da5id

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Here's a big misunderstanding. Tankers need support but not the same kind of support as scrappers (scrapps need more).


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You miss an important subtlety here. To put it in an obtuse abstract way :Support doesn't occur in a continuous scale or gradient. It occurs in discrete steps. The difference between scrapper and tanker survival is smaller than the difference between one of these steps.

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Certainly not the best example of "heroic" tanking I mean, any tanker worth its salt would jump and whack the ring mistresses and the master illusionists, then "taunt" (or whatever) the rest of the weaklings. It wasn't the image I was expecting from Statesman, that's for sure!

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I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I first read it myself!

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When you dont have "pocket defenders" and all that there's no chance your scrapper can do what a tank does defense-wise. Wanna bet? Bring your scrapper and I'll bring my tanker to the test server and we'll see who takes damage better.

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I realize the thread is long asqshy, but at least try to keep up.

This is a strawman that we've knocked down a few times already. Nobody is claiming that a tanker is less tough than a scrapper. Unsuported OBVIOUSLY tankers will last longer (a whole 5 seconds say, intead of 2). The point is that the meagre unsupported defense we bring is too marginal to do anything except "tank" in a useless fashion a la statesman. (Though he was working on a team WITH support! ) A team would be FAR better off bringing a defender instead of the tanker to provide the entire team with more damage mitigation than a tanker's primary could.

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He "tanked" 1/3 of a spawn for 7. He took up a little more than twice his share. On a team with any sort of non-melee AT i'd expect any scrapper to at LEAST do this much. I think it's pretty clear that states' grand vision for tanks is nothing more than scrankers who draw a little more aggro than the vastly more offensively effective scrappers.

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Exactly how does a Scrapper with less defense than a tank do do at LEAST as much defensively? That makes no sense. Since other than Regen and Dark they are using the same numbers but lower than Tanks no Scrapper is going to be able to deal with damage better.

Statements like this are why nothing comes of these threads. There is no basis for them. They are little better than the obvious flames.

The Devs respond to facts not opinions.

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I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are not a troll.

1) I said that i'd expect a scrapper to do at LEAST as much as STATESMAN DID. Not as least as much defensively as a tank.

2) The difference between what a scrapper can do vs what a tanker can do defensively is marginal with the amount of support necessary for a team to be able to use a meatshield. This is far outweighed by the scrappers impressive offensive superiority.

3) Statements like mine are opinion yes. Opinion backed up by a lot of objective analysis playtesting and thought. I'd like to be wrong, but all my own post-I5 experience and analysis indicates I am not. Read my position again (sans the mouth frothing this time), I've said nothing unreasonable or unjustified.

As for my own characters: I can copy to test the following charactes (most in heavy need of respec)

50 Inv/EM/En tank
37 Grav/Kin controller
36 PB
46 BS/Regen Scrapper
24ish Fire/Fire tank
all sorts of low-twenties to high teen heroes.

Yep. It will just take a little longer to feel out the ATs and players to find that optimal strategies.

(You know this might be fun as a regular event and messing around with just bizzare team combinations)

A good starting place would be what D_O suggests. we can expand from there, seeing as how testing all combinations would be impossible.

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I have to ask then, what are you expecting out of these tests? What outcomes lead to what conclusions?

If we do nothing but rehash the old roles, how does that address the issue of "redefinition"? (Not that I am saying we shouldn't test the old roles, I'm just trying to get a clear picture of what we are trying to test)

It seems to me that whatever new role a tanker now has, it must be defined in terms of the team dynamic, rather than the team dynamic being defined in terms of it.

I agree that testing such a thing would be impractical. But I question the utility of a test that is limited in scope to just testing tanks and other ATs performing the roles you described. That only answers the question: What makes the best meatsheild, scranker or partial meatshield?

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I am of the opinion that we have a chance to get the DEVs attention if and only if we can prove one assertion:

In the test cases (and it needs to be cases that cannot have holes shot in them with charges of bias) the following was true:

The team will suffer fewer defeats and gain xp faster if another AT is substituted for a given type of tank.

