Curse

FengShuiDove · Jan 11, 2009, 09:29 AM // 09:29

The OP suggests Warrior or Dervish as a better tank. P.S. Dervs have the same armor rating as Assassins and any PvE Assassin build should have [Critical Agility].

While on the topic, combining Critical Strikes with other weapon mastery attributes makes Assassins a viable replacement for some professions and in some instances (see Critscythe and Critbarrage) a preferred alternative to the original profession in certain situations.

The OP apparently believes that a frontline character should have the armor rating of a squishy as well, since Dervs are *obviously* a better candidate for a "tank" than an Assassin.

Ignoring all of this idiocy and stupidity, nearly any profession can be made IMBA in PvE. This argument is so incredibly dead and so incredibly pointless that I can't believe I'm actually responding to another one of these threads. There have been 55 Monks, Warrior farmers, IMBAgons, 330, 105, 130, 600, and any number of other farming based/tank based builds for nearly every profession. It's PvE. The whole point of the game is to find a set of skills on a set of coordinated players that is designed to exploit weaknesses in the builds, behavior, and characteristics of the AI. Perma-Shadow is good for some of these instances, bad for others. Just like everything else.

cthulhu reborn · Jan 11, 2009, 10:26 AM // 10:26

I agree with that. All the solo builds are proof that classes are imbalanced. Perhaps that's why GW2 will not have h/h anymore and just an optional side kick.

When people talk about tanking in GW being bad, they do have a point. I only take a warrior with me in a party when it doesn't really matter what I put in and, well, Jora does look good ^^

Seriously though, tanking depends on two things: being able to take a lot of damage and holding aggro.
Since, to tank properly you need to be able to take a lot of damage, but your party needs to stay well clear of you to not break the aggro, the tank has to be generally able to take a ton of damage and hold aggro on his/her own. It takes a full tank build to do that and often enough you still need support healing and as soon as someone gets near the tank, it's too easy to break the aggro. Alsp, do not forget that in a PvE area you have to fight very different types of enemies in any given area. This means a tank may have to face each and every type of damage in one session. That is also a reason why you need a full tanking build and as some stated, that does get boring.

I find that in Pve(except perhaps in places like UW and DoA) the best tanking is done by minions. There's more of them and they can actually bodyblock attackers by their numbers. In that sense it is better to have someone who lures with a longbow and an MM to meet the attackers.

Another reason why tanking doesn't work well with a full party is that the tank has to go forward and keep a distance from his party and therefore easily gets into a position where he aggroes more groups because of the insane patrolling overlaps between enemy groups. So it's normal to end up aggroing one or two more groups and then the amount of damage easily becomes more than the tank can handle, not to mention aggroing the groups mid fight when your spell casters are nearer and automatically break aggro and get attacked.
All in all GW has set everything in opposition to tanking. It's not impossible but it fails too easily making it useless for most players.

A warrior has become one of those classes that works fine in pvp but only exists in pve anymore since a lot of people simply just like warriors in general, no matter which game they play, only to find out they can't charge in and kill everything and then die by overextending. And of course that's always the monk's fault....(insert sarcasm)

daze · Jan 11, 2009, 10:32 AM // 10:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arkantos

I don't understand why you have to call someone a know it all simply because they're saying tanks are bad.

I wasn't calling anyone specific a know it all. Just illustrating how at least 66% of Guru posters claim to carry the definitive answers or solutions while effectively completely ruling out alternatives.

So as long as you carry an offensive skill in your bar then you are not a bad tank?
like this? [earth attunement][stone striker][mantra of earth][stoneflesh aura][obsidian flesh][armor of earth][sliver armor]

Tyla · Jan 11, 2009, 10:52 AM // 10:52

Some people would still recognise tanks as people who build their skill bar up to do that task solely. I am part of that crowd and recognise the gathering and building up of enemies for defensive, and possible offensive purpose as "managing agro" over "tanking", which means, to my side of the crowd devoting yourself to the task.

Now, we look at most tanking builds and what do we see? Every single skill has defensive purpose only usable on yourself. The only exception to this, would be skills such as "I Am Unstoppable!" because it allows an anti-knockdown that has a decent duration, can't be stripped and has an armour buff aswell. Adding to this is that there are limited skills that negate the effects of a knockdown, either too flimsy in duration / recharge ("Brace Yourself!", "Don't Trip!") or only affect one person for that time (Aura of Stability). You also see knockdown in PvE to be violently pushed in, for example, you see giants Stomping you a lot of the time, and possible Earth Shakers. Almost all knockdowns in PvE are extremely powerful used against you, because of sheer numbers. Back on the topic of tanking, people rely too much on a large amount of skills used for defense. You look at the Obsidian Tank, and you think "shit, how many self-defense skills does this bar need?" - that, aswell as the speed turned down by an incredible amount. One or two defensive skills only appliable to yourself, assuming that that area of defense is limited (again, knockdown) is a "fair enough" thing. Six, jeez, overdoing it. The Shadow Form 'Sin allows you to have incredibly high defense in two skills, three and your secondary excluding consumables, and only one maxed attribute. This allows a heavy investment in your offensive potential.

