Work In Progress GU103: Tank Balance

There has been many great suggestions on this thread. Only problem is that we just need more dev feedback.

Off topic but then again not really, but can we change atomic's full body aura to a style that doesn't overwrite our current auras? We all know they love to give us cosmetics so maybe this could change.

Good morning
All tank powers needs some tweaking some more than others.
Fire needs increased heals and defense, shorten hit Counter for all tanks.

Ice needs bitter winds as a shield/juggle again. Strengthen reflect shield, resonating gale a 360 pull like backdraft/EC,WM.
Increase defense again.

Earth needs brick to have higher health pool, fix fortify golem, increase heals from totem.

Atomic give higher resistance to control effects, easier to obtain aura.
Rage leave alone.
Bring all powers into line with rage.
Let's Facetank again, less kiting.
I might have missed something.

Are you having trouble as an Ice Tank in PC-E ? A competent Ice tank doesn't need to kite anything in that raid.

Leave Gale alone. It's one of the most versatile CC's in the entire Tank class. You can literally control adds with it at any range.

There's no reason to make Resonating Gale a 360 pull. If you want a 360 pull you'd be better off requesting a new ability that is a 360 pull or if there's one that already has FX that would fit a 360 pull for that one to be converted. All the other tank powersets have a ranged, multi target pull and a 360 pull (I think). No need to turn Ice's ranged multi target pull into a 360 pull.

Another thing to consider is Fire needing good allocate more skill points into healing. Other tank powers only need to use 20 to get down the skill tree...fire needs 60 in order to heal properly. Could something be implemented that specing into all the crit heals is a major benefit or make that it shouldn’t matter specing into the crits. Since healing is a major part of fire tanking I would hope that we could get a major benefit when we allocate 60 sp’s into crit healing.

You’re blaming people not tanking to this nerf? People wouldn’t tank even if they doubled their survivability they have right now. People don’t tank because tanking requires more attention and more knowledge of the mechanics. People don’t tank in dcuo or any other mmorpg. People don’t tank because people want to dps. People don’t tank because they would be tanking. It’s that simple. Go to any mmo. In every single game that has the trio (healer tank dps) or has another role, tanks and healers are always the least played roles. So don’t go blaming the nerfs for that because that’s only a tiny part of the reason.

And yes rage got nerfed because it needed to get nerfed. You think it was ok for a tank power to be able to heal 100% of the damage they took with 0 down time? In fact they made it easy to tank because they made it so that the comboed part of their moves also cancel rage crash which opens their safety window. Then they also made it so that the rage crash cancel window would get extended to where you didn’t have to combo but still had that option. So I’m sorry that your easy mode tank power is getting another SLIGHT nerf. But it needs it.

No love? 2 power sets are getting buffs. And they created a discussion page to actually talk about it. And I’d did read the post in the thread. The majority of people want to feel unkillable and face tank the bosses. I’m sorry but that request is ridiculous and I’m sorry if that seems harsh. People are not taking into account the consequences of doing that. If they buff tanks to be able to face tank everything in today’s era of dcuo then the only way to kill a tank would be to either increase the damage greatly im future dlcs which will end up in the group dying more from splash damage or more likely the devs will have to put way more one shot mechanics in the raids since those will be the only things that could kill a tank. We already have the devs doing a lot of “lazy” mechanics filled with one shots and less tactical mechanic where the groups has to work together. Look at PCe... If you don’t go to the one you’re tethered to, one shot. If you don’t go in the green circle, one shot. If you don’t block to drowned skull, one shot. On first boss... if you don’t run to portal, one shot. If you break out in wrong stun, one shot. If you don’t block to LB charge, one shot. The one shot mechanics are getting ridiculous and if they make tanks be able to face tank than there will be more similar “mechanics” in future dlcs. And yes, I know previous dlcs had one shots as well, but not this many and they also had tactical mechanics to do.

