Captain tanking needs a nerf!

[Joedangod]

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

Except it's not wrong. Filth-Well, Shadow-roost, Deep-barrow, Harrowing, Houses of Lamentation, Hall of Black Lore, Fallen Kings and Askad Mazal are all perfectly possible on non-Captain tanks and they go just fine. Stair/AD don't actually have their T5's yet so we'll have to wait and see there.

You seem to be under the misguided impression that bringing Captain in line with other tanks would make people want to tank less...but in reality the only definite conclusion we can make is that tank players would have more options in regards to which tank they wanted to play. Now normally one would assume that more options = more people but you seem to want to argue against that logic.

Also I'm really not sure why you think "unavoidable fellowship wide massive burst damage" is something the tank should be handling. In other MMO's...you probably wouldn't have it as an unavoidable mechanic in the first place but if it did exist? It'd be something the healer would be in charge of protecting against.

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

Nah, that's bad design.

Blue Guardian right now is a pretty well built traitline. It has a decent rotation to cycle for aggro, it has decent support cooldowns to pop and has a strong active defensive ability that can be used by a good player to massively mitigate dangerous hits reliably. It lacks a bit in the DPS department but overall maintains a solid active playstyle.

Yellow Captain on the other hand is a complete failure of a spec. The buffs? Mostly passive. The defensive abilities? Mostly passive. The aggro? Almost entirely threat copy. When you play Yellow Captain you don't have to think, your mere presence in the fellowship is more beneficial than a guy working their ### off playing any other tank spec. It's truly baffling how much you guys hate the Captain class. Why on earth would you be so dead set against fleshing out the specs that have no real identity? You could have a legitimate specialisation with strengths and weaknesses that is a joy to play but you argue tooth and nail against that because you'd rather be guaranteed a spot in a raid without having to work for it.

[Meshuggenah]

Except it's not wrong. Filth-Well, Shadow-roost, Deep-barrow, Harrowing, Houses of Lamentation, Hall of Black Lore, Fallen Kings and Askad Mazal are all perfectly possible on non-Captain tanks and they go just fine. Stair/AD don't actually have their T5's yet so we'll have to wait and see there.

You seem to be under the misguided impression that bringing Captain in line with other tanks would make people want to tank less...but in reality the only definite conclusion we can make is that tank players would have more options in regards to which tank they wanted to play. Now normally one would assume that more options = more people but you seem to want to argue against that logic.

Also I'm really not sure why you think "unavoidable fellowship wide massive burst damage" is something the tank should be handling. In other MMO's...you probably wouldn't have it as an unavoidable mechanic in the first place but if it did exist? It'd be something the healer would be in charge of protecting against.

Nah, that's bad design.

Blue Guardian right now is a pretty well built traitline. It has a decent rotation to cycle for aggro, it has decent support cooldowns to pop and has a strong active defensive ability that can be used by a good player to massively mitigate dangerous hits reliably. It lacks a bit in the DPS department but overall maintains a solid active playstyle.

Yellow Captain on the other hand is a complete failure of a spec. The buffs? Mostly passive. The defensive abilities? Mostly passive. The aggro? Almost entirely threat copy. When you play Yellow Captain you don't have to think, your mere presence in the fellowship is more beneficial than a guy working their ### off playing any other tank spec. It's truly baffling how much you guys hate the Captain class. Why on earth would you be so dead set against fleshing out the specs that have no real identity? You could have a legitimate specialisation with strengths and weaknesses that is a joy to play but you argue tooth and nail against that because you'd rather be guaranteed a spot in a raid without having to work for it.

Not sure why you think fellowship-wide damage isn't something a tank should be handling. Not sure which MMO's you play in the ones I've played tanks have group-wide cooldowns, interrupts and/or positional damage soakers that help their party survive. Tanking isn't simply a matter of standing in front of a mob and holding agro and, if it were, that would be a poorly designed game.

Clearly the other tanks don't perform "just fine" otherwise this thread would not exist?

Giving each class its own fellowship utility and making it capable of fulfilling the role it's designed for is "bad design?" Alright. I just don't agree. When forming a fellowship players should have choices. Any game where specific classes are required for any content is just lazy design. The state of current 3mans where players can mix and match roles easily based on availability and preference is much better than the 6man/raid environment where you're forced to bring certain compositions to complete the content.

