test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Options
Con Spec
squirrelloid
Posts: 869 Arc User
First, this is not about Con as a SS. It doesn't matter how OP Con is as a stat, because you can always just take it as a secondary SS with a real spec tree.
The Con Spec is terrible. We all know this.
So, as far as I can tell, Con Spec has *1* job. To give ranged tanks the ability to not get treated like a pinball every time some knock-happy mob glances at them. It fails. I'm currently respeccing my ranged tank into Ego primary because the knock resistance from Con spec doesn't do anything noticeable.
Melee tanks are going to go Str primary. They just are. And they'll get their knock resistance from strength, because that's what strength does. Ranged tanks who want to set a SS on fire for a good spec tree are better off going Str primary, get about the same amount of knock resistance, and pick up a real spec tree. That should make anyone who cares about balance or even *spec trees as options* cringe.
And yet, there's some simple fixes that would make Con indispensable for ranged tanks, and tempting for dodge tanks.
(1) Triple the knock resistance from Resilient. Yes, triple. My ranged tank in justice gear gets ~140% knock resistance from it. 420% is enough knock resistance that you might not get knocked occasionally. (Occasionally!) People who dump everything into con will be the appropriately beefy mildly immovable objects they desire. (My pure-strength toon hits ~850 strength and *still* gets knocked with some frequency, so even the purest Con-stacking lump will not be immune to knock).
Also, unless bonus threat for being in tank role is going to get tripled or something equally ridiculous, Resilient absolutely needs to give more knock resistance than blocking does. Because a tank that blocks with any frequency *cannot even theoretically hold aggro* right now. (Remember, while the tank is blocking, that dps you're barely keeping aggro off of isn't). Good tanks don't block unless absolutely necessary, so we shouldn't pretend they do, and blocking certainly shouldn't be the most effective thing a tank can do to avoid being knocked. (It's great as a knock defense for supports and dps).
(2) Make Deflection give dodge *chance*, not rating. That'll make it tempting for dodge tanks to take Con primary, and it'll play better with dodge gear. It doesn't have to be tons of dodge chance either. ~10% for a dex-stacking (~400) character would be a valuable reward on effort. And the double stat requirement (Con primary w/ dodge) deserves a suitable reward for doing so. (Also, 100% dodge is pretty much required for dodge tanks to actually tank, and it's possible now, so giving Con primary dodge tanks a way to hit that without being bound to specific attacks would open up a lot of build space). Also, by letting them gain full benefit from dodge rating on gear, you'll further tempt them away from guardicator loops. (Or at least reduce the value of guardicator loops).
(3) Quick healing needs to actually be quick. Even a regen tank likely doesn't see any value in it. (They're probably all str-primary anyway). Honestly, I can't see anyone being willing to make this worthwhile by giving it enough health regen to matter, so I'd strip it out and replace it with a spec where the will exists to make it work. May I suggest bonus threat that scales on secondary SS? Name it "I said hit me".
(4) Unyielding could be mildly increased in effectiveness. But it doesn't suffer as much as Resilient does, because holds resistance is a totally different mechanic than knock resistance. There's no need to give these identical numbers, and that they were given identical numbers is mind-boggling. It's as if they're using placeholder values, because no one who looked at the actual mechanics could think 'yeah, these should be the same numerically'. It could also be left the same - this is a low priority.
The following specs are probably fine as is: Tough, Fuel my Fire, Adrenaline Rush, Armored. They're just decent secondary specs, not reasons for people to want to take Con primary.
Related changes: Make behemoths Str-primary. ATs shouldn't have choices forced upon them that no mildly competent FF-builder would ever consider making. All non-dodge melee tanks should be expected to be Str-primary.
The Con Spec is terrible. We all know this.
So, as far as I can tell, Con Spec has *1* job. To give ranged tanks the ability to not get treated like a pinball every time some knock-happy mob glances at them. It fails. I'm currently respeccing my ranged tank into Ego primary because the knock resistance from Con spec doesn't do anything noticeable.
Melee tanks are going to go Str primary. They just are. And they'll get their knock resistance from strength, because that's what strength does. Ranged tanks who want to set a SS on fire for a good spec tree are better off going Str primary, get about the same amount of knock resistance, and pick up a real spec tree. That should make anyone who cares about balance or even *spec trees as options* cringe.
