122397-why-must-tank-itemisation-be-so-bad

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tl;dr: see title
 
 
Long version:
 
The new tank itemisation is incredibly bad. I'm writing from an engi perspective, but I do not think it's very different for stalkers or warriors. We've had some long discussions on this issue on the PTR forum, but that one is pretty much dead. Directly after the patch, I wanted to wait some time to see whether there might have been some surprises in the items I did not see on the PTR, but after pretty much two IDs of GA and some searches in jabbithole, I'm pretty confident that there are no positive surprises left. Only negative ones. That's why I'm starting this thread.
 
So, what exactly is the problem? We now have the same stat distribution pattern for all roles. A lot of main stat, some secondary stats, a little bit of grit. No matter whether it's gear for DPS, healers or tanks. That's rather good for DPS (if we ignore the useless grit eating into the budget), but it massively sucks for tanks, since we're a lot more interested in defensive stats, which happen to be treated as secondary or even tertiary ones. The shitloads of tech we get in return may be fun for doing stupid things in farm content, but it does not help at all during progression, where gear is actually relevant.
 
Three things are especially stupid:
First, tanks get as much grit as anyone else, not one point more. Base health, of course, seems to be totally absent from any gear. What exactly was a tank's role? Soaking up damage. And what is extremely helpful for that purpose? Surprise, having more health! If a tank with good old purple GA items switched completely to the new gear, including the legendary set items (which yield a total of 12 more rune slots), he would lose about 5000-6000 HP, gain pretty much no armor and all that in exchange for a little shield and a lot of useless support power. Truly amazing.
Second, strikethrough. Why is this useless stat added to so many items? We now get large amounts of ST from our tech milestones, there is no need for more. In the end, ST on tank items is just wasted budget. If anyone thinks he desperately needs it, he could still rune for it. But I've rarely ever seen a tank rune for any of the offensive stats (tech/SP/ST), because it's not helpful.
Third, the new weapon attachments and support systems in particular. No more primary stats, just secondary ones. And it seems that for tanks, there is just the "unholy trinity" of ST/deflect/deflect crit. Consequently, about half of the item budget is wasted. ST is nonsense, deflect is pretty much useless for engis (too expensive for too little, too random effect), deflect crit probably won't make warriors very happy. I can't really comment on stalkers, but I guess it's not too different for them as the first reaction of our stalker tank loot master towards the new Deployable Threat Analysis was "What kind of crap is this ?!?". If there was at least a chance to get other secondary stats on these items (base health, shield, armor). Right now I've got the impression that, if you did not get an old item from a raid, Coldsnap (NW reputation) and the archivos support system are BiS until you get a legendary one. And the legendary Ohmna supsys will only win over them by value of rune slots ...
 
Those are just the worst cases. Having looked at jabbithole, I did not find a single epic GA item that I would take over an old one. Sometimes, old blue dungeon items appear more attractive than new raid epics. Even in case of the legendaries, which should by definition always be superior to equivalent epics, there are slots where I'd prefer an old epic over the new legendary, despite the additional rune slots. For DS raiders, it will probably still be massively worse because of the shift of nonset items to epic. Dungeons are similar - the items I've seen so far just plain sucked.
 
Finally, there has been some discussion about tank defense being too good in the past. One could see the new items as a reaction to this issue, as they are a big nerf compared to pre-drop4. However, I do not think that this is the case - absolute stupidity of the responsible dev appears to be a more fitting explanation. Now, the question is: Can we expect any improvement of the situation? Something like a vendor where you can get old items in exchange for new ones? That would be extremely helpful. Right now, drop 4 has killed a lot of motivation. Shiny new epics may not be the main factor in raiding motivation, but they have been a factor nontheless - a factor that's pretty much completely absent now due to the absolutely stupid re-itemisation.
 
Congratulations, Carbine. For something that has been in the making for so long, your re-itemisation is a truly impressive failure.
 
 
 
PS: I'm also a bit curious about what DPS and healers say. What I've seen so far and the reactions I've heard haven't been very enthusiastic, but I did not have a thorough look at that gear.	
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Haven't had problems with it. Speaking from an off tank perspective, my set actually got quite a bit better with better and easier access to purples. Threat is still not an issue (duh) the ST on the tech milestones are nice for warrior tanking, and I still pretty much just rune armor > Health > grit.
 
