How could Tankers be buffed in a meaningful way?

My other suggestion for a tanker buff was to make Tanker primary powers not suppress when mezzed. Maybe tough and weave would suppress, but not my primary toggles.

A slight raise of a tanker's aggro cap would be nice - say 24 or 25 ( a full size spawn is roughly 17, so a full spawn and a half about). This way a tank could get any overflow aggro in densely populated spots. This allows a tank to out 'control' a controller by means of aggro generation, but the extra dps of 7-8 foes might be a bit above a typical tank's survival line. This is a good thing because that makes it risky for the non IO based tanks.

IO based tanks will simply out survive almost any threat in the game that isn't tailored to 'cheat'.

Ahhh... the pre-aggro cap days. I remember being in Perez Park as a lowbie with a team, clicking along sweeping the streets. Then some level 50 flies in and (with no aggro cap), proceeds to go to each group and punch one person so that they aggro every group on the perimeter streets of Perez Park. Next step, fly up above them, and train them onto the low level team below.

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Originally Posted by Frosty_Femme I said "ur" which is not a word. It's a sound dumb people make when you ask them to spell out "you are".

I love discussions like this; I sometimes think a good 50% of my enjoyment of MMOG's comes from out-of-game discussion, and I like the conceptual talk the best.

What if the aggro cap for everyone else was lowered (fill in your number here)? Would that make a good distinction between tanks and everyone else? Or would that make everyone else naturally safer?

What if the taunt effectiveness of all the other AT's was adjusted to be less? Would that help?

Stacking is tricky. I sometimes think that stacking might be more situational than anything. If missions were more active, if foes were attacking rather than waiting to be attacked, then tanks would stack better. If you could make a mission where you HAVE to split the party, where you have to defend BOTH ends of a bridge, etc. you'd have reasons to stack tanks.

It's always seemed to me that Defenders and Tankers are similar in a lot of ways, perhaps we could look at why Defenders stack so well and get some ideas to help Tankers do so?

Just thinking out loud...

One of the main problems with the aggro cap is once you reach it taunt, a power specifically designed to pull enemies off teammates, becomes worthless.

I'll go back to what was mentioned several times in the Bruising threads: I think adding bruising to the Tier 2 power, and allowing a minor stack from other tanks would go a long way towards making 2+ tanks on a team more viable, especially against harder targets.

I think the main problem highlighted was correct.

Tankers, as they stand now, are basically overkill. A proper scranker or (soon to be seen blueside) brute can do their job in 95% of game content at any level.

Hell, the moment i saw an 8 troller team pull off a MoSTF i knew tankers were completely unneeded in any well built team.


so we have a basic problem to address... a well built tanker is basically overkill for pretty much all of the content in the game... even a squishy tanker with an emp can tank pretty much anything in the game. The AT really isn't needed, except on poor teams.

So how do we keep this AT relevant after GR sees a horde of Brutes turn blue side and pretty much take away the point of a tanker?

-I don't have an answer for that; other then nerfing the survivability of scrappers/brutes/trollers/whatever just a little bit... to make the difference between the ATs a little more pronounced; as adding to the survivability of a tanker wouldn't solve the problem at all... while lowering the survivability of those ATs might make them relevant.

I don't think this is a good idea... it's my only idea on the topic. but i think this is a conversation we should have.

Frankly I wouldn't touch the AT any further until we see if all this doom crying over brutes stealing tanker's thunder actually pans out.
All the time we have had coop teaming in RWZ and Cim and there has still been plenty of demand for tanks.
Personally I think the biggest threat to a tanker's job security is a controller and we have been sharing teams with them since day one.

The tank forum really needs to stop crying over the aggro cap. You don't go to the Blaster forum and see them crying that they can't do their job by not hitting over 16 targets with an AOE or the controller forum saying they can't do their job if they can't control over 16 targets. It's only the tanker forum.

And that's a shame.

The aggro cap did nothing to diminish the role of tanks, it simply scaled down things in the same way target caps did for other ATs. It's a matter of scale, nothing more. There should be a danger in this game if you have too many opponents, and the aggro cap helps ensure that.

Nothing replaces a good tank. No AT requires more skill to play than a tank. Tanks aren't about hitting buttons and letting the game mechanics magically take place, they are about positioning and situational awareness. Those are the real skills in this game. A monkey can hit a button and make an attack go off......it takes actual skill and thought to be a good tank. Certainly no AT has more of my admiration than a good tanker.

Nothing can replace them, but they're also not needed. Neither are Blasters. Or Defenders. Or Controllers. Or Scrappers. It doesn't make any AT less meaningful that things can be done without them. It simply makes a good game better.