Off Tanking

In all this talk of augments and secondary archetypes, the tank archetype is brought up quite often. Can xxx/tank classes main tank or only off tank? And similar questions, which leads me to this:

What is the role of an Off Tank in Ashes, and what do you expect them to be capable of?

I am basically curious to see if most people agree on what Off Tanking is and how it ties into the class system in Ashes. A tank in MMOs in general have two things they must be able to do, which is 1. keep the enemies away from the other people in the group as much as possible, and 2. be able to survive long enough for the enemies to die first. That's it. Everything else is fluff.

An Off Tank, to me, is someone who can offload some of the pressure from the main tank. They typically have less damage mitigation than a main tank, but also have either higher DPS or higher self-healing than the main tank, and they have some sort of mechanic to hold the attention of enemies. They are often used to handle adds in boss fights.

In some games I have seen the term "Off Tanking" being used in raid situations, where one main tank takes the aggro from another main tank in order to survive a certain boss mechanic. To me that's just tank swapping, not off tanking.

For Ashes, I expect one of the four schools of augmentation from the secondary tank archetype to add threat generation to a skill. And another school of augmentation will add some damage mitigation to a skill, perhaps through temporarily lowering the damage output of the enemy.

In other words, I think xxx/tank classes can off tank with the right gear and spec.

Can off tanks or xxx/tanks function as main tanks in group content (8 people)? Yes and no. If the group is near the minimum level for the content and don't have really good gear, then no. I think a tank/xxx is needed. If the content is on farm and the group is well geared, then absolutely yes; I think the off tank can handle the group bosses and adds in most cases.

I don't expect them to be able to main tank in raid content (40 people). Nor do I want them to. I can see a well geared off tank handle some raid boss adds perhaps, but not easily. I want the choice to go tank/xxx to be meaningful. I want them to be better tanks than any other class in pretty much all situations.

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Noaani

George_Black wrote: »

A vast majority of people posting here or in discord basically say "I will build my character however I want and beat the game, as if I play a singleplayer like dark souls, completelly ignoring the fact that there are other players, more competitive, that will make meaningful choices and sacrifices thus creating effective builds"

Indeed.

It is also worth pointing out, Intrepid have basically said that players will be able to build near worthless characters - basically a broken character.

It is entirely possible (probable, I would say), that the heavy armor wearing mage with the two handed sword really can't do anything. Can't solo, won't be bought along on groups, dies easily in PvP.

Dygz

George_Black wrote: »

No I wasnt asking anything.

You asked a bunch of stuff. The one I was referring to is:
George_Black: "So you are saying that -even according to your theory- the dot and debuff based class (damage over tiiiiiimeeee....) will have high enough DPS, in order to compete with a mage?"

Dygz

George_Black wrote: »

There are also people that claim they can play a heavy armor mage with a two handed sword.
What role would these people fill?
DPS, Tank? Healer?

Expect a "heavy armor Mage" wielding a two-handed sword to actually have a mix of Physical armor and Magical armor.
They would probably be filling a mix of roles. Even Cleric/Cleric is designed to be a mix of Damage and Healing in Ashes of Creation. Similar to D&D and Pathfinder.

"Clerics keep their team in the fight by bolstering their combat abilities and cursing their enemies. Far from simply supporting their allies through healing, a Cleric is also capable of wielding destructive force in the face of danger."

Even a DPS Cleric would probably be doing some group healing in an 8-person group - especially AoEs. But, those healing Active Skills would also have some DPS augments on them.

In Ashes, a DPS Cleric doesn't have to be primarily devoted to heals if there are multiple x/Clerics and x/Bards in the group. The encounter will still be designed expecting Rank 3+ Cleric Active Skills. But, the DPS Cleric will still be using Rank 3+ Active Skills.

George_Black wrote: »

The bottom of the line is that people need to understand that this is an mmo, and that classes fill absolute roles, even more so when talking about raiding.

Ashes is being designed with significant differences from previous MMORPGs. Class design is one of those areas with key differences.
Secondary Archetypes allow people to not have to conform to absolute roles.

