Suggestion to make TANKS viable by changing DAMAGE REFLECTED FLAT damage to PERCENTAGE damage

[Dxisy]

Damage Reflected is a really interesting game stat but it is too weak. Below I have attached my full tank build stats (10K damage / 1.6m toughness) with Damage Reflected stats on literally all my items to show that it's too low to even be viable in trials atleast.

This suggestion is to optimize the Damage Reflected mechanic and to make tank viable

I figure Damage Reflected will only be taken by tanks and we know at the moment tanks are in no way comparable to any other builds which does everything in the game better especially trials.

Tanks have no way to beat trials at the given time considering how much damage Tanks can deal in a short amount of time vs enemies with health up to millions which put tanks on an end game besides taking forever to kill Gorgana.

To make tanks viable I suggest to instead of having Damage Reflected be pure numbers, make it a percentage of the pure damage dealt by enemies (minus armor but this seems harder to code) or the damage received (considering only tanks take this stat, tanks would have no problem receiving high amounts of damage)

[Humus]

The devs don't want all stats to be useful...

[BAgate]

The devs don't want all stats to be useful...

Frankly, that's just stupid. Why not have an ability called 'haha screw you' then? Not everything should be equal, but nothing should be useless.

[giecomo]

Could be interesting to bridge the gap between defensive and offensive warrior cause right now offensive warrior trumps defensive one pretty hard

[BAgate]

Could be interesting to bridge the gap between defensive and offensive warrior cause right now offensive warrior trumps defensive one pretty hard

Defense sucks right now because the devs want it that way. They only care about offense only players.

If you want to bridge the gap, get rid of alacrity and nerf LoH HARD. Then you can worry about damage reflect and the like.

[Rytrik]

Defense sucks right now because the devs want it that way. They only care about offense only players.

If you want to bridge the gap, get rid of alacrity and nerf LoH HARD. Then you can worry about damage reflect and the like.

As long as those 2 are only removed from defense-based warriors. As a mage, i really really like Alacrity and LoH. Even as a DW Warrior I love both of those 'abilities'.

[BAgate]

That misses the point. Alacrity and massive LoH are attributes which make DPS supreme and prevent 'tank' builds from ever competing. So they need to be removed (or at least nerfed massively) for everyone. I'm sure you love them because they are way overpowered and fit your play style.

If cooldowns are reduced by attacks then there is no point in strategic play of hit and run because there is such a difference in cooldowns. With LoH so extreme anyone can restore their life in a second or two, so there is no point in building reserves, you just have to avoid getting one-shot and then heal. Again, massively favors DPS over tank builds, strategic builds, or any other builds.

In short, getting back to original posters point, the developers' choices so favor DPS builds that nothing else is truly viable. And rather than make small changes wich favor other builds, what is needed is a nerf to DPS and changing incentives so DPS isn't required.

[Xusia]

I play balanced build heroes and enjoy the Alacrity and LoH as well. Please don't nerf anything more!

[Humus]

Nerfing isn't wanted by the devs or needed, since currently there's a good balance between classes, but it does make sense for them to buff shield warriors.

[Nhat]

In my opinion, changing Damage Reflect will not increase the effectiveness/viability of a Tank build, since a Dual Wield warrior can also gain benefits from it - but range characters, Mage, Bounty Hunters will be disadvantaged. Also note that Damage Reflect is not a factor of the character's ability, it's a factor of how many monsters are currently attacking you, so the potential total damage output will be very high.

The current issue with Tank build in the game is the nature of the trail levels, which requires high DPS to get through the mobs, as well as bosses. If you think about the role of a Tank, they shine best in a party environment, since their role becomes critical: stand there, take the hits and hold the boss in place while low health members hit them with high damage skills.

This is something that is very difficult to do in a single player game context, since you'll end up with the reverse of the current situation: only a Tank build can get pass certain bosses, since the hits are too tough for other builds. Might be possible when/if co-op is introduced and you have dungeons which requires a balanced party, don't know...

