Day_Dreamer

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No AT should be "more survivable" in its native element than other ATs in their native element, with the obvious exception of tanks.

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It depends on whether by "survivable" you mean overall survivability including "dead mobs do no damage", or merely damage mitigation (which is what I was talking about).

Scrappers have a defensive secondary. Blasters' is offensive. Scrappers' damage mitigation should be higher, as Blasters are expected to derive "overall survivability" from range and offense.

If Blasters are deriving overall survivability from damage mitigation (ie. Aid Self) and that gives them mitigation comparable to Scrappers, or greater overall survivability, then there is a problem. (Whether range is an effective defense is possibly another, different but related, problem...)

It is also untrue that "overall survivability" needs be equal for all individual ATs (somehow excluding Tankers), as there is certainly a tradeoff that can be made between risk (ie. survivability) and reward (damage/speed of execution). Whether the balance is correct pretty much amounts to asking "is the survivability of Melee vs. Ranged where it should be".

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Aid Self is not overpowered on my fire blaster that has it.

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It depends. If it gives your blaster regeneration comparable to a Scrapper's secondary or a Tanker's primary then yes, one could easily argue it is overpowered -- or more accurately, that the damage mitigation provided by these sets is out of balance compared to Aid Self, and vice-versa.

Of course, then the Tanker/Scrapper could take Aid Self themselves, but if Aid Self improves their performance to the point they are basically forced to take it because not doing so effectively cripples them, or keeps them from performing up to most people's expectations, then that too is a significant problem.

Of course, it all depends on how much extra survivability melee ATs are supposed to have compared to the ranged ATs, which I think is the major question. After GDN and ED, there doesn't seem to be a clear or satisfactory answer to that.

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#3 was a non-issue in my mind.

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It certainly was a huge issue when written. Back in the days the two most popular types of "tank" Tankers were rooted and their damage -- when they had an enemy in range to swing at, not a common occurence -- was completely irrelevant to the team. The gameplay for an Invulnerability or Stone Tanker was to lay down his defenses, thus rooting himself; put Provoke on automatic and assist a Scrapper; then wait. If your team had TP friend you could go AFK at that point, the team would just move you from spot to spot, and your character would perform pretty much as well as it would with you at the keyboard.

That was pure "Provoke-bot" gameplay. The Tanker *could* be adventurous and try to do more than stand there and Provoke repeatedly, but at best are it wouldn't matter, and at worse it would detract from his performance.

It was nothing even approaching a comic-book experience.

It was also the days were Fire was an uber-damage machine and Ice was nigh-on unviable, so they were sort of left out of the entire discussion.

Why would you want a Tanker in a 5-man team if you have a Controller, a Scrapper, and a Defender to buff the Scrapper's defenses? At least the Blaster is contributing damage. What should the Tanker's contribution be?

I think that's the question that will truly define the Tanker's role.

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I think we really need to have an idea beyound the extremes of Scranker and Meatshield.

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The big problem is that there's not much of anything between the extremes. That's because the Tanker's capacity to operate at the meatshield extreme has been gutted, and the meatshield role is simply not needed in the game philosophy. So if he's not doing all that much good at that point, it's not going to get any better as he reduces his aggro control role in favor of doing more damage. He should therefore max out his damage as that is the bulk of his contribution, and spreading the damage around to himself is a bit of an afterthought.

In the post-ED world, anyway, everyone above a certain level is effectively a Skranker because there just isn't the spots to put the slots in defense. Post-40 or so your offense is going to be maxed out, or so close to maxed it won't matter much, simply for lack of better spots to put slots in.

I think the philosophy for any remaining Tankers in I6 should be to go in and start walloping the biggest guy you can find to draw some attention, and let the rest of the aggro fall where it may. You're going to be getting a lot of aggro from Gauntlet anyhow, quite possibly more than you can afford to take, and it should be obvious to everyone on your team you can't expected to take on all, most, or even all that much of the aggro anymore. Cold, but sadly, you *are* doing your best; this is as much tanking as you're going to be able to provide. At least this way you're using your defenses to the limit that way, providing an useful service by taking on the alpha, and applying your mediocre damage to help out. Taunt is what it's always been since Gauntlet and auravoke were introduced -- a nice save-the-squishy power, but hardly a mainstay or a must-have.

In this philosophy your role is basically to stand in front of the big guy and do as much damage as you can to him, pray you don't draw so much attention that you get pasted, and keep what you can busy while the real heroes do the work. And don't touch an Archvillain without a pair of pocket Defenders.