Rotation and gameplay is a separate issue to its relative strength when compared to other classes. Not sure what that has to do with anything. The ease or difficulty of playing a class has nothing to do with how it should be balanced compared to other classes.

[Joedangod]

Not sure why you think fellowship-wide damage isn't something a tank should be handling. Not sure which MMO's you play in the ones I've played tanks have group-wide cooldowns, interrupts and/or positional damage soakers that help their party survive. Tanking isn't simply a matter of standing in front of a mob and holding agro and, if it were, that would be a poorly designed game.

WoW, SWToR, ESO...

Which MMO's do you play? Because none of the above put "protecting the group from unavoidable damage" on the tank, they all put that kind of thing on the healer. And that's only considering the super rare cases where they actually do unavoidable damage, they mostly don't.

Clearly the other tanks don't perform "just fine" otherwise this thread would not exist?

There are 11 instances at cap right now. Of those 11; two don't have t5, 8 have been completed just fine with other tanks and the last requires Yellow Cappy. I use the 8/9 T5 instances as proof that Guardian/Beorning/Warden are a reasonable baseline for tanking and suggest that yellow captain and Remmorchant need adjusting. You on the other hand want to argue that Remmorchant is the correctly balanced instance and thus all tanks except Captain need buffs and presumably the other 8 instances need to be scaled up as well. Do you see the issue here?

Giving each class its own fellowship utility and making it capable of fulfilling the role it's designed for is "bad design?" Alright. I just don't agree. When forming a fellowship players should have choices. Any game where specific classes are required for any content is just lazy design. The state of current 3mans where players can mix and match roles easily based on availability and preference is much better than the 6man/raid environment where you're forced to bring certain compositions to complete the content.

You're quite correct, mixing and matching is the best scenario. Which is why I suggest nerfing the outlier down to everyone else's level. So we can mix and match.

Rotation and gameplay is a separate issue to its relative strength when compared to other classes. Not sure what that has to do with anything. The ease or difficulty of playing a class has nothing to do with how it should be balanced compared to other classes.

It's moderately relevant in terms of class work; The skill floor of a spec should be separate from the skill ceiling after all, or do you think a DPS spec that only had 1 button to press in order to pull competitive DPS would be ok? Admittedly rotation and gameplay is perhaps more relevant in terms of spec identity. Yellow Captain basically doesn't have an identity beyond fellowship-wide buffstick. Its existence is almost entirely passive, you're not actively trying to buff people, that will happen whether you touch the keyboard or not. You don't manage aggro through supporting allies, you coast off forced taunts.

When it comes to proposing changes I thoroughly recommend proposing changes that give it the identity that people want to assign to it. They want to be a support tank so give them support abilities that they can think about placing on allies. Maybe make those support abilities siphon threat back to the Captain. Flesh the spec out properly, give it stuff to do that fits with its identity.

[Hephburz-2]

Of those 11; two don't have t5, 8 have been completed just fine with other tanks and the last requires Yellow Cappy.

We clearly have different definitions of "just fine".

Do you hinder the group by taking a tank that is not a Yellow Captain? Yes. Do healers/DPS need to work harder to compensate for the loss of support and DPS utility provided by the Yellow Captain - Um. Yes?

Just because a class can complete the instance does not mean it's "fine", I could tank Anvil T3 on my Blue Champion back at 120, does that mean the class/spec was fine? Um. No?

[Joedangod]

We clearly have different definitions of "just fine".

Do you hinder the group by taking a tank that is not a Yellow Captain? Yes. Do healers/DPS need to work harder to compensate for the loss of support and DPS utility provided by the Yellow Captain - Um. Yes?

If one spec is overpowered of course every other spec would be a hindrance in comparison. Does taking a non-Captain tank in those 8 instances make them unreasonably difficult to complete? No. Hell, in some cases it actually pushes you towards needing a normal group composition. Or are we supposed to pretend that Yellow Captains tanking AM T5 without healer or support and only one DPS is fine?

[Omen_Kaizer]

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

Largely agree outside of this quote. Way overshooting here, undermining yourself by mentioning shaka and remm in the same breath. In my experience, T4 stairs is not that hard to tank on Guard and Bear even without 450k morale dpsers for the hobgoblin (more like 350k for hobgoblin. Also doesnt take shelob bracelets to get to 450k unless theres not even a red capt), or RKs in particular, or cheesy kite methods (not mentioned but relevant strat for weaker comps).

