Tank Balance Changes in Game Update 5.9

[Lorsic]

I don’t remember anyone ever saying Tanks do too much damage in PVE.

 

If I am in Tank spec and utilizing shield/absorb while skanking with DPS mods and Enhancements this tells me that the defensive abilities are pretty worthless. Maybe healers are over tuned? Maybe a lot of things. But this is a horrible fix, missing a bigger problem.

 

Skank Tanks are the problem not Tanks in Tanking gear.

 

Tanks in Tanking gear should do NO less Damage then they are doing right now. That should be the bar for damage for the Tanks right now.

 

We are getting Threat because you are taking our ability to do damage and help our raid members or warzone members. I see how this balances threat, but we only lose in this trade off and as a Tank we feel less of a class and less of a role since DPS can guard oh and taunt. Why am I playing a Tank again?

 

Make defense worth something. Defense IS worthless. The mitigation it does is laughable it’s one of the reasons Skank Tanks exist.

Stop letting critical s bypass our mitigation

Give PT Tanks more cooldows

PT/Vangurd Tanks should have Refect Utility NOT Merc/Comandos

 

These a just few suggestions.

[Kurj]

What are people going to do who currently play skanks in pvp? Will you be switching to dps specs now or continue as you are?

 

Juggs won’t need to switch. It’s a slap on the wrist. I can’t comment on sins or PTs based on experience, but it looks like they got a far larger smack down.

[RPMSKMC]

Hey folks,

 

Second, when comparing all tanks (regardless of gear) against the DPS targets we outlined last year, tanks are doing more damage than intended.

 

We are going to continue to monitor things beyond 5.9 and see if additional changes are needed.

 

-eric

 

 

 

Eric we need a little bit of clarification on this statement because it can mean two completely different things. Does it mean?

A. That all tanks regardless of if they are wearing 240+ DPS or 240+ TANK gear are doing more damage than the goal you listed at the start of 5.0?

OR

B. That all tanks regardless of if they are wearing 210 or 248 TANK gear are doing more damage than the goal you listed at the start of 5.0?

 

At first glance these statements appear to say the same thing, but they actually don't.

(Disclaimer i don't PVP nor Tank group content. In fact my tanks make up half my crafters and are only played and geared in solo content to test the theorycrafter builds so i know how to heal them better in group content.)

 

If the answer is "A" then it's a no brainer that they are doing more damage since item rating 244,246. 248 and 236 augments have been released since then. See Section 2

 

If the answer is "B" then somebody failed to add and subtract properly last year when you came up with those figures. Now i can mouse over my jugg's toolbar and see that every attack has a minimum and maximum damage listed on it. Now it should be easy to add those two different stets of numbers up and compare them individually to your target number.

 

SECTION 2 (Gearing)

 

Prior to 5.0 when you had different stats for PVP and PVE gear as well as a different mechanic for defensive stats you had a predictable path to balance things. But with 5.0's radical change to defense stat mechanics as both the theorycrafters (before you drove them away) and the PVP players in this thread have repeatably said you made defensive stats worthless in PVP and somewhat worthless in PVE. Like many problems in the past two years these issues wouldn't exist if you stuck with a system that worked and just fine tuned some tweaks to it.

 

So this massive change created two problems. Problem 1 was that your defensive stats are worthless against a good portion of the damage directed at you and from crits that can take around 20-40% of your health away. Problem 2 is that your Tanks have 10-15% LESS health than your DPS at equal gear levels. I have been told "The Second Rule of Fighting" both in real life and virtual is "The shorter the fight the less damage you take."

 

So between your radical changed to Defensive Stats, diminishing returns, and the rules of fighting your Tanks took their defensive stats (which don't work in several fights or against certain types of damage} and traded them for damage and health increasing stats (which work in ALL fights) to extend their lives to increase the odds of success of their teams in PVP and PVE . And to reward them for doing what is best for their teams you reduce their damage (in some cases greatly) instead of fixing the root of the problem.

 

And i won't even touch on the subject of you guys removing the guard ability from DPS in one expansion only to add it back in the next.

[Gowithebeat]

Some context: I never post on these forums. I'm always doing something in game, with a more PvE focus. HM/SM Raiding, Flashpoints, Story missions, sometimes even casual PvP, etc; I do it with my guild and solo and I have fun. But these kinds of changes are the ones that make me say: Why should I ever give you money? These changes are atrocious, ESPECIALLY to PT/Vanguards and Sin/Shadows. Jugg/Guardians get naught but a slap on the wrist.

