We’ll I’ve been playing my Dwarf Iron Breaker (tank) for about 2 months now and have reached level 28, I don’t game everyday so don’t kill me that I’m not lev 40 yet. From early on I found my character very well balance but as I’ve been playing more and more I feel my tank is getting the short end of the stick, mainly in RvR and PQs.
The main problem is that tanks have low DPS, because of this when doing a public quests or a Keep siege, I always finish in the bottom of the list when it comes to participation. My tank is meant to take massive damage, which it does, but when the roll comes for loot bags, I almost never get one, which is complete bs. Healers get participation points for the amount of points they heal, but tanks don’t get any for the amount of damage they take.
In the upcoming 1.05 patch, there are 2 significant changes for Ironbreakers which will make us even weaker. We have a Grudge meter where every time we get hit it builds and the higher it builds the more effective our attacks or buffs become. So optimumly we’d want this to be 100% at all times. Currently Grudge builds 5 points every time we’re hit, then after 30 seconds of not being hit decays at 5 per second. The change in 1.05 is huge, instead of 30 seconds it will be 10 seconds and instead of 5/sec, it will decay at 10/sec. This basically means if we stop to loot or need some time to heal, were going to start at zero for just about every fight. The only time my Iron Breaker does any sort of decent damage is when I’m at 100 Grudge, so this will not only make my character much weaker, but it will also mean I’m going to be getting even less participation points in keep sieges and PQs. How are tanks supposed to win loot if we can’t get any points in participation because our attacks are so weak?
Binding Grudge & Heavy Blow are the two attacks I use the most with my Iron Breaker, mainly because they do the best damage. However damage depends how much Grudge you have built up and both are length of time attacks. For instance Binding Grudge at 100 Grudge might do 700 dmg over 15 seconds. The problem here is when doing PQs or Keep Seiges, most enemies don’t last 15 seconds unless it’s a champ or hero. So while people that do high DPS get a ton of participation points, I don’t because the enemy dies in 5 seconds so the damage dealt was only 230 and I get much less points.
The second big change is with our Oath Friend. As a Iron Breaker you can select one ally and deem them your Oath Friend which will grant them and yourself bonus buffs. One of the big pluses is that every time your Oath Friend gets hit, you gain 10 Grudge points, making this is a great way to build and maintain your Grudge points. Not so in 1.05. Not only is this reduced from 10 points to 5, but it’s further reduced the more Grudge you have built up.
0 – 30 Grudge you gain 5 points
31 – 60 Grudge you gain 3 points
60 – 100 Grudge you gain 1 points
So not only are we going to lose our points much much faster, it will be harder to build it up. In essence their turning us into tanks with BB guns. I would have no problem with these changes if they also made changes to participation points. It’s going to be much harder for Iron Breakers to win loot once these changes hit the public servers.
Damn, sounds harsh.
Playing as my Sorc alt, We have spells we can spam with nobody around to build up our dark magic and keep it from decaying. Anything you can do like that to keep your grudge up? (I dont know much about tank mechanics.)
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Also saw a video recently (http://www.warhammermovies.com/movieview.php?id=1243) of a sword and board Chosen doing an insane amount of damage. He had a pretty specialized build and style of play though.
I would also point this stuff out on some forums if its not already there. So hopefully it does not make it to the public servers.
Maybe people should also get the same participation points for being healed as healing someone else. That would solve everything there. Everyone would get more participation, especially the tanks.
Thats rough. Did they do any nerfing of the swordmaster? Seems like SM will be the tank to play if they don’t modify participation points to benefit the meat shield players.
I don’t think the nerf was for the Ironbreakers that were tanking, although it affects them equally. A buddy of mine and myself both played Vengeance Ironbreakers, and we could stack an unlimited amount of oathfriend buffs on each other(vengeful strike being the only exception). If there were 3 iron breakers, for example, and I had oath friends from two others, I could get upwards of an extra 100 strength in tier 2, about 1400 armor(roughly 80~% damage mitigation at rank 21), as well as ridiculous amounts(400+) of willpower which helped in disrupting spells.
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Not only that, but the way grudge built up before guaranteed 100 grudges at all times for any ironbreaker that was in our team, so long as they had another ironbreaker oathfriend’d. We would always share the top spots in contribution in a PQ, too, because of the insane damage we would put out with buffs stacked.
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Vengeance did need a little “balancing,” not so much a nerf. Perhaps removing the ability for OF buffs to stack(which they did) would’ve been enough. I don’t see why brotherhood/stone ironbreakers had to suffer because of the fact that vengeance ironbreakers were melee sorcs with 80% damage mitigation.
One way to remedy your original issue of not getting rewards for tanking is a suggestion I’ve made before here:
http://www.tremblinghand.net/2008/10/making-xp-smarter.html
Basically, give tanks renown/xp/inf for *taking* damage in the same way that dps gets points for dealing damage and healers get it for healing damage.
Thus a tank can do their job – take damage instead of it being doled out on their team – and they can get the rewards for doing that job well.
The problem with a “damage taken” contribution is that it adds yet another way for DPS to be on top of the contribution meters. Contribution variables have to be global, they can’t just be added to a specific archetype. Keeping that in mind, a class that is doing a ton of damage will more than likely peel aggro from a tank, and start taking damage themselves, thus increasing their overall contribution. If the damage those DPS classes are taking is healed, it adds more points to the healers, further watering down the contribution made by tank classes.
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Additionally, even with archetype restrictions(only healers get XP from healing, only tanks get XP from damage taken), it’s a system that wouldn’t encourage you to play your character well at all. Take the way the current system works, then blow up the XP Bright Wizards get solo’ing in scenarios by ten thousand and that will be the result of DPS classes getting rewarded for dealing damage. Rewarding the Ironbreaker, Swordmaster, or Black Orc for damage taken would also encourage them to do the EXACT opposite of what you might hope it would. Given that they would get XP for damage taken, the most efficient way to take damage, to me, would be to walk into a scenario WITHOUT a shield, and with as many points into a DPS mastery as possible. If archetype restrictions exist, and I don’t get gain XP from dealing damage, then great, all I have to do is just walk into the enemy team and die over and over. Healers would get the short end of the stick since there’s no real way for them to exploit an XP/healing system.
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Think about the potential for exploitation such a system would have. Especially with Bright Wizards or Sorcerors. If a meter that lets you select where you want your XP to come from existed, BWs and Sorcs would have it set to 50% damage taken/dealt. All they have to do after that is sit in a warcamp at 100 combustion or dark magic respectively, and powerlevel themselves to 40 by dealing damage to themselves, AND taking damage from themselves.
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A lot of things look good on paper but are either impossible to implement in practice due to player abuse, or contradict with current game mechanics(not just WAR, but whatever game we might be discussing).
BTW,that’s very useful for my health.