Alabaster12

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Stone is the best "tanker" if your ideal tanker is the one character that remains standing while the rest of the team returns from the hospital.

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This is completely the opposite of my experience playing my stone tanker so I'll fix it for you...

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An extremely poor build for a Stone is the best "tanker" if your ideal tanker is the one character that remains standing while the rest of the team returns from the hospital.

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The movement and recharge penalties, and especially the annoying -jump that never goes away no matter how many Kins you have, make it less likely that the Stone tanker is going to be able to react quickly to emerging situations.

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Or you could actually think about your build... take powers that increase your mobility, and use IO's that help offset the penalties, and then you will be the toughest thing in this game, and yet also still be able to move just as easily as if you were any other tanker.

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(And the false belief that Stone is the best team defense only encourages those players who want to play buffing sets to roll up the quite useless and very annoying Kinetics -- and skip Increased Density, the one useful buff in the set -- rather than the Sonic, Thermal, and Force Fields characters that they ought to be playing.)

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A properly built Stone tank is one of the best team defense. If you don't believe that, let me know and I'll give you a lesson on mine about just how good they can be.

And... great job telling other players what they should, or should not be playing. When you start paying their subscription maybe you can tell them what to do. If you seriously think increase density is the only value from a kin then you have absolutely no idea how the set works. There are a lot of great defender sets, and kin is one of them. With or without speed boost, there are some amazing powers in the set.

To the OP... pick what you think works for you. Any set can be a great tanker in this game depending on how much you want to build your character. Any negatives on any set can be offset with the right build, and any tank primary/secondary can do the job for any group.

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In my opinion, the minute the tank needs support to tank the finale, that invalidates Tankers.

In other words, if this AV needs someone bubbled/buffed up and being healed to tank it, why not just get a Scrapper? Or a Brute.

Which is the core of the issue I have with developers and how they treat and regard Tankers.

They'll penalize a Tanker with lower damage because of their ability to tank for a team, but hypocritically they won't hesitate to try to nullify or reduce that niche with enemies who circumvent that survivability advantage.

If a Scrapper can't tank an AV without support, and a Tanker can't tank the same AV without support, but both can with support (and such is true; already I've watched Scrappers tank this TF with support) then what is the point of the Tanker?

None. None at all.

They have no problem removing the need and advantage of a Tanker, while at the same time refusing to stop punishing the Tanker with crappy damage for that "advantage".

If this was on the eve of giving Tankers more damage or something, making them less sturdy by de facto would fly with me. But I doubt that's on the horizon. So what we have here are the devs creating yet another enemy to crap on Tanker defenses while at the same time continuing to crap on their offense as well.
That doesn't fly with me.

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Don't waste your breath derailing another thread so that you can somehow manage to say that "this same topic has come up for 3 years". If that's the only way you can help your invalid argument to get this fake "look at the forums" data point, I guess you have to do what you have to do.

Nothing to see here folks. Move along.

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That is the best advice I can give in this case.

Don't run poorly designed content and don't validate the developers crapping on Tankers.

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It was rhetorical. Obviously you don't give positive good advise just based on the fact that at the end you had to jam in the tanker damage thing... again.

Moving on. As others have said. Defense seems to be the new resistance so stock up on defense sets, maybe get yourself a bubbler, and some CM love and have at it. Try some different team makeup's and I'm sure there are quite a few options that will work.

I'm sure they aren't going to integrate a TF that isn't possible to defeat (regardless of what J_B says) with the current balance, however I must say I'm glad if they really are ratcheting the difficulty curve up... particularly before GR for the villains used to more difficulty.

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Not run this unfinished and poorly conceived TF?

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Do you ever actually just offer positive good advise? Bitter and angry much?

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First; I like the fights. I like massive chaotic knockdown-dragout brawls that last for five minutes straight. Most of my really fun memories in CoH usually revolve around those types of fights. A guilty pleasure is watching my group wipe (multiple times) on the same fight and reform while I'm still going at it the whole time, to eventually overcome that particular encounter.

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I personally cannot stand when I let my teammates die in battle.
I play my Tank to protect others, and if I can't do that then I fail. I'm a Tank, it's increadibly easy for me to survive most things in this game without help...my challenge is keeping the team alive.

