Correct me if I am wrong but i recall that bruisers were never meant to be a genuine tank class to begin with, is it not that one or some of your attacks says "must be flanking/behind" the mob? If so, that could hardly be seen as an outright tank class in my view. Some expansions ago when devs woke up and said hey you know what since we cannot balance warriors and crusaders, lets throw brawlers into the mix and expand our tanking classes so we can advertise: "Everquest 2 -- Now with 6 tank classes". I, digress, we do not have 1 tank class issue, we have the entire tanking mechanic messed up with all the other bloat fest we have in the game which is favouring (intentionally or unintentionally) some tank classes over the others which is just not fair. This is not a new invention but has been the case for some years now. When we have our lead designer saying that shields need a major revision to make them relevant again, i think it is suffice to say that we have a bigger problem then a bruiser not doing enough dps.
As mentioned by Arclite Bruisers were not designed to be a genuine tank class. Bruisers are Tanky DPS. Kind of a hybrid class between scouts and fighters. Bruiser backstab has been part of the class since the game was in Beta 17 years ago. It has always been part of the play style since day 1. I tank plenty of things when needed. I am always doing heroics but in raids I don't do much tanking. I bring more value to the raid when I do higher dps. I am not talking T1 numbers here. Historically there have only been 4 long term T1 classes (Assassin, Ranger, Wizard, Warlock). The rest are just T2s. Bruiser back in the day used to be a high end T2 contender. When the expansion drops everything will be reshuffled and hopefully things will trend back to their historical norms with Bruiser ahead of Monk on the parse and genuine T1s being far ahead of both brawlers. See the list posted early in the thread: In terms of defense the best tanks were supposed to be. Guardian > Paladin > Zerker > Monk > SK > Bruiser Offensively in terms of DPS it went in the opposite order: (T1 dps) > Bruiser > SK > Monk > Zerker > (T2 dps) Paladin > Guardian
Historical roles are gone. They've been gone for over a decade. Too many tools have been put in for tanks to be classified as a T1.5. if you wanna be up there with Summoners/Rogues, you probably shouldnt be able to tank anything meaningful or even be classified as a tank. This means you should lose bulwark, CB group buff, most of your taunts, rescues. If that's the case, you should probably focus on another reason for raids to bring you along as you're no longer filling the role of a third "tank". Just my opinion though, going off historical classifications for dps ability.
I agree with your post here but some is blurred. Yes historical roles are gone but isn't that what or why the issues exist today? Drifting off the trail is where many get lost. You pointed out that if bruisers could they shouldn't be able to tank anything meaningful or be classified as a tank. I think I see, but in certain scenarios are not swashbucklers and brigs able to step in and "off tank if needed" then return to debuff/dps? I would say these two are not fighters and don't really tank anything meaningful but if needed they can possibly fill the role. The rogues also have single target taunts as well. So why can't a bruiser have some of the dps capabilities similar to the two rogues? I think many forget that being able to temporarily off tank is actually "utility". Being able to off tank meaningful mobs "temporarily" like the rogues shouldn't force a bruiser to loose taunts, rescues, ect. Bulwark shouldn't even be necessary for any fighter but here it is. Again, I think i see some of what your are trying to get across but also I don't.
Sure, rogues have single target taunts, they don't have snaps. They don't have bulwark, which the devs have said isn't going anywhere. They don't have multiple death prevents, temp buffs, 100% avoid buffs, stoneskins. They're not going to tank anything meaningful in any recent expansion. If they're able to "tank" for a group that's able to bypass bulwark or massive one shot abilities, it's not meaningful content. If that's what Obano wants for the bruiser class, they don't deserve the extras that come with being considered a tank. At least historically.
You say that like it is a good thing? Horrid class balance has wrecked the game. People quit when their class loses viability. There is no such thing as T1.5 from a class design perspective. It is an illusion caused by P2W items boosting individual player dps higher than it would otherwise be. That was pretty much the opinion of Bruisers back in the day when they could keep up with the Summoners and Rogues. But guess what? Bruiser was a really popular class back then because it was balanced right as a hybrid class. They couldn't tank much unless they were specced for it and sacrificed all their dps. Which brings me back to the point about wanting the dps to come in the form of a backstab. Backstabs are inherently self limiting as they can't be used to tank and dps at the same time. It is a balanced role. Bulwark shouldn't even exist for any fighter. It an artificial mechanic to force players to bring tanks along because the real meta in this game is scout / healer / mage. The tank is just an afterthought because they don't bring enough value to the group without artificial mechanics forcing people to use tanks. If the classes were balanced there wouldn't be any need for bulwark. They leave bulwark in because people would start tanking things with assassins if they removed it. What group CB buff? I don't get a group CB buff. You are confusing me with Zerker. Bruisers have pretty much zero utility. I only use my taunts for the damage they do because I am in subtle 99% of the time. The taunts do more damage than my Bruiser CAs. Bruisers have "drag" which allows them to move the mob around without generation any aggro and thus can perform that 3rd tank role. As I said before, 99% of the time I am not tanking anything, I am just a DPS with extra responsibilities.
