks, but if this latest build is sent to live I think I'll be happy with it.  My main tank's clear times went from 6min, to a depressing 8.5, and now back to 6.5.  6.5 feels ok.  I'm still very slightly disgruntled, because 6min for that mission is already below average and I'm still not convinced an AT wide damage reduction was necessary, but I'll take it.  Could be much worse.

 

The bigger hit I've taken is to my faith and trust.  It seems like, in the end, the devs were receptive and reasonable.  And there's a ton of good stuff in Page 2.  It's great, and I'm thankful.  But.... This tanker thing?  I just wish it didn't take dozens of pages of debate, how many hours of shared testing, fighting amongst ourselves, and all the unnecessary ill will towards the dev team along the way to get us to this point!  I can't help but wonder, "How the hell did that ever make it out of closed beta?!"  I'll try not to hold a grudge, but it kind of feels like, "Yeah, you didn't stab me, but you had the knife, and you were definitely THINKING about it!"  I don't want a sour taste in my mouth, but it is what it is...  It'll wear off, I'm sure.  Especially if there are some upcoming buffs to some underperformers!

 

Thanks to all those who fought the good fight.  In the end, reason, truth, fairness, and justice won!  Very fitting...for those of us who play hero-side.  =P

[WumpusRat]

On 6/15/2025 at 3:14 AM, tidge said:

Never forget that the game's rewards are 99.9% tied to defeating enemies, so there should be NO cause for concern if a whole bunch of similar ATs have nearly identical "clear times" by whatever metrics once they have access to all of their primary/secondary powers. When we see full-kit builds using Epics, Incarnates, and IOs finishing identical content within a minute of each other... this is NOT something to get ego-bruised if a personal feeling that "X should be faster than Y" isn't born out by that result. The 0.1% not strictly tied to defeats is the rando Prismatic reward tied to mission completion.

 

I think I'm really curious as for the people arguing balance back and forth if they're comparing the ATs and builds and such the way balance is supposed to be achieved?

As in, SO's only. No IO sets, no incarnate powers, no temp powers, etc.

 

Cause just from personal experience, I think it would shake out a lot differently if people were using purely SO'd builds instead of fully tricked out ones.

[tidge]

4 hours ago, WumpusRat said:

 

I think I'm really curious as for the people arguing balance back and forth if they're comparing the ATs and builds and such the way balance is supposed to be achieved?

As in, SO's only. No IO sets, no incarnate powers, no temp powers, etc.

 

Cause just from personal experience, I think it would shake out a lot differently if people were using purely SO'd builds instead of fully tricked out ones.

 

I think you are correct. IOs, and IMO the lowering of levels at which powers can be chosen, further reduce how much certain ATs are 'valued' for even more content than just 45+ when incarnate powers come into play. It was always true that exemplaring down (with slots and more inspirations) was good... now exemplared characters have access to T9s for even lower level content. BTW: I think the lowering of the power choice levels was a good thing, some of my ATs used to really flounder for some lower level content when exemplared... I point this out because it was a dev choice that directly reduced the disparity (for much more content) between ATs like Tankers/Brutes who have flip-flopped primaries and secondaries.

 

Writing for myself: %proc damage gets some amount of hate, but I find the PPM %damage to be one of the few ways the lower-performing (DPS-wise) ATs can stand a chance to finish most content within an order of magnitude of other ATs... and I'm NOT thinking about +4x8 content when I write this! At the 'finish content uber-fast' end of the spectrum, I simply don't care if a bunch of fully-tricked out solo-ists all finish some content within a minute of each other. The ATs that can already do excellent amount of damage don't need to rely on %damage, and through build choices can concentrate on something else.

[ZemX]

On 6/17/2025 at 1:50 AM, WumpusRat said:

I think I'm really curious as for the people arguing balance back and forth if they're comparing the ATs and builds and such the way balance is supposed to be achieved?

As in, SO's only. No IO sets, no incarnate powers, no temp powers, etc.

 

I'm not sure this was really about IOs and procs at all.   After reading the dev notes, the part that stood out to me was this (emphasis mine):
 

Quote

 

Initially, [the arc/radius buff] was balanced out by Brutes still dealing more damage per swing as well as a pyramid effect as enemies are defeated, diminishing the Tanker AoE advantage as there were not as many targets to hit as a fight went on. We also wanted them to have a better start, with higher base damage, but lesser burst. We have found that over time this intended balance did not hold up by virtue of the same changes making it easier to keep the player AoEs saturated with targets across various mission and map types. The result was tankers overshooting our goals.

 

 

This to me sounds like a fancy way of saying "farming" or at least soloing x8.  I don't know how else you keep consistently hitting over the standard caps of 10 for PBAoE and 5 for Cones except by herding on a farm or whilst soloing team-sized spawns all by yourself.  This is the advantage Tankers had with the arc/radius buff.  On any typical team, that Tanker is not "saturating" AoEs all the time.  I know because that's how I play.  Tanker Tuesday is about the only time, thanks to massive herding with 8 tanks, that I see those kind of concentrations of enemies on a constant basis.  Every other time, my AoEs are really only hitting the Tanker caps of 16 and 10 when the fight starts.  As intended all along.  Pyramid effect.

