Let's Talk Tanks

[ForteNightshade]

Speaking personally for the warrior, I feel it should be the tank with the most satisfying "crunch" when it swings that axe.

Consider dividing the weaponskills into the basic category (as we have them now) and then 'Slams' (Where we'd put things like Fell Cleave, Decimate, and others). The warrior would follow a basic style of building and spending, but instead of gauge enabling 'Slams', slams themselves are further empowered.

Beast Gauge is built through stages, though still maintaining the numerical build up.
Stage 1: 25
Stage 2: 50
Stage 3: 100

Each slam consumes one 'stage' and gains more power as the stage progresses. Using any 'Slam' at 68 gauge consumes 50 and grants the stage 2 bonus. Using at 38 consumes 25 and uses the Slam as its basic action.

Of course this does mean Onslaught and Upheaval likely move off the BG system, and rather than just being bog standard OGCDs, we'd want to do something with them. As a preliminary thought, having them be charge based abilities, but having Warrior be unique in the notion that the charges are all expended at once for greater magnitudes of effect could add some interesting facets.

For example, Onslaught has 3 charges, and is the basic effect at 1 charge, gains a large potency bonus for each additional charge, and at 3 charges, it strikes all enemies in the area.

This sort of reminds me of HW Warrior where you built up Wraith stacks for Fell Cleave—back when it wasn't a button you spammed a bazillion times. I, for one, would love a return to that style of gameplay because it feels so much more rewarding than simply spamming the same ability over and over.

[Kabooa]

This sort of reminds me of HW Warrior where you built up Wraith stacks for Fell Cleave—back when it wasn't a button you spammed a bazillion times. I, for one, would love a return to that style of gameplay because it feels so much more rewarding than simply spamming the same ability over and over.

Were we to go with a less frequent use of BG abilities, it might also be a good idea to increase overall generation through an expanded OGCD kit, where Brutal Swing can make a come back along with old Berserk (Making it a window of greatly increased BG generation instead)

Infuriate might need a tweak, maybe have it treat the next BG weaponskill as a stage 3 despite its current stage. IR changed to +100% Crit Chance and -100% Resource Cost would let the warrior benefit from Shurrikhan's proposed Critical changes. In addition, instead of it being a Spam Window, IR could be a single use buff rewarded through another part of the Warrior's kit.

[Shurrikhan]

That's pretty hard to wrap my head around. I think I get the gist of it, and I think you're right that it doesn't quite fit in overall. That said, consistency over several hits does seem the sort of approach one could aim for when it comes to the unflinching tank.

What about staggering damage? Raw unmitigated hits shave a portion off, allocating it to a pool that deals damage to the tank every 6 seconds until the pool is expired. Improving the "Endurance" thresh hold determines how much gets shaved off.

That'd amount to much the same, so if easier to implement, then by all means, so long as it'd come in a form that doesn't almost solely reward poor play, assuming we can typically have what's necessary to actively mitigate any meaningful blow to some extent so long as we're playing skillfully.

Perhaps it'd be easier to account for it as simply increased passive recovery atop a portion of would-be %HP loss being turned instead into stagger damage, with that stagger damage of course being cleansable through excess healing (or even claiming would-be healing in the same way as it originally claimed damage). We needn't limit it to unmitigated damage, unless by that you just meant pre-mitigated, in which case -- perfect (since that wouldn't then have anti-synergy with active mitigation).

[Ekimmak]

That said, given this is a thread purely for hypothetical discussion, do you just want more boss positions to matter, or do you also want the tank to have more positioning based abilities?

Hmm... that's a good question. Realistically, I think it's that Tanks need more position abilities.

I don't see the cinematic style of fights at the moment to be changing any time soon, and I think it's more tanklike to be able to just shrug off these constant knockaround skills so I can hold the boss static.

[Kabooa]

We needn't limit it to unmitigated damage, unless by that you just meant pre-mitigated, in which case -- perfect (since that wouldn't then have anti-synergy with active mitigation).

Lets pretend I meant that, yes.

[Shurrikhan]

That said, given this is a thread purely for hypothetical discussion, do you just want more boss positions to matter, or do you also want the tank to have more positioning based abilities?

While I enjoy performing positionals, I don't think they're a very sensible mechanic overall, at least as they're presently implemented, so if there was such an ultimatum between the two, I'd have to go with boss positions being important. That said, I don't think there would be an ultimatum so long as enemies weren't so quick to give up the illusion of being mobs, with limbs and eyes and a main body and so forth, instead of simply a spinning cylinder.

If mobs could just turn at visually reasonable rates, we could start to work even tank positionals into combat. Add to that stagger and an improved DR system for CCs and we could absolutely still support positionals, and likely more intuitively, even while letting boss positions matter.

