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Tanks for the Memories...
markfalcone
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users Posts: 4
Noticing something that I find more than a little disturbing in game so far (and I admit freely that most of what I experience is PUGs, so I am sure there are a multitude of exceptions to the rules):
1) It is completely possible for a Great Weapon Fighter, though the builds don't really do nearly as much for tanking, to outtank a Guardian Fighter. I suspect this has much more to do with the Guardian Fighters, however I ended up inadvertently tanking Malabog and then the dragon with a Guardian Fighter right there, the GF then running around offtanking everything else. I was just doing DPS (and trying to save my own skin with lots of Unstoppable, potions, and my healer out and the cleric helping as well). Now being an old tanker from WoW who could outtank just about anyone using druid, paladin, or warrior (and once by way of warlock), I can understand the mechanics of tanking and how this could be possible, but I've been carefully studying the GF and don't understand any GF that can't outtank just about anyone except possibly a souped up wizard (like mine :-D) or a cleric without the extra feats to drop down the threat, keeping control of the boss.
2) There are people out there who claim that a GWF will slow a party down in a dungeon. Not a clue as to how this rumor got started. Mine lays down lots of damage and, if anything, speeds up a party. Yet there is that notion out there, making it hard to do anything but a PUG for my GWF because every party I've been invited into (rather than the random PUG groups of the Queue) have had at least one person who dropped unless I left. While my GWF was the first to make it to 60 and the first to get a majority of the Sharandar gear, I'm finding him less and less fun to play simply because there seems to be a real hatred towards GWF's.
So that's my two cents. Getting real tired of my GWF and working up my GF's slowly (had them staying at near the same level as other family members) since tanks are what are needed.
1) It is completely possible for a Great Weapon Fighter, though the builds don't really do nearly as much for tanking, to outtank a Guardian Fighter. I suspect this has much more to do with the Guardian Fighters, however I ended up inadvertently tanking Malabog and then the dragon with a Guardian Fighter right there, the GF then running around offtanking everything else. I was just doing DPS (and trying to save my own skin with lots of Unstoppable, potions, and my healer out and the cleric helping as well). Now being an old tanker from WoW who could outtank just about anyone using druid, paladin, or warrior (and once by way of warlock), I can understand the mechanics of tanking and how this could be possible, but I've been carefully studying the GF and don't understand any GF that can't outtank just about anyone except possibly a souped up wizard (like mine :-D) or a cleric without the extra feats to drop down the threat, keeping control of the boss.
2) There are people out there who claim that a GWF will slow a party down in a dungeon. Not a clue as to how this rumor got started. Mine lays down lots of damage and, if anything, speeds up a party. Yet there is that notion out there, making it hard to do anything but a PUG for my GWF because every party I've been invited into (rather than the random PUG groups of the Queue) have had at least one person who dropped unless I left. While my GWF was the first to make it to 60 and the first to get a majority of the Sharandar gear, I'm finding him less and less fun to play simply because there seems to be a real hatred towards GWF's.
So that's my two cents. Getting real tired of my GWF and working up my GF's slowly (had them staying at near the same level as other family members) since tanks are what are needed.
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GWF do not do significantly more damage than a GF, a GF has about +200% threat that a GWF will never see. This is why GF's can out threat a TR when a GWF will never do that unless he doubles the TR's gear.
Their damage-taking ability is comparable. My sentinel GWF routinely sits well above the local GF's in damage dealt and damage received, even with me running about 40-45% deflect most of the dungeon. In DnD terms, my lighter mail pushes me to avoid, dodge and deflect as much damage as the fighter with the plate mail and the shield, due to comparable AC boosts afforded through class features in 4e.
As far as the MMO equivilent of a 'tank', however ... your gonna be hard pressed to tank as well as a GF with your GWF, mainly because we don't have the necessary on-demand 'mark' capability that we, as fighters, need. So solo, and in PvP (where threat doesn't matter), GWF's are just as good as GF's. But in group PvE, we suffer.
