Tankers Obsolete?

[JusticeBowler]

The point has been made and we don't need to beat it to death but I'll repeat it once. Everyone is useless on an eight person high end team (assuming there isn't some really out of balance skew going on). Incarnates (and grape colored builds as well) break the game to exaggerate this feeling of uselessness.

 

I am beginning to think that the 8 person team is what is broken. You can still do +4/x8 with only four people on a team and get a challenge. And if you only had four people on a team, you'd need everyone frosty judgements or no, especially on the high end mob groups.

 

When you are one of 8 on a well-balanced team with a vibe, you can just stop playing for a bit and the team will hardly notice. That's just a fact.

[jcbrooklyn]

The point has been made and we don't need to beat it to death but I'll repeat it once. Everyone is useless on an eight person high end team (assuming there isn't some really out of balance skew going on). Incarnates (and grape colored builds as well) break the game to exaggerate this feeling of uselessness.

 

I am beginning to think that the 8 person team is what is broken. You can still do +4/x8 with only four people on a team and get a challenge. And if you only had four people on a team, you'd need everyone frosty judgements or no, especially on the high end mob groups.

 

When you are one of 8 on a well-balanced team with a vibe, you can just stop playing for a bit and the team will hardly notice. That's just a fact.

 

This, this, 100% this!

8 man teams (especially then you factor in Incarnates) are probably part of the true issue.

But this is also due to a root game mechanic, or lack there of.  In other games when you have more than 4 people in a group, there are needs for those extra people (ie mechanics that only certain roles can perform.) In CoX, damage solves EVERYTHING so bringing more is the way to go. And any tank or healer or CC or other "specialist" only needs to be good enough to hold out a few seconds before everying is defeated.

I'm not throwing shade at the design, there is a lot of freedom and power fantasy fulfilment in this. But it does make "roles" less useful.

 

[JusticeBowler]

This, this, 100% this!

8 man teams (especially then you factor in Incarnates) are probably part of the true issue.

But this is also due to a root game mechanic, or lack there of.  In other games when you have more than 4 people in a group, there are needs for those extra people (ie mechanics that only certain roles can perform.) In CoX, damage solves EVERYTHING so bringing more is the way to go. And any tank or healer or CC or other "specialist" only needs to be good enough to hold out a few seconds before everying is defeated.

I'm not throwing shade at the design, there is a lot of freedom and power fantasy fulfilment in this. But it does make "roles" less useful.

 

I'm going to call it a feature rather than a bug. BUT it is a feature that folks might want to consider voluntarily dialing back.

 

I know everyone is afriad of not being all-that-and-a-bag-of-chips, but this game is incredibly forgiving especially on 8 person teams. You can make a weird build for fun. You don't have to be the most awesome thing ever. You can experiment and RP. People complain about heal-bots but who really cares when you are completing TFs in about an hour anyway.

 

And more than anything else NOT FILLING TO 8 all the time! Even in your mid20s you can run +2/x4 on a four man team and have a fresh experience in the game without actually "slowing down" all that much. If you are that worried, take a bloody XP boost from P2W.

[Infinitum]

There's a couple of points I would like to give my point of view on in how I view the game in relation to these discussions.

 

First I'm a tank in how I play no matter what AT I'm playing on, it's my play style and personality.

 

Second, I have a brute that I spent a week on designing in mids before I even rolled it out on the game. I spent a lot of game time there after teaming to 50 and beyond, making enough ing to slot him and also learning his deficiencies and outright weaknesses.  For me it's fun to put the time into that to build overpowered and unique.  It's not easy by any stretch and the average person may not want to put that much time into a build that a tank can do better earlier and also quicker and cheaper in the long run.

 

Third, IOs made much more noticeable differences than incarnate has and I only have 2 purple sets the rest are mostly orange with a few yellow, but it all fits well.  Just because its purple doesn't mean it will fit your goal.  I used incarnate to make any deficiencies less noticeable and round the build out.

