Captain tanking needs a nerf!

[Kotal]

I really hate calling for nerfs on any class actually, since in the past nerfs were often either pointless (e.g. that one time early on this year when a few lightning rk skills and a few burg skills got a damage nerf - before the fate bug got fixed... anyone remember that? lol) or way overtuned completely breaking a skill or even an entire trait line (RIP hammer down, execute and rk dps).
When lightning rks were dps meta earlier this year they were just overtuned in dps and had more utility than hunter and champ, that combined with a trivial rotation made them just stupidly strong for basically no effort at all.
But Captain tanking is broken in a completely different way. They have a massive morale pool paired with a huge amount of passive or easily maintainable active incoming healing (without need to invest into it at all), they have very reliable and easy to maintain self buffs (battle hardened, sure strike, pet) that add up to a large amount of damage reduction and they have a large amount of reliable cool downs that either have a high uptime (fighting withdrawal and to arms mainly) or longer ones that pretty much guarantee you to survive in pretty much any situaltion (SoD and last stand). additionally you can choose to combine in harms way with either to arms (ST boss fights mainly) for even more damage reduction, or with last stand (in fights with big aoe hits that can oneshot other group/raid members) to negate the drawback that you take the damage others take. plus they have an in combat rez that you went out of your way for to make unavailable for beorning tanks.

And that's only considering the yellow line traits on their own. captains get even far stronger if you trait into either red or blue - depending on the situation. traiting into red significantly buffs the entire groups dps and can let you maintain the red banner 100% of the time with a red captain in the group (which every raid group has) without sacrificing a dps spot. if you trait into blue on the other hand, your in combet rez will lose the induction and gain an additional target. additionally you will be able to maintain ~15-20k hps on each group member without effort, removing the need for healers in most 3-6 man content.

compare this to any other tanking line in the game (which btw makes up half of the roster of classes, yet only one works well atm), they are all squishier and have far less utility as tanks. even the arguably second best option, namely guardian, does not come close to captains, even tho tanking is the only thing they are designed for. guardians are theoretically speaking in a better spot than they actually are (that spot still being worse than captains tho). but the fact that 2/3 cooldowns are just a b/p/e buff, and all big hits just bypass that entirely, makes it really difficult for them to survive. redirect - while being stupidly strong in theory - is highly RNG based and is very unreliable because of that. all in all guardians would probably be tanky enough to compete with captains on that regard under the condition that the are constantly followed by 5-10 immortal mobs hitting them for 1 damage each with b/p/e-able skills. but since that condition is never given, they just fall flat in that regard.
and even with the recent buff to break ranks they still won't come close to captains on the group support/utility part. captains still have better/more consitant dps buffs and they don't even need to sacrifice damage reduction to use them.



tl;dr: Captains are way overtuned and they trivialize content. unless there are plans on making the other tanking classes as broken as captains (which i doubt cause that would be stupid), they need a number of serious nerfs in multiple aspects (survivability, group buffs and aoe heals while in tanking line) to even get the tanking meta into a somewhat decent shape.

[HolyDuckTape]

Totally agreed, captain tanks are insanely strong/overpowered and the best by a HUGE gap when it comes to survivability and utility tanking. They are the only real viable tank in the game and also crazy overpowered for it aswell. They definitely need nerfs.

Content works like this now:
Either 1. Captains tanks are the ONLY ones able to tank x content (Look at high tier remmo)
or 2. When another tank can tank it, captains are just insanely much better at it and the top pick for it all the time.

A class should NOT have the best utility AND the best survivability (between tank classes) at the same time.

Even before BPE became an issue, captains were still MUCH better than guardians in every way except for aggro. That's the whole reason why guardians were still considered in anvil for example. (Tho some still did it with 2 captain tanks) Guardians were chosen to high tier anvil content because of the aggro especially at boss 1 adds. But now that captains are insane aggro machines too, guardians are simply trash. They would not even be used in anvil if this would be 120 cap now.

And before people start saying ''if u nerf captains u wont be able to do any content'' well just do shelob t5 or watch any of the videos and you can see that captains can survive it without almost ever dropping below 80% morale. They can easily afford a huge nerf and still be able to tank everything.

