"As tanks, they lacked a clearly defined role compared with others"

[Cafat]

Hi, the above sentence (title) really got me.

Could we get a feedback from the Devs regarding the different tanks and their intended role, even if some of the classes are not there yet?

Would be interesting to see, what should be expected from the various specs and in which direction they are heading.


Even if some tweeking is needed for non conventional tanks, knowing that all of us has a defined role with its pros and cons would help us keep pushing our blue beos, champs, wardens.


Many thanks.

[KillAllFrep]

From what I understand it's:

Brawlers are the new, shiny (monetised) class so should be the best tank in the game hands down.
Guardians finally got some love and are decent, but shouldn't eclipse Brawlers because they're free and Brawler is paid.
Captains got self survivability nerfed into oblivion because it's OP, then they gave Brawlers even better self-survival skills on half the cooldowns.
Wardens. Not shiny nad new so devs don't care.
Chanks. Not shiny and new so devs don't care.
Beornings. Not shiny and new enough, came out half-baked so devs don't care.

I think the intended roles were:

Brawlers in the fray direct mitigation tank.
Guardians direct mitigation tank.
Captains self healing, self sustain tank, but with the self sustain nerfed.
Champs no idea, old Glory tank was amazing fun but RIP that.
Wardens avoidance and self healing tank but neither of those work at all.
Beornings no idea.

[Zaheer]

captain was never self-healing, its role as tank was that it could do anything and fit pretty much any build, but never would outperform warden in selfheals, or guardian in buffer tanking.

With today's content, SSG forced all tank to bias into buffering regardless of their advantageous role. Guardian suffered a bit here due a lot of the dmg not being mitigated, just dumb morale dmg, which captain could take adv of for a long time.

Then they buffed yellow, which was unasked for, they only required to rescale our strength in numbers, that's all. But yk, SSG somehow saw fit to buff it.

[Cafat]

Well, apart from the current state of tanks, what I would like to know is what role the tanks should fit in to, not how should they fit (at least for now).

This would be the high level design.

SSG mentioned two terms, dps-tank hybrid and offensive support tank, wonder what other terms they are using for tank classification and in which classification the different tanks belong to, and finally, what these different roles should mean in practice.


Several classes have received some long awaited fixes already (not just tanks), so I wonder, how the new class philosophy looks like.

[Joedangod]

SSG mentioned two terms, dps-tank hybrid and offensive support tank, wonder what other terms they are using for tank classification and in which classification the different tanks belong to, and finally, what these different roles should mean in practice.

Hybrids don't work, trying to make them work is just gunning for failure. If they want to actually balance tanks they need to just label every tank as a "Tank", at which point they need to figure out what core abilities/functionality a tank should have and make sure that all tanks have access to those things. Can throw in minor functionality differences at the end to help accentuate class differences (beyond class mechanics making each tank play differently) but only once the baseline stuff has been sorted out.

[Cafat]

Hybrids don't work, trying to make them work is just gunning for failure. If they want to actually balance tanks they need to just label every tank as a "Tank", at which point they need to figure out what core abilities/functionality a tank should have and make sure that all tanks have access to those things. Can throw in minor functionality differences at the end to help accentuate class differences (beyond class mechanics making each tank play differently) but only once the baseline stuff has been sorted out.

Maybe it's just me, but based on brawler, the term, offensive support tank is not a term for hybrid class but for a tank class which has additional utility in the offensive support departement.

Also what they are doing with the class is exactly what you have mentioned, making sure that the core abilities/functionality are there.

"Brawler tanking has had some significant issues, and we have wanted to build a more distinct role for them as tanks in comparison with their fellows. Three issues we wanted to address in particular:
- The class had stacking incoming damage buffs that could render them effectively immune to damage for limited windows in concert with group buffs. While amusing, this was rather game breaking in certain encounters.
- They had trouble managing agro in fights with many mobs.
- As tanks, they lacked a clearly defined role compared with others.
We've decided to focus the Brawler's role towards being an offensive support tank. This doesn't mean they are a DPS-Tank hybrid - they are not focused on personal damage to the detriment of their own defense. Rather their personal defense is intended to remain quite strong, but their buffs now focus on their ability to improve the group's damage output more than any other tank, in particular to open up major burst windows against bosses or adds that need to be eliminated as quickly as possible."

