Big bosses tear apart anyone without a shield. So GF is the only viable thing for 1v1 tanking on bosses.
No class is intended to be an alternative for any other one. You should bring 1 from each class.
I only did one higher end dungeon without a GF. We had two GWF, myself and another. It was the wolf den dungeon in Vellosk. We could not complete it. Myself and a TR almost duo killed it, but the last add phase wiped us. I had a messed up build though, all defensive feats until I hit paragon then destroyer. I was testing if i could do enough damage on adds with this kind of build to keep threat. I absolutely did. However without the sentinel line I was too squishy to hold up against them. I even went Con as my 2nd stat to increase my survival. I can change some stuff for live and I think swapping the Con out for Dex still have a shot at maintaining threat on adds. The problem though is that there is no on demand threat, sometimes it takes time to build and clerics and others, like damage focused GWF, die in the process. I also should add that the group did nothing to help control the adds. The cleric did not use chains at all, nor the knock backs. I really don't know what hey was doing to be honest with you. Also even though I was the most defender type in the group, that boss just lays down too much splats to get much done on them when everyone else is ignoring the adds. I think I could have easily tanked it, messed up spec and all, if others would have focused on adds, but I could not do it all. The other GWF tried but they were so squishy that they may as well have been a control wizard.
As for the alternative part, that is very much the case, classes MUST be able to swap in roles. It has always been this way in good MMO games. In WoW you had one tank in the beginning of the game, but by the time the first expansion hit you had several classes that could tank, it only expanded for LK. Other MMO games are like this too. To plan the entire game around 5 classes is not only already not going to happen, the Devs have stated that they are bringing in other classes, but it also is going to make this game die fast if that is the case.
Paladins are defenders, Bards are leaders, Druids are controllers, Rangers are strikers, Warlocks are strikers, Barbarians are strikers, Monks are strikers, Swordmages are defenders. That is just to name a few. The minute any class is added, which there are plans for many, group roles must be interchangeable based on different classes playing them.
It is fine for the GWF to be a secondary defender / AoE damage and controller in a group. And that is what they are. Depending on how they are built they will be more or less able to be a defender based on that. IMO what needs to be defined is what that secondary defender role is. Right now I interpret it as an add tank and a such I do not think that they will ever be as good as a Guardian at it. That is fine, they don't have to be. But they can possibly still be good enough to main tank a boss even if they are not as optimal as a defender. Many times in WoW this was the case. Protection Paladins were pretty superior in tanking for anything in BC, LK, or Cata. All of the hard core progression guilds used them as a main tank. But they also had the off tank build there too in a Death Knight or Feral Druid for their flexibility. There was even a number of progression guilds that took Warrior tanks because they did not need the absolute min / max to progress. This is what I mean that one can be the best as long as others can do it too. Only the biggest elitist jerks would push someone out of a raid or guild over not having the absolute best class make up possible and even then many of them knew the value of a good player on a non optimal class over a bad player on an optimal class.
If Cryptic does it right there will be no real preference in the class of a given role. If it is a defender class then it can defend, if it is a leader class then it can lead, if it is a striker class then it can strike, if it is a controller class it can control. All of that is very simple to balance. The really hard one is the hybrid like the GWF. Maybe that is why they wanted it in for launch. For all we know maybe they want to face and get over fitting a hybrid into the class balance and group dynamic early on so they know how to implement other hybrids down the line. But even a hybrid needs to have a role, they just usually have more flexibility in build choices, or even sometimes on the fly depending on the class, of what they can do.
What Cryptic really needs to do with the GWF is get off of the fence on things and do an AMA with me and the class designer so that I can get all of the answers from them! I think I could give them a list of 10 questions that would pretty much settle everything and anything we want to know.
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vagrantzeroMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 0Arc User
No class is intended to be an alternative for any other one. You should bring 1 from each class.
I am not interested in feel-good jargon (I'm not being confrontational, I'm simply a blunt man). This statement clearly has no basis in reality, as we will shortly after launch be receiving the Warlock and Ranger classes, making it a physical impossibility to "bring 1 from each class." So my original question still requires answering.