This approach is not going to be terribly effective, and I don't think it does much to justify the Tanker in a team. You're still putting out mediocre damage and not doing much to help out with team defense. But it's about the best you can do as it beats the alternatives, such as they are.

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Taunt-Bot is not tanking!

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... no, it's not, even if for a span it was all Tankers *could* do.

I'm not sure what this has to do with my argument?

Certainly that's not a direction we want the Tanker to move in.

My worry here is that the Statesman Tanker role is what the devs expect Tankers to do... and as this thread shows it's clearly perceived as not representing a meaningful contribution (and quite possibly turning to the detrimental). If this is to be the "redefined" Tanker role, and the extent of his contribution, we might as well not bother with the AT at all.

Scranking, while clearly suboptimal compared to Scrappers, has a bit more promise. One might want to limit such endeavors to smaller teams as Gauntlet in large teams may by itself gather more aggro than the Scranker might comfortably handle, but I think therein lies the Tanker's real playable avenue -- note that by playable, I certainly do not mean balanced. Tanker offense is much too low for this to be a truly worthwhile addition to a team, relative to another AT, but at least it's of some use. It also meshes well with the slotting ED forces Tankers into. Finally, it happens to be what a lot of would-be brick players originally wanted to do; let's not forget that even in the darkest days of Tankers, they were still fed by all the I-wanna-be-a-brick players, who might now turn more towards the Brute.

I think it's clear that the meatshield role is dead as a doornail, and was intended to die. I don't think this was solely a PvP decision, though that certainly factored in. Rather, the goal was to change the dynamic of a PvE encounter. I think the idea that each character is largely self-sufficient is genuinely brilliant, as it breaks the stupid EQ Holy Trinity, but in such a design, the role of a MMORPG tank is utterly superfluous. (I could point to the CoV archetypes at this point). This is a good thing; I like the idea of more chaotic battles where attacks aren't centered on a singular point of impact. But it's obvious that the Tanker's role will need to be re-examined in this light. He needs either an entirely new niche, or to share the Scrapper's to the extent the Stalker and Brute do.

Finally, let's not forget that it's not enough for an AT to be a zero-sum game to a team to be worthwhile; they need to bring actual benefit to the table to be considered. Defenders and Controllers let the group fight more than they normally would (synergy); meatshield Tankers don't anymore, so their presence is simply not useful.

I think that the bottom line is that Statesman has described what he sees as the role of a Tanker in the game, and I'm sitting here wondering why a team might possibly want to pick someone up for that purpose...

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I have never seen a planar level warrior able to solo any mobs worth xp, and they need support to tank for a team. Scrappers are actually better at tanking than EQ tanks are, and Tankers are above that! This is why they slapped us so hard I think. They belatedly realize they bascially made us too tough and now are bandaging the game haphazardly.

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I think that what they're really running into is that in a game designed so that anyone can solo effectively, groups don't have much need for a meatshield.

I'm not sure how much this is being realized -- but the CoV ATs sure look designed based on an anyone-can-solo paradigm, more so than the CoH ATs (and look, no tank AT).

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With the resources we have at the present time, can we fulfill that role?

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Barely, but I'll buy it.

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Are there Primaries that would not have been able to fulfill that role? Secondaries?

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I don't think the primary matters much TBH -- I think high hitpoints and status protections are the main deal here, and while the Tanker primaries are obviously uneven, they're just bonuses on top of the extra HP.

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Is the role a reasonable one that we can live with, long term?

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Certainly not, IMHO. I've gone into an elaborate explanation above, but as I pointed out, the role described by States seems to bring little tangible benefit to a team, and might conceivably prove to be a detriment.

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If not, how can we expand on it?

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The Tanker, by being a defensive bastion, must allow the team to be able to take on more than they otherwise would -- he must create *synergy* with the rest of the team in such a fashion that it becomes greater than the sum of its parts. Because of his low damage potential, he cannot be expected to "carry his own weight" simply by eliminating his "3 minions" as quickly as everyone else -- as a defensive AT, he must therefore benefit the team by allowing it to take on over "3 minions" per team member.


This is what pre-I6 tanks were capable of doing, and what they brought to the table. They did so in an excessive manner pre-I5, that's certainly inarguable, but they need to make the team better to some degree to be useful in the post-I6 world.

