woah!
Sounds like a plan statesman.
Do things like Burn count as landing more and more blows?
Definitely a good direction, if you can slightly enhance the tanking ability above what scrappers can achieve, the tanks can have a distinct role in the game. Afterall, tankers are all about agro (keeping your team alive) and ability to absorb damage regardless of which type of tanker you are (the result of wanting to keep your team alive).
This sounds really excellent, especially the point about damage building as the fight progresses. I hope you can elaborate if this effect will happen on a per-mob basis, or over the course of a larger fight.
Also, I hope that you're able to give equal attention to the Illusion controllers regarding their issues as you have the tankers.
Lady Deacon, 50 ill/ff
Cinder Imp, 50 fa/wm
and many more!
Totally loving it. Sounds like a great step to take and I look forward to the testing and implementation of it.
Many many thanks to the Dev team for hearing us
Buff to Tankers + no nerf to Scrappers = Great job devs.
Good luck Tankers, I hope this happens for you guys.
The City of Heroes Community is a special one and I will always look fondly on my times arguing, discussing and playing with you all. Thanks and thanks to the developers for a special experience.
That sounds... well awesome
Wow.
Just... wow.
Thank you Statesman.
It always impresses me how you're willing to change the way the game works a little rather than just try to shoehorn in a fix by flat-out boosting damge or swapping around exsisting stats.
This sounds excellent.
Here's what I want to know: If you Punch someone, and if the provoke effect in that Punch triggers, will you be able to tell if the effect kicked in, and if so, which mobs just got mad at you? I'm assuming that the little explosion will still appear over the heads of the mobs like it does with Taunt and Provoke, but I figured it couldn't hurt to ask.
Heh, and I just got provoke on my tanker. Oh well, it'll be useful until this goes live and then I can get rid of it, since I never really wanted it in the first place. Good changes.
Overall I like the direction of the changes. But I do have a concern about doing more damage as more blows are landed. That change will not do much good in a group setting at higher levels. The combats don't last all that long.
One issue springs to mind, the role of scrappers as "boss beaters". Some of the longest fights in the game are against arch-villains, and most boss fights tend to be a bit long also--meaning tankers will be doing a lot more damage in those fights. Will tankers become the teammate of choice when taking on an arch-villain, due to combat length?
Sounds like an interesting solution. Although you stated that you're not sure if the increasing Tanker damage will approach that of a scrapper, I suggest at least considering no hard-coded upper limit (though rate of increase might slow).
That way, if a group is having a long hard fight against an AV (say he's barely out-healing their damage output), the Tanker will eventually be able to take him out, if he can just hang in there and outlast him...
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Do things like Burn count as landing more and more blows?
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I have the same concern. I really really really don't want to have to endure another Burn nerf.
Thanks Statesman, sounds pretty cool. And will help solve a lot of the problems that us tankers feel.
A bit of seff interest here, but will this affect the changes to the SS powerset changes that are currently on test? Or will the changes to SS be rolled out with issue 2 if you and we are happy with them?
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2. The Tanker's defense stats can be matched by a properly slotted Scrapper - but the Tanker can not approach the Scrapper in damage.
Feel free to comment!
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Not true if you are a dark armor scrapper, since our armor doesn't stack. Since you are making tankers more offensive, can we make armor stack so scrappers are more defensive? Tankers will get more offense the more they hit/longer they fight; scrappers will get more defense the more they hit/longer they fight.
If that doesn't work for you, then I'll wash your car (and Geko's too!) if you let me stack 2 dark armor toggles (just 2, not 3, not asking for the world here). 
CoH exists because there's a little hero in all of us.
Ridolfo 50 DM DA.
& far too many alts
See, this is how changes SHOULD ALWAYS been implimented, IMHO, with the exception of powers that are just plain broken and need fixing, like smoke grenade.
This addresses the concerns of tankers without negatively effecting any other archetype. Very ingenious problem-solving.
Gratz, Tankers.
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Do things like Burn count as landing more and more blows?
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I believe Statesman indicated melee attacks only, but unclear.
Holy carp. This is going to push powerbuilt tanks into the stratosphere. Glad I bought while the stock was low. 
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2. As a Tanker lands more and more blows, he'll start doing more and more damage. The longer the fight, the more powerful the Tanker becomes.
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What's the mechanic for this?
I mean, does your damage build for each successive attack on the same enemy, or does it build over the course of a single battle? If I fight and kill three enemies, and then run over to another group ten feet away, do I lose all my accumulated power? None of it? What?