With this in mind, introducing tank classifications helps to differentiate between different tank classes.

I'm not playing brawler but its good to see that some tanks are not just pure meatshields and have the option to interact more with the team.

What I would like to see is a similar feedback regarding the other tank classes from the Devs.

[KillAllFrep]

captain was never self-healing

It out-self-heals Wardens right now. I get 150-200k HPS as a Yellow Captain in raids, 50-60k on self, Wardens don't even get close to those numbers because they're immediately one-shot right off the bat by a green-tier add.

...Guardian suffered a bit here due a lot of the dmg not being mitigated, just dumb morale dmg, which captain could take adv of for a long time.

?? Your understanding of the way tanking works is suspect. A class with naturally higher morale and less burst survival (CaB, WF on Guardian) struggles much more than a class with lower morale and said burst healing options. Cappy with 2.5m HP stepping in a 20% puddle is a lot more damage taken that needs healing up than a 1.6m Guardian, that can immediately use a short CD self heal and be back to full, knowing that the next non-%-based boss hit isn't going to hit for over a million damage due to their good mitigations.

Guards are in a great spot right now and very sought after for tanking the raid.

Then they buffed yellow, which was unasked for, they only required to rescale our strength in numbers, that's all. But yk, SSG somehow saw fit to buff it.

Did I miss something here? What got buffed? SiN is still garbage, Last Stand got its duration reduced from 17 to 10 seconds, a nerf in itself and making In Harms Way a guaranteed death-sentence now, SotD can no longer be used on self, Morale boost for Yellow Line got nerfed. Like, what buffs are we talking about here?

Don't get me wrong, Captain is in a decent spot right now, but having their two core abilities destroyed and then almost given to Brawlers in this update is a bit disgusting, if you ask me, and if they didn't have a 10% raid wide morale buff and a double rez, with these new Brawler raid-wide DPS buffs you'd never see a Cappy tanking a raid again if a Brawler was available.

[CaerArianrhod]

From what I understand it's:
Beornings. Not shiny and new enough, came out half-baked so devs don't care.

I think the intended roles were:
Beornings no idea.

Beorning is at the moment the most balanced class in the game in terms of using all 3 skill trees.
Of course, you need to show some love to your Beorning (say: grind a lot for equipment), but if you do so, it can perform all three rolls very well.

[Joedangod]

Also what they are doing with the class is exactly what you have mentioned, making sure that the core abilities/functionality are there.

They're kinda doing the opposite by giving it stuff that is unmatched by other tanks. Brawler offers some pretty insane group buffs already (the +10% mits bonus has an utterly ridiculous uptime considering its strength). It already had group damage support abilities that were roughly equivalent to Guard (Strike As One! being a decent Break Ranks parallel). They've now notably buffed it in that area.

"their buffs now focus on their ability to improve the group's damage output more than any other tank"

The above statement is the main bit I take issue with here. We don't need niches like that especially considering "offensive support" is basically the most sought after "niche" in this game. There's no reason to make it an outlier in this regard when there are plenty of things already present on the class that could do with refining to really set it up as a feasible alternative (but not full replacement) to Guards. Different tanks should play differently, they shouldn't be different levels of effectiveness. If they want to improve Brawler tank they should be properly tying in the Innate Strength buffs and making sure Innate Strength is something the spec has to actively monitor rather than being something that is pretty much applied passively.

[Gamlieldar]

They're kinda doing the opposite by giving it stuff that is unmatched by other tanks. Brawler offers some pretty insane group buffs already (the +10% mits bonus has an utterly ridiculous uptime considering its strength). It already had group damage support abilities that were roughly equivalent to Guard (Strike As One! being a decent Break Ranks parallel). They've now notably buffed it in that area.

"their buffs now focus on their ability to improve the group's damage output more than any other tank"

The above statement is the main bit I take issue with here. We don't need niches like that especially considering "offensive support" is basically the most sought after "niche" in this game. There's no reason to make it an outlier in this regard when there are plenty of things already present on the class that could do with refining to really set it up as a feasible alternative (but not full replacement) to Guards. Different tanks should play differently, they shouldn't be different levels of effectiveness. If they want to improve Brawler tank they should be properly tying in the Innate Strength buffs and making sure Innate Strength is something the spec has to actively monitor rather than being something that is pretty much applied passively.

