Genesis_NA

Ah, almost like a toggle. Yes, anything that gives you more control over your character I’m generally in favor for. I don’t care much for automated systems that can get me into trouble, I’d rather do that on my own.

Yes, if the concept behind all of this, as Statesman put it, is that the villains recognize that you are becoming an increasing threat and thus their attention shifts to you, I think there are ways for your Tanker to be more flamboyant about it to achieve that effect and also ways not to be as obvious. Maybe this results in simply increasing the range of the AoE from something that is quite large all the way down to a very tight area around you.

If you really want to be the center of attention, just grab the villain by the foot and let out a bellow as you start swinging him around as a club against all the other villains. There are ways to be less than subtle about your presence on the battlefield.

I would not want, say, a dozen Vahzilok Abominations to be taking an interest in me all at the same time if I were a Tanker in my teen levels.

Tankers are not real Tankers before they reach level 20. They're abilities are a mix of values based on a generic archetype that are slowly morphing towards the values on the Tanker tables. They also may or may not have their defenses heavily slotted at this point depending on how they chose to place their slots (which are not handed out in abundance like they are at later levels), and are probably still using generic enhancements. Depending on their initial power choices they may not have much in the way of defensive powers to begin with. Things like this aren’t an issue for elder Tankers.

However, even an elder Tanker can find himself in a position where his life is threatened. At a point where luck is all that stands between you and death, is attracting the attention of even more villain the wisest move you could be making at that point (particularly if the rest of your team is relatively healthy and capable of fielding a few bad guys for you)? Your only recourse at that moment would be to cease attacking, which I doubt very many Tankers want to be in the position to have to do just to control their aggro.

I don’t know, the potential problems seem obvious to me. It may be one of those things that just don't make sense until you find yourself in that position.

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I agree, Umagon. Automated and uncontrollable, that’s not a direction I really want to go. I wish they would discuss this with us a bit more.

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That would be no different from critical hits, which are automated and uncontrollable, and thus don't change tactics much, if at all. Anyway, there is precedent for them making that kind of change.

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Do you really not see the difference there?

Uncontrollable critical hits allow you to do more damage. Who's going to complain about doing more damage? And how does that have the potential to be a bad thing to a Scrapper?

Uncontrollable AoE provokes may lead to you getting more villains aggro on you in a given fight than you can handle. I can understand players complaining about that.

As jvbrown mentioned, a very short range AoE wouldn’t be bad, as you more or less have some measure of control as to what is directly around you. But if some of my team are purposely fielding bad guys while I’m tanking as many as I can handle fifteen feet away (staying in healing range is a good thing), and my punches keep attracting too many villains away from them and back onto me, that has the potential to suck a whole lot.

It can also lead to a lot of wacky villain behavior if multiple tanks are all fighting within proximity of each other.

Well, this aoe-provoke tied into Tanker attacks is an artificial fix to correct a Tanker issue, it’s not a function of the power. I agree that feedback on powers is good, but these aren’t superpowers called “Jeering Jab”, “Provoking Punch” and “Heckling Haymaker” from the “Provoke Melee” power pool.

Unless the feedback is something like a chat balloon above the minions saying “He smashed Lenny, get him!” or “Holy.. rush that guy!”, I don’t think it’s appropriate. It would be unlike anything you ever see drawn in a comic to display what is actually happening (bad guys turning their attention towards you because you’re kicking tail). And even chat balloons/chat text would turn into a lot of spam quickly, especially with multiple Tankers fighting. These melee attacks already have effects associated with them to begin with.

If this was the Provoke Melee power pool, sure, but this is just a behind-the-scenes artificial way of making Tankers a more attractive targets to the villains, and it should stay quietly behind-the-scenes. My two cents.

(I’m not even wild about the idea of uncontrollable aoe-provoke punches to begin with.)

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There's an effect every time they provoke anyway, so there's not really a difference.

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...

Sure there is. I’m 100% certain that some of us take a swing at the bad guys a lot more often than we provoke.

That would be a lot of unneeded spam, in my opinion. Villains flocking to me will be all the feedback I need.

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I really hope the Taunt/Provoke agro control they add to our atks has a visual effect, much like Porvoke does now. Two reasons. So i can space myself accordingly, and to show my team mates that I AM in fact provoking, pissing off, or gaining agro.

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Do you really want a visual effect every time you take a swing, in addition to what is already there? That’s a lot of constant screen noise.

I agree, Umagon. Automated and uncontrollable, that’s not a direction I really want to go. I wish they would discuss this with us a bit more.

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I think once tanker attacks get a provoke effect it will help against AoE aggro. You just keep punching and stuff sticks to you. Also remember there is only so much a tank can do. At some point it is up to the blaster to not be stupid enough to pull aggro on himself so bad that a tank can't get it back.