Both do about the same damage when damage spec'd, by the way. It's the nature of the beast. Again, the tipping factor is in the mark ability, which we GWF's only have as a sideline to regular encounter powers, while GF's have it on Tab.
"D*mn wizards," said Morik the Rogue.
Learn what a GWF and GF really are: The History of Fighters
I do agree that we need an alteration. But instead of taking more of our defender potential away, I feel that adding straight threat generation is the key. Let us be the other tank option.
"D*mn wizards," said Morik the Rogue.
Learn what a GWF and GF really are: The History of Fighters
The thing going for the gf is its high threat generation.
Our guilds gwf has been invaluable in learning content and getting us through dungeons, however once our gear passes a certain point, most intelligent play isn't required and I think that's what this game suffers from.
Pug's in general don't appreciate a gwf and in most cases a gf, because they outgear the content or rely on cheese to get them through. Also it's just gamers in general, mmos these days aren't as social as they should be.
Not a horrible idea. In fact I had thought during the testing that the GWF's would be given tanking ability for off tanking if nothing else. Only reason I made this one after the testing is to do something different instead of just another GF. Now I'm starting to think it was a mistake. For the most part I just solo him all over the place because it's either that or wait forever in the queue for a party that has about a 70% chance of not being good enough to get to the last boss and 90% chance of not being able to finish.
So I'm going to slowly switch to having nothing but GF's and a single CW in my collection, getting rid of all others more out of boredom than anything else. Why the single CW? She's a tribute to a dead friend. Otherwise I wouldn't keep her either.
The first person to hit the dragon after an air phase will be focused by the dragon until the next air phase. It is like when someone activates a mimic, the mimic always goes straight for the one who tried to open it, regardless of damage/threat. It is possible that the dragon focused you because you hit it first, not because you generated more threat.
That right there is the issue. They are not. The bosses are slow, hardly ever move and only do slow area attacks that are easily avoided. Your aoe damage is wasted when most of the mobs can just be sucked up into singularity and thrown off the cliffs. In your example - having a TR and if present the gwf on boss while the wiz and CW are on the adds is a standard play. You see, the adds are pretty much the only thing thats actually dangerous there. Without the adds the bosses are pretty much a joke.
Anyway, the class dynamics in this game are just fundamentally flawed. To fix things and give every class their niche role, you would need a lot of changes. For example, make the GF a neccesity for boss tanking, tr as it is the boss dps (this one is actually working as intended imo), gwf for off tanking adds and dpsing them in tandem with CC and dps from a wizard. To make this happen you would need to:
1) Make it so anyone other then a GF would die in a couple of seconds with boss agro. For this, you would need to make bosses move a lot faster and hit for huge amounts of damage with fast normal attacks that do not come with a warning. Simultaneously, raise the the defense soft cap to around 75% instead of about 50% with proper set bonuses on GF gear to ahcieve it. Drop GF damage in contrast to make it balanced.
2) Remove the ability for a wiz to push multiple mobs entirely. Give them stuns, and aoe damage debuffs etc intstead so they form a perfect tandem with the GWF.
3) Slightly improve the GWF agro to do the job of tanking the adds with help from the wiz, and give him some important aoe debuffs so they really form the perfect duo with the wiz for add clearing.
4) Remove atleast half of the most screaming exploits, such as boss instagibs, content skipping (ie skip all the mobs and 2 bosses in FH) etc etc. I don't mind a few shortcuts for those that know the maps, but honestly some of the stuff that's possible atm (or atleast was a few moths ago) is just ridiculous.
These changes would fix most of the class balance issues for pve imo, but ofcourse the list is too long to actually become a reality and skipping a single point on this list will not solve the issues.
Balance doesn't exist in any other D&D game. I disagree with your assessment as classes need to be more specialized and not balanced at all. Fighters for instance deal high damage and have high defense, but very few skills and zero spell-casting abilities. Mages on the other hand should have no health to speak of and are awful in melee but would also have the most powerful spells at there disposal. Balance is arguably the biggest problem with this game.
