An Idea for tanks and small group content [Archive]

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SilentTrouble

01-17-2009, 12:32 AM

Aeralik said:"The problem with this is that one of the things we are trying to discourage is the concept of tanks tanking by dps. By flipping the taunts you essentially make it a choice. You either go pure dps in offensive or pure tanking in defensive. It's still subject to change. However, the changes need to be such that tanking via dps is discouraged yet somehow still effective for the small group which is something we have discussed here a bit."so lets discuss it and only it so this can be a good chat about this in particular without rants, whines, or going off topic.If anyones been living under a rock for the past week or so go read some other posts about what changes went into stances.stances are here: <a href="http://www.spetz.ru/Guard_bers.gif" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.spetz.ru/Guard_bers.gif</a>A possible solution to allowing tanks to tank small content and do some dps to make them more inline with the speed a mob should die while discouraging tanks from dps tanking in other content could be:Def stance: I really dont see a problem with it -- Save for additional testing and feed back tweeking may be required but the over all feel I like. Ive seen some say they need more hate gain that would be an example of tweeking.Offensive stance is the big one everyones fussing about. The inverse hate gain is killing us. It also decreases hate gain by 10%. My solution would be to remove the inverse hate gain. In the event your dpsing you should be able to get some hate so your not at the bottom of the hate list and if your doing small content your not dishing all hate off to your friends. In exchange to offset that bump up the hate gain decreaser by 20-30%. In need of testing but I think from my parses it should be right about inline with the objectives.So you do dps in offensive stance you get far less hate definately not enough to tank. You tank in defensive you dont dps but you are a meat shield of death!As a side note as something possibly to think about and I know its way out there for another update maybe but...Another unprecidented option would be to add an effect that "threat adding abilities do not increase threat" I dont think that the idea from tanking with dps should be discouraged but rather embraced by making us pick between doing it with taunts or dps which would make characters more unique and specialized... Just an idea though with a grain of salt

Tandy

01-17-2009, 12:58 AM

I have been thinking a lot how to make duo's workable and still keep tanks from tanking in offensive stance and I honestly am at a loss after running thru diffrent scenarios.If the deaggro is taking off, even if threat is giving -10 or -20%, since a lot of tanks DO generate good DPS in offensive, even that wont really stop them from using it to tank with, in which case this whole exercise is a moot point and the problem isnt fixed at all.If you go increase damage by 10 or 20 or 30% in offensive stance you run the risk of people complaning about not being able to solo because of increased damage...and at some point you WILL run into too much dmg to effectivly solo without a healer to heal you, which is fine for the duo's but sucks for the 'real' soloers, and in turn makes tanks depend on another class to solo with...which ISNT solo'ing at all.The core of the problem is that people want to 'solo' but solo with other people. If your truly solo the mob will always be on 100% of the time. In a duo, the mob will go to whoever generates enough threat to keep it. If tanks have deaggros its gonna go to the healers. You cant remove threat from heals, becaue then you give the healers a free pass on all aggro...which isnt fair.Duo'ing with a DPS class is gonna be even more rough to balance, cause if your duo'ing with that assassin that can do 7k, and still want to keep the mob off him, AND still be in offensive (and dont worry I am sure someone reading this wants that) you basically are right back to where we started from again.Basically I dont see a way out of this that balances things for the solo'er, the duo'er, the trio'er, the grouper and the raider. At some point you have to look at the big picture, decide what amount of the population you have to balance for and start there. I am not of course in a position to say that groupers or duo'er or solo'er or raid'ers are the highest percent of players, only the devs can. But I do know someone is gonna end up walking away from this feeling upset, but the mechanics have been broken for a while now. I just hope it gets fixed for the majority of the gamers out there who play this...whoever they might be.

denmom

01-17-2009, 01:11 AM

Very true, Xaren.I've been going over and over this whole thing, and you both summed it up well.The longer this goes on, the more I test things out, the more I think that I'll just have to go with def stance, like it or not. And my husband's Warden, as well as my own, will have to shift AAs around and gear to do a bit more casting damage.Yanno...if def stance could have close to the stat boost that off stance has and near the same damage ability, I'd be happy.Hell, why not just combine the best of both stances?Meh, just trying to come up with something. >_<

