Nano changes and Form Of Tessai

[Dogtrauma]

So, Advys get agressiveness ( increased taunt) on their lizard morph, should not MA's get a similar buff?
Form of Tessai is a prime candidate for a tank-stance no?

/discuss i guess.

[-Ruken-]

I would LOVE to see this.

[McKnuckleSamwich]

It certainly is bordering on "form of troll" esque design.

The main issues I see are that MA design has progressed much further towards the healer goal, and having design capability as a tank seems to have stalled out - despite MA having much stronger tankiness than healiness.

That said, I don't think there's anything wrong with entertaining the idea. To be honest, I'm a bit flabbergasted that Genele went the direction of secondary healers instead of secondary tanks. My MA, with selfed 24k HP and triple wield tonfas, is actually a very good tank already, so it seems kind of ridiculous to do a full 180 on previous design to try to make a healer out of something that was never intended to be a good heal (other).

Looking at MA capability (current) our heal other capability is highly limited:

MoK (heal self/heal other line)
Team heal (heal self/heal other)
disharmony (self only)
Red dawn (self only)
Balance of yin and yang (self only)

So what gives? how did she possibly think that our two nano heals constitute a basis for being a "healer profession"????????

Working from our current position, make Form of Tessai a tank line as suggested, make advy the secondary healer (however they do that, I don't care, but they got bio rejuv, awakening perk heals for team, not to mention team proc heals... I reckon it wouldn't be too difficult to make advy into a healer with an easy stance/non-morph or whatever that buffs heal eff, debuffs cost and reduces AR a bit or something)...

Ok anyway on Form of Tessai I would do something like this:

1. on proc for disharmony (if form of tessai active, then AOE taunt 500 taunt/per perk)
2. add some tanking stats to form of tessai line (i.e. 8000 max health for top, 200 damage shield 4k AC's)

[Dogtrauma]

Ok anyway on Form of Tessai I would do something like this:

1. on proc for disharmony (if form of tessai active, then AOE taunt 500 taunt/per perk)
2. add some tanking stats to form of tessai line (i.e. 8000 max health for top, 200 damage shield 4k AC's)

That would be a *very* strong buff to put it mildly, if you compare the aggro component to soldiers it's kinda off the scale.
The drawbacks would have to be massive to balance this, i had in mind a smaller change of added aggressiveness and possibly heal-reactiveness.
Possibly also an added MA attack, either a circle kick or a sweep (short root) with a low damage/high taunt value and a fairly low recharge.
From the perspective of a doctor i fully support the armor increase and as far as i can tell AC would not impact PvP very much so it would not require that much of a drawback ( i do ofc, know sweet FA about pvp on MA so i admit i could be wrong) since the top engi AC buff gives 5k i could see an even larger buff be ok for PvM as long as they don't stack.

I have to say that i reject the disharmony AOE taunt proc as being lazy mode and since even enfo seems to be moving away from that with the changes incoming i don't think it's the right thing to ask for.

So, my counter: maybe 4k HP, 5k+ AC, aggressiveness enough to make target shifting DPS coupled with roughly the same single target taunts MAs already have a viable way of keeping the healer clean of mobs, a fair amount of healing reactivness possibly enough to put B.I. effect at around 18-20k HP ( 25-ish% i think).

Drawbacks then? For me the obvious answer would be to put it in the Controlled destruction line and be done, a vicious snare might work as well i guess. The oddball version would give a massive initiative debuff but also give immunity to further debuffs in that area, that could be interesting if done just right but would ofc impact more than just PvM.

Edit: I find myself liking the image of a "Mountain Stance", glacially slow attacks coupled with an almost inevitable impact of great force, so maybe an AAO buff as well ( kind of a tangent tho)

[McKnuckleSamwich]

ok.

My idea wasn't very well thought out, I admit. I just kinda thought it might be an interesting way to make disharmony matter in a valuable way.

my main beef though is that I think MA's have a way better toolset for tanking than they do for healing (other).