 

Tell me: What would these changes accomplish? People will still find a way to skank tank. The augments you're releasing will almost assuredly help with that. Increased threat gen in return is absolutely ludicrous and honestly does nothing to help PvE. Good tanks already know how to hold threat, this isn't necessary. The damage nerf most certanly makes DPS checks in HM all that much harder. It makes tanks less satisfying. And furthermore it decreases the incentive to even roll anything other than a Jugg/Guardian!!! This doesn't make a lick of sense. At all. Honestly should these changes go through as they are or get worse when they hit live, forget this game. FF14 has my money instead.

[RACATW]

Pts / Sins needed more nerfs than juggs due to yellow / internal damage vs white damage.

[hesfalcon]

What about people leveling as tanks? Totally makes that untenable.

 

So anyone who wants to be a tank MUST get a full set of dps gear too or else they can't do half the content, i.e., heroics, solo anything, story.

 

Stupid PVP ruins it for the rest of the game AGAIN.

[MurkyDregs]

So....because PVP, you break PVE, more. Excellent. /sarc

[Kurj]

What about people leveling as tanks? Totally makes that untenable.

 

So anyone who wants to be a tank MUST get a full set of dps gear too or else they can't do half the content, i.e., heroics, solo anything, story.

 

Stupid PVP ruins it for the rest of the game AGAIN.

 

Leveling should be fine. Set a companion to DPS and you'll still roll through the content.

[Exocor]

So, first of all, I want to thank the Devs for taking time to look into those issues. I surely don't know, what ressources were available and what priority this matter had. However, i want to propose an alternative, that also can serve as an addition to the already announced changes.

 

As far as I know, your (the devs) main goal is, to force players to not use skank tank builds. I don't think, that these changes would work out in this way. I propose to alter the goal in providing an alternative for skank tanking.

 

Currently, there is an high amount of defense rating on tank gear. Especially on Mods, there is just defense rating. So, we can decide between unlettered Warding, Warding B, unlettered Lethal and Lethal B. Lethal Mods don't have defense rating but power rating. B-Mods have more endurance and less power/defense, unlettered Mods have more power/defense and less endurance.

With full-tank-equipment and unlettered Mods, we are acting deeply in diminishing-return areas - so, the stat is not as valuable as other stats would be. That forces us into taking B-Mods. However, even with Warding B-Mods, we are still in the diminishing return area. I am currently using Lethal B-Mods, and I am still inside of the diminishing return area. I am also using some non-token-tank-enhancements for my shadow tank and I am still inside of the diminishing return area. With full-tank-equip, I am ending at around 37% defense rating. With nearly 50% less defense rating, I am still at 31% defense rating.

Regarding this, I am insting on the fact, that we have way to much defense rating without any valuable alternative in our equipment. That forces us into trading one useless stat into one stat, that is not as useless as defense rating, into power.

 

My suggestion is now, to reverse the changes to warding mods made with 4.0: Reintroduce Modifications with Absorb and Shield Rating. That would clear the mess, that tank stats currently are a bit and combined with the other change I propose in the next section, would provide an alternative to skank tank gearing in PvP.

 

 

A problem mentioned by some in this thread is the use of guard by DPS-classes. My suggestion for this topic - and to use the mods mentioned above - is the following:

Change Guard, that it requires tank stats to work.

Guard now has the following effects:

The guarded target has a chance of mitigating incoming attacks. If attacks are mitigated (A), the damage can be reduced (B) and/or redirected © on the tank.

Defense Rating increases the amount of attacks affected by Guard. (A)

Absorb Rating increases the amount of damage reduced by the guarded target. (B)

Shield Rating increased the amount of damage redirected on the tank. ©

Without any stats, Guard has the following base effects:

10% chance to mitigate any attacks.

2% damage reduction.

5% damage redirection.

The maximas, that can be reached by distributing all possibly stats to one of the three options are the following:

100% chance to mitigate any attacks. (diminishing returns up from 80%)

100% damage reduction. (diminishing returns up from 50%)

100% damage redirection. (diminishing returns up from 65%)

The optimal distribution with full gear would probably be 70/25/50 with a small range to adjust these values.

(These numbers are highly speculative and not the result of any mathemtical calculation.)

 

 

With these changes, tanks in PvP have to decide, if they want to do damage with DPS-equipment, or if they want to fullfill their tanking role by having a better Guard. DPS specs do have a basic guard-abiliy, that is far from being as powerful as tank-guards.

