Your Theory on the Tank Shortage

Discussion in 'Gotham City (General Gameplay)' started by BaelinFishman, Sep 23, 2021.

  1. Magnificent Loyal Player

    I don't see tank shortages when PUG'ing normal content. I'm Fire and am primarily DPS but I keep my Tank build up just in case tanking is needed and most of the time I'm going a PUG Alert or Raid there's already a tank there when I join the group.
  2. Penryn The Gadgeteer

    I watched your video. I believe you are operating under the assumption that Higher Defense stats should translate into lower incoming damage number. That's how it works in most games and I once believed it worked that way for DCUO. However, the way the Defense stat works in DCUO is very different and fairly complicated.

    The most important thing to realize is that the Defense stat is actually CR-based and regulates incoming damage according to a set of rules. Here is a summary of the rules:

    1. The game expects the player to have a certain Defense stat at each CR. The "base" Defense stat for each CR is met by wearing a relatively uniform set of item level Damage-role gear.
    2. Until the player's equipped combat rate exceeds the enemy's CR by 29, incoming damage from specific enemy attacks remains constant. That means if a specific attack from a CR 94 enemy does an average of 82 damage, it will do 82 average damage as long as the player's equipped CR is 0 to 122.
    3. Increasing your CR with non-Defense boosting gear leads to more damage being received because the player's defense stat will not meet the expected Defense stat for that CR point. The can result in large damage multiplication in the most extreme scenarios.
    4. Powers and mods that provide Defense percentage bonuses scale linearly with damage reduction. For example, equipping a mod that increases your Defense by 10% results in a 10% decrease to damage received from enemy attacks.
    5. Once the player's equipped CR exceeds the enemy's CR by 29, a scaling factor is activated which provides an additive bonus to Defense. As the differential between player's equipped CR and the enemy's CR increases, damage received will slowly decrease. This bonus caps out at 75% damage received reduction when the player is about 75 CR above the enemy's CR.
    If you would like to see a dramatic example of this at work, try fighting Arkillo.

    CR 0 Example
    Here I fight him with no gear equipped at CR 0:

    Note that all of his hits are in the low hundreds. Note that Whirlwind Attack does ~190 damage per tick.

    CR 66 Example (No Defense Stats)
    Now what what happens if I equip gear that provides that provides no Defense and boosts my CR to 66:

    I take damage in the tens of thousands because my Defense stat isn't at the expected value for CR 66.

    CR 350
    Now watch what happens if I put on a proper set of gear:


    The additive Defense Scaling bonus kicks in and I take 42-45 damage per tick. That's 25% of what I was taking at CR 0.


    The Defense stat is important, but isn't something you have a lot of influence over. Generally the best you can do is equip mods and artifacts that boost your Defense by a certain percentage. The way it is all setup helps to guarantee you can never drive a NPC's damage down to 0.

    I hope that clears up some of the misconceptions about the Defense stat.
    • Like x 13
  3. catplaysxoxo Loyal Player

    Well done!
    • Like x 2
  4. JailhouseBat Active Player

    Excellent explanation.

    Question: Where exactly do artifacts come into play in your theory? Particularly the Everyman, which converts health into defense?
    • Like x 1
  5. L T Devoted Player

    I concur.

    It seems like it's not right because it completely breaks the consistency of the game. It's a non skull haymaker attack that ought to be vulnerable to block, but isn't. Instead it's a tank-shredder.

    Every time the Devs move away from the original rock-paper-scissors/block-blockbreak-lunge combat mechanics they make the game worse. This is one of those times.
    • Like x 1
  6. Penryn The Gadgeteer

    When testing anything related to the Defense stat, it helps to pick NPCs that have weapon attacks with low damage variance. The best example I've ever seen is the Wrath Imp in Gotham Wastelands. It only uses ranged Handblaster attacks with low variance. It makes it easy to pick up on the full range of possible incoming damage after about 30 seconds of testing.

    Having said that, let's see what a Wrath Imp does when testing Level 200 Everyman Prototype at CR 118 and 8827 Health:

    at 100% Health (5751 Defense):
    Wrath Imp Pulse Beam does 28-31 damage per tick

    at 50-75% Health (6544 Defense):
    Wrath Imp Pulse Beam does 25-27 damage per tick

    at 31-50% Health (7534 Defense):
    Wrath Imp Pulse Beam does 22-24 damage per tick

    I can't actually test the <= 30% condition because the EEG kicks in and auto-heals me back up before my health reaches that threshold.

    As you can see from the test, there is a 12.8% difference between 5751 and 6544 Defense. The reduction in damage was approximately equivalent to 12.6%.

    There is a 26.8% difference between 5751 and 7534 Defense. The reduction in damage between those two thresholds was 24.8%.

    Based on the numbers, the Defense boost on Everyman Prototype does help to reduce incoming damage from Wrath Imps. The percentages are in line what I'd expect to see with percentage increases in Defense resulting in a similar decrease for incoming damage.

    The numbers for Everyman Prototype will be different in other stat-clamped zones because Health and Defense stats will vary.
    • Like x 7
  7. inferno Loyal Player

    Very well done. Thank you for taking the time to show and explain what goes on with Defense.
    • Like x 1
  8. Doctor Nova Devoted Player

  9. Zero303 Well-Known Player

    well tanks are leaders so to say. and perhaps many players just want to play and not lead.
    and maybe its because they dont know the maps yet 100% as a tank should.
    perhaps thats whats the problem is, psycological ?
  10. Jurandyr Ross Well-Known Player

    It's difficult being a tank when people b**** at everything you do, and you usually take the blame for everything when grouped with noobs.

