Hey folks,

 

One of the topics we have seen quite a bit of feedback about is the viability of tanks in PvP. There are a few reasons for this which we would still like to address down the line, but we have one change planned for 5.9.2 which we hope will help their survivability in PvP. This will also help incentivize tanks to wear tanking gear in PvP.

 

• Critical hits are now affected by Shield / Absorb.
  

Currently, only regular hits from players can be impacted by shield procs. By including crits, this gives the potential for much more damage mitigation for tanks when being targeted by DPS classes. Here is a very basic example. Let’s say a normal hit would do 1,000 damage and a critical hit would do 2,000 damage. You are a tank and when your shield procs, you reduce damage by 25%. Previously you could reduce the normal hit to 750 damage, but would always take the 2,000 from a crit. After 5.9.2 you can also reduce the critical hit damage down to 1,500. This allows shield and absorb to be a direct counter-stat to Crit Rating for DPS classes.

 

Let us know your thoughts.

 

-eric

Thanks for considering tank stats and making them useful in PVP. Sounds like another great step in the right direction.

I only wonder how this impacts their damage though, more survivability means longer life means more sustained damage. I hope this works.

I want to see tanks that play like real tanks, meaning hard to kill. I always think of the tanks on Warhammer Online and how they were ultra hard to kill. The balance there was the tanks did little damage in PVP though.

• Critical hits are now affected by Shield / Absorb.
  

 

Let us know your thoughts.

 

-eric

OMG.

Here's my thoughts. :D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D

I would put more, but the forum police won't let me.

Bioware, by all means adjust how mitigation stats work in PVP to make tanks function the way you like.

But please know this: if you do not change how they work in such a way to make DPS gear less effective than it is now it will continue to be the "meta."

The reason why is that even if you're wearing full dps gear (with a shield that has more dps mods in it) in most situations you are still plenty tanky because so much of tank survivability is a result of their abilities and passives and NOT THEIR GEAR. And this actually just got even MORE TRUE! DPS geared tanks will benefit from this change, not as much as mit tanks, but they will benefit nonetheless so this "usually tanky enough" even in DPS gear problem just got slightly worse tbh. The impact of this is that wearing mitigation gear translates into absolutely ruining your damage 100% of the time in order to be more survivable....which is only useful some fraction of the time. For example, group ranked rounds are rarely lost because the tank was too squishy because he's wearing DPS gear. The same goes for many warzone situations.

Far too often, it's just not "worth it" to gut your damage to be more survivable to be worth dropping the DPS gear.

If you want DPS gear to not be the meta, you need to make it less effective at improving tank damage or make it negatively impact their survivability much more than it currently does (which probably means reducing how effective their passives/abilities are by default). Or implement the change many have suggested about the amount of damage guard redirects scaling based on your mitigation.

If you're fine with tanks in DPS gear being meta and just want to make mitigation more viable...go ahead I guess!

Hey folks,

 

One of the topics we have seen quite a bit of feedback about is the viability of tanks in PvP. There are a few reasons for this which we would still like to address down the line, but we have one change planned for 5.9.2 which we hope will help their survivability in PvP. This will also help incentivize tanks to wear tanking gear in PvP.

 

• Critical hits are now affected by Shield / Absorb.
  

Currently, only regular hits from players can be impacted by shield procs. By including crits, this gives the potential for much more damage mitigation for tanks when being targeted by DPS classes. Here is a very basic example. Let’s say a normal hit would do 1,000 damage and a critical hit would do 2,000 damage. You are a tank and when your shield procs, you reduce damage by 25%. Previously you could reduce the normal hit to 750 damage, but would always take the 2,000 from a crit. After 5.9.2 you can also reduce the critical hit damage down to 1,500. This allows shield and absorb to be a direct counter-stat to Crit Rating for DPS classes.

 

Let us know your thoughts.

 

-eric

Their was a reason for limiting tanks for regular warzones up to two? Buffing them now would have the opposite effect.

