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3. Plain and Simple: The Tanker primary Taunt power should have always been like Provoke.
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Thank you. Apprently some tanks disagree with you and would rather run willy nilly around the battlefield "tagging" mobs just so they can do their jobs. I prefer provoke.
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Heh, personally I'd love running around tagging stuff. I'd go with either that or ranged attacks as an alternative to taunts and provokes, because if Tankers are going to be the anchors that all combat revolves around, I'd much rather have a system centered on an all out brawl rather than yelling at guys. I want enemies to notice me because I'm ripping up concrete and throwing cars and leaving gaping craters in my surroundings. Taunt is the emergency backup if something goes wrong and I can't get to a guy fast enough. But I know he knows I mean business.
The reason it doesn't happen now is a combination of Tanker powers that limit mobility (directly or indirectly), Tanker powers that can only be used from close range, and Tanker powers that only affect single targets. And then you've got a pool power that's a ranged AoE that makes those problems disappear.
Didn't read all pages.
Questions:
Would this taunt effect break sleep?
How does Burn work with this (taunt effect + fear effect? mmm)
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Do things like Burn count as landing more and more blows?
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Nope, that is not a melee attack. Burn is a PBAoE attack.
I could see the landing more&more blows thing being very interesting against monsters and archvillians.
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That quote right there is where everyone is going wrong. "comic book Tanker" There are no Tankers in comic books. There are what I have always refered to as Comic Book Bricks, but there are no Tankers.
Well, okay, maybe The Blob, but aside from that the Tanker Arcehtype doesn't really function like any comic book character. Sure their powersets are meant to recreate the Comic Book Brick "feel" but the main game function of a tanker is to take damage, as stated by Statesman himself.
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I think it's a matter of combining comic book "tanks" with mmorpg tanks. Comic books may not have tanks in the class AT sense, but from what I can tell, CoH models tanks after characters like The Hulk and Colossus, while scrappers are more like Daredevil and Wolverine. More of a difference in style than damage/defense ratios - those get differentiated and balanced, because it's an MMORPG, but I think they're trying to find a way to do so, without losing the style of comic book tanks, aka heavy melee types. Not to be confused with mmorpg tanks, aka low damage meatshields. While in CoH, maybe they want the Tank AT to be both, somehow.
Good example of what people thought being a tank would be in this game is...
Superman - Obvious tank, but strength too powerful to fit into Coh. And on a sidenote I believe the only reason anyone picked up the super strength power set is because they were thinking of characters like Superman and the Hulk.
What people are stuck with is an example of...
Luke Cage - Perfect example of current CoH style tank, extremely invulnerable, but weak damage, and not too cool a character, lol.
I have to say I'd like to believe this is a comic book mmo but when I pass by on the street and see a "The HuIk" hitting a equal level skull minion with all he's got to no real avail, i sigh.
What happened to picking up cars or ripping out lamp posts or picking up enemies over your head and flinging them into a concrete wall?
Here's a wacky proposal...
Why not make ALL the tanker and scrapper primaries and secondaries available to both ATs? Each character would choose one offensive set and one defensive set. For Scrappers, the offensive one would be the Primary, while for Tankers, the defensive one would Primary. For Scrappers, the base numbers for their defensive secondary would be set at 75% of those for the matching Tanker primary; the same would be true for Tanker offensive sets, which would be set to 75% of the base numbers for the corresponding Scrapper primary.
Certain specific secondary effects would be tied to the chosen AT, of course. Only Scrappers would get the chance to Critical Hit, while only Tankers would get the inherent taunting effect on their attacks and various other powers, like Invincibility. In the scrapper primary version, the third power would be Taunt; in the Tanker version of the same set, the power would be Provoke.
Challenge, in the Presence pool, would be upgraded to be the equal of Taunt, while Provoke would remain as is. Thus, Tankers could get the AE Provoke without wasting a pool, and those Tankers and Scrappers that actually WANT both a single-target and an AE taunting power can still dip into Presence for the one they can't get in their offensive set.
This would make room for the current crop of unhappy Inv/SS tankers, who really want to be SS/Inv scrappers. It would open options for both ATs, without really undermining either. The only thing to stop this from happening is a gut sense by the devs that Super Strength "feels" like a tanker power, while Claws "feels" like a scrapper power. But that is just graphics and special effect, really--they've already blurred the line between the ATs by making Invul available to Scrappers. Why not just open everything to both ATs? If the numbers balance out--and there is no reason why they shouldn't--such a change would do nothing but widely broaden the choices available to both ATs.
I second this proposal, Silikate. Let's put it up for a vote.
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3. Plain and Simple: The Tanker primary Taunt power should have always been like Provoke.
