As a tank player I am in favor of nerfing "skank tanks" into oblivion. Tanking is for defense, not offense. Kind of the point no?

 

That said wouldn't an easier fix be to simply make it so that DPS gear requires being in a DPS spec and tank gear requires being in a tank spec?

 

What if tanks automatically guarded everyone within a set radius of them? Stand near a tank and get a massive defensive/mitigation benefit? Would kind of eliminate the entire need for a separate threat mechanic and would actually kind of mimic how real phalanxes worked in ancient combat, where defenders stood/positioned next to attackers to protect them.

 

What if tanks actually had meaningful pvp mitigation?

 

What if taunts were restricted to tanks?

 

What if tank/defensive gear provided a modest dps benefit but still clearly inferior to pure damage gear?

 

What if defense provided a *small* boost to all forms of mitigation (damage reduction and avoidance) for all kinds of damage?

 

Lots of ways to make real tanks better and make skank tanks completely pointless.

Skanks exist because there is no trade-off for tank level armor mitigation. I think all they need to do is remove armor rating from the armor pieces and distribute it to mods and enhancements. The more tank pieces you have, the closer your armor mitigation approaches to tank levels. Will people still skank? Sure, but you would see a lot less of it than you do now.

When 4.0 came out, guard was not usable unless you were tank discipline. Taunts were still usable by all specs, but only tanks could guard. Why that changed, i'll never know, but that was probably the closest bioware ever got to a balanced game since the level cap went above 55.

Wrong.

Guard was usable only by tank capable classes using tank stance. Dps could do it... technically.

Wrong.

Guard was usable only by tank capable classes using tank stance. Dps could do it... technically.

This. TBH I preferred being able to stance dance, I feel like it only got taken out because it was OP for Juggs, but all they'd have to do is add a cast time to it and make more Vengeance abilities rely on Shien (it wasn't as good for Rage since many of that specs abilities relied on Shii-cho).

So how are the changes now to skanks compared to pure tanks?

Someone in chat on Fleet said in a discussion that pure tanks wiped the floor with skanks now in PVP... He said skanks were pretty useless.

If this is the case, then it sounds like mission accomplished?

Anyone able to confirm if this is true?

So how are the changes now to skanks compared to pure tanks?

 

Someone in chat on Fleet said in a discussion that pure tanks wiped the floor with skanks now in PVP... He said skanks were pretty useless.

 

If this is the case, then it sounds like mission accomplished?

 

Anyone able to confirm if this is true?

The changes affected skanks and pure tanks the same, no difference. If anything, given the continued uselessness of def/shield/absorb theres more reason than ever to run a skank.

Anyone saying otherwise probably doesn't understand what def/shield/absorb do in PvP vs PvE.

Hey folks,

 

Second, when comparing all tanks (regardless of gear) against the DPS targets we outlined last year, tanks are doing more damage than intended.

 

The summary of what we are changing in 5.9 is that tanks across the board will be doing less damage.

Only taking this from the first post but the idea was to reduce damage for the tank spec no matter what you were doing.

Only taking this from the first post but the idea was to reduce damage for the tank spec no matter what you were doing.

Ok I'm going through this again?

We were teased with a skank nerf - until the announcement with the bit in parantheses we were not expecting a nerf to tank geared tanks.

As I have been saying I question their means of coming to the decision that all tanks do too much damage. It is strongly dependent on the specifics of gearing. For instance, I went from using warding b mods to lethal b mods because of thr change, so I have noticed an actual increase in dps in tank gear (and for whatever record, the roughly 4% defense rating loss isn't noticeable).

So I propose that gear does play a bigger role than they appear to admit - that said it's all moot now anyway.

Skanks exist because there is no trade-off for tank level armor mitigation. I think all they need to do is remove armor rating from the armor pieces and distribute it to mods and enhancements. The more tank pieces you have, the closer your armor mitigation approaches to tank levels. Will people still skank? Sure, but you would see a lot less of it than you do now.

This sounds like a fantastic way to address skank tanks without totally screwing over PvE.

Lets talk credibility. We can accept the word of a bunch of random posters with no true investment in the game or the property, and with no intricate detail of the game or metrics, or we can accept the word of the game developers who have jobs that are on the line if they communicate false information, especially when its unwelcomed.

 

Choose and live with the reputation consequences. Everything gets saved to cyberspace in one form or another.

