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Tank Role
Kragtor
Member
Just watched the Tank Alpha preview, and I have concerns.
Tank is a role, and they only showed (I get it's alpha) a heavy armor shield wielding character. That's not the only way to tank.
One of my favorite classes i've ever played was from a super old MMO; it was a rogue tank, that generated aggro through counter-attacking when they evaded. The goal was to not get hit, while still keeping enemies aggro'd on you. The entire showcase of Tank in this game so far is just the Sword and Board heavy armor user.
What are the Nightshield and Spellshield going to look like? Dragon Age 3 had a mage class that was very tanky; they generated magic shields by harming enemies. Rift had tank options for every base class. Please don't just limit it to Heavy Armor, Sword and Board person with slightly different abilities. Give us more diversity in how we play: Evasion based tanking with some Counter-attack DPS, Sword and Board typical, Mage damage mitigation....
Tank is a role, and they only showed (I get it's alpha) a heavy armor shield wielding character. That's not the only way to tank.
One of my favorite classes i've ever played was from a super old MMO; it was a rogue tank, that generated aggro through counter-attacking when they evaded. The goal was to not get hit, while still keeping enemies aggro'd on you. The entire showcase of Tank in this game so far is just the Sword and Board heavy armor user.
What are the Nightshield and Spellshield going to look like? Dragon Age 3 had a mage class that was very tanky; they generated magic shields by harming enemies. Rift had tank options for every base class. Please don't just limit it to Heavy Armor, Sword and Board person with slightly different abilities. Give us more diversity in how we play: Evasion based tanking with some Counter-attack DPS, Sword and Board typical, Mage damage mitigation....
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Personally what I find more concerning about the tank skills is the lack of a taunt button, which drastically limits PvE encounter mechanics.
As a future AOC Tank, I was actually excited to see the lack of a taunt ability. Almost every single ability had a threat generating perk to it. I'm thinking if we get rid of the ability to literally yet at a monster to get its attention, we can focus more on threat generating rotations. The harpoon can also be treated as a true taunt if they wanted. I'd rather grab somethings attention by chucking a spear into it's face than by calling it names out loud lol.
The sword sticking in their head is exactly what was wrong with the fireball. This animation team is trying to be flashy and the community just doesn't want that. There is zero reason to leave the sword in their head like they are impaled if it is just going to magically appear back in our hands. The animation looked bad (yeah yeah pre alpha) and it didn't make sense. Why waste time on all these animations at all. TONE IT DOWN. Show us simplified content because we are all already drooling over anything we can see and grow from there. Just my opinion, not trying to cause any arguments.
At earlier levels (20+) , being a Warrior with a Monk sub-job allowed you to gain the passive trait for “Counter” which would sometimes evade an attack entirely and counter attack the enemy instantly. I got away with this in my group of friends, but it didn’t fly with pugs.
I’d like to see some conventional tank roles and some unconventional ones as well, maybe where the “Tank” is the specialization/secondary class.
• Summoner “Brood Warden” would be cool, using minions or a single big minion to control fights and maintain a safe distance. Maybe it makes them immobilized to maintain focus when controlling a big minion.
• Rogue “Shadow Guardian” tank that uses deception, evasion or trickery to manipulate fights in such a way that they can frustrate enemies and avoid damage.
• Mage “Spellstone” tank could interesting... I’m hoping they would use enchantments and self-buffs to resist different damage types and also punish the enemy when the enemy lands a hit (think “thorns” or a fire armor enchant). Weapon enchants that could deal elemental damage or generate resources on attacks always interest me.
• Bard “Siren” might work by maintaining a certain song (vocalized) that severely reduces damage of enemies and maintains high enmity. Additional song options could bolster self-regen or provide the party with some sort of damage redirect/absorption. I could see them also using sleep or charm to heavily control fights where multiple enemies are involved.
It's like you said, Tank is a role, and what they showed is just the abilities on what the Tank class(yes, we all know very confusing etc etc) will have access to. I believe, as the game is developed around this idea, that it'll be up to the players and own agency on how they wish to tank. It's not going to be a set in stone way, like many other MMOs, where if you play a PLD tank, you HAVE to do a certain rotation in order to generate aggro, and you HAVE to play a certain way in order to tank properly.
Seeing how most, if not all, of the abilities shown generate threat, I believe players will have far more freedom on what they wish to use in order to play Tank their OWN way. Since, as Steven mentioned before, you can choose whether or not to take ALL of the abilities and not upgrade any, or upgrade a few and lose out on other abilities.
They could've showed us how the Tank...well...tanks, but I feel like that defeats the entire purpose their ideals behind the game is crafted behind. If you want to play as a Rogue-Tank hybrid, then by all means go ahead, and they give you that freedom on doing so. It's up to YOU on how you play that hybrid though, and up to YOU on how you wanna tank, if you decide on doing so.
That's all well and good but from the gameplay we have seen so far, even basic weapon attacks from the tank generate threat so all you need to do to keep threat is have all the mobs grouped up and cleave them with your weapon. Now to me that is NOT fun tank gameplay at all. At that point you're just a dps who happens to get hit by the mobs.
Also, as @Maezriel pointed out in my tank review video, no dedicated taunt means no tank swap mechanics in boss fights, which immediately limits what the devs can put into the fight.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Tank
"Tanks will have different build options:[4]
Evasion tanks
Control tanks
Shield tanks"