Earth Tanking Improvement Thread

Veritech created a thread that sought to compile relevant Earth improvement threads but that got me thinking (and Veritech mentioned as well) that there isn't a thread dedicated to offering reasonable buffs/tweaks to Earth tanking. There are quite a few ideas floating around but nothing focused, so this thread will be used strictly for Earth tanking improvements.

After much noise from the community Fire received attention from the devs on more than one occasion. Regardless of your own opinion of the tweaks to Fire it is a good sign that the devs will at least acknowledge the community's complaints. First I'll start with things I do not believe Earth needs.

-Tacked on healing abilities
-Health buff
-More shields
-Earth elemental armor

All of these abilites are too derivative of exisiting tank mechanics. What makes Earth unique is that we slow damage with our absorption so I'm of the camp that all future tweaks should keep this in mind. If you want to heal yourself go Fire, if you want insane health buff go Rage, if you want a ton of shields go Ice. Here are a few tweaks (some are my ideas, some are the community's) that I believe are the right direction for Earth tanking improvements.

-Change innate absorption buff from 25% to 30%, full absorption buff from 50% to 60%
-Add absorption mechanics to various powers; Totem seems to be a popular choice
-Add cc effects to various powers; Epicenter and Tectonic Break immediately come to mind (allowing Localized Tremor to cc without Daze pi would help as well)
-Change Envelope from an encasement to literally anything else

At work right now so I'll go into further detail on why I feel those tweaks can work, downside to each suggestion, and a few more minor alterations to Earth tanking. Everyone should feel free to offer suggestions, I only ask you provide an explanation for each suggestion.

Awesome thing here

Don't really have any suggestions of my own but would like to say that I'm interested in any more ideas you have and also from other earth tanks out there

I personally love earth and recently started tanking as earth when the most recent dlc dropped

Tanked Lab
Tanked Halls
Even tanked Ares in throne elite

The power is very usable in the raids but just is a bit harder as you got to use powers at the right time ( example: when most ads are knocked down so you avoid some damage when you use a power)

I saw the vid that's in your Sig and I'm impressed!
Nice tanking there man! Now I wanna give it a shot on tanking the ads.
I do believe that was the elite raid? (Correct me if wrong)

An aftershock load out seems to be the only usable one in the newer content

golem loadouts are fun but Brick can hardly handle the amount of damage taken from the raids and requires that he be summoned again and again which is pretty risky as if he goes down, you're most likely soon to follow if you don't summon him quickly


Anyway, just posting a comment here on a few of my thoughts as an earth power user

Earthen Grip should have an aftershockable multi-target pull...similar to what Rage has, but activated with aftershocks. This would make it more vulnerable than Rage's multi target ranged pull (because the aftershocks would bring them in in succession 1 at a time)...but you play Earth for the risk v reward challenge anyway.

Cosmetically, I want the old Damage Shift aura/animation active when aftershock absorption is active. I really miss that animation and want it back one way or another.

What about Epicenter having a wider range?

yeah that would be great

I think that the brick and crystal shouldn't be a tanking mechanic but more of a support pet. A nice option and make sorcery have the pets mechanic and make their pet mechanic awesome. This would make it awesome for sorcery and earth players. I think that if using the pet then gemstone shield should shield the pet heal it and restoring it to full power. That would remove totem and the pet shield. Also change the supercharges. They aren't very good at all, for damage and tanking.

My suggestions for tanking are:

• Make aftershocks mitigate up to 80 or 90% damage.
• Gemstone shield to shield pet too.
• increase the length of gemstone shield or reduce cool down time.
• Make tectonic break or localized tremor an add CC.
• Make reinforce also absorb 20% damage and start a possible aftershock AM
• Make reinforces buff better.
• Make shards max range and the same damage as striking stones.
• Remove crystal's weapon mastery crit excluded. (enforcing the idea that the pets are support not a mechanic)
• Make the single target pull multiple target pull.
• Improve bricks AI
• increase bricks health
• reduce crystals power cost
• Increase the range of epicentre.

i think that's it for now

Earth has 3 options for self heals, which is enough for the power, IMO. Everyone wants the power to sustain without a reliance on the healer which is not going to happen. Giving Earth tanks higher defense to take less damage is one solution.

Risk vs Rewards principles need to be incorporated into Earth. Ice is no risk, ALL reward. If earth is going to be a more skill based power that requires really good counter play and precise timing, as it does now, there needs to be a reward for the extra effort. Currently there is none and when you compare it to Ice it becomes even more glaring.

Earth needs an increase in its DmgA. I think earth should get increase to innate Tank buff = 30% dmgA when using power.

AFTERSHOCKS:
I think their should be increasing DmgA with more AS. Maybe something like:
JH/Upheaval Cast = +20% for total of 50%

x1 AS = +25%; 55% DmgA

x2 AS = +30%; 60% DmgA

x3 AS = +35%; 65% DmgA

I think this will bring some risk vs reward aspect with respect to activating your mechanic.

