Well one adjustment that could work is to add some wdb to tank gear, or make tank jewerly have more static buffs that increase our dps. A great example of this would be the tension bracer
I love how this issue has been ongoing since SF and they continually ignore it. The fact is at the time when Fighter DPS was at its best, in SF, there were not balancing issues compared to non-Fighters. It actually fixed one of the other biggest raid set-up issues that has been going on forever which is the limited use of Fighters within raids. SF when Fighter DPS was high raids would actually bring 4 Fighters along. Not more than that. 4. Scouts and other DPS classes have a lot of utility on top of their DPS that are must haves. Things like health debuffs. Proc buffs. Jack Fighter DPS up to T2 levels whether tanking or not and be done with it already.
Ha! I laugh only because I have had a paladin for more than a decade now. Tanks weren't meant to be DPS (well, except brawlers maybe), and for the longest time crusaders were **** Upon by the God of Stats and Mechanics. Then we got better and some other tank classes got worse. The only thing certain is that they will swap this stuff around enormously every couple of years. Too bad we don't have the old old forums, so you could relive the angst of GU13. Last expansion, when we had tanks in Reckless stance topping parses in raids, was just unhinged. Reckless was meant to be used to alleviate the pain of soloing a fighter. All I can say is, if you enjoy tanking, level up at least one crusader, one warrior, and one brawler, and be prepared to betray them if the winds of fortune favor one subclass over the other. Then you can just use whichever tank is not gimped up at the present time.
TSF also had the first split of "offensive" and "defensive" gear sadly * people complained at tanks using the offensive gear when farming or soloing * tanks complained they needed the defensive gear really impacted DPS to the stage where holding agro was becoming an issue (the last should sound familiar) then they SOLVED it in this expansion by introducing the tier4 tank gear which had the DPS stats on AND all the defensive ones. And as @Duele said 3 or 4 tanks was common in every raid - SK in mage groups zerkers in scout groups, brawlers doing great numbers and even main tanks pushing out some decent numbers. Any decent DPS did more than a fighter and the healers but having an extra fighter in the raid was not a bad thing... I actually enjoyed amending a fighter class in many raids
*every* class is (or should be) DPS... some just do less than others. no-one wants to play a game where most of the damage is done by half the raid (or only 2 guys in a group) and the rest of the group is just there to heal them, taunt the mobs away from them and keep them buffed. DPS bring the pain (T1 DPS) bards and chanters bring the buffs AND dps (T2 DPS) healers bring the heals AND dps (T2 DPS) Fighters bring the taunts... oh but they can't do DPS - that's just silly! (T4 DPS) no fighter wants to top the parse vs equally skilled and geared players... they just want to be able to contribute as much as the other classes whilst performing their primary role.
And lets not forget that a huge flaw in this game is that the tank role is designed to be done by as few fighters as possible. You will always need 5 healers in a raid to keep everybody alive. You will always need a sh*t ton of utility classes to raise everybodies DPS. But you will only need as few Fighters as possible. A lot of times that means 1-2 Fighters, some scripting requiring maybe 3-4 (meaning bring in the alts for those fights). Any non-Fighter class simply needs to ask themselves how would raising Fighter DPS to T2 levels hurt them. It won't. It didn't the small time it was happening. And it wouldn't again. Comparing T2 DPS classes (non-T1 scouts and mages) those classes are bringing a ton of utility to the table that helps the DPS and survivability of the raid as a whole. Really the only extra utility that Fighters are bringing besides their DPS is tanking capabilities - which is minimized as much as possible due to the mechanics of tanking in this game.
