Update the Tanker AT's description

With CoH F2P coming up, if the devs aren't going to fix Tankers, for the sake of honesty to new players, they should change/update the Tanker AT description on the official web site to be truthful.

This:

This again? The description is fine, and so is the AT. That is my opinion. Notice how I don't go around starting new threads about it all the time.

I actually agree. New players will think Tankers do OMG damage, and while there are some combos that are very good at it (FM/FA, SS/FA) I don't think they are 'devastating hand to hand combatants'.

I wouldn't say they 'rank low' as JB suggested but 'do medium damage' would be better imho.

I would hope that in any set of descriptions of all the archetypes, any broad comparisons would be to all the other ATs, instead of just a subset. I think knowing that Tankers are medium damage compared to all ATs is more useful to a first-time player than that they're the lowest damaging of melee ATs... especially if you could go look at the melee ATs and see that none of the others are rated at 'low'. There's no need to complicate it with sub-categories.

All the talk about being a devastating force is flavor text, and from a story point of view, even a low-damage superpowered individual is doing a lot more than a normal civilian. I think it's fine how it is. (Besides... have you seen a Fire Tank use Burn lately? I think devastating is certainly apt. )

The description is fine as is. Unless they start describing Blasters as having Highest Ranged Damage, then there's no need to describe Tanker damage as Lowest Melee. Damage is damage is damage. But, if you have to beat a dead horse with your agenda, might I suggest some sage advice:

Didn't think I'd get to re-use this twice in one day, but:

are you seriose man? Did you ever read the actual in game description?

The Tanker can take it and dish it out all at once. The Tanker primarily can absorb vast amounts of damage, and hold his own in a fist fight. But the Tanker lacks any long range punch. The Tanker would prefer just to charge straight ahead anyway.

Oh, look, another of BJ's threads to ignore.

You know, fairly often I see Brutes and Scrappers "waste" damage by doing way more damage than an enemy has remaining life.

When you win this campaign, are you going to lobby for their descriptions to be changed to say "often wastes excess damage without any material return, in exchange for lower survivability"?

I agree that with Praetoria where you can start with any AT, the AT descriptions need to be updated to include Red and Blue sides together.

I think that Tankers actually have a decent range of offense, but I think that's a problem in a lot of these discussions across ATs. For instance, I often hear that Controllers will out-damage Defenders, but those people are talking about Fire/Kins, or Illusion/Cold controllers. I don't think that an Earth/Sonic is going to out damage any Defender.

When talking about Tankers, you've got everything from Fire/SS to Willpower/Ice (probably the lowest damage combo available to Tankers). However, you've got that same range in the other melee ATs. JB says that Tankers do less damage than Stalkers. Well, as a blanket case, maybe, but Stalkers also get drastically reduced survivability. However, a Fire/SS Tanker is likely to do significantly more total damage through a mission than the MA/SR Stalker that's also on the team. Having extra AoE attacks helps significantly with that. However, the Willpower/Energy Tanker (also single-target focused) might not do more damage.

As such, you have to look at the range of damage available to the AT, and find where the median is, and describe the AT around that. Fire/Rad Controllers might be considered "High" damage, but an Ice/Rad might be considered "Very Low." So what do you put Controller damage as? Then do the same thing for the other ATs. Once that is said and done, I think that "Medium" is a good place to put Tanker damage. Some combos can put out more damage than some Scrapper combos, to be sure, but overall, "Medium" is a good fit.


But basically, other than maybe including the CoV ATs in the description, I think it's fine how it is.

I said this on another post and I will say it again, my fire/fire tank dose more damage then some of the scrappers/brutes/stalkers I have teamed with. You have to remember it all depends on how you build it, and what you take. My WP/SS tank dose less damage then my SD/BA tank, but dose more then my WP/Kin tank. While my fire/fire tank dose the most, and my stone/stone dose the least out of them all my lvl 50 tanks.

Tankers win their fights via war of attrition. What would kill another AT quite readily often doesn't even tickle a tanker. If a Tanker had the same damage as say a Scrapper, and kept their top of the rungs durability, well, why play a brute, stalker, or scrapper ever again?

I do wish when solo they had a damage uplift like a Defender does, but, they have bruising which is almost as good.

Say for example an elite boss, where a scrapper would kill it quicker, they'd maybe need to use more insps along the way for example, where a tanker may not even need one insp. But you'll be trading punches for longer.