Captain tanking needs a nerf!

[Hephburz-2]

Where'd I say that they must have no defensive support at all? I can find a lot of places where I say that they shouldn't have defensive support on the level of IHW/Shield but can't find the "No defensive support at all" bit.

You'd certainly prefer it if they didn't

Nice, what're the big chank and yellow guard defensive support abilities again?

Still not reading the whole sentence are we? and in most cases, specifically defensive support

I mean really I've been going the other way and saying that guard/bear/warden offer "enough" support as is and that's why Captain should be reduced...

So is it enough? Or is it minimal?

They offer minimal support and that support is primarily in the form of a mitigation debuff to bump damage a bit. They aren't even well implemented debuffs, they basically just force representation as certain classes find themselves being brought for that one debuff first, their own personal DPS/Healing/Tanking/Whateverr second. At best these other tanks dip their toe into performing a secondary role

[Joedangod]

It's not weird at all. SSG deliberately targeted Red-line healing output in an update when they had very strong damage output, survivability, group support and healing. They stated pretty much exactly that in the notes, specifically targeting Red.

Which makes it weird that they don't target yellow-line a bit when it has strong self healing, survivability, group support and healing. You'd think they'd at least move a bit of the tangential power into some decent aggro-generation, amirite?

[Joedangod]

You'd certainly prefer it if they didn't

Ooo, where's that one?

Still not reading the whole sentence are we? and in most cases, specifically defensive support

In about as many cases as they have offensive support...

So is it enough? Or is it minimal?

Both. If they're offering major support, why they'd be busted and need nerfs. Someone should make a thread on that topi- oh.

[Ethrildar]

Which makes it weird that they don't target yellow-line a bit when it has strong self healing, survivability, group support and healing. You'd think they'd at least move a bit of the tangential power into some decent aggro-generation, amirite?

Doesn't seem weird to me, the two lines specifically built around group healing and protection have improved healing.

Either way it doesn't really matter anyway, the devs, designers, the people who make the choices looked at the class and thought Blue and Yellow were fine but Red was a touch too strong on the healing side, this is evidently how they want the class to be or they'd have changed Yellow-line as well.

Also, again, if you played Captain (and you're not wrong RE us having very minimal threat gen) you'd laugh at that statement because the vast majority of our threat-gen outside of taunt threat multipliers is from healing.

[Macroscian]

Maybe the numbers could be reworked a bit too? To make the differences have less impact? To make the trait trees less vastly different for any class.
You know, if the differences were not in the tens of thousands of XX and NN but in the hundreds?

Every little bad gap is exaggerated manifold. Reworking every stat in the game was the worst makeover the game had.
Quest gear versus well-geared is double the stats and the numbers are absurd. Hundreds of thousands.

[Joedangod]

Maybe the numbers could be reworked a bit too? To make the differences have less impact? To make the trait trees less vastly different for any class.
You know, if the differences were not in the tens of thousands of XX and NN but in the hundreds?

Technically it probably wouldn't change anything at the highest tier. If spec A does 200k DPS now and spec B does 150k dps now, rescaling all the numbers to make that 2k DPS vs 1.5k DPS still leaves spec A doing 25% more damage than spec B. It's the % difference that matters, not the raw numbers. A stat squish would definitely help flatten the levelling curve but scaling down stats across the board doesn't really fix balance unless you scale different things by different amounts.

I also think we'd be better off making trait trees more different for each class rather than less. If you have a tank/dps/heal tree class you don't really want the heal spec being able to tank, the dps spec able to heal and the tank spec able to DPS. Ideally you want core role abilities to be locked into their respective lines and inaccessible outside of that. Other lines should be able to grab minor items that let them get a bit of the feel for one of the other roles but shouldn't be getting the big ticket items that let them perform as that role.

[Joedangod]

Also, again, if you played Captain (and you're not wrong RE us having very minimal threat gen) you'd laugh at that statement because the vast majority of our threat-gen outside of taunt threat multipliers is from healing.

Which as mentioned is very little threat gen. A slight reduction in heal threat from lesser magnitude inspire and a big bump to threat from additional AoE skills or threat siphons would be reasonable. At the moment Captain is basically locked out of frequent AoE usage, pressing attack can't be cycled anywhere near the rate that blue/red can do it and routing cry has too long a cooldown to be a reasonable tool. Sure you can tag things with banners but that threat at best lasts long enough for things to walk close to you, you need something more to retain threat.