I'm bumping this reply. As it stands on BR, Brawlers are being given too much damage utility. They already have Strike as One +20% damage for 30s on a 1 min CD, they're being given on BR a +30% damage boost for 15 sec on a 2 minute cooldown (replaces Iron Will, which is affected by Hasten Powerful Techniques on live. Is "The Best Defence" cooldown reduced likewise on BR?), +20% incoming damage on an internal 70s CD for each target struck vs. a Guardian's mere +40% OGD for 15 sec on a 1 minute cooldown.

On top of this, One For All, which is baseline for all Brawlers, will allow nearby allies to have 10% mitigations for 50% uptime. Guards only give the entire raid 2% mits on a 100% uptime provided that they maintain full stacks of Fortifications. Just this ability's power alone shows that Brawlers are NOT ONLY damage support. Whatever group support the Guardian provides in terms of raw numbers (not counting Litany, which can be a suicide button if used wrong, so that balances out), Brawler is doing better. Something needs to be adjusted, or I will refer to the above quote and suggest that Brawlers are too powerful in the current BR state, and can most certainly replace guards, ESPECIALLY when the fights are NOT add heavy (like FoKD, Shelob, etc.).

[Technician46]

I'm bumping this reply. As it stands on BR, Brawlers are being given too much damage utility. They already have Strike as One +20% damage for 30s on a 1 min CD, they're being given on BR a +20% damage boost for 15 sec on a 2 minute cooldown (replaces Iron Will, which is affected by Hasten Powerful Techniques on live. Is "The Best Defence" cooldown reduced likewise on BR?), +20% incoming damage on an internal 70s CD for each target struck vs. a Guardian's mere +40% OGD for 15 sec on a 1 minute cooldown.

On top of this, One For All, which is baseline for all Brawlers, will allow nearby allies to have 10% mitigations for 50% uptime. Guards only give the entire raid 2% mits on a 100% uptime provided that they maintain full stacks of Fortifications. Just this ability's power alone shows that Brawlers are NOT ONLY damage support. Whatever group support the Guardian provides in terms of raw numbers (not counting Litany, which can be a suicide button if used wrong, so that balances out), Brawler is doing better. Something needs to be adjusted, or I will refer to the above quote and suggest that Brawlers are too powerful in the current BR state, and can most certainly replace guards, ESPECIALLY when the fights are NOT add heavy (like FoKD, Shelob, etc.).

They are doing it again....... making Guardians unwanted/unneeded like in the days when the Captain reigned supreme (which wasn't to long ago). If guards had other effective trait lines this might not hurt so much but as it stands our dps is still very uncompetitive and lets not mention yellow line. Soon we'll be out classed again, this time not by a Captain but by a brawler. Instead of making all classes equal but with different ways of expressing their tankiness (style) and keep them balanced they further unbalance them by buffing 1 class over others and rendering the others unneeded/unwanted. Frustrating !!!!!. I also very much agree with Joedangod here he's hit the nail on the head.

[Gamlieldar]

They are doing it again....... making Guardians unwanted/unneeded like in the days when the Captain reigned supreme (which wasn't to long ago). If guards had other effective trait lines this might not hurt so much but as it stands our dps is still very uncompetitive and lets not mention yellow line. Soon we'll be out classed again, this time not by a Captain but by a brawler. Instead of making all classes equal but with different ways of expressing their tankiness (style) and keep them balanced they further unbalance them by buffing 1 class over others and rendering the others unneeded/unwanted. Frustrating !!!!!. I also very much agree with Joedangod here he's hit the nail on the head.

Couple of things I want to say on this comment:

#1: Word on the street is that yellow mini line is getting reworked into a Brawler-Style line, where you don't spec into it, but traits cost 1 point per rank. "If Guards had other effective trait lines..." -well, it's time yellow line was reworked to revolve around a different theme (believe me, I'm thinking of something I would share on Guard class forums) that isn't a gimmicky "Captain Mark"

#2: Brawler DPS is apparently insane on BR (not that it's bad on live, far better than red guards/minis), and yet Guardians red line DPS is still substandard and unwanted. Now granted, a guardian's primary role is tanking, as in the name, but there are ways to make guardian DPS extremely powerful while providing utility that is very "guard-like"

#3: Being outclassed by a brawler instead of a captain: This will hold true when the raid fights are NOT add-heavy, like in FoKD/Shelob. And even then, depending on how skilled the brawler is at add-play, they could take the role of guard as the add-tank, because their slightly less potent AoE (long-range warchant is not in their toolkit) is made up for by this overwhelming amount of group DPS buffs.