Speaking historically here but there was NEVER a point when Bruisers could not tank for heroics. That is not what I am advocating anyway. I was talking about raids. Historically Bruisers were good heroic tanks but poor raid tanks. Rouges and Bruisers were perfectly balanced classes back in the day. In a heroic group a Bruiser could tank and the rouge would debuff and dps. This was in meaningful heroic content. The rogue would out parse the Bruiser because the Bruiser had to be in defensive and couldn't use the sucker punch or get epic 1.0 procs. Then when it came to raids Rouges and Bruisers did pretty much the same dps when both classes could get off their backstabs. It was a balanced mechanic of tradeoffs.
Players should go make a new EQ2 and rebalance it properly. Make it an ARPG like Diablo view. Would be fun. Make the Guardian actually good. Sure, he keeps his low DPS and damage, but he gains various other tricks to make him viable. -When he Blocks: Gains +5% mitigation for 30s and has a 25% chance to counter attack, with that counter attack having a 50% chance to stun the target for 3s. -Improve BASE Blocking for the Guardian. Then add an addendum to his Defensive Stance that boosts block by 25-30% atleast. Then, in his temps, keep the stone skin, but once the stone skin is up, add a buff that increases Mitigation and block chance by 25% for 10 seconds. -Give the Guardian far more knock downs. Guardian should get more knockdown skills, some AoE, some direct damage. Guardian should have numerous, 4..5? Something like that. Guard is the all Physical attack character....he should be able to do grapples and stuff as well. Some of those should apply debuffs to the enemy, like his current skills do, but make the debuff actually matter. Something along the lines of: If your knock down was a critical hit, reduces enemy Mitigation and Defenses by 30% for 10s. My damn TEMPLAR has damn 2 stuns, and a Hammer summon pet that ALSO stuns. My Paladin and SK have 2 single target and 1 AoE knock downs as well. The Guardian gets 1 shield bash.....sad. -Give the Guardian more Mitigation buffs, or vastly buff the one he has. +1066 mitigation for 30s with over a minute CD? My SK gets 2000+ for several minutes if he hits a big enough group of enemies. I can easily get my mitigation upwards of 9-10k(yes, im only lvl 80) -Give the Guardian more reactive skills. More skills like that Gladiator line Reversal AA. -Give the Guardian physical damage type effects: -Bleed: Just like you would think, a deadly slow, over time DoT effect, that while active, also reduces the enemy's damage output -Concussion: Slows the enemy attack and movement speed by 10%, for each stage of the concussion, id say up to 5 stacks. -Give the Guardian FAR better inherrant ability to resist being stunned, dazed, stifled and feared. The Guardian is supposed to be the stalwart defender of the group. He should not be so easily scared and that should reflect in his ability to shrug off pitiful attempts at mobs stunning him. -Buff ALL the melee skills for the Guardian, DPS, Haste, Auto attack damage, weapon damage, flurry, the like.....his AA tree gives like +0.9% flurry with 10 points spent. 1.1% AE autoattack with 10 points spent....like WOW, ill try not to spend that ALL in one place....give me a ***** break. The Guardian AA tree is an absolute JOKE. Yeah, the Guardian, the class I want to like, but just have always hated due to how bad he always performs when I take mine out of retirement. He cant make it even past that big stone giant thing in Chardok.
Rather than developers working on this, I'd actually posit that it needed statisticians (or at least one solid statistician/mathematician with experience in modelling game combat systems). The groundwork for a good class balance is structurally there, but the values are completely out of anything workable. When you end the xpac doing orders of magnitude greater damage than you started it due to stat inflation, you can kiss goodbye to subtlety and any form of tying to balance. Strangely, EQ1 still has the "Progression" metrics working nicely. The subtlety of classes is still there and you definitely need all classes brought to the table to make up groups. Simply because of the way their offensive and defensive (or recuperative powers) are modelled. If the AA trees were updated (a la last year's Ethereal rewards) around a solid statistical model, and gear progressions was again robustly modelled such that there was a noticeable (but not overwhelming) progression and relevant flaws and strengths again made more clearly defined, I think it would clear up a lot of the issues (and from reading what's being said, that seems to be the underlying things that are causing most irritation in the current environment). So, bring back subtlety and good math, rather than hitting things with the blunt hammer of "Well, throw bigger numbers in there and hope that people get all starry eyed about being so much better and stop asking for the difficult stuff."
I don't predict VoV will be good for the numbers of active tanks out there. The content so far puts far too much responsibility on the tank's shoulders. It's definitely not balanced well in that sense.
