I think a tank should be able to absorb some serious damage for a relatively long time a non-tank would die to in 1 single hit.
A tank should be mandatory for almost all group content. It also incentivizes bonding naturally. You can't rely only on yourself. It's a forced mechanic that makes sense for a social game especially when it's rooted in MMORPG history. It gives meaning to having different roles. Roles shouldn't be just choice of fashion. It also adds forgotten complexity to DPS role where one ought to think about their positioning and timing rather than just out-DPS'ing any and all damage they take while almost mocking the enemy by sitting in their face the entire time. If you can realistically and intuitively involve more tank roles for variety's sake, I wouldn't like anything more.
I don't like the idea of ditching an entire role and "speedrunning" it with just a bunch of DPSs. It makes the game all about steamrolling through content as fast as possible with no downtime, with no thought to action, just muscle memory to your own rotation with zero regard to adapting to a new situation an irregularity would present (say another role performing less optimally, for example, and thus changing the flow of things). It also creates a toxic environment where you will simply be left out because you chose a fantasy role thinking you were going to play as one providing interesting utility or whatever when in reality all that matters is DPS and there's usually only and only 1 meta DPS build that deals the most DPS in a given situation. Not just toxic, but also restricting in RPG elements, come to find out. What's next? Instanced dungeons? And then a leaderboard with groups ranked by a ticking timer in which they completed the dungeon? That would be the natural next game development step in a such a case.
PvP
Since a tank wouldn't be dealing much damage, how about making the role intuitive for PvP, too? Say, crowd control or area of damage absorption, a big impassable one-way shield wall, etc. Only something a tank could do.
Don't know anything about the classes and abilities in the game though, so the PvP part is grasping at straws at best here...
As a tank main myself, there are a couple of things, that are essential. General things first. Tanks and certain melee dps specs shouldn't be too specific. For normal world pve, you shouldn't require a perfect comp. Some melee classes should be able to tank decently well in dps spec and some caster classes should be able to heal reasonably well. This also makes levelling a tank bearable if not fun.
Regarding raids and such: Just like any class, feeling your own impact on the battle - even a bit - makes for a rewarding player experience. Interrupts defensive cooldown and crowd control make for an engaging overall experience. Threat should be a mechanic, but not all dominating. While some may think that "tanking on the edge" is fun, it's mostly just frustrating, when missing two attacks (or god forbid making a mistake) means your group wipes. The tanks job should be manifold: mitigation of your own damage, do dps yourself, support your team with buffs, participate in mechanics, keep aggro. All of these things should be of importance (not equal importance though. Mix it up on encounters).
The singular maintank model is ok for 5-man, but for larger encounters, there should be enough work for 3-5 tanks depending on the encounter. Real work. Not get hit by an add for 2 minutes. Tank swaps should either occur or the player should be forced/heavily incentivized to do them. Stacks that reduce healing, threat generation, damage intake or simple aggro resets. There is a reason twin emperors still command respect and so do 4 horsemen.
I was playing EQ2 during their first expansion. I remember a significant change they made to tanking for raids then that I would just hate to see happen again. It was discovered in the meta with the introduction of a new skill tree. If a player spec'd into a very specific build using a buckler, he or she would gain the best possible stats for tanking in raids.
Aside from my disagreement of there being one clear and true best speccing build for any class, I just thought it was visually absurd to have a tank—typically thought of as donning a full set of plate mail armor and a tower shield—forced to use a buckler no bigger than one's head as a means of protection, especially against something like a giant dragon. If you can picture that, I think you might understand what I mean. I would not like again to come into this game and discover the best possible stats for tanking are achieved (somehow, crazily enough!) by wearing a piece of light armor that generates uber-aggro or dual-wielding because it procs something special that mobs hate...or making a buckler the best shield in the game.
I suppose I am a traditionalist when it comes to the archetypes of characters in high fantasy regarding their wardrobe. With tanks, guardians, warriors, heavies—whatever you want to call them—it is aesthetically appealing to see them in full heavy armor with a one-hander and a big shield. To be otherwise I feel betrays what a tank really is about.
I believe the question should be changed to garner more meaningful insights. What I prefer is irrelevant. How either system would be implemented is. Each system should be explored with the community independently and the consensus or prevailing themes imagined then. Does it fit the game you want to make? How easy is it to balance? Etc.
In any system 'kits' should be utilized and changing skills should have limiting factors (e.g. time, or location). This will help create risk/reward and matches your design philosophy. In having more efficient PVE skills you are more killable by players in a PVP kit. Skill coefficients should control this dynamic too.
If I had to say I think traditional gameplay is more appealing for instanced content. Anything open world I imagine would be more fun if treated like Lost Ark boss gameplay. In this style 'Tanks' would fill the role of dealing with spawned lesser mobs during specific phases while also having to dodge red zones, but have no ability to aggro the main boss as it would be immune to such mechanics.
A game with both systems can be possible depending on how skills are created and kits utilized for targeted content, and this mixed system idea appeals to my imagination the most. No one PVP or PVE style/build should be BIS for all content. Kits (tailored content builds) should be. This logic should extend to any role specific question - healing, dpsing, tanking or other variations.
Unrelated, is there a time limit to these threads? Hope I wasn't too late to throw my two cents in ^^;
I think Rift had some cool ideas for having other classes tank content. While I'm a fan of the trinity method I think there should be viability among other classes. For example, speccing heavily into dodging/evasion should be *almost* as good as speccing into straight vitality/defense. I always thought it was a cool idea for there to be other classes other than a meat shield standing still. I imagine a beefy Rogue with high evasion so the mobs miss more often instead of damage mitigation. You could apply this set of ideas to any class really and make tanking an interesting mode in other classes maybe
Final Fantasy XIV has a decent way of sharing aggro by having skills that allow for easy aggro switching.
I've mained a tank in almost every mmo to date. Standing still and being a beefy boy has kinda burned out a bit imo but that's not to say it shouldn't be the best method.
