Tanks

I returned to the game recently and have been attempting to level my 92 Eva's Templar.

What I discovered was that tanks are no longer *required* for groups, in fact some party setups without tanks are superior to ones with tanks.

I find this unacceptable, as tanks rely on parties to level up. Just as ISS or Healers do, and any half-decent group will *always* have those 2 classes. In fact tanks are the least solo-able class in the game (post-awakening), even healers can solo better.

When GoD came out, tanks were *needed*, because of the high damage that mobs dealt. This is not the case anymore, and even robe classes can take hits from mobs without too much worry (obviously not in an AoE situation, more on that later)

A few things that have pushed Tanks out of their PvE roles include:

• Nerf to hate and hate aura, they don't land nearly as reliably anymore. Even if the debuff lands, the mob will continue to attack it's target for a few more hits, by which time the debuff timer runs out, the mob hits the tank a few times, then switch target to the highest damage target again...
• Hate doesn't work on raid bosses at all.
• Some Tyrrs have high enough pdef (some have more than tanks), that even without the shield defence, can tank mobs while keeping aggro with their significantly higher damage.
• Shield defense: A +3 Twilight shield grants ~750 extra pdef (please correct me if I'm wrong) on a shield block... That's barely useful... Ok, there are crit blocks, but they don't happen that often, plus big hitters mean a non critblock would still hurt like hell.
• As people farm better gear, their defenses can be increased significantly more than a tank could increase his/her offense, as the game has shifted from auto attacks to skill-based since GoD.
• Feoh's gather skill is superior x1000000 than a tanks chain hydra: It lands more often, has a significantly lower cooldown, and has a larger AoE area.

It's going to be hard to balance this, because of olympiad, where tanks are pretty balanced; and pvp, where tanks are essential with their UDs.

Some ideas I have to improve this situation are:

• Make mobs at party areas hit harder again. I suggest something along the lines of: robe users dying from 2 hits.
• Change shield block mechanics:
  • A shield block should essentially nullify damage
  • Reduce shield block rate to something acceptable, given the point above
  • Return of the shield block animation lock, it was a problem before because of the amount of shield blocks, but with reduced shield blocks it shouldn't be a problem
  • Using a skill disables shield block temporarily. This solves the issue of shield block cancelling an skill, also serves to balance my proposed shield block mechanics.
• Make hate 100% or close to 100% land rate
  • Increase reuse time on the hate skills
  • Interrupts skill usage
  • A small chance to disorient target for a short period (like 0.5-1s)
  • Duration of hate depends on STR. This could create some interesting tank builds, as right now most tanks concentrate on CON only.
• Make chain hydra 360 degrees, but a shorter range (e.g. 600 -> 400). Leave single target chain as is.
  • Either decrease it's reuse to match that of Feoh's gather, or make it land *much* more.

I'm not asking for *all* of the above at the same time, they are all independent ideas.