So I got a PM from Synapse about buffing Tankers

I wouldn't change Brutes/Scrappers/Widows taunt at all. They are superbly balanced. I know from playing them ATs and benefit from them. Changing them is not an option to me. I wish Black Dwarfs was longer, as good as White Dwarfs which is almost superbly balanced.

Simply increasing gauntlet duration would be probably a bad design idea as it makes things easier than the Devs would want. It's an AoE gauntlet and already superior to Brutes.

It would be nice if two gauntlets could apply with each hit, one is single target and the other one is what we have, the AoE. The single target one can stacks with the aoe one. It can be balanced so that it still takes work to take from a Brute but, be easier than it currently is.

Some people may not come across taunting brutes "on their server" but on other servers some people have brutes with taunt as a set mule and use it on an AV with gusto, compromising the rest of the PuG. I don't care how people play but I like to be in the team and able to do what I think Tankers should be doing. I don't have a situation as much as I foresee a situation and to be a Tank unable to redirect damage away from team because of a Brute would make me want to ask, why am I playing a Tank? I am not fulfilling my role.

I play my Brutes as Tanks, if a Tank isn't redirecting damage away from team or a team doesn't make use of safe standpoints. I might as a Brute try to make the situation safer, this is why I would still prefer Tankers to have to work at taking aggro from a Brute.

Communication, the chatbox is there for a reason and the logical route but the amount of times I thought "I would of got thru better speaking english on the French server" is unreal, but they are more strategically minded alot of the time, bless them.

I'm not sure if this is directed at my last post or not.


Let me clarify, since I should have been clearer anyway.


I see Brutes who actually take Taunt, they're among the minority of Brutes that do but there are definitely Brutes that take it (myself included).

What I meant was I don't see Brutes who just spam taunt repeatedly. I see a lot of Tankers do this, I see enough Tankers do this so often that it feels like an epidemic.

When I say "taunt spamming" I mean literally that, hitting Taunt as often as it recharges or something nearly as ridiculous.


In a situation like that, I think most Tankers will be able to pull aggro off of any Brute that is not simultaneously taunt spamming.


This is my experience from nightly trial running on Freedom & Virtue - two servers with extremely different player cultures but also very highly (the two highest?) populated.



So what you're saying here is in effect what I was saying in opposition to your earlier comments in the thread.

You're stating very clearly here that some Tankers, or more correctly some players, are unable to understand fundamental things like AV positioning and that this has nothing to do with someone playing a Brute specifically.

The other difference is that Tanker inherent taunt is AoE on single target attacks: its not on Brute attacks. Tankers were designed to affect more targets with inherent taunting.

Oh wow, did you just bring up the dreaded Defender = Healer argument as a point to prove your stance? Really? Yes, there are defender sets with heals in them, but not all, and even those that have them aren't reliant on them as their primary focus. There's one that may be called a "healing set" and it actually provides more regeneration that healing.

In fact, I tend to think that Defenders are one of the more versatile ATs in the game. They're not HealorZ they're threat multiplyers. And yes, they do their "job" quite well.

Yes, Blasters do suffer for their intended design. I'd tend to think that stems from lack of focus on designing their secondary which are all over the map when it comes to mechanics.

The entire point behind giving stalkers crits outside of hide was because they couldn't provide on a team what they were designed for, which was their stdps. Teams weren't willing to slow down and allow them to rehide, or placate certain targets, or even let them choose their target on the outside.

Now that there's some new tech availabe, they're able to go back and revisit Stalkers and are trying to bring them back to their intended design.

The HP being raise, while their base is staying the same is because Stalkers don't maximum use from +hp powers, they hit their cap and basically, portions of those powers become essentially useless. Then there's the issues for people who want to get accolades, or use +hp bonuses. It's a long standing issue for Stalkers that's finally being addressed.

This again? Touting this old quote from a dev no longer on the team, whose statement was never realized to the extend that anything about it was implemented in game has already been shot down. Face it, Tankers weren't designed that way, from the first Closed Beta until now.



Scrappers and Brutes do not screw over anyone. To screw someone over implies personal, malicious intent to harm in some way, most typically in a material manner. Which seems to me that you've personalized this issue far beyond discussing game design and balance.

I only mentioned it in a rather toungue in cheek manner. Though its still true that NCSoft did grab the domain name. It doesn't mean its in the works. They could have just been protecting themselves in case they decided to go that route and didn't want to deal with someone nabbing it before them.