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Thank you. Apprently some tanks disagree with you and would rather run willy nilly around the battlefield "tagging" mobs just so they can do their jobs. I prefer provoke.
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I disagree. Taunt is a ranged attack (yes attack) that EVERY Tanker wan get. Taunt allow Tanker to pull when they have a need for it. It can be invaluable at lower level before your DMG Resists are built up.
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Here's a wacky proposal...
Why not make ALL the tanker and scrapper primaries and secondaries available to both ATs? Each character would choose one offensive set and one defensive set. For Scrappers, the offensive one would be the Primary, while for Tankers, the defensive one would Primary. For Scrappers, the base numbers for their defensive secondary would be set at 75% of those for the matching Tanker primary; the same would be true for Tanker offensive sets, which would be set to 75% of the base numbers for the corresponding Scrapper primary.
Certain specific secondary effects would be tied to the chosen AT, of course. Only Scrappers would get the chance to Critical Hit, while only Tankers would get the inherent taunting effect on their attacks and various other powers, like Invincibility. In the scrapper primary version, the third power would be Taunt; in the Tanker version of the same set, the power would be Provoke.
Challenge, in the Presence pool, would be upgraded to be the equal of Taunt, while Provoke would remain as is. Thus, Tankers could get the AE Provoke without wasting a pool, and those Tankers and Scrappers that actually WANT both a single-target and an AE taunting power can still dip into Presence for the one they can't get in their offensive set.
This would make room for the current crop of unhappy Inv/SS tankers, who really want to be SS/Inv scrappers. It would open options for both ATs, without really undermining either. The only thing to stop this from happening is a gut sense by the devs that Super Strength "feels" like a tanker power, while Claws "feels" like a scrapper power. But that is just graphics and special effect, really--they've already blurred the line between the ATs by making Invul available to Scrappers. Why not just open everything to both ATs? If the numbers balance out--and there is no reason why they shouldn't--such a change would do nothing but widely broaden the choices available to both ATs.
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This is interesting, but unless the cap for Scrapper damage resistance is limited to 75% instead of the 90% damage resistance cap for Tankers there would be absolutely no reason whatsoever for people to choose to play Tankers. Scrappers under your proposal would be superior in almost every single way.
Good suggestion, Silikate.
dmd1966
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Here's a wacky proposal...
Why not make ALL the tanker and scrapper primaries and secondaries available to both ATs? Each character would choose one offensive set and one defensive set. For Scrappers, the offensive one would be the Primary, while for Tankers, the defensive one would Primary. For Scrappers, the base numbers for their defensive secondary would be set at 75% of those for the matching Tanker primary; the same would be true for Tanker offensive sets, which would be set to 75% of the base numbers for the corresponding Scrapper primary.
Certain specific secondary effects would be tied to the chosen AT, of course. Only Scrappers would get the chance to Critical Hit, while only Tankers would get the inherent taunting effect on their attacks and various other powers, like Invincibility. In the scrapper primary version, the third power would be Taunt; in the Tanker version of the same set, the power would be Provoke.
Challenge, in the Presence pool, would be upgraded to be the equal of Taunt, while Provoke would remain as is. Thus, Tankers could get the AE Provoke without wasting a pool, and those Tankers and Scrappers that actually WANT both a single-target and an AE taunting power can still dip into Presence for the one they can't get in their offensive set.
This would make room for the current crop of unhappy Inv/SS tankers, who really want to be SS/Inv scrappers. It would open options for both ATs, without really undermining either. The only thing to stop this from happening is a gut sense by the devs that Super Strength "feels" like a tanker power, while Claws "feels" like a scrapper power. But that is just graphics and special effect, really--they've already blurred the line between the ATs by making Invul available to Scrappers. Why not just open everything to both ATs? If the numbers balance out--and there is no reason why they shouldn't--such a change would do nothing but widely broaden the choices available to both ATs.
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I wouldn't go quite so far as totally melding the two archetypes, but that's only because I feel there should be a difference between the more agile feel of the Scrapper and the heavy brute feel of the Tanker. But I think it might be an option to simply balance the offense and defense of both AT's. Tankers get their usual higher HP, the added taunts and rage build-up powers, and they get their defense powers much earlier. Scrappers get critical hits, and get their offensive powers much earlier. But on a power-for-power basis, they both get roughly the same results. Tanker invulnerability and Scrapper invulnerability are both equal, but Tankers get Invincibility at level 18 instead of 26, and so on. Overall Scrappers would still deal more damage, but only to balance the extra Tanker HP, and an offense-heavy Super Strength build could still outdamage a defensive Broadsword player.
