My Tank Feedback

[gingerbear]

Okay, so I played around with some of the tanks (I have all of them unlocked and augmented some already to 8-10 levels in main traits), and here are my thoughts:

Silver: a nice starter tank. With a single turret it lacks the much needed fire prowess, but the abilities are nicely tuned for survival, so new players can get the hang of the game relatively safely until they are able to switch to other tanks.

Trailblazer: When I first tried it, I thought, oh my gosh, this tank is so bad. Shields go down fast, abilities aren't that good as they are supposed to be, it cannot even attack... But then I spent some victory points in it, at lvl 9-10 hp/shield/CD/spd you can literally run out of the world with a bit of luck... So yeah, a good tank, but requires some upgrade investment and mastering.

Avenger: Superior melee tank (in 1v1 situations). It lacks good range thus kind of suicidal at watch towers, and is kind of inefficient in crowds, but the strong shield, the buffing abilities and the "stun shot" makes up well for it. Pack 2 or 3 of them together and they blast through everything. Well, except maybe deltas, because those are unfriendly to melee, but can't have them all... So yeah, great tank, the first one I started to upgrade with VP and never regretting it.

Valkyrie: It is kind of weak even with level 10 damage, but I find the "sweeping" flamethrower main gun immensely fun(ny). It is not good against big enemies (e.g. delta), but can loosen up mass vehicle minions pretty well, along with even damaging the buildings lying behind, so a great choice against triple or quintuple drill towers, provided the team has some big hitters too. It also works well against single towers that hide behind mass waves of minions, which is always the case in a new sector where cities aren't lessening their numbers. What I would change on it is that I would add a faster rotation speed to the main gun. Right now it tracks out always the nearest enemy, so the spray gun always moves away slowly from the desired location, and it is very hard to aim. This would not be an issue if the turret moved faster, as it is an agile and fast tank, but right now a lot of valuable shots go wasted on the turret rotating here and there and not really attacking... It would be an interesting concept to tune the AI so that the flamethrower always shoots at the direction with the highest density of enemies (so you have to aim for single targets with the front lasers), but that might make it too easy to use. In any case, a faster turret would really help.

Viking: Viking has a lot of potential, but it could use some tweaking. The main gun has a nice damage, but unfortunately it always rotates around to the nearest enemy, which makes the tank more-less useless anywhere where minions circle around. I know that it has a forwards teleport, so maybe that if it gets fast to a building it won't rotate away... but it is NOT so and it switches to the next target even then, so it's just plain bad... What I would change is to swap around the two turrets' AI. Let the big heavy gun shoot at what is the strongest around him, and the small tracer to seek out lesser targets. This would likely make it a "good enough" tank, and then we could experiment with the other abilities. An alternative to this would be to change the forward ion burst to a mass all-around explosion, which would have 2 results:
a) With the minions cleared the now wiggly main turret would shoot at what it is supposed to do (and no AI change is necessary), and
b) since it has a fast teleporting cool-down, it could be a fun hit&run unit (like a RotMG knight with Strike Amulet). I don't know how fast the cool-down is on that when augmented, but if not enough maybe making the base teleport ability a bit faster would work too.

Hornet: A great sniper tank. It excels in ionic regions, and the mass damage on the main turret makes it a good damage dealer, provided the company can help him to shoot undisturbed. What I would change is the 4th ability, which seems to be a really small AoE damage around the tank, kind of useless even if it is crowded around (in which situation it shouldn't get, btw).

Hercules: Also a funny tank that needs some tweaking to bring out the efficient side. What I would change is to give the 4th ability a cross-hair to see where the actual mine will be placed. If it is a constant distance, people could eventually get used to it even without the cross-hair, but still, that would help a lot. Also, this tank is low on shields, and the repairing bots recharge kind of slowly (so either it could have a faster recharge, or a longer and stronger ongoing effect). I have nothing against low shield + high hull HP, as it can be an ace combo where enemies have weapons that are better against shields than hulls, but in its current state the Hercules seems to be kind of fragile - which contradicts its name... It could be also an option to make the 1st and the last ability recharge super fast so the tank would become a wacky mine-laying thingy... for the funsies.

Spectre: Let's face it, this tank is bad. It is an alternative shielded version of Hornet, but uglier, the abilities are kind of the same dull ones, and there is no real reason to use it. It has also no reason to be called a spectre at all. What I would change is to somehow make it more different from Hornet. Since it is called a spectre, maybe it could get an ability to become invisible for a long time? So instead of having a range upgrade, it's sniping ability would come from stealth? The gun could also rotate a bit faster, and maybe increasing the coverage to 180° instead of the meager 90° could do it well, too.

