Test Discussion GU 103: Tank Balance

Good morning I would like to see bitter winds made into a shield again, reflect to be as strong as winter ward and resonating gale to be like epicenter,backdraft and without mercy. If a Tank has to use iconics powers it's not balanced.

Really hope they don’t make reflect as strong as winter ward.

Whats wrong with remorseless recovery?

No, resonating gale is an amazing crowd control move (and pulls adds nearby) and can be used from range aswell. Not every tank power has to be the same..

Resonating Gale is fine the way it is. It provides range and close quarter CC. Leave it alone.

When I use it, it only heals for one out of every 8 or 12 hits. It doesn’t work like it used to and the amount of heels I get from it despite the fact I’ve tried it with both resto and dominance doesn’t change the amount. It used to heal for each hit I delt against enemies but now it’s like it’s not even there.

RR was changed in the Revamp so you only get 6 Heals maximum during the 12 second duration. So every 2 seconds the damage you do, a % of that added with a % of your Resto and Dom will be the Heal and it does have a Cap. What the formula and figures are has not been released to us. If you dont see the amount changing it may mean you are hitting the Cap of the Heals.

Im you are already but check your combat log as you go. You'll see 6 heals every 2 seconds. The damage you do before your heal should add up and match the Heal.

Please buff density. That is all.

So just to make sure I’m on the same page here...
They change the health stacking for rage tanks from how many ads are attacking you
They change the health stacking again to your dominance after you reach 50 hits
They change the health stacking again to now only be 50% of your max dominance
They clamp the value of healing from (all while lying through their teeth and saying skill points matter) remorseless recovery
They’re taking away even more of its defense
They’ve made it suicidal to close quarter damage anything above alert content and make its range rotation for might second string DPS
And while doing all this they couldn’t bother to completely slide everything into dominance but instead had to leave it some garbled mess of resto, dom, and health
I mean the least they could do is fix that much since they’re again damaging one of the games greatest creations

The Devs have done multiple nerfs to rage because in their words it’s “overpowered” and it needs to be brought in line with other tanks then turns around and proceeds to buff three other powers fire, atomic, and earth. All while they continue to claim that ice is fine despite the fact it only has one functioning shield with the other two breaking like they were made of papier-mâché and with its DPS still not performing up to par.

Thats about the sum of it yea. I dont know if you noticed this but every power got a nerf during stats because we were too powerful

Yes you’re right. And yes rage was over performing. It was not only the strongest in terms of mitigation, but also had the window to cancel rage crash so large that anyone can do it so that made it the easiest to handle. And yes they made it so you can’t face tank bosses as a dps. No dps should be able to survive that well in melee against bosses and some adds in elite. And even thou they did nerf rage again it’s still the strongest tank power. I’m glad that they aren’t buffing tanks to be able to do what ever they want in elite. If you want easy mode stick to event or regular. Elite was never meant to be easy but because so many people cry about not being able to beat it they have become easier. Tanks can do elite just fine. You can solo them and kite or 2 tank and face tank. Some parts you can face tank by yourself. People asking for all these major buffs just want easy mode and easy renown.

Ice is fine. Ice is still one of, if not, the best tank in game. The only problem Ice has a problem with is Multiple Targets which I think the new Shatter Restraint change may help with that a little bit. Rage hasnt been neutered as i feel youre trying to convey. Im not sure on the DPS part cause I dont play DPS. Rage is still a top Tank and still does impressive damage in Melee when they are alive lol. Range is safer and does okay damage. Im not too sad about my damage but again, i dont play DPS a lot and when i do, Im not there to be #1 in the charts, Im there to kill the boss and at least do more damage than the Controller lol.

Rage is still the strongest tank power in the game.

If I look at Ice's shield strength order

Winter Ward, HL shield (iconic), Reflect, Shattered Restraint. Shattered Restraint is a paper bag in hard hitting content. It's a liability to even put in the loadout in those places. Shattered Restraint in elite hallway is instance death. The cooldown is less of an issue than shield strength. Tieing in ice giant (SC), is not going to help much. Not going to about Amazon Deflect right now.

The fact that HL shield is good, shouldn't be a reason not to buff ice shields. I'm not going to suggest nerfing HL shield, as that could affect other tank builds, and it will bring pitchforks against me.

