Headed to new genesis to mess around with the NGN adds testing survival capabilities of all the tank powers, since those adds are the only things that closely resemble a raid scenario without actually being in a raid. Ice- only issue I see is lack of tank abilities, you got 3 shields, a pull, and some SC's, there's really no variety with ice. Despite that being said, it's by far the best tank in the revamp. Strong shields, low damage-in, don't need to use a lot of power, utterly ridiculous how much better it is then the other tank powers. 10/10 Atomic- not really much to complain here. In no-troll situations, power costs do hinder it, but inside a raid where there's trolls, cost wouldn't be an issue at all and its survivalbility is practically on par with ice. 8/10 Earth- in a no troll/no heal scenario, it survived pleasantly well, gemstone shield is the shiznit, rotating that with soothing sands, you don't really have issues with staying alive. Power costs are fairly low (except for gemstone, each input took fairly large chunks) so there's no doubt in my mind earth would be a raid friendly tank. Not really any complaints besides the animations (never liked the way earth looked but thats more of a pettiness issue ). 7/10 Rage- Inside a raid it's not too bad, it's decent when you have power. When you don't, it can have issues. For starters, the cooldown on severe punishment is longer on test then it is on live, so you have a longer break in between rage modes which could be problematic if redirect rage or remorseless recovery are on cooldown. Since you need one of those two to help you survive the lul, you can no longer carry two breakouts on your loadout to help gain immunity to cancel rage crashes, so we're limited to one. As I said, with a troll and heal rage can shine, without a troll or heal, it will struggle, mainly cause rage mode only heals 75% of incoming damage on test so you need to constantly cast rage bringer or without mercy to make up for the lost 25%, which is why im putting rage at a 5/10 Fire- for me this felt like the least "tanky" power of the 5, high damage-in and high heals from backdraft and burning determination made me feel more like a healer with high health then a tank. It's squishiness is why I wouldn't bring it in higher SM rounds, not quite sure what it needs yet, maybe a higher health pool, but as it stands it's the most healer reliant tank power. Power costs aren't too bad though. 4/10 Overall feedback: I think tanks are in a decent spot with the exception of a few discrepancies within the powers themselves. What I would like to see added though, I touched a little on this in the fire thread already, I want each tank power to have something similar to the earth and atomic damage split abilities where you transfer a portion of incoming damage from someone else to you, but I want it added on to the main shields so we don't feel forced to use a loadout slot for it (when you have two tanks you already need to sacrifice a slot for single target taunt, having to use a slot for this too would take too much away from your survivalbility). I also want other tanks to take priority over everyone else with the damage split, that would be very helpful in elite and SM situations.
Tbh, I dont see how Redirected Rage+Remorseless can carry Rage tanks over the 4 sec vulnerability window. Provided you would need to Rage cancel with a combo and clip it with Redirected Rage, the vulnerability might go over to 5-6 secs if your not fast enough or you misclick or even get stunned. Things are tight enough with 2 sec vulnerability at Live server. As for Fire, active Fire tanks would have to forget about Engulf(since no healing) and not even bother with Wildfire (insignificant healing effect). They would need to spam Backdraft like insane and clip with the now weaker self healing abilities trying to fill their health bars. Power costs will be quite high always needing to use 2 powers at once.
If the cololdown on severe punishment was bought back down to match live server I probably wouldn't have any more complaints for rage, because you're right even with the shorter window we have now it can get messy if you're in high damage situations. I agree with the fire part, I don't see myself using wildfire anywhere outside of a solo or duo to help speed it up slightly. It's not raid material, and I wouldn't even put stoke flames on my loadout if I were to venture into SM. Would most likely spec into the HL shield instead.
I havent gone as far as testing shield caps but from my previous experience with HL Shield, it is nothing but a clipping tool. Shield cap is usually met by the time you are still in the animation. In case of Ice, I usually use it to clip Winter Ward. With Fire, I would use shield first and clip it with a self healing power. Or use a pull and clip with Shield+Self Healing. Shield first would give you a bit of a breathing room for heals to restore your health. Considering the new only 2% damage "boost" from Max Damage mod, I think 2 Shields with healing proc Hand mod would be the way to go for Ice, Fire and even Earth.
Nerfed health. Nerfed Healing-in. Nerfed self heals. It was pretty obvious Fire would be weak. On live, they had to buff Burning Determination and Stoke Flames, while also adding the Restoration buff, just to make it be more on pair with the other tanks. And now they are nerfing that and beyond to make it be on pair with the rest. What?
Except it's not really on par. Fire doesn't need a resto buff, back draft and BD heal fine. What it needs is to not feel so squishy. Perhaps a larger health buff.
Of course its not, if they nerfed everything that made it be on par. What neck mod were you using? Fortified block or the other for active tanking?
I had the active tanking mod, because I prefer to be active. Not sure the difference turtling makes yet.
During the first version of the Fire revamp, it was said that if you blocked you would loose the increased healing-in passive. Is this still the same? Or was it a bug?
Ill try it out when I get a little time freed up, although if this is the case this tells us that there is a preferred method to tanking with fire. Blocking and active should be equally as effective and if one is better then the other, all that will do is shoehorn people into one way of playing which I thought the stats revamp was supposed to eliminate? Although it could just be a small difference, this community likes to blow "small differences" way out of proportion, something to keep in mind.
Im really glad i dont tank with fire. Remember how bad it was for that long period of time and how long it took to be buffed? I have 1 major gripe with the revamp but my 2nd one is id bet we see powers that are not on par after this revamp goes live and who knows how long it will take before they are fixed/corrected. If nature/electric has been any indication it worries me that 1 of the powers i play will be pretty much useless and i have to wait a very long time for it to be fixed. Or else switch powers. And i wont be switching. I refuse to give them money for something they broke.
I also do the same testing in NGN. I could tell the tank differences in each Revamp version with that Raid spot. For a long time Rage and Ice were virtually head and shoulders over the rest of the tanks. With the latest, it seems more like a three way tie between Ice, Earth, Atomic in terms of surviving. Rage in my opinion got a bit hurt with the decrease in effectiveness in Remorseless Recovery. Maybe you could argue it was too powerful. I don't know. But it was a terrific ability when it had Shield formula numbers. Fire is a weird test for me, it seems to do much better while blocking lol. Fire is tricky on test. All the shields are extremely important to use now. All the tank powers should use them, my only worry with this new direction is something like high rounds of SM. That's when shields start breaking. Tanks on Stats Revamp are highly reliant on shields so I wonder how things fare when shields start to break.
Well...to be honest, thats on some of the players. There were some people that kept asking to keep the turtle tanking. Guess this is the answer to that ... smh
Just one question, when using the active mod, did you make sure your targets were burning? Fire has this thing where it only builds your defense if you're attacking burning targets. I haven't tested it in raiding yet, of course, but in other content I haven't had problems. Will test in raid (if I don't get kicked, lol) to check. Also, it's extremely important with fire to have all your healing out crits maxed, not sure if you did that too.
Tried turtling with fire, quite a big difference between that and active tanking, didn't even need the fortified blocking mod or rely on backdraft as much. Can this be looked into Moja? This says you have to block on adds and can really only be active on bosses where you have time to build up your fire soul.
