While crippling debuffs are typically associated with other support roles, I'd like to see some Stalwart armors that put a strong emphasis on debuffing enemies. After all, debuffs provide an effective way to protect yourself and your teammates by ensuring that your enemies can't function effectively. Just ask anyone who specialized in Defenders or Corruptors in CoX.
In fact, CoX had a few armor sets with powerful debuffs such as [url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Ice_Armor]Ice Armor[/url] and (the tested but unreleased) [url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Bio_Armor]Bio Armor[/url]. Most Tanker armor sets had at least one power that carried some form of debuff. This not only provided an extra layer of protection but also helped to generate aggro.
My wish is that a more "Defendery" kind of Stalwart can exist in CoT. A kind of guardian that doesn't just put up his shield to block attacks but also plagues and weakens his enemies so they can't put up a fight. A tenacious kind of leader who suppresses his enemies instead of taking it all on the chin.
It seems that there may already be some consideration for this idea given the [url=http://cityoftitans.com/content/mastering-your-character-primer-masteries]Bruiser Stalwart mastery[/url]. It's my hope that the devs will take it a step further and give us a few armors that allow the Stalwart to be a debilitating force in combat and not just a meat shield. Guardians are likely expected to fill this role, but I'd like to see a Stalwart who can take this kind of capability to the front lines.
What do you think?
We can utilize this using masteries as is, and there is little doubt that powersets with debuffs bolstering your defenses will exist. To have a pure debuff set would be about the same as having a support powerset since they tend to deal in buff as well as debuffs, so if you're going that far then a Guardian would be most excellent. In fact, the Guardian Vindicator would be as perfect as you can officially get to this.
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Preface my comments with I'm not a Tank expert by any means.
While I can see the benefits to a Tank having some amount of debuff capability, how would you compensate for the powers so you didn't end up with a Tank that is over powered?
If for example you increased the -tohit of a Dark Armor to an amount similar to Dark Melee, and a Tank took both, it would make it substantially harder for an enemy to hit anyone on the team. That seems like a good thing I'll admit, but how do you balance that out? Do you lower the resists of the Tank?
That's the gist of it! After all, there's a reason why Dark Armor's defenses looked crappy when compared to Willpower's...
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You both raise good points. Let me try to clarify a bit.
I think a Guardian will be much better suited to spreading debuffs than the Stalwart and certainly should be. It's my understanding that Guardians (or at least Sentinels) are meant to parallel Defenders from CoX. If that's true, then I'm sure there will be a strong possibility for "Offenders" that mostly do what I described.
My main inspiration for this thread was my Ice/Ice and Elec/Elec tanks from CoH. They both focused on debuffs as a means of defense. Granted, much of those debuffs were contributed from their secondary powersets, but the primary powersets really defined debuffs as a core part of their strategy. It was great holding down a mob by slowing them to a crawl or completely draining their endurance.
These are the kinds of builds I was trying to advocate for. As far as balance goes, these sets seemed to work well. Ice Armor provided plenty of defense and a big heal in addition to its debuffs. Electric Armor provided lots of damage resistance and a heal plus regen on top of its endurance drain. Still, the debuffs were defining elements of the powersets and contributed to the survivability of you and your teammates.
I didn't mean to imply that Stalwarts should be tankmages with both exceptional debuffs and armors, but I would like to see some armors that blend the two like the aforementioned powersets from CoH did. If you want maximum debuffs while being able to slug it out at close range, a Vindicator would probably be perfect.
I just think that Stalwarts could be appropriate for this. Tankfenders? Tanktrollers? Something like that.
[url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/ultimate-classification-and-specification-chart]That can be arranged.[/url]
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Debuffing enemy offense is awesome ability. I'm asking myself why you wouldn't want that in the crowd control sets instead of Tank.
Debuffing enemies doesn't just affect the caster, but it affects everyone in the team.. I suspect debuff class will come with less HP than tanks and less survival.. I don't necessarily want a tank class to have that same capability. It really depends on how roles affect character ability.
Just speaking off the cuff regarding metagame..
Crowd Control Enthusiast
I respect that tanks shouldn't supersede characters wielding an actual support (debuff) set. Guardians, Directors, and Partisans will likely bring the most powerful debuffs to the battlefield, and so they should. However, the flexibility and variety of powers in CoH allowed you to build tanks for support rather than just focusing on armors and attacks.