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I see what you’re saying, Wargun, although I was commenting on something different. There was a concern that pre-20 Tankers are not the indestructible power houses they are after they fully enter their archetype. If an AOE provoke effect is tied to each of their attacks, they may be drawing more attention to themselves in any given battle than they can actually handle. I’ve had a few Tanker characters, and my lower level one can handle X number of bad guys (depending on the villain group) and no more. The rest I have to depend on my team to handle in their own way while I tank the majority. Sure, it’s my job to be the meat shield, but my team realizes that they’re going to be in a much worse situation if I take on more than I can handle and die, leaving nothing between them and all of the villains.

The solution they're working on gives us an easier way of attaining aggro, but depending on how they implement it it can get a lot of Tankers killed. I'm not wild about an AoE provoke tied to my attacks which can only be controlled by either attacking or not and would really like to hear more about what they're considering.

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The increased aggro is something that's close to implementation.

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My apologies if you mentioned this elsewhere and I missed it, but when this change was first announced there was some concern about how deadly increased uncontrollable AoE aggro could be for the weaker lower level (pre-20) Tankers. Has any thought been given towards this, or a solution decided upon?

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1. Tankers will get a "provoke" like AOE effect on their melee attacks. The more a Tanker lands his blows, the more and more mobs he'll attract. The bonus here is that it's not exactly like Provoke (it's not ranged) - but it makes a lot of sense. Some huge monstrosity is bashing the heads of a villain group - they're going to get more and more concerned about taking him/her out....



Feel free to comment!

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Statesman, I have a concern about one of the upcoming changes.

Having restarted a second SS/Inv Tanker not long ago, I’ve been recently reminded of how tough certain villain groups (Vahzilok) are to a lower level Tanker. A young Tanker’s ability to mitigate damage is nowhere near as effective as it can be later on in their career. Also, a Tanker is not fully a Tanker until level 20, and the closer he is to level 1 the more he’s just a generic hero that is slowly transforming into his archetype. This is true of all archetypes between 1 and 20, as you know.

So, younger Tankers have the problem of only being partial-Tankers until they’ve completed their shift fully over to the Tanker tables, and are facing very dangerous opponents (Vahzilok) during that time. My opinion has always been that around level 10-20 is the toughest range of levels in your game. Because of this, frrequently my new Tanker has had to rely on the tactic of spreading the agro around when facing some of these exceptionally difficult (Vahzilok) opponents, something my teammates have been very willingly helpful with and supportive of. They’ve seen how fast my health drops when, say, ten Vahzilok are spitting on me. However, they know if they use their powers to distract a fair percentage of those Vahzilok, I can manage a much smaller group of them and slowly but steadily take them down. They are also not exactly slouches in evading damage themselves, and know I can pull a villain off them at a moment’s notice if they get in over their heads.

At moments like these, it would be suicidal to use an AoE provoke, much less one that happens with every swing. If this kind of uncontrollable AoE taunting had been linked to my attacks, I would have most certainly either been visiting the inside of a hospital a whole lot more, or attacking a whole lot less.

I like what you’re trying to accomplish with this move, I just want you to remember that younger Tankers (at least in the Invulnerability line) are not the indestructible machines that they are later on in their careers (especially depending on their slotting and the order of their power choices).

The inability to control when you do an area effect provoke (short of ceasing your attack, which is actually counter productive to your other mentioned Tanker change) has the potential to make life extremely dangerous for Tankers early in their career. I’m not suggesting you drop the idea, simply that you keep this problem in mind when working out the details of this concept. Maybe it’ll be as simple as having the artificial AoE Provoke be very weak in effect at lower levels and grow in strength from there (which is pretty much how the artificial taunt on Tanker attacks works now). I’m not sure, it’s definitely something that will need a lot of testing and tweaking to find that line between a young Tanker’s advantage and a young Tanker’s curse.

LoL. Wow, completely not what I expected, but ok.

You’ve said repeatedly that you want to be able to one-shot villains, and how important that kind of comic feel is to you because 4 hits to take down a minion isn't cutting it. We all know about the new knockout blow on test center, and that power will now just barely let you one-shot a villain. So, of course I’m going to use it as measuring stick on how a heavy hitting super-strength attack like you describe would work, why wouldn’t I? It's better than guessing, and they’re certainly not going to give us super-strength attacks that allow us to one-shot villains and not have refresh/endurance penalties similar to knockout blow. X damage comes with X penalties. I fail to see what you misunderstood in all of that, and I think I explained it pretty clearly above, but that’s fine.

“Try swinging at the air once every 6 seconds” wasn’t a condescending remark, but take it as you wish. I stood up from my chair thinking “I don’t consider S.S. punch to be very fast. Let me see what that 6 seconds between punches is like without all the other attacks in between so I don’t have to load up my character and check. (jab).. (wait).. (wait).. (jab) Man, that’s pretty slow.” I wouldn’t have suggested trying it if I hadn’t done it first myself. Frankly, you see insults where they don’t exist and I’m not going to apologize for false emotions you’re pinning on me.

