This is really something we need back into the game. Off tanking being real role of real off tanking (not just 2ndary tanking).Quote:
Originally Posted by Wolf2x
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This is really something we need back into the game. Off tanking being real role of real off tanking (not just 2ndary tanking).Quote:
Originally Posted by Wolf2x
Not only am I aware of your concerns, I will admit to having intentionally caused them in this particular case. ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Decrepify
As I noted, I didn't expect this to be the most popular of the changes I was making, because it does indeed make tanking larger encounters more difficult. It may be impossible to solo tank certain pulls in the game now. Frankly, I very much hope that is the case.
That kind of tension and risk creates more roles for other classes and builds, such as off tanks, CC builds, or even hardened DPS builds that can handle some incoming damage while they burn down a couple mobs on the side.
That's the goal at any rate. If it doesn't play out well I'll certainly revisit the issue.
- Vastin
Thank you for being brave enough to steer in this direction. And thank you for being open about the thought process behind the changes. Getting to the end state will not be a matter of a few simple adjustments. It is reassuring that someone will be keeping an eye on how things work out and make adjustments if needed along the way. To me (and I'm sure others) many of these changes feel like a return to classic LOTRO group mechanics.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vastin
To get back to classic LOTRO group mechanics will require changes to both the games design (being done with the classes starting now) and the way the players operate those classes. Right now too much group content is handled with the over-simplistic recipe of:
- Tank spams force taunts.
- Healer spams AOE heals
- DPS set on AOE
- blend
The players will have to modify this strategy. And I think this will be good for the game. Tank forums will again be offering advise about cycling through targets. Healers will again be talking about healing too soon and how AOE heals draw aggro. DPS class forums will again be talking about not using your big hits right away, stay on the assist target holding aggro on the tank is 1/2 the tanks job and 1/2 the DPSers job. Everyone will have the secondary job of protecting the healer. All these things about the early days of LOTRO group mechanics made the instances more fun.
It will take some work from both the devs and players to get there. I'm very encouraged to see the desired end goal. Thanks for sharing it with us!
With these changes, the group game doesn´t get better ...
Tanks can´t hold enough targets, champs who kill themselves even more and are later completely excluded from raids because aoe is not possible and his melee single target dmg is too bad.
For this you will need 2 CC classes for each Add group.
And if only the smallest thing goes awry, there's a wipe by Add groups that were designed to be blown away from the start.
It was sufficiently said in the beta to Abyss that the Add groups need better mechanics.
At that time you did not want to hear now the bad guard gets nerved because everything is so easy .....
Apart from that, the tanking doesn´t get better, you simply can not hold so many targets anymore .... The complete system has to be redesigned.
And many players want the pre HD tank system back, simply because it was not just about dmg or right timing of one skill.
With HD, emergency skills and selfheals have been given away to everyone.
Totally covered healing skills and rezzes.
In order to bring even more challenging content, dmg spikes were introduced that some tank classes can´t stand.
And now, as the first thing, the guard gets nerved. Because he still has so many Trait lines, which are RAID-capable .....
Frankly its unwise to implement this change to one tank class without implementing the changes to every tanking class at the same time with the same desired goals in mind which is apparently not the case of the dev reworking champion blue line. Champion blue line hits 8-13 targets with just about every skill. Captains have a 6 target 15 second cooldown taunt. Warden aoe taunt doesn't have the long cooldown. Hardened dps don't exist, they end up dead quickly or do too poor dps that they aren't a dps anymore that is just the way it is.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vastin
Yes there needs to be changes to taunt tanking, but those changes need to be thought out fully and tested fully before being put into the game unlike now where they are an afterthought to your work on redline. You fully admitted you have no clue that your damage to keep threat theory is even plausible earlier in this thread yet you want to just throw it to live. Your desired goals will fail since nothing has been tested properly and adjusted. Throwing them in and then promising you'll look at them is poor development. How long will it take you to correct the problem? Months? I'll bet a lot of cash it wont be days like it should be.
The kind of tension you're going to create is a bunch of guardian main players who are pissed off at you and more than a few who will just stop playing because this careless method keeps repeating with developers and designers.
In other words, he thinks we are smart enough to deal with it and adjust. Its actually a complement and a challenge all wrapped into one.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vastin
Since Challenge is such an important skill in gaining aggro for Guardians, by nerfing it you will make us unable to do our job as tanks.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vastin
Unless you give us another similar skill to complement the new weakened challenge, you will have guardians complaining until it's fixed.
Guardians will be excluded from raids because they will be seen as a broken class that can't hold aggro.
Guardians will be practically useless in 3 and 6 mans where there are lots of adds.
The improved DPS in red line is most welcome and sorely needed, but nerfing challenge, which is a tanking skill, should not be done.
