Suggestions to Make Tanks More Viable in PVP.

[Wreklus]

Recently, the developers asked for suggestions on how to make tanking more viable in PVP.

 

My main character is an immortal juggernaut who I've never put a single point in any other tree with. I know I can already have a noticeable impact on the survivability of a single player at a time, but tanking is, at it's core, about protecting the entire team. Considering this fundamental purpose of tanks, these are some suggestions for skill tree abilities for Immortal tree Sith Juggernauts and Defense tree Jedi Guardians.

 

My overall focus in conceptualizing these abilities is to reduce a tank's dependence on healers, increase the obviousness and influence of a tank in PVP and to reward tanks for gaining enemy attention.

 

 

 

Hateful Oppressor / Shining Protector

 

(PASSIVE)

 

While below [50% / 75%] health and guarding an ally, gain this status which reduces healing received by all enemies by 15% / 25% in a 20 meter radius.

 

INTENT:

 

- Dial down the futility of healer - heavy teams

 

- Generate an area in which your team will be attracted to fight in (much like the opposite of a DPS AOE)

 

- Effectively mark the tank as the frontline of combat and establish a natural flow of enemies around them (low hp moving away to gain better heals, high hp moving toward to kill the source of debuff)

 

- Rally allies around the tank (which is often a serious issue outside of the opening grand melee at mid)

 

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Monolithic Terror / Towering Hope

 

(PASSIVE)

 

Accumulating, defending against, absorbing and mitigating damage equal to or more than your max HP in a single life adds a [5% / 10%] damage and heal debuff to all targets you deal damage to. Lasts 10 seconds.

 

INTENT:

 

- A tank SHOULD be taking lots of damage and focused fire. This ability rewards doing so.

 

- Make a tank's focused damage have a bigger impact on an enemy without risking over powered damage.

 

- Reward allies for keeping their tank alive while simultaneously rewarding tanks for attacking key enemy players.

 

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Building Hatred / Gaining Momentum

 

(PASSIVE)

 

Sheild and Absorbtion increased by [.5% / 1%] for each time you take damage. Lasts 30 seconds. Stacks 20 times. Healing cancels this effect.

 

INTENT:

 

- Reward tanks for gaining enemy attention.

 

- Increase survivability without a healer present.

 

- Reduce the need to retreat from intense combat to find a healer or wait for combat status to time out in order to self-heal.

 

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Oppressing Overlord / Beacon of Hope

 

(PASSIVE)

 

Allies who attack a target suffering from one of your debuffs gain an additional 10% armor and defense. Stacks 5 times. Lasts 30 seconds.

 

INTENT:

 

- Reward allies for following their tank's lead.

 

- Encourage enemies to focus fire and kill tanks quickly.

 

- Make tanks more desirable in PVP.

 

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Smell Fear / Sense Evil

 

(ACTIVATED)

 

Activating this ability increases your stealth detection by 45 for 30 seconds. Cooldown: 45s.

 

INTENT:

 

- Close the gap between stealthie opening damage and tank survivability

 

- Encourage teammates to rally behind their tank.

 

- Enable tanks to defend a location solo more effectively.

 

- Offset the frustration of simply being repeatedly stunned by stealthed opponents while defending a location solo.

 

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Malevolent Estate / Bequeath Justice

 

(ACTIVATED)

 

Lasts 20 seconds. Cooldown 30 seconds.

 

Upon your death, allies within 40 meters gain this status which increases armor, defense, internal and elemental ratings by 20% and increases crit and surge ratings by 5%. Status lasts 20 seconds. Stacks and refreshes if multiple allied tanks die before status ends.

 

INTENT:

 

- Encourage tanks to stay on the front line of combat and continue gaining enemy attention while taking damage.

 

- Make sacrificing yourself for the greater good actually benefit your allies.