If we can present case after case where this is true using the same team setup and the same missions, I think we have a shot.

For the purpose of this kind of testing, the *role* of the tank is important from an anecdotal standpoint, but not from a statistical standpoint. What is important to the DEVs, I think, is the hard numbers.

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Being a hard numbers kinda guy, I actually get the feeling that what Statesman is more swayed by is what he percieves as honest, unbiased philisophical points, rather than numbers. I don't think he's that good with numbers frankly.

I agree 100% with what you have written above. This is why I think designing the tests around the anectodal roles, will bias them in an unhealthy way. The teams tested must be free to adapt beyond the rigid 'roles' to provide any data on how a team will interact with other ATs compared to tanks. This will be different for different team configurations.

I have to ask then, what are you expecting out of these tests? What outcomes lead to what conclusions?

If we do nothing but rehash the old roles, how does that address the issue of "redefinition"? (Not that I am saying we shouldn't test the old roles, I'm just trying to get a clear picture of what we are trying to test)

It seems to me that whatever new role a tanker now has, it must be defined in terms of the team dynamic, rather than the team dynamic being defined in terms of it.

I agree that testing such a thing would be impractical. But I question the utility of a test that is limited in scope to just testing tanks and other ATs performing the roles you described. That only answers the question: What makes the best meatsheild, scranker or partial meatshield?

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My chosen method (so far) has always been "Meatshield," but others might be "Skrank." Testing both is good, then for these two major camps.

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Testing both of those is fine, however, if we design test to simply test those two aspects, it's not going to tell us anything we don't already know.

The question is one fundamentally of team dynamics, and the optimal performance of such dynamics. Assuming that a team dynamic is one that needs a meatshield/scranker is to already bias the test towards having a melee AT. It will illuminate Tanks vs scrapper slightly, but not much else.

We have to get past our I1-I4 preconceptions, and test the TEAM dynamics, with regards to what tankers bring, rather than just how we perform the old roles. Half the contention is the roles have changed.

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Yeah, this is why I wanted to open the testing criteria up for discussion.

I like Bob's set of parameters on an instinctive level. It looks, though, like three different roles could be tested:

The meatshield role, arguably replaceable in all cases by an FF or Sonic defender....

The Scranker role, arguably done better by a Scrapper...

And the Statesman Tanker Role, which I am perfectly willing to forget about, since I hold that any tanker in the game right now can do that, probably better than he can, but in most cases doesn't want to.

One of the problems I see is that if the role is already defined in the mind of the DEVs and that the kind of results that States got on his team are seen as acceptible, we may not be able to come up with anything to counter it. It becomes a philosophical argument, rather than a numerical one.

What do you think on this subject?

[I can't believe I just agreed with Nozy on a subject, I need to wash my brain out with soap now.]

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I guess we are testing to answer two different questions here. You and Bob seem to be asking "How good am I compared to another AT at my job?".

I want to know "How much does a tank optimally contribute to a given team compared to how much another AT could optimally contribute to the same team."

The difference is subtle but there. I think the former assumes too much about the roles we are used to from before I5.

Well Tanks don't have anything else to do besides meatshield and scrank. But what I am saying is that another character, say a defender, could definately bring a lot to a team with a low level of existing support, that would render a meatshield moot. Meatshields are often not necessary, now more than ever.

If you set up your team/tests specifically to test meatshield and aggro control ability, you miss this important subtlety: It is not so much that we are no longer have the best potential to be a meatshield. It is that such a character is never in a situation where such a role is useful or where a tanker's abilities prove more than marginally more helpful.

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However given that I think varying the team composition is an essential component for the test. At least with teams of varying support/control/damage levels are necessary to see how tanks behave in each situation. Of couse the more variation we need, the harder it will be to find enough people with enough toons to test everything.

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We may need two different tests. I wrote my post under the assumption that we were testing whether a tanker could be effectively replaced by other ATs. If we're also going to test how each tank contributes with different types of support, we should probably keep those tests separate.