Only trouble is that people who are currently enjoying Tanking as the one thing they can do better than Scrappers might be a bit disappointed to find out that they're not as superior as before. But moving things in that general direction might be an improvement.
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This is interesting, but unless the cap for Scrapper damage resistance is limited to 75% instead of the 90% damage resistance cap for Tankers there would be absolutely no reason whatsoever for people to choose to play Tankers. Scrappers under your proposal would be superior in almost every single way.
Good suggestion, Silikate.
dmd1966
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This has been discussed before.
In order for scrappers to hit the cap, they need to access a variety of powers, take other pools, and still don't compare HP wise.
Sure, there's a build out there where you can build a scrapper that matches def and res caps attainable by tankers, but tankers a: do it easier b: do so with less management, and c: do so before SL40.
The problem lies with two things, if scrappers can sacrifice some damage to max def, why can't tankers sacrifice some def to max out damage? While criticals are random, and tankers don't like the idea of them, statistically they add between 5-15% to overall damage to the total output of a scrapper, depending on the types they are fighting. Therefore, not only are tankers limited by less than 75% damage output (including buildups and ranges of the set on as often as possible) there's still that extra percentage that tankers will never be able to surpass unless we get something.
States has said that there's a "comic booky" like change in production. Throw in the inherint taunt, and tankers will be able to tank better than scrappers could, just by autoagroing everything with just attacking, while a scrapper would have to get presence, limiting the powerpools available.
I think the idea of opening all the "type" powers to everyone would be a great idea. Blasters who want to get dark blast could do so, and you could have a mind blast/mind manip blaster. Some very strong superheroes didn't have THAT much defense, so this makes sense there as well. It also helps to realize if attacks from one pool are weaker than others, based on overall comparison.
Not in every way, dmd1966. Tankers have a higher HP. So they have less chance to be one shotted. I would happily take this survivability over increased damage.
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That quote right there is where everyone is going wrong. "comic book Tanker" There are no Tankers in comic books. There are what I have always refered to as Comic Book Bricks, but there are no
Tankers.
Well, okay, maybe The Blob, but aside from that the Tanker Arcehtype doesn't really function like any comic book character. Sure their powersets are meant to recreate the Comic Book Brick "feel" but the main game function of a tanker is to take damage, as stated by Statesman himself.
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I think it's a matter of combining comic book "tanks" with mmorpg tanks. Comic books may not have tanks in the class AT sense, but from what I can tell, CoH models tanks after characters like The Hulk and Colossus, while scrappers are more like Daredevil and Wolverine. More of a difference in style than damage/defense ratios - those get differentiated and balanced, because it's an MMORPG, but I think they're trying to find a way to do so, without losing the style of comic book tanks, aka heavy melee types. Not to be confused with mmorpg tanks, aka low damage meatshields. While in CoH, maybe they want the Tank AT to be both, somehow.
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They can do it. I've been advocating have at least 1 big damage attack that when slotted w/ (3-5) SO's can drop an even con miinion in 1 shot w/o Inspirations or Build Up. This attack is obtaining attainable at somewhere in the teens. The attack has sufficient End usage and Recharge time (20-25 secs) to balance things out. This give Tankers their slow, but heavy hitting. It gives us that comic book brick feel, but doesn't upset the MMOG balance.
It seems doable for all Tankers. (Correct me if I'm wrong) The recent Damage increase to Knockout Blow shows it, at least to me. Blasters and Scrapper would still be the Kings of Damage. But that type of attacks gives everyone good reason to go after Tankers in PvP. The fear of "I don't want to be hit by that attack! He can punch a hole through Battleship Armor! Keep him away from me!"
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They can do it. I've been advocating have at least 1 big damage attack that when slotted w/ (3-5) SO's can drop an even con miinion in 1 shot w/o Inspirations or Build Up. This attack is obtaining attainable at somewhere in the teens. The attack has sufficient End usage and Recharge time (20-25 secs) to balance things out. This give Tankers their slow, but heavy hitting. It gives us that comic book brick feel, but doesn't upset the MMOG balance.
It seems doable for all Tankers. (Correct me if I'm wrong) The recent Damage increase to Knockout Blow shows it, at least to me. Blasters and Scrapper would still be the Kings of Damage. But that type of attacks gives everyone good reason to go after Tankers in PvP. The fear of "I don't want to be hit by that attack! He can punch a hole through Battleship Armor! Keep him away from me!"
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Because super damage was never a priority for me, at least not compared to defense and aggro control, I never gave much thought to KOB. I took it, I appreciate it, but it didn't change my view of my character much, aside from the relatively rare times when I actually choose to solo.
