Is cappy tanking too good?

[XSR2]

I haven't been able to log and seriously play my captain for a bit, so I don't know when threatening shout/Elendil's fury changed. Given that the captain is already a top of the line tank, best if not second best, does anyone else think they are a little too powerful right now. Before the changes to Elendi's fury and threatening shout, the main weak point of cappy tanking was tanking many mobs at once. Usually from what I saw, and could do, cappies always had trouble keeping threat on more than one mob at a time. So my question is, does anyone think this change is too powerful, taking away one of the few weakness of captain tanks, who already had phenomenal tanking on top of great support and panic skills?

[Arabani]

No, the less weaknesses the better. If the class has a role, it shall be as effective in it as any other class with the same role. The difference shall be in the playstyle (active mitigation vs self healing vs avoidance vs something else; buffs vs debuffs; dots vs direct hits; different themes of the class and so on).

P.S. Make the Blue Captain a real healer.

[Hephburz-2]

The ability to hold aggro against 1 or 20 mobs should not and never have been a defining characteristic of "tanks", as it further diluted what was already a small player base to begin with. The current content was completable without the changes with Captain Tanks for everything, and aggro was never an issue then anyway, suggesting that it has somehow made them too powerful is irrelevant until we actually get content where we can see the benefits of said changes.

The problems with Cappy tanking are not to do with threat/aggro, they are to do with beyond stupid scaling that has taken place more so over the last 3-4 years, and SSG's inability to scale up or even play the slightest attention to any other tank in the game.

No, the less weaknesses the better. If the class has a role, it shall be as effective in it as any other class with the same role. The difference shall be in the playstyle (active mitigation vs self healing vs avoidance vs something else; buffs vs debuffs; dots vs direct hits; different themes of the class and so on).

Agreed!

Edit: And I really wish we would move away from this culture of, X class is underpowered, but Y class is in a really good spot, so let's nerf Y class to make X class more appealing. It's old, and it has already destroyed 1 class this expansion (RK), can we not let it happen to another?

[Omen_Kaizer]

Agreed y'all. You have to put effort into each line to be good at it anyway, not like it's just retrait and go. Folks ask "why should X get to be viable at 2 or 3 things?", but you don't get to do nothing--you grind a 2nd or 3rd set of LIs and gear and you hone a whole other skillset.

Plus choice in a game is just good, even before considering it's healthy for an aging game + dwindling player base (covid spike aside).

[Pavlin]

3 bs comments and not a propper answer.
""Is cappy tanking too good?"" its way better than other 2 tanks (guard and beor.) in everything (agro, selfg heal, dmg and support-while taning)
Hope that answer your question.

[Hephburz-2]

3 bs comments and not a propper answer.
""Is cappy tanking too good?"" its way better than other 2 tanks (guard and beor.) in everything (agro, selfg heal, dmg and support-while taning)
Hope that answer your question.

It's way better than the other tanks because they have not paid any attention to tanks over the past 5-6 years, literally none. The recent changes aside and the so-called "captain balance pass" aside, which didn't really change anything tank related, Captains are almost EXACTLY the same as they were when trait tree's were first introduced if we say level 100-105 times accounting for all the mini-changes that came after HD, Captains were not OP then, they were decent, sure, but not OP, I urge you to find me a SINGLE forum post from that time claiming Captains were OP and needed nerfing, the only thing that has changed between now and then to make Captains overpowered is rubbish scaling, badly designed content and a lack of attention paid to every single other tank.

Yes, they are good, but they are by no means "better" at aggro than Guard/Beorning, on par, perhaps, but certainly not better.

[Elmagor]

You need more skill and better gear/legacy to tank with guardian AND survive. If you compare guardian and captain with same virtues, legacies and other things, 1/10 guardians can sucessfully tank anything, while 9/10 captains can sucessfully tank anything. With "sucessfully" I mean tanking without using DNF or mini spend all their time 100% heal just tank to help him survive with low health.

[Brinuw]

Yes, they are good, but they are by no means "better" at aggro than Guard/Beorning, on par, perhaps, but certainly not better.

I agree with your comment only because your comment means very little. "aggro" is a moot point since all tanking is the same now with how force taunts threat copy; thus it no tank now is any better at generating aggro than they are hitting 1 button as soon as the dps pulls. Maybe an argument could be made for X class being better then Y due to the number of taunts and the number of targets those taunts can effect but theses days all tank classes has a 10+ target taunt on a relatively short cooldown and current content doesnt really require even that.

