Defender tanks ideas.

[Grimreich]

I propose a new tier 5 enhancement to both Paladin and Fighter defender trees: 3 tiers, 2 AP per tier 3%/6%/10% Combat Style Attack Speed bonus while wearing heavy armor and wielding a shield for both Defender trees.
Additionally, fighters get "every 30/25/20th attack (adjusted for balancing) heal for 1 point per fighter level" scaling off melee power. This would give fighters a bit of self sustainability I feel they could use in the current build and it would be somewhat unique-ish in mechanical implementation.
Paladins could use something like +1 to Attack per tier. This would make up for the generally lower Strength and feats that a Fighter would otherwise have.

So...
Stalwart Defender tier 5 Enhancement: Tier 1 (2AP) +3% Combat Style bonus to attack speed while wearing heavy armor and wielding a shield and every 30th attack, the fighter heals 1 point per fighter level scaling off 100% melee power.
Tier 2 (2Ap) + 6% Combat Style bonus to attack speed while wearing heavy armor and wielding a shield and every 25th attack, the fighter heals 1 point per fighter level scaling off 100% melee power.
Tier 3 (2Ap) + 10% Combat Style bonus to attack speed while wearing heavy armor and wielding a shield and every 20th attack, the fighter heals 1 point per fighter level scaling off 100% melee power.

Sacred Defender tier 5 Enhancement: Tier 1 (2AP) +3% Combat Style bonus to attack speed while wearing heavy armor and +1 Attack.
Tier 2 (2Ap) + 6% Combat Style bonus to attack speed while wearing heavy armor and wielding a shield and +2 Attack
Tier 3 (2Ap) + 10% Combat Style bonus to attack speed while wearing heavy armor and wielding a shield and +3 Attack

I feel this will give full Defender tanks a pick up in damage that should allow for them to effectively kill self-healing bosses and champions they may otherwise have not been able to or would take an excessively long time to achieve without taking away from incentive to go off-tank damage dealer with Vanguard.

I would also propose that the core enhancements, starting with the level 12 and working retroactively, offer +1 to tactical feats per core enhancement with fighter capstone still offering the additional +2. This would make up for the lower Strength that Defenders are likely to have (while still giving fighters the flavor advantage) in comparison to damage dealers, giving them a more reliable means of single target CC and debuff ability.

I feel like this would round out full tank martial classes to make them more than just niche builds for a handful of quests and/or speed up their questing a bit to promote not avoiding them on account of the game is largely played with the idea of expedient questing in mind.

This is a more thought out alternative to the hasty and poorly considered idea I previously had in changing Swift Defense.

[HastyPudding]

I like the idea of giving the fighter at least some sot of healing ability. That potion thing in kensei is a joke. It's decent in lower-mid heroics, but in epics it's downright useless: chugging pots in epics is simply not effective. Drinking one pot to gain better healing from cocoon or renewal or make it easier for clerics/druids/fvs/bards to heal you is one thing, but for self-reliance it's really not that great. The only other healing ability for kensei is the defender capstone, which only comes in the form of an action boost. That every class in the game (even barbarians, which shouldn't have any healing at all) gets some form of self-healing ability except fighters.

I'd like to see defenders gain some hardcore defenses. As it stands, they're just a cut above the rest in PRR and only slightly better than some warlocks in the MRR department. The diminishing returns makes the defender's high PRR kind of a wasted effort. If you're going to go tier 5/capstone with a defender, then it better give some monumental defenses, HP, and damage reduction that scale into epics, and needs to be in proportion to the damage and dps lost via doing so.

Aggro is another thing. The rework to intimidate definitely helps, but only just. A true defender build (not some vanguard build) needs top notch aggro management. I say double the threat generation of the defensive stances, going from 200% total to 400% total and give large bonuses to intimidate in the capstones.

If you're going to play a meat shield or a dedicated tank, you better have some high quality defenses and aggro management, otherwise the two defender trees are just a splash tree for vanguards, kensei, and multiclass builds.