To your point in a more measured way, it ought to take an LM (or maybe yellow burg? Not tried that) for non captanks to do w/o kiting whereas captanks can IHW+LS the horn, does take stuff like marked piercing roar or legend of the hammerhand (or even better as you mentioned, bubble + fates intertwined) to be applied right, and solid DPS to let the other tanks' lesser cooldowns last them through the nasty bleeds. I have not wardtanked t4 yet but agree with you more there; despite good mits and OK sustained HPS, without real cooldowns I would have to kite the melee twin and the hobgoblin while being carried by heals support. One trick we learned , after I guard and bear tanked the twins, is that the LM bearpet can taunt away one of the twins bleeds onto itself after a dialogue line.

Chank I can't speak to.

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

Joedangood is a captank, from what I have read him say. His reasoning, which I dont fully buy into, is essentially that SSG can't be counted on (lack of time, lack of ability, or both?) tobuff the other tanks to the captains level but probably are capable of measuredly nerfing the cap to the other tanks level. I ofc disagree that it would be shooting the moon to buff the other tanks. But I do like his idea of moving SotD to blue line without all the rest, in addition to other tank buffs like what people have proposed.

[mkcraft27]

Once again, Warden tanks, Beorning tanks and Champion tanks are literally not even worth mentioning because the prospect of trying to do T3-4-5 Remm or T4+ Stairs on those is a joke in itself.

I guess we are clowns then because we regularly do T4 stairs with a warden tank

I have not wardtanked t4 yet but agree with you more there; despite good mits and OK sustained HPS, without real cooldowns I would have to kite the melee twin and the hobgoblin while being carried by heals support. One trick we learned , after I guard and bear tanked the twins, is that the LM bearpet can taunt away one of the twins bleeds onto itself after a dialogue line.

The hobgoblin doesnt need to be kited on a warden if you have a good group and get a bit lucky with RNG . The twins are more of a problem. Expect that you are going to die when the archer puts that 1 million+ bleed on you. As long as the dps has the archer dead before he gets another bleed off, the melee guy isnt to much of a problem with a good healer.

[Hephburz-2]

Or are we supposed to pretend that Yellow Captains tanking AM T5 without healer or support and only one DPS is fine?

I don't understand why this is surprising? Or even an "issue" only now.

Captains were solo-tanking Seregost back on 115 without heals - which any other tank was almost incapable of doing (perhaps a really good guard if you had an rk and a hunter). Heck, I even watched Captains tank Quays without a healer - but even outside of that, Captains ability to solo-tank 3 mans without heals has been possible for many years now, so, to suggest just because they can tank AM T5 without a healer is a problem, where was this thread 3 years ago?

And again;

Just because a class can complete the instance does not mean it's "fine", I could tank Anvil T3 on my Blue Champion back at 120, does that mean the class/spec was fine? Um. No?

Furthermore, see my earlier post.

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

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

It is impossible to forgo having a Captain in each group.

Because none of these changes deal with the fact that other tanks offer absolutely zero utility (either in terms of offensive or defensive (except beornings and to 'some' minor extent, wardens), and to suggest that a tanks ONLY role in a group/raid is to be an aggro-bot, yeah, I am sorry, but that is AWFUL class design, and who would ever want to play that to begin with. Tanks should excel at defensive support/utility, that is what they are there to do, all tanks should be able to do this in "some-way", whether by reducing the targets damage, or intercepting said damage, as long as they are equal in strength.

[hoibideptrai]

Unless I'm missing something that's the horn blow from the Hobgoblin that caused a wipe so how's kite gonna prevent that. Only Captain LS can bypass it now.

[Joedangod]

where was this thread 3 years ago?

I can offer a 2018 post on the topic:

Ooo, Captain suggestions. Fun:

• Remove all access to the rez from yellow line.
• Make SotD self only and nerf it to around -50% (but let it stack with other inc damage sources).
• Improve Captains capability to generate aggro in yellowline by buffing threat generated through healing and damage skills.
• Increase the number of targets captains can hit in yellow line.
• Remove the motivating speech aura in yellow line or turn it into a self only variant (perhaps with more defence focus) that doesn't stack with other captains.
• Nerf incoming healing modifiers on captain by a fair amount (you know, so they don't hit 80% higher inc healing than anyone else can possibly reach).
• Remove the trait granting 10 extra seconds of last stand (this skill somehow managed to be better than 90% of other tank CD's whilst having a longer duration).
• Add a slight mitigation to the redirected damage from In Harms Way.