Why are Cappy tanks OP, its 100% the support the bring to the the table. Current content is primarily balance to squeeze every ounce of dps out of the group as one can so in that regard only 3 options really have any effect:

Captains can bring an additional red banner, which wasn't available when trait trees were created due to lower number of trait points so yes cappies have power creep, they can also cover the mark that the red cappy in the group isnt covering so there is always telling/revealing. they can also shield brother the yellow burg or a dps in the tank group for a small damage buff.

Beornings can reduce physical mitigations by 15% and increase incoming damage by 15% at 80 to 100% uptime.

Wardens can reduce mitigations by 5-10% on 1-4 targets, which for most of the current content is plenty.

Guardians can do absolutely nothing to increase damage. there is the blue trait the reduces B/P/E but honestly if your dps is getting b/p/e'd tell them to get more finesse; its a useless debuff. The only case could be made would be for yellow guardian with Singular Focus but its a minimal debuff on an unreliable application.

Champions do nothing for increasing group dps....nothing at all....

So is cappy tanking too good, yes. Its not the captains fault though. Content requires dps and yellow captains can offer that support while doing the same job as every other tank in the game. Beornings can offer the same support while coming as a healer, and Wardens can offer the same or better support while taking a dps spot so at the end of the day the question's gotta be asked of why ever take a guardian or champ?

Now am I calling for nerfs? not at all. I'm asking for the same thing you are, an in depth revitalization of guardians, blue wardens, blue beornings, and blue champs, as well as a comprehensive understanding of why the current content only favors one play style. making less fights pure dps checks (1 or 2 bosses in an encounter is fine to slow progression) and adding in more puzzle mechanics or pure survival. Honestly a raid fight where a champ and warden get asked to trait out of dps and into blue as offtanks would be amazing for me cause its something different than the standard 1-2tank/2heal/3support/5-6dps lineups that have become the norm.

[Pavlin]

It's way better than the other tanks because they have not paid any attention to tanks over the past 5-6 years, literally none. The recent changes aside and the so-called "captain balance pass" aside, which didn't really change anything tank related, Captains are almost EXACTLY the same as they were when trait tree's were first introduced if we say level 100-105 times accounting for all the mini-changes that came after HD, Captains were not OP then, they were decent, sure, but not OP, I urge you to find me a SINGLE forum post from that time claiming Captains were OP and needed nerfing, the only thing that has changed between now and then to make Captains overpowered is rubbish scaling, badly designed content and a lack of attention paid to every single other tank.

Yes, they are good, but they are by no means "better" at aggro than Guard/Beorning, on par, perhaps, but certainly not better.

I never said that cpt is op. And ofc they have better agro holding than rest of the tanks.
They get agro from heals, also their dmg was increased in general, to the point that yellow cpt dont need to switch specialisation while questin, and with proper gear do more dmg than red beoring and captain + some other ""dps specs"" like blue LM / while stil saying in yellow tree.
About the nerf and op posts check pvp section of the forum. I wont do it for you because i dont care pvmp in this game.

(also re read the post above mine)

[Elmagor]

I never said that cpt is op. And ofc they have better agro holding than rest of the tanks.
They get agro from heals, also their dmg was increased in general, to the point that yellow cpt dont need to switch specialisation while questin, and with proper gear do more dmg than red beoring and captain + some other ""dps specs"" like blue LM / while stil saying in yellow tree.
About the nerf and op posts check pvp section of the forum. I wont do it for you because i dont care pvmp in this game.

(also re read the post above mine)

Well, I never seen Captain getting agro from other tanks by using heal or damage, without using force taunt. Damage increased? When? Increased when they nerf Grave Wound and bleeds? No one care about that specialisation you use while questing, because landscape mobs nerfed to the ground and you can do it in any spec, in any gear.

[HolyDuckTape]

I haven't been able to log and seriously play my captain for a bit, so I don't know when threatening shout/Elendil's fury changed. Given that the captain is already a top of the line tank, best if not second best, does anyone else think they are a little too powerful right now. Before the changes to Elendi's fury and threatening shout, the main weak point of cappy tanking was tanking many mobs at once. Usually from what I saw, and could do, cappies always had trouble keeping threat on more than one mob at a time. So my question is, does anyone think this change is too powerful, taking away one of the few weakness of captain tanks, who already had phenomenal tanking on top of great support and panic skills?

