Item effects for taunts

[Noaani]

<p>As a wizard, my spells can be affected by crit chance, crit bonus, +base damage, +spell mob, damage specific debuffs, higher int and spell double attack, among other things. On top of this I can also load myself up with damage procs that can deal upwards of 150 DPS, and I can cast my spells more often with casting time and recovery effects on equipment. I can get a decient amount of some of these effects from achievements, and I can cap most of them when I select specific gear.</p><p>As a guardian, I am able to increase the hate value of my taunts by crit, +hate gain and +base taunt. The taunt procs I am able to get increase hate by about 25 a second.</p><p>In a group setting, where buffs for DPS are light, I am able to hold aggro on my guardian without too much issue. A tank that is geared on par with his group members should have less troubles holding aggro in heroic instances on test than on live. This is obviously good.</p><p>What I am concerned about, and as has been bought up once or twice already, is the impact that better buffing of DPS and better gear for them will have. When every mage in the raid goes from having 10 - 15% base spell damage increase to having 30 - 40%, thats a lot of extra damage I need to hold aggro against. As the game stands now, there are very few items for me to be able to increae my hate as a guardian with. There is no item with +taunt crit, there is no taunt double attack, there is not even a resist to increase the hate value of a taunt.</p><p>Tanks need equipment with effects such as +taunt value, +taunt crit chance, +taunt crit value, taunt double attack, basically any means by which a DPS character can increase their damage output, a tank needs to have access to in order to increase his hate.</p><p>Taunts need to have mental resists apply to them in the same manner they apply to spells as well.</p><p>Are effects on items like this planned? If so, are they going to be added to existing drops, or will tanks need to totally regear in order to hold aggro off of DPS wearing gear they already have?</p><p>If its not planned, why not?</p>

[Prrasha]

<p>There is a lot of wisdom in this post.</p><p>It's just as bad for melee dps:</p><p>base damage x 2.25 (maxed haste) x 2.25 (maxed dps) x ~1.5 (mitigation debuffing) x 2 (maxed double attack) x more (flurry) x 1.3 to 1.5 or more (maxed melee crit, with melee crit amount boosts)... x something for a bigger STR score, too.</p><p>2.25 x 2.25 x 1.5 x 2 x 1.5 = 22.7  That's ignoring flurries and STR mod.  I suppose I could use funny math with those two effects to get this number up into the 100s... but 22.7 is big enough, considering...</p><p>Is there anything in the game that can make a taunt 22.7 times bigger than its base value, ever?  I'm seeing 100% ability reuse, 100% crit (and say a 1.5 crit value, again), and 50% hate gain and 50% of taunt value in +taunt effects...</p><p>for 2 x 1.5 x 1.5 x 1.5 = 6.75</p><p>Everything from Tier1 void armor on up needs to have taunt effects added to it, I think.  (Not replacing existing effects; <em>added</em> to it.)  And some new taunt effects might have to appear.</p>

[Bakual]

<p>Maybe, just maybe that is the reason we get that hate meter. Perhaps DPS has finally actually to do some sort of agro management like we were used to in other games and can't burn out all the time mindless. We will see how this will turn out. Perhaps it will be no problem at all in raids, perhaps it will be tuned a bit after it hits live, perhaps it's intended. Who knows. Time will tell <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>I actually am glad that we have to watch agro a bit more as a DPS. I'm just not sure yet how the hate meter works with my conjuror pet as it has it's own hate calculations (till it dies, then I get it's hate added).</p>

[Faelgalad]

<p><cite>Bakual wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I actually am glad that we have to watch agro a bit more as a DPS. I'm just not sure yet how the hate meter works with my conjuror pet as it has it's own hate calculations (till it dies, then I get it's hate added).</p></blockquote><p>Just a bit... problematic, that some Mobs need to be burned down as fast as possible. You can't afford a "siege" with the first Named in Ancient One for example, 5 Minutes, or you're gone.</p><p>The Lack of exponential crit equipment will break our neck.</p><p>OP has spoken knowledgable.</p>

[Prrasha]

