Abandon the Avoidance Tanking Concept

[lagerone]

<p>I think its time for the whole avoidance tanking concept to get retired.</p><p>Let avoidance for all fighter classes be calculated on a similar basis.</p><p>Give the brawler classes a mitigation modifier on their leather armour (perhaps stance based) that would bring it up to the equivalent level of plate when equipped.  Avoidance tanking as a concept hasn't worked, lets just abandon it and move on.  Let all fighters be mitigation based, and that will restore the class balance we lost when DoF came out (no we couldn't tank at all pre DoF but we were a DPS class then).</p>

[Etchii]

I'd rather go DPS than a plate tank in leather.It's BRUISER [Removed for Content] it.

[Quicksilver74]

<p>Yeah it's Bruiser, and the only way to satisfy everyone is to make avoidance tanking MUCH more do-able, and make it so that bruisers can tank ANY mob in game with relative ease... AND increase our DPS.  </p><p>  Unfortunatley thats not likely to happen.  I like the class, I've been a bruiser since day 1, and plan to stay that way until EQ2 dies.  Weve always been capable of being very high dps.  If I had to choose tanking or dps now, I'd choose DPS though.  We have about the same tanking ability as rogues, but less dps.  I'd rather get tuned down to becoming group tanks, not epic tanks, and better dps. </p>

[EQ2Luv]

The new RoK brawler skills that people are rumouring about on certain sites seem to indicate they're not moving us in the dps direction, but rather reinforcing tanking abilities (albeit in a really poor way in the case of bruisers <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />). 

[Madmoon]

If I wanted to only do damage, I'd have been a rogue.  I'm a fighter, let's hope they (some day) fix it so that a group needs a fighter for anything, brawler, crusader and warrior all can perform equally well.

[TheSpin]

<p>I loved my eq1 monk but as soon as they were moved into the same 'archetype' as the tanks the class became ruined for me.</p><p>Monks are supposed to have elevated themselves to another state of being and in EQ2 they just learned to hit with sticks instead of swords.</p><p>I agree that the avoidance tanking concept should be abandoned.  Now that the official archetype > class > subclass system is gone I wish they'd stop thinking of them as 'fighters' and give them the uniqueness they deserve.</p>

[lagerone]

<p>For the sake of clarity I would prefer us to be primarily a DPS class as well, just as we were before DoF (LU 13?).  The whole premise behind the archetypal change to the class was that in exchange for considerably lower DPS we would be effective tanks.  In instances against heroics I appreciate that this is largely true.  </p><p>In raids, we are not an effective off-tank and effectively just second rate scouts.  So if the great archetypal change was to make brawlers tanks, well with a good solid period to relfect on it, that concept just plain failed.  If the archetype concept had held true you should be able to fulfil the duties of the fighter archetype with a brawler, currently I don't think this has been fully addressed.</p><p>I think everyone accepts that avoidance tanking does not work against epic mobs.  What I am proposing is that all fighters operate under the same regime for tanking, except for largely semantic differences.  However, if we are being moved back into being a proper DPS/light tank role with RoK then that's great news.</p>

[kuwappa]

<p>I love eq1 mnk and bruiser.so. ill chose DPS =)</p>

[Spark]

The Brawler are devided into people who want to dps and people who want to tank. I personally would like to tank the most times, but i can understand the people who want to be most of the time a dps machine. I dont see the problem to give us skills or at least stances where we can choose and with addition of AA there should be a good way to choose one way out of this. But it seems that it would be too overpowered, if there is one class who can choose between two utility ways for groups. If thats the problem, then they have to return the dmg AA`s of the Priest classes, cause they can choose between good heal and good dps or excellent heal and few dps. I dont know how it looks in the other class trees, but the most classes can choose between more dps or utility. I dont want to be better than other classes. If we could choose between dps or tankin we should be in both not as good as classes who cant choose, but at least, good enough so that we dont be ignored.

