Balancing Order Tanks

[Panzerkasper]

I think a lot of you guys simply never played a Chosen. But hey, please nerf it, so maybe this whining will stop.

If you think SM is ****, you guys should play against Wingz and tell me the same.

He's gud. And many others. If there is a tank that needs balance in a positive way, that is blackguard.

Amen Brother! Amen!

[Wittygamertag]

For a long time the Knight has been the backbone of all premade and any competent group set up. I have been trying to figure out how to tone the knight down, bring the other two tanks up, while not trashing the knight. This is designed to stimulate discussion and result in a well thought out balance proposal. It may, as a result, be useful for how to tone down the Chosen as well.

Why the knight is top dog.
1. Large super punt; the only ability guaranteed to move a player from guard range.
2. The largest, by far, resist buff, 236 base while the AM and RP are 157 base.
3. A 100% up-time aoe snare which as shown by the Black Orc in any serious level of play is un-forgiving and necessary.
4. Unbelievable group utility in the form of aura buffs.

The key is then to address these qualities by bringing these abilities on the other 2 tanks up so that there is variety in choice.
The Iron-breaker.
1. Has a punt, but it barley clears guard range. First suggestion is to edit the IB punt so it grantees to clear guard range as effectively as the Knight Super Punt. If there is no alternative punt, the knight, will always be taken in competitive groups. An edit to the SM punt to the point of clearing guard range is not viable because it is AoE and this would be too much imo. More on this later.
2. Has a AoE snare, Earth Shatter, but is only 50% up-time with 10 seconds of downtime. This window can be the difference in between a kill or not if you can't contain the movement of melee dps and tanks. Therefore it should be brought to 100% up-time with a decrease in damage by 25% because it hits hard at 100 grudge and spamming it may lead to outrageous damage from the IB.

The Resist Game
Resists are needed to help reduce Sorc and Magus Damage and buff the BW damage. The knight is picked because its buff outshines the AM and RP and to counter the Chosen debuff. Therefore a solution is to either
A) increase the Arch Mage and/or RP resist buff to match that of the Knights base. This allows option to achieve the level of resistance provided by the knight and then allows the Sword Master resist debuff to replace the Knights as shown below.
B) Reduce the Knight resistance buff to that of the RP and AM to allow lower levels of late Game resistances so that the SM can stay competitive in terms of overall damage (it is at its peak right now). Buff the Healer resist values to around 200 base otherwise sorc and magus damage will become nuts in our current state and there would be little reason to drop the knight at all. I favor this point.

**Maybe the Knight and Chosen value of debuff needs to be reduced as well so not to completely cancel other classes buffs.

The Sword Master
1. Has a reliable resist debuff which outshines the Knights, 118 base compared to SM of 235 but is not considered because you need the huge resist buff from the Knight aura to compete with Sorc and Magus damage.
2. The SM 1.4.9 changes included a change to Natures blade, flat 160 stat steal with a 25% chance. See below.

Nature's Blade - All your melee attacks gain a 25% chance to randomly steal 160 stat points from targets within 30 feet of you for 10 seconds. During this time, both you and your group mates within 100 feet will benefit from the stolen stats.

This I believe is a needed change as it begins to break up the unbelievable group utility in the form of Aura buffs that the knight brings. The value of 160 exceeds the Knight is all aspects.
3. Increase the duration of Dragons Talon to 8 seconds to allow the use of other perfect balance abilities and giving something to Order that is some-what equal to Crippling strikes.

Through these changes, not taking a knight would result in a loss of 15% increase healing and 5% heal crit. I think everything else is covered in some shape or form by other tanks.

What do others think about these changes, do they change to much at once, do they expose too many vulnerabilities?
Does it not reduce the benefit of taking the Knight enough?