I agree, tightly focues classes make it easy to balance a game. But make it harder to introduce additonal play styles that may appeal to more people. I think it's perfectly viable to have multiple classes, and still balance the system. It takes time, as more classes are introduced, it can warp the curve so to speak, which is why good MMOs are constantly addressing those issues.

You're trying to ad hominem and deflect with semantics. Nice try but not nice enough. My point stands. There are 'Trinity ATs' in the game. Tankers Blasters and Defenders are those exemplified.

Again, you're wrong. They were intended to hide and backstab.

In fact, I'd wager to say the exact intent of Stalkers was to compliment and contrast the slow building back loaded damage of Brutes with front-loaded burst damage.

That doesn't work so well on most teams, and adding Scrappers to the mix didn't help, so the developers are expanding on the Stalker's repertoire, not pushing them further down a path of extremely front loaded damage that wasn't working. They're improving their damage after the initial strike and improving their chances at scrapping out the fight instead of relying on more Stalkery hit and run tactics (which waste a lot of time and often don't work so well).

Some Stalkers sets/combos run into that problem, but not all of them, fair to say?

Well in that case the same can be said about Tankers' damage caps.
They don't get maximum use from Rage, Against All Odds, Kinetics, Leadership and others in a buff rich environment. But, you won't be conceding that point, will you?


You said, and I quote:

"Tankers were never, once designed with the intent of being heavy hitters in this game."

The old quote you refer to proves your assertion wrong. No matter if it's no longer applicable to the present design or if it didn't get past the design phase; it was the intent of the lead developer at that point in time and it was designed. And you said 'never'. You're wrong.


Screwing someone over doesn't have to be about malicious intent. The weather can screw over your picnic plans, and there's no true anthropomorphization of the clouds and wind behind the meaning of the phrase.



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That quote doesn't prove the lead developer wanted tankers to be the heaviest hitter. It proves only that he wanted them to appear to be a heavy hitter.

Jack *always* had issues with conflating performance and appearance, and he had essentially no intuitive grasp of what the consequences of the game's numerical decisions were. He didn't even know how Blaster Defiance was implemented before writing a guide on how to use it, so his guide was completely wrong. He was responsible for a serious structural issue with the numbers in the I6 Prima Guide (he didn't appreciate power pool numbers were different for different archetypes). And in discussions with him, he alternated between discussing appearance and performance without distinction. At one point he thought one way for tankers to be the "heavy hitter" was to increase screen shake**. That was Jack's perspective on being a heavy hitter.


I can't prove it, but I believe the reason Jack was opposed to releasing numbers is because Jack believed that City of Heroes was supposed to evoke a different picture from what the MMO design rules enforced. In other words, Jack believed the game was supposed to essentially deliver the gameplay illusion that tankers dealt a lot of damage, while under the hood Scrappers were actually dealing more damage because that's what was required for balance. He just couldn't admit it for obvious reasons.



** I don't have a quote handy, but I have to believe there are other long-term tankers out there who remember that discussion on the forums, along with the almost universal oh-hell-no.

I didn't say "heaviest hitter" then, did I?

And yet I can get behind that.

I can see why. The rules and mechanics don't suit the superhero genre very well. Most people playing are resigned to that fact or don't care about comics or superheroes anyways, they just want a casual MMO with a flexible costume editor.

Well, he failed on delivering the illusion and on delivering the reality. So we get rodeo clowns.


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That change made it to test, and some of those changes made it to game. It was decided to take the shake off of jab and punch, but leave it on Haymaker.

Actually, there have been dozens, if not hundreds of discussion threads over the years discussing the fact that the game mechanics and the overall design of the archetypes is remarkably well suited to the superhero genre, if only purely by accident. I don't think most players have your problem.

In particular, City of Heroes Tankers have levels of defense *and offense* so much higher than anything before and most things since called "tankers" were and are allowed to have. The fact that you can complain about constantly running afoul of the damage cap would be a ludicrous complaint in almost any other MMO. And even now, even without massive influsions of inventions, City of Heroes Tankers still vastly outperform what passes for tankers in the other two superhero-based MMOs out there. Both defensively *and* offensively.

You simply don't get the levels of AoE, of buff, of debuff, of enhancement anywhere else in the way we get them. All of that allows *most* players to achieve huge levels of power they just can't get in most other MMOs, and entirely in keeping with the genre.