Oh here we bloody well go again... Oh the developers know best because they have the metrics. Rubbish.

First of all, BW doesn't release their metrics to the public; neither you nor I or anyone else has access to the information they allegedly have.

This means Bioware can make up whatever excuses they want regarding what their collected data supposedly says and we would have no way of knowing whether or not they are talking out of their arses.

Secondly, having a bunch of statistics isn't enough. Even if the data gathering was done properly, there is still the matter of analysing it and deciding how to act on it, which BW don't seem to have done very well.

Furthermore, collected data can be ... 'creatively interpreted' to mean whatever BW feels is convenient for them, not for us; statisticians learn quickly that statistics can be manipulated to mean whatever you want them to mean, so saying BW have metrics to act on doesn't mean much.

In addition, the personal experiences of actual players who play the game regularly provide meaningful context and a more comprehensive look at the state of game mechanics than a bunch of dry abstract datapoints and figures. I'd wager that at this point there are more gamers than BW testers, the gamers game more often, and for longer.

TLDR: Metrics are a cop-out, I prefer to hear the different game experiences of various kinds of actual players, read between the lines and decide for myself rather than rely on the phantom spreadsheet.

TLDR: Metrics are a cop-out, I prefer to hear the different game experiences of various kinds of actual players, read between the lines and decide for myself rather than rely on the phantom spreadsheet.

I disagree with your opinion about metrics being suspect sources of information in which to base decisions. They are used in nearly every facet of professional business planning. A game company basing balance decisions on what they are seeing in their server logs is certainly no exception. What I do agree with you about is that metrics may only reveal symptoms of a problem and not the cause, as appears to be the case with the Skanking issue and their subsequent attempt to address it.

That said, game experiences from actual players are often anecdotal and inconclusive. For example, I could tell you that from my perspective, the predictions about players who played PT or Sin tanks prior to 5.9 gravitating toward Jugg/Guardian tanks and that more Jugg/Guardian tanks would start Skanking all seems to be coming true. I've seen more and more Jugg/Guardian Skanks in WZs since 5.9, and the nerfs did nothing to impact their effectiveness. I could cite several examples of this, but the most recent was a match last night where a Skank Guardian did over 2.6m damage, and had over 200k protection and over 400k healing. He had the 2nd highest damage/DPS in that match, and as embarrassed as I am to admit it, out-performed me on my Merc. Nevertheless, a tank should NEVER be able to do that much DPS and still effectively Guard someone.

While all of this is certainly true based on my personal experiences, it may not be accurate overall. I could just be getting unlucky with all the Skanks I've been seeing. Another player might report that he's seen hardly any. It's really dependent on RNG with the WZ queue. Then there's other variables and factors such as relative gear levels, as Bolster doesn't account for anything over 242. The point is, Bioware can see all of this, and more importantly, they can parse and organize that data into meaningful measurements of performance, which in turn can inform their decisions about balance issues. Yet as I said earlier, metrics won't necessarily reveal the problem, and as we all have likely witnessed in WZs since 5.9, nerfing tank damage capacity isn't the best solution for the Skank problem as it clearly did not have the intended affect on Jugg/Guardian Skanks.

How long did that match go on Mourne? If he had enough time to do 2.6 mill damage he should have been over a mill protection too, unless the match was blatantly unbalanced and no damage was going out.

I've had matches with 4 skanks where I was the only one doing active protection (i.e. the only one trying to use a guard).

I play dps as well - dps guardians do far better damage than tank ones. They just can't survive as long.

Also I seem to remember saying nerfing tank damage wouldnt accomplish anything except force PTs into oblivion.

How long did that match go on Mourne?

It was about 6 minutes of a Voidstar match. They were defending first, and stopped us from capping the doors (5 minutes), then they capped within the first minute when they were attacking. I sent you a PM with a screenshot.

It was about 6 minutes of a Voidstar match. They were defending first, and stopped us from capping the doors (5 minutes), then they capped within the first minute when they were attacking. I sent you a PM with a screenshot.

Then he definately should have managed more than 200k or so protection, I pm a shot of the last match I did where I got over 2 mill damage note the difference in protection.

I sent you a PM with a screenshot.

Hi Mourne! Glad you're feeling better

So, how much of a dps nerf was it?

For guardians, negligible. I havent played my shadow or VG yet.