Havelock
07-04-2005, 12:44 PM
636The keystone of the MMO "holy trinity" is the tank - the beefy damage sponge who places himself between his allies and the full fury of an angry mob. Generally clad in inch-thick steel, trained to perfection in the art of mitigating damage, he still clings to a narrow lifeline as his health dips drastically, only to be saved at the last second by a friendly healer. The trinity relies on the tank to keep the enemy occupied, the healer to keep the tank alive, and the damage-dealer to kill the monster.
While conceptually the tank role has changed very little over time, from its pen and paper origins through its early MMO iteration in EQ to the dynamic warrior in WoW, the way in which the a given MMO player executes the role has changed from game to game. Vanguard promises to significantly alter the mechanics of tanking and agro management and raise the challenge level for would-be tanks to new heights.
Conceptual Foundations of Tanking
All modern roleplaying games owe their existence to Dungeons & Dragons. The seed of Dungeons & Dragons was a supplement to a medieval combat ruleset focused on armored knights. So it is fair to say, I think, that the first RPG class was a tank, and all others followed.
In Dungeons & Dragons, fighters and dwarves had more hit points than the casters and rogues, and on top of that they could wear better armor. Thus in a fight the question of who should be up front making himself available to be beaten on was easily answered - send in the person with the best mitigation and the highest hit points, and hope the rolls come out in his favor. The principle held in later iterations of D&D and AD&D as well as in the ensuing computer games - from Pool of Radiance on, you tried to put your fighters between your casters and your enemies.
642Other single player CRPGs adopted similar distinctions to allow for tanking - in The Bard's Tale, for instance, your party was divided into two ranks, one up front and one behind. The front rank came into direct contact with the enemy, and so of course the warriors, paladins, and monks belonged there in melee range while the casters stayed out of the fray.
The basic logic of designing melee classes that can take hits is so fundamental that it hardly seems worth thinking about. The tank is built into the basic structure of class-based roleplaying games, and it is no surprise that the tank has weathered a busy 30 years of change and progress with its basic concept entirely intact.
The implementation of tanking, however, has changed quite a bit as games have grown increasingly complex. I will briefly recount a few steps in the history of MMO tanks based on my experiences in the genre to provide some context for discussing tanking in Vanguard.
Tanking in Previous MMOs
Everquest
644I came late to Everquest, in the spring of 2003, and played a very solo-friendly class, so I had limited experience grouping until toward the end of my time with the game. I had heard that warriors were dreadfully boring to play, so I did not play one. There were relatively few abilities available, and little subtletly or nuance involved in using those abilities. The hybrid tank classes were more flexible and supposedly more fun to play, and holding agro involved a bit more complexity for them. But it was still a relatively straightforward and predictable process.
I stumbled through EQ largely unaware of the ins and outs of agro management; when I was in a group, I healed who I was supposed to heal and that was pretty much it. I've learned more about tanking in that game since I stopped playing than I ever did during my EQ days. I have heard many horror stories of people who, while tanking high hp mobs, would get the battle set up and then read a book or watch television for the duration of the fight.
Tanking and agro management in EQ, like many mechanics of the game, drew heavily on its MUD predecessors. Tanking in EQ was driven by a mob's hate list - to hold agro, a player had to keep himself at the top of the hate list. This involved doing as much damage as possible and using hate-generating abilities as often as possible. Taunt theoretically allowed tanks to react to the sudden loss of agro, but aside from that tanking generally was designed not to be very interactive. Tanks served as a type of crowd control, parking a mob and keeping it occupied. One tank could control a mob while countless allies worked behind him to keep him up and bring it down. This is the basic model of MMO tanking, the foundation upon which all successor games have built.
Star Wars Galaxies
SWG did not feature a class system, but rather a number of skill trees. Players could mix and match templates with great variety, and for almost two years after launch everyone could wear all types of armor (except wookiees, who for most of that time could wear no armor). Given the universal availability of armor mitigation and the large number of of players whose templates gave them additional mitigation and other defenses, concerns about agro management were significantly lessened and players were much less interdependent in combat.