Yes one huge yes. The only reason why other tanks were taken the last years was because captains lacked in their ability of tanking a big amount of adds. Ofcourse captains were still able to do it, but it was difficult and usually required some good teamwork in raids to pull off, that's why most people just said ''ah frick it'' and just took something like a guardian to tank the 1st boss anvil adds for example. But captains were still better than that other tank in every other way possible.

Now with the recent ''elendil's roar'' change, captains have lost their only weakness and are now almost perfect tanks. The only real thing they lack atm is a BPE emergency but their huge passive BPE and their best emergencies already make up for it.

Captains have been OP for quite a time now and this recent taunt change has made them insane. Totally removing the only reason why other tanks were even considered into instances.

[Zaheer]

Agreed y'all. You have to put effort into each line to be good at it anyway, not like it's just retrait and go. Folks ask "why should X get to be viable at 2 or 3 things?", but you don't get to do nothing--you grind a 2nd or 3rd set of LIs and gear and you hone a whole other skillset.

Plus choice in a game is just good, even before considering it's healthy for an aging game + dwindling player base (covid spike aside).

Perhaps its too storng on the taunts side, but regarding its position around cds, building, mits and mits, it's balanced.

The captain is not too strong, the issue is the guardian and warden being broken by the ridiculous RNG BPE system that needs to be restored.

Yes one huge yes. The only reason why other tanks were taken the last years was because captains lacked in their ability of tanking a big amount of adds. Ofcourse captains were still able to do it, but it was difficult and usually required some good teamwork in raids to pull off, that's why most people just said ''ah frick it'' and just took something like a guardian to tank the 1st boss anvil adds for example. But captains were still better than that other tank in every other way possible.

Now with the recent ''elendil's roar'' change, captains have lost their only weakness and are now almost perfect tanks. The only real thing they lack atm is a BPE emergency but their huge passive BPE and their best emergencies already make up for it.

Captains have been OP for quite a time now and this recent taunt change has made them insane. Totally removing the only reason why other tanks were even considered into instances.

Captains havent been strong on BPE, their BPE is rlly quite broken because of the system, not because of the captain. The whole BPE system needs to be restored or redeveloped, not the class.


To be very clear, I got the following text from a main-guardian friend, he plays the class for a very long time and you could say that the guard is his only char much like me playing only my captain.

SSG doesn't understand that by ####ing up the BPE ratings, they ####ed up the guard and the warden because they were relying mostly on BPE in order to survive.
Capt was always a morale ##### ''buffer'' (beorn probably as well) but not the guard and the warden.

Add to that the fact that most of the boss skills can't be BPE since Mordor, so slotting BPE essences is not an option.
Sure you can argue that the guard has 10% more mits but that hasn't changed for years, while capt keeps gaining reduced incoming damage from LIs every update (talking here about a spammable skill not CDs).
And yea guard gets 8500 BP to Ward from LIs when the BPE rating cap is close to a million.

All capt CDs are focused on damage absorption/reduction - Last Stand, SoD, In Harms Way, To Arms.
Because of the raid mechanics, which for the last updates consists in bosses doing huge damage that can be only countered by huge morale pools and damage reduction skills.
(btw the Last Stand had one balancing factor that the healer had to get you up from 1 morale, well you get auto healed back now)

Guard cornerstone CDs are BPE - Juggernaut & Pledge - so irrelevant when it really matters.
Redirect reduced damage can help but getting a parry at the right time is RNG.
Warriors Heart is ok, you can get to a capt's morale pool ... for 20s ...

I can go on and on about this but anyway, while capt can buff DPS, heal and tank, warden DPS and tank, guard can only tank.
I still enjoy the the guard but I miss the AoE targets, the Shield taunts, the BPE been relevant and at same time achievable.
(In ToDT days I had 18/19/15 full BPE chance, 25% partial chance and 50% partial mitigation.)

MY personal response to this is not entirely true, Hardened reduction has stopped increasing, but overall it is fairly accurate.

[mrgiles]

Don't forget the fact that they can revive two players in combat while tanking. Healers can't even do that, unless you count both RK DNF targets going down at the same time. If they moved double rez to a blue line trait bonus, it would somewhat bring them down from their Thanos level. No tank should have that ability.

