So I got a PM from Synapse about buffing Tankers

about the 16 mob cap thing. I would like to know why it is 16 mobs when there are more than 16 mobs crammed into a tiny area for 8 man teams anyway. I can pull some of them, but inevitably, more than my aggro cap comes and eats up my team.

to the guy posting earlier saying we are whiny brute haters, id say from looking at these posts that no, we really arent. what i am seeing people ask for is more hp and more defense to define our role in a game that has ever-narrowing gaps in defense between the AT's.

Everyone can softcap. Tankers need to be able to do more defense wise than just "soft cap more cheaply."

The only real problem with Tankers in general (I don't play them enough to comment on all the individual power sets) is that Brutes are usually "good enough" at tanking while packing more damage. Tankers hold aggro better than Brutes and are harder to kill, but if a team is AoEing spawns down to small clumps of bosses in a few seconds then all the "tank" really needs to do is survive an alpha and then distract a couple of bosses... Brutes can do that just fine. There just aren't that many times where you need the full survivability of a Tanker, or the full aggro management capability... mainly just on small teams running at x8 against purples with few buffs, which is pretty much limited to unusually ambitious PUGs.

I'd give Tankers a mix of the old Blaster defiance, along with a version of Defender's Vigilance, but tailored to add damage buff instead. So you're starting to take damage? Your damage increases. Your friends are dying? Your damage increases. Both of the above? Damage buffs ahoy!

Thus, Tanker damage cap would have to be raised.

(half in jest, half serious)

1) I would fix the disparity between Tanker Taunt Auras. SR and WP need to be much better than they are.

2) I would raise the resistance on Fire Armor slightly so that it is a little more durable and not so heavily reliant on tough

3) I would raise the defense values on tanks so that they can reach a defense of 60 easier to make them better on the Incarnate trials.

4) I would reduce the end costs of some toggles because I think that tanks end management is their bigger issue

5) I would increase the number of targets that taunt auto hits from 5 to probably 8-10

6) I would fix energy melee for tanks only. I totally understand why they did what they did with stalkers and scrappers getting it.. but it seriously affected tanks.

I dont think Tanks need more damage. I think their damage is just fine.

While I've hesitated to jump into this very old argument that's been rehashed, oh so many times, I'd like to throw out a few ideas.

1.) At low levels, just like we've got an accuracy boost that diminishes till we hit a certain level (level 20 I believe), I'd like to see tanks get a +dmg that slowly fades in the same manner.

2.) Make bruising stack from other tanks. I'm not talking huge numbers, I'm talking small numbers. Right now you get 20% -res. Make it so that you can stack the -res from more bruising up to 30%, or maybe 40%.

3.) Stop Gauntlet from affecting to hit rolls! Any time we miss because of gauntlet injecting it's self into the hit rolls, it lowers tank dps.

That's pretty much it. (Although I do like the idea of tanks having a way to resist the un-resistable damage in the itrials, even if it's not by a large amount.)

Still reading the thread but wanted to throw my hat into the mix

Why is it wrong to think of Tankers as slow and 'weak' (offensively)? I sort of embraced that idea when I made my 2 tankers, a SD/DM and Inv/KM. That is, they aren't *literally* slow and weak, but conceptually they kind of are. Literally, they're just easy.

When I make one, in most cases of an average size spawn (somewhere between the +1/x6 and +3/x3 settings) there is usually no danger of death from a single encounter. Even in larger encounters (or encounters combined with other encounters), there's usually no struggle not to die if you know how to build right. Only in extreme cases vs specialized foes (or foes that exploit a weakness in your armor) do you face the thread of being defeated.

I can't really say what would fix Tankers or what their problems really are. I can only say, I like my Tanks because they're easy. When I play my Scrappers, I have to try to stay alive (or go the extra mile to make diffuse that issue) and on Brutes, it's the same. I can be killed unless I focus on making them survivable.

So I'll turn around the interrogation and ask some other questions about Tanker concepts:

-Do you feel Tankers are 'easy'? If so, in what ways?

-What ways would you consider a Tanker 'hard'? Do they counter balance any of the 'easy' aspects at all?

-Would any buffs you're looking to gain make being a Tanker 'easier'? Or perhaps have negative counters to try to keep the AT's difficulty balanced.

