Tanks seriously nerfed in pve

[Disaro]

Tanks got utterly destroyed in the new update, I can understand removing party rescue and other "OP" protection skills to balance the gameplay but changing Focus Shield from toggle to active and adding shield block cooldown is killing us, we cant do our job properly. The higher stats are a joke as well as the new two handed stance, we are tanks, not a damage dealer class. There is no point in my opinion to play as a tank now. Other players noticed it and stopped using tanks to Altar parties etc.... 

[Pokemon]

You have absolutely right. The first sock it was KAMA for me. After at AF it was very embarrassing. I haven't try yet ALTAR but i don't think i will survive at third floor. It's like my char lvl-down 

[Disaro]

Same things happen to me, I really hope that developers fix those issues in a server maintenance restart, it's really bad experience for me and for all tanks that we have discuss the matter, like developers did on Korean servers...

[Draecke]

6 hours ago, Disaro said:

Same things happen to me, I really hope that developers fix those issues in a server maintenance restart, it's really bad experience for me and for all tanks that we have discuss the matter, like developers did on Korean servers...

there won't be any future changes to tank class, what we have now has the final changes the Koreans made to the class and is here to stay..

[Irlumir]

I dont see it that way. I found it better

Raise shield,  and the mechanic with it, works very good. Really i see only improvements as tank.

On heavy tanking, aoe, you can almost have always on the raise shield skill, while pulling mobs and hold them around you (new root) while you get hit, and grand fortres stack on, with each stack raise shield cooldown get a 5 sec reduction, grand proc 100% when hitted and has a 3 sec cooldown,  so to have the skill at +10 ( ideal +15 depends on your cooldown reduction)  will keep you always, when need in aoe pve, with it on. You also have shield wave to link,. Wich have 50% def boost. And if that dont catch your raise shield cooldown ( very rare) just root them and take a.few step aside, that will.give you 5 sec more for your raise shield cooldown to catch up.

Learn how to play with your tank,  i can say that it get boosted in pve with agro capability, and defensive.

In pvp.... Well Ud get nerfed. The party ud seems better, can be boosted with raise shield / shield wave effect.  Noble sacrifice mixed opinion xd. But you can bullying ppl around with phys/ mag silence and pushing them around  ;D

Oly wise, i will say you, have a better chance againdst magic enemys... Just will say two hand stance is there for that.

And always use knight harmony

[Pokemon]

1 hour ago, Irlumir said:

Learn how to play with your tank,  i can say that it get boosted in pve with agro capability, and defensive.

I think all we know how to play our tanks. After Grand Crusade update (tanks lost lot of hp) and especially with Salvation update the only thing is matters is the gear and nothing else. You must have at least +8 pve armor.

[Irlumir]

2 hours ago, TenebrisFilia said:

I think all we know how to play our tanks. After Grand Crusade update (tanks lost lot of hp) and especially with Salvation update the only thing is matters is the gear and nothing else. You must have at least +8 pve armor.

 

You can be on max HP or close to it with rose, or divine elixir, with not expensive gear. ( full con, 3x sa hp in any weapon (even an apo will do fine, what you want is HP),  4x HP dual, AP tree knight). Is easy to maximize (or close to) HP.

I dont have pve set, but yes i have +8 blessed set, diamond lvl 4, abund lvl 1, cloack 5%pdef, shirt 6% pdef (low enchant on thouse things, con+pdef hat. some augment with pdef

I first was ST. I found it Ok, but the lack of decent cubic moves me to change to evas templar.

The change was mayor, my evas has almost the same pdef without rose that ST with rose. I bet paladin, without rose, has more pdef than "offensive tanks" with rose. 

As ST raise shield works very good, providing good endurance in aoe situation.  So yea, tanks works different now,  you need to pay attention to your cooldowns rather to just click on a toggle skill. 
 