IMO, the overall solution is to give the Guardian class a rework on their trait tree lines, ESPECIALLY yellow line and it's thematic flash of light being gimped to the ground. There are things in each trait line that no guard in their right mind would ever take for endgame, such as:

a. Red Line's Invigourating Parry - Get enough fate, and you should also be running with a captain. This is negligible.
b. Blue Line's Tireless Defender - Guardian's Ward provides power reduction. Also useless trait.
c. Yellow Line's Insult to Injury - imagine spending 10 points just to give your abilities a 15% chance to reset the duration on debuffs, when those debuffs will easily expire in both kiting and non-kiting situations.
d. Warrior's Fortitude in each of the lines - imagine spending a point in any one of the Warrior's Fortitudes for a buff that is very minimal. These need to be buffed.

[Technician46]

Couple of things I want to say on this comment:

#1: Word on the street is that yellow mini line is getting reworked into a Brawler-Style line, where you don't spec into it, but traits cost 1 point per rank. "If Guards had other effective trait lines..." -well, it's time yellow line was reworked to revolve around a different theme (believe me, I'm thinking of something I would share on Guard class forums) that isn't a gimmicky "Captain Mark"

#2: Brawler DPS is apparently insane on BR (not that it's bad on live, far better than red guards/minis), and yet Guardians red line DPS is still substandard and unwanted. Now granted, a guardian's primary role is tanking, as in the name, but there are ways to make guardian DPS extremely powerful while providing utility that is very "guard-like"

#3: Being outclassed by a brawler instead of a captain: This will hold true when the raid fights are NOT add-heavy, like in FoKD/Shelob. And even then, depending on how skilled the brawler is at add-play, they could take the role of guard as the add-tank, because their slightly less potent AoE (long-range warchant is not in their toolkit) is made up for by this overwhelming amount of group DPS buffs.

IMO, the overall solution is to give the Guardian class a rework on their trait tree lines, ESPECIALLY yellow line and it's thematic flash of light being gimped to the ground. There are things in each trait line that no guard in their right mind would ever take for endgame, such as:

a. Red Line's Invigourating Parry - Get enough fate, and you should also be running with a captain. This is negligible.
b. Blue Line's Tireless Defender - Guardian's Ward provides power reduction. Also useless trait.
c. Yellow Line's Insult to Injury - imagine spending 10 points just to give your abilities a 15% chance to reset the duration on debuffs, when those debuffs will easily expire in both kiting and non-kiting situations.
d. Warrior's Fortitude in each of the lines - imagine spending a point in any one of the Warrior's Fortitudes for a buff that is very minimal. These need to be buffed.

I would be interested in seeing your ideas about yellow line in guard forums.

I agree with your assessment to an overall rework of the guardian trait tree including repositioning of some traits and lowering the cost to rank them up. Here are just a few other examples added to your list:

1. Red line: Reactive Parry - causes a small amount of damage to enemy when parrying an attack. I want to stress a SMALL AMOUNT AND ONLY HAPPEN WHEN YOU PARRY AN ATTACK WHICH IN ITSELF COULD BE LESS THEN 13% OF THE TIMES.

2. Red line : Honourable Combat - a big joke and a capstone trait. Luckily or should I say unluckily we don't have to waste a trait point for it but leaves an empty useless slot in our trait tree.

3. Blue line: Disorientation - cost 5 trait points to have a 25% chance to reduce enemies b/p/e by 5%. Another useless skill specially against higher tier adds and bosses that have increased avoidances. This needs a rework or something new altogether.

4. Blue line: Stoic - A BIT COSTLY, 6 trait points to get increase morale and -20% damage reduction for 15 secs. I don't know about you but 6 trait points is a bit much. 5 trait points would still be high IMO but more reasonable then 6. And how about increasing the damage reduction to 30% or more?

