[Review] [Tank] Focused Offense

[forsa]

I see a lot of experts on those 8 pages, who either haven't played tanks at all, or "seen someone played in 2010 with rr100".
FO is crap tactic. +15% is not worth it, -15 hate is laughable, and -33% armor in RoR is a death sentence.

I would have considered using it if it was around +15% dmg - 20/15% armor and no hate trait.

My suggestion: +15 crit +10% chance to be critted (as tank would take damage from various sources, while attacking 1 target) - a truly focused offence.

Guard nerfing is a bad idea: I see a lot of tryhards who just dont guard anyone at all, so the nerf would just touch only good tanks.
Just my 0.2$

[zabis]

The whole guard nerfing idea seems to be a moot point, as a 2h offensive tank isn't going to be guarding anyways.

[TenTonHammer]

The whole guard nerfing idea seems to be a moot point, as a 2h offensive tank isn't going to be guarding anyways.

right but we have to look at things from the perspective of "organized group play" (where for some bizzare reason people would run a 2H tank) and "competitive warbands" (which would find use from 2h tanks) where clearly they would be guarding

:^p

[Eathisword]

The whole guard nerfing idea seems to be a moot point, as a 2h offensive tank isn't going to be guarding anyways.

Untrue... I guard and swap all the time. I am 2h. I am offensive. It is not moot. Pretending that only turtle tanks guard is very shortsighted.

Edit : tbh, I have experienced a lot of SnB BG/BO sitting on my RP, 150 feet away from their team, debuffing me (healdebuff/CD increaser) for entire scenarios, out of guard range of anybody and doing no damage. A shield doesn't make you a good tank, ya know.

[Dalgrimar]

The whole guard nerfing idea seems to be a moot point, as a 2h offensive tank isn't going to be guarding anyways.

Untrue... I guard and swap all the time. I am 2h. I am offensive. It is not moot. Pretending that only turtle tanks guard is very shortsighted.

I agree.
2h tank doesnt mean your not a tank annymore.

[zabis]

Of course some 2h tanks that run FO will still guard, but I believe that a majority of them will not. So, if you have an offensive boost of 15% and a nerf to guard, then that is just going to boost solo tanks and be a nerf for group oriented 2h tanks.

[Dalgrimar]

Of course some 2h tanks that run FO will still guard, but I believe that a majority of them will not. So, if you have an offensive boost of 15% and a nerf to guard, then that is just going to boost solo tanks and be a nerf for group oriented 2h tanks.

Tought you ment 2h tanks in general ATM.
Doubt anny tank currently runs FO or they must be really bad for running it.

[Dethcord]

I used to play a 2h BG with focused offence. It was fun, especially before the Monstrous Rending retarded nerf, I had Crimson Death crits for up to 1800, and MR crits for 1k+ in an AoE. It was great for melee trains. At the same time, I was always guarded, and I had one more melee guarded with my guard. A big advantage of a 2h tank is that you get DPS comparable to an mdps, but you still have a knockback, and a guard. Plus, minus wounds debuff was pretty good as it makes your target easier to burst down from 100% to 0, because of lower max HP, that is if you don't have another source of wounds debuff. Another plus is tank's 4th morale, which would bring us to total 3 tank morales in our usual group - DoK/Zealot/BG/Chosen/Chosen/Witch Elf.

I used to be pretty well known back then at the russian servers, so people knew that I'm squishy and focused me at all times, but I was guarded and it just gave me more hate to spend so I just spammed MR and CD when ready.

What most people keep forgetting is that unlike mdps, a dps tank has no detaunt. That means he may have decent survivability without focused offence, but with FO slotted, you suddenly recieve huge damage and even SW's damage becomes a concern, and the only way you can survive with FO in a big fight - is to be guarded by another tank.

There are various ways to balance focused offence to the point of being useful (I used it just for spike crits tbh), the first thing that comes to mind is something with armor piercing. Let's say, with focused armor slotted your attacks penetrate 35-50% of enemy's armor. That won't be an overkill even without armor penalty, because it still takes a tactic slot. Another idea is to make focused offence provide flat crit chance, or increased critical chance as you hit the same target over and over. ("focused", afterall). However, I don't know if it's possible to implement.

If devs plan to change FO, I strongly recommend to give up on the armor penalty. Because for -33% armor to be a worthy exchange, this tactic needs to give 35-40% damage, because it should grant huge damage as an exchange to being less survivable than a witch elf (because of no detaunt). and this would make 2h tanks overpowered in groups as they will form crossguarding groups and have more dps than an mdps groups on top of more CC.

[Tifereth]

Let's say, with focused armor slotted your attacks penetrate 35-50% of enemy's armor. That won't be an overkill ...

At this point, many posts simply devolve into suggestions without giving any proper reasons as to why they should be made.
Volgo, members of Fusion, many other knowledgeable people on here and my humble self already stated that increasing DPS is barely justifyable when some (namely IB, SM and BO) 2H DPS classes already have enough damage potential and have the benefit of bringing more CC, a myriad of additional buffs plus another extra guard. You could cut that all out once FO is slotted, but to what end? OP's suggestion of getting rid of guard as sort of a drawback looks great on paper, but when the upside will be something ridiculous as +40% damage or 50% armour pen, then the suggestions go overboard imo. Mediocre changes will simply result into everybody continuing to not pick it, and Megadeath even pointed out some (admittedly at this point not useful) uses as off tank/in pve.

Inner faction balance, buffs unable to stack etc does more towards unviability of certain classes and group compositions, than removing drawbacks from and powercreeping FO ever could fix. At the risk of repeating myself: An across the board change, when
certain classes are already fine, seems like a step in the wrong direction to me. Wouldn't it be better to look at underperforming 2H classes individually? It's not a general performance problem and more DPS across all tanks is not needed.

[Dethcord]

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Armor penentration was a quick thought and I talk from 2h BG's perspective.
For classes like IB or BO it may be too much indeed.

but when the upside will be something ridiculous as +40% damage or 50% armour pen, then the suggestions go overboard imo

Well, it's expected to have a damage of a WE or a WH or even more, if you're about to die even faster than those classes due to lack of detaunts, parry r1 morales, etc. But it will make those classes imbalanced in other circumstances like crossguarding groups.

FO was clearly a tactic that was intended to bring tanks closer to MDPS, so the question is how to bring tanks' damage on par with mdps with this tactic, while they maintain the same survivability with no detaunt, and so they won't be overpowered due to having tools like knockbacks, guard and mass taunts. And at the same time, it seems bad to remove tanks' singature ability/role - guard.
And, it still takes a tactic slot, so it should give more than it takes, or it will be not worth to ever slot it.

At it's current state, FO is not worth slotting (as a BG), even if you remove the armor reduction altogether.

Wouldn't it be better to look at underperforming 2H classes individually?

Agreed, however it won't make FO any more desirable.