Slow down there Tex
Let's get the facts straight before anything else

Ok so addressing your points
1 knight "super punt" does not punt as far as BG or IB iT does however make a player elevate higher

2 resists buff completely depends on mastery. For example an am or Rp can spec the tree to increase resists buff as a knight can. 2h knights usually don't run tree that buffs resists

3 Please let's stop calling it an AOE snare, you can run a tactic that makes it hit 3 players. The IB has true aoe snare and the trade off is the damage. Btw my AM has permanent aoe snare between pool and aoe knock back.

4 yes auras are great but half my party are not interested in my 105 strength as healers and yes my toughness and resists are handy but let's break that down. Let's say the resists are provided by an AM and the knight is replaced by an IB guarding another melter dps. While the knight is debuffing and buffing all those only in 30ft radius the IB can buff his guarded dps strength, crit, armour, willpower, initiate, toughness and corporeal resists without speccing into them.
Remember the knights buffs are usually not affecting the ranged dps or heals as they are usually over 30ft from front line where Knight and melee are. So within 30ft of me I am left with my guarded melee dps.
Which buffs would you choose all those listed above by IB or resists , strength and toughness?

[Cimba]

*Do people believe that the values of the auras need to be edited to allow other abilities such as the other healer resist buffs (AM and RP) and SM Nature Blade Stat steal+buff to come into use other than for only possible initiative debuffs or does the possible change to the Knight aura system provide enough of a window for other abilities to be worth using?
I think this is critical, otherwise their bonuses are completely disregarded.

I think stat and resistance auras need to be looked at separately because their impact is on a different scale.

This is based on the assumption that the uptime of the resistance aura is below 100%. If that isn't the case ignore what follows.
Below the soft cap 252 resistance = 15% damage mitigation. If you go up to the stagger the resistance aura is somewhere around 320 I believe. If you stay below the soft cap this is about 19% damage mitigation. (13 points AM/RP resis buffs are 254 or something like that so a difference of about 5% with less points invested on the knight)
The question is: Can your group afford taking 10-20% more magic damage for the time the aura is not up. If yes you obviously don't need to buff the other resis buffs. If no you still don't 'need' to buff them because they are kind of mandatory anyway.

However if you don't buff the other classes resis buffs you would increase the overall magic damage. Anyway these are details that need to considered when it's closer to implementation and goes beyond the current discussion.

I don't think the stat auras need to change for the sake of Nature's Blade. The Initiative debuff of Nature's Blade at current gear levels is massive. Additionally he can provide a slightly more potent willpower/intelligence/ballistic buff which the rest of your grp probably doesn't mind either. Not sure if weapon skill can be buffed with Nature's Blade if so it's certainly nice since afaik only slayer can buff weapon skill on order for 10 s with a 60 s cooldown.
So yes there is some redundancy but at least for me the benefits would outweight it in a variety of setups.

Depending on their uptime they maybe should be changed because of their aoe debuff/buff nature.

If you think SM is ****, you guys should play against Wingz and tell me the same.

He's gud. And many others. If there is a tank that needs balance in a positive way, that is blackguard.

Hehe but wingz doesn't play a tank he plays mdps that was the first thing he told me when we grouped up

4 yes auras are great but half my party are not interested in my 105 strength as healers and yes my toughness and resists are handy but let's break that down. Let's say the resists are provided by an AM and the knight is replaced by an IB guarding another melter dps. While the knight is debuffing and buffing all those only in 30ft radius the IB can buff his guarded dps strength, crit, armour, willpower, initiate, toughness and corporeal resists without speccing into them.
Remember the knights buffs are usually not affecting the ranged dps or heals as they are usually over 30ft from front line where Knight and melee are. So within 30ft of me I am left with my guarded melee dps.
Which buffs would you choose all those listed above by IB or resists , strength and toughness?

The buff effect is 100ft so they do reach the rdps and healers... As explained above the reistance aura would provide an additional 5% of magic damage mitigation compared to current AM/RP buffs. Since the IB can currently only buff one... maybe two targets I would prefer the group wide buffs in situation like orvr where you have often multiple players under pressure. The IB buffs might be superior in 6on6. But then again knight has 15% more heal and other ****.

