a serious attempt at getting ideas from the community for fighter balance(aka threat)

Jalathan@Antonia Bayle wrote:

Please point out examples of brawlers saying they can't raid tank during this expansion. The only issue brawlers have less agro and less utility then plates. Survivability is the same across all tank classes.

We certainly can tank quite adequately. We just have to sacrifice much more to do it than other tanks do, and are more or less balanced pretty much exclusively through itemization right now instead of through innate class abilities, which is obnoxious. You are right with one thing you said though, which was that there are a great many little biases against brawler tanks. It is worth noticing, however, that the developers seem to be aware of them and are taking care of them as best they can--we complained about ward items that procced when we were hit being worse for us, and they gave us stonewill which procs both on hits and when hit. We complained about block chance not being half as good as mitigation increase, and they gave us some mit increase on the higher end armor. Kander alone has done wonders for the brawler community via itemization, which is why we're capable of all the things we are right now.
Right now, I feel totally secure in my value to my raidforce. Granted, we run like a bajillion tanks so I think that if it came down to cuts one of our umpteen million crusaders would be the one to drop, but still, a slot is a slot and I think that most raid forces find it valuable to keep a brawler around. The next step is becoming as viable a choice for MT as a paladin, a shadowknight, a zerker, or a guardian. In an ideal world you'd see raids running all sorts of different classes as MT, based on whoever they've had around the longest or whoever has the best skill/gear. When that happens we'll be able to say that tanks are balanced.

Bchizzle,
This whole thread seems to be a case of brawlers complaining that they can't tank. A great deal of it is comparison to crusaders, but there are quite a few complaints about not being able to deal with spike damage or if they build up to handle spike damage, they can't hold agro or complaining about this or that mechanic that is biased against you. Either way, it appears from the outside, that you all are complaining that you can't tank raids.
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=479243
Honestly, this thread is the first time where I've actually seen one of you actually say you COULD, so it is easy to see how 95% of the people out there don't think you can. When every other post is about how broken the class is, that is exactly what people are going to think. To be honest, I shouldn't have given all of that as much credit as I did as I used to be on the other side of that (as a paladin) a few years back and for that, I do appologize.
My goal isn't to get anyone nerfed (shadowknights included), I just want to see a way for every class in the game to have a real shot at getting into a raid without being a "Oh, yah sure, we have a slot open you can come" type of decision.

As Vinka said, the brawlers ability to tank is basedf on itemization, not class abilities so not all brawlers will be able to tank. They don't have the gear to do it.
Vinka did put Guardians in her list of chosen raid tanks and that is just carryover from earlier expansions. Raid forces that switch to SK's no longer consider a Guardian an acceptable choice.

Jalathan@Antonia Bayle wrote:

I cant figure out what youve been reading bro. every thread mentioning brawlers and tanking this expansion has been entirely about our lack of hate when tanking. I cant recall a singel radi brawler saying they couldnt tank a mob, all I remember seeing is saying that most often we dont do it because of how much dps we lose therefore agro lost and not being capable of maintaining enough threat off the other tanks in the raid making it a seriosu struggle for a brawler to do it. I know in my case thats teh issue. every mob my raid force has killed i have also tanked at one point or another. most often (yeah we are old school) we use our guard to mt and our sk to OT. more often then not I'm in a tertiary tank role. a tank dies I snap swap stance pop tsunami mt gets rezzed rebuffed and takes it back. currently i'm not the tank of choice solely because of agro problems while defensively specced, which is why i have an incredibly idiotic hybrid spec right now that offers me literally jsut enough hate procducing ability in defensive to keep the mob for about a minute if neccessary. but even with my half and half offense defense spec i can still tank the mob if neccessary. ive nerfed my own uncontested avoidance down to 42% to maintain enough offense to do what i do for our raid force. for right now it works well enough for the role im taking. the biggest problem i have when being called to tank is agro. when our mt or ot are not in raid for some reason or another and im tapped to tank i have to jack my spec up even more jsut to keep agro. so again i dont see where you are coming from with this brawlers saying they cant tank thing. its ALL about agro. which is also what this thread is ALL about.

The topic is so off topic.
The balance is not about threat only.
As the game are today, people want to clear the instances fast and in easymode. A crusader can pull the whole floor in an instance and the dps can go all out. Would think a zerker can do the same with some good healing.
My main is a guardian. I'm mt in our guild and have no problem getting groups with guildies so I have gear from both the raid- and heroic instances in sf. And there's a lot of gear that helps with aggro.
BUT, the majority of the guardians never get a chance to see anything about it. They don't get into raids and they have hard times getting groups for the heroic content.
As I said, people want it fast and easy. When I want to play my alt, a swashy, I look for a crusader tank. There's always someone available becuase the servers are swamped with them. It's fast pace which means more instances and loot in shorter time.
I hate to call for a nerf of a class but I don't think it was soe's intention to boost the crusaders and especially sk's to what they are today. And stop compare the tanks as raid mt only. We are just a small part of the community. It the those who don't raid, who just want to log in to play and having fun who suffer from this fiasco.