5. Blue line: Break Ranks - A skill that I feel should be lower in the trait tree to help out lower level Guardians, maybe put it in the place of "Disorientation". Break Ranks should also be disassociated from shield taunt and be a separate skill.

6. Blue line: Relentless Assault - the Finesse recently added to this trait should be removed and added as part of "Guardian's Defense" as a % to the class trait set bonus. This is forcing us to either have to choose to rank this trait up or add finesse to our essence slots. In the case of choosing an essence slot it make it more difficult to add vitality essences that are much needed on Guardians.

And well yellow line I just don't have the desire atm to get into all of that but yea I would like to see your ideas on it. But before I go I do want to say that ppl just don't realize how many trait points and how deep down guards have to go into yellow line to get "Vicious Rebuttal". It's almost a capstone trait and what this means is that in order for a blue line guard to get this yellow line trait we have to either weaken some of our other blue line trait or relinquish them altogether making us forgo the full potential of blue line. It also means that lower level guardians are at a disadvantage. Some food for thought for our Devs !!!

P.S. And btw so are higher level guards even us who have all our trait points. We can't reach our full potential in Blue Line because "Vicious Rebuttal" is just to important to go with out. This is something that very few ppl mention and that Devs don't seem to realize.

[Zvim666]

I play all tanks except Warden, just don't like the gambit system. I think you can do pretty much any content with any tank but I think the main issue with LOTRO and basically every class type (dps, healer, tank) is that it is a rollercoaster and the effectiveness variance between one and another can be pretty significant and tends to peak when a class is "reviewed" and wanes the longer you go between reviews. The variance just goes off the charts between one class and another in the same role.

Another mmo I play is FFXIV and there is significantly less variance between their class/job roles and basically one character can be every class/job so there isn't the same kind of grind to change between them, it comes down to which style you prefer to play, each has minor strengths and weaknesses they also have class defining abilities but most of the functionality exists between all tanks.

All mmos have pros and cons and I am not saying just do what X or Y mmo does, but they have some fundamental design philosophies which defines what various classes do, and it works well for that game. For example, their end-game content (8 man ultimate raids) are 2 tanks, 2 healers and 4 dps. The difficulty is defined really by how much 2 healers can heal, you don't really get unhealable fights like lotro likes to sometimes throw at you where tanks need to kite, that breaks their design philosophy. Bosses have some abilities called tank busters, if a non-tank gets hit by one, you die. Tanks have various damage mitigation abilities (all tanks get their own versions of them), some of them are shared between all tanks. They do not allow addons, you can clearly see when bosses unleash abilities, you know where they are going to hit. You don't need mods to track a tsunami of debuffs. The way it is setup for their game, it works. It doesn't matter if you are dps, healer or tank, everyone's job is to do as much damage as possible to make the fight easier. Healers don't sit there spamming heals non-stop, it is about efficiency and the least amount of healing you need to do to keep everyone alive, then you focus on doing as much damage as possible. Outside of holding agro and moving mobs, tanks also focus on doing as much damage as possible. It works because there is about 5-10% variance between best to worst so there isn't this crazy rollercoaster of effectiveness in your role. You can basically play what you like to play, bring the player, not the class/role.

There are a lot more variables being used in LOTRO and utility is one that is the most broken fundamentally, this is what has caused problems (particularly with the captain) and has resulted in numerous nerfs, much needed ones. The utility of blue bears is kind of obsolete, because you want a yellow bear and they can cover all of the utility, largely because there is no depth at all to the healing role outside of a few traits, there is little to nothing in the other trees that make a yellow bear a better healer so they are free to chase the utility bearing traits.

Brawler with these changes will provide a lot of damage dealing utility, even if the Brawler is vastly inferior to that of any other tank, it will catapult them to most desirable tank, once you stack the various damage dealing buffs, that is when damage output goes through the roof. You need to learn from the pitfalls of the captain and ask how much did a few % here or there break it and warrant a nerf then compare what you are adding to Brawlers and compare that to what other tanks offer.

The problem for lotro tanks is the toolkit each has is radically different. Two of the three Guardian "oh ####" buttons are BPE based and these do nothing against bosses, but they are very strong against trash, it is why the class gets cookie-cuttered into tanking trash. It is crazy Beorning Worthy Adversary still functions only in bear form when the class needs to shift out to access some abilities.