[BAgate]

No one said balancing was easy. But to address Humus, it isn't just about balance between classes. It's about balance between builds and play styles. If someone wants to be a tank and walk through the world invincible but taking forever to kill things that should be viable. If someone wants to play hit and run in a strategic fashion that should be viable. IMHO, playing BH isn't any different from playing mage because they are played the same way. Throw in the fact that trials are generic random levels and not very interesting and the game, to me, is now boring.

And the vast majority of this stems from the single decision to make trials timed (and to make trials the only interesting part of the game in terms of difficulty/reward).

Fix story mode, get rid of all the synergies that benefit offense (or add some that benefit defense), and you'll have a game that people will want to play for a long time. I don't see the play stats the devs do, but just from the posts on the forum, a lot of players are bailing because of lack of interest.

[MikeMike]

Tanking is useful för some kind of multiplayer style. I have only been playing for a few days so far and only played solo so l do not know what is planned there but a TANK would need to have threat building abilities, accept a relative low damage output and allow for more glasscannon type of builds to survive by aiding them.

[Arionthe]

As the resident shield warrior shrill, I will chime in here.
Truth of the matter is that Devs will never allow a pure tank/damage reflect build that is viable, and for good reason. Think about it, if such a build is viable, why don't we just make the game autoplay itself. You wake up, you are 30 CLs higher and got drops/gold/gemstones. The reason is that such a build requires minimal player interaction. You just need to move the character from one spot to another to aggro monsters and viola, game solved.

Devs want players to actually play the game, tap, draw, and what have you. So passive damage for a tank build will always need to be complimentary/secondary so it doesn't overwrite the need for active damage output. The proper direction to take the shield warrior, under the above assumption, is to make the DPS gap between the tank build and the DW DPS build a little smaller. Right now, I'm estimating a 70% DPS gap (see post in Shield Slam specifics) between two equally skilled, equally equipped DW and Shield Warrior. Of course 70% gap is way too wide, hence the dominance of DW on warrior leaderboard.

So damage reflect will never be a focus for the Devs since it is truly passive. The closest thing to it is shield slam which still requires grouping (shockwave) and shield block skill to maximize along with using up a passive slot.

Huge part of the DPS gap comes from the synergy of DW DT's bleed with shockwave. Let me do a quick analysis here.

Single target (bossing)
280 power, 250 haste, 210 CR, 75% CD
Above are the set bonuses and one additional offensive passive slot DW enjoys over shield warrior.
That's probably a good 15% DPS gap right there. This is before considering the 30% attack speed advantage and the associated alacrity bonus.

Full frenzy attack avg about 11.5 attacks/sec for a 8 attack/sec DW (frenzy has its own 30% attack speed boost)
At 580%, you avg about 6670% per sec in frenzy damage.
RS does 390% also 400% DoT over 5secs.
Optimal attack split will be to work in 8 RS every 5 secs of Frenzy sequence. But let's be suboptimal, 8 RS every 4secs.
That means over 4 secs, you lost (580-390) * 10 (those 8 attacks will on avg trigger 10 frenzy attacks) = 1900%
So the Frenzy and RS 4 sec sequence has a damage output of 6670 * 4 - 1900% = 24780%
Let's now double this for an 8sec sequence = 49560% total normal attack damage.
DT at level 10 does 1600% * 7 = 11200%. At high alacrity, we are looking at 2 DTs easily over 8 secs. So DT damage will be 22400%
Now let's look at DoTs damage
RS DoT is 80% per sec stackable 8 times. Thus when maintained we are looking at 640% DoT from RS per sec
DT's bleed is 1000%, from training ground testing, seems to have a duration of 4secs. I recall Dev mentioned that it's stackable twice. So 500% max stack.
DoTs total damage per sec will be 1140%, over 8secs will be 9120%.
Finally the Shockwave synergy
Shockwave hits for 800%. At high alacrity, should be able to trigger 2 every 8 secs. So that's 1600% Shockwave damage.
Shockwave also does 8 times the DoT damage per hit. So the DoT finisher effect is 8 * 1140% = 9120% per trigger. Over 8 secs, that's 18240%.

