Work In Progress GU103: Tank Balance

The first sentence in your note pretty much says why Fire Tanks still lag behind: Fire is the health and healing tank, yet the last revamp to Fire made it less heal-y and health-y in exchange for more natural mitigation and now you're wanting to tinker with the mitigation again.

Let me be clear on this: I hate Fire Soul because it runs counter to the powerset's theme.

Prior to the revamp the issue was that changes to damage and mitigation and increases in damage really exposed our vulnerability. Instead of just increasing our natural mitigation 35% we got Fire Soul, a process which demanded we foresake some of one aspect of mitigation (healing) in order to achieve its potential (20 stacks). In other words every Fire Tank has to make a choice between "Do I heal myself" and "Do I keep my counter up", in situations where both are equally important.

My suggestion for fixing Fire Tanks:

1. Revert back to the pre-revamp level of healing and extra health
2. Increase our natural mitigation permanently (while in Tank role) by what we will get with the new max on Fire Soul you've mentioned
3. Leave Immolation's mitigation alone but add a HoT to put it within the Fire theme

I know this seems like a lot more than what you were intending, but what Fire has always really needed was a solid boost to natural mitigation, not a combo-dependent temporary mitigation boost. Fire Soul as implemented was far more complicated than was ever necessary.

Set up a way to copy our current characters to Test then set it up with the changes I've mentioned and let us do some apples-to-apples comparisons.

Hive E 1st boss. were going to forget tanks kiting back and forth over the rail (lol), because they couldnt handle the adds that came out the door it was a thing for some groups.

you have to understand when you say "we" your group of elite players you probably run with are a different breed the experts of the game. know exactly what to do, know exactly how to tank it, know exactly where to tank it, know all the 1 shots, counters etc etc, great healers, great dps etc etc. yes yall can go in the content and sleep walk through it. What about the rest of the community that doesnt have the luxury of being in these op leagues or have these op friends they can hit up and blow through it. you cant really look at it like "well we can do this 123 whats the problem with you other guys"

i personally rather the tank powers just get the slight buff / nerfs as intended and thats it nothing extra. imo if you dont want to learn tanking stay away from the role its a delicate role to play and not for everyone. BUT if majority of the community likes how it used to be and want more face tanking im not against that either because its what they want.

Thanks for pointing out my very exact point.

Encounters are allowed to be created that 100% require a second tank to be efficient. That's why there are 7 other players in that group that have the opportunity to switch to their support role. Because MoMe final boss requires absolutely zero dps to actually beat it. You could run 5 controllers and finish faster than 5 dps.

HiveE 1st boss is another case where its actually more efficient to run 2 tanks because of the npc spawns and how large the room is one tank can easily struggle to keep pulling and keep taunts up which may lead to a player getting attacked in the back. Plus it actually was really easy to solo HiveE 1st boss with guess what drumroll Rage because as rage you don't even care about the adds attacking you because of severe healing you, and you can run around and pull both bosses and adds together because you don't have to worry about surviving at all just getting your cancel off.

It's not about running with good players, most of all this tank balance feedback is mute if you have terrible healers, you'll struggle regardless but you can't balance a powerset around bad players. For one those types of players shouldn't be in elite if they aren't ready and in regular there is no real danger to die at all. These subtle adjustments will impact elite content more than regular because of the scaling in difficulty.

fair points made fair points.

Even after the changes Rage is still at the top of the chain.Since it still has the 20% health buff,defense slightly less than ice,8 seconds of invincibility and with almost no risk cuz manacles and strong shields,rage will still be the first pick for elite content.

Imo frevor should get nerfed by 10% instead of 5%(this would keep rage tanks, while in severe punishment, on their toes instead of being braindead damage sponges) &/or reduce frevor's effect so that it last less than 14 seconds.

Quick Survey: How many Tanks are using Immunity for Elite Content (besides Ice Tanks)?

