Tanktics part three. Guard.

You can check the other two parts of my tanktics series here and here but for those who aren't overly bothered it's simply a small post with combining tactics and the tank archetype abilities to improve them, to give something a bit more well.. Tanky.

Following on from my conversation with Bootae about only being able to guard if you are a shield it occurred to me this is actually a nerf. We're removing something from two handed tanks and not giving them anything in return, it doesn't actually make tanks want to guard more (which they always should anyway) but it certainly gives people ammunition to whine in scenarios etc about "OMG not a 2h tank.. ffs you're not mdps". If we were to only allow guard to be activated if using a shield then potentially we'd have to increase 2h damage to make it worthwhile for tanks to go 2h in scenarios etc.

Orrrrr..... We could look at combining it with a useless tactic. Now barring Unstoppable Juggernaut the other tank tactics are pretty decent, as we've already commandeered it for a Hold the Line buff then we either have to change another archetype tactic or I'm sure there's a useless tactic each tank has we can replace. I wont go through each class to find it, I wont pretend to know anything about Knights or Blackguards so I'll leave it as that, but here's what I propose instead of a straight "you can only guard if using a shield"

1 Slot Career Tactic - No range - No cool down - Passive
IMPROVED GUARD
If you have a shield equipped the damage split on your guarded target is increased to 75% assigned to you and the effect range is increased to 50ft

I have deliberately gone a bit overboard with this as I felt that my Hold the Line was in retrospect quite weak although it had the right 'feel'. Improved Guard might be a bit potent but it certainly makes choppa and blocka tanks be an absolute beast for guarding targets and much better than the 2h equivalent without nerfing 2h tanks.

Thoughts?

More thoughts on tanktics!

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?

Taunt , Challenge and tactics - Is there wasted potential?

So I've always thought that two of the four class defining abilities that tanks have (challenge and taunt) have no actual interaction with any other tactics or abilities. The tactics in that mastery can be good but especially as a Black Orc the top tier tanking tactic is absolutely rubbish (you can check previous rants on it in older posts). I'm sure each tanking class has the same issue, a tactic in there that really, isn't all that good and would rarely if ever be slotted and you'd gladly see another one replace it.

I have a little proposal for all tanks, it's not overly thought through so potentially it might be a bit potent or underwhelming but how about this for the top tier tactic in your tanking tree:

1 Slot Career Tactic - No range - No cool down - Passive
(insert name here)
Cool down on Taunt and Challenge is reduced by 5 seconds and the effectiveness is increased by 5%

So this would put Taunt on a 10 second cool down with 35% extra damage and Challenge on a 25 second cool down with enemies doing 65% damage to all other targets. The question is, would it become an option for you to slot, something to ignore or an essential tactic?

There's other possibilities as well, such as increased range or making Taunt a cone effect like challenge. Could we also then do things with Hold the Line?