Tanking

I love the overall archetype class design that they're going for, and I know they have said that a tank archetype will be able to tank no matter what secondary class he chooses.
But does anyone know if any other classes if they choose a tank secondary will be able to tank?
For example a rogue/tank being able to do a Dodge evasion type build for tanking. Or a summoner focusing on tanky summons?

Or will the tank primary be the only tanking option?

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Dygz

Hmmn. Yeah. It would have to be something like a Brood Warden.
One of the classes with multiple Summons rather than one big one.
But, it would be interesting to see Keeper v Brood Warden.

Saedu

Ventharien wrote: »

Saedu wrote: »

The problem is more than just the number of "viable tanks". I am a player that likes to tank, dps, and heal. I also like to do it competitvly so i need something that is both fun for my playstyle, but also viable for end game. I don't want to be a liability or sub par for my team. I don't expect to do more than one of these roles at a time, but I require the ability to change between them (perhaps only in towns of people feel there is a need to limit the changing (guess what, there isn't, but I'm willing to compromise) What single class do I pick in AoC for my main?

If @Dygz has his version of AoC the answer is I don't play AoC. I don't like that answer. I'm not asking for anything that is overpowered (I can only do one role at a time). I'm not doing anything that impacts other people's play (you can still choose the role you want).

Dygz... do you hate me? . Why push for a subpar game when this system could be better? I don't think you realize it, but I think this decision could literally alienate millions of players (and therefore less funding for IS to make more content for you so it negatively impacts you). Don't start that "maybe this game isn't for you elitist attitude either." I have a lot of interest in this game, but I see risks like this one where the wrong game decisions could alienate a lot of really great people and not bring any actual benefit to the game.

I recommend archtype impacts your playstyle through what your core abilities actually are. It also drives your initial role in the lower levels. Augments should be powerful enough to modify your abilities to a degree that could change your role through buffs/debuffs. This would give the game so much more. This is true meaningful choice.

Oh and don't answer "alts" to my question about what class to play. I will do alts anyways, but there isn't the same time dedication for an alt vs a main. This game also doesn't look like it is going to be very alt friendly given how grindy it sounds like it may be. That's a separate problem of course.

The problem is, what you are really asking here is, Intrepid, please make my choices not matter. You are asking to do everything, whether or not you are doing them at the same time. Why look for any particular class, when you can do any? And it does heavily impact other peoples play, especially in our current discussion of roles within a group. (Side note: If this is a request you need, the Summoner has already been tapped as a jack of all trades)

Quite the opposite. I think being able to switch role actually brings in more meaningful choice as you are making tradeoffs that are more impactful with each augment you select.

We're comparing these two things:

1) Making a choice once and being locked into your role forever
2) Making dozens of choices with each augment/weapon/armor/skill that are impactful enough to modify your role.

I want more of the choices to be meaningful, not less. A choice that is one and done isn't very meaningful and it limits the choice over time to try out new things with your character.

Ventharien wrote: »

In a post after this one, you reference WoW, which throughout it's releases dumbed itself down again, and again and again. They homogenized the classes down to some classes tank, some classes heal some classes dps, and some classes mix. WHICH class you use is almost irrelevant, beyond the tuning that puts one or 2 to the 'meta' for a patch cycle. Having classes not feel unique is not a positive.

Having only Tank/x be tanks is actually more homogenized than having multiple X/Tank be able to tank. If its Tank/x only, then literally "every" option for tanking has the same skills.... so you have one playstyle (your skills) for tanking.

WoW has multiple playstyles for tanking:
1) Warrior: Traditional sword and board non-magical tank. Uses rage resource mechanic. Tends to rely on lots of CDs.
2) Paladin: Holy tank who uses sword and board, but augments with holy magic. Uses holy power + mana resource mechanics.
3) Druid: Bear tank. No shield/parry mechanics. Focuses on dodging and a larger health pool + strong self healing. Most basic of all rotations among the tanks. Uses rage resource mechanic, but very different than warrior in how rage is spent.
4) Brewmaster: mitigates damage through stagger... Most damage taken is applied as a 10 second dot which can be purified from time to time by drinking brews. Fewer CDs than other tanks. Energy mechanic. Tends to be able to smooth out damage intake more than other tanks. Poor self-healing. Good mobility. Uses energy resource system.
5) Deathknight: dual-wielding plate tank. Augmented by dark magic with strong self healing done through DPS. Rune resource system. Tends to have the most spiky health pool, but strongest self healing. Strong anti-magic mechanics.
6) Demon Hunter: More of an agility/evasion type of tank. High-mobility. Some self-healing, but often stays alive though kiting.

