Why barbs make very good tanks and how to "fix it"

[eonfreon]

So, if I understand your suggestion, these armor and shield bonuses would apply + fort items - level of difficulty = applicable fortification?

I really see no problem with this. Since it doesn't really favor one class over another, just adds benefits to certain fighting styles, as far as I can see.
After all, even Barbs and TWf can use a shield when they need to do the traditional tanking method. Just like against the Hound, since dps is useless against her until the little dogs are charmed and have hurt her enough, even a Barbarian pulls out a shield and shieldblocks.
I kind of lke this idea, even though it would hurt my twf DT Vestment(PJ's I guess) wearing Pally/Monk on elite (lower his fort from 100-50= 50).

[Xionanx]

I wish I had been one the lead developers for DDO when it was first in developement all those years ago, I would explained vehemently that thier proposed AP enhancement system would overpower the game and completely ruin balance across the entire game. I would then explain the need to be more strict in the creation of certain "magic items" that inexplicably stack

Monsters have insane To Hit rolls because players have/had insane AC's
Monsters have insane HP's because players can do/did insane damage
Monsters do insane damage because players have/had insane HP's
Trap DC's are crazy high because players have high DD skills
etc etc etc...

If you take away the key component that makes player characters so overpowered, then you bring the game back down into a more easily manageable "tweaking" zone. As it is now, the only real option the devs have at thier disposal to make quests "harder" is to:

A) Make enemies have Higher AC's, HP's, and do more damage
B) Increase enemy numbers so they can "Swarm" the PC's
C) Implement various immunities and DR on the enemies
D) Swing the nerf bat like mad and **** off a lot of players

I'd go with option D and start nerfing, sometimes you got iodine on a childs thumb to stop the sucking.. sometimes you gotta break some toys so everyone plays fair.

[aurum1]

No need to fiddle with heavy fort, eventhough it would make sense that fortification comes from a tower shield and full plate not a helm every caster can wear.

A similiar solution to what you are looking for is to just add a haste boost to boss mobs that scales with difficulty. If on elite Harry and Sally have marilath style melee attacks/round then AC and HP buffer are both viable options in their own right, with AC in the lead.

[noinfo]

So, if I understand your suggestion, these armor and shield bonuses would apply + fort items - level of difficulty = applicable fortification?

I really see no problem with this. Since it doesn't really favor one class over another, just adds benefits to certain fighting styles, as far as I can see.
After all, even Barbs and TWf can use a shield when they need to do the traditional tanking method. Just like against the Hound, since dps is useless against her until the little dogs are charmed and have hurt her enough, even a Barbarian pulls out a shield and shieldblocks.
I kind of lke this idea, even though it would hurt my twf DT Vestment(PJ's I guess) wearing Pally/Monk on elite (lower his fort from 100-50= 50).

That is exactly my suggestion and believe me it would hurt my twf icy wearers just as bad.

[noinfo]

No need to fiddle with heavy fort, eventhough it would make sense that fortification comes from a tower shield and full plate not a helm every caster can wear.

A similiar solution to what you are looking for is to just add a haste boost to boss mobs that scales with difficulty. If on elite Harry and Sally have marilath style melee attacks/round then AC and HP buffer are both viable options in their own right, with AC in the lead.

On normal yes, on elite I don't really think so.

[Stonen]

I really agree that s/b should become a viable playstyle again. It should allways be rewarded to wear a shield and heavy armor, even if you dont have the raidloot to make your ac matter. Ac is broken, and hard to fix. This solution with fortification looks promising. Maybe other forms of damage migitation on shields and heavy armor are needed as well. Like, 10% less incomming weapon damage with a tower shield equipped and 15% with a full plate.

We need other benifits from armor and shields besides ac.

[Lorad]

OK so I am new sorry if I am missing something.

Why not limit items to 50% fort?
Add 15% stackable to shields.
Add 10/10/10% to the pre tank choices.
Add 5% to the two weapon defense feat
Add 5% to the dodge feat

Add 5/10/20/30 to the haste and armor boosts.

Add the ability to get to ignore spell crits to 100% for wiz/sorc to throw them a bone.

Make a tank spec into a tank role.

[Gunga]

[noinfo]

OK so I am new sorry if I am missing something.

Why not limit items to 50% fort?
Add 15% stackable to shields.
Add 10/10/10% to the pre tank choices.
Add 5% to the two weapon defense feat
Add 5% to the dodge feat

Add 5/10/20/30 to the haste and armor boosts.

Add the ability to get to ignore spell crits to 100% for wiz/sorc to throw them a bone.

Make a tank spec into a tank role.

