[Swordmaster]Why are our tactics so bad?

[Sigimund]

Citing an ability on another class that is either not available or available to everyone does not stop a given class from having weak AP management.

[Azarael]

...

God forbid a racial tactic actually do something to define the race which is using it

Also, if you're running a theoretical AP-reducing CoT, you're sacrificing another tactic to do it. Accordingly, yes, it should be good.

[TenTonHammer]

I'm just tryin be devils advocate here guys

Y'all can do what ever you think is right

My problem is just the potential ramifications it could have for overwritten a key weakness common in burst style classes

[Annaise16]

Tactics that people are listing as poor or useless are actually on a par with the best tactics for other classes. It's easy to check this for dps and survivability tactics.

A class's best dps tactic usually adds about 10% extra dps on average. An example would be the mdps tactic Flanking. It adds an extra 15% damage to attacks from the 180 degree rear arc. While all mdps try to attack from the rear arc, there are many situations where they can only attack from the front. So the total damage gained from Flanking is probably closer to 10%.

Now compare some SM dps tactics with the 10% standard. GWM delivers an extra 10% dps plus 5% extra parry. The extra damage from Ensorcelled Agony depends on build, but if you are using EB as your standard first stance ability (which you will be doing if you have EA slotted), than EA will deliver about 10% extra damage. You can check the difference that other tactics make for yourself and compare them with the 10% standard.

The best survivability tactics have a similar 10% standard. They add about 10% more mitigation or damage evasion. So you should compare the effectiveness of a tactic against this 10% standard. It appears to be the figure the game's devs were using when they designed the game.

Utility tactics need to be judged differently. People have been commenting that most of the SM's utility tactics are single target in nature. But remember, the SM has there aoe debuffs and aoe cc as core abilities - the aoe kb, morale snare, Nature's blade, Spirit debuff. so it is unsurprising that the tactics apply to single targets and don't open up aoe application of abilities.

[Annaise16]

Basically, all HE careers except possibly SWs would gain a little tactic or spec diversity. At the moment CoT is only used until you have any other tactic applicable to your class and then it is retired forever.

Keep in mind that this applies to all classes. All classes have tactics that are useful for a time while levelling but which are eventually discarded when better tactics come along. That aspect of the game is balanced.

A toon can run a variety of tactic sets, full dps, full defence, a balanced set, a utility set, etc. But there will generally be some overlap between these sets and a toon can only have 4 tactics slotted at any one time. So there isn't much point in having 15 good tactics that you feel should always be slotted when you can rarely make use of most of them.

[Azarael]

It's actually bad design to make tactics obsolete. Each tactic in WAR consumes a single tactic slot, and it should be expected that in a game where reaching level 40 (and thus having access to all these tactics) is not a big deal, every single core tactic should, ideally, be competitive with every single other core tactic - in that it has a role to play for the class. Of course this is almost impossible to do, but it doesn't violate the idea.

If there are 15 solid tactics that are all good picks for different compositions or playstyles, then people are going to select much more varied sets. That should have been the intent of a tactic system to begin with - to allow the user to determine what combination they prefer to use (or need to use, for a given situation) rather than have a few useful sets, depending on career and determined by the most powerful tactics, and the rest be garbage.

[Jaycub]

Some tactics could be turned into risk-reward / build enablers, instead of just flat positive bonuses.

Would make it easier to balance them because you could turn tactics into something that only a particular build would benefit from, so you would never have universal must have tactics.

The only tactic I can think of in the game right now that sort of fits that bill is FO, but the bonus is pretty trash for what you lose. Risk-Reward things in games tend to have much higher risk than reward and that is good design IMO, but the problem with FO is that 15% increased damage is barely any more than most offensive tactics give, even less in some cases.

[TenTonHammer]

make FO -33% armor for +33% dmg bonus

we real mdps now

:^)

[Jaycub]

if you tac on cannot guard/be guarded it might work :^)

The risk should always be greater than the reward, if the reward is something greater than you would normally get for the same investment (tactic slot).

[ThePollie]

make FO -33% armor for +33% dmg bonus

we real mdps now

:^)

This one I never understood. How does being on offense suddenly reduce your armour? You're still wearing it, it didn't go anywhere, but it's suddenly like paper because you're trying harder to hurt people.

I'd rather see it reduce your ability to parry attacks, instead.