634The lack of interdependence was especially pronounced in SWG because virtually every character intended for combat was able to heal himself about as well as any other player could. SWG also featured a very overpowered pet profession, the creature handler, that gave all players access to a very tough pet for a minimal investment of skill points. During that time, the number of characters with creature handling skills approached 1/2 of the total population, and basically every PvE fight involved a big graul soaking up a lot of the damage.
This lack of interdependence seems to be endemic to all skill-based, as opposed to class-based, games. Players will generally min-max to give themselves the most flexibility in combat. This impulse leads to armies of "tank mages," the cautionary example game designers watch out for when trying to design a community-friendly combat system.
For those who nevertheless practiced agro management (and against the top-tier mobs most people informally practiced it, generally simply by sending in a swordsman first), it was like EQ - not very reactive. Agro-generating abilities moved a player up on the hate list. Taunt could be used to try to pull agro off another player, b ut beyond that there was little room for reaction. The goal, as in EQ, was to keep a mob focused on one player while the rest of the group did its thing.
The Combat Upgrade has apparently turned SWG into a more interdependent game, and I hear that taunting and consciousness of agro management are widespread now. I have not played in some time, and my friends that still play speak of nothing but PvP, so I have little light to shed on the specifics of tanking in the new and improved SWG.
World of Warcraft
WoW was my introduction to the art of tanking. While I had been the sole jedi master defender on my server in SWG, as I mentioned above tanking tactics were not widespread there and after the jedi revamp the only PvE I engaged in was either solo or in AoE jedi groups. In WoW I played a shaman during closed beta but switched to warrior at open and launch because few people in my guild were willing to commit to that class and a Horde guild basically needed a warrior for every instance run.
633WoW introduced me to the satisfaction that can come from being a decent tank. One of my fondest MMO memories is of the first time my guild killed Lucifron. I had off-tanked one of his guards and been hanging back while the MT built up agro. The MT, an exceptionally skilled warrior, died quickly - dang healers :p - and our number two man, who had off-tanked the other guard, moved up and died almost immediately. I stepped in and the healers managed to keep me up until we eventually brought that sucker down. It felt great having the success or failure of the raid hinge on my ability to hold agro and do my part to mitigate damage, and to feel a sense of immediacy by being right up in the face of the mob the whole time. I had some similar experiences elsewhere in the Molten Core. And even prior to endgame raiding, I enjoyed the tank role the whole way up the level ladder. I especially liked tanking instances like Maraudon, the Sunken Temple, and Blackrock Depths, where I had to work hard to hold agro on multiple mobs in some pretty chaotic fights.
Tanking in WoW built squarely on the foundations of Everquest, but with some twists. The hate list still drove the role, and agro was managed by focusing the mob on one particular warrior. But a number of reactive and situational abilities, combined with the stance switching necessary to put all those abilities to use and management of the rage bar that allowed those abilities to be used, made tanking more involved and challenging.
Tanking in Vanguard
While much of the "sekret sauce" is still secret, we do have information that hints at how tanking might work in Vanguard. Sigil has recently released additional information that gives us an even clearer picture.
Tanking Classes
506Classes in Vanguard are defined by their job, i.e., their role in a group. For each job, several classes (http://www.silkyvenom.com/forums/showthread.php?t=718) exist that can fill the role in a unique fashion. The protective fighter job is the clear-cut tank - he lives to be one big damage sponge. The tentatively-announced classes for the protective fighter job include the Warrior, the Paladin, the Dread Knight, and the Inquisitor.
Offensive fighters, the lighter melee combatants of Vanguard, will also possess some tanking abilities, though they will not be as effective at taking a hit as their more defensively-oriented brothers. The tentatively-announced classes for the offensive fighter job include the Ranger, the Rogue, the Monk, and the Bard.
Defensive Targets
One innovation in Vanguard is the addition of a defensive target. In past MMOs such as EQ, each player could target one other player or creature at a time. In Vanguard, a player will have two simultaneous targets, one offensive and one defensive. Offensive abilities will affect the offensive target, defensive abilities will affect the defensive target.
