City Of Heroes: Tanker Changes Bugged

Hot on the heels of the Regeneration tweak comes the Invulnerability changes.

In short, here is a the part from Statesman addressing Invuln:

Invulnerability/Unyielding Stance has been renamed to "Unyielding". It no longer makes you Immobile and offers resistance to Immobilization. It is no longer Mutually Exclusive with Temp Invulnerability, however, it comes with a Defense debuff. Slightly increased its End Cost.

Increased the Duration and Recharge time of Unstoppable. Improved its Mez resistance. (You can no longer keep Unstoppable on permanently, but it will now last for 200 seconds.)

Decreased the Accuracy and Defense buff of Invincibility. Defense bonus is now against melee attacks only.

This was immediately decried as gimping, nerfing and just about every other nasty word in the book that relates to power changes. However, some community members took the time to log onto the Training Room, test their powers, and analyze the results. One such player was DamonWraith1 (this is long, but very well thought out / edited for format):

Ok, I am not gonna complain, I am not gonna complain, I am not gonna complain.....LOL

Here are some test results:

After trying Several different builds, this is the one I finally decided on for testing my LVL 50 tanker:
+ Resist Physical Damage - 6 Dam Resist
+ Temp Invuln - 1 Endurance Reduct
+ Unyeilding - 1 End Reduct, 5 Dam Resist

This Capped my lethal/smashing resistance and gave me good resist to fire/cold(test results confirmed the cap)

+ Invincibility - 1 to-hit buff, 1- end reduction, 1 def buff
+ Tough Hide - 6 defense buff
+ Dull pain - 5 recharge, 1 health (perma with 1024 HP increase)

I did not incorporate unstoppable.(no slots would have been left for attack)

+ Resist energy - 1 slotted dam resist
+ resist elements - 1 slotted dam resist

Unyeilding had/has a base resistance of 20%, 5 slotted ++ gave me a blanket resist of 40%(or should have) for cold/fire/smashing/lethal/energy. I took aid self from the medicine pool and slotted it 2 health, 4 reduce interrupt.(had a feeling i would need it.) I took the energy epic power pool, 6 slotted conserve power(recharge), 3 slotted focused accuracy(1 To hit, 2 end reduction).

This is the basic build I used. I was running perma unyeilding/temp invuln/invinc.

Immediately i noticed i was having a hard time hitting anything, even surrounded by 5 lvl 50 Nemesis Minions. They did not seem to have the same problem i did. They hit me every time. After 30 seconds, these minions had me at less than 25% of my health.(no dull pain at this point). I had not even attacked them at this point. I used dull pain, and attempted to finish them off. No problems attacking, used focused accuracy) but i noticed that i was almost completely out of endurance. In fact, my endurance was barely coming back (six slotted stamina btw). I turned off focused accuracy, and my endurance was still not regen'ing like it used too.

Once my endurance was back up, i attempted to try a mob of 5 rikti, 3 mins, 2 lts(all lvl 50). I reslotted focused accuracy with 3 end reductions, and fought these guys with it on. Again i was having no problems hitting them, but i was sucking endurance way faster than i ever have. These rikti had me at less than 25% within 20-23 seconds. (i was not attacking). Normally i could withstand alot more attacks because Invincibility would shrug off some attacks. This wasn't the case at all. Every time the mentalist put his hands to his head, i got slammed. I popped dull pain and went to work on them.

Again, i was completely drained of endurance by the time they were dead.(not using conserve power obviously)

The time my endurnace took to recharge was easily 2x longer than normal. More like 2.5x longer.

I tried a mob of lvl 50 malta, 3 lts, 4 mins, 1 boss. They wailed on me. the gunslinger slammed me everytime, as did the rest of them. My health bar looked like a stopwatch counting down. It was going down so fast i slammed dull pain, and went to work early. I ran out of endurance before i had the slightest chance of finishing all of them. I was drained by the time i had 1 lts and the boss left. So i activated conserve power, and finished them off.

