In the Powertech class rep answers this week, the developers invited feedback on how to make tanks more desirable in PvP vs hybrid DPS roles (or even straight DPS). This post represents my own theories and ideas on that topic, but I think it would be very interesting to gather up opinions from other people, especially those with more group ranked experience than I have.

Disclaimer: I do tank quite extensively in PvP, but mostly in regs and solo ranked. I basically don't do group ranked at all since I simply don't have the time. Thus, my views don't reflect personal experience with the area of PvP which is probably most important for balance.

Survivability

I think the most significant factor in people discounting pure tanks as a viable contributor in PvP can be summed up by the following comparison (from my tanking stats post):

Dread Palace

• Shadow: 73.3933%
  
• Guardian: 74.1169%
  
• Guardian (hybrid): 74.9887%
  
• Vanguard: 73.1754%
  

PvP

• Shadow: 57.4008%
  
• Guardian: 58.0441%
  
• Guardian (hybrid): 58.0374%
  
• Vanguard: 58.1033%
  

These values are the net survivability percentages, including all buffs, self-heals, damage ratios, active procs (like Energy Blast and Kinetic Bulwark), damage debuffs (like Slow Time), and more. Player armor penetration (e.g. talented or debuffed) is not considered, which slightly inflates the calculated survivability of vanguards. The only thing not included here are defensive cooldowns (like Resilience or Saber Ward). Higher numbers are better and represent a larger fraction of damage mitigated. Fully optimized Dread Forged and Obroan gear sets are respectively assumed.

Notice the disparity here. The problem is that pure tanks are not very "tanky" in PvP! There just isn't a lot of survivability to differentiate them from DPS. Sure, there is more survivability here than a DPS, but not that much more! And if a tank isn't really much more survivable than a DPS but still suffers from dramatically lower damage, then there is no benefit to bringing the tank rather than the DPS.

For comparison, here is the survivability for an average Combat Sentinel wearing exclusively offensive gear (i.e. zero defense rating):

• Without rebuke (0% uptime): 37.9177%
  
• Rolling rebuke (50% uptime): 44.6375%
  

So, hilariously, your average Combat Sentinel in full DPS spec and gear has nearly as much survivability as a pure tank in optimized defensive gear! Considering that sentinels get defensive cooldowns which are almost as good (or better) than those granted to tanks, there doesn't seem to be much of a defensive advantage to bringing a tank over a sentinel, while the offensive advantage to the sentinel is manifest.

The problem is that mitigation mechanisms as currently designed in SWTOR do not scale well in PvP. There are several reasons for this. First, player characters have non-zero crit rates, as well as some auto-crit attacks. This dramatically lowers the value of shield, since critical hits cannot be shielded. This, incidentally, is the primary reason why shadow/assassin tanks have disproportionately low survivability in PvP. Second, only a vanishingly small percentage of damage in PvP comes from melee/ranged attacks. Based on our currently best-validated data, barely 30% of all PvP damage is sourced from melee/ranged. 54% is force/tech + kinetic/energy, while the rest is internal/elemental. This dramatically devalues defense to the point where optimized PvP tanks have literally none on their gear. Unfortunately, shield too has been devalued (by crit), meaning that mitigation is just dramatically worse across the board. Finally, self-healing mechanisms (like Blade Barrier/Sonic Barrier and Shoulder Cannon) don't scale in response to damage taken, which is a particularly harsh problem in PvP due to the burst profile of most DPS compositions.

In general, the consensus among PvP tanks is that you really only feel like a tank when you have a cooldown rolling, which is entirely a terrible situation to be in. You should always feel like a tank, and you should always feel much harder to kill than a DPS or a healer. When you have a cooldown up, you should feel nearly immortal. Because defensive cooldowns are essentially the only way that PvP tanks are able to fulfill their role, Guardians/Juggernauts have become the kings of the PvP tank meta-game.

