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A Discussion on Tanks
Mionikoi
Member
I have heard a number of things about Intrepid's approach to tanks and tanking. I would like to throw some ideas out.
PvE, PvP, PvX.
Let's start with PvE. Most are familiar with the concept. Meat shield. High health, armor, taunts enemies. That might be it for some. I think that should be only the beginning. I propose tanks be the masters of buffs and debuffs. Maybe this could be in the form of shouts for ally buffs and martial prowess in the form of debuffing the enemy.
Examples some community members I talk to on discord suggested is 'Anchor Howl' an ability from Log Horizon that makes an enemy have to attack the caster, or take double damage.
Crippling, Bleeding, Weakness, Cowardice, Breach, and a few other debilitating debuffs can really make a tank valuable for fighting dangerous opponents while having its own class and role identity.
PvP
I have thought of a few approaches for this. Such lwts talks build and mechanics.
A tank being used against players can still be treated as the biggest threat considering party comprization.
Fly trap-One approach where they are not competing as a DPS is what I call 'Field Control.' ESO had a lot of tools for this. AOEs like caltrops and elemental wall using a frost staff cut movement considerably, leesh as a pull allowed tanks to grab. In a way, they are a 'harassing' build, but their job is to grab players, cripple their ability to move, and make it easier for the DPSs to pick them off.
Totem Tank- Dealer of blessings and curses. Why not have mechanics that makes you want to avoid direct confrontation with a tank? Crippling blows might cut portions of your health, bleeding cut, hamstrung legs to slow your movement, and perhaps depending on their weapon, attacks that ignore your defense. They might not dish out the highest numbers. But they can be no less nasty.
Reflective Tanks- Once upon a time their was a tank build in ESO that made gankers and bombers rage. You think you were going to hit them from the shadows with with a one hit K.O attack or quick succession of attacks... And then you drop dead. You killed yourself when you look at your death recap. The tank reflected your attack back at you.
These tanks are a gimmick. They were great as a middle finger to gankers who wanted to farm PvEers doing quests. However they were still susceptible to seige and restro staves. Or ultis.
But, they were nerfed out of existence. I was thinking this would be a great build to deal with high damage burst DPSs that are hard to uproot from their PK farms.
Thorn Tank- Simple. Hit them, take damage. They do too, but they just have to outlast you. I was thinking they could have an 'aura of thorns' or such, allowing them to inflict Damage Over Time that prevents you from healing, or at least debilitates your ability to heal.
The Wall- In ESO, we call these 'Troll Tanks.' You can kill them. But sometimes it takes 3-8 players to actually do it. Or seige. Which they aren't waiting around for. These are the guys who make the DPS centric meta rage. They are great for going up to a point, securing it, grabbing an item, or burning siege engines to ashes. Practically immortal and some will hit you with the force of a wet noodles while most are about average DPS. But nevertheless they are the tankiest of tanks.
A few of these work fine for PvX situations, in my mind anyways. But I wanted to hear what you all think?
PvE, PvP, PvX.
Let's start with PvE. Most are familiar with the concept. Meat shield. High health, armor, taunts enemies. That might be it for some. I think that should be only the beginning. I propose tanks be the masters of buffs and debuffs. Maybe this could be in the form of shouts for ally buffs and martial prowess in the form of debuffing the enemy.
Examples some community members I talk to on discord suggested is 'Anchor Howl' an ability from Log Horizon that makes an enemy have to attack the caster, or take double damage.
Crippling, Bleeding, Weakness, Cowardice, Breach, and a few other debilitating debuffs can really make a tank valuable for fighting dangerous opponents while having its own class and role identity.
PvP
I have thought of a few approaches for this. Such lwts talks build and mechanics.
A tank being used against players can still be treated as the biggest threat considering party comprization.
Fly trap-One approach where they are not competing as a DPS is what I call 'Field Control.' ESO had a lot of tools for this. AOEs like caltrops and elemental wall using a frost staff cut movement considerably, leesh as a pull allowed tanks to grab. In a way, they are a 'harassing' build, but their job is to grab players, cripple their ability to move, and make it easier for the DPSs to pick them off.
