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Tank Balance Changes in Game Update 5.9


EricMusco

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Hey folks,

 

Let’s talk about the changes coming to Tanks in Game Update 5.9. There are two things that informed the changes you will find below. First, “skank tanks” are greatly overperforming in PvP. This is a player who is using a Tank Discipline but equipping DPS gear. 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. To ensure that this doesn’t have a negative impact on their ability to tank/hold threat, we are greatly increasing their overall threat generation. This will mean that although they will commit less damage to an encounter, holding threat will not be any more difficult than it is today.

 

We are going to continue to monitor things beyond 5.9 and see if additional changes are needed.

 

-eric

 

Below is the detailed breakdown of changes.

 

 

Assassin

Darkness

  • Dark Charge’s threat generation bonus has been increased from 100% to 150%
  • Dark Charge’s internal damage has been reduced by 50%
  • The damage bonus given to Shock from Electrify has been reduced from 25% to 20%
  • The damage bonus given to Depredating Volts from Harnessed Darkness per stack has been reduced from 25% to 15%
  • The Wither and Discharge damage bonus given from Mounting Darkness has been reduced from 30% to 20%

Powertech

Shield Tech

  • Ion Gas Cylinder’s threat generation bonus has been increased from 100% to 150%
  • Fixed a bug in Power Armor that wasn’t calculating damage correctly
  • Power Armor now gives a 5% damage bonus to Ion Gas Cylinder (down from 10%)
  • Reduced the base damage of Heat Blast by 18.75%
  • The damage bonus given to Firestorm and Searing Wave by Flame Engine has been reduced from 100% to 40%
  • Reduced Ion Overload’s damage by 50%
  • Reduced Ion Gas Cylinder’s damage by 20%

Juggernaut

Immortal

  • Soresu Form’s threat generation bonus has been increased from 100% to 150%
  • The damage bonus given by Pillar of Strength to Crushing Blow, Ravage, and Backhand has been reduced from 30% to 15%

Shadow

Kinetic Combat

  • Combat Technique’s threat generation bonus has been increased from 100% to 150%
  • Combat Technique’s internal damage has been reduced by 50%
  • The damage bonus given to Project from Bombardment has been reduced from 25% to 20%
  • The damage bonus given to Cascading Debris from Harnessed Shadows per stack has been reduced from 25% to 15%
  • The Slow Time and Force Breach damage bonus given from Pulsating Force has been reduced from 30% to 20%

Vanguard

Shield Specialist

  • Ion Cell’s threat generation bonus has been increased from 100% to 150%
  • Fixed a bug in Power Armor that wasn’t calculating damage correctly
  • Power Armor now gives a 5% damage bonus to Ion Gas Cell (down from 10%)
  • Reduced the base damage of Energy Blast by 18.75%
  • The damage bonus given to Ion Storm and Ion Squall from Pulse Engine has been reduced from 100% to 40%
  • Reduced Ion Overload’s damage by 50%
  • Reduced Ion Cell’s damage by 20%

Guardian

Defense

  • Soresu Form’s threat generation bonus has been increased from 100% to 150%
  • The damage bonus given by Beacon of Might to Guardian Slash, Blade Barrage, and Hilt Bash has been reduced from 30% to 15%

 

 

 

Edited by EricMusco
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and defense is still more or less useless in pvp. thanks for nothing

 

Just adapt guard, in such a way that the transfered damage gets mitigated by your defensiv stats. so not only endurance is a viable stat in pvp.

Edited by CarlGustaf
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I guess this will help technically with asjusting the skank tank performance, how much I guess we'll see, but this also doesn't remotely curve the usage of skank tanks since all tanks are being nerfed across the board. Then again I don't think any tanks that took ranked seriously wore pure tank gear anyway so yea. I wonder what the PvE parse drop will be for each of the 3 classes, especially PTs. Edited by Hellhog
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This doesn't fix things at ALL!

 

The tanks might not do as much damage, but skank will still be the way to go vs an actual tank in PvP, especially from a ranked perspective.

