Time to revamp intim/hate/threat gen "Tanks"

[Captain_Wizbang]

It seems the terminology of "tank" has been redefined by the community in the last few years.

The constant development of power creep into the game is partly to blame.

Before we had this disparity in the game, a "tank" was mostly an S&B fighter or Pally, that had high hate or intim and took the targets (monster) aggro.

During the raid scene days I had 3 toons, all high intim S&B ftrs & pally's. They were called upon every Tues, Thurs, Fri, & Sat for nightly raids, HoX, ToD, Shroud, Titan, Reaver, VoD, etc.. The average intim was 75, with a few able to get to 82 w/ buffs.

These builds that a lot of people used were considered mandatory spots to fill, until the era when monks mountain stance would generate enough of the bosses attention that the intim got broke. Simple enough, everybody playing those builds were asked to change stance or move away.

Those day are over. Now almost every class can "tank". Really?
You meta players will have many jibes and barbs about how uber your build is, and can tank w/ a gnome rogue. Pfft. This isnt about YOU players. This is about how the developers have totally ignored over and over the perks and rolls of the tank.

And the entire "intim", threat generation, hate, diplo, bluff, damage producing situation is out of whack, and it should be addressed.

The recent proposed changes SSG is making for melees, leaves out yet again S&B & both Vanguard paths. How are these part of the topic? If that needs explaining then, you should look at the change in the game that favors every class & build over something that should by rights be the ultimate in intimidation and threat generation.

When Vanguard went through changes 3? years ago, on the surface looked promising, but in reality it was nothing more than meatloaf. Day old, microwaved blah blah meatloaf

I say we offer up points of debate to give SSG some guidance on where to go with this. It's obvious they are not concentrating on it, as the recent changes on lamma right now prove.

SSG has left these builds out in the cold. Sure there were some melancholy changes and fixes made to DC's of trip & stun, but it ended there. That's OUR fault for not pressing the issue.

Now it's time we do so. If ONE person can come here, make a post about how filigrees and power surge affects his build, then the whole melee debacle on top of the "help" that melee's are getting is turning into yet another "screw the pooch" for intims, Vanguard tanks, S&B tanks.

Just because the meta player wants say tanks aren't included in the melee vernacular, doesn't mean they're right, I even argue that they are 100% wrong.

So lets debate the meaning and role of a tank. Both Vanguard trees, and help SSG develop SOMETHING that doesnt prejudice builds and play styles.

[Captain_Wizbang]

I'll start.

Vanguard. Shield Specialization should have inherent bonuses to intim or threat generation. And have a choice* for it.

*A Fighter isn't going to put build points into cha for any other reason than for intim. A Fighter/Vanguard will. But there are no benefits for anyone to do that.

*A Pally will (should) have build points put into cha, as it's a Pally stat. A Paladin Vanguard will have points to bolster intim and threat generation, but can't get the numbers needed to make the point investment worthwhile.

Why are you playing an S&B Vanguard? You want to tank, you want to be "the turtle up, take it on the chin guy"

Ok let's look at that aspect for my 1st response to the thread.

Vanguard trees lack anything to augment the role of the player. IF a player is taking all forms of shield spec's to make his build better, there should be another core ability that grants a chosen path of bonus.

Be it intimidation or threat generation.

Point of those 2 is simple enough. Fighter = Intimidation.... Paladin = Threat Generation

Give these 2 Vanguard paths a core bonus. It's that simple, (I'm not a coder, so it's all *that simple)

[Hipparan]

I TRed a character on Lamannia to test out a Fighter tank build. I see people on the forums talk about 6000 HP tanks and it seems to me like it's either not true or they're counting in Reaper enhancements. I went solo into EE Tavern Brawl to test out how much damage I could take and although I survived fairly well by blocking, but once I stopped blocking to heal, enemies swarmed around me and killed me in very little time. He probably didn't have the best build, but he had the Epic Defensive Fighting Feat (using THF via Fighter feats) , was in Unyielding Sentinel, and had some of the higher end loot from Ravenloft, etc. He had around 2k HP and 250 PRR but still didn't last very long.

I agree that I would like to see intim tanks come back, but I don't know how well it would work if a character can't take all of the hits they're gonna get from grabbing everything's attention. There should be some Stalwart Defender/Sacred Defender enhancements that give you a massive bonus to PRR/MRR if you successfully intimidate an enemy.

[Captain_Wizbang]

There should be some Stalwart Defender/Sacred Defender enhancements that give you a massive bonus to PRR/MRR if you successfully intimidate an enemy.

Neat idea. I like the concept

[Captain_Wizbang]

There should be some Stalwart Defender/Sacred Defender enhancements that give you a massive bonus to PRR/MRR if you successfully intimidate an enemy.

Neat idea. I like the concept.

Both defender Trees I was going address later. Thanks

[Bloodskittle]

The real problem tank builds have -at least the ones that are planning on putting up a shield and hoping that Kor-Kaza won't knock them off the ledge- is that they have pretty rubbish DPS. This is bad for holding aggro because threat gen is just a % increase to how much damage the monster thinks you're doing.
It is also bad for questing because it is incredibly niche for parties to require a turtle at any given point in the end game. If you want to fix tanks you have to make the viable DPS builds in the meta-game rather than just be angry about the state of the meta-game.

BTW, Shield-Bearbarians are great tanks with decent AOE DPS for trash, Ftr+Paladin aren't the only tank classes

[Amideus]

"Before we had this disparity in the game, a "tank" was mostly an S&B fighter or Pally, that had high hate or intim and took the targets (monster) aggro."

I find this to be a poor explanation of tanking. Because S&B was NOT the only way to tank. There were monk tank builds and other builds as well. The hallmarks of a tank should be intimidate, high AC, PRR, MRR, HP, and threat generation.

The problem isn't the incentives created from the classes and builds though, the problem is the mechanics of the game have drastically changed. There's very little reason to tank most content because there's not a lot of requirement to it. It certainly makes things easier having a beefy tank to absorb the damage. But it's rarely required.