In short, Shadow Form allows "tanks" to take on a decent offensive turn aswell as a decent defensive turn because it gives you a high amount of usable attribute points and skill slots to take advantage of.

cthulhu reborn · Jan 11, 2009, 10:53 AM // 10:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by daze

I wasn't calling anyone specific a know it all. Just illustrating how at least 66% of Guru posters claim to carry the definitive answers or solutions while effectively completely ruling out alternatives.

So as long as you carry an offensive skill in your bar then you are not a bad tank?
like this? [earth attunement][stone striker][mantra of earth][stoneflesh aura][obsidian flesh][armor of earth][sliver armor]

Well you forget [aura of restoration] and [ward of stability] so take out sliver and you have your 8 skills. You do need to make sure you dont get knocked over and you do need some health gain from yourself against life stealing and spirits. ^^

What I think some people mean, is that when your tank doesn't do damage, it's kinda boring. So a full tank can be good but may not be fun to play.

zwei2stein · Jan 11, 2009, 06:31 PM // 18:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arkantos

Tanking is not bad. Tanking is one of the smartest tactics in PvE. However, pure tanks are bad. If your team needs someone who is dedicated to tank, your team doing something wrong. Maybe people are calling tanks bad because, well, they're bad. I don't understand why you have to call someone a know it all simply because they're saying tanks are bad.

I shall append this:

there is difference between "tank" and "tank".

First one goes all the way into making defensive skillbar, neglecting offense. Success of group wholy depends on him gathering all the aggro and staying alive. Should he fail in either, party wipes because such party will not be able to handle aggro spills.

Other thank is scrapegoat that runs in combat with few prots to make mobs waste skill recharges, hes is not exctly carefull about attracting all the aggro and its okay. In any case, group has monks who know what prots are for and can handle aggro spills/deaths/whatever.

---

On topic: I suspect that SF came to be because of QQ about sins being unwanted, groupless, redheaded stepchildren of GW.

Which is kinda sad, considering how good they actually are without SF.

Skyy High · Jan 11, 2009, 08:57 PM // 20:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Abedeus

Can you do that with PuGs? No. Mentality is tank and spank.

In CoV/CoH, people don't want passive tanks. Tanks have to deal damage and be aggro magnets. Because in GW, usually tank doesn't have to worry about "threat" or whatever it's called. In CoX you have to watch it and deal a lot of damage as a tank.

Because if your Corruptor or Blaster deal 200 damage to all mobs around you, and if you managed to deal only 100... It's more than sure mobs will run at your squishies.

That's why in GW it's not hard to tank. And it's faster without tanking. But pugs don't believe it.

The skill level of the general community is not a reflection of how good the game's mechanics are. Furthermore, an aggro system that is defined by numbers is always going to be exploitable in some way. When a game is made where monsters react intelligently to a party and go after the squishy healers and/or people killing them, as opposed to the big hunk of metal standing in front of them, then you can claim to have a superior aggro system. Until then, it's all just a matter of players doing what works best and is the most reliable in the particular game they are playing, which amounts to screwing with the AI to make them attack the "wrong" target.

Abedeus · Jan 11, 2009, 09:25 PM // 21:25

This can be fixed by adding a "threat" on scale 1-1000.

All characters start by having a threat of 1. For every 10 damage, you get 10 threat. For every 15 damage, you get 10 threat.

At 250 threat (so with 250 damage dealt) your aggro bubble grows by 10%, so monsters aggro you from greater distance.

At 500 threat, it's 25%. At 750 threat (Cry of Pain with 8 mobs will produce that amount at r8) it's 35%. And at 1000 threat it's 50%. You aggro much more this way.

It's pretty inferior to existing threat systems, but it's one of the few possible in GW without changing the engine.

Note, bubble change won't affect spell range, only aggro.

zwei2stein · Jan 11, 2009, 09:42 PM // 21:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skyy High

The skill level of the general community is not a reflection of how good the game's mechanics are. Furthermore, an aggro system that is defined by numbers is always going to be exploitable in some way. When a game is made where monsters react intelligently to a party and go after the squishy healers and/or people killing them, as opposed to the big hunk of metal standing in front of them, then you can claim to have a superior aggro system. Until then, it's all just a matter of players doing what works best and is the most reliable in the particular game they are playing, which amounts to screwing with the AI to make them attack the "wrong" target.