Also, I wanted to +1 everyone mentioning how tanks are never viable in pvp scenarios. This is true in many cases. They shouldn't be OP obviously, however.
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ogreMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I’m hoping that there will be multiple “tank” classes available and not just Tank+x or Tank+y. Imo any class with tank as it’s primary or secondary class should be viable as a tank. It will be interesting to see how the variety in that regard turns out. Super unpopular opinion I’m sure but I honestly believe that it should be possible to beat most content without a tank so long as you are able to make up for it with either increased DPS or better healing/buffs. Sure most groups will just get a tank if they can because obviously tanks are built to…tank…but it’s great to leave determined groups with more options than *requiring* a tank to play the game.
Maybe you guys could come so far out of left field and make something very weird. For specific Subclasses as tanks, the more Physical Based ones having like a timed block mechanic that either reflects damage or adds to the tanks damage, or even lowers the damage of the Mob when timed right. so it rewards Doing it properly and drills home the whole "protect as much as possible" mentality, and to make it super rewarding, I would also give a way to time blocks to negate damage for others as well. like actually moving into the beginning of a cone attack and throwing up an ability that negates all damage behind you\ around you and boosting every ally protected in some way Giving a that warrior 300 feel . Then I would go with maybe a more methodical approach to magical tanks, basic timed blocking remains but they have something like Continuous Guarding magics that trigger when something specific happens ie. Whenever x Spell cast by ally and\or enemy, Boost mana regen\ increase potency of spell type cast in area, so they can feel like masterminds when they set up different effects and plan accordingly. That probably isn't super realistic but I think it would make tanking its own fun niche and allow many different playstyles of tanking to come to the forefront.
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waypocMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I would love to see the traditional Tank / Off-Tank in AoC.
Full traditional Raids with healers, utility, etc…
I have few questions if anyone or any developer can answer me.
1-1. We all know that class = primary archetype + secondary archetype. So is that I don't have to choose tank as my primary archetype to be able to tank?
1-2. For example: Mage + Tank = Spellstone, so is that Spellstone a special tank for specific condition or Spellstone still just a DPS role can't be any kind of tank?
2. Can summoner really tank?
3-1. If summoner can really tank, will class that has summoner as secondary archetype be able to tank through tuning summoner augments?
3-2. For example: Mage + Summoner = Warlock, can Warlock be a tank like Spellstone or just a role mixed by DPS and support?
I want to see different tanking strategies for different encounters. There's a huge design space, and there's no reason to only use one type of tanking for the entire game.
tank class should be diverse depending on the augmentations.
evasion tanks should be viable
shield tanks
magical tanks (magic shield or bubble)
one of the classes should be more focused as a viable dps option i.e. tankxfighter
tanking should require complexity such as Line of sight pulls, cc, threat generation, mob separation etc. not like a lot of modern games where you just run in and AOE everything.
I'm late to this, but I hope that you choose a more traditional role with CC abilities. I also think there should be active blocking to mitigate or nullify damage based on the type of attack. I like to be able to weave in damage in between blocking but I don't think dealing damage should be what generates the most threat from a tank perspective. Playing a tank in New world for example was the worst, very few taunting capabilities other than just swinging your sword. I would much prefer to be more CC orientated, I also enjoy paladins, so maybe incorporating threat when I give myself a small heal or whatever in with some secondary augments on tank classes would be Good whether it's paladin class or any other secondary tank augment. I think that would be a great idea actually, incorporating threat into the secondary tank augmented abilities along with whatever CC you may have.
As far as a pvp perspective, I think it should be hard to kill tanks, but I also think it should be hard for tanks to kill other people, I don't know how you would balance that, but I don't think it should be impossible for either or to kill each other. Maybe make it to where it's very hard to kill tanks from the front, but let's say they are more vulnerable to the back, so like a rogue could actually get some serious damage with a backstab but not from the front especially if the tank is blocking. I think shields are very important to tanking and the identity of a tank.
I don't think the number of tanks is important in and off itself. Out of my own experience I have to wonder tho if you are prepared to make the tank an exciting/versatile enough class for people to play if you plan to require teams to have more tanks "than usual".
Tanks are usually one of the least played classes and how long you wait to go into a dungeon usually comes down to how long it takes you to find a tank.
With all these ideas about identity and investment put into your character it won't be possible to quickfix a raid into having tanks when the people playing it are not having fun in the class.
I can't just reskill my druid/warrior/insert gameclass for tonight's raid and fill the position temporarily and take the less exciting day for myself in exchange for a functional raid. It's not something we can rotate, it's a rather permanent choice.
Tanks are usually more laid back and "simple" in design, they provide a playstyle choice for certain people to participate without intense involvement. Most raid tanks I got to know fall into that category of wanting a more laid back play style, but overall they are only a tiny fraction of people that feel that way, in mmorpgs that is - hence the chronic lack of tanks in all games I have played so far.
So the real question you should be asking yourselves, imo that is, is: Will your tank class provide enough people with what they are looking for to have fun? So you can provide a healthy tank population to support whatever tank requirement you are looking for in group-/ and raid-play.
I can be a life fulfilling dream. - Zekece
I can be a life devouring nightmare. - Grisu#1819
I decided to rewrite this because it read like dogshit.
NO MORE PROTAGONIST TANKS
I think Fighters should have more of a Berserker archetype; Tanks a Grappler archetype.
Tanks should have unique "Grappling" mechanics. Such as holding onto a large enemy and not being thrown off. Similar to Monster Hunter World I guess, not sure. No double jump. . .
Tanks should take reduced knock back and other CC by the nature of them being Sturdy and Heavy. Encumberance should add some Inertia to All players though, including Tank.
Fighters should be a bit sturdy as well, with decent recovery from Agility, if not injured too much [Constitution].
Tanks should be able to block damage for other players by nature of being large, sturdy, and in the way; absorbing damage. Shield of course being useful.
But absorbing damage should be part of the game; such as an attack doing more damage to the first person hit and doing damage to others if they knock into them and how hard they knock into them.
