Proposed Tormentor Set Changes...

Keystroke

The new changes that are proposed:

Tormentor:
This set now only taunts the first enemy hit by the ability that activates the set, rather than taunting any and all enemies hit by the ability. Due to this change, the set can now trigger off blinks, such as Streak.
This set now also heals for 45% of all damage done from the ability that activates the set.

I must admit I am disappointed in these proposed changes. Changing this to a 5 piece set adding a single-target taunt seems fairly redundant, as most applicable abilities already apply soft-taunt like DK chains or silver leash. For abilities that gain a taunt from this interaction, like streak, it seems impossible to control which enemy the taunt would apply to, as if you streak into a group of mobs, one "at random" would get taunted.

For the healing change, does this apply to something like the 2H ability Stampede to become a heal-over-time from the ground dot, healing for 45% of all the damage that ability causes for the full duration? That seems like a lot of extra healing, but with a weird taunt interaction. Who is this change for?

Developer Comment:
This set has flown under the radar at allowing an Area of Effect application of a taunt for quite some time, but like all things in life, it must come to an end. While this is a very old functionality of the item set, Area of Effect-damaging movement abilities were spread few and far between during its introduction to the game, so its AoE taunt capabilities went effectively unnoticed. Over time, however, we've added significantly more of these ability types and this item set has enabled behavior that goes against one of our core philosophies for tanking - where taunting should be an individual action meant for one specific target in the moment of activation. To prevent a complete loss to this set, it now works with blinks and we added a new healing functionality to help ensure chain activating the abilities still provides something fun and impactful.

Why exactly must this come to an end? It seems to have been a fun, harmless, off-meta setup that required a 5 piece set bonus to utilize. And it has been in the game effectively since launch as a well-known interaction. How core of a philosophy could this have been to be ignored for so many years? Is the philosophy a worthwhile one? It's also very odd to see the change occur randomly now. As players, when we see changes like this proposed that appear to be out-of-the-blue, it makes us wonder how something innocuous like this can get priority and attention from the team when so many other things in the game seem to go overlooked.

My main is a templar tank and I have this as one of my 10 loadouts in my armory and it was may favorite one and what I spent most of my time playing this game with. It was very fun, not meta or OP at all, and it's such a disheartening change to see especially with so many other things in Templar toolkit (or elsewhere) that could use some attention.

James-Wayne

Its because they have control effects like taunt AOE type effects coming with scribing.... they could have done this change on release of the chapter qtr because as of this patch, a dungeon patch they have deleted the only way Templar Tank can crowd control because there is nothing else in any of the generic skill lines that are close to useable, no Time Freeze is not usable its WAY to expensive to be used as a PvE time control ability.

I'm ok with buying a chapter to get access to abilities I should have in my base class kit, been doing it for nearly 10 years but dont remove my ability to tank for the next 3-4 months during a Dungeon update, that is not a 10 year birthday gift.

Keystroke

James-Wayne wrote: »

Its because they have control effects like taunt AOE type effects coming with scribing....

According to the developer comment they posted, AOE taunts go against their "core philosophy" for tanking, which would imply they are not going to provide an AOE taunt in the upcoming scribing system.

Can you clarify, did they announce an AOE taunt in the new scribing system, or were you hazarding a guess?

Soarora

I use turn evil as my root for templar, you don’t need tormentor. Its not great but tormentor wont help you against ranged enemies anyways, as they will run out of stack. I hope scribing will give us a real instant immobilize for templar, nb, cro…

Anyways, theres still purpose in the new version of tormentor. I was unhappy with the change but the silver lining is it still works for ww tanks. Tormentor is the only way a ww tank can taunt.

Keystroke

Soarora wrote: »

I use turn evil as my root for templar, you don’t need tormentor. Its not great but tormentor wont help you against ranged enemies anyways, as they will run out of stack. I hope scribing will give us a real instant immobilize for templar, nb, cro…

Anyways, theres still purpose in the new version of tormentor. I was unhappy with the change but the silver lining is it still works for ww tanks. Tormentor is the only way a ww tank can taunt.

I've been using this set for years and have become an absolute pull artist for mob packs in dungeons. It's so fun. And like you say, one doesn't "need" AOE taunt in this game as it's been designed without needing one, so it was just more about having fun in a way that didn't ruin the game, rather than just rolling yet another dragonknight tank with the same setup and using talons etc.

This change removes a fun and unique gameplay interaction that had no issues. It's not like this set was allowing people to cheese some interaction or something like when they had legitimate issues with the Vampire skill, or even plague breaker (thought both of those were poorly-handled changes IMO).

This also affects werewolf tanking since even if you still keep a single target taunt, you can't follow-up and taunt the other mobs because the werewolf jump skill has two modes you have to toggle through to get back to tanking.

Soarora

Keystroke wrote: »

Soarora wrote: »

I use turn evil as my root for templar, you don’t need tormentor. Its not great but tormentor wont help you against ranged enemies anyways, as they will run out of stack. I hope scribing will give us a real instant immobilize for templar, nb, cro…

Anyways, theres still purpose in the new version of tormentor. I was unhappy with the change but the silver lining is it still works for ww tanks. Tormentor is the only way a ww tank can taunt.

I've been using this set for years and have become an absolute pull artist for mob packs in dungeons. It's so fun. And like you say, one doesn't "need" AOE taunt in this game as it's been designed without needing one, so it was just more about having fun in a way that didn't ruin the game, rather than just rolling yet another dragonknight tank with the same setup and using talons etc.

This change removes a fun and unique gameplay interaction that had no issues. It's not like this set was allowing people to cheese some interaction or something like when they had legitimate issues with the Vampire skill, or even plague breaker (thought both of those were poorly-handled changes IMO).

This also affects werewolf tanking since even if you still keep a single target taunt, you can't follow-up and taunt the other mobs because the werewolf jump skill has two modes you have to toggle through to get back to tanking.

Yeah, I should specify that I also agree tormentor should be returned back to how it was, just suggesting ways to cope if it isn't changed back.

sneakymitchell

Least you get a heal from it. When you do damage.

Keystroke

sneakymitchell wrote: »

Least you get a heal from it. When you do damage.

I was actually kind of concerned by that change. It seems like a strong heal to add if that heal is going to include DOT damage, especially AOE dot damage. Think of Nightblade using lotus fan and stampede and getting some crazy healing back, it's more than ring of pale order, especially since stampede ticks every second. Is the taunt meant to keep the power of the healing in check? Kind of a bizarre change to try and salvage the set from "being a total loss" (their words).

sneakymitchell

Keystroke wrote: »

sneakymitchell wrote: »

Least you get a heal from it. When you do damage.

I was actually kind of concerned by that change. It seems like a strong heal to add if that heal is going to include DOT damage, especially AOE dot damage. Think of Nightblade using lotus fan and stampede and getting some crazy healing back, it's more than ring of pale order, especially since stampede ticks every second. Is the taunt meant to keep the power of the healing in check? Kind of a bizarre change to try and salvage the set from "being a total loss" (their words).

Gotta test it out to see

Araneae6537

That sucks. I enjoyed using this set as an aoe taunt on my Templar tank. Why make tanking less fun and more laborious? Don’t we want more people to play as effective tanks? It is a good thing if there are more ways of getting the job done.

MarioSMB

Seriously? Templars being able to AoE taunt was one of the more unique and fun aspects of tanking with them... Funny that they call it a "fix" and not more accurately destroying a playstyle in the game.

This is just sad. Why bother finding different ways to play the game if they're just going to remove anything we find?