(Because i dont since its never better than using just another Shield )

yeah pretty much. 5% will barely be noticeable like at all. peeps actually think this is a big nerf to rage

This is a rant directed at you. I'm a bit miffed at your multiple posts in this thread bad mouthing the players that are giving their two cents on this specific subject. I like you, I respect what you do for the community. But in this case, I think you are wrong on several things. And I just don't feel it appropriate to hold my tongue. If you get to speak your mind, hells yeah I am going to do the same.

Out of curiosity, would you want (do you think it would be a good idea for) each tank to have it's own unique way of tanking? A strength that sets it apart from all the other tank power sets. A way for every player to try out the different types of tanking and say I prefer this tank because it suits my play style, or because they feel more comfortable & confident in their understanding of how a specific tank works.

Some people are hard core and like the more intricate combos certain power sets have. While others, lets say more casual players that still want to enjoy end game content, find that some types of power sets are just a bit too difficult to master.

I have been in so many raids where a tank power set is running dps, for the very fact that they are under lvl, under geared, have way too few skill points, or just aren't as confident in their abilities to run a raid in the tank role. In those very same raids, you have multiple people begging for a tank, and no one steps up except the low lvl dps/tank. that tank tries their best, and gets slandered multiple times because the tank dies very few 2 minutes, and the party invariably wipes. I have even seen on many occasions, after that low tank (in event mode no less) gets kicked from a raid, all the while being called stupid, worthless, if you can't tank don't tank. They beg and coerce a tank to appear, and then blame that tank for not being good enough.

I AM SICK OF IT. This is why tanks are so hard to find. They don't want the constant verbal abuse when no one else will step up and do the role. Instead these cruel players should be offering tips in friendly conversation to help the tank better their skills.

Tanks need to be reworked from the ground up. Each tank needs to have it's own unique spin of tanking. Most importantly, tanks need to be way more user friendly.

Also, what exactly is wrong with Face Tanking. The first mmo (or heck any strategy game even DnD, or actual war history) that introduced a tank, what were they good at? What was their purpose. Pretty sure it was to Face Tank for the sake of the other party members. They ran out into battle and stood their ground, that was their job, they were **** at everything else except face tanking. It's only decades later that the gaming community has made Face Tanking a shameful thing. Not every player of every mmo with tank classes is a 20+ year veteran that can jump in at any time and pull off what the aggressive ***** in DCUO raids expect.

Lets cut some slack to the tanks, and help them have a better role going forward. Let's stand up and tell the verbally abusive dick heads to **** and tank instead if they can't stand the tank they have. And if they say "but i'm not a tank", then turn around and say, they guess what Mr. non tank you don't get to say **** to the tank who braved the harsh reality of mmo raids in dcuo because you begged him to.

I get, and I honestly respect, that you take the time to make in-depth videos about powers/gear/stats/etc. I refer to them often and I am no where close to a end game fully stated/geared player. But not everyone can follow those guides exactly as you have laid them out. Your guides are based on end game lvl characters maxed to the brim with the best of pretty much everything. and on the rare occasion that you don't have the top of the line of something You apologize to the viewer for your lack of X, Y or Z item. There are times when you even say "I don't play this class often enough to have all the answers." If you don't, as someone that actively studies and breaks down each class, know everything 100% of the time. How in God's Name can you expect every other player to be even 1/2 as good as you.

And FYI, as much as I try to follow your guides, there is some stuff that goes over my head in EVERY video of yours that I have watched. That doesn't mean I am a **** healer. That doesn't mean I am not actively trying to get better. But I am never going to be a hard core gamer, and there are so many tanks in exactly the same place as me. We play DCUO because we love the world it represents. We want to play and learn our classes to the best of our ability. But your ability, and my ability may never be at the same lvl. expecting the player base to put up with broken power sets and saying it's not nearly as bad you all are complaining about. Well, to those of us that are willing to speak out minds, it is as bad as we are saying. We don't know how best to fix things, if we did we'd probably be way better at our classes as you seem to want us to be. All we can do as a community is offer up our thoughts in this thread (as asked by a dev) on how we like the planned changes, or any others that we would like to see happen that they may not have considered.