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I am normally under this mindset, however I do have to admit, I had a team when MA first came out on my stoner where we were facing 54 bosses and this team had very limited support (I think we had a single FF defender that didn't like casting his bubbles) at all and these packs were HUGE and they were actually pretty close to each other. I seriously think this guy made what he thought would be the biggest pain in the [censored] mission he could. Picture the worst of the worst as far as combo's from the MA, and you're pretty much there. I think there were spines/regen and /fire scrappers, debuffers... it was nasty. About the only thing it didn't have was psi.

A single pack and we were fine, but for some reason a lot of these guys liked positioning themselves and/or knocking back to the point where we almost always got a second pack.

I do have to admit, it was a lot of fun when 2 packs of these guys were sitting on top of me, laughing the entire time, while even the IO'd scrappers that we had were getting killed in less than 5 seconds. It was virtually impossible for me to hold them all just with the aoe cap and the fact that they couldn't get close enough to me to get in range... not to mention that even when they were near me, everyone else was getting splash damage.

The entire team besides me, died regrouped/buffed up (the FF decided it would be a good idea to buff now since they had wiped), attacked again, all died within about 5-10 seconds... they repeated this entire thing about 8-10 times, while I was just sitting there laughing.

By the end they were all saying "You know... we'd be pissed at dying so much, but this is a pretty impressive display".

Eventually they whittled down the pack enough in that 5-10 second spurt they had, that we managed to kill it off.


FWIW... this is also my answer on the other thread to why I play my tankers.

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Thats just my point, their not rewritting code for character models or building textures. My comment was directed toward the power customization. My comparison using an FPS, was that the FPS in said comment was pretty diversed, far more diversed than DOOM. And it only took four programmers. I didn't say just ANYONE can program, but rather that those with years of experience can do it quite easily. Apparently I offended you and Starsman.

The fact is, no one on this board (red names excluded) has developed an MMO, so we can understand the premise of it being "hard", but what you fail to acknowledge, is that most if not all MMO devs have years of experience and can handle programming. What YOU deem as hard, isn't necessarily hard for others. I cant just pick up a rig and all of a sudden develop an MMO with zero overhead. Well I could but it would be City of Stickman5000. My point being, don't get all flustered in nerd rage and understand that somethings aren't that hard to PROFESSIONALS.

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You were comparing two types of game development (one of which was on a console which makes it even more different) which believe it or not, I do actually have PROFESSIONAL experience in, and saying that because only 4 people were required for one, that it somehow supported your case for it not being hard. Patently false.

No one ever said programming was hard for people who do it for a living, but you're comparing apples and oranges. It is the equivalent of saying that because html for a web page only took a single person to write, writing an http server isn't hard. It may or may not be hard to write an http server, but the amount of resources it takes to write a web page in html is pretty much irrelevant to whether it is or isn't.

My problem was with your analogy, not with saying it is hard or not.

I'll stick to that to avoid going overboard with what Mr. Moderator already said about this thread.

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In J_B's defense, he does bring alot of evidence to the discussion, but it's just almost entirely anecdotal.

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Anecdotal evidence might as well not even exist when discussing balance in an MMO. To this discussion it might as well be no evidence, particularly for the self-appointed crusader for his "cause".

It is by far the easiest to defeat which is why so many people simply respond. "That is not my experience." and completely negate his "argument".

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<pokes head in thread> Anything new....... </pulls head back out>

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Yeah Ace. Positron popped in to say that since the same damn topic has been coming up every week for three years that they're going to actually do something about it instead of ignoring it and wishing it goes away.

And then my alarm went off, I woke up, took a shower and had my coffee.


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When you always have the same poster throw the thread off topic and push to that same topic for three years ranting and raving without any evidence at all, I doubt they will listen.

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Dark has plenty of debuffs and some heals, but no +defense

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Just had to correct this a bit. It does have shadow fall which provides some defense, and resists (to energy which is nice if you go bots) and even more nicely some rare resists to psi.

The rest I agree with, but I found that it was still pretty easy to solo a good chunk of the AV's with my bots/dark without many IO's. I also found that the to-hit debuffs and -regen still worked pretty well on the AV's. Not as easy as /traps, but still pretty darn easy.

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I think you took my programming in their sleep comment too literal or yout being obnoxious about it, either way it was a cheap way to insult me.

Secondly, you clearly havent heard of Insomniac studios which started with four programmers, their first game was a playstation success called Disruptor and then later Spyro followed by the acclaimed Ratchet and Clank series. FOUR programmers.... developed an ENTIRE first person shooter, with levels and all. Programming code is primarily easy to those IN THE FIELD. Dont act oblivious just to try and disprove me.