Perception
Another innovation in Vanguard is the perception system. As players develop their perception skills, they will gain an increasing chance to notice things. This includes both environmental details as well as enemy tactics (and incidentally may allow you to learn from your opponents - for example, if you get shield bashed enough by a kobold, you may learn the shield bash skill).
507Pertinent here is that perception will let you anticipate what an enemy is going to do and take steps accordingly. For instance, a sorceror who sees a mob casting a particular spell may be able to counter that spell or otherwise render it harmless.
Similarly, a protective fighter who sees a creature moving to attack his defensive target will be able to use a "rescue" to place himself bodily between the attack and the intended target. According to game designer Darrin McPherson, aka Talisker (http://www.sigil.com/000110.php), "Rescues are a type of ability that protective fighters get to help them defend their allies. These allow you to take the place of the target, either blocking the damage or, at the least, taking the damage themselves." "Rescue" is not a single ability, but rather a type of ability, with many variations, "some easier to perform than others, some that even return some damage." From dev comments, it sounds as though the traditional taunt abilities might be incorporated into the game as a subset of the rescue type abilities.
Brad McQuaid (http://www.sigil.com/000003.php) has highlighted the importance of rescuing:
The ability to rescue another party member that is about to die or isn't as suited to tanking is a key strategy in Vanguard. Given our desire to see combat involve less pulling and often involving fighting multiple mobs at one time, rescue/taunt is very important.
Offensive fighters, too, will be able to use their own type of ability, "intercepts," to protect party members. Intercepts allow offensive fighters "to ward off attacks using attacks," but Talisker warns that "[t]his is not easy to do and if the offensive fighter fails, the intended target still takes the damage."
So?
Allowing players to react to threats to other players marks a step away from the traditional model of agro management. Rather than simply having a "one tank per mob" model, reactive tanking in Vanguard hints toward a "one tank per caster" model. This would make more sense than having a warrior constantly talk smack about a mob's mother in the hopes that it chooses to continually and futilely beat on the guy wearing a bunker instead of quickly eviscerating the dress-wearing target that is obviously stymieing its efforts to kill the tank.
Additional factors that would make such a departure possible include the widespread availability of tanking skills - half the classes in Vanguard can tank to some extent - and the hardening of softer targets. We know clerics will be armored and more martially capable than they have been in past games, and we have been told not to be surprised to see casters wearing various types of armor. Thus some non-tanking players may be able to take care of themselves relatively well in case the ratio of tanks to non-tanks is unbalanced in a particular group. On top of that, an ally-oriented, rather than enemy-oriented, tanking mechanic would create incentives to have more balanced groups, and it would give players incentive to tank by making tanking more intense and enjoyable, with players forced to constantly pay attention and be ready with the appropriate reaction.
575That said, although the seed of a major evolution in the tank role appears to be contained within Vanguard, any changes are tempered by the continuing inclusion of agro-building moves, with the primary focus of tanking continuing to involve a fighter trying to sit firmly at the top of a mob's hate list. Sigil has made this clear, explaining that tanks "will have a lot of ways to gain agro, from attacks that build agro (but may not be as damaging) to abilities that will garner you some additional agro on a successful hit, etc."
But Talisker warns, "You will not have the 'Place myself at the top of the hate list' button." It sounds like holding agro will be very difficult, and the devs expect us to fail frequently. Fortunately, they have provided abilities like rescues and intercepts to help tanks protect their allies even when they lose agro.
In addition to the addition of ally-oriented defensive abilities, tanking in Vanguard, like combat in general, will certainly be more complex and involved than it has been in previous games. Vanguard will build on the increased combat complexity of games like WoW and DAoC, with a lot of reactive abilities and the ability to choose between various tactical options. Stance switching and a wide array of sympathetic and situational moves promise to keep a player on his or her toes throughout a fight.
Conclusion
The classic role of tank as damage sponge is still alive and well and Vanguard promises to offer more of the same from a big picture perspective. But the days of reading a book while tanking are over, at least as far as Sigil is concerned. Tanking will be a very active and intense activity. And although the Vanguard tank is a linear descendant of his MMO predecessors, the specific mechanics of tanking in Vanguard could mark a major change in a fundamental mechanic of agro management by beginning to change the tank from a passive agro-generator who parks mobs to an active and reactive protector of his party members, making for increasingly complex combat. Tanking in Vanguard promises to be a very fun and engaging experience.
