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Now, we do have plans to eventually give the Eternal Soldier a damage aura. Basically, when someone gets to close to them the ES simply smacks their attacker, dealing some impact damage. But again, a damage aura isn't flashy so I'm open to suggestions.
Maybe give them some uniqueness by making it slightly weaker than a typical tank aura (lvl/5 rather than level/4) but making its damage type match that of the last melee-range attack the ES connected with? It'd still be just a damage aura (ie valuable but not flashy) but having the ability to change its type via Way of Fire, Master of the Hidden Energy, or an enchanted melee weapon would be a neat trick.
Edit: Not even sure the lower damage would be necessary, as I'm now realizing that the IB and Seraph auras already have some extra tricks built in beyond a basic "hit melee dudes back" function.
Think of an ES like an action hero you see in a movie, right down to their high defense score. How many times have we seen Bruce Willis or Arnold Schwarzenegger get in a gun fight against 20+ other dudes, and not one goon managed to actually hit them? However, this image inherently makes it difficult to really give them anything flashy. they're action heroes, not super-heroes.
You know, I just now got it. Just like a Hollywood action hero doesn't need to reload, neither does an Eternal Soldier.
ES is really good from a flavour stand point, it's really bad as a tank though.
The only thing that made it a viable tank was old style +30% dodge enchantments. If you look at the chart on the previous page, the ES is the only tank that can be killed by a single pet. Without a damage aura (or the DBS) I wouldn't recommend playing an ES in 3.5 based on my experience of it in 3.
How many pets of a single type can kill a tank. Given the hypothesis: "For each pet would N of those pets kill a tank of each class", the table is then of how many pets that hypothesis is true for.
Alternatively how many tanks of each type needed to kill a 20 strong Ghoul Horde (rounded up):
NormSeraph: 5
TankSeraph: 2
ES: 11
IB: 5
There are two other crucial differences are:
1) with a damage aura the attacking pets will be dead in ~10 attacks so ~1-2 min, the ES has to rely on the pets exhausting themselves 50-75 attacks, 10-15mins. That's a lot of time to defenders to wake up.
2) ESs don't work great with other tanks, multiple IB's or Seraphs will wound pets meaning that each subsequent tank has an easier time wiping out the pet shield. An ES is doing nothing to assist any IBs or Seraphs in killing the pet horde (well except for keeping some of them off the IB or Seraph so they have more time to heal).
Can't the ES hit 40% melee defense with Dodge & Evasion? The 30% cited seems to only cover Super Reflexes, Way of Water, and Master of the Reflex. That actually makes a significant difference due to how the math on defense ends up shaking out - the more you have, the more valuable it is to get more. That boost knocks a Zombie's hit rate from 15% to 5%, tripling your durability against them. With clothing enchantments, you can even push it down to 1% for another 5x survivability on top of that.
Admittedly, you're going to be tanking Ghouls (which go from 30% accuracy to 20% accuracy, not counting enchants) in practice, and not having a damage aura is still a major strike against for the reasons Sihoiba describes. But the ES is very close to hitting truly obnoxious levels of defense if you spec for it. It's costly CP-wise, though; you're spending 60 Mortal, 20 Myrmidon, and 120 ES CP just to get your dodge and armor. In contrast, 150 Infernal Behemoth CP gets you armor, fire immunity, an aura, and 50 HP.
Last edited by MerlintheTuna on Mon Jul 13, 2015 8:46 am; edited 3 times in total
Can't the ES hit 40% melee defense with Dodge & Evasion?
Yes. All assumptions made here are assuming the tanks are using no defensive enchantments and that none of them have dodge or evasion, although I will admit that the assumption of no dodge/evasion is more damaging for ES then it is for Behemoth and Seraph.
Can't the ES hit 40% melee defense with Dodge & Evasion?
Yes. All assumptions made here are assuming the tanks are using no defensive enchantments and that none of them have dodge or evasion, although I will admit that the assumption of no dodge/evasion is more damaging for ES then it is for Behemoth and Seraph.
Well if none of them are using dodge/evasion then they anti pet numbers are still a viable relative comparison. Giving them all dodge/evasion still leaves the ES half as good as tanking pets as any class - more telling would be to compare an ES to an NC with a damage aura cast up, if the jack of all trade class out classes the dedicated tank at tanking... well then there is definitely a problem.
- more telling would be to compare an ES to an NC with a damage aura cast up, if the jack of all trade class out classes the dedicated tank at tanking... well then there is definitely a problem.