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Well that's the thing, HOW is another AT going to replace a tank? It's important that we don't set ourselves up to only test based on the old 'roles' as it were because the premise is the old roles are no longer valid. A tank without support is a fundamentally different thing currently than a tank with support.

How and which AT can replace tank will likely vary heavily with support potential of a team.

What it sounds like to me is that you are setting up tests centered around a meatshield role. This is okay for a single datapoint, but misses that that role is exactly the one that has shrunk. Certainly there is the contention that scrappers can perform as meatsheilds just as well, but more important is that a meatshield with our meagre capabilities can be replaced with a buffer who can render the entire team into pseudo tanks, thus making the meatshield role moot.

In other words, we are testing for the performance of the optimum team dynamic for each setup, and does a tank ever increase that level of performance. Not "how well does X meatshield". (Tanks are indeed the best meatsheilds, there is no question. But there are two caveats to that: 1) With the meagre level of meatshielding one can perform without support, is having such a role even a good idea? 2) with a lot of support, having a meatshield is useful, wouldn't a scrapper do only marginally worse, but yet bring significantly better offense)

Good start bob. Remember what we are testing here is the relative contribution tanks make to teams. I presume we will do this quantitatively using XP/second or some such method, and qualitatively with anectdotal description of the play experience.

However given that I think varying the team composition is an essential component for the test. At least with teams of varying support/control/damage levels are necessary to see how tanks behave in each situation. Of couse the more variation we need, the harder it will be to find enough people with enough toons to test everything.

Hey Tom, I may be out of town that weekend for a russian judo clinic but I'll see if I can make it.

Let me think on the test parameters for a bit. It is important to choose parameters that allow us to potentially see what we suspect, but also not to bias it so that we MUST see what we expect. Of course many level ranges is important, as the CoH dynamic changes vastly as powersets and ATs come into their own.

The problem with this kind of test is that you'd always like to run it with ALL possible combinations, but of course that is impractical. You'd need at least one or two different team combinations for each of
<ul type="square">[*]minimal support [*]medium support[*]heavy support[/list]as well as several spare ATs that can come in. To not bias the results it would be better if we tried testing each AT in turn to replace the tank, rather than just the scrapper or defender/controller, with enough shakedown time for a group to find it's equilibrium in discussion and testing.

I'll think on it a bit more and get back to you.

Scorus, I would really like to be wrong about the AT having a role that is still well differentiate from what the other ATs could provide.

It's not a matter of tanks not being "needed" or "necessary" it is a matter of tanks bringing nothing that another AT cannot provide. It is a matter of our primaries not actually affecting our value to a team. You only value tanks on the team because it is what you have always done , rather than any inherant value they now bring.

If you look at your performance objectively, without the bias of your pre-I5 teaming habits, I think you will find this to be true.

You and othe tankers who are reporting you can tank, but at a reduced level, don't realize that at this reduced level, we are better replaced by someone else. A scrapper is just as survivable in a team sitatuation with heavy support. On a team with minimal support a defender or controller would provide even the weakest defensive character with more damage mitigiation than your tanker could bring.

Please, examine this honestly, without the bias of your pre I5 teaming experiences. Tell me what you think your tanker brings that another AT cannot. Our abilities to control aggro (mainly through a nice-to-have inherant and our secondary I might add) has been rendered moot except in extreme support situatoins, because we can no longer handle the aggro that is ridiculously easy to draw. (And in those same heavy support situations the defenders/controllers are going to be able to make everyone on the team a psuedo-tank, rendering aggro control again moot) In what situations do our primaries distinguish us? In what situations is the marginal value we bring due to being a larger bag of HP and caps?