And yet, there's some simple fixes that would make Con indispensable for ranged tanks, and tempting for dodge tanks.
(1) Triple the knock resistance from Resilient. Yes, triple. My ranged tank in justice gear gets ~140% knock resistance from it. 420% is enough knock resistance that you might not get knocked occasionally. (Occasionally!) People who dump everything into con will be the appropriately beefy mildly immovable objects they desire. (My pure-strength toon hits ~850 strength and *still* gets knocked with some frequency, so even the purest Con-stacking lump will not be immune to knock).
Also, unless bonus threat for being in tank role is going to get tripled or something equally ridiculous, Resilient absolutely needs to give more knock resistance than blocking does. Because a tank that blocks with any frequency *cannot even theoretically hold aggro* right now. (Remember, while the tank is blocking, that dps you're barely keeping aggro off of isn't). Good tanks don't block unless absolutely necessary, so we shouldn't pretend they do, and blocking certainly shouldn't be the most effective thing a tank can do to avoid being knocked. (It's great as a knock defense for supports and dps).
(2) Make Deflection give dodge *chance*, not rating. That'll make it tempting for dodge tanks to take Con primary, and it'll play better with dodge gear. It doesn't have to be tons of dodge chance either. ~10% for a dex-stacking (~400) character would be a valuable reward on effort. And the double stat requirement (Con primary w/ dodge) deserves a suitable reward for doing so. (Also, 100% dodge is pretty much required for dodge tanks to actually tank, and it's possible now, so giving Con primary dodge tanks a way to hit that without being bound to specific attacks would open up a lot of build space). Also, by letting them gain full benefit from dodge rating on gear, you'll further tempt them away from guardicator loops. (Or at least reduce the value of guardicator loops).
(3) Quick healing needs to actually be quick. Even a regen tank likely doesn't see any value in it. (They're probably all str-primary anyway). Honestly, I can't see anyone being willing to make this worthwhile by giving it enough health regen to matter, so I'd strip it out and replace it with a spec where the will exists to make it work. May I suggest bonus threat that scales on secondary SS? Name it "I said hit me".
(4) Unyielding could be mildly increased in effectiveness. But it doesn't suffer as much as Resilient does, because holds resistance is a totally different mechanic than knock resistance. There's no need to give these identical numbers, and that they were given identical numbers is mind-boggling. It's as if they're using placeholder values, because no one who looked at the actual mechanics could think 'yeah, these should be the same numerically'. It could also be left the same - this is a low priority.
The following specs are probably fine as is: Tough, Fuel my Fire, Adrenaline Rush, Armored. They're just decent secondary specs, not reasons for people to want to take Con primary.
Related changes: Make behemoths Str-primary. ATs shouldn't have choices forced upon them that no mildly competent FF-builder would ever consider making. All non-dodge melee tanks should be expected to be Str-primary.
0
Comments
But at the same time, I also don't lose aggro when blocking! The issue to keeping aggro in a situation like that really is to remember to use your taunts when you can, and building up enough damage in the interim to keep them interested while they attempt to use knock/hold abilities.
Deflection's problem, along with any other dodge spec, is that none of them were updated to compensate for the change to dodge stats, so yes this is a change I'd be happy to see implemented. Just make sure the chance graned is a very low amount, such as like max. 5% chance. DEX *really* needs a similar treatment for its dodge specs.
Quick healing and basically any other 'REC=Super-lame regeneration' spec should just be trashed, or otherwise modified to do something more clever. In this case, what if it made healing from all sources more effective on the player? Just straight-up healing over time is a tough thing to balance, as there isn't much middle-ground between being completely useless and being grossly overpowered.
Honestly, thinking about it, Con should just straight-up get some sort of offensive boost of some sort from at least one of its specs. It'd just be fair; Strength, Dexterity, and Ego PSS' all get some defensive specs in their trees, so why can't Con?
I can't think of anyone who uses Unyielding, really; it's something that, if a player's good at knowing and blocking holds, they will have basically no use for outside of bad luck. And even then, that's generally why Active Offense is a thing. If I had to make a tiny tweak to the suggestion:
Resilient increases both Knock and Hold resistance, and for the knock, has a heavily improved factor.
