Threat meter suggestion

[Morrolan V]

<p>As we continue to move down the path toward the threat changes, I have been thinking about the threat meter.  As presently instituted on test, the meter is useful to dps'ers, who can tell quite easily how close they are to taking aggro.  It is not very useful to the tank, however.  If you are succeeding, you see "100," but you have no means of knowing whether someone is breathing down your neck.</p><p>Here's my suggestion:</p><ul><li>Have the threat meter function as it does presently if the mob is targeting someone else.  </li><li>If the mob is targeting you, have the meter show how far ahead you are of the next person on the list.  That number would always be OVER 100% if you are successfully holding aggro.</li></ul><p>This would give the tank useful information about how he or she was performing, and would allow preventative action if someone else was overtaking.</p><p>I think this change to the threat meter would be appropriate and far more conistent with the devs' stated intent to make the tank more actively responsible for holding aggro.</p>

[Lleren]

<p>Hmm, so instead of showing 100% for the tank, it might show  say 110% if the next highest person was at 90% and closing?  Steadily ticking down to 100% as the dpser closes the gap even farther, and below 100% once the dpser has stolen aggro if you do nothing to prevent it?  If I have understood your idea I like it , a lot actually =D</p>

[Kordran]

<p>This idea was brought up in another thread about the threat meter (it was a while back, and I'm feeling too lazy to dig up a link at the moment). While I understand why this might be attractive, I still think it is of limited use because it would only tell you that "someone" is getting closer to ripping aggro from you. So, of course, the next step would be for it to show the person's name who is next higher on the threat list, and then we're going down the slippery slope of having the UI show a sorted threat list for the encounter, etc. etc.</p><p>Personally, I think the threat meter is largely unnecessary; it's a crutch for DPS who aren't particularly good at playing their toon. That said, it's not the tank's job to babysit the group and say "Now watch yourself there Bob, you're getting a little high on the threat meter, I think it's time for you to hit your detaunts". If Bob is high in the threat list, then it's <strong><em>his</em></strong> job to manage his threat appropriately. The tank should not be expected to play nursemaid to every button-mashing DPS player in the group.</p>

[Ventisly]

<p><cite>Kordran wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>This idea was brought up in another thread about the threat meter (it was a while back, and I'm feeling too lazy to dig up a link at the moment). While I understand why this might be attractive, I still think it is of limited use because it would only tell you that "someone" is getting closer to ripping aggro from you. So, of course, the next step would be for it to show the person's name who is next higher on the threat list, and then we're going down the slippery slope of having the UI show a sorted threat list for the encounter, etc. etc.</p><p>Personally, I think the threat meter is largely unnecessary; it's a crutch for DPS who aren't particularly good at playing their toon. That said, it's not the tank's job to babysit the group and say "Now watch yourself there Bob, you're getting a little high on the threat meter, I think it's time for you to hit your detaunts". If Bob is high in the threat list, then it's <strong><em>his</em></strong> job to manage his threat appropriately. The tank should not be expected to play nursemaid to every button-mashing DPS player in the group.</p></blockquote><p>I think the idea is a good one.  As the threat meter is now on test, it is useful for everyone except for a tank properly doing their job.  A tank might as well not even display the threat meter if it's only going to show 100 all of the time.  Anything less than 100 means you need to grab aggro again so it doesn't really matter what it shows.  A threat meter that shows a percentage above the next highest member would allow a tank to focus more on DPS and taunt less.  If second highest threat member is at 63% the tank would show 159% (1 / 0.63).</p><p>It's not like this doesn't happen now anyway.  Most experienced tanks that have ACT running already know how close to the top DPSer they need to be given the group makeup and monitor the DPS parse closely during combat.  If a tank or DPSer is opposed to the whole threat meter concept nothing is forcing them to have it displayed but if it is going to be available it should at least be useful for everyone.  Otherwise you'll probably have a lot of tanks asking after each fight "Ok, what's the highest threat anyone got on that mob?" since their "100% max threat meter" is useless.</p>

[Noaani]

<p>Its actually not too bad of an idea.</p><p>It provides tanks with a tool to know if they have enough hate built up to switch to off stance to deal a little more DPS, while still providing them with a que for when they may need to switch back to def stance to get some more hate build up.</p><p>Since most groups will have DPS running fairly close to the tank, its only useful as above in groups where the DPS is either cslacking or not present (ie a group with no high DPS classes). For those groups where the DPS is running close to the tank on hate, its simply a means for the tank to realise that slacking for even a second may well be picked up by the rest of your group.</p><p>I wouldn't say I am overly for the idea, but I would definatly not be upset about its inclusion. The more tools and the less ambiguity in the game the better.</p>

[Rothgar]

<p>It really depends on what angle you want to approach from.</p><p>Most DPS classes will be pushing the limit of hate as much as they can, but as they approach the threshold of gaining aggro they will probably back off.  I play a Guardian and personally I will be generating as much hate as I can, all the time so the DPS can push as much as possible.  If I slow my hate down to match them, and they are slowing down so they don't take aggro it could lead to a cycle where we're neither working as hard as we could be.  By me focusing on hate and not so much on dps, hopefully I create a big enough gap that the DPS classes can push their hardest and not have to worry about slowing down for me.</p><p>Only in a situation where I'm generating WAY more hate than the DPS classes would I worry about not taunting as much.  And I don't know about you, but I already run out of combat arts as a Guardian.  I can rotate all my taunts and CA's and still sometimes be waiting on abilities to refresh depending on my group buffs.  For me, I think the biggest use of the threat meter will be in multi-mob encounters or when we've got adds.  It'll allow me to quickly cycle through the targets and I'll know just how much I need to do to get aggro.  On single target fights I dont expect I'll have to look at it much because I generally don't have aggro problems in that situation.</p><p>On a related note... I'm looking forward to the hate changes and hope they'll allow me to do a better job of keeping aggro on my own without relying on specific classes to be in my group.  I ran a Ravenscale instance this evening in a group that consisted of myself, Templar, Fury, Troub, Necro and Conjy.  Not an ideal group for me.  I had very little melee buffs and no hate increase or transfer.  We are all raid-geared with Mythicals and it was pretty challenging keeping aggro especially in multi-mob encounters.  If the fighter changes succeed in allowing me to keep aggro without those hate transfer classes, I think they will have been successful.</p>

[Noaani]

<p><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>It really depends on what angle you want to approach from.</blockquote><p>This is absolutly true.</p><p>Your angle is from the perspective of a tank. Your job, when playing your guardian, is to hold aggro and minimise damage. This is the same mindset I am in when I am tanking, and is why I am absolutly looking forward to these changes.</p><p>Thing is, as you eluded too, there is another angle here. There are tanks out there that want to push for as much DPS as they can, and most of them want to do so without asking the group to slack off. If a fighter is able to generate enough hate so that the next highest on the hate list is at 60%, then imo he has earned the right to switch into off stance and put up the best numbers he can. At this point in the encounter (assuming the mob is close enough to dead to not be likely to switch), his job as a tank is essentially finished, and he is now responsible for what everyone in the group is: DPS. Currently, the only way to do this is to ask each group member what their current hate level is, not exactly an elegant solution.</p><p>Beginning an encounter in off stance is not a valid option for the vast majority of fighters, but with enough hate built up, finishing it should be.</p>

[Vulkan_NTooki]

<p><cite>Noaani wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>It really depends on what angle you want to approach from.</blockquote><p>This is absolutly true.</p><p>Your angle is from the perspective of a tank. Your job, when playing your guardian, is to hold aggro and minimise damage. This is the same mindset I am in when I am tanking, and is why I am absolutly looking forward to these changes.</p><p>Thing is, as you eluded too, there is another angle here. There are tanks out there that want to push for as much DPS as they can, and most of them want to do so without asking the group to slack off. If a fighter is able to generate enough hate so that the next highest on the hate list is at 60%, then imo he has earned the right to switch into off stance and put up the best numbers he can. At this point in the encounter (assuming the mob is close enough to dead to not be likely to switch), his job as a tank is essentially finished, and he is now responsible for what everyone in the group is: DPS. Currently, the only way to do this is to ask each group member what their current hate level is, not exactly an elegant solution.</p><p>Beginning an encounter in off stance is not a valid option for the vast majority of fighters, but with enough hate built up, finishing it should be.</p></blockquote><p> <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/385970365b8ed7503b4294502a458efa.gif" border="0" /></p>

[Noaani]

<p><cite>Akuu@Runnyeye wrote:</cite></p><blockquote> <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/385970365b8ed7503b4294502a458efa.gif" border="0" /></blockquote><p><img src="/eq2/images/smilies/0a4d7238daa496a758252d0a2b1a1384.gif" border="0" /></p>

[Vulkan_NTooki]

<p><cite>Akuu@Runnyeye wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Noaani wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>It really depends on what angle you want to approach from.</blockquote><p>This is absolutly true.</p><p>Your angle is from the perspective of a tank. Your job, when playing your guardian, is to hold aggro and minimise damage. This is the same mindset I am in when I am tanking, and is why I am absolutly looking forward to these changes.</p><p>Thing is, as you eluded too, there is another angle here. There are tanks out there that want to push for as much DPS as they can, and most of them want to do so without asking the group to slack off. If a fighter is able to generate enough hate so that the next highest on the hate list is at 60%, then imo he has earned the right to switch into off stance and put up the best numbers he can. At this point in the encounter (assuming the mob is close enough to dead to not be likely to switch), his job as a tank is essentially finished, and he is now responsible for what everyone in the group is: DPS. Currently, the only way to do this is to ask each group member what their current hate level is, not exactly an elegant solution.</p><p>Beginning an encounter in off stance is not a valid option for the vast majority of fighters, but with enough hate built up, finishing it should be.</p></blockquote><p> <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/385970365b8ed7503b4294502a458efa.gif" border="0" /></p></blockquote><p>You just caught me off guard when u promoted a way for tanks to increase dps.. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/ed515dbff23a0ee3241dcc0a601c9ed6.gif" border="0" /> This is Vulkan btw..</p>

[Noaani]

<p><cite>Akuu@Runnyeye wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>You just caught me off guard when u promoted a way for tanks to increase dps.. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/ed515dbff23a0ee3241dcc0a601c9ed6.gif" border="0" /> This is Vulkan btw..</blockquote><p>I never said I was against fighters doing DPS, I only said I was against them doing high(ish) DPS while tanking.</p><p>All I did in this thread was define exactly what point I consider the job of tanking to be finished.</p>

[Kordran]

<p><cite>Gaktar@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>It's not like this doesn't happen now anyway.  Most experienced tanks that have ACT running already know how close to the top DPSer they need to be given the group makeup and monitor the DPS parse closely during combat.</blockquote><p>Not really. Most experienced tanks go full-out, maximize their threat generation (which right now usually means tanking in offensive stance and maximizing their own DPS) and eyeball their implied target to watch for anyone ripping from them. They don't use ACT to perform some mental calculation as to determine what their maximum damage needs to be to hold aggro. There's not a tank out there -- at least not one with a functioning brain -- who looks at a parse and decides to ramp down their damage because all that "extra threat" isn't needed. The only thing an ACT parse can really do is help them decide to put Moderate or Amends on.</p><p>Changing the threat meter so it shows how close you are to having aggro taken by someone (and you wouldn't know specifically who) isn't particularly useful information. If you're the tank, what are you going to do? Taunt "extra hard"? Pre-emptively blow one of your rescue/position increases? If you have a clue about how to play your class, you'll be taunting every time the CA is up in your rotation. If someone is going to rip, they're going to rip and you'll know it when the implied target changes. And personally, I don't mind if some DPS with a wild hair rips and gets punched in the face. It's the only way they'll learn how to keep it in their pants and play their toon correctly. As the tank, your first responsibility is to your healers. The finger wigglers and the backstabbers? Not so much. If they're eating a lot of dirt, then they know what they need to do -- or they can keep paying a repair bill until they learn not to suck.</p><p>I'll say it again. The tank's job in the group is not to wipe everyone's noses and make sure little Bobby the Assassin or Tommy the Wizard knows how to play their class and do their job without ripping aggro. This idea that the tank should be saying "Uh oh guys, I see someone's awfully close to ripping, you better slow that DPS down!" is complete and utter rubbish. The Wizard rips and dies because he casts Bolt of Ice when his threat meter shows him at 90%? The correct response from the tank is to point, laugh, and resume tanking.</p>

[DngrMou]

<p>Sigh.  I don't know exactly what is behind the rather obvious anti-dps bias in these forums, but it gets old.  For every DPS class that 'button mashes' his way to the top of the parse list, there's a tank that can't hold aggro in a paper bag, a healer who does'nt know what those little icons mean, and a mezzer who thinks app IV is just fine.  People who don't know how to play occupy all classes, and equally so, that I've seen.</p><p>And no, the hate meter is not a 'crutch'.  It's a tool...a needed tool, which no more constitutes hand-holding than health bars, and detrimental effects windows.</p>

[Kordran]

<p><cite>DngrMouse wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>And no, the hate meter is not a 'crutch'.  It's a tool...a needed tool, which no more constitutes hand-holding than health bars, and detrimental effects windows.</blockquote><p>Admittedly it's anecdotal, but everyone I've talked with in my own guild, and friends in other raiding guilds, think that a threat meter is unnecessary for anyone who's good at playing their toon -- after all, they've been playing just fine for the past 4 years without one. The consensus seems to be that, at best, it'll help noobs suck a bit less.</p><p>So yeah, it's a crutch.</p>

[DngrMou]

<p><cite>Kordran wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>DngrMouse wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>And no, the hate meter is not a 'crutch'.  It's a tool...a needed tool, which no more constitutes hand-holding than health bars, and detrimental effects windows.</blockquote><p>Admittedly it's anecdotal, but everyone I've talked with in my own guild, and friends in other raiding guilds, think that a threat meter is unnecessary for anyone who's good at playing their toon -- after all, they've been playing just fine for the past 4 years without one. The consensus seems to be that, at best, it'll help noobs suck a bit less.</p><p>So yeah, it's a crutch.</p></blockquote><p>I wonder if all those people you've spoken with are willing to give up their crutches?  No more health bars, effects windows, (beneficial, and detrimental), name tags, etc.....or does this whole crutch idea only work in one direction?</p><p>And even the best dps'ers can pull aggro.  It happens, it will always happen.  This tool will help prevent that from happening, while allowing dps classes to put out as much damage as the group, and encounter allow.</p>

[Kordran]

<p><cite>DngrMouse wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>I wonder if all those people you've spoken with are willing to give up their crutches?  No more health bars, effects windows, (beneficial, and detrimental), name tags, etc.....or does this whole crutch idea only work in one direction?</blockquote><p>It's a crutch because it's information that some may find useful, but it is not needed to play the game. Healers need to know how much health players have in order to do their job. DPS doesn't need to know how close they are to the top of the mob's threat list. How do I know this? <strong>Because everyone has been playing this game for the past 4+ years without a threat meter, and they've done just fine.</strong> Is that really so difficult to understand?</p>

[Eugam]

<p><cite>Kordran wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>, what are you going to do? Taunt "extra hard"?</p></blockquote><p>ROFL. Thanks, that made my friday <img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Eugam]

<p><cite>DngrMouse wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Kordran wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>So yeah, it's a crutch.</p></blockquote><p>I wonder if all those people you've spoken with are willing to give up their crutches? No more health bars, effects windows, (beneficial, and detrimental), name tags, etc.....or does this whole crutch idea only work in one direction?</p><p>And even the best dps'ers can pull aggro. It happens, it will always happen. This tool will help prevent that from happening, while allowing dps classes to put out as much damage as the group, and encounter allow.</p></blockquote><p>Quite contrary. Here is a healer and i know the next thing is to give healers an overview over the group hate situation.</p><p>That not only turns me into a mindless heal bot, it also trivializes content more and more. I heal faster and more efficient, the dps'ers dps more efficient. Result is that content becomes easier.</p><p>Thats why we should keep it low on the hate meter. It should be dps'ers little helper. Not more.</p>

[Vulkan_NTooki]

<p><cite>Kordran wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Gaktar@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>It's not like this doesn't happen now anyway.  Most experienced tanks that have ACT running already know how close to the top DPSer they need to be given the group makeup and monitor the DPS parse closely during combat.</blockquote><p>Not really. Most experienced tanks go full-out, maximize their threat generation (which right now usually means tanking in offensive stance and maximizing their own DPS) and eyeball their implied target to watch for anyone ripping from them. They don't use ACT to perform some mental calculation as to determine what their maximum damage needs to be to hold aggro. There's not a tank out there -- at least not one with a functioning brain -- who looks at a parse and decides to ramp down their damage because all that "extra threat" isn't needed. The only thing an ACT parse can really do is help them decide to put Moderate or Amends on.</p><p>Changing the threat meter so it shows how close you are to having aggro taken by someone (and you wouldn't know specifically who) isn't particularly useful information. If you're the tank, what are you going to do? Taunt "extra hard"? Pre-emptively blow one of your rescue/position increases? If you have a clue about how to play your class, you'll be taunting every time the CA is up in your rotation. If someone is going to rip, they're going to rip and you'll know it when the implied target changes. And personally, I don't mind if some DPS with a wild hair rips and gets punched in the face. It's the only way they'll learn how to keep it in their pants and play their toon correctly. As the tank, your first responsibility is to your healers. The finger wigglers and the backstabbers? Not so much. If they're eating a lot of dirt, then they know what they need to do -- or they can keep paying a repair bill until they learn not to suck.</p><p>I'll say it again. The tank's job in the group is not to wipe everyone's noses and make sure little Bobby the Assassin or Tommy the Wizard knows how to play their class and do their job without ripping aggro. This idea that the tank should be saying "Uh oh guys, I see someone's awfully close to ripping, you better slow that DPS down!" is complete and utter rubbish. The Wizard rips and dies because he casts Bolt of Ice when his threat meter shows him at 90%? The correct response from the tank is to point, laugh, and resume tanking.</p></blockquote><p>Say you got a PuG that has some lousy dps and a wicked tank.. The tank can through dps in defensive alone compare to the aggro the so called dps classes are doing... Why would the said tank still rotate taunts to increase aggro further, when he instead could contribute to killing the mob faster?</p><p>If you can see that you have twice the aggro of the second person on list.. then you can stop using taunts and do some increased dps instead to finish the mob off quicker.</p><p>Another workaround would be to see the total group aggro as 100%.. and the tank could see his number as the amount of aggro in percentage of that 100%.. so if he has 51% of the total aggro, then he has aggro.. If he has 75% aggro, then surely he can stop taunting and do some dps to increase group dps. And he wouldnt have to see how much aggro the others have.. He know they have  a total of 25% aggro..</p>

[axl_2baz]

<p>That idea won't work. Cause a groupe is 6 personne, not 2. So if the tank is 51 %, it would be that the others ares sleeping on their keyboard (less than 10% of total aggro each one).</p><p>The tank might be around 20-25% and hold all the group, or not, if the wizzy or assassin let go everything, and get to 30% of total aggro.</p>

[Brook]

<p><cite>DngrMouse wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Sigh.  I don't know exactly what is behind the rather obvious anti-dps bias in these forums, but it gets old.  For every DPS class that 'button mashes' his way to the top of the parse list, there's a tank that can't hold aggro in a paper bag, a healer who does'nt know what those little icons mean, and a mezzer who thinks app IV is just fine.  People who don't know how to play occupy all classes, and equally so, that I've seen.</p><p>And no, the hate meter is not a 'crutch'.  It's a tool...a needed tool, which no more constitutes hand-holding than health bars, and detrimental effects windows.</p></blockquote><p>I agree its a tool, its like training wheels on a kids bike so they can learn to ride, only these never come off. Its for all those people who never learned to properly play their class, and now they don't have to.</p>