This allows Tanks to literally Tank shots, swipes, slams, et cetera.
Given there are many large and/or powerful enemies, I do not think the DOGSHIT SUPERTANK should be allowed. No one wants the Main Character Tank. NO ONE.
Give the Tank good Constitution and mitigate some damage for others, but otherwise
THROW AWAY THE INVINCIBLE JUGGERNAUT THAT PROVOKES ENTIRE KINGDOMS TO WASTE THEIR LIFE, TIME AND ENERGY SLAPPING HIM.
A combo of Freedom and Control should define the Tank. Like a Juggernaut. But not a Hero. UNCRUSHABLE.
Multiple tanks should be able to latch onto a boss in multiple places; hence impeding movement and possibly part of a strategy that allows others to move in and out, or fire from a distance and run around being chased by a slowed, staggering Giant Monster.
For smaller targets; Grappling is more clearcut. Simply bashing with your shield and following that up with something is perfect though.
Game should have nuance to CC [Control] in order to allow for a more interesting "Tank" and in general, more interesting Archetypes.
PHYSICAL classes should have physical means of dealing with CC. 'EFFORT'.
MAGICAL classes should have magical means of dealing with CC. 'BUZZWORD'.
It's as simple as that. You can throw 10 x 3 second CCs at someone and have them try to Burn through it with Magic Shields, Dispels, Dodge/ Blink, or EFFORT, EFFORT, EFFORT, whatever.
You want to figure out how to DESIGN CONTROL? Figure out how to balance a Full Plate Tank Bear Hugging a Ranger. Is he CC'd forever? HOW would RANGER realistically get out of that with MECHANICS rather than ARBITRARY NUMBERS????? HOW?????
SOMETHING more Satisfying; Please.
Do that and you're flying high.
No more copy pasting from other games. No more lazy design.
Figure it out. Problem solve. Design.
Focus on improving Movement (Inertia PLEASE), Freedom/ Control, and make the Physical classes MORE PHYSICAL to Play. Please.
I don’t personally care whether there are many tanks or main/off tanks as a general rule. The situation should dictate the number and type not the other way around. That is, I’d prefer flexibility in encounters vs all encounters dictated by a simple notion of tank design.
That said, what I do care about, similar to thoughts posted by @Azherae , is how the tank functions. I completely agree that a tanks job should be about positioning and mitigation. I’ve tanked in many MMOs and by far the best tanking experience was in the short lived Warhammer Online. Because you could not run/pass through another player’s avatar, a tank could physically block the advance of other players/enemies. I recall once defending the entry to a tower “standing” shoulder to shoulder blocking the advance of the enemy while back line healers and dps fought safely behind. It made the tanking experience far more meaningful than simple hate meters (e.g. WoW).
Main tank only. I have seen tank and off tanks really not work out. Many games tried and off tanks turn into the less desired class/position. Having the classic trinity is the best option in my opinion.
We have had some great and valuable lessons feedback on this so I will contribute a direct answer to take into consideration in my own way.
I have personally enjoyed tanking a lot in WoW.
I would have tanked more as a WoW classic player but the problem was that all the encounters in raids were designed to have max 3 or 4 tanks in general.
But if you look at small group dungeons you always needed a tank.
So if there is no role switching which I don't expect there will be. Then I would assume encounters need to be designed so that an amount of tanks necessary for a raid fight should be proportional to the amount of tanks needed in small group dungeons... or relatively the same. It sucks needing it for groups but having too many for raids.
Hi there,
I played a lot of MMORPGs in my live and many of them did a quite good job with class balancing. At the moment I only play WoW, due to a lack of time (I play WoW since Vanilla). What I like in WoW is, the Tank classes like the Paladin, Druid or any other class are able to switch their talents between fights however they want. So, during leveling, you can switch to a DPS build and in dungeons or raids, you switch to a tank build. This makes the tank class more flexible and interesting for players.
When it comes to tanking itself, I personally like the old school spell rotation, but please don‘t add too many spells or actions into the game. I also played a lot of free 2 play Asia grind MMORPGs with tons of spells and abilities. This is not really fun to play. In this point, Guild Wars 2 makes a really good job with great ideas. You have a limited amount of spells and abilities which are depending on the equipped weapons. I really love this idea.
F.e. If you play a warrior with a two handed sword, you get other abilities than with equipped one hand sword and a shield. The first one could be a DPS setting and the second one a Tank setting. If your warrior is equipped with f. e. An axe, there could be other abilities or if he is equipped with a ranged weapon. I think you get my point.
This mechanism could solve some problems with searching or building a group for raids and dungeons. If your game hasn’t a strong and active community, it often takes a long time to build a group for a dungeon or raid. This would make the classes more flexible.
I unfortunately don’t know how AoC created their classes, because I missed the Kickstarter campaign and I don’t Warntönen spend so much money to get Alpha access. So I have to wait until beta starts. 😉
Another thing I am thinking about is, that I hope, the gameplay will not be like Black Desert or something like that. If I want to play an fast pace action RPG, I play Elden Ring or something like that. For me, fighting in a MMORPG should be more tactical and not too action based. The „push the right abilities to the right time“ mechanics are perfect.
To sum up, I still like the classic tank and off-tank system. But I agree with some others here, the this could be a problem in PvP. I am not a PvP player, but I understand the comments before.
Kathraal I know soloing as a tank or healer can be painful. And ways to mitigate that might make sense. But it is kind of counterbalanced by the fact that you only need 1 tank and 1 healer generally in a small group. Those roles in themselves are intrinsically rewarding as they are a different playstyle that people enjoy beyond the traditional dps roles.
I think a mix of both. I believe tanks are the best when there role is more of a protector and counter punch type class. A more recent example of this not even in the MMO genre that i loved both theme and mechanically, was Braum from League. He had many abilities disrupting the team for leading a charge, or he could hunker down between the threat and team using his shield actively moving to block abilities and projectiles. Doing this gave himself more dmg and made you feel like well a Tank. But not a mindless one spamming abilities to gain threat.