 

Even in Ston's venerable min/max melee comparison, Brutes were never significantly behind on average.  None of the melee ATs were that different on average.  Certain outliers were, but mostly, no.   And that test was exactly the +4/x8 solo clear that can let you keep those AoEs saturated.  But as a solo test at highest difficulty, it ALSO involved surviving the test, which is a Tanker specialty.  So maybe they SHOULD have been close in that test?

 

I dunno.  Getting difficult to shake the feeling this nerf was more about knocking Tankers down a peg (certainly down below Brutes) on farming and soloing, more than it was about anything else.  But thanks to that, I get to do less damage in my normal boring team play I guess.  I suppose that's not a huge deal really since it's not a big reduction to the team's damage output and I mostly build tankers for... well... tanking.  

 

[Warboss]

On 6/16/2025 at 9:01 PM, Uncle Shags said:

Well, it's been quite a roller coaster over the last two weeks, but if this latest build is sent to live I think I'll be happy with it.  My main tank's clear times went from 6min, to a depressing 8.5, and now back to 6.5.  6.5 feels ok.  I'm still very slightly disgruntled, because 6min for that mission is already below average and I'm still not convinced an AT wide damage reduction was necessary, but I'll take it.  Could be much worse.

 

The bigger hit I've taken is to my faith and trust.  It seems like, in the end, the devs were receptive and reasonable.  And there's a ton of good stuff in Page 2.  It's great, and I'm thankful.  But.... This tanker thing?  I just wish it didn't take dozens of pages of debate, how many hours of shared testing, fighting amongst ourselves, and all the unnecessary ill will towards the dev team along the way to get us to this point!  I can't help but wonder, "How the hell did that ever make it out of closed beta?!"  I'll try not to hold a grudge, but it kind of feels like, "Yeah, you didn't stab me, but you had the knife, and you were definitely THINKING about it!"  I don't want a sour taste in my mouth, but it is what it is...  It'll wear off, I'm sure.  Especially if there are some upcoming buffs to some underperformers!

 

Thanks to all those who fought the good fight.  In the end, reason, truth, fairness, and justice won!  Very fitting...for those of us who play hero-side.  =P

 

Agreed, I think the changes are heavy handed and overdone. I extremely dislike the change to GZ. It should be able to heal any it hits, not just affect team members. Was that change really necessary? I can hold aggro, but forget about doing anything else. Certainly decreases the "flavor" of the set... 

[Psyonico]

14 minutes ago, Warboss said:

It should be able to heal any it hits, not just affect team members. Was that change really necessary?

I don’t see anything about Ground Zero only affecting team mates in the patch notes, in fact, it specifically says it can hit 255 allies, which leads me to believe that it doesn’t just affect team members.

[Warboss]

8 minutes ago, Psyonico said:

I don’t see anything about Ground Zero only affecting team mates in the patch notes, in fact, it specifically says it can hit 255 allies, which leads me to believe that it doesn’t just affect team members.

 

Just tested it in league. Doesn't affect anyone but my teammates. I'll test again. Maybe a bug? But I tried multiple times and on other teams in the league and no healing was done.

 

[Warboss]

15 minutes ago, Warboss said:

 

Just tested it in league. Doesn't affect anyone but my teammates. I'll test again. Maybe a bug? But I tried multiple times and on other teams in the league and no healing was done.

 

 

Just checked again. No affect on anyone not on my team.

 

Tried again and it hit ONE.

 

Tested again with mix of teammates and non-teammates, only hit teammates.

 

 

Edited Sunday at 02:27 AM by Warboss

[Psyonico]

I’d file a bug report.

[tidge]

On 6/20/2025 at 11:01 PM, ZemX said:

This to me sounds like a fancy way of saying "farming" or at least soloing x8.  I don't know how else you keep consistently hitting over the standard caps of 10 for PBAoE and 5 for Cones except by herding on a farm or whilst soloing team-sized spawns all by yourself.  

 

MMV, but I got the sense that there was some disingenuity in the (various) stated rationales for the changes targeting Tankers in i28p2. The radius fix for PPM was a no-brainer. The change to buff/debuff scales... as opposed to looking at specific powers... um okay? The "Tankers will be AoE specialists" made no sense given the initial round of changes... and it isn't as if the Tanker secondaries suddenly got new AoE attacks.

 

I feel like most of the Tanker changes could have waited to allow the i28p2 focus to be more on Controllers and KW.

[Uncle Shags]

18 hours ago, tidge said:

I got the sense that there was some disingenuity in the (various) stated rationales for the changes targeting Tankers in i28p2.

