Took me a while to gather my thoughts, so i will add my 2 cents here.
Upfront sorry for the mess of a post, i’m just pouring my mind… will try to edit and sort it later.
“Stats And Perks”
With certain types of mobs i u group more than 4 of them the moment u release block they start flailing you around… for class that is supposed to control battlefield this feels just bad.
Similar situation is with PVP with every bruiser swinging with grit any tank joining fight feels like 55kg(122pounds) guy joining POGO dance (i from experience know how it feels)
A lot of suggestions to fix this would be grit on 300 CON which would be nice… but imho not that easy
If u just duplicate 300 STR perk it would lose its uniqueness. On other hand if u were to take away STR perk u would need to give in exchange something of similar value.
Last thing we want is giving GA/WH bruisers something even stronger… or if the new STR perk would be bad… all of them going 300 con. We would go back to pre resilience fix lag meta.
(everyone stacked together… no1 can die… everything lags)300 Con perk should be pinnacle tankiness, but not force dps to pick it. Imho instead of increased cc duration by 20% how about increasing hp by 20% of total hp… at 300 con with town buff it should give around 3k hp leving player at ~18k HP
For pvp lately a big concern is how easy can tower shield blocks be broken.
We all want what is best for us but we can’t go overboard. Make shields too tanky an we see phalanx on every point in war make them too weak and… well we have them as of nowI have no idea what led AGS to the decision of nerfing 250 con perk(it was 80% reduction) . In any form this perk is a meme. 1 min cd is too long and it activates from any source even fall damage. Changing perk to give 20-40 stamina damage reduction while blocking for any weapon would be nice. It should encourage people to use blocks instead of dodge as their primary defensive action.
“Skills”
My suggestion would be slight modification of defiant stance… while it looks like a staple skill of “Guardian tree” there are superior ways of taunting like shockwave or berserk. One of the biggest issues is skill cast time and duration/cooldown ratio. Without a full refreshing set and ref.move sword tank don’t even have skill ready for the next pack of monsters.
What i say is to add light/heavy attack grit while under defiant stance effect, make it cast faster or apply effect at start of casting animation not by end of it… and add 2-3 sec duration… with this any reasonably skilled and aggressive Sword&Plank user should keep close to 100% uptime.
Whirling blade and shield charge both feel underwhelming. At the moment I can rarely see people replacing leap strike and reverse stab with one of these.
Whirling blade range should be increased by 1m. What i also suggest is to take away GA whirlwind suction effect and give it to this skill.
When first I saw shield charge I was hyped for PAIN TRAIN, in reality what i got was a bit longer range shield bash but without taunt. Distance, hitbox should be increased and movement speed decreased and skill should pass through enemies like “Burn Out” add stagger and taunt (look elden ring shield bash/shield crash).
Those changes with slightly increased tankiness (stat section) should encourage people to pick this weapon for reasons other than leap->bash single target setup. It could give the ability to actually have impact and be a few steps closer to taking away from the bruiser’s crown of control over battle.
Technical Difficulties.
I still remember times when all brute-type mobs had so scuffed collision/hitbox to the point that a player facing one swinging hatchet/sword could not hit the mob. I would love to see more similar fixes with certain types of monsters:
All “snake type” monsters" Cilla, final genesis boss and archer snake from tempest are quite punishing for aggressive tank. Your light attack lunge moves tank too close to the mob to the point where some of them can coil around the player turn and attack in unexpected directions.
One fix would be increasing the collision box size of them so the tank can’t lunge too close to the boss…
Another fix would be reduction of normal attack lunge… but to not nerf it with pvp it would be ideal if players can attack while holding S(or any button tied to backpedal) to stop lunge completely and swing weapon in place. This should encourage a more aggressive playstyle instead of turtling behind shields.
Now that we addressed player lunge let’s talk about one peculiar mob type/skeleton:
Spriggans and edengrove arena boss are notoriously bad to tank.They are unblockable… well ucan block them but it’s dangerous for your party. Problem with them is their 3hit chain have so large forward momentum that they will move past blocking tank with 1 hit then do 180degree turn and finish combo in general direction of party.At the moment its either better to have light armor for them and roll backward or cheese them in corner where they cant move forward.
Fix would be reduction of their forward momentum with this attack and/or again increase collision slightly so they can push the tank in the general direction they are moving.
Lot of players tend to raise the camera and look down for easier measurement of distance between them and a target. What it results in is they attack the floor effectively decreasing their attack range. Is it possible to limit how close can weapon get to floor level?
Gear, Gear Perks, personals whims and wishes
Legendary shields were already mentioned multiple times. What i want add here is for shields to have slot that can be used to socked carmelians only… We already have bugged slotted shields just make it standard and and let only carmelians to slot in. Don’t force carnelian on weapons, we would love to have shiny elemental weapons too.
For 2h weapons just make them apply carmelian from shield if equipped.
It was already mentioned in multiple topics but Refreshing Ward perk should work with shield up. In current state in order for it to equal to “Refreshing” for skills that have 8s cooldown, you ask players to take 10 hits in that period of time. And with some types of enemies it is the same as asking them to die.
Separating shield and sword would be amazing. It would allow shield to mix with other weapons
increasing variety of builds. Any 1h weapon should in skill menu have toggle switch if that replaces one tree of weapon with shield “defender tree” and u spend standard 19 points after toggling option
Here’s example of how it could look(ignore amount of skill points)
I think that is all i have for now. Surely will add more once i think of something
