Class Synergy Concern

So I wanted to hear other opinions on my take away from the Synergy showcase. Please understand that I am not saying Intrepid shouldn't implement the synergy system, I am just concerned about how it seemed to be explained.

So in the recent Dev Update we got a taste of Synergy between classes, in the form of a "Stagger" condition that when applied multiple times by different players, progresses the affect into a stun. I love the concept, but here is my main concern...

With every class potentially having skills that all provide the same affect, would this take away from class identity? And is it a boring system (in its current presentation) to be as simple as adding spells with the same conditions together to level up conditions?

Obviously things will need to be tested, but I feel like all classes synergizing by adding the same conditions together is a underwhelming design. When I hear "Synergy" between classes, I think different affects between different class combos, such as Mages AoE's on friendly tanks granting them protections against that element if the tank is also channeling a defensive ability at the same time, or a rogue dealing increased damage with a backstab to an enemy pinned down by a ranger. The only drawback is not only would it be difficult to design for the amount of abilities Intrepid is claiming to be working on for each class, but it would also be incredibly more difficult to balance.

A constructive middle ground suggestion I though up was basing Synergies off of class Roles, and damage types. (Summoner is up in the air to me, not sure what category they will be in but I am assuming Magic DPS.)
-Support (Clerics/Bards/?Summoners?)
-Tank (Tank)
-Magic DPS (Mage/?Summoners?)
-Physical DPS (Fighter/Ranger/Rogue)

Focusing on role types for synergy seems to me like a much better choice to maintain class identity. To further emphasize the roles, each one that procs would also have a specific type of focus. And the proc would be based off of the initial synergy activation, and potentially have options depending on the secondary trigger. And these are just ideas.
-Support - Healing procs for allies, movement procs for allies, Combat buff proc for allies.
-Tank (Tank) - health shield proc for nearby allies, AOE CC, Threat gain, Damage debuff for enemies
-Magic DPS (Mage/?Summoners?) - Explosion AOE's, Mass Fear, AOE Slow, Resource Regen proc
-Physical DPS (Fighter/Ranger/Rogue) - Movement procs, Damage AOE's, Blinds, Damage Over Time procs, Stuns

Just to give an example, if a tank were to use a synergy affect, and Magic DPS used its synergy with it, it could proc the AOE CC. While if a Support role was done in place of the Magic DPS, it could proc the health shield for nearby allies.

Please let me know what you think of my take, and again understand I know everything should be test, but I also feel like this is an important thing to address seeing as classes and archetypes along with the identity each has for playstyle is an major selling point for this game. Hope you enjoyed more of my ramblings!

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maouw

@ElCrisp

Right, so:

if the synergies are too generic then player choice is almost trivial
but if the synergies are too niche then we get obvious best synergies

I think it's possible to retain class identity while keeping it fairly flexible by putting this problem in reverse: What synergies does each class NOT have access to?

That way you can still have things like:
Support

Clerics AND Bard uniquely have: x y z
Clerics also have: m n
Bards also have: p q

Tank

Tanks and Summoners uniquely have: a b c
Tanks also have: n
Summoners also have: p

etc.

@Azherae

yeah I see what you're saying about having effects that are too deterministic.

Can I ask, if you add a significant cost to synergy does this allow you to have strong synergy effects? (My reasoning being the sum of the strong effect is penalized with a significant cost for an overall minor advantage if successful? ((high risk, high reward)))

Azherae

maouw wrote: »

yeah I see what you're saying about having effects that are too deterministic.

Can I ask, if you add a significant cost to synergy does this allow you to have strong synergy effects? (My reasoning being the sum of the strong effect is penalized with a significant cost for an overall minor advantage if successful? ((high risk, high reward)))

No that's way 'worse', unless I don't understand you.

Either it will be 'antisocial' because every mistake feels like a big cost, or 'even more blatant'.

Synergy effects being MECHANICALLY strong, to me, is just a negative (again, when both halves of the synergy are more or less 'on-demand' from the players involved).

This is a perspective from my card game design days, though I feel that this is one of those times where that experience absolutely applies.

The 'binary' perspective I am holding here, though, is an exaggeration. From my experience and data from my players (sample size around 10k, give or take a few thousand) they will rapidly discard anything that has less than a 'strong chance of working' EXCEPT when NOTHING has a 'strong chance of working', at which point everyone finds their own thing and the meta expands and people learn to adapt more.

