You might wonder how these are related. But first I would like to request a formal clarification :

1. Are the critical hits supposed to be like this? (where they can one shot a fully geared, perfect rolled, maxed buffed tank).

If the answer is yes then I will relegate my honest attempt at building a tank set and I will do what I see and hear people do - make a build around tactics that completely negate the intended difficulty mechanic. I don't know about anyone else but I think it's complete bullshit that a tank with ~750 health and ~1100 goes down from a rng "oopsie". What's the point of having 55% mitigation if it doesn't work vs critical hits? Making a build that tough gives up a ton of dps; in a game like this it realistically means having a special tank set (meaning you bother to make a second amazing yellow set, and roll it perfectly - ignoring the pitfalls with that).

Is there a post somewhere that I missed that says this is what I have in mind on how these should work?

I have heard people say well it keeps the game interesting. No... it really doesn't. What I see is that people react to what feels like a dirty mechanic by playing dirty and working to ignore the mechanic. Furthermore overtuned critical hits just make the game feel unappealing from an advancement perspective (in other words someone might give up early and not keep playing and not be interested in buying vanity gear from the PG shop).


A. Root

I don't know exactly why but it seems like we are missing an incredibly basic function for root effects : If the highest priority target on the taunt list is out of range, then the monster will immediately switch to the next target on the list. Project Gorgon doesn't do this and I have no idea why. Can we please have this in the game? It's a step towards fair play that needs to be a part of the game or people will just abuse root functions.

*counter argument* : Nerf root! No! Roots generally speaking are special and most classes do not have them (this is good). I have heard people say they liked the root system in WOW where damaging the mob had a chance at breaking the root. That's stupid because then what are you going to do with a root? The only thing that spell has just become suited for is running past content. Is that what you want a root to do? I think not. Root effects are rare, do not last long and generally have pretty long cool downs. I think we just need some tweaks to enemy AI behavior.

Furthermore I request that rooted mobs revert to range attacks if available. For example I would love to see infiltrators in Gk revert to range attacks while rooted unless engaged in melee. This creates a window where your powers are still very useful but you have to be careful when and where you apply them. This would mean that a poor root could cause a wipe if you made two ranged enemies start immediately using ranged attacks.

B. Overtaunt

There are apparently combos in the game where you can apply a taunt greater than the mob's life bar (or close enough to its entire life bar). In other words you can apply 8,000 taunt with a single ability to a mob with ~10,000 health. This makes the game silly because the mob has zero interest in any other party members (we can assume that no one person is going to do more damage than the tank's taunt). The tank is free to run around a circle in a large room or up and down a cleared hallway. I completely shun this type of sillyness. You can also combo this with root so the mob ends up attacking no one (even if we applied the target liste changes mentioned earlier). I want to emphasize that I don't think people would bother with cheap tricks like this if critical hits were on the order of remotely fair.

Cow might need to get nerfed a bit so this isn't an option people can abuse.

C. Mezmerize effects

I'm really not sure why but it is currently possible to apply a bunch of dots to a monster and then you can mez it so that it can't fight back. For whatever reason the game doesn't register the dots as breaking the mez so you can kill very strong single pull mobs with extremely low risk. This is not right. As far as I know mezmerize effects should break as soon as the target takes damage.

When that is not the case you are actually talking about a hold effect (see city of villains/heroes). These are quite silly because you can attack a target and it can't fight back at all. I hope we don't ever get hold effects in PG.

D. Boss resistances

While on the topic of City ov Villains let me mention an interesting game feature in that bosses needed 2x of a specific effect before they were affected (so 2 holds, 2 stuns, etc with a short window of time). I think it might be interesting here if we just said as a general rule bosses were twice as strong against these effects so generally speaking they will only last half as long. Maybe this isn't necessary for stun effects as there is already a feedback limit for those.