Aislin

Nice read and grats on 50, recently started my own spines/DA and she is so much fun, only level 11, so I seem to spend a fair bit of time hitting red on the health bar.

But nothing like living on the edge for that spine burst that will hopefully kill the bods around you before they kill you

I know the patch notes said that there was a fix in there to stop Khelds appearing to lose form.

However, in the first mission I did, just before Snaptooth died, I dropped from the dwarf image to the human one, although I was still in dwarf mode (all powers working etc)

Just a quick question...

Why not slot Grant invis for defence and fortitude with to Hit buffs?

Its how I've got my toon slotted to allow both extra defence and to hit ability because they won't always be in range of leadership toggles, especially the scrapper that is chasing the stalker down.

Any reason why you chose to do it differently apart from it being 2 buffs to keep going, just curious?

Just to warn people, I lost all my PvP rep for gaining the Atlas medallion - pm sent to weirdbeard before people point me in his direction but

Ok the above poster got there just before me but here goes....

Thanks for the update on why you believed that Burn needed amending, in reality you are repeating what you said before, and adding that immobilisation duration is being extended.

That's fine, sometimes people need to be told a few times before they accept a change, except, one thing you haven't answered that has been raised a few times is why a tanker set, that is supposed to generate and hold aggro, should have a power that causes fear?

If you look at the power set logically, it's a little odd that a tanker has a power they need to die to use (bad for the team), and one that causes bad guys to flee (also bad for a team).

And this is a generic set you want to team more, to make sure that any AT remains wanted by another.

Having done some limited testing on the test server (I lag badly on there but that has already been sent as a different problem….) burn still seems to have in the most simplistic terms, increased its magnitude on the fear factor, or taunt has lost its magnitude from current live environment.

And this is testing on no more than 5 mobs at a time, since that is the maximum I can taunt with “Auto taunt” to do realistic tests, that don’t require a “to hit” function that can skew the tests results.

So my first question to you would be:

Is the current test environment working as you planned it, is the magnitude of fear as you expected and planned it to be, and I say this as someone that has not heavily slotted taunt (1 recharge reduction, 1 taunt enhancement)?

My next question is simply, with the reduction in the powers damage and the increase in the recharge reduction, which technically reduces its real time damage output further do you think that the Fear aspect is still justified?

Logically, a tanker shouldn’t have a power that generates fear, and from the illusion controllers I have teamed with, their fear generation causes the bad guys to stand and tremble.

I know you said that when used with a stun/hold/disorient the power is a strong one, but that doesn’t hold true as they bad guys still run like a rabbit if they are stunned/disorientated and in the burn patch and that would only happen when, yups, we team or we have taken an epic power pool.

I know for my own fire/axe tanker, I was more concerned with slotting defences than attacks (inc burn) until fairly late on, since I teamed (which is what you want us to do) defence was more important than attacks.

So to repeat my question, with the ability to use burn less frequently for less damage (significant damage reduction) do we really need to keep the fear factor in?

Another part to this is simply, I do not feel we can use burn if we have +5 people around us due to the very long animation time, generally after I have applied it in test, the bad guys have jumped out of it before the animation has finished.

With a more limited taunt, I can, potentially (not all respond to the taunt) bring some back in, up to a maximum of 5, but I cannot punchvoke them to keep them in, since they have already jumped outside the melee range during the animation time.

So using it on more than 5 baddies, in a team environment, is increasing the risks to the team, which again, goes against the nature of a tank, believe me, I take it personally if someone dies on “my shift”, even if there wasn’t anything I could realistically do.

In I4, at least I can punchvoke them to keep the attention after using Burn and therefore maximise its effect.

My point is, when you add the recharge increase, damage reduction and fear aspect it is making it a very limited power to use and lessening its value as a 7th primary power.

I can live with the recharge and damage reduction, but can you remove the fear, or at least justify why, with all the other changes Fear should stay part of the power and how that fits with you vision of a tanker.

And I will re-iterate for people that didn’t read it and think this is a fire tank rant I can live with the recharge increase and damage decrease

Then there is the immobilisation issue, this feels like it was overlooked by the developers, which is fine, we are all human and it seems like you are now looking into this issue with another tweak, which is good, but before you put it into live, can I take you on a little roundabout discussion of a fire tank?

I know you must have data mined a lot to come up with these changes that “balance” the AT’s, so did your data mining not show that proportionally fire tanks use leaping pool far more than any other?