[Noaani]

<p><cite>Kordran wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>I'll say it again. The tank's job in the group is not to wipe everyone's noses and make sure little Bobby the Assassin or Tommy the Wizard knows how to play their class and do their job without ripping aggro. This idea that the tank should be saying "Uh oh guys, I see someone's awfully close to ripping, you better slow that DPS down!" is complete and utter rubbish. The Wizard rips and dies because he casts Bolt of Ice when his threat meter shows him at 90%? The correct response from the tank is to point, laugh, and resume tanking.</blockquote><p>Why would the idea in the OP make it so this was the case?</p><p>For every group with a tank that is calling others out, ther is a different group where it is the DPS calling out the tank, and a different group where it is the healer calling everyone out. If there is a tool for DPS to see how far off the tank they are for hate, why not implement that in reverse for the tank.</p><p>Its one of those things that some players simply will not use, myself as an example. But it is something that many would gain use from, as evidanced by the existance of this thread, and the people posting here for it.</p><p>Some players will undoubtidly use it to tell others how to play, but chances are they are the type of player that would do that anyway. Some players would undoubtidly use it to give a que as to when to switch to off stance to put up a bit more DPS, but chances are those players would do that anyway. Some players would undoubtidly use it as a mini game, playing "get the hate meter as high as I can" in their groups and raids.</p><p>Basically, its a tool. Nothing more, nothing less. It has the potential to only do what players would find a way to do without it (hence my main reason for not <em>actually</em> caring if it got put in). I can't see how implementing it could be a bad thing for the game overall.</p>

[Eugam]

<p><cite>Akuu@Runnyeye wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Say you got a PuG that has some lousy dps and a wicked tank.. The tank can through dps in defensive alone compare to the aggro the so called dps classes are doing... Why would the said tank still rotate taunts to increase aggro further, when he instead could contribute to killing the mob faster?</p></blockquote><p>As tank ? Demand DPS. Be polite and friendly, but demand DPS. You shouldnt play the game for them. Its a circle. Many DPS player dont go out in PUGs because there are bad tanks as well. Once the hate meter makes it obvious that tankage and dps is good for a few spikes more it will help PUG's</p>

[Noaani]

<p><cite>axl_2baz wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>That idea won't work. Cause a groupe is 6 personne, not 2. So if the tank is 51 %, it would be that the others ares sleeping on their keyboard (less than 10% of total aggro each one).</p><p>The tank might be around 20-25% and hold all the group, or not, if the wizzy or assassin let go everything, and get to 30% of total aggro.</p></blockquote><p>Have you seen how it is implemented on test from a tanks perspective?</p><p>If the tank is around 20-25%, someone else is tanking.</p>

[Gamer1965]

<p><cite>Kordran wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>DngrMouse wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>And no, the hate meter is not a 'crutch'.  It's a tool...a needed tool, which no more constitutes hand-holding than health bars, and detrimental effects windows.</blockquote><p>Admittedly it's anecdotal, but everyone I've talked with in my own guild, and friends in other raiding guilds, think that a threat meter is unnecessary for anyone who's good at playing their toon -- after all, they've been playing just fine for the past 4 years without one. The consensus seems to be that, at best, <strong><span style="font-size: medium;">it'll help noobs suck a bit less.</span></strong></p><p>So yeah, it's a crutch.</p></blockquote><p>But wouldn't you consider that a reasonable thing to happen?   I agree, for those that know how to play their toons, it wouldn't be a <em>necessary</em> tool to use, but what about those who may find it necessary ?  Wouldn't this tool allow those 'noobs' to have a chance to develop into a better player.  Wouldn't that then increase the pool of decent players that established and/or up and coming raid guilds would want to recruit?  And just like a crutch in RL, you don't always have to use it.  Just long enough to 'do it on you own'...</p>

[axl_2baz]

<p><span style="color: #ffffff;">@ <span><a></a><strong><span style="font-size: x-small;">Noaani</span></strong></span><span><span> </span> : I Know, I was answering to </span><span><a></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><strong><span>Vulkan_NTooki</span></strong> idea,<strong> </strong>I should have quoted him. My bad <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/136dd33cba83140c7ce38db096d05aed.gif" border="0" /></span></span></span></p>

[DngrMou]

<p><cite>Kordran wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>DngrMouse wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>I wonder if all those people you've spoken with are willing to give up their crutches?  No more health bars, effects windows, (beneficial, and detrimental), name tags, etc.....or does this whole crutch idea only work in one direction?</blockquote><p>It's a crutch because it's information that some may find useful, but it is not needed to play the game. Healers need to know how much health players have in order to do their job. DPS doesn't need to know how close they are to the top of the mob's threat list. How do I know this? <strong>Because everyone has been playing this game for the past 4+ years without a threat meter, and they've done just fine.</strong> Is that really so difficult to understand?</p></blockquote><p>So what?  We did'nt have a lot of things, for a long time....that does'nt make something new a crutch.  I find it more than just a little hypocritical to assume DPS classes should just intuitively 'know', while other classes need special tools to accomplish their jobs....and for some reason, that's just fine.  Healers NEED to know when to heal, but DPS classes have no NEED to know when to increase, or decrease the damage they're putting out?  Tanks NEED the mob's implied target window to know when/who rips aggro, but DPS classes have no NEED to know that they're close to ripping?  DPS classes should just intuitively know that the tank did'nt cast his taunt when it was up, and they're dangerously close to the top of the hate list?</p>

[DngrMou]

<p><cite>Brook wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>DngrMouse wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Sigh.  I don't know exactly what is behind the rather obvious anti-dps bias in these forums, but it gets old.  For every DPS class that 'button mashes' his way to the top of the parse list, there's a tank that can't hold aggro in a paper bag, a healer who does'nt know what those little icons mean, and a mezzer who thinks app IV is just fine.  People who don't know how to play occupy all classes, and equally so, that I've seen.</p><p>And no, the hate meter is not a 'crutch'.  It's a tool...a needed tool, which no more constitutes hand-holding than health bars, and detrimental effects windows.</p></blockquote><p>I agree its a tool, its like training wheels on a kids bike so they can learn to ride, only these never come off. Its for all those people who never learned to properly play their class, and now they don't have to.</p></blockquote><p>Let me ask you the same questions.  Why are'nt healers expected to learn when to heal, and when to cure 'intuitively', as DPS classes are expected to just know that they're one CA away from ripping?  Why the double standard?</p>

[Vulkan_NTooki]

<p><cite>axl_2baz wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>That idea won't work. Cause a groupe is 6 personne, not 2. So if the tank is 51 %, it would be that the others ares sleeping on their keyboard (less than 10% of total aggro each one).</p><p>The tank might be around 20-25% and hold all the group, or not, if the wizzy or assassin let go everything, and get to 30% of total aggro.</p></blockquote><p>As I said.. 51% on tank = solid aggro..</p><p>lets say group is 2 dps, 2 utility, 1 healer 1 tank.</p><p>Tanks has 25% hate, dps1 has 23, dps2 has 21, utility1 has 10% and utiliy2 has 11% and healer has rest 10%.</p><p>Tank will have aggro in this situation.. barely.. yes..</p><p>Lets say u have 3 slackers in group.. 2 utility slackers and 1 dps slacker..</p><p>D1 has 35% aggro, D2 has 10% aggro, U1 has 3% aggro, U2 has 5% aggro, healer has 10% aggro, which leaves the tank with 37% aggro.. he still has the edge..</p><p>Now lets say u have a wicked tank and slacker rest of the group(except healer)..</p><p>Tank has 60% aggro, D1 has 10%, D2 has 10%, U1 has 5%, U2 has 5%, Healer has 10%</p><p>This is very viable for a PuG with a good tank where the dps hardly does more than 2-3k dps, and Utility does barely above 1k</p><p>(this equals Tank(100), D1(16.5), D2(16,5), U1 and U2(8,3 roughly each) and healer (16,5) in its current setup on test.</p><p>Now the dps obviously can see that they have way room to improve their dps compared to the tank.. but they can sit back and relax cause the tank cant see that anyways..</p><p>Now.. do you think the tank in the last scenario should keep taunting or switch offensive (provided he knew how far ahead he was)? Do you think he would switch if he didnt know?</p>

[Eugam]

<p><cite>DngrMouse wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Brook wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>DngrMouse wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Sigh. I don't know exactly what is behind the rather obvious anti-dps bias in these forums, but it gets old. For every DPS class that 'button mashes' his way to the top of the parse list, there's a tank that can't hold aggro in a paper bag, a healer who does'nt know what those little icons mean, and a mezzer who thinks app IV is just fine. People who don't know how to play occupy all classes, and equally so, that I've seen.</p><p>And no, the hate meter is not a 'crutch'. It's a tool...a needed tool, which no more constitutes hand-holding than health bars, and detrimental effects windows.</p></blockquote><p>I agree its a tool, its like training wheels on a kids bike so they can learn to ride, only these never come off. Its for all those people who never learned to properly play their class, and now they don't have to.</p></blockquote><p>Let me ask you the same questions. Why are'nt healers expected to learn when to heal, and when to cure 'intuitively', as DPS classes are expected to just know that they're one CA away from ripping? Why the double standard?</p></blockquote><p>It is a crutch. If people are fixated on the hate meter they miss something. YOu big boom probably has 2.5 s casting timer. You dont cast it because there is not enough hate. BUT, within those 2.5 secs the tank tauns and has a few procs. The hate meter is no exact science.</p><p>A good healer does heal intuitively. Do i have a meter of the shamans wards or the clerics reactives ? Nope, may hots have to go in intuitively. Many wardens just spam heals. But a good healer knows the timers intuitively. The health bars are much less important then you think for a healer.</p>

[axl_2baz]

<p><cite>Akuu@Runnyeye wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>axl_2baz wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>That idea won't work. Cause a groupe is 6 personne, not 2. So if the tank is 51 %, it would be that the others ares sleeping on their keyboard (less than 10% of total aggro each one).</p><p>The tank might be around 20-25% and hold all the group, or not, if the wizzy or assassin let go everything, and get to 30% of total aggro.</p></blockquote><p>As I said.. 51% on tank = solid aggro..</p><p>lets say group is 2 dps, 2 utility, 1 healer 1 tank.</p><p>Tanks has 25% hate, dps1 has 23, dps2 has 21, utility1 has 10% and utiliy2 has 11% and healer has rest 10%.</p><p>Tank will have aggro in this situation.. barely.. yes..</p><p>Lets say u have 3 slackers in group.. 2 utility slackers and 1 dps slacker..</p><p>D1 has 35% aggro, D2 has 10% aggro, U1 has 3% aggro, U2 has 5% aggro, healer has 10% aggro, which leaves the tank with 37% aggro.. he still has the edge..</p><p>Now lets say u have a wicked tank and slacker rest of the group(except healer)..</p><p>Tank has 60% aggro, D1 has 10%, D2 has 10%, U1 has 5%, U2 has 5%, Healer has 10%</p><p>This is very viable for a PuG with a good tank where the dps hardly does more than 2-3k dps, and Utility does barely above 1k</p><p>(this equals Tank(100), D1(16.5), D2(16,5), U1 and U2(8,3 roughly each) and healer (16,5) in its current setup on test.</p><p>Now the dps obviously can see that they have way room to improve their dps compared to the tank.. but they can sit back and relax cause the tank cant see that anyways..</p><p>Now.. do you think the tank in the last scenario should keep taunting or switch offensive (provided he knew how far ahead he was)? Do you think he would switch if he didnt know?</p></blockquote><p>I totally agree, but in a tight situation, as your first or second case, the tank won't know how close the DPS are from making the mob come to them,</p><p>That's wy I said it was not a good idea ... except if the group can see all the threat-meters.</p>

[Noaani]

<p><cite>Eugam wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>A good healer does heal intuitively. Do i have a meter of the shamans wards or the clerics reactives ? Nope, may hots have to go in intuitively. Many wardens just spam heals. But a good healer knows the timers intuitively. The health bars are much less important then you think for a healer.</blockquote><p>There are UI mods that tell healers when their reactive, regen or ward is running out and there are click to cure mods.</p><p>There are no mods anywhere for this game in relation to hate control.</p>

[Gamer1965]

<p>It's NOT a crutch. You can simply toggle it off.   But, if you do 'enhance' this tool much in the way as the OP suggest, then yes, it would then be a crutch and would end up being detrimental to the 'good' of the game...</p>

[Dasein]

<p><cite>Kordran wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>DngrMouse wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>I wonder if all those people you've spoken with are willing to give up their crutches?  No more health bars, effects windows, (beneficial, and detrimental), name tags, etc.....or does this whole crutch idea only work in one direction?</blockquote><p>It's a crutch because it's information that some may find useful, but it is not needed to play the game. Healers need to know how much health players have in order to do their job. DPS doesn't need to know how close they are to the top of the mob's threat list. How do I know this? <strong>Because everyone has been playing this game for the past 4+ years without a threat meter, and they've done just fine.</strong> Is that really so difficult to understand?</p></blockquote><p>The game had been out for a couple of years before the detrimental effects window was introduced, and players got along just fine with it. Same with consolidated healer cures. Now, however, encounters require players to watch their detrimental effects and curing is as iportant as straight healing. In other words, as players get new tools and more information, the developers can add new encounter features to take advantage of this information, adding additional levels of complexity to the game.</p>

[DngrMou]

<p><cite>Eugam wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>DngrMouse wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Brook wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>DngrMouse wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Sigh. I don't know exactly what is behind the rather obvious anti-dps bias in these forums, but it gets old. For every DPS class that 'button mashes' his way to the top of the parse list, there's a tank that can't hold aggro in a paper bag, a healer who does'nt know what those little icons mean, and a mezzer who thinks app IV is just fine. People who don't know how to play occupy all classes, and equally so, that I've seen.</p><p>And no, the hate meter is not a 'crutch'. It's a tool...a needed tool, which no more constitutes hand-holding than health bars, and detrimental effects windows.</p></blockquote><p>I agree its a tool, its like training wheels on a kids bike so they can learn to ride, only these never come off. Its for all those people who never learned to properly play their class, and now they don't have to.</p></blockquote><p>Let me ask you the same questions. Why are'nt healers expected to learn when to heal, and when to cure 'intuitively', as DPS classes are expected to just know that they're one CA away from ripping? Why the double standard?</p></blockquote><p>It is a crutch. If people are fixated on the hate meter they miss something. YOu big boom probably has 2.5 s casting timer. You dont cast it because there is not enough hate. BUT, within those 2.5 secs the tank tauns and has a few procs. The hate meter is no exact science.</p><p>A good healer does heal intuitively. Do i have a meter of the shamans wards or the clerics reactives ? Nope, may hots have to go in intuitively. Many wardens just spam heals. But a good healer knows the timers intuitively. The health bars are much less important then you think for a healer.</p></blockquote><p>Uh huh.  And you would have no problem with disabling health bars, power bars, and icons that represent detrimental, (curable), effects on other players then, right?  Because, afterall, you can't know that something 'big' is going to happen. so that renders them completely useless.</p><p>And as an aside, yes I do recognize that a good healer is not going to depend on some of those visual cues for all of their decision making....but in the same vein, good dps'ers are not going to rely on the hate meter for all of their decisions either.  In both cases, they can help good players by providing information that is otherwise not available, and give players that are'nt as good an excellent tool that will help them improve.  How is this a bad thing, exactly?</p>

[Vulkan_NTooki]

<p><cite>axl_2baz wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Akuu@Runnyeye wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>axl_2baz wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>That idea won't work. Cause a groupe is 6 personne, not 2. So if the tank is 51 %, it would be that the others ares sleeping on their keyboard (less than 10% of total aggro each one).</p><p>The tank might be around 20-25% and hold all the group, or not, if the wizzy or assassin let go everything, and get to 30% of total aggro.</p></blockquote><p>As I said.. 51% on tank = solid aggro..</p><p>lets say group is 2 dps, 2 utility, 1 healer 1 tank.</p><p>Tanks has 25% hate, dps1 has 23, dps2 has 21, utility1 has 10% and utiliy2 has 11% and healer has rest 10%.</p><p>Tank will have aggro in this situation.. barely.. yes..</p><p>Lets say u have 3 slackers in group.. 2 utility slackers and 1 dps slacker..</p><p>D1 has 35% aggro, D2 has 10% aggro, U1 has 3% aggro, U2 has 5% aggro, healer has 10% aggro, which leaves the tank with 37% aggro.. he still has the edge..</p><p>Now lets say u have a wicked tank and slacker rest of the group(except healer)..</p><p>Tank has 60% aggro, D1 has 10%, D2 has 10%, U1 has 5%, U2 has 5%, Healer has 10%</p><p>This is very viable for a PuG with a good tank where the dps hardly does more than 2-3k dps, and Utility does barely above 1k</p><p>(this equals Tank(100), D1(16.5), D2(16,5), U1 and U2(8,3 roughly each) and healer (16,5) in its current setup on test.</p><p>Now the dps obviously can see that they have way room to improve their dps compared to the tank.. but they can sit back and relax cause the tank cant see that anyways..</p><p>Now.. do you think the tank in the last scenario should keep taunting or switch offensive (provided he knew how far ahead he was)? Do you think he would switch if he didnt know?</p></blockquote><p>I totally agree, but in a tight situation, as your first or second case, the tank won't know how close the DPS are from making the mob come to them,</p><p>That's wy I said it was not a good idea ... except if the group can see all the threat-meters.</p></blockquote><p>If the tank is in situation 1 or 2 he will not drop taunts for increased dps.. he will instead be working on getting aggro alot higher... He doesnt have to see the other groups aggro percentage, cause its bloody obvious 1 or 2 is close.. <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[axl_2baz]

<p>I stand corrected <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/2786c5c8e1a8be796fb2f726cca5a0fe.gif" border="0" /></p>

[Brook]

<p><cite>DngrMouse wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Brook wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>DngrMouse wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Sigh.  I don't know exactly what is behind the rather obvious anti-dps bias in these forums, but it gets old.  For every DPS class that 'button mashes' his way to the top of the parse list, there's a tank that can't hold aggro in a paper bag, a healer who does'nt know what those little icons mean, and a mezzer who thinks app IV is just fine.  People who don't know how to play occupy all classes, and equally so, that I've seen.</p><p>And no, the hate meter is not a 'crutch'.  It's a tool...a needed tool, which no more constitutes hand-holding than health bars, and detrimental effects windows.</p></blockquote><p>I agree its a tool, its like training wheels on a kids bike so they can learn to ride, only these never come off. Its for all those people who never learned to properly play their class, and now they don't have to.</p></blockquote><p>Let me ask you the same questions.  Why are'nt healers expected to learn when to heal, and when to cure 'intuitively', as DPS classes are expected to just know that they're one CA away from ripping?  Why the double standard?</p></blockquote><p>Double standard?? Do you play a healer? How long have you been playing this game and having fun without training wheels?</p>

[DngrMou]

