Scrappers will be the death of tankers

[jpark]

I built this char hoping AoE would solve my issue of getting aggro since my invuln tanker could not keep it with single, slow attacks and the provoke change.

You're thinking about how to keep agro with an active taunt and damage output, and that's where you're wrong.  I play an Invuln tanker and with invincibility (area effect taunt that also gives huge defense and accuracy bonuses) and unyielding stance I can out-control controllers.

Okay I gotta draw the line right there.  If you convince Grind on this point he will re-roll his build - again - and I'll be stuck powerleveling him!

Honestly though, interesting insight.

[Big Gulp]

Well, one problem with invincibility is scrappers don't get it until lvl28.

Yeah, but he was talking about a tanker, which invulnerability is our primary where it would be your secondary; we get invincibility a lot sooner.

[Glazius]

Invuln tankers are the only one who actually get the PBAoE taunt, though.

For my fire tanker, whose only means of soloing is Burn, and things run _out_ of Burn if they're not taunted onto you, Provoke is key.

I would love a taunt effect on Blazing Aura, Icicles/Chilling Embrace, and Mud Pots.

Sometime after respec's implemented, ideally.

--GF

[ClydeJr]

Statesman has started a thread on Tankers, asking people what some of the issues were. The damn thread is over 12 pages long now, but he came back and summarized what he saw:

1. Tankers seem to want bigger damage, and don't mind if they swing slower to do the damage. Still make scrappers outdamge tankers but close the gap some. In the same time period, a scrapper would hit twice for 35 each (70 total) where a tanker hits once for 50. I would be glad for that since my tanker takes forever to kill yellow lts, especially those freakshow with self heals.

2. Tankers have endurance issues. Combine all the toggles with weak attacks which make fights last longer and tanks end up out of endurance even after small fights.

3. Finally, at higher levels tankers no longer have a well defined role. High level scrappers can have just as good defenses as tankers, plus they can out damage us. We can do some crowd control using taunts and knockdowns but controllers are better at that.

[eldaec]

There have been similar threads on every AT board (except blasters) at some point in the past.

Not saying he's not genuinely looking at stuff - but the outcomes have not been dramatic.

[daveNYC]

There have been similar threads on every AT board (except blasters) at some point in the past.

Not saying he's not genuinely looking at stuff - but the outcomes have not been dramatic.

I'd prefer to hope that they aren't just going to make some ham fisted adjustment to damage and swing times.

[Sable Blaze]

Well, I've said this in my /sg repeatedly and I"ll say it here: the tanker boards on coh.com are pure, unadulterated havens of stupidity.

Tankers there want it all with a big "S" on their chests. Think EQ warrior and you'd be in the correct mindset. Tankers do have some END issues that I think do need to be looked at. However, damage-wise you have options.

Axe, stone melee, and energy melee can all do pretty good damage. You have to chose them, though, and slot them accordingly. You're going to need hasten. You're going to need buildup. You'll need to slot both of them, too. You're not going to have maxed defensives and maxed attacks. It's simply not going to happen. The morons on coh.com can't seem to come to grips with this.

For streetfighting and small group action an invul or DA scrapper can do a pretty good job of both damage-dealing and tanking. However, they don't tank hazard zones or task forces all that well. Simply lack of hit points.

Hopefully Cryptic will look very carefully at this issue. Tanks do need some help with endurance usage. Other than that, I think they're fine as is. Ahh, maybe move provoke out of the power pools. That I'd personally like to see as a fire tank. On the other hand, there's the distinct possibility of seriously screwing up the game. Cryptic needs to be very careful here.

[Grind]

Provoke has range that AoEs (incl. invincibility) do not. So IF you want the role of saving blasters it has a place in the roster, but at a cost of a whole pool.

Don't worry Moon. Since I use Unyielding Stance as a core ability I still need a longer ranged aggro tool outside of just teleporting into mobs to help hold aggro. No re-rolling for me on this issue - but do wish there were other useful abilities in that pool to take something strategic or of value in the game otherwise.


As far as moving provoke out of the pools and into a tanker roster, I am all for that and have suggested that on posts as well. It is core to tanking, not other classes (i.e. how may blasters take it as core to their builds...)

At level 24 I can easily tank reds and purples with one defender in the group. The freak show task force we had the other day prooved beyond a doubt that case with 10 - 15 mobs on me at once. Question is will I still be able to tank as well into the 30's and 40's. IF so, this scrapper IS the death of my invuln tanker. If not, at least I am having a lot of fun getting there.


