Frontlines: Do tanks need to scale better with player skill?

To get some things out of the way:

This post acknowledges tanks are valuable in frontlines. They are critical for blocking objectives, controlling enemy battle highs, initiation, peeling, and helping people to retreat. Holmgang in particular, combined with stun and displacement, is one of the most hilariously obnoxious combinations in the game. That's powerful.

This also acknowledges how even with the changes to how Battle High works, it favours DPS more than tanks and healers. Especially melee or anyone with a lot of burst, since that is more conducive to killing blows rather than assists.

Now for the actual thread:
I've been thinking about the tanks role in frontlines, and how your skill as a player scales with impact. While the difference between a good tank player and a bad tank player is there, it doesn't reward players of greater skill as much as DPS or healers. When you get onto a point and block an objective capture, for example, while the self-healing of tanks is there, a lot of your effectiveness is intrinsically linked to the skill of your healers. You just asserting a position, or dealing like 1 damage to stop a channel, isn't going to vary as much between an average tank and an amazing tank.

I think part of it is Battle High, and how it allows skilled players to carry a weaker team. On any DC, you will consistently see the same people rack up BH, perform well, and have a great impact on wherever they employ their abilities. The difference between a good tank and an average tank is there, and anyone who has done a lot of PvP can tell the difference, but is it winning the game as hard as it would be if you were in another role?

To start, maybe tanks should get some kind of bonus that makes more sense for them when they get a BH going. One thing worth considering is giving tanks and only tanks an HP bonus when they get a Battle High going. That is HP and not raw mitigation, since damage reduction scales more with healing which can be obnoxious. More max HP could help more skilled tanks that happen to get a battle high going perform better and play more aggressively, which could be healthier for the game.

Of course, I could be entirely wrong. My perspective comes from playing a lot of FL for about a year and have hundreds of games on all of the maps. I perform pretty well on all of the roles and while I am not perfect I'd like to think I've developed an informed opinion on the way things work on Primal and Aether, though I realize things play quite a bit differently on JP.

tl;dr I'd like to see changes to allow good tank players carry harder in Frontline like you can as a DPS or healer. Maybe bonus max HP with increased Battle High.

You just want really really long mid fights. Tanks already have a bonus shield for being in frontlines. SE just needs to give people some kind of PvP tutorial. Most of the people on Primal don't know they have AOEs.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Newmanxeno

You just want really really long mid fights. Tanks already have a bonus shield for being in frontlines. SE just needs to give people some kind of PvP tutorial. Most of the people on Primal don't know they have AOEs.

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This post is kind of a reductive assertion of my goals.

While I can see the paranoia, with how tanks can already take a while to die with their 30% DR, self-sustain on AOE, and defensive CDs, keep in mind, my suggestion isn't saying to make all tanks sturdier. It is examining the capacity for your progression of skill as a tank to reward you with outcomes more conducive to victory and carrying versus that of other roles. Of course, my post happened to have a suggestion, though the point of the thread is more an examination of the game's overall design, and how improvements of your skill as a tank player scale with increased success.

As for the suggestion at the end of my post with regards to tank HP scaling with Battle High: The impact is good tanks will become sturdier more often. The average tank might get like BH1 or something, thus the capacity to kill them would be roughly the same. Keep in mind, while tank longevity has the capacity to drag out a skirmish, one of the tank's primary functions (aside from using CC to set up picks) is to disrupt standoffs and initiate fights to begin with. Things conducive to breaking formations and resolving a battle. Thus, it would better facilitate good tank players advancing to pressure an enemy alliance if they could play more aggressively. In addition, it makes sense for a role defined in part by its defensive attributes to survive longer with Battle High if DPS with BH are killing them faster or healers are healing them for more. Especially because, in this case, this is raw HP as opposed to mitigation. So if you are taking more damage than you are being healed for, you are still going to die.

As a side note, yes, I do think the game needs to do a better job at providing its players with information, covering some universal fundamentals, etc. I think facilitating player learning is good, though this thread is not talking about an absence of skill. It's obvious someone who is new to the game or not using their buttons is not going to contribute well. It's talking about how much skill scales with positive outcomes for a role relative to the same improvement on a different role.