"Again, the purpose of Secondary Archetypes and the augment system is to blur the line a little bit with the class roles. So, while we're following a traditional Trinity role class system in class roles, we are utilizing the Secondary augment system to move the dial a little bit in one direction with the augments."
---Steven

We have our 8 Base Archetypes, and the Trinity is a pretty strong influence with regards to the 8 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

George_Black wrote: »

A vast majority of people posting here or in discord basically say "I will build my character however I want and beat the game, as if I play a singleplayer like dark souls, completelly ignoring the fact that there are other players, more competitive, that will make meaningful choices and sacrifices thus creating effective builds"

I'm not aware of anyone posting here saying, "I will build my character however I want and beat the game, as if I play a single-player, like Dark Souls."

A DPS Cleric/Mage will synergize their Active Skills and augments with the Active Skills and augments of the other players in the group. And vice versa.
There's a plethora of ways for an 8-person group to adjust to having a DPS Cleric and still complete the encounter(s).
It's highly unlikely that every Cleric/x in a raid is going to be a DPS Cleric, but even that can accommodated.

Noaani

Dygz wrote: »

Even a DPS Cleric would probably be doing some group healing in an 8-person group - especially AoEs. But, those healing Active Skills would also have some DPS augments on them.

This cleric would be a healer doing a small amount of damage, not a DPS cleric.

The base spells are going to be stronger than the augments to those base spells.

If you have a heal and then add a damage component to it via augment, it is still primarily a heal.

Caww

It seems that tanking/off tanking will be extra complicated with the addition of the PvP aspect of other groups getting in the mix on the same mob; how will mob focus shift when everyone is defending/fighting? It would almost just be a brawl with a heavy boss mob tossed in for extra disruption (and maybe a lot of fun as well).

Dygz

It's unlikely to be a "brawl".
Expect people to still be synergizing their Active Skills and augments with their allies.
PC rivals will basically be treated like NPC adds.

ZombieHeart

Off tanks mostly help with mechanics, or group utility. Potential class mixes could be tank / healer, tank/ beffer , tank/debuffer, tank/crowd control classes.

George_Black

zombinvestor wrote: »

Off tanks mostly help with mechanics, or group utility. Potential class mixes could be tank / healer, tank/ beffer , tank/debuffer, tank/crowd control classes.

Unecessary.

MaiWaifu

I think lots of people are missing that because there isn't going to be any LFG/party finder tools ingame, people will need to just adapt to what players are available. You won't always have the best in-role party member available for every situation.

You'll just need to learn to play to each classes strengths and weaknesses.

Mag7spy

Yo....

I can't wait for them to show how abilities work and such, plus some of the balance xD. Literally anything is possible since we know nothing. In certain instances Cleric/rogue might be able to out dmg certain dps. Perhaps they build in a certain way having few more defined and augmented skills over having a bunch. Those skills cause aoe Dps dots with special effects which also weaken enemies. So in large groups they have slightly more dmg potential over a rogue/rogue that might only focus on single target dmg.

Saying that anything is impossible without knowing how things work is kind of pointless. I could be a cabalist in rift and out dmg everyone in the arena by x10. And that was a cleric class lmao.

Mag7spy

MaiWaifu wrote: »

I think lots of people are missing that because there isn't going to be any LFG/party finder tools ingame, people will need to just adapt to what players are available. You won't always have the best in-role party member available for every situation.

You'll just need to learn to play to each classes strengths and weaknesses.

That is the fun of it and why people are like its boring if your only tank can be one thing and you need to use that in that way with certain items and skills to be effective etc. People want to build cool fun stuff, and then some people only have the mind set of the less than 1% of content and aren't thinking of the whole game in general. We have no clue till more information is out on the game so we should just be open to more cases, for all we know a very good summoner tank might be able to tank most the content in the game in the right party.

