The neverending Nightmare of an ESO Tank

Forestd16b14_ESO

Ffastyl wrote: »

From Heavy armor needs buffed already.:

Forestd16b14_ESO wrote: »

Rapid mending I find extreamly useless. Increases healing received by 1% per HA equipped. Doesn't help in solo stuff and again CP can replace that so I feel it just needs a entire remake to reduce effect of snare effects by 20% and reduces enemy physical and spell penetration by 40% when having all 7 armor slotted with HA of course. Why the giant reduce penetration ? Well a gold level 2H hammer with sharpened on it alone gives 34% armor penetration and stack that with the champion passives players can easily get 50%, 60% res penetration making HA 25K res into 10K res might as well go to battle in your under wear cause that's what it's at now and why HA is so useless cause LA has shields and MA has dodging.

Yolokin_Swagonborn wrote: »

Stamina recovery while blocking if you are wearing at least 5pc heavy.

Even if it was just a percentage return it would be better than current.

Ffastyl wrote: »

Resolve needs a buff to the base value, but in the spirit of adding secondary effects, it could add more Resistance based on Max Health. 0.5%(I)/1%(II)/1.5%(III) of Max Health added as Resistance sounds reasonable given the average tank runs around 20k - 23k Max Health; a full suit of Heavy Armor (7/7) for a 23k HP tank would add 2415 Resistance (10.5% of Max Health). Then there's a synergy between Resolve and Juggernaut.

Speaking of which, Juggernaut should probably reduce Break Free and/or Block cost per piece. I did think about adding a melee/physical damage bonus here but then it could be compounded with Medium and Light Armor damage boosts. 2%(I)/4%(II) cost reduction per piece of Heavy Armor for either (or both) Break Free and Block so a suit of 5/7 matches the current Bracing bonus of 20%. This also raises the maximum reduction to 28% for those wearing 7/7 Heavy Armor.

Why add Block cost reduction to Juggernaut when Bracing already has it? Because Bracing should be replaced with regenerate Stamina at 10%(I)/20%(II) of the normal rate while blocking and increase melee damage by 5%(I)/10%(II). Increasing Physical damage instead of melee grants a synergy with Bows for Heavy Armor users but it leaves out Magical attacks. By making it melee, both Magicka and Stamina based attacks get a damage boost.

Rapid Mending should, at the very least, have its percentages doubled to 1%(I)/2%(II) per piece if nothing else. However if a secondary effect is added, then doubling the percentages may be too big a buff. There are only two effects which come to mind that fit with the name Rapid Mending: Health Recovery, which Constitution covers, and increasing recovery rate from ailments. Rapid Mending could, in addition to increasing healing received, reduce the duration of negative effects by 1%(I)/2%(II) per piece, for a 14% duration reduction with 7/7 at Rank II, close to the maximum effect of similar CS stars. You can see why I think adding this effect while doubling the healing received value to be overkill.

Constitution is in a rather good place, requiring only minor tweaking. I am not sure what the value per piece is, but my ingame recovery per hit is 247. Given it procs every 4 seconds, this is +123.5 to my Recovery rates for Stamina and Magicka. Thinking of it this way, I can see why ZOS has made this effect superficially weak. That said, an increase to the base value so 5/7 grants 300 per hit (+150 to Recovery rates) or a reduction on the cooldown to 3 seconds is a called for buff. Note "or." Both increasing the base value and reducing the cooldown puts Heavy Armor Recovery rates, while conditional, on par with Medium and Light Armor, which should not be the case. Heavy Armor's intended tradeoff is good armor for bad resource management.


Thoughts on these suggestions? I personally think implementing every last one of them, while awesome, may overpower Heavy Armor. Resolve's buff I think is necessary but one of the buffs should be left unimplemented. Rapid Mending's secondary effect is the one we stand least to lose from, so it would be my choice to drop. For Juggernaut I would choose Block cost reduction over Break Free reduction, otherwise the changes to Bracing would completely remove Heavy Armor's Block cost reduction.

hrothbern wrote: »

I think there are many ways to buff Heavy Armor, many ideas mentioned in posts above of this thread, many in other threads.

Key is that the position of HA is different in PVP, normal PVE, Maelstrom and Dungeons where the HA Tank taunts.
There is quite a disconnect between those combat grounds. In PVP HA is e.g. heavily affected by Penetration, whereas in PVE the NPC's do not penetrate.