My mostly unjustified wishlist for Tankers :

Aggro cap : 17 for everyone else, 25-30 for tankers.

[[Res cap : 90 for brutes, 95 for tankers.

Defense floor : 5% for everyone else, 2.5% for tankers.

Base HP 1967 vs. 1874. 5% buff. ]] *

*Pick any one along with the aggro cap boost

And while we're at it?

Damage cap : 400% vs. the current 300%

Most of the "problem with Tankers" posts I've seen seem to rather tie into the late / end game where everyone ends up being buffed and / or well built with IOs and / or Incarnated to the point where, really, no matter what the team make up, things will die quickly, and anyone with a taunt can manage agro of the single hard target that needs to be controlled thus.

Personally, I think that's rather a wash, and not how Tankers should be viewed. Is it a data point? Sure, but not the only one and certainly not significant in comparison to the rest of the game.

What needs to be looked at is how the AT operates at it's core, and at that core, does it fulfill it's design intent well? Does it underperform in certain game metrics compared to other ATs in PvE significantly enough in one or more areas that change is needed to address this?

Which is in part why Bruising came about. Early levels of game play had Tankers taking a little too long to defeat mobs.

The poster above that stated Guantlet should no longer affect to-hit rolls is spot on. That needs to be addressed as well. It affects Tankers at all levels of the game.

And speaking of Guantlet, I think that the one major problem is that every other AT has an inherent that provides a quite visible impact on how that AT operates, both while solo and on teams. Well, Vigilence is a close third, and I'd say that Defiance is a second, if not first (blasters need to be looked at next after the Stalker changes are tested imop).

The fact that Tanker Guantlet, grabs the agro of 5 mobs vs. the 1 mob of Brute guantlet is something that's over looked by the majority of players in the game. I've spoken to quite a few newer people in the game that had no idea that Tankers had that type of effect (I was teaching them how to tanker on a lower level team). It really doesn't make much of an impact solo, and is practically insignificant on the high end of the game. It's the in-between, in normal game play, with normal builds where it can be useful, but just barely above what Brutes can provide.

If nothing else, give Tankers that 4 mob edge in the agro cap, to make it 20, Brutes and Scrappers can still remain at 16.

But something else needs to be done that will help Tankers stand out a bit more, and have more of an impact while both soloing and teaming.

Take a look at the thread linked in my sig. and look at the testing I did. You tell me if it's myth or not, and/or tell me where my testing was flawed. As far as I can tell from the testing I've done, Gauntlet is inserting itself into the "to hit" rolls.

I would never say a Tanker is not useful on a team.

I would say a *second* Tanker is not useful on a team. And I wouldn't say that about any other AT.

When you trade out melee for more squishies, you get more damage multipliers and more mitigation done because of the synergy of the buff/debuffs/mezzes.

When you trade out squishies for more Scrappers, Brutes, and Stalkers, you get a lot more spike damage done, which is less need for mitigation.

When you trade out anyone for a second or third or more Tanker, you get more people standing around going "uhhhh" 'uhhhh"... which doesn't do much more than when one Tanker was doing it. The mitigation doesn't really increase with extra Tankers (except for edge cases of multiple simultaneous spawns). And their damage isn't spectacular. They're not a multiplier of anything else. So... what's the use?

Just like Shield Defense has mechanics for team defense multipliers, so, too, should Tankers in general. For each extra Tanker, there should be a team defense bonus. And for each extra Tanker, they (and not the whole team) should get a Damage bonus.

This way, extra Tankers are as useful as any other extra AT. This gives the second Tanker a role on the team as a damage dealer and as a source of mitigation without having to spam Taunt like the "main Tanker" is doing.

I agree with you Zombie, a second tank currently doesn't add to the team like having multiples of other ATs. That's why I mentioned the idea of allowing bruising to stack from multiple tanks. It won't replace true de-buffers, but certainly would keep from having a second tank feel so redundant.

As for a team with more then one tank on it having folks standing around going "uhhhh" 'uhhhh"..., you haven't been on any Tanker Tuesday events have you?

Tanks are fine, and in fact my new Titan Weapons character will be one

If you wanted extreme damage but with some degree of danger, go Brute/Scrapper.

If you wanted good damage and almost no danger whatsoever, go Tank.

That's your trade off