2H Tanks: 9001th thread edition

[Dreadspectre]

I do see the solution in a (de)buff-increase, a relatively simple way of making the twohanded tanks a bit more valuable. Having a 120 Strength aura or a 132 Strength aura might already help equalizing those specs, especially with the tactic changes above.

Honestly we could just give all Tank classes a core passive called like "Intimidating Presence" or something that says:

"When equipped with a GW, you emit an aura to everyone in 30 feet that buffs STR by X."

[Idrinth]

I do see the solution in a (de)buff-increase, a relatively simple way of making the twohanded tanks a bit more valuable. Having a 120 Strength aura or a 132 Strength aura might already help equalizing those specs, especially with the tactic changes above.

Honestly we could just give all Tank classes a core passive called like "Intimidating Presence" or something that says:

"When equipped with a GW, you emit an aura to everyone in 30 feet that buffs STR by X."

10% is an example
The point was not the strength aura, but the easy example - it'll be about as useful for other buffs and debuffs tanks have, even if it would only affect the stat ones. Consider it a simple way of upping the usefulness a bit

[Vaul]

Barring a complete redesign of the mastery trees, it'd be neat I think if 2H tanks were given a unique ability or method to counter Guard in some manner, and particularly SnB Guard.

Quoting myself from page 4 but want to add an ability idea I thought of that I think could be provide an interesting dynamic. Values van be tweaked of course.

Any time you critically hit you bewilder your opponent for 4s. During this time any Guard damage they block has a 50% chance to be redirected back to their Guardee. Effect cannot proc more than once every X seconds.

This would be a passive core ability that requires Great Weapon. The on crit requirement means the 2H tank has to sacrifice deference to make it work, needing Crit as well as Str in order to get through the SnB tank's avoidance.

[peterthepan3]

no need to really spec it for the rather ehhh

bonuses it gives

also YSMBD >>> GWBC

5% parry and 10% damage on a class that is known for dealing out among the game's biggest crits is not 'meh' at all. In regards to being useful for the group, i.e. as a tank? Perhaps. But it's good if you're aiming for DPS assist, which the BO reigns supreme at.
2H Tanks certainly do not need a damage buff, the way I see it. If you play certain tank classes well (namely BO, SM, IB and BG - Chosen and KOTBS already have a plethora of other things that more than justify their lower dps potential) you can put out respectable damage. The problem is their survivability (IB aside).
There need to be more incentives for using a 2h - and damage is not one of them.

[th3gatekeeper]

The fact that tanks have the option to do SnB immediately makes 2h worthless. Doing like 15% - 25% more damage in a scenario is not worth the defenses lost and the utility granted from the SnB trees. They should have had some heavy armor wearing only 2hander classes with some type of defensive passives or abilities to negate damage in my opinion.

That is why most ideas centered around aditional utility, from what I recall:
- kicks better by weapontype
- buff/debuff stronger when twohanded
- higher movement speed when twohanded
- anti-guard of some kind

The small part talking about damage was mostly rebalancing focussed offence, that seems a bit low on returns for the prce payed.

Idrinth, not to belittle your response to my response last page. I thoroughly read and agree with you almost entirely. This post summerized this thread so nicely I wanted to try and keep things on topic and promote some of the common suggestions.

Something I am seeing in responses though, are pretty complicated mechanics, both from an understanding standpoint, to a coding/design standpoint.

I keep going back to the ackronym "KISS" - Keep it simple stupid. And think that when designing mechanics, often times less is more.

So while I agree the idea of guard bypass, or mechanics that have a % chance to redirect back the damage at the guardee etc all sound AMAZING, they are not necessarily "simple" or "common sense". Like Azarael said, a big 2H should be able to deliver more force for punts than a 1H, this just seems "common sense". Having something that debuffs a target for 4 seconds after a crit that returns guard damage etc, isnt simple nor common sense (IMO). So respectfully, Vaul, I would not be a huge fan of that suggestion though I do think it is creative and would be fun.

