slainsteel

That is very good advise.
Re-started this thread on that forum, with a more appropriate title.

I disagree on the point that there is 'no AT that is needed'.
Debuffers and Kins are always needed; so are solid DPS toons.

Run a heavy TF without them and your efficiency _will suffer. Run one without a tank (or a emp fender or a dominator or mastermind or even a blaster) and it really won't, as long as you replace him with a debuff, kin or solid dps toon.


BTW, I've heard claims of 25m even 20m STF's, but it's strange that no one can really seem to provide me with screenshots. Honestly, our best STF time pre-i20 has been 29m, no offensive temps, no deaths and no tanks; I have seen *one* screenshot that beats that time by a minute and I believe they used offensive temps. Of course, our fastest pre-i20 MoSTF was 38m, but then, that was 'with' a tank, so that would account for the slowdown.

I apologize. It's rather frustrating to have a post hijacked by people simply debating a rather unrelated concern simply because you agreed that it actually is a concern.

*roll eyes*
For goodness sake; I don't care how easy or how hard the game is for the purposes of this post. All I want to know is what times other people have run.

That's it.

I am not sure how to say this more clearly.


Tankers, do less 'personal' damage than scrappers/brutes, I believe we all agree on that, even with bruising.

Second, bruising doesn't help that much on a really debuff heavy team.

Third, considering how often a team breaks up in high end speed tf's, personal damage is of major concern.

Fourth, on my speed tf teams, survivability is not a concern.

Fifth, considering all these points, the 'best' I can hope from a tanker is that he won't be a negative impact on our efficiency.

Sixth, I am not just singling out tanks; I believe there are a lot of AT's out there that are even more useless to bring on a team.

Seventh, in a post i20, fully IO'ed, Incarnate'd up toons, damage and -resistance is all that counts. Unless you can do solid damage (or increase other people's damage), or have solid -resistance debuffs, you are simply taking away from the team. Tanks are NOT top end +dmg, and their -resistance is only ST hence much less useful than many debuff toons that we can take along.


So, why again would I ever take a tank on my team if I get to cherry-pick the AT's?


I am hoping this should settle it, but I am sure, some one or the other still believes that tanks are 'oh so useful' and will want to argue further.


If you really want to, run with us, and see for yourself. If a tank would help that much, believe me, I would insist on it. This is not an idealogical debate for me - I've been proven wrong about AT's before and I would like to be proven wrong if it helps my teams get things done more efficiently. There just doesn't seem to be any logic that would somehow make it clear that having a tank along on the teams that I run would actually in any way 'help'.

How does this help me know what times people have run? Again, did you read my original post?

Did you actually 'read' my original post?

Thank you - that's exactly it. I would like to find fellow speeders and have something to benchmark my own runs against so I can make them faster.

My intention is neither to trivialize or non-trivialize the game. I really enjoy doing speed TF's, have for a long time; I only wanted to ask other speeders about their times.

I simply admitted that yes, the incarnate content has made the game less challenging, which does give me less motivation to log on. I like 'pushing' the game, getting the most I can out of my toons and when that becomes really lacking in challenge, yes, my interest does wane. This post is not about that though, this is simply about speed times of the various TF's post i20.

I am not complaining, nor am I upset with the introduction of incarnate powers.

I am simply acknowledging that the powers make an already easy game even easier and, really, I am mostly just asking people what times they're running these in so I can benchmark my teams more accurately

True, in fact, zoning and out of mission travel are our major time sinks.
So with teams that have a near 0 time for killing things, it is imperative that the bottlenecks not introduce a slowdown.

It simply comes down to this; a scrapper can take down a cyst in let's say 10 hits, a tank would take 20 - that's about a 20-30 second slowdown, depending on animation time and lag. Now the generals, then the traitors; that time adds up to 1-2 minutes, which *is* 10% extra time on a speed ITF.


Additionally, you have to account for tanks being built for defense, quite a few existing tanks need to sacrifice on damage in their builds, so the case I am talking about is probably an underestimation in the sacrifice in damage. A lot of really well built tanks do not have the slots to put procs in every attack. That is just how people build their tanks, particularly the good ones.


That being said, if a Fire/SS tank decides to come along on an ITF, I am usually not bothered, particularly if they've built themselves for damage, since the discrepancy in damage is much lower. Now if you instead take a Stone tank, you might as well run with 7.