[Joedangod]

If a tank balance update would ever happen then guardians would either need their survivability OR utility buffed by a ton to be able to compete with the other tanks, mainly bears but also wardens.

Dunno. Blue Guards mostly just need a vitality bonus to draw even. Yellow Guard is the one that needs most of the work. Only reason you might find yourself prioritising Warden/Beorning is for their respective mitigation debuffs but adding a mitigation debuff to Guardians isn't really a great solution. Ideally we need to start making those mit debuffs non-class specific so we can stop bringing along lousy specs purely for said debuffs, kinda feels bad if your primary reason for being there is an effect you apply once every minute. Basically several specs across multiple classes should offer the same debuff so you only need one of any of these specs and don't just keep stacking a silly number of mit debuffs.

Outside the mit debuffs, Blue Guardian is somewhat above average. It doesn't need major overhauls, Captain on the other hand absolutely needs a big overhaul because right now the line between each specialisation is far too blurred. The taunts shouldn't be available outside of yellow, revealing and double rez shouldn't be available outside of blue and....this one is probably gonna result in a few die-hard Captain only players complaining but...the passive motivating speech aura probably shouldn't be available outside of red. We are required to have two Captains in every raid because the passive value of having a Captain in your fellowship is just too much. It's gotta be dialled back in some way, whether it be removing it from 2/3 lines, giving other specs similar non-stacking auras or just flat out giving scholars a "Scroll of Motivation" to apply the effect.

Overall I'm not saying that only nerfs need to happen, there is definitely a need to buff Captains in a few areas (blue needs ST healing improvements, yellow needs non-forced taunt based aggro options, red...is kinda fine actually as it's still a guaranteed pick for groups) but we do need those nerfs to happen.

[Kotal]

Dunno. Blue Guards mostly just need a vitality bonus to draw even.

i disagree on that one. even if guards could run around with a million morale unbuffed you would still most likely pick cappies over them just for the pure utility they provide. also, while they would certainly be much sturdier than they are rn, guards are still gonna have nothing compared to the CDs that cappies have. jugger and pledge are just overglorified animation cuts for shield swipe basically since they are barely worth anything outside of trash pulls and maybe some adds. WH is a great skill bit it works poorly with the kind of damage spikes that currently happen on tanks. and with a big morale boost even redirect won't change.

the only thing that would bring guards close to the survivability would be reworking a lot of boss fights into making their big hits at least partially avoidable (and maybe change them into multi hits, as someone else pointed out on one of the BR threads). but a change like that would also increase the survivability of captains as well since they have very high innate bpe ratings passively.

if you wanna fix tanking you won't be able to avoid nerfing a lot of things cappies can do in tanking spec. additionally, other tanking classes would need buffing, with a priority on guardians, since tanking is literally their only role.

just dumb that this class is by far the number one tank. captains would be fine to take into t5 raid content even if their yellow line just got deleted over night...

[Joedangod]

i disagree on that one.

Equal with the other tanks, not equal with Captain.

[Kotal]

Equal with the other tanks, not equal with Captain.

oh that immediately makes more sense lol

[Joedangod]

We went through and compared pretty much every tank ability a few months back on the beta forum, that thread definitely supports the idea that Captain is the main problem: https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...###-Comparison

[Elmagor]

IMHO that's how they need change captain:

Yellow spec - make In Harm's Way yellow spec only trait skill, same way as Last Stand. Improved Motivation Speech: Change how many % morale getting different classes. 5% for light armor, 7% for medium armor, 10% for heavy armor, 15% for heavy armor classes in tanks spec only. Exemplar - remove decrease CD for Shield of Dunadan. Make Standard of Valour yellow spec only trait skill, in place of Shield Brother's Call. Steeled Resolve - change 8% of morale into 8% of B/P/E. Situational Awareness - change 50% to 25%. Demand Attention, In Harm's Way and Last Stand - put them deeper into build, yellow captain getting them too soon. Stand Tall - remove decrease CD for Last Stand. Shield of Dunadan - decrease effect on captain himself, make -75% decrease damage into others and -50% decrease damage to captain himself. In Harm's Way - decrease effect on captain himself, make -20% decrease damage into others and -10% decrease damage to captain himself.