Totem Tank- Dealer of blessings and curses. Why not have mechanics that makes you want to avoid direct confrontation with a tank? Crippling blows might cut portions of your health, bleeding cut, hamstrung legs to slow your movement, and perhaps depending on their weapon, attacks that ignore your defense. They might not dish out the highest numbers. But they can be no less nasty.
Reflective Tanks- Once upon a time their was a tank build in ESO that made gankers and bombers rage. You think you were going to hit them from the shadows with with a one hit K.O attack or quick succession of attacks... And then you drop dead. You killed yourself when you look at your death recap. The tank reflected your attack back at you.
These tanks are a gimmick. They were great as a middle finger to gankers who wanted to farm PvEers doing quests. However they were still susceptible to seige and restro staves. Or ultis.
But, they were nerfed out of existence. I was thinking this would be a great build to deal with high damage burst DPSs that are hard to uproot from their PK farms.
Thorn Tank- Simple. Hit them, take damage. They do too, but they just have to outlast you. I was thinking they could have an 'aura of thorns' or such, allowing them to inflict Damage Over Time that prevents you from healing, or at least debilitates your ability to heal.
The Wall- In ESO, we call these 'Troll Tanks.' You can kill them. But sometimes it takes 3-8 players to actually do it. Or seige. Which they aren't waiting around for. These are the guys who make the DPS centric meta rage. They are great for going up to a point, securing it, grabbing an item, or burning siege engines to ashes. Practically immortal and some will hit you with the force of a wet noodles while most are about average DPS. But nevertheless they are the tankiest of tanks.
A few of these work fine for PvX situations, in my mind anyways. But I wanted to hear what you all think?
MY Own NIckle Co-operates with an EYE. -Mīonikoī.
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Comments
Probably everyone will ignore them in fights until they are the last survivors.
anyways, i think ashes is going for cc on tanks, buffs on bards, and debuffs on summoners.
- reposition the tank
- reposition the ally
- reposition the enemy
- combos of all of the above
Another tool that would combo with that one would be directed protective shields, both incoming and outgoing.Make the tank an active participant in the fight, rather than "I cast a buff/debuff and run around as a tin can, hoping that my party doesn't die before I do".
Most people wouldn't attack the tank first, thorns don't really make a difference...
From the 'sorta evasion tank' side, if you treat the Martial tank as 'Takes a hit, then doesn't take further hits for a bit', and the magic tank as 'can decide when to avoid a hit in advance, but can't keep this up forever', I prefer the magic tank type even though the cooldowns generally 'make it clear to most opponents when they can hit you.
I like disrupting enemy plans and making them overthink to buy time for my group, moreso than I like the raw Damage Reduction. For PvE enemies with randomized attacks, obviously the Martial Evasion Tank is a bit 'better', but the Magical Evasion Tank is still decently fun for someone who overthinks/overfocuses like me.
Repositioning mechanics can be a lot of fun to use, but when you are the enemy and you get repositioned it can be less fun than being stunned, which isn't very fun. People tend to dislike loss of character control mechanics.
A martial tank is 'Sword and Board' stamina. They are generally up in your face hacking and slashing.
A magical tank can be up in your face, but they use staves primarily and can afford to have more distance. In ESO, the frost staff lets you pin enemies that aren't too large for a brief period.
Spells and skills aren't exclusive from a martial vs a magical. But the resources they invest in tend to skew them one way or another.
I like the idea of a battle mage/war wizard being a front liner and acring as a tank just as easily as a big beefy knight-like character.
if you send him in first and everybody else in your party is outside the enemy range, he will be attacked first.
Well yeah but then he dies. And then your party has no tank. I think I may have missed the more subtle nuance of your post? Sorry.
and you lost your dps, he has his reflect thing on...people will most likely die attacking him..plus u can heal him you know..you dont have to be right next to him to do that.
so reflecting damage will either be so small that it doesnt matter, or it will be so big that people will kill themselves attacking the tank and then wont attack him, basically making the tank counter himself. he wants to be attacked.
Another method could be if a reflective tank also was a flytrap or had some fly trap skills. Make it to where the enemy players have a difficult time getting away. That would kind of be insidious. But I think a method that could work is placing down an AOE maybe not directly ontop of the reflector, because that might trigger the ability.