<p><cite>Brook wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>DngrMouse wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Brook wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>DngrMouse wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Sigh.  I don't know exactly what is behind the rather obvious anti-dps bias in these forums, but it gets old.  For every DPS class that 'button mashes' his way to the top of the parse list, there's a tank that can't hold aggro in a paper bag, a healer who does'nt know what those little icons mean, and a mezzer who thinks app IV is just fine.  People who don't know how to play occupy all classes, and equally so, that I've seen.</p><p>And no, the hate meter is not a 'crutch'.  It's a tool...a needed tool, which no more constitutes hand-holding than health bars, and detrimental effects windows.</p></blockquote><p>I agree its a tool, its like training wheels on a kids bike so they can learn to ride, only these never come off. Its for all those people who never learned to properly play their class, and now they don't have to.</p></blockquote><p>Let me ask you the same questions.  Why are'nt healers expected to learn when to heal, and when to cure 'intuitively', as DPS classes are expected to just know that they're one CA away from ripping?  Why the double standard?</p></blockquote><p>Double standard?? Do you play a healer? How long have you been playing this game and having fun without training wheels?</p></blockquote><p>Yes, I play a healer.  I also play a DPS class, and a caster.  And for all those classes except for DPS...there are visual cues that assist me in playing those classes better.  Or as you call them, "training wheels".  Question for you....do you have any of those enabled?  Health and power bars?  Names?  Icons representing curable effects?  If the answer is yes....when are you going learn to play with the training wheels off?</p>

[Wytie]

<p><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>On a related note... I'm looking forward to the hate changes and hope they'll allow me to do a better job of keeping aggro on my own without relying on specific classes to be in my group.  I ran a Ravenscale instance this evening in a group that consisted of myself, Templar, Fury, Troub, Necro and Conjy.  Not an ideal group for me.  I had very little melee buffs and no hate increase or transfer.  We are all raid-geared with Mythicals and it was pretty challenging keeping aggro especially in multi-mob encounters.  If the fighter changes succeed in allowing me to keep aggro without those hate transfer classes, I think they will have been successful.</p></blockquote><p>Im really gald you see it that way because thats 100% exactly how I see it and cant wait!</p><p>Cant wait for the days of giving up so much survivabilty just to be able to hold agro off dps classes are gone.</p>

[aliksteel]

<p><cite>Dasein wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Kordran wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>DngrMouse wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>I wonder if all those people you've spoken with are willing to give up their crutches?  No more health bars, effects windows, (beneficial, and detrimental), name tags, etc.....or does this whole crutch idea only work in one direction?</blockquote><p>It's a crutch because it's information that some may find useful, but it is not needed to play the game. Healers need to know how much health players have in order to do their job. DPS doesn't need to know how close they are to the top of the mob's threat list. How do I know this? <strong>Because everyone has been playing this game for the past 4+ years without a threat meter, and they've done just fine.</strong> Is that really so difficult to understand?</p></blockquote><p><strong>The game had been out for a couple of years before the detrimental effects window was introduced, and players got along just fine with it. Same with consolidated healer cures. Now, however, encounters require players to watch their detrimental effects and curing is as iportant as straight healing. In other words, as players get new tools and more information, the developers can add new encounter<em><span style="text-decoration: underline;"> </span></em>features to take advantage of this information, adding additional levels of complexity to the game</strong>.</p></blockquote><p>I'm got to go with Dasein.</p><p>This game has changed so many times in the past, That most of us can barely remember the way it was when it went live. Allmost every time they have added something you hear the same thing 'YOUR NERFING MY GAME".</p><p>Look people I know we as players don't like some one changing our game, but I could see this (If it was something that was going into the game,and this is not. It's something some one said they would like to see.) as a tool, and not a crutch for players. This tool would be able to help the new players learn how to tank at a much faster rate. It would allso help out the older players that may not have played there Alt in a very long time.</p><p>Alik Steel</p>

[Ventisly]

<p><cite>Kordran wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Gaktar@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>It's not like this doesn't happen now anyway.  Most experienced tanks that have ACT running already know how close to the top DPSer they need to be given the group makeup and monitor the DPS parse closely during combat.</blockquote><p>Not really. Most experienced tanks go full-out, maximize their threat generation (which right now usually means tanking in offensive stance and maximizing their own DPS) and eyeball their implied target to watch for anyone ripping from them. They don't use ACT to perform some mental calculation as to determine what their maximum damage needs to be to hold aggro. There's not a tank out there -- at least not one with a functioning brain -- who looks at a parse and decides to ramp down their damage because all that "extra threat" isn't needed. The only thing an ACT parse can really do is help them decide to put Moderate or Amends on.</p><p>Changing the threat meter so it shows how close you are to having aggro taken by someone (and you wouldn't know specifically who) isn't particularly useful information. If you're the tank, what are you going to do? Taunt "extra hard"? Pre-emptively blow one of your rescue/position increases? If you have a clue about how to play your class, you'll be taunting every time the CA is up in your rotation. If someone is going to rip, they're going to rip and you'll know it when the implied target changes. And personally, I don't mind if some DPS with a wild hair rips and gets punched in the face. It's the only way they'll learn how to keep it in their pants and play their toon correctly. As the tank, your first responsibility is to your healers. The finger wigglers and the backstabbers? Not so much. If they're eating a lot of dirt, then they know what they need to do -- or they can keep paying a repair bill until they learn not to suck.</p><p>I'll say it again. The tank's job in the group is not to wipe everyone's noses and make sure little Bobby the Assassin or Tommy the Wizard knows how to play their class and do their job without ripping aggro. This idea that the tank should be saying "Uh oh guys, I see someone's awfully close to ripping, you better slow that DPS down!" is complete and utter rubbish. The Wizard rips and dies because he casts Bolt of Ice when his threat meter shows him at 90%? The correct response from the tank is to point, laugh, and resume tanking.</p></blockquote><p>Have you actually seen the changes on test?  Yes, I will taunt extra hard if someone is rising quickly up the hate ladder (for example a wizzy with jcap or alacrity).  My casting order can change drastically whether I want to focus more on DPS or more on threat and it doesn't have to involve a stance change.  There's also other things a tank can do besides DPS and hate management.  How about casting defensive buffs or regening power or a whole range of other things that you can focus on to make the encounter more successful if you are not at dire risk of losing aggro.</p><p>But go ahead and laugh at your T1 DPSers, mine will enjoy grouping and raiding with me more since I'll be trying to adjust to them just as much as they try to adjust to me.</p>

[Morrolan V]

<p><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>It really depends on what angle you want to approach from.</p><p>Most DPS classes will be pushing the limit of hate as much as they can, but as they approach the threshold of gaining aggro they will probably back off.  I play a Guardian and personally I will be generating as much hate as I can, all the time so the DPS can push as much as possible.  If I slow my hate down to match them, and they are slowing down so they don't take aggro it could lead to a cycle where we're neither working as hard as we could be.  By me focusing on hate and not so much on dps, hopefully I create a big enough gap that the DPS classes can push their hardest and not have to worry about slowing down for me.</p><p>Only in a situation where I'm generating WAY more hate than the DPS classes would I worry about not taunting as much.  And I don't know about you, but I already run out of combat arts as a Guardian.  I can rotate all my taunts and CA's and still sometimes be waiting on abilities to refresh depending on my group buffs.  For me, I think the biggest use of the threat meter will be in multi-mob encounters or when we've got adds.  It'll allow me to quickly cycle through the targets and I'll know just how much I need to do to get aggro.  On single target fights I dont expect I'll have to look at it much because I generally don't have aggro problems in that situation.</p><p>On a related note... I'm looking forward to the hate changes and hope they'll allow me to do a better job of keeping aggro on my own without relying on specific classes to be in my group.  I ran a Ravenscale instance this evening in a group that consisted of myself, Templar, Fury, Troub, Necro and Conjy.  Not an ideal group for me.  I had very little melee buffs and no hate increase or transfer.  We are all raid-geared with Mythicals and it was pretty challenging keeping aggro especially in multi-mob encounters.  If the fighter changes succeed in allowing me to keep aggro without those hate transfer classes, I think they will have been successful.</p></blockquote><p>I agree with you about the need for the boost to threat generation.  My normal Dirge and Coercer post-raid group mates weren't around the other night, so I tanked Necrotic Asylum in a group with three brigands with Mythicals and no hate gain/transfer.  Good thing brigands can take hits.</p><p>I really don't think the downward spiral you mention is a risk.  Tanks will be going pretty much flat out on TPS anyhow, but there are things the tank can do to preemptively increase aggro a bit more that he or she may not want to have in regular rotation. </p><p>As to the comments about the threat meter being a crutch, I can see that point.  We have all played the game and done without it.  The counter argument, though, is that it gives DPS a tool to use and a "reminder" that aggro management is everyone's job.  Do we "need" it? No. </p><p>Ultimately, you are adding the tool.  IF you are going to put the tool in, why not make it useful for tanks?  As it stands, I will turn it off while tanking, as it will just take up screen real estate.</p>

[Kordran]

<p><cite>Gaktar@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Have you actually seen the changes on test?  Yes, I will taunt extra hard if someone is rising quickly up the hate ladder (for example a wizzy with jcap or alacrity).  My casting order can change drastically whether I want to focus more on DPS or more on threat and it doesn't have to involve a stance change.  There's also other things a tank can do besides DPS and hate management.  How about casting defensive buffs or regening power or a whole range of other things that you can focus on to make the encounter more successful if you are not at dire risk of losing aggro.</p><p>But go ahead and laugh at your T1 DPSers, mine will enjoy grouping and raiding with me more since I'll be trying to adjust to them just as much as they try to adjust to me.</p></blockquote><p>Yes, and I've actually playtested with other players on Test Copy using my raid geared Paladin (i.e.: I didn't just run around killing solo mobs, I actually ran through some instances). You talking about "focus more on DPS" tells me that you probably haven't spent much time there since there is no focusing on your damage when you're tanking. Your casting order and CA rotation is secondary to pounding out those taunts, because in defensive stance your damage output is nerfed into oblivion. Everything is about threat generation through taunts and hate modifiers to CAs. Here, I'll put it in bold letters for you, so you won't miss it:</p><p><strong><span style="font-size: large;">All tanks will be taunt monkeys.</span></strong></p><p>That's it. With GU51, there's no significant penalty to constantly using taunts because they're all fast casting and fast recast with a low power cost. Casting order, timing autoattacks, all that good stuff? Meaningless in the larger context of the new tanking paradigm because you're going to be forced to tank in defensive, and penalized for trying to switch stances on the fly. <strong>It's all about the taunt, taunt, taunt, taunt and taunt. Get used to it.</strong> Because if you're not doing this, and instead of taunting you're focusing on your damage CAs, you're not maximizing the damage output the DPS classes can do.</p><p>Welcome to the brave new world of GU51.</p>

[Ventisly]

<p><cite>Kordran wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Yes, and I've actually playtested with other players on Test Copy using my raid geared Paladin (i.e.: I didn't just run around killing solo mobs, I actually ran through some instances). You talking about "focus more on DPS" tells me that you probably haven't spent much time there since there is no focusing on your damage when you're tanking. Your casting order and CA rotation is secondary to pounding out those taunts, because in defensive stance your damage output is nerfed into oblivion. Everything is about threat generation through taunts and hate modifiers to CAs. Here, I'll put it in bold letters for you, so you won't miss it:</p><p><strong><span style="font-size: large;">All tanks will be taunt monkeys.</span></strong></p><p>That's it. With GU51, there's no significant penalty to constantly using taunts because they're all fast casting and fast recast with a low power cost. Casting order, timing autoattacks, all that good stuff? Meaningless in the larger context of the new tanking paradigm because you're going to be forced to tank in defensive, and penalized for trying to switch stances on the fly. <strong>It's all about the taunt, taunt, taunt, taunt and taunt. Get used to it.</strong> Because if you're not doing this, and instead of taunting you're focusing on your damage CAs, you're not maximizing the damage output the DPS classes can do.</p><p>Welcome to the brave new world of GU51.</p></blockquote><p>That's like saying all bards are buff monkeys.  A well played bard can do so much more and the same will still be true for tanks after LU51.  Sure, you could probably hold aggro with just spamming the taunts but I doubt any decent tank will be satisfied with that and will instead work to find the perfect balance of holding aggro, squeezing out as much DPS and/or survivability they can while tanking.  Sure, in a good group of several high DPSers I'll need to taunt/snap aggro a lot more but that's not too different from what I do on live right now.  Are things changing with LU51?  Yup.  Will tanking still be a challenge after LU51?  It will be what you make of it.</p>

[Motzi]

<p><cite>Kordran wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>That's it. With GU51, there's no significant penalty to constantly using taunts because they're all fast casting and fast recast with a low power cost. Casting order, timing autoattacks, all that good stuff? Meaningless in the larger context of the new tanking paradigm because you're going to be forced to tank in defensive, and penalized for trying to switch stances on the fly. <strong>It's all about the taunt, taunt, taunt, taunt and taunt. Get used to it.</strong> Because if you're not doing this, and instead of taunting you're focusing on your damage CAs, you're not maximizing the damage output the DPS classes can do.</p><p>Welcome to the brave new world of GU51.</p></blockquote><p>My expectation is that while currently bards and druids are the official 'spouse class', this is going to quickly change to tanks.  Ie, they now become the easiest class to provide it's basic roll.  Some dps will be possible outside of that roll, but for all intensive purposes you can put your least skilled player in the raid on the tank now and get your best skilled people on other classes.</p><p>Tanking becomes very passive decisions.  Having the right gear on, having the right buffs on, etc.  What you do in combat can be summed up to 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, ,2 ,3 ,4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4.... WIN!</p>

[VALKOR]

<p>Regardless of how you feel about the tool, I agree that the threat meter could be made more useful to tanks by showing how close the next person is.  Maybe Guardians don't have a lot of choice about what to do, as Rothgar implied, but as a paladin I would certainly be able to utilize knowing how much breathing room I had in order to cast a ward, a heal, use a heart/shard/potion, judge how many of my CAs and spells to cycle through, etc. instead of taunting.  If we aren't on a raid, my CAs/Spells do a number of useful things besides DPS (stifle/stun/interrupt) so I can make a case for them on that alone (because someone will falsely assume I want to use my CAs/spells to do more DPS so might as well preempt that argument now).</p><p>If the next closest person is at 91% hate, then have my meter show 109% (simple 100-[next highest #]).  If they are at 99% and my meter is showing 101, then it's not a good time for me to do anything besides taunt.  Even guardians have to make a call about when to use a heart/shard/potion, so having an idea how far ahead in the aggro race you are would be useful in that respect.  Unfortunately, this thread got derailed into thinking it would help DPS, and while it might, it has a number of useful non-DPS reasons to be included.</p><p>Right now, the hate meter is almost entirely useless for the tank as I can tell I lost aggro by the mob spinning, running away, dead characters all around, etc.  As for using the hate meter with multiple mobs, I again think tanks are more likely to look at the screen and rely on orientation and targetting rather than a hate meter.  And would anyone really target through 5 mobs, mentally jot down the #s, then determine which one to target back to in order to work on it?  The only real world use of the hate meter by a tank would be to give some indication of how well you are doing holding aggro - the hate meter would then be useful in that it would add another dimension to aggro control instead of the current you have it / you don't.</p><p>I had originally hoped the meter would simply display the percentage of overall hate you had so that there would be no obvious value but instead you'd have to get a feel for what was right.  For example, if I am in a group of 3 and I have 45%, the next person has 30%, and the last has 25% then I would have to learn what % of hate my companions tended to have in small groups, full groups, and on raids.</p><p>No doubt there are pros and cons to that approach, but if we are going with the simple 0-100 then I would prefer the modification Morrolan V suggested in order to make it much more useful to the tank, especially tanks whose survivability depends in some measure on their own actions.</p>

[Motzi]

<p><cite>VALKOR wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I had originally hoped the meter would simply display the percentage of overall hate you had so that there would be no obvious value but instead you'd have to get a feel for what was right.  For example, if I am in a group of 3 and I have 45%, the next person has 30%, and the last has 25% then I would have to learn what % of hate my companions tended to have in small groups, full groups, and on raids.</p></blockquote><p>Thats the most reasonable thing I've read about this so far.</p><p>I agree, if the hate meter worked this way, it would be useful to all parties without being overly /easymode.</p>

[Rothgar]

<p><cite>Motzi@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>VALKOR wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I had originally hoped the meter would simply display the percentage of overall hate you had so that there would be no obvious value but instead you'd have to get a feel for what was right.  For example, if I am in a group of 3 and I have 45%, the next person has 30%, and the last has 25% then I would have to learn what % of hate my companions tended to have in small groups, full groups, and on raids.</p></blockquote><p>Thats the most reasonable thing I've read about this so far.</p><p>I agree, if the hate meter worked this way, it would be useful to all parties without being overly /easymode.</p></blockquote><p>I'm not sure I follow this logic.</p><p>Take the following 2 scenarios with me as the tank.</p><p><strong>Scenario 1</strong></p><p><strong>Me (30%)</strong>, DPS1 (25%), DPS2 (18%), DPS3 (16%), Healer1 (8%), Healer2 (4%)</p><p>In this situation the meter would display 30% and I would have hate on the target.</p><p><strong>Scenario 2</strong></p><p>DPS1 (32%), <strong>Me (30%)</strong>, DPS2 (15%), DPS3 (12%), Healer1 (7%), Healer2 (4%)</p><p>In this scenario the meter still displays 30% for me, but I dont have hate any more.</p><p>If each person can only see their percentage of the overall hate, how would this number be useful without knowning what everyone else's hate is?</p>

[Slowin]

<p>The threat meter should work fine as is.  If it were to change to be more useful to the tank himself, then the display would simply have to be changed to exceed 100%.</p><p>If number 2 on hate list is generating 9k hate and tank is generating 10k hate: number 2 reads 90% and the tanks meter reads 111%.</p><p>if number 2 is at 1,375,333 and the tank is at 2,798,231 then it would read 49% for the dps.. and the tank reads 203%</p><p>A mechanic like this would be beneficial to both the tank and the dps and i'd find it fun to see how high i could get my number as a tank use this mechanism <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Detor]

<p><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>If each person can only see their percentage of the overall hate, how would this number be useful without knowning what everyone else's hate is?</p></blockquote><p>Personally I'd like to simply have a bar with one red triangle (me), then 5 white triangles that move left to right along the scale.  If mob is on tank, then I know the right most arrow is him.  I can also safely assume the left most arrow is usually going to be a healer.  I can easily see how far I am from gaining aggro.  The tank can easily see how much more hate he has and how quickly everybody else is catching up to his hate by judging the speed of the other arrows getting closer to his.  That way the hate meter would be useable for tanks all the time rather than just when they've lost aggro and they're going to try to spam their +position abilities anyway.</p><p>I didn't bring it up until now because quite frankly ANY hate meter is more than we have now, so if it stays the same as it is now on test it's still more information than we had before.</p>

[Slowin]

<p>One thing i am curious about is how exactly decreasing threat position works.  If you're in a group of 6 people and say you have 2 crappy utility dps 2 healers.. and a tank and you are the amazing dps. </p><p>So the tank is at 100k hate.. i am at 90k hate.. and the crappies are at 50k or below.  If i now use my decrease threat position, does that in essence decrease my threat by 40,001, putting my effective threat at 49,999?</p>

[krrr]

<p><cite>Detor wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>If each person can only see their percentage of the overall hate, how would this number be useful without knowning what everyone else's hate is?</p></blockquote><p>Personally I'd like to simply have a bar with one red triangle (me), then 5 white triangles that move left to right along the scale.  If mob is on tank, then I know the right most arrow is him.  I can also safely assume the left most arrow is usually going to be a healer.  I can easily see how far I am from gaining aggro.  The tank can easily see how much more hate he has and how quickly everybody else is catching up to his hate by judging the speed of the other arrows getting closer to his.  That way the hate meter would be useable for tanks all the time rather than just when they've lost aggro and they're going to try to spam their +position abilities anyway.</p><p>I didn't bring it up until now because quite frankly ANY hate meter is more than we have now, so if it stays the same as it is now on test it's still more information than we had before.</p></blockquote><p>And in raid you`ll have 23 triangles? Will make things unreadable.</p>

