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Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Tank Siege Feedback
Solvryn
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Feedback for tank in sieges
Best skills in the kit:
Intimidating Aura: AoE Stagger into Ground Pound peak frontline control.
Ground Pound: AoE stun is peak frontline control.
Rush of Courage: it's 100 free courage.
The Wall: Denial Tool with many applications, mostly used for lane denial and setting up kills. Always a must have.
Charge: Best in-lane mobility skill in the game (for those who dont realize the maps in Ashes are lanes), just over all one of the best design skills in the game.
Tomahawk: This skill is really damn good even though it just doesn't always make sense with a tank kit, but its great for catching high mobility archetypes.
Iron Aura: Free damage reduction is always good and it costs nothing.
Tremoring Strike/Bellow: Adding to the frontline control of the tank. Used this a lot to snare a lot for control.
New Vengeance: When played right, that little stun is potent.
Reflect: By itself, it's a great ability.
Needs Work/Improvement:
Grit: The new grit change is decent, but no ones going remember to press that every ten second and try to control a front line. Two, roll supernatural grit into grit and not require tanks to have to force a point somewhere when they already melt against magic to begin with.
Sustain: Indomitable Spirit & Shake It Off: These skills aren't inherently bad, I want to address the fact there are non tank classes with better ways to mitigate than a tank (heal throughput) and have better sustainability and survivability.
Shake It Off: Shake It Off: This skill, for lack of a better term, feels inconsistent or design strangely. Maybe up the tick rate per half a second and change the requirements?
Between Needs Work/Reworked:
Grapple/Chains sets the tone for most engagements, however I think there are much better implementations of skills out there that would do a better job than how weird grapple behaves. So I'm going to say remove grapple from the game and replace this engagement tool with a force taunt.
From Athena in Smite: 2. Confound – Emits a shockwave that taunts enemies in a cone, forcing them to attack Athena while reducing their attack speed.
Needs Reworked/Removed:
Slam: Not worth a point/better options.
Inciting Strikes: Not worth a point/better options.
Taunt: Not worth a point/better options.
Relentless Vengeance: Not worth a point/better options.
Aegis: Not worth a point.
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I'm going to skip a lot of the skills since they’re not bad, but the Tank currently feels unstructured and incohesive.
It's a protector class, it can do that through frontline control and mitigation. But a lot of the buttons feel like bloat and can be more streamlined.
Absorption Field/Protect/Intercept: Can be merged into one skill and it already exists in other games.
"Ultimate: Eagle's Rally Bellona plants a Roman flag at a target location, dealing damage and stunning enemies directly under it. Allies within the flag's radius receive increased protections and physical power for the duration."
See banners in GW2 Warrior Kit, as well.
a clean, visible rally point for a group is a huge plus in the game, it creates the line of contention, pivot point, and the gathering point for all players to be at during siege.
Reflect/Aegis: Aegis always struggled and had tons of potential, here's a skill that can serve that function.
"2. Barrier Formation – Creates a barrier that blocks ranged basic attacks and repels nearby enemies. Reactivating collapses the barrier, dealing damage."
I think merging Reflect and Aegis into one super skill would better serve it, having a conal denial from the tank and making the new ability the real "Stand Behind Me, I'll Protect You" skill and it adds to the class fantasy.
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Tank Fantasy:
It's got the buttons, needs streamlined and more cohesion. It's almost there. But it doesn't feel like a Frontline Protector yet. But it's hard to say because these skills needs to be brought a lot more inline with each other so it's the true "Stand Behind Me" class.
Best skills in the kit:
Intimidating Aura: AoE Stagger into Ground Pound peak frontline control.
Ground Pound: AoE stun is peak frontline control.
Rush of Courage: it's 100 free courage.
The Wall: Denial Tool with many applications, mostly used for lane denial and setting up kills. Always a must have.
Charge: Best in-lane mobility skill in the game (for those who dont realize the maps in Ashes are lanes), just over all one of the best design skills in the game.
Tomahawk: This skill is really damn good even though it just doesn't always make sense with a tank kit, but its great for catching high mobility archetypes.
Iron Aura: Free damage reduction is always good and it costs nothing.