This feels to me like a conversation about roles in general. Sure, it's about tanks but if having a bunch of tanks is okay then having a bunch of healeers probably should be as well.
I'm perfectly fine with the idea of multiple tanks or parties that don't require strict locking of roles. Even in MMOs that go with strict roles I've played in ways that pushed outside of that envelope, sometimes for extended periods (I did druid tanking in vanilla World of Warcraft for years and this wasn't supported until the first expansion). And I've seen quite a few "all tank" or "all healer" runs of various content in multiple MMOs with strict roles so I'm assuming people have a lot of fun trying things like that.
At the end of the day you're not really deciding whether these things will happen. You're deciding how obnoxious doing them will be. I think that the mixing of classes that's available to us in Ashes of Creation makes this an area where the game could really stand out if the roles weren't too strict. You're actually halfway there already so why not go for it?
When you quantify it, it honestly comes down to just how far are you willing to go in terms of developing a combat system?
MMO Standard such as FFXIV, WOW, EQ, ETC have used these systems for a reason. They are simple enough to develop at the time, they work, and they are generally well accepted.
Realistically, sure in combat situations there would be some people who focus on mitigating damage. Whether that's trying to take down high threat targets, or being part of a shield wall... Well, that depends on the scenario and what's available. That being said though...
Realistically, Humans have leaned to the concept of having walls tank for them rather than people.
I think a simple compromise would be in the weapons system. You can hold your weapon two handed, or equip a shield. Two handed provides damage, mobility, technique etc, but a shield will stop that dragon's breath from roasting your face.
In terms of maintaining aggro and all these other systems... Let's be real here. Combat has never been organized and it doesn't matter who you are or what your class is, a dagger in the back of the neck is a dagger in the back of the neck.
The real question is, how far are you willing to step outside of the comfort zone of commonly accepted practice (and the dreaded lack of personality and distinguishing features) in an attempt to revolutionize the field of MMO combat?
Edit: I guess what I'm trying to say here is regardless of what you choose to do... don't half ass it. You want to implement a few small interesting stable and good changes, go for it, but make sure they are polished, and most importantly enjoyable.
You want to flip the table, pull out your great sword and start swinging? That's pretty bad ass, but ask yourself. Is it a fight you can win? Is it worth it? Make sure it's polished and enjoyable. The chances of success may be low, but the ceiling for rewards is high.
Anything in between those two though, are even more likely to end up as failure. You'll have players expecting traditional mmo style systems and they will get confused while also feeling some similarity leading to an odd sense of frustration while adapting, and players expecting an entirely new combat system and finding that there's still a lot of the same old boring stuff. Negatives on both sides, and the difference will be a minor distinguishing factor.
With tanks being face first, they essentially become a dungeon master. Responsible for the path, the pulls, and a lot of the risks. Add dungeon management functionality to other classes, or make one class very control oriented. Someone that could be the dungeon pathfinder. Make dungeon matchmaking acknowledge the pathfinder role. It might lessen the burden of groups always waiting for tanks.
There is only one tank Class in Ashes of Creation - If you want people to play this role, and not end up having an unbalanced low number of tanks in the server this class Needs to get some love.
A tank Should actually TANK. Under no circumstances a DPS should be able to kill a tank 1v1 in PvP with similar gear - a Tank should have enough damage mitigation to feel like a tank, to make a DPS not want to engage and a fight between tanks or tank vs healer should be a stalemate.
Tanks should be the initiators in PvP with gap closers and AoE CCs, and have the option through augments to specialise in a little more damage, CC or mitigation
Active blocking should be a thing, active blocking should block 100% of incoming Frontal damage up to a certain amount and then put the shield on a 15 or 30s cooldown - passive block should Always be in place and it would work as normal when the tank is not using active block, tank should be the only class with higher blocking % stats
skills that reflect incoming damage should also make up a good part of the damage done by tanks,
remember, if the tank has low damage, it needs to make it up by actually Tanking, having lots of AoE CCs, pulls, gap closers and all the love needed so it won't be like every other game where 2% of the playerbase plays a tank
I agree with some but not all, I think a tank should be able to kill a dps and vise versa depending on the skill level, the type of gear with strengths and weaknesses.
Gear plays a main part however, dps should have varied weaknesses to match their burst or dot damage, a hybrid dps with heaps more cc and manoeuvring should do lower dps.
Also reaching a bit on the question. In open world settings, I like to see the ability to plan a bit more variety; such as if there is a gorge which is a perfect place for an ambush, but also the quickest route to get to some place from another place, a couple of organizations could arrange a battle where the objective of one side is to transport something through the gorge, and the object of the other side is to stop them. Even better if they are transporting a mythical but otherwise somewhat useless named item that can transition ownership, be stored in a location, etc. So they could do stuff like have a cave with a guardian and a chest that they hide the item in in while they complete the 'transport', but upon reaching the end don't have the item. This kind of variety is what I'm looking for, however it has to be noted that it takes a bunch of people playing to do it - and the ability to have and/or craft named items and store them in certain chests where they will permanently show up until removed. Maybe recovery from abandoned characters, but mythical items do get lost in time for a while, so some sort of algorithm where an item shows up in a special place nearby where a character was last seen a year or so after abandoned would be a nice touch, history building. What does this have to do with multiple tanks? Tanks should generally be a little bit slower, to protect through a gorge with the pressure of lots of very mobile foes, the best strategies involve setting more than one waypoint with tanks managing a zone. So I guess what I'm saying is that it would be good to have multiple tanks if the scenarios where they are used could strategically benefit from it.
Reading alot of comments and aggro to a certain extend with each and every comment, as a raid healer, it has been my job to know when an aggro shift/drop, mobs/adds, large aoe and debuffs were going to occurr so I can work with other healers to mitigate damage.