[Adovir]

All really *********** cool ideas is just my opinion I think we should spread it out over all the tank classes not just the juggernaut Because if we did something like this for every single tank on my God you *********** imagine PVP it would be kind of a pain in the *** Though it would be nice to see tanks actually a serious threat and all that is just you don't want to make him who powerful

[JouerTue]

immortals are already pretty viable..

[Wreklus]

All really *********** cool ideas is just my opinion I think we should spread it out over all the tank classes not just the juggernaut Because if we did something like this for every single tank on my God you *********** imagine PVP it would be kind of a pain in the *** Though it would be nice to see tanks actually a serious threat and all that is just you don't want to make him who powerful

 

I'm glad I've inspired at least one person for the possibility of true tanking in PVP.

I think it would be better to have different, but equally beneficial abilities for the other tank classes. I haven't played any other tank class, though. I would really like for someone who has a lot of experience as the other classes to come up with simple mechanics for new abilities which are similarly team-bolstering.

 

 

immortals are already pretty viable..

 

As I stated in my introduction,

A Sith or Jedi tank can influence the survivability of ONE ally at a time (or several whenever AOE threat cools down.... that cooldown is WAY too long, by the way). Simply put, guard often leads to the tank taking shocking amounts of shared damage which can't be defended against and the threat abilities have GIGANTIC cooldowns. Also, often times it feels as if my Immortal Jugg is just not appreciated by the team in PVP. I would like to see a team celebrate having a tank on their side as much as they would, say, complain about not having a healer.

In a universe full of heals and deeps, PVP tanks are very rare in the first place and when we are present, we often find ourselves trying futilely to steer focus fire toward objectives.

 

I am suggesting some ideas to make tanking more satisfying, less desperate and more appreciated without simply amplifying their DPS or (I assume accidentally, due to the nerf...) giving DPS Juggs / Guards an OP heal which can be activated a silly number of times in a single life.

Edited June 20, 2014 by Wreklus

[Recamier]

I haven't played my Jugg in about a year, but I am currently playing a Shieldtech PT. My suggestions are pretty basic.

 

1) Tanks could hit a little harder. The 36 point talent should add "converts xx% of endurance to power".( I'm not sure how this would effect PvE. )

 

2) Allow any damage source from another player to be shielded, or have crits from other player automatically reduced by your absorb %. (The 2nd option is if it takes too much work to change the way the game roles for crits & shields.)

 

3) Remove +Def from PvP gear and just let tanks stack end/shield/absorb. ....or just give me an shield/absorb earpiece.

 

 

Those changes don't seem too drastic. Although, #2 might be difficult to implement.

Edited June 20, 2014 by Recamier

[Wreklus]

I haven't played my Jugg in about a year, but I am currently playing a Shieldtech PT. My suggestions are pretty basic.

 

1) Tanks could hit a little harder. The 36 point talent should add "converts xx% of endurance to power".( I'm not sure how this would effect PvE. )

 

2) Allow any damage source from another player to be shielded, or have crits from other player automatically reduced by your absorb %. (The 2nd option is if it takes too much work to change the way the game roles for crits & shields.)

 

3) Remove +Def from PvP gear and just let tanks stack end/shield/absorb. ....or just give me an shield/absorb earpiece.

 

 

Those changes don't seem too drastic. Although, #2 might be difficult to implement.

 

Those don't seem like too much to ask for, however increasing a tank's DPS should be used to balance damage and not to improve tanking mechanics in PVP.

The second option seems more like a complaint about overall survivability, which I addressed in my intro and through suggested abilities. With that in mind, if PT had a list of separate abilities something like that could definitely be one of them.

The third option would simply reduce the survivability of non tank spec players considerably and bring about a problem this game had early on; dying way too fast in PVP.

 

I don't mean to poke holes in your suggestions, the overall issues you are trying to resolve are legitimate complaints. The reason I point out these flaws is to emphasize the need for tank tree specific abilities to make tanking more important to the overall team in PVP. What you are suggesting would simply improve your personal survivability, which is not what the thread is about.