I'm not sure what a good solution here would be. Changing player ability attack types is a massive rebalance that affects survivability across the board. Similarly, changing shield to work against critical hits would also be a very serious shift. The lazy solution of course would be to just add a component to all three of the tank stances which further reduces player damage by X%. Based on my numbers, a player damage reduction component of 37.5% would increase PvP survivability to roughly parity with PvE survivability. That's a super-lazy solution though, and I'm slightly worried about the other implications of such a change (e.g. players running in tank stance with DPS gear).

A better solution would be some way of increasing the value of tank gear for tanks, since the poor scaling of mitigation against player attacks is the heart of the problem. Frankly, I'm at a bit of a loss as to what can be done in this area, but there are probably several options which I haven't considered yet.

Conclusion

In general, my thesis is that the undesirability of full-spec (and gear) PvP tanks is driven primarily by the lack of substantial defensive advantages offered by tanks relative to DPS (especially certain high-survivability classes like sentinels). The goal should be to correct this problem in such a way that PvP tanks reach a level of survivability perhaps not as high as PvE tanks, but still substantially higher than PvP non-tanks, without making that survivability accessible to hybrid tanks wearing DPS gear.

i would say tie the player mitigation buff to a high tank tree talent, to avoid dps specs wearing the stance. perhaps it would be best to require both the tree specialization and the stance to get the player mitigation buff.

i also like the idea of the aoe taunt providing group bonuses, again tied to high tree points. make them have good flavor with each tank type. shadow gives extra 10% healing, PT gives 10% damage, jugg gives a bubble... soemthing like that.

not sure if its feasible, but making defense matter for force/tech kinetic/energy might go a long way. not for pve, but just for pvp.

Random idea: add talents high in the tanking trees that make them immune to executes.

Other random idea: change the priority of crit and shield in the roll. So an attack with 30% crit chance against a tank with 30% shield chance will never be shielded (if it crits), but an attack with 100% crit chance against a tank with 30% shield chance would only crit 70% of the time, and would be shielded the remaining 30%.

Related: much more extreme idea: flip the crit/shield roll so that it is like accuracy/defense. An attack with 30% crit against a tank with 50% shield would never crit and would be shielded 20% of the time; an attack with 50% crit against a tank with 50% shield would never crit and never be shielded; an attack with 100% crit against a tank with 50% shield would crit 50% of the time and never be shielded.

not sure if its feasible, but making defense matter for force/tech kinetic/energy might go a long way. not for pve, but just for pvp.

Just for you dipstik, here's what PvP survivability would look like if defense applied to force/tech+kinetic/energy attacks (in addition to resist):

• Shadow: 66.9454%
  
• Guardian: 67.3448%
  
• Guardian (hybrid): 67.155%
  
• Vanguard: 64.9218%
  

Poor vanguards…

Related: much more extreme idea: flip the crit/shield roll so that it is like accuracy/defense. An attack with 30% crit against a tank with 50% shield would never crit and would be shielded 20% of the time; an attack with 50% crit against a tank with 50% shield would never crit and never be shielded; an attack with 100% crit against a tank with 50% shield would crit 50% of the time and never be shielded.

I like this idea a lot. It's basically how I thought crit vs shield worked back in the day, but of course I was wrong. This change, paired with the presumed increase in PvP tank population, would also push DPS a bit more into crit builds.

Unfortunately, it has a rather counter-intuitive effect on tank survivability:

• Shadow: 52.3683%
  
• Guardian: 55.9489%
  
• Guardian (hybrid): 55.9835%
  
• Vanguard: 54.3763%
  

If you think about it, the reasoning becomes a lot more clear: treating crit like accuracy makes it a subtractive debuff, rather than multiplicative. Remember that in the case of a percentage increase, multiplicative composition results in a larger effect than additive. However, the exact inverse is true of percentage decrease! This is why Battle Readiness/Overcharge Saber is almost exactly as valuable as Warding Call/Invincible, despite having very different percentage "values".

