Question for old timers and some advice needed

Hello Tanks,

First, a little background. I started playing in 2004 and have the 36 month vet badge. Now, i have been off and on playing the game as other games come out etc... I have been here through the glorious herding days (yay for gathering 100+mobs in creys folly). I have been here during ED... I was here when the villains invaded. Through it all I have been a tank.

I have taken a long while without playing and just came back about a month ago. Now, with all those details, my question: what has happened to teams?

I have controllers running in and throwing down their AOE immobs with all the mobs scattered to the four winds. I have the blasters running in before the tank even gets close and blast their aoe's... Now, I appreciate that you Dual Pistol blasters have some fancy moves but your damage of your aoe is barely a tickle to the mass of minions and lt's that you just shot... Combined with the controller who just immobilized the whole room full of arachnos shooters = dead blaster and controller. Then, I get blamed for not taunting... I'm a little confused...

In the old days people used to wait for the tank to grab aggro and come back to a staging point around a corner to draw in shooters etc.. then they would open up. Taunt aura's are stronger than ever, the taunt power itself is glorious now as it's aoe, god I remember the days when we had to take the presence power pool to get an area taunt... Gauntlet is beautiful to behold, even though my two slow recycling attacks really don't help much with rapid fire blaster boy and lock down everything 20 feet apart girl.

Add to that the fact that people just seem to play bat poop crazy and just die over and over again and it gets to be very frustrating to be a tank.. why not just roll a scrapper and do more damage?

ARGH.. sorry, s'pose I just needed to vent and figure out if this is a global problem or if people still pay attention to good playing etc...

Oh, also, Looking for roleplaying sg's on virtue, any still exist?

Thanks for reading Hounds wall o' text!

I do understand containment, unfortunately your "contained" mobs still blast you to smithereens before I can tag them all...

Obviously at level 50 fully tricked out things may be different, but in the late 20's early 30's those blasters and controllers are still awfully squishy...I guess I am just pining for the old days... Oh well. adapt and grow I suppose.

Thanks =)

Oh, I understand. I have IO's slotted in almost all my resist/defense powers as an invuln tank and at 28 am almost at the S/L cap. however, most characters I see who play that way I think do so because of what you said, they saw it done... I look at their info and they have no set bonuses. And, when queried, most don't even have basic IO's or even singles. Some are still running Training enhancements.

Thank you very much for the conversation, I half expected to be told to STFU

For what it's worth, I could tell right away you're not the usual brand of ignorant troll that comes here. I mean, you can spell for crying out loud. No, you honestly needed to vent, and that's totally ok.

Another thing that causes the soloist mentality is redside. The red ATs are all more balanced with solo play in mind. Everything there has a degree of self reliance, to a point that the best redside teams are 8 people soloing the same map. Some of that has spilled over to blueside, and I'm not so sure it's a bad thing. If everyone knows how to take care of themselves, then it can't be so bad.

I hope you haven't played only blueside and I really hope you haven't played only tanks. It would give you a better feel of your tanking "respnsibility" to learn how it feels to need the tank and especially how it feels to not need that tank when you're built or you play right. Don't judge the other guy until you've walked a mile in his shoes and all that.

Been tanking (well mostly solo and skanking, occasionally tanking for friends) since the very beginning. For the most part the PvE content can be zerged with ease. If on a team, just stay with the team, use all the offense you can muster, and take a little more than your fair share of the aggro. Gone are the days when you should try to take all the aggro from a spawn. The game is balanced now so that all ATs can easily manage their own aggro, you as a tank can make their lives a little easier if you can take 25% of their normal aggro and put it on you.