[Draecke]

@Irlumir, you can't deny that the 2H stance is kind of bad for PVE purposes outside of solo/duo xp areas or easy instances like K95/K99 though

[Irlumir]

1 hour ago, Draecke said:

@Irlumir, you can't deny that the 2H stance is kind of bad for PVE purposes outside of solo/duo xp areas or easy instances like K95/K99 though

The stance indeed increase dps if you have a defensive set up. (with AP build 100% shield defence it add a lot, it adds over your passive, check,  double the patk that the stance gives you... even a little more)

i think the only tank that was nerfed hardcore, on that aspect, was HK.
What i agree is that it make you weaker on defence. True vanguard + HK aura was a nice combo, that make a dps build sence. But that is only to HK.

Shillien Templar "dps" build was crap v/s HK one. So, on  other tanks, the stance indeed improve dps capability. In combination with Frenzy allow tank to "aid" with some damage, specially on bosses where damage is low. ( altar bosses, af boss, etc)

For evas and pk there is an improvement in dps, even for SK. If you see it that way, It seems that the intention of developers was never allow tank to act like a dps on pve.

And yes, what you say is true, the purpose of the stance is to allow hunting on solo areas "decent". Why would tank do damage on other hunting grounds? On that ppl take tank to soak damage, not to deliver. Party want a char that can crowd control mobs to do aoe damage with safe, and the new tank delivers that very good. (root, pulling skills, constant agro, skills that boost a lot defence with short cooldowns) So make sence now, after using it.

 

Now the difference on defensive tanks vs offensive tank, in deffence is huge, i really dont see the point to be an offensive tank now, rather to improve 10% patk/matk to the group. Because, the difference in solo damage between them is a lot less.  
For my perspective now offensive tanks are a lot expensive to build / gear than deffensive ones....

 

 

[Znipo]

Seems boosted for me.

First time ive ever killed bosses & the tank is able to do what he is supposed to do. hold the agression, you have no idea how good it feels doing things like tauti, kamaloka & field bosses while the tank holds agression almost all the time.

I admit I have not bothered looking between the classes, but all the skills evas templar is carrying right now for PVE is crazy, would not call them nerfed at all.

 

I think you're all hung up on the fact you can no longer stand AFK and spam aoe agro while tanking the mobs, while doing nothing at all.

Now you have to actively play your class & use its skill, is that so bad?

[Gilgamesh]

Why are tanks trying to take the role of a tyrr?

[Disaro]

@Gilgamesh I really dont want to play the role of a tyrr

@Znipo the only instance i use macro is kama

@Irlumir the raise shield mechanic works indeed, but there is a problem I discovered, nowdays most ppl play the role of DD+tank (eviscerators+some +12 "weaponed" no-brainer tyrrs), that rush to the fight before giving me the chance to get agro, then for some reason the raise shield mechanic wont work for me after I use mass agro skiil so i die die die  

[beherit]

On 13/12/2017 at 8:53 AM, Irlumir said:

I dont see it that way. I found it better

Raise shield,  and the mechanic with it, works very good.

....

i kinda agree with this, and also think tanks are a lot more fun now, but i  think mechanics are pretty bad.... i mean raise and focus are good, yeah, but if you use any shield skill this buffs dissapear ie: shield boomerang   (ok it seem logic, you are usng your shield to attack so you cant block, but logic on this game was lost long long ago....)
also all this skill spam could be a lot better with wizard harmony, but shied block seems to be a lot more than before and now tanks only have 1 "inmunity" skill so, could be dangerous XD.

the mechanic behind 2h stance is bad too, not for itself, but with the new buffs you have a lot more attack with knight, than warrior, but you miss 35% crit damage.

14 hours ago, Znipo said:

Seems boosted for me.

First time ive ever killed bosses & the tank is able to do what he is supposed to do. hold the agression.

mb this is why some of them think they qre getting more damage...

in any case, i didnt have any problem with tanks lv 99 and 102 (pk and eva) i ve tested.

for the other 2, i made SK/HK lv 85 just for testing. with them i tested  some solo play, and some raid bosses, in some of them i was able to hold the aggro, not all the time but pretty well, but in others it was just like before, raid dont even noticed me... (however it could be related to level diference between the tanks and the raids and/or the missing gear)...

