Advice For A Sin To Not Take Aggro?

Lelouchvi - Sanctuary

Ello.
I have an alt sin level 83 atm and i just wana know some tips to not take aggro.
I didnt have any problem before with taking aggro but recently i got some interval gear
and once in a while i will take aggro from the kitty.

The reason i am making a big deal is cause i was in an fcc and i was taking aggro from barb on some bosses. I stopped attacking for a couple of seconds and resumed only to take it again a little bit after b:sad
Someone in the squad noticed me not attacking and mouthed off to me and i tried to tell him that it was so i dont take aggro b:shocked

This isnt any of those QQ threads about sins b:pleased
just need some advice

LeiMai - Raging Tide

Run with kittys that are 20 levels higher than you oh wait..that doesn't work either b:shutup

I swear something has to be messed up with the aggro mechanics when it comes to sins. Sometimes no matter what you try to do, you are going to take it anyways. You are also pretty useless when you are trying hard not to take aggro, its hard to deal with.

Tips:

1. Chill of the Deep, you can turn it off by casting it a second time. Takes getting used to!
2. Take off your blessing, but put it on a hotkey so you can put it on quick if you need to.
3. Spend your time trying to increase the damage other people do, or reducing the damage they take. The time it takes you to stop and cast skills helps.
-keep Rib Strike up on the boss
-cast Puncture Wound when you can, mine is leveled up to lvl 10 I think? Maybe 11...but it does more damage than my barb husband's bleed skill. I never used it because I assumed his was more powerful, but it seems like the sin one is.
-Subsea Strike, amplify other people's damage. It stacks with HF too
-I dont think any other debuff skills really work on bosses :S try to help cancel the boss's aoe (Earthquake genie skill), genie skill Tangling Mire, stuff like that.
4. Make use of the Esc key to stop attacking, some skills auto attack after so try not to hit too many times in a row. You just have to attack a few times, stop, cast something, attack a few times, stop...and so on.
5. Avoid sparking.

The other side of it is to increase your survivability, so when you DO pull you can tank long enough to live through it while the barb pulls back.
1. HP Shards
2. Refines
3. Balanced gear...this is just my observation and opinion, but for the most part it is better to have overall good gear instead of one really epic (aka expensive) piece and the rest be junk.
4. You don't need vit to have HP, try to get it from your gear. If there was one thing I'd suggest you really invest in, instead of putting points in vit put a few extras in strength and get a good HP helm. You can get a big HP boost from a good helm.
5. Use your self buffs, Focused Mind, Tidal Protection and Deaden Nerves. I'm bad for remembering to keep those up but once you try to get in the habit you really notice a difference when they wear off.

The biggest problem I find is that we need to do damage to survive. What we get back from BP is what keeps us alive! So when you do take aggro, if you have CoD on and your blessing off..you might be more likely to die than if you were fighting at full strength and you sparked.

It really just takes practice, paying attention, and a good squad. You need a cleric that can give you a few quick heals when you do pull (because no matter how hard you try, sometimes it just happens anyways). You need a barb that knows how to hold aggro.

If you are still really struggling, take off your rings (which are probably Patk) and even carry some extra gear that doesn't have -int to change to if you really need to. There are times I'd have to carry two sets of gear when I was running with other squads, and to put them both on my skill bars so I could switch back really fast if something went wrong.

Don't let people tell you off like that, it can be very difficult to avoid taking aggro off the tank. It is even harder when sins get closer to their full potential earlier than other classes. I'm at the point where if its possible, I just want to stealth and let people like that take aggro and die to prove a point. Maybe you could try that next time if its a normal boss...lol

Lelouchvi - Sanctuary

LeiMai - Raging Tide wrote: »

Run with kittys that are 20 levels higher than you oh wait..that doesn't work either b:shutup

I swear something has to be messed up with the aggro mechanics when it comes to sins. Sometimes no matter what you try to do, you are going to take it anyways. You are also pretty useless when you are trying hard not to take aggro, its hard to deal with.

Tips:

1. Chill of the Deep, you can turn it off by casting it a second time. Takes getting used to!
2. Take off your blessing, but put it on a hotkey so you can put it on quick if you need to.
3. Spend your time trying to increase the damage other people do, or reducing the damage they take. The time it takes you to stop and cast skills helps.
-keep Rib Strike up on the boss
-cast Puncture Wound when you can, mine is leveled up to lvl 10 I think? Maybe 11...but it does more damage than my barb husband's bleed skill. I never used it because I assumed his was more powerful, but it seems like the sin one is.
-Subsea Strike, amplify other people's damage. It stacks with HF too
-I dont think any other debuff skills really work on bosses :S try to help cancel the boss's aoe (Earthquake genie skill), genie skill Tangling Mire, stuff like that.
4. Make use of the Esc key to stop attacking, some skills auto attack after so try not to hit too many times in a row. You just have to attack a few times, stop, cast something, attack a few times, stop...and so on.
5. Avoid sparking.