Even then, that AI would be abusable, because it would be predicable.

Only way to stop abuses would be to make AI random (each being having randomly generated personality on spawn).

Kha · Jan 11, 2009, 10:07 PM // 22:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Abedeus

In CoV/CoH, people don't want passive tanks. Tanks have to deal damage and be aggro magnets. Because in GW, usually tank doesn't have to worry about "threat" or whatever it's called. In CoX you have to watch it and deal a lot of damage as a tank.

People don't want passive tanks in CoX because there's no need for one. Aggro isn't all that hard to control there for a Tank/Brute. Even my Scrapper did a lot of successful tanking even on the higher levels of 40+. Toggle buffs, which a lot of other games rely on, make tanking a bit easier because there's less pressure of downtime. My blaster could jump into a group of 15+ guys and Nova them, and any still alive still were smacking the tank mindlessly as if he had done all the damage. Not to mention that you have Controllers and Dominators who make the game a breeze - a lot of games have classes like that, which is something Guild Wars lack completely, and what skills this game does have that are close (Pacifism and Amity for example) are completely useless.

GW is designed a lot differently than other games. Other games rely on having someone to hold aggro, hence you have skills that actually keep monsters on you or lessen your threat level. It's because the battles and skill systems are a bit slower than GW. In a lot of games, good luck in finding a skill that will cast under a second. And many have long recharges of 10+ seconds for key heals and skills. Guild Wars is about having a more pro-active, unified team that has a lot less downtime and relies more on quick reaction and key decisions than having an imbalance of overpowered aggro-managing skills.

As many have pointed out, there's nothing wrong with having a "tank" in that it's a peson who goes in first and draws the aggro. A strategy like that comes in very handy in many places and keeps the party more organized. Having a "tank" in that it's a person who is completely devoted to just standing there and taking/absorbing damage though isn't very justifiable, save for some of the more difficult places in HM like the Desolation.

If people want to play one of the latter tanks, then so be it. It isn't really wrong if people have fun and that's what they want. But there really are few places that actually benefit from it over a group that has a bit more damage and protection.

As for all the people that say perma-SF was some conspiracy planned by ANet to make sins awesome after so many deleted theirs and whined about them... lol. No. Perma-SF wasn't the first broken build to enter the game and stay there a lot longer than it should've. At this point, what it really comes down to is ANet caring enough about balance and their original concept to get rid of it or just let people enjoy themselves in a game that's taking its last few breaths.

But hey, what do I know? All I know is that I have found the PvE in GW more difficult and entertaining than in other games, and I'm glad I'm not forced to rely on a tank because I have a brain.

Clarissa F · Jan 11, 2009, 11:55 PM // 23:55

For whoever talks about SF being meant to be perma, you must have been playing the game less than a few years. It was meant to help a spike, through going into a crowd of baddies, killing the high-value target, then getting out before it drops and you die. Worse comes to worst, you get killed after that and get rezzed. Hell, I thought it kinda worthless, especially with MS/DB spam around.

Face it, while GW was based on team pvp play more than tank-n-spank, most people in GW came from games revolving around the Trinity: tank-damage-healer. It's natural they will bring this mentality and these habits with them. The good thing is, the way GW is designed, the smart ones will see that the tank-n-spank model isn't the rule, and that in this world, killing fast always beats any other technique. A high damage/condition group will always beat a tank-n-spank group in GW for sheer efficiency and fun.

cthulhu reborn · Jan 12, 2009, 07:03 AM // 07:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by zwei2stein

I shall append this:

there is difference between "tank" and "tank".

First one goes all the way into making defensive skillbar, neglecting offense. Success of group wholy depends on him gathering all the aggro and staying alive. Should he fail in either, party wipes because such party will not be able to handle aggro spills.

Other thank is scrapegoat that runs in combat with few prots to make mobs waste skill recharges, hes is not exctly carefull about attracting all the aggro and its okay. In any case, group has monks who know what prots are for and can handle aggro spills/deaths/whatever.

---

On topic: I suspect that SF came to be because of QQ about sins being unwanted, groupless, redheaded stepchildren of GW.

Which is kinda sad, considering how good they actually are without SF.

Well, there are two types of tanks in that sense, although you could argue whether the 2nd style of play is actually tanking, but that is what I am talking about when I say that minions are better for that.

But I think you can say that the warrior in pve is now a superfluous character class. For soaking initial damage, minions are simply better and for damage dealing...well, where do I begin?

