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Statesman thinks that tanking 33% of an 8-man spawn is satisfactory.
He thinks that tanking 100% of an 8-man spawn is too much.
He thinks that dropping to 33% of your hp while tanking an 8-man spawn of Carnies is a little more punishment than you should take, but acceptable.
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something about the math here bothers me ....
in order to tank an entire 8 person spawn you'd need at least 3 tanks per team? I wonder if two losses per mission would still be acceptable then?
this makes laugh for the same reason i laughed when i heard about the reduced debt cap.
a lower cap doesn't mean anything if you're always in debt regardless.
I think everybody, including Statesman, agrees that a Tanker should be able to do better than his specific example.
What no one seems to be answering is,
How much of the spawn should he have been able to take?
With how much support?
I agree that to get to this point, some more info would be nice (Inspiration use, build, etc), but if we can extrapolate enough to say, "That's not good enough", we should also be able to say, "THIS, on the other hand, is what I would consider acceptable."
So: Your Invulnerable Tanker, at the specified level, tanking the specified enemies with the specified support. How good should you be able to do, and still NEED the team?
That's what I mean by using it as a benchmark. He was able to tank 33% of the enemies, dropping to 33% health. What should those numbers be? 50% and 50%? 75% and 75%?
Story Arcs I created:
Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!
Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!
Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!
Look at his post and the support he got to be able to tank 33% with I may add the secondary with the most AOE's. He was adding nothing to the team that a scrapper would not with those kind of buffs and way more damage.
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So I mostly find the example demeaning for the Tanker AT as a whole.
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Par for the course then. 
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SpiritWraith, can a Stone tank hit DR cap solo with his powers as they are now including the Fighting Pool but not counting Granite Armor?
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6 50++'s of Damage Resistance puta us at 104% S/L DR according to Hero Planner.
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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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Point taken, Da5id. Sometimes I have gotten real frustrated over the past year, especially during the arguments over herding when I brought this up and had myself shouted down. I guess I feel vindicated in some sort of really sorry way.
Do you remember how bad tanks were at launch and under I1? We got our major buffs in I2. What I remember is *nerfs* to the tanker set beginning with I3 (including the end of perma-unstoppable.) I figure that was when they realized that the game was broken (again, that coincides with the November date.)
You are right about when they decided on this being irrelevant to the question at hand, however.
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.
I also have to say that I think you may be right about other ATs filling our spot on a team contributing more than we do. I'd like to see some hard numbers from teams running the same mission over and over again on test, but taking the intuitive approach, it seems like it may be true.
Mr. Lithuania
Jessica to Nathan in bed: "I'm not really bad, Isaac just drew me that way."
What is even more pitiful in that example is there was a second tank so with any sort of coordination they should have been able to split the aggro and lock it down for the team.
Did he leave the other tank to do the real work of locking down the (Dark) ring mistresses and (Master) Illusionists?
If I was in his shoes and I have been several times I'd target the ring mistresses. They are the most dangerous. The Illusionists are next on the hit list. The reason they take second spot is because they phase shift before they can be dropped blitz style. The mistresses can be dropped fast with an all out blitz. The Illusionists have that 30 second unkillable which means turn and wipe a minion or 2 and then continue dropping the Illusionist.
My Scranker style does not rely on taunt to keep attention on me. I'm there blitzing things taking out enemies. I drop bosses and LTs and the aggro will be mine. In the old days I'd taunt as an exclamation point now I use the Inv aura to back punchvoke.
Tanks I've teamed with would lock down the Mistresses and Illusionists to give controllers and everyone else the openings to lock down and eliminate them. THEN they eliminate minions like Strongmen.
Hell in comic book terms Statesman's strategy would be the same as Superman saying "You guys take on doomsday I'll take on that thug with the broken beer bottle over there". or Wolverine letting The X-Men take on Magneto, Sabretooth, and Blob while taking out a security guard.
(Virtue/Champion) Neil Fracas: Inv/SS
(Virtue) Gideon Fontaine: MA/SR (Sc), Generic Hero 114: Ice/Cold, Marcus Tyler AR/En, Project F: Spines/DA (S)
(Champion) Jenna Sidal BS/SD, Generic Hero 114: En/En (Bl), Loganne Claws/WP (Sc)
"Well, no one was that familiar with their builds."?
By that level, they really should be. Are you suggesting it was ED's fault?
Since it seems the PB was in squid form, that means you and the scrapper were the only damage-takers. 1/3 of mob aggro is not enough in those situations. Honestly, I think you're just a lazy tanker. But hey, I'd love to play with you anyway, if only for the novelty.