While conceptually the tank role has changed very little over time, from its pen and paper origins through its early MMO iteration in EQ to the dynamic warrior in WoW, the way in which the a given MMO player executes the role has changed from game to game. Vanguard promises to significantly alter the mechanics of tanking and agro management and raise the challenge level for would-be tanks to new heights.
Conceptual Foundations of Tanking
All modern roleplaying games owe their existence to Dungeons & Dragons. The seed of Dungeons & Dragons was a supplement to a medieval combat ruleset focused on armored knights. So it is fair to say, I think, that the first RPG class was a tank, and all others followed.
In Dungeons & Dragons, fighters and dwarves had more hit points than the casters and rogues, and on top of that they could wear better armor. Thus in a fight the question of who should be up front making himself available to be beaten on was easily answered - send in the person with the best mitigation and the highest hit points, and hope the rolls come out in his favor. The principle held in later iterations of D&D and AD&D as well as in the ensuing computer games - from Pool of Radiance on, you tried to put your fighters between your casters and your enemies.
642Other single player CRPGs adopted similar distinctions to allow for tanking - in The Bard's Tale, for instance, your party was divided into two ranks, one up front and one behind. The front rank came into direct contact with the enemy, and so of course the warriors, paladins, and monks belonged there in melee range while the casters stayed out of the fray.
The basic logic of designing melee classes that can take hits is so fundamental that it hardly seems worth thinking about. The tank is built into the basic structure of class-based roleplaying games, and it is no surprise that the tank has weathered a busy 30 years of change and progress with its basic concept entirely intact.
The implementation of tanking, however, has changed quite a bit as games have grown increasingly complex. I will briefly recount a few steps in the history of MMO tanks based on my experiences in the genre to provide some context for discussing tanking in Vanguard.
Tanking in Previous MMOs
Everquest
644I came late to Everquest, in the spring of 2003, and played a very solo-friendly class, so I had limited experience grouping until toward the end of my time with the game. I had heard that warriors were dreadfully boring to play, so I did not play one. There were relatively few abilities available, and little subtletly or nuance involved in using those abilities. The hybrid tank classes were more flexible and supposedly more fun to play, and holding agro involved a bit more complexity for them. But it was still a relatively straightforward and predictable process.
I stumbled through EQ largely unaware of the ins and outs of agro management; when I was in a group, I healed who I was supposed to heal and that was pretty much it. I've learned more about tanking in that game since I stopped playing than I ever did during my EQ days. I have heard many horror stories of people who, while tanking high hp mobs, would get the battle set up and then read a book or watch television for the duration of the fight.
Tanking and agro management in EQ, like many mechanics of the game, drew heavily on its MUD predecessors. Tanking in EQ was driven by a mob's hate list - to hold agro, a player had to keep himself at the top of the hate list. This involved doing as much damage as possible and using hate-generating abilities as often as possible. Taunt theoretically allowed tanks to react to the sudden loss of agro, but aside from that tanking generally was designed not to be very interactive. Tanks served as a type of crowd control, parking a mob and keeping it occupied. One tank could control a mob while countless allies worked behind him to keep him up and bring it down. This is the basic model of MMO tanking, the foundation upon which all successor games have built.
Star Wars Galaxies
SWG did not feature a class system, but rather a number of skill trees. Players could mix and match templates with great variety, and for almost two years after launch everyone could wear all types of armor (except wookiees, who for most of that time could wear no armor). Given the universal availability of armor mitigation and the large number of of players whose templates gave them additional mitigation and other defenses, concerns about agro management were significantly lessened and players were much less interdependent in combat.
634The lack of interdependence was especially pronounced in SWG because virtually every character intended for combat was able to heal himself about as well as any other player could. SWG also featured a very overpowered pet profession, the creature handler, that gave all players access to a very tough pet for a minimal investment of skill points. During that time, the number of characters with creature handling skills approached 1/2 of the total population, and basically every PvE fight involved a big graul soaking up a lot of the damage.
