Guardian agro issue [Archive] - EQ2 Forum Archive @ EQ2Wire

Landiin

01-26-2010, 09:44 PM

So how many of you think we should be able to hold aggro with out hate transfer like other plate tanks in heroic groups or should we continue to need to drag along certain class in order to do what other plate tanks can do with out them?

GarrX

01-26-2010, 11:41 PM

To answer your question in short, yes, I believe we should be able to hold threat without hate gains or transfers from other classes in a group. In a raid situation, I could see the need for one class that would benefit our hate gain, where the DPS numbers are borderline compared to the Guardian's threat numbers with raid buffs considered to increase the DPS classes' performance, and would need a hate gain or hate transfer from another utility class to keep above the water.Personally I'd like to see the Trakanon shield ( Stormbringer Bulwark of the Unstoppable ) hate transfer rolled into the class as a passive ability in an Acheivement ability perhaps somewhere in our tree, ie; change Got Your Back, etc. Seeing as we dont cap on transfers in raids anyhow, I dont see how it would hurt the class at all in a sense of balance.Considering most Guards wont even touch two of our endline abilities, "Got Your Back", and "Cripple", best thing we could hope for is It being a passive ability that would replace the current "Got Your Back" in our stability line in the Guardian Tree.But then again, this is assuming a developer would read this, and give it the nod.. and highly unlikely to happen in the expansion's release, due to them being more concerned with the current new set of AA, rather than old problems like Hold the Line, Aggressive Nature, and the lack of desire to use our Defensive Stance except in a pinch with stance dancing.I support the idea of a passive hate transfer personally.. Paladin use the same method as the other defensive plate tank, and given our lack of significant DPS or ability to put up numbers outside of damage ( sk heal numbers, etc ) to contribute to our threat total, the only people I could see upset by the Idea would be the people who are accustomed to the current system, where dual wield / offensive stance DPS, is currently the common method used by Guardians to keep up from losing threat positions. And by nature of design, Im sure this was not the intended method for Guardians to tank for a group OR raid, by sacrificing their shield and defense just for the sake of holding hate..But the problem is, you have a lot of people who dont want their shiny toy taken away from them, and as such, will fight to keep DPS the significant factor for holding threat, so they can see their numbers on ACT and compete with others. We saw this in the last fighter revamp, where the big "taunt bot" hype went around and people were all up in arms about it. Me personally, I dont see how pushing buttons for threat and pushing buttons for DPS are any different, but that's just from the perspective of someone who has played the "main tank" class in numerous other MMORPGs, including EverQuest1.The real root of the problem seems to lie in level cap increases with the history of EverQuest 2's progression, in my opinion. The DPS has increased dramatically, but threat values have not scaled in comparison. If you roll a Guardian to level 20, examine your taunt value around that level. It's about 300, whereas your autoattack swings are about 90-150, in a generous proportion. If you examine them at level 80, your taunt value is about 2400, and your autoattack is critting for 3500, you can see that the threat values have not scaled with DPS values. If my autoattack is swinging for around 5000 at level 90, I'd expect my taunt to be hitting for 15000-17500 when I use it every 8 seconds or so, considering resistabilities and the dramatic penalties to our DPS in defensive stance in the way of holding threat.I wish our community would start emphasizing threat per second on their ACT's rather than damage per second, , when It comes to defensive tank class performance in the threat generation department of our class. More than ever in previous expansions, TSO's has brought about an elitist attitude that has spread like wildfire amongst the entire community, and It's caused a decent amount of people to quit the game, I'm sure.

Landiin

01-27-2010, 01:29 AM

Just wanting to get a consensus here, because it seems some guardians think we should have to have hate transfer to keep agro on heroic content and not be even close to the other tanks on AE threat..