The other side of it is to increase your survivability, so when you DO pull you can tank long enough to live through it while the barb pulls back.
1. HP Shards
2. Refines
3. Balanced gear...this is just my observation and opinion, but for the most part it is better to have overall good gear instead of one really epic (aka expensive) piece and the rest be junk.
4. You don't need vit to have HP, try to get it from your gear. If there was one thing I'd suggest you really invest in, instead of putting points in vit put a few extras in strength and get a good HP helm. You can get a big HP boost from a good helm.
5. Use your self buffs, Focused Mind, Tidal Protection and Deaden Nerves. I'm bad for remembering to keep those up but once you try to get in the habit you really notice a difference when they wear off.

The biggest problem I find is that we need to do damage to survive. What we get back from BP is what keeps us alive! So when you do take aggro, if you have CoD on and your blessing off..you might be more likely to die than if you were fighting at full strength and you sparked.

It really just takes practice, paying attention, and a good squad. You need a cleric that can give you a few quick heals when you do pull (because no matter how hard you try, sometimes it just happens anyways). You need a barb that knows how to hold aggro.

If you are still really struggling, take off your rings (which are probably Patk) and even carry some extra gear that doesn't have -int to change to if you really need to. There are times I'd have to carry two sets of gear when I was running with other squads, and to put them both on my skill bars so I could switch back really fast if something went wrong.

Don't let people tell you off like that, it can be very difficult to avoid taking aggro off the tank. It is even harder when sins get closer to their full potential earlier than other classes. I'm at the point where if its possible, I just want to stealth and let people like that take aggro and die to prove a point. Maybe you could try that next time if its a normal boss...lol

TY nice detailed adviceb:pleased

Thinkalot - Dreamweaver

0.0

Why such a long post when it's simple to accomplish :

Use Fists.

Explanation : When i'm in SQ with a barb, i switch to 3* fists that
i picked up cheap in AH. When i spark (demon) and i see i DO take aggro, i don't spark anymore, otherwise i just keep on hitting for a decent amount and avoid getting hit all the time. IF the barb is in danger (like on BH69/Pole debuff), i just switch to daggers again to take some of the heat off him.

Barb happy, me happy, Squad happy.


You can easily regulate your dmg output by just changing 1 piece of equipment : your weapon. What do you expect me to do ? Run around nekkid in favor of barbs ? Hell no.

Sakubatou - Sanctuary

Edit: Posted in the wrong thread, somehow.

Typhyse - Sanctuary

What started the problem? -int gear. What is the easiest solution? Take off that -int gear.

_Skai_ - Raging Tide

I tend to use fists/claws at the start so I don't steal agro early on. As the fight progresses and the boss has its full attention on the fuzzy tank, I switch to daggers and DD.

If my stealth level is higher than the boss, and I start to steal agro, I'll go ahead and steal it all (the boss is hitting me 100% of the time, regardless of barb's skills), then I shadow escape. The agro mechanism with shadow escape is that when you have 100% agro, shadow escape deletes your agro completely from the table.

I love doing the last option a lot because I can DD as much as I want to, lose my agro, and DD as much as I want to until the boss dies because by then it'd be impossible to steal agro back (unless I have insanely high DPS vs the rest of the squad, and the boss has more than 3/4 hp left).

If the boss is level 150 (? level), then I do everything LeiMai says.

LeiMai - Raging Tide

Because I refuse to lower myself to using claws/fists, thats why.

He asked how to avoid taking aggro as an ASSASSIN, so I answered him. If you don't like my long reply, don't waste your time reading it. And do not tell someone off for giving a detailed answer.

In a worst case scenario at lower levels, where I couldn't take the AOE damage without full attack for the HP back with Bloodpaint, I'd go to range and use a bow. Or, some bosses only have a frontal AOE so you can fight from behind and be safer than if you are beside the tank.

The other thing I forgot to mention is waiting to start attacking. I don't know exactly how aggro mechanics work, so I could be wrong. But at least in some cases, I think someone said it works like each person builds up hate/rage from the boss. And then the person who the boss has the most hate towards has aggro. Like I can't even rib strike within the first few seconds most of the time, because of the spike damage. So let the tank run in and get some hits in. Hopefully they open with some good barb skills, or spark. Then you can go in and debuff, rib strike, subsea etc. Around half hp sometimes its safe to take off CoD and spark yourself if the tank has had aggro the whole time. You kind of just have to judge based on the situation and the tank and all that.