Now, the numbers above don't take into account the fact that tanks would be getting critted almost-never, but I wouldn't expect much of an increase even if I did take that into account. In other words, while it would be appealing to make crit more like accuracy, it would in fact be a substantial nerf and not a buff.

Are you sure about your numbers? I'm not confident in your reasoning.

Right now damage can be broken into three categories: crit, normal, and shielded.

Crit damage = crit * (1 + surge)

Normal damage = (1 - crit - shield)

Shielded damage = shield * (1 - absorb)

Total damage = 1 + crit*surge - shield*absorb

Assume for simplicity that crit < shield. Under the new formula, the new formulas would be:

Crit damage = 0

Normal damage = 1 + crit - shield

Shielded damage = (shield - crit) * (1 - absorb)

Total damage = 1 + crit*absorb - shield*absorb

Delta = crit * (absorb - surge)

As long as absorb < surge this is an improvement.

(In the case that crit > shield, delta = shield * (absorb - surge), for the same result.)

The intuition for this should be fairly clear: you are taking [absorb] extra damage on the shield end of the roll to remove [surge] extra damage from the crit end. If absorb < surge that's a good trade.

would 75% mitigation be OP in PvP? i think the question is, what should the TTK for a pure tank be in PvP? twice that of a dps/healer? how much should having a tank present increase the TTK for a group? 10%?

i think a healer should be able to keep up a min maxed tank being dpsed by 2 players, but not 3. i dont think a dps or healer should be able to survive being focued by 2 players, even with a healer. a tank being focused by 2 dpers, without a healer, should be dead in as much time as it takes a dps/healer to die from 1 dps.

H=H_0 - n*d*s*t + h*t

where H is present health, H_0 is initial health, n is the number of dps, d is the dps of a single dps, s is the squish, h is the hps of a single healer, and t is the time in seconds.

for heal+tank against 2 dps, with no change in health of tank i get:

dH/dt=0=h-n*d*s, so h=n*d*s

for amount of time a single dps can survive against two dps without heals:

0=H_0-1*d*s_d*T, so T_d=H_0d/d*s

where i have used d subscript to designate dps, i will use t subscript for tanks.

Using the value of T_d for a tank against two dps, without a healer i get:

H=0=H_0t-2*d_d*s_t*(H_0d/d_d*s_d)

solving for s_t we get:

s_t=H_0t*s_d/2*H_od

using ball park figures of 37k health for a dps and 48k for a tank;

(48000/2*37000)*s_d=s_t -> 0.649*s_d=s_t

so if dps have a squish of 0.45, tanks should have a squish around 0.292.

i think defense against force/tech kinetic/energy plus 5% player mitigation (additive) would bring us near that mark.

If part of the problem we need to avoid is Tanks in DPS gear becoming a problem by buffing tank survivability in PvP would it possible to add some sort of "bonus armour" stat to tank PvP gear or have Expertise apply a modifier to Shield/Def/Abs?

A good idea, but it would have be a pretty substantial modifier. Here's what it looks like if I tack on 20% to both shield and absorb:

• Shadow: 64.0254%
  
• Guardian: 62.7268%
  
• Guardian (hybrid): 62.6279%
  
• Vanguard: 63.7168%
  

So, you're probably talking about needing something approaching a 35-40% bonus to both shield and absorb, which would give shadows a hilariously high shield chance (nearly 100%), and would make shield almost equivalent in strength to dodge for both shadows and vanguards (since the absorb percentage would be nearly 100%).

Are you sure about your numbers? I'm not confident in your reasoning.

The main part that I'm not confident in is my hand-wavy assertion that not including the "tanks are getting critted less" bit is inconsequential. Basically, all I calculated was what happens when crit chance is subtractive from shield chance.

Right now damage can be broken into three categories: crit, normal, and shielded.