Do consider one more thing; even on ST damage, we don't usually replace a tank with a scrapper, we replace him with a debuffer. Ideally we go with 3 DPS'ers, 1 kin, 4 debuffers. If a tank is replacing the DPS'er (particularly if it's a lower damage brute versus a high damage tank), the impact is lower, but if you're replacing one of the debuffers or the kin with the tank, your team will experience a much more measurable impact.


Lastly, looking at all the factors, *why* would I want to bring a tank on a high end team? We definitely don't need one on our teams. At best, it won't be a noticeable negative impact.

I have yet to see a reason to actually bring a tank on a team which has no issues with survivability (particularly post i20); which is the basic logic behind my original statement, "I still wouldn't take a tank on my teams".

Well this isn't just shaving off a little time. This is um, well these runs? None of us actually even 'tried'. We just went about a lazy set of speed runs to gather merits/HO's and just kept setting the MO settings to get our badges.

This was on auto-pilot; shouldn't something require 'some' work in the game?
The trials are also a joke. We do lambda in about 8-12minutes.

So I kinda understand the merits of resistance debuffs; which is why my teams usually run with approximately 150-250% or more in resistance debuffs (several colds, sonics, /sonics preferably). Our AV fights are with capped damage and typically a 30-80% final -resist on the AV (with reactive and other miscallaneous debuffs from non-debuff toons - > -50% typically on trials).


You are assuming that AV's are really some sort of a slowdown for our teams.

Let's take a few examples,
STF:
1st mish: AV1, 5-20s (since most people are still at parts when he spawns)
2nd mish: each AV, ~10s (we pull them together and pound on all of them)
3rd mish: Tree AV, 10-20s
4th mish: 4 AV's, ~10s each, Aeon, 10-15s
5th mish: 4 Patrons, 20-30s each (a collective time of 1-2 minutes), Recluse 30s'ish


That's a collective time on AV's at maximum of 285s; assuming bruising, that's an additional 2.6-3.0% -resistance debuff; saving us what, 8 seconds?

Most of the time, the entire team does not even get there from their individual tasks before the AV's are dead. So that kinda throws all those calculations straight out the window.

So the same argument can be used for damage right? Since -resist (unless unresistable - which is very rare) might as well be the same as +dmg. But straight up damage dealers are much more useful in finishing off TF's fast and efficiently, and this is why,

ITF: Shadow Cysts, Generals, last ~200'ish traitors
STF: Vines, Chiefs
Lambda: Temps
LGTF: Hostages
Apex: Champions, WarWorks

In all these cases, these are the bottlenecks, where a tank helps very little. With good buffs, even a blaster (assuming a survivable build - for example, my blaster can solo cyst and generals) accomplishes these objectives faster than a tank does.

I am speaking out of experience; I typically run between 2-8 speed TF's a day (except for days when I don't log on) and have been for 5 months or so. I am also obsessive about team makeup, so this is data I've gathered over hundreds of runs. I *have* tanks, why wouldn't I play them? They've all got billions of inf builds on them and frankly, are the easiest toons to play. They just "don't" help the team enough as any of my other toons.


We've run our Speed STF's with the exact same team twice minus changing out a debuffer or scrapper for a tank, and lost time - enough to be not just chance (a 31m team ended up taking 36m with approximately similar amounts of chiefs).

We also attempted many record breaking runs on some of the hardest TF's - whenever we take along a tank, we don't even come close to our old records, let alone beat them.


Your math and arguments work for teams that 'need' to focus fire and actually take some time to kill off hard enemies, ours don't. So efficiency for our teams becomes often a function of what they can do on their own more than their 'small' contribution to the team. On non-optimized teams, bruising might even really be a contribution, but on teams super heavy on debuffs and buffs, it barely makes a dent at the cost of having a toon that contributes less in many other aspects.

Edit: Antagonistic, nice euphemism

BAF and Lambda? Not the first day, I did take my stone tank.
That was also the last day I logged him on. It didn't take very long to realize that once you know how this works, you can 'optimize' the team.

Regarding a blaster - a good blaster can be really survivable. Get it a self heal, capped range defense, some resistances and he can survive enough to not really need a tank in the team. My own blaster (though I rarely play him), usually out-survives quite a few tanks (he doesn't even have any incarnate powers other than his Alpha).

