Why tanks can never be balanced

This is kind of a 'no duh' post, but I don't know if anyone has really put it out there for discussion.
It all comes down to the methods different tanks have for dealing with damage taken. The tanks all fit on a spectrum for self heals versus avoidence/mitigation.
Guardians have no self heals but have always been the most durable class without heals. This is why for years they were the tank of choice for heroic and raid content because they straight up take the least damage. Other tanks that relied on self heals have always been more powerful than guardians versus mobs that deal less damage, but much less powerful versus mobs that deal more damage than their self heals can counter. In a raid setting guardians surviveability has been WAY higher than other classes because the additional heals became almost meaningless.
What has happened over the last few years, and especially with SF is that the self heals have been made powerful enough to balance the guardian versus the other tanks in a raid setting. That means that for heroic content and especially small group/solo content the other classes became way overpowered.

Honestly there is just NO Way to balance tanks that rely on self heals versus tanks that rely on straight avoidence/mitigation unless the self healing amounts are balanced differently depending on the type of setting (more powerful heals in raids, less powerful heals in groups).
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(part 2)
Here's kind of a breakdown to illustrate the situation using hypothetical numbers.
Tank without heals - overall mitigation is 70% (including both avoidence and mitigation)
Incoming damage regardless of amount is reduced by 70%. So 1000 incoming dps becomes 300, 10,000 becomes 3000. Surviveability stays at 70% in both scenarios.
Tank with heals - overal mitigation is 40% (avoidence + mitigation) Heals Per Second is 800
Incoming damage is reduced by 40% so 1000 incoming dps becomes 600, add heals per second and surviveability becomes 1400, but when incoming dps increases to 10,000, the damage taken becomes 6000, heals per second counters at the same amount of 800, so it turns into 5200. So Surviveability taking 1000 dps is 140% but taking 10,000 dps it drops down to 48%.
Now in the illustration above, during the SF expansion the paladin heals were made powerful enough to put surviveability at 10,00 dps closer to that 70% amount that the guardians had, but that means the heals when fighting weaker enemies became outrageous. Now obviously the increase surviveability from the tanks with heals haven't come exclusively from heals themselves. New AA abilities and new gear factor in as well.

What it really comes down to is that gear has inflated to beyond stupid levels of powerful because each expansion lacks planning into the next one. As a result of where the itemization is right now, what you've said is true. Itemization and the inability to plan for the long-term are what are killing this game.

TheSpin wrote:

Guards from what I remember where not the best choice heroic tank except in ROK. Raid wise was the only stage that a guard did shine in compairson to the other fighters.
I agree with the rest of your post.

The foundation of the Guardian class was based on the fact that you had to sacrafice in one area to excell at another. The problem is that Guardians still hold true to that concept where as all the other fighters (to varying degress of course) do not hold true to that.
Guardians trudge up through the levels, strugle to get gear, strugle to gain skill in their class, strugle to get to a point where they can do their job. Once we reach a point where we can do our job a Crusader with 10 hours played walks in and does the job better than us.
Trade offs is why fighters will never be balanced. If we call all DPS to the hilt while maintaining survivability then why do we need 6 of us? If we have differences and have to accept trade offs then not every fighter will be able to tank a raid mob.
Trade offs exisist for some and not for others. That is why fighters will never be balanced.

There's several problems with your post. The first is simply that heals are not as important to any tank's survivability (including paladins) as you're making out. Paladins don't take 30% more damage than guardians. Honestly, no tank (with the exception maybe of brawlers that don't min/max to an obscene degree) really takes 30% more damage than a guardian.
Secondly, (and more importantly), you are neglecting the fact that heals scale. A paladin, for example, has 10% damage reduction on their mythical. That 10% scales exactly with the amount of incoming damage. Their mythical also has a percent based heal on it (if I recall correctly), which again scales--this time with the paladin's HP. So a poorly geared paladin with 15000hp might get a heal for 1500, while for a raiding paladin with 30,000hp that heal is going to do 3000. And finally, for a paladin's actual heals, you're going to see scaling as they upgrade their spells to experts and masters and as they increase their potency. So if a heal originally healed for 1000hp, if the paladin has 50% potency that will translate into 1500hp. Removing the ability of heals to crit makes them scale a bit less than other abilities, but they really were balanced against abilities which don't scale well either so it works out.
Tanks can absolutely be balanced. Its just a simple matter of seeing who is falling behind and buffing up those classes a little at a time until people are as likely to want a monk or a guardian as they are to want a zerker or shadowknight. The harder task (which also needs to happen) is ensuring more slots for fighters in a raid.