I have been wondering how much Captain would benefit from having Gallant Display made baseline. Yellow could get a trait for increased targets, red could get a trait for increased damage and blue gets a trait for increased healing. Mostly just want a button you can fairly frequently use to tag multiple targets. It'd still need threat siphons to manage aggro beyond that but I'm not really sure on how those would be implemented. Current idea was mostly "Boost targets damage or healing by X% and siphon 25% threat for 10s, 20-25s CD" but I still haven't quite worked if those would need to be new skills or if it could be incorporated into blade/song/shield bro.

As a minimum, don't suppose we could agree that shield/song/blade bro should be non-traitline specific? You might want to be a blue cappy with song bro in raids but man do I wish I could take shield bro for fellowships. Swapping the marks out for the bro skill of your choice feels like a decent way to remove rev mark access from red/yellow.

[Ethrildar]

A slight reduction in heal threat from lesser magnitude inspire and a big bump to threat from additional AoE skills or threat siphons would be reasonable.

I have been wondering how much Captain would benefit from having Gallant Display made baseline. Yellow could get a trait for increased targets, red could get a trait for increased damage and blue gets a trait for increased healing.

As a minimum, don't suppose we could agree that shield/song/blade bro should be non-traitline specific? You might want to be a blue cappy with song bro in raids but man do I wish I could take shield bro for fellowships. Swapping the marks out for the bro skill of your choice feels like a decent way to remove rev mark access from red/yellow.

I don't really think Inspire is that great a source of healing for the group, makes up a fairly small amount in the grand scheme of things so any reduction (slight or otherwise) won't really have the impact you're after, Revealing Mark is where the "too easy to apply" healing comes from. Because of this, as I said before I am not really that averse to a reduction in passive healing availability (for the group only, don't touch self-heals) for Yellow Captain. If I am honest I think any reduction in passive AoE healing should be then added to the base healing on Words of Courage, which actively requires targeting and some thought and is underwhelming as is and mostly never used by the majority of Cappy tanks.

Gallant Display is a nice rotational currnetly, I trait it in all lines where feasible so I'd be very up for it being a base skill that's tweaked per line: Red-line high damage and AoE, Yellow-line high threat gen and AoE, Blue-line high healing (same as now) with a small trailing HOT.

Brother skills used to be trait-agnostic and I much preferred it that way. I'd like to retain access whilst tanking to Song/Blade-bro so I can adjust as I see fit for the needs of the group. Added complexity within reason is never a bad thing. Sadly, though, if I am honest it makes very little difference nowadays as they've all been cookie-cuttered to be identical between lines with only minor value differences and additionally with the self-buffs present on those X-Brother skills, you'd risk the +% OGH buff from Song-bro applying to the Yellow Captain, even further buffing their healing output which is counter to what you're after.

[Joedangod]

I don't really think Inspire is that great a source of healing for the group, makes up a fairly small amount in the grand scheme of things so any reduction (slight or otherwise) won't really have the impact you're after, Revealing Mark is where the "too easy to apply" healing comes from. Because of this, as I said before I am not really that averse to a reduction in passive healing availability (for the group only, don't touch self-heals) for Yellow Captain. If I am honest I think any reduction in passive AoE healing should be then added to the base healing on Words of Courage, which actively requires targeting and some thought and is underwhelming as is and mostly never used by the majority of Cappy tanks.

I'm just trying to think of ways to dial back the "always active" stuff. Migrating power to WoC instead is reasonable as it's something you'll have to think about maintaining if you're really gunning for healing output. Then again WoC is already one of the stronger HoT's so...I don't know. I'm trying to think in terms of blue at the same time here and I still can't figure out a decent way of adding single target healing that doesn't require massive spec changes. If they do bump blue ST they need to reduce AoE anyway so inspire would be one place to start albeit not the biggest % of all the aoe healing.

Gallant Display is a nice rotational currnetly, I trait it in all lines where feasible so I'd be very up for it being a base skill that's tweaked per line: Red-line high damage and AoE, Yellow-line high threat gen and AoE, Blue-line high healing (same as now) with a small trailing HOT.

Please not another HoT, there are just so many already with valiant/inspire/rc/woc...can we just leave this one as a burst heal where you're mostly trying to weave it in as much as possible? It's possibly silly since I don't really know how things are being computed behind the scenes but I feel like dialling back on the number of effects that need to be continuously tracked groupwide would be a smart choice in terms of performance.