I'm ok with ice not having a group pull. Not changing resonating Gale. And ok with not making bitter winds a shield again. How about just make Reflect as strong as HL shield at least. Make Shattered Restraint as strong as the current Reflect. During revamp test feedback, the reason the devs gave us taking away bitter winds as a shield was that it'll free slots to put more utility / non shield moves. I appreciate the reason. Fewer shields but strong enough.

Make Shattered Restraint viable again, at least in line with Reflect's current strength on live.

So to everyone here that keeps saying rage is over powered as a tank let me ask you this when is the last time you saw a rage tank beat an atomic tank. I can tell you right now in the last five months I have been everything except an earth tank. I have solo’d from birth to death open world bosses from metal part one and metal part two and even the justice league dark content. I’ve done elite raids from Titans content all the way up to DME. The easiest tanks I had in there were fire and atomic with ice right behind them. Do you know which ones I had the hardest time with? Rage. Rage is the only tank in the game right now where your survivability is not predicated off of your stats as an individual player, but off of a predetermined mechanic for what you will soon have no influence on. With ice your Skill points increase your Dominance which increases your shields strength. The skill points you get for your restoration for fire increase your heels. Tell me what part of skill points once this clamp goes through will matter for rage.

I have noticed that Ice tanks lose aggro pretty often if one doesnt taunt the millisecond after one used a shield, one of the shield ability detaunts...

What exactly are you talking about here?

First you say that rage can not beat atomic. Is this in pvp? If so that please do not bring pvp into this thread as pvp is currently broken and nothing should be balance around pvp right now.

You then say that the easiest tanks you had in there were x. Does this mean that you were not tanking? Not bashing, just wondering what you mean by this.

You say that rage mechanics aren’t measured by skill points than go on to say that ice gets stronger shields with skill points going into dominance. While it is true that rages mitigation mechanic is primarily based on none adjustable factors this still doesn’t mean that rage doesn’t benefit from SP. you can put more points into health to gain more ehp or put them in Dom to increase EHP. This is equivalent to putting points into Dom and restor for ice.

Rage is the strongest tank in the game. However other factors still apply. Mainly the person tanking. If you have a great atomic tank and a mediocre rage tank than yes the atomic tank will have an easier time. However if you get to tanks of equal skill level than the rage tank will usually do better.

The changes being made to rage are minuscule. If anything, for bad rage tanks it’s a buff because it’s easier to get your max scar tissue up. While with the better rage tanks the nerf won’t be to big if a deal. And people forget that the 100% defense buff doesn’t equal to double damage mitigation. Think LT did the math on how much mitigation defense actually accounted for. So people aren't going to be losing to much EHP.

So I'm seeing a lot of feedback that is requesting new or different things. I would like to see some feedback on what ACTUALLY changed. Please let me know on the following:

• Fire Tanking - How have the changes worked out on Test?
• Atomic Tanking - I've gotten plenty of feedback on this.
• Ice Tanking - How has the change to Shattered Restraints worked out?
• Earth Brick Tanking - Has the increase in healing shown a noticeable difference to keeping Brick alive?

Thank you.

The changes to shatter seem to be a little clunky tbh. The whole point of ice is to try to not take damage at all while maintaining a shield as long as possible. As an ice tank if you take damage to your health you will usually take a large amount of damage in in turn get close to dying fast. I don’t think the change actually helps out as much as it seems on paper (at least in elite). In regular your health getting hit isn’t much of an issue to begin with. Would it be possible to have the cooldown changed a little? Either tie to shield damage mitigated (after damage calculations). Not sure how this would turn out but make it so when you take shield damage your other shields cooldowns get decreased by 1 second with an internal cooldown of 3-5 seconds? Or something like that? This would help promote the whole use less shields mechanics you guys wanted to push originally.

Granted I do want to admit that I’m not the greatest ice tank either so the cooldown might feel clunky personally but for others would be great so just my 2 cents.

You are absolutely wrong in saying that it will be easier for someone. Before so aggressively criticizing anyone who disagrees with you , do your homework. Before and after the change you need the same number of hit to get 50%. The only thing that made a change is that after 15 hits, you will not grow more in % (now 1-10%, 15-50%, 30-75%, 50-100% after changes 1-10%,15-50%(and yes 2,4,5 etc. hits now and after provide some % (10-50)).