Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Too many Tanks?
Soaker
Member
If Tanks are locked to the tanking role, I worry that finding a spot in a raid group may get difficult as having a third or fourth offtank probably isn't needed or ideal.
For normal group content a game usually needs plenty of tanks but in raiding only a few are needed. This makes me think alot of tanks wouldn't get to see the endgame raiding at all.
That, or there will be way too few tanks for normal group content.
Do we know how the devs plan to solve this? Will there be real viable DPS or maybe support builds for the Tank archetype?
From what I've been able to gather, augmentations aren't meant to be strong enough to truly change your party role.
In other games I've played, tanks are able to change their role if they are unable to find a raidspot as tank, wich mitigates the problem somewhat.
Finding that you are not needed for the only job your archetype excel at would truly suck.
My worries are probably unfounded and I bet the devs have thought of this. Still, I would love to hear what you guys think and how you would solve this problem.
Sorry for my bad english
Edit:
I feel i need to clarify my point a bit.
in a game where normal PvE dungeons require 8 players (and only one of the primary AT can tank) 1/8 players should roll a Tank as primary AT(in an ideal world)
If 40 man raids only require, let's say 2 Tanks, that would leave 3/5 Tanks without a raidspot. (Unless they get the option to change thier role)
Ps.
The best solution I've heard so far is to make the 40 player raid content require 5 primary AT Tanks through boss adds and a need for specialized tanks(magic mitigation, evasion etc) for some fights. I believe that way the devs could control the meta and create a good balance on the servers.
Maybe that has been the devs plan all along.
Thanks for sugesting this, it makes me more hopeful!
For normal group content a game usually needs plenty of tanks but in raiding only a few are needed. This makes me think alot of tanks wouldn't get to see the endgame raiding at all.
That, or there will be way too few tanks for normal group content.
Do we know how the devs plan to solve this? Will there be real viable DPS or maybe support builds for the Tank archetype?
From what I've been able to gather, augmentations aren't meant to be strong enough to truly change your party role.
In other games I've played, tanks are able to change their role if they are unable to find a raidspot as tank, wich mitigates the problem somewhat.
Finding that you are not needed for the only job your archetype excel at would truly suck.
My worries are probably unfounded and I bet the devs have thought of this. Still, I would love to hear what you guys think and how you would solve this problem.
Sorry for my bad english
Edit:
I feel i need to clarify my point a bit.
in a game where normal PvE dungeons require 8 players (and only one of the primary AT can tank) 1/8 players should roll a Tank as primary AT(in an ideal world)
If 40 man raids only require, let's say 2 Tanks, that would leave 3/5 Tanks without a raidspot. (Unless they get the option to change thier role)
Ps.
The best solution I've heard so far is to make the 40 player raid content require 5 primary AT Tanks through boss adds and a need for specialized tanks(magic mitigation, evasion etc) for some fights. I believe that way the devs could control the meta and create a good balance on the servers.
Maybe that has been the devs plan all along.
Thanks for sugesting this, it makes me more hopeful!
1
Comments
Yes, but that is the problem. How many tanks do a raiding guild need. 2? 3?
there is going to be huge competition to get a raidspot as a tank and it doesn't seem like tanks will be able to change role. Getting a guild might not be so easy if thats the case
Having half of the tanks rerolling because they can't get raidspots, leaving a huge lack of tanks for dungeons seems like poor design and it should be the devs "problem"
Most MMOs tend to have a dearth of both tanks and healers, compared to other classes. There is 1 each of the tank/healer primary classes, compared to 5 DPS and 1 support/utility primary class. Based on my ~20 years of MMO experience, there is very, very rarely ever an overabundance of tanks. I would hazard a guess that there will likely be less than 1/8 of the playerbase having the tank as their main class.
Just because you roll an alt doesn't mean you suddenly give up your main. If a tank joins a guild and they have too many tanks already - something that is very, very rare - so that person rolls an alt to join in raiding, they still have their tank character available if needed.
That would still leaves the same % of raiding Tanks in your guild.
So maybe you could need many tanks to form a wall to prevent creep overflow.
That is if their balance so that you need even amounts of each archetype in a raid of 40 you'd want 5 tanks with different secondaries
I do agree that there is usually too few tanks overall in MMO's however the opposite is usually true when it comes to raiding.
Imagine making a 40 man raid in AoC would 1/8 be a tank? i doubt it. having 1/8 healers however is probably a good idea
My guess is that the bigger concern will be not enough tanks for the typical 8-man content. According to a couple recent polls on this forum and reddit, tank will be the 7th or 8th most played class, and generally tanks are scarce.