Grind

[Phred]

Well, I've said this in my /sg repeatedly and I"ll say it here: the tanker boards on coh.com are pure, unadulterated havens of stupidity.

Tankers there want it all with a big "S" on their chests. Think EQ warrior and you'd be in the correct mindset. Tankers do have some END issues that I think do need to be looked at. However, damage-wise you have options.

Axe, stone melee, and energy melee can all do pretty good damage. You have to chose them, though, and slot them accordingly. You're going to need hasten. You're going to need buildup. You'll need to slot both of them, too. You're not going to have maxed defensives and maxed attacks. It's simply not going to happen. The morons on coh.com can't seem to come to grips with this.

For streetfighting and small group action an invul or DA scrapper can do a pretty good job of both damage-dealing and tanking. However, they don't tank hazard zones or task forces all that well. Simply lack of hit points.

Hopefully Cryptic will look very carefully at this issue. Tanks do need some help with endurance usage. Other than that, I think they're fine as is. Ahh, maybe move provoke out of the power pools. That I'd personally like to see as a fire tank. On the other hand, there's the distinct possibility of seriously screwing up the game. Cryptic needs to be very careful here.

While it's all well and good to slap the moron tag on anything you don't agree with, I wonder if you've reached the late 20/early 30 levels where tankers become completely unnecessary in any part of the game yet, to possibly have a feel for why people are bitching? I've done about 12 taskforces between the 25-30 and the 30-35 one in the last few weeks and not one had a tanker in it. In fact, the only reason there was a scrapper in it (me) is because my rl partner playing the game is a controller and wouldn't join without me. In almost every fight, by the time the first mob I engaged was dead, I had trouble finding a mob standing with more than about 10% of their hitpoints left and by the time I'd reach it, it'd usually be finished off by a blaster unless it was hidden from them.

In the latter part of the game, roughly coinciding to when blasters start slotting so's on their powers, there is rarely a group that would benefit more adding any other AT over another blaster. Most of the groups I've been in have had 2 or 3 controllers and the rest blasters, with a defender brought along for emergency heals if one of the controllers doesn't have empath as a secondary. No tanker needed or wanted, and that includes hazard zones up to Crey's, as far as I've got so far.

Scrappers at least can solo relatively effectively, but tankers have such huge endurance costs for relatively low damage hits, plus the need to keep toggle powers up to survive, that they are lucky to get through one mob before becoming very short on endurance. Of course they can slot out stamina and add stamina reducers to their hits but that measn even less damage; meanwhile blasters can slot their damage for 5 dmg/1 acc and have lower endurance and faster animations as well.

What really needs to be done is make blasters more group dependent but I doubt the devs will do that with over half the playerbase playing blasters now. So they either have to toss the tankers a serious bone or people just won't play them.

[Phred]

There have been similar threads on every AT board (except blasters) at some point in the past.

Not saying he's not genuinely looking at stuff - but the outcomes have not been dramatic.

They seem to save the dramatic changes for the nerfs, like the purple patch and the recent nerf to controllers.

I don't think I've seen game designers work so hard at making their game less group friendly than Cryptic since release. The only large groups that make even half way decent experience post 30 are mostly blasters with controllers and a defender for emergencies, and even they cant match the efficiency of a blaster/controller duo in places like Crey's. Considering 30+ is where the experience curve goes exponential, I see less and less large groups, except in my supergroup where no one is turned away. Ours is one of the few supergroups I've seen where everyone seems to try to group together, most supergroups seem like a glorified chat channel unity wise. We did a bunch of task forces the other day (3 in a row on a Saturday) where we had 5 from our sg and filled the other spots with pickup folks and many commented that it was the first taskforce they'd seen with so many from one supergroup on the team.

[Alluvian]

I personally don't LIKE the big groups and prefer the small ones.  I have all my exp chatter turned off so I am certainly not making that decision based on exp.  Anything over 4 starts getting too crowded enemy wise for me.  As a fire blaster I can have some fun with it, but the scrappers and tankers get pretty much lost in the shuffle and become unimportant.  Sticking to smaller groups keeps the indoor mission badguy numbers at sane levels.

[Fargull]

Hmm...

I think it should be worth noting that with COH I think a group of 8 any AT is a viable option.

My SG has two primary tanks, three primary defenders, two primary controllers and six primary blasters.  We have some scrappers, but they are mainly alts.  Overall the best group post thirty for debtless TF/Mission running is build around the two tankers, two defenders, two controllers, and 2 blasters.  When our primary tank is given about twenty seconds to assure aggro the rest move in and wipe out.