This reminds me of WoW's Warriors. Their attacks are all based on "rage", which is a meter that starts at zero, and goes up as you give and take damage, and is then spent to use special attacks, and decreases over time. The more consecutive battles you fight, the more fuel to have to play with, so the more powerful attacks you have at your disposal.
WoW's Rogues, on the other hand, use "combo points", which add up with each special attack you land on an enemy, increasing the effect of your "finisher" moves, but which go away if you change targets.
Which is this?
I play a defender, so be gentle with me However, I want to see Tankers get what they need and want them to be effective and useful as much as anyone; so I offer this as my suggestion to this discussion.
This may be in the realm of pure fluff, but I think it would be neat if as the villians become more and more concerned about the increasing amount of damage the tanker was producing, a few things happened:
1) Specific emotes from the villians that had increasing amounts of "worry" and "concern" voiced as the tanker continued to increase damage over time
2) Perhaps as Tanker damage increased, create additional effects, passive or active, in a tiered manner that were beneficial -
ex/
Level 1: (base)
Tank does X damage as they deal damage in the 1st 10 secs
Level 2:
Tank does X+Y damage as they deal damage in the next 10 secs, and the damage resistance of any current target drops slightly
Level 3:
Tank does X+Y+Z damage as they deal damage in the next 10 secs, and not only does the damage resistance of any current target drop even more, but other targets in the area of the tanker randomly get affected by Fear - not the way it works now, but the way it will work when it is changed..mobs cower but do not run away, since they are so awed by the 1st class can of whoop a$$ the tanker is dealing out with free refills!
You can keep going with this, (even graphic effects as the tanker moves from 1 tier to the next one above) but I only use these examples to illustrate a point. As you initially said, aggro will increase as the mobs get more concerned about the tanker bashing in peoples heads, but perhaps you can combine that aggro with additional benefits for the tanker, and even his/her teammates to really make a difference and have a true, interactive comic book feel for being a tanker.
As Statesman said, the code to do anything still needs to be developed, so maybe something like this can be included if Tankers feel it would be worthwhile.
Good luck, Tankers - I hope you get what you need.
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That way, if a group is having a long hard fight against an AV (say he's barely out-healing their damage output), the Tanker will eventually be able to take him out, if he can just hang in there and outlast him...
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I like this suggestion. Would have been nice to have something like this fighting Diabolique. Took us like, 15 minutes to kill her.
A tanker with a power like that would have been ideal.
Thank you Statesman for addressing the above, and for working out a nice set of solutions that do not nerf anyone else.
I'm hoping that the aggro and escalating damage will apply to all the damaging effects of our Primary and Secondarys (such as Mudpots or Icicles), and not just a few of the damaging powers.
Good news, and thank you
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Yes, I like Force Fields.
As promised, I've been looking into the issues facing Tankers; I thought I'd explain the direction we're going. As we analyed it, Tankers have three very valid concerns (aside from the issues with specific power sets):
1. Without Provoke, they are not a real Tanker. Those people who enjoy the MMP role of "meat shield" have trouble holding aggro properly.
2. The Tanker's defense stats can be matched by a properly slotted Scrapper - but the Tanker can not approach the Scrapper in damage.
3. The Tanker doesn't "feel" like a comic book Tanker should. And frankly, this one really, really bothered me. Because our game is a comic book MMP.
So - here's the solution we're going to try internally. We went through a ton of possible solutions, and we weighed each one against how well they answered the three points above as well as how long it would take to get done.
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....
2. As a Tanker lands more and more blows, he'll start doing more and more damage. The longer the fight, the more powerful the Tanker becomes. I can't say that the Tanker will do as much damage as a Scrapper - but it'll certainly be more than he does now. This ability really gets to the core of a comic book Tanker. He's extremely powerful - but at the start of a fight, he holds himself back some. As the battle progresses, he lets loose....I prefer this system to a power because this way it's inherent. It's simply the nature of the Archetype. And it also sets the Tanker apart from the Scrapper's criticals.
Of course, the thought in your minds must be....WHEN?...I'm afraid I don't know. First, we need some code for this. Then we've got to test it thoroughly. Finally, it'll go on the Test Server for awhile to gather data and impressions. This is going to take some time; but I thought you'd like to know at least where we're going, even though we don't know when we'll get there.
Feel free to comment!