[Populus]

Tanks have always sucked in PvE, they only fit into mediocre-ly geared groups. End game geared groups don't need tanks, and badly geared groups doesn't benefit much from a tank being in group because they can't do enough damage

I found out, after reading a few posts in this forum, that switching back to defensive AP with the 100% shield def and actually using Knight's harmony gave me more DPS with the 2hand stance, so I guess there isn't a need for warriors anymore. I wish the switching was a bit quicker, though I guess it can be abused, you can already cast raise shield, then switch to the 2hand stance, but that use case is limited at best. I managed to get up to 57k patk as an elf tank, which makes it 74.1k effective patk with the 30% passive pve bonus, my max before update was almost 100k effective patk with true vanguard. I also had max atk speed (1.5k) before update, whereas now I'm at about 1.3k atk speed since we lost rage aura, they should add atk speed to the 2hand stance as well XD.

I am sad to see UD and party rescue being nerfed into oblivion, they were pretty much the only thing that kept tanks in PvP groups, and now that it's gone tanks will now change roles to CC with slightly better defenses and almost no damage (same as before), which could work well... if their skills land reliably in PvP (yet to be determined, can someone check?), it would be a good thing, otherwise this update is an overall nerf to the tank classes.

I just find it sad that pvp gear mitigates damage significantly more than tank's inherent skills... but tanks cannot hope to reach DD status even with the best weapon possible. Again I'm not trying to be a DD, I'm just saying tanks have very little edge on their defensive prowess compared to DDs at offense.

[Disaro]

@Populus so what AP do you suggest, i have knight skills, but maybe i am doing something wrong so i want to double check it (i am 101 lvl)

[Irlumir]

20 hours ago, Populus said:

Tanks have always sucked in PvE, they only fit into mediocre-ly geared groups. End game geared groups don't need tanks, and badly geared groups doesn't benefit much from a tank being in group because they can't do enough damage

I found out, after reading a few posts in this forum, that switching back to defensive AP with the 100% shield def and actually using Knight's harmony gave me more DPS with the 2hand stance, so I guess there isn't a need for warriors anymore. I wish the switching was a bit quicker, though I guess it can be abused, you can already cast raise shield, then switch to the 2hand stance, but that use case is limited at best. I managed to get up to 57k patk as an elf tank, which makes it 74.1k effective patk with the 30% passive pve bonus, my max before update was almost 100k effective patk with true vanguard. I also had max atk speed (1.5k) before update, whereas now I'm at about 1.3k atk speed since we lost rage aura, they should add atk speed to the 2hand stance as well XD.

I am sad to see UD and party rescue being nerfed into oblivion, they were pretty much the only thing that kept tanks in PvP groups, and now that it's gone tanks will now change roles to CC with slightly better defenses and almost no damage (same as before), which could work well... if their skills land reliably in PvP (yet to be determined, can someone check?), it would be a good thing, otherwise this update is an overall nerf to the tank classes.

I just find it sad that pvp gear mitigates damage significantly more than tank's inherent skills... but tanks cannot hope to reach DD status even with the best weapon possible. Again I'm not trying to be a DD, I'm just saying tanks have very little edge on their defensive prowess compared to DDs at offense.

This is bullshit.

New instances require tank, maybe top gear players can do it without tank, but even then they want a tank to aid do it faster. The crowd control capability that tank has now is really nice.
Tank is not a damage dealer to be worried about defence, but two hand stand, wich most find bad, actually allows you to do some nice damage to bosses without having to change all AP configuration to deliver damage. Now you are tank, push a button, and be a semi decent DD. Activated with frenzy, abundance, savage and br really add some damage to bosses. 
The nerf in UD is OK. Still tank, and deffensive tank, can perform really well with less gear than any DD deliver, each one in their own job. Maybe in kama tanks are not wanted, but who cares? kama is a low lvl place,

Factions, AF (most), Altar (most), superion, etc, almost all good place require a tank to perform OK. 