[unbongwah]

If it were up to me, I'd move Block & Cut to T5 Vanguard (that tree needs a DPS boost post-U31, IMO) and add something similar to Blood Strength to T5 Stalwart D.

[psykopeta]

I would have 3 trees:
-dps kensai as it is
- mix defender and vanguard in 1 tankish agro shield wielder some dps tree(same for pally)
- tactics (all types, multiselection, not a generic to all dc as kensai) with some healing based on dps or mitigation/avoidance(again multiselection) with some extras to non heavy defense(extra dodge and cap for light and robe since med and heaby are in tankish tree)

That 3rd tree could be shared with pally too if needed

[Grimreich]

I like the idea of giving the fighter at least some sot of healing ability. That potion thing in kensei is a joke. It's decent in lower-mid heroics, but in epics it's downright useless: chugging pots in epics is simply not effective. Drinking one pot to gain better healing from cocoon or renewal or make it easier for clerics/druids/fvs/bards to heal you is one thing, but for self-reliance it's really not that great. The only other healing ability for kensei is the defender capstone, which only comes in the form of an action boost. That every class in the game (even barbarians, which shouldn't have any healing at all) gets some form of self-healing ability except fighters.

I'd like to see defenders gain some hardcore defenses. As it stands, they're just a cut above the rest in PRR and only slightly better than some warlocks in the MRR department. The diminishing returns makes the defender's high PRR kind of a wasted effort. If you're going to go tier 5/capstone with a defender, then it better give some monumental defenses, HP, and damage reduction that scale into epics, and needs to be in proportion to the damage and dps lost via doing so.

Aggro is another thing. The rework to intimidate definitely helps, but only just. A true defender build (not some vanguard build) needs top notch aggro management. I say double the threat generation of the defensive stances, going from 200% total to 400% total and give large bonuses to intimidate in the capstones.

If you're going to play a meat shield or a dedicated tank, you better have some high quality defenses and aggro management, otherwise the two defender trees are just a splash tree for vanguards, kensei, and multiclass builds.

I feel defenders are mostly in a good place. They just fall off a bit on effective damage around 16 or so. Fighters could obviously use the sustain and I feel the tactical feats fall off too quickly unless you really push towards maximizing them and that's a lot of cost for something that doesn't scale. The other points you made I feel would be better addressed in Unyielding Sentinal for epic levels.

I just ran Legendary Elite slavers chain with each group of enemies living approximately 4 seconds, as the entire group other than myself on a tank were using repeaters (FvS, Fighter, Paladin, Warlock and Wizard) and the arcanes just blew through anything. I was the only one who took any damage from enemies. Would have ended up dying for running out of heals fighting a group of trogs. Just ran off instead. If the current state of the game is that people can construct builds that can blow through the hardest non-raid content in the game, while the devs are afraid to give another build type ENOUGH damage to be effective at all, it's kind of ridiculous. Granted, I'm not well geared at all. Most of what I'm using is Heroic level range gear, but it's not much worse than the best for stat increases for tanking. I'm running 251 PRR, 130 MRR and 170 AC at lvl 29. Like you said, the depreciating value of defensive stats makes it so increasing anything much further than that becomes more costly than it's worth and any damage increase I can think of as an alternative is meager.

At a glance, if I really tried, I could probably get my PRR to 270ish, MRR to 150ish and AC to over 200 just by upgrading items I have that already give me those stats, but anything other that would be pinching for minimal gain. I could increase my damage by probably 20% with the right weapon and items, so maybe I'll be useful in groups for something other than Intimidation, but it's still so far off the functionality that literally any other type of build can manage that it's kind of disgusting.

I don't want to be able to blow through content like some classes. I want to fight for it. That's why I build tanks. I like the idea of being really hard to kill while having an actual scrap with enemies, but I'd like be able to solo content. The balance is just too off and kind of always has been. The depreciating values was kind of a poor idea given how much they scaled up power with level cap increases after they changed the formula.