To elaborate on this quote though:

- kicks better by weapontype: This seems easy to me. GWs get an inherent 10% block passthrough. They could also be given a ~10%+ Knock Distance inherent stat - I dont know many classes that get Knocks? Could apply to ONLY tank 2s? Then you could ALSO make abilities that increase distance (like Banish Darkness on Knight) require a 2H and possibly some other modifiers. My personal BIGGEST issue with just leaving this as a "knock" is frankly restricts this benefit to EU players only. I gave up punt because I cant tell you how many times I would be behind a target and aim them towards my group only to punt them over my own head into their own group - because of ping... So Ive never been the biggest fan of this ability since its too unreliable for me...

- buff/debuff stronger when twohanded - I dont know how this would be easily incoorperated into the game unless you want to somehow modify "taunt" somehow... This is where I think "Focused Offense" could come in potentially. Or as you suggested, somehow equipping a 2H somehow makes taunt apply 5-6 stacks instead of 3. This would be a damage increase overall from a 1H and incorporate the class mechanic however this isnt "common sense" unless you want to state it in the tooltip.... As for other buffs/debuffs, im not sure how you incoorperate this either without some sort of massive overhaul. Each class has things (like Knights get a Wounds debuff) that you could make more potent with a 2H... IDK I am just not a huge fan of drastically changing mechanics based on weapons.

- higher movement speed when twohanded. This is actually another thing I was considering. We talked about Juggernaught having some added benefits. Another idea I had here was you could make: "Unstoppable juggernaut" - no longer require being CCd to activate. Makes you immune to control effects for 3 seconds and increases you and your parties movement by x% for 3-5 seconds. Something like that as a party utility/Offensive ability that can be used to charge/avoid CC pro-actively but require a 2H. Kinda the "offensive tank" aspect. Or even, make this provide CC immunity, run speed, AND damage for JUST your tank for X seconds.

- anti-guard of some kind. This would be difficult to program and play with. One of my initial thoughts would be that if you taunted a tank, it disrupts/interrupts their guard forcing them to recast it. But again, this is solved with addons and I am not a HUGE fan of requiring add ons to play the game... We talked about guard "pass through" which could also be tied to "taunt" - in that taunts damage (30%) would strike through guard...


Overall, I dislike ideas that add complication or many modifications... I am much more in favor of just modifying tactics/abilities to require 2H versus 1H (for example tactics that require blocking are clearly 1h) as a way to achieve these "modifications. Like making Super punt a 2H only tactic. Making F.O. a 2H only tactic or giving all takes "GWM" instead of FO.... Can re-purpose F.O. to be made into some "2h only utility". Same with "Unstoppable juggernaut".

Would it make sense to list out all the "generic" tactics and peg them as either 1H/2H or neutral?

[Idrinth]

Idrinth, not to belittle your response to my response last page. I thoroughly read and agree with you almost entirely.

I don't expect a reply, don't worry

Something I am seeing in responses though, are pretty complicated mechanics, both from an understanding standpoint, to a coding/design standpoint.

I keep going back to the ackronym "KISS" - Keep it simple stupid. And think that when designing mechanics, often times less is more.

I think most agree on it(even me), sometimes KISS just feels different between persons.

- kicks better by weapontype: [...] I dont know many classes that get Knocks? [...] My personal BIGGEST issue with just leaving this as a "knock" is frankly restricts this benefit to EU players only.[...]

It's unreliable for most I think, I'm eu and my kicks often do not at all match where they should have been going. Might be just me being slow maybe. As far as I am concerned, kicks are all easy to learn, extremely hard to master, especially when the game is laggy.

Or as you suggested, somehow equipping a 2H somehow makes taunt apply 5-6 stacks instead of 3. This would be a damage increase overall from a 1H and incorporate the class mechanic however this isnt "common sense" unless you want to state it in the tooltip

The main point here is not improving the burst, while keeping pressure up longer - keep a supporting role. I don't think the difference is that big, that it would require leaps to make sense, but yes, it might not be the first thing you'd expect, agreed. What is keeping it KISS, would be, that it's a benefit to what tanks already do, so they'd just need to adapt a little.

