Improving the Tank's Options

While the tank is a pretty solid class, but he just doesn't have the damage output or move synergy to compete with other classes at a higher skill level. So here are a few minor items that could help him without pushing the class to over powered.


RATE OF FIRE

An important matter for both of his guns. Tank pretty much requires at LEAST a silver rate of fire endorsement to stay competitive with the other classes' damage output. I've tried playing without it and fought tanks without it. The damage output on the jet gun tickles unless you stand there and take it. The rail gun is completely escapable too if it takes more then 1 hit to kill.

It wouldn't hurt to give a small rate of fire buff to tanks. Maybe the equivalent of a bronze rate of fire endorsement to allow for more variety in endorsement set up. This could also be added to his rank 3 passive skill.

It's not fun to be pigeonholed into your endorsement choices.

Alternately: Give the tank a little more starting HP so he actually feels reasonably durable for his lower damage output.



AFTERBURN DAMAGE

It's pretty tiny for how lit up someone looks when burned. A straight increase to the burn damage would be great. As a bonus, that means assault's bombs would do more damage too (I would assume they use the same burn formula).

If not a direct damage, then a stacking effect on fire would be a welcome addition to tank. The more they're hit by the jet gun, the more the fire damage stacks on itself. That seems a little harder to add to the game then just upping the damage for burn though.

Another option is to let the rail gun light people on fire too, giving tanks a little more kick to their long range option. This would give the rail gun more of a 'hold the enemy back' quality because they'd duck for cover longer to shake off the burn and heal.

ONE of those 3 options would most certainly help the tank out when fighting Pro's. Plus it wouldn't change how he deals with bots at all.



CHARGE (B Skill)

A good skill in itself, but a frustrating aftermath. Far often this skill puts the victim in the 1 place a tank doesn't want them. Mid range. Out of jet gun reach but too close to comfortably rail gun.

I've had people fly off into the distance in front of me, or worse end up behind. Ring outs are nice, but tank's charge usually doesn't have quite enough oomph to push someone over.

Without changing the core idea of the skill, a more reliable knock back direction seems like a reasonable adjustment. Or a reduction in how far is knocks people away.


There's also the matter of being able to death blossom during the charge. This doesn't actually seem to do... anything. It just makes the tank use up all his ammo. If both can hit at the same time, I've never seen it happen. The ability to trigger the death blossom during a charge should probably be disabled if it has no effect.



PRODUCT GRENADE (X Skill)

Level 3 has poor synergy with charge. Doing the grenade first means you have to wait to charge or risk blowing yourself up with adds.

Other wise the fact that the grenade bounces once seems to hurt the tank more then help him. A simple change for the initial shot to explode on impact would be a HUGE help. Tanks could shoot it at the feet of a moving target and have it explode close to them, or even hit a wall behind them.

As it stands now, the bounce usually means you have to hit your target dead on with the grenade or it's doomed to sail off into the distance.



DEPLOY (Y Skill)

This skill is situational. A rate of fire buff would make the infinite ammo from level 3 more appealing. Just about any additional bonus would help, actually. Maybe deploy level 3 could add fire effect to the rail gun?

Also, tank can't change where he's aiming while deploy activates. That really hurts the usefulness of the skill in tight spots where you're trying to deploy to heal and being chased.



PASSIVE

Could the rank 3 do -something- more. Any of the suggestions above would be great. More HP then the rank 2 version adds, better rate of fire, fire effect on the rail gun, better burn damage... crit? a little more health regen speed? a small boost to over all damage?

Heck, I'd even take an immunity to his own (or all ) product bombs.

"Gives the tank more HP and an add blocker"



I'm not saying the tank needs all of the ideas. But he really does need a -something-. Just a little bit to give him more options vs other Pros. Even making product grenades explode on initial impact instead of bounce would be a big help.

As far as Tank's passive. I gave this some thought as well.

I honestly think lvl 2 tank should reduce knock back by 50%, along with the normal increased hp, And level 3 should make you bounce off face grapples they way the mascot does along with the current hp boost. So the tank would only be affected by assassin back grapples.


I just seems to me the tanks are way to easily taken care of by grapples / slams.

I think that would bring the tank up to the current class standard.

Make the tank grapple-proof from the front? What!? That's ridiculous, making all grapples except assassin back-grapples obsolete, why? The tank is already just about immune to assassins as it is.

Something less drastic like the base ROF increase or increased fire damage is more reasonable.

tank is perfect as is , learn how to use it.

