Let's get real with these tank powers

So before I start my rant, I'd like to introduce myself. I'm May. Some of you "may or may not" (indirect joke) me, but I'm a fire tank on the uspc server. I've been playing for quite a bit of time, since this game came out free to play to play in november whatever year. I would like to say I'm a competent tank, I know my powerset, I know how to play my role. I'm not completely clueless, usually, and I'd like to think that I can tank things just fine. But anyway. let's get down to why I'm ranting in the first place.

We have 4 current tank powers. Rage, Ice, Earth and Fire. What's my issue? Let's talk about viability and survivabllity. Ice and Rage are the top powers for tanking pve content right now. Totd is a cake walk right now for these 2. But what about earth and fire? Where is the love? And why don't I think theyre viable?

Well, I can't go too much into earth, and maybe an experienced earth tank can help me out in adding content in a post. But I certainly can talk about fire and why it's a dying breed. Let's get things straight. Adds hit hard in these new raids. I'm not complaining. I'm just saying they hit pretty damn hard. If you're not familiar with fire tanking, just know, fire has no damage mitigation unlike every other tank power. Fire has no sort of shield either. So, when you're fire tanking, you're taking every bit of damage to your face. Now some of you might say, "Just hold block". I would if I didnt have to a few things.

#1 position my squishy *** and aggro stuff.
#2 I get cc'ed more often than you think. These immunity powers don't work all the time.
#3 I can't hold block when I have to press a power

Now, fire tanking is a damn scary thing. That's why you don't see a lot of them. Your health bar is like rage tanking, except it's like youre crashing all the damned time. I know that fire got a recent buff, THANKFULLY, but it's just not enough right now. I have 6 powers on my loadout bar. 2 to pull, 2 for immunity,2 to heal. But I have cooldowns on my powers too.

So what's the issue here? Fire gets overwhelmed extremely quickly. With no damage mitigation, I take full 12k+ hits from ares and, as you know, these adds hit harder than a train for fire. I can only juggle adds for so long, until they get immune and touch my butt. With the resto buff, I understand, the heals can be massive, but like I said, I gots cooldowns. I'm also not saying fire tanking is completely unviable. But, more often than not, I've gotten deleted by adds in less than a second.

The survivability of fire to ice or rage is incomparable. If your healer dies as fire, and you're in the middle of the adds, you're probably dead, unless you have a little damage immunity. As fire, you need constant heals to survive, as I've been told by healers in my league "damn may, your hp bar is scary".

I'd just like to suggest a change to fire. We have self heals, but our cooldowns are too punishing. The only way I can suggest utilizing our restoration to it's maximum, is to be able to heal ourselves passively over time. Fire has a supercharge called Eternal Flame. Why not change this to a toggle ability, when it uses power, and has the same effect, and heals passively for a small percentage of health per damage taken? At least this way, fire has a fighting chance of surviving without a healer for an amount of time. I understand the balance between pvp and pve as I was also an avid pvp'er. An easy fix to this could be to reduce the heals in pvp maps.

Thoughts opinions? Am I wrong? Or can other fire tanks vouch for me? Did you switch powers because of these problems?

i've seen fire and earth tanks do fine in the latest content...

Sadly, best thing I did was change from fire tank to ice. Better tank, better dps. I do agree, tanking overall needs to b revamped. Tanks should have the highest health. Dps and controllers should have 1/4 health of tank. Healers should have half the health of tanks. If there was a greater variance of roles with similar stats for tanks that r viable it would make all 4 powers better. If all 4 powers were good, how would that help new tank power Serums sell? I believe, it is intented that certain powers suck. It has been that way for a long time.

They should make fire a more health based tank so our health goes up really high and we don't drop so fast. If we could have like 30-50k at all times with tiny heals I think it would be better

bump?

If you have been around that long this can't be a new thing for you. Ice has always been the tank of choice. And when Rage came out it did look like a power that Fire would have been if they used all that feedback. Fire and possibly Earth can pull off the raids but they will have a harder time doing so.

That's the thing. Fire has always been looked at as sub-par to ice, and you're right. It's not a new thing to me. Fire has always been in Ice's shadow. It's as I said, fire doesnt get love like ice does. Unless they do something about balancing the powers in their specific classes, it will unfortunately be behind the "better powers".

hes speaking about Throne of the dead ... and probably elite , everything else is a cake walk with a geared firetank.

i've done throne with a fire and earth tank.

if u tell me elite version with fire tanking the adds while earth took ares i tell you i dont believe ya.

