Current Issues with GF Threat and Abilities

kenji1134

Quick bit of background about me. (Fair warning, wall-of-text INC)
I have been playing MMOs and tanking since about 1997. I have main tanked most of the endgame content in EQ2, Vanguard, Age of Conan, and RIFT. And I now find myself in Neverwinter, and seeing the same old tank problems rearing their ugly heads.

1A. First and foremost, a tank NEEDS to have at least one force taunt. One extremely strong instant aggro tool for getting a mob to go after you.
We currently have nothing of the sort. In fact, some mobs (undead hulks) often completely ignore our hate generating abilities altogether.

1B. As a general extension of the above point, a tank needs to have snap aggro. Right now we rely on our Marks to generate hate over time, and cause us to generate ~3x hate on marked mobs. However this is simply not enough to overcome cleric heal aggro (which often comes in bursts), or to pull off a dps who decides to unload.
More on marks later.

2. Given the sheer number of adds in the game, especially on boss fights, long cooldown abilities which hit limited targets (Enforced Threat, Frontline Surge) are simply not enough.
At 35 we can charge in and apply our marks in a small aoe using Threatening Rush, however the hate over time component is weak, so we now need to actively hit our targets to get some aggro going. But Rush hits one target, Frontline hits maybe 3-5 at best, and is kinda flaky, and Enforced has too long of a cooldown to be reliable.

The solution to this would likely be to GREATLY increase the hate over time component of Marks (and make them last a given duration, not fall off when you get hit). However this would likely mean removing the 3X hate mod for hitting marked targets, and let the marks themselves do the bulk of the work.

Another option would be to give GFs an buff that acts as a hate siphon. Throw it on your cleric, and lets say... I want to say 50%, but that would be too easy... 40% of their hate is transferred to you. This protects our siphon target somewhat, and makes controlling large groups easier.

A third option would be to "magically" make GF damage aggro apply in a large aoe, similar to cleric healing aggro. So as a GF, you hit a mob, you do say 300 damage. The hate caused by that 300 damage, say 300 hate, is then applied to ALL engaged mobs in a 30' range. Note, just the hate, not the damage itself. I am aware that this would cause geometric hate gain when fighting more and more mobs... so we would need to control ourselves and not overaggro the whole room.

3. Attacking and abilities while blocking.
We are all aware that blocking is finicky. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt, sometimes it looks like its up but it isnt... etc. My biggest gripe about blocking is that while you are holding shift, you cannot use anything but your blocking at-wills. (2nd biggest gripe is that marks fall off if not blocking)
This means that I need to drop my guard (potentially resulting in something hitting me and my mark on it dropping) in order to charge, aoe, apply more marks, anything...
It would be oh so great if we could somehow use at least our Encounter abilities while blocking, without dropping our guard. Heck, it would be even better if, lets say... "While blocking, all abilities deal 1/2 damage and generate 10x hate". Viola, hold block, you are now a tank with super tank aggro. Release block, you can go do some dps.
Got solid aggro on the pack of mobs? Release block, throw Frontline, Enforced, cleave a few times, and go back to blocking. This would add an element of finesse to the class, striking a fine balance between dps and hate/survivability.

Those are my thoughts for the moment. I imagine that my concerns are mirrored by the majority of the GF tanking community, and I am sure that the devs are aware of what needs to be fixed. Hopefully the coming combat rebalancing will pan out, and tanking will become the testosterone fueled bloodbath that it should be.

vagdush

Keeping hate is easy on a single target, on groups it is easy UNLESS -or should i say until- knight's valor breaks. ITF + KV + villian's menace holds hate on almost all the trash. If your party members, as a group, can't handle one or two stray mobs, then they need to be shot. When KV breaks... totally different story. Your party will hopefully let you switch it in and out until it works again, or log off/on, or whatever your preferred fix-it method is.

I have run three dungeons in a row without incident for KV. I have also had it freeze up twice in the same dungeon. Fixing that would leave me perfectly happy with GF's threat mechanics.