On Tulak Hord you have some major problems in pvp. Far too many tanks in regular warzones. far too many guards in regular warzones.

the result is that even skilled teams need way to long to kill tanks and guarded targets.

So my advice is to limit tansk and healers as planed and leave those tank stats as it is now.

You guys should thinking of doing one step after another and not just do one changed and undo it with another change.

Thanks for considering tank stats and making them useful in PVP. Sounds like another great step in the right direction.

 

I only wonder how this impacts their damage though, more survivability means longer life means more sustained damage. I hope this works.

 

I want to see tanks that play like real tanks, meaning hard to kill. I always think of the tanks on Warhammer Online and how they were ultra hard to kill. The balance there was the tanks did little damage in PVP though.

Well, hopefully stacking shield/absorb will result in a loss of crit/power/mastery, which will result in a loss of DPS... right? I guess it's another thing to consider in the balance equations, and, granted, bioware does not have a good history when it comes to balance changes. But I still think it's a step in the right direction, in making "tank gear" more useful if you want to go that way.

Their was a reason for limiting tanks for regular warzones up to two? Buffing them now would have the opposite effect.

On Tulak Hord you have some major problems in pvp. Far too many tanks in regular warzones. far too many guards in regular warzones.

the result is that even skilled teams need way to long to kill tanks and guarded targets.

 

So my advice is to limit tansk and healers as planed and leave those tank stats as it is now.

You guys should thinking of doing one step after another and not just do one changed and undo it with another change.

Well they are making the change to max number of tanks anyways. This should incentivice those tanks to actually run tank stats. So you will probably see a lot less skanks around in pvp because of this, while it's actually a buff to those playing actual tanks.

It could be meaningful change for tanks, especially with the amounts of critical hits we currently have.

Would definitely be an incentive to consider hearing or have alternative set.

@Lhancelot

That would be very boring especially with all the dcds dd classes have and self heals.

Also in swtor effective tanking I would consider protection since it is far more useful then 1 persons longevity.

Bioware, by all means adjust how mitigation stats work in PVP to make tanks function the way you like.

 

But please know this: if you do not change how they work in such a way to make DPS gear less effective than it is now it will continue to be the "meta."

 

The reason why is that even if you're wearing full dps gear (with a shield that has more dps mods in it) in most situations you are still plenty tanky because so much of tank survivability is a result of their abilities and passives and NOT THEIR GEAR. The impact of this is that wearing mitigation gear translates into absolutely ruining your damage 100% of the time in order to be more survivable....which is only useful some fraction of the time. For example, group ranked rounds are rarely lost because the tank was too squishy because he's wearing DPS gear. The same goes for many warzone situations.

 

Far too often, it's just not "worth it" to gut your damage to be more survivable to be worth dropping the DPS gear.

 

If you want DPS gear to not be the meta, you need to make it less effective at improving tank damage or make it negatively impact their survivability much more than it currently does (which probably means reducing how effective their passives/abilities are by default).

 

If you're fine with tanks in DPS gear being meta and just want to make mitigation more viable...go ahead I guess!

I hate you. Coming in with reasonable arguments and ruining my blissful happiness.

Hey folks,

 

One of the topics we have seen quite a bit of feedback about is the viability of tanks in PvP. There are a few reasons for this which we would still like to address down the line, but we have one change planned for 5.9.2 which we hope will help their survivability in PvP. This will also help incentivize tanks to wear tanking gear in PvP.

 

• Critical hits are now affected by Shield / Absorb.
  

Currently, only regular hits from players can be impacted by shield procs. By including crits, this gives the potential for much more damage mitigation for tanks when being targeted by DPS classes. Here is a very basic example. Let’s say a normal hit would do 1,000 damage and a critical hit would do 2,000 damage. You are a tank and when your shield procs, you reduce damage by 25%. Previously you could reduce the normal hit to 750 damage, but would always take the 2,000 from a crit. After 5.9.2 you can also reduce the critical hit damage down to 1,500. This allows shield and absorb to be a direct counter-stat to Crit Rating for DPS classes.

