Archetype Roles... I swear I'm not crazy.

We have not received permission from TrUSivraj to share the quoted post.

Did you know that it's easy to test whether or not people are arguing in good faith?

You say something ambiguous, for a smaller response, or you leave a red herring at the beginning of a larger response, something that only supports their mindset when taken out of context, and see if they latch onto that instead of actually thinking about your point long enough to address it.

The ambiguity allows you to see what they would 'prefer you were saying' because that's what they feel is important to argue against to make their point.

Here's an example.

There's a Poison dragon BOSS in Alpha-1 siege.

I eagerly await your response.

It's fair, and it shows me what types of MMOs you've played. There's definitely a spectrum.

You based your original counterpoint on the concept of 'a game in which non-tanks who are hit by a boss just die almost instantly'. In Ashes that is not the case so far. I have played and enjoy multiple games where that's not the case. Some very successful. I don't see it as a requirement for good gameplay.

In such games, the efficiency of the Tank and Healer team, the survivability of the group, and the chances of doing well in an encounter, depend on the efficiency of the Healer's dwindling Mana pool. A poor tank will take more damage than they need to, the healer will run out of mana, and then it will fail.

This also means that 'the character who takes the least mana worth of healing to solve the problem while damage is happening, is the optimal choice to tank'.

Sometimes, a group of DDs gets together and kills the enemy much faster than you would if you included a tank, and then there is no tank required. The healer's Mana is conserved by kill speed, and since no one is usually at risk of being instantly killed, the difficulty is in 'having the Healer not take attention'.

Except that the healer could explicitly aim to take attention, gear for more defense over mana, and now they tank. Has happened in many other games. Is somewhat difficult to thread the line to avoid, actually.

I don't intend to devalue your experiences, but they may not apply to Ashes. I find that they only apply to approximately half of the MMOs out there, the ones I personally find to be simplistic. "Hit a button and stance, you're the tank now". "Manage your MP even decently and it never really runs out". "All the DPS have to do is optimize their numbers."

So far, from all my Alpha-1 testing, Ashes is not that type of game.

If I tanked the Poison Dragon in Alpha-1 Siege because the way my Tanks (I have multiple in my group for Alpha) get their threat generation is inefficient and the Dragon's attack style doesn't involve massive physical attacks anyways, what would be your opinion on that?

Would it be that 'Ashes needs to redesign it so that Clerics can't tank Poison-dependent enemies'? I.e. bring it in line with your perception that Tanks significantly reduce damage from poison clouds to the point where the healer tanking isn't most efficient?

Would it be that 'Ashes needs to make sure that there aren't too many Poison enemies or similar things where a Tank isn't the optimal choice'?

Would it be 'you didn't really tank it' or 'you're deluding yourself' because your worldview does not allow for this possibility?

Or some other response?

Thanks, and now you can probably see the difference in philosophy here which leads to the disagreements.

In my mind, this is completely normal.

1. The Trinity system is still in play, it's just that a Cleric is currently in the 'Tank' role because of the enemy type.
2. The Tank still has utility in this situation because they probably have abilities that physically limit the enemy, or can enhance the mitigation available to the Cleric and others without necessarily being the enemy's focus (Tanks can do an AoE defense buff to everyone, but this doesn't matter as much against the Poison Dragon, by design)
3. The Tank's secondary Archetype would come into play at that time, either as a further mitigation boost given to the Cleric for the dragon's physical attacks, or as a different function probably related to either DPS or other boosts given to the Cleric. Maybe debuffs given to the dragon, causing the Tank to take on the 'Support' role in some cases.

This is the level of complexity I am used to in my MMOs. The strategic decision before going into battle is 'which of my available roles should I play for this battle', while the Trinity overall is still effective.

The Tank can make the Poison enemy experience more efficient as a support while the Cleric continues to be efficient as the current tank, and I would not see anything as wrong.

I always enjoy gathering data on the opinions of players who explicitly want games to be this way. You and I probably don't want to play the same game, and I can't say I understand why you'd want this outcome (if you even do, I don't think you were explicit) but I hope you can also see the position I approach this from.