All he needs is afterburn damage put onto the Rail Gun too, this way you only need 2 shots and a few seconds of afterburn to kill any Snipers that don't use Armour Endorsements.

It's very annoying beating a sniper twice at his own game to just have him run around the corner and recover off the damage.

It's hardly imbalanced, I usually roll Gold Armour on my Sniper anyway, so any Sniper would just need Bronze to prevent the 2-shot kill.

Other than that, no complaints, the Tank has his own niche as a marksman role with the Rail Gun who can effectively push and hold lanes and rip the moneyball / turrets apart when he gets the appropriate upgrades. I really don't think he's underpowered personally, after maining him for about 50 levels.

i only play tank and disagree with almost everything.

i mainly use charge to finish people off and if they don't die they are always low enough on health to easily finish with the jetgun. also the level 3 adds a stun which garuntees a kill.

i agree the 3rd level of the product grenade is pretty counter-intuitive but i love the bounce and like the 2 step kill even though most people dodge the secondary grenades nowadays. i like the bounce cuz even tho it sucks for shooting down at people its easy to bounce around corners to hit people early or finish them off.

the afterburn gets me quite a few kills from people who run at the last second but i agree that its too weak when people just keep running and i can only hit em for less than a second several times until they finally escape with an empty health bar but their life

Tank is the best class if used properly.

Provide some insight on this please? As far as killing pros, turrets, and in some cases even bots the gunner pretty much out classes the tank. Or at very least can do all that with a fraction of the effort and skill.

I love everything about the tank except the Product Grenade. I think it bounces WAY too much and could maybe last a little longer on turrets. Also i like the OP's idea of an "add blocker" or something like that. Other than that tank is one of my fav classes.
and to the poster above me Tank completly pwns gunner at taking out bots. deathbloom instakills everything around you. Takes gunner half a clip to take out a blackjack.

I think the idea to bump off Grapples is a great idea - and while lag is an issue that impedes my suggestion for a happy medium, grapples should have a window by which the move can be countered, or at least negated (Except Assassins, cause the killgrapple is their bread and butter - and most good Assassins are avoiding Tanks unless you're -sure- you can go in for the Backstab unless you want to be set on fire with a Deathspin.) with a timed button press.

Getting close to a Tank is the worst idea ever for most combatants. This just cements them as a true Defense character.

Another idea would also be a Face Shield when they Deploy, in lieu of getting an Antigrapple.

I partially agree with this statement only because the tank is slow and the jetgun does questionable damage until getting a rate of fire endorement. That said, the jet pack and charge are pretty nifty, although he does require a fair amount of thinking to play as opposed to a most ranged specialized classes. The Tank doesn't totally suck, he has a beard that would put Chuck Norris to shame.
That said...

Practically everything the Tank can do to a player (minus bot rapeage, holy **** the jet gun destroys black jacks fast!), every other class can do with less effort and at RANGE. Do not tell me the Tank simply requires more skill to play, a swordsman beating a guy with an AK 47 is certainly possible, but it would be much more effective to get a gun yourself (by the way this comparison is brought to you overexagerations).

As I said before, the jetgun's reward for getting that close to an opponent is minimal considering the dps of the weapon. Charge does MORE than enough damage, but the problem is it's his only real way to get close to an enemy without this is to hope your targets have their heads up their asses, not to mention it's his escape tool as well.

Giving the level 2 or 3 passive bonus a SLIGHT ROF bonus wouldn't be anywhere near overpowered, although I'm thinking the cooldown endorements should effect the Charge a little bit more, knocking only 2 seconds off the Charge for the GOLD endorement seems ludacrise, buff it to 2.5 or even 3 seconds for gold, I mean come on.

I do NOT support more burn damage, it is not needed and soon after an afterburn buff people will be whining about how the big bad tank tuk n0 skilz 2 plai and got a kill after dying (ever go to the TF2 Pyro forums).

I COULD see it being implimented only because it's fairly easy to escape a slow tank even on foot and afterburn might make up for that, but I would rather have more overall Jet Gun dps than a gimicky afterburn, not to mention the rail gun is going to get better hit detection for when something does get out of jet run range.

I'm split on this, not because I think it would be overpowered or anything, but if the knockback was reduced the Tank could possibly end up right in enemy grapple range once they recover.

Support, missing pros with grenades by an inch is beyond frustrating.

I honestly think a stationary ability for a close range class dependent on movement should be replaced honestly, but I think if one thing needs to be changed about this ability, it would have to be the limited turning. The tank's deploy is basically a less useful gunner deploy, minus the easy to aim and effective mini gun, not to mention it's main use currently is to use it against jack bots and money balls.