The only skill that each of these classes have in common is taunt. Outside of that how they DPS, mitigate damage, and their cooldowns are all very different. This is literally the opposite of homogenization.

Not all of these classes are perfectly balanced and of course with how much WoW has been optimized by the playerbase there is always a meta, but you can pretty much clear content with any of the classes. What matters is the playstyle. The playstyle of the tank can have implications for the healers as well. For example, with a DK the healer needs to learn to not panic as much regarding the DKs health, and instead see where the runic power is (if the DK has runic power, he/she is about to do a massive self heal and you can focus on healing the raid. if not, the DK needs help ASAP). Whereas with a Brewmaster the healer may find hots are most effective as the Brewmaster is going to always be tanking damage, but it isn't likely to be spiky damage. With a Warrior it may be more about cooldown management communication.

Ventharien wrote: »

As to whether or not augments will just provide flavor, i agree if the augment just makes the sparkles i make have a different color, or get a special animation, i would be dissappointed. I don't think this will be the case. But i also don't think you'll be able to change your role. otherwise, If a tank/rogue and rogue/tank can both survive an encounter, and the rogue/tank does more damage, why would you ever pick the Tank/Rogue? And if Rogue/Tank can't survive an encounter they have failed in their most basic role as a tank. Adding tank should just give you survivability options, maybe you feel rogue is just not working in the big knock down drag out field battles, or just not to your liking, so you add some beef.

I think this will depend on the degree to which you apply augments. What if a rogue/tank who focused heavily on defensive augments + plate armor + a shield could tank as well as a tank/rogue who gets similarly setup? Or what if a tank/rogue focuses in more on damage increasing augments (perhaps the strongest of which also reduce his damage mitigation ability and threat modifiers, but give big DPS buffs through poison dots) and a 2-h weapon instead of a shield? You could be in a place where depending on the augments selected either class could be viable for a DPS or tank role, but not both as the same time. Not perfectly balanced of course (thats near impossible), but close enough that the variance won't make a difference compared to the players skill.

Or perhaps tank/rogue isn't a viable tanking setup, but tank/tank, tank/cleric, tank/fighter, and tank/summoner are viable tanks with some variability in strengths/weaknesses? (brute grit for a fighter, self-healing for a cleric, high mitigation for a tank, and utility/companion/absorb from a summoner). With 8 sub-classes to choose from, a tank only needs about ~4 of them to be viable tanking specs. Perhaps if the sub-class is a bard they can become more of a off-tank/support class (able to hold adds, but not tank boss while also buffing up the group). The three remaining sub-classes could be focused more on turning the tank into a DPS role. Mage brings AOE/elemental damage. Rogue provides poision/dot damage increase. Ranger focuses more on single target damage and perhaps adds some more range to attacks, but doubles down on physical damage.

Probably not a healer role for the tank class as that might not fit well with the tank fantasy (of course, the class name needs to change because "tank" isn't really a fantasy. Something like "Guardian" would be better). This is okay as not every class needs every role. If most have 2, some 3, and some all 4, then you got some good variety. You won't see everyone roll the classes that have all 4 because people will gravitate to the playstyle/fantasy that they prefer, not who can do the most number of roles. For example, I love the WoW Monk playstyle and I do all three Melee DPS/Tank/Heals on it. I'm not as much of a fan with some of the roles on the Druid class however and even though it has access to 4 roles (melee DPS, ranged DPS, tank, and heals) I only do tank and ranged DPS on that character).

Let's take Rogue as another example. They are of course a bit more DPS oriented so perhaps when they are paired up with fighter/mage/ranger/rogue/summoner their primary role is still DPS, but they have different flavors of DPS that may have pros/cons. tank as a "shadow guardian" sounds like it should be very tanky and perhaps it could be a evasion heavy based tank. Cleric might be a healer or support type of class (healer might be a bit of a stretch for class fantasy, but it depends on what their abilities end up looking like and to what degree they could be augmented. support might be more appropriate). Bard of course would probably make sense to turn the Rogue into more of a support class (I think bard would generally make most other classes move toward support except perhaps the Cleric class).