And yet another option is using offensive auras and debuffs to wittle the reflector down. We could treat this scenario almost like a boss fight, and it wouldn't surprise me if we encounter something like this happening. Intrepid, we are giving you ideas!
i would prefer damage reflects on warriors, but nothing op, just something to add a lil dps.
if i have a tank in my party, i want my enemies attacking that tank. i dont wan to give them reason to not attack the tank. for example l2 gave tanks really op magic reflect that lasted for 10 seconds. it was op in 1v1 because you could make the mage kill himself, and if not, you were just doing free damage on him with your autos, but in group combat, the mage can simply choose another target making the skill almost pointless and u werent always in range to use provoke on the mage, in which case, he could just not attack for 2 seconds.
there were some reflect stuff for everybody too that eventually became too strong. they were added later.
the reason id prefer this skill on a warrior is because now you have to make a choice. warriors do more damage than tanks. if you ignore the warrior, he can kill you, so you have to attack him or deal with him somehow. if the tanks have this, you can just ignore them as they shouldnt have the damage to kill you, especially when you have a healer in your party.
#1 Tank will have the most explosive and consistent amount of damage, second only to a rogue and a wizard who nukes. #1 Tank will also have the highest mitigation (AC) and some tanks that cast spells also have the ability to heal themselves by a healing spell or stealing health from their enemies with a dark magic.
I fully reject the notion of the tank being the buffer and de-buffer of the group. You are thinking of the enchanter, this is the enchanter's forte.
What kind of games have you been playing? I don't think I've ever heard anyone ever say that tanks have dmg, let alone highest dmg outside of caster/rogue.
What he is talking about is a perfectly valid description of a tank, in a game with four classes.
Yeah, thats the class list.
A healer doing more damage than a tank is viable in some games, for sure.
EQ2 had 6 healers and 6 tanks, 2 of the healers were able to do more damage than 3 of the tanks, but the other three tanks were actually fairly decent with damage. They were considered second tier (of four) DPS classes.
The rest of the healers damage output was really low - yet for some reason it was still expected that they would deal some damage (an expectation I still have of healers).
he played fiesta online too much xDD
Warrior used to often be the tank back then though because of the inspiration points of those games.
Maybe I'm too young and yall boomers are used to warrior tanks, but
Sure sure, but they did say P1999. It's in the name.
I mean, I won't complain too much if Intrepid suddenly decide to give my tank/fighter a ton of dmg - but I'd still prefer if others didn't expect amazing damage from me, when I'm just a tank doing tank things.
So mechanics is what I am familiar with. And a tank that has mechanics that will make players want to kill it first sounds just as if not more successful than a glorified beefy DPS. I get the idea of 'heavy armor with a cannon' tank. But that feels like it breaks the holy trinity I am familiar with.
And, although I understand that AoC will be complex, am I wrong in assuming that itbis still following the holy trinity?
i think they were called meat shields before xDDD
since now the tank and the warrior are separated, i dont expect the tank to be able to dish out too much damage.
For example, maybe tanks bring powerful auras that boost their allies pvp potential by a significant amount, and the only way to get rid of this aura is to do a percentage of their health in the span of a few seconds putting the aura on cooldown for 20 or so seconds.
These buffs could range from cooldown reduction, attack speed, spell power, "execution effects", damage reduction, etc.
Another good idea would probably be to add guard skills, letting tanks guard specific players from harm. This could be used to protect high value healers/ccers/damage dealers, and the idea would be to make it more reasonable to tear through the tank instead of tunneling that target down.
Theres also the offensive aspect, where these auras could apply detrimental effects to enemies, from movement speed reduction, to reducing resource generation (mana, special class resources, etc), damage over time, damage taken increase, for just a few examples.
Tanks are not just a guy that takes longer to kill, they should be seen as protectors/commanders that can bring a group through battles. That takes skills that protect others, not just themselves. Mechanically they would take on a more support role for groups. On one hand they buff allies/debuff enemies, and on the other they are a focus point in fights that, if lost, can severely change the outcome of fights.
I believe these would be good ways to make sure tanks are just as important for pvp as any other role.