Of TankMages

If you say so. But imagine that expanded to regular content, and beyond!

Maybe your fully-Incarnated and IO'd hero Tank Man gets ambushed and defeated by a bunch of level 10 Skulls, because Mr. Shgoratchx! is in town and thought it would be funny. You can try to outwit him, but it's probably easiest to just endure his "zany" antics for an hour until he pops off back to the 8th Dimension.

Then next week, in a moral dilemma Which Will Change Things Forever, you have to decide whose account gets suspended - yours, or your best friend's. (Fortunately, this only lasts a month. Nothing in comics is permanent, except the status quo.)

Either way, after you (or your friend) get back, it's time for Crossover Season! For three whole months, you get to play nothing but event content. In fact, you're required to be at your computer at least twice a week at a certain time, logged in and ready to go. (Actually, hold on... I understand that in some games, people already do this, and even think it's fun.)

After that finally ends, you'll have to deal with Purple Enigmite reversing your controls and scrambling your power buttons for 24 hours, and face another dilemma when Tank Man's Girlfriend Maisy Mae asks you if this dress makes her look fat. (Spoiler: there is no correct answer.)

Sound good to you?

Really, I think the actual definition of Tank-Mage has gotten lost in this discussion. It's someone who fights as well as a mage but has defenses like a tank. They're problematic because they're as durable as the most durable defensive class and as offensively capable as the most powerful ranged class, which makes everyone else obsolete.

It's not just a Tanker with one or two ranged attacks. It's not just a Blaster with Tough. They have to have the best of both worlds, or they're not the Tank-Mage that is so troublesome.

For example...

Thor is not a Tank-Mage. He can shoot lightning, but it's not his primary attack. He saves it for big moments. In CoH terms, he's a War Mace/Invulnerability Brute (possibly Tank, possibly even Scrapper, but definitely WM/Inv) with Ion Judgement for when he gets in trouble.

Hulk... He's a pure SS/Invulnerability Brute. His only ranged attacks are throwing things. If that's all it took to be a Tank-Mage, then every SS/ Brute or /SS Tanker would already be a Tank-Mage, and they're clearly not.

Black Widow is a Dual Pistols/Martial Combat Blaster with the Fighting Pool. Hawkeye is an Archery/Trick Arrow Corruptor with the Fighting Pool. Captain America is a MA or SJ/Shield Scrapper with Body Mastery . None of them are Tank-Mages.

The only one of the Avengers I'd consider an actual Tank-Mage is Iron Man. He's also the only one you can't accurately make in-game. (I'd say he'd be something like Energy Blast/Invulnerability)

Outside of the Avengers, "Shazam" (by which I assume you mean Captain Marvel) is a straight-up Invulnerability/Super Strength Tanker. His only ranged "attack" is one that is aimed squarely at him (and will cause him to lose all of his powers if it hits), so he only uses it as the most final of final last-ditch attacks, not as the main part of his arsenal.

Superman... primarily Inv/SS Tanker, with Energy Mastery (including Laser Beam Eyes) and perhaps Gale from Storm Summoning (in the form of super-breath). Only that last part can't be currently done in-game. But, again, two or three ranged attacks (including Hurl) does not a Tank-Mage make.

The closest the game has is Arachnos Soldiers (particularly Crab Soldiers), but their numbers are lower for both their defense and offense than Tanks and Blasters respectively, so they're still not an actual "Tank-Mage".

The idea of a Tank Mage being overpowered is based on the assumption that blasting sets do more damage than melee sets. They don't.

Good post, Johnny.

I too really like the progress thats been made since I started playing. Tankers got their "Sunday Punch" powers beefed up - KO Blow, Clobber etc. Set bonuses let us make tough "squishies" and so on.
Temp powers were added so anyone can carry a bit of conventional weaponry if they want to.

While we're still bound to archetypes, we're not being pigeonholed into roles so much any more, and it looks like its going to keep getting better.