 

Crit damage = crit * (1 + surge)

Normal damage = (1 - crit - shield)

Shielded damage = shield * (1 - absorb)

Total damage = 1 + crit*surge - shield*absorb

Not quite. Normal damage is actually: (1 - crit)(1 - shield) in the current setup, while Shielded damage is (1 - crit) * shield * (1 - absorb). Joint probabilities FTW.

Thus:

total = crit * (1 + surge) + (1 - crit) * ((1 - shield) + shield * (1 - absorb))

Assume for simplicity that crit < shield. Under the new formula, the new formulas would be:

 

Crit damage = 0

Normal damage = 1 + crit - shield

Shielded damage = (shield - crit) * (1 - absorb)

Total damage = 1 + crit*absorb - shield*absorb

Normal damage = (1 - crit - shield)

total' = (1 - crit - shield) + (shield - crit) * (1 - absorb)

Delta = -crit (2 + absorb * (shield - 1) + surge)

(delta is computed as total' - total)

Thus, it's a buff when the following holds:

absorb * (shield - 1) + surge < -2

This is actually not completely implausible if you look at it, since "shield - 1" is negative while "absorb" is positive. However, we further know that shield, absorb and surge are all in the range (0, 1). Thus, shield - 1 > -1, meaning that absorb * (shield - 1) > -1. Since surge > 0, it cannot possibly be the case that the sum of these two terms is less than -2.

In other words, under no circumstances could this be a buff. (please check my algebra and reasoning; ran out of time to do a more extensive analysis)

using ball park figures of 37k health for a dps and 48k for a tank;

 

(48000/2*37000)*s_d=s_t -> 0.649*s_d=s_t

 

so if dps have a squish of 0.45, tanks should have a squish around 0.292.

 

i think defense against force/tech kinetic/energy plus 5% player mitigation (additive) would bring us near that mark.

Beautiful work, dipstik. If nothing else, this gives us an entirely reasonable way to relate the squish targets for DPS and for tanks. It is worth noting though that PvP tanks have about 40k health, while PvP DPS have about 32-33k. Lower stat budgets, remember? :-)

Not quite. Normal damage is actually: (1 - crit)(1 - shield) in the current setup, while Shielded damage is (1 - crit) * shield * (1 - absorb). Joint probabilities FTW.

This may the source of my confusion. My understanding was that there was a single roll for crit and shield, with crit at one end and shield at the other. For example, if you had a crit chance of 30% vs a shield chance of 40%, a roll of 1-30 would be a crit, a roll of 31-60 would be normal, and a roll of 61-100 would be shielded.

Dumb question that I should know...is guarded damage subject to defense and shield rolls(I'm pretty sure not)? If not, adding this alone would be enough I think because rarely does a tank get directly focused. Most of their damage comes through their guard.

I really don't feel like tanks need much more direct survivability in pvp. They are already quite noticeably more difficult to bring down. The best way to get them down is to focus their guard and let it bleed through to them.

for 40k and 32500k i get that a tank should have a squish of 0.277. assuming pvp tanks get 65% mitigation when speced to make defense viable against f/t+k/e, there is a 7% gap. I like the 5% additive DR buff still, since its a nicer number. maybe make it 10% for vanguards....

of course the 7% gap is moot if programming the defense against force/tech attacks isnt feasible. that seems to account for a 10% buff to mitigation (except vanguards... but oil slick against non auto crit melee seems OP).

off topic but, do u have min shield, def etc specified for pvp by your script? interested to see if there is tendency towards stat budget boundries when making defense matter.

However, the above logic actually makes the case stronger that this would be a buff. Using crit and shield rolled separately (with crit overriding shield), we get current damage taken equal to:

Crit damage = crit * (1 + surge)

Normal damage = (1 - crit) * (1 - shield)

Shielded damage = (1 - crit) * shield * (1 - absorb)

Total damage = 1 + crit*surge - (1 - crit)*shield*absorb

(verified in Mathematica that the algebra is the same as yours and tested with sample numbers in Excel)

That's more than what I had before: 1 + crit*surge - shield*absorb.