Its been so long my memory is getting hazy, but correct me if I'm wrong the idea was that originally that was going to be the first experimental change and it would eventually be propagated out to all the tanker secondaries, but the fact there was strong opposition to having basically continuous screen shake caused the devs to abandon the idea.

Going to have to disagree based on my experience. There, my flying super strong guy came dangerously close to soloing their giant robot with just the gear they had at launch. Had I stuck around...?

Find me a non-Incarnate Inv/SS Tanker on SO's that can drop Kronos without temp powers and the like.

And yes, beating up giant robots is part of my metric for determining how 'super' something is. Why wouldn't it be?




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Heroes, Villains ♦ Reviews ♦ Retrospect

(trimmed for breivity, no other reason)

It doesn't take the perfect situation for it to happen. To be clear, I'm not saying it happens all the time.

When Brutes were first released, I don't think the imblance was a big deal. Even GR, in and of itself, wouldn't have been a big deal. There have been a lot of little changes over time that have made Brutes more and more problematic, and I can only see it getting worse. Let me explain:

When IOs were first released, there were a lot of options available - defense included, but there were significant restrictions that prevented mass defense stacking. Over time, multiple changes were made to defensive set bonuses (positional / typed cross over, grouped type bonuses, stronger typed bonuses), more set bonuses were added, etc. This paved the way for more and more people to stack +def. At first, this was a boon for Tankers, who had bigger defense mods. Due to the non-linear nature of mitigation stacking, they could reap the rewards well. As things progressed, it got to the point where more and more people could soft cap - even sets with no inherent defense to begin with. The Tanker's larger defensive mods started going to waste.

Then came Incranate Abilities. First was Cardiac with its resistance enhancement, but Resilience (I think?) is coming and it's even stronger. There is also Destinty to consider, for example Barrier's persistent +def/+res.

Also with Incarnates came Leagues. This brought more buff/debuff potential to bear. It was, however, limited as I doubt buffers would spend time buffing the entire league. Since then, buffs were changed to be AoE. This means that it doesn't even take as much effort by the buffer to apply it to people outside their team. Just stand in a large group, and there is a strong chance buffers will focus their attention there. (I know I tended to on my Kin. And do note that it was a huge QOL change for buffers. I'm not saying that it wasn't justified, just the consequences of it.)

These little changes, by themselves, aren't bad. It's their cumulative effect. Brute Invuln, for example, never used to be able to hit the Scrapper res cap, let alone the Tanker one. These changes are pushing them closer and closer to being able to hardcap s/l permanently. Does everyone build that way? No. Is everyone IOed/"purpled" out? No. I'm not daft.

We're only halfway through the Incarnate system, though. I don't see this trend reversing.

That's how they're designed, or more acurately, that's what may be intended. In practice, however, that's not how things work out. The AoE effect of Gauntlet is extremely weak. Let me explain:

Threat = ThreatMultiplier * Damage * (TauntRemaining * 1000) * ((Debuffs and AI Preferences here))

Let's drop debuffs and AI Preferences, since they're the same for both ATs. So the variables we're left with are:

Threat = ThreatMultiplier * Damage * (TauntRemaining * 1000) * (...)

Where am I going with this? Taunt effects, in and of themselves, are 1 damage attacks. So, if I have 40s of taunt on a target, a gauntlet effect would be worth 160,000 threat. Suppose a Tanker attacks every 1s for 10s. That'd be a total of 1,600,000 threat from Gauntlet. (Technically, it would be less, since every second would reduce the TauntRemaining, but I'm being really simple here.) With equivalent TauntRemaining, it would take just 10 damage to equal Gauntlet's AoE threat.

As you say, a Brute only has Gauntlet-lite... but I sure as hell bet their AoEs deal more than an additional 10 dmg over a Tanker every 10s.


Anecdotally, I can't remember ever seeing Gauntlet sway a mob against an AT with taunts. Taunt? Yes. Taunt + Damage? Yes. Gauntlet? Never.
Against an AT without taunt effects? It doesn't matter because they're trivially easy to hold aggro over.

Getting back to you, Deus, as you can see, your assumption is faulty. Tankers do not have the advantage in AoE threat. Tankers are at a threat disadvantage compared to Brutes. Honestly, the one thing that Tankers have over Brutes is an AoE -range debuff rather than single target.


Before I continue, don't misunderstand me, I don't think a Tanker having "iwin" threat is ideal. I like the idea of having to put some effort into threat. Likewise, I don't think Tankers should be the only AT that can stand up to an AV. That essentially destroys the game's entire heritage. I don't have an issue with a Brute putting more effort into tanking (like Taunting mobs, etc) and pulling aggro over a Tanker who is just scrapper-locked. That's fine.