Tandy

01-17-2009, 01:14 AM

<cite>Pheep@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>Very true, Xaren.I've been going over and over this whole thing, and you both summed it up well.The longer this goes on, the more I test things out, the more I think that I'll just have to go with def stance, like it or not. And my husband's Warden, as well as my own, will have to shift AAs around and gear to do a bit more casting damage.Yanno...if def stance could have close to the stat boost that off stance has and near the same damage ability, I'd be happy.Hell, why not just combine the best of both stances?Meh, just trying to come up with something. >_<</blockquote>You might get by with defensive stance in your duo with some tweaking to pallys. I know on my sk the dmg wasnt that bad at all....so I am crossing my fingers pallys get a boost there or some of your abilitys get tweaked up a bit to give you the needed DPS in defensive stance.I am easily able to keep 1k in defensive on test against solo mobs without even trying to time auto attacks and casting orders and anything else, just button mashing (and I am quite happy with that for a defensive tank situation)....and after all pallys are crusaders just like SK's so you hopefully can get to the same level DPS with some adjustments.

denmom

01-17-2009, 01:36 AM

<cite>Xaren@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Pheep@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>Very true, Xaren.I've been going over and over this whole thing, and you both summed it up well.The longer this goes on, the more I test things out, the more I think that I'll just have to go with def stance, like it or not. And my husband's Warden, as well as my own, will have to shift AAs around and gear to do a bit more casting damage.Yanno...if def stance could have close to the stat boost that off stance has and near the same damage ability, I'd be happy.Hell, why not just combine the best of both stances?Meh, just trying to come up with something. >_<</blockquote>You might get by with defensive stance in your duo with some tweaking to pallys. I know on my sk the dmg wasnt that bad at all....so I am crossing my fingers pallys get a boost there or some of your abilitys get tweaked up a bit to give you the needed DPS in defensive stance.I am easily able to keep 1k in defensive on test against solo mobs without even trying to time auto attacks and casting orders and anything else, just button mashing (and I am quite happy with that for a defensive tank situation)....and after all pallys are crusaders just like SK's so you hopefully can get to the same level DPS with some adjustments.</blockquote>If crits happen, I can get 8-900 in def stance. I may have to increase Pheep's caster jewelry to compensate a bit more in def stance. She gets a 163 boost in off stance on int, 60 in def stance. Her hard hitting spells are all int based damage.Yah, if they up the stat boost in def to close to that of off stance, it could work.

Oakum

01-17-2009, 01:19 PM

So here is a guestions.How many solo mobs for example does it take before an encounter becomes "heroic" and a tank should have to switch to defensive for extra buffes even with a templer, the best healer there is, as the second part of a duo.How many levels below white should HEROIC mobs be killed by a small group/duo without the tank having to switch to defensive?From tso shard instances it looks like 4+ solo mobs white or yellow equal a heroic encounter.So at what point should a fighter become a "tank" and have to use defensive buffs and not just another player who happens to do more dps then the other person or 2 in the group and keeps aggro that way.It almost seems like some people are saying that whenever its a group of 2 or 3 people, the fighter should alway be able to do the same dps as if they were in offensive and be able to taunt and use their defensive skills and buffs like they were in defensive.Basically, if there are less then 4 people grouped, they should have complete immunity to the new no tanking while in offensive rules. Some may be using it as back door way to get a loop hole for their class.Others are more reasonable and asking for modifications to no stances. Now if there was a way to put a condition on stances like not usable if more then 2 or 3 people in group for a new mid stance for plate tanks. Lower dps with some taunts but neither as good as D-stance for not taking damage and not as good as O-stance for doing damage and shedding aggro.

Maroger

01-18-2009, 12:49 AM

I think for solo and small groups they need to reduce the huge decrease to DEFENSE in offensive stance.They should be able to use some IF/THEN/ELSE logic to fix these problems.