This does indeed sound like an answer to the tanker problem.
And I am not one to look a gift horse in the mouth (states, I am not really callin you a horse here) but does this mean the previously proposed improvements to the tank AT are not taking effect with issue 2?
I am speaking primarily of the reduced endurance on attacks and the modification of knockback.
An official answer on this would make this tankers day.
Awesome prospects indeed.
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Essentially, each hit (if successful) will give you a short term damage buff. Different powers would have different buffs; but if you could string enough hits together you can "peak" your damage.
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Well on that note, would Tankers using this still hit their normal "+400%" damage caps? Because many are already there (depending on the group situation), so a damage buff would ONLY be beneficial if it raised the damage cap they could attain.
This sounds very nice. I do have to wonder how your going to impliment this though. If you go for a timer after each attack then you have to store all that extra data which seems inefficient and space on the server. If you just go for hits then it favors low damage, fast recharge attacks with short animations times. So I am guessing your going to just starting counting damage and then apply it as a multiplier after finding its log and then decrease the counter by some fraction each tick until it drops the log back to one. Then again that still wouldn't work that well. Since it would give something like:
(log is base ten in this with all powers given a 2 second cast time)
1: 100 Damage attack (25 sex recharge)
2: 50 Damage attacks (10 sec recharge)
4: 30 Damage attacks (8 sec recharge)
So if the damage count drops by 10% per second you get: (format is Second. (value in the log), attack base damage / damage done)
0. (10) 100 / 100
2. (89) 50 / 97.5
4. (151) 50 / 109
6. (210) 30 / 70
8. (227) 30 / 71
10. (241) 30 / 71
12. (252) 30 / 72
14. (262) 50 / 121
16. (310) 50 / 125
18. (352) 30 / 76
20. (347) 30 / 76
22. (343) 30 / 76
24. (339) 30 / 76
26. (336) 100 / 253
28. (477) 50 / 134
30. (495) 50 / 135
Obviously this isn't the ideal attack routine for this sort of a damage system, but I am guessing this is something like what the devs will put in. Odds are if they do use this they will use a higher base value for the log though.
A couple of questions:
1) What will happen when there is more than one tanker in the group if each of their attacks have a Provoke effect?
2) By being able to buff their own damage to the cap, what need will tankers have for defenders who's job it is to buff their teammates' damage output?
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That change will not do much good in a group setting at higher levels. The combats don't last all that long.
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That will also be changing soon.
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this worries me a bit.....may keep a few people up at night sadly enough...( no not me...i promise...my wife wouldn't allow it) wondering how this would be done?
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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....
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Anything that helps hold aggro will help, of course, but an inability to draw the attention of something at range will really hamstring the tanks that didn't take Teleport, because of the amount of time you have to spend immobilized at the higher levels.
Please, please consider either giving the Taunt power in the secondary sets an area effect, or having the AoE of the taunt component of the melee attacks not be a standard distance-based AoE (unless the radius is just huge beyond anything seen in the game so far), but a good chance to affect EVERY opponent who is engaged with ANY team member. This actually makes sense from a comic-book perspective -- as a bad guy, having one of your buddies scream in pain or aggravation may very well draw your attention even if you're all the way over in the next room. If possible, you might consider using the same detection code that you use to see if an attack would have *started* any aggro at the beginning of a fight, and for any opponent that would have started attacking the team if the attack that the tank made was the very first one that was detected, cause each of those opponents to have a 10-second taunt effect towards the tank (thus making the taunt effect less useful if the tank is stealthed, or the opponents have their backs turned).
Also, please please PLEASE give Mud Pots and Icicles the same taunt effect that Invincibility gets. If anything, those are the powers that SHOULD be getting the attention of the enemies. Invincibility is a subtle thing.
I have a vision...
...
Eldritch lightning arced across the room, dancing from body to body. She worked best striking from the shadows one at a time, rather than calling down the flashy, but devastating power that lanced through the room now, but they were running out of time. It wouldn't take the gang members more than a few more minutes to find the artifact they were looking for, and then it would be a whole new ball game.
