Can We Talk About Group Tank Balance Problems?

Discussion in 'Tanks' started by Luclin.Dragonball, Feb 24, 2023.

  1. Lluianae Elder

    Initially with this, I thought the post was pretty fair. Tank mercs are solid, not perfect, but they can get the job done. It's not inherently trivial, as a Cleric that had to use one until I made my alt. Anything with multiple adds, or a damage throughput that is high enough and the difference between the mercs and players is night and day. The main thing going for them is their ability to taunt back mobs fast, just like pets. Clerics will still have to work a fair bit harder on a tank merc than on a real, adequately group geared player.

    It's when you came to talking about the flipside that things really are being stretched and exaggerated. Tactical execution and precision through concerted efforts? You make it sound like being a Warrior is Gates era where nameds needed cycled evasion discs and high burns just to get them down with group geared players.

    It's not the same, no. Healer merc AI is not the best and they lack a lot of the tools real Clerics have. They poorly handle multiple add situations especially when they rip aggro. But for the majority of cases, just like tank mercs, the healer mercs get the job done, and they can heal hero missions especially when people use their tools appropriately. The difference between a Warrior, group and raid geared, that uses their tools and one that does not is also night and day.

    Both use cases require more effort from their respective players. It's not an equivalent demand, nor do I believe it ever can nor should be. Both have their foibles, but I think it could be said that the healer mercs could be tweaked to respond to situations better. I've seen them leave people hanging at critical moments, where a real player would have resolved it much differently. The tanking logic is much simpler, but a similer idea would be if tank mercs didn't react to taking aggro off others in the party at a more critical moment.
  2. tsiawdroi TittyGOAT


    Outside of gumdrop mission, you don't need any healer as an sk. Me and sith will roll 2 sks for mean street for the second epic click.

    But having the merc healer at least adds a little bit of challenge. Even more so when I do missions on paladin instead of sk.

    To get back on point of op: specific to raiding, if they nerfed dragon glyph (duration specifically), the down time for knights having no mitigation on would then really allow warriors to shine with their better toolkit for rotating mitigation. I used one dragon glyph on pit fight the other night and average hits taken were 37k which was significantly lower than the warriors in raid. I feel like an equally played warrior vs knight should have the lowest avg hits. Followed by paladin and then sk (for the ones who 2h tank at least).
  3. Szilent Augur

    All that has to happen for my shabby class to be worth spitting on is for Devs to delete the good classes? Get out of here, man, I'm doing fine
  4. Wulfhere Augur

    Agreed. My tests have showed that Promised heal cast does not impair healer merc decisions. I believe it should not be blocked. It's the slow casting Word heals that can be blocked to benefit the tank healing (at the cost of curing).

    ps: I posted this info in another thread a while back.
    Velisaris_MS likes this.
  5. Wulfhere Augur

    Merc abilities (and therefore AI) have been greatly nerfed simplified for all archetypes last year and they can now barely function in their roles compared to pre-nerf (apx Feb-Mar 2022). I've reported these issues in the bug forum. Getting them fixed will help the group game .
  6. Lluianae Elder

    In the same boat as you. Llu might as well be a glorified aura bot when my SK does all the healing he needs in missions and farming zones for augs and cloak xp. Testament to how crazy that power can be. It's only when I mess up a pull and bring on too many that I have to wake her up.

    I'm also in agreement to how Dragon Glyph does muddy the waters, that's why I brought it up. All else mostly equal, the War should have the better lower average hit taken given the innate -1 DI (unless that's gone?) and the better mitAC, along with their tools. If they aren't and the discrepancy is bigger, then it's on hit variance and tools used (or lack thereof).
  7. Lluianae Elder

    Only speaking from experience as to how miserable silence on an SK is on alt raids when people don't run during Aten while blobs are up :D

    There have always been ways they could make things more Warrior favourable by considering the class' actual strengths. I helped tune the Bolvirk mobs in PoR to that end with their attack and DI (not that people spent much time in Devastation and Sverag).
  8. p2aa Augur

    They compensate largely their less strong sustained tanking toolkit with their great self healing tools.
    If knights in your raid are not able to tank adds or raid bosses as good as warriors, even on NoS mobs, then they are probably not using enough their self healing tools.
  9. Lluianae Elder

    I'm accounting for such when I say that, just as I'm accounting for the healing healers are doing.

    Their self healing matters a lot less when you have splashes, squalls, hots/pulses, rds hits and innumerable heal procs happening throughout an encounter.

    I not am disparaging the weight of passive procs and obscenities like rotated Lich Stings, but you're remiss to think their impact is more significant than they are than in a scenario where recovery resources are far more limited. A ton of it ends up becoming overheal on raids.
  10. Velisaris_MS Augur

    I think some people may be under the impression that casting a Promised spell wastes time. It doesn't...it's darn near instant cast. There's zero reason for anyone to block it.