ADDENDUM: In regards to your controller cannard, their argument was always that tanks provided better aggro control than they did. To a certain extent, this was true because of how overpowered we were in I4, and how dumb the aggro control game mechanic is, but it ignores the supremacy of status control vs aggro control. Despite what you may think the argument "sounds" like, the comparison is not a good one. Controllers did not require any outside support in order to perform aggro control. Tanks currently require heavy support to do the same, beyond the pathetic kind of tanking that Statesman demonstrated. Without this supportwe are mearly low damage scrappers, with marginally superior survivability (which is most likely more than cancelled out because of the ease at which we draw extra aggro which we can no longer handle).

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Scorus, it seems from your sig you play a stone tank. YOUR character is still able to hold aggro and survive it fine.

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I expected this, though not in the first response.

The premise is incorrect. Pre-granite took severe hits both from I5 and ED. Granite didn't take a hit as far as surviving, but it took a huge hit in the "able to hold aggro." Without Hasten, the huge -SPD component of Granite makes holding aggro on a large scale very problematic. I don't mean that it is impossible, but it is very difficult. Imagine trying to keep aggro while under the influence of 2-3 swarms and you'll get the idea of the challenges.


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&lt;sigh&gt; I was refering to only your post granite build. That's why I refer to granite tanks, rather than stone tanks.Of course I realize your pre-granite stone tank took a big hit. My "premise" is only that your ability to still be a tank post-32 colors your judgement.

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I've tested ED at the mid-20s, mid-30s, and mid-40s (I keep old versions of my character on the test server). If I push the envelope with my character the way I used to, then I and/or my teammates die. If I make sure that I take the aggro from the most dangerous enemies in a group and my teammates understand that none of us can get away with what we used to, everybody walks away.

Scorus

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For your pre-granite tests, another AT would have provided more than your stone tank could have. That is the point. Not that we can't do what statesman did, but rather that what he brings (and what you bring, by the sounds of your 'tests') is minimal compared to what another AT could bring to the same team.

To Reiterate again: This is not about comparing what we could do before. It is pointing out that our "roles" have been reduced so far as to be nonexistent. With the support we require to truly tank for a team, a scraper could do the same. With our meagre abilities without support, the team would surive more easily with a defender or controller, or with another scrapper to kill things more quickly. Your own anecdotal evidence supports this!

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You do realize that Stone took it in the chops pre 32 as well, right? The fact tht they have a level 32 power that makes them FAR more survivable.

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Yes of course I realize that. That's why I usually talk about granite-tanks as being the only ones with survivability, rather than stone tanks. Pre-Granite stone is down around ice level.

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I haven't read this thread through so I am probably repeating someone else, though I don't expect my stance to be common or popular.

There is no need to redefine our role in PvE. We can still tank, we can still get and keep aggro, we can still take tremendous amounts of damage.

The difference between pre-ED and post-ED is that we cannot take ALL the damage. This is consistent with a number of changes they have made in the past few months. Controllers can no longer control ALL of a large group, Blasters can no longer blast ALL of a large group, Defenders can no longer debuff ALL of a large group, and Tankers can no longer tank ALL of a large group.

This will make some people no longer feel like superheroes, and I expect that group to no longer want to play this game over the other options out there. But I believe that the role of the tank has not changed, only the way we play that role. If the rules had been this way from the start, as they are in CoV, then we'd be known as the people that can take tremendous amounts of damage, damage that would easily kill most of our team if we were not there. Instead, we are known as the guys that can now not take nearly as much damage, and the guys that fall over quickly if we don't realize that we are no longer Invulnerable and play our characters accordingly.

Part of the problem is that teams are still trying to do what they did pre-ED instead of turning the mission difficulty slider down (I know, I know, blasphemy that I would suggest that). Tankers are obviously the class that is going to take the brunt of that decision, even though everyone is now able to do what they do worse. That fact is leading good Tanker players to go through massive amounts of existential angst concerning their disappearing role. The role is the same, our ability to do that role on a massive scale has changed, just like it has changed for every single AT out there.

I5 and ED were an ugly 1-2 punch for Tankers and I think there need to be some changes to ED. But if you try and do less to match the fact that you can do less, just like everyone else, you'll find that the changes are only a matter of degree and not redefinition.

