Tanking

Dygz wrote: »

There will be some changes. I never said there wouldn't be.

The point is if majority of players think tank/x is not satisfying enough and want x/tank to have some viability , Steven is not going to say to the players well too bad this my vision for my game. Devs will make the changes to make the players happy . No plans survive contact with the enemy as they say in the military, and tanking is not even fully in the game yet to be tested to see players will even like the current plans for it.

Uh hunh. They say without even having tested it.
That is not going to change significantly and... if they try to...expect vaporware.
This is not something we need to discuss farther. We just wait to see which one of us is right after the game launches.
If the game launches.

Dygz wrote: »

Uh hunh. They say without even having tested it.
That is not going to change significantly and... if they try to...expect vaporware.
This is not something we need to discuss farther. We just wait to see which one of us is right after the game launches.
If the game launches.

It will be vaperware? So you know better then other players or the devs making the game? Ok then..

I know better than Steven, yeah. Just as I knew he would not be able to launch the game before 2020.
Because I've been a game dev longer than he has.
But, hit me up when Steven drastically changes the way augments work.

Dygz wrote: »

I know better than Steven, yeah. Just as I knew he would not be able to launch the game before 2020.
Because I've been a game dev longer than he has.
But, hit me up when Steven drastically changes the way augments work.

Careful your big ego is showing.

in my pissed state it is important to remember the devs want a tank tank (Guardian) which might not be viable in PvP and 7 other Tank/Xs which could be viable in PvP. We do not know enough about Tank/X augments, we know Cleric Augments are either death or life augments, but these augments lack the other two styles of augment. It is not clear how drastically the augments will affect tank dispositions or which tank/x will be the main tank most groups will ask for.

Neurath wrote: »

in my pissed state it is important to remember the devs want a tank tank (Guardian) which might not be viable in PvP and 7 other Tank/Xs which could be viable in PvP. We do not know enough about Tank/X augments, we know Cleric Augments are either death or life augments, but these augments lack the other two styles of augment. It is not clear how drastically the augments will affect tank dispositions or which tank/x will be the main tank most groups will ask for.

Steven says all Tank/x will be viable as main tank. We should expect that to be true because all Tank/x have the same Tank abilities - which is what allows them to Tank.
How they augment their Tank abilities will be different.
Which Tank/x most groups ask for is different than whether all Tank\x can actually main tank.
Could be that most groups believe Tank/Tank is what every group must have, even if it's not true.

Dygz wrote: »

Steven says all Tank/x will be viable as main tank. We should expect that to be true because all Tank/x have the same Tank abilities - which is what allows them to Tank.
How they augment their Tank abilities will be different.
Which Tank/x most groups ask for is different than whether all Tank\x can actually main tank.
Could be that most groups believe Tank/Tank is what every group must have, even if it's not true.

Yeah man, I hope the generic requests are more than Guardian Level (Tank/Tank). I've considered the options at the present disposition of information and I would agree that Guardian is the predisposition for Tank in the current knowledge base. The truth is we don't know the tank secondaries so we can't make an educated guess. I would argue the semantics between the different tanks but we don't know enough about the tank dispositions. Would it be advantageous for a tank to teleport charge when the standard charge knocks down all targets on route? who knows. I will love the time when we understand the augments enough to build a competent tank class

Well...but, it's not like the teleport is the only option to put on the Charge ability. If you want to add damage to the Charge, you could choose an augment from the Elemental School rather than the Escape School.
What we do know is that all of the Tank/x will have the abilities that allow them to main tank. They have a wide variety of choices of augments - they might even choose to use social, racial, religious or other augments rather than Secondary Archetype augments, but...if they want to dabble in some different Archetype, they have options that allow them to do so.

It will be a fun experience on the tanking front, even without x/tank being viable. I would hope the social and religious augments will allow a plethora of play options which will make tanks unique in the diorama of conflict. I would hope we would not be pigeon holed into Tank/Tank (Guardian) but will have the opportunity to build a viable tank for all end game metrics with the secondary, societal and religious aspects in tow. It will broaden the scope of tank/x considerably if we can glean augments from other areas, and, if those augments add to our repertoire rather than subtract from our repertoire. It will be a pleasure working with intrepid to build the tank classes. It will be a pleasure tanking for my guild if the augments add viability rather than switch viability with the augments.

Well, I mean, yeah...off-tank should still be a lot of fun. If you really want to main tank choose Tank as your Primary Archetype. But, you should still have plenty of fun doing some tanky stuff with x/Tank augments.

I'm also very curious to see how racial augments will have Tank/x of different races tanking differently.

