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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Songcaller

If you want to guarantee a x/tank being a viable tank, choose Tank/Tank.

Ventharien

Lol i suppose that is a x/tank.

RocketFarmer

Tank/tank should indeed be most viable...for pure tanking.

Dygz

RocketFarmer wrote: »

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.

The question is answered primarily by how the devs design and balance Secondary Archetypes.
Since Cleric augments will not replace the need for a Cleric/x it seems unlikely that Tank augments will replace the need for a Tank/x.

Competently maintain hate on a boss is subjective, I suppose.
The variety for main tank really comes with how augments change the gameplay of the Primary Archetype Tank.
There are 8 variations specifically designed for with Secondary Archetype augments. They will all be viable main tanks.
And there will also be variations if there is a focus on racial augments. A Ren'Kai Primary Archetype Tank can play quite differently than a Py'Rai Primary Archetype Tank.
Expect other variations from those who focus on social org augments or religious augments.

But, the devs are not balancing combat to ensure that augments allow an x/Tank to be main tank... or replace the need for a group to have a Primary Archetype Tank.

RocketFarmer

I never specified main tank versus secondary tank with respect to the role. Also never mentioned balanced with respect to tank/x = x/tank. Some aspects they may be equivalent, but mostly tank/x > x/tank when it comes to “pure” tanking.

Need to take the augment as a sum total combined with how skillful or creative players are at their play. It all depends on the hate calculations and what goes into that plus what the group brings as a team.

The overall party may be less effective with an x/tank because the other players need to keep their healing or dps at a level that doesn’t peel off mobs or the boss. Or it may mean fights would be less forgiving to those who make mistakes. Stupid groups should wipe if we stick to the risk/reward concept, IMHO.

Then there are tactics such as ping-ponging. Using space and effective hate generation.

Hence my main point is that x/tank will likely be more challenging to play, and that includes more challenging for the group. That means tor demanding dungeons or boss fights you will most likely want the tank/x character over the x/tank. However there may be special circumstances where an x/tank might be as good or even better than a tank/x. Very special circumstances.

Example of a special circumstance. A dps/tank group should have greater overall dps (unless as I mentioned the dps players need to nerf their damage to avoid hate). The way dungeons are being designed, a faster and easier kill early in the encounters leads to progressively more difficult encounters. So this group might have a more powerful final fight. Will they survive? That’s another question. A tank/dps may have something slightly more manageable. But if a group wanted an all or nothing dungeon experience then they might choose to go dps/tank. Hopefully Intrepid’s design factors this and makes it truly difficult and truly epic.

I think x/tank builds are for players who want a couple of “tanky” augments to give them a little variety.

Ventharien

As long as they understand that whatever setup they try, some combos just won't work for given content, that's fair. I'd like to see tank augments give people an option to shy away from glass cannon builds, or to be closer to more intense levels of combat.

Dygz

RocketFarmer wrote: »

I never specified main tank versus secondary tank with respect to the role. Also never mentioned balanced with respect to tank/x = x/tank. Some aspects they may be equivalent, but mostly tank/x > x/tank when it comes to “pure” tanking.

RocketFarmer: "Both tank/x and x/tank should be able to competently maintain hate on a boss and have enough damage mitigation to survive."
This is what you wrote.
And that is why I replied: "Competently maintain hate on a boss is subjective, I suppose."
Because I don't think that the devs are designing with that in mind. But, it depends on what "competently maintain hate on a boss and have enough damage mitigation to survive" is supposed to mean for an x/Tank.
That is certainly true for a Tank/x.
An x/Tank can assist with Tank stuff, but their primary role is their primary role, so they should not be expected to be able to competently maintain hate on a boss and survive - rather they should be expected to assist the main tank.

It might be possible for individual x/Tanks to make a build that allows them to "competently maintain hate on a boss and have enough damage mitigation to survive."
But, "should", for an x/Tank, is a greater degree of expectation for success than what the devs have said so far.

RocketFarmer

Have to wait and see what the augments are to know for sure. I am indicating what I think they should do. You are indicating what you think they should not do. I do think we both agree that tank/x will be stronger at tanking. The question on the table is by how much. Right now we can speculate and sort through all of the Dev comments while acknowledging they will likely change things over time to the point where previous statements may no longer be valid or have a different meaning.

