[Poptartu]

This might just be me.. or might be a majority of the population on the server. But tanks are seriously ridiculous right now. I can fully invest into a way of dealing damage and hit for 50 damage against a tank, which, is relatively fine. It's not fine, however, when the tank can turn around and hit me for 250 damage. That isn't balance. That's everyone build a tank time! I keep trying to make fun unique builds, that seem like all the math supports them being decent. Then the math comes up against a tank's math and 90% damage reduction with moves that do their 120 predicted damage cause i'm not over invested into maxing defenses. So, my predicted 800 damage a turn, loses to their 200, cause mine turns into 20. I don't understand how this is considered balanced. It's not fun to have you entire existence turned into 0's cause tanks can stack too many percentage reductions, before 10-40 hp regen a turn, completely negating you.

[MegaBlues]

I warned you about them "using defensive stats offensively' bro. I tried.

Elemental Attack being tied to stats was a mistake. Stats aren't balanced in their efficiency in the slightest, and tanks being able to use the same stats for damage reduction and offense means that being a tank is the most reasonable way to play. There's no reason to be a glass cannon when you can deal the damage damage and tank to boot.

Also, autohits.

[Kameron8]

Tanks pretty much dominate in Player combat, yup. It's a combination of how weapons and elemental attack scale, as well as how easy it is to bypass evade should you so wish. Light investment into evade is meaningless, since it's a feast or famine defense and anyone who needs to hit will get as much as they can.

What we end up with are mages who have to choose between sinking all of their stats in things like Strength and Celerity, or stats like Defense, Resistance, and Vitality. There is no decision to really make. The non-magically inclined will invest into whatever stat their weapon scales off of, and pure defense. Dodge is an impossibility without particular class setups, so it's far more applicable to just roll Black Knight, or Boxer, or anything without caring at all about evasion. Tank stats will -always- help you, there is no RNG involved.

Not segmenting certain stats as offensive and defensive is one of the main issues with this, I believe. The fact that Vitality scales something just as much as Strength seems counterintuitive, since Strength provides no tangible benefits outside of damage and things like Battle Weight. In a pure number sense, 500 health mages with fir and explosion hitting for 200-300 will be inferior to a 1,000 health mage with Parraeta dealing 200-300, and healing them for 150. Nothing should scale with Vitality, Defense, and Resistance. Luck, Celerity, Guile, Faith, Sanc, and Skill are all half as effective at providing multiple benefits along with weapon scaling, with Strength and Will being the stragglers that mostly only benefit weapons.

I have no idea how to address this trend, to be honest. People bulked up way too much in the Great Reckoning, and the %based defense has made it drastically more effective than building strictly for offense. It's essentially a matter of defense being nearly mandatory, even for offensive builds.

To give a random, anecdotal example: I have an archer running nothing but offensive stats, two rebelling 1* Bows, and a ton of Guile. I also have a boxer with a ton of defense, strength, and Sanctity (It's a Dullahan, so that makes it even tankier). What normally critically hits Jammers for 300 damage crit the Dullahan for 80, while the Dullahan walked over and Cold Fronts for 180, and can use any number of Boxer skills for WAY more damage than that. The latter has twice the health, and god knows how much more effective health, than the Archer, and it's a real no win situation trying to combat a wall of defense with just as frightening of an offense.

[Lolzytripd]

How to kill the tank Meta

Change evasion

Make it so Everyone has the current version of evasion

Change rogues/infighter/boxer evasion to danger sense, which is a chance to completely dodge auto hits and aoes.

this has worked in tabletop style rpgs for decades


In tabletops, which is what sl2 plays like, its turn based, its an rpg, theres a grid, its a tabletop not an mmo. When you attack normally you have a hitcheck, when you use an ability/skill/power that doesn't have a hit check it has a saving throw check for halved damage that EVERYONE makes.
Rogues and other dodgy classes usually pick up an ability that makes their saving throw equal no damage.

[Snake]

How to kill Tank Meta:

Make Water ATK, Earth ATK and Dark ATK skills and spells have terrible scalings, like Wretched Oil.
Water is made to give life, Earth is made to protect, and Dark is made to trick. Why would they even be effectively stronger than the other elements?

Too bad this doesn't solve the CAST FIST trend.

Also, make sure to stomp down Mythslayer's scaling from 20% 80% STR/DEF to 50% 50% STR/DEF

[Kameron8]

How to kill Tank Meta:

Make Water ATK, Earth ATK and Dark ATK skills and spells have terrible scalings, like Wretched Oil.
Water is made to give life, Earth is made to protect, and Dark is made to trick. Why would they even be effectively stronger than the other elements?

Too bad this doesn't solve the CAST FIST trend.

Also, make sure to stomp down Mythslayer's scaling from 20% 80% STR/DEF to 50% 50% STR/DEF

Making water mages and dark mages trash isn't the way to handle scaling. I'd much rather see Water, Dark, and Earth attack scale off of a different stat, before that. I don't think scaling 2 elements off of Str, and 2 off of Will, would be worse than just making anyone trying to use those elements garbage, since they'd be inherently tanky.

[Flamesword1]

Frankly. I mostly agree with Lolz here. Honestly, giving everyone evasion then changing the evasion that's in the game to danger sense would be a good way of getting Dodge back on par with defense wielders. In D&D Evasion gives characters who focus on not getting hit, a chance to fight others, especially mages who go lolfireball or lolaoespells, and their AC (Armor Class) is high enough to usual avoid getting hit by tanks. (Unless RNG unfavors you.)

In any RPG I've played, tanks are meant to soak up damage, not out damage the dpser. They focus on survivability and protecting key members of the party, and keeping the enemy on them, either through CC or just fucking challenging them. It's not supposed to be like this, where tanks can beat down the mage and the dpsers with little to no counterplay. Should a tank stop a mage or Dpser, sure! Should they be able to beat both of them at the same time? It should be possible, but once again it should be difficult. You should feel rewarded for stopping the enemies damage, not have it so trivial to the point where you can outright deny another PC.

[Neus]

Weapons that scale off of defensive stats should probably have their scaling lowered. Spells that scale off Water/Earth/Dark could stand to have somewhat lowered scaling or the amount of Water/Dark/Earth ATK given per stat point could be reduced, perhaps more prominently in the case of Youkai skills. Skills that grant damage reductions could also be adjusted. Regeneration effects might need to be looked into, as well, since they can be overwhelming.

One of the goals of GR was to make everyone capable of taking more than one round's worth the hits, so in a sense, people capable of being tanky is fine, but I agree that it's not tuned properly at the moment.

[Rendar]

If you're going to hit how much water/dark/earth atk vit/res/def give. You'll need to revert the change done to Wretched Oil so it doesn't do next to no damage whatsoever.

[Snake]

Agreed with Derg for now, but let's work with facts. First we see if it will be doing 12 damage total, to then start whining once again. :>