Tank Balance

[Phoenicia]

I have to post this here since it's funny:



"Colin Farrel is right, PLD is shit."

[rawker]

Swapping str and vit.... U serious?

[Reynhart]

Swapping str and vit.... U serious?

Well, if you're the OT and VIT doesn't change your HP pool anymore...yeah, I'd be serious about it.


Another crazy idea...YES, I'm bored at work

What if tanks mitigates by accumulating a "Barrier" ?

Nowadays, mitigation is, mostly, a passive thing. Pop you CD, wait for the blast...even WAR has it a little.
BUT, like DPS constantly attacking to build greater DPS and healers constantly healing to build greater HPS, tanks could constantly use skills to build greater BPS (Barrier Per Second).

The barrier would work like Stoneskin or Addlo, meaning that, as long as you have that barrier, you won't take any damage. This way, tanks could have skills with potencies, even combo, that would give them higher and higher barrier numbers. Rampart, Sentinel, Vengeance...all those skills would work like Flight of Fight or Internal Release by increasing your numbers for a short period of time, adding more chance for them to crit, etc...

With a system like that, tanks would have a rotation to master to accumulate the highest BPS, and harder content could throw higher and higher damage against your barrier meaning you'd really have to master your skills to reduce/prevent your HP from dropping as long as you can.

[Phoenicia]

Snip.

Yeah, that's called "active mitigation". WAR has some of it with Wrath building and IB usage. DRK kinda with Souleater but not really.

But yeah, active mitigation is a lot more fun than passive mitigation. This game is in the middle though, popping a CD to mitigate busters is a form of "active mitigation" but it's not active enough.

I feel I should be adding more to my posts but too lazy and tired to elaborate. haha. I should sleep.

[Reynhart]

This game is in the middle though, popping a CD to mitigate busters is a form of "active mitigation" but it's not active enough.

And it's definitely not "challenging". Maybe that's why the endgame challenge as a tank is to do the max DPS while surviving.

[Alahra]

And it's definitely not "challenging". Maybe that's why the endgame challenge as a tank is to do the max DPS while surviving.

Which is by design, I think. They realize that in terms of social pressure, tanking is seen as an "important" job and a lot of people who don't tank choose not to because of that pressure. That's why the tank jobs (with WAR being something of the exception for variety) aren't as demanding rotationally as DPS classes are, so that they have less to worry about and (hopefully) more people can learn to like tanking.

The current setup works pretty well, I think: serious tanks can go all in for DPS maximization, and those that are just tanking for their roulettes or friends can get by just doing the meat shield thing. They need to do something regarding parity in the OT role and probably to make PLD more desirable in 8-mans, though.

[rawker]

IMO, what tanks need are more tanking abilities.

ATM, WARs are already in a good spot since they are gated by wrath/abandon to balance out their offense and defense.

DRKs are gated by MP. A bit more tweaking, and they're done.

PLDs need to be gated by something else. If they're supposed to be the most defensive tank among the rest, then it should reflect through their abilities. i am thinking of a resource that is only gained from blocking. And their future abilities are dependent on that.

[carbonx]

IMO, what tanks need are more tanking abilities.

I don't think this is necessarily true. I think they have enough abilities, it's just that their skillset doesn't seem to flow well or even contradict use in a party setting.

For instance, take a look at Blood Price from DRK. They restore their MP from taking damage, which is important usually during AoE spams of Unleash. The problem? Your healer is usually using Holy or Shadowflare, which reduces incoming damage and thus mitigates enough to cause MP problems, and you have a harder time holding aggro.

PLD's skillset has a lot of good tools, but they seem disjointed at times. Take this for example: Rage of Halone is unlike Butcher's Block, as it's the lowest potency combo instead of the highest, but needed to keep aggro. In addition, Authority is combo'd from Savage Blade instead of Riot Blade, which is inconsistent when compared to the other two tank classes.

[Rbstr]

PLD DPS is lower because they have the shield (and, probably, the much more powerful "No Death" button).
They simply do take less physical damage, even if we can argue up and down about whether it matters or not (2.x it was certainly argued this is what made them the best, though I've never found it to be that valuable). That's worth some DPS in the dev's mind.

In addition, Authority is combo'd from Savage Blade instead of Riot Blade, which is inconsistent when compared to the other two tank classes.

This is a feature, not a problem, because Savage Blade has an enmity multiplier. It facilitates more Royal Authority when tanking and keeping hate.

[rawker]

In addition, Authority is combo'd from Savage Blade instead of Riot Blade, which is inconsistent when compared to the other two tank classes.

To its defense, since PLDs are currently the lowest threat generating tank, as soon as you use savage blade, you are still not screwed up when a sudden turn of events happen.

As I stated earlier in the thread, PLD is the only class without an ability that directly counteracts the damage penalty brought on by remaining in their tank stance. DRK has Darkside, WAR has Unchained and IB. Paladin technically has FoF, but it neither ignores the damage penalty or has close to full uptime. So, before you even get into combo potencies, PLD is already at a disadvantage in damage. This problem with DPS output is only reflected in their struggle for enmity generation.

As for this one, you can easily work your way around this by toggling Shield Oath off when doing your big moves. Toggling oath off is the same as toggling cleric stance off where it doesn't interrupt your combos and doesn't consume a GCD. And then, it's just activate oath again after performing your dps move.

As what others have already said, pumping PLD threat generation is a very sound solution.