Tanking: Should the "Tank" Primary Class Be the Be-All-End-All Tanking Class?

IMO, tank/* and Summoner/tank should be the only viable options to tank any content.

Within that, tank/tank should be perfectly viable on all content, while each other tank has content/situations it is good in, and content/situations it is just not suited to.

Only a tank primary should tank rbs and instanced pve.

George Black wrote: »

Off tanking.. go nuts

In almost 20 years of playing MMO's, most of it at the top end, I have never once had a dedicated off tank for any PvE content.

I'm convinced this is only something people do when they don't trust their tank.

Same thing goes for Fighter, Mage and Summoner.

Sardokus

The Trinity systems work best tried and true over the years and I am not a fan of everyone can do everything class system. Can another melee class off tank to make for smoother pve pulls ? Absolutely. However a main tank should be necessary to bear the main brunt of absorbing damage so the rest of the party can do their job. Everyone should have distinct roles for a balanced composition to achieve X goals. If a dungeon requires 2 tanks maybe , can a hybrid help pull aggro off weaker hitting mobs thats another possibility. People want to feel empowered that they are doing the best possible job for the role they have in the party and should be rewarded for such.

Dolyem wrote: »

Interested in hearing all opinions on:

-Should Tank Primary classes be the only and/or most dominant tank choice?

-Should other, not necessarily all, Primary Class variants have secondary options that make them just as viable as tanks or even off-tanks?

I opened this can of worms once, so good luck to you for trying again.

My opinion is that I hope more than just tank/X can be a viable tank. I would love to see most X/tank options if properly geared and spec'ed to tank to be able to. If not I feel like party composition is going to get really repetitive.

But there are a lot of people here who don't feel the same.

Honestly, it depends on how much secondary archetype augments can change the primary abilities, and we just don't know enough about them yet to have that talk...

bloodprophet

Good question. Let's change it a little to gain perspective.

Should the Summoner be the end all be all best Summoner or should any /Summoner be able to also have the ability to have access to all the best summons?

If the answer is yes then they need to get rid of the archetype system all together and allow everybody to be whatever they want at all times.

If the answer is no. That all archetypes should be good and strong in their own way. Then why should tank not follow this same logic?

One of the big draws for me was the idea they were getting back to the idea of community and working together by making each archetype special and different. Not the same rehashing of homogenization of everyone can do everything or everyone is DPS with a self heal and rez. Every archetype should be the best at what they do. The augments blurring the lines so players can customize their build as they choose I think is a good idea. But it should not go sooooo far that the primary archetype has become irrelevant.

Vhaeyne

TBH, I don't mind if a non-tank class could feasibly tank some things.

Something like a summoner's summon, being able to tank some things in some situations. That said, I think a "real" tank should always be better.

I hate when there are tank specs that get outplayed by non-tanks due to poor class design.

Give X/tank the ability to tank most content and nobody will want to invite a tank in a pve or pvp group. They bring nothing to the table besides tanking.
Might as well do away with the class concept in mmorpgs. Just "play as you want" crap.

How would you like it if all X/healers could heal the group, X/mages,rangers could dps for the group etc etc?

X/Summoners could summon any pet-like object you want and be summoners.

X/Rogues could be good assassins.

.......

bloodprophet wrote: »

Good question. Let's change it a little to gain perspective.

Should the Summoner be the end all be all best Summoner or should any /Summoner be able to also have the ability to have access to all the best summons?

See this is why having the tank archetype share the same lable as a 'holy trinity' slot is weird.

Most MMOs that stay around a while usually have more than one tank or healer. People like variety. Now this doesn't mean that some end up being better than others for certain content or that some aren't easier to play and manage than others... But still, the choice is there rather than having every party require at least one tank/x and cleric/x in them...

Ashes also has more than one tank and more than one healer.
But, by design, Primary Archetype Tank is main tank. You can have a whole bunch of other off-tanks.
Primary Archetype Cleric will be the most powerful healer. You can have a bunch of other healers, but...
An 8-person group will always want to have a Primary Archetype Cleric - by design.

https://discord.com/channels/256164085366915072/256164085366915072/739365922246098987
Q: If i use secondary cleric can i heal others?
A: indirectly there are some augments when applied to certain skills that can do this. But it would not replace a cleric (primary) archetype

George Black wrote: »

Give X/tank the ability to tank most content and nobody will want to invite a tank in a pve or pvp group. They bring nothing to the table besides tanking.
Might as well do away with the class concept in mmorpgs. Just "play as you want" crap.

How would you like it if all X/healers could heal the group, X/mages,rangers could dps for the group etc etc?

X/Summoners could summon any pet-like object you want and be summoners.

