So I'm desperately trying to make my brain work tonight, for some reason motivation has disappeared and I'm tempted to just watch a film or some such, but I'm going to force myself to write something. Better to at least be a bit productive today even if I did sod all at work today.So I wrote an earlier post about having changes to the taunt and challenge mechanic by adding in a tactic which improves it by speccing deeper into the tanking tree for tanks, and after speaking with Bootae earlier in the week we liked the idea of giving sword and board (or choppa 'n' blocka) tanks something more rewarding for speccing that way in RvR. To me, tactics are an easy way to look at how tanks can be improved, we have certain ones which are shared or at least are all very similar and yet we hardly have any that interact with our archetype abilities (taunt, challenge, guard and hold the line). So after my little thought about challenge/taunt being changed a bit, how about we look at Hold the Line....
Tanks have an unused tactic which is shared amongst them... Unstoppable Juggernaut. This tactic is all but useless these days with and in fact was never that great to start with, I can't see any tank justifying using up a tactic slot on it when there is so many better tactics out there. Now I don't want to make a tactic which works with Hold the Line that makes it the Uberbestomgwtfbbqpwn tactic of all time but I do want to make something which makes you think "Hmm, could I possibly slot this instead?". So after a few thoughts and simply looking at the name of the tactic I actually realised it's fairly simple.
1 Slot Career Tactic - No range - No cool down - Passive
UNSTOPPABLE JUGGERNAUT
While using Hold The Line! you also become immune to roots, snares and knockdowns, this also increases the channeling cost of Hold The Line! to 25 AP/sec
Nice isn't it? You can still be staggered and knocked back and the AP cost does go up, but it certainly helps to make tanks push forward more and gives another nice effect to having a shield. My other version of this was was to include knock backs (but not staggers) and increase the AP again to 30/sec.
Would this make a worthless tactic better? Certainly. Would it be used? I don't yet know but I can see potential for keep sieges and with WAR heading to more important sieges it could find a very nice place. Any thoughts?
"immune to roots, snares and knockdowns"
ReplyDeleteThat's all well and good, but who's actually rooting, snaring or knocking down a tank who's running in holding the line? Admittedly, knockdown's are a little more common on tanks, but still, most DPS classes are just going to run AROUND the tank and hit the mid/backlines
I often see aoe snares and roots affecting tanks, not to mention morale aoe knockdowns (I think) on keep defences. I also know that we tend to fight as a ball so pushing past or going around tanks ends up with you pushing past or going around everyone else anyway.
ReplyDeleteIt's not a perfect idea at all, don't get me wrong, but it's certainly better than what's in place. I'm trying to think of a better version or something which all tanks could use which links in with HTL
Perhaps it could be made in to a single-target defensive tool?
ReplyDelete"Hold The Line! will now grant your defensive target 100% block for X seconds, but will root you for the duration."
X could be increased with the mastery level. Maybe 3 seconds base to 7 seconds at the highest? In fact, the block percentage could be increased with mastery level too.
So instead of being an AOE tool, it becomes an effective tool for protecting ONE target entirely for a duration.
Hmmm that could be a good idea however block only works if the character has a shield, it goes back to increasing dodge and disrupt .
ReplyDeleteI'll need to revisit this idea, it's one that has potential but I'm not happy with it currently :)