Doesn’t that tell you something, personally, I don’t use burn to protect me against immobilisation and here is why:

Burn (current I4 as far as I am aware):
End use 7.0
Recharge 10 secs
End use/sec = 0.7 for immobilisation defence

Combat jumping (current I4 as far as I am aware)
End use/sec 0.08

That means I have a click power that costs more end to use, since is does damage as well so that’s understandable or an always on power that costs a lot less.

If that was the only reason for Combat jumping, then it wouldn’t be the reason to use that above burn, but I also, as a fire/axe tank, feel that if I want to be effective, then I can’t be sat on my butt all day, especially in the I5 world as I need to use punchvoke more to keep my team safe.

If I need to use punchvoke (which I do in I4 anyway) I have to be standing and participating in battle, therefore to do my job I need knockback protection, ergo, I have to have a pool power, and even more so in I5.

With I4 and my ability to deal a good damage from burn/axe combo’s it was a trade off I was happy to make, but let me ask you, since we are no longer the offensive tanker we once were, is there any other AT/Class that cannot operate effectively without a pool power?

Where is the trade off now to not having knockback defence in the Fire tank class?

So to make an effective tank, (in my view this becomes even more critical in I5) I need to take Acrobatics and therefore 2 earlier powers from the leaping pool… my fate for travel power is therefore fixed…especially if I want a reasonable number of attacks so I can use punchvoke.

Which leads onto a final point, (sorry for the length of this post, thanks if you are still reading to this point).

If, as most people do on a fire tank, you take Combat jumping for immobilisation resistance/extra damage mitigation and Acrobatics for knockback resistance you will most likely be running Fire Shield and Plasma Shield at a minimum as well.

In addition, you are probably (if you can) running Blazing Aura for the added taunt effect (again, more so in I5 as you need to keep the aggro more effectively)

So this means:

Blazing Aura
0.75 end/sec unsloteed
0.56 end/sec 1 end reduction SO

Fire Shield
0.38 end/sec unslotted
0.25 end/sec 1 End red SO

Plasma Shield
0.41 end/sec unslotted
0.30 end/sec I end red SO

Combat Jumping
0.08 end/sec unslotted
0.06 end/sec 1 End Red SO

Acrobatics
0.32 end/sec unslotted
0.24 end/sec 1 End Red SO

Sub Total
1.94 end/sec unslotted
1.41 with 1 End Red SO in each power

Natural end gain 1.62 end/sec

Gain/loss
-0.32 end/sec unslotted
+0.21end/sec with End reduction SO's

Additional powers that most Fire tanks run to supplement defence

Tough
0.22 end/sec unslotted
0.16 end/sec 1 End Red SO

Weave
0.20 end/sec Unslotted
0.15 end/sec 1 End Red SO

Overall defence total Net End use
-0.74 end/sec unslotted
-0.10 end/sec with End Red SO's

So in effect if I want to be the toughest little fire tank I can be, without having major endurance issues I need to use end reductions, but even at 1 SO level I am draining endurance without attacking.

So I take stamina, and hey presto, I can now punchvoke effectively as I am now adding 1.25 end/sec (6 slotted even SO’s) meaning with my end reductions that I gain 1.15 end/sec.

But wait a minute, there is a downside to my little defensive tank build…. I am required to take 9 power pools to get there, and if I want to keep punchvoking in a tough team situation, my attacks will drain my end quite happily, so I take Consume from the primary, and boy it's a life saver.

So now, I can start thinking about “other powers” but out of 24 slots, in addition to my Primary and secondary choices, I have taken 9 semi mandatory pool powers for a tank, which defeats the point of them being pool powers…

I can skip CJ if I use burn as my immobilisation freeing power, but that increases my end use and I still need acrobatics.

Since burn isn’t such an offensive giant anymore, which again, I am happy to live with, can we not put knockback protection into one of the base shields?

At least then a fire tank could choose to use burn as an immobilisation shield and free 1 slot (previously acrobatics) for powers to use punchvoke with (I am assuming 2 would have been used for a travel power anyway) and provide more choices of travel powers to the Fire tank without compromising their Tanker ability.

So my final question is, after tweaking burn for immobilisation and making fire tanks less scrapper like in comparison to other tanks, is there justification for not giving knockback protection in the primary set?

Go on, you know you want less cookie cutter builds out there