Also gonna throw in a fancy blue talent change:

• Gut revealing mark.

I've got some personal requests for Captain adjustments before that albeit they aren't quite as succinct.

And again;

Just because a class can complete the instance does not mean it's "fine", I could tank Anvil T3 on my Blue Champion back at 120, does that mean the class/spec was fine? Um. No?

Certainly not. If a spec is reasonably comfortable completing said content and isn't required for said content then power-wise it's in the right place. It may need quality of life adjustments but it does not require notable buffs/nerfs, at most it needs a rebalance of the power it already has. If a certain spec trivialises content then that spec needs nerfs, if a singular piece of content forces you into using one particular spec then it is likely that that content and spec need some adjustments.

It is impossible to forgo having a Captain in each group.

Because none of these changes deal with the fact that other tanks offer absolutely zero utility (either in terms of offensive or defensive (except beornings and to 'some' minor extent, wardens), and to suggest that a tanks ONLY role in a group/raid is to be an aggro-bot, yeah, I am sorry, but that is AWFUL class design, and who would ever want to play that to begin with. Tanks should excel at defensive support/utility, that is what they are there to do, all tanks should be able to do this in "some-way", whether by reducing the targets damage, or intercepting said damage, as long as they are equal in strength.

See this cuts both ways. You complain that tanks would only be aggro bots and advocate for a world in which tanks are basically just buff bots. Captain is not a good example of "More than just a tank" because it does 90% of its support passively. If you ripped away the aura, ripped away the sure strike buff, ripped away the fellowship aspect of the HoT's...then the person playing Yellow Captain wouldn't change their rotation at all.

What is important is not what you can do, it's how you do it. If you bump tank DPS to be more statistically significant and remove AoE forced taunts you no longer have an "aggro bot", you have a spec that spends time focusing on building aggro and carefully managing the mobs in front of it so that other players don't pull threat. If you tweak defensive buffs to have a cost and require maintenance instead of being always on (fortification, guarded) you no longer have a "defence bot", you have a spec that carefully manages its defences to ensure that it doesn't get killed. The same goes for support, add specific single target ally buffs with reasonable uptimes (< 100%) and you can actually produce a tank spec that legitimately plays like a support instead of being a "buff bot".

[Ethrildar]

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

But you don't seem to get it... Nerfing Captains does not suddenly and magically make Chanks viable... So how is that in any way going to benefit anyone at all? It doesn't, it just upsets Captains, the last remaining truly viable tank class in the game, and makes us not want to play anymore when we're a shell of what we once were. So instead of bringing everyone up to to the versatility of Captain and improving upon what each tank offers, you'd just detract from the Captain class and call it quits. Everybody loses, the content is no easier to clear because other tanks are still underdogs for the current content, Captain tanks feel disappointed, and all the community loses even more tanks from the already dwindling pool of what tanks are still left playing the game.

Ever done remmo t5 or watched it?

Yeah, I have funnily enough and whilst I don't doubt that it's doable with a Guardian or that you could get lucky and get through it with a Warden (9 months after it came out and with all the gear from it, gained by doing it with a Cappy tank the first time around), for the masses that is simply non-viable.

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

This.

Except it's not wrong. Filth-Well, Shadow-roost, Deep-barrow, Harrowing, Houses of Lamentation, Hall of Black Lore, Fallen Kings and Askad Mazal

So, your argument is that instances that came out the best part of a year ago and were designed with tanks having half the stats we have available right now are doable with alternative classes? Right. I can tank Tier 5 3mans on my Champ in red line with more morale in that build than fully geared Cappy tanks had back when they released, what on earth is your point?

You seem to be under the misguided impression that bringing Captain in line with other tanks would make people want to tank less..

That's simply not logical though, people aren't playing tanks right now because they're boring, two-dimensional and underpowered for the role they're asked to fulfil, except Captains. You'd have us diminish the current Captain population, too, instead of making people want to play the other classes by making them interesting again and adding to their utility.

Also I'm really not sure why you think "unavoidable fellowship wide massive burst damage" is something the tank should be handling.