The sliding scale of 'enjoyment of the game' to 'ability to predict and consistently perform in the skill contest' tends to bleed 'casual' players when you are on the 'able to predict' side and lose 'hardcore' players when on the 'game is enjoyable' side, from my limited data.

But whereas 'hardcore' players can just put in time to learn an 'expanded meta' and therefore might continue to enjoy it, putting in more time doesn't make casual players happier, it just turns them INTO 'hardcore players' and honestly doesn't actually seem to affect their overall ENJOYMENT metrics much. Those who like 'winning' stay, those who were 'trying to have fun by not losing as much' drift off anyway.

I'm still gonna give feedback from this experience though, anecdotal as it is. I mention this so you have max context for my perspective.

Letterz

I absolutely hear what you are saying. and my concerns line up with yours.

Also i remember trying the lord of the rings MMO when it came out and the class synergy attacks were beyond IMBA . I would hope the devs are going to start out a bit lower and then dial it up. also a big fan of "synergy"doing small temp buffs, as the cleric fighter AOC stun seems absolutely HUGE.

All that being said its things like this that need to be played, and visited often in PVE and PVP to see what works and what doesnt and why.

Letterz

TheBravoActual

Interesting.

maouw

Any confusion is my fault, because I had two ideas in my head simultaneously:

Case A: skills function normally until a synergy is procced - at which point the penalty occurs
Case B: mechanical cost for mechanical benefit

I agree that Case B is prone to those problems Azherae listed above (basically "why even bother")

Do you think Case A has potential?
I think it could create quite meaningful choice because then triggering a synergy opens opportunity for counterplay from opponents, so you'd want to be prepared to cover your weaknesses before you choose to pop off on synergies.

edit: I'm realizing this is like how Skillchains fill enemy TP

Azherae

maouw wrote: »

Any confusion is my fault, because I had two ideas in my head simultaneously:

Case A: skills function normally until a synergy is procced - at which point the penalty occurs
Case B: mechanical cost for mechanical benefit

I agree that Case B is prone to those problems Azherae listed above (basically "why even bother")

Do you think Case A has potential?
I think it could create quite meaningful choice because then triggering a synergy opens opportunity for counterplay from opponents, so you'd want to be prepared to cover your weaknesses before you choose to pop off on synergies.

edit: I'm realizing this is like how Skillchains fill enemy TP

That's it... let the knowledge feeeeed you... {Open} your {Eyes On Me} to the {Darkness}, and let the {Carnage Elegy} begin...

More seriously, yes. This is one of those 'someone has solved the issue already' design considerations. I don't bring up TP Gauge out of any nostalgia based love for it.

It's the best system I know, the convergence at the end of the design-goal space.

Everything else just ends up mimicking parts of it, finding the flaw in the approach, fixing that flaw, and moving closer to it.

The essence of game design really...

As for the overall concept of Case A, the 'flaw' is that doing this is either binary ENOUGH to be simply comprehensible and ironically THEREFORE meta-defining...

Or esoteric, chaotic and cool, and frustrating to the uninitiated (what if you trigger the synergy 'by accident'?) at which point I'm back to begging 'please just give people TP Meter so they can see this sort of thing coming'.

Uboon

With the synergy shown, I like the fact that higher orders of CC are limited to combo effects, as this limits the power of solo play and encourages group play, and saves the hot stuff for group actions. The downside is that in very large fights the fields will be so numerous that all combo effects naturally max out without any player cooperation required. The solution would be that you can only proc the combo with players in your own group.

I suspect that there will be many more synergies utilising different conditions and fields, and hopefully other states. Some may even be negative, such as a stealthed thief running into a fire AOE could start smoking so much he gives his position away! Some may be quite unusual, like enemies being blinded if they walk through the clerics 'heal beam' thingy. I also have a suspicion that there will be a third level of combo, as Steven said the stagger/stun was a level 2 {something thingy effect}.

I am sure Intrepid are keeping many skills and augments hidden from us so that A2 is more fun and garners the relevant feedback at that time in actual gameplay. Intrepid do not want us theory crafting over all the skills now in the forums, as mostly we will be wrong.

I like Dolyem's idea "to have support and tanks be the ones that have the initiating synergy abilities while DPS classes can only trigger those synergies set up." Or at least split everything up across the 8 classes. So if you're fighting a boss that needs to be slept, you'll need to bring a Bard and a Summoner so that the bard's lullaby combos with the "summon sheep" field. As daft as this sounds I do wonder if Steven will be injecting some of his humour in the skills.

