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What is the minimum amount of health a tank should have?
bellesorciere
Posts: 44 Arc User
Assuming a fairly reasonable amount of defense, a good defensive passive (like invulnerability) and such?
I'm looking at two possible builds for my tank - one that is much more energy efficient, but only has about 10,100 health. The other requires more work to keep energy going, but has about 11,500 health. Uses invulnerability for the slotted passive, and energy shield + phalanx system for block. I have been able to tank fine in alerts and Nemcon with the 11,500 health and it seems like I'd do fine in those with the 10.1k. However, anecdotes I've read about Gravitar have me a bit worried about going for the lower value.
I'm looking at two possible builds for my tank - one that is much more energy efficient, but only has about 10,100 health. The other requires more work to keep energy going, but has about 11,500 health. Uses invulnerability for the slotted passive, and energy shield + phalanx system for block. I have been able to tank fine in alerts and Nemcon with the 11,500 health and it seems like I'd do fine in those with the 10.1k. However, anecdotes I've read about Gravitar have me a bit worried about going for the lower value.
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If the energy management of your lower-HP setup is significantly better, I'd go for that. Means setting up your heals and extra defenses more easily.
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In short, survivability in Champions Online is NOT necessarily related to high hitpoints.
The best thing you can do is to layer different types of defenses together. Extreme dodge/avoidance, defense, self-healing, HP, etc. The trade off for lots of defense is you'll not have as much for offense, and until the tanking suggestion seen in my signature goes into effect you'll be constantly struggling to keep agro/threat and keep your energy up. Energy and threat management for any tank in this game is a major challenge.
To be a good tank in this game you need at minimum:
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I don't think there's really a point to "tanking" something like gravitar... I'd rather pass aggro around to other competent players instead of her focusing on a "tank" that's going to die at some point.
As long as you have a decent amount of health and you can heal yourself before you take a significant amount of damage, you can still be a tank. Although I would advise against running around with 4,955 health points like some players like to do.
I totally and utterly disagree. You WANT a tank to have her focus her attacks first at, as that reduces the number of shots firing off at all targets (as her first shot out of up to three will go to the tank). Plus, you also want her focusing on one target as that means that that person can control where she moves.
Oh, and she shoots 'waves', too (like how Force Cascade works) - so you want the tank facing one direction, and the rest of the team facing the opposite side.
I'd MUCH rather have her standing in one spot verses constantly running after the next person in her aggro list, too.
You've apparently never seen good tanks in action against Gravitar - it makes things SUBSTANTIALLY easier.
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Does that mean that anyone who is squishy is not skilled?
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Evidently. But then again, lucy believes LR is the weakest defensive passive to and that stacking dodge is stupid.
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Strongly agree!
Plus you forgot to mention having just even ONE dedicated healer healing said tank will make an amazing difference too. It's like day & night.
This is true for pretty much any boss in the game. And while you need to stay on your toes for the AoE blasts or special tactics that some of the bosses employ, in general, having 1 solid tank who's experience, and having 1 solid dedicated healer who's experienced; you'll find most of the "challenging" content in the game, even if Elite, even if you're all archetypes other than the tank, becomes a sort moderate-to-easy mode.
Even with insane numbers of enemies and being blinded with all the stuff going on in battle, as long as each person on the team is doing their role you'll all survive it with no deaths. Fast-paced epic combat, got to pay attention to your surroundings.
Teamwork FTW!
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Well to give you an idea, pvp wise, tank or not, majority of us shoot for above 10k - reason being is to have enough room to survive most of the big hits thrown our way and allow enough time to recoup.
As far as fighting Grav, more HP helps. Just keep in mind that some of her hits can go over 80k so mitigating that down to survival numbers is rough, and generally avoiding her yellow bubble of doom is better than trying to block and tank the hit. In your case, at 10k hp and blocking, you should be able to survive it assuming your health is high when she throws it at you (or around you literally).
Really though, it's more a matter of being able to heal after mitigating her damage, since you can't always rely on the healers for support. If you've got adequate self-healing, (ie r3 conviction, resurge) and masterful dodge, you should be covered for the most part.
I went ahead with the 10.2k hp + better energy build. It's generally smoother and more fun to play than going with the other options.
Not to diminish the role of others:
A good tank means everything is easy.
A good DPS means everything is fast.