Do Engi tanks need insight/deflect more? Is this is a raiding in GA or DS level only problem?	
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My kit from old dungeons and a few old GA has gotten better in the new area for the most part.  But I really only started doing GA stuff in December, so like I said, just a few pieces and just about done replacing things (still need something better than the old Havok Gun from WotW).  There does seem to be a lot of Tech, and Deflect is low.  Health has been hard to gauge as it went up dramatically at D4 due to new scaling numbers, but actually as a few pieces have been replaced, has been leaking out if I don't rune for some more.  Armor value went down though.  I have more armor than I had before and at 55% on resistances where previously I was already over 60%.
 
So mixed bag maybe?	
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Practically speaking, my tank has gotten MORE, not less, powerful.
 
Sure, I have less deflect and defense statistically, but there are two offsetting factors here:
 
-Stat effects have shifted slightly, and more are apparently coming
 
-Healers are buffed as Hell from what I've seen
 
And it's that last one that essentially makes the itemization make a lot more sense.  I've lost some top end defense maybe, but if I have I haven't noticed because healers are blowing up my recovery.  And I'm on a Warrior, God only knows what that does for Stalkers.  So itemization has changed, but I'm not sure it's bad.  Our stats were reallocated to be SP heavy probably because the healers got such a boost.	
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Haven't had problems with it. Speaking from an off tank perspective, my set actually got quite a bit better with better and easier access to purples. Threat is still not an issue (duh) the ST on the tech milestones are nice for warrior tanking, and I still pretty much just rune armor > Health > grit.
 
Do Engi tanks need insight/deflect more? Is this is a raiding in GA or DS level only problem?
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Well IMO the problem is not that tanks have too much MS into gear. The problem is tanks have way too high aggro generation per 1 point of DMG. Currently every1 in WS have to avoid telegraphs, but tanks...
Well I am simplifying too much, so let my clarify. Light armor can die almost from everything, heavy/medium can usually take 1 hit from same telegraph that kills light. This is in theory, because heavy take way more DMG staying in melee, but because how healing/buffs work, usually ranged classes have also be melee (not to mention that in some fights there is much more to avoid in range and of course we have engis). Even with possibility to eat some more stuff, heavy armor DPS want to avoid as many telegraphs as possible and ultimate goal is to avoid them all (repetitive mistakes will lead to dead even with heavy armor). As for tanks they can just eat up way more telegraphs than any other role and IMO way more than they should. In any good balanced MMO I have played, tanks were first taking as much attack power as they have to and than stack everything else into survivability. Otherwise every single good geared DPS would out-aggro them. In WS any tank is starting with as much survivability as possible and that's it, there are no real aggro issues and this is a bad design.
 
So I hope new gear is a way to end that issue softly. After a while they will lower aggro generation and tanks will need that additional support power, as they will need to dodge way more telegraphs.	
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SNIP
 
...there are no real aggro issues and this is a bad design.
 
SNIP
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			I wouldn't mind threat becoming a bit more relevant, but even if that was the case, the new gear would still be bad. Before the drop, almost no one runed for threat stats. Now, SP runes etc. are 110 % obsolete. Before putting so much useless tech on the gear, there should have been an incentive to put at least some threat stats into our rune slots, so that people would have had a choice between going for more defense and going for more threat. Right now, we get threat gear forced on us by the failed re-itemisation, while runes are used for full defense.	
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Rune slots... problem solved. Where in progression are you that you feel strikethrough is useless? Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't tanks still need to be able to hit their target in order to tank? Think of strikethrough as accurracy... because that's exactly what it is.
 
The lack of grit on the gear is a minimal worry as most of your mitigation comes from resistances rather than just having a butt-load of health.
 
I'm still on the fence about the itemisation changes. Personally, I don't think it changed much other than forcing us to rune for secondary stats because they don't come stock with the gear anymore. But the common dope will look at it and say, "It has more mainstat than it used to. It's so much better!" But the fools can't land a blow for the life of them.
 
Next wave of complaints: I can't hit anything in DS. Why do I have to rune for strikethrough. What's with this terrible itemisation I begged for for so long?	
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Strikethrough is nothing more than an extremely poor TPS stat, since the only things for which it would be relevant (taunts) cannot be deflected. For the same amount of tech, we'd get multiple times the TPS. Besides, threat is a non-issue, as has been stated several times in this thread. Therefore, I couldn't care less about whether I get deflected 3-4 % more or less.
 
And no, the rune slots are exactly not the solution. How can someone compensate for missing defense on the gear when all rune slots were already filled with defensive runes?	
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			Hmmm, I'm not a raid-geared tank but I logged in and actually had about 1500 more health than I did before the update and still well more than the DPS and such in my guild.  My defense percentages dropped about 1.5% and my SP was roughly the same.  I don't know if it's different for Engi tanks but for Warriors, SP is very helpful since we have threat probs.  Ultimately, though, I feel like my ability to tank was not better or worse with the stat changes but I do find it more interesting because the moves changed to be more enticing, imo.	
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Strikethrough is nothing more than an extremely poor TPS stat, since the only things for which it would be relevant (taunts) cannot be deflected. For the same amount of tech, we'd get multiple times the TPS. Besides, threat is a non-issue, as has been stated several times in this thread. Therefore, I couldn't care less about whether I get deflected 3-4 % more or less.
 