Voxtrium

A few have already said this, but I would at a minimum expect what you suggested. With some more complicated additions in there as well.

Dygz

I think I'd rather not focus on combat role types.
I'd rather focus on the status effects of the class abilities - similar to what was mentioned in the demo.
That should set up combat role synergies at a fundamental level.
My Ranger's Root might synergize with the Mage's Frost Snare.
And, yeah, my Mage's Frost Snare might synergize with a Figther's Hammer Strike to cause a Knock Down.

In an RPG, I want to play the classes first and the combat roles farther down the hierarchy.
Play a Shadowcaster; not Support.
Play a Bladedancer; not Damage.
And synergize the Bladedancer abilities with the Shadowcaster abilities; not synergize Damage with Support.

There should not be a "trigger" based on who does what first. Espcially not a limit on who can initiate a synergy. Shouldn't really matter whether the Mage casts the Snare first or whether the Ranger casts the Root frirst.

Azherae

Alright here's some synergies I'll throw out and some explanations of how they relate to everything else said in the thread so people can pick them apart and clarify their points of disagreement. For this reason I'm gonna go pretty hard on 'my exact design style' instead of trying to incorporate anything suggested, I'm counting on people to react with their dislikes. Let's start with Damaging ones.

Mage Frost Snare >> Fighter HammerFall/QuakeStrike (same ability, don't wanna start a different argument):
Bad: Knocks down and CCs harder.
Decent: Does extra damage to all affected by the Frost Snare
Great: Makes the ground ice shatter in all directions doing AoE damage but also BREAKING the Frost Snare.

Reason for ratings:
Just more CC is too obvious, and people would build to resist it.
Extra damage is fine, but it's not a tradeoff, you just do it because reasons.
The best version of this has a 'Tradeoff'. If you wanted the enemy snared for longer for some OTHER reason, you shouldn't HammerFall. If you didn't need them CCed but instead needed them HURT, you go for it, but you lose your CC. Skill wise you could try to time it so that it happens near the end of the Snare for both effects, to give you a 'higher skill ceiling' on the Synergy. The AoE damage also needs to be considered on a 'do I need this?' and 'will it aggro things I don't want to aggro?' basis.

Mage Black Hole >> Cleric Chains:
Bad: Full stuns or roots enemies
Decent: Does immediate extra damage to all in radius
Great: Consumes the 'Stagger' effect of the Chains and trades for a potent alternating Planar/Radiance DoT.

Reason for ratings:
Again, just more CC is too obvious, and both abilities already do it.
Immediate extra damage is not a tradeoff, you'd just almost always do it or frontload it.
The 'great' version is a CHOICE you're making, but more importantly, if you used the 'CC' of either Chains or Black Hole, it was probably to set up a kill, and your opponents will want to get away as soon as possible if they lived through whatever other incoming damage was involved, or start spamming heals. A strong DoT leads to a better situation because they have to devote more focus to when to heal, and if this is PvE, it allows for a damage source from the (often) squishier archetypes that won't pull hate. (the reason why DoT is fine whereas immediate damage isn't is simply that DoT of the exact same type don't normally stack so you can't just frontload a pile of damage)

Two for now. Please complain or praise my genius, whichever suits you.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

Two for now. Please complain or praise my genius, whichever suits you.

Both are good and smth I'd like to see in the game (or along the lines of). Though on the second one I'd maybe prefer something like the dota 2's Puck's ulti, where targets in a radius get tied to a point on the ground for a time and if they run too far away from that point they get a stun, but instead of a point I'd tie them to each other.

Hell, you could even combine yours and mine. They get tied with chains that give a strong dot, but if they try and break the chains to stop the dot - they're stunned. You could either build against the dot (if it's elemental or whatever) or the stun.

Azherae

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Two for now. Please complain or praise my genius, whichever suits you.

Both are good and smth I'd like to see in the game (or along the lines of). Though on the second one I'd maybe prefer something like the dota 2's Puck's ulti, where targets in a radius get tied to a point on the ground for a time and if they run too far away from that point they get a stun, but instead of a point I'd tie them to each other.

Hell, you could even combine yours and mine. They get tied with chains that give a strong dot, but if they try and break the chains to stop the dot - they're stunned. You could either build against the dot (if it's elemental or whatever) or the stun.