The artifact... she was so distracted by the thought that she didn't see the figure that climbed back to his feet in a shadow and started to move outside of her field of view. Instincts, or perhaps a warning from one of her spirit allies, bought her just enough time to bring up her hands and start a warding spell as the spiked metal came down towards her head.
It saved her life, but not by much. Dazed and bleeding on the ground, her vision cleared to see the smirking figure above her, slapping his old-fashioned mace into a leather-gauntleted palm. "Yeah, that's right, [censored]," he snarled. "No matter how subtle the mage, a block of steel to the head will really crimp her style. Now say goodnight." He started to raise the weapon when he was interrupted by a loud whumpf followed by screaming. Her partner, a magma elemental that one of her friends had introduced her to just a few nights ago, had just vented superheated air onto another gang member, setting his hair and shirt on fire and causing him to drop his gun.
Grimacing, the man with the mace turned back towards the big moving rock, muttering, "Don't go anywhere, toots. I'll be right back as soon as I do some mining."
Painfully, she wiped blood out of her eyes and staggered back to her feet...
...
Pleasepleaseplease...
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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. 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.
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I kind of like this, too, though you still have the problem of dealing with frontloaded damage caused by blasters... There generally aren't enough combat rounds for a Tank to work up to maximum damage in a group. On the other hand, this will help soloers a lot.
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Feel free to comment!
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Comments (and other things) above. 
Thanks for thinking about us.
Awesome!
I've been a cheerleader for the build-up-over-time thing since I saw it (although the version I was posting was get-hit-get-angry rather than land-hits-get-angry), but I think it's a great move both for helping out tankers, balancing them up to parity AND making them more comic-book appropriate.
Nice!
And if they do it as damage/tick, I again express concern about what powers they assign it to, because here AoE has a large advantage due to damage scaling, unless they restrict the damage bonus counted on AoE as damage done per opponent and not total damage done.
YEAH BABY!
This is so weird. I just mentioned the provoke on all attacks instead of taunt just a few days ago. I said it made a whole lot of sense because basicly guys would go..
"Hey.. He is beating the snot out of Joe! Lets get him!"
Someone else spoke up and said they have been saying the same thing for a long time. I think this is great!
Slowly building up steam makes sense to for any number of ways you put it. As for everyone wondering how and when.. don't bother.
You should know that devs are sneaky sneaky! They won't give us the exact date. Not untill it is already completed anyway. I doubt they are sure as to the "how" either. As someone else said.. Probably still in the development stage.
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Essentially, each hit (if successful) will give you a short term damage buff. Different powers would have different buffs; but if you could string enough hits together you can "peak" your damage.
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Well on that note, would Tankers using this still hit their normal "+400%" damage caps? Because many are already there (depending on the group situation), so a damage buff would ONLY be beneficial if it raised the damage cap they could attain.
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I wouldnt worry too much about the caps, its not ment to boost damage that much after all. It wil most likely be around 5% bonus from each attacks that stacks, making it around 25% bonus if continious fighting, a similar bonus to that from Followup wich work similarily.
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Tankers will get a "provoke" like AOE effect on their melee attacks.
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Just want to be clear here, this provoke effect will not effect ranged attacks? Any insight on powers like Hurl Boulder, Tremor, or Fault?
@Murphy - 10 Murf Beam/Traps Corruptor on Virtue(4 retired 50s)
Well upon hearing this I am a little more confident that the tanker line is headed in the right direction. Can't wait to test this out. 
Overall, very good ideas that should make tankers more useful, more fun, and less of a provoke-bot.
I'm especially interested to see #2, especially if the growing effect lasts for more than 1 enemy (i.e. a whole fight). A one enemy limited bonus would be good for soloing but more limited in group situations.
Can't wait to see it implimented.
Jack, this is a fantastic concept!
Your relationship with the players and continually innovative game design leaves me ... speechless. 
Stuff like this reinforces to me that CoH is the right choice.