3 primary things I always believe a tank class should compromise of is;
-Damage mitigation
-Max HP
-Threat Generation
*Damage mitigation
I would assume that the type of enemy will have a specific trait that tanks would need to build resistances to, some enemies would be fire dmg dealers so you'd need fire res gear to protect, if the boss fight changes to a frost type damage dealer, you'd need another tank with frost res gear to start tanking after the aggro drop for instance, the raid boss in wow tbc that switches from poison to frost as it crosses the line, without good communication from the RL and knowledge of the fight, the raid will wipe giving raid members an opportunity to learn.
*Max HP
This is a no brainer here, unless a specific boss calls for a mage tank for their spell mitigation, a tank archetype will generally have the most amount of HP, this is because other classes could opt for the same gear but would sacrifice dps and this is primarily why you see high constitution pieces with resist in item combinations.
*Threat generation.
All classes should be generating threat, some more than others however, a tank archetype should always be able to generate more threat, how they do that should come down to skills, positioning and gear with threat generation traits, tanks should be able to see when they are about to lose threat and the RL should tell the dps/heals off for going over lol.
As I mentioned, I have always been a healer in every mmo I have played, I get faster groups and more raid invites but tanks are always in a higher demand than I, I think this is fair but from what I have heard, tanking can get fairly boring when not in a raid fight.
If you have ever queued for a 5 man dungeon in an MMO, the most demanded role is always tank. Tanks instantly get into a group, while DPS can take up to 10 minutes, and healers roughly 2-3 minutes.
The truth is, most people don't want to play tank. The more an encounter demands more tanks, the longer it will take for the group to be formed, and the more stress it puts on a guild to find/maintain good tanks.
A good ratio is 1 tank for every 10 players.
I think encounters requiring more tanks/offtanks would be fun, but for it to work, most classes would need the capability to tank or switch into a tanking role easily.
An alternative is to have certain encounters require certain classes to tank them, such as a mage tanking a spell casting unit, or a ranger kiting a mob that hits too hard for anything to tank, or an assassin dodge tanking a mob that ignores all forms of damage mitigation except dodges. Giving the classes the capability to change certain talents on the fly to be capable of tanking these types of encounters would be a great change of pace for DPS.
I play Tank since EQ1 and for me there were always a problem with the MT/OT system. So I talk fully from this perspective.
1. A lot of Players that I know who choosed Tank as their Main Class like to tank stuff, but often it depends how the party decides if you can do your "job" or if you are a sidekick.
Depends on the Game, but in EQ1/EQ2 (as long as I played this games) you have mostly Tanks that never tank anything for multiple reasons. So they are just there and do worse dps as an full DPS.
Same in FF14. As OT you are mostly forced todo garabage jobs or you are just a 2/3 dps.
2. Mostly some classes are better in tanking than others like the guardian in EQ or mostly warrior in FF14 (yes depends a bit from time to time but mostly).
The funny part is that Tanks with actual shields like Paladin or Shadowknight and so on are mostly the sidekick, even if they have a shield what should mitigate/block more damage as an
2 hander or someone with dual wield. So if you choose the "wrong" class you will never tank the big guy in Raid.
So my suggestion after years of playing tank MT/OT I would like more content where all players who like to play the tank class have more equal fun of tanking
and the amount of fights for 1 MT 1+ OTs should not be the main way to go. Class balance will never be perfect but don't force players like Paladin in FF14 before 6.0 with abilities like
"on full HP you do more damage" and stuff to be an OT. Let it always be at least player choice.
I've played a tank in PvP before and have seen lots of different systems before. I'd just list things I liked and disliked, maybe some ideas for things that would improve them in PvP:
Likes:
- I really liked the KotBS auras they had in Warhammer that buffed enemies or debuffed allies
- I liked the Warhammer detaunts that they gave healers, but think it would have been better if they gave that ability to tanks. In other words make taunts debuff the enemy player so they do less damage if they attack anyone other than you
- Another idea is to make taunts automatically change the target's target to you (so if someone attacks your healer, you can peel by taunting them like an NPC and you become the target)
Dislikes:
- when you can be ignored because you're no threat
- when your only job is to not die. I like the idea of tanks being tough disruptors who cause havoc behind enemy lines being one style, or protectors who can help other players by peeling in a defensive role.
Comments
I think a tank should be able to absorb some serious damage for a relatively long time a non-tank would die to in 1 single hit.
A tank should be mandatory for almost all group content. It also incentivizes bonding naturally. You can't rely only on yourself. It's a forced mechanic that makes sense for a social game especially when it's rooted in MMORPG history. It gives meaning to having different roles. Roles shouldn't be just choice of fashion. It also adds forgotten complexity to DPS role where one ought to think about their positioning and timing rather than just out-DPS'ing any and all damage they take while almost mocking the enemy by sitting in their face the entire time. If you can realistically and intuitively involve more tank roles for variety's sake, I wouldn't like anything more.
I don't like the idea of ditching an entire role and "speedrunning" it with just a bunch of DPSs. It makes the game all about steamrolling through content as fast as possible with no downtime, with no thought to action, just muscle memory to your own rotation with zero regard to adapting to a new situation an irregularity would present (say another role performing less optimally, for example, and thus changing the flow of things). It also creates a toxic environment where you will simply be left out because you chose a fantasy role thinking you were going to play as one providing interesting utility or whatever when in reality all that matters is DPS and there's usually only and only 1 meta DPS build that deals the most DPS in a given situation. Not just toxic, but also restricting in RPG elements, come to find out. What's next? Instanced dungeons? And then a leaderboard with groups ranked by a ticking timer in which they completed the dungeon? That would be the natural next game development step in a such a case.
PvP
Since a tank wouldn't be dealing much damage, how about making the role intuitive for PvP, too? Say, crowd control or area of damage absorption, a big impassable one-way shield wall, etc. Only something a tank could do.
Don't know anything about the classes and abilities in the game though, so the PvP part is grasping at straws at best here...