I don’t think my last post was insulting at all. Maybe you're just angry I’m disagreeing with you. There’s not much I can do about that.

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On that topic, I'd say Spiderman, Nightcrawler, and Daredevil all have defenses that outshine their offenses. Should they be Tankers?

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These characters are about evasion, not mitigation, a style of defense that’s available in the Scrapper pool. It’s also available in the form of ice armor, but I think we can agree the concept behind evasion there is different and not something you’d assing to any of these characters.


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The manual also says that Tankers have a "powerful, but not exceptionally quick offensive punch". Should I make sarcastic remarks about how you picked the wrong AT, now that we are getting our set to fit that description?


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I really don’t consider most of the super-strength Tanker’s attacks exceptionally quick, except for jab (a type of attack that has always been defined as a quick strike). Punch takes almost six seconds to cycle. Six seconds is a long time to be waiting on a punch. Punch at the air a moment once every six seconds.. it’s pretty slow.


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I'm willing to sacrifice speed to actually feel strong, it's a balance concession I'm willing to make.

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I want SOMETHING to feel strong against. Taking 4-5 hits to kill the weakest things I fight, when I'm supposedly really pissed off, isn't fun. That's all I ask.

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Regarding your desire to be able to one-shot minions, can any archetype repeatedly take down a minion in a single hit unassisted? I know it can be done with sniper shots, and by some powers at the end of certain powersets, but these are all attacks that also have very heavy restrictions tied to their usage. They can’t be used repeatedly from one minion to the next.

So, it sounds like you’re asking for a level of power tied to a frequency that just isn’t practical, as anything faster would be unbalanced compared to like-damage powers. The new Knockout Blow supposedly lets you one shot minions. However, it has an abysmally slow recharge time of 25 seconds, and costs over a quarter of your endurance pool to use. Now, that’s fine. Knockout Blow is meant to be a situational power, not a bread and butter attack.

That sounds like an impressive attack that would make you feel powerful, but I see a very hefty price attached to it. If we conclude this is the cost of a power that allows you to one shot minions, where would we be if more of super-strength’s attacks worked that way? Slap those same attributes on punch and haymaker and combine them with knockout blow for an opening triple-move-attack. After almost 7 seconds, three minions are dead, you’ve spent 80% of your endurance pool, and you have 18 seconds to go before the first of those attacks comes back on online. Of course, that's assuming you don't miss. That would be a heck of a whiffle, and 18 seconds is a long time, sit there for a few and count it out. It’ll feel a lot longer than that when you’re waiting on it in a pinch, too. I know I’ve certainly had plenty of three-swing missing streaks. That’s a serious amount of eggs all in one basket, but that's a huge con of slow attacks.

Still, not too bad if you’re solo’ing. You could probably go from encounter to encounter like that since it’s usually 3 to 5 minions in a cluster. Where does it leave you when you’re in a large team, though? I think you’d be doing a lot of standing around while your team takes care of everything beyond the first three villains you defeated. It’s be pretty hard for you to hold agro during those 18 second gaps of downtime without provoke or taunt, which means they’d probably become a must for every tanker. I know I’m not fond of that idea.

Of course, All-Tanker-Teams would probably be really popular, as every Tanker in your group could kill three minions in around seven seconds. A team of eight Tankers could take down twenty-four minions in seven seconds. That might be considered a balance problem.

See, I’m trying to look beyond “This would make me feel powerful, therefore it’s the right way to go” and consider the idea all the way through to its conclusion. And what I see at the end makes me say “Hey, you know what.. that, uh.. kinda blows after you stop to think about it”. That’s what makes me feel really strongly about tankers not going in this direction. Beyond everything I just mentioned, in addition that kind of fighting style would get really boring and repetitive, fast (at least to me).


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You are still being pretty patronizing. It really isn't helping.

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You seem to be taking this personally. I really don’t have any delusions that I’m going to convince that your ideas are wrong just because I think they are, nor is that my goal. You are more than welcome to your opinion on how Tankers should be, and free to try and convince the developers to change them to your vision. Just don’t get frustrated if I or someone else looks at what you’re saying, decides it’s a direction we don’t want the archetype to go in, and then comments as such so that the developers hear counter opinions as well.

I think I’ve shown plenty of real reasons why slower, heavy hitting attacks would be detrimental to a super-strength tanker. I haven’t heard any reasons why it would be a positive move beyond that it will make some of you feel more powerful, more like a comic book hero. Well, I really don’t believe that’s a good enough reason to justify the negative aspects of this idea. I'm not saying that there's no room for comic-book qualities in this game (that would be silly considering its genre), but it is an online massively multiplayer game, and balance and design have to be taken into account.

Lungorthar:

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I'd give tankers hits a 70% or 68% accuracy, while scrappers would have an 80% or 82% accuracy.