A good healer means that even when it's not easy or fast, you probably still win.
I like this
It also highlights why a diverse balance is important.
You're welcome and that sounds like solid plan. *thumbs up*
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When I do Gravitar, I will block whenever I see that she calls up blue bubble and also yellow bubble.
I am using Defiance as passive defensive power. In this case, constitution gives me more defense as stated in the description of the passive and also more self-healing from the enrage advantage.
She can hit me 9k+ when I block with yellow bubble but not often.
My another character is a freeform using Invulnerability as Passive. He has 310 defense and 10k hp. When I block, Gravitar never one shot me. I have devour essence which can heal myself, circuit reconstruct(450hp per second for 8s but cant use any skills except blocking). Another power is reduce recharge time for 20s and healing me 3k hp( I forgot the skill name). Even though this freeform has higher defense but I found that my behemoth take less damage with 280 defense.
So, I guess I don't the powers you choose plays a very significant role and not the hp you have.
Strange. I'm using a Regen tank and I mostly get hit by yellow bubbles for 8k. Do you have a ranked block?
I hope you mean that you avoid the yellow bubbles with your behemoth, and only block when you fail at that. Healers have enough to do without having to heal people that take 9k hits that are mostly easily avoidable.
/brokenrecordmode
I will say, my main Gravitar tank has over 18K HP plus immense self and team healing so she tends to ignore all bubbles for the first 2 bars and just keep attacking. Much easier on your own hands too since some alerts tend to be long if DPS is low. Another benefit of 18K HP is the ability to hold off on Masterful Dodge until a yellow pops out.
No tank who can survive yellows with blocks should risk running away and have lag or whatever catch a yellow unblocked. I've seen too many hit Evasive Maneuvers but BAM - dead. And every sturdy tank should have Resurgence as a heal backup for those occasions. If you have to use Resurgence every time it's just off cooldown -- your build may be a little too squishy.
Dead tanks open up a bunch of force cascades on healers, easier to heal a tank than rez under fire.
If your lag is so big you can't evade those bubbles, you can't block them either. The idea is you start running away even before you actually see the yellow bubble, they are pretty reliably predictable. Most bubbles have a strange lag build into them, but that is very predictable too.
It is very much possible for everyone, with any TP, to avoid the yellow bubbles that follow the normal pattern (first a stun bubble, then a yellow bubble at the same location).
Of the countless times I did this fight, I have never seen the people that bother to run after a stun bubble being hit by the followup yellow.
If you make a tank that does not need to run away, and can block and heal itself, that is nice, but irrelevant to what I said. Of the two builds mentioned by andromeda9899, I responded to the one that obviously does not have such a big self heal.
Not quite true. The yellow bubble can spawn in a different area than the blue that precedes it. It's very rare but it happens. If I have KB resistance up and MD off cooldown, I'd probably just eat the bubble. Dodge-block reduces it to a very manageable 2k but the huge KB is hella annoying. If I'm the only one left, I would always try to run out of it but I've been hit too many times by bubbles I'm clearly out of that I've learned to block once I'm outside just to make sure.
You've obviously never seen people run into teammates when targeted by a stun bubble, getting them held unexpectedly right before the yellow bubble of doom.
If you avoid the stun bubble, then yellow bubbles of doom should hardly be a threat, but if you're the target of said stun bubble, if the yellow proc's after (other teammates in bubble blocking or held) only certain Travels will get you out fast enough, latency factor and all.
Anyone with a block and swinging and block the paralyze hold and then jump+swing out of a yellow bubble(due to combat lag and the actual yellow bubble being smaller than the outline shows)
Anyone with superspeed of any rank can block+run away from the paralyze and even the yellow bubble as long as they never stop running(if they were the primary target that is, otherwise they can stop once they get out of the paralyze)
Now, does the above apply to the person who takes one step forward and 10 steps back? No...those people will die..
As for hp, 8k is all you really need 11k+ is "Screw dodge I can just block and press my resurgence and only take 7-10k damage" (Note: You need at least 120% resistance to all damage and a block with at least 280% in order to laugh at yellow bubbles)
Funny thing is...you can debuff her damage to levels where you pretty much give everyone an active block...but the damage debuffs last for short amounts of time..
Anyway to sum up everything:
On-Topic: 11k+ Hp is expanding for the future
Off-Topic: Yellow Bubble CAN be avoided but they can also be 'tanked' by anyone with MD+Block(and hp over 3k..)