Where our role does need to be redefined is in PvP because we are NOT equipped to get and hold aggro there any longer.

Scorus

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Scorus, it seems from your sig you play a stone tank. YOUR character is still able to hold aggro and survive it fine. Granite tanks are the only ones that still bring anything to teams that isn't better brought by another AT. Please take some time to read through at least part of the thread. Perhaps it will help you understand the state of the other powersets.

ADDENDUM: The contention is that our abilities have been reduced so much that our role is easily eclipsed by other classes in almost any situation. And that our non-granite primaries are rendered moot. We KNOW that everyone got reduced. It's not a matter of an expectation based on what we were able to do in I4. It's a matter of a frank assesment of what we are able to contribute compared to other ATs in the current balance. And for non-granite tanks, it's not much. (In fact I think those that cry out that our roles are still there because everyone was reduced are the ones stuck with the pre-I5 mentality of how the ATs function. Looking at non-granite tanks honestly and objectively it should be clear that that role has shrunk to virtually nothing.)

In a balanced place I'd expect a good tanker to at least be able to hold close to 100% aggro of 1.5-2 spawns and survive for long enough for a quick team to defeat them with minimal support, but indefinately with strong support.

I say 1.5-2 spawns because those are the crisis situations that tanks are expected to step up for in most gameplay situations.

For single spawns, a tank should have the capability to survive the single spawn's aggro for long enough that a slow team could defeat them, with minimal support.

The challenge for a tanker should NOT be his inability to survive. Our primary powers reduced this far means that we do not bring enough to a team to really make a difference compared to other ATs. Our defensive abilities are rather passive things, and barring certain clustering techniques to maximize the borked Invincibility there really is no player skill on a tanker's part that can improve raw defensive ability.

What once made a good tank, and what should make a good tank in the future is player skill in aggro control in chaotic situations. It currently takes no skill to get more aggro than a tank can survive. This is not to say "nerf our aggro control powers so they are as bad as our defenses". Rather give us more intelligent and challenging game mechanisms that make us WORK to protect our teammates and defensive level that makes such work worthwhile.

Taunt and Aggro themselves are a poor game mechanic, and immersion breaking. I realize how hard this is to fix, but many people have suggested alternate mechanisms.

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like i said: the MORE North/West you go the more the uberness increases, of course BC would be second only to the Yukon.


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I cannot argue with that logic. I am defeated. Zounds!

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Foo is definetly uber.
it's a known scientific fact Canadians Pwn
little known fact. the most NW you go in Canada the more the Uberness increases

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Are you kidding? he's from Toronto. The suckiest place in Canada. Everybody knows the west coast rules.

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I also am getting more and more convinced that it will not be us who defines the new tank. There's just too much history here. We can't even agree on what the definition was for the old tank.

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I think we can get past the history just fine. But first the DEVS have to have an idea as to what they want from the AT. Clearly statesman does not.

I have no problems with giving Tankers a new role. I just want it to be one we can objectively say it can actually fulfill and excel at compared to other ATs.

Again, it's not a matter of history. It's a matter of AT definition.

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Ok, after reading the last 5 pages of posts, I think that people finally understand one of the things that I have been trying to get across over the last couple months in this forum and over the last year on the Test Server and AT Boards.

Here is the real information that was given to us yesterday from the DEVs:

THE DEVS NEVER INTENDED OUR TANKS TO BE ABLE TO DO WHAT THEY DID DURING THE NOVEMBER TO MAY PERIOD. ANYTHING WE WERE ABLE TO DO WAS AN UNINTENDED SIDE-EFFECT OF THE GAME NOT OPERATING IN THE WAY THAT THEY DESIGNED IT.



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Tom I don't think you are right here. The devs CHANGED their design when PvP illuminated flaws in the balance. Their vision for the various ATs has been a moving target since the beginning. Tanks were working as intended before, and it was their intention that changed.