Recall that the total damage under my alternate system (with a single roll resolving both crit and shield, treated like accuracy/defense) was:

Crit damage = 0

Normal damage = 1 + crit - shield

Shielded damage = (shield - crit) * (1 - absorb)

Total damage = 1 + crit * absorb - shield * absorb

(You had a typo with a minus instead of a plus on crit, but that actually would have made my case stronger.)

So the delta from changing to my proposal is now:

Delta = crit * (absorb - surge) - crit * shield * absorb

Which is almost certainly negativeabsent weirdly low surge and absurdly high absorb.

Sanity-checking it in Excel with 30% crit, 75% surge, 40% shield, 50% absorb I get:

Current damage taken = 1.085

New damage taken = 0.95

Dumb question that I should know...is guarded damage subject to defense and shield rolls(I'm pretty sure not)? If not, adding this alone would be enough I think because rarely does a tank get directly focused. Most of their damage comes through their guard.

Easy test: guard someone and pop Deflection/Saber Ward while someone else uses their basic attack on the guard target. You'll see "Deflect". Basically, the game takes incoming attacks, divides them in two and rolls them separately against each player in the guard pair. I think it's actually possible for abilities to crit on one target but not on the other.

I really don't feel like tanks need much more direct survivability in pvp. They are already quite noticeably more difficult to bring down. The best way to get them down is to focus their guard and let it bleed through to them.

Not enough harder to put down though. That's basically my contention.

off topic but, do u have min shield, def etc specified for pvp by your script? interested to see if there is tendency towards stat budget boundries when making defense matter.

Yep, I'm using Obroan minima. Still assuming the FR relic though, partially because it provides more mitigation, and partially because it's hard-coded.

Current damage taken = 1.085

New damage taken = 0.95

I think the flipped negative was the problem I had. So basically then, the lack of crits on tanks balances out the lower shield value.

I think the flipped negative was the problem I had. So basically then, the lack of crits on tanks balances out the lower shield value.

Yes, as it intuitively should if absorb < surge.

I think I got something. I mean sure theres the survivability issue, and that could simply be fixed by changing the set bonus from "while guarding a target you deal 5% more damage" to "While guarding a target, both you and the guarded target take 5% less damage"

The other problem though, is making them want to hit you, instead of someone else. If theres a tank, 2dps and a healer, chances are they are gonna mez the healer, focus down the DPS then mez the healer again to kill the tank, then finally kill the healer. A tanks job is to stop them from going after ANYONE else first. So to cover that I'd give them talents that improve group survivability and make you generally more annoying to fight. Good examples of this currently are Riot Gas, though that has issues with being stuck to one place, and Guardianship, which isn't that strong, but it does encourage killing the guardian first.

My recommendations?

GUARDIAN

Guardianship is now significantly stronger and lasts for much longer, but falls off it the tank dies. Say if guardianship provided a shield that was equal to 30k health, pretty much everyone under it would take twice as long to kill. This would be incredibly frustrating for the enemy team and as such they'd want to come after the Guardian instead. Also tie Zen Strike to Shien form to remove the hybrid.

VANGUARD

Riot Gas can now be electrified by using Explosive Surge while in it. This causes Riot Gas to do a minor DoT to any enemies who go into it, with the DoT having the same effects as the gas. The DoT persists for 10 seconds after leaving the gas, but the gas now will automatically dissipate upon the tanks death instead of just after timing out. Putting this in means the enemy team will try to get rid of the Vanguard Tank in order to remove the accuracy penalty everyone would be facing.

SHADOW

And this is where im lost. As far as Im aware, shadows are already a pain to verse. Not only do they have great internal/elemental damage resistance, but they also have the most health out of the 3, and the most DPS. So yeah, im lost here for what to put in. Especially since I dont have a shadow, just a VG and a guardian.

Back when I had faith in PvP tanking I tried to compare grossly how would end a fight between a DPS and a Tank by comparing their passive stats.