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Except Geko has commented before that using accuracy negatively as a balance tool between the archetypes is a direction he doesn’t want to go, citing how often players cry their accuracy has been nerfed every other week as it is. I agree with that, as whiffing through several shots just to land one big one would quickly become very frustrating to me. I’d much rather be getting the constant feedback of contact that equaled out to the same damage over time.

Foo007:

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Honestly not trying to be snarky, but it sounds to me like you just described a scrapper.

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Only because I didn’t insert the fact that I also wanted to be invulnerable, as we weren’t discussing the primary power pools. Also, super-strength isn’t a Scrapper option, and at the moment martial-arts is mostly kicking.

Liquid:

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Are you an MMORPG veteran? I think maybe this is causing the friction here. I don't want to play a meat shield, and when I conceived my character, and saw that the only AT that got Super Strength was Tankers, I thought of people like Colossus, Rogue (my favorite character), Captain Britain, and The Hulk.

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The friction is simply caused by a difference in perspective. Save for the Hulk, I find super-strength to be a match every one of those characters you mentioned. Colossus, Rogue, and Captain Britain did not come across as overly slow to me. You believe a Tanker needs to be able to one shot minions at the cost of speed, despite the fact that minions in this game are low-end superpowered individuals and not your everyday street thug.

And to be honest, the Hulk seems more like a Scrapper to me who happens to be tough. The madder he gets, the stronger he gets, isn’t that how it goes? Not the madder he gets, the more invulnerable he gets. I’ve seen the Hulk get hurt plenty of times, I’ve never seen a limit to his strength though. He is primarily damage dealing, toughness secondary. Sounds Scrapper’ish to me. I think Wolverine even coined him as one, once.

I hate to say this, but damage dealing is not the domain of the Tanker archtype. They are a medium damage class. Scrappers and Blasters are high damage classes. It clearly states this right at character creation so there are no surprises.

Now, you can fake it. You can make a S.S. Tanker so slow that his attacks are one shotting villains while still maintaining the current medium range DPS that we have, but does that really improve super-strength in any way? No, not at all. It just appeases your idea of what super-strength should be while moving it away from my idea of how it should be. And heaven forbid you should miss three times in a row against a minion while swinging at snail-speed, how ridiculous and dull that would be. Yay, a K.O. on the fourth swing, I missed it after dozing off from the boring lack of feedback. That’s also assuming the minion you’re fighting is even still sticking around for the fourth swing in the first place, and hasn’t run off to someone actually outputting damage since our punches with their built in artificial taunts seem to be taking forever to land.

On that topic, that's one of the things I really like about super-strength’s speed. I don’t use provoke/taunt because I don’t feel the concept fits my character, but I can keep a crowd of minions around me by cycling through them with one punch each and reminding them that I’m still there. I can only do that because super-strength has moderate speed attacks. If it were slower, most of them would lose interest in me and run off to other members of my team. I’m not concerned so much about the damage I’m doing, but rather about being the center of an angry mobs attention while my team mops up. Doing that, I feel like the team is playing its strengths. Seriously, if high damage and one-shotting minions is your thing, you should have played a Scrapper or a Blaster.

I think the most amusing thing about this conversation is that anytime I complained super-strength’s damage sucked (which I used to do a lot until I found it out it was on par with Defenders), I’d get a sea of Tankers led by Havok telling me dealing damage isn’t the Tanker’s job, it’s to take it. Now I have Tankers telling me they’re more concerned about dealing damage than being a meatshield. I guess my idea of a good Tanker must be somewhere in the middle because I disagree with both philosophies. But thankfully the game lets you swing your Tankers both ways through the use of enhancements. It won’t, however, if the base model is pushed too far to one side to begin with. And that would be bad design.

Simplifying my opinions for the record:

-Equal DPS amongst the tankers if it doesn’t exist already: Good idea.

-Slowing down what are already only moderately paced super-strength attacks: Bad idea.

-Stripping powers of their alternate effects to trade in for more damage: Bad idea.

-Fixing the AoE problem sometime in the next 5 minutes: Good idea.

-Ditching the concept that immobilizing your character to make use of a power is even remotely fun: Good idea.

-Giving the players a /knockback powername 0/1 toggle to satisfy knockback/knockdown lovers instead of the unfair nerf we got stuck with: Good idea.

Oh, and I didn't mean to miss this.

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After reading these posts of yours, I no longer believe that you built your character based on a concept. I believe you took a set you saw as a fast attacking set and are now fighting to keep it that way.

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No, actually I just believe that characters like the Hulk are, at worst, too imbalanced to exist in CoH in the first place, and (at best) the pinnacle of extremity when it comes to a Tanker example. And neither of those represents a wise model to base a tanker on in the first place, so I honestly don’t understand why people continuously pull him out as an example of how a tanker should be.

Damage enhancements can lead to huge bonus damage. Recharge enhancements are not nearly as effective in comparison. You already have the tools to easily make a harder hitting tanker, while making a faster hitting tanker is much more difficult. What a huge mistake it would be to swing super-strength in the direction of damage at the cost of speed.