As an example, let me give a quick list of the kind of support an [url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Ice_Armor]Ice[/url]/[url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Ice_Melee]Ice[/url]/[s]Baby[/s][url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Arctic_Mastery]Arctic[/url] tank could deliver.
[list]
[*]4 AoE powers that debuff both enemy recharge and movement
[*]An AoE damage debuff
[*]2 holds
[*]An immobilize
[*]A knockdown patch
[*]An AoE sleep
[/list]
It has enough slows to bring most mobs to the cap on recharge and movement debuffs, enough holds to keep a boss perma-held, and other soft controls to keep mobs distracted and subdued.
There are any number of tank builds that could deliver significant support: [url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Dark_Armor]Dark[/url]/[url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/War_Mace]Mace[/url]/[url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Earth_Mastery]Earth[/url] for stacking controls and debuffs, [url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Electric_Armor]Elec[/url]/[url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Electric_Melee]Elec[/url]/[url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Mu_Mastery]Mu[/url] for keeping mobs drained of endurance, etc. Is this too much for tanks? Is it too far outside the role that tanks are expected to fill?
In my opinion, this fits squarely into a tank's primary purpose: protecting their allies and mitigating damage.
EDIT: Corrected an incorrect powerset in one of my examples.
In a great many cases the "balance" point of all this debuffing was ... area coverage and positioning.
[url=http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/powers/power.php?id=Defender_Buff.Storm_Summoning.Hurricane]HERDicane[/url] ... for example ... on a Defender could be slotted for To-hit Debuff and effectively debuff affected Foes to crash them to that Accuracy Cap (in your favor/against theirs) with every pulse of the Aura. Drawback? You had to keep them in the PBAoE Aura ... and because of the Knockback/Repel aspect of the Power, that usually meant use of Terrain to force everything into a corner where you could deliver a beatdown in relative safety.
I had a Storm/Dual Pistols Defender (named Sidhe Bang...) who routinely used Herdicane as her primary means of damage mitigation for entire teams. I'd use it to "tank" entire waves of Ambushes when teams I was on started getting swamped. Whenever we were in danger of getting overrun because we were getting swamped, I'd toggle the Herdicane on ... and "cloth tank" for the team. I even saved more than one Task Force from being wiped simply by turning on Herdicane and getting my team to cluster up around me inside the PBAoE to protect themselves. It was, on balance, an even more effective Power all by itself than a Force Field delivering +Defense.
Needless to say, PToD practically negated the value of Herdicane entirely because Arch-villains were for all intents and purposes "Immune" to Debuffing most of the time.
The thing you have to keep in mind is that although Buffing and Debuffing are simply opposite sides of the same coin, since they both yield similar results (game mechanically speaking) ... with Buffing it's usually Set And Forget type stuff. This isn't true of Debuffing, where you have a lot more tactial/positioning factors to consider, which don't yield easily to offline spreadsheet analysis of comparison performance.
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Dark Armor ( http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Dark_Armor ) had -To-Hit on one toggle and probably could/should have had it as a secondary effect on all of its AoEs. To-Hit debuffing was a pervasive effect in the Dark-based attack sets, though: Dark Melee ( http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Dark_Melee ), Dark Blast ( http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Dark_Blast ), and Dark Assault ( http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Dark_Assault ).
Be Well!
Fireheart
QFT. This point is definitely worth highlighting because a character's "sphere of influence" was vastly different between support classes (Defender/Controller/Corruptor) and tanks. Even if a tank had lots of debuffs and/or controls, they weren't able to totally disable entire mobs quite like classes who had better tools for it.
I fondly remember the use of Herdicane™ to round up foes. It came with a [i]massive[/i] to-hit and range debuff along with it's ability to push enemies around, and it was a [b]big[/b] AoE. You could easily round up entire crowds if you knew how to use it right.
On the other hand, tank auras typically had very limited range and could only affect enemies that were up against the tank. You could still spread debuffs if you moved around, prioritized targets, and had good aim with AoE's, but it was not as effective as tossing around huge debuff patches or toggling "anchor" debuffs.
Limited potency and coverage of debuffs for tanks would likely be a key balancing point for debuffs between tanks and other dedicated support classes--as it was in CoX.
...
In response to Fireheart, I agree that to-hit debuffs were a common theme for dark powers in general. Dark Armor is a prime example of an armor set that had debuffs and controls. If you rolled a [url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Dark_Armor]Dark[/url]/[url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Dark_Melee]Dark[/url]/[url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Soul_Mastery]Soul[/url] tank, you could stack quite a lot of to-hit debuffs.