So, please stop telling us to stop saying what the dev's have asked us to voice our opinion on. Share your opinion on what you like and dislike about the changes proposed, but don't tell us that our opinion is wrong.

Thanks.
And I do look forward to your next power set update video.

Hey Wassup guys Costy Here,


These Changes are for the three power sets don't do much when it comes to elite content. Look at rage scar tissue, in elite I don't walk up to barbatos and POW him with my one handed 50 times to build my health when I can easily just roll the pulse beam and get hit by the smite for example and my severe got me. The only change for rage really is the -5% fervor in which changes the def u get from popping severe. In which case if you wanna nerf rage to make it in line with others the only way to do that substantially is to nerf either fervor more or severe punishment heals. Like honestly why are saying rage is getting nerfed when it's not. People in elite don't build their hp in boss fights, even in hallways i only do it to add some cc like one hand flip slash or flurry.. Most of the time I don't even have scar tissue in my mind because simply no rage tank needs it because the fundamentals beyond that are so strong.

As for Fire how is fire's strong suit healing. I swear stoke flames be healing me for 20k out of my 250k health pool which sounds cool but isn't when I'm taking either constant hits of 50k or slower big hits of 100k (smite from barb) . Even then fire heals way too slow on top of that. Just fundamentally change it at this point. Like why are implying that fire's strong suit is healing and hp when that's obviously not true, in fact fire soul has nothing to do with that. It's just defense. I see that some people are content with the shield change and it is interesting..if only fire had the hp to back up it's low defense rather than buff it's defense which runs away from it's main concept of an hp tank. I just want more hp with a good amount of healing received buff. to make fire what it used to be in terms of concept.


As for atomic, you don't need to fiddle much with it to make it great. In fact just buff density, make atom splitter worth something in hallways at least or small addsets in boss fights. Ofc some of u reading this will probably take kiting into this argument. The reason tanks kite now is either they take too much damage or there are too many ads to stun, or both. If atom splitter worked how intended, atomic would be the cc based? dmg absorption tank it set out to be in the first place. And ofc more dmg reduction with aura would be cool too cuz atomic tanking feels like paper.


As for ice and earth they are where they're supposed to be and I'm totally satisfied with that except the fact with brick tanking that other beautiful players are already talking about.

That will be all post your feedback on my ideas.

Costy out

I feel like you haven't read any of my posts and you just pick certain words out and then assume the rest of my post is meaningless? Everything you said in your response doesn't apply to what i've been replying to in this thread. I can't really make any sense out of your reply.

Each tank already has its own unique playstyle, there isn't another tank powerset that plays the same, except for FIRE which tanks have been playing in a full DOM spec and taking multiple shields and stoke flames because a shield spec with fire was viable because of running multiple shields rather than what the point of a Fire tank is and that is the healing. Also I don't see how you can say tanks need to be more user friendly when the developers have nerfed GIANT aspects of the role since stats revamp. Players no longer have to focus on counters for immunity because the immunity duration and protection is significantly reduced, tanks have pretty much the same survivability not blocking as they do blocking. Crowd Control has completely changed to where tanks don't even need to run stuns or knock ups because they can just use a chronomatic emitter consumable for a free hardstun. Shields are all 100% absorption so having a strict shield rotation isn't as impactful now as it was in the past. All you have to do as a Rage tank is to hit severe and just jump around and do nothing until the cooldown or heatbeat reaches 75% percent and you hit e-chain. Then repeat the process, its the most forgiving tank powerset now that has ever existed after stats revamp. Man-bat form has made kiting ridiculous easy where you can just roll once and be half way across the entire map. The reason you don't see alot of tanks like you describe has more to do with the DPS side of the powerset than the tanking side. Ice/Fire/Atomic are considering weaker DPS powersets by might standards so you can either melee with Earth but have weaker range, or you can also melee with Rage and have weaker range. Alot of new players aren't prec spec'd until their artifacts are stronger and alot of new players like to play safer which doesn't lend itself to a melee playstyle which you have to be for max damage for Earth and Rage. If the tank powersets were all amazing for damage like the Controller Powersets are you'd see alot more "pug tanks" out there.