The game works great, now, one concession that I can see is that the Tank AT is not as fun as the rest.  It is lacking something and should have that boosted.  Personally I think more endurance and a bit higher damage would be good start.

[kaid]

The two big problems at the high levels in big groups is that A) the number of opponents is huge so AOE is king B) aoe damage for those who have it is so high minions roll over and die very quickly.

This leaves the scrappers and tanks looking for maybe a boss with some hp left to tank. Tanks are impressive at the high levels to the point of being almost immune to damage but there is no real need in the game for serious tanking. Scrappers at high levels can also tank just about anything nearly as well as tanks can but due to their single target focus they are left on mop up patrol. Controllers at high levels if they are lucky can play with their pets to do some huge damage. For those without pets they are kinda out of luck they cannot hold AV, have trouble holding bosses and minions and lt die so fast its not worth the effort to hold them.

It shows in how many folks I see rolling blaster alts after they see what the high end game is like. Myself I will stick with my friends in our small little groups where all archtypes still work pretty decently.

Kaid

[Sable Blaze]

Tanks aren't even necessary in the first 20 levels. If you're got controllers, you're golden for CC. NO AT is necessary at any part of the game. You can always dance with who you brung at any level of the game. I was under the impression that that was what Cryptic wanted insofar as gameplay is concerned.

My fire/axe tank soloes pretty well. She's damage oriented. People observe that she plays like a big scrapper. Yes, she does. She was built to. My ice/axe tank soloes OK. No great shakes, but, again, she's damage oriented and does OK. My invul/energy tanks soloes poorly. She's defensively oriented and quite frankly soloing is mostly frustrating. She may do better later on, but getting there hasn't been a thrill ride so far. The limiting factor on axe, though, is END usage. It's brutal. Axe tanks can do really good damage; they just can't do it for long.
 
I'd like to see tanker endurance usage looked at. I don't want them to be an EQ warrior though. One of several reasons I quit EQ was my class pretty much got pushed into uselessness by the incessant warrior improvements, whereas the hybrids never saw similar changes. Tanks and scrappers have a lot of role overlap. I play both and would rather not see either pushed aside.

I don't see any easy answers here. The game isn't meant to be role stratified. There are ways to get around not having any particular AT in your group. Tanks are very good at tanking (when built for it), but that ability isn't needed in most situations. Forcing them on groups by content so difficult that you MUST have them is just going down the same road EQ went down.

[daveNYC]

Tanker endurance would be a good thing to increase.  I'm not to happy about spending thirty seconds of a fight just standing and waiting for enough endurance to take a swing at a guy.

[jpark]

Invuln tankers are the only one who actually get the PBAoE taunt, though.

Interesting.  This is why my idea of a scrapper is really an offensive tank build.  Slot the Tanker for damage, and then defense (with what is left).  Energy is my preference here - not built him yet - but will someday.

I still see this discussion as a replay of a theme I have seen before - the problem of hybrid melee classes vs. pure warrior.  In EQ the Paladin vs. Warrior arguments continue.  Here it is Scrapper vs. Tank.

My lesson from EQ was that hybrid melees (monk, paladin, shadowknight) are more fun to play than pure tanks, more flexible and do the job of tanking well enough with some tweaks.

[Phred]

The two big problems at the high levels in big groups is that A) the number of opponents is huge so AOE is king B) aoe damage for those who have it is so high minions roll over and die very quickly.
Kaid

And C) experience slows down so much, anything but the most efficient killing yeilds barely noticable movement of the experience bar.

Just thought I'd toss that in.

[Phred]

Invuln tankers are the only one who actually get the PBAoE taunt, though.

Interesting.  This is why my idea of a scrapper is really an offensive tank build.  Slot the Tanker for damage, and then defense (with what is left).  Energy is my preference here - not built him yet - but will someday.

I still see this discussion as a replay of a theme I have seen before - the problem of hybrid melee classes vs. pure warrior.  In EQ the Paladin vs. Warrior arguments continue.  Here it is Scrapper vs. Tank.

My lesson from EQ was that hybrid melees (monk, paladin, shadowknight) are more fun to play than pure tanks, more flexible and do the job of tanking well enough with some tweaks.