Voeltz

It's very possible there will be x/tank classes that are good at tanking based on the sheer amount of combinations, just don't expect them to do it better than a tank primary role class. This is the direction they are aiming for with all classes but at this point, we can only speculate since they have only shown primary classes in game and even those are probably outdated by now. I think another part of it will be the type of gear you choose to wear and the stats it gives. If you are wearing full cloth with offensive stats you will not be a good tank regardless of primary role. I could see a support/tank class doing well but we'll have to wait and see.

raeyik

What is the role of an Off Tank in Ashes, and what do you expect them to be capable of?

In an attempt to stay on-topic to the main question, I'll just answer the OP directly with my thoughts:

An off-tank is a role that supports the main tank in several ways.

I define a main tank as the role of protecting the rest of the party from becoming the target of the primary objective. This is generally achieved by having a toolset that includes the most superior forms of damage mitigation attainable as well as high levels of near-constant damage mitigation coupled with the most superior forms of threat generation and threat maintenance.

An off-tank is not a second main tank. An off-tank has a toolset that allows them to fill several roles that, when taken individually are not the best in slot, but when taken as a total toolset are capable of full-filling their role better than anyone else.

Necessary roles/attributes of an off-tank (in my opinion!):

Superb burst duration damage mitigation. Not the best necessarily, and definitely not indefinitely; however, an off-tank must be capable of surviving long enough for a main tank to re-establish the hate control of the primary objective if it has been lost (intentionally or unintentionally) or to recover from a scenario where they would otherwise die. Abilities are usually tied to this in some way.

This ties into the second role/attribute of an off-tank which is the ability to peel hate off of other party members, or even the main tank through a combination of mechanics. For example: riding the hate line generated by DPS and then using a threat generation ability. Another way would be to ride the hate line through healing the main tank or party members and then using a threat generation ability. The key here is that they need to be able to ride a hate line through a combination of actions outside of their threat generation ability(s)... or perhaps in combination with even a lesser hate generation ability - but not all! If an off-tank goes all out with all abilities and role toolset components, they should be able to pull hate off of a main tank because with everything else being equal, the main tank should be losing hate generation through the concept of hate decay*.

The third key component to being an off-tank is the ability to manage a secondary objective for a brief duration of time. In this case, a brief duration could be 30seconds to several minutes (it all depends on the type of off-tank and role they need to fill). Either an expected or unexpected situation, this could be a spawn or trigger of an additional target from a main objective, an add (additional mob) from proximity aggro range, or the management of multiple additional targets that would otherwise overwhelm the party. Often the off-tank would need assistance with this role from either an off-healer, dps, or CC support of some kind - on harder content perhaps even 2 or 3 of these supports.

The final role of an off-tank is to be able to provide meaningful impact to the party without outshining a specialist in that role. This means that an off-tank should be able to do some version of at least one of the following as well as full-filling the above: provide solid dps (but not as much as a specialist), provide solid healing (but not as much as a specialist), provide solid cc (but not as much as a specialist), provide solid party buffs (but not as much as a specialist).

So, could 2 or 3 off-tanks in a party be able to make up for the lack of a main tank? Sure, in some situations like regular partying or perhaps specific dungeons/group content. But that requires superb teamwork, communication, and a great grasp of your class/job's abilities.

Should 2-3 off-tanks be able to tank a raid boss? I would argue that their toolset shouldn't allow the rest of the party to maximize their long term hate line ride and that their damage mitigation shouldn't be good enough to be able to handle a significant enough duration of time to make it work regularly. Raids are where in most games you'd have at least 2 main tanks in a tank focused party that is specifically designed to maximize the main tanks survivability. Off-tanks are usually relegated to a second party built around adds/phase control to allow the rest of the raid to focus on the primary objective.

*hate decay is the idea that all actions that do not generate hate will instead diminish hate. Examples are a mob damaging a character, cc'ing a character, removing a buff, as well as the character standing idle and not attacking or causing a form of threat towards the target etc.