    Person: "hey tank, can you not pull every trash mob so my static DoT do all hits even though i should only have casted it after everything was pulled together?"

    Person: "hey tank, why you not pulling everything? we want to burn a big pile of trash"

    Person: "I went ahead of group and died to an add/boss, this tank is trash"

    Person: "oh no, the dps died to a scripted attack. it's tank's fault... kick him"

    Person: "why u not superspeed? I don't pay for your sub but you should play how I tell you to"
    • Like x 3
  11. zNot Loyal Player

    i think the raid content design that tells people to pew pew to win makes this issue bigger the content is dps centric so the dps always think about doing damage damage damage and it really got worse over the years,the only time i see DPS behave is when the content or that boss fight is a tank check or tank centric design.

    The elite raid content has become easy on the Tank and as i said is DPS centric this imo leads to DPS having a attitude, people used to respect tanks alot back in the day because they knew Its difficult on the tank but sadly now you can just find a random pug tank that will do any job and the hard job atm is actually to find a few good dpses and a buff troller i really hope this will be reversed to what it once was.
  12. Burning_Baron Loyal Player

    I only like tanking with league mates during endgame content. Even during things that should be easy, I find that certain roles don't assist in my sustainability. As tanks we look at a lot of information coming in and usually have to be the ones to call out tells. This means I am constantly looking at power bars and health bars. I know when trollers aren't doing there thing causing healers to not have juice. I know when healers are spamming heals for every little tick and becoming a burdon on trollers. I know when dps straight up ignore fallen allies. I know when healers are just working on their "battle healing" but forget the heal part. I could be watching my health tick away and only see the healers power bar drop slightly every few seconds indicating to me that tehy may be doing other things besides healing during tank killers or high burst damage from adds etc.

    It gets frustrating so I think a lot of us just dps to save ourselves a headache. Afterall I am playing to have fun.
    • Like x 1
  13. Reinheld Devil's Advocate

    If this were any more true it would need to be a law or something. Especially the last one. The push to be SS in Tank or DPS is annoying at best...discriminatory at worst. I don't know that any of these make me NOT want to tank ever, but that last one has had me say 'Oh...ok, I'll take off so you can find an appropriate tank with SS'. I love seeing the shouts in LFG for 30-40 min after...on the VERY few runs the excuse vote actually passes.
    • Like x 2
  14. BumblingB I got better.

    I love me some Penryn testing information.

    This was very informative.

    Though, I do remember there was a different Defense formula back before they did the whole CR Differential and stat flattening. I only remember this because Kristyana was testing Fire and Rage and there were some weird results with the defense stat. Like older content was different than newer content in how defense worked. It was also looked at with the whole chest mod debate.

    In any case, thank you for the information!
    • Like x 1
  15. Zeph El New Player

    I was mentored in tanking by a real-life grandmother in the days of City of Heroes. My mains are usually tanks regardless of the MMORPG. Tanking in DCUO is different – I resonate with many of the comments that preceded me in this thread. If my League was big enough, I would run exclusively with them. I am not going to race with a DPS to keep them from danger. Their life is in their hands. In Warcraft, a healer and I would typically run PUGs together. We would break out the popcorn when they rush ahead of me instead of letting me lead the group. When I am not tanking, I (90% of the time) wait for the tank to initiate the boss fight. When I am tanking, I initiate when I am ready (and typically do a ready check with the group – almost no one ever responds) and expect the group to follow. When I appear in a pug with no healer or controller, I already have a judgement for that PUG. I wish – even for much longer queue times to wait for a traditional raid (2 Tanks, 2 Healers, 2 Controllers and 2 DPS) – that DC’s Queue system would be revised to let the DPSers do their thing and to let the traditionalists – run raids the way they are supposed to be.
    • Like x 1
  16. Trykz Dedicated Player

    They do have this option for role required alerts. It’s just broken right now. And I’ve seen no response on getting it fixed. I’m with you, I’m a purist, I’d much prefer to run a traditional set up in every piece of content. If you would, to upvote the bug about the role required option setting.
    • Like x 1
  17. JailhouseBat Active Player

    Wow thanks.

    My final question: What is your theory as to why 1st boss in ISE seems to give so many tanks trouble? By my recollection only rage and earth tanks have seemed most comfortable in there.
  18. Penryn The Gadgeteer

    I'll leave detailed answers about this question up to experienced tanks. I mainly play Controller or DPS.

    In all of the runs that I've done of Inner Sanctum Elite, I've seen multiple tanks of all types encounter issues with the ARC. My experience is that it is usually related to the tank not maintaining proper distance from the ARC at a critical moment or not handling the adds correctly. The ARC does hit really hard and is an annoyingly mobile boss. The more experienced tanks that I play with generally don't have a problem with this fight.
  19. JailhouseBat Active Player

    Ok. Thank you sir.
  20. L T Devoted Player

    See my previous comment.

    Actually, to save you some time: it's because the ARC breaks the normal rules of the game. When a boss does an obviously counter-able attack that's not a skull, then -- duh-- you counter it. Except in this case if you block to counter it you die. It's a stupid exception to the way the game is supposed to work.

    So the "proper" way to tank this boss is to ignore the game's core mechanics and just run away while getting him to chase you. Which is a decidedly unfulfilling way to tank.

    Rage Tanks are ok VS that boss for reasons that got spelled out in my tank-vs-tank thread. Earth Tanks are OK because your pet gives you a lot of margin in that particular fight. Aftershocking Earth Tanks need to run away like little girls. (Note to self: change to a Brick load-out)