Update Discussion: November 6, 2020

[Yaffy]

This update having a lot of changes around tanking came as a pleasant surprise. I know there was another forum post recently where it was discussed, but to see the changes so soon is great! I think pretty much every change this patch brought was good, but I would like to go through each one just for my own analysis as well as for anyone who actually cares enough to read my notes. I apologize in advance for the wall of text but I’ll try to break it up into sections just like the patch notes.

General note about Flat Mitigation vs Percentage Mitigation:
I know I’ve talked a lot about the whole flat vs percentage mitigation issue, and that I support percentage based mitigation much more due to scaling better as enemies deal more and more damage while not nullifying weaker enemies. However, I find it very interesting that in these patch notes that there are a lot of flat mitigation options provided, but in VERY high numbers, significantly higher than we’ve seen before. It’s pretty baffling seeing certain mods offering close to 100 potential flat mitigation while older mods might have offered something like 10-20. I do think there is a place for both kinds of mitigation, so I’m interested in seeing where this goes although the numbers may need to be tweaked a bit. The bonus mitigation vs elite stuff is certainly a good idea, and I’m glad to see it implemented. Personally I think the mitigation vs normal enemies might need to be a little lower while the elite mitigation could be a bit higher in most of these cases, but none of the mods look outright busted or outright useless and so depending on how combat changes in the future this might be totally fine.
As a further note, I would highly suggest against the idea of making flat mitigation occur after percentage based mitigation. With these numbers it would be very VERY easy for players to become outright invincible to most attacks outside of rage attacks, so I would advise against it. Even with hefty percentage based mitigation these mods should still prove to be decently valuable, and even without percentage based mods these flat mods will help bridge the gap between an undergeared tank and an overgeared tank, which I think was INCREDIBLY large before this patch, far greater than the discrepancy between an undergeared DPS and an overgeared DPS.


Shield changes:

Bulwark Mode:
Overall this is a great addition to shield’s moveset. It’s surprising to see a tank stance added to Project Gorgon, but its implementation is good. Reducing all damage you take by 27% is a decent amount, but the most important part of this is that it reduces any type of direct damage, which is something shield definitely needed. Before this patch shield was pretty much the best thing vs elemental damage simply due to elemental ward, but it basically offered nothing meaningful against physical damage and lacked defense against many other damage types which was a major flaw with the skill.

The damage reduction is pretty hefty which makes it undesirable to use all the time which is definitely good. The movement speed reduction isn’t too bad but it also encourages players to avoid using it all the time (Ex. while just running around) so that’s good as well. One thing to note however is that it doesn’t cut your indirect damage, so this means thorns and DoT builds aren’t weakened very much. Normally this wouldn’t matter too much… but some of the mods may make this kind of abusable.

I think the one thing I would like to see changed with Bulwark though would be to allow it to be a sidebar skill, since I find shield's bar is already getting really crowded with "mandatory" skills. There's no way you're removing Take the Lead or Fight me you Fools from a tank shield's bar, and if you don't run shield team you're a monster. Since Bulwark is something you don't necessarily want on 100% of the time, I feel like it would make more sense if you could put it on your side bar, although if it couldn't then it would be pretty easy to chuck out reinforce or a shield attack for it.

"While Bulwark Mode is enabled you recover 13 Armor per second"
This mod isn’t too spectacular, with 13 armor per second sounding like a lot but really most enemies are going to be chipping away at your armor much faster than that. It’s about close to what you could expect to get from your combat refresh at end game, but only for armor. Still it can add up, but I wouldn’t prioritize this mod too much unless you’re planning on doing heavy stalling, in which case you can get this mod twice and regenerate more armor.

"While Bulwark Mode is enabled you recover 10 Power per second"
This mod is a bit ridiculous for the wrong reasons, and I think this should be changed a bit. 10 power per second is incredibly strong, and it’s essentially passive regeneration since you can leave the mode toggled. However, the funny thing is that this mod is actually very well balanced while doing normal tanking. Usually power isn’t a huge concern when tanking (You should be building mostly around fairly power efficient moves) but it’s still useful when kiting or doing chain pulls, which are important for playing tank well. Outside of tanking however, 10 power per second basically negates a majority of power issues for other purposes, lets you abuse kiting in a cheesy manner with ranged classes, and even lets you fly forever. Personally I think this mod should be changed to be an on hit power regeneration effect, or perhaps it should require you to get hit (Ex. After you get hit restore 10 power per second for X seconds) just so people don’t use it outside of fighting things directly.