GarrX

01-27-2010, 01:38 AM

<cite>Toran@Oasis wrote:</cite><blockquote>Just wanting to get a consensus here, because it seems some guardians think we should have to have hate transfer to keep agro on heroic content and not be even close to the other tanks on AE threat..</blockquote>If this is the direction we're going to keep going in, Im going to drop my subscriptions before long. The saddest part of this is, the "some guardians" are likely the ones in the ideal raid setup/situation and have time to devote to raids, etc. Whereas people in business situations that play casually are just going to look at this game at T9 and just switch over to a game that doesnt have ridiculous issues with important aspects of the game, like threat generation.If I had one thing to say to the developers, It would be this: You will not please everyone, so satisfy the majority. Make threat generation self reliant in group situations, and reasonable with one utility hate buff in a raid situation. If you want specific ideas, post a thread requesting them. If not, dont tease us with this listening to the community playerbase stuff we've been hearing since TSO release.. Listening to the community is a scary thought in itself, because the major part of the community never knows what it wants. They just want what other classes have, so they dont feel compelled to roll an alt.The Guardian is a Sword/Shield tank, that can dual wield or pick up a 2hander to solo or clear through trivial content in a group situation, if the Guardian has fully fabled gear, or is of superior level to said content. The reality of our situation is 2handers are unviable due to comparable DPS with 1handers, and we are forced to dual wield the majority of the time to keep hate if we do not have a coercer, dirge, or swash/assassin in our group. Only if we're lucky enough to have the ideal setup with utility classes for hate transfer/gain do we feel safe enough to use our shield or toy with defensive stance without stance dancing.People in full fabled, have access to the perfect hate gain/transfer setup, etc, will disagree, but I'm not speaking for the small fraction of the Guardian community that are.

Aull

01-27-2010, 10:59 AM

There are guards and even zerkers in full fabled t4 gear that still need hate transfers just to have any hope of holding aggro. Crusaders do not have it as rough.The dps in this expansion has gone so high that no fighter can rely on just taunts and even positionals to give them hope of holding aggro.

GarrX

01-27-2010, 04:59 PM

<cite>Aull wrote:</cite><blockquote>There are guards and even zerkers in full fabled t4 gear that still need hate transfers just to have any hope of holding aggro. Crusaders do not have it as rough.The dps in this expansion has gone so high that no fighter can rely on just taunts and even positionals to give them hope of holding aggro.</blockquote>And the biggest reason this has happened, is unlike any expansion before RoK, crit, double attack, etc, are all able to reach the cap now. There's no damage spread anymore at T8, and if itemization is done the same way at T9, there won't be a damage spread there either.. only the same numbers consistently popping up with criticals.

Humayon

01-28-2010, 02:34 PM

I agree mostly with what has been said and would like to say that guardians by initial design are the defensive tanks, excelling at melee single target combat. That said, the reality these days is far from it. Our own hate gain is abysmal, many would disagree but i stand firm on this. I play at the top tier, raiding mostly and have most of the best instanced raid gear this game has to offer and time and again i see how inadequate guardian threat is compared to other classes.I have mentioned this before and will say this again. The game these days is all about parses and who can churn out the most dps and i resent this fact completely. As a guardian, dps should be the least of my worries, i don't care if i parse 1000 per fight but what i want is to hold aggro on single target like no other tank and have the best defense of any tank, which is just not the case especially without the right group setup. We are the lowest of all the tank dps and frankly defensively not that great either considering in order to hold threat some of us have to resort to offense stance and the "defense" goes out of the window there.I enjoy playing my guardian but in some cases i strongly feel that if i was not in raid, i will not be missed. The whole idea of going dual wield and pumping out high dps to hold aggro is just not appropriate for a guardian. Other classes can do same and a lot better. The guardian SHOULD be a defensive tank which we clearly are not right now.

RafaelSmith

01-28-2010, 05:25 PM

Guardian aggro is a joke. Its obvious to me when I play my Guardian and its even more obvious when I play my Assassin =PWe have some snaps......that it.....we really dont have hate generation/maintanece of our own. We are only "defensive" tank in the sense that assumming we have the proper group to generate our aggro for us we can then take the dmg.I pretty much benched my Guardian many months ago due to frustration overload. Having a blast playing Assassin but I still wish I was playing the tank.......its the role I enjoy the most. But there is no place for a tank like Guardian in the vast majority of EQ2's content today. Our only purpose in the game is in progression raiding....but any guild or raid alliance worth a [Removed for Content] already has an established MT so Guards not already in those positions really have no place or hope in the game anymore. The smaller lower tier/"casual" raid forces dont even use Guards because its so much easier to form a raid with limited resources/classes around other fighters like SK....and those raid forces will never tackle the top end hard hitting mobs where a Guard would actually be a better choice as MT.