Mobs like hulks aren't so bad, but that is because the players already know what to expect from that mobs behavior. If it is dangerous to leave those mobs alive in certain situations, then kill them first. They move and attack so slowly, though, that there is almost no point in killing them, and can be a waste to do so (Throne of Idris).

elanith

Threat definately needs some tweaks, especially for specs outside conq, but the suggestions you are making are completely contrary to their obvious design goals. They dont want us to be threat magnets. They want us working to maintain threat, which is why our marks go away when we get hit. That being said they do need to adjust our sustained threat gen (w/out marks) so its not quite as extreme as it is now (except conq spec, which is fine threat wise).

Problem is, even if we do become threat magnets does this make us wanted for groups, or provide anything people need in dungeons?

vagdush

If changing powers and feats were cheaper, I would do my best to make viable non-conqueror builds, but for now it is what it is. I want to make sure I have the basics down, then I'll add on another account or two to test new things.

Some of the major things for non-conq. are obviously things like tenebrous. Counting on HP and mitigation for dmg to assist in keeping mob focus. Also the effectiveness of life steal --lifedrinke, too-- for keeping hate are things I need to see with my own eyes. Can I gain dmg threat and healing threat from it? Silly little things that will make all the difference.

As to being wanted for groups... every game has these issues. It is a player driven situation to decide which jobs are "best," but all content can be cleared by one of every job, so I support the job strengths and structures.

elanith

Tell me about it, I dont mind having a respec cost, but i think its currently too expensive. All the high cost of respec does is inhibit people experimenting with their specs. Many of us, myself included, wait to see what other people figure out and once we see something we like than switch. I like playing around with diff specs/abilitites, but in this game its not happening till respec costs come down or they seriously change encounters/tune abilitites and my current spec becomes invalid.

As for groups I dont want them to make us unique snowflakes that are "needed" in a party but as of right now the only "Defender" class in the game doesnt do much defending, and what we can bring to a party is largely considered unneeded. I do think things are a bit exagerated "Into the Frey" is a huge dps/CC boost on any run and we do have other abilities just as usefull.

I also dont think that throwing buffs at us left and right is nessisarily the correct path to "fix" us either. I think a lot of what will determine if we need huge buffs or just a few tweeks will be what they decide to do with healing agro, and more importantly how they are going to change/impliment future boss fights. If the prevent throwing mobs off the side of cliffs, limit continuous cc, and either lower healing agro or buff our agro (in non conq specs) than we will become far more valuable to a party. If they leave things as they are tho, we need some serious changes to abilities in our other 2 specs to make them viable.

dkcandy

Yes please make another thread about GF & Threat as there isn't enough already made.

Thanks.

elanith

dkcandy wrote: »

Yes please make another thread about GF & Threat as there isn't enough already made.

Thanks.

While i agree we should keep as much discussion as we can in a few threads as possible, dkcandy why dont you back off. You responded to another thread about GF that was created today, about the same topic. This post was actually created yesterday. Why do you feel its ok to come in here and ***** at the OP/responders, but in the other thread your not telling everyone to get out of that thread and move to another one.

If your going to be going into threads and telling people to get out at least provide a link to a thread that you somehow grace with your aproval. At least than people will know which threads you consider valid and worthy of posting in.

balanorz

they just need to give us a way to get crit without slamming other stats the class itself is so crit starved it hurts your threat gen i have 2pc timeless and 2pc high general timeless sword and ancient grand knight shield and all my crit comes from jewelry they need to put crit on weapons running 5.5k power 1210 ap 17.5 rec 3k def 1.2 deflect i hold threat just fine but if i could get over 1.5 crit it would be soooo much easier that is impossible without the 4 set timeless and its procs and befor you say it gemming for crit would kill my ap so whats a GF to do to get crit.

dkcandy

Balanorz - Cat or Stone. Lots of added CRT from those pets with CRT gear.