No, my frustration is multi-faceted:

*) Brutes can deal more damage than a Tanker. Cool, they're supposed to be between a Scrapper and Tank.
*) Brutes can tank. No biggie.
*) Brutes stack better than a Tanker. Damage rarely goes out of style and Bruising doesn't stack. Ookay.
*) Brutes can hit Tanker survivability numbers. (Some easier than others, be it builds, teams, etc.) This is progressively getting easier. Err...
*) Brutes generate more threat than a Tanker. Wait, what?

So, Tankers have higher defense mods, otherwise they really don't have anything going for them over a Brute.


Do you see where I'm going with this? I can't help but feel like something has to give. What's worse is I can't say that Tankers are underpowered. They're very tough and forgivable when solo, so Tankers don't have to deal with much debt. They don't have any finicky prerequisites to deal damage like squishies (Defenders/Controllers/Corruptors) do. They don't have to deal with status effects. They have a (non-stacking...) force multiplier. They really aren't bad... but they're (one of) the easiest to render redundant, especially at end game.


(For the record: I have been turned down from Incarnate trials because they didn't want/need another Tanker. BAF no less...)

Hit anything with a taunt or debuff/control at the start of a fight that deals no damage and the formula says Threat = 0, because Damage is 0. However this is clearly untrue.

I read later in the thread the inelegant explanation that Taunts "effectively deal 1 damage". I call it inelegant because it doesn't fit the formula which puts the whole thing into jeopardy. What sort of aggro does a debuff generate? Because they certainly do give threat, but the formula doesn't explain it at all.

Ding, Ding, Ding.....

Brute/Tanker comparisons weren't an issue until Brutes came Blue Side. It was at that point that Brutes were reduced in Damage and Tankers were buffed in survivability so Butres wouldn't marginalize Tankers.

Problem is, Brutes do marginalize Tanks. A whole lot.

When CoH started, I made Tankers because I couldn't get Super Strength and Invlunerability with any other class. I retired my Tankers and re-rolled them as Brutes because Brutes were closer to Comic Bricks. But, I die far more on my Brutes than I ever did on any of my Tanks. Brutes are tough, but in no way are Tanker tough.

However, Brutes are survivable enough to Tank almost all of the content in CoH. Especially if it is sufficently IO'd. An IO'd Tanker would be even more survivable, but that extra toughness is wasted on the vast majority of content in the game. Also, at least in my personal observation, the extra toughness Tankers have wasn't so prominent that it made an appreciable difference in the Incarnate Trials I've run in.

JB has been on this wagon for years. I tend to agree with his point. There really isn't a Tanker equivalent in the comic world. All of the Comic Book Bricks happen to be tough AND damaging. The closest thing I can think of that would equal a CoH Tanker would be The Blob, and I cannot see how being the big Damage Sponge would be a role that many would like to play. Bruising is a good start, but Tankers need more help. Maybe, adding Bruising in more (or perhaps all) Tanker attacks. Or, decreasing threat modifiers on Brutes so Tankers trump them in aggro management (although this would be yet another Brute Nerf that would only exist to soothe hurt Tanker feelings).

I don't see why this would be a problem if Tankers got comparable damage potential to Brutes in the same way.

Again, I don't see this as a problem as long as the enemy is not on the squishies. A Tanker using Taunt still trumps a Brute that isn't, right? Well, if Brutes chose to pull aggro into themselves in that way, that's their call. They do put it to use for Fury, after all.

There's a crud sandwich and Brutes need to take a big bite in terms of a nerf.

But realistically, Brutes outnumber Tankers and last time a dev tried to adjust them, it got ugly and if this thread has shown anything, the majority of Tankers are mostly content.*

"Something has to give" you say? Well that something has been Tankers and I can't see that changing. I don't honestly think much will come of the chat Synapse did or didn't have yet about Tankers because in truth the source of the problem isn't with them.


*I've never cared much about what 'the majority' thinks at any given time. For the longest time the majority thought the Earth was the center of the universe, sickness was caused by humour imbalances and that more pouches and buckles make a better super hero costume.


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Yep. I vividly remember telling Jack to kick rocks when this topic came up.

I don't consider it a sidetrack, I think it's critical to understand that the "Tankers are best at holding aggro" statement is a myth. If it were true, there would be less of a balance problem.