[Zaheer]

Don't forget the fact that they can revive two players in combat while tanking. Healers can't even do that, unless you count both RK DNF targets going down at the same time. If they moved double rez to a blue line trait bonus, it would somewhat bring them down from their Thanos level. No tank should have that ability.

and a 5minute cooldown, what part of Jack of all trades did you not understand?

[Joedangod]

Perhaps its too storng on the taunts side, but regarding its position around cds, building, mits and mits, it's balanced.

The captain is not too strong, the issue is the guardian and warden being broken by the ridiculous RNG BPE system that needs to be restored.

Captains havent been strong on BPE, their BPE is rlly quite broken because of the system, not because of the captain. The whole BPE system needs to be restored or redeveloped, not the class.

You don't appear to understand what you're talking about. In terms of full BPE Captain is currently the class with the highest overall full avoid chance, they even beat wardens on that front.

Off the top of my head the figures are as follows:

• Captain: +10% full avoid chance from traits, +8% evade with near 100% uptime with good rotation.
• Warden: +4% from traits, +2% bonus to swords parry chance.
• Guardian: +5% block from traits, +5% parry from traits.
• Beorning: +10% evade with 50% uptime baseline, 100% if raid geared from Remmorchant. -1 or 2% because can't use swords.
• Champion: +5% parry trait, +10% parry on a mystery uptime (I'll admit, my blue champ is back at 105 and I barely played it in the first place).

As far as passive buffs to rating go Captain certainly comes out worse but neither Guard nor Cappy are getting anywhere near the partial cap of ~1.1 million of each rating.

Warden at least has plenty of gambits that get them to exceptionally high ratings but Cappy/Guard are pretty much in the same boat as far as partials go albeit guards perform slightly better thanks to the small partials bonuses they receive. So yeah, revamping the BPE caps to be within reach of Guardian kinda puts them within reach of Captain. The main benefit Guards would receive from this change is that Pledge/Juggernaut would actually have bit of value as defensive cd's.

Otherwise defensively Captains and Guardians are at similar totals if we do a quick number crunch on all tanks incoming damage % we get something like this:

• Captain: 63% mitigations, -20% incoming damage. Overall take ~29.6% of incoming damage.
• Guardian: 71% mitigations, -35% incoming damage on ~35-40% uptime. Overall take ~25.23% of incoming damage.
• Beorning: 75% phys, 65% tact mitigation. Overall takes 25% of incoming phys damage, 35% of tact.
• Warden: ~70% phys/tact mitigation (depends on gambit uptime) with set bonus. Overall takes 30% of incoming damage.
• Champ: I don't really want to bother looking through it, just like SSG. :P

No, this doesn't account for Cappy herald on everyone else. Granted it also doesn't account for tomes of defence which actually favours Cappy since they start at a higher -incoming damage %.

Captain definitely won on the full avoids count, here they come in fairly middle of the pack. Of course what we're ignoring is the whole morale bonus thing which is something like:

• Captain: 33% bonus to morale.
• Guardian: 0% bonus to morale (does have a defensive cooldown that boosts it).
• Beorning: 20% bonus to morale + a low uptime 15% morale bonus roar that nobody uses since you need to be healed for that morale gain.
• Warden: 20% bonus.
• Champ: 20% + 10% uptime on another 20% bonus.

Then we get to incoming healing which err... quite heavily favours Captain:

• Captain: 25% bonus from trait, 50% uptime on +30% and another stacking incoming healing buff on a 2m CD.
• Guardian: 5% from traits.
• Beorning: 7% with good uptime, 15% with ~33% uptime. -5% because not race of man, scrubs.
• Warden: 5.5-9.5%
• Champ: It's got a rating buff I think...

Honestly, I've made it this far on the comparison I might as well go the rest of the way. For defensive cooldowns we have:

• Captain:
  
• Cannot die for 17s, effective cooldown of around 75 seconds.
  
• -75% non-stacking incoming damage, can apply to self or others. 20s duration with unimbued swappy. 2min CD.
  
• +40% parry chance, 20s duration, 1min CD.
  
• +30% incoming healing boost, 50% uptime. Applies in AoE around the Captains banner.
  
• -15% incoming damage, 41% uptime.
  
• Stacking incoming healing buff, 10-20s duration (depends on stacking speed), 2min CD.
  
• 100k morale heal from herald, 90s CD.
  
• ~8k per second HoT 5s duration, 1min CD.
  
