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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.
Tanking - Active vs Passive Mitigation
falcorpix
Member
Tanking, love it in theory, hate it in practice.
Only one MMORPG managed to make tanks exciting and fun to play, Tera (excluding brawler).
Active blocking being the main reason it was so fun. Being in a fast paced fight against a boss, looking at its animations and timing blocks at the right time, it feels good and its fun.
I just watched a video of AoC where a tank pulls in a bunch of mobs and stands still and theres just a bunch of combat text saying "evaded", "blocked"... Personally I don't see the appeal in that, its boring.
Im playing FFXIV right now, as a tank and its so not fun... I just stand in front of the boss, doing 1-2-3 combo and pressing each mitigation skill at a time, wow, i increased my defenses by 10%, now i increase my dodge rate by 15%... but im just standing there, getting smacked by a boss.
Another issue is aggro management, there needs to be a certain level of difficulty on keeping aggro, a good DPS needs to challenge the tank and make it hard to keep aggro.
Please, make tanking a fast paced, active and engaging role.
PS: yes, i just posted on the subreddit aswell.
Only one MMORPG managed to make tanks exciting and fun to play, Tera (excluding brawler).
Active blocking being the main reason it was so fun. Being in a fast paced fight against a boss, looking at its animations and timing blocks at the right time, it feels good and its fun.
I just watched a video of AoC where a tank pulls in a bunch of mobs and stands still and theres just a bunch of combat text saying "evaded", "blocked"... Personally I don't see the appeal in that, its boring.
Im playing FFXIV right now, as a tank and its so not fun... I just stand in front of the boss, doing 1-2-3 combo and pressing each mitigation skill at a time, wow, i increased my defenses by 10%, now i increase my dodge rate by 15%... but im just standing there, getting smacked by a boss.
Another issue is aggro management, there needs to be a certain level of difficulty on keeping aggro, a good DPS needs to challenge the tank and make it hard to keep aggro.
Please, make tanking a fast paced, active and engaging role.
PS: yes, i just posted on the subreddit aswell.
3
Comments
FFXIV/WOW both have active blocking, where you have to pay attention to the boss animations and react accordingly.
In addition, you have to worry about maintaining high uptime and good positioning of the bosses. Doing tank swaps correctly, parsing well, keeping aggro, and doing mechanics.
If tanking in these games is not hard enough for you, I would expect that you are not challenging yourself and just doing the easy content.
If there is no challenge for you, then I look forward to seeing you clear world firsts. While the rest of us unwashed mortals have to put effort into learning and practicing fights.
All that said, I do expect Ashes to be much more random than FFXIV/WOW because that is the nature of open world bosses. Much of the time you will be PvPing while you deal with the bosses anyway. It's not like PvP is going to magically stop for the bosses.
So, if dealing with all the normal MMO boss stuff is not enough for you, then add rogues coming out of stealth with a sneak attack timed with the tank buster to your list of things to worry about. Should be plenty reactionary.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
WoW needs better story telling in their raids and more cut scenes/cinematics to bring that forward. The game over the years has taken too many turns and resulted in shortcuts and lack luster content. The raids do need a bit more randomness and surprise to them. That Sylvannis fight was going in the right direction in my opinion.
Race to World First is some of the best content you can watch when it comes to WoW raiding, seeing those teams figuring things out from players to offscreen members is quite interesting.
EDIT: grammar
Can't speak for WoW, but in FFXIV i havent seen any active blocking skills, i know paladin has a skills called sheldron that "blocks" all attacks for a short duration, its not really an active block, its just a buff that reduces damage taken for a few seconds. There are also other skills that make you immune to damage, but again, not really active mitigation, just another buff.
Again only speaking for my experience in FFXIV, the content is indeed challenging, but being a tank only makes it easier. You do have to worry about positioning the boss and parsing well, you dont have to worry about aggro and you can ignore a lot of mechanics that DPS and healers cant, just because you are tanky af.
I never even said that tanking was easy, I said it was boring. Being a training dummy for both the boss and the healer is boring.
I wanna be more engaged in the fight itself, watching the bosses moves and blocking/dodging accordingly, not simply buffing my defenses and waiting for the healer to heal me.
Im just giving my feedback here, on how I would like to play tank.
Tank is a role that always lack population, theres always a severe lack of tanks. Maybe if they stop catering to the same tank player, the tank player that has played tank in every other game and start innovating the role and making it more appealing to other players, then maybe, we will see an increase in tanks in the game.