This lack of interdependence seems to be endemic to all skill-based, as opposed to class-based, games. Players will generally min-max to give themselves the most flexibility in combat. This impulse leads to armies of "tank mages," the cautionary example game designers watch out for when trying to design a community-friendly combat system.
For those who nevertheless practiced agro management (and against the top-tier mobs most people informally practiced it, generally simply by sending in a swordsman first), it was like EQ - not very reactive. Agro-generating abilities moved a player up on the hate list. Taunt could be used to try to pull agro off another player, b ut beyond that there was little room for reaction. The goal, as in EQ, was to keep a mob focused on one player while the rest of the group did its thing.
The Combat Upgrade has apparently turned SWG into a more interdependent game, and I hear that taunting and consciousness of agro management are widespread now. I have not played in some time, and my friends that still play speak of nothing but PvP, so I have little light to shed on the specifics of tanking in the new and improved SWG.
World of Warcraft
WoW was my introduction to the art of tanking. While I had been the sole jedi master defender on my server in SWG, as I mentioned above tanking tactics were not widespread there and after the jedi revamp the only PvE I engaged in was either solo or in AoE jedi groups. In WoW I played a shaman during closed beta but switched to warrior at open and launch because few people in my guild were willing to commit to that class and a Horde guild basically needed a warrior for every instance run.
633WoW introduced me to the satisfaction that can come from being a decent tank. One of my fondest MMO memories is of the first time my guild killed Lucifron. I had off-tanked one of his guards and been hanging back while the MT built up agro. The MT, an exceptionally skilled warrior, died quickly - dang healers :p - and our number two man, who had off-tanked the other guard, moved up and died almost immediately. I stepped in and the healers managed to keep me up until we eventually brought that sucker down. It felt great having the success or failure of the raid hinge on my ability to hold agro and do my part to mitigate damage, and to feel a sense of immediacy by being right up in the face of the mob the whole time. I had some similar experiences elsewhere in the Molten Core. And even prior to endgame raiding, I enjoyed the tank role the whole way up the level ladder. I especially liked tanking instances like Maraudon, the Sunken Temple, and Blackrock Depths, where I had to work hard to hold agro on multiple mobs in some pretty chaotic fights.
Tanking in WoW built squarely on the foundations of Everquest, but with some twists. The hate list still drove the role, and agro was managed by focusing the mob on one particular warrior. But a number of reactive and situational abilities, combined with the stance switching necessary to put all those abilities to use and management of the rage bar that allowed those abilities to be used, made tanking more involved and challenging.
Tanking in Vanguard
While much of the "sekret sauce" is still secret, we do have information that hints at how tanking might work in Vanguard. Sigil has recently released additional information that gives us an even clearer picture.
Tanking Classes
506Classes in Vanguard are defined by their job, i.e., their role in a group. For each job, several classes (http://www.silkyvenom.com/forums/showthread.php?t=718) exist that can fill the role in a unique fashion. The protective fighter job is the clear-cut tank - he lives to be one big damage sponge. The tentatively-announced classes for the protective fighter job include the Warrior, the Paladin, the Dread Knight, and the Inquisitor.
Offensive fighters, the lighter melee combatants of Vanguard, will also possess some tanking abilities, though they will not be as effective at taking a hit as their more defensively-oriented brothers. The tentatively-announced classes for the offensive fighter job include the Ranger, the Rogue, the Monk, and the Bard.
Defensive Targets
One innovation in Vanguard is the addition of a defensive target. In past MMOs such as EQ, each player could target one other player or creature at a time. In Vanguard, a player will have two simultaneous targets, one offensive and one defensive. Offensive abilities will affect the offensive target, defensive abilities will affect the defensive target.
Perception
Another innovation in Vanguard is the perception system. As players develop their perception skills, they will gain an increasing chance to notice things. This includes both environmental details as well as enemy tactics (and incidentally may allow you to learn from your opponents - for example, if you get shield bashed enough by a kobold, you may learn the shield bash skill).