If the battle-axe powerset has a higher DPS than the super-strength powerset (and nobody has bothered to show any real numbers proving this so far), then by all means, let’s up the super-strength damage without making adjustments to its speed. But if you’re just interested in having super-strength made into a damage/speed clone of battle-axe because larger numbers get you more excited, no thank you.

My 'concept' for my character was a super-strong non-weapon using character that didn't take forever-and-a-day to land a punch. Thankfully, there was a powerset that matched that concept. So, yes, I am just a tad bit interested in keeping it that way.

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Skulls don't take Dyne. The Warriors just train in ancient weaponry. And don't tell me that Crey scientists are super-humanly tough.

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Er, Skulls are all over Dyne. Did you miss that whole plotline the first 14 levels of the game? And do you honestly think Crey scientists are the Warriors are powerful enough to be level 30+ and 20+ villains respectively and somehow not be considered superhumanly powerful? I’m not sure how to respond to that. Just so we’re all the same page, Joe-Normal and non-powered thugs are below level 1, because you start at level 1, which is hopefully a step above the civilian screaming for help in the alleyway. Infer the rest from there. In CoH, you don’t fight the normal thugs raiding the warehouse that Cage mops up by the dozen in the comic books. If you want to see what it's like though, get to 50 and then hook up with a new player on their level 2 mission. That's the closest this game lets you come to it. So, please, let's not base our balance requests off things you see in the comic that haven't translated over into this game to begin with.


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Screw the knockback DPS issues. That was never my problem to begin with. If AoEs weren't the king of all in this game, then we could do things like this. The game design is what is interfering with it, and you seem very happy to (and are even fighting to ) leave things at the status quo.

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I find it very odd that you would say that, as I have watched you push in the past to have knockback removed from all Tanker attacks when discussing ways to increase Tanker damage. Not Tanker’s avoiding irritating their group members because it fouls up their lame AOE playstyle, but simply to improve Tanker damage. Now you’re saying it was never a DPS issue for you? Weird. Just saying it didn’t look that way from over here.


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We know EXACTLY what we want. We want this game to be less "gather everything up for the AoE". If scattering foes was actually a benefit, as it should be, then none of this would be an issue!

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Ah, ok, something we can agree on. I abhor how AoE’s have impacted this game, everything from the sort of playstyle it’s encouraged, to the nerfing of knockback because it interfered with AoE combat, to the ridiculous leveling rate it causes. Thank goodness this thread is exactly about tha.. no, wait.. this is a thread about changing the super-strength powerset around. That’s strange, I can’t seem to find the thread started by Tankers titled “Make us a useful archetype again: fix the AoE debacle”. It must be here somewhere.

Are you sure you know exactly what everyone wants?

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How many thugs do you see Cage fight that take more then a single blow? I don't care if it's exactly the same damage, but there should be some balance between the secondaries. I don't care if I one shot minions, but not taking a decade to go through a group solo is reasonable.

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If this is really the problem you see with the tanker class, your error is in how you perceive thugs in this game. You don’t fight Timmy who just robbed a convenience store with his handgun, you’re pitted (at a minimum) against gang members that are now superhuman because of drugs like dyne. Cage wouldn’t be able to one-shot them either. That isn’t a tanker balance problem, that’s a design decision to not have heroes fighting ordinary civilian-class villains. I have no doubt you could one-shot those, if they existed, just as you can one-shot superhuman thugs far below your level.

Something else I want to add. I think a large part of the problem revolves around too may people getting hung up on the term super-strength. The concept behind powers like knockout blow, hurl, footstomp, and handclap, combined with their visualization, justifies naming this powerset Super-strength (as these are powers that just wouldn’t fit into a name like “Melee Combat”).

However, when players think of super-strength, they think of things beyond just punching. Suppose Geko announced they were populating the maps with respawning items which super-strength tankers could use as temporary weapons to mix up their attacks: cars, lamp posts, etc, things that would increase your damage but slow down your attacks (because you have to keep the DPS the same for balance). I have no doubt many tankers would be cheering “Yes! Now THAT’s a comic book tanker!”.

I would love those sorts of options, but I have serious doubts that the same people who complained about knockback lowering their DPS are going to be the same people that take the time to stop attacking long enough to run across the street and pick up mailbox to start swinging around as a weapon. Do you really believe that AOE blaster in your group is going to be happy you’re more comic-like now when you send 15 villains sailing in different directions after clubbing them with your AOE telephone pole attack? He’ll hate you more than ever.

I often hear developers suggest that players don’t really know what they want. I think that thought matches very well when players request comic book tankers.

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I did choose super strength as a concept. The only reason I even started this game was so I could make my own classic super hero. A lot of people who started an Inv/SS tanker was for that classic image. I don't want to be a Superman or a Hulk, but Colossus shouldn't be out of reach, hell, I'd take Luke Cage at this point. To be honest, when I started Ayin, I thought he would be more Luke Cage like, able to take a licking and dish out a good amount of punishment.