[MokiCh]

Well, like someone said in another thread, the reason we're in such a pickle at the moment is that we're a second rate choice for both tanking and dps roles. Plate tanks tank better than us and can do at least comparable damage, and rogues can tank just about as well in a pinch, but do far more dps than we do and have utility on top of that. The fix to this that I would prefer to see is an dps boost so we're about where we were pre-LU13, and just forget about the whole raid tanking business. We will never be a viable raid tank without being totally overpowered, unless the current combat system just gets canned and they start from scratch.I would be perfectly happy if my dps got boosted to roughly equivalent to that of a rogue (eg. pre-LU13), and got to keep my ability to tank most heroic instances reasonably well. That way I would have a place in a group other than a space filler when they just couldn't find anyone else. This would also eliminate any need for a drastic overhaul of the combat system. I wouldn't ever be a raid tank, but that's ok since I don't get to tank them now either. But I would be contributing a sizable amount of damage at least, rather than just having my FD button hotkeyed in case something goes wrong.I don't know if that is asking too much or not, but that's my .02

[Couching]

The solution is simple.Give brawler tree dps route and tank route as warrior tree and rogue tree.I still can't understand why Devs are so stubborn. They even gave rogue tree tank line but not brawler. That's so weird since they said we are tank.

[tt66]

<cite>Couching@Crushbone wrote:</cite><blockquote>The solution is simple.Give brawler tree dps route and tank route as warrior tree and rogue tree.I still can't understand why Devs are so stubborn. They even gave rogue tree tank line but not brawler. That's so weird since they said we are tank.</blockquote>Oh, I know. Flipping rogues. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" />I'm currently playing with an idea that would involve updating the tier 4 STR , STA and AGI lines, so that they give an additional bonus to our offensive, defensive and mixed stances respectively. (kinda like how the endline rogue STA ability gives a very nice bonus if you're wearing a shield). Something to make those tier 4 abilities truly desirable, as opposed to something you put spare points in to get the endline abilities.Because as it is, with 70AAs in RoK, I don't think we'll be seeing much in the way of variation in the Brawler tree. Looks like pretty much everyone will be taking crane flock, and 448 in Agi and Int. The only variation will be deciding between Eagle Shriek, Altruism or 5 points in Mantis Bolt. We desperately need a viable STR tree if that situation is going to change.

[mace of night]

<p><i>I'm still playing my bruiser, i'm still raid MT on 90% of targets. I've read so many threads send by bruisers complaining about tank ability i've rolled a guardian to keep my raid MT role (just in case of ...) and to be honnest RoK rumors about bruisers sound just perfect for me !</i></p><p><i>If you try to play your bruiser like a plate-tank, don't be surprised you'll die quick. May be don't waste so many times complaining and go work to find a way to play your bruiser in a more efficient way, it just works.</i></p><p><i>And if you really want your bruiser to tank like a plate, make a plate and buy him a rice-hat <img src="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/images/smilies/385970365b8ed7503b4294502a458efa.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" /></i></p>

[Couching]

<cite>tt66 wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Couching@Crushbone wrote:</cite><blockquote>The solution is simple.Give brawler tree dps route and tank route as warrior tree and rogue tree.I still can't understand why Devs are so stubborn. They even gave rogue tree tank line but not brawler. That's so weird since they said we are tank.</blockquote>Oh, I know. Flipping rogues. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" />I'm currently playing with an idea that would involve updating the tier 4 STR , STA and AGI lines, so that they give an additional bonus to our offensive, defensive and mixed stances respectively. (kinda like how the endline rogue STA ability gives a very nice bonus if you're wearing a shield). Something to make those tier 4 abilities truly desirable, as opposed to something you put spare points in to get the endline abilities.Because as it is, with 70AAs in RoK, I don't think we'll be seeing much in the way of variation in the Brawler tree. Looks like pretty much everyone will be taking crane flock, and 448 in Agi and Int. The only variation will be deciding between Eagle Shriek, Altruism or 5 points in Mantis Bolt. We desperately need a viable STR tree if that situation is going to change.</blockquote>It would be nice if we can get better tier 4 abilities rather than more contested avoidance. It's pretty useless in tanking epic mobs.