507Pertinent here is that perception will let you anticipate what an enemy is going to do and take steps accordingly. For instance, a sorceror who sees a mob casting a particular spell may be able to counter that spell or otherwise render it harmless.
Similarly, a protective fighter who sees a creature moving to attack his defensive target will be able to use a "rescue" to place himself bodily between the attack and the intended target. According to game designer Darrin McPherson, aka Talisker (http://www.sigil.com/000110.php), "Rescues are a type of ability that protective fighters get to help them defend their allies. These allow you to take the place of the target, either blocking the damage or, at the least, taking the damage themselves." "Rescue" is not a single ability, but rather a type of ability, with many variations, "some easier to perform than others, some that even return some damage." From dev comments, it sounds as though the traditional taunt abilities might be incorporated into the game as a subset of the rescue type abilities.
Brad McQuaid (http://www.sigil.com/000003.php) has highlighted the importance of rescuing:
The ability to rescue another party member that is about to die or isn't as suited to tanking is a key strategy in Vanguard. Given our desire to see combat involve less pulling and often involving fighting multiple mobs at one time, rescue/taunt is very important.
Offensive fighters, too, will be able to use their own type of ability, "intercepts," to protect party members. Intercepts allow offensive fighters "to ward off attacks using attacks," but Talisker warns that "[t]his is not easy to do and if the offensive fighter fails, the intended target still takes the damage."
So?
Allowing players to react to threats to other players marks a step away from the traditional model of agro management. Rather than simply having a "one tank per mob" model, reactive tanking in Vanguard hints toward a "one tank per caster" model. This would make more sense than having a warrior constantly talk smack about a mob's mother in the hopes that it chooses to continually and futilely beat on the guy wearing a bunker instead of quickly eviscerating the dress-wearing target that is obviously stymieing its efforts to kill the tank.
Additional factors that would make such a departure possible include the widespread availability of tanking skills - half the classes in Vanguard can tank to some extent - and the hardening of softer targets. We know clerics will be armored and more martially capable than they have been in past games, and we have been told not to be surprised to see casters wearing various types of armor. Thus some non-tanking players may be able to take care of themselves relatively well in case the ratio of tanks to non-tanks is unbalanced in a particular group. On top of that, an ally-oriented, rather than enemy-oriented, tanking mechanic would create incentives to have more balanced groups, and it would give players incentive to tank by making tanking more intense and enjoyable, with players forced to constantly pay attention and be ready with the appropriate reaction.
575That said, although the seed of a major evolution in the tank role appears to be contained within Vanguard, any changes are tempered by the continuing inclusion of agro-building moves, with the primary focus of tanking continuing to involve a fighter trying to sit firmly at the top of a mob's hate list. Sigil has made this clear, explaining that tanks "will have a lot of ways to gain agro, from attacks that build agro (but may not be as damaging) to abilities that will garner you some additional agro on a successful hit, etc."
But Talisker warns, "You will not have the 'Place myself at the top of the hate list' button." It sounds like holding agro will be very difficult, and the devs expect us to fail frequently. Fortunately, they have provided abilities like rescues and intercepts to help tanks protect their allies even when they lose agro.
In addition to the addition of ally-oriented defensive abilities, tanking in Vanguard, like combat in general, will certainly be more complex and involved than it has been in previous games. Vanguard will build on the increased combat complexity of games like WoW and DAoC, with a lot of reactive abilities and the ability to choose between various tactical options. Stance switching and a wide array of sympathetic and situational moves promise to keep a player on his or her toes throughout a fight.
Conclusion
The classic role of tank as damage sponge is still alive and well and Vanguard promises to offer more of the same from a big picture perspective. But the days of reading a book while tanking are over, at least as far as Sigil is concerned. Tanking will be a very active and intense activity. And although the Vanguard tank is a linear descendant of his MMO predecessors, the specific mechanics of tanking in Vanguard could mark a major change in a fundamental mechanic of agro management by beginning to change the tank from a passive agro-generator who parks mobs to an active and reactive protector of his party members, making for increasingly complex combat. Tanking in Vanguard promises to be a very fun and engaging experience.