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Wow did this one rub me the wrong way.

There is a HUGE difference between writing a relatively simple FPS with a static map system, than writing an MMO that requires everything the FPS had, plus dynamic characters, maps, classes, terrain, and levels... combined with some rock solid network code, a system for modifying game details going forward to handle inevitable balance issues, scalable server code, not to mention tools for both your own design team and your users... and you also have to be cognizant enough going forward that any minor time saving (or slightly less forward thinking than anyone would've thought you needed) design decision you make is going to be scrutinized for years (as is happening right now)... and that's JUST the programming side, saying nothing of your art assets.

I wrote a simple FPS in college 7 or so years ago with 1 other friend. Trying to write an MMO with 2 people would take so long that you would be obsolete before you even got to the first milestone.

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Any thread about Tankers vs Brutes vs Scrappers.

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So.... you don't have one.

All I needed to know. Thanks.

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Tankers "being boring" and "lacking punch" are the two biggest reasons given by people when asked why they don't player Tankers.

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As you so aptly said in the other thread...

Source?

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what I would like to see is some kind of timer. Maybe a reverse of fury were the longer you wait before throwing a punch the more damage it would do. Something like..I am warning you..don't push it..okey dokey Bulk <SMASH> !

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Not to pintpoint your post here, but this is a perfect example of what I think the major problem is with combining game balance, with game concept.

Conceptually this is a fantastic idea that would help give more of a comic book feel to the game.

Balance/Game wise this is a horrible idea. How fun would it be in game to have to do nothing for an extended period of time just to be able to do additional damage. People don't like having breaks in their attack chain as is because it feels like you are just sitting there, imagine if that was enforced by a mechanic like this.

As I said I don't mean to rain on your idea, conceptually I like it a lot, I think it's just a great example of how we can't go to far towards concept and to far away from the actual game.

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It could work, the timer would only reset when you use an attack, so basically a tank wouldnt lose dps for taunting, or using his secondary powers.

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I never said it couldn't work. Just that it would be counter productive. Why would you want to entice a player to not use powers.

Considering a large portion of defensive powers for tankers are toggles, this makes it even worse. If that were implemented then I would actually agree with J_B... we would be taunt-bots. (waiting for lightning to strike nearby for actually saying that I would agree with J_B).

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what I would like to see is some kind of timer. Maybe a reverse of fury were the longer you wait before throwing a punch the more damage it would do. Something like..I am warning you..don't push it..okey dokey Bulk <SMASH> !

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Not to pintpoint your post here, but this is a perfect example of what I think the major problem is with combining game balance, with game concept.

Conceptually this is a fantastic idea that would help give more of a comic book feel to the game.

Balance/Game wise this is a horrible idea. How fun would it be in game to have to do nothing for an extended period of time just to be able to do additional damage. People don't like having breaks in their attack chain as is because it feels like you are just sitting there, imagine if that was enforced by a mechanic like this.

As I said I don't mean to rain on your idea, conceptually I like it a lot, I think it's just a great example of how we can't go to far towards concept and to far away from the actual game.

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Me, I'd rather play something with devastating hand to hand combat than something that just holds their own. Holding your own doesn't sound very super to me. And just because the devs ran out on Tankers for Brutes, doesn't mean I will.

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There are options available to you that would allow you to be devastating hand to hand, as so many others have pointed out to you.

I've tried to figure out if you actually believe you are in a world where everyone is with you against the mean evil dev's who abandoned tankers and put all the emphasis onto brutes, or if you just like to repeat yourself a lot. Your need to make this a big dramatic crusade that you're "taking on" for "oppressed" tankers shows you really do want to be a super hero in real life, and I don't know whether that is just because you are extremely bored, or whether you have some kind of mental deficiency.

In either case I know you're not going to stop repeating the same exact text over and over again regardless of where you post, and I realize that makes my post here superfluous as well, but yet we both persist. You, for a reason I've decided I can't figure out... and me because I'm at work and enjoy feeding the troll. It amuses me.

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Unfortunately, most of those expectations are quite unreasonable.


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Prove it.

Most of the poeple here have agreed on a number of solutions for Tankers that they deem quite reasonable in theory.

The developers don't weight in either way, so in this case their silence can not be taken to equal disagreement, nor can it ever really.



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From what I've read here... "most" (whatever that means by the way) people here don't even accept your premise that there is a such a gigantic problem to begin with.