By seasoned testers you mean people who know how to play the game, are familiar with optimal allocations, and how to execute all game mechanics? OK, great... you've just tested optimal. You haven't tested what the average inexperienced DCUO player will do. Try looking in your randomly queued instances at the Skittles Rainbow of augments that these people have. If you're a Precision DPS, I expect to see 4 yellows. For a Might DPS, 4 reds. Didn't know better and went Hybrid DPS? I'd expect 2 reds and 2 yellows, or some other mix of them. For Healers, 4 greens. For Controllers, 4 blues (maybe 3 blue, 1 purple). For Tanks I would expect 4 purple except for Fire tanks where I would expect a mix consisting of anywhere from 4 green and 0 purple to 0 green and 4 purple.

All I'm saying is that you have to establish a base line performance expectation of each tank power set without any of the iconics, consumables, or advanced artifacts and augments necessary to run the elite content. That falls on the developers to set the theoretical baseline and for the testers to confirm that those minimum standards are met.

Testing has to be done with "gorilla hands"... that is, you need to just push a button, enter a word, hit a power, or whatever it takes... even if it's in the most unexpected location just to see what happens. This means you can't just think like an elite level player. You have to be able to put yourself in the shoes of a new player who is caught up in the gravity of rapid CR advancement.

Up in nine years I’ve been in this game the overwhelming majority of them I’ve spent as a tank. The reason I’m freaking out is because every time without exception you start to get somewhere the GM’s come along and Nerf/break a power down even more. If you think I’m trying to baffle you with BS I invite you to my YouTube channel where you can see the things I did with rage before they started nerfing the power into the ground and then ask you if you could replicate the same thing today that I did years ago. Reason why you don’t have tanks in this game anymore is because they’ve been doing that for years. And now as they attempt to do it again you wanna either sit here and remain silent about it or you wanna try and justify that it should be done.

Speaking as someone who was new once and failed constantly, I expect people to stand up after tying their shoes and ask why they keep falling.

Like I said before let testers set their own personal preference. If you want to test from the PoV of someone fresh off level 30, go for it.

Good afternoon ice only has long range pull( inescapable storm) which is a long range cone. Ice has no 360 pull like backdraft, without mercy, epicenter, atomic splitter. Ice could use 1. I have to use low pressure from flight mode.

Every tank power should play as any type of tanks. Tanks are post to be defense base, that is why they have a shield icon.

That's not too much

Totem range of healing need to be increased, increased all pets health.

Why kiting people need to do damage to the enemy.

Omg I had a brainfart and confused Resonating Gale with Inescapable Storm, my bad. Completely disregard what I said in my post in that case.

they should remove it, if one day like on Apr 1st. The reliance on that power is no joke.

Back then people were able to tank because the powers worked, they where rotations in reeving heals when needed, immunity rotations allowed us to rotate fresh heals without waiting on a cold down, all i got to say is we kited way less then now, regardless of this kiting trend people started doing, your not gonna see fire, atomic IN content unless run cus i cant tank and since when does ice kite back then unless one shot? the shields where solid.

Another reason why exchanging our healing & Dom-buff for a combo-dependent higher mitigation instead of just giving us the extra mitigation still makes little sense.

Rage has never been nerfed to the ground ever... Rage tanks have only seen buffs since its creation as a power. The only real change a Rage tank saw was to Remorseless Recovery. Rage was always the best add tank but struggled in s/t fights for not being able to get the health pool high enough, so they flipped how that worked and took away that weakness. The duration was too long between severe punishment cooldown and reapply rage mode so they reduced that duration, several abilities were given the ability of fervor, including the shield. The devs did everything in their power to make Rage the best overall tank by far at stats revamp and succeeded to the point where rage is overwhelmingly the most common sight in Elite content and Survival Mode. There is literally no argument against the fact that it needed to be brought down in line, which it has been and Rage tanks largely won't even see this as a nerf.