Tankers - So Where are we at?

[Warboss]

Hi all,

After all is said and done. Where exactly are we at?  What nerfs went through, and what was rolled back? What I know, is my Tanks are not like they were prior to the patching/"fixes", and Ground Zero still doesn't work right. Is there a consolidated thread that shows exactly where we're at, or can someone who has ferreted out the information post so I can tell what is causing what I'm seeing?

 

Did the Damage Scalar reduction go into affect, or was it rolled back?

Where are we at with the Damage mechanics for AoEs?

Were the AoE Distances dialed back? (looks like cones have been nerfed into idiocy)

There were other issues as well (certain powers affect, like GZ), but I can't remember them all right now. Things seemed to get pretty confused right before the release.

 

Any info or links would be appreciated.

Thanks!

 

Edited Sunday at 04:50 PM by Warboss

[Maelwys]

20 minutes ago, Warboss said:

Did the Damage Scalar reduction go into affect, or was it rolled back?

Where are we at with the Damage mechanics for AoEs?

Were the AoE Distances dialed back? (looks like cones have been nerfed into idiocy)

There were other issues as well (certain powers affect, like GZ), but I can't remember them all right now. Things seemed to get pretty confused right before the release.

 

So first they took away the global radius/arc buff (which was previously part of Gauntlet).

 

Then they went through and manually increased the base radius (but not the arc) of most Cones and AoEs... which resulted in a reduction of their base damage as well as their proc activation rate. And at the same time they introduced a reduction to all damage (including proc damage) dealt by both AoEs and Cones to targets beyond the regular target caps (eg 11+ for AoEs and 6+ for Cones).

 

Then there was outcry.

And much testing.

Then several cycles of tweaks, each followed by yet more testing. 

 

 

The TL;DR of it all is:

 

+ The manual increase to base radius for Cones (and the resulting Damage Scalar and Proc activation rate reductions) effectively all got reverted. So compared to before the patch Tanker Cones have lost their global buff, and now currently possess the same radius and arc as on other ATs.

 

+ The manual increase to base radius for AoEs technically still remains in effect, however at the last minute (the night before golive!) the Devs raised their base damage to compensate. So compared to before Tanker AoEs with a base radius of <15ft really just now have a slightly lower proc rate.

 

+ Whilst the higher target caps remain in effect for both Tanker AoEs and Cones, "Overcap" targets (meaning anything beyond the base caps so targets 11+ for AoEs and 6+ for Cones) now take only 33% damage from the attack itself as well as any additional sources like Incarnate Interface DOTs and Damage Procs.

 

 

 

I wrote a fair bit about all the various bits during the Beta Feedback thread.

 

Here's a summary of the original changes:

 

 

Then they reverted the Cone radius changes:

 

Although it took them a few tries to catch them all

 

 

Then they finally raised AoE base damage:

 

 

 

 

The nature of the "Overcap" damage reduction fluctuated a bit too- originally it was two different scaling exponential curves, one for AoEs and another more harsh one for Cones.

 

 

Then they changed it to a flat -67% damage reduction for both.

 

 

I'm still personally in favour of toning the Overcap reduction down a bit (to ~50%)... but to be fair to the Devs, they did listen to feedback and reverted the base damage reduction to AoEs and Cones, instead letting the Overcap reduction be responsible for the vast majority of the "tanker damage nerfs". And that has made the impact (i) far milder than it would have been, especially to those who don't regularly saturate their AoEs (e.g. soloists and non-farmers!) (ii) much more even across all powersets. The radius changes were originally disproportionately negatively impacting specific powersets like Staff and TW.

 

 

[Maelwys]

Regarding "other things"... there were lots, but the main ones that might have impacted proc damage output for a Tanker are:

 

 

The Proc Damage bug (which was fixed prior to i28p2 hitting live)

 

 

 

And the Ground Zero proc activation rate bug (which a fix has been found for but hasn't quite made it to live yet)

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Warboss]

Thanks for the response. I'll have to look it over vs what I'm seeing in game. Right off the bat, I agree with you on the Overcap daamge. 33% is a bit low for AoE specialists.... ST seems low to me too. Not sure why since it looks like the bulk of the adjustments were for AoE/Cones.

 

[Maelwys]

20 minutes ago, Warboss said:

ST seems low to me too. Not sure why since it looks like the bulk of the adjustments were for AoE/Cones.

 

 

Single Target damage shouldn't have changed, aside from very minor differences to "damage buff" and "resistance debuff" scales. Perhaps if you're a Bio/SuperStrength Tank with double stacked Rage plus Evolving Armor and Epic pool Melt Armor... maybe.

 

On Brainstorm back before they'd sorted out the Cone and AoE base damage changes my Bio/Staff Tanker's ST damage output was noticeably weaker since it's attack chain relies on two cones... but it's been fine on live.

[Biff Pow]

My Inv/SS Tank now has a 90% damage bonus with Rage running instead of 100% which barely makes a difference except I really liked that round number.