Statesman and the devs are only human, and in designing the ATs originally, he made a big mistake in allowing a fundamentally defensive class to exist as it was. To say this was not originally his intent is to rewrite history.

There is no question this is no longer his intent. What I and others are trying to point out to him though, is that if he follows up on his current "vision" of what a tank is, he might as well just remove our AT altogether, as we bring virtually NOTHING to the table compared to other ATs.

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Da5id, I wish I had saved the discussion with Statesman. One of the reasons that I am so adamant about this is that in November 2004, I brought up the exact same issues as are there now.

Statesman's reply then was almost verbatim what they are now, (without the example of the mission.)

It was one of the first times he mentioned the 1 hero= 3 minions argument.

I don't need to pat myself on the back. The information was there all the time, it's just that people did not want to believe that that was the DEVs' vision for the tank.

I have never been sorrier about being right.

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Right. And the buffs in I3 and I4 were because they were trying to realize this vision of reducing us down to this level? Please.

Their vision has changed. It was a moving target to start with, and they have always had a very poor idea as to what they wanted out of the AT.

Tom, besides patting yourself on the back, I don't even know why are you bringing it up. The dev's previous vision isn't relavent whether this was part of their convoluted grand plan or whether they are stumbling drunks. All that matters is that their vision for the AT now, as described by Statesman is one of an AT with no real role that cannot be easily exceeded by other classes.

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Please don't misunderstand.

I'm not saying Tankers don't need improvement. I'm saying they DO need improvement. I just appreciate the fact that Mr. Emmert gave us a benchmark to work from, and that we should use this opportunity constructively to spell out what we want.

Should the aggro cap be 17 foes? yes/no
Should an average, non-min/maxed Tanker be able to tank at the aggro cap consistently? yes/no
Should a Tank be able to meat shield a third to half a 7-man spawn with support? What about without support? What about the roles of Defenders and Controllers in a group with a Tanker?

All I'm saying is we as Tankers should say something other than, "this is a lot less than we used to be able to do."

That last sentence reads kind of rough, but I mean it in a nice way.

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Mr Emmert's benchmark isn't one.

All it is a single anectdotal data point. And a disturbingly poor indication at that. The playstyle and role he demonstrates in his example is one that would be better served by a scrapper's powerset. His tank brought nothing to that team that wouldn't have been better done by another AT.

We are saying that what he presents as his "role" or his contribution really isn't. Not in an absolute sense of what players expect, nor in a relative sense to what another character could have provided. It's not a "benchmark" as you say we can really work from.

We are trying to talk in broad design terms. The AT and it's primaries SHOULD have a purpose. If he is unwilling to allow us that, he should have the courage to change the AT entirely rather than try to patch it back together with half measures.

As it currently stands Tankers cannot handle 17 mobs without enough heavy support to enable a scrapper to do the same. The only difference is the scrapper kills things faster.

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I think the new Tanker will play much the same role as the old Tankers...just with smaller numbers.

Players who do not come to the boards (and who do not remember the 'old days') will not kick Tankers out of their group for Tanking one-third to one-half of a spawn. They will see that as the Tankers' fair share.

Now that Controllers can no longer perma-lock one third of a spawn (and since a large spawn can't usually be disposed of before an AoE Hold wears off), the Tanker's new, smaller role is still desirable and viable.

On Live, I still hear players advising the Leaders of groups, "We need a Tanker" right after "We need a Healer".

The new Tanker catchphrase is "Keep me alive, and I'll keep (17 of) them off you" as opposed to "Stay back here and start Blasting when I say go."

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To say that it is only those that remember the I4 days that are having issues with is a red herring, and vaguely insulting to those of us who ARE doing objective analysis on this. The problem is that those "smaller numbers" have been reduced to the point of not actually contributing anything of substance.

If you honestly look at the role you played with your current non-granite tank, you'd see that another damage dealer or a defender would have brought much more to the team. There is almost NO normal situation where it is currently preferable to have a tank.

People just haven't realized this is the case yet.