 

It will be 2.2 DPS + healer + .9 tank (vs 2.9 DPS + healer + .9 tank)... but it will still outperform a "proper" 2 DPS + healer + tank

 

 

I thought you were going to make a min Defense req for PvP to cue as tank or (somehow) make PvP defense mean a damn XD

 

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How are you planning to offset these changes for PvE Eric? Will you be boosting DPS players damage for PvE since you're cutting tanks so much?

 

Tanks already sucked for leveling...this destroys them.

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Well, Im sure the thought that DPS is going to have to work that much harder in HM/NiM ops didn't even cross their minds. But this is typical of BioWare. They rarely, if ever, fix the actual problem and just apply band aid after band aid, never addressing the root cause (bad design in the first place).
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I have to admit that this kinda doesn't really fix skank tanking. Skanking needs to get fixed obviously. But this is NOT the way I think.:rak_02:

 

The problem is now that the dps of TRUE tanks gets hit very hard too. This further reduces the value of being tank vs skank or dps.

 

Also PvE gets affected very much too in this way. The way how its handled now tanks will be dealing significantly less damage against bosses too.

 

Firstly, and this might be a controversial idea.

You could consider locking tank roles to shields. A quite significant one might be to make shields and generators/foci depending on the proficiency. So when you spec a tank your offhand will ALWAYS be acting like a shield.

Kinda like you did with the cells and stances. I have to admit I hate this newbing it down but it does fixes part of the issue.

 

Next to or besides this you could increase the mitigation of tech and force abilities.

My shadow passivly has 2% defense against force and tech abilities. DR wise I have 28%. What should work better is to make it so that

a - your defense influences the defense against force and tech too (at least for 50% of the melee/ranged defense)

b - increase the internal/elemental DR by adding internal/elemental stats to the shield offhand (to further force people into shields)

 

Lastly consider to remove guard from the dps. In regs this is creating kinda an issue for tanks who want to activly swap guard depending the need.

 

 

Nutshell.

Bluntly hammering down damage done is a real bad idea and won't really fix things.

Try to incentivize tanking gear by increasing its value

 

 

EDIT:

The change to mitigation is also helping out tanking against PvE bosses like:

Zorn, Stormcaller and Brontes.

Currently I could spec dps and not take increased damage. Its also very annoying to tank something that almost fully ignores shields, defense and armor.

 

I did some calculations a while ago to calculate the DTPS on stormcaller. This is assuming the firebrand tank taunts stormcaller right before defensive systems while you hide under the shield and kill adds.

I didn't do other classes as you would need to overaggro the firebrand tank again which could create a 'slight' issue. But imagine gunslinger dps tanking stormcaller? (dodge, high tail and hunker down??)

                                innate    after dcd	after healing/absorbing	
guardian tank	         5.681 	 3.692 	 3.067 	100% 
shadow infil	         5.127 	 3.731 	 3.473 	113%
shadow tank	         5.952 	 3.799 	 3.540 	115%
shadow seren	         6.904 	 4.824 	 4.009 	131%
guardian vig	         7.645 	 4.615 	 4.214 	137%
guardian focus	 7.071 	 4.665 	 4.263 	139%
vg tactics	                 6.904 	 5.618 	 4.964 	162%
vg tank	                 6.698 	 5.769 	 5.512 	180%

Edited by fire-breath
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As one of these "skank tank" mains i want to say that the game forces me to go for this build. defensive stats are useless in pvp especially in ranked and this wont change the fact that every tank equips dps gear! they will just deal less dmg with it what, since it hits every tank, hurts the pve tanks more than the skanks.
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Well, as a guardian I'm not going to scream too loudly, especially with the fix to focused defense. (Just why did it take a year and a half to realize the scaling sucked?)

 

That said, these damage nerfs are pure elephant painting, Musco. People will still run skanks, because there is still no reason to run tank gear in warzones.

 

So basically thanks for the slap in the face to tanks yet again, Musco. Glad I've been a loyal customer and tank main for years and that my loyalty is appreciated.

Edited by KendraP
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The only way this "fixes" skank tanks in PvP is by making tanks useless in PvP, period (though any hold-outs will be skanks, still).

 

How about taking DPS's guard away? How about not letting DPS get any protection from their taunts? How about making Defense mean something (maybe let it be how PvP determines how much protection is given via taunt/guard/etc...

