Fencer Archive

So, Holo mentioned the possibility of adding active abilities for melee types that make them better tanks.

This is a bad idea. It's a bad idea because it turns defense into an on/off button. These threaten to overshadow the differences between melee types, making us all essentially equivalent in PvE.

Also, it's a bad idea because it is already hard enough to be a melee. One of the main disadvantages of melee is that targeting is a pain in the butt and we have all sorts of problems just getting in the right spot. We need combat to get easier, not more difficult. Being a good melee player should not require carpal tunnal.

We definitely DO need a boost to defense. Instead of Tank-buttons we need to have the passive defensive bonuses fixed. For this to work, the current system needs to change. Defenses should be more prevalent (more bonuses along your career) and more effective but should give diminishing returns. This will give melee types a significant boost to defense in PvE/PvP to make up for their other disadvantages and will do so in an interesting manner. That is to say that different builds will have varying defensive levels(and not just the same Tank button) making defense still a strong component of character customization but diminishing returns should be put in place to guarantee that a full-defensive build does not max out defenses.

I want defenses to be more prevalent in the trees because I see it as a significant problem that defenses do not really come along until a player is finishing his expert profession. This is screwed up. Instead, characters should be getting tougher slowly throughout their career.

If Tank-buttons go in they should bea supplement to an already robust system, and not a quick-fix that makes all melees essentially interchangeable for tanking and it shouldn't undo the strategy of varying defenses for varying builds. Even if different classes be different abilities, limiting the system to a set number of active abilities will be detrimental to character customization and will also face the problem of simply making combat even harder for a class that already is working its butt off in combat.

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StGabriel

I agree with this. The passive defense system needs to be effective and smoothly in place before any active abilities are created/changed. We don't need anything else burning up out HAM at the moment.

Ranges also need to be corrected - and aquiring the proper range for your weapon should be a little less time consuming (nudge forward, nudge forward, nudge back...). Too close and you get instant aggro, too far and yer just posing.

Yeah, a decent /stick is LONG overdue.

I like the idea- if its done correctly..i.e believably. As a master of footwork I want the ability to DODGE to be my "Tanking" ability. A draw Fire if you will..give it a timer if you want..but If im to be a tank, make it believable.

Let it burn mind down, let the enemy hit you some but for the most part we should be avoiding most attacks..unless we attack while in this mode..which should open you up for damage..we are Fencers so we should take LESS damage when this happens.

Also give polearm actual blocks that work; let it take away from there action or health pools

TkA the same..but increase damage to them for Tanking it due to the fact they are using there hands and due to the amt. of damage they can already dish.

2 hand swordsman should follow the same lines as the polearm.

Just some ideas.

Active abilities do allow for more strategy especially if they pull from your HAM pools.

More strategy = more rewarding combats. If it's all just passive defense and spamming one optimal special move key then combat is boring.

A little bit of active and passive would be nice. Definitely keep the different brawler classes separate in flavor!

Just some comments from a grinding pikeman....hope you don't mind me wandering by your boards.

If there is anything we do not need it is another HAM tax on our combat abilities.

yup, i can't even kill 3 cubs by myself. I was killed by them. We definitely need a boost to defense.

IMO, if it drains anything, an active ability should drain action more than mind for us. While we *do* train to anticipate movements and learn what combinations of attacks tend to lead to what things can be dodged (which taxes the mind), I'd say that it would actually be more instinctual after a certain point. We know how to keep moving and dodging, which really just wears out a person's stamina after awhile.

As far as for or against active defense abilities...it all comes down to how they are implemented. Obviously, visuals are a big thing. It depends what they work against, too. Would it be all melee, would be it be ranged also, would it work against AoE attacks...what's the chance that you'll end up dodging an attack, what's the chance that you could get a partial dodge and get some damage mitigation...those are really my concerns.

Did Holo ever mention what kind of tank abilities he had in mind? I'm really curious about the types of things they were thinking of. I hope it's not just abilities that increase your combat bonuses for short periods of times or things like that.

They should really do something unique for the melee classes that allow them to provide something both interesting and strategically important to both PvE and PvP. New tank-like abilities not available to Marksmen might do it if implemented properly. By making these abilities strategically significant you can easily create an important role for the brawler classes to play (which more importantly provides a big reason to group with the brawler classes).

If there is some kind of "special" that we use to tank..then it should absolutely come @ a price. I'm not suggesting it be at a large expense to the mind pool..but it should have a price for strategic purposes as would every other melee class..to keep things balanced.

To say that a defense should require a cost in order to have balanceis to imply that fencers and other melees are currently balanced with other professions, something which is very far from true. Melees already pay lots of costs over ranged. This is part of why I wrote my original post.

I've been thinking about this more and I may have gone too far with the first post. The idea of active defenses is not absolutely silly, but the usage of this as a band-aid for the current problem is. We need strong, effective passive defenses first. And something to do when we are kited. THEN maybe we should consider what kinds of interesting passive defenses we should implement.

Holocron's post on the idea implied that there would ONE ability that all melees got. This makes us all cookie cutter images of each other defensively. Now maybe they're going to do something more interesting. It also implied that the defenses would be very short lived. Maybe only a few seconds. And at relatively high HAM costs. Melees already have too much to do. Trapping a kiter somewhere takes time. HAM costs are already too prohibitive. None of these implications bode well for actually fixing problems.

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StGabriel

Yes, I've read that thread and yes, I can take red mobs with armor too. But only at my lower level. If I go out with a group then the things we fight tend to squash me fairly quickly. I haven't hunted any really high-end game but what I have heard is that at this level the melee truly becomes useless, armor or no, because it's pretty much one shots no matter how good your armor.

There is no real compelling reason why a tank has to give up all other actions and drain HAM just to tank. Like I said above, it's not as though melees are otherwise perfectly balanced with the other classes. We're already paying a lot at no return. There's plenty of room to add passive defenses that work before passing the issue on to some band-aid with active defenses. Ranged classes can still kite and have much richer targeting options and abilities like warning shot, etc.When fightinga lair with a group, I find that the melee "tank" spends half his time running from critter to critter. Especially if he's trying to keep aggro off his group.

Let's look at the scenario suggested by Holo's initial post. Basically what happens to us melee people is that we become glorified creature handler pets. We run into the middle of things and get aggro and then we just spam our defensive action. Repeat until your friends have finished everything off (hopefully, because if they don't do a good job of this it's not like you'll be able to do anything but continue spamming). Is that what we want our role to be? Does that really sound like it will make grouping interesting or has any strategy to it? We're not even performing as well as the CH pets because even they can tank and damage at the same time.

What I think we really need instead is a something in between. Better defenses that will make us more viable in general against critters with the possibility for actives that augment this system but are not on/off Tank buttons that basically just put us in tank-mode where we do nothing but hope that our HAMs stay high.

Also, I find it hard to reconcile Q's post as it is generally talking about PvP and I don't think that Holo's suggestion would help much in PvP at all. It's hard to say what Q intends to imply by his post.

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StGabriel