May you preaching to the choir. I will say this, I disagree slightly about fire always being in ice shadow. If you recall in the great old days when the game first came out fire was a baddass tank set to play. It did damage and healed like a champ. The high power cost was worth it since you got high heals and good damage. The devs said it was a mistake and pvp'ers complained about the OP of fire tanks and then came the nerfs. Fire was a shadow of itself after that. After the recent fire buff was released and you could leave player feedback in the feedback thread, myself and many others stated that the resto buff was a band-aid and made numerous suggestions. Myself and some others looked and saw that there were many redundant powers 4-5 to be exactish that should be combined and some powers in in the ignition tree that should be in the immolation tree. I also suggested like you that eternal flame and ignition? should be regular abilities and new supercharges should be made. I suggested a fire form kind of like the ice tank ice golem only like fire storm or the character fire with a fire shield that mitigated about 40% damage while form was active. The idea was some mitigation with high heals and high aggro with the shield aggro/ damaging enemies. I also suggested a hot feet ability where the ground is super heated around the tank and those in the radius take damage and are aggroed. I also suggested either the damage be upped to reflect the high power cost (both fire and earth) or the power cost lowered since the damage is negligible. It seems to me like they are afraid that maybe these two sets would be wildly popular if certain changes were made

Now explain to me and everyone else reading this thread how your personal experiences goes against the solid FACT that ice and rage have abilities more fine tuned to tank higher damage adds then earth or fire.

I've completed and healed all 4 tanks types in throne and have succeeded, that doesn't address the issue at hand

Now if he said it were impossible sure. but he NEVER stated that.

i said its impossible to tank the adds in throne ELITE as firetank... because at some point you have to move to get the adds and thats something only godlike healers could handle that not exist according to me.

I think the adds in elite are a different animal and shouldn't really be what he power is a balanced around.
I've seen rage tanks scew that up with a 4 tank method let alone a solo on the whole group.

They complain about the group panicking about bowmasters but tanks even rage oddly are the most scared bunch when it comes to an elite punisher.

You can't compare the old days to today's raids tho. The content now is much more different. In the good old days, there were no base mods, there were no exobits, there were no there was no gear with vitilization or restoration in dps gear. Don't forget, this game has evolved. Fire even needed a huge buff to just keep up, remember? Compare these 2 super charges. Eternal Flame to Ice Elemental. Eternal flame has an extremely short effect time while Ice Elemental stays up for a few years.

Like I said, the good old days of tanking aren't like today in the higher tier content. Also, there are now 4 tank powers, not just 2 like before. They can't just add damage mitigation. The tank powers need to be unique to themselves.

you don't have to believe me.

Since I've personally seen punishers oneshot for more than 300k, do you blame us?

True there were not based mods and the like. I was just slightly disagreeing with you when you said Fire was always in Ice shadow. In the early( beginning) days it wasn't which I think was the problem. It is now though in addition to being a shadow of itself. Fires supercharge in comparison to ice = no contest. Ice is better which is why I said eternal flame and ignition should be regular powers and fire should have a fire form like ice has an ice form but different. Whereas ice is high mitigation and low heals ( you get a heal tick in that form) fire should be high heals and low mitigation ( 40% damage mitigation shield) and the form should be high arrgo and damage a high risk high reward so to speak that aids in keeping the bosses attention since they seem to have ADD in the higher content. I also think fire should have a long range multi-target pull and earth should as well. What do you think of my suggestions ?

Fire's heals are pretty incredible right now. But the problem is, what can I do with all this resto when my loadout is on cooldown most of the time. I can heal myself from 5% to 100 with Stoke flames, burning determination and burnout if I really need it. But once those are down, I'm kinda sitting there defenceless. If a fire tank gets cc'ed while those are down, it's kinda over.

Your suggestion to change fire to have a "fire form" is already too much like ice. The bosses in Throne of the Dead are proximity aggro'ed anyway, so as a tank, you're getting their full attention anyway. Also, a long range pull would be nice as well. The reason I stay as flight is because of low pressure as a long range pull. Fire is already risky enough as it is, not like rage or ice, because when you're cc'ed, there is no way to stop the damage flow, and since you take everything to the face, like I said in my other post, it gets extremely overwhelming. What they could do is change fire is to add something that could stop the damage flow.

I know some people love fire but tbh i dont how anyone plays it. People ***** and moan about it all the time and imo rightfully so. Theres been how much feedback on fire tanking? Yet the devs do nothing or some tiny tweak that doesnt help much. Me personally id just rather not play the power. And ive played all 4 tank powers. Ice/rage has clear advantage over earth/fire. Does that mean no1 should play earth or fire? Ofc not. I just dont know how people continue to play and deal with the devs ignoring them. Id rather switch powers and have things be a little smoother and fun, but hey thats just me.

Also ive seen some good fire/earth tanks do well in thrones, normal thrones. But they are few and far between. Id like to see a dev go tank that raid as earth or fire, then tank it as rage or ice and honestly tell the community theres no difference. Id bet every penny i have, everything i own, and my life that it wont ever happen tho.