Brother skills used to be trait-agnostic and I much preferred it that way. I'd like to retain access whilst tanking to Song/Blade-bro so I can adjust as I see fit for the needs of the group. Added complexity within reason is never a bad thing. Sadly, though, if I am honest it makes very little difference nowadays as they've all been cookie-cuttered to be identical between lines with only minor value differences and additionally with the self-buffs present on those X-Brother skills, you'd risk the +% OGH buff from Song-bro applying to the Yellow Captain, even further buffing their healing output which is counter to what you're after.

Potentially? I dunno. Yeah song bro applying to self in yellow would be a boost to your healing but a 25% boost to your own healing doesn't have the impact of a 25% boost to an actual healers healing and you would be sacrificing shield-bro benefits to have it that way. If song/blade/shield bro are different enough it becomes a decent question of "what's the best one for the situation" rather than an outright winner.

Honestly my main problem with this approach is that we'd be tying threat management into your brother skill choice which in almost all content outside of raids would push you into wanting to take blade-bro and siphon Champion threat. Perhaps the song-bro threat siphon would need to be higher to balance that out? And shield-bro probably shouldn't threat siphon at all, you don't want boss to accidentally swap to you after all.

[Ethrildar]

I'm just trying to think of ways to dial back the "always active" stuff.

Then again WoC is already one of the stronger HoT's so...I don't know. I'm trying to think in terms of blue at the same time here and I still can't figure out a decent way of adding single target healing that doesn't require massive spec changes. If they do bump blue ST they need to reduce AoE anyway so inspire would be one place to start albeit not the biggest % of all the aoe healing.

Yeah, I'd say Inspire isn't where that change is made as a 50% reduction in Inspire healing would reduce a yellow Captain's overall HPS output by around 3.5%. As I say the biggest sources of healing output from a Cappy are Revealing Mark and Rallying Cry, by an order of magnitude over other heals. Words of Courage doesn't even touch on what the others are putting out and it really sorely lacks a burst heal when applied, though I only really care about that in Blue honestly.

Please not another HoT, there are just so many already with valiant/inspire/rc/woc...can we just leave this one as a burst heal where you're mostly trying to weave it in as much as possible? It's possibly silly since I don't really know how things are being computed behind the scenes but I feel like dialling back on the number of effects that need to be continuously tracked groupwide would be a smart choice in terms of performance.

I do agree with you entirely here, another HOT would be a little silly, there are a plethora of other ways to make it better in Blue from the base skill, from providing further healing support to even making it give further boosts/heals to your Song-brother only, thus reducing the lack of single-target healing capability Blue Cappy has.

All Blue Captain really needs to be a truly viable healer is:

• Reform the Lines needs to be a ~45 second CD not 120 seconds, it also needs to heal the Captain just like any other healer's emergencies heal themselves. The CD works as-is if they had some other emergency heal, but with just one it's a little underwhelming.
• Muster Courage (traited) self-heal should heal one target as well as the Captain, if no target is selected/self is selected, only heals once just like it currently does.**
• Words of Courage initial heal multiplied by around 4x, crit multiplier of initial heal reduced by 50% to balance out silly-high crit numbers whilst retaining good sustainability.
• A short induction (or no induction) medium sized single-target heal that works on target, or self with a ~15 second CD. Primarily for self-sustain as unlike other healers you really haven't got much other than small ticking HOT effects to self-heal with.
• Reduce crit healing multiplier across the board (not stacking with WoC change) by -25% to improve reliability and reduce insane "lucky" heals, and bring group-wide HPS numbers down a bit back towards normalcy with other healers.

**Ordinarily I'd suggest that the MC heal goes to the "brother" but one of the primary benefits of a Blue Cappy is the auto-crit (Inspiriting Presence) it can give to an RK or tactical class, so I want to avoid forcing Song-brother onto the tank for necessary extra healing, negating all the benefits it offers to tactical classes.

If song/blade/shield bro are different enough it becomes a decent question of "what's the best one for the situation" rather than an outright winner.

Yep, I am very pro-change when it comes to Song/Blade/Shield-bro each having distinct bonuses even if you can still only access each in their given line. The only thing I would say is that the Captain skill-set is currently extremely cluttered and two additional skills I know I'd struggle to find a place for on my bar (at least that is accessible with hotkeys).

Honestly my main problem with this approach is that we'd be tying threat management into your brother skill choice which in almost all content outside of raids would push you into wanting to take blade-bro and siphon Champion threat. Perhaps the song-bro threat siphon would need to be higher to balance that out? And shield-bro probably shouldn't threat siphon at all, you don't want boss to accidentally swap to you after all.