“While Bulwark Mode is active all your attacks taunt +50% and restore 17 Health to you”
"While Bulwark Mode is active all your attacks taunt +50% and restore 26 Armor to you"
Both of these mods are fairly similar, although the armor one is technically more useful due to regenerating faster and appearing on two armor pieces. Overall these two mods offer the strongest health and armor cantrip effects in the game due to applying to ALL attacks, and I believe if your goal is to make a build that can self-sustain itself to tank something infinitely, these would be your ticket to it. Assuming you’re constantly attacking (Which you should be for the most part), you can regenerate up to 40 armor and 13 health per second, which is a pretty large amount. The strongest part about this however, is that due to being a global modifier to your attacks it means you can combine this with other similar cantrip effects, which can result in healing for over a hundred effective hit points per attack. Oh, and I guess the taunt bonus is nice too to make up for the reduced damage in bulwark mode.

That said, before everyone who’s bothering to read this goes out and grabs these healing mods to become invincible, I do want to add that regeneration should not be your priority when building a tank. The most important thing to build first off is damage mitigation, because healing for hundreds of HP doesn’t matter much if enemies are destroying you on the spot. Healing becomes more useful AFTER you build mitigation, as it becomes more effective. For example, if you only take half damage, then 100 healing essentially becomes 200 healing as the enemy will need to attack you for 200 damage to make up for the 100 healing points. Bulwark mode’s mitigation helps with this, but it’s certainly not enough just by itself for end game elites at least.

Elemental Ward:
The nerf to elemental ward was definitely needed, although I appreciate leaving the 3 second invincibility time at the start. I actually find that part really neat, since it essentially rewards players for “Parrying” certain attacks with elemental ward while removing the ability to cheese too hard with it. That said you should normally have been using elemental ward right before getting hit by a strong elemental attack, but this really pushes that idea.
Changing the elemental immunity to flat mitigation is a bit strange because of the issue of flat damage not scaling very well, but the amount of flat mitigation it offers is pretty large, especially with the mod that improves it. It’s enough to block out very strong fire DoTs, which is still very useful even if it can’t outright block fire attacks. I certainly don’t think this will do much to protect you against the strongest elemental attacks (That ””””””Fire”””””” elemental in the fae realm is still going to obliterate your health with a rage crit even with 100 mitigation), but due to lasting for 30 seconds it will block a lot of damage over time, so it will still be very useful, ESPECIALLY against enemies that apply burning DoTs, in which case it could even feel outright overpowered due to negating them entirely.

"Elemental Ward mitigates +54 Darkness damage for 30 seconds"
"Elemental Ward mitigates +55 direct Trauma damage for 30 seconds"
For the most part these mods are kind of lackluster, due to Darkness and direct trauma being fairly uncommon damage types. It’s a bit sad seeing the old poison and trauma resistance being removed, since they were overall more useful for reducing poison and trauma DoTs. Still, +55 mitigation for 30 seconds is a fairly noticeable amount and could reduce Ensign damage by quite a bit, so if you REALLY hate Ensigns then the first might be useful. I’d personally put these two on the bench unless you have a very specific enemy type you want to deal with or new enemies with these damage types get added.

"All Shield attacks have a 22% chance to conjure a force-shield that mitigates 10% of all slashing, crushing, and piercing damage for 30 seconds (or until 100 damage is absorbed). Stacks up to 5 times”
"All Shield attacks have a 22% chance to conjure a force-shield that mitigates 10% of all direct nature, darkness, demonic, and acid damage for 30 seconds (or until 100 damage is absorbed). Stacks up to 5 times”
I just want to start by saying it’s really funny how this mod moved over from Unarmed to Shield, but with some tweaks. This version is a lot weaker due to only having 1 mod for each and having a limit of 5 stacks, but shield getting some physical resistance is nice and the latter mod reduces a wide variety of uncommon damage types which is kinda interesting.
On paper these mods are useful, but it’s a bit tricky to use them due to requiring shield attacks. Unarmed can fill its whole 6 slot bar with attacks (I mean it doesn’t have anything else), but shield has many very useful utility skills which will make upkeeping these barrier effects with a decent rotation more difficult. You could use emergency bash as well, but I think it will be difficult to get the most out of these mods without either spamming quick bash (Which is definitely not preferred) or purposefully skipping out on some useful abilities like elemental ward or take the lead in order to have more fast cooldown shield attacks. Overall I don’t think you should build around these mods as a tank as much as you should simply think of them as a bonus (Ex. Gain 2.2% mitigation on using fight me you fools), but I don’t think they’re worth building in that case.
I’m sure the idea behind things like this is to try and get players to make a build where people use all the shield bash abilities (Since there are several other mods that boost all shield bash abilities), but personally I don’t think it’s worth it. If someone else wants to try and make it though I’d be very interested in seeing how it works out.

