Combat Design - The role of a Tank

When Dragon Age was first released and players were talking about having a tank in the group and discussing whether Alistair or Shale was a better tank, I admit I really didn't understand why you'd need a tank in the group. In almost all encounters, a couple of mages in the party will wipe the opposition before the tank even has time to pull aggro. In rare cases when it is required and the tank goes in first to draw threat, the battle is anyway over soon enough. Couple that with the fact that party members cannot die and I didn't see any role for a tank in Dragon Age.

Now, most of my gaming has been with single-player games and the ones I have played multiplayer (Unreal and Shadow Magic), the concept of a tank is non-existent. Well, maybe a little in Shadow Magic but since that was PvP always, that didn't work as expected.

Enter World of Warcraft. Yesterday, I did my first dungeon run - two actually. Being the first time, I didn't even know every member had to talk to the quest-giver to get the quest to show up in the log; just assumed it was handled on a party basis. Even worse, I had a full inventory (I was out doing the regular campaign while queued) and couldn't pick up the items I needed. Second run, I died and couldn't remember the path to get to the other members (this was in Blackfathom Deeps). Anyway, the thing that really struck me about these runs was the importance of a tank. The tanks really played a part here - unless they maintain aggro, it usually leads to a wipe. The mages and other DPS had to make sure they are not drawing too much threat or it's back to spirit form - I learned this the hard way the first time.

Transposing this to Dragon Age, one gets similar skills in the Warrior Shield tree. However, the effectiveness is vastly reduced due to two important factors -

• threat calculation missing/removed from a lot of rogue/mage talents. These classes, primarily DPS, can do damage without being at risk most of the time.
• the mobs (and even bosses) are too weak or too few for the tank role to really shine.

I must say, those dungeon runs were a revelation. As I've said before, Blood and Lyrium will feature custom classes for the player and most companions. In fact, except for the Warrior class...at least, till yesterday. The warrior class in BaL already has no access to the 2H tree so this gives a perfect excuse to maximise the utilization of the Shield tree and design the combat around the concept of a party as in WoW. Since the classes for most companions are fixed, I don't have to deal with the possibilities of a significantly gimped party due to player choice and can pretty much anticipate how strong the party is going to be at key points in the story. I tell you, this is going to become very interesting.