Should tanks have the same DPS offspec option as healers?

[Bullen1995]

No simply due to the default survival factor and high utility over other damage dealers and from my understanding they are in a decent place atm and should simply not have higher damage than somone who actually play a dps class.

Would argue this is the general issue with the healer patch and the argument is why play a magic caster class when a healer can do the same plus heal themselves ontop, It gives you both high survival but also good damage with little downside. At this point Destro have more dps Shammys than actual magic casters in their warbands and while im for people playing what they want, War is a team based game meaning you have to fill certain rolls to be effective in Orvr and if both tanks and healers are going dps there will be less people picking up their main role.

In short healing and defences are very strong and blending these lines which has already kinda happened creates its fair bit of unbalance.

[Starx]

No simply due to the default survival factor and high utility over other damage dealers and from my understanding they are in a decent place atm and should simply not have higher damage than somone who actually play a dps class.

Would argue this is the general issue with the healer patch and the argument is why play a magic caster class when a healer can do the same plus heal themselves ontop, It gives you both high survival but also good damage with little downside. At this point Destro have more dps Shammys than actual magic casters in their warbands and while im for people playing what they want, War is a team based game meaning you have to fill certain rolls to be effective in Orvr and if both tanks and healers are going dps there will be less people picking up their main role.

In short healing and defences are very strong and blending these lines which has already kinda happened creates its fair bit of unbalance.

Healers are not doing the same dps as actual dps, maybe some instances of scoreboard warrioring but actual meaningful pressure no way. dps shaman is outpaced by even bottom barrel stuff like magus. DPS shaman and AM are popular because they are good solo and you get 1 and a half class for the price of one, leveling stuff is pretty rough right now on the server so thats a big bonus.

Think the reason you see dps am and shaman in wb unless it has changed is the capstone lifetap in right tree has no target cap and no restriction on group/wb so its great for blob vs blob healing.

[Sever1n]

Devs stated that they want to make heal dps specs in wb. Zealot and rp mechanic working. AM/ sham didnt tryed, but dont think they can normaly use casted skills in rvr. Doks aoe is joke, damage near nonexistant. So in rvr specs i believe they finished only 1/3 job on dps heals.

[live4treasure]

I think the framework of this poll is fundementally wrong. Making tanks become true DPS is pretty much unfeasable, and it becomes easier to just make a new class after a point, because the tank framework provides far too much utility, as has been stated multiple times in this thread.

Let's come back down to earth and talk about something more realistic, that I think is still in the spirit of what this thread is about:
Should 2h tanks be playable in RVR?

Arguably, they are already playable in some cases, because of some of these tanks bring useful aoe debuffs that are good to have in a warband. But even though they are *technically* playable, they are rarely *wanted* in warbands, and usually end up both far squishier than an SnB tank, and also not contributing to the warband's damage output in any real, noticable, way. Not only that, but they require having full BIS for their archetype with 75-80% parry in order to even function.

Is there something that can be done to 2h tanks, that might solidify them more upon the RVR scene? Even if we know what to do, should it be done?

This is a far more down-to-earth question to ask.

[Lescargo]

I think the framework of this poll is fundementally wrong. Making tanks become true DPS is pretty much unfeasable, and it becomes easier to just make a new class after a point, because the tank framework provides far too much utility, as has been stated multiple times in this thread.

Let's come back down to earth and talk about something more realistic, that I think is still in the spirit of what this thread is about:
Should 2h tanks be playable in RVR?

Arguably, they are already playable in some cases, because of some of these tanks bring useful aoe debuffs that are good to have in a warband. But even though they are *technically* playable, they are rarely *wanted* in warbands, and usually end up both far squishier than an SnB tank, and also not contributing to the warband's damage output in any real, noticable, way. Not only that, but they require having full BIS for their archetype with 75-80% parry in order to even function.

Is there something that can be done to 2h tanks, that might solidify them more upon the RVR scene? Even if we know what to do, should it be done?

This is a far more down-to-earth question to ask.

The original thread was about changing focused offense and also bloodlord weapons for tanks, so tanks can have a dps option without being too squishy.
actualy those are too much punitive, the point was not to give tanks the same dps as a real dps.
Actualy if you're equiping FO and bloodlord, you are squishy like a dps and you are not even close to the dps, of a real dps.

And probably some people would say that equiping F0 + Bloodlord weapon don't make yu as squishy as a dps, but what they forget is you equip those on a tank that is already builded for dps, that mean it has high strength/WS or crit instead of high toughness and parry/block.

Equiping FO on a tank that is def builded is pretty useless. You already struggle to make damage having FO/bloodlord on a tank dps builded, so on a def tank it's just pointless.

