Consolidated Tanker Improvement Ideas

Aett, there have been a few new suggestions and a proposed revision of the battle mastery concept. Can you please update the list on the first page to reflect the new ideas?

There's a lot of false dichotomy going on in this thread. We know that Brutes have a significant damage advantage over Tankers, and we know that Tankers have a significant passive survivability advantage over Brutes. The active survivability advantage has room for argument, since Tankers do generally have slightly better debuffs than Brute, damage itself is a powerful method of survivability against anything short of AVs.

Anyways, the false dichotomy here is the one that says "you cannot close the damage gap without closing the survivability gap, too". That is not necessarily true, and is dependent upon various opinions regarding the value of said survivability gap compared with the value of said damage advantage. And this basically comes down to whether or not you think Tankers are currently well-balanced (and thus just need to have the balance adjusted) or not (and thus need to have a straight-up buff in order to bring them in line). Some people here obviously think the first, others think the second. As a result of this dichotomy, a lot of these arguments just aren't going very far, since they're based on different assumptions.

Personally, I think Tankers are not currently well-balanced. They were, once upon a time, but that changed starting with Inventions and the RWZ and has only gotten worse over time. The metagame has changed and the environment they were built for no longer exists (as made obvious by the greater number of mobs using exotic damage types and mezzes, and the fact that new Tanker sets invariably lack the holes of the old Tanker sets).

All comments that are applicable to the OPs initial posts could be updated to the initial posts. All other comments are just padding. The OPs posts might continue to be updated unbiasedly therefore arguments and derails might waste Aetts time. I trust a Dev to look at something and take a 1 sec decision on it where necessary.

Random - and hence poorly thought-out - idea for tanker damage that hinges on good tanking:

What if Gauntlet granted a 2% damage buff to the tanker for every enemy it affects for as long as gauntlet lasts? Not taunt - Gauntlet (so no using Taunt for a poor-man's build up or taunt auras for non-shield aao's). That way a tanker that stick with one target until it's dead gets a damage buff equal to the gauntlet effect on that target and those around him. BUT a tanker that switches targets can potentially get more of a damage buff in addition to holding all that aggro by affecting different groups with gauntlet.

And the fewer targets, the less damage a tanker does. Sort of like a tanker rising to the occasion when needed, then doing less damage when not necessarily needed. That way a tanker is at his/her strongest in emergency situations like unintended aggro or ambushes - especially if that tanker is good at holding aggro by switching targets to maximize gauntlet.

Some tier 9 powers should be looked at and readjuststed as they have not been adjusted much since beta (and if they were adjusted it was to reduce recharge times so they could no longer be made permable)

Unstoppable is a great example of this.. If you take and don't slot all of the resist powers in Invuln an invuln tanker will hit the cap while running unstoppable. If you do nothing else but run unstoppable with 3 resists SO's a tanker will hit the resist caps for everything but psi. All overflow damage resistance is pointless.. ie no (or maybe very few) situations call for having 179ish+% s/l resistance. A side issue is that the differences between a brute and tanker while these tier 9 powers are running vanishes defensively.. both are either resistance capped to similiar amounts or defensively capped to similiar amounts. While the tanker has a slight HP advantage the damage difference more then makes up for that.

Unstoppable and the other tier 9's like them (power surge, elude, and that other one who's name escapes me atm) just does too much. It either needs to do less ala one with the shield, or it needs to be made into an exclusive mode like toggle ala Granite complete with downsides.

Also remove the crashes. Players should not be gun shy about using their powers. Crashes are just not a fun game mechanic.. recharge/click based tier 9's can not be made perma so only allow for bursts of resistance boosting and have a built in crash when the resistance boosting goes away.

Add a fury like bar that instead of increasing damage would increase the tanks survivability and threat generation abilites (also to increase the agro cap).

This would not only give the tanks something more but also would make them synergize well with brutes since both the brute and tank would want to keep the fight rolling to maintain their buff bars. Many of the changes above are great ideas to deal with having multi tanks but I think this would also make tank brute combos work well.

Id also like to add a huge thank you to Synapse for finally taking a look at this. If his stalker changes are any indication im really looking forward to his final decision on what is to be done to tanks. When brutes came blue side I abandoned tanks heh, wish i hadnt deleted them now oh well.

Edit, when i said damage cap i meant agro cap....it was late sorry I fixed it.

I was reading over this thread, and the various notions tossed out have INSPIRED ME.



How's about this:

For every enemy on a tanker's aggro list, the Tanker gives his league a 1 percent damage buff. Namely, since the bad guys are discombobulated by the Tanker, he and all his buddies can hit it harder.

