Tears of a Baby Tank

This is yet another opinion post on tank changes. Now I am not a tank main, although I play DRK and PLD on my alts. I don't have much to say on end game tank changes. However something has been bothering me enough were I actually logged in to the forums for once to make a post about it.

Trying to tank anything up to Haukke Manor is agonizing now. I am struggling to understand why devs thought it was a good idea to only have Rampart (with a 90 second cooldown) and Reprisal available to mitigate damage for half of ARR??? Doing standard pulls ends up with a situation where I only have Rampart available every other pull, and I just cry for the healer's sake. My suggestion is either make Rampart cooldown timer shorter or switch Reprisal and Arm's Length's availability by making AL available at 22 and Reprisal at 32. Or even better, switch Arm's Length and Interject and make AL available at 18 and Interject at 32. Reprisal is stupid to have during low-level dungeons where the bosses don't even do real tank busters yet. I don't need single-target mitigation at that point, but Arm's Length would be really nice to have.

I love learning about new job changes, but please, devs, remember to consider how changes will effect running older content and not just everything past level 60...

Is this new though? I don't recall ever having very many low-level tank cooldowns.

Also, keep in mind that "Tank Mastery" is a lv1 trait that reduces ALL DAMAGE at ALL TIMES by 20%. Given that you're referring to levels prior to our old tank stances, I suspect tanks are taking less damage now than they ever were.

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Originally Posted by Raldo

Is this new though? I don't recall ever having very many low-level tank cooldowns.

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We used to have Anticipation in addition to gap the time in between Ramparts so the amount of time you spend with no form of cooldown up is more noticeable, to the point where sometimes I'll get healers asking me to use cooldowns when...Rampart just isn't back up yet. The cooldown timer for Rampart doesn't really match the flow of when pulls happen in dungeons.

Low level tanking is easier than it has ever been, it seems like a weird time to whine about it.

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Originally Posted by Raldo

Is this new though? I don't recall ever having very many low-level tank cooldowns.

Also, keep in mind that "Tank Mastery" is a lv1 trait that reduces ALL DAMAGE at ALL TIMES by 20%. Given that you're referring to levels prior to our old tank stances, I suspect tanks are taking less damage now than they ever were.

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The problem is you don't get to feel the 20% damage reduction. You just have to assume it's doing so.

So I don't know how the damage formula is, but Tanks tend to have higher armor values than other classes. By game sense, a new player sees this and goes "oh so they'll take less damage". They don't even need to see the 20% damage reduction on the trait to think that, just most games go "High armor, less damage".

Before we took 100 damage, turn on tank stance and take 80 damage. Now, we just always take the 80 and don't see an easy way of lowering that outside of CDs. To people who have played this game for a good while, this might not a be a problem. To new players, it might explain why tanks don't feel that tanky or feels squishy as we are still always taking a Flat damage amount outside of CDs. Espically back when the Stances were earned later, you could easily and clearly see a reduction in damage taken after working your way up to that level.

We might be taking less damage now with it as a trait but it probably doesn't feel that way to some new players.

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Originally Posted by Makarrov

Low level tanking is easier than it has ever been, it seems like a weird time to whine about it.

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Odd. I don't believe before I've ever gone "I don't have a CD for this" when tanking at Brayflox.

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Originally Posted by MerlinCross

The problem is you don't get to feel the 20% damage reduction. You just have to assume it's doing so.

So I don't know how the damage formula is, but Tanks tend to have higher armor values than other classes. By game sense, a new player sees this and goes "oh so they'll take less damage". They don't even need to see the 20% damage reduction on the trait to think that, just most games go "High armor, less damage".

Before we took 100 damage, turn on tank stance and take 80 damage. Now, we just always take the 80 and don't see an easy way of lowering that outside of CDs. To people who have played this game for a good while, this might not a be a problem. To new players, it might explain why tanks don't feel that tanky or feels squishy as we are still always taking a Flat damage amount outside of CDs. Espically back when the Stances were earned later, you could easily and clearly see a reduction in damage taken after working your way up to that level.

We might be taking less damage now with it as a trait but it probably doesn't feel that way to some new players.


Odd. I don't believe before I've ever gone "I don't have a CD for this" when tanking at Brayflox.

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New players wouldn’t have any context. If they’re new they likely weren’t around before the change. Again, seems like an odd complaint.