 

Lastly I think we are missing the point a bit about the end game IO and incarnate setup.  This is the A team, not the lesser heroes, so destroying bad guy maps is kinda what we do at this point, but also some content can still stop us if not careful, like Bobcat 2 shotting me the other day or hamidon in the lady gray TF causing a group of incarnated out warriors that the rikti to couldnt slow down fits for nearly 45 min (the whole tf took 1:23 min)

 

Weaknesses are still there and its not a matter of usefulness or not its a matter of being a part of it and stepping in when needed because we are heroes and thats what we do, sometimes even superman needs help.

[Hyperstrike]

 

This, this, 100% this!

8 man teams (especially then you factor in Incarnates) are probably part of the true issue.

 

 

It's not that 8 man teams are "broken".  It's that Incarnates and the introduction of new Enhancement sets has caused power creep over the years.

The game's still balanced for SOs.

 

Toss in heavily optimized builds?  And it's all easy-street.

 

Toss in Incarnates on TOP of that?

 

Yeah.  You come out of that going "Okay...when's the fighting start?"

[Herotu]

The point has been made and we don't need to beat it to death but I'll repeat it once. Everyone is useless on an eight person high end team (assuming there isn't some really out of balance skew going on). Incarnates (and grape colored builds as well) break the game to exaggerate this feeling of uselessness.

 

I am beginning to think that the 8 person team is what is broken. You can still do +4/x8 with only four people on a team and get a challenge. And if you only had four people on a team, you'd need everyone frosty judgements or no, especially on the high end mob groups.

 

When you are one of 8 on a well-balanced team with a vibe, you can just stop playing for a bit and the team will hardly notice. That's just a fact.

 

I concur. 8 seems like an awful lot of people nowadays, but way back when it was the standard. I think the small, intimate groups are cool, too. I'd like to see those self- imposed restrictions happen, but if you give people freedom they will take it all and ask for more!

[Sanguinesun]

The point has been made and we don't need to beat it to death but I'll repeat it once. Everyone is useless on an eight person high end team (assuming there isn't some really out of balance skew going on). Incarnates (and grape colored builds as well) break the game to exaggerate this feeling of uselessness.

 

I am beginning to think that the 8 person team is what is broken. You can still do +4/x8 with only four people on a team and get a challenge. And if you only had four people on a team, you'd need everyone frosty judgements or no, especially on the high end mob groups.

 

When you are one of 8 on a well-balanced team with a vibe, you can just stop playing for a bit and the team will hardly notice. That's just a fact.

 

This is like calling a band-aid broken because its being used for a brain tumor.  The over-effectiveness of team is due to, as others have said, the feature/power creep that occurred in conjunction with the business models that the game was employing whilst it was still live.  Now with the game being free and with various things changed to accommodate players, the imbalances become more readily seen/experienced.

 

However, I would be rather curious to see Homecoming's statistics on players in regards to activity of characters post 50 versus the activity of 1-50 preincarnate game play wise, especially for those that have 50's that have been t4'd. I suspect the percentage or player activity on 50's is smaller than the percentage or pre 50 characters being played, but I could be wrong.

 

This current topic's lament then really was inevitable with the more public play of the game as it is now.  And it only changes with either implementing significant curtailing of the way the game is currently played(ie nerfing, re-instituting inane grinding, etc) or another round of feature/power creep and other content added for the post 50 incarnate centric crowd.  And if it goes the feature/power creep route.... no end.  It would just be a vicious circle of complaints of gaps/disparity with content and stagnation or complaints of how progression occurs or many other things. New stuff---- optimizing---- rebalancing---stagnation---New stuff--- etc etc etc. 

 

 

There is no answer that is going to work for this sort of linear-progression-tunnel-vision thinking.  This is why there has become such a disenfranchisement with games like wow and others that require sustainability for their business models by providing more and more same ole same ole by rebalancing/stat shrinking/rehashing etc to keep the monetization going. 

 

If this issue were to be a majority/major concern(which I think overall it isn't at this point... yet) then I think the homecoming team will have to decide if they want to maintain the status quo of progression creep or come up with better ways that match their servers status of playing more freely as one more or less chooses.