• -20% damage on next hit, effective cooldown of around 10s.
• Guardian:
  
• 100% block chance for 10s, also gives combat state immunity, 150s CD with set.
  
• +50% morale for 20s with ~110k bubble. Also full health heal. 2min CD.
  
• +60% full BPE chance, 2min CD.
  
• -35% incoming damage, ~40% uptime.
  
• +20% mitigations for 15s, also causes you to soak fellows damage and die, not bad if you outrange that effect. 90s CD.
  
• 35% heal, 43s CD.
  
• 2.5% morale on per incoming hit, 10s duration, 1min cd.
• Beorning:
  
• ~15k HPS HoT, 6s duration, 3s CD. (Only putting this as a defensive because the Beorning list is damn empty without)
  
• -60% incoming damage, 25s duration, 2min CD.
  
• 10% evade chance, 100% uptime with set bonus.
• Warden:
  
• When under 15% morale, restore 50% morale and power. 5min CD, can have active and off CD at the same time.
• Champ:
  
• 9k heal, 2 minute CD.
  
• When under 30% morale, restore 25% morale. 90s CD.
  
• Reduce incoming damage by 20%, 10s duration, 1min CD.
  
• 20% max morale bonus, ~30s duration depending on stacks, 2min CD.

Let's idle on over to group buffs:

• Captain:
  
• Cappy Aura for 10% morale +1.2k of each non vit stat, 950 or so vit.
  
• -9% incoming damage, +9% outgoing healing/damage 25s duration, 1 min CD.
  
• 4% group morale every 5 seconds from revealing mark.
  
• -75% incoming damage on ally or self, 20s duration, 2min CD.
  
• Stacking incoming healing buff on self + 1 ally, 10-20s duration (depends on stacking speed), 2min CD.
  
• -5% incoming damage groupwide, 100% uptime.
  
• -20% to all incoming damage fellowship wide, 50% of damage each player receives redirected to Captain. 20s duration, 3min CD. Can be survived with last stand.
  
• Roughly 12k HPS per person from inspire/rallying cry healing. Add words of courage to bump this to around 17k HPS.
• Guardian:
  
• 2% mit buff to fellows.
  
• -5% target BPE chance, 100% uptime once active.
• Beorning:
  
• -15% physical mits on opponent.
  
• Can hand out honeycakes.
  
• Could use Mend/Hearten on you...probably won't.
• Warden:
  
• [Section pending Warden friend to get off his butt and actually give me the full stats]
• Champ:
  
• Legitimately have no idea what it can buff/debuff.

Guess we need a section on rough self healing quantities:

• Captain:
  
• 3% morale every 3s on self (more likely to be running revealing for 4% every 5s).
  
• ~8k HPS from Rallying Cry.
  
• ~6k HPS from Inspire.
• Guardian:
  
• N/A outside of defensive CD's.
• Beorning:
  
• Up to ~20k HPS purely from recuperate spam.
  
• Also has Mend/Hearten, using them does require you to slow recuperate spam though.
• Warden:
  
• [Section pending Warden friend to get off his butt and actually give me the full stats]
• Champ:
  
• [Seriously, does anyone play this class?]

[mrgiles]

and a 5minute cooldown, what part of Jack of all trades did you not understand?

Mini Rally is 2.5 minutes for one revive and that's in blue line. Not in blue Minstrel has just as long of a CD at 5 min for one revive. A 5 min CD makes sense for reviving two players. Capts can revive more people than a healer can in the healing line, at once while in a tank setup and that really shouldn't be available. Jack of all trades means it can do everything well enough to get by. Not well enough to be the only viable option, which in this case is a tank. Players are calling for balancing, not bringing everything up to a Lotro god level. I don't think that you really understand what a jack of all trades is. This is coming from another Captain main.

[Ethrildar]

I never said that cpt is op. And ofc they have better agro holding than rest of the tanks.

That's just wrong. Guardians and Beornings (and Wardens especially, but they're useless) have an infinitely easier time holding aggro on multiple enemies even despite the recent addition of a proper AoE taunt to Captain (which was much needed for group pulls imo).

Don't forget the fact that they can revive two players in combat while tanking.

Makes sense to me, they're a "leader of men", aka a battle leader.. The sort of commander that shouts "get on your feet" when you fall down. Fits perfectly in my eyes and has never been an issue until now when people are clutching at any straw they can find to bring down the only class, that despite all its bugs (and there are MANY), still functions at two of its primary roles and is passable in easier content at the third (healing).