Blue spec - make Cry of Vengeance blue spec only trait skill, so only blue captains can res 2 targets. Bolstered Resolve, Lifting Words and Gallant Display - put them deeper into build, yellow captain getting them too soon.

Red spec - make Standard of War red spec only trait skill, in place of Blade Brother's Call

[Ethrildar]

No thanks, no nerfs to Captain.

When every tanking class/spec is viable, then we can discuss balance passes to get all of the lines into their own niche and all equal. Until then, please for the LOVE OF GOD, do not nerf THE ONLY REMAINING TANK CLASS IN THE GAME. I am so, so bored of spending hours LFFing and only being able to find tanks in prime-time unless I tank it myself, I'm at the point where I'm considering making a 2nd Captain because it'll be easier than me playing LM/RK Heals/Champ/Hunter or Warden in groups.

Buff every other tank to where Captain is, then discuss nerfs, not the other way around.

[Joedangod]

When every tanking class/spec is viable

But they are viable. Every single T5 outside of Remmorchant is totally doable on other tank specs. Remmorchant itself is pretty much the only content where other tanks struggle and well...they aren't technically struggling to tank it, they just can't offer the insane utility that Captain has to bypass mechanics.

So yeah, Captain changes are the most appropriate thing here. Those changes would by necessity include nerfs.

[0987654321]

I am so, so bored of spending hours LFFing and only being able to find tanks in prime-time unless I tank it myself, .

This alone makes me not want to nerf captain tank, as much as i tihnk it probably needs it. To put it bluntly the tanking system in this game right now is just broken. Theres a reason why guards just arent used. Yes, part of it is the lack of utility, but the bigger part is they just arent tanky enough. Their cooldowns do next to nothing when a tank class would need them, although this is a bigger problem related to bpe. On top of that they lack the morale of a captain, because captain has several % buffs that have benefitted from the absolutely insane stat bloat.


Guardian is perfectly fine at keeping aggro (although i think captain is actually too strong here given its relative utility and healing), it just CAN'T survive in certain encounters. Even the ones it can a captain will do it better and overall be faster

[Joedangod]

but the bigger part is they just arent tanky enough. Their cooldowns do next to nothing when a tank class would need them, although this is a bigger problem related to bpe.

Captain defensive cooldowns are poor design and should not be replicated in the other tanks under any circumstance. A defensive cooldown shouldn't render you totally immune to death for nigh on 20s.

Remove Last Stand and defensively Captain is roughly on par with the other tanks. The majority of balance issues with Captain revolve around the support aspects of the class.

[0987654321]

Captain defensive cooldowns are poor design and should not be replicated in the other tanks under any circumstance. A defensive cooldown shouldn't render you totally immune to death for nigh on 20s.

Remove Last Stand and defensively Captain is roughly on par with the other tanks. The majority of balance issues with Captain revolve around the support aspects of the class.

im not even saying guards should get a cooldown like last stand, they just need to make guard Cd's (and by extension bpe) a relevant and useful stat for end game tanking. But if im being perfectly honest, a captain is tankier than a guard in most situations, even without last stand.

[Joedangod]

But if im being perfectly honest, a captain is tankier than a guard in most situations, even without last stand.

They're borderline equal. Captain basically just (and I mean just edges Guardian out due to pure morale pool size but technically a perfectly played Guardian will outperform a Captain). Captain without Last Stand is defensively about the same as a Beorning. Which is a little dumb since Beorning is the least BPE focused tank so should probably be strongest in the current meta but...whatever. It's close enough that any tank can reasonably be considered competitive.

It's not defence that is causing this massive disparity. It's the support capability. If you were to straight up rip away all support abilities from Yellow Captain...it'd remain a competitive tank.

There has to be trade-offs, currently Yellow Captain just isn't fleshed out enough to have any trade-offs. It is the main class that needs work right now.