Anyone have the base damages and the max damages for SS and Axe? I'm not saying we should have exactly the same damage, but we should be balanced.

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You’re saying you want to be more like Luke Cage or Colossus, and I don’t understand how super-strength (damage wise) in its current form makes you feel like you’re not that way. Is it only because axe tankers get a higher damage number coming up over their targets on a hit by hit basis? Well, they chose to be more like Thor, and your Luke Cage or Colossus is just not going to be dishing out damage on the same level. I’ve seen comics where Thor fights with and without his hammer, and his attacks with his hammer are slow and massively hard hitting, and when he has to rely on his fists his attacks come faster but not nearly as damaging. That’s the difference between axe tankers and super-strength tankers.

Like you, I wouldn’t mind the same damage, but when I say damage in this regard I mean DPS. I like the faster, weaker attacks (although weaker is a poor way to term it) over slower, stronger attacks so long as the DPS all matches out in the end. Considering our attacks have built in taunts (which players keep seeming to want to get rid of, but believe me.. life for the tanker sucked before that feature got added), the more often I have attacks that I can bring to bear, the more things I can keep angry at me without having to rely on provoke/taunt. And as a tanker that doesn’t want to take either of these powers, taunting through rapid striking is what I depend on to keep agro.

Then why didn't you choose a powerset that fits that description? Slow but heavy damaging attacks are not how the base powers in the super-strength pool work. And before someone comes back with the answer of "concept", ask yourself how many other powers from alternate powerpools you picked, not because they fit your concept, but because you felt you needed to in order to have a better tanker.

There are many advantages to having faster recharge rates, and I for one am glad super-strength works that way and have no desire to see it become a slower powerset. Equal DPS's between the tanker secondary? Sure. Everyone having the same damage, same speed attacks that are only different in name? Ugh, no thank you.

Understand that every powerset has the capability to change to a degree based on the enhancements you’re willing to invest into the power. You can make super-strength heavy hitting, to a point, by slotting it with 6 damage enhancements. But blow for blow you’ll never hit as hard as an axe tanker who does the same thing. At its heart, super-strength is a mix of speed and power, where battleaxe is slow, heavy damage. What you dislike about super-strength is what makes it appealing to others who chose it for that reason.

I look at battleaxe as someone who is possibly just as strong as someone with super-strength (when's the last time you've heard of an axe causing knockback), yet chooses to wield a weapon instead of bare fists. This allows them to do more damage at the price of speed. If I was an axe tanker and super-strength was made to do equal damage on any given blow, I'd be requesting that the battleaxe set got a damage boost, citing that idea of your slapping hands doing the same damage as my cleaving axe is just silly. Then you'd have super-strength tankers asking for another boost to be brought back up to par.

The powersets behave differently because variety is essential for a game. Otherwise, just give us all a button that says "kill target" that takes 3 seconds to activate and be done with it. "Balance" for everyone.

Are there some real numbers floating around for unenhanced damage / activation time / recharge rate of super-strength and battleaxe powersets using post-20 characters of the same level? Or is this just based on a feeling you get observing the other two tanker types in action?

Axe is the harder hitting but slower powerset, while super-strength is the weaker but faster hitting one. In the end, if the DPS’s are comparable, what exactly is the problem? I don’t have the numbers in front of me to tell you that this is true, but I can say that this debate has come up several times now, even in beta, and after the players compared real numbers they’d always seem to come to the conclusion that the overall damage output was comparable. Maybe something has changed since then, but to know for sure you’d really need a listing of each power in these two sets using data from two identical level players with no enhancers slotted.

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1. I hate Knockback. I've been booted from many groups because of interrupting targeting of blasters and controllers with KB.

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OK, i hate that excuse. The only people that are affeccted by knockback are (by just little really) melee types. A blaster or controer uses ranged attacks so there is NO reason for them to hate knockback, only way would be if they complain about enemies leaving the radius of an AOE, but AOEs are extremely overpowered, another subject entirely, but entirely a bad reason.

Hell, i remembered once i was on a team of blasters and me t he only tanker... we had an empaty healer that INSISTED i stayed close to the team so that she was able to heal me... can you explain how do i melee and tank if i do that? Same goes for this point of yours, the team is there to act as a team, not so that only AOE blasters do the damage.

Also, IF that was the requirement, you can USE knockback to actualy push strays into the radius instead of pushing them out of the radius. I have done this a few times with my axe tanker that almost always KBs, but if i was kicked out of a team because i got ONE target out of the radius, i would certainly set those to ignore list because they are just min/maxers i dont realy care to play with.

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I completely agree, Lungorthar.

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I'm of the opinion we could easily drop the "hold" component. Doesn't need a fake knockout part as it can now really knock something out.

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Just if the great god Balance decides it's too powerful now, they could think about losing that part instaed of upping cost.

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Yeah in 15 levels of using KO Blow, the hold has never once stuck on a Boss for me, that's why I consider it just flavour.