That all depends on how careful you are playing. When someone is targeted by a stun bubble I have often inched very close to it when that allowed me to still hit grav with melee attacks. That has turned out badly when the player being targeted decides to move a bit at the very last moment, but it is pretty rare. When someone is running around from the start while being targeted it is probably better to just block for the duration.
When you get targeted by a stun and are using a really slow in-fight travelpower, you need to start moving before the stun bubble hits, if you want to reliably avoid the yellow followup bubble (due to lag). With flight for instance that is no problem at all, you can hold block and move up while the stun charges, then when stun hits you release block while you keep moving in the same direction, that way you escape 100% of the time.
Of course there will be situations where you can not escape, like when knocked or when the location of the stun and yellow bubble is not the same (which is why I mentioned that), or teammates that are blocking you (which has never been an issue for me). But you should still be able to block if one of those things happens, it is no reason for not trying to escape when possible.
...I just recently realized something really disturbing. We're all eating Sodapop3's "humble pie."
I am using this fight as a way to grind questionite, doing it multiple times per day, I can't remember being hit by a yellow bubble after blocking a stun bubble. And I see enough people doing the same.
You can claim it is impossible all you want, but there are multiple people still doing it on a daily basis.
Omit everything but Acro and Superspeed, and even then you still have a chance of dieing anyway, it's just less.
You can claim it possible all you want, but this has been complained about by numerous separate parties, independently, since she was released. All denying it does is make you look like a liar, a fool or a troll. Which one suits you best?
I swear, this is like the launch day level gaps all over. "HURR DURR THERE R NO LVL GAPS DURP" said the fools and fanboys alike. Meanwhile, people quitting!
...I just recently realized something really disturbing. We're all eating Sodapop3's "humble pie."
heh... Not only do you two assume I think squishy players are weak, but you misquote me about LR... I never said LR is the weakest... and yes, having 100% dodge and 90% avoidance all of the time is stupid. The "evidence" is not in your favor. You can only blame yourself for taking what is said out of context.
I have already described a way to escape with flight, have you tried it?
You have, but its not reliable. I really don't like agreeing with Xao, but I have to on what he said in regards to your post.
Considering I used to do her regularly, just glancing at the q times it's apparent she's lost appeal since being granted her latest immunities.
Flight at full speed is fine for typically evading bubble - the problem is the majority of flight users won't be at full speed from previously attacking. If you're the target of the stun (ie center) getting out can be challenging even with travels at full speed, that's a lot of ground to cover in a split second to clear the radius.
It can be particularly nasty if she knocks you down, launches a gravity well pulling you in while still down and locked in falling animation, and throws a stun bubble as she's bound to throw out a yellow bubble of doom after. Can't escape if you can't even get up.
She's still easily doable with the right team composition, and those who bother to q her still are typically better equipped to handle her compared to the random mixes I ended up with on a regular basis from before.
This feels like I am talking to people just starting to play this game, I am disappointed.
This has happened to me so many times, I swear she reads the PvP forums.
Flight isn't full speed, without a charge or not being in combat for several seconds.
Full Speed TPs do you know good if you're knocked down and unable to move.
I used to solo her, more often than I'd like to because of teammates dying excessively to easily avoided situations.
I am disappointed you would assume the situation is always ideal, especially ignoring the latency and server disconnect issues that have arisen since they've been "improving" server response time. When I did run her regularly, I never worried about the yellow bubble of doom, I worried about teammates dragging the stun bubble over other teammates and getting the team wiped, leaving me and maybe one or two others left to finish her.
But going with the "disappointed", I'm disappointed that weeks after she had been live, I saw the same folks make the same mistakes. But I also know there are situations that can arise where the player is helpless in avoiding an issue short of playing a completely different character. There's a difference between failing to learn and simply having no recourse.
Knocks and people running around while targeted with a stun I consider exceptions, those thing will just happen once in a while. The few times I've been caught in a stun with my tank, I could mostly break the hold and block just before the yellow bubble hit, but that is very dependent on the build, my melee dps would just die.
I have tried many times to run away from the bubble. But I notice I still got hit even I am sure that I am outside the bubble. So I am not sure that it is a lag for me or not. As my graphic card is getting worse lately, I have huge lag when someone summons drones or using stone powersets.