hmmm ... all I can say, as a raid monk (I cant speak for other tank classes), is ... I always have had to maintain 2 sets of gear and 2 sets of AAs, best thing they ever did was allowing us to switch on the fly instead of AA mirrors and manually swapping out gear. 1 set was Defensive the other Offensive TOV was in my opinion the best x-pac for brawlers because we could be productive in a raid both ways, as a tank I could hold single target (and some multi-target) encounters as well as anyone, while in dps I could parse equally well and generally in the top 5 in the raid. the trade off was "either, or" but not both ... and I was good w/ that. I could be productive when not needed for tanking and when needed I could comfortably survive the encounter. in our latest x-pac I can still tank solidly when needing to but that is maybe 1 or 2 encounters per zone ... as for dps I cant even break top 10 (usually around 11 or 12), and that's pushing 3-4 mil/dps, now granted, I haven't been able to play as much and build the gear for dps as it is much harder to now, at least for dps. because most of the monk gear is being pushed in a defensive direction and with the huge amounts of health the mobs have, extending the duration of fights, many of our CAs (which haven't really been tweaked or scaled in a very long time) are becoming a joke. I could pretty much focus on stats and accomplish more than twitch clicking through an encounter now I realize that there are some out there who will immediately jump and say "well what about grandmasters?" grandmasters are soe/daybreak's joke on the population ... extremely rare (and overly priced on brokers) harvests, or excessively expensive dp/station cash (apprx avg of 20.00 per gm from lvl 80 on), they are about making money for soe/daybreak and ego/status, having nothing to do with game balance or improving output sad and disappointing
So in short right now, if I want to be a dps fighter, I should at least not chose the obvious choice of a tank for most encounters... What class would that be I wonder? Bruiser? Zerker? It's a weird way of looking at it, but if I can at least be the lesser popular choice I may then be able to slip in as backup/dps =) *Still hoping on a dps monk one day...
Both of those classes are good for aoe dps. At best you could probably get to t2 dps with the right gear currently
sounds good, so long as when a raid is forming and the raid leader is going down the class list, he passes by me and selects the more popular tanking classes hehe I still have no idea witch those may be. Guard I suppose. SK and Pal... I know all tanks can tank but we all know some tanks routinely get selected for most fights. (I don't want to be that one ehehe)
It's completely related to itemization as been mentioned in this thread. In full DPS gear tanks can easily fit comfortable in T2 DPS. Genghes had a good simple suggestion is just continue adding DPS stats on existing "tank-only" gear. Adding WDB to existing tank gear would be a good start. Frankly though, I think the ethereals are a little polarizing in this example because they basically allow tanks to fit somewhere in T2 in full tank gear already. But I think the idea would be is to put tanks somewhere on the T2 spectrum without need ridiculous items to get them there.
This is all good info, currently split in between Zerker and Bruiser. Given what I said, can you picture one doing more dps then another, one being a more popular tanking spot choice for main tanking?
the tank which is chosen is the one which can do the following 4 things (in order): 1. Survive the content 2. keep agro on the relevant content 3. give the best buffs to the group 4. does the most dps #1 is now meaningless since around TSO (all tanks can now tank all content) #2 if its just stand and hold agro on a single mob/encounter for 20min - pally wins out. everything else (including any sort of memwipe/adds etc) - any other tank will do with preference to bruiser. #3 brawlers hands down #4 shadowknights followed by brawlers/berserkers and holding up the rear paladins and guardians so if you want to pick a tank which will be used in a raid - go brawler. don't want to tank anything whatsoever - go shadowknight and shout a lot about "deeps" and "lol i died to agro pull again". don't bother to play pally or guard unless you gear to, and want to tank berserker is a middle ground thing - groups will prefer a brawler but you'll do well as both deeps and tanking.
actually they didn't say that... they said "fighters will be effected by the scout changes to concentrate more on combat arts" this could mean anything from: * autoattack nerfed (least likely) * wdb not used so much on gear base combat art increase added instead to upgrades (most likely) - this will barely effect fighters as currently "tank gear" doesn't include wdb and it won;t include +combat art increase either. * massive increase to all combat arts (flat increase to fighter and scout dps) (unlikely) * increase to all combat arts when in offensive stance (already partly introduced and will only effect fighters in offensive stance so no change) * potency / crit bonus goes from a 1:1 ratio on gear to a 5:1 ratio - possible although restricting mage access could be an issue. whenever I hear the devs say things like "such ans such will be effected" but they never say given benefits it generally means a nerf or not increasing as much as others (effective nerf)
Amazing breakdown! this made me chose Brawler. Thank you very much for all the effort and open mindedness =)
I see no reason why not =) Bruisers have a high kick and do round-house kicks as well right? I recall way back they were more like punch punch low kick