So your post makes no sence at all. 

 

[Tool_of_Society]

13 hours ago, Irlumir said:

This is bullshit.

New instances require tank, maybe top gear players can do it without tank, but even then they want a tank to aid do it faster. The crowd control capability that tank has now is really nice.
Tank is not a damage dealer to be worried about defence, but two hand stand, wich most find bad, actually allows you to do some nice damage to bosses without having to change all AP configuration to deliver damage. Now you are tank, push a button, and be a semi decent DD. Activated with frenzy, abundance, savage and br really add some damage to bosses. 
The nerf in UD is OK. Still tank, and deffensive tank, can perform really well with less gear than any DD deliver, each one in their own job. Maybe in kama tanks are not wanted, but who cares? kama is a low lvl place,

Factions, AF (most), Altar (most), superion, etc, almost all good place require a tank to perform OK. 

So your post makes no sence at all. 

 

If you had your AP and gear setup properly you could do more dps prior to two hand stance WHILE BEING ABLE TO USE THE SHIELD AND SHIELD RELATED SKILLS. Soon as you use that two hand stance you're going to take a lot more damage and lose access to all your "oh sh*t" buttons.

Even my "poorly geared" tank lost dps and survivability in boss fights. So I just went ahead and redid it's AP into a completely defensively minded setup to try to compensate.

[Keoz]

Well, I have to say that the very first 2 days or so was a pain. I knew more or less about the changes and skills, but there's a difference between knowing and doing. It took me time reviewing my new skills, cds, ranges, passives and mechanics, even finding the right shortcut distribution accordinly was very important

I'm HK and I'll stay in that path, Blessed R95+8 as set. What's the state of the tank right now? Well, we gained a huge deal of CC that we were lacking before: 1 single chain, 2 group chains, shield boomerang with an awesome range to call groups without running, AoE stun, frontal push+stun, root, active AoE aggro skill and the passive aggro aura to simply run through mobs to gather them. This patch is called The Gathering and hell now we can really gather mobs!

Playing tank is a lot more active and skill intensive than before, but you can achieve more with it. Doing about 3 or 4h grinding party with good feohs, if you are to AoE grind, a skillful tank can make the difference and last siege the gathering cappacity of tanks during Siege proved important. How we defend our partners has also changed

Ignore death was fussed (and a good thing, because that 30 min cd skill wasn't really that helpful) with Sacrifice for a new mechanic, and also gave another "oh sh*t" button since we and our party can't die while this buff is up. UD keep its damage cap which is important for a semi-invincibilty mode, the same goes for Protection of Faith which now gain the damage cap property (now we don't need it to combo with UD as it was done before). Rescue on the other hand is a defense and resistance buff and no longer limit the damage, so it kinda switch places with PoF in my view. The fact HK lost cubic really hurts tho, as the new vampiric cleanse is not nearly as good as the cubic was

How to tank nowadays?

1. Keep your defenses boosted. Learn about your new defensive buffs, mechanics and how to rotate them. Also Frenzy has a really short cd, use it as much as you can.

2. CC. We have a lot more tools now, use them properly

3. The way to protect our party has changed, specially talking about UD-like skills. More tools disrupt opponents

 

Happy tanking

 

PD: @Draecke I'm curious about your thinking around the SK in the current update

[Disaro]

You are losing the point of my post, all I talk about is tanks losing survivability in PvE and now you made a argument whether a tank should go dps or deffencive AP