That was actually my FIRST thought, but there's both an implementation difficulty (I've had to check the feasibility of it because of the Transfix ability in Cardinal) and a 'player frustration' difficulty (it's difficult to give the feedback correctly to the player which can lead to irritations in control, especially in a higher lag situation).

But yes, if Intrepid can do that better (pretty sure they could, as they have a better network engine) then that would be optimal.

@maouw this is what I meant, and what my card game design days taught me to do. The tradeoff should be built into the 'result' in that sense. It doesn't need to be a 'penalty', it is moreso 'I normally get this benefit, I'm explicitly giving it up, for this other effect that I only want conditionally'.

That's a true 'synergistic' game style because the WORST you'll get is 'why'd you cancel the snare with your hammer/quake?!' instead of all the other chaotic mess that happens.

There's some underlying stuff in there too related to why I would make those EXACT choices but I'm not really aiming to 'teach everything I know about this design type', I'm moreso looking for 'what people don't like', maybe it will help Intrepid find the 'line to not cross' for people, if they even intend to go that far.

Looking at it now, in comparison, though, I can see Dolyem's concern. "Stagger + Stagger = Stun" doesn't actually imply ANYTHING near equivalent to what I'm thinking about, by itself, my original reaction was just 'me assuming stuff again'.

Depraved

Azherae wrote: »

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Two for now. Please complain or praise my genius, whichever suits you.

Both are good and smth I'd like to see in the game (or along the lines of). Though on the second one I'd maybe prefer something like the dota 2's Puck's ulti, where targets in a radius get tied to a point on the ground for a time and if they run too far away from that point they get a stun, but instead of a point I'd tie them to each other.

Hell, you could even combine yours and mine. They get tied with chains that give a strong dot, but if they try and break the chains to stop the dot - they're stunned. You could either build against the dot (if it's elemental or whatever) or the stun.

That was actually my FIRST thought, but there's both an implementation difficulty (I've had to check the feasibility of it because of the Transfix ability in Cardinal) and a 'player frustration' difficulty (it's difficult to give the feedback correctly to the player which can lead to irritations in control, especially in a higher lag situation).

But yes, if Intrepid can do that better (pretty sure they could, as they have a better network engine) then that would be optimal.

@maouw this is what I meant, and what my card game design days taught me to do. The tradeoff should be built into the 'result' in that sense. It doesn't need to be a 'penalty', it is moreso 'I normally get this benefit, I'm explicitly giving it up, for this other effect that I only want conditionally'.

That's a true 'synergistic' game style because the WORST you'll get is 'why'd you cancel the snare with your hammer/quake?!' instead of all the other chaotic mess that happens.

There's some underlying stuff in there too related to why I would make those EXACT choices but I'm not really aiming to 'teach everything I know about this design type', I'm moreso looking for 'what people don't like', maybe it will help Intrepid find the 'line to not cross' for people, if they even intend to go that far.

Looking at it now, in comparison, though, I can see Dolyem's concern. "Stagger + Stagger = Stun" doesn't actually imply ANYTHING near equivalent to what I'm thinking about, by itself, my original reaction was just 'me assuming stuff again'.

every time you type a word in caps, I imagine u yelling it at the screen when you're talking T_T

Azherae

Depraved wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Two for now. Please complain or praise my genius, whichever suits you.

Both are good and smth I'd like to see in the game (or along the lines of). Though on the second one I'd maybe prefer something like the dota 2's Puck's ulti, where targets in a radius get tied to a point on the ground for a time and if they run too far away from that point they get a stun, but instead of a point I'd tie them to each other.

Hell, you could even combine yours and mine. They get tied with chains that give a strong dot, but if they try and break the chains to stop the dot - they're stunned. You could either build against the dot (if it's elemental or whatever) or the stun.

That was actually my FIRST thought, but there's both an implementation difficulty (I've had to check the feasibility of it because of the Transfix ability in Cardinal) and a 'player frustration' difficulty (it's difficult to give the feedback correctly to the player which can lead to irritations in control, especially in a higher lag situation).

But yes, if Intrepid can do that better (pretty sure they could, as they have a better network engine) then that would be optimal.

@maouw this is what I meant, and what my card game design days taught me to do. The tradeoff should be built into the 'result' in that sense. It doesn't need to be a 'penalty', it is moreso 'I normally get this benefit, I'm explicitly giving it up, for this other effect that I only want conditionally'.