[Grimreich]

I would have 3 trees:
-dps kensai as it is
- mix defender and vanguard in 1 tankish agro shield wielder some dps tree(same for pally)
- tactics (all types, multiselection, not a generic to all dc as kensai) with some healing based on dps or mitigation/avoidance(again multiselection) with some extras to non heavy defense(extra dodge and cap for light and robe since med and heaby are in tankish tree)

That 3rd tree could be shared with pally too if needed

I would love if they combined Defender and Vanguard trees. I would even be willing to invest huge amounts of time to organizing and deciding which should stay, which should go, what to modify and how.

[bloodnose13]

i personaly see it bit diffrent, issue for me is bit more layered.

1. first i would like to see all ac/prr/mrr rebalanced, in such way that high ac would be around 100 again, this would mean that value of 1 point would grow, and all those bonuses that give +1 2 or 3 (like warpriests on heal bonus) would have meaning. same for prr/mrr.

2. nameing, and diversity of paladin from fighter, in both build method, role and achieveing the similar result in diffrent way:

a: fighters, stalwart protector means to me a fighter that focuses on building own defences and power so he can protect others by makeing enemies attack him instead of others, so focus would be on armor, towershield that is supported by class. fighter could get party support abilities through 20 secnond action boosts that are aoe. to give them the feel of being the tacticians of the group.

b: paladin, should be renamed to sacred protector, so show that they are similar but diffrent, as paladins role would be protecting others through use of divine magic, auras, paladins auras should be boosted, to have not only more power but also let for useage of certain short timed aura boosts, that would make everyone around them have extra benefits, paladin would become a pillar of defence of whole party, not just self, this prestige would focus on boosting heavy shield mostly as paladins dont get natural support for tower, however there could be multiselectors in it to allow choosing to use tower if someones build would focus on it. but with use of enchancements for heavy shield, those shields could be on par with towers in paladins hands, or close.

3. vanguard tree after adjustments, should become a "meta" prestige, same as harper, available to every class, with restrictions that it only works with small and heavy shields, no bucklers (so its not exploited by swashbucklers) and no tower shields, as those should be seen as domain of fighter. this new vanguard tree could become the ever so missing cap reward for purple dragon knight favor.

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my main issue with current paladin defender is that its created as a utility tree for both vanguard and kotc, to use as a boost for their defences, with no ability in it in mind to make it a standalone tree, when focused on, you are left with a paladin that has no offensive ability, the one offensivelydefensive ability that defender has, is laughable......
for paladin to not have use of his smites is a joke, paladin should not be a fighter with self healing, it should be a paladin. that has a real use of all of iconic powers at ALL levels.

additional idea:
knight of chalice should lose the cleaves, as its ridicolous, instead they should have abilities based on smites, few diffrent smite types that could use used as aoe, or cleave like, but giveing them straight clone of cleave that is more powerful, is bad design (i was so tempted to call it lazy, but i rolled 20 on my will save). also holy retribution is as bad as it gets, basicly 90% of dps this tree can dish out comes from that one ability, and that is sorely felt when turns run out in mid fight. it would be much better idea to make smite charges return as part of the feat, and make them return on hit, whenever paladin hits target with any attack they have 1% chance for charge, on crit 5% chance for a smite charge, on vorpal chance is 33%, on crit SMITE chance is 66%, on vorpal SMITE chance 150% (meaning he gets 1 charge with chance for getting second).

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sorry for wall of text
i seriously hope that devs read this, and will think it through.

[Grimreich]

i personaly see it bit diffrent, issue for me is bit more layered.

1. first i would like to see all ac/prr/mrr rebalanced, in such way that high ac would be around 100 again, this would mean that value of 1 point would grow, and all those bonuses that give +1 2 or 3 (like warpriests on heal bonus) would have meaning. same for prr/mrr.