Saedu

Dygz wrote: »

Neurath wrote: »

in my pissed state it is important to remember the devs want a tank tank (Guardian) which might not be viable in PvP and 7 other Tank/Xs which could be viable in PvP. We do not know enough about Tank/X augments, we know Cleric Augments are either death or life augments, but these augments lack the other two styles of augment. It is not clear how drastically the augments will affect tank dispositions or which tank/x will be the main tank most groups will ask for.

Steven says all Tank/x will be viable as main tank. We should expect that to be true because all Tank/x have the same Tank abilities - which is what allows them to Tank.
How they augment their Tank abilities will be different.
Which Tank/x most groups ask for is different than whether all Tank\x can actually main tank.
Could be that most groups believe Tank/Tank is what every group must have, even if it's not true.

Imagine though if say the mage augments boosted up the DPS of the tank at the cost of the survivability. Now the player who decided to roll the tank class has more meaningful choice over the long term of the character. Add in a few of these sorts of these augments (plus use a 2h weapon instead of a shield) and you could move the tank/mage to a DPS role instead of a tanking role. Since we know the that the sub-class can be changed, this would now give the player the option to do the tank or the DPS role and switch over time rather than being stuck only playing the tank game. This would be 100x better game design.

More options is always better.

SirChancelot

Dygz wrote: »

Well...but, it's not like the teleport is the only option to put on the Charge ability. If you want to add damage to the Charge, you could choose an augment from the Elemental School rather than the Escape School.

Ok I agree, and those are all going to be different flavor options... But that won't change how the tank plays... Adding ele DMG just makes the charge more effective against frost types, or add a burn effect... It's still just a tank charging in though... That's not going to change the play style, just help your character tailor his kit to run a specific dungeon or quest area.

I'm hoping for something that has a different playstyle than charge in

It will change how the Tank plays.
A Tank/Cleric who Javelin's the boss to where he's at and then self-heals will have a significantly different result than a Tank/Mage who Javelin's the boss to where he's at and teleports to a different location.

Adding any augment to the Charge makes the Charge more effective, but different augments will make the Charge more effective in significantly different ways.
If you are a Tank/Rogue or Tank/Ranger and put a Stealth augment on your Shockwave, you might choose to Stealth to your next target rather than Charge to your next target.

I'm not sure a maxed out augmented charge will knock down all in the charge path though. How would you knock down foes with a teleported charge? It would be good if you could still function the same but I'm not sure it will be possible.

Saedu wrote: »

Imagine though if say the mage augments boosted up the DPS of the tank at the cost of the survivability. Now the player who decided to roll the tank class has more meaningful choice over the long term of the character.

If a Tank/Mage adds an Elemental augment to Javelin, it will increase the DPS of Javelin.
I don't understand why there would be a cost to survivability for that.

Add in a few of these sorts of these augments (plus use a 2h weapon instead of a shield) and you could move the tank/mage to a DPS role instead of a tanking role. Since we know the that the sub-class can be changed, this would now give the player the option to do the tank or the DPS role and switch over time rather than being stuck only playing the tank game. This would be 100x better game design.

It's still going to be a tank role because the Tank uses Tank abilities. All you are saying is that the secondary role would be DPS. It doesn't give the player a chance to tank or DPS because all of the augments are attached to Tank abilities. What they would be doing is tank and DPS.
Steven says that an x/Cleric will not replace a Tank/x, so I doubt very much that a Tank/x is going to replace a Rogue/x or a Mage/x when it comes to DPS.

Biccus

I'm not sure if you've tanked much before Dygz but it certainly feels like you aren't in tune with our concerns.
I (we?) are coming from games that have different classes that can tank, each class having completely different abilities, which in turns comes with completely different play styles. What I (we?) am worried about is that the way abilities are modified by the augmenting class will not be enough to allow for the different play styles we are used to.
The fear is simply that all the tanking "classes" will feel too similar to each other.

Now, It's very likely that through the passives, weapon skills and as you said racial abilities will be able to align with the augments to give differing play styles. However with such little information of those (and even augments), we are left with the fear we have.

Azherae

This is an equation though.

If I ask 'why can't a Fighter/Tank be a tank', here's what prevents that overall.

1. Can they do more DPS than a tank?
Probably, or we may not see a lot of Fighters...
2. Can they find a way to take near or less damage than a tank?
Probably harder, but most of the tank abilities so far don't do damage reduction consistently, or other classes can help provide a lot of this.
3. Can they control adds (for some this might even be optional)?
Dunno, but this is pretty binary.
4. Can they match a Tank/X's bonus to Threat?
Not saying I know, here, but if the answer is yes via augments, then the equation's done.

This class has all the abilities of a Fighter, and outperforms the Tank at Tanking in at least some groups, where 'Ultimate Defense' isn't necessary for whatever reason.

Are we assuming that Bulwark and Ultimate Defense are such powerful damage mitigation tools that nothing can match them?