Can't wait to make my SS/WP brute in Preatoria and bring him blue side.

yup soundsl ike a normal time in coh honestly...tanks nowdays are the step child for everything else...thanks to i.o's and countless changes anything can be used in place of a tank ( i.e. kleds magilla gorilla ,and brutes and scrappers can take alphas now) plus softcapping your toon out is the "big new idea" which helps not take hit as much

no one waits for the tanks anymore but those of us that actually play tanks...its a sad world we live in we know..nothing will change anytime soon

Also, anyone who is in their 20s or 30s and is still using TOs is a candidate for an AE baby, IMO. The fact those people ever even make it out of Atlas Park boggles me sometimes.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hyperstrike English does not borrow from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, hits them over the head, and rifles through their pockets for loose grammar.

I think Desch covered most of the issues you are running into. Now add that with Patrol XP eliminating debt while a player sleeps and you get a lot more people that simply don't care if they die during a battle.

"I have 10 bars of Patrol XP. Yeah I died but I am still not in debt so.. So what?"

"Okay so big deal I died. I'll either work it off on the next mob or when I log off the Patrol XP I earn will eliminate all the debt by the time I log back on tomorrow!"


Trust me this particluar aspect has not just affected people relying on Tank Aggro control. Defenders and Controllers with heals, especially empathy, used to be in high demand and could find a team in no time but these days more teams are looking for buffs/debuffs and could care less if you can HEAL anything.

The increased survivability offered by IOs encourages folks to do a lot of stupid things nowadays. At one extreme you have the team dying from overconfidence regardless of how good the tank is, while at the other extreme you have a team steamrolling with no need for a tank.

The upside is that with the right IOs, any tank can be almost unkillable. When I'm with a team that's just doin' its own thing, I just do my own thing. If the team wipes because it's stupid, well, I'll still be there killing stuff when they get back from the hospital .

I am mostly a redside brute player, but have experimented a lot with doms, and a little with blasters/scrappers. My first toon was a tank, and I am experimenting with them again. I have a couple at 50. Team cohesion is not the word of the day in CoX. Redside there is always some "8 people soloing a map", but the order still is to let the brute take it in the face first. The fact that brutes get rewards for being the first in helps motivate and so that works. I was running a scrapper yesterday, with the team tank set as waypoint so I could follow the agro sponge. The thing was that the tank was, well, timid. The tank never went in first. I started taking the alphas just to move the team along. Thankfully I was on a regen. Blueside has always been weird to me. Redside plays much more like every video game i have ever used. Blueside is best when everyone coordinates. It is true that good I/Os make bluesiders less "needy" for teamwork, but it still helps. Especially, and I love this, when a lot of people want to run at +4/x8 "for the good experience" Only to take multiple deaths per spawn and forever to kill stuff. It is a strange world in the cities. Wisdom, it just ain't there. Heck, a lot of players cannot seem to see the obvious, and just want to do what they believe is the best. Very frustrating. Still, I will be blueside for awhile, working on scrapper and tank projects. I have found a great group for task forces, and when I cannot take amateur hour anymore I grab some speed TFs with them.

Thank you guys for the words and comments. I have started going with the "bring more offense to a team" mentality and used my alternate build for a more offensive tank build and it is actually working wonders. For TF's I will run my more defensive build or when called upon.

Every once in a great while I will ***** myself out to a pug to get those last few bars to a highly desired power.
I always end up feeling tired, frustrated, and more than a little dirty.
Skanking seems a fine name for the practice.

Given the increased survivability (perceived of real) of your average hero, efficient (IMO, YMMV, etc.) Tanking tactics have changed a bit.

There's no real need anymore to stand at a corner, say "Here", go grab aggro, and bring 'em back. You'll still see it occasionally, but it seems like your average team finds that pretty boring...and I don't really blame 'em.

My personal Tanking playstyle is to herd the next spawn. Once that first batch of badguys is relatively whittled down, I just jump to the next spawn and use old-school herding tactics. Rest of the team finishes up the previous batch, comes on over to beat up the new batch, once they get whittled down, etc. Rinse and repeat.

And if you've got a Scrapper on your team who runs ahead (as in, multiple rooms, spawns, or floors ahead) on their own, that's more than OK; Scrappers these days are ridiculous (see: Imperious Task Force, soloed, no deaths, temp powers, or Inspirations).