Let's Talk Tanks

[Kabooa]

It required that tanks pay less of an inherent penalty in their offensive output, but that everyone effectively pays a higher penalty (offensive and cumulatively defensive) for tanking, in that they get 'knocked around'. This doubled also as a way of allowing people to survive initial blows without making them sturdier in the long run, since their initially raised mitigation floor would be quickly knocked down. Think of it a bit like either granular vulnerability afflictions or normalized RNG (whereby initial dodge/parry/block chance starts much higher but is then reduced with proc success * effect of said proc). Steadfast simply reduced those penalties from damage taken, keeping you more consistent over further hits.

This would have faint anti-synergy with active mitigation, though only in the same way any two stacked mitigation effects (active or passive) have with each other when calculated at different layers (i.e. not calculated additively).

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.

Lets say at 470, you could currently have Endurance at a rate of 25%. This means any unmitigated, undefended attack is reduced by 25% and that amount added to the pool. The tank rolls a 6s timer before taking an echoed 'hit' that deals a minimum amount of what was shaved off (or less, if the pool could be reduced below that), and a maximum amount proportional to the total damage stored.

In this manner of speaking, this tank's damage intake is smoothed out at the start, though as it starts to take its toll (and the damage stored climbs higher and higher) the tank starts taking ramping amounts of damage if they, in turn, just take everything to the face without timing mitigation on more lethal incoming attacks.

Ideally there should be a way to reduce the stored damage count through the Tank's own action. Perhaps their healing capabilities double dip in this regard - Both healing themselves and a portion of it also going to the stored damage and shaving off their total.

Have thing I want to talk about in regards to the Tank's role in raiding, but not sure if I can get my point across without being mocked for being a below-average Savage PUG'er.

I feel like the Tank's role of positioning has been so phased out of savage content that when it actually became a thing again in E2S, it throws me for a loop where I'm supposed to hold Voidwalker.

Positioning has long been a tank's responsibility that has been rather minimized in the recent tier. The tanks own position instead of the boss has been a larger impact.

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?

[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).

[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.

[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.

[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.