The result was that in the best case, they're even, when all stat mechanics work, but when something bypassed the defensive rolls, the tank was flatly beaten by a wide margin. Since then, I don't play tank in PvP anymore.

I'll try to do an explanation later... For now, it's 3 AM where I am, and I post from my phone, so I'll just say what I believe has to be done.

--

Firstly, aiming for 1vs1 equity against a DPS is the biggest error to be made when trying to put Tanks in a PvP environment.

In a group fight, the tank will be for the most part, ignored. So his personal survivability will always be less important than in 1vs1. In addition, his damage, being lower, will be easily healed. So he put an additional burden to his team.

As a result, if the tank isn't above average in 1vs1 against DPS, he simply can't hope being of any help for his team. Note that it doesn't mean that they can't be some tank killers, but it has to be some very specific specs, and not any random spec.

Secondly, the right to cut through tanks, like stated earlier, should not be granted to every spec. And that's done by making tank stats to only have a few flaws, near perfectly working.

In their current form, nearly anything can ignore at least one of the defensive measures tanks have.

Here's what I propose : Defense works against anything. Shield isn't over written by crit. Shield works against all direct hits. There will be one and only one flaw to tanks : indirect damage. Indirect damage are mainly DoTs, and a few exceptions (adhesive grenade).

That may seem a extreme buff for Tanks. But it would still not be enough, since with current values it will bring them on par with DPS, not above like stated in the previous paragraph.

In this third paragraph, I'll only try to convince that the first is justified.

If the loss of DPS is compensated with defense in a duel, but the fighter is ignored, then his only hope to make use of his defense is guarding. However, since he only takes half of the damage, then to be equally worth as being directly attacked, he need to guard someone attacked by two ennemies. And to be more valuable, the ennemies need to be at least 3. But the problem is that in a perfect situation, there shouldn't be more than 4 DPS in WZ, and 2 in arenas... Which make the situation in which the tank start to be preferable, very unlikely.

But if he's given the upper hand against DPS, then he starts to be preferable when the ennemies attacking the guardee are two, not three, which is much more unlikely to happen.

Now, there's also something else that has to be done, and that is not on the Tank side. Healers need changes. At the moment, they don't need more from the tank to do their job fine. Buffing the tank will help them further too.

In addition, I believe that the way they heal is very tank unfriendly. Let me explain : they are pretty focused on big single target heals, and it's not wise because of some side effects like by having such big heals, they lessen the need for personal survivability... Making the tank less important. They also have the bad habit to turn people into undying war machine regardless of how flawed they were.

I think they'll need to have their single target output limited, and have more group-wide support, so that the Tank will actually have to run around protecting people in needs, instead of leaving that work to healer, and remaining besides him because his extreme efficiency will attract ennemies.

If the healer can't heal that much on one target, people will die unless the tank interferes. If he interferes, the healer becomes vulnerablethen he can come back, etc.. It becomes dynamic. Unlike current PvP where letting the tank run is useless, healers attract people like honey attract bees, and the tank is granted a life-long job, be the healer's puppy. (Sorry I really hate our current job)

Posted this in the PT answers thread, but here's my input:

I've seen many burst-heavy hybrids out there completely outshine pure tanks. Hell, I played APtank when it was nearing its way out the door. Intercepting guard damage while controlling the battlefield with an overpowered flamethrower for my role made for more effective tanking, in theory. I couldn't hold my ground as full tank [my native spec] versus these hybrids and was forced to run APtank [which I was unfamiliar with] whenever the other team was using one in 4s because there was no competing... and my win ratio as hybrid was far greater than when I was full tank. To me it seems that taking more steps to diminishing hybrid tanks across the board will make pure tanks as viable again.

I will always feel more viable as pure tank over hybrid in a warzone, however. Pure tanks make for better objective play, but we are still outperformed on many occasions by hybrid tanks with high burst dps teammates in arenas.

Not necessarily asking for more burst in full tank, but I do like the ideas proposed for taunts that I have seen.