We don't yet know the extent of our nerfs so it remains to be seen if we'll have a Guardian and Captain tank, Warden and Captain tank, Champion and Captain tank, or Captain and Captain tank, because based on their defensive buffs think you need a captain and raiders will gravitate to whatever works best. I don't know what "hardened dps" refers to, but no, a DPSing Champion will be flattened in most pulls if they get aggro and even if they don't, there's nothing hard about it, and mechanics are generally hostile to them and all melee. With these changes a shield-equipped Guardian could do "some" dps and maybe off-tanking and avoid death.... don't know, but that's been my secret wish for a long time.
But I wonder if SSG has people who are experts in their classes get together and do complete runs of Abyss with proposed changes. To me it looks like this old engineer meme: https://i.imgur.com/MuGGR4l.jpg
I am still trying not to respond to people directly.
Wouldn't Overwhelm be a better candidate for either a mitigation bypass or an armour rend? Currently Red Guardian and Red Champion will be the only dps specializations in the game with no access to either of those options in the base class or tree itself (champs get a modest physical mit debuff from the horn legacy if they carry it and Red guards would have to invest down to the final row of Yellow for Singular Focus). Even a 10% physical mitigation bypass with a short duration would be good for a solid 25% increase in damage on most mobs while not being as prone to massive increases in effectiveness when a guard does have access to other classes' mitigation debuffs.
this!Quote:
Originally Posted by siipperi
Quote:
Maintaining both the imbued/non-imbued LI systems is quite time consuming, and the data structure behind the older LI's is EXTREMELY cumbersome and difficult to work with. Thus we're trying to gradually move to a position were we'll eventually be able to shift everyone over to the 'imbued' version and effectively phase out the old system without causing anyone too much anguish.
-Vastin
Vastin, can you clarify this statement please.
I'm trying not to jump to conclusions, but are you saying that there are plans to dump the old LI system and have LI's that will level with us from the time that we get them ?
Making guard aggro more difficult would definitely make it more fun to tank on guard considering it's essentially impossible to lose aggro on guard if you have any idea of how threat copy works. It would be nice seeing there be a more noticeable difference in between guards who are able to generate threat well and those who merely use challenge and go afk.
In order for tanking to be challenging and interesting again the whole underlying mechanic needs to be reworked. Even if challenge is reduced to affect 5 targets but no change is made to actual threat generation, you will still have the same pattern of fighting only with fewer mobs. Go in hit War chant, hit a few shield skills until the appropriate time for challenge and that's it. No true change made.Quote:
Originally Posted by dselden
But anyways, I'm really looking forward to see how these changes will affect tanking. I also won't reinforce the notion that people will quit their class. We have adjusted to far worse things as a community.
Thanks again for all your effort, irrespective how it pans out. I appreciate the work being done and hope we end up with better classes for everyone.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vastin
I think it was the right call.Quote:
- Put knockdown back on Brutal Charge.
Is that temporary or will it stay generic?Quote:
- Prey on the Weak now procs addt'l damage when any skill crits against a target with Slashing Wound. (Unfortunately these show up in parses as some kind of totally generic damage?)
PTR is down, will have to check out the numbers when it's up again.Quote:
- Greatly increased general Guardian instant skill damage (varies by skill)
Interesting change, I tried Overpower plus all the traits and legacies during build #2 and didn't like the numbers so just cut it out completely, I will have to see if it's worth using with the changes. A lot depends on the balance between strike damage vs bleed damage.Quote:
- Overpower converts Deep Wound to Terrible Wound (higher intensity bleed, stacks with deep wound)
I think only Thrust had a long duration bleed, have to also consider that bleeds, without Bleed them Dry the Broad Strokes and Haemorrhage bleeds are quite short. I think it is good to have short, punchy bleeds for Guardian, as the abilities when used again only refresh the bleed, so long bleeds don't really add much to shorter fights or what are shorter rotations.Quote:
- Modestly decreased base bleed damage and LI Bleed bonus.
- Added bleed damage bonus to deeper wounds - affects Deep Wound and Terrible Wound.
- Reduced base bleed duration of some bleeds slightly.
I don't think this is a big deal for organised raids, as these raids are generally disciplined, will have a second tank, will have CC that actually have CC abilities on their bars (you would be surprised the number of LM and Burgs that don't know how to use their abilities). I think there will be fewer guards who will be willing to tank if agro management is much harder or intended for more than one tank.Quote:
- Reduced AoE Targets on Challenge, and increased its cooldown.
- Non imbued AoE Target legacy updated to match imbued AoE DPS legacy (grants additional dmg rather than targets).
- Increased number of base targets on several Guardian AoE Skills.
When I see people asking for hour after hour for a tank or healer on world chat, I go and help them out... it can be scary out there in pug-land. You do find some very capable people at times, but there are a lot of people who aren't very good at this game.