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That’s because bosses require stacking of holds in order to be affected by them, and it’s why removing the hold component from knockout blow would be a bad idea. You wouldn’t be able to contribute to a hold maneuver with the rest of your group when they’re setting up a combination of hold attacks on a boss. The hold component is what makes Knockout Blow a situational power (and an extremely useful one under the right circumstances).

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How on earth did you get up to L39 and not run into multiple stun issues without either US or Unstoppable?

Do you just enjoy sleeping/drunken walking alot?

Or did you solely kill 5th Column (sans Vamps) in all that time?

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I answered this actually a page back.

Everyone has access to discipline inspirations. I make sure I always have a few on hand for emergencies, and I stock up on them beforehand when I know I’m entering a mission with villains that cause stun/mez problems (like the Rikti and Devouring Earth). There’s nothing really difficult about planning ahead. I don’t think I’ve ever walked blindly into a mission and said “Holy smokes, it’s a Rikti trap!”. /panic

Other players that I group with frequently have powers that aid in protecting me from effects like mez. So, there are a couple of options right there that guarantee I can avoid these nasty effects a majority of the time. It’s not like every Rikti can mez, and when I run into a Rikti Mentalist I just make sure to take him out of the picture as quickly as possible before doing anything else.

The players I group with also know to ease up on the offense if I do happen to get put into a situation where I can’t react because I’m mesmerized, because they know if they do this the villains that were agro on me before I got stunned will still be concentrating on me after I recover. Thus I don’t have to worry about teammate casualties while I’m taking a 5 second snooze.

The people I play with know their characters. They may be more frail than a Tanker, but they know they're driving around superheroes that are capable of dealing with the same threats I can in their own way. If a villain gets past me because I'm momentarily in la-la land and latches onto the Defender, she doesn’t panic and run around screaming for help while it kills her, she simply proceeds to kick its rear with her own situational powers.

In the end, no Unyielding Stance needed, and complete freedom of movement 100% of the time. I can’t imagine playing an action-based game like this any other way.

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I hate playing the "level" card, but you really need to get to a higher level to know what most of us are referring to. I've got no clue what level you are but I'd be willing to bet it's somewhere in the 20s which is pretty much the ideal level range (18-31) for a Tanker in this game. Either that or you just solo 100% of the time oblivious to everyone and everything else around you (I have a friend who does this and he loves his Inv/SS Tanker).


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Krunch, 39 is the highest SS/Inv Tanker I’ve had (and life up to that point seemed fine), although now I’m playing a lower–level tanker on a different server where some friends of mine are. While I have solo'd at times, most of my adventuring is done in smaller groups because I feel the game lends itself best in that format, with larger groups (which I do now and then as well) being chaotic and for the most part un-fun (but that's another debate).

When you describe super-strength as “Hulk-ish”, I picture massive damage, slow hitting attacks. I honestly hope this isn’t the direction super-strength is going. I’m comfortable with the speed of most of the super-strength attacks, and slowing them down simply to make them appear more damaging and flashy while maintaining the same DPS is not how I want my character to be.

The majority of valid complaints I personally see people making are:

-Tankers can’t compete in the high-end game (because of the frequency of powers like mez) without having specific powers (like Unyielding Stance) that clash with other powers in the set because of its side effects (rooting). If that’s true, there are multiple problems here. First, the frequency of which powers that require specific counters are showing up on villains in the high level game. Second, the concept of rooting in Unyielding Stance. I completely skipped that power because as soon as I understood you couldn’t move while using it, I thought “Wow, that is so not how I play this game. Pass.”. I can understand the concept of “digging in” to gain the benefits that Unyielding Stance allows, but would much rather see an Unyielding Stance that slows the movement of the players and slows the refresh rate of their offensive powers while it’s active to represent the extra focus needed to reap the benefits of this power. That, to me, is much more acceptable than forcing my character to stand in one spot.

-Tankers can’t compete in the high-end game because it has turned into an AOE fest where players prefer the practice of rounding up hundreds of villains at a time and killing them with area-effect attacks to make what they deem acceptable XP over time. There are so many things wrong about this, and none of them have anything to do with Tankers being too inadequate to do fulfill their role.

-Tanker damage is on the low side. Everyone will always feel their damage is on the low side, but it really comes down to where you meant for it to be. I know the damage output of Tankers is on par with the damage output of Defenders. If that’s where it’s supposed to be, you succeeded. If Tankers are supposed to be more damaging than that, then the attacks need beefing up (and not at the cost of speed). If Tankers are supposed to be less damaging than that, I would be pretty disappointed.

I feel like you’re saying that if someone disagrees with these proposed changes, it’s ok to respond repeatedly with your opinion to reinforce the fact that you still agree with the requested changes, but not the other way around. Curious.

As for why I continue to respond, it’s because I see statements I wish to comment on, like..