I decided to try a mob of 7 lvl 50 possesed scientists, 6 were minions, 1 death mage. Everyone of those buggars were working me over. My health again looked like a stop watch again. The death mage dropped my Unyeilding after his 3rd attack, i recovered from that and had unyeilding dropped later on, this time by a minion with a gravity hold. Hy health was below 20%, i had already used dull pain, and 1 respite to recover from the death mage dropping my toggles. So i did what i had to do, i ran like a small child would. ( i was out of respites btw).

Last, i decided to try a mob of carnies. Carnies usually kick my butt. This time i decided to see how badly they would own me. I found a nice mob of 8-9 with 2 lts and an illusionist boss. I slammed dull pain before i went in, as well as focused accuracy and conserve power. I am happy to report that i did not have any issues with my endurance running out. I was dead well before that would have been an issue. Once the boss unleashed her pets and illusionist buddies, i was done. Normally a few of those attacks would miss me, but every single attack slammed me hard. I might as well have attacked them with no toggles running at all. That is what it seemed like.

So after all that fun, i have concluded that:

1- even though you can hit the smashing/lethal cap with less slots now(stacking RPD/TI/UNYIELD), you are guranteed to be hit by everything thrown at you.
2- Invincibility is in-effective. Period. It offers no bonus to acc or def. If it does, unyeilding kills it.
3- If tankers are meant to hold the aggro, we are in some trouble. These changes have insured that if a tanker takes the aggro, he will die at least 2-3 times faster than he normally would.
4- Mobile status protection is a good thing, but not at this cost. Besides, i had my unyeilding dropped. repeatedly. Even if you take weave, you are still gonna get pounded fast.
5- Endurance consumtion is too high. Tankers use more endurance. I accept this. But now, toggles use more endurance, mobs are killing you faster etc... its a death sentance either way.
6- Tankers do not have the attack rate that scrappers do, but we are taking damage faster than we can kill, (in alot of cases). Add the increased endo drain, and the lowered accuracy, and you will see alot of swing-and-a-miss tankers dying due to misses and endo running out.

I understand that mobile status protection is a good idea, but this price is too high. Invulnerable tankers are taking way too much damage now. So much, that they are a liability to a team.

Tankers generate hate, and hold the aggro. They can no longer withstand the outcome of the very design of their powers. A tank must be able to maintain aggro. Not die before a team can do their job.

Tankers do not have fast attack rates, but consume endurance fast. This was ok, when we knew we could survive long enough to do our job.(when invinc and unyeilding helped, not hindered).

I feel that all of the changes should be undone.

Simply reducing the activation and recharge time of unyeilding stance would have been sufficient. The problem was being able to set up, not run around. Making a tanker a damage magnet will certainly not help anything.

This testing was me alone, i hate to think what would have happened on a full team.

I appreciate that the dev's listened to all the tanks who wanted to be mobile. BUT, mobility isn't the answer. Especially like this. If your playstyle is "gimme everything i want cause i hate a challenge", then you miss the point. I was a tele-tanker. It did suck, but it was way better than this.

Any tanker who actually knows about their build can tell you that Unyielding stance wasn't that bad. It was just impossible to set up. You would get stunned before you had a chance.

Reducing the activation/recharge time would have fixed all of that. Now look at us.

I hope we get a good fix for this, because these changes negate the purpose of a tanker, IMO. I wanted to add the following, I felt that scrappers should have had lower resistances than Tankers. If i noticed this kind of a result, i hate to think what the scrappers are going through. This is too much for either tanks or scrappers.

In a later response another player, Doc_Spielmann, noted that the "50% DeBuff" to Tank defenses is not a suitable tradeoff.

Vyvyanne, QA Community Liaison, responded with this:

There is currently a defense bug in the version of Unyielding on the Test Server. This will be fixed with the next patch.

-Vyvyanne

It looks like there may be something other than the changes at work after all. It is apparent that the alterations to the set will undergo more testing before being released to make sure the effect is purely intended.

Fear not, fair hero, the CoH Development Team has an official place to air your opinion and responds to you as well.