Problem is if we continue to buff every tank class eventualy it will still come b ack to wich tank does it fastest. That is why outside of RoK guards were raid tanks and the others heroic/small group tanks. What ever tank allows the dps to dps biggest or has dps themselfs will win out. All soe can realy do is a blamket nerf to current OP classes survivabilit. A increase to guard dps and survivability. This come from some one who plays a SK/Zerker/guard/pally

Vinka@Antonia Bayle wrote:

Key phrase there is INCOMING DAMAGE so if the paladin is warded it takes off the ward first So when people say paladins take 20% less damage than other tanks is is a miss conception, its 10% reduction, and a CHANCE of a heal proc... if you actually take enough damage to push through your wards (and I think reactives as well tho I am unsure)
PROOF 1, 2, 3) Marr's favour is the 10% heal buff; works off incoming damage nothing to do with a pallys Health.
And as you can see our group heal healed for a staggering 9hps - which was used once when I realised how little damage it actually healed; compare this to a guardians stoneskin based abilitys to protect ytheir group and what we have here is a gimic nothign more.
Well... I supspoe we don't actually HARM our group like SKs do... that's kind of a good thing...

Vinka@Antonia Bayle wrote:

Exactly, but unlikely to happen. SOE nerf bat philosophy says otherwise.
Although, paladin heals do need to be reworked right now, since they are scaled well below our HP pools at the moment(excepting Marr's favor, since thats % based).
Guardians typically don't like to bring up the fact that the stoneskin mechanic is inherently more powerful than any heal mechanic in any kind of group setting. If there is any doubt there, explain to me why the avatar boots required nerfing.

EQ2's fatal flaw happened long before it was launched.......
24 classes divided into 4 basic roles is too much and was doomed to be the balance clusterF that it is today.
With simplistic MOB AI there was no way to keep 6 classes able to fufill their basic role while keeping them unique and balanced without eventually turning them all into clones of eachother with different names.

Vinka@Antonia Bayle wrote:

The first problem with this is that some fighters are already stupidly overpowered as is. Buffing up all fighters to be overall balanced just means we would all be stupidly overpowered.
The second problem is that people are in general pretty smart. That coupled with the fact that people are in general pretty lazy. Both of these items mean that tanks can not be balanced. If all six fighters are different then there will always be one that is better than others are certin things. People will determine what is easier and all the sudden half the raid forces will have that class as the MT.
People solve problems. Once the problem is solved they optimize the solution. Human nature makes it so fighters will never be balanced until we all do things the same way.

Vinka@Antonia Bayle wrote:

I disagree, while a "BUFF BUFF BUFF" approach might give the illusion that archetype is balanced in reality it would lead to a more broken and unbalanced game. We already have fighters that have far exceeded the boundaries/purpose of the archetype. We have fighters that have no limits or disadvantages, get their pie,cake and ice-cream....at least when considering the ease of the content whie some do have limits which IMO is as it should be.
And "falling" behind is sorta subjective........i mean what if a class like Guardian is in fact just fine......yet the others are OP.....Guard appears to be behind when in fact the others are too far ahead. Buffing Guard would be the wrong thing to do. Nerfs are bad.....nobody likes them but they are much a part of proper balance as buffs.
That said....blanket ill thought out nerfs like the recent heal crit is also the wrong approach. We need tweaks(both positive and negative) not this sledgehammer across the board approach that SOE keeps using.

this thread is a prime example of why the game will never be balanced, and will become easier and easier with every expansion. got lots of ppl crying that the game is too easy etc, but lots of ppl saying tanks need buffed up.

There is just no way at all, whatsoever, without a doubt, in 1000 years that all tanks could become both equally capable at tanking raid content and also equally desireable in reasonable numbers (4-5) in a raid setting.
The only way to make each fighter a successful class is to accept their strengths and weaknesses and enhance them rather than the overal class equalization that has been going on for so long. (I'm not going to list specifics about what each classes strength and weakness are or should be because that will likely take the whole thread off topic)

I obviously know that the numbers in my OP aren't actual representatives of the numbers in game. Obviously no tank is going to have 30% mitigation, and yes extra buffs do play a larger role in a raid setting than I had illustrated in my original example, but I stand by the theory illustrated in that example. The harder the stuff hits, you eventually get to a point where the self heals don't cut it. You can balance heals and mitigation for a particular level of content, solo, heroic, or raid, but you can't balance them across all 3.