I actually am curious about how the decision was derived via "We hate the dreaded tank mage" rather than in terms of balance.

The issue with that is that I think that the same decision that gave us defenders who could not buff themselves also gave us blasters with no defenses. How would blasters fare in such a brave new world?

Most forum-goers have a desire to interpret the game, to stay up on the latest information, to figure out the paths of least resistances or the best build possible, etc. (Note, I said "most.") This game is also likely our main video game that we play. For us, the concept of a tankmage is very appealing because we wouldn't get bored with it. We would play it just as much, if not more so, than any of our other characters.

The Devs, however, have to appeal to a much wider player base. The reason most people play games, of any kind, is for the mental (and sometimes physical) stimulation: there is a puzzle to be solved, a challenge to be overcome, and usually a reward to be had for surpassing the obstacles. Each of the archetypes brings with it a certain challenge that has to be overcome, at least out-of-the-box (i.e. early-to-mid levels, no IOs, no Incarnate powers, etc.). I'm not going to go into those challenges; odds are, as I alluded to above, most people here reading these forums, and this topic in particular, know to what I am referring. Hell, I'd wager we've figured most of them out. Our challenge is now finding new ways to do things, the best ways to do things, or figuring out something completely new when it gets added to the game.

For other players, for whom this is a game that they do not necessarily feel any strong attachment to, their interest is harder to maintain. Sure, they may get frustrated as all hell when they log in and cannot create their "Uber-Man" exactly to their liking. However, that frustration soon gives way to a desire to figure out how to get as close to their "Uber-Man" as possible, using the tools available in the game. The obstacle becomes stimulating, and the experience enthralling, as the player tries to "figure it out."

Tankmages require far less "figuring-out". It is a simple playstyle: stand there, shoot stuff, and you probably don't have to worry about much else unless you bite off more than you can chew. While that is immediately gratifying for the player, it does not offer an obstacle that provides sufficient mental stimulation to maintain interest. If such a thing was possible, there would be far fewer players maintaining a high level of activity, because odds are some other game would have presented more of an obstacle that begged to be solved.




For my part, I love that Blasters are getting the Sustain mechanic. It is my favorite archetype, and lord knows I have gotten frustrated at the number of times I have found myself eating dirt in certain missions. That said, figuring out how to avoid eating dirt (via strategic firing positions, moving around with Combat Jumping/Hover, knowing which moves to use when, etc.) was what kept me interested in the archetype. If the sustain mechanic makes it so that my character can just stand there shooting and punching stuff, I may make use of it on one character (the one I designate as my personal "Uber-Man" if you will), but I'll skip it on the others! I am all for self-imposed challenges, but I feel I can say that because I have been playing this game long enough that somehow that is the only way I remain challenged. For new or less experienced players, I think having such options available to them could be detrimental.

For the record, this is a very stimulating and enthralling discussion

Captain Marvel will always be Captain Marvel to me. He's had that name for over seventy years, while he's been called "Shazam" in exactly zero issues of any current comic book (and Marvel keeps making new Captain Marvels just to keep a strangehold on the trademark, not because they actually give a crap about who they give the name to). If Cap is still called "Shazam" in 2082, then I'll start calling him that. (But what they've done to my favorite comics character is a separate rant on its own)

Anyway, Cap's still not a tank mage. His transformation lightning is meant for just that - transformation. It's a Nova, a self-heal... and it immediately strips him of all powers, offensive and defensive. It's the ultimate crash. It's not his primary attack, let alone his only attack.

A Tank-Mage is, by definition, a character who is primarily a ranged character, but with tank-like defenses. Not just someone who has a ranged attack or two that they use if punching doesn't work. Certainly not someone who has a ranged attack that can be used only once, and then takes away all his other attacks.

They have to be just as good at ranged attacks as the ranged attack specialists, and just as good at surviving and drawing aggro as the defensive specialists. That's clearly unbalanced, and that's the problem with Tank-Mages.