Saedu

Dygz wrote: »

I know what you believe.
I'm just making sure people understand that is not the game design and is not a dev goal.

I'm not destroying anyone's fun. My decisions cannot ruin the game for others since i'm not the one implementing features and mechanics

Saedu wrote: »

Flavor only augments are not going to do much to actually change your class playstyle.

According to the game design, that is false.
We'll have to see how well the devs are able to implement the design.

https://youtu.be/ndtjwBxhwtw?t=2180
The active skills stem from your base archetype. So from a design standpoint, even though augments do radically change the way your active skills provide you abilities, there's still a primary focus on the base archetype itself and not the 64 whole classes.
––– Steven

We're not really talking about 64 true classes, we're talking about eight classes with 64 variants... There isn't as much variance between the 64 classes as you might expect. It's not like there are 64 different versions of... radically different classes. There are eight archetypes that have the same chassis but then they have different augments put on top of that to change the performance of that chassis....to make a car analogy.
––– Jeffrey Bard

radically change can mean quite a bit here. They don't explicitly state it couldn't be role changing. the "primary focus on base archtype" could be considered the playstyle of the class as you still have the same core abilities, they are however "radically changed" by some augments (and potentially less so by others). This could give good player choice to what degree you want to change your role... do you want to go fully into another role? or do you want to be more of a jack of two roles, master of none?

I don't think IS has fully locked in the plan on this and I think they intend to test out lots of different things around this over the alpha/beta. they seem to be very careful with much of the communcation/expectation setting on this and have not locked themself in one way or another.

Saedu

Dygz wrote: »

SirChancelot11 wrote: »

If you interpret those two quotes to mean what you're saying I don't feel like augments are going to change the tank class very much.
have you found any examples of how secondary augments will affect the activated abilities of the tank archetype?

I know you don't.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnoHtzaQeMs&t=3071s
"When you pick Cleric as a secondary class, two of the augments (Schools) are Life and Death. Choosing Life augments, on certain skills, will have the ability to both potentially impact others to a degree, and give them life-giving benefits, to a degree through you skills, and also provide healing benefits to yourself through your skills, as well.
So any class that's going to choose Cleric as a secondary class will have the ability to pick from those augments (Schools) to influence their skills to affect the Life of others around you and yourself.

It (augments) changes the primary abilities to some degree. And that degree depends on the augment that is applied to it. So, yes, you only get active skills from your primary class and that ability could look totally different after the augment is applied. It really depends on what the augment is."
---Steven

https://discord.com/channels/256164085366915072/256164085366915072/739365922246098987
"Some cleric augments applied to certain skills will indirectly provide the ability to heal others. These will not replace the need for a cleric archetype."
---Steven

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x55xkOprpUo&t=9616s
"We have our eight base archetypes; and the trinity is a pretty strong influence with regards to the eight base classes. However the area in which we actually begin to play with that line between the trinity is in the secondary classes that you can pick. That's where we begin to blend those spaces and allow people a little bit of influence over their role and whether or not they fit perfectly within a particular category within the trinity."
---Steven

The quick comment in discord is probably the best quote to base your evidence on, but Steven could have easily been saying that just so people would not be worried that the cleric would not be viable or become obsolete because all the other classes just build off-healing through cleric off-spec. The last quote here indicates that they actually want to push around the roles a bit. Literally he's saying the augments have different levels of degree to which they change spells as well as a desire to have these augments cause "influence over their role".

Dygz

Saedu wrote: »

radically change can mean quite a bit here. They don't explicitly state it couldn't be role changing. the "primary focus on base archtype" could be considered the playstyle of the class as you still have the same core abilities, they are however "radically changed" by some augments (and potentially less so by others). This could give good player choice to what degree you want to change your role... do you want to go fully into another role? or do you want to be more of a jack of two roles, master of none?

It could mean if we didn't also have the quote:
"Some cleric augments applied to certain skills will indirectly provide the ability to heal others. These will not replace the need for a cleric archetype."
---Steven

That does explicitly state your role will not be changing.
Also, what I stated -several times- is that the devs will not balancing to ensure that secondary archetypes can main tank.
And that is what probably not means when I said secondary archetypes will probably not be able to main tank.
Don't act like what I wrote is, "No secondary tank will ever be able to main tank - that is completely impossible."