It's the ongoing challenge of making RPG's into computer games and certainly into MMO's. D&D changes markedly at higher levels, and balance is never part of the equation. Getting a low level squishy monk or mage to very high levels is a much steeper power curve than that for the harder warrior types who have a much more level power gain. We see some of that in PvP, with a well-specced and played CW being able to dominate any other class one-on-one just as a well-specced and played GF can take just about any hit. The problems come in where people demand that everything be the same, which generally amounts to "I don't like the fact that I was just killed by another player."
But your flaw is in typecasting fighters. Fighters in 4e DnD have great damage (to a limited amount of targets), great defenses (against physical attacks), as well as an assortment of skills which control our enemies and buff our attacks against certain enemies. We can also take attacks directed at our allies, and at times, boost our allies capabilities.
All in all, DnD has a lot of redundancy in it's class design. Every class shares roles and capabilities with every other class. There is no DPS class. There are strikers that are ranged, strikers who are melee, strikers who have magic, strikers who do a lot of control, and strikers with a lot of defense. In fact, there are strikers who do any two or three of those, PLUS a lot of damage.
The push for each class to be 'required' or have a niche is against the grain of DnD. It is common in games designed to be MMO's first. But Dungeons and Dragons is designed for a group to have three-to-six characters, and each character needs to be able to fill every required role. So on the short end, each class when combined with any two others needs to be able to apply damage, cc, tank damage, and heal.
Balance in this game is team based. High-end PvP shows this repeatedly. The balance and synergy between classes is very strong, and comp stacking has a marked failure rate in high-end matches.
It's PvE which shows an imbalance, and this isn't because of the classes themselves. Dungeon design is limited. No tight corners and closed corridors that give melee and advantage. No damage immunities. Every boss battle is in a big, wide open room (again, perfect for spellcasters). Masses of mobs support AOE over single target. Boss health supports high-damage over damage over time. Even when your using the environment, mages have the edge due to the only environmental hazard being push (instead of also being able to collapse sections of tunnels, break bridges, apply traps, or otherwise change the environment).
Again, not the classes ... but the dungeon design.
"D*mn wizards," said Morik the Rogue.
Learn what a GWF and GF really are: The History of Fighters
As was stated earlier, this is less a game mechanical issue and more a play-style/gearing issue. A GF with even just decent gear who knows his skills, feats, role and how to use them can pull and hold aggro on any mob regardless of the other player's damage output or threat generation. The game mechanics are slanted this way on purpose.
omgnicktaken does have a good point though in that if they're going to try to fix the threat mechanics and or cc ability of GWF's then there are several options and suggestions that can be considered. I have stated in other threads that I believe the GWF if the most poorly designed and implemented of the classes and have posted some things (alongside a better monster and dungeon designing) that would help them out. A few more ideas would be:
1: Add a fear effect onto a GWF's unstoppable ability (either through feats/powers or within the core mechanics) so that when the GWF triggers unstoppable, there is a wide radius burst fear effect which causes certain adds... let's say all but elite and boss level, to become temporarily rooted and unable to act for a few seconds out of fear of the raging GWF. Hell there is already an animation for the fear effect with the Hammer of Fate daily that clerics have. This gives a little more value to the class without pushing it over the edge and it will assist it in performing the off tank role on the lesser adds by giving some control ability.
2: Give GWF's an overrun ability with their sprint which has a knockback effect on adds in the path of the sprint. again elite or higher adds get pushed back slightly, lower power adds get pushed back more so or even knocked down briefly. This gives the GWF a little bit more party defensive capability through utility. GF and TR are tied up on boss and the DC or CW pulls threat for some reason? No problem, the GWF can run over and literally run over that add to gain it's attention rather than just run up, hit it twice, CW teleports back, add follows CW, rinse and repeat...