 

 

TL;DR: Reintroduce Absorb/Shield for Modifications and Guard is affected by tank stats.

 

So, I cleary hope for a Devs feedback and I would also ask other players what do you think about this suggestion. Be aware that I am not a native english speaker, so some phrases are not as eloquent as they could probably be.

[AscendingSky]

Do you people even understand how your own game works? Now you're just going to have more PvP tanks going the skank tank route rather than wearing tank gear, because their damage as a tank will be less so they'll need all the buffs to damage they can get. Why would they switch to tank gear when that will make them hit even weaker? And Defense still means NOTHING in PvP combat. Once again, EA has a kneejerk response to PvPers screaming for nerfs, and completely misses the mark.

 

Thanks for once again crapping all over Vanguard/Powertech tanks, by the way. They were already by far the weakest tanks in PvE in terms of survivability (because for some reason you want to give all the good defensive cooldowns to DPS and heal troopers/BHs instead of the tank ones like would be fracking logical), and now you've done nothing to fix that while also making it so they won't be able to hold aggro worth a damn. Yeah, increasing that threat multiplier isn't going to do dork when the tanks can barely scratch a boss while the DPS burst all over the place.

 

Keith, you claim to play this game. You should be ashamed of yourself for presenting these changes and acting like they actually are going to fix the problem you're claiming to address. If you truly do play the game (without GM cheats), then you MUST know better.

Edited April 6, 2018 by AscendingSky

[TyrFoge]

This change is...odd. Why not just fix defense and shield stats encouraging players to wear the proper gear? Isn't the fact that shields and defense don't work correctly what made players decide to put stats into damage creating "skanks" in the first place? Or even put authorization limitations on each class for what gear they can wear. I don't see how crippling damage output on players wearing proper gear for their proper spec fixes the issue of "skanking". Doesn't it just encourage it?

[MrEndymion]

My biggest problem with this is that instead of finding a solution that aims at fixing the problems pure tanks have in PvP (the fact that every defensive stat except Endurance is completely underwhelming and borderline useless), you instead take away their ability of getting around that. Nerfing numbers isn't the answer to everything, you might consider that perhaps the reason skank tanks are a thing are because of poor design decisions regarding tank stats. Fixing bad design with bad balancing isn't going to make a balanced meta, instead, your intention to fix a PvP problem is going to have much more problems leaking into NiM raiding. Also, since Juggernauts are clearly more of a problem than the other two when it comes to the PvP meta and skank tanking, why are Assassins bearing the brunt of this nerf?

[matthobbit]

Great. Thanks for the unmitigated, obvious PvE nerf for DPS checks. No mention of increasing DPS to compensate for this.

 

It's not fair to blame PvP players for this. This is just more ham-fisted "balancing" that penalizes one player base in favor of another.

[-JE-BLAZAR-]

Thank you btw for warning us before hand what you are proposing, I do appreciate that, now we can discuss it with the all of us here on this forum. Please do that more with future topics months beforehand if you plan for small/ but mainly with major game changes.

Now to the topic...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

I also do not agree to nerf so much the damage of a Tank who has the correct gear, that he needs to suffer from someone else misusing the system.

 

It is not fun, it is simply not fair. And I am no tank player nowadays, but I must say I enjoyed it while playing it once in a while, I liked what you guys made the tank now how it feels imo with the correct gear, and I think most of us do. It feels cool to play it imo, and what you do will ruin the fun and emmersion I think for the players who want to play as a normal tank. It will suck that you are unable to kill any adds 50% less faster with that 1 attack combined with the other reductions, it does not feel fun and because of this it is a bad game change.

 

I propose something else, like this for example:

Just make it so, that once a tank wears not a shield/absorption enhancement with tank mod + tank armor in each set of gear of clothing, that then the shield does not work. That will fix I think in an easy way most of the issue with skank tanks. This is an idea what I have come up just now, but imo I find it better what the bioware team proposes here.

[kirorx]

Do you people even understand how your own game works? Now you're just going to have more PvP tanks going the skank tank route rather than wearing tank gear, because their damage as a tank will be less so they'll need all the buffs to damage they can get. Why would they switch to tank gear when that will make them hit even weaker? And Defense still means NOTHING in PvP combat. Once again, EA has a kneejerk response to PvPers screaming for nerfs, and completely misses the mark.