What you're talking about is entirely a different beast - which is a minigame that punishes you when you fail it - that is why it isn't commonly used in mmos - you're just driving away potentional tanks with this added baseline difficulty
the best "widespread known" equivalent of what you want is dark souls block mechanic - when you raise your shield in order to lower incoming damage based on how good shield you have
this would of course make you choose between using your own attacks or blocking - so there is an option to make it completely separate (meaning you can use all skills when raising your shield) - or somewhere inbetween (meaning that your skills have reduced potency when you're blocking)
The problem is that any implementation of such "minigame" is straight up increasing the baseline difficulty of the role and thus it isn't as welcoming for new players
― Plato
Personally I think that tanking in LotRO is even better than TERA Online. At least as a Guardian, it was amazing. With that class it was like martial arts; you'd engage your enemy, drawing aggro, then your skills would be reactionary... You can taunt, interrupt, stun, and so on with skills that become enabled based on what the enemy attacked you with. And you could weave those skills into chains to do other skills based on what you were trying to do. It was a very active and strategic way to tank, not based on a robotic rotation, but rather by reacting to what the enemy did and turning the tables on them.
Even TERA Online falls into the same old "optimal rotation" tedium that most MMOs do, even if your rotation is happening as you're actively blocking things.
An ability that increases your ability to take a beating, yet can only be active for a fraction of a fight, sounds to me a whole lot like an active tanking ability.
What part of that makes it "just a buff" as opposed to action combat tanking being "just stepping out of the way"?
In both cases, you analyze the encounter and work out when best to make use of the tools you have. You then activate those tools at the appropriate moment.
To say either of these are different to the other is just bias, it isn't rooted in any sort of fact.
Havent played Tera in a while, but I know i have tanked with Berserker before when it was first released.
I dont really remember how good or bad it felt, but i assume it wasnt great since it was just a weird update no one asked for many years after the games release. It was pretty pointless, when I want to tank i have lancer and warrior and the fun of berserker is dealing huge crits behind a boss.
It's so bad that it's a joke. I mean, it's literally a joke; Berserker tanking is more of a meme that TERA Online players bring up in discussions than something anyone actually does. My first main character (that I advanced pretty far) was a Berserker, and I was intrigued with the possibility of tanking with a giant axe, so I looked up guides on how to do it. There weren't any, the only advice I could find was "don't". Yet the developers did make it part of the class, and they expect players to do it, even if they didn't implement it properly. I also tried to do it, because why not, and it sucked. It's like trying to fight with a sword that has no hilt and is only partially sharpened; you can do it, but it's painful and doesn't work very well.
Here's a good discussion on why it sucks so badly, and it fits with my own experience when I briefly tried to do it in a couple of dungeons.
https://www.reddit.com/r/TeraOnline/comments/8gkdor/so_how_is_berserker_tank/
Oh, and I eventually abandoned my Berserker. While the feeling of putting in big hits is somewhat fun, the whole "scoot along barely moving while you charge up your weapon, hoping your enemy will hold still long enough to hit it, and watching your health be cannibalized" thing got old. I kept at it because I was sure as I got higher level and learned more skills it would get better, but it never did.
Warrior and Valkyrie, on the other hand, are fast-paced, fun, and dynamic. Brawler is also somewhat fun but weird, I consider it a distant third. I tried making an Archer work but it feels like you're throwing straws at people compared to everything else.
Your feedback is basically you don't feel like you are blocking unless you get animation locked.
I don't know about you, but when I greed until the last second and pop Shelltron, I feel pretty good about my tanking. Under no circumstances in FFXIV or WOW should you feel like you can just ignore mechanics and let the healers top you off. You are wasting valuable DPS by doing that.
Your job as tank is not just a damage sponge for the healer to ring out every time it gets wet. You actually have the direct ability to make sure that yourself and the healers can do as much damage as possible with correct timing and mitigation. Every time a healer has to heal you for a mechanic you ignored makes a party wipe more likely due to enrage timers.
Personally, I prefer to actively pop my tank CDs and still be able to DPS. Otherwise, you are just sitting on your hands wasting time. Which feels clunky and bad.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
The way I read this post - as someone that has not tanked on either game in question - is that if you play shit, tanking isn't as deep.
On the other hand, if you go in to the details of it, it usually is quite deep and there is usually more you can do other than the bare minimum.
This is how I read the above largely due to the fact that it holds true in every game i have played a tank in - but also every game I have played a healer or DPS in. You can get by with the basics in any game, with any combat system, on most content.