[Detor]

<p><cite>Darlock@Runnyeye wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Detor wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>If each person can only see their percentage of the overall hate, how would this number be useful without knowning what everyone else's hate is?</p></blockquote><p>Personally I'd like to simply have a bar with one red triangle (me), then 5 white triangles that move left to right along the scale.  If mob is on tank, then I know the right most arrow is him.  I can also safely assume the left most arrow is usually going to be a healer.  I can easily see how far I am from gaining aggro.  The tank can easily see how much more hate he has and how quickly everybody else is catching up to his hate by judging the speed of the other arrows getting closer to his.  That way the hate meter would be useable for tanks all the time rather than just when they've lost aggro and they're going to try to spam their +position abilities anyway.</p><p>I didn't bring it up until now because quite frankly ANY hate meter is more than we have now, so if it stays the same as it is now on test it's still more information than we had before.</p></blockquote><p>And in raid you`ll have 23 triangles? Will make things unreadable.</p></blockquote><p>Group and raid windows are different - no reason a hate meter couldn't work differently in a group or raid as well.  Even with that said though using the same hate meter with a raid you'd still have your triangle being easy to see because it's red, and you'd still be able to see just how far you are from the right side where the current aggro holder is, meanwhile the tank would still be able to see if any arrows are getting close to the right side where he's seeing his red triangle.  Certainly more informative than him just seeing 100 in his hate meter.</p>

[VALKOR]

<p><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Motzi@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>VALKOR wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I had originally hoped the meter would simply display the percentage of overall hate you had so that there would be no obvious value but instead you'd have to get a feel for what was right.  For example, if I am in a group of 3 and I have 45%, the next person has 30%, and the last has 25% then I would have to learn what % of hate my companions tended to have in small groups, full groups, and on raids.</p></blockquote><p>Thats the most reasonable thing I've read about this so far.</p><p>I agree, if the hate meter worked this way, it would be useful to all parties without being overly /easymode.</p></blockquote><p>I'm not sure I follow this logic.</p><p>Take the following 2 scenarios with me as the tank.</p><p><strong>Scenario 1</strong></p><p><strong>Me (30%)</strong>, DPS1 (25%), DPS2 (18%), DPS3 (16%), Healer1 (7%[Valkor edit from orig 8%]), Healer2 (4%)</p><p>In this situation the meter would display 30% and I would have hate on the target.</p><p><strong>Scenario 2</strong></p><p>DPS1 (32%), <strong>Me (30%)</strong>, DPS2 (15%), DPS3 (12%), Healer1 (7%), Healer2 (4%)</p><p>In this scenario the meter still displays 30% for me, but I dont have hate any more.</p><p>If each person can only see their percentage of the overall hate, how would this number be useful without knowning what everyone else's hate is?</p></blockquote><p>With this alternate system, there would be no absolute reference - hate % would be entirely relative.  The only certain number would be 51% and above (and that would likely only happen in small groups).  You would have to learn through gameplay experience what % to expect in each setting and group make up.  In either Scenario 1 or 2, you would know the mob was on you by the current visual game clues along of course with the mob's target.  The drawback to this system, as you pointed out, is that it doesn't tell you whether or not you have aggro - only how much overall hate you have, and on raids, it would become a razor-edge percentage.  One of the complaints about this change has been about it being /easymode; this alternate method would make it so that hate was easy to figure out in small groups, a bit harder in full groups, and much harder on raids.  It provides an inherent scaling that goes along with the intended difficulty of the situation.</p><p>However, I don't want to lose site of the main thread's suggestion.  9x%+ of the time the hate meter won't be of much use for the tank as the mob will be on them.  By having the meter display 100 + (100 - [2nd rank person #]), you retain the features of the current system while making the hate meter more interesting for the person whose primary role is to generate hate.  Am I running 101 in this group because DPS1 is consistently hovering around 99, or am I at a solid 105, or even coasting at 115?  No doubt the #s will fluctuate throughout each fight but having any number at all would help plan the secondary and tertiary actions I take as a tank (preventive ward, heal, heart/shard/potion, CA/Spells for interrupt/stifle/stun/debuff, activiate an item, use my mythical, etc.).  And frankly, it would be fun to see how much my # spikes when I cast rescue and how quickly it falls back down toward 100 and the imminent loss of aggro.</p><p>Thanks for reading - always nice to see comments and feedback from developers and the community at large.</p>

[Scythien]

Personally I like the idea of the new hate meter. It'll let me know how hard I can push my dps without peeling, which before I'd only know because I'd be a splat on the floor. In the right setups for groups and raids it shouldn't be a problem with hate as all players should know their abilities like we do now, but in a less than perfect setup or even a dreaded pickup it would be good to know where your limits are set rather than peel & die which is currently the only way to know you're doing too much <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> It'd also be useful for some current encounters and create possibilities for new ones. That said I totally agree with the above idea of "100 + (100 - [2nd rank person #])" if it's to be of use to the tanks as well. If their number's fluctuating around 100-110 you'd know to keep tanting, if it's closer to 130-140 you'd know you have room to throw more DPS or other abilities in to the mix without losing aggro. If ofc you choose to use it =D

[circusgirl]

<p>I'm with Rothgar on this one.  I like the idea of a hate meter when I'm dpsing, but don't think its gonna really be useful for a tank--in any form, to be honest--since we should always be generating hate so the dps can push harder.</p>

[Danelin]

<p>Yeah, we don't want to see any change to this that gives the tank information about what is happening. That might give him the means to make an informed decision about when to do something that ISNT PUSHING A TAUNT.</p><p>The revisions as they stand have one really nice effect! It means I can un-clutter my hotbars! All those high power DPS arts can go right the heck away, and make room for taunts, positionals, and defensive abilities only!</p><p>God forbid we have to think while playing our class, or that it should be a multi-dimensional activity.</p><p>Personally I am against the creation of the hate meter because it is more 'easy mode' crap. If it IS going to go in, it should perform a function for the hate generating classes along with the hate dumping ones.</p>

[victer]

<p>something similar to the op's suggestion works best... dont need to make it all complicated.</p><p>just keep it the way it is but allow for a threshold of up to 125% or something. So if you are at 100% you are at the brink of looseing agro.</p><p>The idea is that the tank will see his agro bounceing from 100%-125% when hes at 125% he can start throw out CA's and blah blah. Everyone else just tries to stay away from 100%.</p><p>Does it make tanking even more dumbed down? I guess. But they already added an aggro meter they might as well make it right.</p>

[Xehl]

<p><cite>VALKOR wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Motzi@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>VALKOR wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I had originally hoped the meter would simply display the percentage of overall hate you had so that there would be no obvious value but instead you'd have to get a feel for what was right.  For example, if I am in a group of 3 and I have 45%, the next person has 30%, and the last has 25% then I would have to learn what % of hate my companions tended to have in small groups, full groups, and on raids.</p></blockquote><p>Thats the most reasonable thing I've read about this so far.</p><p>I agree, if the hate meter worked this way, it would be useful to all parties without being overly /easymode.</p></blockquote><p>I'm not sure I follow this logic.</p><p>Take the following 2 scenarios with me as the tank.</p><p><strong>Scenario 1</strong></p><p><strong>Me (30%)</strong>, DPS1 (25%), DPS2 (18%), DPS3 (16%), Healer1 (7%[Valkor edit from orig 8%]), Healer2 (4%)</p><p>In this situation the meter would display 30% and I would have hate on the target.</p><p><strong>Scenario 2</strong></p><p>DPS1 (32%), <strong>Me (30%)</strong>, DPS2 (15%), DPS3 (12%), Healer1 (7%), Healer2 (4%)</p><p>In this scenario the meter still displays 30% for me, but I dont have hate any more.</p><p>If each person can only see their percentage of the overall hate, how would this number be useful without knowning what everyone else's hate is?</p></blockquote><p>With this alternate system, there would be no absolute reference - hate % would be entirely relative.  The only certain number would be 51% and above (and that would likely only happen in small groups).  You would have to learn through gameplay experience what % to expect in each setting and group make up.  In either Scenario 1 or 2, you would know the mob was on you by the current visual game clues along of course with the mob's target.  The drawback to this system, as you pointed out, is that it doesn't tell you whether or not you have aggro - only how much overall hate you have, and on raids, it would become a razor-edge percentage.  One of the complaints about this change has been about it being /easymode; this alternate method would make it so that hate was easy to figure out in small groups, a bit harder in full groups, and much harder on raids.  It provides an inherent scaling that goes along with the intended difficulty of the situation.</p></blockquote><p>I really like your idea for the meter. It would not turn the game into "easymode", and it would actually allow the tank to learn about which percent would be safe, and make decisions based on that. It would be helpful but still require skill to use effectively.</p>

[Noaani]

<p>IMO there are now too many conflicting ideas in this thread to gain anything useful.</p><p>Leave the hate meter as it is, as obviously any change made will not please a lot of people.</p>

[Lord Hackenslash]

<p><cite>Noaani wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>IMO there are now too many conflicting ideas in this thread to gain anything useful.</p><p>Leave the hate meter as it is, as obviously any change made will not please a lot of people.</p></blockquote><p>Leaving it as it is will also [Removed for Content] alot of people off. thats why this thread persists.</p><p>The addition of a threat meter to this game has really dumbed it down to such a level about half my raid force has expressed they want to quit if it comes out. The problem with it, is it may be optional now but soon enough some dev will be trying to come up with a new group or raid encounter and decide that the threat meter must be used in order to defeat it. Then those who chose to learn our classes will be forced to use this tool in order to do content theoretically designed for skilled players. It happened with parsing which is not even in the game. there are encounters that have minimum and maximum DPS requirements and without a parser there is no way to know you are doing it right. those encounters were poorly thought out and the threat meter is another such pandora's box. They are trying to appeal to new players and casting aside thier player base. The threat meter will set a level of medeocrity that will drag down the quality of players and drag down the game. </p><p>I play a tank and I play a brigand and in 5 - 10 minutes I can figure out how much hate the group can generate. its not that hard just ramp up till you find the sweet spot. I like to think when i play this game its why i tried WoW and dropped my subscription before the first month ended. When there is nothing leaft to figure out the game just becomes a bunch of button mashing and looses its art.</p>

[Noaani]

<p><cite>Melina@Splitpaw wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>The addition of a threat meter to this game has really dumbed it down to such a level about half my raid force has expressed they want to quit if it comes out.</blockquote><p>IMO the HP and power bar have dumbed the game down in the same way.</p><p>A good player will know when he is about to run out of power, he knows what each of his spells take, what buffs he has on him (both temporary and persistant), what effects he has on his gear, and can take this information and is aware of exactly how much power he has left, and will know the second he is about to run out. All this without a power bar.</p><p>HP is similar, a person will know how many HP they have, how much a mob hits for, how often the mob hits, how often his healers are healing him for and for how much. Healers are the same, they should know all of this and be able to use that informatino in order to make an informed decision as to when to cast a healing spell, and whom to cast it on.</p><p>The fact that we have a visual cue for both HP and power is such a dumbing down of this game that it is beyond rediculous. I vote for the removal of both of them, along with the hate meter.</p>

[Kahling]

<p>I like the idea where the tank has 100% agro and the next has 75% it actually shows the tank 125%.  When it ticks closer to 100% you know your loosing agro.  If it stays a steady 125% you know your keeping it.  When it goes above 125% your gaining ground.</p><p>Easymode?  Probably But in this update Im not going to have the fun of watching my DPS like I used to.  I want to try and generate as much agro as possible and I want to know how I am doing and have that fun aspect of agro shown to me.  Showing 100% all the time isnt going to be very exciting.  Showing it ticking towards 100% (and loosing agro at 99%) sounds fun and exciting to me.</p><p>It also allows an informed choice wether we can afford to throw up a ward / heal / dps and miss out a taunt rotation.</p><p>If the above doesnt happen then you might have a situation in raid where people are shouting out,  IM AT 98%!! Do somthing!</p><p>With all these changes it will take people time to adjust, know what aa's to sacrifice to increase agro.  The above method retains the origional system but also informs the tank how well hes doing, adjustment would be quicker with it.</p><p>BTW Im not saying this cos Im a bad player and want easymode.  Just that I like things to be open and 100% all the time isnt fun or exciting in my opinion.</p>

[DngrMou]

<p><cite>Melina@Splitpaw wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>The addition of a threat meter to this game has really dumbed it down to such a level about half my raid force has expressed they want to quit if it comes out.</p></blockquote><p>This sentence was conveniently placed at the top of your post.  Thank you, it saved me from having to read the rest of it.  I'm just guessing here....but this same half of your raid force....they're just happy as clams with the rest of the tools in the game, yes?  Your raid force is using ACT, yes?</p>

[Scythien]

<p><cite>Melina@Splitpaw wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Leaving it as it is will also [Removed for Content] alot of people off. thats why this thread persists.</p><p>The addition of a threat meter to this game has really dumbed it down to such a level about half my raid force has expressed they want to quit if it comes out. The problem with it, is it may be optional now but soon enough some dev will be trying to come up with a new group or raid encounter and decide that the threat meter must be used in order to defeat it.</p><p>I play a tank and I play a brigand and in 5 - 10 minutes I can figure out how much hate the group can generate. its not that hard just ramp up till you find the sweet spot.</p></blockquote><p>If you don't like it then don't use it. Yes they may add an encounter where you may need to use it when learning the mob but I'm sure after a couple of kills your skilled players should know the encounter by then and not need it anymore.</p><p>I play a wizard and I've been rading 3 nights most weeks since KoS so I'm not one of your casual noobs and I'm not a hardcore 6 nights a week raider either. I know what you mean by ramping up till you find the sweet spot. Easy enough for a chain wearer but for a clothie on a raid you know you've found where your spot is when you see the nice window with 'You have died..'</p><p>Give it a month after it's implemented and all the fuss will be gone anyway =P</p>

[Ventisly]

<p><cite>DngrMouse wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Melina@Splitpaw wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>The addition of a threat meter to this game has really dumbed it down to such a level about half my raid force has expressed they want to quit if it comes out.</p></blockquote><p>This sentence was conveniently placed at the top of your post.  Thank you, it saved me from having to read the rest of it.  I'm just guessing here....but this same half of your raid force....they're just happy as clams with the rest of the tools in the game, yes?  Your raid force is using ACT, yes?</p></blockquote><p>Yea, the baloney-meter was pegged on that "threat" to quit the game.  Good call, I'm sure they are so uber they don't use ACT at all. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/e8a506dc4ad763aca51bec4ca7dc8560.gif" border="0" /></p>

[Rothgar]

<p>There are already encounters in the game that require you to manage your hate in different ways.  The threat meter isn't going to change this.  And fights like Nexona that require a min and max dps absolutely do not require you to use ACT.  You learn by putting a certain number of people on the mob all the time.  If you're doing too much dps you take a person off.  If you're not doing enough, you add another person.  Eventually you figure it out and it just works.</p><p>Hate is obviously a very large part of combat and before this update there were no tools or exposed information to give you a way to measure it.  Of course there are going to be people out there that liked the fact that it was hidden and will be resistant to change.  However, its not fair for us to expect fighters to focus on hate as a major part of their job and not give them any indicators other than "oh, the mob is now hitting on someone else".  We might make tweaks to these tools down the road, but its too early to start rewriting them when they haven't even gone live yet.  Its apparent by this thread that people have a lot of different ideas about how it should work.  I'm just asking that you try it out on live servers in your day-to-day activities for a few weeks and then lets talk about any improvements that might be needed.</p>

[Kahling]

<p>Rothgar, I agree.</p><p>With that in mind lets get it live then please.</p><p>As the update was postponed so that feedback could be assesed and since then there has been a load of whineing, some good feedback some bad feedback, and some I want lazer goggles feedback.</p><p>BUT no change to test at all from the feedback.  We have hit a brick wall.  Nothing is happening at all.  Aerialik has stated that he has some changes in the works, but that the changes are very minor tweaks.  This is somthing that could be a hotfix to live and didn't require the update to be held back for.</p><p>Your going to get a hell of allot more data when this thing is live and if there are holes in it or tweaks to be made you are going to gain allot more from it being live. </p><p>This thing is comming wether some like it or not.  Were just putting off the inevitable.  It is getting extremely frustrating as tanks we are in limbo on live at the moment and it appears to be for no reason what so ever other than a few tweaks.</p><p>When this thing hit test early Jan there was a huge ammount of action from both players testing and dev's tweaking.  It all stopped when it was announced that it was being put off and any threads asking whats going on appear to get locked.  I think we have given people enough time to test the changes now and to get their head arround the idea and there is no stopping it comming so lets bring it on and then use hotfix's from the huge ammount of data you will get.  And if you find that tanks can't do their job right from feeback and data then you can change stuff / blurr the line between single and multi target tanks taunts etc etc</p><p>Regards</p><p>Kahling</p>

[Noaani]

<p><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>However, its not fair for us to expect fighters to focus on hate as a major part of their job and not give them any indicators other than "oh, the mob is now hitting on someone else". </blockquote><p>Just something to point out...</p><p>As the tool stands currently, it does no more for a tank than the implied target window does. With the hate meter, a tank is now able to say "oh, the mob is now hitting on someone else, and I am at less than 100% on the hate meter".</p><p>Its a great tool for DPS to manage aggro, but worthless to a tank that is holding aggro. Strangly, this is what the thread was started up to address, and if your intent behind implementing it was to provide a tool for tanks... then yeah...</p>

[Kahling]

<p><cite>Noaani wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>However, its not fair for us to expect fighters to focus on hate as a major part of their job and not give them any indicators other than "oh, the mob is now hitting on someone else". </blockquote><p>Just something to point out...</p><p>As the tool stands currently, it does no more for a tank than the implied target window does. With the hate meter, a tank is now able to say "oh, the mob is now hitting on someone else, and I am at less than 100% on the hate meter".</p><p>Its a great tool for DPS to manage aggro, but worthless to a tank that is holding aggro. Strangly, this is what the thread was started up to address, and if your intent behind implementing it was to provide a tool for tanks... then yeah...</p></blockquote><p>Extremely good point.  The only person that agro is secret to when you have agro is the person with agro i.e. mostly the tank.  Therefore the fun that will be implemented with trying to get to but not go over 100% will be the dps classes.  The tank will be oblivious.  Thats why the 125% showing when the next threat down is at 75% is a good one.</p>

[Dasein]