Having said that, this formula is based off information that Castle posted on the forums after doing some code diving with Ghost Widow. Having said that, he was also keen on making sure we understood that the equation is a simplification of what is really happening. The formula you see above doesn't exist in that form in the code.

Be that as it may, Taunt = 1 damage is how it works.

Debuffs are also a threat multiplier, but that starts getting into the murky water I mentioned above. (I tried to figure it out once, even asked Castle about it, but there was no simple answer for it.) I will say, however, that the more attribute you debuff, the stronger the threat modifier.

That's why damage and resistance debuffs are such potent multipliers - they each debuff 8 attributes (smash, lethal, energy, neg energy, fire, cold, tox, psi). You really notice it when trying to out tank Shield characters, or why, say, a Dark Defender can tick off mobs so well at low levels. :P

I don't think anything else I could say would change your mind on the matter, but I disagree completely that Defenders are the typical healor class of other mmos or even table top rpgs that led to the tactic of the holy trinity.

Tankers by far tend to be way better than other classes of that type I've played in other games as well. But that may just be my experience.



Assassin's strike may kind of work like a "backstab" but it was intended to give Stalkers that first high burst of single target damage upon which they could placate and potentially deliver another high damage attack, then follow up with the remaining attacks to fill out their attack chain. Most of those attacks for most sets end up being single target in nature.

Stalkers were meant to deliver high amounts if single target damage. Works great solo, not so much on teams. When such things as this were brought up with Castle in the past, he stated that there wasn't much else he could do for Stalkers at the time, that the problem wasn't necessarity the AT but within the game itself. Now there's that there's new tech, some of those game issues can be resolved, hopefully delivering the experience Stalkers were intended to deliver.

In a buff rich environment, practically no sets self buffs are of benefit. Those same powers do about as much for Scrappers or Brutes in those situations. Build-up, soul drain, and other such powers aren't necessary if you're on a League being surrounded by multiple buffers laying it all on the melees.


[/quote]You said, and I quote:

"Tankers were never, once designed with the intent of being heavy hitters in this game."

The old quote you refer to proves your assertion wrong. No matter if it's no longer applicable to the present design or if it didn't get past the design phase; it was the intent of the lead developer at that point in time and it was designed. And you said 'never'. You're wrong.[/quote]

If the quote you choose to cling to so much was never realized was it? Nope.

Which means that when Tankers were designed, they weren't made to be the heavy hitters you expect them to be.

When people later brought up requests for more damage, even if it came at the cost of longer recharge of attacks, Gecko, the powers dev at the time, shot it down. The only change that occured was a modest boost to Tankers' base melee damage mod.



[quote]Screwing someone over doesn't have to be about malicious intent. The weather can screw over your picnic plans, and there's no true anthropomorphization of the clouds and wind behind the meaning of the phrase.[/qupte]

No, I'd say bad weather ruined my pic nic. The weather didn't scew me. My date's jealous ex that slashed my tires so we couldn't get to the pic nic, he screwed me. Now my pic nic date is shot and I need to buy new tires. Man that guy is good at that

Either way, JB, I really do admire your tenacity. While its great to banter with you, I feel that we're starting to argue in semantics which is only serving to derail the thread.

I think its safe to say that we both believe that Tankers are in need of change. We may disagree on what those changes are, which is fine, but I think we can be confortable in the fact that the devs are at least willing to look into it. If you want to continue our discussion about these other topics, please feel free to carry it on via PMs.

When an AT is causing balance issues, you don't propagate those same problems to another AT.

A Tanker who uses Taunt and a Brute does not, yet. If the Brute Taunts, then no.

The problem is the Brute can take over the Tanker's role and there isn't anything the Tanker can do about it.

I hate when that happens.

Thanks for taking the time to retype it all out.

I'm going to cut to the points I want to address.


I think you overestimate the Brute resistance sets ability to hit the softcap for the most part.

I will agree that +DEF buffs are common for sure, and there are definitely enough +DEF bonuses to be had to softcap every Brute secondary (even if I think that is often detrimental to my performance standards).

Some things to think about:

Yes the Brute can build for defense, the Tanker always does it easier. This means more room in the build for more rech, more +HP, more recovery, etc.

I have another point, but I'll save it for your next one.


Incarnates also brought us a new softcap number to reach, with only 1 melee AT able to actually consider building for it in any seriousness.

Incarnates also brought outlier damage types to the forefront.

It also brought us massive spike damage.