X/Rogues could be good assassins.

.......

This is why I also mentioned spec'd and geared for it.
I'm going to skip over your DPS for the group part because yes they all should be able to DPS
Mage/hunter/rogue/fighter in any mixed mashup possible should still be able to DPS...

Not all X/summoners might even summon pets. A fighter/summoner might just summon extra blades to float around and copy his moves for more "on hit effects". But I could also see two different bladecallers making very different builds, one could lean into his secondary archetype augments more than the other.
However, neither of those bladecallers are going to replace a wildblade who could still be a summoner with his pets but use fighter secondary augments so rather than sitting in the back like a mage he gets up in your face with sword or spear and fights alongside his summons. Again these all play differently.

I've said this before with tank/summoner summoner/tank. One is a summoner who can tank through his summoned minions, the other is a tank who can summon Shields or support effects. Neither would make the other obsolete. These would just be different play style of tanks.

One of these things existing doesn't negate the other. All it does is give people more options to choose from. But this is where the gear and specializing comes in, if a fighter/tank for example barely uses his secondary archetype augments, puts all of his stat points into attack stats, is geared out for DPS, no he shouldn't magically be able to tank just because he's an x/tank, he should get stomped by a boss. Now if he rolls sword and shield and all plate, puts all of his points into defensive stats, and leans heavily into his secondary archetype augments doing everything he can to make it a tank character. Then go for it, let him tank.

*Copy and paste whole argument for cleric and healing with any primary matchups you want*

Eff it, I want a necromancer that uses all of the life augments so rather than summoning skeletons I'm summoning guardian angels that heal my targets instead... Go wild intrepid! Lol

While I'm on that topic if clerics can do life or death schools, making them either be healer role or DPS role... Will tanks have a school that allows them to be more DPS role than tank role oriented?

Damn, I cycled back to the same punchline again we just don't know enough about any of this to talk about it yet.

Tank/mage, tank/ranger top dps.

Cleric Secondary Archetype has 4 Schools of augments.
We can expect DPS from the Death School. And probably DPS also from at least one of the other 2 Schools.

Summoner/Tank is not really just a different playstyle of tanks. It's really a different playstyle of Summoner.
Summoner/Tank is a sub-class; not a dual-class.

CROW3

Dygz wrote: »

But, by design, Primary Archetype Tank is main tank. You can have a whole bunch of other off-tanks.

That’s how I would expect this to work as well. A lot of solid off tanks, but one core main tank.

George Black wrote: »

Tank/mage, tank/ranger top dps.

Sure, but probably not too DPS unless they go straight glass cannon... But if that's your desired build you probably should have said fighter not tank as your primary.
Given they also need to accept they won't be able to tank anymore. That they want to be an elemental bruiser like a spellsword but less of a fragile? I would be shifting a lot of my stat points from tank skills to damage skills to pump out that kind of DPS

Look at the passive skill trees for tank. You can choose stuff like health, Regen,DMG mitigation OR you could put your points into damage, cooldowns reduction, crit rate... You can't do everything, you have to choose what you want. Do you want to be a tank or DPS, not both.

Dygz wrote: »

Summoner/Tank is not really just a different playstyle of tanks. It's really a different playstyle of Summoner.
Summoner/Tank is a sub-class; not a dual-class.

Yes it would play different than a primary archetype tank because it's a summoner not a tank. I am saying it would be a different play style for tanking as in trinity role. (Again this is why I feel it's silly to be called tank, it leads to confusion)
Yes a subclass by choosing broodwarden instead of shadowmancer my subclass works different. Now my line up of summonable minions kits me out for filling the Trinity role of tank INSTEAD of DPS. A broodwarden would deal less damage than all of the other summoner subclasses because it has better survivability ... And then if I pump all of my upgrade points for skills into tanky stuff instead of damage again, I'm building my summoner to be a tank instead of a damage dealer. Not a dual-class? Just a tank.

SirChancelot11 wrote: »

George Black wrote: »

Tank/mage, tank/ranger top dps.

Sure, but probably not too DPS unless they go straight glass cannon... But if that's your desired build you probably should have said fighter not tank as your primary.
Given they also need to accept they won't be able to tank anymore. That they want to be an elemental bruiser like a spellsword but less of a fragile? I would be shifting a lot of my stat points from tank skills to damage skills to pump out that kind of DPS

Look at the passive skill trees for tank. You can choose stuff like health, Regen,DMG mitigation OR you could put your points into damage, cooldowns reduction, crit rate... You can't do everything, you have to choose what you want. Do you want to be a tank or DPS, not both.

And if your desired build is to tank you should get tank as primary.