<p><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>There are already encounters in the game that require you to manage your hate in different ways.  The threat meter isn't going to change this.  And fights like Nexona that require a min and max dps absolutely do not require you to use ACT.  You learn by putting a certain number of people on the mob all the time.  If you're doing too much dps you take a person off.  If you're not doing enough, you add another person.  Eventually you figure it out and it just works.</p></blockquote><p>If a fight offered some sort of signal that you were approaching a DPS threshold, then I'd agree, but as it is now, most DPS thresholds are silent, and there is no way to gauge performance other than with a parser. Essentially, the parser takes the place of the communication loop that should be present as part of the encounter. Adding and removing people from an encounter like Nexona is a very poor strategy for a number of reasons. A single class represents a much larger DPS swing than is often needed - moving a DPS class to Nexona can cause a swing of many thousands of DPS, and this is often far more than is needed, given Nexona's window. Often, you just need the players on Nexona to scale back a bit to bring DPS back within the safe range. Other times, you may want to rearrange groups to improve DPS via buffs, or have your big debuffers like brigands bring down Nexona's defensive abilities, thus allowing the DPS to increase a bit. This is real strategy, the sort of fine-tuning that can only be done with a good feedback loop or a parser. As the game does not have good feedback loops, parsers are really the only alternative.</p><p>On top of that, given the complexity of many of these scripts, with multiple fail conditions, trying to pick out a DPS threshold without using a parser is effectively impossible - there's just too much going on at any given time, and too many possible things which could be going on to first figure out that there is a DPS threshold at all, as opposed to some other mechanic, and then figure out what that threshold is.</p>

[liveja]

<p><cite>Melina@Splitpaw wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Noaani wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>IMO there are now too many conflicting ideas in this thread to gain anything useful.</p><p>Leave the hate meter as it is, as obviously any change made will not please a lot of people.</p></blockquote><p>Leaving it as it is will also [Removed for Content] alot of people off. thats why this thread persists.</p><p>The addition of a threat meter to this game has really dumbed it down</p></blockquote><p>Of course, nobody in your raid force uses ACT, right?</p>

[RoguePyro]

<p>I will admit first off that I've only skimmed this thread every day or two, and if this was said already I apologize.</p><p>To those wanting a way to know when the DPS is getting close to the threshold, I have but one thing to say.</p><p>/macro</p><p>/g At 90% hate, don't let me die!!</p><p>Yes it is the tanks responsibility to manage hate, but the DPS has to take some also. I already have macro's on my wizard warning when Bolt of Ice is incoming, or that I'm being hit by an add or stole agro. You don't need a meter for that.</p><p>I know, its a strange and horrible thing. DPS actaully having to do something beyond position and hit the same keys over and over. Then again, that WOULD just be one extra little keystroke, wouldn't it?</p>

[Dasein]

<p><cite>RoguePyro wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I will admit first off that I've only skimmed this thread every day or two, and if this was said already I apologize.</p><p>To those wanting a way to know when the DPS is getting close to the threshold, I have but one thing to say.</p><p>/macro</p><p>/g At 90% hate, don't let me die!!</p><p>Yes it is the tanks responsibility to manage hate, but the DPS has to take some also. I already have macro's on my wizard warning when Bolt of Ice is incoming, or that I'm being hit by an add or stole agro. You don't need a meter for that.</p><p>I know, its a strange and horrible thing. DPS actaully having to do something beyond position and hit the same keys over and over. Then again, that WOULD just be one extra little keystroke, wouldn't it?</p></blockquote><p>Most will just use voice chat, and in most situations, it doesn't matter all that much if the DPS rips for a moment, the mobs die quickly enough. A scout can take a few hits from an heroic mob without much trouble, and often times, it's simply more efficient to kill the mob than try to get agro back.</p>

[Obadiah]

<p><cite>Noaani wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>However, its not fair for us to expect fighters to focus on hate as a major part of their job and not give them any indicators other than "oh, the mob is now hitting on someone else". </blockquote><p>Just something to point out...</p><p>As the tool stands currently, it does no more for a tank than the implied target window does. With the hate meter, a tank is now able to say "oh, the mob is now hitting on someone else, and I am at less than 100% on the hate meter".</p><p>Its a great tool for DPS to manage aggro, but worthless to a tank that is holding aggro. Strangly, this is what the thread was started up to address, and if your intent behind implementing it was to provide a tool for tanks... then yeah...</p></blockquote><p>lol. Yes, that's quite funny that in arguing against this change Rothgar pointed out one of the best reasons for it.</p><p>A lot of folks are saying tanking will be boring now. At least giving them a number above 100 on the meter will give them a good [Removed for Content] feeling. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /> The tool on Test is absolutely useless to the tank, except inasmuch as when you LOSE aggro if you're at, say, 95 you can get it back with a taunt, but if you're dropped extremely low for whatever reason you may need a snap.</p><p>Even if this change would make things too "easy mode" .... a color change if anyone else was over 90 or that sort of thing would be helpful.</p>

[Grumpy_Warrior_01]

<p>Well, since this is an issue on a lot of minds right now, and the developers seem to be open to ideas (thank you), I'll add my two cents. The way I see it, the threat meter is being used in two different modes during combat. On the one hand, the tank is using it to confirm he has aggro (100%), and when he loses aggro he can see how hard it's going to be to regain it (throwing a couple of taunts at 95% versus needing a rescue at 60% to use the example above.) On the other hand, everyone who is not tanking is using the threat window to stay just below the top as in the case of an offtank (91%) or dramatically below the top as in the case of a wizard about to hit fission (11%). This is great, but I think we are asking a single number to do too much. If you are going to show nothing more than this single value, then combat hasn't really been improved enough to justify such a big change.  Kurgan suggests changing the color of the number if someone is encroaching on aggro, but I dont think this goes far enough to make it truly usable.As stated earlier in this thread, tanks need one more bit of information beyond that single aggro number in order to use the threat bubble for its stated purpose: we need to know <span style="text-decoration: underline;">how far away the next person in line is from capturing 100%</span>. Currently, the tank sees the red 100% in the bubble but has no idea if the other players are hovering at 99% or 60%. We can't poll all of our allies constantly during battle, so this prevents us from having the freedom to do anything other than compulsively taunt our butts off which has been one major point of objection lately. We don't really need to see all 5 or all 23 of the other hate values, because generally speaking who cares who is 18th or 23rd on the hate list. This also holds true for groups. I am only interested in the top end of the hate list, primarily about the one who is second in line and how far down they are from me. This value needs to go into the hate bubble alongside our personal hate number. So as you can see in the images below, when the tank has aggro (100%) he also knows at a glance that the closest competition for aggro is at 88% (or 31% or whatever), without needing everyone in the group or raid calling out their numbers on voice or spamming macros. Then when aggro is lost, those two numbers reverse and we can see how far below 100% we have fallen. The person who took aggro gets the big red 100 until it has been recaptured: <img src="http://www.frontiernet.net/~randyc1/threat/threat0.gif" /> With me so far? Okay, there's only one thing wrong with this picture. During combat the tank can look at the above threat meter and see the secondary percentage changing constantly. 91%... 86%... 97%... etc. Is this all coming from one player? Or are there several players bouncing this number between them? If I could look down and see the offtank's name consistently in the window alongside that number, this tells me something very different than if I see it flickering between offtank-assassin-mage-offtank-mage-offtank-assassin. As an alternative, I propose <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>the #2 name and percentage</strong></span> be included in the threat window.</p><p>I give you an example. Rothgar has his tank, Aeralik is on the assassin and Domino is playing her healer. As the battle begins, Aeralik is AFK and Domino has already thrown a ward on Rothgar, and so here is what each of their threat bubbles looks like. Rothgar sees that Domino is next in line on the hate list, and Domino sees the effect of the preward on initial hate. <img src="http://www.frontiernet.net/~randyc1/threat/threat1.gif" /> Aeralik returns from AFK and begins doing damage. Immediately Rothgar can confirm that Aeralik has moved into #2 by surpassing Domino's hate level, and both Aeralik and Rothgar can see how far apart they are percentage-wise. Aeralik can see the effects of his own damage and dethreats on the mob's hate, and Domino is throwing additional heals and cures, also raising her number relative to Rothgar's 100%. <img src="http://www.frontiernet.net/~randyc1/threat/threat2.gif" /> Aeralik throws an Execute, which places him at the top of the hate list. Everyone instantly sees that aggro has changed but Rothgar also sees how much distance he needs to make up to regain it. If this were an offtank in a raid, the main tank could choose to react very differently than if a mage's name appeared alongside the number. Aeralik can see the percentage difference at a glance as well as the red 100 confirming the aggro switch. <img src="http://www.frontiernet.net/~randyc1/threat/threat3.gif" /> Rothgar casts a rescue which places him back at the top of the hate list, moving the other players comfortably back into lower hate ranges and the battle continues. <img src="http://www.frontiernet.net/~randyc1/threat/threat4.gif" /> Does this duplicate the functionality of the implied target window? Yes. But I wouldn't want to see that part of the interface replaced, and really it couldn't be since it disappears for whoever has aggro, which would defeat the purpose of the information display.  Basically this proposal provides the tank with the name and % of the <span style="text-decoration: underline;">top two</span> on the hate list, and gives the non-tanks hate values for <span style="text-decoration: underline;">tank and self</span>.  That's enough information to give the tool general purpose value for its intended use, and makes it worth implementing for all combat roles.</p>

[Kahling]

<p>Grumpy Warrior.  I like it, I really do.  Tanking will be less boring and there is easily a quick 1hr dev time to implement it.</p><p>Gets my vote tbh, if were gonna have a threat meter, lets have it right, lets have it to show the tank how good he's doing so that they know when to taunt and when there lagging behind on taunts.  Lets not have it secret.</p><p>To anyone that thinks this is easymode.  Then I take it you never raided, cos if you had then you would of come accross act and used joust timers from act which tbh is the exact same easymode as a taunt meter, but in this case the main argument for having a hate meter isnt for easymode, its to make the whole experience more enjoyable and exciting for the tank.</p>

[Vortexelemental]

<p><cite>Grumpy_Warrior_01 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Well, since this is an issue on a lot of minds right now, and the developers seem to be open to ideas (thank you), I'll add my two cents. The way I see it, the threat meter is being used in two different modes during combat. On the one hand, the tank is using it to confirm he has aggro (100%), and when he loses aggro he can see how hard it's going to be to regain it (throwing a couple of taunts at 95% versus needing a rescue at 60% to use the example above.) On the other hand, everyone who is not tanking is using the threat window to stay just below the top as in the case of an offtank (91%) or dramatically below the top as in the case of a wizard about to hit fission (11%). This is great, but I think we are asking a single number to do too much. If you are going to show nothing more than this single value, then combat hasn't really been improved enough to justify such a big change.  Kurgan suggests changing the color of the number if someone is encroaching on aggro, but I dont think this goes far enough to make it truly usable.As stated earlier in this thread, tanks need one more bit of information beyond that single aggro number in order to use the threat bubble for its stated purpose: we need to know <span style="text-decoration: underline;">how far away the next person in line is from capturing 100%</span>. Currently, the tank sees the red 100% in the bubble but has no idea if the other players are hovering at 99% or 60%. We can't poll all of our allies constantly during battle, so this prevents us from having the freedom to do anything other than compulsively taunt our butts off which has been one major point of objection lately. We don't really need to see all 5 or all 23 of the other hate values, because generally speaking who cares who is 18th or 23rd on the hate list. This also holds true for groups. I am only interested in the top end of the hate list, primarily about the one who is second in line and how far down they are from me. This value needs to go into the hate bubble alongside our personal hate number. So as you can see in the images below, when the tank has aggro (100%) he also knows at a glance that the closest competition for aggro is at 88% (or 31% or whatever), without needing everyone in the group or raid calling out their numbers on voice or spamming macros. Then when aggro is lost, those two numbers reverse and we can see how far below 100% we have fallen. The person who took aggro gets the big red 100 until it has been recaptured: <img src="http://www.frontiernet.net/~randyc1/threat/threat0.gif" /> With me so far? Okay, there's only one thing wrong with this picture. During combat the tank can look at the above threat meter and see the secondary percentage changing constantly. 91%... 86%... 97%... etc. Is this all coming from one player? Or are there several players bouncing this number between them? If I could look down and see the offtank's name consistently in the window alongside that number, this tells me something very different than if I see it flickering between offtank-assassin-mage-offtank-mage-offtank-assassin. As an alternative, I propose <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>the #2 name and percentage</strong></span> be included in the threat window.</p><p>I give you an example. Rothgar has his tank, Aeralik is on the assassin and Domino is playing her healer. As the battle begins, Aeralik is AFK and Domino has already thrown a ward on Rothgar, and so here is what each of their threat bubbles looks like. Rothgar sees that Domino is next in line on the hate list, and Domino sees the effect of the preward on initial hate. <img src="http://www.frontiernet.net/~randyc1/threat/threat1.gif" /> Aeralik returns from AFK and begins doing damage. Immediately Rothgar can confirm that Aeralik has moved into #2 by surpassing Domino's hate level, and both Aeralik and Rothgar can see how far apart they are percentage-wise. Aeralik can see the effects of his own damage and dethreats on the mob's hate, and Domino is throwing additional heals and cures, also raising her number relative to Rothgar's 100%. <img src="http://www.frontiernet.net/~randyc1/threat/threat2.gif" /> Aeralik throws an Execute, which places him at the top of the hate list. Everyone instantly sees that aggro has changed but Rothgar also sees how much distance he needs to make up to regain it. If this were an offtank in a raid, the main tank could choose to react very differently than if a mage's name appeared alongside the number. Aeralik can see the percentage difference at a glance as well as the red 100 confirming the aggro switch. <img src="http://www.frontiernet.net/~randyc1/threat/threat3.gif" /> Rothgar casts a rescue which places him back at the top of the hate list, moving the other players comfortably back into lower hate ranges and the battle continues. <img src="http://www.frontiernet.net/~randyc1/threat/threat4.gif" /> Does this duplicate the functionality of the implied target window? Yes. But I wouldn't want to see that part of the interface replaced, and really it couldn't be since it disappears for whoever has aggro, which would defeat the purpose of the information display.  Basically this proposal provides the tank with the name and % of the <span style="text-decoration: underline;">top two</span> on the hate list, and gives the non-tanks hate values for <span style="text-decoration: underline;">tank and self</span>.  That's enough information to give the tool general purpose value for its intended use, and makes it worth implementing for all combat roles.</p></blockquote><p>i REALLY like this idea. We should not be doing anything this drastically changing halfway.</p>

[Noaani]

<p><cite>Grumpy_Warrior_01 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>Well, since this is an issue on a lot of minds right now, and the developers seem to be open to ideas (thank you), I'll add my two cents. </blockquote><p>That is the general idea of what most are asking for in this thread, but after reading your post, I have what I consider to be a better idea.</p><p>Everyone knows that whom ever has aggo on the mob is at 100% (or, everyone will know this), so displaying that is kind of redundant. Also, while it is absolutly a matter of opinion, I do not want to see names of players on the hate meter.</p><p>Other than our current hate displayed as a percentage as we have now, I would like to see what percentage the person on the hate list above me is on, what percentage the person on the hate list below me is on, and what position I am on the mobs hate list overall.</p><p>This could be displayed simply as the hate meter is now, with a smaller number above and below our hate percentage (the percentage of ahte the person above and below us have), and another small number above the whole meter to display our overall position.</p><p>This provides tanks with an indication of how good their hold on aggro is while they have aggro, gives them an idea of how worthwhile it is to cast a positional increase over a regular taunt (ie, if the next highest on the hate list is 2% above the tank, they should cast a taunt, if it is 15 higher, a position increaser is a good idea).</p><p>It also has the advantage of letting DPS classes know when using that positional decreaser they have is a good idea, and when it is a waste of time.</p>

[Allurana]

<p><cite>Grumpy_Warrior_01 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Well, since this is an issue on a lot of minds right now, and the developers seem to be open to ideas (thank you), I'll add my two cents. The way I see it, the threat meter is being used in two different modes during combat. On the one hand, the tank is using it to confirm he has aggro (100%), and when he loses aggro he can see how hard it's going to be to regain it (throwing a couple of taunts at 95% versus needing a rescue at 60% to use the example above.) On the other hand, everyone who is not tanking is using the threat window to stay just below the top as in the case of an offtank (91%) or dramatically below the top as in the case of a wizard about to hit fission (11%). This is great, but I think we are asking a single number to do too much. If you are going to show nothing more than this single value, then combat hasn't really been improved enough to justify such a big change.  Kurgan suggests changing the color of the number if someone is encroaching on aggro, but I dont think this goes far enough to make it truly usable.As stated earlier in this thread, tanks need one more bit of information beyond that single aggro number in order to use the threat bubble for its stated purpose: we need to know <span style="text-decoration: underline;">how far away the next person in line is from capturing 100%</span>. Currently, the tank sees the red 100% in the bubble but has no idea if the other players are hovering at 99% or 60%. We can't poll all of our allies constantly during battle, so this prevents us from having the freedom to do anything other than compulsively taunt our butts off which has been one major point of objection lately. We don't really need to see all 5 or all 23 of the other hate values, because generally speaking who cares who is 18th or 23rd on the hate list. This also holds true for groups. I am only interested in the top end of the hate list, primarily about the one who is second in line and how far down they are from me. This value needs to go into the hate bubble alongside our personal hate number. So as you can see in the images below, when the tank has aggro (100%) he also knows at a glance that the closest competition for aggro is at 88% (or 31% or whatever), without needing everyone in the group or raid calling out their numbers on voice or spamming macros. Then when aggro is lost, those two numbers reverse and we can see how far below 100% we have fallen. The person who took aggro gets the big red 100 until it has been recaptured: <img src="http://www.frontiernet.net/~randyc1/threat/threat0.gif" /> With me so far? Okay, there's only one thing wrong with this picture. During combat the tank can look at the above threat meter and see the secondary percentage changing constantly. 91%... 86%... 97%... etc. Is this all coming from one player? Or are there several players bouncing this number between them? If I could look down and see the offtank's name consistently in the window alongside that number, this tells me something very different than if I see it flickering between offtank-assassin-mage-offtank-mage-offtank-assassin. As an alternative, I propose <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>the #2 name and percentage</strong></span> be included in the threat window.</p><p>I give you an example. Rothgar has his tank, Aeralik is on the assassin and Domino is playing her healer. As the battle begins, Aeralik is AFK and Domino has already thrown a ward on Rothgar, and so here is what each of their threat bubbles looks like. Rothgar sees that Domino is next in line on the hate list, and Domino sees the effect of the preward on initial hate. <img src="http://www.frontiernet.net/~randyc1/threat/threat1.gif" /> Aeralik returns from AFK and begins doing damage. Immediately Rothgar can confirm that Aeralik has moved into #2 by surpassing Domino's hate level, and both Aeralik and Rothgar can see how far apart they are percentage-wise. Aeralik can see the effects of his own damage and dethreats on the mob's hate, and Domino is throwing additional heals and cures, also raising her number relative to Rothgar's 100%. <img src="http://www.frontiernet.net/~randyc1/threat/threat2.gif" /> Aeralik throws an Execute, which places him at the top of the hate list. Everyone instantly sees that aggro has changed but Rothgar also sees how much distance he needs to make up to regain it. If this were an offtank in a raid, the main tank could choose to react very differently than if a mage's name appeared alongside the number. Aeralik can see the percentage difference at a glance as well as the red 100 confirming the aggro switch. <img src="http://www.frontiernet.net/~randyc1/threat/threat3.gif" /> Rothgar casts a rescue which places him back at the top of the hate list, moving the other players comfortably back into lower hate ranges and the battle continues. <img src="http://www.frontiernet.net/~randyc1/threat/threat4.gif" /> Does this duplicate the functionality of the implied target window? Yes. But I wouldn't want to see that part of the interface replaced, and really it couldn't be since it disappears for whoever has aggro, which would defeat the purpose of the information display.  Basically this proposal provides the tank with the name and % of the <span style="text-decoration: underline;">top two</span> on the hate list, and gives the non-tanks hate values for <span style="text-decoration: underline;">tank and self</span>.  That's enough information to give the tool general purpose value for its intended use, and makes it worth implementing for all combat roles.</p></blockquote><p>As a guardian with a creation date of November 9, 2004, with NO breaks in subscription AND having my guardian be my main character that entire time,</p><p>I whole heartly endorse and give support to this suggestion.</p><p>Playing a guardian since our dps has been nerfed so badly has been very tough to stay with.  It is simply not fun anymore.  I have already tested the hate changes on the Test server and I like them A LOT.</p><p>This suggestion to the threat meter completes those changes and only adds an additional layer of depth and enjoyment to adventuring and encounters that we do not current have.</p><p>And to Rothgar and his post earlier in this thread, I like everything you wrote BUT please consider this suggestion by Grumpy Warrior 01.  Is it not true to say that the current state of threat meter on test is actually flawed in its presentation.  It is actually WAY more useful to everyone else and not the tank because everyone else can see their position on the hate list BUT the tank has no idea where they are.  Are they just barely hanging on to the #1 slot by the tips of their finger nails OR are they so far out ahead on the list that they may actually be able to "encourage" and "coach" their group mates as to different strategies and new styles of play.</p><p>Thank you.</p>