Raise shield+Grand Fortess mechanic works great as @Irlumir said as long as the no-brainer DDs let me get agro of a group of mobs, but it wont work everytime, they die almost instantly if a 2nd or 3rd mob attacks them, then my block mechanics wont work (still dont know why - and no i dont use shield skills while on raise shield buff), eventually the whole party dies and they blame me for their bad gameplay (also ISSes nowdays forget to cast Angel on healer), before salvation update i could easily handle the whole 1rst floor in AF instance *,and on Altar half room each time w/o problem, now nothing at all, even kama is a pain 

 

Edit * not using UD, just toggle focus shield

[Irlumir]

1 hour ago, Disaro said:

You are losing the point of my post, all I talk about is tanks losing survivability in PvE and now you made a argument whether a tank should go dps or deffencive AP

Raise shield+Grand Fortess mechanic works great as @Irlumir said as long as the no-brainer DDs let me get agro of a group of mobs, but it wont work everytime, they die almost instantly if a 2nd or 3rd mob attacks them, then my block mechanics wont work (still dont know why - and no i dont use shield skills while on raise shield buff), eventually the whole party dies and they blame me for their bad gameplay (also ISSes nowdays forget to cast Angel on healer), before salvation update i could easily handle the whole 1rst floor in AF instance *,and on Altar half room each time w/o problem, now nothing at all, even kama is a pain 

 

Edit * not using UD, just toggle focus shield

I have almost completly different experience. Never lose aggro, AF is a breeze, what i do is pop raise shield, run collecting all mobs,  using aoe agro and aoe slash then collect then with the water whirlwind ,  root them aoe agro again,  raise shield,  agro,  i keep them root around me, most of the time they do not last long. If you want it easy use protection of faith when u collect them, no big deal. Why you have hard time keeping agro on you? Root is there to use it, the agro toggle pops every 3 seconds, so give it time to spam, new root has a really high land rate and keeps them there 5 sec.

Also now is more versatile, you use your sword skills, pulling when tanking,  shield attack skills are not needed on aoe,  maybe shield wave can be linked as you wait cooldown. Hell i dont even auto atack while aoe, im busy pulling,  agro, rooting,  and using sword skills and raising shield on.  If any mob try to escape chain or the new aoe pull are ready to bring them back and root.

Dont waste time hitting.

On bosses i change to two hand, with knight ( who cares) activate savage, frenzy,  abundance and the the one that prevent to use soe xd, and damage change, in burnstein, from like 100 xd, to 7k as skills last, usually is enough time to drop boss. Also same mechanic on altar bosses. May not be that much, but perform great on tanking and aid on damage boss, it really helps.

Honestly tanks are now a lot better than before, it can have some improvements, ofcourse. Fully gear must be really good, if with mid gear perform well. Ofcourse,  as a tyr setup, it will suck

[Pokemon]

 

2 hours ago, Disaro said:

before salvation update i could easily handle the whole 1rst floor in AF instance *,and on Altar half room each time w/o problem, now nothing at all, even kama is a pain 

After some times i checked (kama, af, altar) it seems tanks have more more survivability to hordes of moobs and less survivability to raid bosses. That's why kama is a pain as you said.

39 minutes ago, Irlumir said:

On bosses i change to two hand

Do you see better survivability to raids with two hand stance skill? Or you have very good weapon and get some hp from vampiric?

44 minutes ago, Irlumir said:

Honestly tanks are now a lot better than before

After 1 week of tests i must say that i agree with Irlumir. Now you must use more skills and provoke aura holds moobs better on you, so yes you can do your job much better. If the price to do my job better is to get more damage on bosses as i see to myself it's worth. 