And no, the rune slots are exactly not the solution. How can someone compensate for missing defense on the gear when all rune slots were already filled with defensive runes?
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The itemization problem is typical of western MMOs tbh.
 
Korean MMOs tend to have less variety in stats and more direct itemization usually because they employ a base to+10(or X number increase) on their gear system.
Western MMORPGs refuse to use this system for some reason, even though its fairly fantastic for progressive gear climb and itemization.
I expected terrible and annoying gear itemization from WildStar TBH.
 
I don't expect it to change much, but the rune system us *cupcake*ING AWFUL.
 
Gear itemization is usually pretty poor in western MMOs.	
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I spent most of Sunday tanking Vet Adventures; something I haven't done since I first got my tanking gear.  I can say two thing definitively:
 
-I experienced a boost, not a loss, of survivability post drop-4
 
-I'm already starting to replace gear again from the same gear tier that my tank was already in.  So the gear does appear to be stronger in the early stages of 50 progression.	
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Same here Vic.
replaced my old pieces with the new drop 4 pieces, and currently evaluating my stats.
As soon as I have the plat again, I will start switching some of my runes into Insight runes again and focus more on Crit and Recovery.
 
What I don't really get is, why I as healer have automatically 11% strikethrough, although I do not have a single Brutality or Strikethrough rune :/
I have more strikethrough as healer at the moment then I have in my DPS spec without even focussing on it......
 
That said, my current goals are:
2000 insight
1000 Moxie
the rest in pure crit
Right now sitting around 3700 SP using my passive and spellsurge. 
I'm okay with the itemization for healing, but I definitely agree that for tanks it's a lot harder.
Can just see it at the amount of gear we simply throw away during raids because our tanks don't want it.	
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What I don't really get is, why I as healer have automatically 11% strikethrough, although I do not have a single Brutality or Strikethrough rune :/
I have more strikethrough as healer at the moment then I have in my DPS spec without even focussing on it......
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Since drop 4, insight now grants some big strikethrough bonuses in the later ranks. Thankfully dps cannot exploit this as it takes a lot of insight :P
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it still makes no sense though....
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correct me if I'm wrong here because I'm not a healer by any means, but I thought Strike through helped prevent heal deflects and healing criticals?
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I've never seen a heal being deflected before....No idea if that's even possible.
Would definitely make no sense that a player deflects your heal, refusing to be healed....
 
Healing criticals, yes. Brutality increase crit at a few milestones, but you're better off stacking Moxie or crit/severity directly.
At least it's for Spellslingers like this.
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I'm pretty sure your heals can get deflected when you're blinded.. Will have to test to be sure though.
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This may be a PvP only thing.  I haven't seen it myself because I don't really play my engineer in PvP but a colleague who does says that Obstruct Vision is a hoot because it's one of the few player generated blinds and it causes opposing healers to get deflects on their heals.
 
Again, secondhand information, but it does play into what Mugabe was saying.
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Pretty sure they don't.
Easiest to test this in Swordmaiden where I can heal people just fine on the last boss, even when blinded.
But let's run some tests to be sure.
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			pvp is done so badly in WS they should just scrap it all and then they will have more focus on the PVE stuff that needs to be fixed	
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There's nothing wrong with the tank itemization besides the fact that insight is still kinda pointless stat.
 
Tank is the tank because he takes the least dmg, not because he has the most hp.
 
But even if you think you know better, you can nowadays easily get 5 slots in every gear piece and you can rune them all full of hp. That's 57 slots for pure hp. That's way over 10k more health.	
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There's nothing wrong with the tank itemization besides the fact that insight is still kinda pointless stat.
 
Tank is the tank because he takes the least dmg, not because he has the most hp.
 
But even if you think you know better, you can nowadays easily get 5 slots in every gear piece and you can rune them all full of hp. That's 57 slots for pure hp. That's way over 10k more health.
 
 
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Pretty sure they don't.
Easiest to test this in Swordmaiden where I can heal people just fine on the last boss, even when blinded.
But let's run some tests to be sure.
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Rune slots... problem solved. Where in progression are you that you feel strikethrough is useless? Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't tanks still need to be able to hit their target in order to tank? Think of strikethrough as accurracy... because that's exactly what it is.
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