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Comments
I stopped playing tanks in general in MMOs because none of these new developers know how to make a tank class to begin with. Just make a bunch of DPSers with some that generate 10% more threat, and call those "tanks". Just look at Brawler for example, [filtered] joke "tank" [filtered] class.
what this guy said basically.
This is precisely why Ruinous Manor is such a fun dungeon to tank. If you're sloppy with positioning there, your party will wipe over and over again. Even though the new tanking system makes it much easier to hold aggro in a group with less than stellar DPS, there's still a fun challenge to being able to squeeze out as many hits as you can between blocks. While the dps attack the back of the boss and occasionally pause to handle a single mechanic, you are actively engaging with the boss nonstop for the duration of the fight -- and that's thrilling, in my opinion. Much more rewarding and fun than dpsing. It's obviously just a preference thing, but I can't understand people who go from tanking to dps'ing. To me it seems boring as hell, and obsessing over numbers is just not how I want to spend my leisure time. As a lancer even, no one's expecting you to be the next shigatsu or whatever. Lancer's utility comes from their party buffs and their debilitate debuff. Extra dps they can do, while certainly helpful for maintaining threat and making the fight end sooner, is icing on the damn cake. Like, I've legit never seen anyone post dps logs after a fight and go "OH THIS LANCER ONLY DID 500K, KICK HIM"
That said, gonna agree with the guy below my post. I tanked before the brawler changes, and it was basically "be aggressive and shout." now it's just "be aggressive." I legit don't see why someone would quit their tank over these changes.
This isn't and was never true in Tera. The way you hold aggro is by dealing the most damage possible. Back then, you still needed to cast as many skills as possible, but shouting was a thing.
Blocking also gives tanks damage through Counter abilities or Perfect Blocks/Hold the Line. An experienced tank should be able to know when to facetank attacks (this is fine to do) and when to block.
That's not how tanking works in this game. Tank survivability comes mostly from blocking, not facetanking every attack and relying on raw defense stats to carry you. Did you expect to just hold aggro indefinitely by using Shout and holding block?
Tanks have always been about dealing DPS to hold aggro. They still need to do things like hold aggro (which is a given) and reposition the bosses so that the DPS are safely back critting.
I'm gonna stop you there and say something. First, i do agree with you on the topic that a tank last worry should be damage. I main Lancer for 4 years and this was always my top priority. I wont lie, i am interested in how much damage i do too, but top priority is to keep the boss at bay and not let go of that aggro, regardless of how much damage i do.
Now on the damage topic. it was not BHS who decided it was a good idea to have tanks doing dps to tank. The decision was mainly community driven. Turns out that the community figured that the best way to hold aggro wasn't by stacking aggro modifiers, but going toe to toe with the other DPS by bringing your own share of DPS. BHS noticed this and decided to take on the approach of offensive tanking, seeing as the old way of tanking by stacking aggro modifiers was slowly getting outdated. Tanks now have to build up damage in order to hold aggro properly. The more damage you do, the less chances are for the other DPS to steal aggro.
Unfortunately i have seen some people taking this to the extreme, with of course, the tool that is in everyone's mind: DPS meters. Some time ago when this things were just coming out of hiding for TERA, some people actually wanted tanks that could do an specific amount of damage because to the, that was the standard and what a tank has to deal in order to hold aggro. Failure to do this would result in you, the tank, getting labeled as bad.
Conclusion: 100% agree that tanks should worry more about holding aggro than doing damage (unless you are a brawler, just roll your face on the keyboard and you good) but BHS did not forced us tanks to go offensive tanking, it was the community who forced BHS to make this type of change.
U need to know the mech, u cant floormaster
u have to have good damage to hold aggro and defense to block hits.
Tank must have good gears, good skills and good pings.
Dps is like good damage, try not to die and medium defense.
Healers are like good skills, medium defense(u got one shot anyway) and no damage required.