Steven stated that Cleric augments will not replace the need for a Cleric archetype, so we should expect the same to be true for Tanks and the other Primary Archetypes.

https://youtu.be/cY-JEV49xYY?t=62s
We also have some idea of what is meant by "radically change" from the quotes for Summoner augments:
"Summoners will e able to Summon things - as described in their name. Things that they can Summon will be different animals, potentially spirits depending on what secondary class they choose, potentially even corpses.... Some Summoners will have the ability to Summon multiple things. Some Summoners will only be able to Summon one powerful thing. Some Summoners might not be able to Summon things anymore as much as they will be able to Summon effects or temporary energies. Depends on the secondary class you choose."

It's highly unlikely that "radically change" means change primary role because, again, we have the quote:
"Some cleric augments applied to certain skills will indirectly provide the ability to heal others. These will not replace the need for a cleric archetype."
And the devs are not going to be balancing the classes to ensure that Secondary Archetypes can replace the need for a Primary Archetype. They are balancing to ensure that each version of Primary Tank can main tank. They are not balancing to ensure that Secondary Tanks can main tank.
As I have previously stated - it's not impossible that individuals will be able to find builds that replace the need for a Primary Archetype Cleric or a Primary Archetype but expect that to be rare rather than common.

Sure, we don't have a dev quote that explicitly states "Tank augments will not replace the need for a Primary Archetype Tank."
We only have a quote for that regarding Clerics.
But, even if we did, there would still be people arguing that if the majority of players wanted that to change, Steven would change it to make them happy.
Or, "Steve explicitly said that but it's possible he didn't mean that."
So...it really doesn't matter what Steven explicitly states or not.

At launch, we will see what the game play is actually like.

Azherae

I find that you all are still arguing in a binary way for something that involves 'degrees'.

A group can do content where damage is spread out, let's say fighting a plant monster that does constant AoE and has a passive DoT aura.

In this fight, augments are probably enough and you probably don't need a Cleric/X.

A group can try to do content against a dragon who stacks debuffs and hits fairly hard single target with little chance of the target running out of range to heal naturally.

In this content 'augments will not be sufficient to replace a Cleric archetype'.

It's a Role Playing Game. I feel like philosphically @Dygz is leaving out whether or not the discussion here is 'can do X in raid level content/deep dungeon boss fight' so it devolves into semantics unnecessarily.

How much content requires a Cleric, and how much content requires a Tank/X, is dependent on content much more than on class design.

@Dygz - either stick to talking about 'raid' level content or explain why you're a reactive ball that constantly posts stuff that has no determined merit to a real discussion. Are you unable to see the perspectives of others, or trolling? You've claimed in other threads that you have been involved in game development (or design?) yet nearly every post you make treats other people's perspective as nothing more than 'contrary to the design spec document', which, itself, is (unfortunately) pretty mutable still.

I guess that's how some developers that don't really do the 'design' part are trained to act, so, is that it? Have you been 'the implementation person' following the spec for your 10 years?

Songcaller

The Devs said they won't make group content which does not involve a Tank/X, it is safe to assume they won't make group content which doesn't require Cleric/x and Bard/x seeing as group balance relates to the 8 primary archetypes.

Azherae

That'd be incredibly boring overall though, and limiting in terms of what PvE experiences could be like.

There's so much potential here, that doesn't mess with the overall feel of the game, I just don't want to keep doing what Dygz does and writing a whole essay every time to explain why/nuance.

And I bet the devs don't either. I can't speak for them with surety, but in my career we'd make sure never to spend too much time explaining nitty gritty details or underlying functionality to the clients. It led to confusion and nitpicking even with the Customer Relationship Managers assigned to the clients, since they weren't as technical.

I'm trying not to act like 'the dev translator' here since I don't know them, but I can see the signs of 'minimizing clarity in spec' littered throughout their communications.

I can give a massive dissertation on why the thing the Devs said is probably not to be taken literally, and that's even without a full consensus on what 'group content' means.

Dygz

Azherae wrote: »

I find that you all are still arguing in a binary way for something that involves 'degrees'.