Now we have 5 classes, so that makes 1 from each.
Warlock and ranger will be strikers so I guess they will be interchangeable with the TR.
But you can't survive 1v1 against a big boss without a shield. That's for sure. And unless they give a new class dmg absorption comparable to the GF, GF will remain the main tank of the game.
There are five classes at launch. Are there any other classes you're working on that you're not prepared to discuss yet?
We've already started work on classes six and seven. In fact, class six was really close to making it for the launch of the game.
One of the things we're trying to do with Neverwinter is to ensure that we don't just put out tons of stuff but put we put out things of high quality. It wasn't that class six wasn't good -- it's actually many of the developers' favorite right now -- but we wanted more time to focus on the launch and make it awesome. We figured that if the classes we released were really good, people would stick around to see what comes later, as opposed to if we put out a bunch of classes that are whatever, then nobody will care when we say that class 10 is coming next month.
Is there a concern that there is only a single healing class for launch?
I guess that it's something we're aware of. I wouldn't say it's a large concern, however unfortunate that it will be. We'll get some more healing classes soon. It's our intent to continually be adding more classes. We'll put out some more as soon as we can.
Lets use a simple math model for the theory craft. 100 hits @ 1,000 damage for each hit. Then 100 hits @ 2,000 damage for each hit.
I will also use the 4 point differentiation in points between Con and Dex because it is probably a pretty common middle ground differential that will be in many builds. So 2% Damage Resistance versus 2% deflection @ 50% severity. Note that this is only looking at the mitigation versus avoidance and nothing regarding the other aspects of the comparison.
2% Damage Resistance: 100 hits @ 980 damage (2% = -20 damage per hit) = 98,000 damage taken. 100 hits @ 1,960 damage (2% = -40 damage per hit) = 196,000 damage taken. Basically you mitigate 2,000 damage per 100,000 taken no matter what.
The 50% Severity is the key. If you can increase the Deflection Severity to 100% they will be equal. One will just be mitigation and the other avoidance. To actually make deflection superior in taking less damage it must surpass 100% severity, which it never will. At the best it can be equal, not better.
The advantage to taking Dex has more to do with threat and damage done rather than damage taken. However the build of Sentinel that I will play in live will not feature Sure Strike for threat off of critical hits. Furthermore I do not have the Heroic Feat points to put into Critical Chance or Severity.
I actually will switch over to Weapon Master's Strike as my primary attack at some point so I do not have the synergy in my build with dex, threat, or Sure Strike. For me Con is far more beneficial, but for other builds the Dex will make more sense.
Yeah it depends on how and where they apply mitigation versus deflection in their math model. I let this drop off because the sources on Con getting damage resistance are varied and unreliable. We all know that the Guardian gets it, but it is believed by the majority of players that the GWF does not. Just something we really have to watch for launch. Should the GWF actually get Con it will only change my build in the stat priority at start and swing me 4 points between the two ability scores. Honestly I am really hoping that this is the case, because I really would like to focus more on tanking and damage.
In fact, it would be fantastic if Con could add to threat in a feat. Perhaps the 3 point feat that gives 5% / 10% / 15% more effect for Con could add 5% / 10% / 15% to threat generated as well.
Comments
Big bosses tear apart anyone without a shield. So GF is the only viable thing for 1v1 tanking on bosses.
No class is intended to be an alternative for any other one. You should bring 1 from each class.
I only did one higher end dungeon without a GF. We had two GWF, myself and another. It was the wolf den dungeon in Vellosk. We could not complete it. Myself and a TR almost duo killed it, but the last add phase wiped us. I had a messed up build though, all defensive feats until I hit paragon then destroyer. I was testing if i could do enough damage on adds with this kind of build to keep threat. I absolutely did. However without the sentinel line I was too squishy to hold up against them. I even went Con as my 2nd stat to increase my survival. I can change some stuff for live and I think swapping the Con out for Dex still have a shot at maintaining threat on adds. The problem though is that there is no on demand threat, sometimes it takes time to build and clerics and others, like damage focused GWF, die in the process. I also should add that the group did nothing to help control the adds. The cleric did not use chains at all, nor the knock backs. I really don't know what hey was doing to be honest with you. Also even though I was the most defender type in the group, that boss just lays down too much splats to get much done on them when everyone else is ignoring the adds. I think I could have easily tanked it, messed up spec and all, if others would have focused on adds, but I could not do it all. The other GWF tried but they were so squishy that they may as well have been a control wizard.