 

Let us know your thoughts.

 

-eric

I see a little problem with this that being Guard Eric. A good tank healer combo can keep 4 dps busy for a whileas is now with a tank wearing DPS gear. The only counter to this is to split the damage between tank and healer. Unless you guys do some thing with guard that still providing this update. Then it will be turtle city as the tanks now take less damage. It is time to fix guard so you can apply a little more pressure on this combo. We pvpers are not asking for a big nerf to guard the damage a tank takes from guarding is fine. It is the damage the guarded target takes that out of wack. While making shield and absorb viable and update to guard would be nice. Now with this update the crit damage applied to the healer will be even more mitigated. Making this incredibly powerful.

If you fix guard a well tanks can wear tank gear guarding a healer while making the healer have to work at it right now it is laughable how easy it is for a tank in dps gear with a healer to sit on a node keeping a team busy. There should be diminishing returns on healers and guard. Like every other MMO that's had this issue.

I hate you. Coming in with reasonable arguments and ruining my blissful happiness.

But if this change happens DPS gear will still be the "meta." However, it might be worth occasionally throwing on that mit gear set that normally collects dust in your inventory for those moment where your tank's survivability is actually the reason you're losing.

Good long waiting changes since 3.0. But still healer+tank is pretty strong if not OP. If we back in days the old mechanic provides you to kill healer while CC or push tank, now with dat "OMG i can't die yusss" buttons/escapes/immunes/healer can facetank 2 DPS and other stuff, its very hard.

Tanks should be tanky its a right way to go.

Well, hopefully stacking shield/absorb will result in a loss of crit/power/mastery, which will result in a loss of DPS... right? I guess it's another thing to consider in the balance equations, and, granted, bioware does not have a good history when it comes to balance changes. But I still think it's a step in the right direction, in making "tank gear" more useful if you want to go that way.

Yes, I am not going to get into trying to theorize how they can balance this, you, Yellow, and many others understand the logistics of tank stats, skank stats, etc. and you can offer a lot more insight as to how this change will affect PVP.

I am not a fan of the DPS meta we got. Making tanks really tanky sounds awesome. I just hope they fix the cheesing of gears that allow a class to utilize both high DPS as well as the DCDs of a normal tank.

Bioware, by all means adjust how mitigation stats work in PVP to make tanks function the way you like.

 

But please know this: if you do not change how they work in such a way to make DPS gear less effective than it is now it will continue to be the "meta."

 

The reason why is that even if you're wearing full dps gear (with a shield that has more dps mods in it) in most situations you are still plenty tanky because so much of tank survivability is a result of their abilities and passives and NOT THEIR GEAR. The impact of this is that wearing mitigation gear translates into absolutely ruining your damage 100% of the time in order to be more survivable....which is only useful some fraction of the time. For example, group ranked rounds are rarely lost because the tank was too squishy because he's wearing DPS gear. The same goes for many warzone situations.

 

Far too often, it's just not "worth it" to gut your damage to be more survivable to be worth dropping the DPS gear.

 

If you want DPS gear to not be the meta, you need to make it less effective at improving tank damage or make it negatively impact their survivability much more than it currently does (which probably means reducing how effective their passives/abilities are by default).

 

If you're fine with tanks in DPS gear being meta and just want to make mitigation more viable...go ahead I guess!

This is pretty much sound information. Meta will not change based on this changes.

My suggestion to fix this is to make shield/absorb increase the about of DR your Guard does. Reduce Guard DR by half (25% by default) and allow the rest of the 50% (50% would be max) gained only with a far amount of shield/absorb on your gear.

Guard is the reason healers/dps will not die in pvp. It will passively force players to stack shield/absorb to make their guard effective. This could also make actual "skank tanks" in regs (dps who off-guard) less effective in solo ranked and regs. 2 birds with one stone.