The structural big nerf to zero Stamina Regeneration during Blocking affected all combat grounds.

I believe that we, all kind of players and ZOS, should and can agree that the HA Tank that taunts in a Group must be an enjoyable and playable role in this game, a benefit to the Group, also for more casual players after some L2P.

@Wrobel , If you do not agree with the lines above in bold, a comment is appreciated.

Ideas for buffing the HA Tank should be clear whether they are aimed at:

• A general buffing
• Buffing HA in PVP
• Buffing HA for the taunting Tank role

So far most ideas to buff are a general buffing. Too much will create OP in PVP and that cannot be, IMO not even close to it.
So a more complex discussion.
I would favor to buff the taunt role first and move on from there.

A HA Tank that taunts is in a completely other position than a HA tanky build on the other combat grounds.
A HA Tank that taunts must have a very low risk appetite to die, because if he dies, the group wipes.
This low risk appetite means needing a higher Effective Health (high Mitigation from Armor Resistance & Evasion and big Health pool) and a higher usage of Blocking, Break Free and Roll Dodging.
And also the disadvantage to sacrifice one slot for the taunt, the resource costs for the taunt, the cast time in the rotations for the taunt.
With the recent nerf to zero Stamina recovery during Blocking, the Tank is forced to spend more Gear features, Jewelry enchants, CP perks, resources, slots and casts on keeping Stamina up balanced with an increased risk appetite to Block less.

So a couple of general buffs for HA are IMO needed and as said, many ideas mentioned...

but the for me most important improvement is that there come buffs that help the taunting role of a taunting Tank for casual players !!!

The most simple way to do that is add some buffs during the taunt being active. Also valid during solo. Nothing OP will come from that. Has anyway no effect on PVP.
These taunt buffs could be handled in the HA passives added to the existing HA passives.

Possible taunt buffs, only valid in HA, with 5 pcs of HA, could be:

• a 20% Increase on the Health pool (4% per piece)
• a 20% Cost reduction on Break Free and Dodge Roll (4% per piece)
• a 20% Regeneration of Stamina during Blocking (4% per piece)
• other

EDIT added as clarification:
The proposed buffs are for taunted NPC's.
Aimed at the Tank Role in Pledges & Trials and World Bosses.
So not for PVP.

Ffastyl wrote: »

Forestd16b14_ESO wrote: »

dodgehopper_ESO wrote: »

Artjuh90 wrote: »

dodgehopper_ESO wrote: »

I just had a thought, it might be cool to give heavy armor 'Reflect' damage such as existed in Skyrim's Heavy Armor Perks. This would help punish melee range enemies. Alternately this reflect effect could be part of utilizing Immovable, and scale with the # of HA pieces worn. I'm just offering a spitball idea here.

this is kinda already in game spiked armor

I know, but I'm talking about a heavy armor passive not a Dk active skill.

Would be nice and yes be better as a HA passive. But thinking about it that it would stack with DKs spiked armor and honestly be fair and be nice buff to DKs. Now before any one thinks " DKs having 2X reflecting damage nerf nerf nerf" Spiked armor only reflects like 600 points and that's maxed out and only does so with melee strikes. Last timed I checked players tend to use long range attacks more and if they did add it and it stacked it be only at what 1000 points of reflect damage. Not that powerful.

But all in all that is still more useful that immovable so again ZOS fix immovable.

A tweak to Unstoppable that came to mind while playing was to change the percent increase in duration to a flat value. Right now the maximum possible duration increase is 5% x 7 = 35%, which bumps the Major Resolve/Ward duration to 20.25 seconds and the CC-immunity to 6.75 seconds. If the boost is changed to 1 second per piece of Heavy Armor, the maximum duration becomes 22 for the armor buff and 12 seconds for the CC-immunity.

Since the reason Immovable's CC-immunity duration was decreased was due to Light Armor users using the ability as a crutch, this change gates the CC-immunity behind the use of Heavy Armor. Light Armor users are likely to wear 2 pieces of Heavy Armor for armor's sake, making their durations 17 seconds and 7 seconds respectively.