All three of those play to the Tanker ATs strengths (depending on primary of course), not the Brutes (at least not without buffing).



Cardiac is definitely a huge boon for Brutes, its pretty much my defacto Brute alpha slot. It shores up Res and the end recovery is pretty much a godsend to a go-go-go play style fueled by high EPA attacks.

I really doubt you will see many Brutes going Resilient. It's there, I've tried desperately to see if it made sense on any of my builds, but it doesn't.

Even with all of this, I think it pushes at most 3 Brute secondaries into very powerful resistance categories: Invuln, DA & Ela. However the Tanker numbers are still vastly superior.

As I said before the outlier damage types have moved into the prime time. This brings Tanker base Resistances & Tanker base HP into play IMO.




I agree in terms of most buffs, but not the two critical ones that truly separate Brutes and Tankers at this point in the modern game:

+Resistance

+HP


These two are always scarce.



I'm not trying to thump my chest with this, but I have run something on the order of 12 characters to all T4s.

Most of them have 30 to 60 EMP merits stored up.

Some of them have alternate T4s just for fun.

A few of them have as many as 8 to 20 unused Very Rare salvage with nothing to use them on.


I have easily run over a thousand incarnate trials at this point, I run BAF, Lam and Keyes nightly. (If I had to take a rough guesstimate, I think it would be about 1200-1300 trials)

In my opinion, and my experience, Resistance buffing even after the changes is very rare.

Enough resistance buffing to put the average Brute to their resistance cap is basically nonexistent.

The only time I see it regularly is BAF because there are 24 people in a long tank and spank fight and often quite a lot of Barrier. This depends on the league of course, as some leagues have low level incarnates with no Destiny at all.

Keyes & Lambda are the opposite. They require a lot of movement and small team targets. Its not often to be heavily buffed on either of these trials.



On the other hand an Invuln Brute will have lower defense numbers to build off of for damage beyond SM/L, and a harder time building for both defense and recharge.

Perma DP Brutes will be sitting about 3K HP, Perma DP Tankers will sit 3500.






I stand corrected.

In which case, I think increasing the strength of Gauntlet a bit to bring it closer in line for better overall threat generation.

Which is to say a bit different from just increasing Tanker threat across the board. (which I disagree with)


I also think adding a simple movement speed decrease to gauntlet might be interesting. This emphasizes the Tanker's "stickyness" and their control aspect, without being yet another force multiplication power like bruising.

That depends, only one Brute will get to reap the rewards of holding aggro and therefore higher Fury.

The rest will not be at their peak.

A Brute that does not hold aggro and deal damage should have been a Scrapper instead.

That's probably an extreme opinion, but it's how I feel.


Can and Do are the operative words here. I think a lot of dedicated Tanker players are often put off by the Brute's potential.

But its potential, not a baseline and it's not consistent.




I think that underplays the dynamic of higher base DEF + RES + HP.

I'm putting various mock up builds together in anticipation for TW.

I've built both Tanker and Brute TW/ELA builds for comparison.

I can't get the Brute past 1800-1900 Hp and meet all of the other needs I have.

The Tanker sits at 2400+ HP and is softcapped with ease, tons of rech, room to spare.

The Brute has around 60% SM/L res, the Tanker is at 80%.

The differences are a lot larger than people make them out to be.




To be honest there are a lot of times I'd like to turn melees away period (I don't).

Most trials are overflowing with superfluous levels of melees.


People really need to play more support.

I like the idea but not the direct implementation of them casting buffs. It'd be nice if they had an aura that either redirected damage to themselves (perhaps not doable) or gave those close-by additional resistance (definitely doable). Then when you are close to the Tank, you are safe

Turn Tankers into Paladins?

No thanks.



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No, it isn't fair to say, because it isn't true. Any Stalker, with any combination of power sets, can run into their current HP cap with just accolades and a few set bonuses. At that point, any +hp power is completely wasted over the cap. Dull Pain/Hoarfrost/Overload ALWAYS waste part of their benefit over the cap, even unslotted and with no accolades or set bonuses at all. Stalkers only need +33.3% hp to reach their cap, which means they only need 13.3% from sets, which is quite easy; builds can get that much by accident. The Stalker HP cap isn't so much a "we can't really make the most of a high-end build" as it is "did you actually know what the cap was when you made our powers?"
Meanwhile, one Tanker secondary, using a recharge-intensive high-end build, still needs to use Shield/ or Musculature to reach the damage cap under its own power.
These are not comparable situations.