The reason why I ridiculed alot of posts in this thread is because it is against exactly what Batuba intended with this update, which is what he said directly in the first post that all those people didn't read.

Redesigning Core game mechanics such as immunity and breakout profiles doesn't even remotely count as non-invasive changes and that is literally rebuilding the game so all this talk about kiting is fruitless and its largely lower skilled tanks that are even worried about kiting to survive because that is all they know. They start to tank damage and panic and keep running away and rolling when there are only a tiny percentage of encounters that even require true kiting in DCUO.

I can't speak to comprehension of my guides as I will only use proper game terminology and i'm not going to make up any slang or act like I don't know what the powers are called or their abilities. If clarification is required that is why I have a comment section and a discord server with 700+ players.

thanks for watching.

Hello Batuba,

I like most of this and really appreciate it. I do have some suggestions.

1 - "Breakouts" for all tanks should have a cool down of 12 seconds with a minor/semi mitigation effect (heal/hot or absorb/mot) for (min) 3 to (max) 6 seconds. (Breakouts should be more usable and meaningful then they currently are).

2 - "Supercharges" for all tanks should be evaluated and determined whether a cool down and/or supercharge cost reduction along with some minor adjustments to some are needed. (Tanks have some interesting supercharges but most are not as good or out of reach for most when compared to movement or iconic supercharge options and some power abilities).

3 - "Shields & Heals" (BSM/BHM) for all tanks should be slightly increased. (Most of the tanks mitigation effects are slightly under performing when compared to the amount of damage in take).

4 - "Defense/Mitigation" for all tanks should have a similar base percent while in tank role, with minor range differences based on their mechanical buff effects. (We want tanks to be a little different sure, but we also want them all to be more balanced/inline with one another).

5 - "Immunity & Counters" - for all tanks should be more rewarding/meaningful. Currently immunity and counters have very minor impacts on game play when compared to the earlier state of the game. It barely seems noticeable or if it is working at all. (Consider giving a slight benefit for successful counters = block break, melee block and range lunge. As well as dodge mechanics = lunge and roll. An Internal cool down of 10-20 seconds for the benefit granted can be considered, depending on the value and duration given).

Perhaps utilizing dominance to increase tanks immunity percent so they aren't as susceptible to most crowd control effects will help with this. Also granting a minor/semi absorption effect for successful counters will be another good addition as a reward/meaningful tactic besides half a second knockdown/fight advantage. (Something like the weapon absorption adapter but with a lower percent for like 3-6 seconds with a cap based on a percent of the players health. Based on the given value, there could be an internal cool down of 10-20 seconds. This will be a nice benefit for successful counters but not something that will be game breaking or necessary most of the time).

Dominance for tanks should also override any non tanks' unsuccessful counter/boss immunity. If the tank didn't fail the counter/give the boss an immunity then they should have a chance to still counter the boss them self. There have been plenty of times where Players or Npcs' have given out immunities unintentionally, which prevents the tank from doing their role properly and makes it more rough for them and the group.

(Side Note: Most of these suggestions were given as an overall balance for all tanks. I do have something I wanted to mention for fire and perhaps the other powers as well since I play each of them. But I will leave most of that perhaps until after some testing is done, though most of what I've mentioned is what I believe is missing for tanks in general.

What I will say though is that I believe each tank should have at least 1 shield, so fires' "immolation" should be 100% with the minor BSM increase I suggested above for all tanks. Fire is mostly about heals but having a shield when needed has proven to be useful as well.

What should be done is the minor BHM increase for all tanks as suggested but also make "stoke flames" last the full duration and "burning determination" should receive additional healing without lowering its' value. The BHM should increase heals for it and other abilities some, along with restoration increases over time.