That's a true 'synergistic' game style because the WORST you'll get is 'why'd you cancel the snare with your hammer/quake?!' instead of all the other chaotic mess that happens.

There's some underlying stuff in there too related to why I would make those EXACT choices but I'm not really aiming to 'teach everything I know about this design type', I'm moreso looking for 'what people don't like', maybe it will help Intrepid find the 'line to not cross' for people, if they even intend to go that far.

Looking at it now, in comparison, though, I can see Dolyem's concern. "Stagger + Stagger = Stun" doesn't actually imply ANYTHING near equivalent to what I'm thinking about, by itself, my original reaction was just 'me assuming stuff again'.

every time you type a word in caps, I imagine u yelling it at the screen when you're talking T_T

That's approximately correct honestly.

But it's mostly that Shift-Typing is faster than the bold and I use IRC and our various custom chat implementations a lot.

(if this is legit bothering you for any reason lmk and I'll make more of an effort to bold for emphasis instead, but I bet 'me yelling at the screen for one word' is amusing so I'll go with it)

Depraved

Azherae wrote: »

Depraved wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Two for now. Please complain or praise my genius, whichever suits you.

Both are good and smth I'd like to see in the game (or along the lines of). Though on the second one I'd maybe prefer something like the dota 2's Puck's ulti, where targets in a radius get tied to a point on the ground for a time and if they run too far away from that point they get a stun, but instead of a point I'd tie them to each other.

Hell, you could even combine yours and mine. They get tied with chains that give a strong dot, but if they try and break the chains to stop the dot - they're stunned. You could either build against the dot (if it's elemental or whatever) or the stun.

That was actually my FIRST thought, but there's both an implementation difficulty (I've had to check the feasibility of it because of the Transfix ability in Cardinal) and a 'player frustration' difficulty (it's difficult to give the feedback correctly to the player which can lead to irritations in control, especially in a higher lag situation).

But yes, if Intrepid can do that better (pretty sure they could, as they have a better network engine) then that would be optimal.

@maouw this is what I meant, and what my card game design days taught me to do. The tradeoff should be built into the 'result' in that sense. It doesn't need to be a 'penalty', it is moreso 'I normally get this benefit, I'm explicitly giving it up, for this other effect that I only want conditionally'.

That's a true 'synergistic' game style because the WORST you'll get is 'why'd you cancel the snare with your hammer/quake?!' instead of all the other chaotic mess that happens.

There's some underlying stuff in there too related to why I would make those EXACT choices but I'm not really aiming to 'teach everything I know about this design type', I'm moreso looking for 'what people don't like', maybe it will help Intrepid find the 'line to not cross' for people, if they even intend to go that far.

Looking at it now, in comparison, though, I can see Dolyem's concern. "Stagger + Stagger = Stun" doesn't actually imply ANYTHING near equivalent to what I'm thinking about, by itself, my original reaction was just 'me assuming stuff again'.

every time you type a word in caps, I imagine u yelling it at the screen when you're talking T_T

That's approximately correct honestly.

But it's mostly that Shift-Typing is faster than the bold and I use IRC and our various custom chat implementations a lot.

(if this is legit bothering you for any reason lmk and I'll make more of an effort to bold for emphasis instead, but I bet 'me yelling at the screen for one word' is amusing so I'll go with it)

it doesn't bother me lol

Gui10

Answering to OP.

To me, given the variety of skills a class will have in AoC, as per what the MMORPG community demands, I see class synergies not as "class X should synergize with class Z", or "role synergy" but rather, any class can synergize with any other class, given the players build accordingly.

Groups will have to theorycraft their builds in order to work together, they will have to make choices, obviously they wont be able to synergize every single player on the team since they will also have their own roles to fulfill.

Also, I feel your "concern" might be uninformed. Many of the options you propose are in fact already in the making. For example, we saw the staggering/stun in the video combined with the Cleric AoE spell. Well for every other archetype, they will have a different way of proccing the stagger,

maouw

Azherae wrote: »

Two for now. Please complain or praise my genius, whichever suits you.

Yes, I'm sold!
*claps for genius*

Azherae

Well, no complaints yet, so here's two more since I was thinking about them. These are more 'Martial' so they end up with a bit more complexity in the 'tradeoff' aspect.