As for other buffs/debuffs, im not sure how you incoorperate this either without some sort of massive overhaul. Each class has things (like Knights get a Wounds debuff) that you could make more potent with a 2H... IDK I am just not a huge fan of drastically changing mechanics based on weapons.

I don't know exactly how buffs and debuffs are handled server-side, I'd assume their numerical values are stored somewhere, so at the point of first creating those, you'd just multiply in the extra 10% - pretty much the same point, that needs to take care of ability levels for example.

higher movement speed when twohanded. This is actually another thing I was considering. We talked about Juggernaught having some added benefits. Another idea I had here was you could make: "Unstoppable juggernaut" - no longer require being CCd to activate. Makes you immune to control effects for 3 seconds and increases you and your parties movement by x% for 3-5 seconds. Something like that as a party utility/Offensive ability that can be used to charge/avoid CC pro-actively but require a 2H. Kinda the "offensive tank" aspect. Or even, make this provide CC immunity, run speed, AND damage for JUST your tank for X seconds.

Maybe give all 3 options and toss them around between the tank classes?
IB and Chosen would get "no cc needed, 3s immunity, party movement +5%"
BG and SM would get "Passive 10% speed"
BO and Knight would get "+20% for 5s speed after use for them and their guardee"

The grouping is intentional, so that the mirroring is smaller and the effects hopefully don't make a specific class too strong.

We talked about guard "pass through" which could also be tied to "taunt" - in that taunts damage (30%) would strike through guard...

That might actually pretty dangerous, it would equal out to 80% / 50% of the normal damage - I'm pretty sure I'd run a 3 or 4 tank group with that option and rotate taunt I think the amount might need to be smaller, more like 70% / 60%.
I am not a fan of removing guard - while I'd see that via aura quickly, it's just annoying and not fun for either side.
We could use anti-guard as something specable to help out specific 2-handed classes once the rest is better balanced - that would be a tool to majorly up the usefulness of that spec.

Can re-purpose F.O. to be made into some "2h only utility". Same with "Unstoppable juggernaut".

I would prefer to have as little weapon-locked tactics as possible, since that would give more options, more choices and more fun when planning.

Would it make sense to list out all the "generic" tactics and peg them as either 1H/2H or neutral?

Not sure, I think that details would still require in-class balancing and that won't be achieved with those tactics. The only tactic I'd see useable is the Juggernaut one, since it's currently pretty much a wasted slot - with rare exceptions.

[th3gatekeeper]

It's unreliable for most I think, I'm eu and my kicks often do not at all match where they should have been going. Might be just me being slow maybe. As far as I am concerned, kicks are all easy to learn, extremely hard to master, especially when the game is laggy.

Yeah, its almost mandatory to get them staggered or knocked down first before you can aim a punt.... Wish it was more reliable because it could be a GREAT way to "break guard".... I dont think this would be a good idea, however it almost seems like "Punt" needs to be a 2 part ability. Hit someone once, and it causes a 1 second "stun" and then you hit again for the actual "punt" in the direction you want. I tried speccing into the "stun" for Knights but its too unreliable with a tank block/parrying it or just flat out a big loss of damage (as 2h). So again, really just not something to "build" a character around....

The main point here is not improving the burst, while keeping pressure up longer - keep a supporting role. I don't think the difference is that big, that it would require leaps to make sense, but yes, it might not be the first thing you'd expect, agreed. What is keeping it KISS, would be, that it's a benefit to what tanks already do, so they'd just need to adapt a little.

Yeah making Taunt last longer has always been appealing to me. 3 stacks falls off ridiculously fast... Without the 5/5 duelist gear, its completely unreliable to use for damage boosts. I came from a game called Neverwinter (not nights, just Neverwinter) and the "tank" class there had a "taunt" called "Knights Challenge" where it would give the Tank 100% damage boost against the target but then ALSO give 100% damage boost from the target TO the tank. Needless to say, it was mainly used as a way to burst a healer or unsuspecting class. It also lasted a full 10 seconds.