[Kander]

They're borderline equal. Captain basically just (and I mean just edges Guardian out due to pure morale pool size but technically a perfectly played Guardian will outperform a Captain). Captain without Last Stand is defensively about the same as a Beorning. Which is a little dumb since Beorning is the least BPE focused tank so should probably be strongest in the current meta but...whatever. It's close enough that any tank can reasonably be considered competitive.

It's not defence that is causing this massive disparity. It's the support capability. If you were to straight up rip away all support abilities from Yellow Captain...it'd remain a competitive tank.

There has to be trade-offs, currently Yellow Captain just isn't fleshed out enough to have any trade-offs. It is the main class that needs work right now.

I know many people made their captains with a main tank in mind at this point, but I feel the original idea of having a support tank was good. You sure can remove the support a captain offers in yellow but it would not fit the class at all, a main support class that becomes best tank with no support or healing at tank spec. I think quite the opposite would add more diversity to the game, a tank that can help healing and protecting the group, can offer some in combat rezz, some damage support and such but with lower deffensive capabilities compared to other tanks. I think you could increase CD on last stand massively to have a base like 8 minutes cooldown for an effective 5-6 mins cd, reduce the self buffs of captain tanking (parry buff, inc healing buff, battle hardened...) and then keep them with the same utility they have right now.

[Meshuggenah]

Every other class in the game has at least one worthless trait tree that needs to be completely reworked in order to be viable. Meanwhile, people complain that one of the few classes that's actually capable at its intended role is "overpowered."

Amazing. It's like poor people suggesting that the best way to achieve equality is to burn all the rich peoples stuff.

[Joedangod]

I think quite the opposite would add more diversity to the game, a tank that can help healing and protecting the group, can offer some in combat rezz, some damage support and such but with lower deffensive capabilities compared to other tanks.

Generally it's a bad idea to go this route. Tanks are there to be the defensive wall protecting everyone else, if we reduce the defence of one tank too much...it can no longer fulfil a core aspect of its role and as such will not be taken. On the flip side if we don't reduce its defence enough...it becomes the only tank that is ever taken, because it offers so much support. Right now Yellow Captain fulfills 100% of the requirements you might ask from a tank...as does Guardian/Beorning. What Guardians and Beornings don't do however, is also fulfil ~66% of the requirements of a healer whilst tanking. In fact Guard/Bear basically do nothing outside of tanking but that's a different issue.

When you take a Captain you're getting more than a tank, you're essentially getting a backup healer at the same time. Other tanks can't match that. There should definitely be more added to Guardian/Beorning in terms of DPS so that they offer something outside of pure tank capability but you're really gonna struggle to match the group value a Captain adds via its support. In a hypothetical scenario where Beornings are buffed to be a competitive DPS whilst tanking; you've only increased raidwide DPS by about ~20% since you were already running 5 DPS specs. Meanwhile a Captain who outputs 66% of the support a healer does is increasing your raidwide healing by ~33% since you probably only had two healers to begin with. I get that this is poorly phrased overall, I'm just trying to convey the idea that the support a Captain offers right now is statistically more significant than anything we could reasonably add to Beornings/Guardians.

I'm not opposed to the idea of a tank that offers support but Captain support abilities are generally really poorly done. Most of them are totally passive, the player never actually thinks about them they're just there. They are also pretty darn big in terms of magnitude. In this regard Yellow Captain is totally failing as a support tank because you don't actually feel that you're doing anything to support anyone. If we say dumped the passive support abilities and gave them buffs that they could actively apply on other players to boost their output (and siphon some threat from the buffed player) you'd technically offer less....but feel like you're doing more. And right now we need Captain to offer less, because damn does it do too much.

Every other class in the game has at least one worthless trait tree that needs to be completely reworked in order to be viable. Meanwhile, people complain that one of the few classes that's actually capable at its intended role is "overpowered."

Perhaps make an attempt to read a thread before you try to badly guess what it says. Captains are overpowered at the tank role because they bring an insane amount of added support which no other tank can hope to compete with. It's not so much that they're too good at tanking, it has more to do with them being too good at everything else whilst tanking.