Thanks, very much. I look forward to testing this one when it's ready.
Very Best Regards, Statesman!
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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?
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Essentially, each hit (if successful) will give you a short term damage buff. Different powers would have different buffs; but if you could string enough hits together you can "peak" your damage.
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What about the hard 400% cap on damage? Is the buff increasing the base damage and thus enhancements and other damage buffs (ie. Fulcrum Shift) will multiply the affcet even furter?
Heh I'm feeling sort of silly now. My numbers actually overstate the scale of the damage boost since odds are they would treat it as any other damage boost (even if using logs) so it would end up as damage * (base multiplier + log(recent damage)) with a cap of x4. So you would still have to keep damage SOs slotted in there since unless they allow AoEs to work (which would be a bad idea using this system) there is no way a tanker could reach the 10,000 points of recent damage required for your x4 multiplier.
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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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No hard coded upper limit = Herding Heaven. There HAS to be some sort of limit. You could have a tank sitting in one place with someone continually bringing more and more mobs to them increasing how much damage, so they can in turn kill more and more mobs. Bleh.
Also, being that I play scrappers almost exclusively, I feel very possesive about scrappers being the AV / Boss killers. The idea that a tank just needs to last a certain amount of time to be able to take out an AV / Boss makes me wary. There is room in the game for both ATs, but I would prefer if scrappers kept their place.
What if the increased damage buff is directly related to the health bar, incrementally increasing damage as hitpoints go down, and hitting 400% when you get to the red zone. As you heal you get weaker and if your defense is so good that you're just not losing health, you don't really need the extra strength.
Now thats a cool concept! Think I'll be trying out a tanker when this one goes onto the test server!
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What if the increased damage buff is directly related to the health bar, incrementally increasing damage as hitpoints go down, and hitting 400% when you get to the red zone. As you heal you get weaker and if your defense is so good that you're just not losing health, you don't really need the extra strength.
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What about tankers powersets that are based on Defense (i.e Ice), this wouldn't work for them. this fix is equitable across the AT because we all pound on stuff
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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):
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Wow, I have to say that I eat all the words I have said about your responses in the past Statesman. This is a great post that goes into detail about where you are trying to take the game and is well thought out. Awesome, just Awesome!
Statesmen,
First, that sounds great for the Tankers. That would definitely give them a comic book feel. Now Unyielding Stance & Root will be more effective for those Tanker sets. Especially with the knockdown/knockback change in Issue 2 .
Second, are you going to change how the Invulnerable set works for Scrappers?
All the defensive powers on a Scrapper are 75% of a those on a Tanker. So it would make sense if the resistance cap for Scrappers was capped at 67.5% (that would be 75% of the 90% cap).
Scappers are more than survivable at that dam resist cap. What kills me more than anything else are status effects.
I don't want to be able tank in CoH. I played a Dwarf Paladin in EQ for 5 years. Its a role in a fantasy environment I like.
In a super hero/comic book I wanted a spiderman role, not that of the Thing or Colossus. Unfortunately Unstoppable, as it is now, allows me to be Spiderman & Colossus at once.
I would rather have Unstoppable even if the benefits were less then US due to the fact that its mobile.
I don't think there should be anyway that a Scrapper should be able to replace a Tanker except in an emergency back up type situation. You could do that easily by allowing US to be mobile for Scrappers and making Unstoppable root and never take recharge enhancers.
That way an invuln Scrapper would only be the emergency back up guy, not Tanker-lite.
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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.
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This is somewhat of an Illusion that is often repeated as truth. Its only possible at levels 40+ as else it requires far too much sacrifice in offensive powers. Will these changes only work for 40+? Its also limited to the current level of difficulty of villans, and if that is fixed then Tankers would have more use of their defensive advantage. Its also an issue limited to Invulnerability that is the reason that some Scrappers can reach the same caps as Tankers. Its far to easy to reach said caps as a Tanker, wich is why Scrappers can do it as well.
So, do burn tanks accumulate 'rage' per dmg tick? or per power use?