Unyielding is tweaked to grant small bonuses to offense and severity, scaling off of your CON stat. The spec has 3 ranks, so significant spending on this spec is required to get high offense from here.
With that the decision falls down to using CON to create either ranged tanks, or a sturdy, semi-damaging DPS build.
I don't know what dps you're tanking for, but I'm generally in a race with decent dpsers to keep enough aggro so they don't steal it. CC's Taunt only lasts ~1s before you're relying on aggro again to hold attention, and have a 10s cd for affecting the target again. (CC's bonus aggro is the reason to use it, not the auto-taunt which is near worthless).
At the very least I consider myself a good tank; I run in tank role, use some haymaker, defensive combo, and demolish, and seldom do I lose aggro - Ironically not to the elemental blasters or TGM powerhouses you'd expect. Usually it's to Silverspar or Kaiserin of all people because bestial hits that hard.
But even successful tanking in mind, it's hard to fight, because Haymaker does the most damage of any of my powers, and it needs to be fully charged to do the most damage, but I have to block so much to ensure I don't get near death. Teleiosaurus it's literally every other second I need to stop her giant bites, with Grond it's a tough mixup of trying to figure out what situations call for a charge or a fast block, or even when to hold a block. And then Teleios Ascendant himself is yet another culprit who has a ton of charge attacks directly aimed at the tank.
Despite all this, I even surprise myself with how much I hold aggro despite the amount of blocking I need to do against all these attacks. And with that, how much aggro I'm holding despite landing almost no full-charge haymakers at all; my DPS is kind of trash from what I can tell, but somehow I'm still managing it.
So basically blocking is in fact an integral part of tanking - hell, it's an integral part of the game's combat mechanics, period, because without that, it'd literally just be pressing buttons in an order to do maximal damage, with almost no concern for enemy attacks - which outside of some rampages and TA, is essentially how the game can be played right now, which I don't think is a good thing.
To really resolve the problem, I'd call more for a buff to the aggro mechanics of the tank role, as well as just CS/CC in general, rather than allowing tanks to just block almost nothing and just attack all day to keep aggro.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
Seems kind of silly that you invest a lot of your building into eating damage, and still need to block the stuff that the rest of your team needs to block. I mean, yeah, there's going to be occasional attacks that just need blocking, but I don't imagine it being frequent.
Regardless, the knock resistance from the spec is way too low to do anything. It's literally useless in its present state.
Resisliant: A spec I have activly avoided using because the knock resistance from it is so insignificant that it actually makes no difference what so ever... it's only good for CON/Str/X and just to supliment some of the knock resist you could have had if you stacked more Str...
Deflection: yes, please make it chance instead of rating... this spec has potential that is being lost due to how rating works post Dodge nerf...
Tough: Yes you heard me... TOUGH... this spec is BROKEN... has been since specs came out... it gives HALF, you heard me HALF of the stated HP... if both SSS are at 250 (500 total) you'd expect +750 HP, at Rank 3, instead you get +375 HP...
Also I must be an enigma since I actualy do use Quick Healing on my Regen tank... the only two anks I have that arn't CON PSS are my HW/Celestial tank (STR PSS) and my PFF tank (EGO PSS, was at one point INT PSS). The rest of my tanks are ALL CON PSS... LR Dodge tank? CON PSS... Defiance/IDF "Water" tank? CON PSS... Regen tank? CON PSS.... Invuln tank? CON PSS... Defiance/Dodge MA tank? CON PSS...
-If Tough is broken as you say, a str/con tank would get more hp from Swole than they do from Tough.
-Hold resistance is generally covered by having an AO. There are few holds which are hard to break after popping an AO (and that also care at all about your hold resistance - some are like Shadow D's in Nemcon where it requires 4 z-mashes / AOs - with minimum wait times before the next happens - regardless of hold resistance).
-Con Mastery is only 20 Con and 20 defense. Str/Con with juggernaut easily gets more defense, and can make up the con difference in gearing. (Not to mention gains far more effective hp from the increased defense than the difference in con makes).
-Deflection is very niche. I can believe that Dodge tanks can benefit from Con PSS. They should probably benefit more than they do. (And my guess is they can get more dodge from going Dex primary, and have a spec tree which isn't otherwise useless).