Some have suggested the Tanker AT shouldn't have existed in CoH. Just make it one way to build a scrapper. I play a regen scrapper, not an invul, so while I can solo quite well, it involves picking my targets a bit more carefully. Dispite the insane hp regen, he really is weak on resistance and defence so if I jump into a small group of rikti and more than 2 pull out blades, I usually jump right back out. 3 of those blades hitting me at once is insta death.

I've got combat jumping, stealth and hasten for defence and resilience as my only resist option. I've heard people who went the fighting line for tough and weave can stand up considerably well though, and boxing from fighting actually compares quite well to the first attack in most scrapper primaries for damage and endurance use, so taking it early can open that line up without wasting a skill.

[Murgos]

Some have suggested the Tanker AT shouldn't have existed in CoH. Just make it one way to build a scrapper.

You know out of every direction or idea I've heard as a solution for this problem I actually like this one the best.  Too bad it's the least likely to be implemented.

Morph the tanker attacks into scrapper attacks and nerf Stone and Fire and ice armor down to scrapper levels and I think you'd have a winner.  You could even leave them slightly more effective at the cost of higher end requirements to balance it out.

You would be giving melee'rs a clear choice without limiting them unnessecarily.  Be a big hitter with great tanking ability but massive down time or some other interesting combo...

[Phred]

Some have suggested the Tanker AT shouldn't have existed in CoH. Just make it one way to build a scrapper.

You know out of every direction or idea I've heard as a solution for this problem I actually like this one the best.  Too bad it's the least likely to be implemented.

Morph the tanker attacks into scrapper attacks and nerf Stone and Fire and ice armor down to scrapper levels and I think you'd have a winner.  You could even leave them slightly more effective at the cost of higher end requirements to balance it out.

You would be giving melee'rs a clear choice without limiting them unnessecarily.  Be a big hitter with great tanking ability but massive down time or some other interesting combo...

I don't see why it needs any drawback. It's not like blasters have any drawback to their ability to do massive dmg from range without getting hit. There's already way too huge an endurance penalty to any tanker build and as someone above noted, it's probably the only AT that runs out of endurance half way through fighting 1 or 2 mobs.

I think all AT's should be brought up to blaster level, then if it's too easy, they just have to tweak the mobs to make it evenly difficult for everyone. As it is now, once blasters hit their stride they leave every other AT in their dust.

[Murgos]

I don't see why it needs any drawback. It's not like blasters have any drawback to their ability to do massive dmg from range without getting hit.

I dunno, my blaster has been in danger of being one-shotted since the late teens, I would call that a pretty big drawback.   Usually all it takes is one stun, mez or hold to get through and I'm working off debt.

My Dark/Regen scrapper kills almost as fast and doesn't have that vulnerability but go ahead and rant anyway.

Actually, I'll go so far as too say that after the early thirties almost every AT is a total powerhouse.  Controllers with pets are probably the most effective but they are followed closely by indestructible tanks, scrappers who are nigh indestructable yet can dish out loads of damage, Defenders who can dish it and buff it to ridiculous levels (mid thirties all those not enough slots for enhancer problems they have go poof) and of course blasters who just have so many ranged attacks they can really lay some smack down.  Of them all Blasters maybe have the most steady progression (though my scrapper build is I think as efective throught its life so far as all but the most min/maxed AE blaster) but I certainly wouldn't say blasters work with impunity or are 'teh big chez' of higher level play.

Do blasters have it easy?  Sure, but blasters aint the be all end all at high levels either, I'd give that honor to a fire or illusion controller or maybe one of the better scrapper builds.

[SurfD]

Totally agree with Murgos here.  Everyone pisses and moans about the fact that all blasters get Primary/Secondary lines that are 90% damage attacks, but they never bother to look at the purpose scrapper secondaries serve.

Try actually looking at the class balances between scrappers and blasters before hooting your mouth off.

It would be interesting to actually get a direct comparison between the hitpoints of a blaster and a scrapper at various levels.  

Blasters have crap for hitpoints (just slightly higher then Controllers/Deffenders).  We need all that damage to kill stuff before it kills us, because we dont last long when under fire.

Scrappers may have equal (or slightly more) hitpoints, but due to the nature of their secondary sets, they are about 100x better at soaking up damage then a Blaster is, be it through avoidance, regeneration, resistances or health drains.  And dont even get me started on the fact that nearly every Scrapper secondary comes with a power to resist effects (your Blaster ass is headed strait for the hospital if that bloody Rikti boss happens to be a stun/mezzer with a bigass sword, and not a gunner with a bigass sword like you origionally thought)

We blasters die REALLY fast if we attract too much aggro before we can kill most of it.  Just try accidently droping an AoE attack on a large group of nazis in a mission before your tank has fired off his taunt.  I guarantee you have NEVER seen a hitpoint meter drop faster then that (full to floor before you can even think about clicking on a Respite).  And boy are we good at attracting aggro.