I just feel the focus is towards a portion of the community that is a significant minority and I don't think any mechanical changes you make will make raid content more than a bump on the road for raid kins. I know most of the feedback comes from raiders, I just don't live in a raider bubble so I think it would be negligent if my feedback didn't express what I think will be the outcome of changes.
I think the minstrel changes in particular will create a shortfall of lower end healers and I think making it more challenging for guardians to hold agro against psychotic pug groups will create a shortfall of tanks, that will leave a lot of lower end dps that will be unable to do some of the content like FI raids, etc. The raiding guilds will be fine, irrespective of what changes you make.
Self produced aggro is probably going to be a bit smaller for raid guardians who use abyss tactical relics but we couldn't really produce our own threat with non threat skills + stealing aggro from other players anyway so nothing really changing there.
I just hope they consider looking at big chunks of the classes at some point at one go. Look at tanking classes, look at healers, etc and determine what should be amount of aggro produced by normal skills to how much threat is done by copying aggro from other players.
At the moment formula is pretty much -> do initial aggro with warchant (and similar skills on other classes). Use fray the edge on RAT's target. Few AoE skills in -> taunt with challenge. That is simply the formula. Taunting too early -> can't hold aggro or regain it before cooldown on challenge is off. Taunting on right time -> doesn't lose aggro no matter what you do after (use skills or not).
So they really need to look into multiplier or forced taunts. 8-9x it currently has on guardian is clearly too big. In ideal world with them not wanting to steer away from taunt focused tanking they should explore possibilities of lowering it while compensating that with increasing threat multiplier of normal skills and even seeing taking few old school real tanking skills and give them a bit higher multiplier than rest of the skills.
Imo taunts should have just ~1.xx multiplier on threat, while normal skills would have like 4-5x threat multiplier and selected few "real aggro skills" would have 6-8x multiplier.
In such situation skills like warchant that hits only like 4k (more with unreliable crit) in tank build would produce 24-32k threat as non critical skill. On critical, 10-12k, 60-90k+ threat. I hope they this under the microscope at some point. While most games have steered towards taunt heavy gameplay it doesn't mean that we should have totally irrelevant rotational threat skills as tanks. Those should matter way more than forced taunt.
Sure have that lost battle of copy aggro from leading aggro maker but at least reduce magnitude of that to levels that you can't just taunt over and over again till you hit 80-85% mark on the fight and can go afk and character does not lose the aggro.
I agree with what you said , but after thinking this through , i am still really worried about the cooldown boost on challenge.Quote:
Originally Posted by siipperi
This is obviously mostly about trash pulls since no raid fight in abyss should be any different.
I don't know what the new Challenge numbers are , but it's fair to say we are expecting something like 8-10 targets while blue traited and 45-60 seconds cooldown , so i am discussing based on that guess , any more nerfs on the targets and any more boost on cooldown than the above would be madness.
Thing is , we are too used to 30 seconds challenge to imagine what happens without it.
Basically since the mordor stat scaling and because of the lack of champs , challenge doesn't build decent AoE threat on initial pulling no matter how well you time it.
You delay it as much as you can , and what you gain is minimal initial RK aoe , maybe some hunter aoe and some minstrel heal aggro. That's it , am i missing something ?
But since the cooldown on live is 30 seconds , the above is enough to keep the mobs glued until the next challenge locks them for good.
I honestly believe that will change.
Now 2 easy mode workarounds would be :
1)Taking 1 champ and going with horn like pre-mordor. Problem is i am 100% certain the number of taunt targets won't be enough any more on pulls like devoted / watcher etc. And let's face it , there is no way you can hold aggro off him without challenge. Losing aggro on around 3+ targets is a fast RIP , heavy armour or not.
Also , champ is way too messy for CC. At best , you can throw the CC first , then guardian pulls the mobs further back , then a quick horn so all the damage is done outside CC range. Still messy , until the mobs are pulled , they can throw ranged or aoe attacks or go for a healer or spread out and miss the horn etc.It basically needs training all over again.
2)No champ and focus more on CC and only leave the number of challenge targets unmessed. My question is , how the heck are you going to maintain aggro with larger cd on challenge on NON focused and NON messed targets?
I honestly don't see it happening anymore , no matter how much you delay , not all mobs will have the same aggro numbers , and they are going to run off you before the next challenge is back.
A 'tougher' workaround is what Vastin has envisioned , using 2 tanks.
The thing that he probably hasn't considered , is that AoE taunts land on more or less random targets when stacked. It won't be easy to share the load. The most smooth approach , is 1 tank does the single target raid assist target job while the other does the AoE. Guess which job guardian will do ^^
And know comes the final workaround which in my eyes is the most likely to happen.