Tremoring Strike/Bellow: Adding to the frontline control of the tank. Used this a lot to snare a lot for control.
New Vengeance: When played right, that little stun is potent.
Reflect: By itself, it's a great ability.
Needs Work/Improvement:
Grit: The new grit change is decent, but no ones going remember to press that every ten second and try to control a front line. Two, roll supernatural grit into grit and not require tanks to have to force a point somewhere when they already melt against magic to begin with.
Sustain: Indomitable Spirit & Shake It Off: These skills aren't inherently bad, I want to address the fact there are non tank classes with better ways to mitigate than a tank (heal throughput) and have better sustainability and survivability.
Shake It Off: Shake It Off: This skill, for lack of a better term, feels inconsistent or design strangely. Maybe up the tick rate per half a second and change the requirements?
Between Needs Work/Reworked:
Grapple/Chains sets the tone for most engagements, however I think there are much better implementations of skills out there that would do a better job than how weird grapple behaves. So I'm going to say remove grapple from the game and replace this engagement tool with a force taunt.
From Athena in Smite: 2. Confound – Emits a shockwave that taunts enemies in a cone, forcing them to attack Athena while reducing their attack speed.
Needs Reworked/Removed:
Slam: Not worth a point/better options.
Inciting Strikes: Not worth a point/better options.
Taunt: Not worth a point/better options.
Relentless Vengeance: Not worth a point/better options.
Aegis: Not worth a point.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
I'm going to skip a lot of the skills since they’re not bad, but the Tank currently feels unstructured and incohesive.
It's a protector class, it can do that through frontline control and mitigation. But a lot of the buttons feel like bloat and can be more streamlined.
Absorption Field/Protect/Intercept: Can be merged into one skill and it already exists in other games.
"Ultimate: Eagle's Rally Bellona plants a Roman flag at a target location, dealing damage and stunning enemies directly under it. Allies within the flag's radius receive increased protections and physical power for the duration."
See banners in GW2 Warrior Kit, as well.
a clean, visible rally point for a group is a huge plus in the game, it creates the line of contention, pivot point, and the gathering point for all players to be at during siege.
Reflect/Aegis: Aegis always struggled and had tons of potential, here's a skill that can serve that function.
"2. Barrier Formation – Creates a barrier that blocks ranged basic attacks and repels nearby enemies. Reactivating collapses the barrier, dealing damage."
I think merging Reflect and Aegis into one super skill would better serve it, having a conal denial from the tank and making the new ability the real "Stand Behind Me, I'll Protect You" skill and it adds to the class fantasy.
---_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Tank Fantasy:
It's got the buttons, needs streamlined and more cohesion. It's almost there. But it doesn't feel like a Frontline Protector yet. But it's hard to say because these skills needs to be brought a lot more inline with each other so it's the true "Stand Behind Me" class.
1
Comments
I would also love to see an extra addon passive point for grapple that would allow tanks to pull more than 1 target (up to 3) with grapple, maybe at the cost of reduced range or something.
There's a lot of options in general but also at the same time I feel like there's not enough. Maybe if they make grit better that could help.
Another thing I haven't really gotten round to testing myself but how does taunt work/if at all in PvP?
In AION (my main game for 10+ years) Taunts did literally 0 in PvP unless the taunt applied some additional debuff to the target.
After a while they changed taunt to also work in PvP -> Target would autotarget the tank if taunt was used.
I'm not sure how that could work in Ashes though due to the action combat option....Maybe taunts could force targets to autoface the caster for a split-second? Idk. Just throwing it out there that I think taunts should have a use-case in PvP as well as in PvE
Tank main. Working on my GPH
Barbarians chains from Diablo or a "net" like chain could work, but the single target chain isn't working because of the server.
The only true "Taunt" tank has in PvP is single target, and applies humiliate. Which is why I think going farther into force taunts would better help the tank. There's already force taunt in the game, if you get hit by one of those little mushrooms it force taunts you to attack them for a few seconds.
Really it's just getting Tank cleaned up, it's just all over the place. There are some good skills in the Tank kit, it's just the lack of cohesion in the over all kit.