Valkyrie_EU

Plant/Storm/Levi Controller IMHO.

Plant/Storm was always strong but since I got Leviathan Mastery it bacame insane.

Creepers+Roots+Freezing Rain+Tornado+Water Spout+Lighning Storm tears through enemies like a horde of spines scrappers xD

How about adding a giant Rikti Monkey (with footstomp etc.) as a Great Monster to the RWZ? When he dies he could leave an enormous cloud of ape gas which deals something like 250 dps. toxic dmg and causes this vomit effect like tear gas.

We could call him Bananus The Mighty and I think this would be realy cool!

As we all know Tankers get some improvements in form of "Bruising" and higher HP caps.

While I wont deny those are nice things to have, they dont solve any of the main problems tied to the Tanker AT. Tankers give up offense and get enormous survivability in return... The problem however is this survivability goes pretty much to waste except on very few occasions.

I myself am convinced the Tankers greatest enemy is the aggro cap. I remember before aggro cap Tankers where loved because only they where capable to survive the massive punishment of multiple bosses and hordes of lt's and minions at once over extented time.

Dont get me wrong, I'am not totally against the aggro cap, but in its current form it is just plain bad for Tankers because it makes their greatest strength go to waste: to survive massive punishment.

Thanks to IO's almost any Character in this game can be made tough or powerful enough to deal with 16 enemies himself, which is a wonderful thing. This 16 enemies limit however also means that once you reach a certain level of mitigation to survive those 16 enemies, more mitigation goes to waste.

A good example for this would be my Spines/Fire Scrapper, which is considered a very squishy combo. Regardless of being “squishy” IO’s made it possible for me to dive into most +2 x8 spawns and coming out of it alive. There are a few enemy factions like Maltas, Arachnos or Vanguard which faceplant me with ease, but those enemies are a special case because they have such insane debuffs or other abilities which enable them to drop almost any tanker secondary just as fast. In groups it becomes even worse... just give my Scrapper some stuff like fortitude and I can tear through my enemies without ever having to bother about the “Healing Flames Button”. Give the same buff to a tanker and what happens? Most likely nothing worth mentioning because... he’s pretty much immortal to anything 16 enemies can throw at him anyways.

There are a few specific situations like the Nictus ambush in the ITF where the survivability of a Tanker realy shines. While my Fire Scrapper will faceplant almost instantly if all those dwarfs and novas just look at my way, a good Tanker will survive and live to tell glorious storys about how he defeated all those enemies by himself while everybody else was dead.

But why was everybody dead if the Tanker was alive and well? Did he fail in his job to protect his team? The answer is no, there was just nothing he could do to save them. His defense was powerful enough to tank all those bosses but yet it was worth nothing because anything over his aggro cap simply ignored him and pummeled his team-mates into bloody pulps. Some people may argue the team failed as a whole, but I dont think so... not every AT is designed to take such levels of punishment, even if this can be bypassed with IO’s.

My experience is during “normal” gameplay a Tanker is kind of a waste... even if I enjoy mine a lot, I just have to admit any Brute or Scrapper with some decent IO’s can handle such an ordinary +2 x8 spawn just as well but also dish out a lot more damage during doing so. Even on the few occasions where the incomming damage is to much for others to take my survivability goes to waste because such situations are almost always tied to enormous spawns which exceed my aggro cap, so that I cant do anything to save them. Its just frustrating when you use your taunt on those enemies and they simply ignore you and tear your team-mates apart. Even if I run into them and stomp on the ground I only accomplished to lose 10 random enemies on my tail in turn for ten new ones…

So how could this dilemma be solved? At first one could say increase the aggro cap for Tankers, but I think that would make them overpowered in terms of farming etc. A Tanker could herd large spawns and kill them AFK with his AoE set on auto or he could team up with a Blaster to steamroll through missions.

But then I had an idea… how about tieing this aggro cap increase to “Gauntlet” and make it work like vigilance?

~The Tankers determination to protect everybody rises through his sense of responsibility: For every team-mate which is not a Tanker, Scrapper, Brute or Stalker the maximum number of foes the Tanker can attract rises by 2.

I think this would be an wonderful solution to make this AT more desirable and enjoyable. With a lot of Squishys on his team the Tankers potential to protect those rises and solo play wouldn’t be effected at all because the Tanker would still be limited to his 16 enemies like everybody else.

What do you think ?

I never judged anyone here, if you want FACTS here are some for you:

1) "I'am not tanking I'am bruteing" is nothing more then nitpicking. One doesn't even need that so much hated Taunt Button to tank in this game (although taking it will surely benefit a lot of teams). If you run in there first and stomp on the ground you are already tanking at least 10 enemies which is more then half of most spawns.

2) A brute which doesn't want aggro because he thinks he is some kind of damage dealing squishy and has a hard time staying alive only because of aoe damage alone is a bad brute.

3) Most brutes with this "I dont have to tank" mindset fall into that category.

4) You don't even have to discuss something like this with a good brute because he knows having at least the biggest chunk of the aggro is part of his AT. Thats why they get aggro auras, thats why they get punchvoke and thats also why they can pick an AoE Taunt in their primary.

5) I never judged anybody, I just made my definition of a bad brute and spoke out my opinion.

6) I'am sure most posters in this thread dont even fall into "category 2" and yet I'am the target for some stupid "brute is not a tank zealotry" and I'am being told I'am such a bad player and what not.

7) Honestly, I dont care about point 6 because I knew it would come down to this even before I wrote my first post in this thread. But its amusing none the less.

In my first post I mentioned all I said was in regards to at least +2x8 setting and that it dosnt matter on lower difficultys.

I'am well aware "tanking" with squishys is possible, I have a few of those myself and they are great fun. But this involves certain powersets and enhancement sets... not every powerset is capable of that and even less of them are capable to do this on the lower levels.

Regarding the difficulty being to high: In our SG most of the players set their difficulty to +2x8 from lvl22 on at the latest, just because it is to easy otherwise. Of course its stupid to blame only the brute if a low level group wipes on such a difficulty, obviously everybody in the team has to contribute their abilities to make it work nicely. But if everybody plays in a good, beneficial way and only the brute thinks he has to behave like some kind of pseudo blapper THEN of course he is to blame ;p