[Antryg Mistrose]

<p><cite>Noaani wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Grumpy_Warrior_01 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>Well, since this is an issue on a lot of minds right now, and the developers seem to be open to ideas (thank you), I'll add my two cents. </blockquote><p>That is the general idea of what most are asking for in this thread, but after reading your post, I have what I consider to be a better idea.</p><p>Everyone knows that whom ever has aggo on the mob is at 100% (or, everyone will know this), so displaying that is kind of redundant. Also, while it is absolutly a matter of opinion, I do not want to see names of players on the hate meter.</p><p>Other than our current hate displayed as a percentage as we have now, I would like to see what percentage the person on the hate list above me is on, what percentage the person on the hate list below me is on, and what position I am on the mobs hate list overall.</p><p>This could be displayed simply as the hate meter is now, with a smaller number above and below our hate percentage (the percentage of ahte the person above and below us have), and another small number above the whole meter to display our overall position.</p><p>This provides tanks with an indication of how good their hold on aggro is while they have aggro, gives them an idea of how worthwhile it is to cast a positional increase over a regular taunt (ie, if the next highest on the hate list is 2% above the tank, they should cast a taunt, if it is 15 higher, a position increaser is a good idea).</p><p>It also has the advantage of letting DPS classes know when using that positional decreaser they have is a good idea, and when it is a waste of time.</p></blockquote><p>Only works if you (the tank) only drop to number 2.  Showing adjacent threat positions won't have useful info if you drop further.</p><p>I like Grumpie's better, although less screen real estate would be used if there was only one number that went above 100 or changed colour and displayed 2nd on hate list's percent if you were the mobs target.  Name would be ice cream on top, so lets not get too hopeful.</p><p>ie All those hate meters above have a 100 somewhere - thats redundant</p>

[Noaani]

<p><cite>Antryg Mistrose wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>Only works if you (the tank) only drop to number 2.</blockquote><p>Not true.</p><p>On a raid, if the MT drops to say 10th on the hate list, but he is only 2% below the next highest, he knows that casting a taunt will get him above that person, and casting a positional hate increaser afterwards will then get him even higher up the hate list than if he had not. If he drops to 10th and the next person is 15% above him, he can feel confidant that the best course of action for him to take is to cast a positional increaser.</p><p>Its obviously not going to be perfect, and he will never know what the person 2 above him is going to be at, but no system can portray that much information without being far too detailed to be of use while taking a quick glance at the hate meter.</p>

[Kordran]

<p>I just see this as going further down the slippery slope of showing a sorted threat list in the UI. It's one of the reasons that I've decided I generally don't like the threat meter being added to the game ... not so much as what it is today, but the (significant) chance of what it's going to be tomorrow as more and more people ask for "improvements" to it.</p><p>It's more evidence of tanking's quick rise to the middle in EQ2, where mediocrity is "good enough" when you're a taunt monkey.</p><p><em><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Edit: Not enough coffee yet to spell correctly.</span></em></p>

[Rothgar]

<p><cite>Noaani wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>However, its not fair for us to expect fighters to focus on hate as a major part of their job and not give them any indicators other than "oh, the mob is now hitting on someone else". </blockquote><p>Just something to point out...</p><p>As the tool stands currently, it does no more for a tank than the implied target window does. With the hate meter, a tank is now able to say "oh, the mob is now hitting on someone else, and I am at less than 100% on the hate meter".</p><p>Its a great tool for DPS to manage aggro, but worthless to a tank that is holding aggro. Strangly, this is what the thread was started up to address, and if your intent behind implementing it was to provide a tool for tanks... then yeah...</p></blockquote><p>The 'tool' for tanks is more the hate data that is now coming down that will allow people to parse it.  Thats on par with what DPS get right now.  DPS classes really have no idea how well they did unless they run an external parser.  Now tanks will have the same ability if they want to do this.</p><p>The threat meter was just an added bonus and was not meant as a tool to change the way tanks do their job.  If a tank loses aggro it most definitely will be useful because it will tell the tank how far he needs to go to get it back.  It also helps the tank in an indirect method because it allows other players in the group to better manage their aggro.  We felt it was a better decision to let each class manage their hate rather than give all of the hate data to the tank so he could yell at people when they are getting close.  This gives every player the opportunity to play their class well and demonstrate skill.</p><p>The hate bars added to the "Name and Chat Bubble" that appears over every mobs head is a more useful tool for tanks than the actual threat meter that everyone is focusing on.  I think that hate is more of a problem when you're fighitng a group of mobs, or get addition encounters that weren't expected.  These hate bars will let you visible see which mobs in the fray you don't have aggro on.  I know that some people will say that they can tell that already from which way the mob is facing, but lets be real, combat is a chaotic mass sometimes and people aren't always standing where they need to be.  Trying to rely on the direction a mob is facing, especially when there are skills that can turn them around, isn't always foolproof.</p><p>Kordran,</p><p>Initially we did talk about showing a sorted threat list for every person in the group.  But after mocking up the design and realizing it looked more like a spreadsheet than a gameplay element, we decided to go for something less data-oriented.  There seem to be a lot of people that think the threat meter isn't necessary and don't want it.  Then there are those people that want to see it display even more data than it already does.  I think its fair to go live with the feature somewhere in the middle and see how it plays out.  I think when people understand that threat meter is not meant to be a 'tank tool' they will see that it works fine for what it is.</p>

[Rothgar]

<p>Grumpy,</p><p>Thank you for your well-thought out suggestions and for taking the time to make the mockups.  Something like you have proposed has been bouncing around in my head since we started this and Zoltaroth brought up these exact issues during our internal playtests.</p><p>The biggest challenge for us on the development side is how we bring this data to you without impacting gameplay performance.  The threat meter could be a nice addition but the last thing I want it to do is create additional lag for everyone in a zone whether they want to use it or not.  Without getting into the technical details of how we manage hate on the server side, suffice it to say that sending down more data about a mob's hate list to everyone in the encounter could potentially have a performance impact. This data changes every 'frame' on the server and must be recalculated.  It must also be recalculated for every mob times every person in the encounter because each player has a customized view for their hate.  In other words, this isn't the same value that can be sent to all players in the encounter.  To make things even more difficult, its more performance intensive to find a player's hate based on position than it is to get your own hate.  The current hate meter shows your hate (easy to get) vs the hate of the top-most player (easy to get because of an optimization I made).  If we have to start digging through the hate list for hate values of other players that is specific only to your position, that means a lot of work the server has to do every time a mobs hate changes.</p><p>If the additional data shown in the threat meter were something that was the same for everyone in the encounter, like the value of the second person on the hate list, this would be relatively low impact versus displaying the person above and/or below you. </p><p>Tuesday when I return to work I'll take a look at it again and see if we can come up with something but ultimately we won't know the impact on performance until we put this change in a busy zone with 50+ players in it.</p>

[Noaani]

<p><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>The biggest challenge for us on the development side is how we bring this data to you without impacting gameplay performance.  The threat meter could be a nice addition but the last thing I want it to do is create additional lag for everyone in a zone whether they want to use it or not.</blockquote><p>Thats enough of a reason to leave it as is.</p><p>Having it show the hate level of the person above and below you on the list would be absolutly awesome, but its not worth a hit to performance.</p>

[Boyar]

<p>First and second place would actually be quite helpful, if it wouldn't be a huge drain on resources. That way if your hate is equal to the first, you can compare it to the second place to know what your lead is, which would be very useful.</p><p>The names of second and first place would be handy too, for those of us with proxy taunts and detaunts, but really, just the numbers for first, second and self would give everyone, tank included, all they need to assess the situation.</p>

[Foolsfolly]

<p>What if fighters, instead of seeing a percentage, saw a numerical value for how much hate they need to reach 100%? This would give them a better idea of how strongly they need to taunt to retake agro.</p>

[Kordran]

<p><cite>Foolsfolly wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>What if fighters, instead of seeing a percentage, saw a numerical value for how much hate they need to reach 100%? This would give them a better idea of how strongly they need to taunt to retake agro.</p></blockquote><p>Admittedly it's situational, but if the tank has lost aggro (particular to a squishy), that's really a secondary concern; he's going to hit one of his snap aggro tools like Sneering Assault, Rescue, etc. Even if all that's needed is one of the regular taunts, it's better safe than sorry, and the amount of time that it would take to analyze some number in the threat meter window just means it's an extra second or two for the mob to punch that Wizard in the face again.</p><p>When that implied target lights up, most experienced tanks instinctively know what they need to do and don't even think about it; it's not something that I see the threat meter being useful for. As Rothgar has stated, the meter is not designed primarily to be a tool for tanks; all of these discussions about trying to shoehorn it in some way to make it useful seems to be missing the larger point. Square peg, round hole.</p>

[Calain80]

Transferring hate of 1st, 2nd and self should be enough info, so the client can handle everything itself. If self == 1st show 100% as primary 2nd as secondary info. else show self/1st as primary and 1st as secondary info. This would be a great help for tanks.

[Kahling]

<p>Hi Rothgar,</p><p>Thankyou for the replies thus far in this thread.  It's good that your taking the time to look in to this.  Regarding something you said though.</p><p>Specifically "The 'tool' for tanks is more the hate data that is now coming down that will allow people to parse it.  Thats on par with what DPS get right now.  DPS classes really have no idea how well they did unless they run an external parser.  Now tanks will have the same ability if they want to do this."</p><p>This wont be entirely true, if it was then there would be no need for the threat meter showing the position or hate amount of the next person on the list.</p><p>For example I am a Paladin.  My heals now generate 3x more hate than normal heals but the threat from these is not parsed.  Also debuff's threat is not parsed.  Normal heals are not parsed.</p><p>To be honest if you did add all of the above to the logging then Im sure it would have an impact on performance.  This leads me to another thing, will you be passing on the information to the people that write the external parse programs exactly what a debuff's hate ammount is.  What a heal's hate gernerated is, what a wards hate generated is.    And finally would it be possible to have the Paladin's hate from heals put in the log file as the parsers will have no idea which players are Paladins and therefore have to have the x3 modifier on.</p><p>I understand that this is possibly a difficult ask.  Which leads really back to the hate meter being tweaked to include the information as per Grumpy's suggestion being the easiest and least performance inducing change.</p><p>Regards</p><p>Kahling</p>

[aislynn00]

<p><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>If the additional data shown in the threat meter were something that was the same for everyone in the encounter, like the value of the second person on the hate list, this would be relatively low impact versus displaying the person above and/or below you. </p></blockquote><p>I, for one, would be overjoyed if the threat meter would simply display the top two characters on the hate list of the mob and your threat percentage relative to theirs.</p><p>It would provide damage dealers with all the data they need in order to stay below the tank as well as information of use to the tank regarding the character just below him on the hate list (i.e., the second character on the hate list).</p><p>Example:</p><p>DPS1 (1000 threat), DPS2 (500 threat), Tank (2000 threat).</p><p>Tank would see:</p><p>1: 100%2: 200%</p><p>DPS1 would see:</p><p>1: 50%2: 100%</p><p>DPS2 would see:</p><p>1: 25%2: 50%</p><p>All the percentage calculations could be performed in the game client on the PC of the player in question.  The only data that would have to be transfered from the server would be 1) the hate of the top two characters on the hate list of the mob, and 2) the player's own hate.</p>

[Motzi]

<p><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><strong>Scenario 1</strong></p><p><strong>Me (30%)</strong>, DPS1 (25%), DPS2 (18%), DPS3 (16%), Healer1 (8%), Healer2 (4%)</p><p>In this situation the meter would display 30% and I would have hate on the target.</p><p><strong>Scenario 2</strong></p><p>DPS1 (32%), <strong>Me (30%)</strong>, DPS2 (15%), DPS3 (12%), Healer1 (7%), Healer2 (4%)</p><p>In this scenario the meter still displays 30% for me, but I dont have hate any more.</p><p>If each person can only see their percentage of the overall hate, how would this number be useful without knowning what everyone else's hate is?</p></blockquote><p>It's useful cause when you reach 50%, you've got a pretty good idea you don't need to keep reinforcing hate.  It's useful as your now managing your % of hate.  You don't get the /easymode, if I do one more thing I have aggroz system your putting in, you have to actually learn your position with the players your grouped with and figure out where your threshold likely is.</p><p>This system gives you more info when your just going harder on one fight than your piers, as you see your % rise faster in a given fight, you've got an idea that you need to watch it.  This system simply requires greater skill to learn what you can and can't do, and gives the person responsible for aggro (the tank) a lot more data on how well he's doing his job.</p>

[Motzi]

<p><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Hate is obviously a very large part of combat and before this update there were no tools or exposed information to give you a way to measure it.  Of course there are going to be people out there that liked the fact that it was hidden and will be resistant to change.  However, its not fair for us to expect fighters to focus on hate as a major part of their job and not give them any indicators other than "oh, the mob is now hitting on someone else".  We might make tweaks to these tools down the road, but its too early to start rewriting them when they haven't even gone live yet.  Its apparent by this thread that people have a lot of different ideas about how it should work.  I'm just asking that you try it out on live servers in your day-to-day activities for a few weeks and then lets talk about any improvements that might be needed.</p></blockquote><p>Rothgar,</p><p>I've tried the hatemeter on test, it is a steaming [Removed for Content] for tanks.  Thus, this thread exists to give you that feedback to launch with something that is actually useful to someone other than a dps class.</p><p>You can choose to listen to your community on this or not.</p>

[Motzi]

<p><cite>Grumpy_Warrior_01 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>This value needs to go into the hate bubble alongside our personal hate number. So as you can see in the images below, when the tank has aggro (100%) he also knows at a glance that the closest competition for aggro is at 88% (or 31% or whatever), without needing everyone in the group or raid calling out their numbers on voice or spamming macros. Then when aggro is lost, those two numbers reverse and we can see how far below 100% we have fallen. The person who took aggro gets the big red 100 until it has been recaptured: <img src="http://www.frontiernet.net/~randyc1/threat/threat0.gif" /></p></blockquote><p>While this is much better than the system on test, I feel it is way, way too /easymode.</p>

[Scythien]

<p><cite>Motzi@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><strong>Scenario 1</strong></p><p><strong>Me (30%)</strong>, DPS1 (25%), DPS2 (18%), DPS3 (16%), Healer1 (8%), Healer2 (4%)</p><p>In this situation the meter would display 30% and I would have hate on the target.</p><p><strong>Scenario 2</strong></p><p>DPS1 (32%), <strong>Me (30%)</strong>, DPS2 (15%), DPS3 (12%), Healer1 (7%), Healer2 (4%)</p><p>In this scenario the meter still displays 30% for me, but I dont have hate any more.</p><p>If each person can only see their percentage of the overall hate, how would this number be useful without knowning what everyone else's hate is?</p></blockquote><p>It's useful cause when you reach 50%, you've got a pretty good idea you don't need to keep reinforcing hate.  It's useful as your now managing your % of hate.  You don't get the /easymode, if I do one more thing I have aggroz system your putting in, you have to actually learn your position with the players your grouped with and figure out where your threshold likely is.</p><p>This system gives you more info when your just going harder on one fight than your piers, as you see your % rise faster in a given fight, you've got an idea that you need to watch it.  This system simply requires greater skill to learn what you can and can't do, and gives the person responsible for aggro (the tank) a lot more data on how well he's doing his job.</p></blockquote><p>Now let's see this % of total hate work in a raid scenario with 24 peeps <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Motzi]

<p><cite>Scythien wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Motzi@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>It's useful cause when you reach 50%, you've got a pretty good idea you don't need to keep reinforcing hate.  It's useful as your now managing your % of hate.  You don't get the /easymode, if I do one more thing I have aggroz system your putting in, you have to actually learn your position with the players your grouped with and figure out where your threshold likely is.</p><p>This system gives you more info when your just going harder on one fight than your piers, as you see your % rise faster in a given fight, you've got an idea that you need to watch it.  This system simply requires greater skill to learn what you can and can't do, and gives the person responsible for aggro (the tank) a lot more data on how well he's doing his job.</p></blockquote><p>Now let's see this % of total hate work in a raid scenario with 24 peeps <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></p></blockquote><p>As a former MT, I really like it, even in a raid scenario. </p><p>I'll have a pretty good idea where my % needs to be at a given time based upon the experience I have raiding with that raid party.  I wont have any absolute data, but I'll know if my % is 12 and I'm usually at 15, that I better get it up before something goes wrong, but I wont know exactly who is going harder, and I wont know exactly when I'll lose it.</p><p>I'll simply have a relative idea of how well I'm doing on threat, and thats really all that is needed.</p>

[Oakum]

<p><cite>Kordran wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>DngrMouse wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>And no, the hate meter is not a 'crutch'.  It's a tool...a needed tool, which no more constitutes hand-holding than health bars, and detrimental effects windows.</blockquote><p>Admittedly it's anecdotal, but everyone I've talked with in my own guild, and friends in other raiding guilds, think that a threat meter is unnecessary for anyone who's good at playing their toon -- after all, they've been playing just fine for the past 4 years without one. The consensus seems to be that, at best, it'll help noobs suck a bit less.</p><p>So yeah, it's a crutch.</p></blockquote><p>What it will do is remove any excuse for dps classes pulling aggro. I bet a lot of those dpsers who pull aggro a lot do not like to think about that. lol</p>

[VALKOR]

<p><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>If the additional data shown in the threat meter were something that was the same for everyone in the encounter, like the value of the second person on the hate list, this would be relatively low impact versus displaying the person above and/or below you. </p><p>Tuesday when I return to work I'll take a look at it again and see if we can come up with something but ultimately we won't know the impact on performance until we put this change in a busy zone with 50+ players in it.</p></blockquote><p>Actually, most tanks fall into one of two categories on the hate meter:  1) Don't want it  2) Want it to do more.  Whether it is my alternate idea of hate %, information about the #2 position, or relative info on those above or below you, there is in fact a consensus among tanks who are interested in the hate meter at all that it should be changed to be more useful to us.</p><p>To use your analogy, DPS now have both parsable data and real-time feedback on how their numbers are changing from ability to ability throughout the fight.  Rather than leave tanks one behind, it would be great to get both parsable data and real-time feedback on how we are doing with aggro so that we too can judge the effects of our abilites in real-time just like DPS will be able to do.</p><p>I for one would be perfectly happy with your suggestion of supplying the % of the #2 person on the hate list.  It would of course be nice to have the name but not essential since as MT I'll be trying to stay ahead of the OT along with everyone else so I can live without a name.  The #2 info will also be interesting for the OT and DPS because when the #s match they will know they are right behind the MT, and when the #s don't match they've got an even better idea of how much breathing room they have.</p><p>To reiterate, I want to know where the #2 person is % wise so that I can decide on my own actions; I'm not interested in using it to manage their actions as you implied.  And just as DPS will enjoy watching numbers spike up and down based on their CAs and deaggros, I'd like to be able to see those changes when I'm playing the game too rather than devote out of game time to something that could be represented in game and will be for every single class except those guys whose primary responsibility is aggro.  Thanks.</p>