That's why my Full Guile mystic can run RMHM and farm mats for my reaper and she can always find teams even when she is non skilled.
On the other hand my reaper has better gears but cant find a team that frequently.
Let alone Tanks who has to focus on the fight every sec. One wrong move can lead to a disaster to the whole team, the burden and stress on tanks are high and it might be fun to play at first but when u r forced to grind and run same contents over and over, u tend to find ez and fast way to do so. That's the mind set of alot ppl who play all kinds of roles.
And in my case, I prefer to farm and grind on my healer since it seems easiest in my cases.
Especially sometimes when blockable attack still go through block and hurt u. Now tanks have to be both tanky and powerful which requires a lot gearing. So if an attack is blockable, just make it 100% blockable regardless of tanks endurance.
And aggro is still a problem, undergears tanks just cant hold aggro well enough. My guile brawler find it a hard to hold aggro against an ambush reaper and when my reaper got her ambush, same thing happened against but other way around.This will force tanks to stay on their lv and avoid playing harder dungeons but when u are a healer, u can heal ppl even in full slaughter in RMHM, and on last patch, a full dread priest carried us in SSHM. Tanks have to work way harder than healers to get the same level of carriness and credit from dps which is not fair. And my full guile brawler just cant do RMHM like my mystic.
And contrary to many, i actually like damage through shield. It lets me know when i do not have the correct rolls, gear, etchings, buffs, etc. It also let me know which attacks i can fully block and which ones i have to dodge or add an additional layer of protection called Iron Will.
And the job of a tank is not harder than the job of a healer. Tanks job can sometimes be stressing and intense having to shoulder the safety of the party and above else, holding the aggro to avoid making the battlefield a mess. Healers on the other hand, have already a lot of stress having to run behind the dps. If the dps is all scattered, healers will have a harder time. If the dps do not properly use dodge skills, it makes it even harder on healers, and on top of that, healers are the only ones that can remove buffs from bosses. Comparing tanking to healing in TERA doesn't seem too fair to me.
I dont agree. I play lancer with 160 ping, i dont have problem with blocking and with my full endurance rolls on rings i still can do 300 400k/s DPS on every RMHM boss
The problem with enough tanks not being in this game, is really because there are so many factors behind this.
While true that a tank must hold damage, they still have to deal damage at the same time. More Damage = More Aggro generation; it's that simple and even in the old days before aggro revamp, this is how it was but we had to use shouts/rally cry in between rotations. If a tank is not dealing some amount of damage, then keeping aggro is more difficult. You can't expect to just sit there holding damage and expect to keep aggro. That's not how it works in TERA since tanks classes came out. One of the big differences now is that tanks do more damage but at the same time have the mentality of tanking responsibilities.
When you say years ago, I'm assuming you mean that you quit lancer when brawler patch came out just like so many lancers did. Years ago lancers were not required to be a DPS. Somewhat we did have to keep up our rotations and do some damage but had to use shouts/rally cry in between. A good tank will know how not to be a tinfoil.
The tanking changes that were introduced last year at this time, lancer started to get buffs slowly but not fully until the FIHM & SSHM patch and onwards. After this, people expect lancer to be a frontal DPS for quite some time now but still at the same time maintain tanking responsibilities. I feel they combined both the dps and tanking aspects into one. I Played a bit like a dps lancer back in the days since BRHM patch with mostly crit setup and using some aggro crystals because full aggro did not work as well against very skilled dps parties. I felt if I did more damage it would help and it did really after doing many tests. But I'm glad lancer got buffed because we really needed it.
For Tera, I don't think there was any issue making a tank class to begin with; it's how it ended up when brawler came out last year at this time, which has been leading to the balance of tanks lately. Doing damage on lancer is nice but I always think about what a tank should think about for a party and not only focus on dps. People that gave up playing lancer, really gave up because they didn't learn how to adjust to the new system and maybe some people are just not made for tanking. Everyone has a certain skill level cap limit somewhere.