Test Discussion Atomic Powers

I think a layer of damage absorption would help alleviate the pain. Don't give the full 50 but just enough to allow the heals to do their thing .

I tried tanking Blackest Day a moment ago with Atomic. I was in charge of the adds, but they knock me out when they self destruct. If Density or Mass Density is off cooldown and I time it right I can take the hit, if they're not (or not on my loadout) I can't take the hit at CR 141.

So far this is not very tank friendly.

Buffing the aura to 18 seconds in tank stance would be nice start. The heals should prob be 50 % of Dom instead of 40, but I'm guessing that's where the 2% per power activation comes.

The time between combos needs to be adjusted in tank stance to be a little more forgiving using the 1001, 1002 whisper test (not scientific I know) I getting to between three and four before I don't seem to get the benefits of stacking stacks and charges but that's just a guess.

If that is the case that should prob be replaxed a little in tank stance IMO.

To your question, top end content is going to taxing on atomic tanks in this form.

There will be people who can do it but it's going to struggle.

In theory you *should* be able to keep comboing as a Tank but I have yet to be able to do so consistently. I either use too much Power or I simply get controlled. Without constant healing from combos Atomic feels like Fire Tank that can mess up/get interrupted and get practically no healing. Where Fire gets more Health Atomic gets more Defense. If at 90% that should mostly be a wash there. However without being able to combo and get the Dominance based healing consistently you are basically an Aftershock Earth Tank but very tight on your rotation. Even if you have 2 shortcuts.

Combine that with seemingly no real way to mitigate huge spike damage. If you get a "Tank buster" thrown at you you are basically an Ice with no shields. Since the passive healing is minimal and your main source of healing requires you to combo your likely dead since Density is not really your answer here.

It is a very odd Tank. I am not quite sure it knows what it wants to be... lol

Some things I think should be changed/adjusted:

• Needs some way to help mitigate very large amounts of damage all at once. I think the best thing for this would be to adjust Density to not break on hits and possible have it be boosted higher than a regular Tank shield. Hitting it now would be like hitting Bitter Winds as Ice but Reflection is typically the "Tank buster" shield they would use. If not that then maybe a slight boost in Health to compensate (not as much as Fire but somewhere in between) while hitting a trait as a Tank.
• Would be nice if Atomic Combos were faster as a Tank. Like I said comboing seems to be basically Earth Aftershocks but it is not as easy to pull off and do everything else a Tank is expected to do at the same time.
• Part of the above also involves the duration/refresh of your aura. You can easily lose it because you have a small window to use a combo. Sure you can have 2 shortcuts but that has the same kind of loadout space problems as Earth had when you had to a) summon Brick and then b) manually use the old Damage Shift. You shouldn't have to have 2 shortcuts taking up 2 slots just to consistently maintain your aura.

Some more thoughts about the concept of Atomic:

• It wants to Ice in that it gets a high Defense buff. But it lacks the ability to mitigate high amounts of damage while blocking (since Fortified Black V gives you a total 80% Damage Prevention when blocking). It has a tool to do this (Density) but it is built as a "secondary" tool and thus less effective than even the lower Ice shields.
• It wants to be Fire by having a) an instant high passive heal (Photon Remedy) and b) active heals. However the instant heal requires full uptime of your hard-to-maintain aura. If the aura is more maintainable then it works out great. Also it requires that you never get controlled/attacked since most attacks control you to an extent. You are a Tank so you get by every attack.
• It wants to be Earth in that it uses combos to maintain survivability and supportive instant tools. However it doesn't seem to have the same kind of speed or stacked duration. It can also transfer damage away from another target.
• It wants to be Rage by having an all-the-time passive heal. It also requires a combo to keep it going. However in order to active the aura you need to use 2 traits. At the same time while Rage only requires a single button input for its combos Atomic requires 2.
• It wants to be a Controller in that it can a) shield the entire group, b) easy access to consistent and reliable stuns and b) can detaunt targets.