I'm not really sure why you think "unavoidable fellowship wide massive burst damage" is something the tank should not be handling? Healers are there to heal, not mitigate damage, tanks are there to mitigate damage and protect the group. It makes perfect sense to me. By your argument Guardians should relinquish Shield-wall and give it to Minstrels.

T4 stairs is not that hard to tank on Guard and Bear

Not disagreeing here, it wasn't a great example as it's a mechanic (ice boss horn) that's easily overcome in numerous ways, the point I was trying to make is that you're nerfing your group by bringing anything but a Captain, which is my whole point in this thread, Guardians should be wanted just as much as Captains without making the content harder to LFF for by restricting the classes that are able to partake.

Joedangood is a captank, from what I have read him say.

He may say that, though I've not seen it myself, but I highly doubt it from what I've read, he's misrepresented quite a lot about the class that even the most average Captain tanks at end-game are well aware of. I'm not even convinced he plays any tank classes at end-game.

I guess we are clowns then because we regularly do T4 stairs with a warden tank

That's great. I don't doubt at all that it's possible or even that hard, simply that it's the inferior option and that simply because a Warden can tank easy 6mans (that are literally faceroll content), the class isn't suddenly viable and in good shape. Go tank T5 Remm full-clear and watch as your group repeatedly wipes because the tank class is falling so far short of what is required. You may well get lucky on the RNG and succeed eventually, but probably not.


To sum up this thread, it appears to be full of people who think that when two employees find out one is being paid 20% more than the other, they agree that the employer should simply reduce the higher-paid employee's earnings by 20% instead of bringing them both up to the same level. That's the simplest way I can put it. That's how you better every tank class without losing any players. If you were the higher-paid employee would you honestly continue working there after?

[Joedangod]

So, your argument is that instances that came out the best part of a year ago and were designed with tanks having half the stats we have available right now are doable with alternative classes? Right. I can tank Tier 5 3mans on my Champ in red line with more morale in that build than fully geared Cappy tanks had back when they released, what on earth is your point?

For starters, they were done at release with other tanks not just Yellow Captain. It's just odd that you're gonna try make this point. Saying that the age of the cluster invalidates it as a valid metric by which to judge tank competency would also mean Remmorchant is invalidated as it came out not long after and stats have massively inflated since then. You want to use Remmorchant as justification for the current state of Captain tank and I want to use 8 other instances (a number that will soon increase) as justification for Captain tank nerfs...and probably some Remmorchant tweaks. Amusingly I guess Remmorchant T5 is probably possible with other tanks these days considering health pools/other stats have increased by more than the bonus of having a Captain afk in your group yields. The only real loss would likely be IHW. Granted we won't see other tanks do it, not because they definitely can't but because there's absolutely no reason to take anything less than a Captain.

That's simply not logical though, people aren't playing tanks right now because they're boring, two-dimensional and underpowered for the role they're asked to fulfil, except Captains. You'd have us diminish the current Captain population, too, instead of making people want to play the other classes by making them interesting again and adding to their utility.

No, that's why you think people aren't playing tanks right now. Nobody here can say for sure why people aren't playing tanks, could be that it's because they find tanks boring or it could be because they prefer Guard/Beorning/Warden/Champion tank and people aren't particularly accepting of those. Now the thing is, we could slap motivating speech aura on to Blue Beorning and with that it would pretty much be a competitive tank but the thing is...you didn't make the spec any more interesting. You just gave it a flat numerical boost to everyone around them. For the person at the keyboard it's the exact same spec that it was before so I guess they'll still be bored of it.

I'm not really sure why you think "unavoidable fellowship wide massive burst damage" is something the tank should not be handling? Healers are there to heal, not mitigate damage, tanks are there to mitigate damage and protect the group. It makes perfect sense to me. By your argument Guardians should relinquish Shield-wall and give it to Minstrels.

Because handling that kind of thing is what is known as proactive healing. Traditionally MMO's leave all kinds of healing to the healers, sometimes they give the odd spec a quick heal ability to assist in healing but it's fairly unheard of for the tank to have better means of keeping people alive than the healers do. Odd that you complain about tanks not having enough things to do but want to strip away healer functionality.

Now technically tanks don't do much to mitigate groupwide damage. Guardians/Captains can just redirect half the damage the group receives to themselves, of course in the case of Guardian this results in their death because they don't have an "I'm invincible" button. They're not erasing damage, they're rebalancing it to mostly go through their own health pool so the healer can focus a priority target (and that's great since most healers are stronger on ST than burst AoE).