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Not having Unyielding Stance in the 40-50 game may require me to change my tactics, or rely on the abilities of my group members more. If the only way I can do it is by picking up Unyielding Stance, then this is a broken game in my opinion.


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That's what Krunch has been saying for some time now. In a broader sense, sure, but still.

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Actually I feel like Krunch has been instead pushing to change Tankers to work within a broken concept, instead of working to fix the broken concept (if one even exists) so Tankers work correctly again in the end-game. There’s a difference.

Mostly I’ve been continuing to comment because questions have either been addressed towards me, or people are responding to my comments with points that I feel are, in ways, misleading.

Thus, Mentalee_Fryde, I have no plans to discontinue commenting on things I disagree with (or agree with) any time soon, so I'll suggest that you stop stressing needlessly over it and just ignore my opinions if they bother you so much. Like you, I just want my point of view considered by the developers when decisions about the archetype I play are being made. I’m sorry you view disagreement as negativity, but there’s nothing I can do regarding how you choose to view things.

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As for making the powers more enjoyable to an even wider population, no, you’re trying to make them into something you’ll enjoy, which may change them in such a way that suddenly many other players are not enjoying them. And while I can understand the desire to look out for your own personal interests, let’s not suggest we’re making things better for tankers everywhere by pushing for these changes.

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Key word here is MAY. While these changes may not be what the majority wants. Of the posters to the forums, the majority of posters do like these changes. If the changes go in and indeed effect many people negatively, they will go to the forums and start discussions for fixing them. As any company service, only those with problems will go out of their way to post how to fix it. If enough people were to express their opinions that these changes are indeed bad. The devs would more then likely listen.

This post was started to pose suggestions on fixing them. Since you don't feel they need fixed, then please don't post. May I suggest that you start a thread for what you feel should not be changed and draw your support from those that respond and agree with you.

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Actually, I have to post here because:

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This is now the official Super Strength thread. Standard rules apply. All other threads will be locked.

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This thread was not actually put forward as a brain storming session with suggestsions on how to fix tankers. It was put forward as a list of desired changed by the entire super-strength tanker community with a request for them to be rushed into the upcoming content patch. See the following:

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These changes are listed in order of priority. We (the SS Tanker community as a whole) would like to see these changes implemented within the Content Issue #2 patch. The majority of these changes reflect small number tweaks to existing code. These changes have been requested with thought to balance and gameplay being foremost.

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I did not voice my concerns about the removal of knockback (mainly because I was busy having fun playing my archetype instead of searching the forums for complaints about it) soon enough to have a shot at preventing it, and that change directly impacted my character in a negative way. These suggested changes will as well, and I won’t sit on the sidelines oblivious and quiet until the last moment and watch it happen again.

So, no, Mentalee_Fryde. While you are free to suggest that I not post here, I find that I’m free to continue posting my feelings on any suggested changes that will impact me, as I suspect anyone would want to.

Despite the obvious dislike many of you have for rooting powers, it seems that everyone would rather have powers changed so they mesh better with the rooted concept rather than pushing for a change in powers like Unyielding Stance which cause you to be stuck in one spot in the first place.

I don’t have Unyielding Stance (every time I see a Tanker mention this, it’s followed by fifty-zillion “I don’t know how you possibly survive then” comments, yet somehow we do). What does this mean?

-It means I carry around a few discipline inspirations for emergencies and stock up on them when I’m going on a mission against the Rikti or the Devouring Earth.

-It means I target certain villains first and put them down as quickly as possible, because I know not having Unyielding Stance leaves me vulnerable to certain types of attacks.

-It means I may have to rely on some of the abilities my teammates have to help protect me.

-It means I don’t have to worry about sticking in one spot, and when villains are moving around for one reason or another, I’m right there with them. Thus, I’m not spending time cursing 90% of my powers.

Now, if you go by what the average level 40-50 player says, I’m doomed in that level range because you can’t turn around without running into someone that forces you to use Unyielding Stance to survive. If that’s true, I would call it a design flaw in the game. If the content beyond a certain level requires you to have a certain build to be able to continue playing and advancing, then it’s a flawed design, and that’s what you should be targeting your pleas for change against.

Honestly, I’ll have to see how it goes. Not having Unyielding Stance in the 40-50 game may require me to change my tactics, or rely on the abilities of my group members more. If the only way I can do it is by picking up Unyielding Stance, then this is a broken game in my opinion.

Anyway, when I read a post detailing why the powers in SS/Inv don't mix due to the dilemma of rooting, my answer to that has always been “stop rooting yourself then”. You don’t need Unyielding Stance to win each and every fight. Even if I had the power, I’d only end up relying on it a handful of times each mission, and I know this because I get by without it. Like all powers beyond a certain level, U.S. is meant to be situational, not staple. It blows my mind when a Tanker goes the U.S./Teleport route simply to become the positionable punching bag. Sure, they’re going to be way tougher than I am, but, geeze.. I guarantee you my fights are more entertaining to watch.