Tree of Savior Forum

The game doesn't have Tanks

General Discussion
#1

Tree of savior doesn’t rely on tanks for anything.
Which should be fairly obvious given that out of the numerous amount of classes in this game, and within the warrior tree specifically only one has a dedicated aggro skill and the other rank which precedes it a passive. Quite literally 1 passive and 1 active ability in the game out of the vast amount of classes in the game, handle hate. This is not a game about dedicated tanking. You’re certainly free to do so given this game is casual enough in its implementation that you’re free (and the devs hope you do) role-play as whatever class you want to.

Defense is handled by Clerics in this game, and as a result of both rank 1 and rank 2 being support classes, Clerics all have some sort of base to heal/support.

Since Clerics are the backbone of a team, even if you are a swashbuckling Peltasta, your ability to hold C or slithering to reduce damage as an individual is not nearly as important as the Clerics ability to mitigate or heal the group.

Your real purpose is to pull mobs from a futher distance than a linker and kill them.
There’s no problem taking Peltasta it doesn’t make you a tank, there aren’t tanks. Like-wise if you don’t take Peltasta just kill crap, the only point of swashbuckling is pulling to save time, which can also be performed to a smaller extent by a Linker with the benefit of also making multiple skills effectively aoe. When it comes to a team surviving it’s done through a cleric.

Edit:
Oddly some think this is a bad thing. It isn’t. For example Rank 4 has 6 (new) choices per base class (Rodel c1 , Cata C1, Barb c2, Hop C2, Highlander C3, Pel C3) are the class choices that are unlocked at (minimum) rank 4. With 4 base clases that’s 24 class choices at rank 4. If Cataphracts were mandatory for instance having 1/24 classes being mandatory would be a significant problem especially since that’s 1/6 Rank 4 choices for the Swordmen base class.
It’s actually a good thing that the game doesn’t require tanks (if there is a requirement it is only of the community not the game) because there are far too many classes justify such a deal when you only have 5 slots but 24/25 classes per rank from rank 4 upwards. Since there is only 1 class in the game with a dedicated Aggro skill, the game cannot justify creating content that requires a dedicated tank.

Don’t confuse the convenience of grinding with someone who pulls mobs with the necessity of having a tank. The game is very, very flexible in what it allows to succeed.

3 Likes
Tank Type Build = There is no such thing. Swordmen = filler class
kTOS General Thread (keep all in-game discussion here)
#2

You should check out this game if you wanna Tank.

7 Likes
#3

The game right now is placing down AoEs and watch bosses break dance on top of them.

I assume that tanks would be needed if mobs weren’t dumb.

7 Likes
#4

Why would they be needed.
The First 3 ranks of Cleric all give ways to heal, reduce and spread out damage. That’s Cleric C1-3, Priest C1-C2, Krivis C2-C3, Bokor C1 (although zombies are slow) and Diev c1.

They incentivize you for having at least 1 cleric by an exp boost in a party for having 4 different base classes.

At rank 2 (where Peltasta is introduced) you have The C2’s of rank 1 classes, and then the C1’s of Rank 2 classes.
That’s 3 classes per base. Leading to 12.
Only 1 of those 12 has a skill for handling Hate, which is peltasta.

In what world are they going to make 1 of 12 classes choices fundamentally necessary? Especially when Come Rank 3, they have even more class choices.
Peltasta will never be made necessary, and that’s a good thing. Only thing is for players to understand this isn’t a game that requires tanks.
Peltasta is a pulling convenience and no other swordsmen class has an active tool to redirect hate to itself.

1 Like
#5

Right now monsters only aggro through damage and swash buckling, they don’t aggro through healing for example, as it happens to some other MMOs, and healers on ToS are capable of being tanky while healing tons of HP…it shouldn’t be like that.

Monsters right now don’t really oppose as a challenge without being punishing (One shotting). One thing I would love to see for example is a raid boss that casts Reversi or steal healing tiles for itself.

#6

There’s only 1 active aggro spell in the game.
If you expect them to design content going forward so everything but Swash buckling is invalidated that would be logistically retarded.
At rank 2, Peltasta is 1 of 12 choices.
Designing content for 1 of 12 classes specifically is asinine.
Especially since at Rank 3 you now have
5 choices per class (c3’s of rank 1’s, C2’s of rank 2’s and C1’s of rank 3’s)
Which mean Peltasta C2 for instance is 1 of 20 class choices. You might design it so there’s only Peltasta C1 required but you again have now made exclusionary content based on 1 of 12 classes rank 2 classes.
It’s not remotely healthy for the game to ever make Swash buckling anything more then convenient.

They certainly can make more challenging content, but the long and short is the game isn’t designed for dedicated tanks.
There is the provoke attribute, and swashbuckling the skill, that’s all there is at the end of the day. There’s far too many classes to hinge entire fights on Swashbuckling.