[Kabooa]

While I enjoy performing positionals, I don't think they're a very sensible mechanic overall, at least as they're presently implemented, so if there was such an ultimatum between the two, I'd have to go with boss positions being important. That said, I don't think there would be an ultimatum so long as enemies weren't so quick to give up the illusion of being mobs, with limbs and eyes and a main body and so forth, instead of simply a spinning cylinder.

If mobs could just turn at visually reasonable rates, we could start to work even tank positionals into combat. Add to that stagger and an improved DR system for CCs and we could absolutely still support positionals, and likely more intuitively, even while letting boss positions matter.

I was speaking more along the lines of things like pulls, pushes, immobilizations, and the like.

Actual flank/rear type stuff seems the kind of thing a tank would open up rather than exploit themselves, but for the sake of argument, what if tanks had actions that created this windows of vulnerability that they themselves may not be able to exploit but the party can? It might even be the defining feature of a less offense oriented tank, creating a vulnerability on one of the target's 4 facings (Front, rear, left flank, right flank), and you coordinate around a team to really abuse it.

For instance, it lasts for just one action, so the action that hits it you want it to match in characteristics as much as possible. Auto crit, resource refund, +potency-per-hit, that sort of thing.

[Shurrikhan]

I was speaking more along the lines of things like pulls, pushes, immobilizations, and the like.

Actual flank/rear type stuff seems the kind of thing a tank would open up rather than exploit themselves, but for the sake of argument, what if tanks had actions that created this windows of vulnerability that they themselves may not be able to exploit but the party can? It might even be the defining feature of a less offense oriented tank, creating a vulnerability on one of the target's 4 facings (Front, rear, left flank, right flank), and you coordinate around a team to really abuse it.

For instance, it lasts for just one action, so the action that hits it you want it to match in characteristics as much as possible. Auto crit, resource refund, +potency-per-hit, that sort of thing.

Ahh, my mistake. I'd like to see that, too, but I doubt most bosses would seem vulnerable to being kicked backwards or the like. Would love to see that on smaller mobs though.

Heck, I'd love it if even dealing with 5 mobs at a time felt like a fight to survive by keeping them in front of you, constantly stopping attacks or outranging them mid-swing (similar to a snapshotted zonal AoE but without an indicator; we already have several ingame examples), kicking them back or even immobilizing them into friendly fire, etc.

As to the second point, I prefer as little as possible arbitration "by type". If something works on a DPS, it should work on tank, just that much more or less so based on the actual factors in question (AP, potency, Defense, etc). I'm working out an AI system that builds around the idea of making enemies function more similarly to how they appear, rather than each enemy just being an oddly decorated, friction-less cylinder, which may provide what you're looking for. It makes use of sub-units (some targetable, some strikable only via interception -- and therefore via positioning) such as left foreleg, right hind-leg, head, tail, etc, and a complete rehaul of enmity that should make coordination feel far more necessary and rewarding without relying on anything arbitrary. It's pretty long, though, especially if I provide its context, so it'll be at least another few days in all likelihood.

[Kabooa]

Ahh, my mistake. I'd like to see that, too, but I doubt most bosses would seem vulnerable to being kicked backwards or the like. Would love to see that on smaller mobs though.

Heck, I'd love it if even dealing with 5 mobs at a time felt like a fight to survive by keeping them in front of you, constantly stopping attacks or outranging them mid-swing (similar to a snapshotted zonal AoE but without an indicator; we already have several ingame examples), kicking them back or even immobilizing them into friendly fire, etc.

Much more difficult 4-man content would be ideal here. Do a quick rebalance of Crowd Control options (So AoE sleep doesn't reign supreme) while putting more short term control options on the tank and healers, while low scope but high duration options are on the DPS. Rework diminishing returns so that immunity is primarily a threat on CC designed to keep things at bay as opposed to CC designed to gain breathing room.

For example

Tanks have knock backs, short duration stuns, pacifies, Slows, and Interrupts. These types of control either have very quick immunities or none at all.

DPS have single target, long duration "Mezzes" and roots, where hard CC has harsher DRs while the soft CCs like roots are more lenient. After all, it doesn't do you much good to root a ranged enemy.

Healers might have a combination of both.

For standard 4man content this doesn't really change anything, but a proper "Hard mode" where enemy pack size and lethality is increased, perhaps even with ramping damage increases that discourage aoe bombing down everything. The tanks focus in this scenario is on one or two enemies for focus fire while they actively impede the rest to keep their face from being clawed off.

[Shurrikhan]

Well, had my first run on a tank alt where I survived by the grace of what little Tenacity I couldn't shed. At one point, with no CDs left to pop without screwing me over later I ended up at 28 HP even after popping an HP potion (left on my auxiliary bar from HoH). Tenacity mitigation at the time... .9%. A few other blows dropped me to <1600 HP, so that was probably more than just the Tenacity difference, but still...

I don't think my subconscious will be dismissing mitigation stats from here out.