As it stands right now combining all 5 aspects in a Tank seems to make it jack of all trades at the moment. It is not particular aspect and because of that I wouldn't see it as a prime candidate for the solo Tank position that community desires (I am not here to argue the merits of that mentality, etc.). To reiterate my suggestions if it is meant to a combination of other mechanics give it the same kind of utilities:

• Allow Atomic a good practical way to surviving while blocking and not comboing for a short time. Currently Density is not the answer but it could be by making simple adjustments.
• Let the active healing execute faster to compensate for the fact that you are also threatened to be controlled. I think the speed for 3 taps should be similar in length to Rage's 1 tap/hold combos.
• Either outright extend the duration of the aura or allow successive combos to extend the duration similar to Earth's Aftershocks.

Ideally I would like to use this loadout:

Atomic Reorganization - Photon Remedy - Neutrino Blast - Atom Splitter - Unleash Antimatter/Mass Density/Subatomic Substitution - Density

(I can breakout the exact use if needed.)

That, in theory, should give you the best of everything. A nice conal pull. A nice immediate pull but also has a secondary function (and thus not a redundant trait in your loadout during certain scenarios). A nice heal when your aura is active. Decent enough active healing via combos. The possibility of an additional Group Breakout or additional group utility. Finally the ability to withstand large damage spikes while staying still, blocking and not comboing. In order to do this reliably, consistently and be able to freely move, pull or do other Tank tasks at the same time as surviving the 3 suggestions I mentioned above would help out greatly.

So to wrap up my long post Atomic should be a nice blend of all 4 Tanks and some Controller aspects with some simple changes. It does feel unique in this way but also odd. Would be nice to be consistently comboing as a Tank but I don't think the game will allow for that when you are being attacked so I don't think asking for Atomic to only use combos is very realistic.

hey heavy weapon how are you spec on your generator mods and did you spec like straight Dom heavy or did you go dom health with like resto health and might dom n red or might health? I wanna play around with it I know that spord says that its healing is based off the dom you have but its also based of your max health and so maybe a fair mix might do better than straight dom since I'm hearing that the heals aren't as big as is needed to straight combo tank like a celestial healer in an alert without a tank would do just chaining combos for constant healing over time. I'm a celestial healer as well an so I don't think i'll have a problem with comboing but that's the style I wanna try out is just straight comboing nonstop if I can figure out how to buff up my health and healing out somehow maybe dom colas or something idk yet.

Plus spord said that the tanking buff was only registering as 60% instead of the full 90% right now so maybe once that is buffed up to normal it will feel like you can combo consistently while throwin in blockbreaking combos with melee range combos to keep from being cc

Comboing constantly is not an interruption problem its a power problem. I still think power cost should be reduced while having the aura up in tank role to help alleviate this.

Keep in mind the mitigation and defense buff is bugged.
You're at 60% mitigation and defense right now so the rest is askew.

I agree with a lot of what is said on the healing
However, making it like a combo version of fire even more defeats the purpose of it having that huge defense buff. I wouldn't say a big health buff is in order.
I would argue the power pool should be buffed while comboing. Make it different, not the same as other tanks.
It also should get a healing increase.

Density shouldn't be so weak, Truthfully.
I counted 4 hits and it broke.

I thought the bug was people were having their defense increased by 60% instead of 90%? That would put the defense mitigation under 60% right (I'm not a math guy)?

i agree with you. Some different variables need to be put into place since this is a new kind of tank. Test server went down so i guess this is a patch to fix that i'm hoping and the aura glitch.

90% or 60% it won't really matter against a large spike. At 90% think of Ice that hits Freeze Wave to activate their buff and then just blocks with no shields. The 2% Health heals from the aura is relatively slow and are not reactive. If an Ice Tank can possibly die with just the buff and blocking Atomic will also die. I can name situations where this will happen with Ice.