 

Thanks for once again crapping all over Vanguard/Powertech tanks, by the way. They were already by far the weakest tanks in PvE in terms of survivability (because for some reason you want to give all the good defensive cooldowns to DPS and heal troopers/BHs instead of the tank ones like would be fracking logical), and now you've done nothing to fix that while also making it so they won't be able to hold aggro worth a damn. Yeah, increasing that threat multiplier isn't going to do dork when the tanks can barely scratch a boss while the DPS burst all over the place.

 

Keith, you claim to play this game. You should be ashamed of yourself for presenting these changes and acting like they actually are going to fix the problem you're claiming to address. If you truly do play the game (without GM cheats), then you MUST know better.

 

Yep.

 

Chopping the tank damage in half makes normal tank builds even more useless. You will need that dps gear for tanking in pvp even more.

 

They needed to help the way that pvping In tank gear worked, this just hurts those in tank gear even more

[_Miriya_]

Then add some defenses on the PvP Set bonus for real tanks

 

Nerfing the guard would be nice too... but I guess that's not possible because PvE.

[Assasin-King]

- If you want to play a Hardmode Operation you can wait like 20+ min for a tank because Tanks are very very rare in this game... you see it by yourself the Groupfinder gives Bonus rewards for the class who is in need for the queue: Tanks! and you guys nerv them... then tanks are even more rare

 

- Hardmode and Nightmare Operations needs the Tank Damage now its more difficult to get the needed dps

 

- Tanks with tank Gear have done idk 3k dps and skank tanks 4-5k dps and now Tanks with tank Gear are doing what? like 2k dps or below? and skank tanks are going to do 3k dps? So why should i equip Tank Gear? tank Gear in PvP has zero advantage when you look at tanks with dps gear... with your changes you force us even more to skank tank

 

Why Should I as a skank tank change my equip to Tank Gear

[Loadsamonie]

The saddest thing is that Bioware CAN give us a better fix than this, it would just require a little effort on their part. But they won't do it because they're lazy bums.

[Ghost_Spectre]

Also, why do you guys not have separate PvP/PvE damage profiles for abilities and specs?

 

Because it is beyond the capabilities and expertise to do such a thing. Heck, CoH/CoV were able to do that. GW2 IIRC does too. The developers are incapable. All they know is nerf with a massive hammer without a thought.

[Bullyabass]

Yeah tank damage in PVE was totally destroying the game, good that you finally prioritized fixing this over all the other issues killing the SWTOR gaming experience

 

The fix would have been to give tanks a reason to wear tank gear in pvp, there are a dozen good suggestions for how you could have done that. What you have done is lazy and stupid.

 

Shout out to PT/VG, they have needed survivability boosts for so long its got ridiculous.

Edited April 6, 2018 by Bullyabass

[fabiyun]

Hey folks,

 

Let’s talk about the changes coming to Tanks in Game Update 5.9. There are two things that informed the changes you will find below. First, “skank tanks” are greatly overperforming in PvP. This is a player who is using a Tank Discipline but equipping DPS gear. Second, when comparing all tanks (regardless of gear) against the DPS targets we outlined last year, tanks are doing more damage than intended.

 

The summary of what we are changing in 5.9 is that tanks across the board will be doing less damage. To ensure that this doesn’t have a negative impact on their ability to tank/hold threat, we are greatly increasing their overall threat generation. This will mean that although they will commit less damage to an encounter, holding threat will not be any more difficult than it is today.

 

We are going to continue to monitor things beyond 5.9 and see if additional changes are needed.

 

*snip*

 

Thanks for offering some insight into the decision to make these changes. As I understand what you've written, the problem is that on your list of dps targets all tanks regardless of gear are overperforming in both PVE and PVP. This is why you will be decreasing damage across the board. To compensate the loss of threat you will increase tanks' threat generation. Then there is the problem of skank tanks equipping dps gear when they shouldn't and thus per your words are 'greatly overperforming' in PVP. I don't see any specific change that addresses tanks equipping the wrong gear or stats and thus overperforming in PVP.

 

I understand that big changes like changes to the overall meta are not done in any .x update but are reserved for a big game update. As such there will not be any changes to how the classes or stats fundamentally perform and for now little more will be done than tweaking the numbers to come to the targets that you had set out for the last big game update.

 

Taking the above into account I do have some questions:

- Are you decreasing the dps output of tanks more than would be proportionate to meet your dps targets in order to address skanks overperforming in PVP?

- Are the changes to address the tanks equipping dps gear in PVP still coming? As there seems to not be any specific action taken against those, current actions tweak dps numbers for tanks in both PVE and PVP.

- Are operation bosses scaled to the targets you have set before the previous large game update or to how classes are currently performing?

