City Of Heroes: Statesman's Morning With Geko

Based upon the great feedback on these forums, as well as conversations with Tankers in and out of the game, I felt that we needed to revisit some old issues and try some new solutions. The great thing about MMP's is that they can grow and evolve. Even better, the community can give us both qualititative (opinions) and quantitative (data) information.

So here's what we discussed.

1. By and large, the change to Tankers' Taunt is viewed positively. Instead of a single target Taunt, Tankers will have a Provoke in their Secondary Power Sets. Plus, the mob targeted will be autohit (just like Taunt). So you can pretty much guarantee that'll be done soon. But, as many have said, it's not enough. So that's why Geko and I talked at length.

2. Tankers damage is way out of whack compared to Scrappers' Resistance. Previously, I stated that Scrappers couldn't reach the Resistance cap. And they can't - UNLESS they resort to the Power Pool. That was my error. A correctly built Scrapper (with a lot of Enhancement slots) CAN reach the 90% cap. But a Tanker can NEVER do the same amount of damage as a Scrapper. This needs to be rectified. A Tanker should be as good at Resistance as a Scrapper is at Damage.

3. Some people don't mind the traditional role of a Tanker as a meat shield, other do. Most importantly, however, is that people seemed not to like to be a "provoke bot". It appeared that a Tanker's role was to sit there, take damage, and occasionally hit Provoke. A Tanker's attacks were nice, but pretty much an afterthought in the grand scheme of things. Well, that's not much fun after all. Provoke is fine; but the Tanker's attacks should be MORE important when combat gets started in holding aggro than shouting at various mobs.

4. The Burn change is a little too inconsistent with the role of a Tanker. A Tanker wants to keep aggro, not chase them away. Though it makes sense in terms of AI (bad guys fleeing damage), the power becomes not very useful for the Tanker. We'll probably be making a change to that soon.

In other words, I've said in the past that we weren't going to look at damage and that we weren't going to add any aggro to Tanker attacks. Well, I think I need to put my thinking cap on and come up with some solutions to the points above. I can't thank all the Tankers enough for sharing their thoughts & ideas.

Now - the change to Burn can happen relatively quickly - but the other stuff needs internal testing. I don't want to rush something out over the holidays. That testing will be a priority post Thanksgiving - so I'll keep you posted next week on the status.

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But giving Blasters a level 32 tank power is angering many of us.
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First, the Blaster version has a longer recharge (so that it can't be constantly recycled with Hasten, etc.).

Second, when Unstoppable stops, the Blasters is in far more jeopardy because he doesn't have any other defensive powers to protect him when the power evaporates.

Thirdly, the version of Unstoppable that the Blaster gets has much less of a Damage Resistance than the Tanker version.

And the Blaster only gets this at level 47.

Plus - it's only on the Test Server - and we're still tweaking. If it's overpowered - boom - it'll get tweaked again.

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Oh, very important, while we have your ear... er, eyes.

Are you still considering adding mobility to US/Rooted? If so, will it be a total power change (full mobility) or slowed mobility?

And will we still be able to use TP to move when immobolized or slowed?
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At the moment, we're not considering it. It is, however, on the list that I keep that records the major player concerns. We consider the immobility to be a balancing element.

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As far as the blasters getting a much lower resist number than tankers unstoppable, not so sure about that. It's been posted that blasters get a 50% resist, scrappers get 52% and tankers get somewhere around 60+% (can't think of it right now might even be 70%). That's not a huge difference. Hell blasters unstoppable (as far as resist goes) is damn near identical to scrappers.
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Here's the stats (unenhanced)...

Tanker Temp Inv resistance to Smashing and Lethal: 32.5%

Tanker Unstoppable Dam Res to all but Psionics: 70%

Blaster Temp Inv resistance to Smashing and Lethal: 22.75%

Blaster Unstoppable Dam Res to all but Psionics: 49%

But with Enhancements, a player can certainly boost these. Now that's a problem, to be sure. I don't want Blasters encroaching on Tanker terrain any more than I want Scrappers! So clearly we need to do something there.