[Keoz]

2 hours ago, Disaro said:

You are losing the point of my post, all I talk about is tanks losing survivability in PvE and now you made a argument whether a tank should go dps or deffencive AP

Raise shield+Grand Fortess mechanic works great as @Irlumir said as long as the no-brainer DDs let me get agro of a group of mobs, but it wont work everytime, they die almost instantly if a 2nd or 3rd mob attacks them, then my block mechanics wont work (still dont know why - and no i dont use shield skills while on raise shield buff), eventually the whole party dies and they blame me for their bad gameplay (also ISSes nowdays forget to cast Angel on healer), before salvation update i could easily handle the whole 1rst floor in AF instance *,and on Altar half room each time w/o problem, now nothing at all, even kama is a pain 

 

Edit * not using UD, just toggle focus shield

First of all, not ALL shield skills turn down Raise/Focus/Wave Shield and it's important to know. Only the rush skill, single stun and throw shield turn down your Raise/Focus/Wave buff, you can still use the frontal stun/push and Shield Wave, both which are really useful to reduce damage on you. That's why I said you have to really try and explore the class, for example I have all this shield desactivating skills in one section of my shortcuts, so I don't touch them while I'm raising my defense.

In the case you mention, you should do the following: 1. aggro toggle always up 2. raise shield/frenzy 3. run around the mobs using mass aggro 4. set yourself in a mid position and use mass chain to pull them all 5. combo it with aoe stun, then root and take a little distance to evade damage, from there just control the situation pulling the rest with the other 2 chains skills and assisting yourself with the shield stun/push and stun aoe

A lot of our skills are now disrupting (3 chains, 2 aoe stuns and 1 root), if you use them properly, the mobs won't hit you most of the time. If your party further assist you with their own disrupting skills (snare, knock back aoe, stun aoe, etc), taking groups of mobs becomes a peace of cake

If your concept of tank is: I aggro them, they all hit me and I just stand there, well, then you gonna have to start spending in improving you gear to that point of passiveness

[Pokemon]

 

13 minutes ago, Keoz said:

First of all, not ALL shield skills turn down Raise/Focus/Wave Shield and it's important to know. Only the rush skill, single stun and throw shield turn down your Raise/Focus/Wave buff, you can still use the frontal stun/push and Shield Wave, both which are really useful to reduce damage on you. That's why I said you have to really try and explore the class, for example I have all this shield desactivating skills in one section of my shortcuts, so I don't touch them while I'm raising my defense.

In the case you mention, you should do the following: 1. aggro toggle always up 2. raise shield/frenzy 3. run around the mobs using mass aggro 4. set yourself in a mid position and use mass chain to pull them all 5. combo it with aoe stun, then root and take a little distance to evade damage, from there just control the situation pulling the rest with the other 2 chains skills and assisting yourself with the shield stun/push and stun aoe

A lot of our skills are now disrupting (3 chains, 2 aoe stuns and 1 root), if you use them properly, the mobs won't hit you most of the time. If your party further assist you with their own disrupting skills (snare, knock back aoe, stun aoe, etc), taking groups of mobs becomes a peace of cake

If your concept of tank is: I aggro them, they all hit me and I just stand there, well, then you gonna have to start spending in improving you gear to that point of passiveness

You have absolute right. The trick is not to get all damage but find a ways to ignore it. 

[Draecke]

ok so I haven't played my HK tank outside of mass pvp situations so far since I did my dps test at start of this update at which point I found my old set up is indeed gone and will most likely never get even close to that kind of damage output again - now don't get me wrong this update is an improvement for almost all tanks except the stacked HK's that played on DPS mode which I doubt there were that many off.

to illustrate as an in memoriam memento:

so as the lvl cap is still stuck at 105 I will change the HK to a more for PVP suited class which will be either TK or SK - decided to let the re-augmenting of my pvp weapon determine which one it will be aka if I get +30% para landrate first it will be SK

once my dual class hits 105 (Tyrant) I will play either for w/e my clan needs

irlumir & keoz posts give the best advise, just test stuff out in a controlled area that won't hurt to much like Seal of Shilien

ps, try organize with clan to do fortress raids aka farm KE as with that you can get 15 day talismans and besides selling those is good money making there are also shield defense & pdef/mdef ones which are good to have on tanks imo

[BornInHell]

On 12/12/2017 at 1:10 PM, Draecke said:

there won't be any future changes to tank class, what we have now has the final changes the Koreans made to the class and is here to stay..