In the end I think luring is more of a useful strategy than tanking anyway. And whereas sins and dervs have better energy management (+3 regen and well zealous really works better on scythes and daggers) making it easier to use a secondary properly, the warrior only has decent energy management via an elite ([flourish] and [warriors endurance] come to mind) and thus has a hard time using a secondary especially when it comes to spells.

I like my own warrior but I only really use her anymore for running in prophecies and not if someone needs help with a mission or something.

I did think about using my warrior in pvp but prefer other classes there.

romeus petrus · Jan 12, 2009, 03:40 PM // 15:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fay Vert

SF was a god mode skill balanced with a severe drawback. When players figured out how to have the god mode without the drawback the skill was broke, but ANet fiddled while Rome burned and now its too late as a nerf back to original intent would cause more QQ than its worth. Plus, they ultimate nerfed all farming with the rate of kill throttle so they figure it really doesn't matter.

Once upon a time they cared enough to put another mob in the raptor cave, now its just help yourself to event items.

If ppl QQ because they wouldn't have their God Mode any more they should probably move to another game with an official "godmode" cheat. Atm SF is clearly broken. The 2 "nerfs" that were supposed to address the issue clearly didn't as most sins using SF are not dmg dealers (maybe except in UWSC, which is another thing that clearly shouldn't exist). The bottom line is SF is what turned sins into uber tanks way better than professions meant to tank like wars and dervs. Remove it, problem solved.

Damian979 · Jan 12, 2009, 03:47 PM // 15:47

Assassins being the "best tank in the game" is a bit over generalized imo unless you are talking about god awful cryway groups. Anywhere in the game that a primary focal point for mob control is really necessary has skills that will hit through shadowform leaving it up to the backline to keep the sin alive just like any other "tank" would need to be. It's only "god mode" in places that you shouldn't be having difficulty with a normal team setup anyway.

Ideally you want enemy focus to be on your frontline which is where the concept of "tanking" comes in. Now, if you are a party of one then that character must have skills that can allow him/her to be the focus of attention without dying but you aren't. You have a team that hopefully has a decent set of skills them selves, and with minimal effort can turn any melee character into a "tank" in the sense that they are taking the most damage without getting beat down.

The only time I ever use shadowform is for farming. Otherwise if I am the only melee in the team, I might bring a couple self sustaining skills but mostly damage and a solid team setup that will keep me alive while I do what a sin is the best at, which is killing shit very effectively. When things are dead, you no longer need to "tank" them.

Tyla · Jan 12, 2009, 04:48 PM // 16:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by romeus petrus

The bottom line is SF is what turned sins into uber tanks way better than professions meant to tank like wars and dervs.

Is this a bad joke or something?

Tamuril elansar · Jan 12, 2009, 05:15 PM // 17:15

tanking is bad.

wtfisgoingon · Jan 12, 2009, 05:54 PM // 17:54

Canthan Assassins were chosen to be the best tanks in GW because they had one ability that no other melee class had, this ability is called "Chi Gong" AKA Shadow Form.

romeus petrus · Jan 12, 2009, 08:34 PM // 20:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyla

Is this a bad joke or something?

Up till the introduction of the God Mode AKA the SF buff, the classical frontliners or "tanks" used to be dervs or wars, I didnt mean that tanking is what wars and dervs were supposed to be doing.

Balky · Jan 12, 2009, 10:46 PM // 22:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by wtfisgoingon;

Canthan Assassins were chosen to be the best tanks in GW because they had one ability that no other melee class had, this ability is called "Chi Gong" AKA Shadow Form.

Chi Gong means to breathe out

Fah Gong ( Fire Out ) is the technique with which it is combined....one takes your opponents energy, you divert it, and at the point he is extended beyond his centre, return it with your own energy to produce a counterstrike far in excess of the effort you`ve put in

.....both are basic elements of Tai Chi Chaun, practised in whats known as Shadow Hands ( Sticky Hands to some )

Lesson over, please continue.

wtfisgoingon · Jan 12, 2009, 11:00 PM // 23:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Balky

Chi Gong means to breathe out

Fah Gong ( Fire Out ) is the technique with which it is combined....one takes your opponents energy, you divert it, and at the point he is extended beyond his centre, return it with your own energy to produce a counterstrike far in excess of the effort you`ve put in

.....both are basic elements of Tai Chi Chaun, practised in whats known as Shadow Hands ( Sticky Hands to some )

Lesson over, please continue.

Ah, a smart mouth foreigner claiming he knows ancient Shaolin arts.
Chi Gong is a technique used to stimulate inner energy to any acupoints in the body. Upon doing so, the individual will be able to withstand massive anguish(eh tanking in GW?), and the ability to produce massive damage. The skill is also used for preserving health.

Lesson over, please copy and paste more White American articles of Chi Gong (/sacarsm) they do not know what they are talking about =P.