[Tro]

<p><cite>Noaani wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>It really depends on what angle you want to approach from.</blockquote><p>This is absolutly true.</p><p>Your angle is from the perspective of a tank. Your job, when playing your guardian, is to hold aggro and minimise damage. This is the same mindset I am in when I am tanking, and is why I am absolutly looking forward to these changes.</p><p>Thing is, as you eluded too, there is another angle here. There are tanks out there that want to push for as much DPS as they can, and most of them want to do so without asking the group to slack off. If a fighter is able to generate enough hate so that the n<strong>ext highest on the hate list is at 60%, then imo he has earned the right to switch into off stance and put up the best numbers he can.</strong> At this point in the encounter (assuming the mob is close enough to dead to not be likely to switch), his job as a tank is essentially finished, and he is now responsible for what everyone in the group is: DPS. Currently, the only way to do this is to ask each group member what their current hate level is, not exactly an elegant solution.</p><p>Beginning an encounter in off stance is not a valid option for the vast majority of fighters, but with enough hate built up, finishing it should be.</p></blockquote><p>I would have to disagree with this.. especially with the new changes.. If you are the main tank it is your job to keep the attention of the mob(s) focused on you. You should generate as much hate as you possibly can in order to ensure your group members don't get aggro. In order for these new changes to be successful, the mindset of the tank has to shift from generating hate via DPS to generating hate directly via hate producing CA's/spells. I believe that is the intent of the changes. It isn't about "Putting up the best numbers he/she can"</p><p>By shifting to Offensive Stance mid fight based on a significant hate lead, you put the group in a better position to get aggro as hate gain can happen quickly sometimes (Significant crit..etc..) and will force you to shift back to def stance and then take the time to again get back on top of the hate list.. by that time there is a good chance there is already a group member dead. All that shifting between stances mid fight is just a wipe waiting to happen (IMO).</p><p>Also, I am sure there are some mobs that enrage when they are near death and significantly increase their attack speed/damage which would require the tank to again keep the hate production as high as possible and assuming you do switch to off stance to put up the best numbers when the mob is close to death, you aren't gonna do that if the mob has less than 15-20 seconds of life left are ya?</p><p>For offensive stance, if you are a tank class in a group and are NOT the tank then I would shif to my offensive stance/DPS weps and DPS away.</p>

[Kahling]

<p>To anyone who thinks its easymode there is a really easy solution which Im surpised people havent thought of:-</p><p>1. Right click on the hate window and choose window settings</p><p>2. move all the sliders to the left.</p><p>3. Set clickthrough to enabled.</p><p>4. Click ok.</p><p>It should be hidden from view now.</p><p>Regards</p><p>Kahling.</p><p>PS No I am not being sarcastic I am being serious, if I was being sarcastic I would also suggest turning the detrimental spell effects window off against Trakanon or tell people to not allow anyone in raid to use act aoe timers.  A good tank will have hate whatever.  The hate window is a tool to make tanking more interesting which is why just having the 100% all the time is boring.</p>

[Bakual]

<p>I think you can also just disable it like any other window <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>People should not forget that this Hatemeter was never designed for the tank, but for the DPS. It will help the tank more in a passive way. It's a really nice tool for them so they can push the line but not agroing the mob, thus helping the tank.</p><p>Most of the time I do instances with different tanks. I know that my guild berserker will hold agro while I full burn, but then the guild monk is a different story. Sometimes he holds agro good and sometimes not, this is because sometimes his AE CAs are just down from the encounter before and I don't have a way to see that. The hatemeter will help me here. But there is actually no reason for the tank to see what my hate is in this situation, because he will do exact the same thing anyway, regardless if I push 90% or 50%. He will generate as much hate as possible the same way as I do generate as much damage as possible. That's his job and my job. If I see that I constantly have only 50% while pushing everything out (perhaps cause I'm legendary geared and tank fabled), I still can tell the tank to get a bit more casual. But I worry the time the tank decides himself to lower hate generation only because I had just my petbuff or some big nukes down.</p><p>Fact is: tanks have to do as much as hate as possible, they can not tell if dps is going to produce big hate spikes the next second. But DPS can choose to not do a big nuke when they see they're to close to the tanks hate. It would probably hurt the party more than help in the end <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Morrolan V]

<p><cite>Bakual wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I think you can also just disable it like any other window <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /></p><p>People should not forget that this Hatemeter was never designed for the tank, but for the DPS. It will help the tank more in a passive way. It's a really nice tool for them so they can push the line but not agroing the mob, thus helping the tank.</p><p>Most of the time I do instances with different tanks. I know that my guild berserker will hold agro while I full burn, but then the guild monk is a different story. Sometimes he holds agro good and sometimes not, this is because sometimes his AE CAs are just down from the encounter before and I don't have a way to see that. The hatemeter will help me here. But there is actually no reason for the tank to see what my hate is in this situation, because he will do exact the same thing anyway, regardless if I push 90% or 50%. He will generate as much hate as possible the same way as I do generate as much damage as possible. That's his job and my job. If I see that I constantly have only 50% while pushing everything out (perhaps cause I'm legendary geared and tank fabled), I still can tell the tank to get a bit more casual. But I worry the time the tank decides himself to lower hate generation only because I had just my petbuff or some big nukes down.</p><p>Fact is: tanks have to do as much as hate as possible, they can not tell if dps is going to produce big hate spikes the next second. But DPS can choose to not do a big nuke when they see they're to close to the tanks hate. It would probably hurt the party more than help in the end <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /></p></blockquote><p>Nobody is forgetting that this is a tool for DPS.  What I was saying at the beginning is that, if you're going to put the tool in the game, why not make it useful for tanks, too?</p><p>Go back and read what you are saying.  It's basically "All you tanks out there don't need a tool.  You just spam your taunts and generate all the hate you possibly can and we DPS will use our spiffy new threat meter and manage aggro."  That may be fun for the DPS, but it's B-O-R-I-N-G from a tank's perspective. </p>

[Motzi]

<p><cite>Morrolan V wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Bakual wrote:</cite></p><p>Nobody is forgetting that this is a tool for DPS.  What I was saying at the beginning is that, if you're going to put the tool in the game, why not make it useful for tanks, too?</p><p>Go back and read what you are saying.  It's basically "All you tanks out there don't need a tool.  You just spam your taunts and generate all the hate you possibly can and we DPS will use our spiffy new threat meter and manage aggro."  That may be fun for the DPS, but it's B-O-R-I-N-G from a tank's perspective. </p></blockquote><p>Absolutely everything about this NGE is boring from a tank's perspective.  I can't wait for it to go live and see the general populations response on it.</p>

[Night_Owl]

<p>So much fuss about the threat meter. </p><p><a href="http://mediabeta.curse.com/Curse.Projects.ProjectImages/4963/10905/Omen.jpg" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://mediabeta.curse.com/Curse.Pr.../10905/Omen.jpg</a></p><p>There are quite a few threat meters on Curse, with pros and cons (Omen was the best when I played that other game).  Model it after that and call it a day.  (note: while that ss shows classes, if you've got a raid running Omen, then you're going to show names exclusively, it's showing those due to test mode)  It's pretty standard to just put the name of everyone in a raid that has threat on a target encounter, and total threat.  Judge for yourself beyond that.  Things like threat per second and such are bells and whistles.  While an ingame threat meter might be new to eq2, it's not new elsewhere...so it really surprises me that it's a point of contention at all.</p>

[Tro]

<p>You are correct as Omen is the standard for that "Other" game but I used that and Diamond and I liked Diamond better.. Either way, a TM like that in EQ2 would rock.. I wonder if others will create TM's like those two for EQ2 (assuming that is even possible in EQ2).. </p><p>Much nicer for raids as a DPS class (IMO)</p>

[Kordran]

<p><cite>Talsmar@Crushbone wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>You are correct as Omen is the standard for that "Other" game but I used that and Diamond and I liked Diamond better.. Either way, a TM like that in EQ2 would rock.. I wonder if others will create TM's like those two for EQ2 (assuming that is even possible in EQ2)..  </blockquote><p>I don't think it'll be possible at all because that data would need to be passed to the client, and from what Rothgar has mentioned, it would be too server-intensive to do. Something like this could be attempted with ACT, but because not all threat increases are logged, and position changes aren't logged at all, it would only be a rough approximation. The game would have to dump a lot more information to the logfile to make that possible.</p><p>Add-ons for WoW can be significantly more complex than what they are for EQ2, primarily because WoW incorporates an LUA scripting engine; EQ2 uses a much simpler XML template model. Of course, there's pros and cons to both. Although WoW's support for scripting is more sophisticated, it also means that that clever programmers can write add-ons that can (to a limited extent) have the game play itself; in the past, their scripting engine has also been used against them by spammers/botters. EQ2's design is primarily geared to just changing the interface and how data is presented; it can't be used to create add-ons like Omen, Antislack, BuffWatcher, AggroNotifier and so on.</p>

[Tro]

<p><cite>Kordran wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Talsmar@Crushbone wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>You are correct as Omen is the standard for that "Other" game but I used that and Diamond and I liked Diamond better.. Either way, a TM like that in EQ2 would rock.. I wonder if others will create TM's like those two for EQ2 (assuming that is even possible in EQ2)..  </blockquote><p>I don't think it'll be possible at all because that data would need to be passed to the client, and from what Rothgar has mentioned, it would be too server-intensive to do. Something like this could be attempted with ACT, but because not all threat increases are logged, and position changes aren't logged at all, it would only be a rough approximation. The game would have to dump a lot more information to the logfile to make that possible.</p><p>Add-ons for WoW can be significantly more complex than what they are for EQ2, primarily because WoW incorporates an LUA scripting engine; EQ2 uses a much simpler XML template model. Of course, there's pros and cons to both. Although WoW's support for scripting is more sophisticated, it also means that that clever programmers can write add-ons that can (to a limited extent) have the game play itself; in the past, their scripting engine has also been used against them by spammers/botters. EQ2's design is primarily geared to just changing the interface and how data is presented; it can't be used to create add-ons like Omen, Antislack, BuffWatcher, AggroNotifier and so on.</p></blockquote><p>It sucks we won't see a Omen or Diamond type TM but oh well.. /shrug. Anyway appreciate the indepth explaination..</p>

[Night_Owl]

<p>While WoW definately has an advantage with LUA, in particular how lightweight it is for memory useage, that doesn't necessarily mean that we can't get a basic version of a generic threat meter of that style as far as what is displayed: </p><p>-Total threat, the game clearly already has this determined for each player, nothing new here.</p><p>-Little colored bars to indicate each players threat relative to their target (possibly with a raid-set target as a raid leader option menu?)  Colored bars aren't too tough.</p><p>For what Omen did, it was all clientside with the data available.  It communicated it's findings with other Omen-compatible threat meters, and with a raid fully running Omen you'd have everyone comparing with everyone else.  This is not required at all in this game, so being able to do what Omen did/does isn't relevent.  The threat determinations are already being made, it's just a matter of giving that information to the players in an easy to understand format.  The bars from the ss I put in my last post are such a format (and really, it's a pretty standard, generic format, nothing exciting about the display really).</p><p>Anyhow, it's just surprising to me that it's even slightly an issue, which is seems to be.</p>

[Kordran]

<p><cite>Night_Owl wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>While WoW definately has an advantage with LUA, in particular how lightweight it is for memory useage, that doesn't necessarily mean that we can't get a basic version of a generic threat meter of that style as far as what is displayed: </p><p>-Total threat, the game clearly already has this determined for each player, nothing new here.</p><p>-Little colored bars to indicate each players threat relative to their target (possibly with a raid-set target as a raid leader option menu?)  Colored bars aren't too tough.</p></blockquote><p>I gather that's not possible because the only information that the server returns to the client right now (on test) is your percentage of hate towards the currently selected target; in raids where you have multiple groups selecting different targets (e.g.: the MT group on the named, the OT group on the trash adds, etc.) how would you present that information in a raid window? At the very least you'd need some kind of matrix showing all engaged mobs, and a sorted threat list for each. Also, threat data can't be calculated by the client because not all threat increases are made available to it; some are hidden, and only processed on the server side.</p>

[Night_Owl]

<p>If the game only returns a % total of hate on a target on test, then that's a problem that should be addressed prior to this going live.  It can give back numerical data beyond that if the developers program it to do so-the data exists, it's merely a matter of giving it to the client.  However, I don't believe that's correct, based on some reading I've done elsewhere (quote and source):</p><p>"The only taunt increase item I have found is the TSO set bracers. With those and the str line AA at lvl 8, our single target taunt at m2 was over 9100 threat."  <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.eq2flames.com/guardians/38462-threat-meter.html" target="_blank">http://www.eq2flames.com/guardians/...reat-meter.html</a></p><p>Either way, the specific threat numbers already exist, regardless of if they're given to the client or not.  With SOE putting a threat meter in, passing that information to the client is crucial to an effective threat meter.  Sure, they could put in a half-[Removed for Content] meter, but if it's going to be done, it's worth doing right.  I'm not saying that the client needs to calculate individual threat, I merely pointed out that was the means of Omen determining threat in an environment where all relevent information was available to it, where as this is a developer game addition, negating the need to have all that information available to the client.  With the exact threat totals available to the mobs, which they already are, that information can be given to the client as "your threat is X" without client calculations.</p><p>Information needed for a good threat meter:  Name of all players with threat on a target, numerical threat value, and % value.  Information needed for a crummy threat meter: % value only.  Why does it matter, you might ask?  Without the numerical value, it leaves the gap of "do I have 1 threat between me and the tank, or 5 million threat between me and the tank?  I'm number 2, but heck if I know if I can dps hard or not".  It also leaves questions of if your tank is pulling threat as well as they could be or not, which tank class is pulling better threat than another, etc etc.  Just a % available on the meter is so vague as to be pointless to put into the game.</p><p>As for putting the information available in a threat meter, as you asked.  That's not hard at all, it only needs to show threat of your target (or target of your target).  Switch targets to find your threat on a mob that you're not directly interacting with.  Does, say, an assassin need (or care) about his threat on a mob that he's not attacking?  Not at all.  Tanks that are holding multiple mobs will tend to switch targets to fire off abilities on the various mobs, and have their threat information available to them at those times that they switch.  DPS in a position to pull threat can see if they're going to based on the numerical value, more so than the percentage, due to knowing the tank is managing multiple mobs and seeing that their own target is getting numerically close.  So no, you don't need to have any matrix display for all available mobs, just your target (or target of target).</p><p>After reading a bit more indepth in this thread, I wanted to comment specifically to posts by Rothgar.  Putting the threat over every mob is downright silly, a horrible clutter and completely unnecessary.  I simply cannot fathom the reasoning behind such a...for lack of a better word, awful implementation.  If you present the information that way, yes, there will be lag issues.  There's no reason to splatter it across the screen like that.  I sincerely hope that you head over to <a href="http://www.curse.com" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">www.curse.com</a> and check out their wide selection of threat meters-you'll notice that exactly NONE of them present the information like that.  Nobody needs it, it would create a lag issue, and most of all, nobody needs it.  This includes multimob encounters.  You will find, however, that a simple window that shows name, threat, and % for your target (or target of target, think healers/people targetting through the main assist or tank) is more than sufficient. </p><p>As you mentioned, tanks cycle through the multimobs when holding threat on several.  This makes the information available to the tanks without significantly impacting how they perform their job-this is how it's already done (note the lack of clutter on the group of mobs as well).  You wouldn't need to send down as much data to inform the clients of their threat, since you'd only be making it available for one mob at a time, resulting in what I can only imagine being less of a lag issue than anything displaying data on multiple mobs at a once.</p><p>Here's an image of a very simple, straightforward, a fully functional threat meter.  TPS (threat per second) is nice, but falls into the bells and whistles catagory. </p><p><img src="http://mediabeta.curse.com/Curse.Projects.ProjectImages/3007/4616/threatwindow.jpg" width="276" height="192" /></p><p>That's a classic (and generic, I might add) example of a threat meter.  What's not visible is that it's showing threat for the target of the player (or Target of Target), not just existing in a vacuum.  Total threat, and percentage.  Simple, and yet still awesome for doing what it does.  In this particular shot, let's assume that Dershivar is tanking.  This gives Getafix a good idea of how hard s/he can dps, and shows that Oloth isn't doing much in the way of generating threat despite being 3rd on the meter.  With a % only, you're could easily think that Oloth is doing okay, since he's third...when he's in fact being quite a slacker.  Those who haven't made it onto the mobs hate list simply don't show.  There might be a couple dozen people standing around doing nothing-not on the meter, no information sent to anybody, no additional lag generated.</p>

[Kordran]

<p>From what I've read, they've already ruled that kind of sorted threat list out. Apparently it's something they considered initially, and then decided that's not what they wanted to do. In any case, my main point was that the kind of threat information that you'd like to see isn't something that could be implemented as an add-on; it'd have to be added by the developers, because right now AFAIK the only information the server is sending to the client is the % of threat the player has to the current target. There's no information about other players, nor are actual threat values or threat positions provided.</p>

[Night_Owl]

<p>Kordran,  I read that post which indicates what they ruled out as well, but my interpretation of it was somewhat different.  It sounded to me, and possibly it's just my perception, that they were attempting to get too many mobs involved in the threat meter at one time, resulting in the spreadsheet effect they mentioned.  I agree that it would have to be done by the developers due to the information not being given to the client (I'm not entirely certain that anything like Omen or KLH could be done client side due to the restrictions of XML and it's relative memory impact compared to LUA, anyhow), no arguement at all there.</p><p>I'm just trying to provide a little threat meter feedback, as I've had a pretty fair amount of raiding experience with a threat meter, something that many raiders in this game might not have.  I certainly hope that the devs look at some of what I've posted, in particular other threat meters, and feedback on them (on curse.com there is a fair amount of feedback information about the various threat meter mods from those communicating with the people developing the meters), and take it into consideration-I strongly believe that they're taking a very, VERY wrong approach to what they're implementing.  If it should hit live servers in it's current state, it's pretty much a lost cause in getting a good threat meter in this game, I'm going to guess.  I'd be remiss if I didn't speak up and try to help prevent the travesty that is the current meter from being implemented.  There is so much information out there already about what raiders can use in a threat meter, and what they want, and it seems like it's being completely overlooked.</p><p>A last quick note on multimob threat.  Let's fabricate a generic 2 boss encounter, John Boss and Jane Boss.  Main tank holds agro on John while off-tank holds agro on Jane, dps works John until dead then switches to Jane.  Overly simplistic, but it should suffice to make this point.  Does it matter at all what the threat *anybody* in the raid has on Jane until such time as they switch over to killing her?  Heal threat is going to be completely inconsequential in comparison to the threat the off-tank will have holding her agro, and nobody else is really interacting.  As a result, there's no point in putting her threat info out there for anybody except the tank who is working to build his threat and hold her agro.  Thus, giving out this information to anybody not specifically requesting it (ie, target/target of target meter as I've previously advocated) is a complete and total waste of time/bandwidth.</p><p>Devs, please look through that site I've linked, and read some of the threat meter feedback and look through what they've got.  A simple meter, not a spreadsheet or what's in test  now, is easier, less intensive, and more useful/easy to use.  Thanks for reading, sorry for ye ol' wall o' text.</p>