[Culexus]

short answer: no

long answer:

it's different than with healers because of guard, punt, challenge, taunt, bellow, m4. tank is already the most powerful and influential role in the game in terms of securing and deny kills, this becomes especially true at higher skill levels of gameplay and in small-mid scale content like 6v6, SCs and city siege

dps healers (which are properly specced in to dps, i'm not speaking about weird solo/duo builds or hybrids, but true dps) take large hits to their healing capability. i'm talking about true healing capability here, the ability to sustain a party, not token off-healing or healing in 2-4 player combat situations. i mean that full dps specced dps healers legitimately lose the option to be a healer in basically all cases.

it is important to remember that this game is foundationally crafted for and balanced around group gameplay (6-24 player parties and warbands) and that careful balancing act has to be taken in to account when considering changes like this

this means that for tanks to be able to deal damage like a dps, and for that to not completely break the game, they would need to lose out on a lot of what makes them a tank. for tanks to be in the same position (allowing them to fully spec in to dps) you would have to do a few things

you'd have to either HEAVILY change or outright remove mechanics guard, challenge, taunt, single target punts, heavy armor and morales like bellow and immaculate defense from tanks somehow when they choose to spec dps. whether by a tactic like focused offensive but with more restrictions or some other convoluted design. the only way to ensure that the game would not instantly break and prevent balance from becoming horribly disfigured would be to disallow tanks to do most or all of these things

in the past we have sees triple or quadruple tank comps in SCs (speaking of premade teams running it, usually with a dps geared/focused offensive spec tank class substituting a dps, not what you get when you queue randomly) occasionally and they are an absolute nightmare to play against and it's incredibly cheese-y due to triple guard and stacking of tank elements

to get this to work you will land at a point where you've done a tremendous amount of re-tooling and reworking and you end up with a just another dps class with a different thematic and flavor and likely broken the game along the way. therefore i believe that, however unfortunate, it is not viable from a design, workload and game health perspective to allow tanks to play as a dps in the same manner that healers do

Great post. This is the kind of discussion I was hoping to spark with this thread.

This line in particular hits hard

to get this to work you will land at a point where you've done a tremendous amount of re-tooling and reworking and you end up with a just another dps class with a different thematic and flavor and likely broken the game along the way.

I do think that a lot of the points made against the role swap could also be made about healers. It's only now that it's been introduced and become part of the norm that it's been accepted. Full DPS healers lose healing having to trade their healing role for DPS, but they still keep a lot of the group utility of a healer. Likewise, full DPS tank would have to trade their tanking role to be a DPS, but that doesn't mean that they have to lose all of it. Yes, the balancing of this would be tricky, but it's not like we don't already have the potential of 4 resurrections in a group, which the team considers balanced.

Now, as you point out, the interesting question here is how much would have to be stripped away for this to work? I do think heavy armor could stay as offensive specced tanks are quite squishy and don't have access to detaunt or escape tools as DPS and healers do. Guard, Challenge, and punt would have to go at a minimum. There is just no way that a DPS tank having access to these abilities while doing higher damage wouldn't break the game.

Morales are another issue with tank morales being so impactful to a fight. There could be an argument for distracting bellow being ok as dps healers all keep their M3 absorb, but immaculate defense is so strong that having access to 4 of them in a single group would be obscene. It does have to be taking into consideration though that using the defensive tank morales does limit the ability to moral drop an opponent, which is a big factor in scoring kills in a lot of content. Would the extra defense offset the loss of damage of not only not taking a true DPS, but also losing the ability to morale drop?

Let's imagine that the balance team did figure out a solution to all of the above; there is still the issue of the utility that individual tank classes bring. This is something that isn't comparable to healers as tanks can bring so much more in this regard. Just imagine a 2/2/2 group with a SnB tank BO, 2h BG tank, and two 2h DPS Chosen. That group would have access not only to all the utility that a BO and BG can bring, but on top of that, has access to two Chosen with the ability to maximise their aura buffs. I can't see any situation where a group like that doesn't push everything else out of the group meta.

And if even that balance issue was addressed, it leaves us with your line:

"you will land at a point where you've done a tremendous amount of re-tooling and reworking and you end up with a just another dps class with a different thematic and flavor"

Is stripping a class of its identity really worth being able to play it as a DPS?

I think the framework of this poll is fundementally wrong. Making tanks become true DPS is pretty much unfeasable, and it becomes easier to just make a new class after a point, because the tank framework provides far too much utility, as has been stated multiple times in this thread.

Let's come back down to earth and talk about something more realistic, that I think is still in the spirit of what this thread is about:
Should 2h tanks be playable in RVR?

Like it or not, that's what this thread is about. 2h tanks being warband viable forms part of this discussion, but as it relies on tanks keeping their role as tank in a group, it isn't what this thread is about. Your comments about true DPS tanks being unfeasible are very much on topic and your input is very welcome.

The reason I made this thread is that I thought it'd be an interesting discussion to have as so many players want to (and try to) play a DPS tank. With one support archetype having the option of role swapping, it's certainly worth discussing the feasibility of the other. That includes if it's unfeasible, as you have mentioned.

And let's face it. It's better than another Witch Elf thread.

And just to clarify so people don't get egos involved in trying to prove they're right and I'm wrong. This is not a proposal. I'm very much on the fence about it as I can see both sides to the argument.

My personal opinion is that both tanks and healers should have hybrid offspecs that allow them to do assist damage while their primary role is still to tank/heal. I think the current state of 2h tanks does this extremely well, and if in some horrifying alternate reality where I was in charge of balance, I would have offspec healers heal by damaging their opponent rather than role swapping to DPS. The Grace WP from live (RIP) was a great example of a true hybrid healer.