Update Discussion: November 6, 2020

[Celerity]

I really like the changes, shield and cow especially needed the buffs and I'm glad staff and shield had their cooldown reliance reduced. Staff in particular could be op but only when your cooldowns were off so it tended to be used more for soloing which never felt right to me.

Bulwark mode is fun to play around with and knowing when to toggle it on/off provides a nice reactive gameplay element with a high skill ceiling. This is the exact kind of gameplay I enjoy.

I never made a tank build before because it seemed like it was too much hassle to be worth it, but I intend to make one now with these changes.

Also interested in seeing exactly how combat will be lengthened in the future, which I think everyone agrees is necessary.

[Mikhaila]

At that point I had only managed to reroll 2/3 of the bulwark threat mods, the third one seals the deal really well. All in all I have really enjoyed playing as a tank today, and it will only get better once I finish rerolling and put SI bacK on all pieces. Maybe next time you are around we can test it out!

Sounds good. I'll use Fox/Unarmed and see how it goes. I was using Fox/Warden last night, with warden up to 75 and no mods for damage. Probably only 2/3 dps. More taunt though. Way too much fire adding to my taunt.

[ProfessorCat]

There's a lot of good things happening in this update. I use Staff in multiple end game builds. I am excited to try out the changes, and provide feedback when I spend some time behind the wheel.


My immediate excitement, however, is for the Spirit Fox fixes. It has quickly become one of my favorite skills, and just in time, as I've finally got my Fox/Necro build 100% rolled.

(Perhaps we'll add tools to synergize with another skill... what skill pairing would you like to see?)

Combo suggestions:
My first thought on how additional skills could benefit Spirit Fox would be to add combos that don't already exist organically. Druid/Fire Magic/Ice Magic, or even Battle Chemistry could be interesting (Foxes are clever! Maybe they can figure out how to splash a beaker)

Similar to how Bunny is able to cast Ice Magic when wearing a magical Hat, limitations to Head seem the most balanced, as it prevents Bunnies from being able to use the elemental Damage from a Masquerade Mask at the same time.

Sacrificing a MOD that enables an additional skill, or some other limiting implement could be an interesting mechanic, although Fox/Fire Magic may end up with too much DPS/AOEs.

Another idea for enabling a skill that would not otherwise be available is to have the enabler become a skill that you have to upkeep. If enabling Druid (Or any other skill) on a Fox requires an ability on the bar to be used every 120 seconds, it would reduce your total damage abilities to 5, and provide a disadvantage of upkeep in longer battles.


Synergy Suggestions:
As fox stands, its a DPS skill with a lot of CC. I do not think that it needs more DPS, but the avenues on how to reach that DPS could be expanded. The addition of Lightning synergy would go a long way. Lightning synergy would open up the option for Mentalism, and also Rounding out Warden's existing synergy, as lightning/Fire matches both skills.

Lightning/Darkness also has synergy with Necromancy: Spark of Death, Ratkin Blasters, and mods to increase Target's Vulnerability to lighting all exist in Necromancy as it stands. There is also a small amount of Indirect Fire synergy between Necro/Fox.


I have many more thoughts on what could be fun with fox, but I think a lot of those thoughts would fall into alternative animal classes.

[Silkt]

Not sure if it is from this patch with whatever were the additional changes for Ilmari graphics but I have noticed I run through a lot more terrain than before. As in the character legs or more disappear into the terrain. Noticeable areas are the road edges going north out of Serbule keep towards crystal cave and the docks. Follow the direct route you go up and over terrain, follow the road edge and your legs or more disappear into the slope.

Edit: Found the cause of this, in an attempt to ease eye pain from the excessive blue in FR I had enabled "Low Res Ground" in the advanced graphic settings, which seems to make slope changes more angular allowing the character box to slide into them, for want of a more technical description. So unknown if it is really a bug or just an issue that has to be accepted with lower settings.

[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

[Mbaums]

Lunge causes the next attack that hits you to deal 29 less damage...