[nickicn]

Just a quick little suggestion that won't cause any imbalance, but might make tanks more appreciated; add protection flytext, maybe in blue. This flytext would show up whenever damage is redirected/mitigated by the tank (or dps for that matter). This would make it easier to see in combat the effect tanks are having, the way you can with heals or dps. This would show the tank's allies how they're being protected, and it would show the enemy dps where all their damage is going, and would likely make tanks appear more intimidating from a purely psychological standpoint, kind of the way seeing a huge crit hit you in the flytext makes you wince, seeing half your damage go to waste (in blue text) would likely have people gritting their teeth.

[Petnil]

Personly i would like the pvp effect of guard to be removed. Instead add ways of protecting team members in our tank tree. For vanguard ex.

 

Graple ally and transfer ½ your current health to him whil and shielding both for 25 % of current hp.

 

Charge to an ally and share his damage taken for 5 sec.

 

Smokebomb, Cloud the area for ranged attacks and heals. (both friendly and unfriendly attacks/heals)

 

Overcharge shield ally. Shields an ally and reduce his damage taken by 50% 5-10 sec.

 

Shieldbomb. Shield an area to reduce damage taken by Allies by 20 % 15 sec. reduce damage done by enemies effected by the shieldbomb by 10 %

 

Summon koltotank. Summons a koltotank with 50k hp that heals Allies when they channel it. Should be a very powerfull heal, but you need to channel on the koltotank and the koltotank can be killed fairly easy.

 

 

Then guardian tanks could be based more on debuffing enemies like i see most of OP's suggestiont. Assasin might be a bit of a mix. I'm thinking maybe some clever use of portal ally could be fun/usefull.

 

Ofc. balancing would be a nightmare :/

[Recamier]

Those don't seem like too much to ask for, however increasing a tank's DPS should be used to balance damage and not to improve tanking mechanics in PVP.

The second option seems more like a complaint about overall survivability, which I addressed in my intro and through suggested abilities. With that in mind, if PT had a list of separate abilities something like that could definitely be one of them.

The third option would simply reduce the survivability of non tank spec players considerably and bring about a problem this game had early on; dying way too fast in PVP.

 

I don't mean to poke holes in your suggestions, the overall issues you are trying to resolve are legitimate complaints. The reason I point out these flaws is to emphasize the need for tank tree specific abilities to make tanking more important to the overall team in PVP. What you are suggesting would simply improve your personal survivability, which is not what the thread is about.

 

I think we miss-communicated on #3. I'm talking abut the +def secondary stat that is only on tank gear. It is pretty useless right now since there. Are so many attacks that it doesn't work against. It is clearly a pave only stat at theis point. It is ok if they want to give us Def as a stat that you mix/max out of your headset, but there should at least be a shield/absorb ear for PTs & jugs then. :-)

 

The damage issue is really just a quality of life thing, but taking damage is what tanks do. I think #2 is a much. Healers protect their teammates too. I don't really view that as the tanks primary role. Tanks should be about taking damage first and protecting teammates second. Running the huttball and guarding nodes are perfect examples where tanks can shine if we are given the ability to take damage in pvp the same way we take it in pve. I think this goes hand-in-hand with not relaying on healers so much though.

 

Right now, it is mostly about guard swapping and hoping a healer picks up on the fact they you are tanking is pays extra attention to you. That is sort of lame, but TBH, I don't see Broward doing a huge overhaul of tank abilities in order to balance us in pvp. I think it is better to focus on asking for small things that don't throw too much work on the revs.

 

But yeah, we really need to be looked at in general.