Or he must be capable of inflicting enough damage on his own that the difference between his damage and that of a Scrapper/Blaster doesn't offset the small benefit his aggro control abilities are bringing to the table.

If all they can do is take on their 3 minions slower than everyone else, and maybe take some damage off the other ATs so long as they have help later on, then he's simply not being discernibly useful.

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As long as the Tanker can hold onto aggro so that his teammates are facing less than they'd normally face (i.e. 3 minions), then the team has an advantage.

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Thing is, States, as it is now the Tanker can barely manage the damage from his own "3 minions" let alone accomplish much in the way of relieving teammates of their own aggro.

And even if he does, exactly why is this beneficial? Any AT can take on their 3 minions and win, that's part of the design of the game for soloability -- this is a good thing, but it also makes the concept of a Tanker iffy. That's because the other ATs are not, and cannot be, designed so vulnerable that they actually need protection.

You see, the Tanker might keep the squishies or Scrappers from taking some damage (at the expense of taking it himself), but he's not actually *contributing*. He doesn't make the bad guys fall faster, which is the benefit of the damage AT, and he doesn't make the team able to take on bigger and badder things. He's just spreading the damage around some, and forcing the team to spend some extra time finishing off his own minions after taking care of their own. He is, in effect, *slowing the team down*.

Sure, he's taking some damage off the squishies, but by design it is damage the squishies should already be able to take! What's the benefit of his presence? What useful role is he filling on the team? What's he contributing that a Scrapper couldn't do better?

The Tanker must be able to allow the team to take on more than it could without him for him to be valuable. Otherwise, his presecne is a zero-sum game. At best he provides a way to ensure nobody ends up facing more than they can handle, which can happen when facing large numbers of minions -- typically, this means taking the alpha strike.

That is not much of a role.

Now if he let the team take more than "3 minions" per, at the expense of it taking longer, he would have a clear and useful role in a team. If he's not doing that, his low damage output is slowing the team down. He becomes a liability.

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Is Soloing our future?

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Soloing, and small teams of mostly self-sufficient heroes, I imagine. The Tanker doesn't bring anything really major to a team nowadays so he's best in situations where he'll be asked to carry his own weight and nothing more.

Essentially, the Tanker has become a Scranker -- a pure melee fighter with lower damage and higher survivability, which unfortunately translates into a second-rate Scrapper.

The Tanker's team role is nigh-nonexistent these days, as he doesn't have the defenses to do the traditional Tank role -- not the way this game is set up; he currently lacks the ability to withstand much more than "his share" of opponents, making his role as a main tank untenable, especially in a big team. He's better off acting as something of an off-tank in a team where everyone can take care of themselves, and the Tanker is basically around to contain whoopsies but otherwise slowly wears down his own share of opponents until the rest of the team are done with theirs and can help him out. Of course, you might question his usefulness in such a scenario -- and you'd be right to.


I have nothing against a game where the aggro is spread out among the team rather than centered on one "tank", and in fact I'd welcome such a game... nut the role of the Tanker must then be rethought and right now I don't think he has the tools to fulfill any useful purpose -- except as a second-rate Scrapper.

(You might also question what a Tanker will do in a big team where attacking with the once-awesome Gauntlet inherent will draw more attention than he can likely survive... leaving you to wonder if he can even function as an off-Scrapper without getting himself vaporized.)

In short: I think that right now the Tanker's role is that of a mediocre Brute. If that.

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“All you villains are grey to me, no XP.”

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"What do you care? You're level 50!"

I wish I had the presence of mind to think that up when Posi showed up but I was too busy yelling for help when he attacked my cute level 6 Dominator butt in MI10.

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“What do I fear? Having an intellectual conversation with a Brute. All that SMASH talk gets repetitive.”

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That was precious, wish I had seen that one.

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“As long as I am alive you will never take Paragon City.”

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And around a zillion villains replied "that can be fixed".

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Every power, across the board, is getting a 13.33% reduction in its Endurance cost.

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Well, at least ED is good for one thing -- reducing the absolute necessity of Stamina. Some. I don't think people will want to go without it, but it will certainly make pre-Stamina life easier.

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Every time Statesman has said a change will happen, it's happened or he's explained why it couldn't (like that "rage" ability for tankers).

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You mean Fury?

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i'm suprised no one has brought up the "there should be one melee class" idea again.

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It's a longstanding idea, and I think it should be looked at again in light of I5 balancing and CoV.

I don't expect Tankers as a concept to survive much after the CoV release with its two offensive-oriented melee classes and its highly notable lack of a defensive melee class.