Absorb heats' channel heal was fixed by you/the team earlier but its animation lock still persists. Making it similar to "channel hate" from rage should help with that. "Absorb heat" should be canceled with counter abilities like channel hate. Currently its' heal persists even when not channeling, which is a bug and nice offset until this ability lock can be addressed. Bug Thread = Channeling No-Cancel Bug, link to my post with a summary and possible solution).

Most of this was a general concept for all tanks. Hopefully this can be carefully considered during this current balance pass process. Thank you for your time and dedication. It is very much appreciated.

Sincerely: Brav

I've solo tanked MOMe last boss a few times with my atomic alt although that boss fight isn't example of how Atomic can play to it's strengths to solo face tank. Atomic has by far the best add juggling power as long as you can keep them in front of you which is how Atomic needs to solo face tank. But Dark Robins have very high CC resistance and can lunge and munch so you can't really solo face tank an elite boss fight with Dark Robin adds.

But if Atomic was viable in elite without shields, that would make it god-like to the point of being broken with shields. Nobody, except maybe you, would forgo being nearly indestructible for the sake of being an Atomic purist.

I replace mass density with immunity in FIe 1st boss if I'm tanking adds, MOMe last boss if 2-tanking and I'm tanking Batman and PCe 1st boss if 2-tanking and I'm tanking Lady Blackhawk. Otherwise I don't use it.

Very well said on that red colored text. He should realize that he's just only another regular player here just like the rest and people are posting their own suggestions and recommendations on this thread as per Batuba's instructions only.

I look forward to these changes going live, and seeing how they change the Tanking game. Thank you for helping out Fire and Atomic... but especially Fire. Fire Tanks are definitely the most difficult Tank for me to heal and keep alive currently. ^_^

Innate secondary mechanics for tanks are too weak compared to Iconic and Movement Mode abilities.

Supercharges with the exception of an atomic tank, not a single tank uses innate Supercharges.

The earth has a potentially strong supercharge but its stationarity, price and cooldown kills all the usefulness of this supercharge compared to Dash Attack, Perfect Poise or PB (yes, yes, PB together with the EOG artifact is an alternative to the totem if you're a flyer ...).

Rage ... Vindictive ... this is a mockery and not a supercharge, any defensive abiliti is better than this trash (change the mechanics of this Supercharge to a fixed cost (2500), a fixed duration (8 s) and solve 3 problems with this change !!! lack of good tank supercharge, diversity in the construction of Build, and the usefulness of secondary tank mechanics for rage (Remorseless Recovery, Ire))

Cold is too expensive (5000) compared to utility, Dash Atack or Perfect Poise is cheaper and they have a synergy with the basic tank mechanics of the cold (unlike Rage (which receives a protection bonus only with RR) Cold gets a protection bonus when using any shield ), reduce the cost to (2500) and add a 10% reduction in damage and this will be a worthy replacement for DA or PP ...

Fire ... Cooldowns too long, and price ..

Group breakthrough:

Even despite the fact that all tanks suffer from excessive loss of control ... the only tank that regularly uses the Group Breakthrough is Cold for all other Hardlight Shield, Amazonium Deflectionb, DA, PP is much more useful ...

Any other secondary mechanics, such as Remorseless Recovery or Ire for rage, Densiti for Atom, totem for erth, additional healing or a shield to fire, an additional shield to cold, is significantly inferior to alternatives from Iconik and Movement Mode ... any effective build in a tank is at least one two abilities from Iconic and Movement Mode ... sometimes it reaches the point of absurdity when the most effective build requires 4 !!! abilities from Iconik and Movement Mode (cold with DR and EOG artifacts for the boss (Dash Atack, amazonium deflection, Lasso, Hardlight Shield) ....)

Almost got a stroke reading that but i agree

Even tho this wont get changed with this update, Its good Feedback for Tank updates further down the road.

English is not my native language, I know how I write awfully ... but at the moment this is the maximum that I can (I'm too old to quickly learn a new language )