I disagree. I have consistently been stating that x/Tanks will be able to tank to some degree, specifically because it is a matter of degrees rather than being "main tank or can't tank at all". But, people keep responding as if a Secondary Tank is worthless if they cannot main tank.
I have consistently said that x/Tanks can off-tank. And that just because an x/Tank can't main tank that does not mean they cannot tank at all.
That is not me being binary.

Steven has said that they are balancing the game around groups of eight. Where a group will want one of each Primary Archetype. So, I'm not sure why I should make a distinction between groups and raids.

The argument here has not been, "It should be possible to find encounters where you don't need a Cleric/x.
And then I say: "Impossible!"

The argument has been: "I want augments to change the playstyle of a Primary Archetype radically enough that the character can switch to make the Secondary Archetype the primary role.
And I am saying: "That is not a goal of the game design. Don't expect to be able to do that as a common thing.

In my third post on the first page, I wrote: "It's not necessarily totally impossible but you shouldn't expect an x\Tank to main tank. You could probably survive some group content without a Tank\x. Especially if you have several x\Tanks in the group."
Yet people want to argue as if I didn't say that.

The quote about not replacing the need for a Cleric/x was not a response to a question about raids.
The question was: "If I use Clerics as a secondary rather than Primary will I still be able to heal others. Or only self-healing?"
Steven's answer was: "Indirectly there are some augments when applied to certain skills that can do this. But it would not replace the need for a Cleric archetype."
Which means, that is true in general - not just in raids.

So...you'll have to point out to me specifically where what I've said has no merit.
The OP states: "There's so little information on augments and secondary effects..."
And I go out of my way to find the dev info and share it so that everyone can see the context of the dev quotes we have and draw their own conclusions but you say my posts have no merit?

You don't have to agree with my conclusions. We can disagree.
And then we wait to see what the game looks like when/if it launches.

Azherae

I didn't mean to say that. Technically my 'you all' didn't actually include you, though that wasn't clear since more of my post did. Sorry, I'm a little 'triggered' by your style of communication reminding me of a specific subordinate. I'll try to focus more.

What I can say is that I feel like you're not adequately communicating that type of thing, or you're 'arguing with people who might not be understanding what you meant, without reminding them of that'.

For example, you say it's a matter of degrees, that they can off tank, but what is your definition of that? If an X/Tank goes into a dungeon full of bears and raptors, and for whatever reason their build is good at tanking bears and raptors, then you might just not need a Tank/X for that content.

At that point, some would argue that the Augments have changed the character enough for it to be 'A tank'. Depends on if you define tank as 'can tank most things, not just bears and raptors'.

When someone hears 'you can probably offtank' they don't necessarily hear what they want to hear, even if what they want to hear is a thing you can do in the game. You have specifically communicated before, these things, but your communication style once you feel you need to clarify something is generally 'using the design spec' which is bad for people who are concerned because they can't read between the lines of everything and were apprehensive about the design spec in the first place.

As one experienced developer to another, therefore... can you tone it down a bit with that? Whenever you post a set of quotes, it starts the whole thing over precisely because the language used is exactly the original language that causes the friction, and the nuance is not necessarily easy for everyone.

That's what caused me to say that it had no determined merit. If someone is 'concerned that they won't get what they want' because the quotes from Steven and Jeff were unclear, mild rewording explanations don't help?

I think I'll stand by that concept. The question of whether or not you're actually doing that or I'm just triggered, is a different matter.

Dygz

Azherae wrote: »

What I can say is that I feel like you're not adequately communicating that type of thing, or you're 'arguing with people who might not be understanding what you meant, without reminding them of that'.

I keep trying to remind people but all they hear is that I disagree. And if I disagree at all, people think I disagree completely. Even though I strive to be specific about word usage, when people try to quote me, they will rephrase what I actually wrote and argue is if I said what they wrote.

For example, you say it's a matter of degrees, that they can off tank, but what is your definition of that? If an X/Tank goes into a dungeon full of bears and raptors, and for whatever reason their build is good at tanking bears and raptors, then you might just not need a Tank/X for that content.

I don't think I need a definition.
The argument has been - "I want augments to radically change abilities enough that my Secondary Archetype Tank can change roles to Tank."
We have the quote from Steven that Cleric augments will not replace the need for a Primary Archetype Cleric.
So, we can infer that Tank augments will not replace the need for a Primary Archetype Tank.
The devs have said that group encounters are designed to have one of each of the 8 Primary Archetypes in the group. They want the size of the basic group to be 8.
So, when Steven says that Cleric augments will not replace the need for a Cleric/x, that indicates to me that it will be rare that an x/Cleric will be able to fill that missing Cleric/x role.