PETS:
Pets need buffed to absorb 40% of your dmg to get total 58% dmgA.

Need more control over pets a simple solution would be this:
Clicking on Brick/Crystal will control their basic behavior - toggling between A & B

A: Pet will return and stay next to owner

B: Pet will go range to attack whatever you have targeted.

Clicking the Pet icon will toggle them to stay close or go range.
Holding Brick/Crystal power icon will make it go away as it does now.

While holding block, Pets will also get a small defense buff.

IMMUNITIES:
Earth's immunity powers have nothing to do with our Tank mechanic (ex. Ice gets shields along with their full buff, Fire gets healing along with their full buff, Rage gets their health buff for using powers). So in a similar way our immunities, which are essential in endgame content, need to supplement our Tank mechanics.

Here are some suggestions that I think makes sense:

Soothing Sands: Gives HOT and POT to your Pet. Heals and give 10% control resistance to you.

Unstoppable: Increases your dmgA +10% for 12secs. Knocks-backs and dazes enemies.

Been waiting for a tank thread

I'll be happy with jackhammer healing back a portion of damage dealt while in tank stance.

Then remove the toughness buff. Replace this with health.
Tectonic break must be switched to a cc move.
Remove the cooldown of E-Grip.
Reduce cooldown on epicenter.


Those are the only ones I can think of off the the top of my head.

I like a lot of this. I posted this in another thread, but I want to see certain powers that create earthen constructs like totem, shards, tectonic break and possibly rumble crush stack absorbtion above the 43.75% brick gives and the 50% that Jackhammer offers. Keep the mechanics for those powers the same (Brick gives auto damage shift, Jackhammer aftershocks affect absortion length) and have casting any of the above powers offer 25% additional absorbtion for 8 seconds. Max absorbtion you can have is 75%.

I'd also add a feature revolving around Reinforce where rather than taking that full damage to a teammate, you can pass that off to Brick. This would at least make Brick a bit more interesting to use.

Localized Tremor should not need a PI to juggle. I asked for that when the power first launched and it was never addressed. I'd also add a combo feature to Epicenter and Tremor where tapping melee right after puts you into Jack Hammer for DA or tapping range into the whirl wind power (forgot the name. never used it) for DA.

I don't think any of those changes are too out there and gives Earth the breathing room to do it's job easier, as well as make it engaging. Right now there is just too much turtling to stay engaged. I'm not saying you should be able to go HAM and attack all the time, but all powers, regardless of role should expected to at least be able to get a combo meter for tier 2 power regen so they can stay somewhat self sufficent. Atm, that is really hard for Earth to do.

Earthen grip AS would be bloody amazing. A dmg buff would be a great addition to earth to increase its worth. Was anyone else disappointed when they first started playing earth and realized that the reinforce animation isn't a shield. I was looking forward to popping a shield and having rock shoulders. I would love if they switched the animations for reinforce and gemstone.

OO and envelop needs to be changed, or at least give off a huge aggro burst making all enemies to be drawn to the orb then when it breaks they get knocked back with shrapnel.

Actually both animations i think they could of done better with but i was thinking about gem shield could cover you`re whole body in like gravel,rocks something like a golem maybe and reinforce can`t think of anything but it obviously needs a wayy better animation that fits its purpose as a dps buff (OMG ROCK FIST HOW LAZY AND A FAST WAY TO GET THE JOB DONE ;/ )

I would much rather have rock shoulders than floating chunks of rock

Alright I have a little more time to go a bit further in depth with my suggestions and to look at others in this thread or other threads. I won't be able to credit everyone who came up with their respective ideas first (or at least the first to post said idea) so I apologize.

Change innate absorption buff from 25% to 30%, full absorption buff from 50% to 60%

This is the simplest change (Brick tanking would go from 43.75% to 51%). It would not require much resources or time on the part of the devs to alter our absorption buff. An extra 10% absorption is not enough to make us OP but it is enough to enhance our survivability. The downsides to this change, though, is that it dissuades further work on Earth tanking from a dev perspective. The devs have both limited time and resources so it would behoove them to make efficient changes to powers rather than time intensive changes.

Add absorption mechanics to various powers; Totem seems to be a popular choice

For this suggestion to work I don't believe the first suggestion would be possible; Earth tanking would be too powerful. As I stated above adding absorption mechanics to powers would require time the devs may not have; having said that, there are three different avenues to this approach.