[Wreklus]

Just a quick little suggestion that won't cause any imbalance, but might make tanks more appreciated; add protection flytext, maybe in blue. This flytext would show up whenever damage is redirected/mitigated by the tank (or dps for that matter). This would make it easier to see in combat the effect tanks are having, the way you can with heals or dps. This would show the tank's allies how they're being protected, and it would show the enemy dps where all their damage is going, and would likely make tanks appear more intimidating from a purely psychological standpoint, kind of the way seeing a huge crit hit you in the flytext makes you wince, seeing half your damage go to waste (in blue text) would likely have people gritting their teeth.

 

I agree 100% with this suggestion. Now that you've put it into words, it seems like an obvious simple step in the right direction.

 

 

 

Personly i would like the pvp effect of guard to be removed. Instead add ways of protecting team members in our tank tree. For vanguard ex.

 

Graple ally and transfer ½ your current health to him whil and shielding both for 25 % of current hp.

 

Charge to an ally and share his damage taken for 5 sec.

 

Smokebomb, Cloud the area for ranged attacks and heals. (both friendly and unfriendly attacks/heals)

 

Overcharge shield ally. Shields an ally and reduce his damage taken by 50% 5-10 sec.

 

Shieldbomb. Shield an area to reduce damage taken by Allies by 20 % 15 sec. reduce damage done by enemies effected by the shieldbomb by 10 %

 

Summon koltotank. Summons a koltotank with 50k hp that heals Allies when they channel it. Should be a very powerfull heal, but you need to channel on the koltotank and the koltotank can be killed fairly easy.

 

 

Then guardian tanks could be based more on debuffing enemies like i see most of OP's suggestiont. Assasin might be a bit of a mix. I'm thinking maybe some clever use of portal ally could be fun/usefull.

 

Ofc. balancing would be a nightmare :/

 

I like the guard ability for the most part on my Jugg tank. As for PT / Vangaurd, it would be interesting to see them use more technology than just a shield generator and missiles. Thanks for the input!

 

 

I think we miss-communicated on #3. I'm talking abut the +def secondary stat that is only on tank gear. It is pretty useless right now since there. Are so many attacks that it doesn't work against. It is clearly a pave only stat at theis point. It is ok if they want to give us Def as a stat that you mix/max out of your headset, but there should at least be a shield/absorb ear for PTs & jugs then. :-)

 

The damage issue is really just a quality of life thing, but taking damage is what tanks do. I think #2 is a much. Healers protect their teammates too. I don't really view that as the tanks primary role. Tanks should be about taking damage first and protecting teammates second. Running the huttball and guarding nodes are perfect examples where tanks can shine if we are given the ability to take damage in pvp the same way we take it in pve. I think this goes hand-in-hand with not relaying on healers so much though.

 

Right now, it is mostly about guard swapping and hoping a healer picks up on the fact they you are tanking is pays extra attention to you. That is sort of lame, but TBH, I don't see Broward doing a huge overhaul of tank abilities in order to balance us in pvp. I think it is better to focus on asking for small things that don't throw too much work on the revs.

 

But yeah, we really need to be looked at in general.

 

Oh, I see. I'm not sure I agree with the opinion that defense rating is useless, dodging the hell out of ranged and melee attacks is pretty satisfying to me. I agree that it would be nice for it to be replaced with sheild chance and absorb, OR that DEF would increase resist chance all the way up to, possibly even, I'm thinking maybe, OCCASIONALLY!!!!! or even once in 10,000.

 

 

Thanks for all the input, homies. Keep it coming!

My hope is that the Devs see this thread and are at least inspired to consider expanding tanking influence in PVP, if not pick out the best bits and implement them.

 

So far, we've got some general mechanics ideas (which are always beneficial to discuss), we've got some jugg / gaurdian suggestions, and some PT / Vanguard ideas.

If an assassin / shadow would throw in some skill ideas, that would be greatly appreciated!

 

I'd just like to re-emphasize that the goal is to make suggestions for helping tanks become more influential and desirable in PVP. As long as input is geared toward that end, ANY opinion or suggestion is welcome and encouraged!!