"Disrupting Bash deals +40% damage and taunts +460" => "Disrupting Bash causes the next attack that hits you to deal 29 less damage"
I’m gonna be honest I’m not a very big fan of this one at all. I just can’t see this one being useful, and disrupting bash losing its taunt takes away some of its viability in tank builds (The crushing damage debuff on Disrupting is very nice utility for the tank) . Reducing the damage of one hit by 29 isn’t very useful since it doesn’t scale with other forms of mitigation, 29 isn’t a very large amount of damage, and it’s worse than weakening the target’s attack since at least then you could reduce damage to your whole party if it’s an AoE. I really don’t get this one.


Staff Changes:

Deflective Spin:
Similar to elemental ward, changing Deflective spin to have better uptime is better at making the skill line less cooldown reliant, although it wasn’t as extreme as elemental ward/blocking stance. On a vanilla deflective spin 13% mitigation isn’t a huge amount though which kinda makes the skill seem a little lackluster (It kinda feels like a weaker Bulwark stance you have to repeatedly use), but the mods added to it are really great and then it makes a lot more sense.

"Deflective Spin restores 66 Health instantly and provides +50 Mitigation from all Elite attacks for 15 seconds"
100 flat mitigation is a ginormous amount of flat mitigation, so I’m interested in seeing how effective this mod is. In a great tanking set, this mod will probably reduce elite damage by quite a lot, although rage attacks will probably smash through this as if it’s not there.

"Deflective Spin gives you +18% Projectile Evasion for 15 seconds"
This mod is deceptively powerful. 18% projectile evasion is nothing to sneeze at, especially due to the easy availability of projectile evasion on other pieces of gear. This mod could easily reduce the overall damage you take from ranged mobs by over 30%, and it should be a top priority for staff players. Overall an incredibly strong mod despite how simple it looks.

Blocking Stance:
The parrying effect isn’t as useful but it gives 102 physical mitigation without mods against elites, which is kinda nuts since elemental ward needed two mods to get close to that. With two mods you get 192 flat mitigation against elites, which is the highest amount of flat mitigation given by a single ability in the game AND it lasts for 30 seconds, which is pretty ridiculous. Combine it with deflective spin and I'm pretty sure you have so much flat mitigation you won't be taking damage anymore.
I’m interested in seeing how strong this ends up being as I suspect it’ll make normal attacks pretty weak and it might be too strong at reducing overall damage, although you’ll still be susceptible to spike damage from crits. In GK I suspect it’ll probably reduce the damage you take from normal attacks to pathetic levels, although Wintertide has too many elemental mobs for it to make a ginormous difference.
Physical damage is overall much more common so blocking stance is definitely very strong now. In fact it might be kind of ridiculous due to lasting 30 seconds. 34-64 flat mitigation is a LOT against trash, which will probably make staff trash farming builds basically invincible. Overall I think elemental ward is a bit stronger in a fully built tank build due to the value of elemental resistance and its ability to negate burning DoTs, but blocking stance will be useful against a much wider variety of enemies and is ridiculously strong with just two mods. It honestly might be too easy to throw into a build to negate damage, sort of like how it was before. It’d be weaker at cheesing since it doesn’t give outright immunity, but 30 seconds is a long time.

"Blocking Stance costs -16 Power and mitigates +10% of physical damage from Elite attackers for 30 seconds"
Good simple mod, you can get two of it so it’s pretty safe to just say staff should have 20% physical mitigation at all times. Stacked with the previous mod and it’s pretty easy for staff to say it has the most physical mitigation in the game with just blocking stance. This mod mostly prevents you from getting gibbed by rage crits as badly (Ex. Wintertide Trolls), which the flat mitigation from Blocking stance normally isn't very good against.

"Lunge causes the next attack that hits you to deal 29 less damage"
Same as the disrupting bash thing, gonna be honest I don’t really get this one, seems really weak.


Cow changes:

Overall I think the cow changes are nice, but aren’t really quite enough to make cow that great at tanking, although it’s certainly quite stronger and makes cow tanking a bit more viable. However the buffs are really good for a support/DPS cow, since they have both damage buffs and effects that lower damage for anyone, not just themselves.

"Tough Hoof costs -26 Power and mitigates +11% of all Elite attacks for 8 seconds"
An excellent mod for sure, with two copies this mod offers 22% mitigation to all damage types, assuming they’re direct attacks from elites. This kind of stuff is exactly what cow needed, as Cow had a huge problem dealing with a lot of damage types such as elemental damage. However, one thing to note is that Tough Hoof has a cool down of 12 seconds, so this means Cows should be prepared to use the skill off cooldown and expect to have brief periods where they aren’t as tanky with this mod.