Regarding raids and such: Just like any class, feeling your own impact on the battle - even a bit - makes for a rewarding player experience. Interrupts defensive cooldown and crowd control make for an engaging overall experience. Threat should be a mechanic, but not all dominating. While some may think that "tanking on the edge" is fun, it's mostly just frustrating, when missing two attacks (or god forbid making a mistake) means your group wipes. The tanks job should be manifold: mitigation of your own damage, do dps yourself, support your team with buffs, participate in mechanics, keep aggro. All of these things should be of importance (not equal importance though. Mix it up on encounters).
The singular maintank model is ok for 5-man, but for larger encounters, there should be enough work for 3-5 tanks depending on the encounter. Real work. Not get hit by an add for 2 minutes. Tank swaps should either occur or the player should be forced/heavily incentivized to do them. Stacks that reduce healing, threat generation, damage intake or simple aggro resets. There is a reason twin emperors still command respect and so do 4 horsemen.
Aside from my disagreement of there being one clear and true best speccing build for any class, I just thought it was visually absurd to have a tank—typically thought of as donning a full set of plate mail armor and a tower shield—forced to use a buckler no bigger than one's head as a means of protection, especially against something like a giant dragon. If you can picture that, I think you might understand what I mean. I would not like again to come into this game and discover the best possible stats for tanking are achieved (somehow, crazily enough!) by wearing a piece of light armor that generates uber-aggro or dual-wielding because it procs something special that mobs hate...or making a buckler the best shield in the game.
I suppose I am a traditionalist when it comes to the archetypes of characters in high fantasy regarding their wardrobe. With tanks, guardians, warriors, heavies—whatever you want to call them—it is aesthetically appealing to see them in full heavy armor with a one-hander and a big shield. To be otherwise I feel betrays what a tank really is about.
youtu.be/watch?v=gFYd9TJiRDQ&t=4209 youtu.be/watch?v=TpBSGYWxd38&t=4969
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I believe the question should be changed to garner more meaningful insights. What I prefer is irrelevant. How either system would be implemented is. Each system should be explored with the community independently and the consensus or prevailing themes imagined then. Does it fit the game you want to make? How easy is it to balance? Etc.
In any system 'kits' should be utilized and changing skills should have limiting factors (e.g. time, or location). This will help create risk/reward and matches your design philosophy. In having more efficient PVE skills you are more killable by players in a PVP kit. Skill coefficients should control this dynamic too.
If I had to say I think traditional gameplay is more appealing for instanced content. Anything open world I imagine would be more fun if treated like Lost Ark boss gameplay. In this style 'Tanks' would fill the role of dealing with spawned lesser mobs during specific phases while also having to dodge red zones, but have no ability to aggro the main boss as it would be immune to such mechanics.
A game with both systems can be possible depending on how skills are created and kits utilized for targeted content, and this mixed system idea appeals to my imagination the most. No one PVP or PVE style/build should be BIS for all content. Kits (tailored content builds) should be. This logic should extend to any role specific question - healing, dpsing, tanking or other variations.
Unrelated, is there a time limit to these threads? Hope I wasn't too late to throw my two cents in ^^;
Final Fantasy XIV has a decent way of sharing aggro by having skills that allow for easy aggro switching.
I've mained a tank in almost every mmo to date. Standing still and being a beefy boy has kinda burned out a bit imo but that's not to say it shouldn't be the best method.
Also, I wanted to +1 everyone mentioning how tanks are never viable in pvp scenarios. This is true in many cases. They shouldn't be OP obviously, however.
Full traditional Raids with healers, utility, etc…
1-1. We all know that class = primary archetype + secondary archetype. So is that I don't have to choose tank as my primary archetype to be able to tank?
1-2. For example: Mage + Tank = Spellstone, so is that Spellstone a special tank for specific condition or Spellstone still just a DPS role can't be any kind of tank?
2. Can summoner really tank?
3-1. If summoner can really tank, will class that has summoner as secondary archetype be able to tank through tuning summoner augments?
3-2. For example: Mage + Summoner = Warlock, can Warlock be a tank like Spellstone or just a role mixed by DPS and support?
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tanking should require complexity such as Line of sight pulls, cc, threat generation, mob separation etc. not like a lot of modern games where you just run in and AOE everything.
As far as a pvp perspective, I think it should be hard to kill tanks, but I also think it should be hard for tanks to kill other people, I don't know how you would balance that, but I don't think it should be impossible for either or to kill each other. Maybe make it to where it's very hard to kill tanks from the front, but let's say they are more vulnerable to the back, so like a rogue could actually get some serious damage with a backstab but not from the front especially if the tank is blocking. I think shields are very important to tanking and the identity of a tank.
Tanks are usually one of the least played classes and how long you wait to go into a dungeon usually comes down to how long it takes you to find a tank.
With all these ideas about identity and investment put into your character it won't be possible to quickfix a raid into having tanks when the people playing it are not having fun in the class.
I can't just reskill my druid/warrior/insert gameclass for tonight's raid and fill the position temporarily and take the less exciting day for myself in exchange for a functional raid. It's not something we can rotate, it's a rather permanent choice.
Tanks are usually more laid back and "simple" in design, they provide a playstyle choice for certain people to participate without intense involvement. Most raid tanks I got to know fall into that category of wanting a more laid back play style, but overall they are only a tiny fraction of people that feel that way, in mmorpgs that is - hence the chronic lack of tanks in all games I have played so far.
So the real question you should be asking yourselves, imo that is, is: Will your tank class provide enough people with what they are looking for to have fun? So you can provide a healthy tank population to support whatever tank requirement you are looking for in group-/ and raid-play.
I can be a life devouring nightmare. - Grisu#1819
I think Fighters should have more of a Berserker archetype; Tanks a Grappler archetype.
Tanks should have unique "Grappling" mechanics. Such as holding onto a large enemy and not being thrown off. Similar to Monster Hunter World I guess, not sure. No double jump. . .
Tanks should take reduced knock back and other CC by the nature of them being Sturdy and Heavy. Encumberance should add some Inertia to All players though, including Tank.