The penalties for various difficulty levels I believe are important because it allows people to still run normal with little chance of being critted and then scales in hopes of rounding down some of the standard damage and high to hits (and possibly mob hp). There are many ways to configure the actual fortification and I am not really hung up on any 1 type, mine obviously like the rest of my post is only a suggestion and a starting point.

I would avoid giving 2 weapon defense and dodge any bonuses as I see them as being ac specific only not mitigating damage.

[grodon9999]

Wouldn't simply lowering the to-hit numbers so a "tank" could actually "tank" be as effective and simpler?

[noinfo]

Wouldn't simply lowering the to-hit numbers so a "tank" could actually "tank" be as effective and simpler?

Not really, by doing that you actually then favour the PJ wearing high dex club.

They can reach the same ac while dual weilding and out dpsing, though the goal is to be able to lower the to hit along with the potential for crits, the ballance being in the case of the PJ wearer, yeah they may not get hit except on a 20 (no grazing hits in this model) but they have a reasonable chance that that hit is a crit due to only 50% fort and no armour or shield and the mob with a bonus to confirm. See this as being very hard to be hit cleanly but when it happens you dont have a nice piece of metal between you and the blade.

In this model the barberian is actually better off than the twf PJ wearer when it comes to resisting crits (though they will probably still be critted more) due to the fact they wear armour.

[Angelus_dead]

Yes, that is a real problem you have identified, although changing Fortification that way isn't the best solution.

A useful way to look at the problem is to consider Horoth's Disintegrate attack: it gives him a 5% chance to hit the tank for 500 damage. That's the same gameplay effect critical hits have, if everyone weren't immune to them.

[Angelus_dead]

Standard fortification item bonuses

+25% for Heavy armour types (based on WF natural bonus)
+15% for Medium armour types
+10% for Light armour types

There are multiple serious problems with that approach. It creates a whole new system for melee durability which is independent of AC, meaning that high AC characters (who thus deserve to work as tanks) may be squishy. It's also unopposed by the characteristics of the enemy: percentage immunities just aren't good game design.

In this model the barberian is actually better off than the twf PJ wearer when it comes to resisting crits (though they will probably still be critted more) due to the fact they wear armour.

Yeah, and that is a BAD thing.

Here is a repeat of my traditional suggestion to nerf fortification.
1. Sneak Attacks require confirmation to work, but with the same number as the attack roll.
2. Fortification no longer provides a percentage immunity to extra damage (except when provided by creature type, such as Undead and Elemental)
3. Instead, Fortification grants bonus AC against confirming critical hits and sneak attacks. The amount might be +5 from Light and +20 from Heavy, or whatever.
4. Optionally, Fortification also provides bonus stacking DR which applies only against the damage from critical hits and sneak attacks. Against critical hits, that DR is multiplied times (crit mult -1). The amount might be 3 from Light and 12 from Heavy, or whatever.
5. Optionally, add new effects like Major and Superior Fortification which are better than Heavy, but come on higher-level items.
6. Edit some powerful monsters (especially raid bosses and epic mode) to moderately reduce their physical damage.

Note that with this change in place, characters can still use Heavy Fortification to be immune to crits, as long as their underlying AC was enough that the +20 makes it impossible for the enemy to confirm.

Why Nerf Fortification like that? It'll improve four problems at once:
1. AC is meaningless to the majority of characters. The large number of game mechanics that raise or lower AC are also meaningless to them.
2. A monster having rogue levels or imp crit is meaningless to high-level characters.
3. Players in high level content never have to react to burst damage from standard monsters.
3b. To be threatening, the designers have had to increase the damage of high-level monsters so that all their hits are dangerous, which makes healing metronomic.
4. The Fortification item property caps out at about level 9 and then never improves.

[Angelus_dead]

Standard fortification item bonuses
+25% for Heavy armour types (based on WF natural bonus)
...
+25% for shield of any type

There are problems when you base it on item type like that:
1. The quality of the item is irrelevant to those effects, so that for some purposes a Masterwork Half Plate is better than a +5 Mithral Breastplate.
2. That system allows a barbarian to easily equip a shield for the specific fights where he'd hate to be critted.

A basic S/B would have 150% fortification base to be modified by difficulty level
Casual -0%
Normal -10%
Hard -25%
Elite -50%
Epic -75%

It is a mistake to have monster abilities which are directly set by difficulty level. (Note that DDO already does this with Grazing Hit range, which was a mistake too). To do that kind of thing causes perversity, where a level 1 Elite mob is in some ways superior to a level 13 Normal mob. It also causes double dipping and other problems.

The good way to handle difficulty mode is that it treats the monsters as if they came from higher level content.