The ranks would work out to 0.25 sec (I) / 0.5 sec (II) / 0.75 sec (III) / 1.0 sec (IV). Unstoppable could be further buffed to 0.5 sec per rank (2 sec at IV for 29 seconds Major Resolve/Ward and 19 seconds CC-immunity at 7/7) as well. But then non-Heavy users can get 9 seconds CC-immunity from 2 pieces. Therefore the base duration of 5 seconds could be reduced to 3 seconds, keeping the exceptionally long CC-immunity times gated behind Heavy Armor use (2 piece becomes 7 seconds and 7 piece bonus becomes 17 seconds).

But this change would nerf Immovable Brute, so the change in base value could be a change made only to the Unstoppable morph or Immovable Brute could gain the added effect of increasing CC-immunity time by 4% per Heavy Armor piece worn in addition to reduced Break Free cost by 4% per Heavy Armor piece worn. CC-immunity after Breaking Free lasts 8 seconds (correct me if I am off), so the 2 piece bonus would be 8% reduced cost and 8.64 seconds of CC-immunity while the 5 piece bonus would be 20% reduced cost and 9.6 seconds of CC-immunity and the 7 piece bonus would be 28% reduced cost and 10.24 seconds of CC-immunity. Additionally, the 3 second CC-immunity granted by the ability would be boosted to 3.24 seconds, 3.6 seconds and 3.84 seconds respectively.

...Potions of Immovability would be affected too, unless specifically stated/coded otherwise. With the Medicinal Use passive, Essence of Immovability (Veteran Rank 15) grants 15.7 seconds of CC-immunity. The 2, 5 and 7 piece bonuses would buff that to 16.96, 18.84 and 20.1 seconds respectively. Potions can therefore still be stronger than Immovable, though on a cooldown. It is tough to say whether Immovable Brute's effect should apply to potions or not, given the relatively small gap as well (3.1 seconds to Unstoppable compared to 8.95 seconds in the current build).

The above makes altering the base time for CC-immunity exclusive to the Unstoppable morph just as viable as buffing Immovable Brute in the described way.
I do need to mention the current cost of Immovable is about 4,000 Stamina, more than Evasion, which grants better protection than Immovable currently. If these buffs are implemented, do not increase the cost to compensate for the added power. These changes will make Immovable worth the cost it has currently.

Preyfar wrote: »

Ffastyl wrote: »

To reiterate a bit on my large post a while back:
What of adding effects to passives that only have one effect? Comparing it to Medium Armor, most passives have multiple effects (Wind Walker, Improved Sneak and Athletics). Resolve, Juggernaut, Bracing and Rapid Mending can have additional effects added that fit with their themes, like Constitution.

If you think buffing Heavy Armor in this way has merit, I'll start brainstorming some effects for each passive.

I'd consider the following:
* A buff to heavy attacks (there's more force to go into the swing given you're wearing heavy armor)
* A buff to attacks that involve bashing and/or closers (e.g. when the tank shield rushes you, the force from the tank's rush is that much greater, giving skills like Crit Rush and Shield Charge a damage buff).

Not everything has to be solely be regen.

Forestd16b14_ESO wrote: »

Welp time for look at what players want to see in heavy armor from what I gathered from my post.

Immovable
-cost: 2500 stamina
-requirements: 5+ heavy armor pieces equip
-duration: 25 seconds.
-effect: gain major resolve and major ward increasing physical and spell resistance by 5500 amount and gain full immunity to CC and knockdown/back for entire duration

~Immovable brute
-requirements: 5+ heavy armor pieces equip
-duration: 25 seconds.
-effect: gain major resolve and major ward increasing physical and spell resistance by 5500 amount and gain full immunity to CC and knockdown/back for entire duration. Also gain minor brute increasing weapon power by 5%

~Unstoppable
-cost: 2000 stamina
-requirements: 5+ heavy armor pieces equip
-duration: 30 seconds.
-effect: gain major resolve and major ward increasing physical and spell resistance by 5500 amount and gain full immunity to CC and knockdown/back for entire duration. Reduce cost and last longer.


Constitution.
-Increases health recovery by 5% per piece of heavy armor equip and allows stamina regen while blocking if wearing 5+ pieces of heavy armor.

Resolve
-Increases physical and spell resistance by 2% per piece of heavy armor equip and increases critical resistance by 4% per piece of heavy armor equip.

Juggernaut
-Increases max health by 3% per piece of heavy armor equip and reduce cost of break free by 35% when wearing 5+ pieces of heavy armor.

