Tanks?Follow

I have noticed a couple of races dont even have tanks. Are tanks not important in this game like they are in wow?

tanks are important, just the DE and empire tanks were cut about 6 months ago.

hopefully they will be back in one form or another.

In PVP your healers typically end up tanking most of the time lol..

I think this also touches on some of the reasons why tanks are not as important in a PVP game.. Who in there right mind would target the tank first?

In PVE mobs are dumb.
They target the guy with the most hate and healers get to live.

This game not so much...

Edited, Oct 1st 2008 1:12pm by TheCastle

Edited, Oct 1st 2008 1:15pm by TheCastle

they said the cities will be back, the classes were never guaranteed to come back.

The lack of an Empire tank can be a real liability when trying to do public quests in Nordland. I eventually just gave up and moved my leveling to the Dwarf area, as I was tired of repeatedly failing Stage III of the PQs.

I'm glad the cross-region queueing went in. I've seen much better balance in the Tier 1 Scenarios at least. Doing Nordenwatch was alway a pain. The Chaos tanks would just push our poor fragile Bright Wizards all over the place. :)

Tank aren't just tanks though. They also provide very useful buffs/debuffs, snares and in some cases, they can even take some damge instead of a friendly target. All-in-all they are great to have around, even in PvP.

Edited, Oct 1st 2008 1:58pm by Lathais

Well, I havn't played my tank that high yet, but the Black Orc in particular provides a lot of buffs and debuffs that get applied to his defensive target when he does his damage abilites. Things like weapon skill increases, toughness increases and things of that nature. So as long as he sticks by the person that is getting hit, he can provide mitigation for some of the damage, making that taget easier to heal.

The Chosen, that I played briefly, had "curses" which are Point Blank AoE abilites that buff friendly units and debuff enemy units in the range. You can only have one up at a time, but when changed they have a residual effect for a few seconds, so it's easy to keep 2 up, and I've heard of people keeping 3 up.

The Dwarf tank has an Oath Friend, with which he shares damage and things. I have the least experience with this one though.

Basically, while thier damage may not be great, in PvP they will provide a lot of utility.


Edit: one more post and my post count will be 1337, lol.

Edited, Oct 1st 2008 2:51pm by Lathais

Basically, yes.

see what would have made more sense to me is if your healers were typically the big beefy shield using dudes with heavy armor and such.

Sucking at DPS they would run in and take damage on the front lines while healing others.

Then you can make the DPS vary more on lower class armors and things of that nature. So you mages with high damage would typically have cloth armor and your front line DPS like warrior classes would be using 2 hand weapons and medium armor ect.

So you healers would be the ones brandishing short swords heavy armor and shields.

Maybe thats what they will do for some healers on the order side down the road.

Using collision, tanks can stop enemies going after the healers. just be annoying to those chasers.

it's nice to see you can actually do that. in the pvp i've seen so far it's mostly alot of fokls running around in circles (literally) spamming attack abilities/snares, but all i've played are the T1 scenarios and there isn't alot of strategic terrain (no choke points, the objectives are wide open and undefendable, etc).

Yes, except now you'll hate warrior classes. The vicious cycle.

Tanks are very useful in pvp in this game, and their best jobs include defending the squishies, just like in PvE.

Collision can help you prevent people getting to classes, in open areas it can be difficult but still possible.

IBs have access to single target and AE; knockbacks, snares and an AE root (I assume other tanks have similar options). For example the IB has potential access to a talent which makes one of their ae attacks knockback all targets hit AND snares them by 40% to help prevent them getting close again.

The damage of the IB is not to be taken lightly. Of course it isn't as good as a dps class, but they have access to good AE and single target damage skills, so ignoring them isn't exactly a way to avoid damage.

Lastly buffs and debuffs. The IB can buff an ally with + toughness/armour/strength/willpower/crit rate. He can buff him self so he does more damage against a target until that target attacks him 3 times, or debuff all targets within a cone so that they do less damage against any target other than the IB. These last two abilities either encourage players to attack the IB or make the IB and his group happy that they are not attacking him.


Overall there are plenty of very advantageous things a tank can provide whether or not people are attacking him, and he can encourage people to attack him, or prevent them from attacking someone else.


oh and they're lots of fun.

I've been playing a dwarf tank for the Order and it started to really depress me around level 20. I know I'm not the best at pvp but the destro tanks clearly have better... something... than the order tanks. Whether is a more developed economy, abilities, items or stats/armor, it's almost impossible to kill a destro tank my level.

I've tried most everything I can think of but the problem seems to be lack of damage. Maybe all the destro tanks are speccing for damage and I specced for defense, but lemme tell ya damage wins by a longshot.

If there is little PvE (and there is no way to make someone target you in PVP) a tank doesn't make much sense on a selfish personal level. It may benefit the party because idiots will attack the tanks first for some reason, but the smarter players just run by and the best I can do is slow them down or knock them back for a few seconds. It is a wholly unsatisfying experience, especially when coupled with the lack of dwarf damage. Tanks really need a way to make the other side have to fight them other a debuff. In scenarios the morale ability to root a person for 10 seconds has the nasty side effect of rooting him too far away for you to hit him due to lag. So lame.

Many of our moves are useless as well. I have a move called "Hold the line" which buffs the people behind me. The animation makes a big show of the dwarf putting his shoulder to the shield and try to block something. The best part is when a destro tank just jumps OVER me to get at my healers while I'm stuck looking like a dumbass.

The biggest problem is the lag in scenarios though. It's much harder with a melee class, so damage output is also important here as the guy you are fighting has a tendency to suddenly be 50 feet away. Scenarios are also the fastest way to level so truth be told a tank is probably the slowest recipe for leveling.

So all in all an order tank may be great to have in the party, but it kinda sucks to be in the game. I love this game don't get me wrong, but I don't see why tanks are needed at all with the exception of the public quests and maybe some dungeons, which no one seems to do. (E.G.- sewers)




Edited, Oct 10th 2008 3:46am by isoparam

I just respecced offensive tree and was doing pretty well in there. I guess I have to color myself stupid on this one, and mention that the offensive tree is the way to go without a doubt.

I stand corrected.