So no way would I recommend 100%, but I do think simply increasing # of stacks up to 5 or 6 makes it more meaningful. The idea here is a "taunt" though and IMO I think it should be dangerous to NOT attack the tank if you get taunted. Right now, even with taunt up, even with over stacking STR past soft cap WITH a 2H and even IF you want to be a pretend "MDPS" and use F.O. you still wont hit that hard.... Which is why people just ignore 2H tanks (like Knights)... I cant tell you how many times I am beating on a healer and he is able to out heal my damage.... Since I dont contain much burst to scare them, and my DPS is low compared to their HPS... On my SM my only advantage is WW which silences but even then PLUS spamming my 50% longer build times for 5 seconds, they can still outheal my full DPS 2h tank... Before people quote this and say I am doing it wrong, I know, I support MDPS with Guard on them. My entire illustration was just to point out that even with beefing up F.O. and what not, its not as if youll see some 2H tanks killing EVERYONE. You can still out heal their DPS as its not very good. Rather than just a flat damage buff. I like increasing taunt up to 5-6 and I REALLY like being able to slot a tactic that bumps the damage from taunt up another 10-20% as well.

Maybe give all 3 options and toss them around between the tank classes?
IB and Chosen would get "no cc needed, 3s immunity, party movement +5%"
BG and SM would get "Passive 10% speed"
BO and Knight would get "+20% for 5s speed after use for them and their guardee"

Only issue I see with this is how do you space this out? Its a tactic right? So it would just be spelled out differently for each class? Possible.... Not a HUGE fan however I do think there is more to this idea that could be spelled out... I just dont like everyone given the same ability/tactic but it works different on each class and this doesnt seem to imply 2H only so it would be for all?

I would prefer to have as little weapon-locked tactics as possible, since that would give more options, more choices and more fun when planning.

Yeah I hear you on this one.... Same could be said about encounters though but thats part of the issue right now, 1H can do almost everything 2h can.

In reality what options do we have to beef up 2H tanks?
- Tactics requiring 2H
- Encounters requiring 2H
- Inherent bonuses to 2H weapons (but this impacts all classes).
- A new encounter (like HtL) that requires a 2H.....

Actually that may be some solution. A "HtL" equivalent.... Since HtL is based on defense, this would be an encounter that costs maybe ~80+ AP so it eats nearly all your AP (rather than Ap/sec cast). Maybe starts with:


"You focus your offenses against the enemy. Increasing your AA speed by 50% for 12 seconds. You will also boost all allies up to 50 feet away, increasing their AA speed and crit damage by 15%. This effect cannot stack. This ability requires a 2H"

Something like that... So basically you trade all your AP (or most of it) for an AA boost - in reality over 12 seconds this means an extra ~3 AAs... But also boosts allies AA a tiny bit along with their crit damage. This provides a meaningful Party buff all 2H tanks could use to benefit the group at the expense of their own AP....

Just another idea....

[Annaise16]

Guard - It was suggested to give 2h tanks taunt a guard "debuff", which is a great idea. Something small like a 10% reduction in guards effectiveness while taunt is active would be interesting. At the same time, I would suggest changing 2h tanks guard to a base 40% reduction. Which might seem contradictory in a thread about buffing 2h tanks, but if they are going to be the offensive utility tanks, then the defensive utility builds need some advantage besides simply blocking more guard damage.

I thought you were trying to make 2H tanks more useful in groups. With this change, you would ensure that no one would want a 2H tank in their group. A 10 percentage point reduction in Guard is a 20% increase in damage on the guardee. That's a large increase in damage in the context of this game.


All those people complaining that GWM is an underpowered tactic, I suggest you look at what the best, average, and below average tactics do for other archetypes. I think you'll find that a 10% boost to damage and a 5% increase in Parry ranks it well above average and up near the best in game category.