The problem with stealthing to reset aggro is you don't KNOW who the aggro is going to go to. Archers can take aggro really easily, so can arcanes. For the most part you are going to have a better chance of surviving until the tank can grab back than if an archer or arcane grabs it off you as you stealth. You just have to be careful with that, you don't want to cause a squad wipe. Sometimes bosses and mobs do weird things and will run after the person you least expect. I've seen them randomly turn on clerics and stuff.

You need to try and run with people who know what they are doing, and know how to use their skills. It's difficult, and I'm pretty sure there has to be something messed up in regards to assassins and aggro. It takes time and practice to learn your limits and what is or isn't safe to do.

_Skai_ - Raging Tide

@LeiMai I can understand your take on how dangerous reseting your agro can be. But the thing about stealthing while you have 100% agro is that it removes only you off the table. That means whoever had the most agro beforehand gets it back, which in most cases should be the barb (unless the barb is not doing his job correctly). For all the times that I've done such a tactic, the agro always went back to the tank.

But, you're definitely correct about high DDs, such as the ones you've listed, that can steal agro quickly. But every high DD class has to have damage control implemented when in a squad.. Though most people would DD for the hell of it (and steal agro), the better people would know how to damage control the boss fight. Fortunately for me, I have yet to run into a situation where I steal agro completely, stealth, and have a character other than the tank take the agro from there.

Most of the time, I let the barb secure initial agro, then slowly DD. During this time the tank would still be using agro skills and the lot, and when I feel like it's a right time to steal agro (usually when boss has 80-85% health left), I go all out, get the agro, and reset. I tend to squad with factionmates, and they know what they're doing, so nothing bad has happened for me yet b:pleased

I hope nothing bad happens anytime soon! b:avoid

Nonetheless, your information and answers to the OP are really detailed and informative. It informed me of a few tidbits here and there ;D

Thank you.

Traz - Dreamweaver

Use chill of the deep, get a **** pair of daggers, or use a bow.

Sereneai - Dreamweaver

LeiMai - Raging Tide wrote: »

Because I refuse to lower myself to using claws/fists, thats why.

I like you. b:thanks



OP: As others have said...

Use [Chill of the Deep].

Dont spark, or use one of the crappier sparks.

Spam skills. [Ribstrike] makes your tank take less damage. [Subsea Strike] makes the boss take MORE damage, and it stacks with [Heaven's Flame] (yay). and BOTH of them take time to cast, meaning you deal less damage, less aggro.

if you STILL take aggro with that, take off a ring. or two.

Typhyse - Sanctuary

Sereneai - Dreamweaver wrote: »

if you STILL take aggro with that, take off a ring. or two.

Agreed. 100%
I was quite surprised when I found out just how much of a difference in damage Physical Attack +24 makesb:pleased

Finrah - Sanctuary

Lelouchvi - Sanctuary wrote: »

Ello.
I have an alt sin level 83 atm and i just wana know some tips to not take aggro.
I didnt have any problem before with taking aggro but recently i got some interval gear
and once in a while i will take aggro from the kitty.

The reason i am making a big deal is cause i was in an fcc and i was taking aggro from barb on some bosses. I stopped attacking for a couple of seconds and resumed only to take it again a little bit after b:sad
Someone in the squad noticed me not attacking and mouthed off to me and i tried to tell him that it was so i dont take aggro b:shocked

This isnt any of those QQ threads about sins b:pleased
just need some advice

I didn't use TT80 Hook and Thorn daggers for a good reason.

I know I will steal aggro from Barb if I used those, being a squishy yet low level sin (80). So first of all, don't use Hook and Thorn if you don't want to steal aggro. I used Silent Slasher, then Vicious Stare (TT90). I barely ever steal aggro. (I do, but barely do.)

Another way you can decrease your aggro stealing would be using Chill of the Deep, which reduces your attack speed. However, it DOES raise your dmg. So still be careful, and have your hand on your Shadow Escape key.

Just want to throw it out there - Stealing aggro doesn't make you cool, because:

1. You most probably **** your cleric off
2. You most probably **** your barb off
3. You most probably **** your charm off (if you're charmed) - leading to
4. You most probably **** yourself off for getting charm r@ped, THEN-
5. You most probably **** yourself off coz you died from tanking

Otherwise if you don't care of any of the above then feel free to steal for all I care x.x

Firefeng - Dreamweaver

This is why I just prefer to tank.