The way I would like to see this is in a way based on the differences between wizards and warlocks. They seem to be fairly well balanced between each other, and are vary focused on ST and AOE respectfully. A wiz has sufficient AOEs to be very effective when needed but a warlock will leave a wiz in the dust on a good AOE fight. The same is true on a ST fight, the Wiz should smock the Warlock.

The problem with trying to do this with the tanks is that there are more factors then with the 2 soec’s. 1 of the biggest factors is agro generation in its many forms. Balancing the ST and AOE DPS, with the TPS and snaps between the 6 fighters is I think what this thread was trying to talk about and should come back to.

Silzin wrote:

It should be this way for every class. However with fighters it seems that most of the players that are playing fighter classes want what every other fighter has. The grass is always greener on the other side mentality. A good example was brawlers asking for a death save because other fighters have them.
It is more than just having differences between warriors, crusaders, and brawlers. It should be looked at from a sub-class standpoint. There should be definate distinctions between them and specialties that each should have that makes them unique.

Whats wrong with Brawlers wanting a death save, we are the only 2 classes that really need one.
We also didn't even get one we got a rubbish with a 45 second duration and a 4 minute recast.
You want a better real example, Tsunami.

Aull wrote:

I find this to be a fairly poor example actually. Brawlers have long been considered to have less survivability than plate tanks, and then on top of that all the plate tanks have death prevents. How was that even close to balanced? It's not like brawlers had other separate but equal abilities that made up for the lack of a death prevent.
Unless your goal is for the distinction for brawlers that makes them unique is that they don't live as long as plate tanks then I'm apparently missing the intention behind your statement.

Aule@Guk wrote:

Brawlers have FD! One of the best DS in the game if you ask me. Ok it could fail witch makes it less useful then BL. But then again Brawlers where not designed to be doing the main tanking. Yea they 'can' do it but are not designed to do most of the time.
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Toranx@Crushbone wrote:

Every class can FD it isn't brawler only.

BChizzle wrote:

But your the only ones that can do it on such a fast refresh timer. So don't try to play it off like brawlers FD isn't such a great thing any longer.
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Ummudien@Guk wrote:

Nothing wrong with it at all. There was nothing wrong with other fighters wanting a tsunami ability back when it was a monk exclusive either. But now where is that special for the monk in todays game when everyother fighter has a tsunami spin off.
I have preached and preached on how monks got borked over with the tsunami issue of other fighters getting similar abilities. In my eyes it was totally wrong and should have never happened.
I just don't think because class A has something special means or entitles classes B, C, D, E, and F to similar abilities. Not a need for six fighters if the have the same abilities under different names.
Also fd was and still is a great ds.

so your saying that because brawlers can fd and fd again so quickly that they didnt warrant getting a deathsave?
seriously??
yeah cause whats fd gonna do when your the one tanking a raid mob.. umm let me think.. frontal the raid and kill 18 people
yeah thats great. thanks soe for giving bralwers such and aweome way to keep themselves alive by killing the rest of the raid.
/sarcasm off
brawlers not having a deathsave was unbalanced. anyway thats off topic. but i felt the need ot be sarcastic.
I do agree though that tanks are losing thier flavor. things liek tsunami were class deinfing at some point but not anymore. ild love to get back to that type of thing but not sure if its possible, solely because of the grass is always greener syndrome.
but thats something for antoher topic.
threat per second and agro management is something all tanks actually SHOULD share and shoudl in no way be limited to only a couple tanks. im sure we all agree that every raid out there brings at least 2 fighters some bring more. and we all agree that 99% of the time 1 of those 2 fighters is a crusader. crusader agro is where all tanks agro shoudl be. but if that crusader isnt in the tanking role they end up being in it anyway because fo the imbalances in threat. thats what ild liek to fix and as we can all see there are quite a few others that feel the same. hopefully we get those fixes, ultimately its up to the devs on how its done. and im hoping they dont jsut add more dps cause i dont think thats the right way to do it. sure more dps while tanking woudl be nice but that doesnt make it the right way to do it. my goal also isnt to make threat easy mode either. but a defensively specced fighter should have the means to hold agro off anyone(other fighters included) if they play well.

Hehe your right that fd will get the raid smoked if used in that setting. I personally would have liked to see something other than a death save for brawlers. Something more unique to brawlers only. Anyway what is done has been done.
I agree with you in that threat should be just as you explained.

Brawlers are not real tanks any ways so a death save is pointless. Who is gonna have one tanking other then for fun or because its forced on them. Lets get real here.

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Toranx@Crushbone wrote:

Troll harder, its not working for you right now.

BChizzle wrote:

ROFL, yea, just messing with you guys.. Dang you BC calling me out on it, I could of had fun with this...

Toranx@Crushbone wrote:

Was funny TBH.