Active Tanking and You

Xenotex

Hey, I'm a little late to the party but I wanted to discuss some idea's I had regarding the potential for blocking in Ashes of Creation. To start I want to preface this by stating that I'm not a developer and I don't claim to know how difficult systems like there would be to implement, since that's out of the way I'll begin.

Active Blocking, it was brought up during the tank stream and there's been some interesting discussion, but I want to throw out a few ideas to make active blocking an engaging way to have fun as a tank if they decided to go this route.

An idea that was thrown out there was the "Active reload" approach (like gears of war) which would make a player push a button to increase the effectiveness of a guard, I personally think this would make tanking insanely fun and it would become a high skill ceiling class with a unique mechanic.

The idea with Active Blocking would be that if you successfully blocked within a window you would successfully block the damage from an attack, imagine holding up your shield and receiving a hit, when it triggers a bar would fill or have a line through go through a window of success much like a fishing game, pressing the button within that window would reward the successful block, missing that window would cause a failed block resulting in the player receiving full damage.

The exciting part is the "Perfect block" when the perfect block successfully triggers some interesting things can potentially happen if Intrepid is open to the idea.

Archetypes
Guardian: The guardian gains a flat defense buff of 10%
Keeper: The keeper summons a shield with perfect block, each perfect block replaces the previous shield left on the field
Nightshield: The Nightshield steals 2% of it's enemies mana and fills it's own mana bar 1%
Warden: The Warden triggers a ranged arrow that stuns the enemy targeted when hit
Spellshield: Casts a vacuum effect within 3 meters that pulls enemies close
Knight: Unleashes an AoE shockwave that pushes enemies within 3 meters
Paladin: A passive 2% per second heal is applied to the Paladin
Argent: A damage reduction debuff of 8% is left on the ground in in a 5 meter radius

These are just ideas off the top of my head and aren't based on anything specific, they're just examples of Tanking becoming a high skill ceiling and rewarding class. The feeling of active reloads were always extremely satisfying, but being able to pull a group of enemies into one spot to keep them under control or push them back to keep them at a distance, gaining the ability to soft heal yourself or strip away your enemies mana with each block, even summoning a second shield so you can weave your perfect guards side to side to control the flow of a fight sounds incredible.

If this sounds cool to you let Intrepid know, I think it would add a layer into tanking that has never been seen before. Thanks for reading.

Ace1234

Agreed- definitely hoping for the "perfect block", and im also a big fan of having active class skills that add additional class-related effects to the basic skills, like some of the examples you listed.

I made an in depth post on these ideas found here:

https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/54950/proactive-reactive-offense-defense-movement-options-baked-in-at-various-ranges/p1?new=1