Aggro War

kumalca

Hello fellow barbarians,

I'm a Nv3 barb with a +7 unicorn G16 and around 23k hp. My question is, with all these r9r3 +12 sins and other DDs, is it even worth trying to control aggro in instances like FS and warsong.

I can't seem to get the bosses aggro'ed on me with them DDs attacking like hell. Any suggestions b:surrender

kuroshin191

As an archer i know how is it, and must be very stressful for you barbs. The thing depends on barb player skill and on DDs player skill, sometimes i can't get aggro with T3+10, sometimes i turn myself into the squad tank. What i do and many others do to prevent stealing aggro is put a weaker weapon if this is happening often, but barbs must put effort to keep aggro as well.

The saddest thing is to get aggro with a r8 bow +0, then i just give up.

Eoria - Harshlands

tbh, don't bother outside of if you have to tank toad because none of the r9rr +12 people bothered to learn how to tank it by now for whatever reason. Usually safer that way.

Fail_BM - Raging Tide

Well, at FS you must keep aggro at toad or your squad is going to wipe.

Eoria - Harshlands

Fail_BM - Raging Tide wrote: »

Well, at FS you must keep aggro at toad or your squad is going to wipe.

Toad can be tanked by anyone with a decent expel genie/immune timing. You don't specifically need a barb.

Colum - Raging Tide

Reroll demon str. Your problems are gone.

WannaBM - Archosaur

You should judge it from situation to situation. Usually the OP people can tank themselves without problem and you need only keep devour active all the time.

If you see the one with agro has a charm and it ticks, or worse you see the one tanking is getting close to dying, help him by using ream. You might not be able to keep constant agro, but you will take some attention from the boss and reduce the incoming damage for him. You just need to hope that your cleric is not a nitwit and can handle 2 people sharing agro.

If the top DD of the squad is an archer, you may also want to try and hold agro as well as you can. The archer has no BP healing. When the boss has gotten close to the archer, he will do half damage and it will be easy for you to get agro again. It is up to the archer to choose between staying close and doing half dmg or moving to a distance for full damage and getting agro again. If he is R9+12, it doesnt matter so much though, he is just as tanky as you are and will take agro even up close. This is mostly an issue for the archers that are equally equiped like you or slightly better.

Against toad, if any of them wants to do it (because if you tank they need to hold back on DDing) let him do so. But the default is that you tank him. So unless others indicate so, you go and tank. If another person does tank toad, absolutely do not use any agro skill unless he screwed up and died. Do not use agro skills before the other guy is dead or he will get the earth debuf, probably not notice and die.

Communicate with others if you arent sure what they want.

KeepMeAIive - Raging Tide

I don't think pwi game mechanics even makes it "physically" possible for barbs to hold agro over equally geared DD's anymore. If an equally geared DD with today's average gear goes all out the barb will only get agro for a second or 2 after good timed flesh reams to then lose it straight away.

But at the same time you got barbs who have absolutely no idea how to hold agro.

Here is my advice. On one of the final bosses in QSM and on Toad in FS, combo agro skills repeatedly and do your best to hold agro. If a DD takes agro over you (which usually happens with higher geared people because they either like to show off or have never actually learnt the mechanics of the game) then it's their problem .

On bosses in other instances, if the DD can tank the boss then let them, it makes things go faster, but if they're squishy paper tank then they should know better than to steal agro and die b:victory

WannaBM - Archosaur

KeepMeAIive - Raging Tide wrote: »

I don't think pwi game mechanics even makes it "physically" possible for barbs to hold agro over equally geared DD's anymore.

Youd be surprised. Demon strength barbs are among the top DDs without using any agro skills.

kumalca

Thank you all for the advice.

Another question is besides spamming ream and devour, how much of help is the stomp of the king skill is in terms of maintaining a boss' aggro?

WannaBM - Archosaur

kumalca wrote: »

Thank you all for the advice.

Another question is besides spamming ream and devour, how much of help is the stomp of the king skill is in terms of maintaining a boss' aggro?

This skill is a must have when playing the agro game. It is immensely stronger in agro generation than ream and devour. Of course it has that cooldown to balance that. Always try to use it right after a ream and after using it, keep spamming the ream and devour like you always do.

BTW, with the new bosses all being resistant to auto attacks it is important to try and avoid using those. Dont just spam ream and devour. Use other skills in between the reams to avoid auto attacks, mostly surf impact.

And dont forget damage is of paramount importance too. If you have a vit build and actually doubt if you need all that vit and have difficulties holding agro, you might want to try str instead. It will make agro holding much easier. Not only for end game barbs who rely on dmg in human form instead of tiger agro skills. Even when tanking in tiger form and relying on agro skills, the damage you deal is an important aspect to the whole

Oh and since i read your initial post properly now for the first time and notice you mention warsong:
You probably already know that in mobless warsong you should never ream the mobless bosses or you will likely die.
The fire vile is a notable exception to the viles though. It has a very strong buff. If there is a veno in squad, he will debuf it. If there is no veno to debuf it, only very strong APSers can handle this. You should invoke and agro this boss till the buff wears off and the DDs need to hold back so they dont steal agro on this one. It is best to communicate this with the squad somehow. The amount of sins i have seen dying here is astounding. Even more astounding is the fact that half the time they still do so even after i warned them not to steal agro.

Evryn - Morai

Spamming Ream, Stomp of the King and some filler skills to avoid auto attacks tends to hold aggro quite well. Stomp generates a strong bit of aggro, definately recommended to be put in an aggro macro. Devour... not so much.