Bracing
- reduce cost of blocking by 35% and block additional 5% damage (regardless if using a shield or not) and reduce physical/spell penetration effect by 40% when wearing 5+ pieces of heavy armor.

Rapid mending
- increase healing receive by 2% per piece of heavy armor equip in addition reduce snare effects by 25% when wearing 5+ pieces of heavy armor.

Reason some are 5+ pieces and some are just 1 piece is to help out hybrid builds. So thoughts comments opinions and maybe some ZOS guys wanna read.

DKsUnite wrote: »

I run 5 heavy and im very successful in pvp. That said, it is because it comes down to one saying i always tell people. They ask me, "what can i run instead of reactive" and the simple answer is "nothing really" and its because heavy armour just isn't defensively strong enough. Raw resistances + health is not enough when you compare to shields and dodge roll. There is far too much penetration and debuffs flying around that your heavy armour stats will feel like you are wearing cloth.

As for the passives;
- leave the armour increase resolve gives, but also give it 100 crit resistance rating per heavy piece. This would give you 1.5% less crit damage per piece of heavy armour which at 5 pieces is 7.5% or at 7 pieces is 10.5% which is pretty big.
- revert the constitution back to the 4 second cooldown it was back in 1.5.
- combine the increase health and healing passive (1% per piece)
- give back the old juggernaut passive of increase melee damage by 1% per piece. Make this passive applicable to magicka and stamina melee abilities ie. flame lash, sweeps, concealed weapon all work as well as surprise attack, ransack, etc.

this is how i would do the heavy armour rebalance. Gives heavy armour a little more sustain, little more damage and crit resistance which is really important in pvp.

Now as to my statement about penetrations and debuffs and why i haven't included them in my passives changes. That isnt a change that heavy armour should have by itself. It is a change that the team should look at fixing for all armour types. They need to lessen the effectiveness of penetration because it is quite strong at the moment.

Muizer

What do you do when you run into a diverse group of mobs? Attack the melee guy with the sword and shield because he's poking you with a knitting tool or spitting at you? Hell no, you attack and kill the healer first. Then move on to the DPS and finally you get to the poor sod with the melee weapon.

The AI could have been programmed to do the same thing , but instead it's deliberately hamstrung to allow this trinity bovine excrement. Bad enough PvE adheres to it. I don't think imposing taunting on intelligent beings is going to go down well.

UltimaJoe777

Funny... Could've sworn Mudcrab Tanks were the nightmare...

Humatiel

Roles are only necessary in group content, and since I've seen herp derp "i'm a health tank" players manage to tank Sanctum with one of the million builds to mit dmg to 90% we're good on that thanks. pvp isn't group based not necessary check moving on, mael isn't group content not necessary check moving on....wait we're all out of rant.

Wifeaggro13

LegendaryNinja wrote: »

Hi Fellow ESO players. Legendary Ninja here today to talk about Different Issues and concerns when it comes to Tanking, Damage mitigation, Solo Play, PVP, and Heavy Armor. Of course it would be interesting to see some acknowledgement by the ESO devs.

Goal:

My goal in this post is to open the eyes of the readers to different game mechanics which while not bad are not the optimal solution in order to understand the complete state of a life as a tank in ESO today.

Tanking:

I started playing ESO as a DPS on PC during Beta, I remember my first character being a Breton DragonKnight. Still remember the days where I knew nothing about ESO and game mechanics. I sticked to being a DPS during my PC game experience. When the game got released on the PS4 I stopped playing on PC and forgot to do my character transfer (I had 95 champion points at the time). Knowing the mechanics of the game on consoles made me more effective in leveling my character. Eventually I was introduced to the wonders of tanking, it was a wonderful discovery, i was so amazed of the satisfaction it brought. I finally found my place in ESO, I knew from there on out it was what I would be focusing on.

In my quest to try to prove everyone wrong, I was able to build a dark elf magic vampire templar tank and a redguard stamina dk tank. Even with the nerf to blocking It was still possible to tank in ESO.