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Re: Invulnerability seems to be gutted
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From: Statesman
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First - let me comment on what you were fighting. A Warhulk is a Boss - and the Jaegers were minions. A spawn that size wouldn't occur on a solo mission; that's a spawn for approximately 3 to 4 heroes. Bravo on surviving.
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As for the Battleshade mission - what mutilated you? What were your tactics?
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Second - yes, I've played an Invul. Tanker. At all levels. With the changes and suboptimal builds. And I found that I could Tank just fine at invincible.
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An old reply. It appears that the previous statements were accurate from the pathetic standard that he uses for tanking. If I thought that we were tanking from a coward's point of view then by his standards I must be the Incarnate of Ares. 
Seriously though. Sad thing is I'm not even a true tank. I'm a Scranker that tanks aggressively through violence. This must be a truly offensive standard to the true tanks. 
BTW It was Battlemaiden.
(Virtue/Champion) Neil Fracas: Inv/SS
(Virtue) Gideon Fontaine: MA/SR (Sc), Generic Hero 114: Ice/Cold, Marcus Tyler AR/En, Project F: Spines/DA (S)
(Champion) Jenna Sidal BS/SD, Generic Hero 114: En/En (Bl), Loganne Claws/WP (Sc)
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I think everybody, including Statesman, agrees that a Tanker should be able to do better than his specific example.
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I think its everybody except Statesman and the rest of the devs that agree to this. That's my concern. Its like he has tunnel vision and Tankers are outside of his realm of focus.
Statesman pretty much implies by his example that his performance is as expected. That's fairly sad. Even worse that he knows he's operating with a bugged power that's providing too much buff, and he's still trying to pass off his performance as a good thing.
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6 50++'s of Damage Resistance puta us at 104% S/L DR according to Hero Planner.
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I'm pretty sure that with Granite and Stone Skin both 3 slotted for RES you can hit the S/L cap just fine.
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Point taken, Da5id. Sometimes I have gotten real frustrated over the past year, especially during the arguments over herding when I brought this up and had myself shouted down. I guess I feel vindicated in some sort of really sorry way.
Do you remember how bad tanks were at launch and under I1? We got our major buffs in I2. What I remember is *nerfs* to the tanker set beginning with I3 (including the end of perma-unstoppable.) I figure that was when they realized that the game was broken (again, that coincides with the November date.)
You are right about when they decided on this being irrelevant to the question at hand, however.
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.
I also have to say that I think you may be right about other ATs filling our spot on a team contributing more than we do. I'd like to see some hard numbers from teams running the same mission over and over again on test, but taking the intuitive approach, it seems like it may be true.
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Tom, you post as if you and De5id are the only ones here that remember tanking before now. You are a quite mistaken if that is the case. I was there through I1 and every issue since. I wouldn't call what they gave us in I2 to be "buffs". The changes to Tanker Knockback was a "give the AT a remote change of doing what it was designed to do" fix more than anything. And, when I3 came and brought the death of the that virtual exploit, "perma-unstoppable" I remember all of the crying and whining about how "broken" Invul was then. (Which turned out to be total BS, btw ) I agree with you that Tankers have been way overpowered from I3 to I5, but the Dev's idea for the AT has shifted too far in the other direction.
You are saying that the new generation of tankers will define us, but I don't think that will be the case. I think we define what we are as an AT within the scope of what the Devs give us to work with. However, Da5id is right about our role being taken over by other ATs. They have always been able to to so and can easily supplant us in teams now if they wish. I3 gave us the illusion that team needed us and now we are upset when we learn that they nver did to begin with. In all honesty, if the current "vision" of Tanks is for us to be the odd AT out, then I suggest that everyone move to a different AT and don't waste your time on Tankers.
However, that is not what you wanted in this thread, Tom. what you wanted was an idea of what our role in a team is. Our role is to control aggro as much as we can. No other AT can quite do it as well as we can, supposedly. Now, take you "been around since launch, pat yourself on the back" experience and prove or disprove it. I can. Can you?
"I never said thank you." - Lt. Gordon
"And you'll never have to." - the Dark Knight
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I think its everybody except Statesman and the rest of the devs that agree to this. That's my concern. Its like he has tunnel vision and Tankers are outside of his realm of focus.
Statesman pretty much implies by his example that his performance is as expected. That's fairly sad. Even worse that he knows he's operating with a bugged power that's providing too much buff, and he's still trying to pass off his performance as a good thing.