LeiMai - Raging Tide

Firefeng - Dreamweaver wrote: »

This is why I just prefer to tank.

I agree, or just toss aggro around and share the tanking...need a good/alert cleric for that usually though lol.

But there are times where its just not possible to tank easily b:chuckle I only have a little over 8k HP buffed right now, so there are a couple bosses in TT that I have to support on when we go duo squad modes b:laugh

Firefeng - Dreamweaver

LeiMai - Raging Tide wrote: »

I agree, or just toss aggro around and share the tanking...need a good/alert cleric for that usually though lol.

I only trust one cleric enough to play aggro-tag in squad. Anyone who's outdamaging me probably has better gear than me, or is a higher level, so they'd be better off tanking anyway.

I think the only bosses I haven't tanked up to 3-1 in TTs is Belial, and Steelation. Squad wouldn't let me try. (Although Cosmoforce in 2-3 sucks if you don't have a BM buff/Veno for purge. Would occasionally hit me for upwards of 5.7k, in BB. Even 3-1 GBA boss didn't hit me for nearly as much in BB.)

LeiMai - Raging Tide

Firefeng - Dreamweaver wrote: »

I only trust one cleric enough to play aggro-tag in squad. Anyone who's outdamaging me probably has better gear than me, or is a higher level, so they'd be better off tanking anyway.

I think the only bosses I haven't tanked up to 3-1 in TTs is Belial, and Steelation. Squad wouldn't let me try. (Although Cosmoforce in 2-3 sucks if you don't have a BM buff/Veno for purge. Would occasionally hit me for upwards of 5.7k, in BB. Even 3-1 GBA boss didn't hit me for nearly as much in BB.)

Yeah, everyone loves clerics but some are better than others. Its hard when you get one that won't heal you even if you're tanking the whole way. We met one who is totally pro recently lol. I imagine it takes alot of concentration to watch who has aggro when, but it is easier when you each stand on a different side so you can physically see the boss turn to who has aggro.

I tanked GBA boss in BB, I died one time more than the rest of the squad lol. I think he hit me really hard and I wasn't paying close enough attention at the time, I was probably trying to hit the chi boss. Other time the three dds/tanks died but the cleric lived b:chuckle

It really helps to have survivability, because you will pull off people who you NEVER thought you could pull off of. My demon claw barb husband and I toss it back and forth often. But we were in delta with another friend, +10 fist bm with like R9 axes or something..and I was pulling off him (unintentionally). I'll admit I have really nice daggers, but that still shouldn't have been happening. This is part of the reason I'm pretty sure aggro mechanics with sins are not the same as with other classes.

It doesn't do any good to have great daggers with really **** armor. Because you will pull, and if you're a one-two hit you're no use to anyone. You need to be able to survive long enough for the tank to pull back. Even when I'm doing the whole support fish thing, I pull sometimes. Probably because of spike damage (sage CoD is 35 attack levels lol) from skills. But you need to have a balance

Nutta - Dreamweaver

I'd like to start off by saying that at your level it's hard to handle even a couple hits to survive long enough for the barb to get aggro again, like some people were mentioning, while at the same time getting to the levels where it's very easy to steal aggro. Especially with Hook and Thorns and a few int gears.

The best way to control aggro that I can suggest is to just use lower level daggers until the boss has at least 1/4 of his life gone, if not half, then switch back to your good daggers. This way you can have both daggers on hotkeys and you're not changing out more than one item, making it quick and easy. I wouldn't suggest using fists unless you're building for them end-game, since you can't use skills with fists on and the DPS from them suck horribly for pure Dex builds. Like others said, it makes the fight go easier/faster by using rib strike and subsea strike and it's a pain to switch to daggers everytime you want to use a skill. Although, bosses such as Pole and Nob have some nasty aoes, so I always used a bow on them.

Also, try to avoid using anything that increases your damage early on in the fight, such as Wolf Emblem, Power Dash, and obviously sparking. If you notice that you're dishing out a massive amount of crits in a short amount of time, start using some of the above mentioned skills to slow down your DPS a bit. After all, our crits is where most of our DPS comes from, especially with Wolf Emblem on! Once you're 90+, things start to get a bit easier as you get better gear, especially since Clerics just BB on almost everything at these levels. Lol

Teny - Heavens Tear

tl;dr: As a sin you'll have to get used to taking aggro. At higher levels it's much more manageable, when you're lower, you can do things like using chill of the deep, so your attack speed is lowered substantially, or you can just take breaks attacking. If taking aggro is going to be an issue for you then hold off on interval gear till later on, as that won't help you to not take aggro