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Defenders or Tanks?
khoraxgator
Member Posts: 15 Arc User
There's a slight difference between a defender and a Tank. Tanks generally imply that they are the most defensible and have the highest HP. While in 4e, this tends to be the case, it isn't always so.
What makes Defenders slightly different is that they have a form of aggro control. Now, with Fighters, this is the traditional 'strike a target and pull aggro' form, however, with other Defender classes 'Swordmage, Paladin, Warden and so forth' This isn't necessarily the case, often involving effects that go off if the target attacks those other than the Defender.
This provides some unique situations where the Fighter tends to be more about aggro control than defense, and can actually be fairly offense-oriented with the aggro control. What are your thoughts on the matter? Would you like to see a class system that is less based on the traditional MMO fare, with classes that take these ideals into consideration?
What makes Defenders slightly different is that they have a form of aggro control. Now, with Fighters, this is the traditional 'strike a target and pull aggro' form, however, with other Defender classes 'Swordmage, Paladin, Warden and so forth' This isn't necessarily the case, often involving effects that go off if the target attacks those other than the Defender.
This provides some unique situations where the Fighter tends to be more about aggro control than defense, and can actually be fairly offense-oriented with the aggro control. What are your thoughts on the matter? Would you like to see a class system that is less based on the traditional MMO fare, with classes that take these ideals into consideration?
Post edited by khoraxgator on
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Between different tanks you can expect different degrees of damage mitigation and aggro generation (usually being different linear combinations of the two), however, every tank should be able to hold aggro and survive while doing so, the actual differences should be that some tanks are easier to survive with, but harder to hold aggro and viceversa.
As for the difference between Tanks and Defenders, it's just arguing about semantics imho, both terms could be as well used to indicate the same type of character, what's important is that, however they are called, these characters serve their purpose well and in a way that is perceived as the most fun for the players.
This is where there's a discrepancy between the two. I don't want to see another MMO where the Fighters are -just- about holding aggro and taking damage. 4e introduced alternate methods of working around this, such as punishments for targets not attacking those other than the defender.
However, that alone does not make a "tank" in MMO terms, heck, it may be even used by pure dps fighters with great weapon build (or tempest if its in) as a pure form of debuff.
If you want to say all fighters are defenders, but not all fighters are tanks, I guess you are right. But again, it's just about the definition of "defender", by 4th edition standards, a great weapon fighter is a defender as much as a guardian fighter, however, I suspect the latter is a much better tank.
In the end, I say it's about semantics, because you use the 4th edition PnP definition of "defender", which may or may not coincide with "tank" depending on what you intend for it.
I'm worried that PWE will see Fighter=Tank and develop the game around that, limiting the capabilities of the game.
Well, from what I've seen of the rogue and wizard classes, each class has pretty solid survivability. I'd say that the fighter fits into the "defender" rather than "tank" role. It is indeed a subtle difference.
Consider the rogue- they can dance, dodge, bob and weave all over the place with their abilities, all the while putting the hurt on the enemy. This kind of madness is definitely going to draw aggro, allowing the rogue to "tank" the enemy. Of course, this is less than ideal, as rogues are wearing cloth- they get hit too hard and down they go.
The Fighter, however has abilities to defend such as block, something like a shield bash, and probably other abilities to mitigate damage.
In one of the interviews in E3, someone was talking about this stuff. What they basically said was: that tank in NW is not tank in traditional sense. It is actually a hitter who punishes the monsters if their attension is away from him.
What I understood was that if the monster is concentrating on defender, defender defends. But if suddenly monster goes for striker, the defender is then able to use special ability like stun or a big damage attack.
This sounds like a Defender proper. Different defenders do this in a different way. In 4e, when a Fighter marks a target, the target finds it hard to get away. If they try to move away or attack another target, the Fighter gets a free attack against the marked enemy. In this way, it keeps the enemy engaged with the Fighter. Marking an opponent also gives that opponent a penalty to anyone but the defender.
I believe it is. Devs did confirm the roles of defender-leader-controller-strikers like in pnp. But the E3 they deomonstrated only defender-controller-striker combination of party as apprantely cleric was not ready due to some 'healing related' issues.