Lunge was quite a bad skill before. I think they nearly doubled the base damage, but the real reason this mod is interesting is because 1) fast cool down 2) a glove mod turns the attack into an AoE. So, every 10 seconds being able to reduce every attack by 58 adds up. I would put it in the category of "skills you always want on cool down, when fighting more than 2 mobs"

[Yaffy]

Lunge was quite a bad skill before. I think they nearly doubled the base damage, but the real reason this mod is interesting is because 1) fast cool down 2) a glove mod turns the attack into an AoE. So, every 10 seconds being able to reduce every attack by 58 adds up. I would put it in the category of "skills you always want on cool down, when fighting more than 2 mobs"

The thing is that it doesn't reduce the enemy's attack damage by 29, it causes you to take 29 less damage the next time you get hit. If you made it an AoE and hit multiple enemies you would still only have +29 mitigation for one enemy's attack out of the whole group since it triggers on use, not per target hit.

[Mbaums]

Ahh misread the mod, you are right! I was so used to the existing debuff mod like "X causes target's attacks to deal -20 damage", which would have been a nice effect!

[Celerity]

I've made my tanking build and decided to go with unarmed/shield. It's really fun to play, especially managing cooldowns and taunt and it's obvious I still have a lot I need to learn in order to play it completely optimally, which I think is a great thing. I think that this combination in particular though, has too good passive mitigation, especially from darkness and physical on the side of unarmed. On it's own, it's maybe only slightly too strong, but the moment you add in just something like extra skin or mitigation from pig or bard, it gets pushed to be a bit too good.

I did a wintertide group and I only ever even came close to dying maybe 3 times in the whole run, all 3 times were when I pulled ~5 elites (mostly accidentally), didn't have bulwark mode active, then got stunned and elemental ward ran out, while fighting cold elementals and hippogriffs. Even then I didn't die, because of healing and support from my group and I was able to use elemental ward which then saved me with the 3 seconds of immunity, used bulwark mode and then a heal with the combat refresh if needed. If I didn't have the extra skin buff and healing from my group I would have certainly died. It was also a very strong group, I think we had at least 3 people in full max-enchanted yellows with a lot of experience, they also had things such as aoe stun and that generic mod on the helmet which lowers the rage attack damage by 25%, which when your nice attack is aoe, can be incredibly helpful.

The phoenixes and droaches really demonstrated they do very little damage without their dots and I was actually more worried my party members would die to dots from the aoe than I was about myself dying. Similarly, for ensigns I think only their rage attacks hit me for any damage at all, and even pulling 6 at a time the bigger worry was about keeping aggro than it was about my own survival. I was still using the darkness meditation for this run though, which I don't think I would for the future.

Overall, I think I maybe just had a bit too much mitigation because of the added mitigation from supports. I wouldn't want it nerfed too hard because then if you're in a group without a support you might struggle. It was definitely still a struggle to keep aggro, mostly due to cooldowns on take the lead and fight me you fools, and obviously it doesn't matter how good your mitigation is if you can't keep aggro, so that's another balancing factor. My build was still missing a couple of the aggro mods, but I would say unarmed/shield also provides some of the best taunt in the game and I myself witnessed tank builds that other people made where they still struggled to get aggro even with all their mods. So, all in all, maybe a reduction of a few % at most on some of the % mitigation mods for unarmed would probably be enough. I haven't played staff, but just looking at the numbers there, I think the flat mitigation might be a bit too high. With my build, shield didn't feel op because I only use 2 attacks so I would only normally have 1 stack of the forcefields up and bulwark mode feels balanced because of the 50% damage reduction. I also haven't played cow, but it certainly doesn't look op from the numbers. I think if you ran cow/unarmed right now it would feel balanced already, so a nerf to unarmed might need to come with a slight buff to cow too.

EDIT: Just to be clear, for my build in particular I think the aggro is in a perfect spot. It's a challenge but I meant it as a fun challenge and it's part of what balances the strength of the mitigation.

[Yaffy]

I did a wintertide group and I only ever even came close to dying maybe 3 times in the whole run, all 3 times were when I pulled ~5 elites

Something I'd like to bring up that I think is important when discussing expectations for tanking is how many enemies you should be able to handle at once, because personally I believe that 5 elites is honestly a fair number to pull in your situation while a lot of others might think this is crazy high, especially after ages of game play of pulling only one enemy at a time. Let me explain what I mean.

