eq2brawler

A lot of people including myself don't visit the 'official' forums much, so I thought I'd bring over this thread that quotes a developer as basically saying that they are against the idea of having brawlers tank as well as plate tanks on raids because we are too good at grouping and soloing.

Soloing I won't argue with, but are we really better at group encounters than warriors- and even if we are should that affect how we perform on raids?

This post basically makes me think that they're not even considering the possibility of giving brawlers higher uncontested avoidance than plate tanks on raids, in spite of us being *avoidance tanks*.

Here is the link and a copy of the original post. Again, I'm bringing it here since I suspect some who read this forum might have an opinion on the avoidance tanking issue too....

Making Avoidance Tanks as effective as Mit Tanks in a Raid is "Really Risky".

<cite>t66 wrote:</cite>

Well, there you have it. The official EQ2 Dev response.

Taken from a transcript of the Mechanically Speaking Panel at FanFaire.


Avoidance tanking: are we ever going to get that working?

This is a tricky one. Mitigation is traditionally always more effective that avoidance and it's been hard to balance monks and bruisers without making them overpowered because in group and solo situations they're very powerful tanks. And to have them be more effective than the mitigation tanks group/solo and be as or more effective in a raid situation is really risky, especially when they can do as much DPS as they can. The minimum deflection chance is an attempt to bring more parity between brawlers and the mitigation tanks.


Well, regardless of the very arguable assumption that brawlers do higher DPS than mitigation tanks, at least we've now got the official SoE word. I guess that now we can only hope for extra raid utility.

Taucher

The solution is all very simple: (very) powerful brawler loot dropping from mid to mid-to-high-end raids that'll greatly augment the tanking ability of brawlers. That way we're still inclined to solo when we have to solo, group when we have to group and not step on any of the delicate toes of the plate-wearers who stink at DPSing and/or tanking.

Might as well put the loot system to good use. I mean, it's there already and the only thing it's done so far from T5 to right now is leave brawlers in the dust tanking-wise AND DPS-wise(Star Forged Bo vs. Axe of Unending War, anyone?).

Yeah, I'm a little bitter.

Trumak

I agree. And I am bitter about the fact that war axe owns fear staff if anything it should be the other way around. Or the fact that plate tanks can use the stoneskin boots. Why the fuck would they care about losing 200 mit when they are gaining a stoneskin proc.

And the lack of mitigation jewelry. Everything has fucking plus avoidance skills where is the mit jewelry for us?

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agressiv

nm delete me

Gout

Where is the ~I'm a fatass covered with 200lbs of metal~ penalty for avoidance? That would fix the entire problem. All the fat ogre tanks would have ZERO avoidance because they are too fat and too slow to get out of the way.

*ok rant off about the broken avoidance*

On a serious note, problem would be solved if deflection was uncontested like block is for epics. They simply don't want someone who is wearing leather to be able to out tank a metal tank. Can you imagine all the poor heart broken paladins if bruiser walked in and said, oh please that thing cant hit me and I dont need amends to keep aggro and pushed them out of the raid. Can you imagine the guardians that would cry because they get hit too much? All the zerkers that would be on the streets as OT because a monk could do the same damage and get hit less?

Nope, not gonna happen, Sony realizes they screwed up and they have 175k plate tanks that would FREAK out if suddenly leatherheads could do anything they can do and probably better.

Fouk

IMO...

Give plate tanks their damn mitigation back, but _LEVEL_ avoidance on Brawlers.

Plate tanks shouldn't have avoid, they should have mitigation... Atm (I play both Guardian and Bruiser) Guardians have the best of both worlds - easy even... Only class getting shanked is Brawlers cause they severely lack mitigtion vs. raid content...

In my world: "Yes, Plate wearing warriors should be the "MainTank""...

That said, it shouldn't mean that we, as Brawlers, should be completely unable to: 1) Tank some raid content (nameds) 2) Offtank Epic "adds" 3) Have more utility to bring the raid 4) Have a god damn role in general.......

Atm, my Guardian parses like 1100~dps on a wonderful day in FTH. My Bruiser parses, maybe, 12-1400 ZW... Guardian is MT, Bruiser is "Go drag biatch and call MA / get those heroics down asap" (yeah, will damage dps). My Bruiser can't take much of a beating because damage is too high. Sure, I avoid, but so does my Guardian - difference is, that when my Bruiser gets hit >SPLAT< (compared).

I don't know. Still think a MT is a Plate Warrior, but then we need to catch up abit on either dps or tankage or utility. $OE, take your pick. I love out versatile role, but define me

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I am who I am. Someone has to be...

Crabbok

You know.... one possible way to make avoidance tanks good but not overpowered woudl be to fix avoidance and make it work on epics, but lets say thet on parries and deflections Vs Epics, the brawlers still takes some minor damage. Lets say 5-10% of the normal mitigated hit. So even if you are able to avoid 50% of the attacks, you still take some damage on those attacks.

I say parries and deflections because if you think about it, the mob attacks you with fist or sword or whatever, you woudl have to come into contact with the enemy's striek to deflect it or parry it. For an epic mob the sheer force behind the attack coudl still deal some crushing damage or something similar.

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Jalathan

Personally (and this is coming from a plate tank, so take it for what it's worth), Monks and Bruisers should be moved from tanks to dps and given the tools for that. With there already being a problem finding a reason for taking 2-3 plate tanks, there really isn't a reason for any more 'tanks' in the game. I'm not saying that because I'm afraid you will take my slot in a raid, but because I would rather find a way to include people rather than exclude.

So with that in mind, I think they should up your dps significantly to account for the lack of mitigation and put you at or near the top of t2 damage ranges. That would put you into a better shot of getting into raids without all of the complications of adding more tanks to an already saturated tank market.

Gout

Its not a 100% bad idea Jalathan, but I don't think there is one brawlers that wants to loose his ability to tank what we can now, let alone our ability to solo.

And the best thing they could do to IF they decide to go down that road, reduce our recast timers. I think our CA are fine now, just slow to recast outside of 2 of them.

The real answer is to fix the avoidance problem as stated. But then again no one seems to agree how and none of the devs can't figure out that 65% avoidance on a plate tank is strange since brawlers are only a few points over that and brawlers are supposed to be the ~avoidance tanks~

Jalathan

In a game where rogues can tank many instances as well as some epics, I don't think having that ability should impact your DPS abilities.

Though having better weapons choices certainly wouldn't hurt you all at all.