And the Blasters so called range advantage is not much of an issue when you get to the 30+ levels.  Many enemy minions have longer range on their ranged damage attacks then I do on mine.  I swear, some of those Crey Leutenants must have their Sniper Shot 6 slotted with range enhancers (which is a REAL bitch when their first two hits nearly kill you, and then they snipe you in the back from what seems like miles away as you are madly fleeing).  I have had Nemesis Leutenants shoot me (with a REGULAR attack, no less) from so far away that my Snipe is out of range!

Really, other then some moderately overpowered blaster sets (cough*Devices*cough) the whole ultra blaster idea is actually highly over rated.

And for the record, I play an Energy/Elec blaster, currently level 31, and I quite frequently now play only with another person in tow, simply because it drastically cuts down on my chances of eating pavement on a regular basis.  Spending the majority of levels 27-30 in debt has tought me that the Blasters motto should most appropriately be: We can dish it out, deep dish style; but fuck man, we take it like wet kleenex.

[Phred]

Like scrappers, blasters have to take some care picking their targets. At 34, I have 1046 hp. I did a kill 35 rikti mission in creys the other day and if more than one rikti pulls out a big blade I have to bail because 2 or more kill me in one round and being regen, my defence and resistance to damage isn't very high at all. My defence is getting better, with combat jumping, stealth and now hasten, but my resistance sucks so if one hit from a rikti blade gets through it's close to half my hp right here.

I think tanks already pay for their huge resistance and defence with low damage. Making them pay twice with huge stamina cost as well just doesn't make a lot of sense to me, and more, it makes the play experience much less fun, which I think is important in a game so 1 dimensional as CoH. If combat isn't fun for a class, what else is there? It's not fun sitting there waiting for enough endurance to recharge to be able to swing your weapon, it's kind of boring. That's why I dumped my axe tanker, it was just boring standing around so much. Personally much more than balance, I think every AT should be fun to play, in groups or solo.

On missions, for instance, my dark/regen scrapper isn't that much fun to play because evens are very little challenge for him. Solo missions with their groupings of 2-3 even level mobs are just rediculously easy and you didn't seem to be having much trouble with them tonight when we teamed either. I play missions mainly for the stories, which mostly are quite cool, because the challenge and experience for them mostly sucks. I guess they need to keep mobs easy like that because the other 3 AT's are so weak at soloing, so it would be nice if they could up that ability then make solo missions a bit more of a challenge. Either that or put a difficulty slider in like AO had.

[Phred]

I don't see why it needs any drawback. It's not like blasters have any drawback to their ability to do massive dmg from range without getting hit.

I dunno, my blaster has been in danger of being one-shotted since the late teens, I would call that a pretty big drawback.   Usually all it takes is one stun, mez or hold to get through and I'm working off debt.

From the blasters  I see out soloing, that changes in the 30's when your opening aoe takes down all the minions in the first blast. The one or 2 lt's or boss and lt go down to the second and it's on to the next bunch.

On task forces I've been on, where with a controller or two, two blasters can kill whole packs of mobs while my dark regen scrapper is still working on his first mob. The first time this happened to me, I felt pretty useless to the task force, it was like I was getting powerleveled. We had 3 controllers, 2 blasters, me and a defender and could easily have done without me, as I wasn't tanking. Before I joined my current SG, I don't remember one pickup taskforce where someone said, wait we need a tanker. The last taskforce I remember a tanker seeming necessary was the 20-25 one.

My Dark/Regen scrapper kills almost as fast and doesn't have that vulnerability but go ahead and rant anyway.

On single mobs, a well built dark/regen scrapper is pretty scary, but a few big knives can cut you down just as fast as a blaster, and mobs get the opportunity way more often because you have to be in melee range to do anything. There's quite a few times I've jumped in to small groups in Creys only to jump right back out again because 3/4 of my health disappeared on the mob's first free hit they get. Especially Freakshow and Rikti have a nasty habit of putting major hurt on you quickly when you get in melee range. The only ranged damage I've taken that was close to the melee damage my scrapper gets hit for was from purple snipers in Crey's. Melee damage is so much higher than ranged in CoH it's crazy. And Blasters can take enough pool powers to get as good a defence as I have, and have less use for most of their secondary line other than devices than I do. Most blaster secondaries have a bunch of melee powers in them no one I've met takes, except one guy playing a energy/energy blaster as a super lightwieght scrapper build, where he took all the melee skills and very few of the ranged ones. But that's off the track a bit, and it's an alt he built for a lark.

