Higher threat on CS/CC

justicezer0 · December 2013

Tank types are having a hard time keeping aggression on things. They need to spend some time blocking and some time attacking with lower base damage, meaning that they have a lot less ability to generate threat. The damage types get to feel super pretty easily, but I feel frustrated when I can't get up in things' face reliably. Would it be possible to look at making the threat generating advantages more potent, so that people who want to tank can pull it off better?

flowcyto · December 2013

Better threat for the tank role has been asked for a while now. I dun think the extra threat for CC/CS increased w/ the On Alert changes that made everyone way more powerful?

Yeah, it would be nice if those threat values were tweaked, or better yet scaled w/ level or something. A bit OT, but IMO, Tank role itself needs some sort of damage-sharing ability so even extra tanks that obv can't share one boss's attention dun get to feel as much like 3rd rate dps w/ energy issues (the dmg share could proc things like Defiant, fuel my fire, form of the master, etc). Should be all about threat and protecting allies, not damage.

raighn · December 2013

flowcyto wrote: »

Better threat for the tank role has been asked for a while now. I dun think the extra threat for CC/CS increased w/ the On Alert changes that made everyone way more powerful?

Yeah, it would be nice if those threat values were tweaked, or better yet scaled w/ level or something. A bit OT, but IMO, Tank role itself needs some sort of damage-sharing ability so even extra tanks that obv can't share one boss's attention dun get to feel as much like 3rd rate dps w/ energy issues (the dmg share could proc things like Defiant, fuel my fire, form of the master, etc). Should be all about threat and protecting allies, not damage.

That sounds like a pretty good idea...

Assuming I understood correctly, tank role would play out like this:

Player A is Tank
Player B & C are DPS or Hybrid
Player D is Support
Player E is also Tank

Player A is holding aggro decently, while Player E is struggling to hold any aggro... Player E uses Defiant, without aggro they would normally have poor energy managent, but because they are Tank Role they are redirecting a portion of everyone elses damage to themselves, thus stacking up Defiant and generating energy as if they had aggro.

Player B is doing such high DPS that even Player A can't pull aggro off him. Because both Player A & Player E are tanks, Player B is splitting a portion of the damage he takes with the two of them, aiding in his survival.

Players C & D go mostly unnoticed by the mobs

Of that's the case then this would be a wonderful change to Tank Role...

But back to the topic at hand... causing CC/CS to increase damage output by a lesser amount than a solid Rank would also go a long ways to improving Tank threat generation. Tanks have a hard time out aggroing many DPS due to the huge gap in damage output. In many other games this problem was solved by making the tanks damage output unparalleled.... but that creates it's own problems and is just poor design... but Increasing the damage so that the gap isn't quite as large would provide a greater benefit than simply bumping up the threat gen from CC/CS...

If i recall correctly a Rank increases base damage of an ability by 20%... so if CC/CS were to increase base damage by 10-15% that should close the gap enough to allow tanks to generate enough threat from damage plus the bonus threat from CC/CS to keep up and surpass DPS aggro.

flowcyto · December 2013

Yup, you got the gist of my suggestion, raighn, and w/ a nice example. Ofc such damage sharing would need a cap and/or diminished returns of some sort, but I'd love to see something like it happen.

Anyways, I def don't want CO to go further in the route of making tanks just deal more dmg for aggro purposes, but making the aggro scale w/ rank is another good idea too.

Its part of the reason I want the dps on all abilities to be re-balanced so badly in general- it doesn't just balance the pve dps side of things, but helps clean up disparities in tank builds and aids in PvP balance. being able to, say, hold aggro should be more about fitting a bunch of abilities that share a theme well together, instead of cherry-picking the best dps options and slapping crippling on em.

raighn · December 2013

Unless they scaled up the threat from CC/CS by a huge margin, DPS will still generate more threat than a tank through raw damage output alone.

I'm saying they should make CC/CS add a small damage bonus as if it were a Rank, though not nearly as large as Ranks, in addition to bumping up the threat gen from CC/CS.

Also, if they only increase the Threat Gen alone then we likeky won't see tank build branch out much... the most effective tanks will still be those who use the current "threat magnet" skills such as Devour Essence and other Maintains with rapid damage tics to proc CC/CS from.

flowcyto · January 2014

Oh yeah, just increasing threat across the board won't solve the underlying ability balance issue. Since some combo powers can hit faster than maintain ticks, I think its also just due to most of the best dps abilities ya can put crippling on also being maintains (and some maintains having that double hit on first tick 'bug').

I get what ya mean, though- since CC precludes getting rank 3, scaling up the damage a lil by taking a CC would be alright.

I imagine much of this threat issue is due to the large player power creep introduced w/ the On Alert changes. I didn't really play the game much before then, so I wouldn't know, but it did at least expose problems in the underlying threat system.

(still want better ability balance, but that's not specific to tanking)

rugrothrumbor · January 2014

Crippling Challenge and Challenging Strikes need threat increase for sure.

spinnytop · January 2014

It would be neat if CS and CC were affected by damage bonuses, and could crit.

lordhavelock · January 2014

rugrothrumbor wrote: »

Crippling Challenge and Challenging Strikes need threat increase for sure.

Agreed +1.

justicezer0 · January 2014

Yeah, I agree that tanking needs something more behind it than just grabbing aggro and surviving it to make it more useful, but I don't know what, it would be a different suggestion, and tweaking these numbers is an easy fix that would sort out half the problems with probably just a few hours of work.
I assume they would need to do some balancing and QA to figure out the right number, and I also assume that changing the numbers would involve a little bit of digging through pointlessly complicated and badly written archaic code, same as basically every programming task in the history of computing. Still, it's minimal effort for a partial fix.

Another question would be to find out whether the threat bonus from those powers are modified by role/spec threat modifiers.

Higher threat on CS/CC

Comments