Wolverine, Fury, Wildfire: Three tanks that are good at dealing a lot of damage, be it crowd or single target, and are likely worth their money. I guess I like the other (cheaper) tanks too much to really appreciate these in their efficiency, and I definitely haven't played them much to give a valuable insight yet.

Corsair, Mustang, Phantom, Predator, Hurricane: My first impression of them is that I don't liked them much and quickly turned towards other tanks. I didn't take the time to test them extensively, but it is something I plan to do later on, with the hopes of being able to make a worthy feedback of them too.

[tarbomb]

I agree with most of the stuff here.

You seem to find augments useful. How much of a difference does it make to you?

Personally I think Valk is just plain bad considering the vast number of great AoE damage abilities that all the tanks have now. I propose removing the forward guns completely and buffing the shotgun, making it Cobra Mk II.

Wolverine, with the nerf, is no longer superbly powerful and has gone back to being a decent but not great plain vanilla tank. Some people like it, but like the necro, it's not my cup of tea.

Fury is a great defensive tank. Decent DPS and a nice selection of abilities (although the mine is just plain crap).

Wildfire is a terrific tank, and is by far my personal favorite. Cloak, good DPS, a narrow beam shotgun. What more can you ask?

Mustang is actually one of the better tanks now (I'd put it at least on the level of the wolverine) and is the tank I recommend to newbies.

Predator's strength rests in its shotguns, which have the ability to make it a very interesting ability-based tank, but the shotguns just do too little damage and take too long to recharge. Without its triggers it does lousy damage with a lousy firing arc. Decrease cooldown please. Same with hercules, as you said.

Phantom is just plain crap. It's got paper-thin shields, especially for a tank that's supposed to be surrounded. It does barely more to enemies than your average insult, and the defensive measures won't save it if it does't have the firepower to shoot its way out of a mob.

Corsair is Silver Mk. II. A bit more damage and a gamma burst, but nothing to differentiate it from a newbie's point of view.

[gingerbear]

Well, I have level 9-10 augments on avenger, and it seems to kill a lot faster (since the damage increase augment + booster ability synergizes well), also recharge times are a lot better.

On Trailblazer without augments I could dwell into enemy territories, but not for long, and once it got shot it quickly had to leave fast. Maybe I got better or maybe the augments mean that much, but now I can venture so far that I often get the red warning text wanting to teleport me back, and quite often I manage to pull of a second round of ability triggers if the area is not too hostile.

I'm also augmenting valkyre and hornet now, but can't percieve much difference. I'm thinking of augmenting the Viking (to see whether the hit&run is working) too. That being said, I assume that given the different builds, augmenting the different tanks may not be equally good; which means either their base stats should be rewamped a bit, or the weaker ones should get better augments.

I accept your points about those other tanks, but I'm still going to try/test them by myself all the same.

[tarbomb]

On Trailblazer without augments I could dwell into enemy territories, but not for long, and once it got shot it quickly had to leave fast. Maybe I got better or maybe the augments mean that much, but now I can venture so far that I often get the red warning text wanting to teleport me back, and quite often I manage to pull of a second round of ability triggers if the area is not too hostile.

Are you stopping to recharge when you scout? On a barely augmented blazer (3%), or even a fresh one, I have little trouble getting to the comlink barrier unless I'm really unlucky and don't encounter any watchtowers or GCTs on my way.

[gingerbear]

Apr 9, 2013 14:14:04 GMT -5 tarbomb said:

Are you stopping to recharge when you scout? On a barely augmented blazer (3%), or even a fresh one, I have little trouble getting to the comlink barrier unless I'm really unlucky and don't encounter any watchtowers or GCTs on my way.

Whenever I use trailblazer and venture into new areas, the game starts to lag horribly, and stuff appears delayed. (And the game remains slow, so maybe some memory leak here?). Which means I do not dare to stop because I almost never know where I am actually and don't want to get shotgunned if suddenly a delta appears.

By your description with some waiting the recharge augment could be irrelevant indeed, I don't really have the pc to test it out, though.