Maybe most blasters don't do it, but hover or combat jumping, stealth, and hasten all have defence and can be slotted for even more. They add up to a nice chunk of defence. Unless there is an extra defence bonus for scrappers, which I haven't ever heard anywhere, then a blaster could easily be avoiding as much or even more damage than I do, and I really don't get hit that often by even mobs.

Actually, I'll go so far as too say that after the early thirties almost every AT is a total powerhouse.  Controllers with pets are probably the most effective but they are followed closely by indestructible tanks, scrappers who are nigh indestructable yet can dish out loads of damage, Defenders who can dish it and buff it to ridiculous levels (mid thirties all those not enough slots for enhancer problems they have go poof) and of course blasters who just have so many ranged attacks they can really lay some smack down.  Of them all Blasters maybe have the most steady progression (though my scrapper build is I think as efective throught its life so far as all but the most min/maxed AE blaster) but I certainly wouldn't say blasters work with impunity or are 'teh big chez' of higher level play.

Do blasters have it easy?  Sure, but blasters aint the be all end all at high levels either, I'd give that honor to a fire or illusion controller or maybe one of the better scrapper builds.

Fire and Illusion controllers are certainly up there with the nastiest aoe blasters, I agree. It's actually pretty mind boggling how badly the other 2 primaries for controllers compare. The ice pet is a total joke and of course dominated mobs give no experience so mentallists are totally boned. I have yet to meet a high level earth controller, which says something, so I also have no idea how their pet shapes up.

As to tankers, no, other than fire tankers, the few tankers I've met at high levels aren't particularly powerful on the offensive side. Sure they can stand there and take minimal damage, but they have to just stand there waiting for enough stamina to take a swing, for comparitivly little damage.

As to defenders, maybe it's the build be the few defenders I've played with post 30 don't do much damage either. Maybe late 30's they have the luxury to slot out their secondary damage line to actually do some damage but none seem to up to 34, the highest I've grouped with.

[Big Gulp]

Making them pay twice with huge stamina cost as well just doesn't make a lot of sense to me, and more, it makes the play experience much less fun, which I think is important in a game so 1 dimensional as CoH.

In my early days, yeah, endurance was a problem.  I'm now 34, have slotted  Stamina 6 times, and have one endurance reduction enhancement slotted in each of my attacks (the other slots are all damage).  I can continuously attack for what seems like 3-4 minutes.  It just isn't a problem for me anymore.  Granted, I'm a super strength tanker, so I never used as much end as say, an axe tanker did, but I also did much less damage than they did.

So suck it up, bitches.  If you wanted to make a scrapper with a lot of hit points you should have made a scrapper.  I was never able to do it before, but I now solo groups of 6 minions, 2 LTs, and a boss all at around 2-3 lvls higher than me without any real danger.  Man, I love late blooming classes.

[jpark]

And so it comes to pass on October 6th.

The scrapper build - in this case invuln / spines - outclasses any goddamn tanker out there.  What a joke.

The scrapper and I (healer) - at level 38 - tanked and did the Terra volta mission without breaking a sweat.

On numerous other occasions, not only were accompanying tanks the same in damag mitigation as the scrapper - their ability to hold aggro was utterly inferior (hard to compete with AoE damage).  Oh ya - scrappers can kill - and quickly - something tanks even with the latest changes cannot do or do fast enough in Diablo styled combat.

The lesson - beyond COH - is that pure classes suck.  Devs can never seem to defend the territory of the pure class (tank or healer) from hybrid classes.  

Oh ya - I am not really a healer - but a controller - empathy is my secondary.  Healing is an extra for me - which really seems to perform about as well as any other empathy (defender) healer.

In EQ often (excepting high end raids) Paladin > warrior or Druid > CLeric.  This basic lesson has been applied with great brilliance by us to CoH.  My mate dumped his tank for scapper and I dumped my healer for a hybrid healer (controller).

Make no mistake - my friend and I enjoy pure classes - but we are optimizers.  Optimization has lead us - laughably to the same conclusions that we arrived at in EQ with results that are down right embrassing for other members of our SG that belong to a pure class AT.