Honestly the more I look at it the more the ES looks like the jack of all trades, with respectable defense and an OK punching attack and a pretty good gun attack. The NC on the other hand isn't good at much offensive other then bows (and the ES is better at guns then the NC is at bows) and throwing rocks (sometimes magic rocks), but they have acceptable base defense and spells that can be used to improve it to the point of being about as good at tanking as a behemoth. Plus the pet helps.
As for the ability of an ES to tank pets, I ran some numbers. Note that for an ES to be a good tank requires both a morality close to 0 and mana (for the damage aura). Also, he shouldn't use a fire or a death aura, because those don't work on some pets.
Assume the ES has obtained 4 slashing soak (from some armor) and has a morality between 1-3. If they take the myrmidon but not the mortal defensive skills this gives them a total of 17% defense.
I will also be ignoring the effects of Tattoo of Adaptation, as it would make calculations difficult. The Tattoo is incredibly powerful when tanking pets that have the same damage type (i.e a pack of nether hounds), but isn't particularly strong when facing a variety of pets (i.e. a stronghold with Ghouls, Judgemasters and a couple Wights)
This is about as much damage as a Behemoth takes from tanking. Note that Behemoths have more health, but that an ES with Tattoo of Adaptation will take less damage then this, depending on the composition of the pets he is fighting.
However, the NC has more spells then just damage auras. Assume the NC has Mystic Mail (or 5 slashing soak armor), Mystic Shield and Blur as well as the damage aura. Also let us assume that the NC had to do some disreputable things to get all these spells and their morality is now between -4 and -9, reducing their defense.
Again ignoring the effects of Tattoo of Adaptation
This is slightly less damage then a Behemoth takes, about on par with a Seraph without defensive buffs. (although again, the NC has less HP but can get Adaptation)
I will also be ignoring the effects of Tattoo of Adaptation, as it would make calculations difficult. The Tattoo is incredibly powerful when tanking pets that have the same damage type (i.e a pack of nether hounds), but isn't particularly strong when facing a variety of pets (i.e. a stronghold with Ghouls, Judgemasters and a couple Wights)
I've been glancing over your threads for a while now, interesting work! You've done a good job running the numbers, though my opinion disagrees with much of yours.
Since I'm not sure if anyone would point this out, I will:
Do not discount Tattoo of Adaptation. It is the single best pet-tanking skill in the game.
ESes with Way of Hidden Energy are comparable, but they can't cast auras by themselves.
There are only a few sources of mundane immunities in the game. Relentless Sea Holy Champions can also tank incredibly well (especially against ghouls) due to slashing immunity.
A proper Nexus Champ raid tank will use the appropriate affinities for the target. Ghouls? Take a death affinity. With Tattoo of Adaptation, slashing and death are covered. For every damage type that's added, just take another affinity. If there is a mix such as horrid tentacles dealing impact damage, your other defensive skills come into play. The off-types will often die out fast, and you can press the issue by triggering retaliatory ticks to make certain pets die out faster and thus homogenise the incoming damage types.
I've done a lot of tanking with all different types. Dodge Revenant was my favourite tank due to the tricks and skill involved, rather than step-in and forget-until-pets-die-on-an-aura method. Nexus Champs are by and far the best, with an aura and a couple potions and tattoo of adaptation one can clear out any stronghold of pets whilst taking almost no damage. _________________ aav-ann
Eternal Soldiers, despite being theoretically tanks, are not the guys who charge in during a raid to make the pets suicide on them. This is a good thing; we should avoid direct symmetry between the three factions wherever it's possible to do so without unbalancing things. So I'm okay with NCs being the actual raid tanks in unaligned factions, and having Eternal Soldier be a jack-of-all-trades/scrapper/fighter rather than a tank.
Eternal Soldiers, despite being theoretically tanks, are not the guys who charge in during a raid to make the pets suicide on them. This is a good thing; we should avoid direct symmetry between the three factions wherever it's possible to do so without unbalancing things. So I'm okay with NCs being the actual raid tanks in unaligned factions, and having Eternal Soldier be a jack-of-all-trades/scrapper/fighter rather than a tank.
The only problem with this is that in terms of the defined class roles that they were designed around the ES was designed to be the tank and the NC the jack of all trades - e.g. like all Jack of All Trades classes they are a warrior class who can access spell casting.
All Jack of all Trades are supposed to be able to take on another role, but not supposed to be better than the core version of that role. So if the ES is less good than the NC at being a tank either the NC is too good or the ES isn't good enough.