It has been a long time since you trashed BPE on bosses, it should have been revamped a long time ago, there should be some mitigation benefit to BPE, it doesn't have to be all or nothing but there should be an alternative to every tank just stacking vitality, we are seeing more morale % sources of damage to counter the benefit of insane morale pools.

I think tanks need to have more of a homogenized toolkit of offensive, defensive and utility abilities, they should play differently, have different themes, styles, strengths and weaknesses but they shouldn't be night and day differences, if you try to balance content with the most powerful combinations in every encounter you are just going to artificially make it vastly more difficult for those that can't hit the right class combos. It creates an illusion of choice if most of the combos are bad.

There is too large a variance between tanks, too large a variance between dps, too large a variance between healers. You need to start defining a yardstick in terms of what a tank, dps and healer brings and when you adjust classes, make them more interesting to play, but they should fit within that yardstick of power. You will know when you hit the mark when the spread of classes taken are spread more evenly.

[CasualActual]

They are doing it again....... making Guardians unwanted/unneeded like in the days when the Captain reigned supreme (which wasn't to long ago). If guards had other effective trait lines this might not hurt so much but as it stands our dps is still very uncompetitive and lets not mention yellow line. Soon we'll be out classed again, this time not by a Captain but by a brawler. Instead of making all classes equal but with different ways of expressing their tankiness (style) and keep them balanced they further unbalance them by buffing 1 class over others and rendering the others unneeded/unwanted. Frustrating !!!!!. I also very much agree with Joedangod here he's hit the nail on the head.

I think you have some good points here. I think the goal should be to set a baseline for all tanks in the game and make an effort to make them very similar in abilities. If they're going to keep tank lines for brawler, champ, beos, warden, captain and guard then they need to be roughly equivalent. Quit picking favorites and make them equal enough that all tiers of instances can be run by all tanks. If the players wants to tank t5 raid on warden then it should be made possible through proper balancing.

[Meshuggenah]

With this in mind, introducing tank classifications helps to differentiate between different tank classes.

Seems to me that classes should differentiate classes? That's a matter of gameplay preference, not role. A warden and a captain may play very differently but they're both tanks that should have all the tools they need to perform equally well in any scenario as tanks.

The "clearly defined role" of a tank in any fellowship is to a) maintain threat and b) stay alive.

When you form a fellowship you need a tank, healer and some DPS/Support. The particular classes you invite should not matter because all classes/specs should be capable of performing their roles with equal success.

If a player wants to do a dungeon as a red minstrel, blue captain, blue champion, etc. provided they are spec'd and geared appropriately, there's no reason they should be prevented from doing so by poor game design or balance.

[Oelle]

Seems to me that classes should differentiate classes? That's a matter of gameplay preference, not role. A warden and a captain may play very differently but they're both tanks that should have all the tools they need to perform equally well in any scenario as tanks.

The "clearly defined role" of a tank in any fellowship is to a) maintain threat and b) stay alive.

When you form a fellowship you need a tank, healer and some DPS/Support. The particular classes you invite should not matter because all classes/specs should be capable of performing their roles with equal success.

If a player wants to do a dungeon as a red minstrel, blue captain, blue champion, etc. provided they are spec'd and geared appropriately, there's no reason they should be prevented from doing so by poor game design or balance.

I agree completely to all that was said here.

[Cafat]

Seems to me that classes should differentiate classes? That's a matter of gameplay preference, not role. A warden and a captain may play very differently but they're both tanks that should have all the tools they need to perform equally well in any scenario as tanks.

The "clearly defined role" of a tank in any fellowship is to a) maintain threat and b) stay alive.

When you form a fellowship you need a tank, healer and some DPS/Support. The particular classes you invite should not matter because all classes/specs should be capable of performing their roles with equal success.

If a player wants to do a dungeon as a red minstrel, blue captain, blue champion, etc. provided they are spec'd and geared appropriately, there's no reason they should be prevented from doing so by poor game design or balance.

While I do agree, we are talking about two different things.

The fact that a class/spec is classified as a tank or healer means that it has all the necessary tools to perform its job.

If thats not the case, then thats a design issue and needs to be fixed.