 

(Yes, I could find another 10% in bonuses but I like my build as is.)

[DarknessEternal]

So was Radiation Therapy impacted on procs?

@Maelwys

Edited June 29 by DarknessEternal

[Maelwys]

1 hour ago, DarknessEternal said:

So was Radiation Therapy impacted on procs?

@Maelwys

 

Yep.

 

Twice, actually.

 

The power got the "reactive recharge" treatment, which means Proc activation rate dropped a good bit.

It went from from 90% (@60s base rech) to 46.72% (@25s base recharge)... and then later on to  28.7718% (@15s base recharge).

So procbombing it is pretty worthless now, but slotting it for damage and healing and recharge aspect works out pretty well. 

There's a breakdown in the link below.

 

And on top of that, all damage dealt by RT to foes beyond the first target is subject to the same sort of reductions as "Overcap" Tanker AoEs.

This started off as a scaling exponential -30% reduction, then got reduced slightly to a scaling exponential -25% reduction.

 

The silver lining is that RT is now a LOT better than before for damage mitigation (eg healing over time) especially whenever you only have a single target nearby. And its damage dealt when fighting lower numbers of targets is still pretty decent (after I adjusted my Scrapper's slotting... compared to before vs one target its damage per activation has dropped slightly but damage per second has more than doubled; however vs 10 targets it's dropped to roughly a quarter of the damage per activation and a third of the damage per second)

 

 

It also got a +Regeneration buff baked into it on all ATs (previously it was only giving this on Scrappers but not on the rest!)

 

 

 

The good news is that there appears to be an intention to undo some of the negative impact to procs (the proposed change was going back to a 25s base recharge rate)

 

 

 

But this has been put on hold until a future "balance pass" patch because there are currently more than enough other things for the Devs to worry about.

 

 

Edited June 29 by Maelwys

[Uun]

17 hours ago, Warboss said:

Did the Damage Scalar reduction go into affect, or was it rolled back?

There's a lot of confusion about this. A change to the tank damage scalar was never contemplated (and obviously never went into effect). What they changed was the tank Melee_Buff_Dmg modifier, which was decreased from 1.0x to 0.875x. This effects damage buff powers like Build Up, Rage and Soul Drain (but not Assault).

[Warboss]

Some thing still seems off. I can't put my finger on it, but ST attacks seem to be doing less damage (more attack cycles to take out bosses and above). I don't have a great deal of time to work on this, so if anyone else sees this please chime in.

 

1 hour ago, Uun said:

There's a lot of confusion about this. A change to the tank damage scalar was never contemplated (and obviously never went into effect). What they changed was the tank Melee_Buff_Dmg modifier, which was decreased from 1.0x to 0.875x. This effects damage buff powers like Build Up, Rage and Soul Drain (but not Assault).

 

Yes, there has been a lot of confusion about this and most to the changes proposed. I do recall seeing somewhere a chart that showed the various AT Scalars, and at that time. It showed the Tank Scalar as .95. I don't have the source atm, so I can't link it. It was in the forums somewhere, maybe under the Beta section.

Edited Sunday at 04:49 PM by Warboss

[Hopeling]

The tanker damage scalar has been 0.95 ever since it was raised from 0.8 in i26p4. That just means tanker base damage is 95% of what a blaster would do with the same (melee) power.

[Uun]

1 hour ago, Warboss said:

Some thing still seems off. I can't put my finger on it, but ST attacks seem to be doing less damage (more attack cycles to take out bosses and above). I

There were no changes to tanker ST damage. Other than change to the buff modifier discussed above, the only other change was a reduction in the -res modifier. This is pretty niche and I believe only affects Bio.

[tidge]

On 6/29/2025 at 5:44 PM, Uun said:

Other than change to the buff modifier discussed above, the only other change was a reduction in the -res modifier. This is pretty niche and I believe only affects Bio.

 

Wasn't this also carried over to any of the Pool powers that affect -Res? e.g. Weaken Resolve.

[ZemX]

56 minutes ago, tidge said:

Wasn't this also carried over to any of the Pool powers that affect -Res? e.g. Weaken Resolve.

 

Doesn't look like it.  Weirdly, there seem to be several modifiers that can be used by powers for -res effects.  Evolving Armor uses melee_debuff_res_dmg.  That one was nerfed to match the other melee ATs.  

Weaken Resolve, for whatever reason, uses ranged_res_dmg modifier, which has not been touched.  Staff's Eye of the Storm bonus in Form of Body stance uses melee_res_dmg modifier to do -10% res for Tankers and -7.5% for the other melee ATs.  Hasn't changed.  I don't know what the reasoning here is unless it was to JUST nerf Bio.

[Uun]

19 minutes ago, ZemX said:

Weaken Resolve, for whatever reason, uses ranged_res_dmg modifier, which has not been touched. 

Same for Melt Armor and Tar Patch.