So when you add up everything, you get 49560% from normal attacks, 22400% from DT, 1600% from shockwave, 9120% from DoT, 18240% from shockwave DoT finisher.
That's 100920% total damage. Or averaging 12600% per sec.
Normal attack is 49.1% (RS and Frenzy switching)
DT is 22.2% (just direct damage)
DoTs is 9.1% (DT bleed and RS bleed)
Shockwave is 19.6% (direct damage plus DoT finisher)

This is actually the worst case scenario as the real power of Shockwave DoT finisher is when clearing out trash mobs.
Let's compare that with what shield warrior can do when bossing.
Similar eq etc, shield warrior will be doing about 6 attacks per sec. But let's make the math easy, just assume 30% less normal attack damage due to attack speed.
Normal attack 34700% (30% attack speed debuff)
DT is tricky, mathematically shield warrior's direct DT damage should be about 2 times DW's. However due to lower attack speed hence lower alacrity, shield warrior probably outputting DTs at about 80% as fast as DW. So rough estimate: 22400% * 2 * 0.8 = 35840%
DoT for shield warrior is just RS's 640% per sec. Or 5120% over 8 secs.
Shockwave direct damage will be 1600% * 0.8 (alacrity adjustment) = 1280%
Shockwave DoT finisher will be 640% * 8 * 2 * 0.8 = 8190% over 8 secs
Add these up, we are looking at 34700% + 35840% + 5120% + 1280% + 8190% = 85130% over 8 secs or 10640% per sec.
Breaking it down,
Normal attack is 40.8%
DT is 42.1%
DoT from RS is 6%
Shockwave is 11.1% (direct damage plus DoT finisher)

Alternatively, and this is what I do actually since I'm mobile. I just ignore SW and RS, and straight frenzy plus DT.
In this case, 6 attack per sec translates to 7.5 attacks per sec (counting double attack frenzy %), add frenzy's own attack speed bonus, we are looking like 8attacks per sec most likely.
Normal attack is 580% * 8 =4640% 37120% over 8 secs
DT is estimated at 35840% over 8 secs (I will ignore the very slight alacrity benefit here from doing all frenzy vs switching between frenzy and RS)
So total damage that I do is 72960% over 8 secs or 9120% per sec
I'm missing out about 14.3% dps, compared to the optimal, but far less error prone. (here is where PC users have a decided advantage, optimal is actually practical)

So from the above analysis, optimal shield warrior at 10640% vs optimal DW at 12600%, the difference seems not that huge. DW is outputting about 18.4% more DPS. But don't forget the earlier set/passive bonuses that I detailed before. Those count about 15% easily. So now the actual single target dps gap is at 33.4%. And when compared to what I chose to do, DW on PC is probably outputting close to 50% more DPS than me on mobile. So a boss that takes me 3 mins to take down should be about a 2 min job for DW on PC. Finally as a shield warrior, I devote some stats to defensive measures, things like more LoH, more armor (armor stat and armor gem socket on shield), the difference grows larger. Hence my sheet damage is 686k on my best trial result where top DW has 1492k.

This is the reality. Single target is actually where the dps output between the two are the narrowest. When looking at mob situation, Shockwave's DoT finisher value skyrockets. Why Shockwave damage is often well over 50% for all the top trial DWs. Also explains why when looking at the trail dps output, DWs far outstrip similarly equipped shield warrior, a difference easily in the 70% range that I estimated before.

So in summary, when bossing, DW currently has a 33% to 50% advantage, when taking out the trash mob, the advantage is closer to 100% or more. When combined, DW has a ~70% DPS advantage.

Shall we discuss how to buff the shield warrior so the gap isn't this wide?
Btw an easy one will be to make Shockwave work differently for shield warrior. Instead of being a DoT finisher, make it like warrior's immolation. 30% more damage received, stackable twice. Just this one change will do two things. First I will be frenzy and cleave (who uses this at all now?), now Shockwave synergies far better for the shield warrior.

whew I didn't set out to write this much. But here it is. Dont check my math. It's all rough and just to give ppl ideas.

[Coda]

Another one

[PeterK]

All that suggests is that Tank functions need to be active skill rather than Tanks should be nerfed.