Mini Rally is 2.5 minutes for one revive and that's in blue line. Capts can revive more people than a healer can in the healing line.

Uhh well, as per literally your own maths, you have proven that Captains cannot revive more people than a healer can in the same time-frame, just the same.

Jack of all trades means it can do everything well enough to get by. Not well enough to be the only viable option, which in this case is a tank.

Jack of all trades, master of none. This would be great until you realise that all you'd achieve is making Captains entirely redundant as if you're not the best option, you're not an option at all unless the competition is immensely close.

Bring Guardians, blue Wardens and Chanks up to par with Captains in each of their own areas of expertise, and allow BPE to function properly (and with achievable caps!!) on boss fights.

In case none of you have noticed, the absolute last thing we need right now in this dying game is to make it even harder to find tanks for content!

[Joedangod]

In case none of you have noticed, the absolute last thing we need right now in this dying game is to make it even harder to find tanks for content!

Giving Captains a nudge down to the same level of the other tanks would make it easier to find tanks, not harder. After all, it would mean players on those other classes would finally be able to compete for the spots.

[Osglinthor]

Giving Captains a nudge down to the same level of the other tanks would make it easier to find tanks, not harder. After all, it would mean players on those other classes would finally be able to compete for the spots.

That would just screw everything up.Captain needs nerf but nowhere near to lvl of other tanks.Other tanks need buffs.

[Krindel]

Yellow line minstrel has single in-combat rez with 7.5 minutes cooldown, yellow captain has doble rez with 5 minutes cooldown, non of this builds are primary healers, while minstrel has triple cooldown on his rez in non healing lines, captain has same cooldown in all his lines. Trait Blood of Númenor and skill Cry of Vengeance is not part of Leader of Men trait line, maybe if they increase cooldown of Escape from Darkness to 7,5 minutes and move trait Blood of Númenor further down to the 6th row in blue tree or change it to blue line set bonus and add cooldown reduction of Cry of Vengeance to 5 minutes, it would be more appropriate. Otherwise tank build with double rez on 5 minutes cooldown is abomination, if it was only uttility captain has, it would be somehow fine, but captain tank has also best dps/defence support, best self survivability and group/self healing amongst the all tanks and this is too much.

[Hephburz-2]

Giving Captains a nudge down to the same level of the other tanks would make it easier to find tanks, not harder. After all, it would mean players on those other classes would finally be able to compete for the spots.

And what part of other tanks being unable to complete the content do you not get?

[Joedangod]

And what part of other tanks being unable to complete the content do you not get?

The part where that's a tank issue and not a content/healer one.

Currently there are a whole bunch of BPE defensive cooldowns that mean nothing because major damage tends to ignore BPE. Allow the hit to be avoidable and huzzah, Guardian has plenty of defensives available.

On the healer side...LOTRO doesn't really do external defensive CD/healing cooldowns on most of the healer classes. Adding stuff like that allows for more tanks to compete for spots and results in less situations where a tank has so many defensives that they can happily sustain themselves through high tier content without a healer.

Honestly, reworking healer cooldowns is such an untapped area that you can have a lot of fun with. I can think of several neat AoE ones off the top of my head:

Reform the Lines: Rework to be a 50% morale heal raidwide that cannot crit, each player healed takes 2% of their health in damage each second for the next 10s. 150s CD.

Natures Bond: Rework to be a honeycomb that the Beorning places down, 70% of all heals directed to this honeycomb splash to all targets within a 15m radius. 15s duration, 180s CD.

Our Fates Entwined: Raise back up to -50% damage raidwide but increase CD to 180s.


And ST stuff can similarly be done:

Blue Cappy: Give it Shield of the Dunedain.

Blue RK: Let it throw a 100% morale bubble out ST. 2m CD.

Beorning: Bump CD on yellow sacrifice up to 2m and make it 80% redirected, 40% mitigated cancelling when Beorning hits 25% morale.


At the end of the day if you wanna buff tanks...buff 'em where they don't have stuff: Give them more damage, give them the opportunity to sacrifice some defence for offence during quieter moments. Let them be more active rather than giving them more periods where they just can't die/adding more passive auras to buff fellows.