But I was surprised when my regular blaster teammate was surprised by the damage it dealt in a single blow. Whoa! she said. Sure, I said, but I can only do it about twice a minute. Still, she said, Whoa!
What I hadn't realized until that moment was that having that attack made me "feel" more like a superstrength brick to my teammates. Sure, I could only do it occasionally, but when I did, it was impressive even to primary damage dealers. Hence, for SS tanks, KOB is the slow, big damage attack that the scrankers have been calling for, and the devs were able to put it in without affecting the balance of the overall game or messing up my ability to play my own, freely-chosen "meatshield" role.
I've generally sensed that the unhappy Inv/SS tankers are slightly less unhappy post-Issue 2. That's not to say the work is complete, but just re-casting KOB seems to have been an even bigger help on the look-and-feel front than it was on the damage-balance issue.
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Not in every way, dmd1966. Tankers have a higher HP. So they have less chance to be one shotted. I would happily take this survivability over increased damage.
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With a 90% damage resistance cap attainable by both scrappers and tankers, there is really nothing in the game that can one-shot either type of character. If you are referring to the state after Unstoppable has dropped (the 9th tier Invulnerability power) where your character is reduced to 10% hit points, you may be correct. If you heavily slot the passive resists, however, even a scrapper can survive that downtime (unless you are fighting psionic damage enemies, in which case both scrapper and tanker are toast).
Let me put this in perspective...currently my Inv/Fire tanker can herd 100 white-orange con foes, jump into a cargo container and stand there all day either not getting hit or taking so little damage per hit that he heals completely before getting hit again.
Any Invulnerability scrapper that takes Tough (the 3rd tier power from the Fighting power pool) can basically do the same.
Sure, the tanker can do it much earlier, but the fact that every Invulnerability scrapper can do the same compromises the validity of the Invulnerability tanker to some degree.
If you as a scrapper are not really taking any damage, does it really matter if you have fewer hit points than a tanker? I don't think so.
I agree with your point, however, with regards to the non-Invulnerability (and perhaps non-Regeneration) scrappers.
dmd1966
I may have missed if there was a reply to the concern about burn counting as landing hits, if so I'm sorry if I'm saying anything redundant.
AFAIK, burn isn't considered an attack, it's an immobile pet. It's not affected by things like aim and buildup.
Since it's a pet in the game mechanics, the hits from burn wouldn't be considered hits by the character and so it wouldn't immediately max your damage in the proposed changes, it would have no effect at all.
I'm just worried it will also not benefit from the hold agro effect, which kinda defeats the point. What good is a 2 foot radius attack that makes everyone flee the instant it turns on? It's totally useless without provoke as it is now, and if the main point of these changes is to remove the need for tankers to always need provoke then burn will need to stop making mobs flee so much.
Burn is considered a "Summoned Entity" . . . it won't be a part of these new changes.
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Sure, the tanker can do it much earlier, but the fact that every Invulnerability scrapper can do the same compromises the validity of the Invulnerability tanker to some degree.
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I'd take that a step further and say that because Invulnerability dwarfs the other tanker sets that this particular flavor of scrapper renders Ice/Stone and Fire tanks unnecessary as well.
If you can have Tanker defenses and double the damage, why would you not make a */Inv scrapper?
As far as the Provoke on melee attacks for tankers, I think what would be better would be that one of their auras, like
a) Blazing Aura
b) Invincibility
c) Icicles
d) Mudpots
I think those should have the Provoke effect for those in range of it. INSTEAD of a PBAoE Taunt effect on all tanker attacks. What if you DON'T want to provoke everything?
What do you think?
I wounder if there is a time frame to the implementation of the AOE taunt on Tanker Attacks as having to take 1 PP just for provoke is really husting my poor tanker...
an update on this would be cool, I can uderstand the problems trying to implent the increas in Damage but I am getting realy anxious about that
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I wounder if there is a time frame to the implementation of the AOE taunt on Tanker Attacks as having to take 1 PP just for provoke is really husting my poor tanker...
an update on this would be cool, I can uderstand the problems trying to implent the increas in Damage but I am getting realy anxious about that
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Then you should take provoke. It's certainly going to be more than a few days. Use what works now and respec if/when they put in their fix.
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As far as the Provoke on melee attacks for tankers, I think what would be better would be that one of their auras, like
a) Blazing Aura
b) Invincibility
c) Icicles
d) Mudpots
I think those should have the Provoke effect for those in range of it. INSTEAD of a PBAoE Taunt effect on all tanker attacks. What if you DON'T want to provoke everything?
What do you think?
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A. The dmg it does generates agro already.
