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Totenfaust · 02-07-2012, 12:01 AM

(02-03-2012 07:49 AM)Coriolis Wrote:
(02-03-2012 05:48 AM)Stab Wrote: Having me overtake threat and taunt reflexively in NMM ops isn't an option with frontal cleaves, abilites, etc etc...

Here I kind of disagree, even for NM. Taunt is instant, off-gcd, and with a 30 yard range. So long as your tank has fast reflexes and taunts back immediately, there really shouldn't be a problem, even if you do pull threat. So long as you aren't pulling aggro so often that both aoe and single taunts are on c/d when you pull aggro, I'd rather the dps go full damage from the start and quickly get to the point where they'll have alot of trouble pulling from me again until the end of the fight. This has always worked fine for us and we've never died due to pulling aggro+cleave or something like that. Of course if your dps is better then ours and/or your tank is worse and you're running out of taunts then you may have to hold back.

The only boss where I might end up asking the dps to hold back is karraga, the combination of his front and back aoes, and all the other issues with positioning him makes it hard to do maximum threat and annoying to loose aggro. I haven't had to do that on hard, but I imagine I may on NM when we get to that.

Having DPS pull threat off you during an encounter at any time is bad, period. You brought up the example of the Karagga fight. Having a person pull threat off the tank risks a fire puddle in the middle of the ops or more unintended damage done. It may not wipe your group (or it may in NiM), but it causes more strain on your healers to heal damage that could otherwise have been avoided or you lose DPS time chasing a boss that's running around.

Front-loading your threat with your offensive cooldowns (including an adrenal), keeping guard on your most problematic damage-dealer, or just having DPS wait a second or two before engaging all help to avoid a sloppy fight.

Coriolis · 02-07-2012, 02:34 AM

If you're actually loosing aggro for so long that the boss is running around killing people then that's obviously a problem. But with taunt being off GCD with a 15s c/d, and having the backup of aoe taunt, you shouldn't be loosing aggro for more then a split second even if it is pulled from you. I.e. I've never had karaga actually drop his puddles on anyone other then me, even though I do tend to loose aggro ~3 times close to the pull.

Taunt is a tool to hold aggro, hobbling your dps to the point where you won't have to use it is hardly optimal. The threat game is simply balanced differently from WoW where taunting was either impossible for many bosses or otherwise not expected to ever happen.

Totenfaust · (This post was last modified: 02-07-2012 01:33 PM by Totenfaust.)

(02-07-2012 02:34 AM)Coriolis Wrote: Taunt is a tool to hold aggro

My thoughts exactly. Taunt is an off-GCD 15-second skill, so there's no reason you can't be throwing it into your rotation whenever it's up. There is also a consensus that the skill itself generates a small bit of threat, although we won't know for sure without a threat meter.

(02-07-2012 02:34 AM)Coriolis Wrote: hobbling your dps to the point where you won't have to use it is hardly optimal.

I never said anything about hobbling your DPS; I merely support the notion that your DPS should be playing intelligently during the first shaky threat moments of an encounter. Dead DPS and unintentional boss damage to your ops group are hardly optimal, either.

I can't speak firsthand for the threat generation of a Juggernaut, but as a PT tank I have very few problems holding solid threat on a boss apart from the initial DPS bloodthirst phases. However, those problems can be further mitigated by smart use of threat drops by your DPS, and timing your own offensive CDs to counteract threat spikes. From what I gather speaking to other tanks, threat generation seems to be an issue for all but Assassin tanks.

Kaedis · 02-07-2012, 04:20 PM

Quote:There is also a consensus that the skill itself generates a small bit of threat, although we won't know for sure without a threat meter.

What's the justification for this claim?

Quote:smart use of threat drops by your DPS

Well, for the record, most of these don't actually work. They are bugged into only reducing the user's damage by a quarter of a percent, rather than 25%. Extrication and I believe the Marauder one (or maybe it was the Merc one) are working.

Totenfaust · 02-07-2012, 05:18 PM

(02-07-2012 04:20 PM)Kor Wrote:
Quote:There is also a consensus that the skill itself generates a small bit of threat, although we won't know for sure without a threat meter.

What's the justification for this claim?

In-game personal experience tanking and conversations I've had with other tanks as well. Like I said in the second half of that sentence, I can't concretely prove it without something along the lines of threat meters. You are, however, more than welcome to test the theory yourself and inform me of your findings.

(02-07-2012 04:20 PM)Kor Wrote:
Quote:smart use of threat drops by your DPS

Well, for the record, most of these don't actually work. They are bugged into only reducing the user's damage by a quarter of a percent, rather than 25%. Extrication and I believe the Marauder one (or maybe it was the Merc one) are working.

As far as I know, the threat drop mechanic for Mercenary is the only "broken" one, and even that is up to debate (particularly a comment mentioned a few posts back).

Anonymousy · 02-07-2012, 06:55 PM

(02-07-2012 04:20 PM)Kor Wrote:
Quote:There is also a consensus that the skill itself generates a small bit of threat, although we won't know for sure without a threat meter.

What's the justification for this claim?

Quote:smart use of threat drops by your DPS

Well, for the record, most of these don't actually work. They are bugged into only reducing the user's damage by a quarter of a percent, rather than 25%. Extrication and I believe the Marauder one (or maybe it was the Merc one) are working.