Or you can go deep in to it and actually be good at your class.
Not at all, I'm assuming you have never played tera, or at least not extensively, which is fine, im also not an expert in FFXIV. I leveled PLD and DRK to 80, but havent done any of the super challenging content yet.
I dont think I can ever do justice on how good tanking feels in Tera, specifically with Lancer or Warrior, with just words.
Never have I felt like I'm animation locked when blocking, blocking is just another skill, when I block it negates all damage and makes "counter" available, "counter" is a quick skill with great DPS and aggro booster. So when I block im not wasting time or getting animation locked, im negating damage, increasing my DPS and aggro.
Yeah, I do not feel that satisfaction, when I greed a last second Shelltron pop, all i get is flying text saying blocked, my efforts dont feel that rewarding, but if you like it thats great, im glad you are having fun.
On the other hand, when I block a heavy hit on tera i feel the impact, both visually and with the sound, it truly feels like i've block a dangerous attack, its really satisfying.
Again, this is not how it is at all.
Imagine a boss does a 3 swing attack, I dont hold my block for 5 seconds waiting for the swings... I would be losing DPS, blocking stamina and aggro.
What I do is click block the very last second to block the first swing, do a counter, click to block the second swing, do a quick animation DPS skill and finally block the last swing and proceed with the rest of the fight.
There is never a downtime while fighting, you are never wasting time and it surely doesnt feel clunky.
I get it tho, I have played other games with active blocking and they do feel like you described.
So if AoC went for a system like that it all depends on execution.
Interestingly, the last time I played a tank class at (or near) the top end was in EQ2. In that game, I was using a tool in the class I was playing about every 0.3 seconds.
This is the kind of gameplay I think of when talking about games with short term defensive buffs.
In your situation, if there was a boss that was using 3 attacks over 5 seconds, I would expect to use 15 - 16 tricks from my classes tool bag in that time. The concept of holding something - anything - for 5 seconds in an MMO seems simply made up to me.
15-16 abilities in five seconds, in the context of Ashes, sounds stranger to me than holding something for 5 seconds.
I guess we just have different tastes. Tera is a lot better about active blocking, for sure. It's been a long time since I have played it, but I have mostly fond memories. Still, I prefer good old fashion tank CDs like WOW and FFXIV just personal tastes here.
I have found that there might not be such a thing as "too easy" for any gameplay system. Like Tetris is too easy to a point, then it becomes inhuman with a few tweaks(tighter windows to put things in their spots). The baseline "mechanics" in Tetris are stupid easy. Same thing for like most MMO classes and battle systems. When you start to reduce the window of time that a player has to do anything and expect the player to do more in a given time frame. The challenge increases. This basically how tanking can be hard in any game if the encounter is demanding.
For me, as long as I am doing hard content, and it feels hard, it's good. Unless I am being slowed or tied down or animation locked all the time. Then I just get annoyed. I also don't like to play casters because I don't like to stand fucking still and cast. Like, yes tanks keep the boss still, but also I can move and attack during mechanics and try to greed. Which feels good.
Again, that is just personal taste.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
I would expect some classes to be that pace, though likely not initially. Once the combat system is established, the first additions are often mechanics that speed things up a little (or a lot, in some games).
Javelin: Aggro/crowd control (Good against ranged opponents, gap closer, damage mitigation for friends)
Lacerate: damage/dot (Good against armored opponents, non-bleed resistance, or healer types)
Myrimdon's fury: damage+good (against fast attackers with lower damage or possibly good against lots of mobs depending upon if damage resets attack cool down)
Onslaught: Gap closer (Great against range, does it ignore cc temporarily?, can it be used after initiating combat)
Resounding Smash: aoe/directly in front of you with delayed damage
Shockwave: Wider aoe/sounds like a big area
Ultimate defense: Damage immunity
Weapon toss: Ranged attack
Great abilities for particular situations or vs particular foes, what I don't like about the abilities is where it ends. None of the abilities really chain off each other. It's a good start but not a good finish nor do I care for all the passive tank skills. What I don't care for about the rank 1 - 3 skills posted is that they aren't integrated into other skills.
You may weapon toss, javelin, or onslaught to start a battle. Then you choose the best ability based on the situation, after that your real choices fade quickly unless fighting multiple mobs. It's also fine if there is a lot of movement because Javenlin, weapon toss, and onslaught are gap closer or ranged abilities. Unfortunately, the tank look fun or interesting in melee fights, which I would think they should thrive in.
