Work In Progress GU103: Tank Balance

I guess take all the shields, take Heal and Troll group shields as well.... I thought this thread was about tank balance, not shield balance.

Pre revamp, all of ice tank powers were in their powerset. Ice didn't use or need HL shield until the revamp.

The revamp removed ice's Bitter Winds, which was an add juggle and shield. And by removed, I mean by making bitterwinds no longer usable by tanks in elite content. This was a great power for ice and made ice tanking a lot of fun pre-revamp.
Post revamp ice tanking is still enjoyable but in a different way.

The changes to rage are so minor, why change it at all? It will do nothing to 'nerf' rage, and will only get more players with no knowledge of tanking on the forum talking about their power being nerfed.

If you really want to improve the tank powersets, bring back bitterwinds with a shield for ice, leave rage alone, leave earth alone and buff the other tanks, atomic and fire.

If you really want better tank balance, it's going to take more than one balance pass every two years or more

We've got so far from page 1 people forgot what this is about. I think I'll repost this every 2 pages.

This is great news I have been switching between Rage and Fire hoping that fire would do as good as Rage. With this update it will be possible now, to be fair I have played a lot with Earth as well and brick could use a slight buff. Thank you

mom PPP
I do miss face tanking when it was necessary, 85%~90% of the time I would face tank and kite when you were going to get one shot and killed. Good old days

I think what others forget are the unintended consequences along with the intended effects of some of the artifacts. Some artifacts were seemingly designed for specific powers to hopefully address their shortcomings... but when other powers use it for the same role they suddenly become unstoppable, or at least closer to it.

So yeah, you need to make adjustments... and you need to embed those adjustments with the use of the artifacts so that it changes the formulae used to calculate the end result, and it almost needs to be done on the fly as you change your artifacts.

I'm pretty sure I could. I haven't yet as Lady Blackhawks skull attacks are too quick to consistently cancel out of atomic combos and block so always need to 2-tank that boss. And then we get to last boss and it was always decided since we 2-tanked the first, might as well 2-tank the last. But I'm pretty confident it wouldn't be too difficult. Only really need to move if you start to get surrounded or need to get in range to pull adds away from the group.

There is supposed to be a balance between shield strength and damage. Part of why Light Barrier is a weaker shield is it also does damage. This is part of why Reflection is a weaker shield. If BW was made back into a shield, it would likely be a weak one.

Part of me would like to see the effects of immunities increased in maybe a near future update. Increase the shield strength of Shatter Restraints, give Soothing Sands the ability to heal Brick, increase the healing of the other abilities. The heal from Soothing Sands is negligible. These powers just haven't scaled well.

YES! Most tanks can't (or won't) carry their group breakouts any more because they just seem to occupy a space without much overall effect or could otherwise be used for another self-protection/self-preservation move. This is especially true for Fire. Burnout is supposed to provide some self heals, but that heal is negligible at best compared to other healing moves (Backdraft, Stoke Flames, Burning Determination). With the healing rate it has, the power cost should be half as much and its cooldown near instantaneous so you can keep hitting it.

Alternatively, if you make the group breakout that move that I suggested earlier in this thread... one that will push everything away from you so you can duck, dodge, roll, etc, away from a pending attack... and by everything, I do mean everything... your pets, your backups, your teammate's backups, your teammates who are in melee range stealing your priority heal, adds, and any other moveable person or object that is preventing you from being able to avoid that hit... all while still having that mild taunt ability to make enemies want to get up off the floor and come attack you again.

Even though the new tank artifact sounds pretty damn good, I was really hoping for an artifact centered around immunity. Though itsounds like my tanks power is getting that addressed. But I do think it's an issue for more than just Atomic.

Power cost reduction is much appreciated. The increase in def is small but the reduction of stacks sounds good. You mentioned that the Fire soul stack effects fall too quickly: Are you planning on making the effects last just a smidge longer? Just enough so we have time to cast our heals or renew the shield before max def effects wear off?

On live, once I reach 20, I barely register the max def at half a second. When testing, the time it takes (once I hit 20) to stop and check my def stats, I barely have time to see the stats switch down.

By your changes, maybe by lowering it to 5, you're thinking cast power (shield or heal), stack 5 to max def then power again and so forth? That would explain the power reduction.

I look forward to seeing this on test with the shield changes, specially the increase in shield value.

I'm mostly on the PS side but is there an additional app we can use that displays our "current" stats as we use our power or one that you would recommend that gives us a better test results? (the combat parser is too limited in the information it retains and can go by too quickly for me to analyze) I know some testers are able to figure it out by themselves but it sure would be interesting to see that max def wear out or how long it lasts; or how much the shield takes before it breaks

An add-on question to what you put here... or maybe it's a rewording... if I cast a power that would apply a DOT to nearby targets, does that count towards the maintenance hit counter? If it does, would the damage have to exceed a certain value in order for it to count or will a tick of 1 count?

Eh. I think the point is more, "Run the power set without any external helpers and see how well they survive." All of these iconic powers and consumables are great add-ons for specific situations... but tank powers should be able to survive to a certain point with only their native power set, an average number of SPs (around 250), level 100-120 artifacts, and the correct origins augments for the power set in the 130-150 range. This is not for elite content, SM, etc. This is for the normal content, and I look at it from the perspective of a newer player... not one who's been around the DLCs a time or 500, collected every possible feat or item, etc. I'm suggesting something that's reasonably achievable with the way things are now and how people power-level characters.

That's part of why I hate the combo dependent aspect of Fire Soul (another part are all the various mechanics that completely knock you out of the combo so that you have to start over again). I would much rather see the total mitigation applied either permanently as long as we are in Tank role or at least be like our old HP buff was and it lasted for 8 seconds after using a power (meaning to keep it up you just needed to activate a power at least once every 8 seconds).

There are seasoned testers here who have seen almost a decade's worth of powerset changes. If given the proper time they will test the upcoming changes both with and without iconic/movement abilities, at various CR/SPs, with artifacts at varying ranks. Placing restrictions on HOW they should test is a little unpalatable, let the testers set their own personal parameters.

With that said I think if no changes are coming to Ice and Earth, those two powersets should be temporarily locked so testers can focus on Fire, Rage and Atomic. I seriously doubt these changes will be tested enough in elite content since it can be difficult to put a group together for elite on test.

We're thinking alike, but the Healing is too complex to get quickly reworked with this update. Assuming all pets are programmed in similar Fashion, its possible to make it a Health-Link passive for all pets.

Reworking Overall healing wont work all too well since it would split Group heals on pets aswell - wich is why they always excluded pets for Healing so far unless the Healing occured based on an Area effect.

So the most possible outcome will be a Health buff on Brick wich would help, but wont have too much of an Impact Overall.
The Healing would be the much better solution. I guess we'll have to hope for them to consider it in the Future.

Also, check out this post in the Bugs section. Appear Brick is dumb as...well, a brick, again.

earth brick fortify golem

Well I am going to disagree with about ice tanks pre revamp. Most ice tanks still used hardlight shield pre-revamp. My loadout had one pull and five shields including hL shield. So I am going disagree with you on that premise

It's pretty clear that Earth must be tweaked with main focus on Brick alongside fixing its own Gemstone Shield damage mitigation via Fortify Golem.

I'm thinking of actually using dual pistols once this is on test, the rapid fire and wide area of effect means I can quickly get that 5 count and hit as many targets as possible. I can get my max def quick, put a couple of HoT powers or my stun/pull, pistols, the shield or burst heal.