I disagree, because you're thinking in terms of "ES must always be a tank because that's its official role." Whatever the design roles of the two were is not, IMO, necessarily relevant to the current situation; nor is there a need to keep classes strictly aligned to the six-part grid. That's my point.
Eternal Soldier isn't in need of a buff in power, nor is Nexus Champion in need of a nerf, just because the Eternal Soldier is not used in the "tank" role on raids. The questions I would ask are "are unaligned factions able to raid successfully without the ES being able to tank, are Eternal Soldiers a fun and playable class with their own niche, and are Nexus Champions too powerful and in need of a nerf?" I think the answers are yes, yes, and no.
The questions I would ask are "are unaligned factions able to raid successfully without the ES being able to tank, are Eternal Soldiers a fun and playable class with their own niche, and are Nexus Champions too powerful and in need of a nerf?" I think the answers are yes, yes, and no.
I think these are the right questions to ask. Though I think ES might need to be more powerful, I might be biased. All in all, you've summed up my feelings on it.
I would say yes, no, and no, but YMMV, as always :P
(I'm leaving roleplay generally a little bit to the side with this, as I think that if anyone can pull off a great character with their chosen class, whatever it is, then it all evens out in the end. Sorry for going so long lol)
Having played a Martial-Arts ES for like 3 years now (and was my first character to max out, too), I do feel quite entitled to say that they feel very underwhelming - it felt specially so after the dodge-enchant nerf a while back, though I understand that running around with +60% chance to dodge at all times is probably not very balanced. lol
ESs, and much more so martial-art ones, shine when you weigh in maintenance, as it has been said before. 13/15 damage a hit at 90%/75% without using any items at all is not too shabby, though it kinda pales next to other classes' innate weapons (and more so if you add activated abilities to the mix... Umbral Sword + Blood Frenzy + Shadow of the Dust does what, 17 at 100%? Plus you recover HP and MP every hit. Right, right, I'm ignoring the drawbacks of each of those skills.)
I did feel pretty under-powered when it came to faction-play and the raiding game. Only when dear leader gifted me a blackened gauntlet and I could have it enchanted, I started to feel a little bit more helpful, specially with ward-bashing :P I did make a good tank in a pinch with Hidden Energy, though, which, by the way, doesn't work with a gauntlet. Adapt to slashing, and with a few affinity potions you cover most of the pet damage types - leaving out only impact, done by wheels, and arcane, by some lich and WM pets IIRC, in which case you can either drink some invulnerability or just plain kill the pets, since they are never plentiful (your dodge helps a lot here with keeping you alive, too). Of course, without an aura, it means sitting there for several minutes as you wait for pets to tire out on you, or you could also wait until the forts lower a bit to try to kill the petmasters instead. If you suck like me and don't get Way of Fire, then good luck trying to do any sort of meaningful damage over forts.
The high dodge (around 40 it was?) also is a good deterrent against actives, since they will on average only be hitting you around half of the time. All said, though, a Nexus Champion could do all this, at a lesser CP expense *and* with an aura active (90 CP for active adaptation is... not so good, ignoring the other small benefits the skills give)(+3 kick damage you will actually never use, now that's an awesome skill :D).
Master of the Flow is a meh skill. It is not really an additional "20% more dodge". Instead, it adds a "maximum" dodge of 20%, but only if the attacker already has a 100% chance of hitting you. If their hit chances are lower, the net damage avoided is also lower, as is the case of most pets hitting around 70% or even less, so it's help with tanking is arguable. Works better against player-characters, and Maeval, I guess. Funny thing, if you have more dodge, this skill's impact actually worsens :P (Example: Only the Wrackwyrm hits at 75%. Add the average's ES dodge of 30%, and it becomes a 45% chance to hit. If you activate flow, it reduces it to 36%, that is, a reduction of 9%. For all other pets, it's going to be even less. Up to you if that is worth the 60 CP and ap+mp costs).
I'm definitely not going to play a hand-to-hand Eternal Soldier next breath, not in breath 4 if the class remains as-is. I'm considering a factioned melee ES, as enchanted melee weapons are more competitive (and getting Way of Fire this time around), but still not 100% convinced. I very much like the class, but its foggy niche -that is even filled to a better extent by other classes- and a general lacking cooperative characteristic to the class (there's not much you can give in a group, other than a so-so meatshield) make it feel like it's really not worth the effort.
Oh, by the way, I do love the idea of an impact aura that is actually the character punching/kicking people that try to get close :P I had thought of that before, too. Maybe take out that lousy kick damage Lashing Kick gives, and change it for that? :D
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