 

 

 

[Titomancer]

So, after reading this thread, I think I've boiled it down.

 

With the current power creep (purples, incarnates, 8man teams, blah blah blah), yes, tanks are background players.  But EVERYONE is a background player with that amount of crap on screen.

 

Old school.  SOs.  Tanks just do it better. 

 

Thats it.  Tanks are an SO archetype.  They can do EVERYTHING they need to remarkably well with just SOs. 

 

So, if you want to get super fiddly with numbers, and super spreadsheety at high end and all that big, better, best?  Play a brute, your ceiling is higher.  Numerically, anyway. 

 

If you want to just slot SOs and have fun?  Play a tank, and accept that if you DO high end content with high end people, you are gonna feel like a background player.  But thats ANYONE in that situation.

 

[blinkyfish]

My *fix* for tanks to give them some love whilst not adding yet more power creep to the game would be to have their base damage and base DEF/RES scaling with team size.

So, basically a solo tanker (a team of 1) would do scrapper base damage (no criticals though) but pay for that by also getting scrapper level shields. Then as the team size goes up the tanker gets better defences but does less damage, until on an 8 person team (or maybe at 7 people) they are where they are currently.

Tankers would solo much better and be more desirable on small teams but still be the same on big teams.  I have no idea whether that can be implemented easily though.

[JusticeBowler]

My *fix* for tanks to give them some love whilst not adding yet more power creep to the game would be to have their base damage and base DEF/RES scaling with team size.

 

That was what I was thinking only more specifically, just a magic switch for solo play. If you are in a solo team, you do scrapper damage (no crit). Nothing complicated.

 

I also like the suggestion of increasing the tanker taunt limits. If a tanker could hold aggro on a much larger group than a Brute could manage, then the higher caps a tank can manage damage wise would matter more and he would be more helpful even on large teams.

 

Right now I cheat this on my Dark/Staff tank by being a tank-troller. I taunt a different part of the mob group than the one my dark auras (that to fear and disorient PBAoE) are managing. It works out if the difficulty isn't too high and I miss too much on the effects. While I'm sure there are Incarnate/Grape Brutes out there that can handle more straight damage than my lightly-setted tank, I suspect I can still outperform them this way.

 

But that's it, I think. Solo damage buff and higher taunt limit. There is no fix for 8 person teams with 2-3 of them tricked out. But this would make tanks substantially more viable than they are now.

 

This is not a problem that must be fixed. But to quote Winnie the Pooh, I don't need it, but I would very, very much like it.

[jack_nomind]

I also like the suggestion of increasing the tanker taunt limits. If a tanker could hold aggro on a much larger group than a Brute could manage, then the higher caps a tank can manage damage wise would matter more and he would be more helpful even on large teams.

 

For reasons I don't understand, Leandro hates this idea.  I'm all for it as well, personally; although I would like to see Tankers (and Defenders and Peacebringers) given a tune-up across the board.  I think there's a good bit of potential there for them (for all three) to move into bluer waters than damage-racing a counterpart archetype.

[Titomancer]

Well, not to balance around IOs, but lets face it, they need to be considered.  Imagine a fully specced out tank, they herd the ENTIRE mission into one room and the group burns them down.  I cant speak for anyone, but if I had to guess at a thought behind "no increase in tanker aggro limits" that would be my thought.  Its an extreme worst-case scenario, but I get the slippery slope idea.  Though I wouldnt be mad if they got like...5 extra enemies over Brutes.  But that aggro cap might be hardcoded into the game ona universal level instead of an AT level.

[Kruunch]

Well, not to balance around IOs, but lets face it, they need to be considered.  Imagine a fully specced out tank, they herd the ENTIRE mission into one room and the group burns them down.  I cant speak for anyone, but if I had to guess at a thought behind "no increase in tanker aggro limits" that would be my thought.  Its an extreme worst-case scenario, but I get the slippery slope idea.  Though I wouldnt be mad if they got like...5 extra enemies over Brutes.  But that aggro cap might be hardcoded into the game ona universal level instead of an AT level.

 

This is actually what got the agro limit put in place in the first place.