Just to reiterate, examples like this and like those in my previous post are what I'm advocating for. I'm not asking for tanks to have debuff powersets like Guardians will likely have, but I'd really like them to have some powersets that let you play as a tank with a more support-oriented playstyle as opposed to just being a melee DPS aggro magnet with better armor.
If it's done well I don't see any reason why we can't step outside the box a bit with regard to all of the ATs.
All AT's wil have a role and that's designed to enforce the idea that every team member has something to contribute. It also supports the notion that while a character can do one or more things well, no one character can do everything well. I see this as a good thing. But what goals are we looking for here? There are very few things that characters can do:
Deal damage (be it melee, range, ST or AoE)
Mitigate damage (for yourself and/or others)
Draw aggro (to yourself)
Crowd control (whether through hard controls like Holds or soft controls like Slows and debuffs)
Stealth (basically avoiding all the stuff listed above)
Movement (you have to GET there right?)
Every power in the game will accomplish one or more of these things, one way or another. The stereotypical Tank draws aggro and mitigates damage for himself. By drawing aggro he also mitigates damage for the team. One of the problems with a Tank mitigating damage to himself through debuffs is ranged opponents. Say a Dark character has a -Acc field. This is good for him and his team...as long as the enemy is in it. Many ranged opponents will be able to stand back and blast away, reducing the Tank to dust before he can close the range. The only way around this is to make the field range so large that everyone is inside it. Obviously that's way OP and impractical.
But what if the Tank in question had some other powers or effects that would contribute? Something like stealthing up to the enemy? I know, a stealthy tank is an oxymoron but under certain circumstances why not? Something else that might work is some sort of blurring power that reduces the range of enemy powers. Another idea is ablative defenses designed to last until the Tank got to within range of the target and their other powers kicked in.
I like flexibility and I can see a time where the roles will blur between the ATs. I don't see this as a bad thing as long as each AT retains something of their uniqueness.
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
I like flexibility, too. It was one of the defining features of CoX gameplay. Remember Blappers? Offenders? Tankerminds? There were endless varieties of characters that blurred the lines between their stereotypical roles and how they actually performed in combat.
I expect that this same kind of creative flexibility will be prevalent in CoT. [url=http://cityoftitans.com/content/mastering-your-character-primer-masteries]Masteries[/url] and [url=http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/powers/tables.php]class modifiers[/url]* will likely give characters unique qualities that set them apart from their peers.
* Assuming such modifiers will actually exist.
It could be that the Centurion Class (Survivability/Manipulation) could have more Debuff powers in the Manipulation Secondary set which would replace the damage dealing powers. So the trade off is you do less damage but debuff the foes more, but only with (say) 2-3 powers so you cant complete with a Guardian-type class or even the Bodyguard (Melee/Support).
Or just replace some of your Survivability powers with debuff powers...?
The Phoenix Rising Initiative Rules Lawyer
At first, I called Redlynne (my main) a Pocket Tank ... because she was a MA/SR Scrapper. Not a "real tank" but good enough in a pinch against most opposition. I started her in Issue 2 ... long before Super Reflexes was made available to Tankers.
Eventually I was able to "evolve" her into a Martial Arts/Super Reflexes/Soul Mastery hybrid Scranktroller using the power of [b]NO GET HITSU!![/b]
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Yay for ScankTrollin'. ;D
Umm, Izzy, you forgot the 'R' in the Scrapper segment of Scrapper/Tanker/Controller.
Be Well!
Fireheart
Ohhh.. Sorry. it must have been an intentional mistake.
;D
I was afraid of that.
Be Well!
Fireheart
Somebody pick up that phone, because I FREAKING CALLED IT! :D
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I just don't feel Redlynne deserved that, is all.
Be Well!
Fireheart
Dont do that! :<
It was meant as humor at the WORD (not a person). ;)
Hehe.. I still chuckle when Picard looks in her direction! ;)
Hes clapping for a WHOLE different reason! ;D
Fireheart is right.
On the plus side, I just ... dodged ... as always ... and failed to notice the ... humor value?
And nothing of value was lost.
Moving on ...
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I think the best way to do this would be if their was another "Class" that had the bodyguard's version of support as a primary, it would be different in that rather than focusing on one "role" with it's primary it would split that focus between support and tanking.
not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM
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Is it weird that I find how quickly the subject changed funny?
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