Monsters high damage is validated because Clerics can cut that damage heavily for multiple party members and they provide incentive for you to have at least 1 of each base class from a leveling perspective.
They also give the same incentive to have a warrior in the party, but warriors provide many things. They can hold onto multiple targets but they’re restricted to the hate limit outside of Swashbuckling and that number of targets is easy to sustain through with their larger health pools and a cleric.

#7

Just wait. Elemental armors, racial-carded damage reduction shield. Hopefully something similar will be in the future contents

#8

http://puu.sh/pucLc/ec434566da.jpg

16 Likes
#9

OP still locked in dg 50 forever…
If you compare high level grind parties with/without peltasta, you will see the difference between 1~2m xp/hour and 1~2m xp/day.

Edit: peltasta will take less damage in all scenarios.

#10

Try harder.
Let me just reiterate what you said
"If you compare parties with/Without Peltasta: They both still complete the content."

Again this isn’t because a tank is necessary, this is just for pulling mobs.
Let me repeat this again
This is just for pulling mobs.

Maintaining hate? Not actually important.
Individual defense? Not actually important.
What people are interested in, is being able to aoe multiple targets in a short period of time. Which is something Linker also does (and part of its allure, although Linker makes better use of single target damage dealers in a party) , Falconer can also aid in this (but it doesn’t gather enemies), finally there is Cryomancer C3 with Frost Pillar (another valued spell).

The game isn’t looking for a tank, neither is the community (though they loath to admit it). They’re looking for mobs to be bunched together so they can drop aoes and see numbers.

Again Clerics handle the defense of the party. The game doesn’t require a tank, you could be full flipping INT as a Peltasta, it’s not relevant, whats relevant is you pull enemies faster so they can be aoe’d down.
This is convenience.

1 Like
#11

Ok, create a linker and try what you’re saying and come here to tell us.

#12

Tanks optimize your cleric’s healing output significantly. Heal is primarily based on a % of max HP, a tanky swordsman will have massively more HP than a squishy DPS on top of all of their mitigation from armor and block (of course they still get torn apart by magic mobs but others get torn apart even faster). Squishy DPS take 1-2 hits from high level mobs and are flashing red health, eating up all the tiles from a level 10 heal cast just to restore themselves. Tanky swordies can absorb numerous hits and therefore require much less dedicated healing to keep going. They naturally soak all of the hits because of drawing all of the aggro with swashbuckling. You can claim you should just not take hits, but that does not become possible when dealing with homing missile ranged mobs and mages; and the less time you spend dancing away from melee mob aggro, the more time you have to spam skills, which is especially important for archers. Sure, any character sitting on a safety zone tile is as tanky as any other. This rarely if ever happens. Your party will almost never be that static and stay efficient. A tank is actually key to efficient grind, and makes dungeons go by a lot more quickly and smoothly as well.

Tanks aren’t necessary any more than DPS is necessary. A party of 5 pure supports can clear any content in the game except perhaps Earth Tower, it will just take you a hell of a lot longer. Optimal parties for most things will involve a tank. The real problem with swordy is how useless they are if you don’t go tank, and the very limited options for tank specs. It’s a tree that only serves optimally as a tank, but only one of its class choices is truly dedicated to tanking.

TL;DR you’re wrong, you say vague things that have no bearing on reality, all heals are not created equal when they’re based on max health % and you take mitigation into account.

#13

The problem is with your expectation for what a tank represents in an MMORPG, and how it fits into what you believe includes the skillset of a tank to be. The things you’re talking about, maintaining hate, for example is an idea perpetrated by the Holy Trinity in MMORPGs, making tanks necessary.

Remember that earlier MMORPGs particularly Asian ones didn’t include tanks and key components of gameplay, especially asian ones. Maple Story, Ragnarok Online. The backbone of a party is its healer, there is no holy trinity and your problem is in expecting that to exist.

In this game there are healers, damage dealers and utility/support classes, tanks fall into the latter.

#14

this game doesnt have anything. no limit what to wear and no aggro system. its a classic hack and slash game.

#15

The problem of what, when you just said what I said in the OP.
Clerics are the defense of the party. You live and die by the cleric. This is far in contrast to a traditional ordeal where “tank dead, okay we’re all dead” of a Tank + Healer partnership, where the party lives by the two of them.

Tree of Savior doesn’t require anyone who keeps hate, it doesn’t require someone with individual defensive fortitude, because Clerics provide powerful defensive tools and healing. Particularly because their first 2 (arguably 3) ranks are dedicated to Support. Which is not something the other 3 base classes can claim. They’re spread out in their ideals. The game has no requirement of a dedicated tank, and logistically the class system cannot afford to require one for reasons I’ve said in other posts (1/12, 1/20, etc).