I feel as though we should be encouraging damage dealers to use their taunts more than I feel tanks need to be encouraged, but anything to make me feel more like I'm controlling my opponent's damage output is a good thing.

. . . anti-burst. Maybe even let tanks reduce the damage they take if they taunt their attacker, too? Stick it in to the top-tiers and no worry about hybrid abuse..

Defense triggering shield procs would be magnificent, as/or would shield chance on crits. Please look more into that.

I agree that tank survivability needs to be buffed up a tiny bit. In conjunction I would like to see more of an ability to mitigate the enemy player's damage against the tank's ally. Right now there is nothing a tank can do to make enemy damage players stop focusing the tank's ally and focus on taking down the tank for a period of time.

I would also like to see what everyone thinks about giving tanks more damage reduction with their single target taunts and abilities.

Typing this at 430am, so bear with my non math oriented ideas from a different angle (mostly)

Couple of suggestions:

Raise the guard dmg redirected level (60%? 75%?)

Apply a buff every time guard is swapped to someone that redirects an even larger % of dmg to tank for x seconds (skill to swap at proper time)

Nerf over powered DPS CD's (need tanks to peel and guard)

Nerf absurd amount of healing that can be done (taunts and debuffs more important to proactively mitigate damage)

Increase taunt debuff % (50%? More?)

More mitigation on gear (feels tankier and rewards proper gearing)

I think the major issue with tanks right now is that they do not make a big enough difference when having them on your team., because other roles can make up for not having a tank in the WZ. The only tank in a WZ should *never* have to guard a node, he should be absolutely required to win the fight at mid, but quite often now is relegated to this because they do not impact the WZ in a large enough way.

Though I doubt it would happen, I feel like nerfs to other class's survivability would make more sense, rather than buffing tank survivability. (Apart from larger mitigation budgets) Because this is all relative to each other, squishier DPS will have to rely on tanks for more of their survivability instead of their own cd's or the very large amount of heals flowing in this game. Same goes with healers.

Not a huge fan of arenas, but this would also apply to those as well. Proper tank play leading to a lot of proactive mitigation, which causes the other team to try and time up cc and target swaps to catch the tank napping on his guard swaps and taunts. Like a game of cat and mouse with the other team's DPS, while also trying to keep them from putting your healer out of action.

Biggest grey are idea I have would be to raise tank DPS. At this point, with such a marginal survivability advantage over pure DPS classes, and a large DPS discrepancy, raising tank DPS would make it that much easier to bring a tank to a WZ. If he's going to put out .75 of a dps damage while being 3/4 as squishy, instead of putting out .33 of dps dmg while being 3/4 as squishy, then people will be more accommodating in groups. (Random numbers are random)

Doesn't really solve the issue from a tanking perspective, it just makes it less of a hit to team burst and overall DPS to have a tank on their team. This is why all the hybrids started popping up in arenas, to capitalize on improved DPS without sacrificing survivability.

Love the discussion

As a huge fan of PvP tanking, I've always thought that the current implementation of the "Guard" ability, while good, falls seriously short of it's potential.

I'd love to see the "Guard" ability gain unique active skills that require guard to be up on a friendly target in order to be useable, as well as only being triggered in a PvP environment (unless they could be balanced for PvE I suppose)

For example here are some skill ideas:

"Amplification" - Overrides your shield generator control unit, increasing your shield and absorb rating by 100% (ie. doubles the current value, it's not added) for 6 seconds. Has cooldown of 2 minutes.

"Emergency Transfer" - Allows you to bestow your shield on a nearby friendly target, within a 10 meter range, providing a "Shielded" buff, which transfers your current shield and absorb rating to them for 6 seconds. While active your ability to shield is reduced by 100%. Has cooldown of 3 minutes.

"Shield Barrier" - Focusing on your guarded target, you channel your shield for maximum efficiency, reducing all damage done to them by 100% for 5 seconds. While channelling you are immune to interrupts but are rooted in place for the duration of the cast. Has cooldown of 5 minutes.