[Elmagor]

People who want to see Captain nerf and think what it allows THEIR tanks shine just don't get what group still need captain for support and no guardian/champion/warden can replace them as support. So you dig your own grave.

[Meshuggenah]

Perhaps make an attempt to read a thread before you try to badly guess what it says. Captains are overpowered at the tank role because they bring an insane amount of added support which no other tank can hope to compete with. It's not so much that they're too good at tanking, it has more to do with them being too good at everything else whilst tanking.

I read the thread. Perhaps make an effort to remain civil even when someone disagrees with you.

My point was that, if captain provides more utility to a fellowship than other tanks, the solution is to increase the utility of other tanks. Not to nerf the fellowship utility of captains, which is the entire focus of their class design.

[Ethrildar]

But they are viable. Every single T5 outside of Remmorchant is totally doable on other tank specs. Remmorchant itself is pretty much the only content where other tanks struggle and well...they aren't technically struggling to tank it, they just can't offer the insane utility that Captain has to bypass mechanics.

No, this is total BS and you're full of it in every thread post of yours I've read to date, it's unbelievably irritating if I'm honest.

You will simply NOT find Guardians tanking T3-4-5 Remm in the mainstream, is it doable? Yeah if you have a perfectly geared Guardian (no other class can so your point is entirely moot anyway) that is excellent at the class and you build the entire raid around the weaknesses that bringing a Guardian entails. If you nerfed Captains into oblivion as you've been begging for for months now, you're simply making most harder content impossible for the vast majority of players whilst simultaneously exacerbating the already incredibly problematic lack of people wanting to play tank classes right now.

Your point is also a load of carp because even the new (faceroll easy) Stairs instance on Tier 4 is only doable with a Guardian if you get lucky with the RNG or bring an RK healer that can mitigate all of the group hits for you, OR every player including the DPS has 450k+ morale because they did Remm T5 and got the bracelets (with a Cappy tank, probably lol). Once again, Warden tanks, Beorning tanks and Champion tanks are literally not even worth mentioning because the prospect of trying to do T3-4-5 Remm or T4+ Stairs on those is a joke in itself. I can't even imagine the pointlessness of trying to tank T5 Boss 3 with a Chank.

The current problems are below, along with their fixes:

All tank classes are non-viable except Captain and Guardian, the latter of which needs a serious redesign in its tooling and stat dist. to put it on par (which it is not that far off) with Captain, primarily non-BPE related survival abilities and a ~30% HP boost to put them at the 1mil Captains can sit at, without Motivating Speech.
Due to the above, nobody wants to play the "high risk" class that if you do terribly at, everyone can see it and it's hard to play due to inadequacies. Why faceroll on a class that wipes the group if you balls up, vs just being another trash DPSer and nobody ever knowing?
All of the content is balanced around the only properly viable tank, Captain, meaning that as per point 1, if you try to do this content with any other class you need them to excel at their class and have the group setup to make up for the loss of what Captain brings to the table. This doesn't mean that all content is stupidly easy because it simply isn't, Captain is not that OP, Remm T5 is still extremely difficult despite what you'd have us believe and nerfing Captain does not suddenly make everyone decide to start farming Remm with Chanks, Beorning tanks or for that matter even Guardians, they'll just not bother because it's too difficult for 99.999% of the player-base.

Fixes:

Buff the primary tanking lines (I don't care about Yellow Guards, to be quite honest) of all "tank" classes, every class should be equally competent but excel at a particular niche, no class should be ruled out of any boss or have to be carried by excellent healers to make up for them lacking a certain utility or survival ability

Balance all content on all tiers around the now even playing field that all tanks are sitting on, nobody needs to be nerfed at all if the content and thereby all the tanks are brought up to the same level. Captains can retain their functionality without quitting the class because of heavy-handed nerfs, other classes become viable again AND we get more tanks because nobody feels like their work is diminished.

There is literally no reason what-so-ever other than "I HATE CAPTAINS BECAUSE MY CLASS ISN'T AS GOOD RIGHT NOW!!!" to not go for an even playing field bringing all other tanks up and not just Captains down.