He may say that, though I've not seen it myself, but I highly doubt it from what I've read, he's misrepresented quite a lot about the class that even the most average Captain tanks at end-game are well aware of. I'm not even convinced he plays any tank classes at end-game.

You want to dispute that most of the support a Captain gives out is passive? Go ahead I guess. Prove me wrong.

To sum up this thread

Yeaahhhhhh, no. Went so abstract that you totally lost the plot on that one.

[Hephburz-2]

If you bump tank DPS to be more statistically significant and remove AoE forced taunts you no longer have an "aggro bot", you have a spec that spends time focusing on building aggro and carefully managing the mobs in front of it so that other players don't pull threat. .

Soo.....

An aggro-bot that might have to press 2 or 3 skills instead of 1.

[Joedangod]

Soo.....

An aggro-bot that might have to press 2 or 3 skills instead of 1.

As opposed to a support bot that need not press any skills.

Granted that level of abstraction is a little silly. You could argue that a warden is a 4 button class...but we can accept that that is a gross simplification of the matter.

[Kotal]

not responding to a post in particular, but much rather to what is said by some people generally:

- other, non captain tanks are perfectly fine to tank t5 3/6 mans:
- duh, most 3 mans are basically doable without a tank (other than chamber and maybe filth well idk never bothered with that one tbh)
- it is still a massive difference in 6 mans if you bring a tank that's not captain. you actually need a good group comp if you bring a guard even, whereas on cappy you can bring a lm and basically 4 dps

- captains are the last viable tanks, pls don't nerf them omg i'm crying:
- that's the point. captains do way too much while tanking AND they are by far the most defensive tanks. they trivialize 3/6 man content and basically force the devs to make content harder, making the other tanks even less viable
- you could not buff the other classes in a realistic way to match cappy tanking without completely reworking the core functionality of these classes (or just make them stupid OP with these buffs)
- nerfing captains would actually force the devs to make raid content doable for other tanks. atm content is only realistically doable on cappy tanks, everybody only uses cappy tanks, so the devs see no need to adjust content to make it doable on any of the others



*btw with doable i mean not theoretically doable if the entire rest of the raid puts in 10x the effort to be able to afford to take a guard instead. i actually mean be able to tank effectively without much difference to a cappy tank. this is not like when a dps class falls out of favour where all you need to do is have enough dps to afford to bring a slightly weaker dps class. the difference between a guard and a cappy atm is much worse than the difference between hunter and rk pre fate fix.

[Ethrildar]

Saying that the age of the cluster invalidates it as a valid metric by which to judge tank competency would also mean Remmorchant is invalidated as it came out not long after and stats have massively inflated since then.

Your sentence literally disputes exactly what you say at the start of it, you're trying to say the age of the content makes no difference when for example a decently geared Captain at MM launch had 600k morale, and I currently have 1.2m, but that somehow now suddenly Wardens, Guardians, Chanks, Bears can do the content perfectly fine? Why might that be? Hmmm.

Again, I don't doubt that a Guardian can in fact clear the hardest content, the point is how much the group has to make up for this shortfall and that all the other tanking classes that you conveniently forget still need massive amounts of work. Chank is a literal joke, Beorning tank looks like they said "screw it" and just released the class to production half way through the design phase, and Warden is still working with a toolkit and stats from level 95.

As opposed to a support bot that need not press any skills.

It's stuff like this that makes it so painfully obvious that you've never actually played the class to any real level of competency, if at all. People min-maxing Red/Blue Captains work through a fairly complicated and reactive rotation and have to try WAY harder than any other class to actually get good figures off, but the payoffs at the top of the skill ceiling are huge. Yellow is 100% easiest and no class in this game is by any means hard to play, but to pretend that timing, CD priority and taunt & damage management through rotation require you to "not press any skills" is just farcical, that's the reason why 95% of Captains can't do AM Tier 5 without a healer, but you'd still have the class nerfed into oblivion because 5% can...

[Joedangod]

Your sentence literally disputes exactly what you say at the start of it, you're trying to say the age of the content makes no difference when for example a decently geared Captain at MM launch had 600k morale, and I currently have 1.2m, but that somehow now suddenly Wardens, Guardians, Chanks, Bears can do the content perfectly fine? Why might that be? Hmmm.