[quicklite]

I agree with all of those points, except those for the Valk and Avenger. In my opinion, the Valkyrie is a great concept, but it doesn't really do much. As you said, all the shotgun really does is weaken minions. Isn't great at killing stuff, doesn't even dent buildings. Which is neat if that wasn't the only thing special about this tank. The triggers are meh, the shields are sub-par, and while the other guns can kill stuff, but compared to the dps of most of the other tanks in grid, the valkyrie doesn't really make the cut, especially considering that by the time that the valkyrie is availible, good tanks like the avenger/predator/mustang are as well, making it simply inferior. What I'd do to fix it is either make the shotgun cannon much more powerful, but fire really slowly to make it so that the main goal of the tank is to position its shotgun for maximum devastation while trying to stay alive. Or, you could just change the triggers to give the shotgun certain debuffs, buff the laser guns, and have a completely unique tank entirely. |

As for the avenger, after ages of playing it I've decided that the thing's pretty OP. Yes, it's fun to use, and I still use it a lot, but I just feel like when used right, it can show up a Wildfire in terms of sheer power. The reason is simple: The main gun + a few well-comboed triggers. While the main gun is short ranged, it isn't that short ranged given it's ability to wipe out a small fortress in 3-4 shots. As well as this, mixed with the first trigger, which cools down surprisingly rapidly, it can tear a sizable hole in anything. The only thing I haven't seen a avenger high on trigger 1 destroy simply by the trigger alone is the main cores of deltas and drills. Combined with the ability to restore 3 shields at will and the ability to disarm as well as the fact that even with all these triggers exhausted, it still has a seriously high dps, it becomes one of the most exploitable tanks in the game. 2 avengers that know what they're doing can wipe out a drill (not including all the walls) in less than 20 seconds, something that I have yet to see any other group of 2 tanks do. I love the avenger, but I just feel that it should be reeled in a little bit. Just to keep in line with all the other tanks.

[gingerbear]

Well yeah, the valkyre could use some buff. I wouldn't mind the low damage if it had a DoT or maybe did extra against vehicles (or buildings), or maybe making the main gun fire continously (so really would work like a flamethrower...). The shields aren't that bad really, and if you can get out for a fresh breath of air, the shield regen ability powers it back to max in no time. Btw, that burst of concentrated particles trigger takes down about 2/3 hp of the small buildings, along with most of the minions, so it is not that bad. True, most of the tanks have now some kind of cone shaped abilities, but I'm positive this will change and we'll get to play around with more stuff. (Heck, or having a configurable trigger set could even work.)

Yes, avenger seems to be indeed op, but is really screwed when there are a tons of minions around, as it has to kill them off 1 by 1 before getting to the main target. Sometimes it takes you 2-3 rounds of attack to get down a more simple tower when it is swarmed by minions, although it is definitely a quick killer when you only face 1 target.

[quicklite]

Apr 10, 2013 6:47:06 GMT -5 gingerbear said:

Yes, avenger seems to be indeed op, but is really screwed when there are a tons of minions around, as it has to kill them off 1 by 1 before getting to the main target. Sometimes it takes you 2-3 rounds of attack to get down a more simple tower when it is swarmed by minions, although it is definitely a quick killer when you only face 1 target.

I see what you mean, but I don't find that avenger does have problems with large amounts of minions. At least, not enough problems to balance the tank. This is because although its main gun can focus on only one enemy at a time, the main gun can still take enemies in 1-2 shots. This means that you can either just rotate your tank and systematically take out all the minions, or you can just wipe them all out with the performance boosting trigger 1. As well as this, in most cases you can just ignore the minions entirely; given that it has an insta-repair shield trigger and an immobilize trigger, it is really good at tanking surrounding minion fire. My ideal fix would be just to seriously nerf the range of the powerful cannon, and then to nerf the shields just a little bit. To make it so that you have to really get up close and personal to use your main cannon, and that doing so isn't as easy as it is currently in the avenger.

[hypevosa]

Nerfing the range of the main gun a bit is acceptable, however, don't think about touching the shields, they're thin enough. If you must do something decrease the tank's health so that players have to maneuver better to make good use of them, that way it takes more player skill to be effective, without being a large survivability nerf.

[quicklite]

Eh, that's fair enough. After a bit more fun with the avenger, I see what you mean. Though I do still want a health/range nerf .

And as a side note, I'm beginning to love the corsair. A great, fast-recharging, priest-like heal, great forward protection, great dps, and the abiltiy to chop a third life off anything. Though my one problem is with the shotgun. In comparison to every other shotgun trigger in existance, the Corsair's shotgun is kinda puny imo.

[hypevosa]

Apr 16, 2013 5:43:49 GMT -5 quicklite said:

And as a side note, I'm beginning to love the corsair. A great, fast-recharging, priest-like heal, great forward protection, great dps, and the abiltiy to chop a third life off anything. Though my one problem is with the shotgun. In comparison to every other shotgun trigger in existance, the Corsair's shotgun is kinda puny imo.

Hey, the radius on the 1/3 HP drop is freakin huge. We can't give this tank everything.