They just need to massively amplify the threat from Pressing Attack and make it hit 10 targets. As it stands currently if you don't have a Champion unleashing on 10 mobs for ~3 seconds prior to you taunting, you're losing aggro on 6 of the 10 mobs for the next 25 seconds in most scenarios. I don't really think threat siphons lead to that rewarding feeling of tanking and holding aggro, just like force taunts don't either; I should be able to beat on enemies and generate threat myself before someone else comes to the fight to do it for me, taunts (particularly AoE taunts) should be emergency skills like I'm running into a fight late or I've died and been revived and have got to get aggro back quickly.

All that being said, I don't think a big threat rework will happen at all. So taunts will likely stay as they are, my only hope is that they significantly increase threat-gen from Routing Cry and Pressing Attack.

[Kotal]

is innate threat gen actually worth talking about atm?
from what i've experienced, you either have a bad group that doesn't deal any good damage at all and you literally get enough threat with your basic rotation to keep aggro (on any tank btw), or you have a good group where you cannot keep aggro with normal skills (healing or damaging), and you literally just have to rely on taunts.

[Hephburz-2]

is innate threat gen actually worth talking about atm?
from what i've experienced, you either have a bad group that doesn't deal any good damage at all and you literally get enough threat with your basic rotation to keep aggro (on any tank btw), or you have a good group where you cannot keep aggro with normal skills (healing or damaging), and you literally just have to rely on taunts.

Yellow Guards.. and perhaps Wardens, although it's been a long time since I've seen a good one tank any meaningful content are probably the only tanks that exist currently that have enough innate threat gen to not require force taunts, perhaps, requiring a force taunt on the main focus target near the start, but outside of that, not necessary. Every other tank on the other hand, doesn't do anywhere near enough damage, and healing:threat ratio is nowhere near dps:threat ratio - so whilst a Captain may draw the initial aggro of an undamaged NPC, they certainly won't keep it for long without a taunt.

If they could increase heal:threat ratio for captains and beorning tanks (although, that's not really going to change much) without impacting heal:threat ratio for healers, then we might be onto something - but as has been pointed out, a threat rework at this stage in the game, is not going to happen.

[Kotal]

the only tanking lines where i can see innate aggro gen can work against really good dps are, as you said, y guard and warden. however that was just some kinda niche that would work on low tier content or trash pulls or stuff like that (anything where you don't need to heavily invest into finesse lol, but that's a totally different topic that's wrong with pretty much all tanks and healers). but in these scenarios you either lose a lot of survivability on the tank, or the content is so easy that you might as well just not use a tank at all.

also innate threat gen kinda got even more useless with the streamlining of force taunts. don't get me wrong, i like these changes, but they really made innate threat irrelevant. and i feel like this was a trend ever since they nerfed max targets on guard aoe skills.

[Hephburz-2]

the only tanking lines where i can see innate aggro gen can work against really good dps are, as you said, y guard and warden. however that was just some kinda niche that would work on low tier content or trash pulls or stuff like that (anything where you don't need to heavily invest into finesse lol, but that's a totally different topic that's wrong with pretty much all tanks and healers). but in these scenarios you either lose a lot of survivability on the tank, or the content is so easy that you might as well just not use a tank at all.

Well, I don't know about that, back in Anvil we used YGuards for almost everything except the bosses themselves, and I wouldn't say you could do Anvil trash without a tank.

also innate threat gen kinda got even more useless with the streamlining of force taunts. don't get me wrong, i like these changes, but they really made innate threat irrelevant. and i feel like this was a trend ever since they nerfed max targets on guard aoe skills.

The way threat used to work was indeed a much more complex system, and, a good one in my view, but with the way the game has scaled, if the threat system stayed as it was, tanks would probably never be able to hold aggro in the current content - the streamlining of all force taunts on all tanks is probably the most sensible thing they've done since the threat rework itself. I understand many hate this fact, especially hate the fact that Captains have 10-target force taunt as it now apparently makes them superior for all content - a fact so easily disproved by this raid alone in which with multiple targets - a Guardian is still the better choice.

[Joedangod]

Yeah, I'd say Inspire isn't where that change is made as a 50% reduction in Inspire healing would reduce a yellow Captain's overall HPS output by around 3.5%. As I say the biggest sources of healing output from a Cappy are Revealing Mark and Rallying Cry, by an order of magnitude over other heals. Words of Courage doesn't even touch on what the others are putting out and it really sorely lacks a burst heal when applied, though I only really care about that in Blue honestly.