[HolyDuckTape]

Jack of all trades, master of none. This would be great until you realise that all you'd achieve is making Captains entirely redundant as if you're not the best option, you're not an option at all unless the competition is immensely close.

But i'm pretty sure no one wants to nerf captains so hard to make them bad. Captains can afford huge nerfs and still be viable, it just makes it easier to bring the other tanks on par. Also without a nerf i cannot even see other tanks ever getting on par unless they all get rezzes, an invincibility skill and more. You can only go so far with buffing certain tanks, you cannot just scrap their whole concept and make everyone a ''cappy'' when they go into their tank build. There are certain abilities captains have that if captains are not nerfed, will be the deciding factor to still never take any other tank. Tho captains will probably never be redundant, no matter how bad (no one wants them to be bad tho), just look at everything they can bring to the table.

There has to be a good balance between giving support and being sturdy when tanking, captains are insanely strong with both at the same time which doesn't make much sense. Even if you would bring all tanks on par with the sturdyness of a captain, which is a huge buff they would still be miles away from the support part. Now if you would also bring up the support of other tanks it would be better but i cannot see a champ all of a sudden get a rez or a warden give out banners, there are certain limits as to what classes can get due to their themes and atm captains are so strong that even if you would cap out the limits, captains would still be the best by far.

[Hephburz-2]

The part where that's a tank issue and not a content/healer one.

Currently there are a whole bunch of BPE defensive cooldowns that mean nothing because major damage tends to ignore BPE. Allow the hit to be avoidable and huzzah, Guardian has plenty of defensives available.

On the healer side...LOTRO doesn't really do external defensive CD/healing cooldowns on most of the healer classes. Adding stuff like that allows for more tanks to compete for spots and results in less situations where a tank has so many defensives that they can happily sustain themselves through high tier content without a healer.

Honestly, reworking healer cooldowns is such an untapped area that you can have a lot of fun with. I can think of several neat AoE ones off the top of my head:

Reform the Lines: Rework to be a 50% morale heal raidwide that cannot crit, each player healed takes 2% of their health in damage each second for the next 10s. 150s CD.

Natures Bond: Rework to be a honeycomb that the Beorning places down, 70% of all heals directed to this honeycomb splash to all targets within a 15m radius. 15s duration, 180s CD.

Our Fates Entwined: Raise back up to -50% damage raidwide but increase CD to 180s.


And ST stuff can similarly be done:

Blue Cappy: Give it Shield of the Dunedain.

Blue RK: Let it throw a 100% morale bubble out ST. 2m CD.

Beorning: Bump CD on yellow sacrifice up to 2m and make it 80% redirected, 40% mitigated cancelling when Beorning hits 25% morale.


At the end of the day if you wanna buff tanks...buff 'em where they don't have stuff: Give them more damage, give them the opportunity to sacrifice some defence for offence during quieter moments. Let them be more active rather than giving them more periods where they just can't die/adding more passive auras to buff fellows.

Great.

This is all fabulous.

Chances of them actually implementing it? Zero.

So I ask again, how does nerfing Captains, right now, in the current climate of the game, make any other tank viable? Or suddenly mean any other tank is now able to magically complete the content?

I can answer that for you. It doesn't.

When and IF they ever decide to do anything about the 4 other tank classes, and make reasonable changes to their content to compensate, then we can freely discuss the need to bring Captains down, until such time - please answer me this instead - what is the point?

[Joedangod]

When and IF they ever decide to do anything about the 4 other tank classes, and make reasonable changes to their content to compensate, then we can freely discuss the need to bring Captains down, until such time - please answer me this instead - what is the point?

To ensure that future content can be balanced around all tanks rather than digging an even bigger hole balancing it around what a Captain currently brings. I've pointed out enough pretty small effort changes that would go a long way to mitigate the problem and guess what, it's not SSG shooting those ideas down here. It's you.

It's not like the other tanks can't do literally every scrap of content outside of Remm, and they can even do 3/5 tiers of Remm with a bit of effort. Soon we're getting an update that'll inflate stats even further and likely open up the higher tiers of Remm to alternate tanks. This update will come with a new raid that right now has to balance around the current iteration of Captain tanks. You know what it should be doing? Nerfing Captains to be in line with the other tanks and then balancing the new content around all of them. Right now you're using Remmorchant T4/5 to justify keeping Captains ahead of everyone else or even worse, add overpowered features to other classes and that...is just plain silly.