I don’t think the seven x/tank options will make the eight tank/x options less viable or less meaningful. I am most interested in seeing how the tank augments effect the tank primary archetype. If the tank augments are too meh, then I might consider tank/non-tank. If the tank augments are good enough for an x/tank to be viable, then tank/tank ought to rock. But again, we will have to wait for the details on these augments.

Overall, the stronger the tank and the game design around it, the bigger the TPK/wipe should the tank or party screw up. I want it to be challenging so there is more meaning in the doing. I think that’s kind of what they are after, especially by building in progressively more difficult encounters based on player performance.

Even if tank augments aren’t great, it might be interesting to try an x/tank to see how far you can last. In that situation you would probably need a better than average party who can handle the unexpected (or expected if you think the x/tank can’t hang with them). I suppose that would be the best way to determine whether it’s viable or not, and I’m sure folks will be testing this as soon as it comes out either for Alpha 2 or the Betas.

Dygz

I'm indicating what I'm pretty sure the x/Tanks, for the most part, won't do.
The devs are highly unlikely to craft x/Tanks to work the way you think they "should".

I don't understand why an x/Tank would not be able to hang with a group.
You could have a Guardian in a group with 7 x/Tanks if you wanted to.

I don't see any way that x/Tanks could make a Tank/x less viable so I don't know why you mention that.
People can have fun experimenting to see if an 8 person group can beat 8-person group-encounters with just one x/Tank and no Tank/x , sure.

In this case, we can be fairly certain that the devs are not going to choose to give themselves double the workload by trying to ensure, throughout the entire life of the game, that x/tanks will be viable main tanks in addition to the 8 variations of Tank/x.

Azherae

Even without knowing, this can be predicted almost exactly from the overall archetypal design, as Dygz says. A better way to put it would be 'what does the Primary Archetype do that does not contribute to tanking and therefore makes them suboptimal?'

Mages don't sustain tanking as well, certainly not without another Mage to give them extra mana for the job. Result - expensive, inconsistent (won't even matter if they are squishy or not)

Clerics don't generate enough threat without the same issue, takes too much energy, they do much more DoT and mitigation which are better spent on others
Result - Teammates have to hold back a lot, making everything slow, or they have the mage problem

Rangers lose damage when the enemy is too close to them, in the current intended implementation, and also lack sustain somewhat
Result - Often can be secondary tank only, or combine with another tank, or requires teammates to give up
damage for defense, but at least they can offset this with their own provided damage. Quite hard to do

Bards generally don't generate much threat either, and tend to spend more time not building melee DoT. Magical/performance DoT usually doesn't generate any.
Result - Relies on melee for damage but isn't necessarily even up to Tank DPS levels, no instant damage mitigation (they could be nice and allow you to flip 'generating hate/threat' on, by applying the Threat augment to a Performance, but even then it'd still be hard to control the enemy)

Summoner - Pigeonholes a class that is supposed to do multiple things, into one thing. In FFXI summoners don't tank because rotating your summons is optimal for buffs and adaptation, but you can't just 'rotate out' your big tanky summon and everything be fine, in any longer combat. Also summons are harder to heal.
Result - Even if you can heal summons or they get the healing from on-hit abilities or similar, it's a lot of work. I'd still expect this to be one of the more viable X/Tank

Rogue - Either loses a lot of their damage from positioning bonuses due to the enemy always being in their face, or has to build for high evasion rather than melee output, hampering them
Result - Why even try? Half your Rogue abilities probably don't work if you maintank so where is your fun? Tank/Rogue with Rogue-gear would do this job so much better (at least with the augment styles I expect). Probably still possible though, since you could gear tankily and hope that evasion balances out Tank's natural higher defense. It usually doesn't, and your healer works much harder unless your evasion is much higher (I say this as a Ninja tank from other games). This could still work, though, so I expect there will be Rogue/Tanks out there.

Fighter - Now we're getting somewhere, but Gap Closers and Strong Blows don't do as good a job on most things compared to Tank abilities, they're normally tuned down, damage wise, so initial hate generation is an issue.
Result - Probably the most viable, but with the only real advantage being DPS, so limited moreso to things that don't hit very hard, but die fast, for some reason, and killing them quickly is a benefit. I actually expect to see a lot of these in areas with that enemy type, for 'fastest EXP'!