KapStoan

This quote below is the answer. Only Tank/xxx will have the active and passive skills that mitigate the most damage. That doesn't mean other archetypes can't tank or even off-tank, but they will have to be very creative and won't likely get the hitpoint passive skills / talents to have a huge amount of health, and they will need more help from their groupmates to survive. And then the hardest high level raid content will absolutely require Tank/xxx.

Tank/Bard isn't going to get a group run speed active skill, but they may get an augment to some sort of intercept skill that lets them personally move faster for a short time period for more mobility as a tank.
Bard/Tank isn't going to get a taunt active skill, but they may get an augment to some group buff that increases everyone's defense.

Dygz wrote: »

Steven: It's an 8-member party.
The way we balance content is around an 8-person party.
Your best position... Essentially, the best balance you can have as a party is incorporating all 8 base Archetypes into your party. So, that's going to be you best bet for completing content.

When we say Archetype, we're really talking mostly about roles. So essentially, you'll first choose one of the 8 Archetypes and that's going to be the Archetype that you can't change. So, that's Tank, Ranger, Rogue, Fighter, Cleric, Mage, Bard and Summoner. When you hit halfway point, up to Level 50, when you hit Level 25, you're going to select your Secondary Archetype which will combine with your Primary to create your class. That Secondary Archetype isn't going to give you new Active Skills. You're only going to get Active Skills from your base, Primary Archetype.
However, what it's going to do is give you augment abilities.

Summit1G:So, you can combine abilities a little bit. An augment ability essentially just changes one ability a little bit.

Steven:Right.

https://youtu.be/8AeuqaELjFg?t=3862
Mark: 1:04:22

There's more in the video, so I encourage people to watch the video.
The relevant key points here are that any time Steven mentions Primary and Secondary Archetypes, he stresses that you only get Active Skills from the Primary Archetype.
When you combine that with balancing around 8-person groups with one of each Primary Archetype, that means the way they will do that is with the expectation of an 8-person party with one of each Primary Archetype using Rank 3+ Active Skills.

"We're not really talking about 64 true classes, we're talking about eight classes with 64 variants, and again how you build those variants depends on how you spend your skill points. you can lean more into your subclass or less into your subclass depending on where you spend your points. There isn't as much variance between the 64 classes as you might expect. It's not like there are you know 64 different versions of... radically different classes. there are 8 archetypes 8 classes that all have the same chassis but they have different augments put on tto of that to change the performance of that chassis.
---Jeffrey

The dev quote above is telling us that they are not balancing around augments.
They are balancing around the Active Skills of the Primary Archetypes.
They are not balancing around the augments of the Secondary Archetypes.

It's not necessarily impossible for a Fighter/Tank to main tank in an 8-person group that doesn't have a Tank/x.
But, in an 8-person group with a Tank/x, don't expect the x/Tank to main tank better than the Tank/x.

SirChancelot

KapStoan wrote: »

This quote below is the answer. Only Tank/xxx will have the active and passive skills that mitigate the most damage. That doesn't mean other archetypes can't tank or even off-tank, but they will have to be very creative and won't likely get the hitpoint passive skills / talents to have a huge amount of health, and they will need more help from their groupmates to survive. And then the hardest high level raid content will absolutely require Tank/xxx.

We don't actually know that yet, for the last couple of monthly Q&A threads I've been asking if the secondary archetype will influence the passive skills choices available or if those are based completely off the primary.
It's possible that a summoner/tank and tank/summoner have the same passive skill options (max HP, HP Regen, DMG mitigation, etc)

SirChancelot

Voeltz wrote: »

It's very possible there will be x/tank classes that are good at tanking based on the sheer amount of combinations, just don't expect them to do it better than a tank primary role class. This is the direction they are aiming for with all classes but at this point, we can only speculate since they have only shown primary classes in game and even those are probably outdated by now. I think another part of it will be the type of gear you choose to wear and the stats it gives. If you are wearing full cloth with offensive stats you will not be a good tank regardless of primary role. I could see a support/tank class doing well but we'll have to wait and see.

You might enjoy this read

https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/51718/archetype-roles-i-swear-im-not-crazy/p1

We beat the hell out of this topic a few months back...

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