SirChancelot11 wrote: »

Sure, but probably not too DPS unless they go straight glass cannon... But if that's your desired build you probably should have said fighter not tank as your primary.
Given they also need to accept they won't be able to tank anymore. That they want to be an elemental bruiser like a spellsword but less of a fragile? I would be shifting a lot of my stat points from tank skills to damage skills to pump out that kind of DPS

Look at the passive skill trees for tank. You can choose stuff like health, Regen,DMG mitigation OR you could put your points into damage, cooldowns reduction, crit rate... You can't do everything, you have to choose what you want. Do you want to be a tank or DPS, not both.

A Primary Archetype Tank always main tanks because that's is what their Active Skills do.
A Primary Archetype Tank will not be a glass canon because their Active Skills provide Damage Mitigation.
They will be able to gain some "canon" effects from Mage augments.

I don't know what you mean by "damage" skills since Secondary Archetypes do not provide skills.
The only skills a Primary Archetype Tank has are Tank skills - unless you want to include Weapon Skills.

JustVine

George Black wrote: »

Give X/tank the ability to tank most content and nobody will want to invite a tank in a pve or pvp group. They bring nothing to the table besides tanking.
Might as well do away with the class concept in mmorpgs. Just "play as you want" crap.

How would you like it if all X/healers could heal the group, X/mages,rangers could dps for the group etc etc?

X/Summoners could summon any pet-like object you want and be summoners.

X/Rogues could be good assassins.

.......

Unpopular opinion /summoner should summon, /cleric should heal, /mage should have good dps or mobility /rogue should have good evasion and yes /tank should have the ability to reduce incoming damage or attract mob aggro.

If the only thing tank as a primary archetype is bringing to the table is mob aggro and damage mitigation then they botched the class. Tanking means sustain in the face of the enemy. Tanking means protecting vulnerable party members. Tanking means positioning the enemy. There are many ways to approach that and main tank should have access to all of them with the right secondary.

SirChancelot11 wrote: »

Yes it would play different than a primary archetype tank because it's a summoner not a tank. I am saying it would be a different play style for tanking as in trinity role. (Again this is why I feel it's silly to be called tank, it leads to confusion)
Yes a subclass by choosing broodwarden instead of shadowmancer my subclass works different. Now my line up of summonable minions kits me out for filling the Trinity role of tank INSTEAD of DPS. A broodwarden would deal less damage than all of the other summoner subclasses because it has better survivability ... And then if I pump all of my upgrade points for skills into tanky stuff instead of damage again, I'm building my summoner to be a tank instead of a damage dealer. Not a dual-class? Just a tank.

It shouldn't lead to confusion.

Broodwarden and Shadowmancer can both choose Summons that Tank, Support or DPS.
Whether or not a Broodwarden deals less damage depends on which Tank School the individual chooses to focus on. Could be that the Broodwarden chooses to use a DPS Summons with Tank damage augments.
Could be that the Shadowmancer chooses to use a Support Summons with Escape/Evasion augments.

You could build your Summoner to be very tanky. That doesn't mean you can build your Summoner to main tank for an 8-person group.
Dual-class means that your character can switch between being a Summoner and being a Tank. It implies using Tank Active Skills.
But, by design, a Summoner is always primarily Support.
If your Broodwarden chooses a more Tank type Summons and also focuses on Threat and Damage Mitigation augments, your Summoner will be very tanky. That doesn't mean it could be a viable main tank for an 8-person group encounter.

You will need a Tank more or less depending on what's happening in the environment. Certainly in dungeons you will need a Tank. I don't picture us creating any encounters that wouldn't need that sort of control. Now we're not just focused on aggro in terms of control and managing mobs... It's not just about mitigating damage, although that's a part of the sort of calculus there, but it's also about making sure that the mobs are doing what you want them to do.
--- Jeffrey Bard

daveywavey

Noaani wrote: »

George Black wrote: »

Off tanking.. go nuts

In almost 20 years of playing MMO's, most of it at the top end, I have never once had a dedicated off tank for any PvE content.

I'm convinced this is only something people do when they don't trust their tank.

I remember one particular boss encounter where there were two bosses, and if they got too close to each other, then they'd do MASSIVE damage, so the tank took one to one side, and the off-tank took one to the other. Was no point bringing two tanks, cos you didn't need a second tank for the rest of the raid. Off-tanks have their uses!

daveywavey wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

George Black wrote: »

Off tanking.. go nuts

In almost 20 years of playing MMO's, most of it at the top end, I have never once had a dedicated off tank for any PvE content.

I'm convinced this is only something people do when they don't trust their tank.