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I guess I'm a simpler sort, I just 6 slot em for all Acc, then at lvl 12, 6 Acc DOs. At lvl 22, 3 Acc and 3 Damage SOs or lvl 25 IOs. I focus on what I'm gonna use my henchmen the most for ... FRAGGIN', LOTS of FRAGGIN'. So I max out Acc, I passionately HATE wasted ammo. I Then max out damage later. Don't know much on IO Sets, don't overly care.

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Um... what? 6 acc's?

Can of worms... opened.

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Pointing towards a brute forum


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No one said anything about the Brute forum. Read more carefully.

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Funny from someone who selectively reads posts to pull out a single out of context point instead of addressing the meat of the argument. Perhaps you should take your own advise.

I read your post before I responded (insert "Posts on the forums comparing brutes tanks and scrappers" for brute there if it makes you feel better) clearly you only read one sentence from mine.

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In a poll of tankers...

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There's your mistake right there.

You don't poll just Tankers. Any poll would have to sample everyone who plays the game. Most players who think Tanker damage is too low, or their offense too boring, aren't going to be playing them. If you have trouble with getting customers into your restaurant, you don't ask your regulars what the problem is, you ask the people who aren't coming.

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In the end all I have ever seen for the argument about tankers needing more damage is "I think they do", and "I also think that everyone else thinks they do".

Pointing towards a brute forum is just as bad as pointing towards only a tanker forum. Brute players by their very nature are players who enjoy dealing more damage (as do most players), so of course when they play a tank it is going to feel underwhelming damage wise by comparison.

Regarding the rest of your post, you still haven't been able to support your claim with any kind of data backing it up (even including data about how other players feel) so in the end until that happens the "argument" is quite simply invalid.

You will always have someone who's experience says that they are fine, and someone who's experience says they need more damage, neither of which has been backed up at all by a majority of players in the forums, the majority of players who have never even visited the forums, active tanker players, or non-tanker players, support role players... etc. Until you have a sense of that information there is no evidence that a change should happen.

I realize that is partially what you were saying in your above post, but as someone who has campaigned for an increase in damage you don't have all the information either.

It's all just supposition, but the problem is that as someone who wants a change the burden is on you to show that it is needed and I don't believe you've done that.

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Aett:
I don't think he's talking about the ranged attacks for tankers proposal from the beginning of the thread. It's wandered away from that a few times now. I believe he's on the mode damage for tankers bandwagon now (though I could be wrong, correct me if so).



The game is based on the comic book genre. Champions drew its inspiration from the same source. As it stands, the main source of comic books is Marvel and DC, therefore, the main source of inspiration is Marvel & DC.
They do draw a degree of inspiration from greek mythology, but it's nowhere near as direct an inspiration as from comics to CoH.

Oh, and to go on record with a simple mnemonic: Objective=Fact, Subjective=Opinion.

MOST of what is posted here, and particularly in this thread, is OPINION, ergo, subjective and NOT objective.

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I would even extend that.

Most of what has been said here is anecdotal opinion which is even worse.

That is what I mean when I say base it on data and not 'feel'.

Data:
In a poll of tankers (with the following representative numbers to back it up) xyz % of them felt that their tankers weren't doing enough damage.

Tankers are played xzy % less than other AT's and here is the most common reason why.

Tankers do xyz % less damage in game.

What is happening in this thread:
I, and many others like me, feel that tankers aren't doing enough damage.


The last one is a completely invalid argument and yet that seems to be the most commonly used one for this "give tankers more damage" opinion.

The reason you get dismissed so quickly is because you assume that the majority of players of the AT have exactly the same opinion as you do, which you have absolutely no idea if that's the case or not. The only evidence for them not "feeling" right is anecdotal.

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Pining for the days of issue 4, where Fire/Fire and Invuln/SS tankers were soloing maps spawned for 8 and Burning or Foot Stomping mobs to death by the score, illustrates just what you think of game balance. God mode isn't coming back, nor should it.

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This is what it boils down to. People are STILL upset that their tanker can't solo an entire map in 5 mins as they could pre-i4. Get over it. That kind of undeniable power in a video game was completely and totally boring. There was absolutely zero challenge in the game at that point, and it was what made me stop playing.

Running around a map, moving to a spot, waiting a couple minutes for everything to get to you, hitting 1 or 2 buttons and having everything die, and then leaving to do it all over again... was quite possibly one of the more boring situations in a game I've ever played.