Oh, there might still be a Tanker AT, but it will look a lot more like the Scrapper/Brute/Stalker than it does now. I don't think that predicting an exodus towards the Brute AT for long-suffering brick players is a risky bet.

Um... Invulnerability is broke. That's the only way I can describe it. I don't think the "challenge level" is all that off but Invulnerability it ain't.

This comes from someone who was *really* looking forward to I5 and rebalanced defenses. I'd left the game by the wayside because Valiance was quite frankly too tough for her own good.

In I5 she isn't, really -- she's actually pretty survivable for what I've played, although that doesn't really include heavy-duty tanking for big teams and/or AVs. But she's not really a brick either, which in my mind is the worse of the two sins *by far*. So she's not getting much more playtime either, and neither is the game (not much interest in other character types).

And the thing is, I don't think getting it right would require much tweaking at this point. But that's the way it's seemed since day one -- I think Tankers (and Invuln Tankers specifically) were never actually "gotten right" yet, and they're still quite a bit off now, though there's been constant improvement up to I4.
I5 tho, was a step sideways overall, not so much a step backwards or forwards.

Then there's always the old option of putting Scrappers and Tankers on even keel for offense and defense. Seems to be the way CoV went -- learning from one's mistakes and all that.

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PvP aside, the game's not balanced for Hami-O's -- and, since they're supposed to be rare, it can't be. Except that they're not rare for some people anymore.


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Besides your opinion what are you basing this off of?


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"Hami-Os are supposed to be rare" is common sense. Which I realize is something of a matter of opinion. I'd love to see what arguments someone who thought that "Hami-Os are supposed to be common" would bring forward though.

(It does seem that some people think that "Hami-Os should be common for some people and rare for everyone else", but I personally think this position is both unfair and impossible to balance against.)

The rest, that the game can't be balanced for large number of Hami-Os, follows from their rarity. If Hami-Os are meant to be rare, is a direct consequence and seems to make sense on its own. You need to balance the game for the most common player situation, not the extreme cases.

So it's a matter of figuring out whether "Hami-Os are meant to be rare".

Do you believe defeating the Hamidon is meant to be a common event?
Do you believe that for the Hamidon to be defeated once a day or more is the intended design?
Do you believe players are expected to have 30+ Hami-Os to be effective in the "endgame" -- and by that I mean PvE?

I believe the answer to all these questions is "no". Granted, it's based on what I believe the designer's intent to be, but it seems consistent with their track record and the game's general design.

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so because a few people are unbalanced, by your standards, you want to do away with the only end game content's reward?

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It's not just a matter of "balance". More important is the fact that Hamidon breaks all the established paradigms for handing out stuff in the game. Up until Hamidon, there was no part of the content you had to do to have your character "up to speed", no need to do anything in particular to develop an effective character. There was no "elite loot".

Hamidon Enhancements are "elite loot". They create a class of "haves" and a class of "have-nots". Avoiding that always has been one of the biggest strengths of CoH.

The fact that Hamidon has never really been a balanced encounter vis-a-vis all power sets in any of its incarnations only exacerbates the basic problem. (Are they still having Regen Scrappers tank the thing because Tankers are useless?)

But smashed paradigm aside. If the "end game content reward" is going to unbalance the game to a large degree, then yes, it should be done away with. Or at least limited to some extent. Unbalancing the game is not good no matter what's doing the unbalancing.

And this is not just PvP -- PvE is going to be either "too easy" for a 50 with 30 Hami-Os or "too hard" for your basic level 50 without any. PvP just makes it more glaring because those two characters will be directly compared, whereas in PvE, they wouldn't coexist and you could cover up the issue with such things as a difficulty slider.

Again, the problem is camping/farming. Hami-Os would not be a problem if level 50 heroes had one or two, as I suspect the original intent was. The problem is that Hamidon has stopped being "end-game content" and has merely become a source of loot to be plundered over and over.

It's quite probable that the number of Hami-Os out there has already vastly exceeded any capacity of the game to accomodate them while still remaining viable for non-Hami-O characters in PvE already.

Hamidon Enhancers were bad before PvP entered the picture, the combination of Hamidon farming and looming PvP simply make the problem obvious.

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I'd much prefer it if Hamidon Origin Enhancements just didn't exist...

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Makes two of us.

PvP aside, the game's not balanced for Hami-O's -- and, since they're supposed to be rare, it can't be. Except that they're not rare for some people anymore.