Did you actually read the sentence? If you invalidate the MM cluster because it's old you must invalidate remmorchant for the same reason. I'm not trying to invalidate them for being old, you are so you must invalidate Remmorchant by your own logic. To me they are the level 130 cap instances, they should be the metric by which we judge tanks. They remain valid until the cap moves on.

It's stuff like this that makes it so painfully obvious that you've never actually played the class to any real level of competency, if at all. People min-maxing Red/Blue Captains work through a fairly complicated and reactive rotation and have to try WAY harder than any other class to actually get good figures off, but the payoffs at the top of the skill ceiling are huge.

I was not referring to blue/red Captain, I was referring to yellow. If I had been referring to blue/red then yes, my point would be invalid...but I wasn't....so it isn't.

Yellow is 100% easiest and no class in this game is by any means hard to play, but to pretend that timing, CD priority and taunt & damage management through rotation require you to "not press any skills" is just farcical, that's the reason why 95% of Captains can't do AM Tier 5 without a healer, but you'd still have the class nerfed into oblivion because 5% can...

The vast majority of the support that a yellow Captain offers is passive. The few things that aren't passively active are automatically applied by the Captain when doing their own personal rotation, the only exception to this is WoC. Again, if you ripped away the fellowship part of all the support abilities on Yellow Captain you would not see any change in their rotation.

People really want to label Yellow Captain as "The support tank" when in reality they're not thinking about support 95% of the time. It's like labelling red RK as a "support DPS", yeah they're throwing up a bunch of mit debuffs but those debuffs are a side effect of their DPS rotation, they're not monitoring them in any way. Tagging a fellow with DNF once every 150 seconds really doesn't convey that support mindset.

[Hephburz-2]

The vast majority of the support that a yellow Captain offers is passive. The few things that aren't passively active are automatically applied by the Captain when doing their own personal rotation, the only exception to this is WoC. Again, if you ripped away the fellowship part of all the support abilities on Yellow Captain you would not see any change in their rotation.

People really want to label Yellow Captain as "The support tank" when in reality they're not thinking about support 95% of the time. It's like labelling red RK as a "support DPS", yeah they're throwing up a bunch of mit debuffs but those debuffs are a side effect of their DPS rotation, they're not monitoring them in any way. Tagging a fellow with DNF once every 150 seconds really doesn't convey that support mindset.

So.... I press battle-shout, and pressing attack once every 15s and go afk?

Super fun class.

Because that is essentially what you're advocating for.

[Joedangod]

Because that is essentially what you're advocating for.

Whelp, no idea how you reached that erroneous conclusion.

[Hephburz-2]

Whelp, no idea how you reached that erroneous conclusion.

Not my fault you can't see the end result of what it is you're asking for.

The point still stands, you have an overinflated view of what you expect SSG to do, they're not going to rework the threat system, they're not going to start moving skills off into different lines, and they're not going to change the fundamental designs of a class after 13 years, more to the point, I doubt they "could" even do it because they don't have enough people, time or money capable of doing it in the first place.

They know how to buff classes, that's it, what, in recent history has given you any belief they know how to "nerf" a class (Hello, RKS?) - further to that, they're not simply going to take forum suggestions at face value, they have their OWN opinions and ideas for where certain classes should be, and what certain classes should or shouldn't be able to do, so, ask for what they can do, not for what you'd like to happen if SSG was as big as Blizzard.

[Joedangod]

Not my fault you can't see the end result of what it is you're asking for.

So...asking for support abilities that you have to think about applying...results in half the skills being removed?

You aren't making any sense.



Oh and do stop with the whole "SSG isn't capable of that" spiel. If you don't think SSG can reasonably balance classes then why bother commenting? It's just so self defeating.

[Arotharrr]

My impression of the new raid at T4, but valid for lower tiers too, is that in this raid (being highest content available) guardian tanks have their secure place.


You can do the first boss (t4) without captain tank and not feel like you are missing anything at all, either defensively or offensively.

But the differentiator is the second boss.
At the moment I see that a guard and captain tank is the optimal combo for the Ranulur fight.
You want a guard to tank the adds. And a captain for the main boss.