If I were designing this, I would make minimal effort to alleviate any of these results. If you consider the result to be fine and 'a challenge', or 'works for you because of what you want to fight', great. If you want changes so that you don't have those problems while tanking "It Who Sunders The Land"...

Dygz wrote: »

But, the devs are not balancing combat to ensure that augments allow an x/Tank to be main tank... or replace the need for a group to have a Primary Archetype Tank.

Edit: Lacerate is an early, powerful skill... Rogue Augments may play off Bleed effects... The Tank/Rogue is called 'NightShield', with a likely shortening to NiS... which is as close as you can reasonably get to 'Nin' in Ashes' lore...

Ringar

The main problem is that we have a faction with the idea that all */tank should have tank role, and the other said that */tank never can be a tank.

I’m my opinion that game have more flexibility than that. It’s not necessary to make all */tank as a tank, for example cleric/tank can change playstyle to direct heal to shield based or add the shields to the main heal. Because range tank it’s hard to implement less summoner, but in case of Roger/Tank can be a Tank with evasion as a main Raid Tank, or Summoner/Tank focused on buff, heal and manage a Tanky pet.

The same happens with Tank/*, if all of them will be a Main Raid tank with small differences it’s too static and it’s not necessary to have 64 different combinations, my thoughts:

Tank/Tank -> Defense Tank
Tank/Rogue -> Evasion Tank, chain become to go to from pull
Tank/Cleric -> Self-Healing Tank
Tank/Bard -> Shield and shield ally Tank

Other Tank/* should be DPS role, and the same happens with other classes, the second don’t define a role change necessary could help your main function as cleric (direct heal + shields/hots/heal summon/buff on heal) but in other cases could become DPS.

This is a great opportunity to avoid the typical classes, you could have class that you dream based in your playstyle:

Tank: Hard Tank, Evasion Tank, Self-Heal Tank, Support Tank, Summon a Badass tanky pet, Tank who shot with bow and go back to have distance and avoid hits.

Cleric: Direct heal, Shield base, Hots base, Summon Healers to retreat, Increase damage when healing.

That kind of personalization make the opportunity to won’t see the clone party composition, and hours and hours of research to find the party to fits with your friends better.

The last thing: Combine summons to have one pet of 4 Summoner/tank in Raid  to tank all the raid in a row not only in the siege.

This system is more complicated to implement but It’s a wet dream of everyone in the MMORPG have 8 different options to play with our favorite class. It’s like wow, one class with 8 tree talents.

Dygz

Ringar wrote: »

The main problem is that we have a faction with the idea that all */tank should have tank role, and the other said that */tank never can be a tank.

I'm going to respond to this quickly and then expand on it later but...
I will attempt be very clear again...

I have not said anything at all like an x/Tank can never be a Tank. Nor have I said anything like an x/Tank will never be able to tank.
An x/Tank is a Tank. It's right there in the name. There can be no reasonable argument that an x/Tank is not a Tank. An x/Tank has Tank augments, so very clearly will be able to tank. It's absurd to claim that an x/Tank won't be able to tank.

Tank/x is being balanced to be a valid main tank for an 8-person group.
X/Tank is not being balanced to be a valid main tank for an 8-person group.
X/Tank allows Primary Archetypes to dabble as a Tank via Tank augments.
A Primary Archetype Tank is a primary tank - it's right there in the name.
A Secondary Archetype Tank is a secondary tank - it's right there in the name.
It may be possible for individuals to craft a build of x/Tank that can main tank, but expect that to be the exception rather than the rule because Steven has stated that Cleric augments will not replace the need for a Cleric Primary Archetype in an 8-person group. We can expect that to also be true for Tank augments: Tank augments will not replace the need for a Tank Primary Archetype in an 8-person group.

Tank/Rogue augments is a great example of an Evasion Tank.
Tank/Py'Rai augments might also be excellent Evasion Tanks.
Tank/Nikua augments might also be excellent Evasion Tanks.
Tank/Thieves' Guild augments might also be great Evasion Tanks.
Rogue/Tank augments will also likely be great Evasion Tanks - but most commonly will not replace the need for a Primary Archetype Tank in an 8-person group.
Cleric/Tank augments will also be a Self-Healing Tank - but most commonly will not replace the need for a Primary Archetype Tank in an 8-person group.
Bard/Tank augments could also be a Shield and/or Shield Ally Tank - but most commonly will not replace the need for a Primary Archetype Tank in an 8-person group.