My suggestion to fix this is to make shield/absorb increase the about of DR your Guard does. Reduce Guard DR by half (25% by default) and allow the rest of the 50% (50% would be max) gained only with a far amount of shield/absorb on your gear.

Your proposal would force tanks to gear with mitigation stats and kill the dps that tanks do in group ranked. With the amount of cooldowns available to meta dps classes, this will make matches go to acid much more frequently and last longer for both pressure and hardswap teams.

Your proposal would force tanks to gear with mitigation stats and kill the dps that tanks do in group ranked. With the amount of cooldowns available to meta dps classes, this will make matches go to acid much more frequently and last longer for both pressure and hardswap teams.

well since we're already writing fan fiction at this point they could solve that problem by addressing the root of it: the survivability of the meta dps classes

Your proposal would force tanks to gear with mitigation stats and kill the dps that tanks do in group ranked. With the amount of cooldowns available to meta dps classes, this will make matches go to acid much more frequently and last longer for both pressure and hardswap teams.

Acid is being change in ranked in 5.92 this will affect how matches end. Which may make this even longer

Hey folks,

.

Arenas – There are quite a few places where players can exploit to prevent themselves from dying. We plan to address them and implement ways to penalize those players. Additionally, we wanted to take another look at how the acid mechanics work at the end of Arena matches to see if we can improve that experience for stalemates. Here are our thoughts:

• Characters who hack their way into places they shouldn’t be, such as outside the arena or in the ground, will die.
  
• Currently, acid causes characters to take 10% of their max health in damage every second, prevents stealth and all healing.
  
• Acid will now work as follows:
  
  • Characters will take 1% of their max health in damage every second and reduce all healing done/received by 2% per stack.
    
  • Characters affected by acid will begin with one stack and gain one stack per second.
    
  • Acid will still inhibit stealth.
    

 

-eric

This is pretty much sound information. Meta will not change based on this changes.

 

My suggestion to fix this is to make shield/absorb increase the about of DR your Guard does. Reduce Guard DR by half (25% by default) and allow the rest of the 50% (50% would be max) gained only with a far amount of shield/absorb on your gear.

 

Guard is the reason healers/dps will not die in pvp. It will passively force players to stack shield/absorb to make their guard effective. This could also make actual "skank tanks" in regs (dps who off-guard) less effective in solo ranked and regs. 2 birds with one stone.

Eric, the problem of tanks is far more complex than your solution covers. This is a great idea. As stated before the problem with mitigation gear is that a tank in pvp is never in need of it. There are very little times tanks are the first to die.

However by fixing mitigation gear something needs to be done to the healing/damage ratio. If you fix tanks, the overall damage in games will be hurt and nothing will be killed. You either need to nerf hps again or buff dps.

Acid is being removed from ranked in 5.92 it now a debuff applied to all at the same time.

well since we're already writing fan fiction at this point they could solve that problem by addressing the root of it: the survivability of the meta dps classes

I still disagree with making tanks meat shields that can guard... Giving them the option to give up survivability to gain damage (or vice versa) is fine, tying guard to one of the two gearing system is stupid.

I still disagree with making tanks meat shields that can guard... Giving them the option to give up survivability to gain damage (or vice versa) is fine, tying guard to one of the two gearing system is stupid.

You shouldn’t keep a broken part of the game just because it somehow makes other broken parts of the game more bearable.

Fixing skank tanks and tanks wearing dps gear (doing too much damage) is their goal. I gave them a suggestion which would force tanks to wear their designed gear. After that if there is an issue with too much survivabiltiy, adjust healing and dps values slightly to compensate.

I still disagree with making tanks meat shields that can guard... Giving them the option to give up survivability to gain damage (or vice versa) is fine, tying guard to one of the two gearing system is stupid.

After that if there is an issue with too much survivabiltiy, adjust healing and dps values slightly to compensate.

classes that aren't mara/sniper/merc die pretty reliably