The 10s taunt duration on guards vs 5s on all other tanks makes a huge difference in warg aggro management.
The buffs they got to their defensive and offensive arsenal, do make a difference (even while I agree they need more buffing tweaks to their defensive arsenal)
Our main guard tank has both a competent guard and captain tank, and I think he will agree with me that guardian is a better choice for the hardest job in there (wargs tank).
You can also see this in the available vids of T4 2nd boss, as good as all of them use a guard + captain tank duo.
To me that proves the point that a lot of issues in tanking difference lie with scaling and instance design (and devaluation of b/p/e).


Even though all tanks have been brought in line with # of taunts.
Captains have a very hard way of ensuring solid aggro on the warg spawns when they spawn.
your bread and butter taunts: GW and BoE (and we're not sure if or how long we gonna keep BoE taunt), are melee and prone to bpe or gated behind a skill rotation.
The aoe taunt has to be precisely timed and coordinated with the boss tank (and has a long cd). So that leaves the single target ranged taunt which still only covers 1 warg for 5s.
So some people's statements can be reversed here, you need a captain tank to be fully geared and play perfectly for ~9 min, while a guard tank has a better toolkit to deal with it (don't get me wrong they still have to play darn well).
Even though technically "taunts have been put in line" across tanks, in practice Guards are still the king of aggro/threat management.

Some people have mentioned moving SotD to healer line.
=> the result of that is basically the same as just removing SotD, at the moment no-one is blue line captains for top tier content.
if they have to change anything they could remove the unimbued legacy currently giving it +10s duration and give it the same effect as the imbued legacy.
But I would prefer they first do a buffing pass on other tank classes, instead of swinging the nerf bat to cater to vocal minorities not seeing the long term effects on player enjoyment.

[Joedangod]

Some people have mentioned moving SotD to healer line.
=> the result of that is basically the same as just removing SotD, at the moment no-one is blue line captains for top tier content.

To be fair it could potentially shift the meta into Beorning main tank, cappy/RK heals. You'd also bump the viability of Wardens/Chanks since they'd have access to SotD as a defensive cooldown (they'd probably be stuck in an off-tank role though).

It's not that blue captain is bad, in fact it's straight up the best healer for what it does (massive sustained AoE HPS). Yeah, the damage profile of content doesn't typically match that specialisation but giving them the strongest external defensive in the game for ST situations is a big ol' bump to viability. Most of the danger comes in a short window anyway so it...might make them a solid option?


I mean I still don't really like it as a singular solution, whilst it opens up your options it's basically just giving you one other option at best. SotD should probably get moved to blue regardless but other stuff really needs doing at the same time.

[Shirewhistle]

Not my fault you can't see the end result of what it is you're asking for.

The point still stands, you have an overinflated view of what you expect SSG to do, they're not going to rework the threat system, they're not going to start moving skills off into different lines, and they're not going to change the fundamental designs of a class after 13 years, more to the point, I doubt they "could" even do it because they don't have enough people, time or money capable of doing it in the first place.

They know how to buff classes, that's it, what, in recent history has given you any belief they know how to "nerf" a class (Hello, RKS?) - further to that, they're not simply going to take forum suggestions at face value, they have their OWN opinions and ideas for where certain classes should be, and what certain classes should or shouldn't be able to do, so, ask for what they can do, not for what you'd like to happen if SSG was as big as Blizzard.

Well I'm relieved to hear it, because I'm tired of people calling for nerfs, just in general. If other classes seem weak in comparison, how about improving those classes? Or if they are just as good, but hard to understand (like maybe Warden?) how about... some expert guides could be written?

[Zaheer]

I see the captain's class is in need of my help again. With this, I honestly did not even read what is being said before on this topic, but I can assume that we've already discussed this many times before.

The only thing that is ''OP'' about captain tank is LS heal.

Again, the content has been biased towards buffer tanking, even though I am not playing at this moment, I know just from a few glimpses that it is biased once again.
I do understand that logically speaking, the warden and guards are once again in a poor position. But this is not because of the captain, rather the fact that the BPE system is still not fixed by SSG.
As for boss mechanics that avoid BPE as a whole, as for ''morale'' damage, which circumvents the mitigations that warden and guard rely on so much.

We've had this discussion many times and to think you can restart this ''performance'' again while I show signs of inactivity does not mean I won't watch this forum. I ask you nabs to leave this forum and make a topic on the BR forum regarding biased content and broken BPE system. So you can address the warden issues too, we captains are not going to compensate for that what makes your class flawed due to circumstances.