[Kordran]

<p><cite>Night_Owl wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>A last quick note on multimob threat.  Let's fabricate a generic 2 boss encounter, John Boss and Jane Boss.  Main tank holds agro on John while off-tank holds agro on Jane, dps works John until dead then switches to Jane.  Overly simplistic, but it should suffice to make this point.  Does it matter at all what the threat *anybody* in the raid has on Jane until such time as they switch over to killing her? </blockquote><p>In some cases yes, it would matter. For example, consider the twins in Kor'Sha, where you have both the MT and OT tanking separate mobs at the same time, both have to have roughly the same DPS on them, they memblur and randomly teleport players.</p><p>As it is now, the threat meter is a "bare minimum" implementation. If they start adding more, players are going to demand more until you end up with that spreadsheet on the screen; and I think that's why they've decided to go with the KISS principal and just do something very basic. I'm not saying that I completely agree with it (heck, I think the threat meter isn't even necessary), but I do understand their reasoning.</p>

[Motzi]

<p><cite>Kordran wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>In some cases yes, it would matter. For example, consider the twins in Kor'Sha, where you have both the MT and OT tanking separate mobs at the same time, both have to have roughly the same DPS on them, they memblur and randomly teleport players.</p></blockquote><p>Even in this case, no one person is concerned about the hate on both mobs at the same time.  One tank cares about one, they other tank the other sister.  DPS is divided between the 2 and they're only concerned about the hate on their active dps target.</p>

[Grumpy_Warrior_01]

<p>As a raid tank, I would have no use for a list of all 24 names.  To me it's not a question of server lag, it's a case of I don't need or want to see every single name and percent on a list.  There is nothing I can do with all that additional data.  If we ended up with a full hate list like this, I would probably resize the window to cover up all but the top two or three names and never look back.</p><p>For non-tanks, I think their primary hate concern is knowing how close <span style="text-decoration: underline;">they</span> are to taking aggro off the tank, which has nothing to do with relative ally hate.  Once they do take aggro, and the tank loses it, they are both going to do whatever is necessary to get that straightened back out, they are not going to be watching a long list.  So the extra player data is not really useful (IMO) before or during an aggro switch.  I admit it would be a novelty, and informative, to see on screen where you are on the entire hate list relative to allies, but I don't see how that knowledge will materially improve day-to-day combat any more than the current meter does for non-tanks.  And with the way a lot of the encounters are set up to manipulate the hate list, I am not really sure the developers want us to know exactly what's happening on memwipes, memblurs, etc.</p><p>If the hate numbers are logged adequately, then the ACT parser will provide the full side-by-side [Removed for Content] chart comparisons. We don't need to ask the game to do that.  Remember there is also no "dps meter" in-game, we use (overuse) ACT for that level of information.  I think it should be the same with raid hate.  Don't get me wrong, I wish we could build the same [Removed for Content] frenzy for not taking aggro that we currently reserve for DPS, God knows I do.  A somewhat enhanced threat meter plus ACT hate spews in raid chat should be enough for that without breaking the bank on server performance.</p>

[Kordran]

<p><cite>Motzi@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Kordran wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>In some cases yes, it would matter. For example, consider the twins in Kor'Sha, where you have both the MT and OT tanking separate mobs at the same time, both have to have roughly the same DPS on them, they memblur and randomly teleport players.</p></blockquote><p>Even in this case, no one person is concerned about the hate on both mobs at the same time.  One tank cares about one, they other tank the other sister.  DPS is divided between the 2 and they're only concerned about the hate on their active dps target.</p></blockquote><p>Actually, I could see it being useful for both tanks to know that each has aggro or not; particularly when one of the tanks is teleported or both tanks lose aggro at the same time. Admittedly it's highly situational, but there is a case where it could argued that it would be useful information.</p><p>Edit: It's too early to spell correctly.</p>

[Night_Owl]

<p><cite>Grumpy_Warrior_01 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>As a raid tank, I would have no use for a list of all 24 names.  To me it's not a question of server lag, it's a case of I don't need or want to see every single name and percent on a list.  There is nothing I can do with all that additional data.  If we ended up with a full hate list like this, I would probably resize the window to cover up all but the top two or three names and never look back.</p><p>For non-tanks, I think their primary hate concern is knowing how close <span style="text-decoration: underline;">they</span> are to taking aggro off the tank, which has nothing to do with relative ally hate.  Once they do take aggro, and the tank loses it, they are both going to do whatever is necessary to get that straightened back out, they are not going to be watching a long list.  So the extra player data is not really useful (IMO) before or during an aggro switch.  I admit it would be a novelty, and informative, to see on screen where you are on the entire hate list relative to allies, but I don't see how that knowledge will materially improve day-to-day combat any more than the current meter does for non-tanks.  And with the way a lot of the encounters are set up to manipulate the hate list, I am not really sure the developers want us to know exactly what's happening on memwipes, memblurs, etc.</p></blockquote><p>An options menu would be helpful for you then, giving you the option of showing 24, 12, 6, input number of your choice, etc.  Not hard to implement, and perhaps if it was done in such a way as to inform the server to prevent sending you the information for those you're not watching it could save a bit of performance.</p><p>First 10 seconds of a boss fight all threat information is informative to me (raid heals, raid dps, instance tank-yes, multiple characters) due to how much things are in flux prior to the tank establishing threat.  I hate it when the tank gets a (insert miss/avoidance of your choice here) on his first swing, and it's a case of heal or he faceplants...then here comes the boss, or some early crits putting people way high on the list...perhaps it's not of great use the whole fight, but for the first 10 seconds it is.   To me, anyhow, ymmv.</p><p>What I'm really after though is that it's a meter, not some silly overmobhead mess, and preferably with a numerical value as well as a %.  Meter is simple to read, easy to put in a place where I can see it and it's not getting in the way and/or resize, I don't need to squint at little tiny bars that move around to see if there's a problem, etc.</p>

[Kordran]

<p><cite>Night_Owl wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>What I'm really after though is that it's a meter, not some silly overmobhead mess, and preferably with a numerical value as well as a %.  Meter is simple to read, easy to put in a place where I can see it and it's not getting in the way and/or resize, I don't need to squint at little tiny bars that move around to see if there's a problem, etc.</blockquote><p>I don't think that we'll ever see actual, real threat numbers. What we see now are taunt values (edit: on test), but that's not the same as total threat. There's a lot of hidden threat modifications in the game, and some encounters are based around memblurs/wipes and giving players exacting information on threat values and positions would trivialize those fights. They seem to be intentionally obsfucating some threat values, and want to keep it that way. Even if they did expand the functionality of the meter, I suspect all you'll ever see is some percentage between 0-100.</p>

[Grumpy_Warrior_01]

<p>Overhead data is not necessarily all bad.  If you look on test right now, you’ll see that we have the three bars, including hate, above each mob's head basically as shown below.  Using the Options menu you can set all linked encounter mobs to show the overhead data at once.  (For the purists, you can also shut off all threat indicators while retaining health/power bars.)  In group combat where there are a lot of linked encounters, it would be useful to have the option to concentrate on the encounter and not simply on the threat meter.  As a tank with a single-target specialty, I’m going to be doing a lot of tab target-taunt-tab target-taunting on a lot of linked encounters, and it makes sense to scan where I am weakest in the encounter without having to cycle through everything with one eye glued to the meter.  The threat bars do help some in this regard.</p><p>If you subscribe to the model of hate positions 1 and 2 being displayed, then it’s a simple move to apply that information to the hate bar that already exists above each enemy mob’s head.  In the depiction below, the tank (we’ll presume it’s Rothgar) can quickly scan the scene and determine which mobs he has aggro on, and how solidly, without doing the tab-target dance.  Aggro is shown as an easy-to-spot red aggro icon which means the same thing as a red 100 in the meter. The color-coded hate bar shows who is second-in-line on each mob's hate list, and by how much (graphically, no numbers in this example), while eating up negligible screen real estate.  If you do not have aggro, the icon is replaced by the percentage of ground you would have to cover to capture aggro as in the current meter.  For example, Rothgar can see the leftmost mob below has aggroed Zoltaroth and is about to give chase. (Zoltaroth is currently bolting toward the safety of the Qeynos gates, and so he is absent from this picture.)</p><p>So it's a one-size-fits-all improvement to what we already know, and it can be turned off if desired.  This would not eliminate the threat meter, but it would allow us to better take advantage of the information that is already being passed down from the server for multiple-mob encounters:</p><p><img src="http://www.frontiernet.net/~randyc1/threat/aggro_scene2.jpg" /> </p><p>For the same battle, this might be what Aeralik would see:</p><p><img src="http://www.frontiernet.net/~randyc1/threat/aggro_scene2_aeralik.jpg" />  </p><p>As a side note, the existing raid window (and group window for groups) could also be used to display first and second hate position character names without any new interface parts. (If you think about using an overhead system on a mob like Leviathan, you know it won’t work in every case. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything but Leviathan’s waist during that battle.) During combat all the names would go white except the aggro and second positions. Nothing else would change aside from the two colors – names would not reorder themselves, etc., because we do use the raid window for targeting and other things. This would give a raid leader a good birds-eye view of the hate component, since he is also probably using this window to watch health, power and (soon) cures raidwide. In most cases the aggro will be on the tank for the targeted mob, and he could assess whether second-position hate was staying solidly on the offtank or flickering around to others. (I do realize the orange is a conflict with current raid window colors):</p><p><img src="http://www.frontiernet.net/~randyc1/threat/raid_hate3.jpg" />  </p><p>To me, anything done with threat measurement and display needs to fit in smoothly with what we are already accustomed to doing; it should assist and enhance.  Whether tanking or not, these new components shouldn't replace or be a distraction from the things we normally focus on during combat.  The threat meter and exposure of threat values are terrific ideas and I am eager to see them in place.  But I think that once you do expose that part of combat you can also take advantage of the current interface and display new information in a way that’s on-brand with what EQ2 players expect.</p>

[Kordran]

<p>Hasn't Rothgar already addressed in the previous post that you've made about the threat meter? They're already on record as saying that they intend it to primarily be a tool for DPS classes, not for tanks.</p><p>Edit: I'll give you an "A" for persistence though. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/b2eb59423fbf5fa39342041237025880.gif" border="0" /></p>

[Night_Owl]

<p><cite>Kordran wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Night_Owl wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>What I'm really after though is that it's a meter, not some silly overmobhead mess, and preferably with a numerical value as well as a %.  Meter is simple to read, easy to put in a place where I can see it and it's not getting in the way and/or resize, I don't need to squint at little tiny bars that move around to see if there's a problem, etc.</blockquote><p>I don't think that we'll ever see actual, real threat numbers. What we see now are taunt values (edit: on test), but that's not the same as total threat. There's a lot of hidden threat modifications in the game, and some encounters are based around memblurs/wipes and giving players exacting information on threat values and positions would trivialize those fights. They seem to be intentionally obsfucating some threat values, and want to keep it that way. Even if they did expand the functionality of the meter, I suspect all you'll ever see is some percentage between 0-100.</p></blockquote><p>If they've given taunt numbers, all the numbers, as they can be figured out through testing.  It's just a matter of if players want to go through the hassle.  I'm not one, but they do exist, I've seen people figure out mechanics in game after game who do it.  I just don't see the point in this half-[Removed for Content] kind of thing.  In due course, it could be incorporated into something like ACT, for example...just with much more of a performance hit than having it put in dev side.</p><p>Grumpy, have you ever raided with a threat meter prior to this?  The tank doesn't need to pay attention to the threat meter at all, except in some specific situations.  While I see your point of being able to just eyeball all the mobs instead of cycling through a meter, that's far less efficient for the classes who the threat meter really helps-dps/healers.  Don't get me wrong, having the simplistic display over the mobs as something that could be turned on/off could have uses for tanks, overall it's virtually pointless for everybody else.  What you're showing in your screenshots isn't a one-size-fits-all improvement, and I'd even go so far as to say it's a negligable improvement.  It's like giving a starving man a bon-bon...better than nothing, but nowhere near good.</p><p>I think that another window (or perhaps an attachment to the raid window?) would work better, where the information can be well organized and not moving.  So does, oh, I'd ballpark it at around 5million people in that other game (though that's probably a bit low).</p><p>Well, whatever, I can't do any more than I've already done-which is express my opinion and direct the devs to where they can look at tested, proven, and widely acclaimed threat meters along with feedback from users of those meters.  If they insist on putting something in that's significantly inferior, well...se la vi.  If the idea is to attract former raiders from other games, though...well, they're going to be used to a good threat meter, and not want the junk that's being put out.  How disappointing.</p>

[Grumpy_Warrior_01]

<p><cite>Kordran wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Hasn't Rothgar already addressed in the previous post that you've made about the threat meter? They're already on record as saying that they intend it to primarily be a tool for DPS classes, not for tanks.</p><p>Edit: I'll give you an "A" for persistence though. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/b2eb59423fbf5fa39342041237025880.gif" border="0" /></p></blockquote><p>Well here's a direct quote (of several) from this thread, Kordran.</p><p>Hate is obviously a very large part of combat and before this update there were no tools or exposed information to give you a way to measure it.  Of course there are going to be people out there that liked the fact that it was hidden and will be resistant to change.  However, its not fair for us to expect fighters to focus on hate as a major part of their job and not give them any indicators other than "oh, the mob is now hitting on someone else".  We might make tweaks to these tools down the road, but its too early to start rewriting them when they haven't even gone live yet.  Its apparent by this thread that people have a lot of different ideas about how it should work.  I'm just asking that you try it out on live servers in your day-to-day activities for a few weeks and then lets talk about any improvements that might be needed.</p><p>You get a B- for reading comprehension and unwarranted snarkiness.</p>

[Night_Owl]

<p>Alright, coming back with a real post, like I should have done in the first place.</p> <blockquote><p><cite>Motzi@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><p>Rothgar,</p><p>I've tried the hatemeter on test, it is a steaming [Removed for Content] for tanks.  Thus, this thread exists to give you that feedback to launch with something that is actually useful to someone other than a dps class.</p><p>You can choose to listen to your community on this or not.</p></blockquote> <p>Threat meters are primarily for dps.  Not that I disagree with the steaming [Removed for Content] portion.</p> <blockquote> <p><cite>Scythienne@Splitpaw wrote:</cite></p> <p>Now let's see this % of total hate work in a raid scenario with 24 peeps <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></p></blockquote> <p>How about seeing it work in a raid with 40?  While the current meter implementation is, as someone else mentioned, a steaming [Removed for Content], percentage and numeric values work well in a raid setting.</p> <blockquote><p><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite></p><p>I'm just asking that you try it out on live servers in your day-to-day activities for a few weeks and then lets talk about any improvements that might be needed.</p></blockquote> <p>It's unreasonable to expect it to go live when it's already clear that it's significatly below the standard of a threat meter in modern gaming, and require the customers on live (who aren't here for testing purposes) to deal with it.  It's better than nothing, so you'll get some positive feedback, which might lead you to believe that it's good.  It's not.  <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.curse.com" target="_blank">www.curse.com</a> look up threat meters.  Try Omen or KLH for starters.</p> <blockquote><p><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite></p><p>The 'tool' for tanks is more the hate data that is now coming down that will allow people to parse it.  Thats on par with what DPS get right now.  DPS classes really have no idea how well they did unless they run an external parser.  Now tanks will have the same ability if they want to do this.</p><p>The threat meter was just an added bonus and was not meant as a tool to change the way tanks do their job.  If a tank loses aggro it most definitely will be useful because it will tell the tank how far he needs to go to get it back.  It also helps the tank in an indirect method because it allows other players in the group to better manage their aggro.  We felt it was a better decision to let each class manage their hate rather than give all of the hate data to the tank so he could yell at people when they are getting close.  This gives every player the opportunity to play their class well and demonstrate skill.</p><p>The hate bars added to the "Name and Chat Bubble" that appears over every mobs head is a more useful tool for tanks than the actual threat meter that everyone is focusing on.  I think that hate is more of a problem when you're fighitng a group of mobs, or get addition encounters that weren't expected.  These hate bars will let you visible see which mobs in the fray you don't have aggro on.  I know that some people will say that they can tell that already from which way the mob is facing, but lets be real, combat is a chaotic mass sometimes and people aren't always standing where they need to be.  Trying to rely on the direction a mob is facing, especially when there are skills that can turn them around, isn't always foolproof.</p><p>Kordran,</p><p>Initially we did talk about showing a sorted threat list for every person in the group.  But after mocking up the design and realizing it looked more like a spreadsheet than a gameplay element, we decided to go for something less data-oriented.  There seem to be a lot of people that think the threat meter isn't necessary and don't want it.  Then there are those people that want to see it display even more data than it already does.  I think its fair to go live with the feature somewhere in the middle and see how it plays out.  I think when people understand that threat meter is not meant to be a 'tank tool' they will see that it works fine for what it is.</p></blockquote> <p>Rothgar, why do you believe that a threat meter is primarily for tanks?  You've mentioned this a couple of times, and it makes no sense to me.  In my experience it's a tool for dps.  The main tanks job is to generate threat, and everyone else has to stay below what your tank is capable of producing.  While tanks do get some benefit out of a direct numerical threat amount (not percentage) so far as letting them know if they have a significant enough lead to start prioritizing damage over raw threat, 99% of the use of the meter is so that dps knows exactly how far they can push the threat threshold without ripping agro.  I can't count the times I've been riding right behind the tank by just a couple thousand threat (in another game, with a tank I knew and was comfortable with) when it was time to dps hard.  Hard to do that when the difference between 1st and 2nd could be a billion threat or 1 threat.  DPS hard?  F that, I'm 2nd on the meter...not knowing that I could dps very hard and have no worries.</p> <p>Incidentally, I'd love to see the mocked up design.  My spreadsheets look nothing like the threat meters I've used for years.  I included a sample image in a previous post.  What on earth were you putting in there to give it a spreadsheet appearance?</p><blockquote><p><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite></p><p>The biggest challenge for us on the development side is how we bring this data to you without impacting gameplay performance.</p></blockquote><p>You could always put in a separate "chat" channel that's hidden from all players and inaccessable, make it raid-only.  Information transmits sideways from player to player regarding their threat.  Works very well, and lightweight, in LUA anyhow.  Generic example:</p><p>Joe hits mob for 100 damage, giving him 100 threat.  Joes' meter sends this to the raid.  Joes meter is quiet until Joe does something again.</p><p>Fred, Mike, and Mary receive Joes 100 threat increase.  Their meters are staying silent until they do something, not generating threat.</p><p>Instead of having 100% of the information cycle from client to server to all raid clients and back again with an acknowledgement, it might be less intensive to have it go client chat channel which everone (including the server) accesses, without the extra back and forth.  Perhaps something along the lines of how the now defunct Omen 2.0 (they use 3.0 now, but that's based on...oh nvm, look it up if you're interested) used to function (well, all threat meters in that game used to function similarly, just an example).  Try <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.wowace.com" target="_blank">www.wowace.com</a> for some more Omen info to draw inspiration from.  Potential threat information is stored on client side, so that the server wouldn't need to hammer out every threat calculation for every player, but rather that the clients could provide a measure of their own threat calculations, which is then passed on.  Threat calculations aren't that processor intensive when done for only one person.</p>