To address the 'stacking tankers' issues, make it stack.

This is nicely self-limiting too: As baddies die off, the buff drops, it can never go higher than the number of bad guys engaged which (in my experience) is rarely more than 80-odd at a given time, and it re-affirms the tanker's role as aggro machines: If other toons are grabbing aggro, they're debuffing themselves.

I think I rather like this one. It helps tanks solo, it helps teams and leagues, and it's fully stackable. Simple!

I still think the tanker's aggro cap should be raised to let a tanker compete somewhat against pet classes and AOE controls, and I think a tankers damage caps should be increased to pull their buffed maxima closer in-line with the other heavy melee archetypes.

But this seems a simple, fully-automatic mechanism that directly rewards tanks and their allies.

Inspiration OVER. Time for caffeine.

I highly doubt any nerfs will happen to other ATs unless it's clearly broken. Breaking people's billion inf builds is asking for ppl to jump ship.

Rather then increasing Tankers DEF/RES cap permanently could they make due with a "Alpha Strike" power that gives you 100% res for 10-15 sec and can only be reused after X minutes (not effected by any recharges enhancements).

Certainly makes running to fights safer, then hopefully team will break up mobs, debuff etc.

Just a thought. I use my vetran pet to take Alpha when solo is what made me think of it. lol

In a world without Brutes, the obvious answer would be to give Tankers their mechanic. Getting attacked fueling your badassness makes sense for Tankers. We can't do that, of course, but we can try something else.

I propose a new resource and attack for Tankers - lets call them 'Stalwart' and 'Stalwart Strike' for now. Stalwart is similar to a Dominator's 'Domination' bar - they fill it up over time. Their own attacks build a little of it, but the lion's share of Stalwart comes from being attacked. Whether an enemy attack hits or misses the Tanker, the Tanker gets a portion of Stalwart.

Stalwart Strike is only usable once the Stalwart Bar has filled and is similar to a ranged attacker's T9 'nuke' in that it deals a very high amount of damage. The exact animation and potential delivery for the strike would vary depending on the Tanker's secondary (I would prefer PBAoE for almost all, but the case could be made for single target or limited cone on some already AoE heavy secondaries).

Using Stalwart Strike drains the Stalwart resource back to zero, and leaves a short-term resistance and defense buff on the Tanker roughly equal to an unslotted Tough+Weave. Tankers that are judicious at hoarding aggro for themselves will find this buff is up a lot of the time - particularly when the tanker is facing large groups.

I feel like this change would greatly help in making Tankers feel more competitive offensively, help reduce the perceived NEED to pick up Tough/Weave (Invul, for instance, would no longer need Tough to cap S/L resist), and reinforces and rewards the Tanking style of play: get that aggro, soak that damage, and put the boot into your enemies.

Here's a really old suggestion of mine- "Temp Invulnerability" is a terrible name for the power, and could really use a change to something more descriptive of what it actually does.

My suggestion: "Bulletproof"

Cool thread.

I saw the suggestions about crashless tier 9s and defiance and it got me thinking (since I never take crashing tier 9s myself)...

How about having the tier 9s be like a "short surge of defiance" of sorts?

Something like:
120 second duration (2 minutes)
Minor crash (-25% Endurance)
Base refresh of 600 seconds (10 minutes) - unaffected by Recharge
Amplifies Gauntlet Radius (Tankers Only)

Some tier 9s may see a base increase on a certain levels of the following:
Defense
Resistance
Psionic Resistance
Status Effects (including Fear/Confuse/Slow)
Damage
Accuracy
Recovery
Regeneration

One problem I could see with this would be Stone Armor's Tier 9. I imagine some are fond of the ability to keep this on at all times or the Granite Form, but I personally could go for change to this (or an alternate tier 9). One suggestion could be to standardize Stone Armor's Tier 9 to follow suit with others as a Click-Power with a minor crash and offer alternate animations that enable you to choose "Granite Armor" visual and a "No Granite Armor" option.

Just initial thoughts as I head off to work.

Okay, front page posts should be updated. If you feel like I've missed your idea, please let me know.

I don't envy what you're doing but it's appreciated!

Some of the tier 9s are especially ridiculous on Tankers, like Elude, which is questionable enough on Scrappers who can soft cap without it via heavy IO usage, and downright skippable on any Tank that pays attention to the soft cap. Similarly, there's Power Surge in ELA, which winds up being complete overkill in most of its buff, and unlike Elude, has a very, very hard crash (the hardest of any tier 9, actually, with both an hp and endurance crash and a recovery crash).