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It really is sad, Circeus. And being a user of that very same power, I am worried about what will happen to Invul if they think that what we get from Invinc currently is a bug. Ah well, [censored] minus [censored] is still [censored], no matter how you add it up. 
"I never said thank you." - Lt. Gordon
"And you'll never have to." - the Dark Knight
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Statesman pretty much implies by his example that his performance is as expected. That's fairly sad. Even worse that he knows he's operating with a bugged power that's providing too much buff, and he's still trying to pass off his performance as a good thing.
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It really is sad, Circeus. And being a user of that very same power, I am worried about what will happen to Invul if they think that what we get from Invinc currently is a bug. Ah well, [censored] minus [censored] is still [censored], no matter how you add it up.
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I should add that when I5 hit, I had to pour 4 defense buffs into Invincibility; before I5, it maybe had one. Now if Invincibility gets dropped to 1/3 its current defense, I expect I will once again find myself in the I5-pre-respec position of getting devastated if I try to get close enough for Invincibility to kick in...
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The Devs effed up on the Tank AT from the beginning and they've never figured out a way to make it work properly.
"Tanks were meant to be aggro managers" - so they gave them single-target Taunt and slightly increased threat in their attacks? Meanwhile, they could also get >100% RES.
The design was broken from the start, and every subsequent change has been made in an attempt to figure out how they should work.
So never mind the "November to May" period, and the unfortunately high-horse tone of your post, Tanks have never worked the way their design intended, and their intended design has changed just as often.
Frankly, like I said previously, the Devs should just take some of that "Screw you if you don't like I5 or ED" courage and redo the entire Tank AT. Make it something that works and feels comic-booky, and doesn't look like a Scrapper that prefers to be hit than to hit things.
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You know, for months I disagreed with Foo, but I find myself agreeing with him now.
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That's because I've always been awesome, and you're now just realising it.
It's quite alright. True genius is rarely commended in its time.
They don't say, "Foo is uber" for nothing, you know.
...it usually costs me a fiver.
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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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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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.
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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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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Heh, I find it funny how people go from "Statesman knows too little about his own game!" to "Statesman knows too much about his own game!" 
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Actually, no. The actual quotes mean "Statesman knows too little about how we play the game" to "Statesman expects too much effort from his players".
An argument isn't invalid just because it's poorly articulated.
Currently playing:
Infaerna Who knew Fire/Fire Brutes were fun to play?
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End result? Well, no one was that familiar with their builds. The Controller was defeated by getting too close to another spawn. The Peacebringer carelessly tossed off attacks and ended up aggroing too much. After those two defeats, we settled down and functioned fine.
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Well, here is the problem in a nutshell. My "fun" cannot and should not be dependant on the skill of other players.
If I sacrifice ultility powers and soloing ability in order to be more successful (more specialized) in a team setting, then by definintion I should be able to "carry the team".
By default? No. Every Tank should be able to "Tank" with aid from the team, even wtih a suboptimal build.
Guarunteed? No. Every Tank should experience some risk when doing his function. "Some Risk" includes the possibility that there is no Defender or Controller on the team.
But if a Tank is totally specialized toward the job of "meatshield", wiht one-slotted attacks, then I fully expect that the Tank should be able to hold and survive aggro from two full spawns for the 30-45 seconds it will take a poor team to defeat them all.
I don't feel that most builds can do that.
While Tanks are currently both functional, and able to help the team, "playable" does not equal "fun". The current power difference between Tanks is where all customization lies.
If the overall ability of Tank powers are reduced too much, two different bad things happen: all Heroes take the same powers at the same levels with the same enhancements, and no Hero will pick a playstyle different from any other.
Currently playing:
Infaerna Who knew Fire/Fire Brutes were fun to play?
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But if a Tank is totally specialized toward the job of "meatshield", wiht one-slotted attacks, then I fully expect that the Tank should be able to hold and survive aggro from two full spawns for the 30-45 seconds it will take a poor team to defeat them all.
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This is more like it. This is information on player expectations that the Devs might be able to actually use. More of this, please.
Post builds that 'ought to work but don't'. Describe tactics and character concepts that are reasonable, but impossible as things currently are. USE NUMBERS, like "x% of a spawn" or "x number of mobs" or "x% damage mitigation".
I think we have an opportunity here to both see into the mind of a Dev and show him where we are as players.
Here's my question to the Devs:
In terms of pure time-to-die damage mitigation, is there a damage mitigation %, a pure number that Tankers should be able to expect from the various forms of damage? Or is it just a matter of 'feel' from testing builds?
Story Arcs I created:
Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!
Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!
Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!
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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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.