<p>And what's the point of gearing up and improving your character if you're going to be tank-aggro-limited to (invented number) 6000 DPS peak?  If the DPS you can do in voidshard gear outstrips the TPS a tank can create in Avatar gear...</p><p>In other words, I'm not sure the problem is "the gear doesn't  have the hate-scaling effects", I think the problem may turn out to be "there aren't enough hate-scaling effects in the game".</p><p>You can fix this, short-term, by just multiplying base taunt values... in my example above, making all taunts 4x as big as "base DPS" covers it, about 23x base damage to 25x base taunt.</p><p>But if you do that, and just give tanks a big enough base taunt to cover scaling up to Avatar-raiders, now the low end tanks have EZ-mode aggro (beyond what people used to accuse paladins of having with Amends), where they can use 1/4 of their abilities and still hold mobs like krazy glue.</p><p>You can look at group parses vs raid parses on live today, and easily see a 6x-8x increase in damage from "group equipped and buffed" to "raid equipped and buffed".  Would be nice to have someone show me how taunts can scale the same way... as above, I can only see 6.75x from "Isle Newbie" to "Every buff in the game."  (Unless Avatar gear is gonna total up to "increases base taunt value by 400%".  Heh.)</p><p>This isn't a problem on Live, now, because tanks hold aggro through DPS (their own, plus other characters' through various transfers.)  Nerf the tank aggro down 25-30% and remove all the transfer, and now you need Hate Scaling effects to keep up with DPS scaling effects.  And I don't think they can.</p>

[Noaani]

<p><cite>Bakual wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>Maybe, just maybe that is the reason we get that hate meter. Perhaps DPS has finally actually to do some sort of agro management like we were used to in other games and can't burn out all the time mindless. We will see how this will turn out. Perhaps it will be no problem at all in raids, perhaps it will be tuned a bit after it hits live, perhaps it's intended. Who knows. Time will tell <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /></blockquote><p>If pure DPS classes need to curb their DPS in order to not pull aggro, there needs to be a larger gap between the DPS of pure DPS classes and utility, tanks and healers.</p><p>If DPS classes start slowing down, then their DPS will be in the same range as non DPS classes, at which point the question of why bother with DPS at all needs to be asked.</p><p>A tank with the absolute top gear in the game should be able to hold aggro against a wizard with the absolute top gear in the game. If this is not the case, then why bother aiming for the top gear in the game?</p><p>The idea of DPS needing to activly manage their own DPS would be fine, but only if there is a reward for doing so. As the game stands now, the only thing a DPS class will gain from controlling their aggro is the "plesure" of watching others overtake them.</p>

[Faelgalad]

<p>And in this Point, we will see an emerge of Monk/Brawler/SK DD's.</p><p>'cause they can use Top Gear and go into full DPS Burn, as they deaggro like crazy in Offensive.</p><p>While an "real" DD has to go down with DPS to push Deaggros.</p>

[UNTILitSLEEPS]

<p>or we will see tanks worth a [Removed for Content] that are actually able to hold aggro</p>

[Bakual]

<p>Back in EQ1 it was so that you had to hold back in the beginning of a fight and could burn out all you liked after a bit when tanks got enough hate builded up. Don't think the same mechanics apply here in eq2 but still there could be new tactics to be developed instead of just burning whole time (which I do as a conjuror most of time).</p><p>But then OP is correct in term that there need to be items which increase their ability to tank further. I didn't want to make it sound that he is wrong. But then it's possible that SoE knows that as well and has plans to do so in future. I think it's quite easy to add special effects to dedicated tankitems which will increase taunts and such.</p><p>We still don't know how a tank will hold agro in a raid, but I'm sure that Aeralik will most likely try (tm) to balance it so that a tank with right groupsetup can hold the agro of raidgeared DPS. Probably some tuning will be needed after it hits live.</p>

[Noaani]

<p><cite>UNTILitSLEEPS wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>or we will see tanks worth a [Removed for Content] that are actually able to hold aggro</p></blockquote><p>Thing is though, how can a tank hold aggro when I start getting double/tripple hits of Bolt of Ice, each hitting for 100k?</p><p>Its the increased DPS from gear not being matched by an increase in theoretical hate gain from tanks. No tank in the game, reguardless of how good, is able to hold aggro any better than the tools he is given will allow him to do.</p>