Vandraad said:Kilsin said:In One Word - How do you feel about Tanks? (The meatshield kind, not heavy artillery) #MMORPG #CommunityMatters
...
That said, and it has been brought up before, it really does make no sense at all that an NPC would choose to attack the one being which hast he highest armor class, best defensive skills, highest hiitpoints and not attack the squishier, higher damage beings around it. But if NPCs could actually think logically, the players would find these game far more difficult, if not bordering on impossible.
...
NPCS could think logically and be beatable, so long as their damage and hit points were scaled appropriately. Agree that a raid boss that requires max level coordinated zerging under the the standard paradigm would be unbeatable if the boss acted like a human player.
Ainadak said:Riahuf22 said:Ainadak said:Unnatural.
It doesn't make sense for a dragon to attack one person (let alone the one with a shield) and ignore everyone else. A tank should be able to block a goblin from attacking their team, but enemies significantly stronger than the tank should require the effort of multiple people to keep them corralled.
This comment was said to WoW when it was very young and the dev said they could make a raid boss target healers first and than wipe the raid everything but than you would complain it is unbeatable.
That's not what I was arguing for though. Often times the number of tanks required for content doesn't scale at all while healing and dps (even cc sometimes) does. I would argue for a system that requires multiple tanks simultaneously for large/difficult enemies. I think it makes more sense and scales better to multi-group content. It would also be awesome for specific single-group enemies to be best accomplished with two tanks (like giants) to shake up the ideal group comp.
Ahh understandable, and I agree
Ainadak said:Unnatural.
It doesn't make sense for a dragon to attack one person (let alone the one with a shield) and ignore everyone else. A tank should be able to block a goblin from attacking their team, but enemies significantly stronger than the tank should require the effort of multiple people to keep them corralled.
I've always thought it would be neat (but also recognize the mechanics would be more complex to implement) if tanking mechanics didn't center around taunts and hate generation, but some kind of AoE blocking effect similar to how football linemen protect the quaterback or runners. If a tank is near the player being targeted, they can quickly step in and absorb (full or partial) amounts of damage. With single pulls like goblins it'd be easy for one tank to cover the mob, but with raid bosses like dragons you'd need several tanks covering your caster formations to mitigate damage from things like tail sweeps. If you don't have enough tanks, then your DPS classes take more damage and require more heals.
Grateful.
flavor text: some are like a center of an american football team, some more like a quarterback... I am grateful for them, as their role (maintaining the attention of incoming damage) allows the rest of the team to perform their duties. It's fun to play as one, or with one in a party. As long as each player understands that the world doesnt revolve/start/&stop around them, then I find their presence extremely welcome, if not invaluable!
Protector
You know me I can't do just one word posts...I like some people saying how multiple people need to corral the mob and using multiple tanks to do that is a good idea. But that is the sole principle behind taunt skills all tanks have, to keep the dragon's attention off the others. He is doing things that make the dragon more mad than casting a spell on them or hitting them with an arrow. Perhaps the tank is stepping on his toes and screaming yo mamma jokes at the dragon, I don't know for sure but it's worked so well for years.
Plus it becomes almost impossible to keep tanks healed in a raid setting when 4 or 5 are taking a raid targets core damage. You can set up group healers for an AoE easy enough but to keep 2-3 healers spamming per tank it eats into your raid setup really fast. Wont be able to have anything but a bunch of tanks and healers taking out a mob and then it will take 15 hours to kill it lol You would really have to cut back the amount of damage the target itself can do to scale it back and make that feasable and then you make the mob a little trivial if he doesn't do much damage. Would be really hard to balance out.
aggro
swing
absorb
swing
save
swing
face
swing
pull
swing
bash
swing
charge
When I think of tanks I think of people who don't want to let the group down. I think of people who are afriad they will make mistakes and waste a groups time. I also think of tanks as valuable leaders in a setting in which they get to be the tour guide. I think of them as the ones who must at all cost keep the group safe so they can do their jobs.
Tanks are awesome, they are clumsy, but most of all they are appreciated.
(XD I'm about to have some fun with this)
Significant Other/ Soulmate
When forming a group there are only two roles that matter your healer and your tank (aka mommy and daddy). The rest of the group can be filled up with any combination of dps (aka the unruly kids fighting over who is better [ aka DPS numbers]). Now the kids can play alone and be fine by themselves, but if mommy and daddy aren't present you're not going to the candy store (aka that dungeon boss with all that loot). Now you can try but you probably arnt getting past the front door.
Now mommy and daddy usually work very well with each other. Daddy can't really do anything without mommy and vice versa. Daddy works hard on keeping trash from hitting on mommy... while mommy tries to make sure he doesnt get his butt kicked by a gang of thugs or worse a 350-pound bodybuilder. At the same time, mommy is also having to keep her eyes on the unruly kids to make sure they aren't playing with matches (aka standing in the fire), or situationally attempting to kill each other (aka chaining mechanics, spreading mechanics. etc). Usually, everything works out for the best and everyone is able to return home happy. The kids have their candy and mommy and daddy get to sip on some adult beverages because they have very stressful jobs.
However, sometimes mommy and daddy just don't work well together. Sometimes daddy can't keep the trash from hitting on mommy and sometimes mommy can't keep the gang of thugs from beating daddy to a pulp. Sometimes this is mommies fault because she couldn't sweat talk daddy out of a fight (aka heal), sometimes it's daddies fault because he didn't actively avoid the punches (aka damage mitigation/paper tank), and sometimes is because mommy and daddy are at each others throats ; but really it is the kids that suffer in these situations and no one gets to have their candy/ adult beverages that night.
As a healer main I make up 1/2 of that equation and the tank makes up the other 1/2. I can honestly say that regardless of what role you play if your tank and healer dont have decent teamwork and synergy it is not going to turn out very well.
There are a couple of single words that come into my mind.
Taunt?
Heal?
AC?
But in the end. The corner stone of a group that is not doing other important jobs (like healing).
LOOKING for
I never play as a tank as I agree with Ainadak that the playstyle that they offer is extremally unrealistic (and that's said by someone who plays as wizards most of the time) - not to mention boring in most scenarios - especially with a good healer. That is why I like to play either magic/ranged dps glass cannons or support classes personally. It is not any revelation though, that they are frequently not just recommended - but required to tackle some content and since usually there is a shortage of tanks, I find myself quite often looking for one.
Unbalanced
Now, i dont mean unbalanced in a mechanics way but more of unbalanced in that the idea that finding a tank is hard in a lot of MMORPG's. In EQ its more about the healer than the tanks though for some reason but in others its flipped. This feeling of insert X class being so sparse gives them a lot of power and sway in a group setting. This gives me the feeling of them being very unbalanced.
