Work In Progress GU103: Tank Balance

Then you were doing it wrong.

From the ashes of time I revive Kristyana's Guide. This was pretty much the be-all and end-all for Fire Tanking back in the day.

We got an 80% bonus to healing (both from self heals and from what we got from healers) and our Defense was trash. This meant the biggest mitigating factor we had was the extra health so the priority was to get as much health as absolutely possible.

We had a strong healing bonus without Resto so Resto was never a primary concern.

If you were speccing 1/1/1, much less Rest first, then you were exceptionally squishy and made it tougher on your groups. Having less health but being more healable meant your healer was having to work harder re-healing you over and over because you could take less damage before being in danger of dying.

To put it another way, would you rather have an 80% healing bonus for 100k health or a 200% healing bonus for 35k health?

Here's a video with not only 0 artifacts equipped, but also 150sp used. The tank is fire ''the worst tank power in the game'' as many would be quick on judge nowadays, moreover it's a solo tank. There you go, I wish I could record my run when I had 2 tanks of which one had 200 all 3 artifacts and still failed whether he had to deal with the adds or boss, 7 artifacts would indeed make no difference where there's incompetence.

The days of using combos only in the face of the enemies are long gone, well, against heavy hitting bosses at least. For adds you can effectively use Thermo to keep them locked in stun. Atom Splitter has a variety of issues, the main one is that it makes the adds breakout, even used alone with no other combos and stuns, it will always make the adds breakout and give them immunity. Yes the cooldown is longer too, also the animation is terribly long compared to any other combo which really restricts kiting, and last but not least, it doesn't knock down the adds as Jackhammer/Without Mercy/Resonating Gale/Backdraft/Thermochemical Explosion do. No knock down, no juggle, I see those features as an important sign for the tank to know when to begin the next stun, rather than just look at the stunned enemies and count down to 2-3 every single time because there's no telling when they will start attacking.

Acrobatics may seem to have an advantage over the others, but I can already tell that despite the occasional restriction on sc Superspeed suffers from, it has Phase Dodge.The ability has been highly used in the last SM. That thing can really come in handy with it's 16sec cd, 4 sec duration and infinite damage absortion. I haven't looked for flight but I am sure it has something to compete with other movements too. Also Perfect Poise's animation is longer than Dash Attack's. I noticed in SM again that for stuns in rapid succession such as Johnny Quick's Tether, you were literally denied from using Poise due to it's animation, whereas Dash Attack was instant.

I agree with the single taunt to become a pull or at least count for Dilustel's passive. However it would need high rework to the point where even animations will have to be changed in order to appear like a pull. And then if the abilities only gain the ''pull'' tag just to work for that artifact it would be inappropriate as the ability won't pull the enemies as the description states. All in all, we already use Hardlight shield and Amazon Deflection to help our cause, what hurt could Lasso do at this point?

While seeing someone pulling this off is nice, do you really believe this is something the average player can do. I mean he was kiting like crazy
Can u pull that off??? I know me and me my league can but when u consider the everyday player or the type of raid that is constantly doin damage like if it was dme or sge ,arce, crowne, throne, u.s.e etc... those actual top raids wen they came out. I only see a select few pulling off no arts n 150sp

Our Tanks face-tank this content regularly. Using this video as example to detract from the viability of face-tanking is not an intelligent argument.

He wasn't face tanking without artifacts. I face tank all my elite raids as earth and ice I even battle tank em from beginning to end... but once again missing the bigger picture. The video was just an example of not using arts and making tank style adjustments like kiting the entire time or lunge spamming like it was done in sm vs keeping everything stationary like a tank is supposed to. The point is not the individual being able to but the majority

..wait wut..YOU missed my point completely. What I'm saying is, the video is an extreme example where kiting is actually necessary as oppose to it being a "standard" or a "must" strategy in the current DLC. The Tank in the video is my league mate and she, along with our other Tanks (Rage,Ice and Fire), routinely face-tank this content.

The reality is that there is a subgroup of Tanks in this game that aren't very good. I've seen Tanks of all powers with maxed out augments, elite gear, Op items, 160+ artifacts that try to Kite and still fail. There is without a doubt a huge skill gap between average Tanks and higher end Tanks.

I'm not oppose to the changes the Devs have in mind, but what should not happen are changes or suggestions that are directed at accommodating players who clearly have no idea what they're doing in-game.

I'm reading this thread and I can not believe some of the things I'm seeing. Just to be extra clear, these changes will clearly effect Tanks in Elite content and at this level of content, players are expected to have mastery over their role. If I'm being completely honest, most of these complaints and suggestions are even more ridiculous, when you consider that Elite Content goes through many iterations over a series of weeks after release, until it gets "toned" down for more casual players to complete...so in essence..players that are struggling are doing so in a game mode that wasn't as challenging as before or as it should have been. Think about that.

Artifacts have helped some players close the skill gap but at the end of the day, no number of artifacts or skill points are going to help players, if they don't have an honest understanding of their tank power and a desire to get better. Everyone's a terrible gamer at first and its really up to players to want to get better instead of always complaining or pointing fingers. In this case, if high end Tanks can finish this content, so can you, if you really want to.

Why even have different tank powers then? Change all tanks to ICONIC. No need for any balancing. We can all just use Amazonian deflection, hard light shield, movement sc shield,
Lasso, multi target pull, and one more shield.
That's where we're at. Powers are having to lean on iconic and movement mode as much their actual mechanic.