First off, there are two facts about Project Gorgon that need to be explained:
1. Specific party compositions (Ex. 4 DPS, 1 healer 1 tank) are in no way required to beat dungeons currently. You can beat dungeons with any composition.
2. By default doing more damage is the most appealing option, because by killing things faster you can grind EXP and get loot faster. Therefore players are biased towards building DPS.

So as a baseline, I think it's fair to say that a full DPS party can reliably handle one elite enemy at a time, because that's the bare minimum for them to be able to complete the dungeon. I think everyone can understand this since most parties have played around pulling a single elite at a time for quite a while.

However, the thing is that if you add a tank into the mix (5DPS + 1Tank), the tank is useless if the party can still only handle one elite at a time. If the tank only pulls one enemy, then they are pulling just as many as a full DPS party would, except they will kill the enemy slower because they do less damage. Therefore, if the tank wants to be useful, they need to be able to handle at least TWO elites at once, or else why even have them in the party?

Continuing on, if we add a healer/support into the mix (4DPS +1Tank +1Support), then we end up with a similar problem if the party can still only handle two enemies at once. What is the point of the healer if the party can't handle more enemies and they just slow down the party by doing less DPS? Therefore, it should be expected that a healer + tank should allow the party to confidently handle three or more elites at once.

At this point you can probably see what I'm getting at. The ability to handle tougher encounters (In this case, more enemies at once) is the goal of non-DPS orientated classes. In many other MMORPGs, this is accomplished by making content virtually impossible to complete with a full DPS group, but because Project Gorgon Content is possible in a full DPS group, a balanced party should be more efficient at clearing the content in order to justify lowering DPS output. The most simple way to achieve this is to allow the party to pull more enemies, since by pulling more enemies you eliminate downtime and improve efficiency by having abilities apply to multiple enemies at once. Your party probably isn't going 3x faster just because you're pulling three mobs instead of 1, but you're probably speeding things up if nobody is dying.

Therefore, when asking yourself if a tank is too effective or not effective enough, you should compare what the party can normally handle vs what the addition of the tank allows them to handle.

If a weak party can't handle a single enemy but you allow them to handle one, then you're making a huge impact as a tank.
If a normal party can normally handle one enemy but you let them handle two, then you're helping a lot.
If a strong party can normally handle three enemies but you let them handle four, then you're doing something.
If an incredibly geared party can handle four enemies and you're still just pulling four mobs, you're probably not helping.

Because a super geared party of DPS can handle 3-4 elites (Possibly more), I think it's more than fair to say that taking on 5 elites in the same party is expected when you add in a tank. It's also important to remember that your effectiveness as a tank is very heavily reliant on your other party members (DPS killing things lowers the damage you take, healers significantly improve your ability to take on longer fights and good support stacks their mitigation with yours), so having a good party should multiply your effectiveness even more.

There's more to tanking than just the number of enemies you can pull, like improving consistency, clear speed, directing the party, etc. But basically what I'm getting at is that if you have a good party, you SHOULD be able to pull a lot of mobs, even if it seems crazy because a well geared party can already pull a good number of enemies. It just feels extra exciting because all those enemies are all trying to murder one player (you) at the same time which is definitely a unique feeling because you're probably used to people dying to getting hit by just one.
On the other hand if your party is only strong enough to handle one mob but you let them pull five, then there might be a problem. Once you're making "Crazy pulls" and you aren't reliant on five people behind you to do so, or you're pulling entire sections of the dungeon because you've hit virtually invincible status (With or without help), then your tank build is getting out of hand.

If player damage gets nerfed and full DPS parties can't instantly nuke elites down like they can now, this will make a heavy impact on the number of enemies you can pull since each enemy will damage you more before dying, so if damage scaling gets toned down then you will see a noticeable decrease in what you can pull as a tank. After all for each target your party can instantly nuke down, that's an extra mob you can safely pull because it won't be hitting you for very long.