How could Tankers be buffed in a meaningful way?

As we all know Tankers get some improvements in form of "Bruising" and higher HP caps.

While I wont deny those are nice things to have, they dont solve any of the main problems tied to the Tanker AT. Tankers give up offense and get enormous survivability in return... The problem however is this survivability goes pretty much to waste except on very few occasions.

I myself am convinced the Tankers greatest enemy is the aggro cap. I remember before aggro cap Tankers where loved because only they where capable to survive the massive punishment of multiple bosses and hordes of lt's and minions at once over extented time.

Dont get me wrong, I'am not totally against the aggro cap, but in its current form it is just plain bad for Tankers because it makes their greatest strength go to waste: to survive massive punishment.

Thanks to IO's almost any Character in this game can be made tough or powerful enough to deal with 16 enemies himself, which is a wonderful thing. This 16 enemies limit however also means that once you reach a certain level of mitigation to survive those 16 enemies, more mitigation goes to waste.

A good example for this would be my Spines/Fire Scrapper, which is considered a very squishy combo. Regardless of being “squishy” IO’s made it possible for me to dive into most +2 x8 spawns and coming out of it alive. There are a few enemy factions like Maltas, Arachnos or Vanguard which faceplant me with ease, but those enemies are a special case because they have such insane debuffs or other abilities which enable them to drop almost any tanker secondary just as fast. In groups it becomes even worse... just give my Scrapper some stuff like fortitude and I can tear through my enemies without ever having to bother about the “Healing Flames Button”. Give the same buff to a tanker and what happens? Most likely nothing worth mentioning because... he’s pretty much immortal to anything 16 enemies can throw at him anyways.

There are a few specific situations like the Nictus ambush in the ITF where the survivability of a Tanker realy shines. While my Fire Scrapper will faceplant almost instantly if all those dwarfs and novas just look at my way, a good Tanker will survive and live to tell glorious storys about how he defeated all those enemies by himself while everybody else was dead.

But why was everybody dead if the Tanker was alive and well? Did he fail in his job to protect his team? The answer is no, there was just nothing he could do to save them. His defense was powerful enough to tank all those bosses but yet it was worth nothing because anything over his aggro cap simply ignored him and pummeled his team-mates into bloody pulps. Some people may argue the team failed as a whole, but I dont think so... not every AT is designed to take such levels of punishment, even if this can be bypassed with IO’s.

My experience is during “normal” gameplay a Tanker is kind of a waste... even if I enjoy mine a lot, I just have to admit any Brute or Scrapper with some decent IO’s can handle such an ordinary +2 x8 spawn just as well but also dish out a lot more damage during doing so. Even on the few occasions where the incomming damage is to much for others to take my survivability goes to waste because such situations are almost always tied to enormous spawns which exceed my aggro cap, so that I cant do anything to save them. Its just frustrating when you use your taunt on those enemies and they simply ignore you and tear your team-mates apart. Even if I run into them and stomp on the ground I only accomplished to lose 10 random enemies on my tail in turn for ten new ones…

So how could this dilemma be solved? At first one could say increase the aggro cap for Tankers, but I think that would make them overpowered in terms of farming etc. A Tanker could herd large spawns and kill them AFK with his AoE set on auto or he could team up with a Blaster to steamroll through missions.

But then I had an idea… how about tieing this aggro cap increase to “Gauntlet” and make it work like vigilance?

~The Tankers determination to protect everybody rises through his sense of responsibility: For every team-mate which is not a Tanker, Scrapper, Brute or Stalker the maximum number of foes the Tanker can attract rises by 2.

I think this would be an wonderful solution to make this AT more desirable and enjoyable. With a lot of Squishys on his team the Tankers potential to protect those rises and solo play wouldn’t be effected at all because the Tanker would still be limited to his 16 enemies like everybody else.

What do you think ?

Wouldn't this just even further diminish the point of having more than 1 tank?

I have a follow up question about how aggro tables work:

I'm not sure the exact way the aggro tables hold. If you can only appear on 10, 20, or 30 people's aggro list, won't the two tanks predominantly just hold #1 and #2? Thus, their own form of control will essentially be diluted because they are often competing for the same aggro?

Just curious as I presume that's how it would work.

The main reason we have aggro caps at all is because it was too easy for the Tanker to "herd" all of the enemies into a corner and then let the blasters unleash with AOE's, and allowing a Tankers to once again achieve that level of aggro would be like taking a step backwards.

We just barely got Burn back, let's not set it up for another 6 year nerf so soon, eh?