Anyway my regen tank is getting more damage from gravitar for overall but the resurgence always save me where I use nanobot swarm, devour essence to heal myself.
And of course the cheesers are upset they can't cheese the fight anymore. She has a pattern to her attacks, most people are just ignoring them and thinking it's all random.
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I'm sure silver groups me with the "cheesers" even though I've beaten her running a rad AT on several occasions where no one had smoke or skarn's. She's never been hard for a few smart players properly equipped. The issue has always been it's a pug and a large portion of the player base struggles with simple smashes and grabs, let alone a flight of limited complexity like Grav.
She simply requires too much effort for too little reward, A fifteen plus minute fight (my friend running a dedicated healer had one go over an hour after the nerfs hit) for a whopping 1500 q (unless the reward bugs) and an extremely slim chance at a costume piece, which that when does drop, is typically one of the excessively common ones.
There are simply too many options to acquire questionite to make Grav an attractive option, and while still soloable with particular builds, again just not worth the effort.
Anyway, is it possible to avoid being knock down by Gravitar? Is it possible to have high enough strength for that?
I can't do much to my behemoth AT since it is fix that strength is secondary superstat.
I think of all that as common knowledge - but yes I realize common knowledge is unfortunately not as common as it should be.
You should always try to avoid/get out of a yellow bubble if you can manage to do so, just don't forget that there are times where that isn't feasible. Certain builds running def passives and masterful dodge are actually better suited to just sit in the bubble since they're typically so far in trying to avoid it instead of prepare for it would probably get them killed instead.
I am sure you like putting words in peoples mouth to. 15 minutes really? Maybe if the team is doing nothing or you are loaded with leeches. But hey, if you want to continue to make believe it's all well and good to me. The only time I take 15 minutes in the fight is when other people have died in the last 3rd because no one bothered moving. Most fights take between 5 to 10 minutes. But then again, many of those fights also have people working as a team.
If you want I can show some math to if you like. Giving a low end spec, that the team is pulling 10,000 DPS, which would be a fair estimate, for instance, since I know I pull around 2000 myself (and we know there are builds that pull way more than that, even in tank role), so the DPS of the team would probably be much higher. So that's around 600,000 damage per minute. That means it should take around a little less than 5 minutes to take out her 2.9 million health. Since blocking and movement, will of course or should be involved, you could probably round it off to 6 or 7 minutes give or take team competence.
So really, 15 minutes?
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Being hit when you are outside is 'normal', you will need to be outside of the bubble a short time before it hits. Each bubble has its own delay (time you need to be out before it hits), the stun bubble has almost non, the small blue and the yellow have a moderate delay, the big blue (damage) bubble has a huge delay.
The slowdown is very likely due to the physics attached to those powers (small rocks flying around and the bullet shells), there is a setting for that in the video options you could try. Since the last bug-patch physics seems to cause a lot of slowdowns.
I just like the fight itself, I don't really need the 6 haute coutures I got so far, or the globals, or the questionite. Some new shinies would be appreciated of course.
Yes, I am pretty much the same. I enjoy the fight because it's a challenge and it does keep me on my toes, albeit not as much since I've pretty much got the pattern down, outside the occasional wacky thanks to someone's CC going off at just the minute rice moment, or someone I didn't see rushing in with a hold bubble on them.
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Thanks for the info.
I am not able to heal myself except using healing potions since I am a AT and cant change my powers.
I will try to build a good tank versus tank with my freeform slot. I want to avoid the kock from her as much as possible. Besides having some hp. how much strength I really need for that?
With knock resistance more is better, but you will still be knocked.
On my tank I have about 250str, circle of primal dominion (r1), and more then 100% knock res from specs, and she is still knocked when blocking (r2) once in a while.
Ok. Thanks.
I averaged around 10-15 minutes when she wasn't smoke/skarn immune. More if I had to solo. There were rare occasions where she went down in 5min or less, but those were pure damage teams smoking her out and attacking nonstop, debuffing all the while.
Your math is also off, you're not taking into account her mitigation, especially now that her passive doesn't drop to skarns anymore, so any physical damage is getting reduced significantly. You're also not taking into account the squishy factor, and I didn't bother taking certain ATs in as you never knew if you'd actually get quality support short of a pre-made. Considering an r5 Con averages at 50g at any given time, expecting someone to have an entirely separate con setup for Grav is reaching. Some people can barely gear one character, others can gear up more than 15.