TheSpin wrote:

Again, yes it is possible. Making things equal is really not some Herculean class. You just improve the broken classes and/or nerf the overpowered ones. Either way works just fine as far as I'm concerned.
As far as getting more tanks in a raid, there are loads of ways you could manage that. One is to simply give fighters a useful role when they're not tanking. The simplest solution in my opinion is to tie all 6 fighters' survivability to their defensive stances so that in order to tank they really need to go defensive (about like it currently is for brawlers) and then massively increase their dps when in offensive stance. That way, if a fighter isn't useful as a tank for a specific fight, they go full dps instead. Since they'll still lack the utility of other dps classes they won't be overpowered. TADA! Now you can bring more fighters!

TheSpin wrote:

I agree. Example. Guard...strength would be very durable and weakness less offensive prowess. Zerker strength....great offensive prowess and weakness less durability.
Problem. Zerker receives more durability making it a strength. Guard remains as is.
This is what got this all out of whack. I don't think zerkers should have ever received the defensive abilities they have gotten over the years when they are in fact suppose to be more offensively inclined.
If they give guards more offensive prowess then basically we have two warriors being alike hence making them clones. Then why have two warriors. It defeats the purpose.
It applies to brawlers and crusaders as well.
The problem is some will not "accept" that their class was meant for offense and not defense and vise versa.
Harry Calahan said it best " a mans got to know his limitations". That should apply to players as well.

Vinka@Antonia Bayle wrote:

I 100% understand what your saying but I do not agree. Fighters should be equal but different. The problem is that different means different mechanics for the same result. Human's are always thinking and always analizing. They will find the best mechanic for the majority of the content and pick that as the best fighter. It's happened for the last six years so you can't argue this. There will always be the best tank and there will always be the raid forces that switch MT's based on this.
I define balance in a wide arena that includes all aspects of the game. This includes solo, Heroic and raid and all of those parts of the game include DPS, Survivability, Agro and Utility. The problem is that EVERYBODY (including you Vinka) want fighter balance narrowed down to one aspect of the game. Everybody wants to raid tank. Never gonna happen.
The second point is getting more fighters into raids. In a perfect world there should be 6 fighters in a raid. But, for that to happen, they would have to bring things to the raid that compensated the raid for having six of them. That means that fighters have two roles where as all other classes only have one. That is not fair. That can't be allowed to happen or the game just got more broken than it is now.

I agree with you Wasuna.

In order to increase fighter desireability in a raid, the classes would have to actually be reworked in such a way that some fighters would not be able to MT, but would instead bring something unique to the raid. Because if they could both MT and bring something useful to the raid when not tanking it would make fighters too powerful.

I have made what I feel is a good way to describe each classes strengths and weaknesses.



I am a Guardian, I love to protect myself and others. Protection is what is most important.

I am a Berserker, I love to take damage as well as dish it out. Damage is what is most important.

I am a Paladin, I love to smite evil as well as provide protection to my allies through the power of my Faith. Faith is what is most important.

I am a Shadowknight, I love to drain the lifeforce of those before me in order to make myself stronger. Death is what is most important.

I am a Monk, I strive towards perfection, first in my self, and then in the world around me. Balance is what is most important.

I am a Bruiser, I love to use my body as the ultimate weapon. Physicallity is what is most important.


Now these statements I made above may bring some debate, but I feel like this is a pretty straightforward decription for each of the fighters original purpose.

Wasuna wrote:

Another good post. I agree here as well. I think the issue that keeps fighters becoming more and more alike is so many want to be raid tank material. I think it is an ego issue for some players.
I don't think that just because the description says "fighter" means that all in the fighter arch-type will be engineered to be raid tanks.
If balance means all fighters capable of the same survival, dps, soloability, and utility then I don't want it. Each fighter should have areas of strengths, weakness, and limitations when compairing them to the other fighters and the content encountered.

Wasuna wrote:

Untrue. Almost all classes have multiple roles. For example...
Brigand: 1) debuffs 2)dps
Swashy: 1)debuffs 2)dps
Conjy: 1)debuffs 2)dps
Necro: 1)debuffs 2)dps
Dirge: 1)buffs 2)dps
Troub: 1)buffs 2)dps
Illy: 1)buffs 2)dps
Coercer: 1)buffs 2)dps
Templer: 1)heals 2)cures 3)buffs
Inquisitor: 1)heals 2)cures 3)buffs
Fury: 1)heals 2)cures 3)buffs
Warden: 1)heals 2)cures 3)buffs
Defiler: 1)heals 2)cures 3)buffs
Mystic: 1)heals 2)cures 3)buffs
The only classes at the moment that really don't have multiple roles are the T1 dps classes (Sorcerers & Predators). These classes get extra dps in exchange for having sucky utility. Having tanks perform more than one role brings us in line with other classes, it does not put us ahead of them.

Ok... so lets say a fighter brings 1) tanking 2) dps Why bring em instead of someone who does 1) anything other than tanking 2) dps unless they are actually needed to tank.