Bard Performance/Flourish + Rogue Backstab-Stance:
Some explanation:
In some games, the Rogue doesn't immediately just have one attack that is 'backstab', they have a 'stance' they enter wherein the next strike is a backstab (this has benefits for multi-target assassinations because you get two 'charges', but that's neither here nor there other than assuming that it is available here)

Poor: When the Bard is performing, in a way that affects the Rogue and the Rogue enters Backstab Stance, the Rogue does more damage
Decent: When the Bard is Performing in a way that affects the Rogue and the Rogue enters Backstab Stance, some portion of the bonuses for attacking from Stealth are activated for the Backstab even if the Rogue was not in Stealth
Great: When the Bard is performing in a way that affects the Rogue and the Rogue enters Backstab Stance, the Bard gains a duplicate Backstab Stance from the Rogue.

Reasoning:
The Poor version is just more damage, forcing the two to care constantly and ramping up outputs, possibly affecting balance.
The Decent version would at least be cool because it might feel immersive, but it is still very likely to just be more damage from the Rogue's side
The Great version is a positioning based tradeoff OR a damage increase but with the added risk of the hate from the strike going to the Bard, which one might want to avoid. Alternately it would just 'not come up' sometimes if the Bard has few offense abilities or doesn't have their offense ability ready. If the enemy is causing trouble by 'always facing the Rogue', you get to decide 'is it worth having the Bard stand opposite the Rogue to do the damage instead?' and all the tradeoffs that go with that.

Ranger Rooting Snare + Tank Javelin:
Poor: When the Javelin hits, the enemy is CCed harder and knocked down or pulled and 'falls prone'.
Decent: When the Javelin hits, it does additional damage
Great: When Javelin hits in this situation, instead of pulling the enemy to them, the Tank pulls themselves to the enemy.

Poor version has the usual issue of 'why am I doing this CC thing twice?' but more importantly, Rooting Snare should already be 'achieving the goal' and it adds nothing on enemies that aren't easily pulled or are immune for some reason, or even just resist it, but that last part is true in all cases.
Since neither of these abilities are damage based, at least in this case getting extra damage wouldn't be as bad, since it would be a tradeoff of 'using up potential CC abilities in order to do more damage' if you tried to use it FOR damage.
The best version opens up lots more gameplay potential, allowing Tanks to have a 'second' gap closer for themselves specifically against enemies that can't or shouldn't be pulled, particularly things like Bosses with knockback in PvE. In PvP it's even more powerful because if done correctly it can give a Tank a much stronger way to deal with certain terrain limitations, but the tradeoff being that whereas pulling the enemy drags them into the middle of your 'team', this version only 'adds Mobility to the Tank', so there are times you'd use it, and times you wouldn't. It'd be a balance question whether or not doing this would break the Snare, or if you could use it to get multiple Tanks 'up a ledge' in one combo.

This is moreso a 'demo', these things aren't hard to code in general, so there's no reason not to expect them or similar. I'm sure Intrepid is already doing this sort of thing. I'd expect that their issue, if any, is 'coming up with stuff that doesn't get deactivated or confusing when augmented'.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

Bard Performance/Flourish + Rogue Backstab-Stance

I dunno if AA had stances, but in L2 you just had a backstab ability on rogues, so there's a slight chance Intrepid don't go for the stance design. But even if they don't, I'd still assume that the game tracks relative positioning, so theoretically the third version should still work. And I would definitely like it, because it'd be a great pvp tool.

Azherae wrote: »

Ranger Rooting Snare + Tank Javelin

Assuming that the ranger's ability puts "snare" effect on the target, would you change how javelin interacts with snare effects that come from other archetypes, or would it always be the same? We already have a mage-based snare, so how would the tank react to that?

I definitely like more mobility for my tank though

maouw

Yes, I like that bard idea - thematically as a sort of "echo" ability the bard can perform - where bard has to pull the trigger themselves - I also love the positioning idea because rogues usually want to get into the backlines to kill all the glass cannons, so you get a situation where:

which is the perfect position for bards to cause a storm of chaos for a moment, and then slip away (or attempt to).

@NiKr what if javelin pulled you to enemies by default, and then the synergy is pull instead?
Is that too much mobility for a tank?
I'm just wondering if pulls should be the default, rather than tank engage?

Also thinking from opponent's perspective:
rooted --> pulled
vs
rooted --> tank incoming

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