    Whatever stupid code/AI logic is making the hearler merc decide to cast the slowest spell it can as opposed to a fast casting direct heal is the real problem that needs to be addressed by the devs.
  11. Syylke_EMarr Augur

    The reason for blocking Promised was merc healers considering a ticking Promised as "healing done," so doing less or no healing until it fulminated. That may have been changed, I'm not sure. They'll also "waste" time casting group HoT instead of direct heals, which is very detrimental to their healing throughput.
  12. Wulfhere Augur

    This has not been true for at least 2 years. Do not block Promised heals imho.
    Velisaris_MS and Syylke_EMarr like this.
  13. Wulfhere Augur

    Nope. I have to tank adds without any healing support. Sometimes I die because my own toolkit is not enough. If I have healing support like warriors do, then I don't die. The raid priests prioritize who they heal and knights are second tier because of self-healing.
    Syylke_EMarr likes this.
  14. Lluianae Elder

    That logic seems a little sketchy to me. Priorities should be based on who is taking damage and is most at risk of death (regardless of class/role), and healers can heal outside of their group with extended target and good ol' fashioned assist healing.

    As much as people tend to exaggerate that EQ damage is too fast to react to, it really isn't, especially when people are using their mit tools. Unless you're out of range, you're also getting raidwide healing from various sources.
  15. Tucoh Augur

    A few pts:
    • I run a highly proficient six box and in the last expansion I main changed from a warrior to an SK. I only use group gear. Because I can stack ridiculous healing on my group (I ran with a sha/pal and made use of heal procs from mages/bards) I'm not convinced this main change was a net benefit to the lethality of my team. If it wasn't for the ridiculous amounts of mana recuperation my shadowknight provides to my group of 3x mages I'd probably switch back to warrior.
    • Warriors, by design, should require external healing to recover HP lost, while having substantially better mitigation than the knight classes. This is currently true, but I think the disparity in mitigation for the shadowknight class, along with the absolutely massive self-heal shadowknights can do is low enough that the main change makes sense.
    • I'd recommend to any warrior who feels dissatisfied by their performance to exhaust your options for stacking your defensive buffs, which is not a trivial thing to do. The warriors in this forum are an invaluable resource for this.
    • In general, I'd argue that the survivability of a war with a healer merc should be lower than an knight with a healer merc. This is important not just to maintain the viability of knights in groups (which is not in question at all) but also to maintain the utility of player healers compared to healer mercs.
    • I believe that the mitigation and self-healing of the shadowknight class is too high. I believe this so thoroughly that I main changed to one.
  16. Brickhaus Augur

    I'm curious about your assessment of the SK vs warrior. Are you saying the warrior's better mitigation allows you to run more offense versus defense in your team (ie you are having to heal the sk more)? Have you noticed a drop in the straight tank dps? Multiples more of an issue?

    Most of my experience (albeit with raid geared sks at least partially at the group level) would have SKs being more beneficial. But a lot of that is in full player groups so the maximum SK capabilities are reached. I've only heard anecdotally that my boxing friends like the SK above all other tanks.

    I trust your expertise in your particular situation so I'm not doubting your conclusions. Just looking for a little more info.
  17. Tucoh Augur

    I didn't make the effort to quantify the survivability difference. It'd be hard because:
    • I never really logged data for this in ToL for my warrior or played my warrior in NoS
    • My shadowknight spent all of NoS getting AAs and his first set of real gear and doesn't have all the tradeskill items, heroic AAs, chase items etc that my warrior has. Also I spent all of NoS learning how to SK
    My assessment is that if a shadowknight can squeeze in some self-healing into a stream of damage, they are significantly more survivable than a warrior in all but the most intense damage situations. But if a shadowknight is unable to self-heal (either because they aren't able to swing their weapon or lifetap or proc one of a dozen different lifetaps), the warrior comes out on top. This is kind of obvious, but the amount of times a bad pull one-rounded my shadowknight or I screwed up and didn't get self-healing in before dying was fairly high, and I feel confident than in many cases where my SK bit it, my warrior would have survived.
    Another point is that I was running lighter on healing with the SK than the warrior, making the comparison even more unfair. I exchanged the paladin (who basically auto-attacked the mob and blindly spammed heal target's target, while offering +healing buffs in tough situations) for a mage.
    Lluianae likes this.
  18. p2aa Augur

    I feel sorry for ya if clerics don't heal knights and warriors equally in your raid. Or maybe you face a lack of cleric number, in this case the problem is recruting healers in your raid. Also, you just validated my point about self healing power of knights: imagine a warrior with the same lack of healing support than you : which one will survive better ? you or the warrior ?
  19. Notinterested Augur

    As a long time SK main my opinion is they should have put a level cap on the 2.0 years ago and been done with it. Kill the 2.0 and balance from there.
    Dre. likes this.
  20. Wulfhere Augur

    Oh the knight for sure.

    I've posted before about this discrepancy in that a knight has over 10 million virtual hitpoints. If I parse a solo fight then I self heal for 10M, 15M, 20M health before I win that solo fight. A warrior has nothing in their own toolkit to make up for that huge gap with mainly mitigation, HP regen, and heal procs.

    I see the 3 tank classes as having different reaction time vs attention combat models. The paladin has the harshest combat responsiveness and the shadow knight the easiest. The warrior requires two entities (player, merc) so its combat response varies from best to worst.
    Dre. likes this.