Forums » Pantheon Classes

Tanking Abilities--Here's what we need.

    • 432 posts
    June 24, 2016 9:04 PM PDT

    Hello all,

     

    Playing a Tank is my identity, and I have a lot of history with the play-style. To me, a Tank is a support class very much like a healer. When you line up all the support classes in the game we ‘heal’ differently. Instead of our class seeing damage which has been done and reversing it we see a threat which will cause damage and we prevent it. I want to make sure I voice my recommendation on Tanks … because some games can get it very, very wrong.

     

    Example of ‘not fun’

    • :Boring abilities which are usually single-layered. (can only be used in a limited number of situations)
    • :Item dependency so great you cannot hold threat. (This is more of a scaling issue, but, there are abilities I will later discuss which are ‘non-threat’ tanking abilities which help alleviate this.)
    • :So many ‘taunt’ abilities there is no chance for ‘something wrong’ to happen. (This is the same thing Healers complain about. When nothing is going wrong the game is boring. There either needs to be something going wrong or something to do while nothing is happening.

     

    Disclaimer---By no means do I want Tanks to replace healers or CC’ers or Damage Dealers. The number of abilities, their power scale etc is something developers can play with to make sure there is balance among the 4 play-types.

    So first I wanted to bring up some key abilities I think every Tank should have. The common theme here is ‘non-threat’ abilities.

     

    CATCH 22

     

    Catch 22 is the idea when your opponent has no ‘good’ options to choose from. Here are some examples.

     

    When in combat every 25 seconds you are not attacked your next spell or ability has increased critical hit chance.

    Or

    When an ally is critically hit your next damaging ability has a X% chance to stun for X seconds.

    Or

    When you deal damage to a creature, increase your damage dealt by X% (Stacks up to X times). Taking damage removes this effect.

     

    There are a lot of goals which can be gained from these catch 22 abilities but one of the biggest goals of these specifically is to limit the need for ‘Snap Aggro’ (Abilities which guarantee max threat) or to place all your efforts into one ‘taunt’ ability. Randomness factor or not knowing ‘when’ it will be enough damage to get threat back is sometimes a fun and tense moment. These moments can be lengthened by limiting or ‘removing’ snap agro abilities which ‘force’ a target to look at you.

    An example of this working would be a situation where you don’t have Threat and your taunt is on cooldown. You see your damage buff has stacked 5 times and your doing a lot more damage which hopefully will get the attention of the enemy. Your taunt comes off cooldown. You use it, but it STILL doesn’t get threat back. You land a lucky crit with 7 stacks of your damage buff-suddenly the enemy looks at you-YES! The enemy hits you, removing your 7 stacks of damage increase, and your taunt will come back in a few seconds to help get your rhythm back.

     

    Also for these catch 22 mechanics, it makes it a lot more rewarding to play a Tank in PVP where we are often ignored due to our high health and armor.

     

    Multi-Layered Damage preventing buffs

                    Often these abilities are not multi-layered which is a real shame. Situations when you do not have threat and/or do not ‘need’ threat (due to an off-tank role or temporary damage dealing role) these are nice to have. I also like the idea of using these in clutch situations where the damage increase is more beneficial than the defense increase.

    Example of a multi-layered damage preventing ability

    Shield Barrier – Increase your block chance by X% and increases the damage of your Shield Wallop by X%, this ability lasts X seconds.

    Courageous Cry– You and your allies are emboldened! Gain Regain X health and X mana, for the next X seconds you and your allies gain increase attack and run speed.

     

    Non-threat tanking abilities

                    If threat breaks, or your items aren’t that great and you lose threat often, these can be great clutch-saves.

     

    Stuns – Every second an enemy is stunned is a second nobody is taking damage, including you.

    Knockback & Grapple-pulls—prevent damage immediately by knocking away your enemy or yanking them from an ally over to you. Time in transit is like a stun in the fact that ‘no damage is being done’.

    Snares—Enemies running towards allies do less damage the longer it takes them to get to your allies (if they ever get there)

    Damage prevention shields—some may think this is the healers arena, but to be honest we’ve been the damage shield longer than they ever were.

    Spell/Ability cancelling—If the enemy is trying to do something and you stop them that saves you or the group from taking damage. Another way to say “you can’t do this to my ally till you get through me first.”

     

    I’m going to stop at this point and let the thread start to discuss. But one last thing I wanted to bring up was a peve I have.

    Change the name of the ability ‘Taunt’ to something else.

    This is really just a pet peve of mine. What we should really envision a tank to be is a threat which will not be budged or move, who is standing in your face demanding attention  … OR ELSE! #catch22

    It’s a better idea to call the ability ‘Challenge’ or ‘Block Enemy’ ‘Engage’, ‘Face the Threat’, anything which gets the spirit of what your trying to do across. As a LARPer, when I go against enemies in a large team fight my goal is to literally stand between my enemy and my allies. If people try to get around me I merely pivot and the team stays behind me as best they can. I attack my enemy not with the intention of doing damage or scoring a hit but to grab their attention and give my team openings when possible. (RL tanking people) Taunt sounds too much like telling a bad joke or laughing while making silly faces.

     

    Thanks for participating in the thread in advance,

     

    -Todd

    • 176 posts
    June 25, 2016 5:36 PM PDT

    You have some uique ideas. I like your what I would call "Interupt" idea. You should be able to knock caster's out of there spells if "Interupt" them during the cast time.

    Personally I have always played the Tank role as an extension of CC really. It is your job to lock the encounter down and keep it under control. Addional CC helps but it is really the tanks job first IMO>

     

    • 156 posts
    June 26, 2016 1:38 AM PDT

    Also love the interrupt/CC ideas. I really want to see tanks do more than just stand there absorbing damage, and this is a great way to achieve that. While it might be overpowering to give any one class multiple ways to interrupt, basing skills on weapon types might be a great way to get diversity. Knockbacks with a shield, ham-stringing (snaring) with dual weapons and dazing (skill interruption) with a two hander for example.

    As for taunt names, how about something different for each of the three tanking classes. Challenge for Crusaders, Terrorize for DLs and Confront for Warriors?

    • 432 posts
    June 26, 2016 11:04 PM PDT

    As for taunt names, how about something different for each of the three tanking classes. Challenge for Crusaders, Terrorize for DLs and Confront for Warriors?

     

     

    Oh wow, I love the sound of those abilities Umbra! Great idea!

     

    -Todd

    • 2419 posts
    June 27, 2016 6:13 PM PDT

    tehtawd said:

    As for taunt names, how about something different for each of the three tanking classes. Challenge for Crusaders, Terrorize for DLs and Confront for Warriors?

     

     

    Oh wow, I love the sound of those abilities Umbra! Great idea!

     

    -Todd

    If it does the same thing, why care what you call it?  Why waste time coming up with unique names for stuff that are not different from each other?

    • 156 posts
    June 27, 2016 7:01 PM PDT

    Game and character flavour. We just came up with three names for the same ability that adds to both of those, with no time requirements from the devs. Besides, don't you think it's nicer having such immersion rather than warrior_ability1, crusader_ability1, direlord_ability1 even if they do the same thing?