I'm trying to wrap my mind around why even a Ranger/Tank would be especially good at tanking bears and raptors, specifically.
Seems to me that 8-person group encounter would be designed and balanced to need a Tank/x and a Ranger/x. So, the Ranger/Tank would still need to be focused on fulfilling the Ranger role and their augments would not be sufficient enough for them to also be main tank. I think the Ranger/Tank would not be able to hold sufficient threat because pretty much all of the Tank abilities do multiple tanky things - especially generating threat. And I don't believe that the Tank augments will be able to generate as much threat as the Tank abilities. I think each Tank augment will likely do one tanky thing rather than multiple tanky things.
Just as Cleric augments will not replace the need for a Primary Archetype Cleric.

But, what do I think would happen in that encounter? I think the Ranger/Tank would have some augments from the Threat School on their Ranger abilities as well as some augments from the Damage Mitigation School. And I think they would be tanking some bears and raptors fairly well, but not as well as the Tank/x.
And, based on what Steven said, if they did not have a Tank/x, I think the group would still strongly feel the need for a Tank/x, even if they somehow muddled through without one...and muddling through without a Tank/x would be rare.

At that point, some would argue that the Augments have changed the character enough for it to be 'A tank'. Depends on if you define tank as 'can tank most things, not just bears and raptors'.

If you are an x/Tank, you are a tank.
I don't understand how anyone could argue against that.
I don't think it matters whether you can tank most things or just bears and raptors...although, again, I don't know why it would be just bears and raptors.
If you are a Secondary Archetype Tank, you are a Tank. A Secondary Tank.

When someone hears 'you can probably offtank' they don't necessarily hear what they want to hear, even if what they want to hear is a thing you can do in the game. You have specifically communicated before, these things, but your communication style once you feel you need to clarify something is generally 'using the design spec' which is bad for people who are concerned because they can't read between the lines of everything and were apprehensive about the design spec in the first place.

Right. I know they don't hear what they want to hear.
They want what they want and they don't want any disagreement.
And it ultimately doesn't matter what the design is because they will just say, "Well, if enough people want what I want, they will change the design", or, "The devs probably didn't really mean what they said."
But, I post the dev design philosophy for those who don't know what it is.
And, I try to give warnings for when a drastic change to the design could have a negative impact on the release schedule - not because making the change would be a "waste of time" - but because the devs may either ignore requests because it's going to add too much time or if they do add the time, that will likely cause delays in the schedule. As long as people are OK with delays in the schedule - they can request whatever they want. (Well, they can request whatever changes they want anyways, I'm just saying you shouldn't be surprised by significant delays in the release schedule if they meet requests for drastic changes).

As one experienced developer to another, therefore... can you tone it down a bit with that? Whenever you post a set of quotes, it starts the whole thing over precisely because the language used is exactly the original language that causes the friction, and the nuance is not necessarily easy for everyone.

I think the friction is caused when people don't want to hear any disagreement with their hopes.
"You disagreed with me, therefore, you disagree completely!!!"

That's what caused me to say that it had no determined merit. If someone is 'concerned that they won't get what they want' because the quotes from Steven and Jeff were unclear, mild rewording explanations don't help?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's a different goal.
Just because players want something does not mean the devs will give it to them.
That's not necessarily because the devs don't want to, sometimes that can be because there isn't time in the schedule to do so.
Sometimes it's because there are things the devs won't change - like when someone suggested that what should distinguish Elves from Humans is that the Elves should show coloration that reflects Corruption because Corruption permeated so much of Verra...and when I said the lore won't support that, they responded with, "Well, the devs can change that lore for the sake of making Elves look unique!"
And when I said Steven is not going to change the lore in that specific way just to make the Elves look distinct, people reacted as though I said the Elves will never look distinct from Humans! We will be stuck with what we see in the Alpha One Preview!"

I think I'll stand by that concept. The question of whether or not you're actually doing that or I'm just triggered, is a different matter.

My tone grates on people initially. Most people eventually get it.

maouw

I can vouch for Dygz - he's genuinely likeable imo.

