First of all, I am already enjoying the game, bugs or not, arguing about the way we can develop the chars or the weapons, , still, for me, it’s a lot of fun.
Said this, I am into Bardin as a full tank, and I have to say, there is a lack of feedback about tanking.
At the end of the fight, we can get some stats (damage given/taken) but it is not enough to understand how much the tank, tanked well or not.
I obviously have a lower damage given and damage taken, or killed ratio (maybe it’s me not good enough) than the other chars, so I always have the “am I doing enough?” feeling.
Is it possible to know the amount of deflected / absorbed damage, I am not asking to know the exact amount of railgun hits I stopped using the shield (well that would be awesome for a nerd 
) , or the amount of enemies I made fly await with a shield bash, but after those situations when everyone is down and the last one is the dwarf clinching the teeth and putting down the enemies one by one, would be nice to be able to point to the others (players) the amount of absorbed/deflected/bashing times, and, would be help full to stop them running their mouth.
Your team should be grateful you play as Bardin, (Especially Ironbreaker) I’ve played as him as my main, I don’t get all the kills, don’t do the most damage, but I don’t go through anywhere near the amount of healing items allowing those weaker to use them and he’s great for crowd control with his taunt and shield bash. I have 8 Stam shield on my Bardin and really strong block I can take multiple big hits.
He simply can’t compete with the quicker more nimble characters when it comes to DPS.
We ironbreakers don’t mind kills or dps, we PUSH, we PARRY and we save our’s team ass XD
If you only parry/block dmg that means you actually are bad at Ironbraker. I usually play it on Legend, and have dmg done the same as most of the team, sometimes second right after main damage dealer. As a tank your job is not to parry/block, your job is to stand first in line and kill as many mobs as you can with taking minimal damage doing it.
For example, I use 2h hammer and drake flamethrower, I can literally hold the whole wave on my own. By 'hold
’ I mean to kill it. If you are not killing mobs, just doing the CC then, you are kinda useless and bad at this game.
By doing it the reset of the team can kill specials and hold the opposite side of the place where you are standing.
Ironbreaker currently is definitely somewhat overpowered with what is apparently an inherent 40% damage resitance on top of the best ranged weapons available to dwarfs.
That said, there have been multiple threads on getting better feedback for tanks, and I certainly endorse the idea.
The problem is that it’s difficult. The game can’t track how much damage you avoided by cleverly pushing, or dodging just in time. It can’t tell you how many teammates you saved by being in the way or interrupting a heavy hit somehow. I think this is more of a technical problem to be solved. Hopefully, that’ll happen, but I doubt it’ll be soon.
yep I play it the same way, and I don’t think I’ll ever try the troll slayer, because the shield element add that something more that makes the session worth of play, without it’s just another action game. (yes yes yes, the warhammer feeling also keeps me hooked… )
mm I wonder, I play ib because I like to be The Tank, I’m not into the kills, but I prefer to be the one directing the queues of monsters. I know that using the pike or a 2hnd axe I can increase the total damage, but that is not the way I want to play. So ty for your suggestion, but I apologize, probably I wasn’t clear enough.
ty for reading. Do you have some insight about the game mechanics? I’m asking because you wrote that the game cannot track it, but I wonder, it’s just an event derived from an action, so I don’t see any particular difficulty about doing it. But I didn’t write a single line of code, so, I shouldn’t really shoot in the dark.
Anyway, ty for answering!
Well, if you dodge, the game can’t be sure if it would have been hit otherwise and what exact modifiers would apply in that very moment. Being hit while having some sort of mitigation up - sure. But not being hit?
After all, that push would potentially also reposition enemies, making them attack at a different time than they would have done had they hit. How to factor that in?
I suppose it’s possible, but I can’t think of any way to do that that’s not serious overhead. And I doubt Fatshark has time for that. Still, no, I don’t know if it would be possible and feasible at this time.
Well ill put it that way, every second you spend blocking, youre not spending reducing enemy numbers.
Tanking is only useful as a way to increase team dmg output which can be achieved by orange trait on melee weapon, besides that you can taunt bosses making it easier for team to hit them without chasing, but besides that its not useful in the slightest.
Ty, got your point!
I understand your point, but while I’m parrying/deflecting getting aggro using the skill, I’m taking attacks instead of the other guys, also, using the shield I can disrupt the heavy enemies, pushing them aside/back and making them loose their attacks/opening their defensive stance, giving a chance to the other guys to land a full blow.
Pushing yes, blocking itself does nothing. Its still represented by how little damage you take.
ty for the advice!
I play every character except Bardin, I have problem enjoying his low viewpoint (though a cool, realistic design). I´m always glad when I´m being matched with Ironbreaker because I know that, doing damage or not, there will be someone on the frontline allowing the rest of us to do work more safely.
So know that even if it doesn´t show on any scoreboard at least some of us “other guys” appreciate and benefit a blocking Bardin.
It’s true, the low point of view, is difficult, and using the shield, it’s even more hard to look around, but it feels good 
.
Ty for the feedback, it’s difficult to understand if the way Bardin is played (I play) is good or not, till now it’s all based on “how many health pot/kit” were necessary to keep the group on their feet. The lower, the better the tank suppressed some of the attacks.
At this point some encounter combos are way too much random to understand if the group wipe could be avoided with a different approach, but I’ll keep working ( playing) in that way.
Without the flamethrower which is amazing for the stat screen, I think this setup struggles against a lot of armor as a “tank” aka controller where pushing/CCing is very important as most normal setups cannot kill armor quickly. If you cannot control more than very few at a time (such as with 2h hammer) you have a weakness compared to a control build.
I think you mean “increasing damage output assuming everyone plays to take low enough incoming damage”. You can increase this amount by controlling without any dmg increasing talents or damage done, as the uptime of the group is higher when enemies are not hitting them (where they have to dodge, block, move away entirely or die).
I agree that a low dmg output character can be a problem, but if you include all aspects of combat it can’t be stated as plainly as you did there.
Well, I’ve seen it used by two people I regularly play with, with both stating he is too strong, the drakefire pistols frequently end up awarding him most ranged kills if no sienna is in the team, and the pistols secondary fire controls groups quite decently.
Shieldpushes and the rather anti-armour efficient axe allow chokepoint control and murdering stormvermin.
I’m not saying it’s far out of line, but I wouldn’t be surprised by minor changes. Though this might not concern the topic at hand.
You do play for maximum damage, best case scenario you dont ever need to block like i do with my rapier bounty hunter, swinging fast enough to stagger or kill enemies before they can strike back, though getting to that with bardin can be rather hard.
Worse case scenario i push enemies back when i couldnt stagger them with swings.
Worst case scenario youll need to do short timed block from time to time to not get hit and you lost just few swings because of it.
Though i have to say, i got tendency of riding out hits on temporary hp or gromril armor and coming up with tons of dmg taken at the end despite being close to max hp.