Yes a heal reactivity buff + some HP. maybe what you're suggesting without saying it is that you want tanking to be slightly more... active? A roundhouse kick or whatever sounds cool coupled with a taunt.

Angel of night could use an update to be a tanking MA attack too. It's already got a AOE thing on it, but the AOE effect is really meh.

[Dogtrauma]

Yes on the active part, Enfo in my mind pay for their easy aggro by being great lumbering *things*, good for pretty much just that one thing, MA should be more active, picking the right MA attacks for the situation, cycling defenses and targets, it should be a juggling act to at least some extent, i guess i would like the MA play style overall to be more active, my experience tho limited to 1-200 is pretty much summed up in "cycle DoF and Limber and you will be sorta ok... until you're not".

My main concern in regard to HP buffs is that it leaks over into PvP and could imbalance something that i truly do not understand, from the perspective of healing i would ofc love to see a deeper hp pool but i also think that mitigation is a lot more important for reliability, take GA as an extreme example, with the absurdly high defense you are ok 99.9% of the time but every single hit is a crisis, MA as an evade class is a lot like that tho not quite as extreme as GA fixers. So high armor is of importance but more active things like a well placed stun at the right time would add fun to the mix.
It is a bit of a shame that AO mob mechanics makes a sweep ( short stun+root) an inadequate tanking tool ( since most strong mobs have an insane attack range).

Knuckles, i agree that MA is/should be closer to the tank archetype than the healer, in some regards i think that self healing should be the limit of MA ability in this, a simple channeling of Chi to refresh oneself. The new heals/HOTs as proposed are very sexy but i would rather see them locked to the advy tree form tbh, it is a Durid (sic.) Regrowth type nano so give it to the druids



From a slightly different angle then: What would put the MA on par with soldiers as the secondary tank/off tank, what would be the smallest possible changes that would make this happen and that would be uniquely a martial artist flavored style of tanking?

[-Ruken-]

Ok gonna give this some thought beyond "yeah!" Here's what I see coming together...

Armor Buff Line
Not just form of Tessai, give all of the MC line Self only and a LOT more Armor, but make them self only. (Soldiers get reflect, enforcers get HP, MAs get Armor)
Additional Effect of Form of Tessai -Healing Efficiency -100%. Shut down our heals, if we're going to be a "proper" tank with heavy damage, then something has to give I'm suggesting heals.

New Special Attack (or a rework of Angel of Night)
Kick of the Clown - MA Special Attack aka "aforementioned Spin Kick" (Four feet of Kali?)
Just make the "spin kick" pair right with mongo. Just remove the heal/health portion that they get. Taunt = 2500 AoE @ QL 17, 25000 AoE @ QL 300. (EXACT Same as Enforcer) Requirement: MA Armor Buff Line present. Low Damage, locks Stamina.

Evades
We don't want to screw with evades too much more. They're already good enough so if we were to suggest that we buffed evades we hit the possibility of never getting hit... making us OP right out the gate might not be the best idea.

Speed
Think of this more as a stretch goal, but extending the Velocity line out and seperating the GSF Speed Buff line from the Evade line would be good. Allow us to get where we're going faster. Not a requirement though.

All in all, we need 2 things. A change to a nano, and a new MA Attack.

So how do we officially ask for this without sounding... like jerks?

[-Ruken-]

I got it...


"Dear FC -

We don't want to be healers. Never have. Please let us be tanks. We wanted that. We want Bigger armor buffs, aoe taunts, reflects, more hp than an enforcer and a big flaming magenta pony to ride around on.

kkthx

- The MA Staff"

In all honesty, do we agree to what we've suggested? I'd like to make the suggestion on the suggestions board if no one disagrees here.

1. Armor Buffs get bigger but self only and don't stack. (cannot be used in Zazen Stance)
2. Angel of Night rework to provide aoe taunt on the same CD timers as mongo (maybe a slightly longer cooldown due to our added dps)

[McKnuckleSamwich]

Well, ruken, the problem is is that Zazen is actually pretty effing awesome.

FC went way out of their way (Granted, Genele bailed so it's sort of baseless) to produce a really nice set of changes for MA.