- Is the above going to lead to you tweaking the operations?

(After all the damage is being significantly altered, and tanks have functions in operations beyond holding aggro, sometimes they are required to take on a group of adds by themselves, which may now no longer be possible).

 

Personally, I would ask you to reconsider these changes. They do not make dps gear any less attractive for tanks in PVP, they may make it more attractive as you are decreasing tank dps output while not changing the advantage of defensive stats. Those changes to stats may be reserved for the big game update, but as these coming changes do not deter tanks from equipping dps gear in PVP and greatly affect the damage and roles tanks can play in PVE, I would argue you will be breaking more than fixing. The decrease in dps output of tanks is going to affect PVE in operations, flashpoints and uprisings, story chapters, levelling and others.

[Glocko]

It has become quite clear over the past 2 years that they only want snipers, Mercs, and marauders to be viable DPS. And the latest changes verify that. What has been top tier for the past 18 months..... Based on all the changes what are your guesses as to what will be top tier for the next 12 months..... They are at the point to where they aren’t even attempting to hide their bias.... This is a really sad attempt to fix an issue. All the tanks have geared to max dps because the devs have completely failed at tank defensives/threat generation combined withe the under performing DPS specs of the classes, so let’s fix the problem by reducing their DPS without addressing any of the underlying issues. There were so many great suggestions from many different people on how this could have been addressed but of course the community was completely ignored. Same on new augments.....90% of the community are against it... the result the devs make it a priority. This has always been the prime reason for this MMOs shortcomings.. they seem to hear our concerns and eventually address an issue but don’t consider any of the recommendations from the community and we end up with more issues that the community had foreseen. Just bizarre, unexplainable Edited April 6, 2018 by Glocko

[DragoshNashu]

As a PVE Tank main since launch I think I speak for all of us when I say, ARE YOU GUYS ON CRACK?

 

Simplest fix to skank tanking - Add in a bolster that any tank specs with stats other then Tank ones get converted. Mastery above 6k becomes defense, alacrity becomes shield and crit becomes absorption. Make power a static 2k and don't allow anyone to queue if they don't have the proper offhand on. Gg Ez. People can try to skank but it won't work. It also doesn't force them to regear either.

 

You guys either are purposely trying to kill this game or are just stupid. Honestly.

 

Another thing, no one wants new augments! Literally no one. They aren't needed. If you really want a way to uninflate the market think up something clever like idk...here's 3 ideas off the top of my head.

1. Make cartel coins purchasable with credits for a limited time.

2. Make a casino/have a weekly or monthly raffle of some cartel items.

3. Allow people to pay credits to have a live chat with a Dev about *** is going on with this game

 

If you guys want to fix this game get your **** together. Make ranked seasons 2 Months long with a 2 week downtime inbetween. Have a weekly world boss that is buffed to require 16 to 24 players and gives better rewards. Make an incentive for open world pvp like - a weekly for killing 25 people in open world pvp.

 

GET YOUR SITH TOGETHER.

 

Pretty ... much ... this ...

[Liquor]

Leave it to BW Devs to stay the course and ignore community feedback on tanks.

Hurt PvE by reducing damage and push true tanks further away from PvP with these changes.

 

10 pages of WTH!!??!

 

It's quite comedic but expected.

 

.

 

I was really hoping to see guard removed from DPS specs and defense, shield, and absorb actually count for something, especially in PvP

Edited April 6, 2018 by Liquor

[Azerdayne]

I don't reply on the forums much, but this change ... wow. It's obviously terrible to anyone that does ranked PvP and MM Ops, because it incentives dps gear on tanks and creates a DPS deficit in raids without offering any acknowledgement of the issue or plan to solve it. This change will solve nothing, and it will make other things worse.

 

Devs, you guys must realize this is going to make DPS targets on HM & MM OPs significantly harder. Are the augments really going to make up the difference? Are Nim Crystals supposed to be mandatory? Is this going to allow a gear/level increase with 6.0 without any changes to the Ops bosses?

 

What are you thinking? And what are you really trying to do here to the Meta? What is your take on TTK in PvP and how have you taken it into consideration? Tell us that you are aware (of course? right?) of how the damage nerf to PvE tanks will impact PvE content, and what are you doing to compensate the loss?

 

Come on guys. Me and some of my friends just started getting back into the game these last few months after a year away, and we are excited for 5.9+ & 6.0

 

Do better. We all know you can, and we all want this game to succeed, which is why this kind of illogical, poorly/narrowly explained change is so frustrating. :(:(