"Overload" - You overload your shield and that of your guarded target creating an ionic explosion that coats nearby friendly units providing 10% damage reduction for 6 seconds. Your previously guarded target gains the "Discharged" debuff and cannot be re-guarded for 45 seconds. Has a cooldown of 2 minutes.

The benefit to most of the above is emphasis on tanking stats, thus dps gear and hybrids would stand to benefit far less, hopefully creating a better place for mitigation based PvP tanks.

The potential animations for such skills could be quite epic too.

Disclaimer: These are just ideas... whether they are even possible or not, people much smarter than myself will know for sure. Durations and cooldowns were just added quickly for explanation's sake, as I'm sure they're far from realistic.

I'd love to see PvP tanks receive some attention and look forward to reading more in this thread!

Cheers

I dont believe that increasing tank survivability in PvP would be the right approach, at least not to the level of PvE survivability, the issue being in my opinion the effects that this would have on the Guard mechanic.

As it is atm guarding a target causes 50% of all incoming damage to be directed to the tank. This may sound fine and all to some, and in a lot of cases it is, but when it comes to a guarded operative healer for example, the TTK for either the tank or the healer is increased dramatically. Further increasing tank survivability would make fights like this ridiculously long, frustrating and boring.

Additionally its fine to suggest that the most important place for balance is in the ranked game, which i largely agree with, however you cant ignore the effect that a change to tank survivability would have on objective based play. With the state of healing in the game atm TTK is already high, and coupled with guard an increase to tank survivability would make stalemate matches even more common. The fact is that in PvP, things have to die, and it really is that simple. Giving tanks more survivability would make capturing nodes take far too long, and make defending them far too simple (consider TTK vs respawn times for example).

An alternative might be to look at increasing the group utility of a tank rather than its survivability. For example, adding a damage/healing buff when you switch guard from one player to another, or speed buffs, further debuffs to enemies or things along these lines. Again im sure that balancing this would not be easy, but just a suggestion.

While i dont dismiss the idea of increasing survivability entirely, its something that would have to be done very delicately. Without an overhaul of lots of other current game mechanics i just dont see it happening.

 

An alternative might be to look at increasing the group utility of a tank rather than its survivability. For example, adding a damage/healing buff when you switch guard from one player to another, or speed buffs, further debuffs to enemies or things along these lines. Again im sure that balancing this would not be easy, but just a suggestion.

 

While i dont dismiss the idea of increasing survivability entirely, its something that would have to be done very delicately. Without an overhaul of lots of other current game mechanics i just dont see it happening.

I 100% agree with this.

To me the two biggest issues are tanks should be sturdier in PVP, which could be handled by proper changes to the shield mechanics. Additionally, as everyone says, another problem is the feeling that you can essentially ignore a tank, so some sort of additional control would be indicated, but then we already have so very much CC in this game.

I rather like the idea of adding extra things to tank things like Riot Gas and guardianship. I think we should also consider either really upping the amount of damage which guard redirects OR have guard grant a straight damage reduction in PVP and not redirect damage at all. Since the only person who can't be guarded is the tank in question, you'd take out the tank because they're the only one that can't be guarded. That would perhaps be a tad overbalanced though.

One interesting thing that might be interesting to see would be if taunts on healers actually lowered the amount of healing they did.

I dunno, clearly I'm just spit balling. Most or all of the above is probably a tad stupid.

The problem with the "give tanks more utility" solutions is that they don't really solve a key problem, viz. the low value of tanking stats on gear in PvP. There should be fewer incentives for tanks to wear DPS gear.

^^this

The problem isn't with tanks, the problem is that most DPS specs are just too good at cutting through tanks. If every dps had the same prfile of a MM sniper, tanks would be fine, as it stands now there is too much tech/force and too much armor ignores and crit, for full tanks to be as viable as they should.