Keep in mind, I don't run teams which don't have aggro management at all; our aggro management just comes at a lower cost to damage (via illusion trolls or brutes) and is used only when needed.

Pre-i20, we've run a 29m STF with no deaths; post i20, with so many barrier's flying around? Survivability is a joke. That brings the only real value in a team coming from buff/debuff/damage. I am not even assuming this discussion is considering Incarnate powers and still survivability is not a concern, how can it be post i20?


For the record, I always run speed teams - so we rarely kill everything; usually nothing other than what we need to for our objectives (even on MO runs).

Edit: I didn't state all or even many blasters can out-survive tanks. If you actually read through my post, I said 'some' blasters can out-survive 'some' tanks; which is of course completely subjective, but what's your point? I didn't list a blaster as an essential, just a well built one being more useful than a well built tank.

It looks like that you and I play the game at very different levels.

A scrapper gets about 50% more damage per attack, along with that 100% higher damage cap. My teams are usually at the damage cap during combat.

So let's talk numbers.
A /DM tank, Midnight's grasp, capped damage,
122 base * (100% base + 300% buff) = 488 damage
A DM/ scrapper, MG again,
189 base * (100% base + 400% buff) = 945 damage (93% more damage)

..of course, we often replace the tank with an illusion troll (ill/cold or ill/rad); I don't even want to begin to show how much efficient our team becomes with that replacement.


So you're telling me that the 20% debuff is going to somehow make up for that loss of damage? You do realize when fighting +3 AV's (considering that everyone on my teams is +1 off-trial), that bruising is still only 50% more effective? Taking that and making it a 30% debuff, how do you plan on recovering the 60% damage.

Also keep in mind, bruising is a single target debuff - the tank actually has to hit every target to debuff them all and he has to hit them within every 10 seconds.

I am not sure how your 'high end' teams play, but my teams burn through mobs the second sleet/heat loss/other AoE -resistance debuffs are cast. No one is going to wait for the tank to go hit every target or even every boss to get the debuff on there. Hell, we kill the 4 patrons on the STF within about 2 minutes or less; Recluse takes about a minute - the 7 AV's on LRSF now take us about 2 minutes; all this without a tank - add a tank in, and our time inevitably drops by 10% or more.


So any scenario I can think of, a tank is _still a waste of a spot. We've done record breaking speed and MO runs without a tank on every 50 tf in the game and now the trails; every time I take a tank along, our efficiency drops, particularly on TF's where we have only 8 spots and team composition can really make quite a bit of a difference.

To address your point that the same can be said about any other AT in the game? Um, no.

If we don't have scrappers or brutes, our efficiency suffers
If we don't have fenders/corr's, our efficiency suffers
If we don't have illusion trolls, our efficiency suffers
If we don't have kins, our efficiency suffers, a lot

Hell, even a well built blaster is more useful than a tank - I know of some blasters who survive better than some tanks and of course, do crazy damage. The ONLY time I'd take a tank on a team is if we want a very laid back and easy run where no one really has to think too much; or, if I am leading an average'ish team.


(I apologize for the late reply btw, I don't visit the boards often)

Let me put it this way; pre-i20, I'd take a solid tank along on the team unless we had really experienced illusion trolls; if so, the tank would be a waste of a spot considering that are teams usually consiste of high end builds.

Post i20, I am less likely to take a tank since a couple of barriers on the team (on a well built team) makes it almost pointless to have an aggro sink; so we even run STF's (and other TF's and trials) without a single tank.


Most other TF's and trials, we speed them in record time without a tank. Sure a tank 'can' out damage a scrapper since he can survive more easily, but when you have teams with 3 buffers, 3 debuggers, 2 scrappers/brutes, unless you really need someone to pull aggro off others, you're good to go without a tank. The team buffs on our teams usually make worrying about the purple patch superflous.


Our fastest MoSTF (post i20, no temps) run is now 28m, without a single tank on the team.


Hence my statement - tanks can solo GM's now, but that doesn't make them any more useful.

EDIT: Again, this argument is only for ultra-high-end teams; most low to mid end teams stil benefit a LOT from a tank, and a tank that can do so much damage would be a boon for them.