[Gunga]

There are multiple serious problems with that approach. It creates a whole new system for melee durability which is independent of AC, meaning that high AC characters (who thus deserve to work as tanks) may be squishy. It's also unopposed by the characteristics of the enemy: percentage immunities just aren't good game design.


Yeah, and that is a BAD thing.

Here is a repeat of my traditional suggestion to nerf fortification.
1. Sneak Attacks require confirmation to work, but with the same number as the attack roll.
2. Fortification no longer provides a percentage immunity to extra damage (except when provided by creature type, such as Undead and Elemental)
3. Instead, Fortification grants bonus AC against confirming critical hits and sneak attacks. The amount might be +5 from Light and +20 from Heavy, or whatever.
4. Optionally, Fortification also provides bonus stacking DR which applies only against the damage from critical hits and sneak attacks. Against critical hits, that DR is multiplied times (crit mult -1). The amount might be 3 from Light and 12 from Heavy, or whatever.
5. Optionally, add new effects like Major and Superior Fortification which are better than Heavy, but come on higher-level items.
6. Edit some powerful monsters (especially raid bosses and epic mode) to moderately reduce their physical damage.

Note that with this change in place, characters can still use Heavy Fortification to be immune to crits, as long as their underlying AC was enough that the +20 makes it impossible for the enemy to confirm.

Why Nerf Fortification like that? It'll improve four problems at once:
1. AC is meaningless to the majority of characters. The large number of game mechanics that raise or lower AC are also meaningless to them.
2. A monster having rogue levels or imp crit is meaningless to high-level characters.
3. Players in high level content never have to react to burst damage from standard monsters.
3b. To be threatening, the designers have had to increase the damage of high-level monsters so that all their hits are dangerous, which makes healing metronomic.
4. The Fortification item property caps out at about level 9 and then never improves.

There are some great ideas in this post. I hope some devs are following. +1

[Thrudh]

There are some great ideas in this post. I hope some devs are following. +1

Yes, A_D's ideas on fortification are spot on...

It is bad design that we all have 100% fortification and no one is ever critted in high level content.

[Giddlypip]

Fortification is not really overpowered, IMO. It's just the way the game is designed... They do more damage per swing/swing faster because most players do have fortification. If heavy fort is taken away, they would have to change crit damage or something because people would get 1 shot way too often... so in essence reducing that damage just has the same effect of people still staying alive/dying at the same rates because damage is changed. It's not going to solve any problem, just a different way to get the same result.

Pip

[Svetelana]

Why barbs make very good tanks and how to "fix it"

I am going to break this wall of text up into parts so if you are going to reply, please wait till last post.


This post is directly related to tanking builds, ac at higher levels and variation within different modes, casual, normal, hard, elite and epic.

First this is not a request to nerf Barberians, they are the premier sustained dps build.

It is a look at why Barberians are often the choice for tanking elite bosses.

Don't Barberians just cut hair? What's all this DPS/AC stuff?

[stopdying]

Why not put DR on armor (like blocking DR on shields) and have it stack with shields? That way dex AC characters dodge attacks, barbs ignore damage because of their HP pool, and tanks could absorb damage due to stacking DR from heavy armor and shields.

[noinfo]

There are problems when you base it on item type like that:
1. The quality of the item is irrelevant to those effects, so that for some purposes a Masterwork Half Plate is better than a +5 Mithral Breastplate.
2. That system allows a barbarian to easily equip a shield for the specific fights where he'd hate to be critted.


It is a mistake to have monster abilities which are directly set by difficulty level. (Note that DDO already does this with Grazing Hit range, which was a mistake too). To do that kind of thing causes perversity, where a level 1 Elite mob is in some ways superior to a level 13 Normal mob. It also causes double dipping and other problems.

The good way to handle difficulty mode is that it treats the monsters as if they came from higher level content.

Don't get me wrong with this post that I think my way is better, I proposesd one solution to what I believe is an obvious problem. And for the most part am more happy with your proposed solution with the exception that I will address in the end.

Armours should reflect their native type and in some cases possibly give a small bonus. MFP for example should be counted as heavy armour, Adamantine FP should perhaps have a +10% (using percentages still for example purposes only and not because I am hung up on my proposal)

I will stand by my belief that armour and shield should influence the fortification be it percentage (or standard type bonus). Yes a barberian should be able to equip a shield to reduce being crited even though he may not benefit from the ac, he is able to protect VITAL areas with it, and in this regard I believe representation as a percentage is a better option.

It is also something to consider that perhaps the high ac based 2wf will be more vulnerable to criticals than the heavy armour wearers, once again I see this as ideal, the reduced percentage (or whatever method) could be offset against the usually higher ac that needs to be confirmed against.

2wf while legitamate tanks have the advantage in dps so I see this a balance.