Drop the guardian alltogether , use warden with captain bubble and change nothing when it comes to trash pull tactics.
I'll be surprised if i am wrong on this one.
That's why all tank classes should have their aggro skills tweeked TOGETHER , or just rework the aggro mechanics -_-
PS1. Without tactical runes shield smash loses any decent threat assistance that it currently provides on live. The stun it does is basically more valuable than the damage.
PS2. Since we might need the stun mentioned above to delay challenge , perhaps slightly higher finesse builds would be nice to consider.
Here's where CC starts :eek:Quote:
Originally Posted by BotLike
2nd tank comes in. Considering tanking mechanics are still same, you can do just similar how we used to do in Throne sometimes, first guardian builds aggro on huge trash pulls, and 2nd guardian takes over with fresh cooldowns and significantly stronger aggro. When other guard is running out of cooldowns, swap aggro. Or you can do it with captain. No problems. Anyway, I see no reason why groups wouldn't use more champs in future. They are already extremely good on 2-3 boss trash pulls and only really bad ones on maggot pulls, you just have to have DNF on them lol. And CC as said above. Many groups under utilize CC atm. For example we do maggot pulls by CCing all enraged nurnoth in about 5 seconds, after that there's just 3 targets to fight against, smooth as butter.Quote:
Originally Posted by BotLike
Edit, what im worried about is that wardens will be capable of solo tanking such pulls. They are quite squishy, so it might be hard to pull off (esp if raid wasn't on farm mode) but still something devs need to address if they go forward with this change like I have said before. Meme-Bears are ok to have their taunts, nobody cares about them.
Since we are talking about trash pulls here , i wouldn't call them squishy. Avoidances are still very good for trash pulls , so if a warden gets a pre-combat captain bubble for a few sec uptime and then time a defiant challenge ( similar as guard times challenge ) they got enough time for ~3 key avoidance gambit and they automatically achieve god mode. Sure , their morale taps are so-so nowadays but the mits will be boosted ( basically heavy armour with no taunt ).Quote:
Originally Posted by siipperi
It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Fact remains that if the above turns out to be true , most groups will choose 1 good tanking warden over 2 other tanks anyday. Just aoe everything with limited CC as it is today lolol.
Obviously , it won't be that simple since someone will have to tank the boss fight eventually , but with the ranged force taunt addition on warden , i don't see why the optimal group wouldn't be 1 warden + 1 yellow cappy ( that cappy will do trash on red or even yellow ). It's simply a matter of speed since as you've said raid is now on farm mode and warden/cappy tanks offer the most utility.
Considering how much minstrel heal is nerfed though , it won't stay farm mode for long , if people can still be bothered running a months old so-so raid for no new loot in the middle of summer -_- All that while expecting on a new level cap in about 3 months...
Let's see what we get on live )
I bet nothing will change in Abyss trash pulls, still 1 GRD + maybe 1 yellow captain to help with aggro management. Even with 45-60s challenge cooldown (i think it will be 45s, same as before HD).Quote:
Originally Posted by BotLike
Adding a bit of CC before using 'Challenge' to make modifier work should solve the problem.
Btw i think most of trash pulls in Abyss can be done without a tank at all, it just requires more class usage\teamplay and imagination to choose the right strategy.
But when i join a PUG and i see how 100% of DPS dies because of reflect, i understand that it looks impossible for some people. And then they come to forums and tell that -100% skill induction\1 button rotation\0s cooldowns is ok :eek:
Damn, game is hard :D
The weird bit is how well Beorning is coming out of all of this despite not receiving any changes. There's now a reasonable argument for them being the primary raid healers post Minstrel nerfs and Beornings have the strongest aggro capability of all tanks thanks to 3x AoE forced taunts with some of the shortest CD's.Quote:
Originally Posted by BotLike
I'm gonna laugh if it becomes a flavour-of-the-month class after this.
Seeing happy Beorning is priceless ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Joedangod
Vastin, how are these damage changes going to affect shield-taunt? Has its aggro value also been increased?
1 min CD on challenge is too long. Make compromise of 45s, the time it used to be back years ago if you didn't trait challenge trait.
Have talk with warden dev. How's it balanced they have 20s cooldown taunt on 10 targets. Or captain with 8 targets on 15s CD. If one class gets nerf on taunt they all need or you just create situation where other 2 classes are significantly better trash tanks than guardian.
I'm not sure I quite understand how the "Sets Chance for your Block Response skills to increase your Mitigation to 100%" part of the new Bolster is supposed to work. At rank 5, when using block response skills, I don't seem to see any new buffs or any changes to mitigations outside of Fortification stacks. Over a 3 minute fight in which Shield-Swipe, Bash, Shield-Taunt, and Shield Smash was used, no effects in accordance to this change were observed.
Is this bugged, or is there something I'm missing here?