Ye, i hope they go this route
I haven't ever really encountered the opposite being true in raiding, unless you're in a guild where basically everyone has a tank, healer, and DPS character so they can play whatever is needed.
As for 40-man raids, having 5 tanks honestly probably wouldn't be that big of a deal. If you were to stick with an even distribution of classes for the whole group, and your DPS or whatnot was so low by having 5 tanks/25 DPS, instead of say 3 tanks/27 DPS, you have other issues than just a few extra tanks.
Ye that is my worry as well. There would need to be an incentive to bring 5 tanks is a 40 man raid to create balance i believe
We need real pve for bosses where the tank must work hard to keep agro and top dps must be careful not to pull boss off the tank. I hope we don't get dumbed down pve where everything sticks to the tank like it's superglued to them.
Almost every game has shortage of tank and healer. Some couples go far as to make a tank healer pair so they can fill their groups in 2 seconds by going got tank and healer just need dps
With what I read about only being able to put a limited amount of skills on your action bar, a player might allocate more damage related actions to the bar instead of protection to "respec" for encounters where they aren't strictly needed main Hero.
Ye, that would be cool. I hope they make several tank types viable for raiding. Using raid mechanics to Incentivising raids to bring 5 tanks all with different secondary archetypes would be awesome
Negative as long as this passive remains the tank is going to wear plate
Heavy armor (passive) Increases armor given by heavy armor.[13] Further increases armor given.[13] Each piece of armor added gives health percentage bonus to the tank.[13]
In general discussion i made a post that talk about some issues about the classes .
Anyway i have to say that it all depends on the raid / dungeon, and how it works. A group of tanks can be a valid options, it all depends on fight and the META.
The problem exist when you have a META of DPS and the Tank cannot switch his rule
Same goes for Cleric & Bard primaries.
Secondary AT should enable clerics to sac +Healing to become competitive DPS, & Enable tanks to sac +Defense for DPS, and still be able to OT.
It's important to not overtune the healing potential of DPS-Cleric, otherwise they will rule World PVP.
I play Warrior in Classic WoW, Classic and TBC was the glorydays of Warrior, i can be specced as DPS/Hybrid and do competitive dps, or equip Tank gear and OT(Offtank).
Part of me hopes that Tank or Fighter will work similar to the Classic WoW warrior, Can compete with DPS if specced as DPS, but can still atleast OT.
Guilds in Classic WoW have lots of warriors, 2 may be Tank specced or Hybrid specced, and 4-6 Pure DPS specced, All the DPS specced warriors can OT if needed.
Ye, I play a warrior in classic as well and I love being able to play both roles when needed. What made me worry was when I heard one of the devs saying that the secondary archetype won't give you new skills and the new augmentations won't change your role.
The way I understand this is that a Fighter/Tank probably won't ever be able to taunt or keep aggro and the Tank/fighter will probably be a shitty DPS compaired to the fighter. I hope I'm wrong tho.
That's a really bold statement, that only be the case if damage mitigation from armor is next to non existant or healers will generally outheal every damage and overheal the raid/tank.
Why so, you may ask.
Because the effective health increase from armor is usually really big.
Let's say the difference in damage mitigation from magic between plate and cloth is 30%.
With plate armor reducing magical damage by 0% and cloth reducing it by 30%
That would mean a tank with 1000 hp can withstand 1300 magic damage until he dies.
If you would have plate armor your bonus would need to give you 30% bonus health to equalize that.
But the plate tank would still have less mitigation.
That means he would require a lot more healing while he has no advantage in "tankiness" over the cloth tank.
Also health in itself is at least in PVE a tank stat that is basically binary in its demand:
You absolutely need it or you don't need to care at all.
So assuming that health boni do matter, would be wrong 50% of the time anyways.
That may be true as a general statement but even in classic wow guilds gave their tanks away to other guilds to kill the 4 horsemen in Naxx.
Similar to that we may see offtanks for weak encounters but not at the hardest bosses.
I personally would prefer to have the content designed around a persistent tank and heal ratio.
Problem is that even solo tanking encounters that are meant to be duo tanked are a thing that happens.
So it is pretty safe to assume that you need to absolutely enforce a set amount of tanks or it won't happen.
In the end I am pretty sure that at least for pve and mob grinding people that started out as heal or tank will sooner or later just get a dps character as well to do stuff more efficient.
As soon as people have more than one character available the issue will also get a lot smaller in general.
I see it like this: competition for raid spots is the same as competition for resources. Not every player can have something when it's limited, and it's up to the players to work for it.
The solution: build your social connections and skills to improve your chances of becoming part of a raid.
PS. your English looks pretty good to me!