Suggestion: Attrition Mechanic for tanks.

[Zwets]

So I did the Rift Player Survey last week, and it's question "If you have any feedback on improving character building, please let us know." got me thinking. I submitted the following, but I did not feel it should just be read by 1 person going through all the surveys and summarising them. So I decided to post it here as well, and see what other players think.

None of the Rift Tank souls have access to an 'Attrition' Debuff

There is a mechanic that I know most fondly from The Secret World, but it is also used in other games, like Dungeons & Dragons Online's Warpriest enhancement Tree.
I'm not completely sure the mechanic is officially called 'attrition debuffs' but quite simply it is a mechanic that makes tanks benefit from long battles.

It allows tanks to win fights through defensive power. There are many situations in Rift where a 61 point tank is necessary, but in most situations a 61 point tank will lack the offensive power to contribute to winning the fight.

I am not saying buff tank damage, not at all, I'm saying that tanks should gain an advantage during long battles, by wearing down their foes over time. 'Not dying' is pretty essential to combat, but as the only reward for being a good tank its not very exiting.

Because we want each soul to have their own unique thing, adding an extra 'thing' to an underused tank soul, or to give different variations of it to multiple tank souls seems like a good way to improve Rift.
Especially now that we just got the Arbiter added and Justicar's aggro gaining mechanics have been changed to be more in line with other tanks, it seems like a good time to find out which tanking souls are viable but underused in the new paradigm and buff them with some unique contributions of their own.

The 'attrition debuffs' mechanic is pretty simple.

• It is a stacking debuff.
• It can only be stacked to full effect during a long combat. At least 10 stacks, but more likely towards 30.
• Each single stack is very weak, but if the combat lasts long enough the tank gains a significant advantage.

The debuffs used generally work best if they have an effect that helps not only the tank but their entire team, giving sort of a secondary support role to tanks in fights with many players. I'm not sure what should be debuffed to make it work in Rift, but something like damage dealt from 1% to 20%, or Armor & Resists from 2% to 40%, Healing received from 1% to 30%; Or perhaps a combination called Weariness that debuffs strength, dexterity, intelligence, wisdom, endurance and move speed by a small amount, to cover all the bases.

In TSW, each weakness debuff stacks up to 10 times, when cleansed the whole stack is gone so they stack pretty quickly. The one from DDO cannot be cleansed so that game has a 15 second cooldown on the ability used to apply it.
With how group cleansing has a lot less cooldown in Rift opposed to TSW, I figure cleansing the whole stack in 1 go would not allow the tanks to build the stacks to any decent level.
With PvP in mind cleanses should remove only 1 stack or be entirely uncleansable.
With PvE in mind, the time difference between bossfights and trash fights is pretty big, so I'd say applying a stack should be on a 4 or 5 second cooldown, so the tank has to 'work for it' and it is not like a boost that is always on.

I believe in PvP this mechanic will make pure tanks a lot more useful and interesting to play. For PvE depending on where you would put it on the tree it could improve the leveling experience for those of us that like to level in tank souls. It would definitely improve the soloing experience for tanks and it would give lesser used tank souls increased usefulness for their support power in group and raid scenarios.

Anyone else want to share what they answered for "If you have any feedback on improving character building, please let us know." ?
Do you have any comments or additions to the effects of adding this mechanic to rift?
Would you like to tell me to L2P and that none of the tanking souls would ever need this?
Then please leave a comment!

[Mav986]

If any form of this were to reach live, I believe it should ONLY apply to PVP. In PVE a tanks reward for being a good tank is the boss dying, because his raid lived and was able to damage the boss enough.

[Elitizt]

That's an interesting mechanic, I'm just not sure if it is viable. I'm worried that something like that would tip PVE into ez mode or would just make tanks plain OP. It definitely sounds awesome from a tank's viewpoint. WoW had(has?) a mechanic called "Vengeance" where tanks would gain attack power(up to a certain cap) from taking damage, It was fun to play with. I wouldn't mind seeing something similar to Vengeance implemented into Rift.

[evantide]

Not interested. I don't give a damn about my DPS when tanking. I don't care about contributing to the kill via DPS because my job is to keep the raid alive by intercepting adds and mechanics. It is not to "DPS HARDER!". If I wanted that, I would play a DPS spec and let someone else tank.

If the tank is the last one standing, then he or the raid already done something horribly wrong. They should not be allowed to attrition through a win.