Rahatmattata

01-28-2010, 07:57 PM

<cite>Gaylon@Mistmoore wrote:</cite><blockquote>Our only purpose in the game is in progression raiding....</blockquote>Honestly paladins can fill that role perfectly fine.

Odos

01-29-2010, 02:15 PM

Before I go too far, I do believe that guardians do need some agro love; however, I don't buy into this class balancing stuff. Everyone wants their tank to be the best of everything, highest dps, highest agro, highest MIT, and highest HP. If one class is better at something, then the other classes want it.In a raid situation, I don't have any troubles holding agro. A guardian can take hits better than any other class in the game, he is the pure warrior. That's what guardians are suppose to do and I laugh when people say they want their pally, SK, or whatever to be able to tank as good as a guardian. Having said that, I do believe the SK's are highly over powered at the moment but I think xpac time will change that a little.If you want to be an AOE tank, then roll a different class. If you don't raid and have junk gear, I would not recommend playing a guardian. If you don't like the dps, again, roll a different class. Lets not try to make everyone the same class, it would take the fun out of the game.

Rahatmattata

01-29-2010, 02:40 PM

<cite>Odos wrote:</cite><blockquote>In a raid situation, I don't have any troubles holding agro</blockquote>Rolling in o-stance with 2 healers and 3 hate buffers <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/0a4d7238daa496a758252d0a2b1a1384.gif" border="0" />

Odos

01-29-2010, 03:06 PM

<cite>Rahatmattata wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Odos wrote:</cite><blockquote>In a raid situation, I don't have any troubles holding agro</blockquote>Rolling in o-stance with 2 healers and 3 hate buffers <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/0a4d7238daa496a758252d0a2b1a1384.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>You're crazy if you think we can tank top end mobs in offensive.

RafaelSmith

01-29-2010, 03:44 PM

<cite>Odos wrote:</cite><blockquote>Before I go too far, I do believe that guardians do need some agro love; however, I don't buy into this class balancing stuff. Everyone wants their tank to be the best of everything, highest dps, highest agro, highest MIT, and highest HP. If one class is better at something, then the other classes want it.In a raid situation, I don't have any troubles holding agro. A guardian can take hits better than any other class in the game, he is the pure warrior. That's what guardians are suppose to do and I laugh when people say they want their pally, SK, or whatever to be able to tank as good as a guardian. Having said that, I do believe the SK's are highly over powered at the moment but I think xpac time will change that a little.If you want to be an AOE tank, then roll a different class. If you don't raid and have junk gear, I would not recommend playing a guardian. If you don't like the dps, again, roll a different class. Lets not try to make everyone the same class, it would take the fun out of the game.</blockquote>Agreed.The only issue ive always had was with regards to trying to seperate the tanks into AE and ST categories. To me AE is a superset of ST. I just dont think its a valid balance variable.

Grumpy_Warrior_01

01-29-2010, 03:51 PM

Aggro control should not be a balancing factor for fighter classes. The mix of DPS, utility, and survivability should be the balancing factors. Saying one fighter class should have to chase mobs around while another class should not is stupid. It does not make the game more flavorful or interesting, it simply polarizes the desirability of the classes. The only ones who want to see it remain this way are the ones that have aggro lock handed to them (crusaders) who have gotten a taste of how desirable this makes them, regardless of their DPS, survivability and utility, in the TSO expansion.

Rahatmattata

01-30-2010, 05:37 AM

<cite>Odos wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Rahatmattata wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Odos wrote:</cite><blockquote>In a raid situation, I don't have any troubles holding agro</blockquote>Rolling in o-stance with 2 healers and 3 hate buffers <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/0a4d7238daa496a758252d0a2b1a1384.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>You're crazy if you think we can tank top end mobs in offensive.</blockquote>You didn't mention what mobs you are tanking. Yea, I'm sure once you have progressed to the hardest mobs in the game and farmed some high-end gear it gets easier. Sucks for the guard sporting T2 gear random legendary jewelery and his fabled epic though. But the again you don't recommend playing a guard unless they have fabled gear and tanking epic mobs. Too bad we were all non-raiding freshly minted level 80 (70/60/50) guards with trash gear getting crushed like a beer can in harder heroic instances once.