This makes the sprint a little more valuable on dungeons rather than just letting the GWF run ahead of the group and get owned by the next cluster of adds because no one else could keep up.
3: Reverse the damage scaling/per target on the GWF's at-will attacks. Cleave, last hit does additional damage. Chilling Cloud, last hit does additional damage.
The kicker, neither of these two awesome at-wills lose damage capability when they hit more than one target... two of the GWF's do.
So what genius thought it would be a good idea for the GWF attack chain to scale damage downward with multiple targets? It's the exact opposite of the two other best at-will attack chains in the game! Fix this!
4: Again, get creative with dungeon design/creature design. Let's see creatures with different immunities and resistances beyond the standard "it's a big add so you can't pull/stun/push/knockdown/slow/knock back it" That's just HAMSTER and lazy. Let's see adds who have different tactics and prefer different targets. Make it so that dungeons have challenges only certain classes have abilities to complete. It's simple to come up with really; Deep within the bowels of (random dungeon name) there are halls of challenges which hold vast rewards behind them if the adventurers are capable enough to withstand them. One hall is a long narrow corridor with a collapsing roof trap that only GWF's using sprint can run to get through before it crushes them. Another could be an arena with golems or wards that will incinerate any that they see and only a stealthed rogue can get passed and disarm. How about a chamber with three moving keys which all must be rendered immobile to unlock the exit which only a CW has the ability to do. How about a room with a sacred crystal which enemies are intent upon destroying and they must be pulled away from and fought off before the crystal can be destroyed, queue the GF and his threat abilities. Wanna make things interesting? Then tie that new awesome shiny class item of uberness to a path that has to be completed by another class. Put that crazy awesome new dagger at the end of the hall with the earthquaking and collapsible ceiling that only the GWF can outrun. Now you have very creatively made a dungeon which everyone serves a need and is wanted.
I've been playing DnD since 2nd edition came out, and DMing for just as long and I used to love creating opportunities and challenges for each different class individually overcome. Now with the advent of MMO's we sttle for the brain numbing, run in hit adds, get the loot trap. It's sad to see how uncreative we have become. /end rant.
Gloom level 60 Control Wizard
Dusk level 60 Trickster Rogue
Dawn level 60 Devoted Cleric
Eclipse level 60 Hunter Ranger
Wrath level 60 Great Weapon Fighter
Jinx level 60 Scourge Warlock
I love alot of these suggestions. Especially the dungeon design suggestions.
On the Unstoppable: wrap it into the capstones. Sentinel draws add attention (read threat) and pulls them to him when he pops unstoppable. Destroyer stuns adds for a second or two when he pops unstoppable and lowers their DR. Instigator pushes adds away and slows them when he pops unstoppable.
All of the above have varying degrees of success, as you mentioned, per the level of the add. More specifically, they are great on groups of mobs, but can't compare if a GF focuses his threat on a single target.
Making it clear that GWF's are best against AOE and mobs, while GF's are best against bosses and single targets.
"D*mn wizards," said Morik the Rogue.
Learn what a GWF and GF really are: The History of Fighters
To address this specifically, maybe I'm misunderstanding here. You bring up two examples that, as far as I understand, are movement chains. As in, swing for cleave in a combo, and the last hit of that combo does more damage. Same for Chilling Cloud.
And my point, is that the same rule holds true for Sure Strike AND Wicked Strike. The fourth hit on both do considerably more damage than the first.
The damage scaling per target you mention is due to striking more targets with a single swing. As in, one click of the mouse for wicked strike hit's three targets ... the third target takes less damage than the first two.
Now whether this AOE damage on a single attack scales like other classes (as I understand it, GF have an at-will that hits multiple targets), I'm not 100%. I'm under the impression that CW AOE has no limitation on damage scaling, but more on the number of targets hit.
"D*mn wizards," said Morik the Rogue.
Learn what a GWF and GF really are: The History of Fighters