Silikate

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They can do it. I've been advocating have at least 1 big damage attack that when slotted w/ (3-5) SO's can drop an even con miinion in 1 shot w/o Inspirations or Build Up. This attack is obtaining attainable at somewhere in the teens. The attack has sufficient End usage and Recharge time (20-25 secs) to balance things out. This give Tankers their slow, but heavy hitting. It gives us that comic book brick feel, but doesn't upset the MMOG balance.

It seems doable for all Tankers. (Correct me if I'm wrong) The recent Damage increase to Knockout Blow shows it, at least to me. Blasters and Scrapper would still be the Kings of Damage. But that type of attacks gives everyone good reason to go after Tankers in PvP. The fear of "I don't want to be hit by that attack! He can punch a hole through Battleship Armor! Keep him away from me!"

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Because super damage was never a priority for me, at least not compared to defense and aggro control, I never gave much thought to KOB. I took it, I appreciate it, but it didn't change my view of my character much, aside from the relatively rare times when I actually choose to solo.

But I was surprised when my regular blaster teammate was surprised by the damage it dealt in a single blow. Whoa! she said. Sure, I said, but I can only do it about twice a minute. Still, she said, Whoa!

What I hadn't realized until that moment was that having that attack made me "feel" more like a superstrength brick to my teammates. Sure, I could only do it occasionally, but when I did, it was impressive even to primary damage dealers. Hence, for SS tanks, KOB is the slow, big damage attack that the scrankers have been calling for, and the devs were able to put it in without affecting the balance of the overall game or messing up my ability to play my own, freely-chosen "meatshield" role.

I've generally sensed that the unhappy Inv/SS tankers are slightly less unhappy post-Issue 2. That's not to say the work is complete, but just re-casting KOB seems to have been an even bigger help on the look-and-feel front than it was on the damage-balance issue.

Here's a wacky proposal...

Why not make ALL the tanker and scrapper primaries and secondaries available to both ATs? Each character would choose one offensive set and one defensive set. For Scrappers, the offensive one would be the Primary, while for Tankers, the defensive one would Primary. For Scrappers, the base numbers for their defensive secondary would be set at 75% of those for the matching Tanker primary; the same would be true for Tanker offensive sets, which would be set to 75% of the base numbers for the corresponding Scrapper primary.

Certain specific secondary effects would be tied to the chosen AT, of course. Only Scrappers would get the chance to Critical Hit, while only Tankers would get the inherent taunting effect on their attacks and various other powers, like Invincibility. In the scrapper primary version, the third power would be Taunt; in the Tanker version of the same set, the power would be Provoke.

Challenge, in the Presence pool, would be upgraded to be the equal of Taunt, while Provoke would remain as is. Thus, Tankers could get the AE Provoke without wasting a pool, and those Tankers and Scrappers that actually WANT both a single-target and an AE taunting power can still dip into Presence for the one they can't get in their offensive set.

This would make room for the current crop of unhappy Inv/SS tankers, who really want to be SS/Inv scrappers. It would open options for both ATs, without really undermining either. The only thing to stop this from happening is a gut sense by the devs that Super Strength "feels" like a tanker power, while Claws "feels" like a scrapper power. But that is just graphics and special effect, really--they've already blurred the line between the ATs by making Invul available to Scrappers. Why not just open everything to both ATs? If the numbers balance out--and there is no reason why they shouldn't--such a change would do nothing but widely broaden the choices available to both ATs.