[spikespiegel84]

Ok Cimbina, but then what? Shall we also nerf the dps of tanks, forcing them in a snb jail? Chosen 2 hander is super fun, but not even close to SM, IB, BO, KotBS. I know he plays like a choppa but actually SM 2hander is in my opinion the proper way to play it.

[dontcomplainx]

let me add this , bring back the old kobs/chonse mechanics? stack 3 buffs at the same moment really? , tbh this is why many people decide to play kobs and chosen its really easy to play as one atm.

[Sigimund]

let me add this , bring back the old kobs/chonse mechanics? stack 3 buffs at the same moment really? , tbh this is why many people decide to play kobs and chosen its really easy to play as one atm.

Twister is hard.

[spikespiegel84]

When I hear this from people spamming the one button wonder thanks to nerfedbuttons / cast sequence, I just experience a deep feeling of sadness.

[dontcomplainx]

let me add this , bring back the old kobs/chonse mechanics? stack 3 buffs at the same moment really? , tbh this is why many people decide to play kobs and chosen its really easy to play as one atm.

Twister is hard.

still way better than stack 3 buffs at the same moment which requires 0 skill for that

[Cimba]

Ok Cimbina, but then what? Shall we also nerf the dps of tanks, forcing them in a snb jail? Chosen 2 hander is super fun, but not even close to SM, IB, BO, KotBS. I know he plays like a choppa but actually SM 2hander is in my opinion the proper way to play it.

Yeah, then what? Nobody even talked about nerfing tank dps. Some people were pointing out that chosen/kotbs need a dps buff when their mechanic isn't brainless anymore. I think it's pointless to argue about that until we have a better idea how the new class mechanic will look like (including uptime of the auras).

For me personally SM is in a pretty good spot (2h probably better than SnB). He has grp utility that is desirable in a variety of setups. However IMO he will almost always be the 2nd tank due to the lack of a decent single target kick. But since you can effectively play him as mdps (like wingz and others prove) I don't see this as a big issue.

The issue I currently see and discussed with bloodi is that the IB can't compete with the

• SM in terms of damage and offensive utility
• kotbs in terms of defensive utility

Or to put in other words. I currently don't see any reason why I should take an IB (with the exception of some special setups).

[Rebuke]

Ok Cimbina, but then what? Shall we also nerf the dps of tanks, forcing them in a snb jail? Chosen 2 hander is super fun, but not even close to SM, IB, BO, KotBS. I know he plays like a choppa but actually SM 2hander is in my opinion the proper way to play it.

Yeah, then what? Nobody even talked about nerfing tank dps. Some people were pointing out that chosen/kotbs need a dps buff when their mechanic isn't brainless anymore. I think it's pointless to argue about that until we have a better idea how the new class mechanic will look like (including uptime of the auras).

For me personally SM is in a pretty good spot (2h probably better than SnB). He has grp utility that is desirable in a variety of setups. However IMO he will almost always be the 2nd tank due to the lack of a decent single target kick. But since you can effectively play him as mdps (like wingz and others prove) I don't see this as a big issue.

The issue I currently see and discussed with bloodi is that the IB can't compete with the

• SM in terms of damage and offensive utility
• kotbs in terms of defensive utility

Or to put in other words. I currently don't see any reason why I should take an IB (with the exception of some special setups).

I would like to add that tanks being able to fill up a viable DPS slot, when speccing for it, is a good thing.

Just as Bretin fully dedicated himself his mdok to dps back when lvlcap was 32-35; he was FULLY dedicated to push out as much dps as possible to a point where he used the torture main attack over the transfer essence attack since it idd like 20 damage more per hit.

While I believe that for a SM it is simply not needed to use FO since GWM/PE/BA/DO pretty much already give enough dps. It does allow IB to fill a proper dps slot, especially when coupled with a slayer.