-Adrenaline rush similarly benefits more from being Con/Dex, and isn't that much healing unless you manage to stack a lot of crit chance. (My glacier-like ice tank is still using Con PSS, and gets some use out of this because Avalanche adds crit chance, and it's literally the only spec that's tempting me to stay Con PSS - I think Ego PSS would be stronger in a lot of ways, including energy management!)
The other defensive specs are Quick Healing (which is pretty much irrelevant for anyone except maybe a regen tank, but what regen tanks need off specs are *defense* to increase their effective hp, not more healing), Resilient (which is irrelevant as currently scaled), and Armored. I have a hard time believing any of those outweighs having a spec tree which actually does stuff for you, even in terms of survivability. I think you're an enigma. I can't speak for everyone, but it's really hard to see any mechanical advantage to Con PSS for 99% of tanks.
All my ranged tanks are currently moving to ego PSS as I retcon them, for +defense and reduced ranged attack costs, except for the one that was always End PSS (PA, using the EB as toggle advantage and the End spec which turns that into infinite energy when combined with another toggle) and maybe except for my glacier-inspired one - maybe. The only reason they were ever Con PSS was for the knock resistance in the vain hope it would do anything. All my melee tanks are already str pss (except my behemoth, who sadly has no choice in the matter and would kill to go str primary).
Adrenaline rush is, as far as i can tell, the star of the Con specs, but you give up a ton of (non-rating based) crit chance to have Con PSS (instead of Str or Ego or even Pre), which limits how much healing you can gain off it. I'm sure there's a Con/dex dodge tank that makes it work by hitting 100% dodge and healing buckets off it. That's probably the only good use of Con PSS i can think of right now given the current spec math.
Specializations:
Constitution: Fuel My Fire (3/3)
Constitution: Tough (3/3)
Constitution: Adrenaline Rush (2/2)
as my CON specs with the remaining 2 points floating between Deflection & Armored... usually Deflection since I can generally get more effective defense via dodge than i get from Armored... I'm not sure exactly why my CON tanks are more survivable, they just are... I've tried respecing them to STR, EGO, and even END, or INT PSS a few times and every time they die faster with those primaries than they do with CON PSS... that's just been my personal experience...
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for improving CON PSS and fixing it's broken Tough spec & virtually useless Resilient spec... I just don't believe the spec is anywhere near as useless as you make it out to be...
This is a big journey, so far if you're reading this, wish you a good day
- All the "dodge rating" specs are essentially balanced around Lightning Reflexes, with the purpose of preventing LR tanks from achieving constant 100% dodge chance. With that in mind I don't feel that it should be changed to Dodge Chance, but that the scaling of the dodge rating could be adjusted so it's a bit more useful to non-LR tanks.
- Quick Recovery specs in all trees need to be rethought. In Con spec it is clearly outclassed by everything else at its tier. I think it should be replaced with a spec that gives Offense based on Secondary Superstats, to offer a way to counter one of a Con tank's weaknesses.
- I don't even know if Unyielding is worth anything... according to all the threads I've read about holds, none of the hold-related stats do anything. If it doesn't, I think Unyielding should increase break-free damage, from when you mash during a hold, and from Active Offenses. This would then allow someone to make an "Unstoppable Force" type character.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Why not just make unyielding grant damage resistance instead?
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Besides, most LR tanks primary Dex to get Avoidance from stats... (honestly I'm probably going to change my LR tank to Dex PSS for that very reason)
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
That's the thing, having it give dodge rating instead of dodge chance is the way to do it properly. The only real problem is that it might currently not provide enough dodge rating. Dodge rating is the only way to make sure this doesn't create a problem with LR while being potentially useful to non-LR users, hence the solution is to increase the scaling on how much Dodge rating the spec gives.
THAT'S JUST MY OPINION THO BRO.
^ do I have to add that to the end of my post every time I respond to you, or was that enough?
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Defiance (not dodged, 6 stacks): 463
Defiance (dodged, 6 stacks): 371
Weighted Average (10% dodge chance): 454
LR (dodged): 127
LR (not dodged): 702
Weighted Average (50% dodge chance): 415
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
Some of the toughest tanks only get to about what? 50%? 60% actual reduction from resistances? so... avoidance + average resistance should average out to the about the same...
The trick is getting the base values for LR to balance to the base values for Defiance & Invuln while also keeping the upper end values evened out...