Yaliskah wrote: Sat Mar 23, 2019 5:55 pm
Ok here we go.
Since the begining of this project we are testing, changing and keeping and removing changes in term of balance.
Purpose is always the same, bringing as much as possible balance to the game. Sometime change against all odds is good, sometime it is not. But fact is, nothing is engraved in the stone.
Server has been patched what.. 4 hours ago, and even some haven't tested anything,some complain, some rejoice, some don't see the reason, some understand the motive.
This test -cause like any change it is a test first- don't come from nowhere and is motivated by players feedbacks complaining that SnB are useless compared with 2H cause tankiness and general archetype tools are not really impacted in facts when DPS is demultiplied and tools even they can be different are still usefull for the group. I personally share this, and have played Snd and 2H tank in smallscale, and lets be honest, i see no advantage to play a SnB tank, excpet in Dungeons OR to Funnel/siege, which is very situationnal...
I guess no one expect that a DPS Healer for exemple heal as much as a pure Heal. We all know the story and the river of tears about this (DOK, WP, AM, Shaman...). When a DPS heal use his basic archetype, heals are divied /2. Thats a player choice, and no one coplains about it (except those you play with in scenario).
For the same reason, I don't see why a DPS tank would have 100% access to his basic tool, and as for for the heal divide guard /2 seems to be fair.
Now, lets put a little perspective in this. Guard hasn't been removed to 2H. It has been halved. Which means, they will absorb less damages from the target they will guard (50/50 > 75/25). Good thing for the player hmself, let received damage, more survivability.
To conclude. There is no crusade against anyone. There is even no realm balance issue. There is in my very honnest opinion some leverage given to SnB tanks vs 2H tanks in term of defensive tools for the group.
To conclude part 2 : Please stay cool and civilised, we can make mistakes, and our purpose is to make the game better not worse in the end. So concrete feedbacks are welcome more than over-reactions
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Thank you for being brave enough to post your reasoning.
A lot of terminology is being thrown around so lets clarify this:
What is a 2h tank? A 2h tank is being used synonymously with dps-tank or off-tank and that isn't true at all. The tactics, gear set and talismans define whether a tank is going to be offensive or defensive, not the weapon they hold. The entire purpose of the WEAPON as a tank is to unlock or lock certain abilities. I'll use BG as an example. Your choices when holding a weapon are: Crimson death + reliable 3s kd + 10s cd punt vs Block Channel + unreliable 5s kd + 20s cd punt + hold the line. Other classes like SM/BO have 2h specific tactics that can be unlocked but you aren't forced to spec them. Apart from block chance and hold the line vs 2h parry strikethrough it has no bearing on whether you're going to be offensive or defensive. You can run a tanky 2h or an offensive s/b through tactics. With the exception of SM/BO, tanks dont significantly contribute offensively through raw tooltip damage regardless of their spec. Dont let scenario numbers fool you, a lot of tank damage is fluff damage and irrelevant, like kobs/chosen damage auras or AOE of other tanks. The offensive contribution of tanks comes through abilities usually unlocked by 2h. For example you can run a max parry high armor high toughness BG that holds a 2h so he can use crimson death. It won't hit for much, but the crit effect and possibly wounds debuff effect is still applied. But that BG would still be tanky. Up until this patch there was a skill involved playing the offensive tank slot, where the player playing that party slot would have to balance offense and defense. Too much offense slotted and you're a liability defensively, and too much defense and your party will struggle to kill things against other good parties.
The problem with S/B tanks is that someone in the development team erroneously transferred most of the useful utility to 2h only builds. BG didn't use to have a 2h kd. BO channel attack used to not have a 2h restriction. Punt cooldown used to not be affected by whether 2h or shield. There was a
misguided effort to harmonize all tanks to be as similar to each other as possible and in the end the 2hers reaped all the rewards.
So now we have an issue of S+B lacking a purpose.
First, I contest this somewhat. Hold the line and block chance and block-proced abilities are no small loss. Every time I'm in a narrow area or in a fort or in a warband+ fight I much prefer the shield. Its why I carry a shield and 1-her at all times in inventory so I can change easily. I don't benefit from a full mastery or renown respect but at least I have hold the line. Every time I'm in a WB I go to the trainer and spend FIVE entire gold to respec for s/b. I see nearly all other WB tanks using shields. Its the same thing as DPS reskilling for AOE or ST. Different specs for different situations. It doesn't make one useless. It actually depends entirely on perspective. Its the same situation with tanks. Different setups for different situations. Players that play in WB would probably have a shield at all times and players that play scenarios and anything from 3-12 man would run 2h for the extra offense. As explained above 2h absolutely does not mean you're running some solo suicidal spec.
Second, lets assume that you were right in that statement. I can't fathom how you logically concluded that the correct course of action would be nerf 2h tanks. Would it not be more reasonable to simply increase the utility of s/b tanks? A subtle but useful change would be to simply reverse the punt CDs... 10s for s/b and 20s for 2h. Or alternatively in the case of BG instead of a block needed for their 5sec kd change it to simply "requires a shield". A twist of a screwdriver instead of slamming it with a meteor.
But instead you change guard, the most iconic and stable mechanic in warhammer. First and foremost, before any abilities are cast, before weapons or specs are chosen the role of any tank is to guard. Remove or nerf that than you call into question the reason for even inviting a tank to the party at all. Instead of a 2h tank why not run a 3rd dps? 1 s/b chosen/kobs for the auras and stagger, 1 mdps beside the tank, and 2 rdps way in the back. Lets get over a long-standing myth that offensive tanks pump out comparable dps to an actual dps class. They do not. With SM/BO its arguable but you have to recognize how squishy those classes are...they dont have cc imunities, they dont have charge, they dont have detaunt. Offensive SM/BO exist and work because there is a 2nd more defensive tank in the party to guard THEM if they get focused. Any dps class is better suited to dps than an off tank. An off-tank works because in small scale you need a bit of offensive pressure from one of the tanks to get kills. ~90% comes from the dps and that final 10%, the difference between killing someone or not, comes from the off tank. But the off-tank is still guarding, he is still mitigating 50% of incoming damage to one person, of which he parries about 30-60%. He is still there to swap guard in chase the defensive tank is punted. His core purpose (guard) is still the primary concern.
So you're a tank player, you just spent 2 months getting your BG to rr80, you're happy and ready to blow your load of fun and suddenly you're slapped in the face with this change, much in the same way an unsuspecting, naive tourist in Thailand is slapped by something unpleasant. What do you do?
You have a few options.
a) stay with the 2h. But then your choppa is only getting 25% guard mitigation and you're soon kicked from any party whether wb or 6 man. Keeping the mdps alive is more important than whatever damage you provide.
b) swap to s/b. Full defense S/B does nothing outside of 48v48 situations so thats mostly out of the question. Offensive S/B simply doesn't really have the utility 2h BG used to have. Still as useless as you were before as s/b.
Just a word of caution to the developers. The developers of games like starcraft or LOL don't implement balance changes based on feedback from silver league players. I don't mean be to be snarky because its not an elitism thing, its simply about game knowledge. A tank player who spends 75% of his gameplay experience channeling hold the line is not mentally equipped to provide coherent and logical feedback. Everyone's feedback is valid, but not all should be equally weighted, nor should the feedback of the vocal minority be mistaken as that of the majority. What is especially concerning is that the biggest change in the history of the game (that is what this is, no exaggeration for real) was uploaded straight to live without testing, without a public poll and without the feedback of the best and most experienced active players.