Rahatmattata

01-30-2010, 07:16 AM

<cite>Grumpy_Warrior_01 wrote:</cite><blockquote>Aggro control should not be a balancing factor for fighter classes. The mix of DPS, utility, and survivability should be the balancing factors.</blockquote>I've changed my stance a little on fighter balance. I think threat should be a balancing factor. Consider if you had a class with the defense of a guard and the threat of a shadowknight. Why would you possibly want to use another class? To shave three minutes off a dungeon crawl by using a higher dps tank?My feeling now is threat control is a little whack, and survivability is jacked up. As far as threat, I just want the ability to hold up to 2 mobs against reasonable raid dps (not 45 second trash burns) by switching between mobs in d-stance with a templar, defiler, warden, coercer, and dirge. I am fine with having to go as offensive as possible and rely on certain classes to hold most of the mobs in a large battle. As far as survivability goes... I rolled a guardian because I wanted to be the most defensive pure tank in the game. But the edge just isn't there anymore. Guardians give up way to much for the now small defensive advantage. I'd honstely prefer to see guards gain a clear defensive edge once again.I believe it is acceptable for a raid/group to have to manage their aggro in exchange for having a mountian of steel defending them. Or they can put a ball of aluminum foil on the front line and go balls-out. Utility could be the balance between the two extremes with guardians being the mountain of steel, bruisers being the ball of aluminum foil, and in the middle you have the most utility with average threat and average survivability. The problem as I see it is both crusaders have basically come very close to being the class I described in the first paragraph. They can lock down threat better than any class in the game and stand [Removed for Content] close to guards in survivability.One thing is clear everyone wants something different. It is hard to agree on how fighters should be balanced, so we have to leave that up to the game devs to decide how they want to balance it. They can try the whole every tank is equal in every way in every situation, but different. Tank A has defense, tank Z has threat, tank M isn't the best at either but has the most unique utility. Tank A is good at solo, tank B is good at groups, Tank C is good for raids, tank D is good for PvP. Tank A does good DPS, tank B is a good OT, tank C is a good MT. All tanks are equal at this but different at that. Too many variations to list them all.At this point I have no idea what SOE's vision of fighter balance is. They won't tell us, and who's to say if they even have a clear vision for class balance? A defined roll for each fighter. If they did lay it out and say, "This tank is designed to be played best in this way and we will balance things accordingly", they will undoubtedly [Removed for Content] off a lot of people and lose money. Shadowknights that love to tank would be [Removed for Content] if designed into a dps roll, and monks that love to dps would be [Removed for Content] if designed into a defensive roll. Maybe the best solution is all fighters are equal but different, where the only thing that matters is the feel and abilities of a certain class. Unfortunatly, this is virtually impossible.All I know is I want to play whatever tank is the hardest to kill and the best at defending his group. I don't know what people that play other classes want, but I think this is probably something almost all people that play guardians as their main character have in common. Either that or they don't care; they just want/have to main tank raids and guardian happens to be the class that is used most for raid tanking.

Grumpy_Warrior_01

01-30-2010, 01:22 PM

The problem with using threat to balance the desirability of the fighter classes is that aggro is the fighter's primary key to a group's confidence and efficiency, more so than minor differences in survivability. When aggro is bouncing all over the place it changes the air from a pleasant, effective group experience into one of sour aggravation for everyone. A few extra hit points on the guardian is not going to keep that warlock alive, and the warlock is not in the mood to throttle himself as punishment for having high dps.Fully mastered, fully AA'd, raid geared, mythicaled, with 10,000+ hours played on the guardian, I should not have to labor, and frequently fail, to do a fighter's most basic function due to class design. I can get a group through an instance, but without very specific support classes it's not even remotely entertaining. I log out mentally exhausted not from survivability but from the insult of being constantly forced to struggle for aggro against equally geared, equally experienced players. The expansion is coming up and my guildmates are going to be looking to me to run through the new zones with them. I would prefer they look forward to it with pleasure instead of dreading the inevitable ping pong matches. That's not asking for too much.