It doesn't look like the designers envisioned people having more than a couple HOs at any one time. Unfortunately, that's not how it turned out.

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for the challenge?

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It's only a challenge if you have some chance of succeeding.

Otherwise, it's an exercise in pointlessness.

Which, in a way, is what the anti-HO argument is about -- preventing the Arena from becoming totally pointless for the vast majority of people who can't slot over 40 HOs.

I still think this is a probem with the potential to kill the feature, or at least kill it post-45. The more I watch this thread the more I'm convinced.

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I have utter faith in the minds behind "City of Heroes", so I'm not going to give up on 45+ PvP yet.

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So do I, but I'm not sure how much it has sunk in that this will be a "kills-the-feature" design issue. Which I absolutely feel it is.

From States' comments I think it hasn't. I think it's worthwhile to keep pointing it out until the devs come out and say "we have a solution" -- not what said solution will be, just that they've got a fix. My impression right now is that they don't.

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Do we put wieghted bands and Anklets on the better fighter in the ring to even things up when he has trained to be better than others? Do we shorten the bats on superior baseball players? Do we krack the knees of fast running backs? No we do not.

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While I don't think your argument has much merit, I'm going to grab this analogy because it's particularly apt.

What happens in a sport when one team or technique dominages so much that the show and competitiveness suffers?

That's right. They change the rules. Sometimes even if the skill was legitimate and hard-won.

Take hockey (what can I say, I'm Canadian). It's got serious problems right now because of lack of scoring. They're talking about limiting the size of goaltenders' equipment to provide a better show, to favor more offense.

At one point when a team was on the power play (they have more players on the ice because of a penalty to the other team) a team could score any number of goals during the penalty. Then the Montreal Canadiens became so good on the power play that the rule was changed so that one goal during the penalty would end the power play. This was a rule change aimed at rebalancing the game -- squarely by weakening the too-powerful Canadiens.

In effect, they nerfed power plays. And they did it was because they were so good at playing the game, not because they'd farmed the Forum for +5 hockey sticks of shooting and passing.

An other example that might be more familiar to our American friends. IIRC, college basketball eliminated the dunk rule to prevent Kareem Abdul-Jaabar from dominating games. He kept dominating games because he was such an awesome player and found other ways to dominate, but they did change the rule to impede him directly.

Hamidon Enhancers are simply not good for competition. There ought to be, at least, the option of turning them off.

I'll say this in no uncertain terms: I'm thoroughly against Hamidon enhancements in the arena. I think Hamidon in and of itself breaks the basic paradigm of how "loot" is handled in this game, a paradigm that was one of its greatest strengths.

I have no interest in farming Hamidon enhancements repetitively. In this, I think I am far from alone. I do not believe this makes be a "bad" player. I do not believe mindlessly farming raid content makes one an "elite" player either. It does not help that not all Archetypes have an equal opportunity to be useful against Hamidon (one of my pet peeves).

Unfortunately, because Hamidon enhancements are much more powerful than standard ones, they will be the trump card in PvP. MMORPGs being what they are, people will load up on them to the point that it will quickly become mandatory to load up on Hamidon enhancements if you want to do PvP at all and not be laughed out of the arena.

In my personal opinion, having Hamidon enhancements at all was a bit of a mistake considering the rest of the game's design, though it simply wasn't a real problem before PvP entered the picture. It was only a matter of time before people started farming the encounter to load up. Now it'll become a requirement for effective PvP; players without large numbers of Hamidon enhancers simply need not apply.

One suggestion would be to simply raise the level cap so at the top level Hamidon enhancements become unusable. There would still be a period of bad balance in the 45-55 range or so, but at least it wouldn't be permanent.

At least, give a way to turn them off as an arena option, so that people without Hamidon enhancers can have meaningful PvP at the higher levels, and people with them can still get meaningful competition. The arena is supposed to be about friendly competition, let's at least have the means to get a fair fight.

I'm interested in friendly arena competition, and I don't want to have to stop at level 47 because I'd need to spend countless hours raiding Hamidon to give my opponent something resembling an interesting fight.

Heck, maybe I'm being pessimistic, and people without Hamidon enhancements will play with each other and leave the people with to their own devices. That doesn't strike me as desirable, either, but at least the arena won't become useless.

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It looks to me, reading the posts, that the biggest users of Rage are SS tanks. That seems to be because we don't do enough damage without it.

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I think it's probably because SS is the only set that has Rage...