I remember one particular boss encounter where there were two bosses, and if they got too close to each other, then they'd do MASSIVE damage, so the tank took one to one side, and the off-tank took one to the other. Was no point bringing two tanks, cos you didn't need a second tank for the rest of the raid. Off-tanks have their uses!

This isn't so much off-tanking as it is dual tanking. I've also seen similar dual tanking of individual mobs that have a memory wipe.

An off tank is generally a character you have as a backup for your tank, either to take over the main encounter, or to take on adds if you happen to pull any accidently.

The idea of taking two tanks along on content that only asks for one is just odd to me (or taking three tanks on content that asks for two).

Dygz wrote: »

A Primary Archetype Tank always main tanks because that's is what their Active Skills do.
A Primary Archetype Tank will not be a glass canon because their Active Skills provide Damage Mitigation.
They will be able to gain some "canon" effects from Mage augments.

I don't know what you mean by "damage" skills since Secondary Archetypes do not provide skills.
The only skills a Primary Archetype Tank has are Tank skills - unless you want to include Weapon Skills.

Do you just willfully ignore or legitimately not understand what people say.
A tank/mage would be tougher than a fighter/mage. Making him more of a magic melee DPS bruiser than a magic melee DPS glass Cannon, because he can take some hits. Because as you point out his base skills add damage mitigation. But on the skill trees if I put more points into the mage secondary effect of augment of fire damage and big explosions on impact I'm going to deal more damage and be less tanky than if I put my skill points into my primary archetype activated abilities like the charge that adds the damage mitigation. Again I'm trading to deal more damage than have survivability.

The reason I would use the tank over the fighter for my primary art type is because he is tougher and I like the skill set that his primary archetype brings to use.

All I'm advocating for here is flexibility for the players to build their classes how they choose. And that includes the guy that wants to make a rogue/tank and go all in on Dodge, Parry, evasion tanking. If you don't like that don't play with him, just like any other system in the game that they're going to be building if you're not a fan of that, just ignore it.

I personally feel like it would be better for there to be different tank (role) playstyles than just the tank(archetype) playstyle.

This could go either way though and we have no idea because we have no idea what any tank secondary augments do for a primary activated ability. So again, I just feel this route would be healthier for the game.

@Dolyem this is why I warned you some people have very different stances here.

Sathrago

Noaani wrote: »

IMO, tank/* and Summoner/tank should be the only viable options to tank any content.

Within that, tank/tank should be perfectly viable on all content, while each other tank has content/situations it is good in, and content/situations it is just not suited to.

Basically this. We don't have enough information for anything else to really be able to tank, and honestly I am ok with these being the tanks.

Percimes

My worries are that tanks/x and cleric/x will be essential to every grouping scenarios and who cares about the rest of the group members' classes. It means both these classes will always be in shortage, which means pick up groups are much harder to form, which means people have to resort to soloing. Yes yes, get friends, get into a guild, roll these classes, yada yada... All personal solutions, not global ones, and not as effective as you believe.

There will be archetypes that are judged by the players as less desirable/useful. Not useless, but whether you have one or not in your group won't impact the fights that much. A working formula/meta will develop and they simply won't be at the core of it. In raid or world boss, sure. In "normal" content, nah.

And then there will be these two blessed classes that no one can live without. Somehow, only them can perform their divine roles, none other can replace them at that, but that doesn't mean they can't do some dps on their own. Oh no! We can't let them cloistered into their roles, they are allowed to do damage. But no one else can tank. Or heal.

Percimes wrote: »

My worries are that tanks/x and cleric/x will be essential to every grouping scenarios and who cares about the rest of the group members' classes. It means both these classes will always be in shortage, which means pick up groups are much harder to form, which means people have to resort to soloing. Yes yes, get friends, get into a guild, roll these classes, yada yada... All personal solutions, not global ones, and not as effective as you believe.

There will be archetypes that are judged by the players as less desirable/useful. Not useless, but whether you have one or not in your group won't impact the fights that much. A working formula/meta will develop and they simply won't be at the core of it. In raid or world boss, sure. In "normal" content, nah.

And then there will be these two blessed classes that no one can live without. Somehow, only them can perform their divine roles, none other can replace them at that, but that doesn't mean they can't do some dps on their own. Oh no! We can't let them cloistered into their roles, they are allowed to do damage. But no one else can tank. Or heal.

Compare Ashes to a game like WoW.

In WoW, you had groups of 5 players. In that five players, you had a tank, a healer and 3 DPS.

In Ashes, we have groups of 8. Still one tank and one healer, but that leaves 6 other spots in the group.

This means the game will get by just fine with a lower ratio or tanks and healers to other classes than other games can manage.

Honestly, if anything, I am concerned that the game will have more tanks and healers than is needed - not too few.