Fire takes the hit when blocking because a) it gets near if not full 80% mitigation when blocking but also b) has a large Health buff. Rage does this with a massive Health buff, reactive heals and near full 80% mitigation. Earth does with 50% Damage Absorption and near full 80% mitigation. Ice does this with sturdy shields and near full 80% mitigation. Atomic gets the near 80% mitigation but none of its healing adds effective Health in this situation. All of Atomics healing is either active or passive but not reactive. Thus if a hit where to come in that is naturally just above a blocking Tanks effective Health Atomic is dead. Now Density would be a nice option. However none-"Tank busters" can break it too early and since it is a single shield the cooldown makes it such that it can't be used frequently. Mass Density is an unreliable shield due to being a Supercharge and the likely event not wanting to keeping attacking risking being knocked around too much.

With a 90% Defense Atomic will be, in terms of pure survivability, in a decent place. However likely dead against very large uncommon spike damage. If the spike damage is rare it should be roughly fine with Density but this is less common especially if ever expected to solo Tank.

That is the only reason I tossed around the idea of a slight Health buff or similar changes.

I can't find it anymore but I had though I read Spord saying it can only register a hit once every 1.5s and breaks after 3. I'll have to test it out. I did find where he said the supercharge on though is straight dom +resto shield and not hit based which is good.

Yea that's a little bit why I had asked Spord what the intentions of the GAura are as well as the 2% heal on damage. If they are meant to counter the damage then the numbers are too low. But if they are just meant to slow the damage and Atomic is healer dependent like Earth then they need more than just a defense buff. Apparently the thought is that with the defense buff they don't have to block and can just continue to combo but that is SUPER power hungry and not viable. At least watching the stream that is how they were explaining it. But as of right now to answer your question it has no oh **** button like a rage mode, reflect, or gemstone shields. Its like fire with not as much health but more defense.....so its a mobile fire tank with not even close to as much health.

From just looking at it I would be priorizing health because health not only affects the strength of a heal but also how large of a "single hit" you can take while dom is only affecting the strength of a heal. I would go full health then get dom as far as SP go, mod for Dom/Health blues but Health/X other slots, and go full health in the generator.

Sorry was pushed for time. yes the stats are on spec for the Live test.

This is exactly the issue. All of the other tanks have a much higher "Effective Health" than Atomic AND have additional mitigation tools. Atomic just has mitigation tools that just match what the others have (shields/heals) but still has a low effective health. Well put.

Maybe a tank-only buff that makes you unable to be countered while aura is active? Or at least 75% immunity to interrupts/blocks?

Liking all of the Tank feedback and thank you all for helping to balance it out. The 90% Defense issue will be fixed when the server comes back up but I am still working on other tweaks.

One of those tweaks will be lowering the power costs for the Atomic combo super powers while in Tank role. Also in both roles Atom-Powered Assault's power cost is being lowered.

Still looking into the other tanking things.

To entertain the idea of only ever using combos as Atomic you'd also have to add in control immunity. Part of blocking gives you an additional 5% mitigation from Fortified Blocking but it also gives you 100% Control Resistance. This keeps you still which the rest of your group will expect. Also a continuous combo can be detrimental to whatever a Controller wants to do since each combo will stun/knockback at least twice. This makes it impossible for Controllers to pull/stun specific targets if the scenario calls for it since each NPC would effectively be 100% resistant to control effects. So in that case an Atomic Tank would need to combo less and rely more on blocking.

In the end addressing effective Health while blocking still needs to be done (or in general because again active heals are not reactive heals thus no effective Health increase; think Rage Mode, Burning Determination or a Bio-Charge when thinking reactive heals). Without adjusting the duration/combo length to allow for mobility.

It is a nice idea to only be able to combo but it doesn't solve many issues just being able to constantly combo.

How is that too high? Are you talking buffs in general or just atomic? All buffs are the same, they give the same percentages for both the prec and might versions. Hive mind, bloodlust, firey weapon, wired, inspiration etc all follow this pattern.