I do think some of your posts are inflammatory though, @Dygz
hahaha

RocketFarmer

It’s probably going to be the case where tanking via augmentation is achievable but requires more work and skill to successfully pull it off. That would be the “balance” with respect to tanking that makes a dedicated tank not lose its purpose in the game.

If you choose the augment route, you are seeking a Jack of all trades rather than a specialization. Granted, your primary archetype gives you a base specialization, but for the other roles you should not be as good as those who dedicate themselves.

At the same time a bad player should struggle as a main tank. It is too important of a role for weakness.

Ventharien

I've never felt your posts are inflammatory @Dygz , you just have a tendency to go search out quotes and links that irritate people because it escalates from i'm arguing with a guy on the forums, to i want the devs to change things.

The problem you run into there @RocketFarmer is if you make the high skill/ work position do the same job as the specialized one, which really just requires competence, people stop using the skilled thing, or worse, complain that the specific one is overpowered. At the end of the day, Super amazing people, and just absolute unteachable bad players are both rare. Most people are just competent, with some being good, and some needing some practice or teaching.

ThexBlackxKnight

I don't know how complicated open world bosses can be as far as tanking skill goes. Imagine the end game raid difficulty of tanking modern wow , then on top of that having to deal any groups trying to stop your group from getting the loot , you would have to have a very high skill cap just to maintain aggro.

Ventharien

I mean tanking skill is usually just a combo of encounter knowledge, ability uptime awareness, spatial awareness and healer knowledge. Ashes will add pvp knowledge to that bunch. Maintaining aggro is almost never hard especially in more casual systems, staying alive through the following hits can be though hahaha

ThexBlackxKnight

Ventharien wrote: »

I mean tanking skill is usually just a combo of encounter knowledge, ability uptime awareness, spatial awareness and healer knowledge. Ashes will add pvp knowledge to that bunch. Maintaining aggro is almost never hard especially in more casual systems, staying alive through the following hits can be though hahaha

Have ever tried tanking a pve raid boss while being constantly being cc , chain pulled away and getting attack to disrupt what you are doing , its not that easy while you also have to time your tanking abilities and react to the bosses attacks as well. I imagine guilds are going need a couple of tanks to hold it together.

Ventharien

I would assume multiple tanks. If fully archetyped parties are the most efficient you'd have 5. And i don't think it'll be long before people do what they did in the old days. One group fights the boss, another handles security, then they switch if desired.

But it's also doubtfull you'd as tank be the target of the pvp in this situation either way. Groups tend to form around bosses in roughly concentric circles, Healers on the outermost area. They'd most likely be the high prize other groups would be hunting for.

ThexBlackxKnight

Ventharien wrote: »

But it's also doubtfull you'd as tank be the target of the pvp in this situation either way. Groups tend to form around bosses in roughly concentric circles, Healers on the outermost area. They'd most likely be the high prize other groups would be hunting for.

I would target the tanks first , try to break the aggro they have so tanks in my group can get the aggro and move the boss into more favorable position so we can better inflict the damage needed for looting rights. Control of the raid boss is more important in my opinion and it will keep the opposition from being able dps as efficiently as they would be able to do otherwise, keeping the boss mostly out of their aoe.

RocketFarmer

The question on difficulty/skill for x/tank is whether there are enough augments to perform the role well versus marginally successful.

Case in point. Both tank/x and x/tank should be able to competently maintain hate on a boss and have enough damage mitigation to survive. The tank/x should also be proficient at pulling and maintaining hate on the other mobs so that those don’t swarm the healer or dps. The x/tank would be less proficient unless their damage on those mobs is high enough or healing for that combo. Each should be able to do similar things but not necessarily the same. That would be the variety.

Examples:

A cleric/tank would hope their combination of tank and healing effects builds and maintains sufficient hate to be effective.

A summoner/tank would utilize summoned critters to either tank the boss or contain the mobs. Might be a good combo for a dual boss fight.

The dps/tanks would obviously use a combo of tanking and damage.

The bard/tank might be able to reduce the hate level other party members generate to make tanking relatively easier. And then some healing like the cleric/tank.

Some combos may have more dps than damage, so there would be a time element for them. Advantage being the ability to take mobs down faster, but may need to regroup if the fight drags out too long.

The cleric/tank combo may be more of a battle of attrition.

And in all cases, tanking is only as successful as the skill of the group and how well the coordinate.

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