Fighters should be a bit sturdy as well, with decent recovery from Agility, if not injured too much [Constitution].
Tanks should be able to block damage for other players by nature of being large, sturdy, and in the way; absorbing damage. Shield of course being useful.
But absorbing damage should be part of the game; such as an attack doing more damage to the first person hit and doing damage to others if they knock into them and how hard they knock into them.
This allows Tanks to literally Tank shots, swipes, slams, et cetera.
Given there are many large and/or powerful enemies, I do not think the DOGSHIT SUPERTANK should be allowed. No one wants the Main Character Tank. NO ONE.
Give the Tank good Constitution and mitigate some damage for others, but otherwise
THROW AWAY THE INVINCIBLE JUGGERNAUT THAT PROVOKES ENTIRE KINGDOMS TO WASTE THEIR LIFE, TIME AND ENERGY SLAPPING HIM.
A combo of Freedom and Control should define the Tank. Like a Juggernaut. But not a Hero. UNCRUSHABLE.
Multiple tanks should be able to latch onto a boss in multiple places; hence impeding movement and possibly part of a strategy that allows others to move in and out, or fire from a distance and run around being chased by a slowed, staggering Giant Monster.
For smaller targets; Grappling is more clearcut. Simply bashing with your shield and following that up with something is perfect though.
Game should have nuance to CC [Control] in order to allow for a more interesting "Tank" and in general, more interesting Archetypes.
PHYSICAL classes should have physical means of dealing with CC. 'EFFORT'.
MAGICAL classes should have magical means of dealing with CC. 'BUZZWORD'.
It's as simple as that. You can throw 10 x 3 second CCs at someone and have them try to Burn through it with Magic Shields, Dispels, Dodge/ Blink, or EFFORT, EFFORT, EFFORT, whatever.
You want to figure out how to DESIGN CONTROL? Figure out how to balance a Full Plate Tank Bear Hugging a Ranger. Is he CC'd forever? HOW would RANGER realistically get out of that with MECHANICS rather than ARBITRARY NUMBERS????? HOW?????
SOMETHING more Satisfying; Please.
Do that and you're flying high.
No more copy pasting from other games. No more lazy design.
Figure it out. Problem solve. Design.
Focus on improving Movement (Inertia PLEASE), Freedom/ Control, and make the Physical classes MORE PHYSICAL to Play. Please.
That said, what I do care about, similar to thoughts posted by @Azherae , is how the tank functions. I completely agree that a tanks job should be about positioning and mitigation. I’ve tanked in many MMOs and by far the best tanking experience was in the short lived Warhammer Online. Because you could not run/pass through another player’s avatar, a tank could physically block the advance of other players/enemies. I recall once defending the entry to a tower “standing” shoulder to shoulder blocking the advance of the enemy while back line healers and dps fought safely behind. It made the tanking experience far more meaningful than simple hate meters (e.g. WoW).
I have personally enjoyed tanking a lot in WoW.
I would have tanked more as a WoW classic player but the problem was that all the encounters in raids were designed to have max 3 or 4 tanks in general.
But if you look at small group dungeons you always needed a tank.
So if there is no role switching which I don't expect there will be. Then I would assume encounters need to be designed so that an amount of tanks necessary for a raid fight should be proportional to the amount of tanks needed in small group dungeons... or relatively the same. It sucks needing it for groups but having too many for raids.
I played a lot of MMORPGs in my live and many of them did a quite good job with class balancing. At the moment I only play WoW, due to a lack of time (I play WoW since Vanilla). What I like in WoW is, the Tank classes like the Paladin, Druid or any other class are able to switch their talents between fights however they want. So, during leveling, you can switch to a DPS build and in dungeons or raids, you switch to a tank build. This makes the tank class more flexible and interesting for players.
When it comes to tanking itself, I personally like the old school spell rotation, but please don‘t add too many spells or actions into the game. I also played a lot of free 2 play Asia grind MMORPGs with tons of spells and abilities. This is not really fun to play. In this point, Guild Wars 2 makes a really good job with great ideas. You have a limited amount of spells and abilities which are depending on the equipped weapons. I really love this idea.
F.e. If you play a warrior with a two handed sword, you get other abilities than with equipped one hand sword and a shield. The first one could be a DPS setting and the second one a Tank setting. If your warrior is equipped with f. e. An axe, there could be other abilities or if he is equipped with a ranged weapon. I think you get my point.
This mechanism could solve some problems with searching or building a group for raids and dungeons. If your game hasn’t a strong and active community, it often takes a long time to build a group for a dungeon or raid. This would make the classes more flexible.
I unfortunately don’t know how AoC created their classes, because I missed the Kickstarter campaign and I don’t Warntönen spend so much money to get Alpha access. So I have to wait until beta starts. 😉
Another thing I am thinking about is, that I hope, the gameplay will not be like Black Desert or something like that. If I want to play an fast pace action RPG, I play Elden Ring or something like that. For me, fighting in a MMORPG should be more tactical and not too action based. The „push the right abilities to the right time“ mechanics are perfect.
To sum up, I still like the classic tank and off-tank system. But I agree with some others here, the this could be a problem in PvP. I am not a PvP player, but I understand the comments before.
I'm perfectly fine with the idea of multiple tanks or parties that don't require strict locking of roles. Even in MMOs that go with strict roles I've played in ways that pushed outside of that envelope, sometimes for extended periods (I did druid tanking in vanilla World of Warcraft for years and this wasn't supported until the first expansion). And I've seen quite a few "all tank" or "all healer" runs of various content in multiple MMOs with strict roles so I'm assuming people have a lot of fun trying things like that.
At the end of the day you're not really deciding whether these things will happen. You're deciding how obnoxious doing them will be. I think that the mixing of classes that's available to us in Ashes of Creation makes this an area where the game could really stand out if the roles weren't too strict. You're actually halfway there already so why not go for it?
MMO Standard such as FFXIV, WOW, EQ, ETC have used these systems for a reason. They are simple enough to develop at the time, they work, and they are generally well accepted.