There's very few problems with Zazen, and it would be an absolute travesty for MA's to decide that they DON'T want it! Why would we say that?

MA's have been "DPS" only, for years, and many, many profs have been asking for more utility.

So they hand us utility, and some pretty goddamn nice utility at that, and I'm 100% sure that I would never throw that back in their face and say: I don't want it.

Hell no.

Look, the reality is that FC went the route of zazen for MA's. So lets be constructive.

If you want to make some tweaks to MA's tankability, then lets put together a decent set of changes that reflect the "need" or perceived need for MA's to be able to tank.

MA's already CAN tank a lot of stuff - in some cases, MA's can tank some bosses better than solds can, which is pretty good in my opinion. If there's a few small tweaks to a few nanos that don't find a lot of use in everyday play, lets brainstorm and see what we can do. But lets not trade a harebrained tanking scheme for a much more refined zazen stance that already works like a dream.

[Soliartist]

I remember posting earlier this year about MAs' current needs. Genele, at the time, also suggested creating a whole new MA nanoline which would require Matter Creation as primary nanoskill. I asked what exactly you guys had in mind if we were to get such nanoline, based on Matter Creation.

"---> Matter creation is the process inverse to particle annihilation. It is the conversion of massless particles into one or more massive particles. This process is the time reversal of annihilation." Wiki says, the concept in itself is worth thinking about

Engineer is already the top armor class in AO. Can manage a proper amount of HPs, has access to reflects and blockers as well. Let alone giga ACs buffs.

I don't know what you mean to say when you're talking about us having a real tanking tool either. It seems to be a real concern to the community nowadays, somehow.
What I mean to say is that we're pretty much decent tanks already. Aren't we?

Isn't it more about most recent PF bosses having insanely high AR or things like that?
Thus turning MA, a profession with rather good but not highest evades, rather low HPs as well, average ACs/reflects/absorbs abilities and not so solid healing prowess into mere cannon fodder in comparison to the aggro we can pull, due to our DD?
Think we're not even close to a top agg (that is for sure)/DD profession, when it comes to non-RK places that is.

We usually end up in the top DD ranks because of an absolute DD setup which doesn't allow us to tank properly anyway, other professions seldom have an equivalent amount of profession-designed items that boosts DD (even though most generic stuff nowadays outclass sub-2010 items one way or another), at the cost of so much more too.
Probably because we're highly reliant on our critical chance figure.
That SL dmg downside implies a full DD setup in order to have a chance to make the difference dmg wise.

That's for the mass PvM part. Because when it comes to solo-ing, well with half a viable PvM setup (mostly HPs((still not even 15K))/AAD, few crit items), including a sole Shen Stick couple with a bare fist, I can solo Scary Spider and Anansi's, Medusa and such self. LoTV is still outta reach but that's about it, for the record!
Just saying 'cause those may be well-known facts. I just came back in game so I'm kinda trying out/practising pretty much everything again.

To the point though, Inner Balance and Tessai indeed both prove we're supposed to have ACs & absorbs... to a certain extent I guess.

[Cratertina]

What about 150MA, I love mine to the point of wanting 220 one. Will therebe any tl5 stances?

[Dollcet]

Hi Cratertina loooooong Time no see ^^
Some better Singletaunt might be of some use to savely hold aggro vs Shade @ 220 , but AoE Taunts should remain the Enforcers Domain.
The update on Disharmony proc-drain seems to me the most viable way to introduce this PvM specific wish because perking Disharmony is counterproductive for PvP against anyone with a decent amount of reflects .

[Dogtrauma]

The update on Disharmony proc-drain seems to me the most viable way to introduce this PvM specific wish because perking Disharmony is counterproductive for PvP against anyone with a decent amount of reflects .

They changed the Disharmony proc already it no longer has a damage component, only a crap heal ( 135 on my 200 MA with a 50% i think) they did this when the add damage to nanos and perks went live.

[Dollcet]

Damn I need to really get Online and play AO again ...... Dezember ......


Sorry Folks for me talking outdated Bu....it