[Meshuggenah]

Fixes:

IMO, A large part of the problem doesn't even have anything to do with the classes. It has to do with the way SSG is designing end-game dungeons to be incredibly bursty so that tanks can die instantly rather than using real mechanics that require player skill to overcome.

That is really why captain tanks are so strong right now. Not because of their fellowship utility but because of the nature of their cooldowns that allows them to survive mechanics that would simply kill other classes.

Nerfing captains is not going to fix that problem. It's just going to make the current content a nightmare of RNG, wondering if your tank is going to survive the next hit.

[HolyDuckTape]

No thanks, no nerfs to Captain.

When every tanking class/spec is viable, then we can discuss balance passes to get all of the lines into their own niche and all equal. Until then, please for the LOVE OF GOD, do not nerf THE ONLY REMAINING TANK CLASS IN THE GAME. I am so, so bored of spending hours LFFing and only being able to find tanks in prime-time unless I tank it myself, I'm at the point where I'm considering making a 2nd Captain because it'll be easier than me playing LM/RK Heals/Champ/Hunter or Warden in groups.

Buff every other tank to where Captain is, then discuss nerfs, not the other way around.

Why tho? Even with massive nerfs captains can still tank everything lol. It just brings them more in line with other tanks and removes the OP status off cappies and doesn't require the other tanks to become OP to match cappies. Ever done remmo t5 or watched it? Captain tanks can get -50% morale and all their inch removed and they can still tank it. It's insane

[HolyDuckTape]

Every other class in the game has at least one worthless trait tree that needs to be completely reworked in order to be viable. Meanwhile, people complain that one of the few classes that's actually capable at its intended role is "overpowered."

Amazing. It's like poor people suggesting that the best way to achieve equality is to burn all the rich peoples stuff.

-The most morale
-4 taunts
-The most inch
-The highest offensive utility (if there's a yellow beorn)
-The highest defensive utility
-2 invincibility emergencies with very low cd
-AoE Healing
-Double rez
-Highest ''trait'' bpe
-A ton of extra insane utility and even the option to tank high tier content in blue/red line.

And many more things. Captain tanks are not only absolutely insane compared to other tanks but they are in general crazy overpowered. No tank should have supreme godly utility and supreme defensive ability at the same time.

[Hephburz-2]

Why tho? Even with massive nerfs captains can still tank everything lol. It just brings them more in line with other tanks and removes the OP status off cappies and doesn't require the other tanks to become OP to match cappies.

You could get rid of Last Stand - Captains would still be first pick.
You could get rid of the Double Rez - Captains would still be first pick.
You could get rid of the Red Banner - Captains would still be first pick.
You could cut their heals by 50% - Captains would still be first pick.
You could cut their passive BPE trait bonuses - Captains would still be first pick.
You could cut their morale by 20% - Captains would still be first pick.

NONE of these changes deal with the fundamental core issues; other tanks are too weak for the presented content, ergo content is too difficult for the other tanks, either buff other tanks or nerf the content, this is the only way any other tank will ever be considered a better or priority pick over Captains.

AND for as long as Oathbreakers remains unusable on the same target for 3minutes, Yellow Captains will ALWAYS (it doesn't matter how hard you want to nerf them), they will ALWAYS have their spot, 1 Captain per group in a raid, remains the unbroken raiding law, unless you plan to rework the entire class from the ground up (which will not happen in this stage of the game or development), nothing is going to prevent Captain from being tank first pick.

[Meshuggenah]

Captain tanks are not only absolutely insane compared to other tanks but they are in general crazy overpowered.

I haven't said captain tanks aren't stronger than other tanks. I've said that the solution to that problem isn't to gut captain tanks. It's to buff the utility and strengths of other tanks to bring them in line.

No tank should have supreme godly utility and supreme defensive ability at the same time.

I disagree. All classes should be capable of performing equally well within the role their trait tree is designed for while providing strong fellowship utility based on their class flavor. That's how you make an interesting game that gives players choices.