This is the base line.


What this topic is all about is SSG's vision about the tanks and their "extended tooklit". They referd to this as defined role as a tank, which is a bit misleading.

Based on brawler's example, we know that, on top of survivability they meant to be able to augment the fellowship's dmg-ing ability and be the drivers of burst windows.

In my opinion, this is a good approach, since it adds another level to the gameplay and helps to interact more with the team other than being a meatshield.


What I would really like to know, is the vision and state of the other tanks, what is their "defined role" in the fellowship on top of the core tanking functionality?

Current tanking balance and core tanking toolset is a different topic, I'm affraid there is job to do in that departement too.

[Joedangod]

Based on brawler's example, we know that, on top of survivability they meant to be able to augment the fellowship's dmg-ing ability and be the drivers of burst windows.

In my opinion, this is a good approach, since it adds another level to the gameplay and helps to interact more with the team other than being a meatshield.

It's a tolerable approach once you have a firmly established baseline. We don't have that. There are 7 tank specs, 3 are basically dead (yGuard/bWarden/bChamp) with nobody really considering them due to various design issues. One tank is basically disqualified because the yellow line of that class picks up its unique debuff (bBeorning). 1 of the meta tank specs has absolutely no competition for its place (yCaptain), no other tank does a fraction of what that spec does in terms of group healing/support. With the final two tank specs we were getting someone close to even in terms of capability which has now been done away with since Brawler has gotten a massive boost to its offensive support.

Establishing the baseline comes first. Trying to avoid that is why we have this situation.

[savetheroadtodoriath]

I play all tanks except Warden, just don't like the gambit system. I think you can do pretty much any content with any tank but I think the main issue with LOTRO and basically every class type (dps, healer, tank) is that it is a rollercoaster and the effectiveness variance between one and another can be pretty significant and tends to peak when a class is "reviewed" and wanes the longer you go between reviews. The variance just goes off the charts between one class and another in the same role.

Another mmo I play is FFXIV and there is significantly less variance between their class/job roles and basically one character can be every class/job so there isn't the same kind of grind to change between them, it comes down to which style you prefer to play, each has minor strengths and weaknesses they also have class defining abilities but most of the functionality exists between all tanks.

All mmos have pros and cons and I am not saying just do what X or Y mmo does, but they have some fundamental design philosophies which defines what various classes do, and it works well for that game. For example, their end-game content (8 man ultimate raids) are 2 tanks, 2 healers and 4 dps. The difficulty is defined really by how much 2 healers can heal, you don't really get unhealable fights like lotro likes to sometimes throw at you where tanks need to kite, that breaks their design philosophy. Bosses have some abilities called tank busters, if a non-tank gets hit by one, you die. Tanks have various damage mitigation abilities (all tanks get their own versions of them), some of them are shared between all tanks. They do not allow addons, you can clearly see when bosses unleash abilities, you know where they are going to hit. You don't need mods to track a tsunami of debuffs. The way it is setup for their game, it works. It doesn't matter if you are dps, healer or tank, everyone's job is to do as much damage as possible to make the fight easier. Healers don't sit there spamming heals non-stop, it is about efficiency and the least amount of healing you need to do to keep everyone alive, then you focus on doing as much damage as possible. Outside of holding agro and moving mobs, tanks also focus on doing as much damage as possible. It works because there is about 5-10% variance between best to worst so there isn't this crazy rollercoaster of effectiveness in your role. You can basically play what you like to play, bring the player, not the class/role.

There are a lot more variables being used in LOTRO and utility is one that is the most broken fundamentally, this is what has caused problems (particularly with the captain) and has resulted in numerous nerfs, much needed ones. The utility of blue bears is kind of obsolete, because you want a yellow bear and they can cover all of the utility, largely because there is no depth at all to the healing role outside of a few traits, there is little to nothing in the other trees that make a yellow bear a better healer so they are free to chase the utility bearing traits.

Brawler with these changes will provide a lot of damage dealing utility, even if the Brawler is vastly inferior to that of any other tank, it will catapult them to most desirable tank, once you stack the various damage dealing buffs, that is when damage output goes through the roof. You need to learn from the pitfalls of the captain and ask how much did a few % here or there break it and warrant a nerf then compare what you are adding to Brawlers and compare that to what other tanks offer.