I don't think they generate threat. But in the situation where a range dps has 110% of your threat and you use taunt, it should increase your threat by 10%. so taunting - even if you haven't lost the boss - might be a solid idea. i would probably keep the aoe taunt on cooldown so i have my 'real' spot ready if needed.

the broken threat drops were based on the torhead numbers, right? in my opinion it is a typing error in the marauder info:

marauder: http://www.torhead.com/ability/f2xdW1C/force-camouflage
ModifyThreat: AmountPercent=>-25

mercenary: http://www.torhead.com/ability/eeuo61q/chaff-flare
ModifyThreat: AmountPercent=>-0.25

agent: http://www.torhead.com/ability/7EUXBeE/countermeasures
ModifyThreat: AmountPercent=>-0.25

XRR-3 (Eternity Vault): http://www.torhead.com/ability/3OjmkMt/o...ming-swipe
ModifyThreat: AmountPercent=>-0.99

bonethrasher (palace): http://www.torhead.com/ability/1sMyLnK/call-target
ModifyThreat: AmountPercent=>-0.99

Kaedis · 02-07-2012, 08:59 PM

Quote:In-game personal experience tanking and conversations I've had with other tanks as well. Like I said in the second half of that sentence, I can't concretely prove it without something along the lines of threat meters. You are, however, more than welcome to test the theory yourself and inform me of your findings.

I need something to go on to test it, some observed phenomena that has lead others to believe that they generate threat above and beyond simply setting your threat equal to the current aggro target. Without that, all I'd really be doing is confirming the mechanics of the threat system, and that would be tedious at best.

Quote:As far as I know, the threat drop mechanic for Mercenary is the only "broken" one, and even that is up to debate (particularly a comment mentioned a few posts back).

I can confirm from the game files that both the IA and SI ones are broken. That's where I actually noticed the issue.

Quote:the broken threat drops were based on the torhead numbers, right? in my opinion it is a typing error in the marauder info:

Except the only threat reductions in the game that I've observed having any noticeable impact are Extrication and Force Camo, both of which have an AmountPercent of -25. I've even tested it on my sorc, pulled threat in melee range using very small and regular damage output, then hit Cloud Mind. Pulling in melee range means I should have just about 110% of the tank's threat. If Cloud Mind was reducing threat by 25% as theorized, then it should drop me to 82.5% of the tank's current threat (1.1 * 0.75), which would put him at 121.2% of my threat, immediately pushing the target back onto him. Trouble is, it doesn't actually do that. The tank has to dump a pretty significant amount of damage into the target (by his estimate, 20-25% of the damage he'd dealt thus far, which lines up) in order to pull back.

You can also test Extrication. Have a ranged dps hit the target in small regular doses until they pull aggro, then run into melee range. That should put the ranged dps at just over 130% of the tank's threat. Now stack the ranged dps and the tank on top of each other, then pull the ranged dps out with Extrication (you stack the tank so the mob has to run over him to follow the ranged dps, keeping him in melee range for another second to two in case the threat doesn't auto-update). If Extricate reduces the target's threat by 25%, the mob should continue to attack the ranged, as it would reduce their threat to 97.5% of the tank's, putting the tank only at 102.6% of the ranged DPSer's, not enough to pull. If Extrication is reducing the target's threat by 2500%, it would either put the target's threat negative or at 0, which either way should immediately swap the mob back to the tank. It doesn't.

In other words, Chaff Flare, Countermeasures, and Cloud Mind are indeed broken.

Anonymousy · 02-07-2012, 09:48 PM

thanks for the clarification kor.
but just to be thorough:
would it be possible that the ability has some 'hidden' constraints like 'works only on the currently selected target' instead of 'everyone wherever they are'? 'only working on raid bosses' or maybe the table of the mobs is not checked by timer but by event, for example 'for(i=1,i<10){if(attacked){i++}} checktable()'?

this would of course still not change, that the threat system is broken but it could help pinpoint the problem.
a 'simple' way to test it would be with multiboxing. take two snipers (for example) with similar equip that use the same skills and a tank. one of the dps uses his threat dump in addition to the damage skills. if 10 out of 10 times the not-dumping sniper gets aggro, the skill works.

way to test it: low lvl ~30 worldboss with lvl 30 tank/dd and a high lvl (or multiple smaller) healers to prolong the fight.

the whole point would of course be moot if there were a yellow post saying 'hey, this is our current list of bugs we are aware of'.

Coriolis · 02-08-2012, 01:56 AM

A threat dump that only works on world bosses? That would be beyond odd. If it was one that didn't work on certain raid bosses (like taunt doesn't work on Bonetresher) that I could see. I mean you could try and test this on EV bosses if you wanted to but I think the tests Kor is talking about are conclusive enough.

And testing whether taunt gives some very small amount of threat would be tedious and probably inconclusive, considering how small of an effect you're looking for. More importantly, it's unnecessary - if your dps is good, they'll always end up being somewhat higher on threat then you even before pulling, and taunting would be worth it just to gain their threat. And if they aren't, then it's not an issue anyways.

One shot NM karaga on our first time last night heh. I have to admit that was probably the worst fight on aggro since he doesn't follow you while he's doing the drill thing but then uses puddle immediately afterwards, so I usually ended up staying outside of melee range and only doing my force scream during that. I think I lost aggro about 5 times, but not close enough together for it to be a problem.

Nattyice · 02-08-2012, 06:25 AM

I have what maybe a stupid question, but I have seen it mentioned that maybe we should add taunt to our rotation. I know if other games specifically wow there was a DR on taunt. I never ran into unless we were tank swapping and the other tank was fail, and he had to multi-taunt to get the boss off of me; but still......Seems like it could be a waste of a key press if their is indeed a DR on taunts in SWTOR. I haven't read anything about it just something I wanted to bring to light. I guess this is a complicated way of asking if there is a DR on taunt.....lol sorry....