How many cooldowns do you really need to get through Sastasha or Halatali though? Especially when, as Raldo pointed out, tanks at that level are taking 20% less damage at all times than they used to?

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Originally Posted by Makarrov

New players wouldn’t have any context. If they’re new they likely weren’t around before the change. Again, seems like an odd complaint.

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Which is..., part of the problem I was trying to get at. They don't have the context of seeing old tank stance. They just have the context of taking X amount of damage from the word go. We can tell them they are taking 20% less damage but they'll never really see or feel that they are. I have context and I still really don't feel like I'm taking 20% less damage. I'm just taking Damage.

Tanks deal more damage and take less damage in low level content than ever before. The built in 20% passive is basically letting you have tank stance before you would have gotten it at lv 30. Potencies have been massively increased.

The 20% mitigation far exceeds what the role skills used to provise (convalescence, 30% parry rate, anticipation. Etc.).

Its just passive instead of active. You are far more tanky, you just dont hit buttons to be tanky.

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Originally Posted by Makarrov

Low level tanking is easier than it has ever been, it seems like a weird time to whine about it.

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I know. It two easy now. I am falling asleep playing tank. To the point I am tempted to mess up boss mechanics just for me to have something exciting to happen.

I was a bit worried about only having one cooldown for earlier content, but on my new alt had no problems tanking early dungeons in low level gear. As others have said, the addition of tank mastery for low level content makes a big difference.

I have to really wonder on why those early ones prior to Haukke Manor are/were agonizing? But then again, I can probably guess the answer. Probably pulling more than the groups gear and experience can handle, especially if people are not interrupting or avoiding certain enemy actions. Its been a long time since I have done Satasha, Copperbell, Tam-Tara, Hatali, and Totorak, but Hauke Manor/Brayflox was where the kid's gloves came off. So they would have really have had to mess up the early skills to make the training dungeons painful. Though I think the issue is more of expecting geared farming strategies to work during the ungeared leveling process.

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Originally Posted by Hawklaser

I have to really wonder on why those early ones prior to Haukke Manor are/were agonizing? But then again, I can probably guess the answer. Probably pulling more than the groups gear and experience can handle, especially if people are not interrupting or avoiding certain enemy actions. Its been a long time since I have done Satasha, Copperbell, Tam-Tara, Hatali, and Totorak, but Hauke Manor/Brayflox was where the kid's gloves came off. So they would have really have had to mess up the early skills to make the training dungeons painful. Though I think the issue is more of expecting geared farming strategies to work during the ungeared leveling process.

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This was my assumption. It’s the only explanation that fits imo.

I just was in final steps of faith as a DRK and my cooldown rotation was like Rampart > Shadow Wall > Reprisal > ??? > ???

Guess I am not supposed to mitigate tankbusters until lvl 70, when I finally learn TBN...

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Originally Posted by Izsha

Tanks deal more damage and take less damage in low level content than ever before. The built in 20% passive is basically letting you have tank stance before you would have gotten it at lv 30. Potencies have been massively increased.

The 20% mitigation far exceeds what the role skills used to provise (convalescence, 30% parry rate, anticipation. Etc.).

Its just passive instead of active. You are far more tanky, you just dont hit buttons to be tanky.

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No, the 20% damage mitigation was always there when you were in tank stance. The difference now is we lost like multiple defense skills which helped in lower level content. I only have Rampart (lvl 8) now as a PLD until I get Sentinel (lvl 38). You get Sheltron at 35, but it's worthless until you get to level 74 when it gets upgraded to block the full 6 seconds. PLD lost Convalescence (lvl 20), Anticipation (lvl 24), Awareness (lvl 25), and Bulwark (lvl 46). Now we have one skill at lvl 8 and there's nothing until 38 at which point there's a huge drought until 74. PLD has one less personal def skill than all the other tanks because of the Sheltron upgrade at 74. This is one of the things I can deal with, but it's ridiculous. Basically SE was mad that tanks were pulling everything in the dungeons so they decided to gut our def skills.

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Originally Posted by Andaluce

Doing standard pulls ends up with a situation where I only have Rampart available every other pull

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There is your problem.

With the new tank and healer changes and the changes to aoe attacks, there is only 1 pull between bosses in ARR dungeons. (if you have at least 1 dps with aoe)
Maybe 2 Pulls if you have a newbie healer.

So the rotation is -> pull everything, use rampart -> boss -> pull everything, use rampart -> boss -> pull everything, use rampart -> boss