See, I solo q'd it most of the time, so my experience is reflective of the random mixes you could get in queue. I've seen a team wipe in under a minute, and while an extreme case, also an example of just how bad a pug can get. And when I say team wipe, I would still be standing all by myself. My premades never had that issue, they were routine and uneventful as everyone knew how to perform their role well.
It's easy to claim it's a 10 minute fight when you've got pre-mades of capable players. It should be that long or less, it's not a hard fight to understand. I rarely saw leechers, and the one that would do so regularly I hunted with extreme prejudice when he showed in bash to the point he now only duels lowbies as a 40. Leeching usually wasn't a major factor, it was team composition and general skill level that usually decided between a quick routine fight or a lengthy drawn out suffering.
The random cascades were always the most dangerous factor in any fight, but mainly to the AT participants as no AT has adequate healing to compensate on their own for her constant barrage, def passive or not. Even AT tanks require outside healing if they actually were tanking. But it wasn't just the ATs that suffered, plenty of freeforms are under 8k hp, and unless they had a def passive, they'd usually eat it if the tanks went down.
Capable teams should have no trouble with Grav. Once you get the basics down, she's just an "advanced" tank and spank. The problem is with alerts you can't rely on capable teammates without premaking the team beforehand, and even then there's a risk that the other 5 are lacking.
Before moving onto GW2, one of my favorite dedicated healers tried grav as a pug. He would send me tells complaining of how teammates would get him killed by bringing the stun bubble overhead while he was mid rez. I was actually surprised when he finished it after over an hour.
But really, it's never been an issue when capable folks are handling business. It's how things play out when not everyone is capable. I can't count how many times I'd watch one player's actions result in 3 or more people dying.
And as Ron White always said, you can't fix stupid. If people refuse to learn, there's nothing that can be done about it. And this will probably be the toughest things PUGs will see, cause I doubt anything tougher will actually even be made rampages. FREON and Blaze mechanics require more coordination and paying attention something for raiding, something a rampage would never get competence on, and Crush has expressed he would rather it be a raid than a rampage I believe, and a raid UI is on his wishlist.
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The keyword "WE". I just said previously competent teams were fine - it's the random pugs that lead to issues. Premades don't apply if they have competent players optimized for a role - they aren't a pug. I can't think of a single pug where I thought all 10 participants were on point, usually when that happened there were less than 10 from the start.
And I would guess you didn't have anyone heavy on muni or multiple ATs, nor did you have any significant amount of deaths. What about fists and unleashed? You're basing your math on quality teams, I'm basing mine off the ones I've had to carry firsthand. Having the sole healer a mind or no healers at all, or a team of almost entirely healers - that does happen, or at least it did.
I've helped recover near wipes, those take time - you can't say lowball if you're idea of lowballing is a random death here or there.
Ended up running a Grav around 4:40pm yesterday after hearing her q was bugging very nicely. Got in on my cursed AT, to at least have some self-healing. One guy died in less than a minute. Died again, and again soon after. People just left him dead for the most part. Tank was solid, and healing support was more damage oriented. I only got hit by a few random cascades here and there so was in no danger from them. Did die once, blocked a stun bubble and didn't expect a yellow bubble with no one else around. Trying to get out, I hit the fountain wall, so with death on it's way I just blocked to keep from flying and popped a triumph. All in all in came down to about 6 minutes as well - the groups that bother to run her now definitely seem far more competent than what I was used to. However, I'd be willing to bet time of day played a role, as a random pug at this hour is far more likely to succeed certain other hours so to speak.
Ran one this morning. It ended in less than 2 minutes in with a wipe aside from me left standing, and I did eat a death to 3 cascades on my lil soldier. After popping my triumph, the rest of the group died and I was reminded of what my usual experience in grav was like =P
I have a tank with regenerate as passive and supernatural power as most my power.
I can survive Gravitar but the problem is I don't have the dps to take him down if everyone is down as I need to block most of the time.
Now he is having 11k hp and 400 def.
That's the lack of mitigation - you have enough health to survive most of what she can throw at you, and your regen allows you to heal up relatively quickly -- but you end up relying on block to provide mitigation preventing you from spending much time attacking.
You could probably solo assuming she never one shot's you, but the time required wouldn't make it worthwhile.