2. nameing, and diversity of paladin from fighter, in both build method, role and achieveing the similar result in diffrent way:

a: fighters, stalwart protector means to me a fighter that focuses on building own defences and power so he can protect others by makeing enemies attack him instead of others, so focus would be on armor, towershield that is supported by class. fighter could get party support abilities through 20 secnond action boosts that are aoe. to give them the feel of being the tacticians of the group.

b: paladin, should be renamed to sacred protector, so show that they are similar but diffrent, as paladins role would be protecting others through use of divine magic, auras, paladins auras should be boosted, to have not only more power but also let for useage of certain short timed aura boosts, that would make everyone around them have extra benefits, paladin would become a pillar of defence of whole party, not just self, this prestige would focus on boosting heavy shield mostly as paladins dont get natural support for tower, however there could be multiselectors in it to allow choosing to use tower if someones build would focus on it. but with use of enchancements for heavy shield, those shields could be on par with towers in paladins hands, or close.

3. vanguard tree after adjustments, should become a "meta" prestige, same as harper, available to every class, with restrictions that it only works with small and heavy shields, no bucklers (so its not exploited by swashbucklers) and no tower shields, as those should be seen as domain of fighter. this new vanguard tree could become the ever so missing cap reward for purple dragon knight favor.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
my main issue with current paladin defender is that its created as a utility tree for both vanguard and kotc, to use as a boost for their defences, with no ability in it in mind to make it a standalone tree, when focused on, you are left with a paladin that has no offensive ability, the one offensivelydefensive ability that defender has, is laughable......
for paladin to not have use of his smites is a joke, paladin should not be a fighter with self healing, it should be a paladin. that has a real use of all of iconic powers at ALL levels.

additional idea:
knight of chalice should lose the cleaves, as its ridicolous, instead they should have abilities based on smites, few diffrent smite types that could use used as aoe, or cleave like, but giveing them straight clone of cleave that is more powerful, is bad design (i was so tempted to call it lazy, but i rolled 20 on my will save). also holy retribution is as bad as it gets, basicly 90% of dps this tree can dish out comes from that one ability, and that is sorely felt when turns run out in mid fight. it would be much better idea to make smite charges return as part of the feat, and make them return on hit, whenever paladin hits target with any attack they have 1% chance for charge, on crit 5% chance for a smite charge, on vorpal chance is 33%, on crit SMITE chance is 66%, on vorpal SMITE chance 150% (meaning he gets 1 charge with chance for getting second).

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sorry for wall of text
i seriously hope that devs read this, and will think it through.

I mean, my point was that I would love if defender tanks weren't niche. These ideas make sense, but I don't like the idea of them being so exclusive. Adding things for paladins to be able to have more than just being an intimidation bot in the form of buffing allies would be great, but I would also want to be able to build a full tank if I choose. Especially since power would be lost in mid-battle buffs and auras, given that people don't group together all the time. Given that ranged attacks are so strong, there's really not a lot of grouping seen at all. Defenders need to be that front line, self reliant agro holder or they'd risk being made even more niche to the point of complete uselessness.

I agree that the armor class system and the physical and magical resistance ratings system are pretty poorly implemented and maybe smaller numbers would help, but that would require rebalancing the entire game again and, while preferable, is mostly unnecessary. I would instead recommend simply upping any bonus of 1 to 5 if it is standalone and any incremental bonuses of +1 per tier, to be upped to +3 per tier. This will allow non-Armor Class heavy builds to get a little benefit from small bonuses and help tanks in that they'll be able to focus even more on other things, assuming they care about armor class at all, and if they care about getting high AC, the small bonuses may actually be worth taking over something else.