"I don't see why the Poison Dragon needs to be changed, adaptability is part of why I play MMOs."

I will continue to hope that either players like me, or players unlike me, get what they want, unambiguously, because I have no faith in the middling outcome that would come from trying to please both.

There's no reason that has to be true.

The fact that they keep their messaging in that form means that they're under no obligation to 'make sure every X/Tank can tank' just because one or two, or 'very specific builds of any under very specific situation', can.

As for 'how Cleric tanks the Poison Dragon', if you've watched the demo video of the Poison Dragon, you have the context required for me to explain it, but if you haven't, I expect we'd end up going back and forth about how the dragon works, unless you also fought it?

Let me know if you've seen that demo, there might even have been two separate demonstrations of that dragon.

the tl;dr however is that one can design bosses such that they 'prevent players from having a chance to meaningfully damage them without taking big risks', meaning that players trying to play sensibly end up lowering their DPS just so that they don't all die.

Yes, though of course it's not that simple, because it does take a specific type of build on the Cleric and the Tank. Basically what I explained.

The key here is that the Tank could definitely tank, using their Mana, and burn it up, and then also have to position themselves in riskier places in order to do their damage, but it isn't as efficient as having the Healer, whose damaging abilities have interesting ranges, do it.

I'm also absolutely not saying that this was 'successful by a great margin over the Tank' and I'd have complained if it was, I think (at least for my friend who actually tanks in other games and has that skillset and would have built around that).

I just don't perceive it as implying the boss is a pushover, and from there it devolves into speculation on 'Whether or not Cleric/Tank will get the option to augment their healing with added threat' and 'Whether or not Tank/Cleric will have to do damaging abilities to trigger healing' and so on.

We have not received permission from Nerror to share the quoted post.

So your point is that 'one can't assume anything even when explicitly referring to a creature that does damage by DoT and positioning because the Tank could probably pull aggro harder if they wanted to'.

My response is 'they could and didn't want to because against poison/DoT enemies it is inefficient'.

Now, if you mean to say 'I hope this isn't built this way and therefore that Alpha-1 isn't representative', then sure, they've explicitly said that abilities will change considerably.

We have not received permission from TrUSivraj to share the quoted post.

Even so, that's kind of the point too.

People want different games. When someone says 'Tank abilities should have generated much more threat', there is a spectrum. It ranges from 'Tanks are useless, any good DPS will instantly blow them out of the water', to 'Tanks are godlike, they generate so much threat that you don't even have to care unless the player is facerolling their keyboard'.

So to say 'They should generate more threat' is to say how you want the game to be, perhaps based on your preferred play, perhaps based on your previous experience.

I'm telling you that if the Alpha-1 Poison Dragon was considered by Intrepid to be 'a good design', just the Dragon and its mechanics, nothing to do with the Tank class or any of their abilities, then the concept of a Cleric tanking it is not farfetched.

I honestly thought this would be an easy and obvious discussion? It's basically well known that Clerics are powerful tanks against DoT enemies and those which rely on crippling statuses over raw damage. Isn't this true even in relatively 'strict' MMOs?

I think a Cleric by definition 'mitigates harm'?

I absolutely wouldn't expect it in WoW. I am not surprised that it doesn't work in Tera, though I didn't actually play healer in Tera.

In any case, data is recorded, and I feel like where we've reached is the point that I prefer to disengage, if that's alright with you. It's getting into the level where I have to constantly check if everyone else is using the same priors, and I'd honestly prefer to just 'leave it be'.

I can only say that I have not played the same games as you mentioned, and that in the games I played (FFXI being the main, BDO doesn't really count but I DO actually Shai Tank there so maybe?, and some other smaller ones, it's usually that way, so 'experiencing it in Ashes' felt normal and obvious to me, and I wouldn't come to the same conclusions about 'things needing to be fixed'.

If that's so uncommon that the average MMO enjoyer of the day is opposed to it, then I just have to wait for the next MMO that isn't.