Removing rev mark from yellow is a given. Primary reason I'm trying to target inspire over anything else is due to inspire being the "always on" heal. RC has enough burst that sometimes you'll want to hold it for a few seconds, inspire will just get spammed off cooldown since the initial heal isn't notably different from the HoT. I'd prefer to have the power be in more active heals compared to the passive ones.

All Blue Captain really needs to be a truly viable healer is:

• Reform the Lines needs to be a ~45 second CD not 120 seconds, it also needs to heal the Captain just like any other healer's emergencies heal themselves. The CD works as-is if they had some other emergency heal, but with just one it's a little underwhelming.
• Muster Courage (traited) self-heal should heal one target as well as the Captain, if no target is selected/self is selected, only heals once just like it currently does.**
• Words of Courage initial heal multiplied by around 4x, crit multiplier of initial heal reduced by 50% to balance out silly-high crit numbers whilst retaining good sustainability.
• A short induction (or no induction) medium sized single-target heal that works on target, or self with a ~15 second CD. Primarily for self-sustain as unlike other healers you really haven't got much other than small ticking HOT effects to self-heal with.
• Reduce crit healing multiplier across the board (not stacking with WoC change) by -25% to improve reliability and reduce insane "lucky" heals, and bring group-wide HPS numbers down a bit back towards normalcy with other healers.

I can agree with most of that but I don't like the Reform the Lines change. If it's gonna be kept (I still want shield back in blue) I'd prefer it to remain an actual cooldown. Saw someone once suggest reworking it to be a 50% groupwide heal that goes on to reduce ally morale by 2% for 10s after being used. It'd do the same healing as now but would be so much stronger as a clutch heal for a big hit and the sheer HoT power of a Captain helps offset the drawback anyway. That kind of ability should stick with a 90s+ cd, 45s winds up being borderline rotational.

Still need to figure out a proper rev mark rework. I'm currently angling towards it being a mark that goes on an ally to empower the heals they receive (basically how to bump ST healing without pushing us to WoC spam) but I haven't really come up with a nice way of getting that to work.

Yep, I am very pro-change when it comes to Song/Blade/Shield-bro each having distinct bonuses even if you can still only access each in their given line. The only thing I would say is that the Captain skill-set is currently extremely cluttered and two additional skills I know I'd struggle to find a place for on my bar (at least that is accessible with hotkeys).

Can mostly alleviate this being an issue by simply putting the bro skills on a 20s cooldown or so after one is toggled off. Having the freedom to swap bro-style in combat is fine but promoting gameplay where you just keep rapidly swapping it might get a little irritating. If it's not something you frequently touch on it doesn't need easy hotkeys.

They just need to massively amplify the threat from Pressing Attack and make it hit 10 targets. As it stands currently if you don't have a Champion unleashing on 10 mobs for ~3 seconds prior to you taunting, you're losing aggro on 6 of the 10 mobs for the next 25 seconds in most scenarios. I don't really think threat siphons lead to that rewarding feeling of tanking and holding aggro, just like force taunts don't either; I should be able to beat on enemies and generate threat myself before someone else comes to the fight to do it for me, taunts (particularly AoE taunts) should be emergency skills like I'm running into a fight late or I've died and been revived and have got to get aggro back quickly.

Threat siphons during short-term buffs are basically a means by which to keep your threat high but not enough to pull aggro. If ~40% of a Champions threat is going towards you...he still has aggro with his remaining 60%, you yourself need to use some abilities to fully take aggro. Yellow Captain will never pull any real DPS and it probably never should, DPS isn't really a core part of Captain, yes, red can pull decent DPS but even that is still focused on supporting your ally DPS. With threat siphons I'm basically trying to figure out how to bridge the gap in threat in a manner that fits in with the class. I don't think they should always be active, it should be tied into a short buff you apply to your target. There's not a whole lot of difference between using an ability on an ally to get threat compared to using an ability on an enemy to get threat.

[Froyo_K_Baggins]

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.

Sorry, but if it's the main tank choice, that's not its "intended role". As someone who has had a Cappie since before trait trees messed things up, I chose it because of it's utility. It wasn't the best at anything, but it could do everything well. It could side-tank, side-heal, and fill in with debuffs and dps. It was a toon that supported all the others. I loved it. Trait trees ruined that.

[zaboch]

Trait trees ruined that.

Trait trees were, by comparison, miles above of an average concept LOTRO puts out these days. They were meant to streamline and solidify class roles, with detailed blog posts explaining all of them.