I wasn't trying to do anything radical, just get a little love to defender tanks, so leveling them isn't a pain and so they can contribute effectively in groups. I do agree that there should be differences with fighter being a bit more offensive and paladin being a bit more defensive. I could probably write up entire trees given a few hours, but I'm not trying to ask them to overhaul the whole thing, but rather do what I feel MIGHT be enough for now without breaking anything.

[bloodnose13]

I mean, my point was that I would love if defender tanks weren't niche. These ideas make sense, but I don't like the idea of them being so exclusive. Adding things for paladins to be able to have more than just being an intimidation bot in the form of buffing allies would be great, but I would also want to be able to build a full tank if I choose. Especially since power would be lost in mid-battle buffs and auras, given that people don't group together all the time. Given that ranged attacks are so strong, there's really not a lot of grouping seen at all. Defenders need to be that front line, self reliant agro holder or they'd risk being made even more niche to the point of complete uselessness.

I agree that the armor class system and the physical and magical resistance ratings system are pretty poorly implemented and maybe smaller numbers would help, but that would require rebalancing the entire game again and, while preferable, is mostly unnecessary. I would instead recommend simply upping any bonus of 1 to 5 if it is standalone and any incremental bonuses of +1 per tier, to be upped to +3 per tier. This will allow non-Armor Class heavy builds to get a little benefit from small bonuses and help tanks in that they'll be able to focus even more on other things, assuming they care about armor class at all, and if they care about getting high AC, the small bonuses may actually be worth taking over something else.

also tanks are not niche, its just every class got boosted in a way so they are more able to survive on their own, not needing tanking most of time, and second issue is warlock that just is the biggest error devs made, they just got idea to mash up benefits of all character types into one, and created a monster that soloes quests on any difficoulty with party barely keeping up to them. from that perspective every class that is not warlock is niche now. noone waits for rogues to disable traps, noone realy cares about healers, becouse everyone can use cocoon or scroll or whatever, healer is useful but noone will notice if slow running healer lags behind compared, same way noone cares about tanking, untill they do.

i miss old times, when ddo was much more about cooperation in party instead of everyone for their own. now?

I wasn't trying to do anything radical, just get a little love to defender tanks, so leveling them isn't a pain and so they can contribute effectively in groups. I do agree that there should be differences with fighter being a bit more offensive and paladin being a bit more defensive. I could probably write up entire trees given a few hours, but I'm not trying to ask them to overhaul the whole thing, but rather do what I feel MIGHT be enough for now without breaking anything.

i can see your logic here, and from dev logic its probably the easiest one, but its equivalent of pushing pause button on the problem, buffing the ac bonuses from those low bonus sources, will work at first, but overall will be unimportant, becouse if you have 40 ac, even 5 ac wont matter, you still will be quishy, if you have 80, you will barely seea diffrence, if you have 250 ac, you will not even notice that 5 ac as diminishing returns will make its value below 1%, fact is that only rebalancing ac to lower cap, will mean that 1 point will matter, idk how long you play ddo but do you know or remember the reasons why rage was made to be blocked by defender stances? it was becouse of outcry over 2 ac lost, back then getting 90-100 ac was glorious, and today? what is 2 ac? i rather be able to have rage work on my tank again, becouse it would mean i would not have to turn off stance if i want those str and con bonuses, thats where we are now, 2 ac does not matter.

as for diffrence between defender classes and prestiges, i did not mean them to be weaker in any area, i mean both would need ot have dps and defence and hate gen, but what i want to see is DIFFRENCE, the way its achieved to be diffrent for each class so when you play fighter OR paladin you feel the diffrence, fact is that paladin prestiges BARELY use those innate paladin abilities, they are treated as nessesary evil when they should be at the core of the class, devs paid more attention to makeing paladin work good as a splash material than a CLASS and thats what is the problem. fact is that paladin should NEVER been allowed to be splashed and lot of balance issues ddo has would be non existant (im not saying paladin splashablity is only to blame but its one of major issues).

im jsut saying that changes should happen, and they should happen in direction of lowering, not upping numbers ad infintum