Current Issues in Tanking:

1. Block Cost and No stamina Regen for Blocking, the reason why it was nerfed and possible solutions:

Cause: This nerf was implemented because it was possible for characters with very high stamina regen to block forever and not die in PVP(or be incredibly hard to kill). Generally this would be done even with characters that had medium armor. So it was possible to have a lot of damage output and high damage mitigation at the same time.
Issue: Even if still possible to block effectively while tanking via block cost reduction strategies, the sacrifices that that takes on an already barebones heavy armor passives and tanking overall makes tanks weaker and also discourages players from becoming tanks, hence the super long group finder queues for DPS characters.
Solution: My proposal is the following; to increase the cost of blocking first Medium armor, then a little bit less for Light Armor, this would be calculated per piece of armor. Additionally to revert the change in stam regen while blocking.
Heavy: Same cost
Medium: around 8 percent additional block cost per piece of Medium armor equipped
Light: around 4 percent additional block cost per piece of Light Armor equipped.
This way there is a balance of stam regen with increased cost with Light and Medium armor vs Reduced cost and stam regen with Heavy armor.

2. Damage mitigation: Current Cap is 50% (not to be confused with Armor Cap)

Damage mitigation is currently set at 50% of the raw damage, this includes ultimates, passives, and armor; everything together. This is a problem.
While we don't want to have characters that are invulnerable to damage because of the current meta in ESO it's impossible to have meaningful tanks in PVP and Maelstrom for example. Damage mitigation Cap while wearing 5 pieces of Heavy armor ONLY should be raised to 70%.

Reasoning:
In PVP everyone is running crit builds specially due to the nerf to damage, this allows those builds to output about as much non crit damage as before the nerf currently. Also Maelstrom for example is a solo trial designed specifically for DPS builds (Do the devs think everyone is a dps?) Even at 50% damage mitigation a crit Wrecking Blow even while blocking can do around 8-9k damage and while almost at armor cap ((33000 at VR 14, maybe 35000 at VR 16)(The VR 16 Armor Cap has not been confirmed yet)). Heavy Armor is supposed to be that, Tanky, tougher to kill; at the cost of reduced damage output because you are focusing on defenses.
Solution: Remove the current Armor Value and replace them with a raw damage reduction percentages, Spell Damage reduction and Physical Damage reduction. Replace Spell and Armor Resistance Penetration with raw values as well. This would help streamline damage reduction overall and then it will become easier to implement. It's simpler that it sounds. Then Buff Heavy Armor to provide a higher percentage of Damage mitigation. While also improving most of the Heavy armor passives.

3. Taunts and collision detection in PVP

Currently you cannot tount a player in PVP, if this is allowed it would make tactical fights, where Tanks in PVP would be needed, also it would help control the Zerging in PVP, therefore reduced lag. With collision detection in Cyrodiil ONLY it would make defending keeps more engaging and structured, this would also help diversify Cyrodiil in branching players into proper DPS, healers, and Tanks. The way is supposed to be.

Taunt Implementation:
A player that would be taunted only for a few seconds(maybe half of the PvE duration) would see the player that taunted them automatically lock on, so that the player would know. The player being taunted would also appropriately be granted CC immunity, that way a tank would not be able to taunt and CC the same time. A tank would need to choose appropriately. Also in PVP when taunting an enemy player then can't taunt another player in 4 seconds. This means even the tank can be taunted, so it would be really interesting to see in PVP. This way not everyone in Cyrodiil is a DPS or Healer.

Collision Detection in Cyrodiil ONLY:
Cyrodiil would be better this way making players have to go through tanky characters first in order to take a keep. Similar how to other games implement this.

4. A way for tanks to obtain Maelstrom Master weapons
Pretty much other people have touched on this subject, that Maelstrom Arena is a DPS race. This should be true for DPS characters, since they should have less damage mitigation. ESO should be a game in which solo content should be played as a healer, tank, or dps; however the player desires without being forced into selecting a certain kind of playstyle, this is an insult to players who love to and dedicate their entire builds to play as Tanks or Healers. Right now Maelstrom Arena is being completed by self healing high end DPS characters BECAUSE IS THE ONLY WAY.

This is a bad thing, because the mobs in this "SOLO" instance are more powerful that VETERAN DUNGEON BOSSES. It's impossible to mitigate that damage so a Tank stands absolutely no chance of completing it. That's all that needs to be said.

And this is my never ending Tank Nightmare. Would ESO incentivize players to Tank?, can Tanks be useful in PVP?, I'm I one of the few remaining Tanks in ESO? Please share your thoughts and comments below. There will be another post with a Poll shortly. Until next time.

The major problem is the whole game and mechanics was designed around dps. Tanking is in trouble because they put no thought into it. No tanking mechanics exist in eso. All the content is better done with all rolls D psing