As for the alternative part, that is very much the case, classes MUST be able to swap in roles. It has always been this way in good MMO games. In WoW you had one tank in the beginning of the game, but by the time the first expansion hit you had several classes that could tank, it only expanded for LK. Other MMO games are like this too. To plan the entire game around 5 classes is not only already not going to happen, the Devs have stated that they are bringing in other classes, but it also is going to make this game die fast if that is the case.
Paladins are defenders, Bards are leaders, Druids are controllers, Rangers are strikers, Warlocks are strikers, Barbarians are strikers, Monks are strikers, Swordmages are defenders. That is just to name a few. The minute any class is added, which there are plans for many, group roles must be interchangeable based on different classes playing them.
It is fine for the GWF to be a secondary defender / AoE damage and controller in a group. And that is what they are. Depending on how they are built they will be more or less able to be a defender based on that. IMO what needs to be defined is what that secondary defender role is. Right now I interpret it as an add tank and a such I do not think that they will ever be as good as a Guardian at it. That is fine, they don't have to be. But they can possibly still be good enough to main tank a boss even if they are not as optimal as a defender. Many times in WoW this was the case. Protection Paladins were pretty superior in tanking for anything in BC, LK, or Cata. All of the hard core progression guilds used them as a main tank. But they also had the off tank build there too in a Death Knight or Feral Druid for their flexibility. There was even a number of progression guilds that took Warrior tanks because they did not need the absolute min / max to progress. This is what I mean that one can be the best as long as others can do it too. Only the biggest elitist jerks would push someone out of a raid or guild over not having the absolute best class make up possible and even then many of them knew the value of a good player on a non optimal class over a bad player on an optimal class.
If Cryptic does it right there will be no real preference in the class of a given role. If it is a defender class then it can defend, if it is a leader class then it can lead, if it is a striker class then it can strike, if it is a controller class it can control. All of that is very simple to balance. The really hard one is the hybrid like the GWF. Maybe that is why they wanted it in for launch. For all we know maybe they want to face and get over fitting a hybrid into the class balance and group dynamic early on so they know how to implement other hybrids down the line. But even a hybrid needs to have a role, they just usually have more flexibility in build choices, or even sometimes on the fly depending on the class, of what they can do.
What Cryptic really needs to do with the GWF is get off of the fence on things and do an AMA with me and the class designer so that I can get all of the answers from them! I think I could give them a list of 10 questions that would pretty much settle everything and anything we want to know.
Source?
I am not interested in feel-good jargon (I'm not being confrontational, I'm simply a blunt man). This statement clearly has no basis in reality, as we will shortly after launch be receiving the Warlock and Ranger classes, making it a physical impossibility to "bring 1 from each class." So my original question still requires answering.
I was talking about end-game dungeons. Dungeons before lv60 are basically tutorials for the epic ones.
Alpha.
Now we have 5 classes, so that makes 1 from each.
Warlock and ranger will be strikers so I guess they will be interchangeable with the TR.
But you can't survive 1v1 against a big boss without a shield. That's for sure. And unless they give a new class dmg absorption comparable to the GF, GF will remain the main tank of the game.
You forgot to mitigate the post deflection damage
Yeah it depends on how and where they apply mitigation versus deflection in their math model. I let this drop off because the sources on Con getting damage resistance are varied and unreliable. We all know that the Guardian gets it, but it is believed by the majority of players that the GWF does not. Just something we really have to watch for launch. Should the GWF actually get Con it will only change my build in the stat priority at start and swing me 4 points between the two ability scores. Honestly I am really hoping that this is the case, because I really would like to focus more on tanking and damage.
In fact, it would be fantastic if Con could add to threat in a feat. Perhaps the 3 point feat that gives 5% / 10% / 15% more effect for Con could add 5% / 10% / 15% to threat generated as well.