Rahatmattata

01-30-2010, 09:12 PM

<cite>Grumpy_Warrior_01 wrote:</cite><blockquote>Fully mastered, fully AA'd, raid geared, mythicaled, with 10,000+ hours played on the guardian, I should not have to labor, and frequently fail, to do a fighter's most basic function due to class design. I can get a group through an instance, but without very specific support classes it's not even remotely entertaining. I log out mentally exhausted not from survivability but from the insult of being constantly forced to struggle for aggro against equally geared, equally experienced players. The expansion is coming up and my guildmates are going to be looking to me to run through the new zones with them. I would prefer they look forward to it with pleasure instead of dreading the inevitable ping pong matches. That's not asking for too much.</blockquote>I can't help but think you're exagerating. I'm not fully mastered, I only have 3 T4 pieces, but I have geared up enough to where I can run heroic stuff just fine with a half decent group. I must have some kind of tank buffs or a troub, and ostance, duel-wield... often I can get away with using the harbinger of malcontent... but I can tank any heroic content in the game without much issue. The first time I went into Guk3 we cleared the zone with 1 healer and no dirge. The last mob took a few tries. My biggest problem is raid tanking in dstance with a tower shield and a warden instead of a swash/assassin.If you are having serious ping pong issues in heroic zones with that character, sorry but you're doing it wrong.

Odos

01-30-2010, 09:38 PM

You guys should read this post. I would think it would be extremely helpful to anyone.<a href="http://www.eq2flames.com/guardians/45150-guardian-dummies.html">http://www.eq2flames.com/guardians/...an-dummies.html</a>

Gonzo550

01-30-2010, 11:14 PM

im in a raid right now, can't hold AE agro and that's basically all there is in this zone plus the SK tanking it is topping the parse on everything including the solo mobs. this is bad

Sinval

01-31-2010, 04:34 AM

<cite>Grumpy_Warrior_01 wrote:</cite><blockquote>The problem with using threat to balance the desirability of the fighter classes is that aggro is the fighter's primary key to a group's confidence and efficiency, more so than minor differences in survivability. When aggro is bouncing all over the place it changes the air from a pleasant, effective group experience into one of sour aggravation for everyone. A few extra hit points on the guardian is not going to keep that warlock alive, and the warlock is not in the mood to throttle himself as punishment for having high dps.Fully mastered, fully AA'd, raid geared, mythicaled, with 10,000+ hours played on the guardian, I should not have to labor, and frequently fail, to do a fighter's most basic function due to class design. I can get a group through an instance, but without very specific support classes it's not even remotely entertaining. I log out mentally exhausted not from survivability but from the insult of being constantly forced to struggle for aggro against equally geared, equally experienced players. The expansion is coming up and my guildmates are going to be looking to me to run through the new zones with them. I would prefer they look forward to it with pleasure instead of dreading the inevitable ping pong matches. That's not asking for too much.</blockquote>Q...F...E.God I wish someone in red would read this.

TripperFall

02-19-2010, 08:38 PM

<cite>Sinval@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>God I wish someone in red would read this.</blockquote>Ditto....Personally I don't care about DPS or being made comparable to anyone. I care about 1) Aggro control, 2) survivabilityI've thought that a possible fix would be a stacking bonus to constant/chain taunt casting. The more taunts you throw in succession, the more they would stack and actually multiply. You could still break the chain of taunts to work in damage skills, if you chose, but for pure hate control, we'd use our taunts.$0.02

Shorcon

05-08-2010, 09:16 PM

<cite>Toranx@Crushbone wrote:</cite><blockquote>So how many of you think we should be able to hold aggro with out hate transfer like other plate tanks in heroic groups or should we continue to need to drag along certain class in order to do what other plate tanks can do with out them?</blockquote>It's frustrating eh?