Sadly, as was/is always with devs, it was rushed. But general concept is still great. No class should be a "jack of all trades" cause that's not what a situation in a fellowship (especially in a raid) demands.

Then again, I'm replying to the person that argued that War-chant in Red as a Guardian is useless and uses Protection legacies when solo-playing in Red, what do I know about viability and logical concepts?

[Froyo_K_Baggins]

No class should be a "jack of all trades" cause that's not what a situation in a fellowship (especially in a raid) demands.

Only if raids are so simple you don't have to think, and if nothing out of the ordinary happens. Back in the day (and stay off my lawn!), we used to think and experiment. We allowed almost any combination of classes to come in a raid, because we talked our way through the complexities rather than mindlessly following instructions. Trust me, the flexibility matters, as the cappie could fit in where anyone was struggling.

Today, it's all about a simple dps rush and having the "right" mits and masteries. Only the chosen few classes are allowed to join raids. It's dull, but it is what the whales want.

[Joedangod]

Only if raids are so simple you don't have to think, and if nothing out of the ordinary happens. Back in the day (and stay off my lawn!), we used to think and experiment.

Ha.

Gamers haven't declined in knowledge over the years, they've expanded on it. Mechanically players are far stronger now than they were 10 years ago.

[skarnarval]

NERF CAPTAINS, they are ridiculously overpowered.

Not only are other tanks garbage but once you start comparing them to captains its just an immediate delete for the other tank classes. Captains can do everything and their utility reigns supreme like crazy. Not only that but they are the sturdiest and strongest tanks in the entire game, with a gazillion morale and low cd invincibility cds. Absolutely insane, this has been going on for way too long. Captains need to get a massive nerf asap.

[Ethrildar]

NERF CAPTAINS

Interesting that this brand new account has only ever posted on forum threads also posted on by Joedangod, with opinions mirroring those of Joedangod.

That is strange.

[Hephburz-2]

Interesting that this brand new account has only ever posted on forum threads also posted on by Joedangod, with opinions mirroring those of Joedangod.

That is strange.

I agree

[Froyo_K_Baggins]

Ha.

Gamers haven't declined in knowledge over the years, they've expanded on it. Mechanically players are far stronger now than they were 10 years ago.

Not really. There's a reason that folks demand top gear and stats max'd out before allowing folks into raids: Then you don't have to think. P2W means money replaces skill. If you focus on getting the right armor and stats, you can roll through instances. If you figure out the "perfect" class mix, you can make thinks simple. There's not the need to communicate and think that there used to be in the days where all the Moria instances required different tactics, and you could roll in with landscape gear and get rewards to move you towards Challenge.

These days, the requests I see for just running T1, which anyone on-level should be able to enter, shows that knowledge has simplified.

[zaboch]

Interesting that this brand new account has only ever posted on forum threads also posted on by Joedangod, with opinions mirroring those of Joedangod.

That is strange.

Which is not true at all. This poster has advocated for a lot more extremes on both nerfs and buffs and have seen him around for a while now.

[Strider5548]

Interesting that this brand new account has only ever posted on forum threads also posted on by Joedangod, with opinions mirroring those of Joedangod.

That is strange.

It is strange, but the comment he posted (aside from the extreme tone) is pretty valid. Some of this stuff I don't even understand...compare the raid set bonus for blue warden vs cappy tank. Cappies get a CD decrease on the strongest skill in the game, Wardens get an extra 5% room for their morale to drop before never surrender kicks in. I don't believe the devs don't understand the problem, I think they don't care. It's the same reason blue hunter set bonus is a run speed boost...when they determine a certain class/trait mix isn't worth their time, they just give up and throw something nonsense in there.

I am optimistic though, that as far as tanking goes, they have been working on a broader update. I don't think anyone in their right mind can disagree the gap between cappies and all other tanks is way too large, it just seems some people feel we should nerf cappies while others feel we should buff the other tanks. IMO, we need to buff the other tanks first, and can tweak cappies from there. Warden/Bear are completely broken as tanks, and while guards are better they are no where near cappies with effectively no other viable trait lines to run in groups/raids.

EDIT: For those who don't know, the Warden Never Surrender skill is currently broken. It's supposed to heal you back to half health when your morale drops below 10%, but large hits that take you from >10% to 0% just instantly kill you and the skill never triggers (the few tank wardens I've seen are running between 600-700k morale, so that means a 60-70k hit could one shot you). This means the tanking raid set bonus for Wardens, which brings the threshold down to 5%, actually makes it MORE likely that you get one shot and die. Wanted to clarify how insane this all is.