However, I have to say that the almost instant health recharge is very handy when you get a second to breathing room.

Oh and someone suggested a headshot shield, do want.

I disagree with the Grenade changes. I love bouncing it off walls behind enemy Snipers or getting it around corners to dislodge Supports. As far as I'm concerned, the Tank is fine as he is. Less cooldown between charges would be nice, but whatever. After all, the Charge can be used for finishing off players, retreating, gaining ground and warming up bacon.

I play tank quite often, I would support the headshot shield addition or giving the railgun burn damage. Upping his base RoF I'm kind of on the fence on, I don't think it would have quite an impact on people picking new emdorsements setups to compensate as you would think, and it would make Gold RoF builds OP.

Yes, but if you're sieging the enemy base, rushing in to blossom the bots is rarely a safe option. Froma distance, gunner gets the job done almost as well with the full upgraded mortar. This is really noticeable on ammo mule, and to a lesser extent grenade III and steelpeel. It's just safer to chill back and bomb the base and bots.

Antigrapple please. It would finally fix that problem with the assault ALWAYS trumping the tank with his charge.

As for it being op, I'm level 84, exclusively play the tank and have NEVER been killed by an assassin grapple from the front.

your passive should stop grapples except for back ones for frontr ones u could do a belly flop like bullseye

Tank is a good class but against a good sniper or smart assault it is extremely hard to do well, I myself play assault/tank and I know that an assault can destroy a tank mid range nearly every time, I just unload my ROF x3 AR clip into him and hes dead every now and then he might get 1 railgun shot into me. On the other side as a tank I am constantly using my railgun supporting my team and I think there should be a a burn added to it there has been millions of times where i railgun people and they only have a small pixel of health but just stay where they are because it is very hard to die from a railgun if you have a brain. The tank needs to buffed somehow, his passive 3 should be changed and the product grenade shot needs to be changed so it works with a charge.

I'm overall pretty happy with how the tank is. But if I could improve him I'd address the following:

Afterburn
I think the afterburn damage should be increase slightly, since its damage currently is pretty pathetic, the jetgun is a flamethrower type weapon after all. I wouldn't want it increased by a huge amount, but if you jetgun a pro down to around 15hp left and they run off, the afterburn should finish them off instead of it just burning off a pixel of health and then dissipating.

Deploy Skill
Something needs to be done with the Deploy skill tree perhaps upping the jetgun range another 10% and adding a slight critical chance increase, or causing skills to refresh slightly faster while deployed. For a Tank the current risk vs reward for deploying in a fair 1 on 1 engagement is really bad because the Tank has no damage increase while deployed. It helps you heal fast and that's about it. Some kind of crit increase while deployed would really help.

Passive Skill
I also find Tank's passive tree to be pretty weak compared to the other pros with just straight slight hp gains, this would be the perfect place to add an afterburn upgrade as a passive level 3 imo.

I play the tank more than the other classes, and I agree that Rate of Fire is needed to be competitive. ...And that his Product Grenade's level 3 upgrade sucks for close combat when used in conjunction with his Charge skill.

However, his Charge skill is excellent on its own, because its cool-down decreases as you level it up - so you can Charge more and more often - pair it with a Skill Recharge perk and you'll be charging into and out of combat every 4.2 seconds.

My biggest gripe with the Tank is the pin-point accurate Rail Gun, its damage radius is literally the size of a pixel, making it sometimes too hard to use with a bit of lag (when fighting Snipers across the map ).

The Deploy skill is in def need of repair, because unlike the Gunner's Deploy skill, the Tank loses control of his reticule for a moment (as it freezes) during the Deployment animation.

Killing pros- The railgun is a death machine. Fire rate on 3, it kills weaker classes in 3-5 shots and gunners in 5-6. If you keep them far away, they can do nothing. Up close, your jet gun shreds people and the death blossom is being buffed by the update. Lvl 3 charge does tons of damage, OHKOs most assassins and snipers, and knocks down anyone who survives. Product grenade blinds at lvl 2, and kills weak classes that don't move at lvl 3. The railgun shoots through walls. You have the most health in the game. You can kill a group of bots in 1 blossom. The railgun grapple knocks people so far that it rings out non-assaults from almost anywhere on ammo mule and grenade 3. Using a product nade and jet gun, you destroy turrets quickly. You can't die by an assassin. These are most of the reasons off the top of my head.