• In addition to increasing duration of 50% absorption, additional Jackhammer aftershocks (capped at 3) would increase absorption by a set amount. 5-10% has been suggested by various members, meaning aftershocking JH 3 times would result in 65-80% absorption for 18 seconds. To me, this might make us too powerful. Also this change doesn't address Brick tanking (Brick is stupid but some people like him, so he should at least be considered with any future updates).
• Keep the aftershock absorption mechanic as is (50% when aftershocked once with Upheaval, 50% from tray with JH, additional JH aftershocks increase duration to 12, 15, 18 seconds) but WHILE AFTERSHOCKING absorption is increased to 75-90%. What I like about this idea is that it encourages multiple aftershock powers on one's loadout and fits perfectly with the risk/reward playstyle of Earth. Sure you would increase your absorption but you would be vulnerable to block with each aftershock. This change would encourage aggressive, tactical gameplay. Earthquake could also have some use as an SC if this tweak were to be made.
• A somewhat simple (though time intensive) and much requested change to our absorption mechanic would be to add absorption buffs (5-25%) to certain powers. Aesthetically I love this idea; an Earth tank would use the actual Earth to absorb damage. It just fits so well with the idea of Earth tanking from a concept perspective. I think an interesting way to go about this would be for each tree (Geokinesis and Seismic) to have absorption buff powers, but Geo's buff powers would only work with Brick up and Seismic's buff powers would only work without Brick up. In my head each tree would have two stackable absorption buffs; the first buff (Shards in Geo and Localized Tremor [or Pebble Blast] in Seismic) would be 5-10% while the second (Totem in Geo and Tectonic Break in Seismic) would be 10-15%. This encourages the use of some of the lesser used Earth tanking powers, adds more variety to one's loadout options, and would require one to have a good rotation of the three absorption buffs (JH/Upheaval, 35%er, 50%er) to keep them all going.

Add cc effects to various powers; Epicenter and Tectonic Break immediately come to mind (allowing Localized Tremor to cc without Daze pi would help as well)

The Seismic tree, for all intents and purposes, is the tanking tree. Jackhammer and Upheaval are the only way to achieve 50% absorption, Epicenter is the better of our two pulls, and Gemstone is a staple in all end game Earth tanking loadouts. Unfortunately (aside from JH) there is not much in the way of crowd control abilities in the Seismic tree. Take Epicenter, for example. Of the three point black aoe pulls in the game (Fire's Backdraft and Rage's Without Mercy are the other two) Epicenter is the only one that just pulls. No knock up, no heal (I don't want a heal, just mentioning it), just.. pulls. Why? Localized Tremor needs the Daze pi to knock up; Fire has some abilities that require a pi (Burning) but it is stupid easy for Fire to keep up their pi. Not the case for Earth. Tectonic Break's and Pebble Blast short cooldowns may be one of the reasons why the devs won't add cc effects to them (avoid spam I suppose) but Shards and Striking Stones both have very short cooldowns as well.


Change Envelope from an encasement to literally anything else

We need a viable tank supercharge, plain and simple. Ice, Fire, and Rage all have SCs that can be used with either battle tank or traditional tank loadouts. According to the devs it is not possible for someone encased to hold aggro, but someone had mentioned an interesting idea (though I'm not sure of its feasibility). The crate in the Supply Lines (I think it's Supply Lines) duo generates super pro aggro; perhaps have whatever is used to generate aggro with that crate and use it for encasements, Envelope specifically? If not, just remove the rock shield healing thing and replace it with a 15-20 second enhanced state where we have 75-90% absorption. No rock armor, just the absorption.


This is all I have for now. I'll address some of the suggested changes in this thread and ideas I've seen posted elsewhere (specifically our defense buff) later.

I like the sc idea... If they wanted to give it an animation the gemstone shield animation would be fine .. They could even put the shoulders in ut if they wanted I wouldn't hate that although I typically don't like "stuff" on my character... but the sjhiekd would be fine as a visual

But... I like my big Rock Fists.

I hate the rock boxing-gloves. It's the reason I don't have reinforce on bar loadout.

I haven't been Earth for a while but it's such a cool power that I would like to return to it someday.

Here are my suggestions.

- Increase Damage Absorption to 66% (Brick tanking goes up to 55%).
- Every point of Dominance gives you 1.2 to 1.5 (not sure what would be fair) Defense whenever you activate a power.
- Epic Center also roots enemies.
- Earthen Grip pulls multiple enemies.
- Soothing Sands also has a heal over time. *Not sure if it already does. Not Earth at the moment.
- Faster After Shocking for Gemstone Shield.
- Envelope is either a shield that lasts 8-12 seconds, heals you, and can't be broken or rock armor that give you 75% Absorption for 12 seconds and healing.
- Localized Tremor not needing to Daze enemies first to knockdown.
- Brick needs a major AI upgrade.

I can't edit my first post, but I wanted to update something.

75% max absorbtion might be too OP. I want to change my position on the matter as 67% max absorbtion for DA, and 60% for Brick.

75% absorption as a SC too potent? or as the regular mechanic?
It's basically Consecrated Ground rehashed into Earth. That's a