Pure classes in MMORPGs suck - CoH - as a great a game as it is - has added another data point to our EQ conclusions.

[Sable Blaze]

Paladins better than EQ warriors? Obviously, you never played at the Time level. Paladins simply can't tank what warriors can and aren't even in the same reality damage-wise. Maybe things have changed with the lvl70 cap, but from what little I've read, it's business as usual in EQ with hybrids getting the short end of the stick.

Now...CoH...

I play at a BS/invul scrapper primarily anymore. I"m not in the same league as an invul tank when it comes to tanking. I simply don't have the hit points and I don't have the slotting to reach the defensive caps (aside from phyical, which you won't be using much post-35).

My damage output is pretty formidable vs. single targets, but as far as pure dps, I"m nowhere near a fire/* tank with burn. Period. Spines is, of course, a bit different, but spines lack point target damage. And spines won't even approach a fire/* burn tank in pure dps, either.

As for misssion and day to day tanking, yes, that I can and do bring more to a group than a tank...IF...my own groupmates don't screw me up. Which they do. Often. But hell, that's not really the point, is it?

Basically, CoH is built around flexibility. One trick ponies don't tend to fare well on their own, and can generally be supplanted in day to day activitity by generalists. However, in most MMRPGs, the specific, highly focused class tend to be better. It's true in EQ, it's true in DAoC, it's true in AO. It's not true in CoH and not true in EQOA.

Lastly, any invul scrapper can't do what invul tanks can. You can't tank +8 mobs and live to tell the tale. They can. The problem is (still) that you don't need that sort of tanking ability in 99% of play in CoH. Hence, scrappers tend to supplant tanks in most situations.

[HaemishM]

Flexibility wins out over specialization. Somehow, I'm not surprised. Tanks specialize in taking damage, but Scrappers can take it AND dish it out. That makes them more fun to play, same as defenders who aren't healer-focused are more fun to play than pure heal monkeys.

Having one specialized task in an MMOG means your playstyle revolves around 1 thing. Only being able to do 1 thing is not fun. That's the downfall of pure class-based systems where pure classes mix with hybrids.

[jpark]

Paladins better than EQ warriors? Obviously, you never played at the Time level. Paladins simply can't tank what warriors can and aren't even in the same reality damage-wise. Maybe things have changed with the lvl70 cap, but from what little I've read, it's business as usual in EQ with hybrids getting the short end of the stick.

I disagree Sable - but no I have not tanked at the Time level.

You a bright guy so I don`t think you and I need to go through many iterations of this argument:

(Bah foreign keyboard in cafe - can`t get basic punctuation)

Add 3 levels to a Pally and he can exceed a tank in tanking ability.  C`mon mate - the level expansion to 70 has not made much difference since many at the high end have not leveled to 70 yet.  They will - and like every other expansion - when that happens the Warriors lose out to the hybrid.

But wait... there is the latest uber expansion - you know the LAST expansion - no question there - you need pure tank and healer.  Until folks level more and get better gear - then you find the hybrids moving in.

(I am frustrated with the mechanics not you :)

So what your saying is - if you the type of player that can raids time in EQ - then you see the value of the warrior.   Not too many casual players log on to raid time in EQ - so the few that do by this logic will see the value of a pure class.

Today you cite Time as uber.  2 years ago - it was - Luclin I think.  Same pattern, same shit.

The last guild I was with - a year ago now - on EQ was number 4 on our server.  Our shadownknights tanked just fine.  It`s all about level and gear.  

The only place for pure classes - if any - is the latest expansion - when gear and level have not caught up yet.

About CoH - maybe you could let me know where at level 38 my controller (healer) and my scrapper (tank) can go to get our asses kicked to let us know we need pure classes.  There is nothing we cannot handle.  And when we have tanks in our group the scrapper tanks - since he holds aggro better can basically tank just as well (and kill much faster).

I wish pure classes had more attention by devs or eliminate them all together.

[Sable Blaze]

Well, the fact is with the new "paradigm" in EQ mobs, if you don't have some form of absolute damage reduction (i.e. weaponshield or defensive) you can't reliably tank in GoD and above. Period.

The fact is SKs and paladins with 12k hps and 2800AC get one rounded in GoD. SOE has changed mob ATK ratings some so AC again has a real role in your survivability, but you can still get one rounded. This is in contrast to bazaar-equipped warriors who could tank GoD...which is supposedly lvl70 content. Hybrids can't do it with Ikkinz-level equipment. Not reliably, and not the named. We won't even get into the warrior "spellbook" and itemization and what it means to the hybrids.