@SlyGoat

This is not a game where you drop heal cooldowns frequently, and are managing multiple heal cooldowns. It’s a simple question of is the Heal output higher then the incoming damage.
The majority of attacks in the game can be evaded through moving out of the hitbox, or jumping in the case of some ground based attacks.
There are moves that are unavoidable, which is where your health and defense truly come in. Prior to these moves your Health/Defense are basically to allow a margin of error where you can eat Max Health/X avoidable attacks where X is the damage they deal.

Moves that are avoidable however are often limited to a specific type, the basic attack of physical ranged and magical ranged enemies. Magic Missile is another. Spiral arrow can be another.

Barrier, Growling, Mackangdal, Goddess statue of Ausrine, Aspersion, Aukuras, Increased Magic Defense, Revenge Sevenfold, Ein Sof, Counter SPell, Resist Elements, Restoration, Flipping Lethargy, Runic Shield, Evasion, Lachrymoter, all the heap of knockdowns and stuns, Freeze, physical Link, Stoneskin, Revive, Summon Servant, Hangman’s Knot, Frost Pillar, Swells, Bind, Slows.
Stagger effects (Frost Ground, Fire Pillar). Soft aggro tools like Aukuras, Jolly Roger, Caltrops, palvise, Summons,

And your thought is without a tank people get blown up. Seriously? What?
You need a cleric, potions get outscaled, Heals do not. Yes the 5% per tile or 30% benefit of Mass heal obviously scale with higher health, but everyone’s health is continually increasing in this game, and they scale with that general increase as well. There are a lot of tools for handling mobs in this game, and the overwhelming majority of attacks in this game are avoidable. For those that aren’t yes your health pool and defenses matter, no this isn’t at a level that necessitates a tank.
What this game likes is having a puller.
I could move Swashbuckling over to Quarrel Shooter, Muskateer or Warlock, will manage the same, because all that’s desired is grouping up mobs.
Swashbuckling does that from a significantly large range then Links, or Frost Pillar, but at the end of the day my care for the defensive statistics of the person using it are small. Instead we repeat more benefit the faster things die, and an actual Tank isn’t necessary for that. You could swash buckle off base health and we’d still be able to support you as Clerics/Wizards.
Could have no swashbuckling and we’ll still get kills, because this game fundamentally doesn’t require a tank, which is where you get lost in this conversation to try an efficiency arguments.
It’s far, far different from where tanks are an actual requirement because you cannot progress level appropriate content without one.

Healers are a requirement for the later portions of Tree of savior content because you cannot sustain yourself within the time restrictions while still outputting significant dps while level appropriate. Potions don’t scale.
They’re not at lower levels of instanced content but not for higher level content. Damage likewise still has to be dealt out in a fashion to well clear before you get kicked out at the very least. Tanking on the other hand doesn’t end up required because of numerous factors within the game. It’s not a necessary role, it’s part of the general RP.

tl;dr.
Tree of savior doesn’t require them, logistically it can’t and if it wanted to have done so it would need to rework the base Swordsmen class (or any of the 4 which it decides to give that role) at the very least and it’s 5 skills, to cement that role within the game.

1 Like
#16

It really doesn’t it just makes life easier, it’s nice to have a swashbuckler, or a linker, or a healer. But C2 is easy to fit into a build, so is peltasa, people just need to stop trying to eat their food and cake at the same damn time. You give up 1 circle for either of those things, you pick 1 class or 2 classes that you can either go C3 on or C2 and you base your character around creation.

I said this back in beta, and no one listened. It is now open, and no one is still listening, stop basing your entire argument for insert class here off of just 1 part of the equation. Musketeers dont’ go hey I’m a musketeer… No I’m a C3QS, C2A/C3A/ and a Musketeer… or whatever the hell else they want to machine gun with.

■■■■ we got a monk… Oh wait C3… P1, M2 … 32 heal tiles??? DV 10 Saftey Zone 3 people can stand in Fade!!! What is this … it covers everything… I just died… Resurection…

Build your own classes people and stop being so short sighted… Fking jeeze…

Sidenote : Would I love for taunt to be in circle 1… Hell yeah… is it? No Okay well I just grab it as R2 or R3 I’m sure there is one dead zone circle in every ones build, everybody has to sac ■■■■ somewhere, and that is the thing with choice.

#17
#18

It’s fine. Tanks are a tiny minority of the player base in every MMO and they just slow down dungeon queues anyway making everyone else wait for them to pop.

No idea why anyone would want that role as mandatory. Clerics being able to replace them in tos is great design.

#19

as a cleric i can confirm.

tanks claim they need healers to be able to tank

we dont need a tank to keep a party alive

im gonna creatge a sword to test it

#20

since when a tanker doesn’t need a healer ? (even in other games)