 

Too bad too because it was a fun play style you couldn't duplicate in other games as epically.

[JusticeBowler]

For the record, I'll admit to loving stupid tank tricks like herding. And I liked it even more when the mobs collision and AoEs were broken and you could dump the whole lot of them into a crack and melt the lot. My Ice Tank (Svengjuk) was still in the "ice tanks suck" stage back then, but I adapted and learned to do some crazy things (like large sections of IP).

 

But even though I liked it, I wouldn't do it most of the time, even back then. Some players enjoyed it in hazard zones, in part, because XP grind was so bad back then. Some of them just loved the theater of it (the build up, anticipating insanity of 60 + mobs, then climax of chaos). I suspect it wasn't that many people who liked it because herding more than 3 or 4 groups quickly raised objections as players got bored.

 

My experience is, the real problem with herding is that in a small room where two spawns are supposed to "up the difficulty" because you have to take out one group without aggroing the other, having sufficient taunt just made those rooms more lucrative rather than more difficult. That's the sort of thing that sticks under the craw of "play it my way" developers (and Dungeon Masters for that matter).

 

The truth is even though it would be a hoot to do some of that again, I'm not asking for it and the vast majority of the playerbase wouldn't want to play that way even if I did. Even doubling the limits wouldn't enable any of this silliness. I see no harm in a tank being "possible" to hold taunt on two x8 person spawns. If they are that worried, lower the AoE size of taunt to make such an effort more "strategic and challenging" to pull off (and make RCHG worth slotting in Taunt sets), but let it be possible. Or shorten the length of taunt's effects on threat... or reduce the overall threat multiplier of taunt, but let us try to hold more mobs.

 

All of this makes tanking MORE interesting, more invigorating, more vital. I think all of the ATs could use this same sort of treatment, allow some cool things to be possible, but make us work for them a bit. Everyone who plays CoH these days is a long time vet who knows what they are doing.

 

on solo damage...

 

I can see an objection to raising the SOLO damage because of AE farming, but it still wouldn't put tanks on par with Brutes for people who are into that sort of thing. Otherwise I can't see the objection apart from "we have so many worthy things that's just going to have to go in the queue."

[IronJuke]

How do you make enough money to twink out your character?  Are you using a Spines/Fire (or other) Brute to farm up the stuff? 

 

...

It takes me 30 minutes to make enough money to completely twink them out in enhancement sets (including superior ATOs, globals and purple sets). It takes me less than a day to go from dinging L50 to being 4/3/3/3/3/4 Incarnate.

[Kruunch]

How do you make enough money to twink out your character?  Are you using a Spines/Fire (or other) Brute to farm up the stuff? 

 

...

It takes me 30 minutes to make enough money to completely twink them out in enhancement sets (including superior ATOs, globals and purple sets). It takes me less than a day to go from dinging L50 to being 4/3/3/3/3/4 Incarnate.

 

Nope ... just playing the market.

[SmalltalkJava]

I only really play support based toons.  I love it when a tanker is on the team.  Things generally seem to go smoother.  Hell even controllers have a thread about the need for them at 50

[Marine X]

If you remember, one of the biggest Tanker Nerfs of all COX history was the reduction of the Taunt Cap. You literally could have a well enhanced Tank lead huge mobs around like they were on a leash. It really didn't affect the effectiveness of the Archetype on a Team Mission, just the fact that you used to be able to do more. This may be why Leandro is against reversing it. Enhancement Diversification  really brought Tanker damage down a peg, then Invention Origin Enhancements brought them back up. It's all about balance. Still my favorite Archetype, and I tried about everything on Live, except a Petless Mastermind.

[Sanguinesun]

How do you make enough money to twink out your character?  Are you using a Spines/Fire (or other) Brute to farm up the stuff? 

 

...

It takes me 30 minutes to make enough money to completely twink them out in enhancement sets (including superior ATOs, globals and purple sets). It takes me less than a day to go from dinging L50 to being 4/3/3/3/3/4 Incarnate.