My point about tanks in CoH was that they aren't really needed. They are better "tanks" but there's nothing for them to really tank outside a few AVs. They can tank things a scrapper can't, but you can't kill stuff at +8 level, so they have no real role. I have no clue how Cryptic will address this without a purple patch rollback, which causes other problems.

[Alkiera]

As far as people getting to 70 in EQ...  A guy I work with who still plays EQ made level 70 within a week of OoW going live, maybe 10 days on the outside.  He admittedly took a couple days off work at the end of the week, but he made it to 70 pretty quick.  Apparently some of the OoW zones give very decent exp to high level people.  He does play with some uberguild people, but he is not in an uberguild.

And Sable, I believe you and jpark agree on GoD, that you _need_ a warrior to tank the mobs there.  I have, however, played (pre-GoD) in PoP and other zones with plate-hybrid and even well-equipped chain-hybrids for tanks. (Admittedly, the ranger was tanking in Ssra, and he was in elemental/time gear at the time...  But Ssra's snakes aren't really pushovers, even at 65.)

As for defensive... I was reading some printout regarding instanced 'tests' for the GoD expansion, and noted one of the tests had a mob who does mean things to people who use Defensive...  It's either deathtouch, or a nasty debuff, or something equally Bad.

--
Alkiera

[Tebonas]

Single Group my Shaman tanked in the Tower of Solusek Ro, for what its worth, even mini nameds. Once I tanked a entrance named in Fire, admittingly with both a Cleric and Druid healing me. Yes, we were bored like that.

So yes, outside of high end raids Plate-hybrids can replace warriors, with ease. And even on high end raids, Paladins are often used as rampage tanks as well.

With GoD came the return of the Warrior and Cleric, even in the Flag instances. So I heard, but then I heard they tuned down GoD encounters because of the whining, and afterwards you could tank with hybrids again. GoD was about fast damage, so you don't have to tank the mobs THAT long...

[Sable Blaze]

Damage output in GoD was so high on the trials and named that plate-class hybrids could not reliably tank even with 2800AC and 12k hps. I mean, that's the way it is/was. If you didn't have weaponshield to negate damage or defensive to reduce incoming damage, you could (and would) get one rounded. With the revision, the chances of this were reduced some, but it could still happen. That (and the warrior "spellbook") was why warriors were pretty much necessary for advancement in GoD.

For lesser content, sure you could tank with hybrids. As an elemental shadowknight, I was capable of soloing in Ssra...but it was 4 year old content at that point. In GoD I couldnt' do diddly in the trials. This (and the warriorGoD changes) were why I quit. I was a tank that could no longer tank relavent content.

In contrast, in CoH you have tanks that can tank, but nothing for them to really tank. Most content is trivial for them, but since they bring little besides a meatshield to the dance, they aren't really needed.  Statesman's proposed changes to tanker damage output may help this, but I believe they're still a ways out there, timewise. Additionally, they won't change the fact that scrappers can still tank most things a group will typically run across.

[jpark]

I think the posts above do a good job of clarifying things - but I will put my 2 cents in again.

GoD is not a new Paradigm.  You might still need pure tanks and healers for that expansion - but that is temporary.

After a few more expansions (with more levels and gear), GoD becomes old - and while the latest expansion will need pure classes the older ones - GoD (eventually) will not.

So ya I dont really think we disagree Sable.

High end raids are fun - but not many players have the time or availability for it - so outside tanking the latest expansion - the rest of us are working through older expansions with our hybrids.

And as far as COH is concerned - yup agree - but they should just eliminate the tank then.  No point in introducing a class for which there is no real content (ditto Empathy Defender - over kill - unless I heal a blaster who wants to tank).

[Xilren's Twin]

And as far as COH is concerned - yup agree - but they should just eliminate the tank then. No point in introducing a class for which there is no real content (ditto Empathy Defender - over kill - unless I heal a blaster who wants to tank).

You know, something about that idea strikes me a fundamentally wrong.  I'll have to noodle over it but my gut reaction would be pigeonholing a class/skillset as "does X and only X" rubs me the wrong way.  Maybe thats why I like more diverse charcters, so I dont have to play the same way every time I log in.  At any rate, considering how prevalent the Tank concept is in comic lore, removing it would not be a desirable thing.  Making the archtype more fun to play, now you're talking.

Xilren