[Couching]

<cite>mace of night wrote:</cite><blockquote><p><i>I'm still playing my bruiser, i'm still raid MT on 90% of targets. I've read so many threads send by bruisers complaining about tank ability i've rolled a guardian to keep my raid MT role (just in case of ...) and to be honnest RoK rumors about bruisers sound just perfect for me !</i></p><p><i>If you try to play your bruiser like a plate-tank, don't be surprised you'll die quick. May be don't waste so many times complaining and go work to find a way to play your bruiser in a more efficient way, it just works.</i></p><p><i>And if you really want your bruiser to tank like a plate, make a plate and buy him a rice-hat <img src="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/images/smilies/385970365b8ed7503b4294502a458efa.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" /></i></p></blockquote>So your guild let you, bruiser, tank over guardian or any other plate tank in raid? Well, that's perfectly fine with me since I didn't raid with your guild. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" />

[Raznor2]

<cite>Pocketlint@Venekor wrote:</cite><blockquote>We will never be a viable raid tank without being totally overpowered, unless the current combat system just gets canned and they start from scratch. <p><span style="color: #99ff66;">What?  Uncontested avoidance is the problem with brawlers raid tanking and if they fixed it, it would had no effect on anything beyond epic encounters. </span></p></blockquote>

[Couching]

<cite>Raznor269 wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Pocketlint@Venekor wrote:</cite><blockquote>We will never be a viable raid tank without being totally overpowered, unless the current combat system just gets canned and they start from scratch. <p><span style="color: #99ff66;">What?  Uncontested avoidance is the problem with brawlers raid tanking and if they fixed it, it would had no effect on anything beyond epic encounters. </span></p></blockquote></blockquote>In fact, the root problem is not how sucks brawlers are in tanking epic, it's the problem that plate tanks are overpowered in tanking.Brawlers didn't get any uncontested avoidance in offensive stance and uncontested avoidance makes a huge difference in tanking epic.Most high end plate tanks didn't use defensive stance in raiding tanking epic anymore including avatars, it shows how the game mechanics is screwed.Devs should remove uncontested avoidance from plate tanks when they are in offensive stance.

[MokiCh]

I disagree that plate tanks are "overpowered" in tanking, because that would imply that we're actually right where we should be in terms of tanking, which we aren't.Uncontested avoidance is the main problem we have tanking epics, but it's far from the only one. As it stands right now, the raid mobs in this game are designed to be tanked by plate tanks. Which means they're designed to be tanked by someone with higher uncontested avoidance, and significantly higher mitigation than a brawler. To even it out, they would have to increase our own uncontested avoidance by a large amount and boost our mitigation or remove/lessen the (in the case of hardened skin, rather severe) penalties we have on our temp mitigation buffs. But on top of that, they'd also have to totally rework how we generate agro. Since our group hate generation is pretty shoddy, in almost every raid fight of note you'd have to have someone to offtank the adds, and assign healers for the offtank, which is a lot more work than most people would be willing to put into it if you could just have a guardian tank the whole thing and be done with it.

[Couching]

If you can tank hardest mobs in the game with offensive stance is not overpowered, just remove defensive stance in this game.What's the point to have defensive stance then? When I say plate tanks are overpowered with same uncontested avoidance in any stance, I didn't imply that brawler is fine.It's two different subjects. I agree with you that brawler needs some love in aoe aggro.

[tt66]

<cite>Couching@Crushbone wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite></cite>Brawlers didn't get any uncontested avoidance in offensive stance and uncontested avoidance makes a huge difference in tanking epic.Most high end plate tanks didn't use defensive stance in raiding tanking epic anymore including avatars, it shows how the game mechanics is screwed.Devs should remove uncontested avoidance from plate tanks when they are in offensive stance.</blockquote>I'm not too sure about this. I mean, I can't fault your facts but I'm a little uncomfortable with any sort of suggestion of nerfing other classes. It just never seems to end well.I don't play a warrior, but am I right in thinking that the issue is not that their offensive stance contains an element of uncontested avoidance itself, it is that their uncontested avoidance comes from their shield which works no matter what stance they find themselves in?In which case, maybe the best solution would be something like moving uncontested avoidance away from our stances, and making it part of our selfbuff? Or similar? I don't think this would necessarily lead to Bruisers tanking epics in offensive stance, as we'd still get the -defense hit, but maybe Retribution could be given a tweak to make it still a useful skill. (Something like a +hate proc on a successful avoidance or similar).Heh. Or, I dunno, actually *do* something with hardened skin. That would work too <img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />Just thinking out loud here, so don't read too much into all this. I'm not a big believer that bruisers should MT epics, but it does seem that we should be <b>able</b> to, even if we don't do it particularly well.

[Couching]

Just as I said, if you can tank anything with offensive stance, why do we even bother to have defensive stance?Of course, if we can have uncontested avoidance in offensive as well as plate tanks, it will be more balance between brawler and plate tanks.But it didn't solve the problem that defensive stance is totally useless.