B. Already has a PBAOE taunt on it.
C. Same as blazing aura. The dmg does generate some agro.
D. Generates agro based on the debuff.
Looks like you already got what you want =)
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As far as the Provoke on melee attacks for tankers, I think what would be better would be that one of their auras, like
a) Blazing Aura
b) Invincibility
c) Icicles
d) Mudpots
I think those should have the Provoke effect for those in range of it. INSTEAD of a PBAoE Taunt effect on all tanker attacks. What if you DON'T want to provoke everything?
What do you think?
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A. The dmg it does generates agro already.
B. Already has a PBAOE taunt on it.
C. Same as blazing aura. The dmg does generate some agro.
D. Generates agro based on the debuff.
Looks like you already got what you want =)
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But with the exception of the "taunt" on Invincibility, which is probably not a true taunt and just acts similar to one, the aggro generated by those is tiny. At level 43, with blazing aura with 1 slot acc, 5 slots, damage, I'm doing in the mid to upper 20s in damage every tick. The ticks go every half-second to second. Assuming the best, 29 damage per tcik, 2 ticks a second, I'm only doing 58 damage a second. I believe I can be outaggroed by a blaster using nothing but power push. It's certainly not enough to keep the enemies from turning their attention towards a blaster that's firing even half-rate.
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But with the exception of the "taunt" on Invincibility, which is probably not a true taunt and just acts similar to one, the aggro generated by those is tiny. At level 43, with blazing aura with 1 slot acc, 5 slots, damage, I'm doing in the mid to upper 20s in damage every tick. The ticks go every half-second to second. Assuming the best, 29 damage per tcik, 2 ticks a second, I'm only doing 58 damage a second. I believe I can be outaggroed by a blaster using nothing but power push. It's certainly not enough to keep the enemies from turning their attention towards a blaster that's firing even half-rate.
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I agree with what you're saying here, but wanted to point out that the taunt on invincibility is a magnitude 2 or 3, which puts it in the area of provoke. In my experience it holds mob aggro quite nicely.
I also found with my fire tanker that I could hold the majority of aggro with a fast punching set (SS), taunt, and blazing aura. You have to be on your toes to hold close to everything, but personally that made it interesting for me. The ease and simplicity of provoke is what creates Provoke-bots. 
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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.
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That quote right there is where everyone is going wrong. "comic book Tanker" There are no Tankers in comic books. There are what I have always refered to as Comic Book Bricks, but there are no Tankers.
Well, okay, maybe The Blob, but aside from that the Tanker Arcehtype doesn't really function like any comic book character. Sure their powersets are meant to recreate the Comic Book Brick "feel" but the main game function of a tanker is to take damage, as stated by Statesman himself.
If this was the design philosophy, if "to take damage" was the original role envisioned by the devs, is it really any surprise to him now that "The Tanker doesn't "feel" like a comic book Tanker should."
I'm not sure how they can dig themselves outta this hole now, and I'm not sure they should try. The tanker role does fill a nice niche in this MMO. It shouldn't try to be confused with any relation to comic books at this point though. Instead make the tanker fit their role in a better way. As is, the best way a tanker can perform his given function is to take Provoke and go around insulting the mobs.
If we want to make some meaningful changes to the Tanker Archetype we need to find some ways to make their role in combat more fun and less passive. Making Provoke a Tanker secondary power would at least free up a power pool for players but wouldn't do anything to make them more fun.
Being able to select and defend teammates from incoming attacks seems more heroic, but would it be more fun? Being able to deflect and block incoming attacks would be more dramatic, but would it be any less passive? Guess it depends how it was implemented. Maybe someone else can come up with some better ideas to make the tanker role more fun.
One of my big beefs with the tanker archetype is their lacking of quality mobile mez protections. Rooted effects make the game less fun and force more cookie cutter builds. Know why my Regen Scrapper is a lot more fun then my Invuln tanker? Well, okay one of the reasons? He can move! he can flow through battles. He can position himself and take advantage of his powers. He has freedom to fight who he pleases when he pleases. He doesn't have to avoid DE or Rikti mezzers. he doesn't have to wait for his one buddy with Clear Mind to hop on before taking on a mission. He just goes and does it. Fixing this issue alone would go along way to making tankers more fun to play.
Now as for the issue of "Because our game is a comic book MMP". Want a comic book feel, want to be able to make a real Comic Book Brick? You already have an archetype that could accomplish that. They are called Scrappers. Give them some powersets that give the right flavor and you are all set. No further tweaks required.
You let the those who seek the Comic Book Brick feel free to make the heroes they want, and you make those who want to be MMO Tankers better and more active at their roles. That is the only way I see that you could possibly make both sides of the tanker community happy.