The problem for lotro tanks is the toolkit each has is radically different. Two of the three Guardian "oh ####" buttons are BPE based and these do nothing against bosses, but they are very strong against trash, it is why the class gets cookie-cuttered into tanking trash. It is crazy Beorning Worthy Adversary still functions only in bear form when the class needs to shift out to access some abilities.

It has been a long time since you trashed BPE on bosses, it should have been revamped a long time ago, there should be some mitigation benefit to BPE, it doesn't have to be all or nothing but there should be an alternative to every tank just stacking vitality, we are seeing more morale % sources of damage to counter the benefit of insane morale pools.

I think tanks need to have more of a homogenized toolkit of offensive, defensive and utility abilities, they should play differently, have different themes, styles, strengths and weaknesses but they shouldn't be night and day differences, if you try to balance content with the most powerful combinations in every encounter you are just going to artificially make it vastly more difficult for those that can't hit the right class combos. It creates an illusion of choice if most of the combos are bad.

There is too large a variance between tanks, too large a variance between dps, too large a variance between healers. You need to start defining a yardstick in terms of what a tank, dps and healer brings and when you adjust classes, make them more interesting to play, but they should fit within that yardstick of power. You will know when you hit the mark when the spread of classes taken are spread more evenly.

I knew bosses couldn't miss but you're saying they can't be BPE'd anymore either? Wow, that is some seriously bad design. I mean classes like Warden are basically a dozen BPE buffs.

[Meshuggenah]

I knew bosses couldn't miss but you're saying they can't be BPE'd anymore either? Wow, that is some seriously bad design. I mean classes like Warden are basically a dozen BPE buffs.

To be fair, Wardens were busted at the time. They were doing high DPS while tanking and had so much self healing they could complete most fellowship content without even needing a healer.

However, the typical hamfisted approach of nerfing everything into the ground and just deleting BPE killed the whole spec.

I think it comes down to budget. It takes a lot of time and resources to properly balance an MMO with so many years worth of content and doing so doesn't bring in revenue. Releasing a shiny new class or another "expansion" for people to buy does so that's what they focus on. Meanwhile, we're still playing on a client from 2007 with broken specs and bugs that haven't been fixed in a decade.

[Cafat]

I knew bosses couldn't miss but you're saying they can't be BPE'd anymore either? Wow, that is some seriously bad design. I mean classes like Warden are basically a dozen BPE buffs.

BPE were reintroduced in raids with Gundabad or are you talking about a specific skill or attack?

Not a 100% sure, but I remember as there is no BPE penalty for higher tiers, only Pmit, Tmit, and finesse.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

[WhimsicalPacifist]

If someone's willing to put in the effort to max out a class tree's particular role, they should be viable at that role at endgame especially if advertised as a tank. I used to prefer that top-tier tanking be the realm of Warden/Guardian exclusively. Given the time Captain has spent at that role, and the introduction of Bear and Kung-Fu tanks, that ship has long sailed.

Would like to tank again on Warden, but I feel it would be a waste of future time, IRL money and in-game resources (I am very sour about my sunken costs in Warden). I don't know, maybe SSG figures a single role per class is enough and ignoring the small population who plays the worse tanks doesn't justify the effort balancing them.

[fealegwe2]

you honestly think class balance will be executed properly by a company were the balancers don't play end game raid content?

when they change something because its "performing too well" ie. people completing content too quickly, they inevitably stealth nerf or buff a different class.
and so the cycle continues.

[Plidak]

BPE were reintroduced in raids with Gundabad or are you talking about a specific skill or attack?

Not a 100% sure, but I remember as there is no BPE penalty for higher tiers, only Pmit, Tmit, and finesse.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Reintroduce my bacon. BPE have noe afect on boss special attacks. All you can do as warden is to beg ppl to take you at t2 raid, and to pray you have dedicated healers who are willing to keep you alive while you prefer you are tanking.
On t3 good luck. Even if some friends decide to give you a chance, you get one shoted right at the start.
Ouside "for the free ppl" mitigation "bonus" you provide nothing to the reaid. The 10% dmg bonus can be provided from yellow/red warden.
Also crit resistance doesnt work. So ye/ half shoted