[Idrinth]

Right now, even with taunt up, even with over stacking STR past soft cap WITH a 2H and even IF you want to be a pretend "MDPS" and use F.O. you still wont hit that hard

Tbh this might be a leveling issue, tanks are extremely based on their tactics. That you can not (under normal circumstances) kill a healer yourself was always intended btw, should be the same for lonely dps.

Maybe give all 3 options and toss them around between the tank classes?
IB and Chosen would get "no cc needed, 3s immunity, party movement +5%"
BG and SM would get "Passive 10% speed"
BO and Knight would get "+20% for 5s speed after use for them and their guardee"

Only issue I see with this is how do you space this out? Its a tactic right? So it would just be spelled out differently for each class? Possible.... Not a HUGE fan however I do think there is more to this idea that could be spelled out... I just dont like everyone given the same ability/tactic but it works different on each class and this doesnt seem to imply 2H only so it would be for all?

All of thaat extra was meant to be twohanded only. The differences by class would mostly just give a way to build groups differently - might result in more mixed groups.

I would prefer to have as little weapon-locked tactics as possible, since that would give more options, more choices and more fun when planning.

Yeah I hear you on this one.... Same could be said about encounters though but thats part of the issue right now, 1H can do almost everything 2h can.

In reality what options do we have to beef up 2H tanks?
- Tactics requiring 2H
- Encounters requiring 2H
- Inherent bonuses to 2H weapons (but this impacts all classes).
- A new encounter (like HtL) that requires a 2H.....

I don't think a new ability is actually doable by the team, I'd assume it would need client changes. I would still go with all first three
- tactics requiring would be tactics working "better" with(like juggernaut above)
- Abilities requiring already exist, but that is tank by tank balancing
- Inherit bonus should be moved from -block to -defence or -parry

Actually that may be some solution. A "HtL" equivalent.... Since HtL is based on defense, this would be an encounter that costs maybe ~80+ AP so it eats nearly all your AP (rather than Ap/sec cast). Maybe starts with:
"You focus your offenses against the enemy. Increasing your AA speed by 50% for 12 seconds. You will also boost all allies up to 50 feet away, increasing their AA speed and crit damage by 15%. This effect cannot stack. This ability requires a 2H"

Something like that... So basically you trade all your AP (or most of it) for an AA boost - in reality over 12 seconds this means an extra ~3 AAs... But also boosts allies AA a tiny bit along with their crit damage. This provides a meaningful Party buff all 2H tanks could use to benefit the group at the expense of their own AP....

15% extra crit damage is huge tbh and most tanks would not only lose AP but also their ability to buff and debuff - I don't think that this would solve the issue tbh.

[Scrilian]

Is it me or people just love to play their 2h DPS tanks? There are like 2-3 threads with heated discussions of them going all the time on these forums.

Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with them, but I always thought of 2h DPS tanks as the ultimate choice for a player, that wants to play as a melee-fighter and most likely go solo.
They have the traits of both tank and dps worlds, bringing enough CC, while being still fairly tanky, able to stick to the target and deal substantial damage if needed and even some unique 2h only moves.

And all 2h tanks are quite unique in their own way with skills/mechanics/gameplay that fit their lore-fantasy perfectly - one is a hatred driven darth vader with a glaive, the other is a cheerful grumbling slow, but precise and deadly grudge driven dawi lad, the third is the corrupted forsaken ravager from the cold wastes.

There is even an elven jedi that practised his enchanted blade for centuries, an elite greatsword champion with feathers devoted to a goddess of war, whos all about glory and discipline, and a nasty most armored urk with a baseball bat with spikes in it. They are so cool that it makes you want to play one!

Idk how one would fit this jack-of-all-trades ultimate elite melee combatant into 6mans without making them replace the existing go-to classes in one role or the other?
Why not just let them have the 2h tanks have their fun, where now there is plenty of it even if you take them now in your 6man comp, and leave an option to go SnB if they really to push your group potential further and shine in a group-vs-zerg encounters?