In a Raid, you could have multiple groups of Summoners creating multiple Group Summons.

RocketFarmer

We also need to consider that tanking is also a player skill rather than just the combination of archetypes and augments. If an x/tank player is better at tanking than a tank/x player then the x/tank player will play the primary tank and the tank/x player will play the secondary. The archetype names don’t necessarily limit the players to one specific role the way it’s being portrayed. The tank/x will just have more tools to work with.

ThexBlackxKnight

Why not make X/Tank viable for 8 player group content but you will need a Tank/X for raiding , it would solve the tank shortage that other mmos have. Viable dose not mean X/Tank will be better then Tank/X but you can use them to complete smaller group content.

Dygz

Because that would double the work for the devs throughout the life of the game. Really more.
The devs are actually balancing 8 Primary Archetypes rather than 64 classes.

Dygz

RocketFarmer wrote: »

We also need to consider that tanking is also a player skill rather than just the combination of archetypes and augments. If an x/tank player is better at tanking than a tank/x player then the x/tank player will play the primary tank and the tank/x player will play the secondary. The archetype names don’t necessarily limit the players to one specific role the way it’s being portrayed. The tank/x will just have more tools to work with.

Sure, but this discussion is about having the augments change the abilities drastically enough that Secondaries can switch their role such that a Tank/Rogue could be primary rogue or a Rogue/Tank could be primary tank.

A Cleric can do DPS. That doesn't mean that a Cleric/Rogue will replace the need for a Primary Archetype Rogue or should be expected to be main DPS. A Cleric/Mage not replace the need for a Primary Archetype Mage nor should they be expected to be main ranged DPS.

SirChancelot

Dygz wrote: »

Sure, but this discussion is about having the augments change the abilities drastically enough that Secondaries can switch their role such that a Tank/Rogue could be primary rogue or a Rogue/Tank could be primary tank.

A Cleric can do DPS. That doesn't mean that a Cleric/Rogue will replace the need for a Primary Archetype Rogue or should be expected to be main DPS. A Cleric/Mage not replace the need for a Primary Archetype Mage nor should they be expected to be main ranged DPS.

I've never said anything about a tank rogue being able to be a rogue....

The reason my question came about was because there's nothing that indicates that a tank/rogue will play any different than a tank with any other secondary... Nothing says that it will play like an evasion tank, that's why I asked if a rogue/tank would be more of an evasion tank type build. I wanted to see if I had missed any details on how secondary traits will change the primary one

I still haven't found any hard evidence of what augments do... Just a lot of plans and ideas... No actual in game stuff yet... So I brought up the question to see if anyone else had found anything that I missed... doesn't look like it...

Also you got a good point there with racial or religion augments, I didn't think they would change abilities that much... I pictured them being more of aesthetics or changes to quest types...

Dygz

I never said that you said anything about a Tank/Rogue being able to be a Primary Archetype Rogue.
Here is one of your quotes: "The system is either not going to change it enough to really be a different play style or it should change it enough to where it makes X/tanks viable tanks.
If the system only provides minor changes such as turning charge into a teleport charge or a shadow step charge the base archetype ability will still be charge and won't be changing the play style just a method... Now I agree that a rogue tank won't have a charge ability but that's what makes him a different playstyle tank than the tank archetype...
And again I didn't say every X/tank or X/cleric option should be able to tank or heal for some it doesn't make sense. But having a few different combinations out there outside of tank and cleric would prevent take and cleric from being mandatory archetypes for every dungeon group."
If that's true for x/Tank and x/Cleric that should also be true for x/Rogue.
But, by design, Tank, Cleric, and Rogue augments do not replace the need for those Primary Archetypes in an 8-person group.

A Tank/Rogue will very likely be able to play as an Evasion Tank.
We can infer that because Steven confirmed that is possible even with racial augments. It seems likely there will be a Rogue Evasion School of augments.
Rogue/Tank will also likely be an Evasion Tank - but probably will not be main tank.

Augments are not in the game yet, so there is no hard evidence besides the game design.
And the knowledge that the devs are balancing for 8 Archetypes; not 64 classes.

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