Realistically, sure in combat situations there would be some people who focus on mitigating damage. Whether that's trying to take down high threat targets, or being part of a shield wall... Well, that depends on the scenario and what's available. That being said though...
Realistically, Humans have leaned to the concept of having walls tank for them rather than people.
I think a simple compromise would be in the weapons system. You can hold your weapon two handed, or equip a shield. Two handed provides damage, mobility, technique etc, but a shield will stop that dragon's breath from roasting your face.
In terms of maintaining aggro and all these other systems... Let's be real here. Combat has never been organized and it doesn't matter who you are or what your class is, a dagger in the back of the neck is a dagger in the back of the neck.
The real question is, how far are you willing to step outside of the comfort zone of commonly accepted practice (and the dreaded lack of personality and distinguishing features) in an attempt to revolutionize the field of MMO combat?
Edit: I guess what I'm trying to say here is regardless of what you choose to do... don't half ass it. You want to implement a few small interesting stable and good changes, go for it, but make sure they are polished, and most importantly enjoyable.
You want to flip the table, pull out your great sword and start swinging? That's pretty bad ass, but ask yourself. Is it a fight you can win? Is it worth it? Make sure it's polished and enjoyable. The chances of success may be low, but the ceiling for rewards is high.
Anything in between those two though, are even more likely to end up as failure. You'll have players expecting traditional mmo style systems and they will get confused while also feeling some similarity leading to an odd sense of frustration while adapting, and players expecting an entirely new combat system and finding that there's still a lot of the same old boring stuff. Negatives on both sides, and the difference will be a minor distinguishing factor.
I agree with some but not all, I think a tank should be able to kill a dps and vise versa depending on the skill level, the type of gear with strengths and weaknesses.
Gear plays a main part however, dps should have varied weaknesses to match their burst or dot damage, a hybrid dps with heaps more cc and manoeuvring should do lower dps.
Reading alot of comments and aggro to a certain extend with each and every comment, as a raid healer, it has been my job to know when an aggro shift/drop, mobs/adds, large aoe and debuffs were going to occurr so I can work with other healers to mitigate damage.
3 primary things I always believe a tank class should compromise of is;
-Damage mitigation
-Max HP
-Threat Generation
*Damage mitigation
I would assume that the type of enemy will have a specific trait that tanks would need to build resistances to, some enemies would be fire dmg dealers so you'd need fire res gear to protect, if the boss fight changes to a frost type damage dealer, you'd need another tank with frost res gear to start tanking after the aggro drop for instance, the raid boss in wow tbc that switches from poison to frost as it crosses the line, without good communication from the RL and knowledge of the fight, the raid will wipe giving raid members an opportunity to learn.
*Max HP
This is a no brainer here, unless a specific boss calls for a mage tank for their spell mitigation, a tank archetype will generally have the most amount of HP, this is because other classes could opt for the same gear but would sacrifice dps and this is primarily why you see high constitution pieces with resist in item combinations.
*Threat generation.
All classes should be generating threat, some more than others however, a tank archetype should always be able to generate more threat, how they do that should come down to skills, positioning and gear with threat generation traits, tanks should be able to see when they are about to lose threat and the RL should tell the dps/heals off for going over lol.
As I mentioned, I have always been a healer in every mmo I have played, I get faster groups and more raid invites but tanks are always in a higher demand than I, I think this is fair but from what I have heard, tanking can get fairly boring when not in a raid fight.
The truth is, most people don't want to play tank. The more an encounter demands more tanks, the longer it will take for the group to be formed, and the more stress it puts on a guild to find/maintain good tanks.
A good ratio is 1 tank for every 10 players.
I think encounters requiring more tanks/offtanks would be fun, but for it to work, most classes would need the capability to tank or switch into a tanking role easily.
An alternative is to have certain encounters require certain classes to tank them, such as a mage tanking a spell casting unit, or a ranger kiting a mob that hits too hard for anything to tank, or an assassin dodge tanking a mob that ignores all forms of damage mitigation except dodges. Giving the classes the capability to change certain talents on the fly to be capable of tanking these types of encounters would be a great change of pace for DPS.
1. A lot of Players that I know who choosed Tank as their Main Class like to tank stuff, but often it depends how the party decides if you can do your "job" or if you are a sidekick.
Depends on the Game, but in EQ1/EQ2 (as long as I played this games) you have mostly Tanks that never tank anything for multiple reasons. So they are just there and do worse dps as an full DPS.
Same in FF14. As OT you are mostly forced todo garabage jobs or you are just a 2/3 dps.
2. Mostly some classes are better in tanking than others like the guardian in EQ or mostly warrior in FF14 (yes depends a bit from time to time but mostly).
The funny part is that Tanks with actual shields like Paladin or Shadowknight and so on are mostly the sidekick, even if they have a shield what should mitigate/block more damage as an
2 hander or someone with dual wield. So if you choose the "wrong" class you will never tank the big guy in Raid.
So my suggestion after years of playing tank MT/OT I would like more content where all players who like to play the tank class have more equal fun of tanking
and the amount of fights for 1 MT 1+ OTs should not be the main way to go. Class balance will never be perfect but don't force players like Paladin in FF14 before 6.0 with abilities like
"on full HP you do more damage" and stuff to be an OT. Let it always be at least player choice.
Likes:
- I really liked the KotBS auras they had in Warhammer that buffed enemies or debuffed allies
- I liked the Warhammer detaunts that they gave healers, but think it would have been better if they gave that ability to tanks. In other words make taunts debuff the enemy player so they do less damage if they attack anyone other than you
- Another idea is to make taunts automatically change the target's target to you (so if someone attacks your healer, you can peel by taunting them like an NPC and you become the target)
Dislikes:
- when you can be ignored because you're no threat
- when your only job is to not die. I like the idea of tanks being tough disruptors who cause havoc behind enemy lines being one style, or protectors who can help other players by peeling in a defensive role.