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actually the grit change proposed here: https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/66084/feedback-tank-changes#latest is probably better than my own idea. Still need the visual indicator tho

In my previous post i have shat on spoke poorly the tankchanges a bit, and I'm here to rectify it.
I slept on it and decided I wasn't going hard enough.

Since the intention of the changes were never comunicated i'll make my own interpretation.

From a mostly pve perspective that's admittedly limiting.
1:completely annihilate the feel of the class, alienating current tank players while enticing new tanks even less (grit)
2:reduce tanking survivability, that was already in the gutter in pvp. (dps players have insane pen, combined with the precieved gear diff. DPS players rush good lvl10 crafted gear more in my experience)
3:increase tank dps in pvp, while also increasing tank dps in pve, that was not needed (dmg buff + grit dps dampening removed)
4:make tanking even more of chore for those that didn't like tanking (grit spam)
5:make the class a builder spender class, (a style i personally don't enjoy) also making the class resource completely usless. Just a number. Just remove it and make everything a cooldown at this point what the actual.....
6:Make a bigger difference between skilled and less skilled tanks.

The reson the grit change is egregious is that it takes focus away from what's important, the fight, and makes it a must spam minigame where i'm either mindless pressing a brand new key(bind). I cannot emphasise enough how corrosive taking focus away is. While dodging often bugged mechanics you can't afford to worry about 10-20% mitigatinon. We already have an "O sht" button. It's E. Maybe combined with Indomitable Spirit.

Now regarding point 2:

• DPS players LOVE to see numbers go up (who doesn't) and will target farm growlers helm, ewerlasting neckalces, bone rings, swiftscreech bonering, waterlogged gloves, and some other items.
• Us tanks have to target farm (dromroll please): rock necklace. Maybe, blue ashen haunt cloak. Everything else is crafted of POI dropped.
• The difference between named target farmable drops for dps and tanks is in the "are we joking" category.
• Therefore i think tank survivability is more of a function of gear difference combined with how pen works. Both mages and dps can get an absolute truckload of pen from high quality gear regardless of crafted or dropped, when enchanted.
• Furthermore the few things we could farm (or the mobs that drop the dps gear so we can sell) we can barely farm those mobs. It takes 3 minutes to kill some bosses, and i have good gear. (not minroll blue ancient dunzen mace )

Now let's further dive into why new is a bad design choice.

First of all it's just meaningless busy work. Spammy and boring. If the time was increased to 20-30+ seconds, at that point might as well make it a passive.
Secondly the realy issue is that it takes focus away from the fight. Let's say I'm fighitng Zammer. Or a normal graveyard mausoleum. Or whatever that has tank mechanics. I'm pressing E, dodgerolling away, shotcalling it's anvil slam, pressing E for it's clobbering swing, pressing indo spirit or fortify, all the while pressing Q to dps, and doing skills to actually deal some dmg.
Now with new grit, i have to move my focus away from the mob and look at my buffbar to figoure out if my grit is falling down. If my bar is filled with buffs, it'll just stack up AND I WON'T EVEN BE ABLE TO FIGURE OUT IF I HAVE TO PRESS THE BUTTON. Meanwhile I'm not paying attention to the mob, i'm getting clobbering swung, with shield not up, (3k + crits btw), getting smashed by labourer or roasted, mausoleum ran me over, and reapers sliced. All of the mentioned skills are tank mechanics that dsp can interrupt yes, but tank mechanics.

Clobbering swing: press E active mitigation importnat
Labourer smash: with the correct behavour trees you can move past them, or dodgeroll out of the way
Labourer spit: yep, move out of the way
Mausoleum: smas needs to be dogerolled, charge also, circe ran out of, bellow can be removed with self-heal upgrade.
Reaper slice: that's right E.
etc etc etc
This ripple effect is absolutely massive.

When i do the mechanics properly, even if dps interrupts some of these i can't rely on them always noticing and i have to do the thing, even if it's a bit wastful. A thimble of prevention better than a cup of medicine. Also why burn healers mana?

Tanking is already the most hated job in almost all MMOs, because it's just work. Yes it's work.
The saying that "tanking is a job, healing is responsibility, dps is recriation" is not a joke.
With the new grit you just slotted in a mandatory must do mechanic, if you don't do it, you're bad and will be punsihed, into al ready pretty busy schedule.

Which is even more funny since if you have a competent team and a well, heavy geared figher with 2 heals you already don't need a tank in most chases. I'll argue you can do forge withouth a tank. We just hold agro. Actually not even i say that. My guildmates who did that exact thing said it. You can kite most things. You probably can't kill zammer, or belowsmasher, or hte flame thing but that's all.

There are issues with tanking in the game, none of those are solved by the grit and class resource hange, and actually it just makes it wose. More tedious. Less fun.


So that I don't just trashtalk here is a proposed changes:

Baseline: reverted grit and class resource changes.

1: grit no longer privedes extra aggro
2: class resource now stacks to 150 (it was borderline useless, you removed it basically, i propose a buff) This means some extra mitigation, but IIRC not as much from 2 stacking grit. This also largely negates the dmg penalty. I was thinking of 200 at max, but that'd make it super strong, and it's not needed. Or it can go up to 200, but shouldn't provide extra mitigation above 100.
3: shields have no skilltrees. Propose that when worn by tanks active mitigation (E) drains grit before stamina (this is kind of sketchy to be honest). If somehow active mitigation used the class resource that'd be nice.
4: fortify can only use upto 100 grit
5: rest of the changes.

What would this do: The same thing roughly, without needing to minigame with keeping something up.



Today i'll test some more with guildies who actually know how to play the game, so maybe i won't want to log out after a bit of Forge.



This is the part where i'm just wenting:

(Or just make proper !#@$ß^> visual indication on the character with grit so it's not total garbage to use, which you should have tought of in the first place if you actually tried it out. Every single active ability in the game has a visual indicatior in the game expect for grit which makes no sense whatsoever SINCE IT'S A CORE SKILL. It's clearly ment to be used, unlike vengence which is still a joke btw. How do i know when to press the button when there's nothing to tell me?? Even if I look up at my buffslots, it might be burried under the +12345 icons. It's beyong frustrating, that you can'T tell at a glance. If there was a line that goes down around my character, or a visual indicatior, i don't know like indominable spirits, all this tomefoolery would go away. Jesus man.... You already have the blue shield on the back of the character as an animation. Just make it fade away slowly over 10 seconds. You already have the tech!!! One charge blue, 2 charges different hue of blue.

Seriously dude. Stop it, get some help. For real, this is the most ill though-out change for any game i can remember since the Riot messed with Rengar Q, what was eventually reverted btw. If this was how the class was in A1 I'd not be playing a tank, which is the only class I enjoy in any MMOs btw. Probably not even the game. We already are in a bad spot due to being the first in line to loose glint and having to repair, we don't need this, and we mostly accepted that. But at some point I refuse to eat slop. Actually if we must have this, just create the visual indicator i mentioned few lines up)