 

There are a couple of threads on these forums about how people are using the market, converters, and other things to make millions of influence in a very short amount of time. Try to find some of those threads and see if they appeal to you for making enough to support your in game needs.

[Heraclea]

I have an L50 Tanker, Brute and Scrapper. They've all tanked 1-50 + incarnate. It takes me 30 minutes to make enough money to completely twink them out in enhancement sets (including superior ATOs, globals and purple sets). It takes me less than a day to go from dinging L50 to being 4/3/3/3/3/4 Incarnate.

 

I'm especially curious as to how the incarnate business is achieved.  It seems to be taking me a couple weeks or more before I have collected enough geemies on a fresh level 50 in order to slot anything in the alpha slot.  And even then, what I slot is based on what I have rather than what I want.  Apparently some content is gated through level shifts; of my four level 50s only Heraclea is +1, and collecting enough doodads to move past seems an unconscionable grind, especially since I don't play 'mains'.  It annoys that there is any content I likely will never see, even if that way lies only Praetorians and more confusion, fear, psi nukes, and don't-stand-here zones, and other catherding generic MMO crap that makes tankers irrelevant.

[Gone]

I have an L50 Tanker, Brute and Scrapper. They've all tanked 1-50 + incarnate. It takes me 30 minutes to make enough money to completely twink them out in enhancement sets (including superior ATOs, globals and purple sets). It takes me less than a day to go from dinging L50 to being 4/3/3/3/3/4 Incarnate.

 

I'm especially curious as to how the incarnate business is achieved.  It seems to be taking me a couple weeks or more before I have collected enough geemies on a fresh level 50 in order to slot anything in the alpha slot.  And even then, what I slot is based on what I have rather than what I want.  Apparently some content is gated through level shifts; of my four level 50s only Heraclea is +1, and collecting enough doodads to move past seems an unconscionable grind, especially since I don't play 'mains'.  It annoys that there is any content I likely will never see, even if that way lies only Praetorians and more confusion, fear, psi nukes, and don't-stand-here zones, and other catherding generic MMO crap that makes tankers irrelevant.

 

Gain levels and do incarnate content and high level content?  By vet level 12 you basically get all of the doodads you need to tier 3 everything, and if you do incarnate stuff that gives random salvage you can decrease that time by a large margin.  I have lots of alts at level 50 (8 or 9 I guess now) and the first thing I do is tier 3 everything, and while I'm not as fast as the post you're pointing at, it definitely takes me only a couple of days or so to get every ability to tier 3 just by doing some itrials, some high level TF's and whatever else comes up.  If you just want level shifts then focus on the three that give them for gated content (Lore/Destiny/Alpha) and that will decrease the time even more.

[Tyrannosaur]

Tanks are not obsolete. If any class might be considered such it would be Defender. Those poor guys are horrible at dps and are meant for support. That is all fine until late game where 'Trollers seem to provide both support and control. There was a time, until I4, that a Defender could dps as well as a blaster, but I5 or I6 they reduced it to 80 or 60% which means enough to annoy them to death lol.

[JCMcBoo]

On 7/8/2019 at 10:44 AM, Kruunch said:

With enhancement sets, the Incarnate system on easy-mode and an easy market on private servers have Tankers become totally obsolete?

Only if you assume that we are dealing with a zero sum equation which I personally do not believe is the case with CoH/CoV.

[Darth_Helmet]

On 7/9/2019 at 4:34 PM, Herotu said:

 

I concur. 8 seems like an awful lot of people nowadays, but way back when it was the standard. I think the small, intimate groups are cool, too. I'd like to see those self- imposed restrictions happen, but if you give people freedom they will take it all and ask for more!

Personally I think the 8 man teams were and are the most fun to be had. I'd rather see some challenges and content that more damage cant solve.  Or maybe have a +5x10 setting for missions (non AE) as a challenge mode to reward good teams

[Hyperstrike]

Still, just for gits and shiggles, just once, I'd like to be able to enter a map like the Psychic Babbage/Battle Maiden map, drop a Taunt, and watch EVERY LAST ENEMY ON THE MAP come swarming in, literally running up and over obstacles to get at me...