This game isn't designed so that the Tanker is holding all possible aggro at all times, else that renders a lot of what the "squishies" can do irrelevant.

After the addition of Bruising and the re-balance of Brutes, I feel that Tankers are fine.

The biggest buff for a Tanker is, well, a team with some offense. It's not supposed to be a perfect archetype. It's supposed to be heavy on defense and light on offense. It's a melee controller set. Also, COH aggro is a lot more player-friendly than the other MMOs I've played.

When you run an AE farm with 8-man spawns and an ambush exceeds your cap, squishies are going to get aggro and likely die. The game isn't balanced around that, though. If the team can't handle maximized spawns, reduce the difficulty or change teams.

I think an increase to the Tanker aggro cap would be reasonable, provided the AoE caps remained in place.

I don't know how far it'd go in terms of buffing Tankers meaningfully, but it'd certainly help with the goal of them being melee controllers. A Controller can lock down 2-3 spawns (dependent on primary, recharge, etc) if they're good. A good Tanker can only ever have 17 things actively mad at them. Sure, you can have stuff effectively aggroed if you mez them with an APP power like Salt Crystals, but the fact remains its a hard cap on your ability to prevent damage to your team mates.

Honestly though, I think the hp cap and Bruising changes are enough. The concerns about x AT replacing y AT when GR goes live are farcical imo. People who want to play Tankers will continue to do so. The majority of the playerbase won't care about peak performance equivalence and the rest of it.

IMO, the main problem with the Tanker AT can't be fixed by fiddling with mechanics.

First off I think anything that gives tanks more damage is going to not be considered; we just got bruising to help with solo damage, and they've already buffed the damage of almost every AT.

I think the best solution is to expand on the kind of thing Kinetic Melee introduced; the damage debuffs for tankers are higher than they are for other ATs.

Why not add -range to gauntlet? It helps with keeping enemies focused on or near the tanker and helps squishies survive sudden lapses in aggro management. It could even help out with making knockback more useful; knock them all away and they have to move back into the melee range clump to do damage again.

In any case, I think some kind of boost to debuff capabilities makes the most sense.

Another solution I just thought of could be something like a cover power, where some of the damage the team takes goes to the tanker. I think this would be way harder to implement, though.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aett_Thorn Two Tankers on a team now can hold 34 enemies' attention, yet I don't see this strategy being used much in the game unless there are two spawns very close to each other. I do not often see the team break into two sections just because there are two Tankers on the team. As such, this may not be such a fallacy.

My friend and I have two tankers that are supposed to be wizard/monk type guys from some order, so we always play them at the same time. We found that depending on the mission objectives it can be effective to split the team into two halves, particularly in TFs with lots of enemies and ambushes, such as Cimerora.

I remember the game with no AOE and aggro limits. I disagree with both. What difference does it make if a tank can herd the entire map and a blaster can kill them all? People will power level their toons?!? Has that been eliminated?

As has always been the case, whenever new restrictions are put into place people will either game the system to find a way around it, discover new ways to play how they want, or leave.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against an increase to the Tanker aggro cap. I think that increasing it would actually be a decent idea. I just don't think that it solves any of the remaining problems with the Tanker inherent after Bruising was added.

Problems before:

Stacking of Tankers on a team
No use solo
Mainly applies to the secondary


Problems now:

Stacking of Tankers on a team
Mainly applies to the secondary


Raising the aggro cap doesn't really count for the primary or secondary, as both go towards getting and maintaining aggro. Although the target caps from the primary powers I guess wouldn't help to keep more aggro than they keep now, and it would be more how well you can leverage the secondary to keep the focus of more enemies.

Well, what I mean is this:

A Scrapper's primary function is to deal damage. They have a primary devoted to dealing damage. Their inherent helps them to deal damage by affecting the primary powers.

A Controller's primary function is to control the enemies. They have a primary suited to this end. Their first inherent (before containment) was their ability to land a critical control, increasing the magnitude of the hold/stun/immob, etc. This was an ability added to the primary powers.

A Tanker's primary function is to protect the team by taking the hits for them. They have a primary devoted to self-protection so that they can survive the aggro. Gauntlet helps them grab aggro. This was an ability added to each power in their secondary.


Does Gauntlet help a Tanker function in his primary role (and I'm not saying that any AT has to fulfill his/her primary role, before anyone complains)? Yes. However, it is mainly through using the inherent power through his secondary that this occurs. It's not a big problem, but I still think that it's a bit of a problem.