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TANKS - make them great again !
Adamantine
Member RarePosts: 5,094
IMHO one of the weaknesses of Vanguards classes was how the different tanks played too much alike. Sure you had a completely different set of abilities and ability names. But the core mechanisms always have been damage mitigation, hitpoints, damage output, and aggro abilities. The core experience was thus exactly identical, you just got a bit to it in a different way.
For comparison, I also played all four healer classes. Now okay, Clerics and Shamans also played a lot alike. But even so they felt a lot different. For example Shaman had no deaggro skill, which was a very weird problem, since everybody else had them (even Disciple had Fake Death, which, if it worked, would drop aggro to zero).
Anyway Disciple and Blood Mage have been massively different from the classic healers, and very different from each other. Disciple had their Jin counter which usually was their main source to heal, which thus they tried to keep up at all times. Blood Mage on the other hand had their Blood Points, and they had a group heal on a critical hit which healed the group without any aggro generation - super important and also for a long time a way to heal group members even if they'd be on a different continent. Also Blood Points would always be gone when the mob died, so you had to plan accordingly, while Jin would be kept at high counts even outside of battles, with a stance.
Obviously damage/support classes are easy to make different anyway, since their description is very free and they can do whatever shenannigans you can think of.
So that made me wonder, is it possible to also make tank classes that are really different from traditional tanks ?
One idea would be to have a ranged tank. So the class would be able to keep aggro at a distance, and to move very fast over the battlefield to avoid getting hit. Maybe less mitigation and/or hitpoints, or it would have to partially rely on armor spells which had to be refreshed every once in a while, and those spells would be disruptable, thus the class would have to keep distance. So maybe that would be a cloth healer ?
What about a Monk class that can tank ? I never played Lord of the Rings Online myself, but I once read about a LotRO class, I think it was called guardian or something ? Anyway that class was all about attack combos. In order to selfbuff and to other things beneficial to oneself or ones group, or things detrimental to attackers, the class had to keep using a TON of different attack sequences. People said a well played Guardian would be really good, but if you didnt play them well they would stink. That could be a massively different experience for sure, wouldnt it be ? And it would be very much like what Disciples did in Vanguard, only even more complex. Rangers had stuff like this as well.
Or wouldnt it make sense to drop the defensive stance of Warrior and to
give them simply enough stustained damage output that they could keep
aggro ? Once I had an online discussion about Warrior and people objected to me saying that Warrior should have the same damage output as, say, a Ranger. But Warrior would have more hitpoints and more defense, people said, so giving them the same damage output wouldnt be balanced. Sure, but Ranger gets ranged attacks, spells including snare, runspeed and healing, and they get stuff like stealth. So why isnt it balanced to make them about the same in output ? This way Warrior could be the simple tank who can tank at any point in time, without having to change stance.
On that issue, the weird thing about Warrior in Vanguard was that it was the most complicated class of them all. A huge heap of situational abilities that I couldnt get my mind around. That was just very weird. I felt that by its very concept, it should definitely be the easiest class to play. On the other hand my Dread Knight was almost amazingly easy to play, one of the easiest classes in the game, at least once I had figured out how to macro him correctly.
Another idea would be to give Paladins simply aggro auras. So as a Paladin, you dont have to worry much about aggro at all, at least not usually, it would be the "laidback" tank that keeps the focus more on support like healing allies. Except if you get adds, it would actually be troublesome to keep the add off the Paladin for offtanking, so then the Paladin would have to drop the aura for this. Nah, maybe not such a great idea.
I also would say there should be a substantial difference in what hitpoints and mitigation tank classes could archieve. So maybe a Warrior should be really high hitpoints, but not as good defense as a Paladin. Thus healing a Paladin takes a bit less work, and they generate less healing aggro and require less mana for healing. In Vanguard this was pretty much exactly equal for all tank classes, which was in my mind a bit of a missed chance.
Another idea would be a class that sits on a really big heap of hitpoints. But defense and damage gets up the lower their hitpoints gets. Thats a dangerous gamble, obviously, and probably quite hard to balance for raids.
Comments
Even weaker than Monk and Phoenix Shaman.
The problem with ESO is that the aggro tool is a 15 second timer, you hit a button and you have 15 sec until you have to hit it again. Tanks do other things like debuffing the boss, and avoid attacks, etc.
I remeber on the Age of conan forums someone suggested a aggro button like the one in ESO with a 10 sec timer, and everyone jumped and made fun of the guy.
Age of conan also have a good hate generation system. I've not had time to raid since I played WoW back in 2005-2006. So in Age of Conan I just did dungeons or PuG raids. My favourite thing to do was to use "free lvl 80's" that you got in various promotions over the years and start a new Guardian tank. Because there was so much beginner lvl 80 gear you could use, and I found it fun to start over trying new gear setups.
So one day I was playing my blue geared Guardian I saw a team in zone chat who needed a off-tank for Flame HM. Which was a simple one boss dungeon, done correctly it takes 5 min. I had done that dungeon hundreds of times at that point on other chars, but not on my new blue geared Tank.
So I joined up with the team, and the other guys were all from one of the best raiding guilds on the server. There were long queues to join their ranks. They ofcourse had much better gear, and the main tank I was going to help was also on his main raiding char with all his fancy gear.
Nontheless we started the encounter, and guess what, the fancy raiding tank with all his fancy armor couldn't hold aggro. I had to stop attacking the boss so this guy could get the boss attention. In AoC, stopping to attack the boss to switch aggro is basicly an insult to the other tank, but it was either that or me dropping dead. This happend over and over, with me taking back aggro in seconds when I had full health.
We killed the boss no problems and even went on to do another dunegon just next door. After we were finished one of the guys in the team messaged me and said he was the raidleader in the guild, and asked if I wanted a spot on their main raid. Obviously I didn't have time to be in a hardcore raid guild and had to decline. But still nice to get a invite to a top ranked guild.
Age of Conan was really a game where skill mattered a good deal and not just gear.
Rift Stalker (I think) in Rift was awesome, an avoidance tank that could *Bamf* around the battle was really a lot of fun.
Caffynated said: That last sentence is so subjective, I hated tanking in War.
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.
My complaint is that tanks play too equal and there need to be more differences between tank classes.
More uniformity was the last thing I wanted.