New treasure (chest, hands): "Max Power +31 and Vulnerability to Elite Damage -8% when Cow skill active"
Unlike the mod above, this mod is active all the time as a passive, and while it might not seem that exciting, this mod is actually excellent. Not only does it have 100% uptime and apply to all direct damage types, but if the wording of this mod is correct then it actually modifies the player’s resistance. This is important because negative vulnerability is actually taken into account before other forms of mitigation, and therefore this 8% reduction applies BEFORE flat mitigation. Definitely mandatory in any cow tanking set, and pretty useful even if you aren’t a tank.

New treasure (off-hand): "Deadly Emission Deals +170 Nature damage over 10 seconds and reduces targets' next attack by 35%"
An interesting mod, this one is fairly similar to the front kick kick mod in that it reduces damage from one attack by quite a bit. Unlike front kick, you know Deadly Emission is actually going to AoE and apply this to every mob, so this is a pretty useful mod. Overall it won’t reduce damage by that much due to only applying to one attack, but it’s a nice bonus when starting an AoE pull or possibly a rage attack if you can time it right. Two useful things to note is that you can reduce the damage your party takes from AoEs with this mod, and you don’t actually need to be tanking to make use of this ability.

New treasure (ring): "Clobbering Hoof deals +35% damage and if target is Elite, reduces their attack damage 10% for 10 seconds"
A great mod, this one scales perfectly with flat mitigation (Since enemy damage is calculated first) and it lasts for a period of time so it’ll overall reduce enemy damage by a decent amount. Clobbering hoof has a cooldown of 10 seconds, so you can get close to 100% uptime on this effect. However, it only applies to one target which kinda limits it by quite a bit, and once again you don’t need to be a tank to get full effectiveness of this mod.


Other Notes:

Nimble Gear Nerf:
Overall I think this change was good, although I don’t know if it’s quite what we needed. The nimble coat and pants were decent, but not really best in slot for most scenarios so I don’t think they needed to be nerfed that badly. This is because most melee/ranged attacks are spammed at you, so for the most part they would reduce damage by 16% or so if you were only fighting one target who repeatedly used the relevant attack type at you. Still they were better than a lot of other gear, so I guess it’s fair.
Nimble Shoes on the other hand were way too good, and definitely needed a nerf. Back during the Gazluk Keep days I said they weren’t necessarily BiS for tanks because there weren’t too many AoEs and you would usually pull too many tacticians to effectively dodge things if you did pull them, but now it seems like almost every elite has an AoE rage attack and said rage attacks are incredibly strong so nimble shoes are just too useful against everything.
The thing is that even now I think nimble shoes are still BiS for most enemies, even with the nerf. A big reason for that however is just that there aren’t really many other good options for the shoes, with the only option really coming close being the astounding evasion leather shoes (Which to be fair, are looking a lot better after this nerf especially on certain sets). The nerf was good, but if the goal was to make players avoid nimble shoes on tanking sets then I don’t think this really changed too much.

Future Tanking changes:
I’m VERY anxious about the future update mentioned, since I have no idea what’s in store for Unarmed in particular. Ice Magic and Deer deserve nothing but buffs so there’s no problem there, but I know that Unarmed has been the strongest tanking skill for a while and can’t help but be worried about it being nerfed unjustly. Yes I know I am probably the most biased person you could ask, but the only thing overpowered about unarmed was that it was the only thing keeping the concept of tanking alive by being “Acceptable” as a tank while other skills were incapable of holding their own.
I do believe that Unarmed can be nerfed if other skills you can combine it with are stronger (Unarmed/Shield in particular will have a field day with Bulwark mode), but at the very least I would like to suggest that Unarmed tanking be easier to build, even if it is weaker in a perfect set. One major problem with Unarmed tanking is that it is incredibly weak with poor gear, and only starts to get good once you have an INCREDIBLY fine tuned set, and even then you are heavily limited by the strength of your other party members. I do believe Unarmed is the closest skill in the game to getting out of control, in that a few buffs could potentially make it way too good, but it's also volatile in that nerfs could potentially make it worthless very quickly.
If there are any questions you’d like to ask about building an Unarmed tank, please let me know, and I would be happy to lay out everything as objectively as possible if it could give the developers a better idea of how to change Unarmed tanking in the future.
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Sorry for the long post, thanks for reading it if you bothered to do so. I could talk about this all day. I’m happy to see the game going in this direction since I definitely agree that the game has been getting too fast ever since crits were added. Overall I think this patch was pretty great and I’m really happy to see tanking get some love! I’m really REALLY interested in seeing other people try to build tanks, and I hope people can share their experience and feedback with it. Tanking has always been really hard to do properly and to be honest I still think it might be, but hopefully this update is a step towards making tanking a lot less alien.

TL;DR Good patch