 

 

All I'm seeing is screwing over PvE... and a nice little "hey DPS, now that your tanks won't help you, you really WILL need our new augs, no? :rak_03:"

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I'm among first people that started regularly using skanking the way you describe it in PVP.

And the reason is that tanks are useless otherwise, the only thing they can do is die slower.

Any fix should give a reason for tanks to stay in PVP.

 

I think I already wrote this somewhere so I won't go into details, but imho the only way to balance PVP is to:

1. balance individual toons. no player should be able to defeat other player of the SAME EXACT skill in 1vs1 no matter the toon. ex. dps would devastate healer, but healer would heal up yet unable to significantly hurt dps. after an hour they would be at the same hp. simmilar goes for tanks, tank would take less damage from dps but would hurt him less too.

2. after that stop balancing individual toons and balance them as group (synergy balance). code is already there (if x enemies are in the vicinity, sniper gets the defense boost, so game is aware of this metric). for example if after individual balancing healer-tank synergy proves too powerful you don't nerf individual classes, but them as a duo - if enemy dps nearby is overwhelming or, i don't know, friendly dps ain't near they get -200 on defense for being scared.

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and defense is still more or less useless in pvp. thanks for nothing

 

Just adapt guard, in such a way that the transfered damage gets mitigated by your defensiv stats. so not only endurance is a viable stat in pvp.

 

Damage transferred through guard already gets mitigated by all the tank stats that apply (if it's a melee/ranged attack you can defend it, if it's kinetic/energy you can shield it).

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Jesus fart balls you folks are pretty goddamn stupid. Does anyone at BW play the game anymore or are you the lvl 70's running around Korriban , Ord Mantell, Hutta and Typhon will those big mounts RP'ing?

 

You could have taken my monthly sub and by now, could have actually bought a ' clue ' and yet here sit, reading once again, that you just cant fix stupid

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Damage transferred through guard already gets mitigated by all the tank stats that apply (if it's a melee/ranged attack you can defend it, if it's kinetic/energy you can shield it).

 

While you're obviously right, i believe the point hes trying to make is that this does nothing to prevent skanking. Its pure elephant painting. The issue is still there, just in a different color.

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This is hilarious.... there are no options now other than to play skank tank for those classes. No significant dps buffs combined with buffs to snipers, sorts, and Merc have basically made many classes obsolete
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This is hilarious.... there are no options now other than to play skank tank for those classes. No significant dps buffs combined with buffs to snipers, sorts, and Merc have basically made many classes obsolete

 

I mean the fix to scaling for guardians is nice... a year and a half late, but ok. Other than that i dont think much will change for guardians or shadows.

 

VGs just got hosed.

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So how exactly are these changes going to incentivize players to run a Pure Tank in PvP over a Skank Tank? This seems like a very lazy bandaid fix that doesn't at all address the core problems that PvP tanks have at the moment, that being their survivability and their defining abilities being universally available to DPS specs, Guard and Taunts.

 

I don't approve of these changes at all. This addresses nothing and will only serve to stalemate Warzones even more and push people away from Tanks altogether, now that they kill even slower than before.

 

This is a cop-out fix, and the pathetic thing is that you guys could've done so many different things to rectify this problem, including:

 

-Amending Defense/Shield/Absorb to work against Force/Tech and Crits

-Relegating Guard and Taunts to Tank specs only (so DPS specs cannot use them and pseudo-tank)

-Hardcapping the Power/Crit/Alacrity that Tank specs can achieve

-Restricting Tank Specs to Tank gear only (I.E class restrictions on mods, armorings, enhancements, etc)

 

All of these would have either limited Skank damage without harming pure Tanks in the process, or encouraged people to stray away from Skanking and go pure Tank instead.

 

But nope, we get this. Well played, Musco. Tanks have been foiled again.

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So for the purpose of PvP you are going to destroy all tank classes in PvE?...well done...

Bring back the seperate PvP gear and stop destroying the game even more by nerfing and nerfing and further nerfing. At this rate, difficult damage dependending hardmode bosses are going to be impossible. YES, you *********** need the tank dps-wise there as well!!!!!!!!!!

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