elanith

Agreed Cat/Stone is the way to go, its really the only way to go with every class. Untill pets spend less time dead than alive in boss fights cat/stone are the only pets that are viable. On the other hand they are a fantastic stat stick :P

ducksauce49

So recently hitting 60 on my GF came with a shock as I was being kicked from queued dungeon's as they started and being told that tanks are broke and worthless and that they needed a 2nd DC..... so I hit the forums and found out that a few of our skills were.."broke" and that our ability to manage threat and mitigate damage were sub-par. So in frustration I dropped another 6$ and really looked at my spec and setup to see if there was an issue there. ANSWER there wasn't besides for Block and Knight's Valor being broke atm (which is very easy to get around"fixes listed above") as far as the suggested changes listed in this thread, I think they are over kill and just some of the "greatest hits" from other games. I did really like the hate transfers in EQ2 but i think this game would lose it's appeal if we make NW a "Tank&Spank" game. I like that you actually feel like you are fighting for aggro not "shouting/snapping" mobs off from people. I was playing the other night after playing my DC and had an interesting thought; I use Threatening Rush to Mark targets and rarely use the TAB Mark ability. Which means it is a wasted ability then it hit me why not make BLOCK the TAB ability and toggle it like the DC's stance switch allowing us to still use our encounter abilities and give us a legit dodge on our shift? idk those are my thoughts great thread btw

Just read some other threads and my brilliant ideas to change the TAB key was already taken so before people start going crazy about it ..there I edited the post. Also I was reading other threads and there are a lot of the same threads by different authors saying the exact same thing. I surely hope that the Devs are reading these threads and see that alot of us are very happy with the mechanics of the class and implement some of the tweaks suggested and not re-work the whole thing.furthermore I don't have time to read every thread so if I missed something or regurgitated the same stuff other people have said ... well sorry

elanith

Our tab skill def needs to be looked at, only thing i use it for is to pull with. Tho i do try to mark several targets before they get to me. With a mark up even if the healer is healing (for instance if the party is finishing off the last few mobs and im pulling the next pack - first boss of Idris comes to mind sense i chain pull that room and have a rogue or gwf killing crystals while we kill everthing at the entrance)

I dont nessisarily hate the mechanic for mark, i just think they need to increase the TPS of the 2 other specs besides conq so TPS is not yo yoing between good -> <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> and back depending on if mark is up or not. Threat should be "ok" when mark isnt up, and we should have to mark depending on how good our other group members are.

exquina

Ok here goes, I will try to be polite so this doesn't come off the wrong way as a flame.
I have a lvl 50 GF (tank) character. So far I don't know how endgame looks like but up to this point I had no problem AOE tanking 4-5 groups holding all 30mobs on me.

*The observations I've seen so far are ''mindless'' mobs who ignore threat/aggro entirely such as undead Hulks. I think they just pick a target and blindly follow it, in that case only Mark(tab) + Knights' Challenge works the charm on such monsters.

*Another observation is this, I charge into a group I use Enforced Threat skill which in any other game would be called AOE taunt ability! And after I've gained some aggro, I use the wrong attack by mistake (the one not while guarded - shift key) break 2 monsters' mark on their head and immediately they change targets, afterwards I use Threatening Rush or Tab key to reimburst the marks and they turn back on me.

*The last thing is CrowdControl. If I am flinged upwards by some enemy spell or ability I loose almost entire aggro on group of monsters, so I am forced to AOE taunt them back.

Now, I'm not sure if that is working as intended but I love it. This is the only game so far where TANK requires real skill to play well and control monsters how to behave on the field, not to mention they like to get behind you and flank with *sneak attack* bonuses from D&D lore.
Damage plays a big role in threat accumulating but there are 3 specific abilities in your Power Tree, which tells you exactly ''THIS IS FOR TANKING'' and if you aren't specced like that, I'm sorry but u'r doing it wrong.

So far on my healer(44) I've met about 80% failed tank players if not more, so the threat/aggro is far from broken imho, ppl just need to l2p.
Repeating over and over I love this game difficulty and I hope game DEVs don't nerf it to be Blizzard-like.

So in my humble opinion and experience I recommend these abilities for tanks:
-Villains' Menace (good to fight against CCs)
-Enforced Threat (excellent AOE taunt)
-Threatening rush (excellent starting engagement skill, also fast marks on monsters)
-Knights' Challenge (useful against 'dummy-mindless' monsters)

The rest is optional but these will glue a monster or a group of them on you without landing any significant damage on them.