That isn't dev love, that is not wanting the game to be broken again to the point where I decide to leave. I LIKE the game as is, and more to the point I LIKE tankers as is. That isn't being in love with everything the dev's say or saying that they are infallible, that is my wanting to continue playing a game and an AT that I like.

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Objective: adj. expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations

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You are not being objective at all. The burden of proof is on the people who want change to prove that it's necessary, using hard data like in-game numbers recorded in controlled conditions, not subjective arguments such as personal interpretations of comic books, how tankers 'feel' to play, etc. Those people who want tanker damage to increase have not provided objective evidence to support their premise. Instead, the people who post data to back up their arguments are the ones who posit that tanker damage should remain where it is.

If you want tanker damage to increase, you're not going to prove that it needs to be increased by saying the people who say it shouldn't are just expressing unrequitted dev love.

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So very very very THIS that I had to quote it for emphasis.

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That same developer also admitted that increasing tanker damage to compensate was a mistake as well.


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Did he now?

And what quote would that be?

I'm remembering the interview where he sought a modifier increase for Tankers but was told that couldn't happen. We don't know if any thought was put into special mechanics or temporary damage increases. Circiumstances are different now anyways, and what was unacceptable before might be possible now.

Once upon a time, infinite respecs, cross factional teaming and flashbacks weren't possible or were things that were argued shouldn't be done. Things change. I don't think it's out of the question to re-examine Tankers.


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And yet... what they said before seems to have been a large foundation of your rebuttal argument for increasing damage. At least I'm assuming it is with the frequency that you bring it up.

If you do have some additional remarks or reasons (maybe with some data or tests to back it up) for why you feel so strongly that there is a problem with Tankers... and that the problem is damage related, I've never heard it.

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This unrequited dev love needs to stop. Their human, they make mistakes. Fautline being one of those famous mistakes. And finally "fixing" Hollows after four years. Yes its an error, just because they don't admit to it doesnt make it any less a mistake. See passed the love for red names and use some objectivity.

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It isn't unrequited dev love regardless of your ad hominem. I was directly responding to a quote that J_B made that they were admitting that there is an error regarding tankers which once he quotes that will be 3-4 years old prior to changes that have been made.

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Besides the obvious name? or the "rage meter" they have. But if you need a more obvious hint; " Brutes live to fight, and as a brute you revel in hand-to-hand combat. With power offensive sets to inflict pain and impressive defense to take it, your the best there is in a straight fight. Protracted battles only makes you mad, and the madder you get, the more damaging your attacks become." - CoH Brute description.

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Ah yes because the game descriptions are the only things that we can go by.

Please also keep in mind the following descriptions:
"In comparison to the other Archetypes, the Blaster is by far the most damaging to the enemy."
- Except that they aren't...

"The Controller has few offensive attacks and possesses the fewest hit points. But the Controller has access to a range of powers that no one else has: the Control power sets."
- Except for those offensive powers... and the other AT's that have control powers...

"However, Scrappers do not have any ranged attacks, so they rely on the other Archetypes to help in battles requiring long-range punch."
- Except for those ranged attacks they have.

The Corrupter description says absolutely nothing about the support aspect of the class.


It is lack of imagination pure and simple.

I've seen Kheldians in the game who are not nictus. I've seen masterminds controlled by their pets. I've seen evil heroes and good villains.

Concept is what you make of it.

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Superman "stepping it up" as you say when the fight gets tougher could easily be signaled by a fury bar. Whether that bar equals anger or not is completely up to the individual behind the keyboard.

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Except the concept in question isn't a bar filling up with the character's damage slowly ramping up and increasing due to outside stimuli. Like for example, Stong Guy ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_Guy ) absorbing more and more kinetic energy.

The concept is a character who's no longer holding back. There is no ramping up period and it's a deliberate decision to cut loose. That is quite different than Fury in both how it would be executed mechanically and the core concept.


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I can understand the conceptual difference but not the mechanical one.

If all you want instead of a bar that indicates how much you have stepped it up and instead want a button to push that indicates that you have a "build up" then it really does seem like a very semantic thing as far as a game mechanic.

Particularly when tankers in my mind (as someone who plays tankers a LOT) are capable of doing acceptable levels of damage. They might not be able to do scrapper or brute levels of damage out of the gate, but a scrapper or brute cannot achieve tanker defensive levels out of the gate either.

Like a lot of other tanker players this is an acceptable trade off for me.

What I have a hard time with is understanding is how you cannot fit your concept into a bar instead of a button.