 

18 hours ago, tidge said:

The "Tankers will be AoE specialists" made no sense given the initial round of changes...

 

Exactly.

 

I feel like dev opinion had been swayed by the incessant whine of the "tankers do too much damage" crowd and felt like a nerf was a good idea. But once they started to see the numbers and the reality behind them they recognized their earlier position was based on a load of bullshit. At that point they had to reduce the obvious over-nerf, but had to do something to save face. At that point it was all PR. 

[Erratic1]

6 minutes ago, Uncle Shags said:

I feel like dev opinion had been swayed by the incessant whine of the "tankers do too much damage" crowd and felt like a nerf was a good idea. But once they started to see the numbers and the reality behind them they recognized their earlier position was based on a load of bullshit. At that point they had to reduce the obvious over-nerf, but had to do something to save face. At that point it was all PR. 

 

Or maybe they knew there would be a contingent of Tanker fans who would be hyperbolic about any change, intentionally overnerfed, so that when they stepped back to where they wanted things to be everyone would be going, "Whew, dodged that bullet."

[tidge]

28 minutes ago, Uncle Shags said:

I feel like dev opinion had been swayed by the incessant whine of the "tankers do too much damage" crowd and felt like a nerf was a good idea.

 

It's possible that the whining had something(*1) to do with it, but I get the sense that whenever the devs think rewards are outstripping effort, they try to turn the dial back(*2)... Tankers were recognized as being slightly better farmers and it wasn't hard to see a bajillion 'in mission' level 50 Tankers, so I suspect they felt the need to smack down Tankers just because they had become the most popular farming choice.

 

Frankly, I think the efforts in i28p2 to curb Tankers have failed to teach some important lessons to the dev team and community:

1. Tankers got where they had been because of an excellent, but over-tuned change to their inherent. There are a bunch of other AT inherents that are terrible, and deserve to be looked at (ehem, VEATs)
2. The dev team has been really slow to make Tanker primary T9s worthwhile across all sets. I can't imagine an AT like a Blaster skipping or under-slotting their primary T9s like Tankers do. If there is a dev vision that Tankers are supposed to have some role other than 'do damage', maybe the T9s ought to reflect that. I find it janky that the Blaster t9s removed crashes to improve performance, and yet the Tanker t9s can basically be afterthoughts in almost every build.

(*1) Not exactly whining, but the Scrapper/Tanker/Brute ATO discussion always sounds a little whiny to me... Scrappers only hold their ston times because of their ATOs, yet somehow folks still think Brutes deserve better ATOs (more like Tankers' is sometimes suggested). I agree the Brute ATO look lackluster in comparison to Scrapper and Tanker, but this ignores some of the other crummy ATOs to focus on "wah Scrapper/Tanker".

 

(*2) see also the GM changes in i28p2

[flakoff]

I was wondering, maybe they could have a scaling damage reduction? So solo no damage reduction and by the time you are tanking in a full team you do less damage?

[tidge]

4 hours ago, flakoff said:

I was wondering, maybe they could have a scaling damage reduction? So solo no damage reduction and by the time you are tanking in a full team you do less damage?

 

I'm not sure what this would accomplish: in team mode Tanker damage never mattered, unless the Tanker was off by herself... other ATs (e.g. Blasters) are pretty much nuking entire spawns. This is the reason why it is sort of easy to believe that it was the solo performance of Tankers (with large spawn sizes) that was the motivation for the wholesale changes (as initially proposed, as rolled out). Bluntly: I'm surprised that the devs even care about what players do solo, especially in instanced missions (AE or otherwise)... it's not like Solo tankers were en masse routinely running 'defeat all' solo Tinpex, ITF, BAF, whatever. I mean... I've taken my Tankers through some pretty long, painful TFs filled with 'defeat all' missions, but it isn't like such things are particularly enjoyable to me.

 

I suppose *if* the devs were actually concerned about a Tanker out-DPSing other ATs *on teams* (for 'roleplay' reasons?), then this would have been a fine suggestion.

 

At this point in the game, the ONLY AT-centered knob the devs seem interested in turning is the damage knob. I don't think there is any appetite for making other ATs more likely to take damage, be controlled, or be hit... except for a smallish number of critters that get improved ToHit chances (or AutoHit powers). Based on the wholesale nature of most of the recent Tanker changes, it doesn't look like the devs are particularly willing to focus on specific powers unless something really gets their attention.

 

Not appropriate for Tankers, but like many folks I felt the change to Seeds of Confusion was way overdue... yet the scale-back of Plant Control was accompanied by a general boost to the usability of long-range AoE controls... it doesn't bring them anywhere close to the utility of the crashless, fast-recharging Blaster nukes, but it was something. I didn't see any signs of dev interest in offering the Tanker AT anything similar to offset the scale backs of i28p2 (again, the PPM Gauntlet fix was necessary for balance).