3 ranged abilities, 3 abilities that possibly do AOE, 1 active mitigation ability, 1 ability good vs fast melee attackers. As abilities rank damage, cc, utility are picked up but it doesn't do anything for melee vs melee unless the ranged abilitiese are the most damaging the tank have...because there isn't a reason for the tank to move...and moving is counter intuitive for maintaining aggro. I am guessing the ranged abilities will not be the most damaging either.
I think abilities should synergize with each other to an extent to create good rotations, as well as require the player to predict when they'll need certain abilities.
This isn't to say that tanks should be good vs melee mobs or npcs...just that they should have something entertaining to do when faced with them. It looks like AoC is going with passive tanking skills and more the do damage then prevent damage with the tank.
What we have in terms of classes right now literally is just a start.
Each class is going to have 30+ abilities, each of which are going to have around 28 potential augments, as well as having 3 different ranks - with ranks adding functionality as opposed to just increased strength.
Intrepid have also talked a lot about synergizing with abilities - however things like this won't get developed until much later on in development (look for it in two years).
I was playing a warrior (twin swords) and there was one boss, like a giant basilisk (witcher, not harry potter), which I had to off-tank.
My character, while holding block, swords raised, would change his facial expression and feel the pushback with every deflect, as the boss roared, blasting shockwaves.
In comparison, the eso active block feels so unimpactful.
As for mmos that dont have active block, I am sure, all real tank mains wish they did.
I agree that is more exciting than hitting shieldblock for a 40% increase block chance for 6 second... But they also can't take this too far in the other direction like new world where tanking is just me holding my shield up and using my the activate abilities occasionally...
Maybe blocking sharing the same stamina bar as dodging?
It is only "more exciting" because of animations.
This is the only reason people claim you can "feel" the impact.
This isn't something inherent to action combat, it is just something games with action combat generally put more of a focus on due to the inherent lack of depth the combat system has.
They trade depth of a system for animations that make players think they can "feel" an impact - which they obviously actually can't.
All I'm saying is seeing an attack coming and timing a RMB is more interactive than activating an ability and take % less damage for a set period of time.
But these two approaches are the difference between tab Target and action combat... Which is still a toss up for the game so who knows...
Remember, this kind of active defense is all about timing. It doesn't require someone to aim like a first-person shooter. Even the interrupt action in World of Warcraft works the same way; you play a Rogue and see an enemy starting the animation for a huge attack, you use your Kick to interrupt him and prevent the attack. It's effectively the same thing.
My point is that you can have the same kind of engaging and active gameplay without having to make it into an action combat game.
We are talking about active abilities vs stat modifiers
I consider how "interactive" a player is with a game in two ways.
The first is how many button presses the player makes. In the scenario you have described above, there is the same number of button presses, so both are equally as interactive as each other.
The second is in how much thought goes in to pressing a button. This is where the disagreement comes in.
In a game where you just block an attack using RMB or some such, you basically just need to observe the attack, and react. In most games, in most situations, there is little more concern for anything else. Most such games give you no reason to consider NOT blocking that attack if you are able.
In a game with an ability that increases your block, or decreases your incoming damage (or what ever) for a set amount of time, you have to observe the attack coming in, but then you also need to consider if this attack is the one you want to blow your cooldown on. If you activate that ability now, it will be unavailable to you for several dozen seconds, or in some cases, several minutes. You usually have a split second to make this decision, but that decision makes these abilities more interactive than simple "RMB to block" mechanics that offer no real decision.
This is probably a summary of what I dislike about action combat in general. It is about observation and reaction, there is no thinking involved (or, if were to be very generous, we could say there is much less thinking involved).
I'll take a combat system where I have to consider if NOW is the right time to block, and blocking at the wrong time can be as deadly as not blocking at all over a game where blocking is something you do against basically every incoming attack you can see.
if it doesnt have a cooldown then you can use it on any incoming attack and if those animations are juicy enough people will claim that they "feel" that they are blocking.
If you slap a cooldown on an active mitigation you actually have to use brain cells to decide when is the time to use it. And even cooldown mitigation can have juicy animations to make you "feel" like you are blocking.
If it deals some base damage nobody will care, if it can deal damage based on how much damage it mitigated then it will be interesting if it has a cooldown - if not you're pressing it every time to the boss metronome sound and visuals and you're back to not using brain cells.
― Plato
This means someone who holds up their shield when an attack is coming at them gets the maximum effect of the skill
And someone who holds down block all day gets a reduced effect
This could also have interesting augment options.