I'd love to know how aggro mechanics work "under the hood" to be honest - which skills do what in terms of generating aggro, resetting aggro and pushing your aggro to the top.

WannaBM - Archosaur

Evryn - Morai wrote: »

Spamming Ream, Stomp of the King and some filler skills to avoid auto attacks tends to hold aggro quite well. Stomp generates a strong bit of aggro, definately recommended to be put in an aggro macro. Devour... not so much.

I'd love to know how aggro mechanics work "under the hood" to be honest - which skills do what in terms of generating aggro, resetting aggro and pushing your aggro to the top.

Everyone who is in a battle with a mob or boss has a certain amount of agro with that mob or boss.
Primarily, this agro is the total amount of damage you dealt to it. We can just use this number as a measure for the agro. Agro skills add extra agro. Healing also causes some agro. So the boss has a list of players with the agro they have towards him. He will attack the player on top of that list. The only way to reset your agro is to leave the battle (moving out of its agro range or dying).

When you use ream, if you currently are not on top of the agro list, it will first put you on top of the list. If you already had more agro than everyone else, this effect can be ignored. Then it adds a bunch of extra agro from the damage you deal + skill agro. The skill agro is roughly somewhere in the range of 15k. The bleed damage probably keeps adding a bit more agro over time, although i have never tested this (it is insignificant anyway)

So for example, the top DD has dealt 300k dmg so far. You have less agro, how much agro is irrelevant. You ream the boss for 20k damage, it puts you on top of the list with 300k agro, adds the 20k damage and the 15k skill agro for a total of 335.000 agro. The top DD now keeps apsing the boss for 5000 dmg per attack so after 7 attacks (1.4s) he will also be at 335.000.
You are a quick barb and you were able to cast surf impact within that 1.4 seconds. This dealt 15k damage and brought your total agro to 350.000 and buys you a little more time. After 2 seconds however, you cannot prevent the sin from retaking agro until your ream is off cooldown again.

Roar does the same as ream except that it deals no damage and it is aoe.

Devour simply generetes the agro from the damage you deal and also adds about 15k more. So it is similar in strength to ream except that it does not first put you on top of the list.

Stomp of the king generates roughly 100k agro on top of the damage you deal with it.

These are rough numbers, but they are reasonably representative for lvl 11 skills. I have tested all this, but it was long ago and i dont remember the more precise numbers.

KeepMeAIive - Raging Tide

WannaBM - Archosaur wrote: »

Youd be surprised. Demon strength barbs are among the top DDs without using any agro skills.

That's because if you want to take advantage of a demon barb over sage barb in terms of DD, you will need to be in "human" form and there are no agro skills in human (besides penetrate armor).

Yes you might hold agro over other DD, as even do I with my SAGE str build DD-ing in human form, but my gears are slightly above average and I assume yours are the same. Find an archer or a wizard with same gear as you and have them DD as hard as I can and tell me you kept agro without using any agro skills. Furthermore, add in a HF or a seeker debuffing and tell me you kept agro even with using agro skills b:shocked

WannaBM - Archosaur

KeepMeAIive - Raging Tide wrote: »

That's because if you want to take advantage of a demon barb over sage barb in terms of DD, you will need to be in "human" form and there are no agro skills in human (besides penetrate armor).

Yes you might hold agro over other DD, as even do I with my SAGE str build DD-ing in human form, but my gears are slightly above average and I assume yours are the same. Find an archer or a wizard with same gear as you and have them DD as hard as I can and tell me you kept agro without using any agro skills. Furthermore, add in a HF or a seeker debuffing and tell me you kept agro even with using agro skills b:shocked

I used an R9+12 axe but i did not have emperor tome, deity shards, S cards and i was only 103-102-102. So i was poorly equiped among the R9+12s. Yet even other R9+12s would not all that often steal agro. Archers did so regularly (yes pretty much certainly if they were the better equiped 900 dex types, but not even certain if they were equally geared) Casters would very rarely steal agro. Never seen a wizzy do it (ofcourse there arent that many anyways ), sometimes a psy or veno. Sins didnt much steal it in the early days of the update, but that gradually increased as they got their new OP skills and actually got used to using them properly.
So yes the LA toons, they steal agro, but the others rarely.

Most buffs dont matter, they increase the barbs DD just as well as any others. Seekers can choose to buff phys or magic i believe. Havent ran into much problems their though and never payed much attention to that. As i said, its rare that mages steal agro, maybe thats because seekers rarely use the magic buff over the physical one

Joe is much more end game, he does almost 20% more dmg than i and has a higher crit rate as well. I doubt he ever sees a caster steal agro at all. And probably hasnt got much issues with the LAs either.

KeepMeAIive - Raging Tide

WannaBM - Archosaur wrote: »

I used an R9+12 axe but i did not have emperor tome, deity shards, S cards and i was only 103-102-102. So i was poorly equiped among the R9+12s. Yet even other R9+12s would not all that often steal agro. Archers did so regularly (yes pretty much certainly if they were the better equiped 900 dex types, but not even certain if they were equally geared) Casters would very rarely steal agro. Never seen a wizzy do it (ofcourse there arent that many anyways ), sometimes a psy or veno. Sins didnt much steal it in the early days of the update, but that gradually increased as they got their new OP skills and actually got used to using them properly.
So yes the LA toons, they steal agro, but the others rarely.

Most buffs dont matter, they increase the barbs DD just as well as any others. Seekers can choose to buff phys or magic i believe. Havent ran into much problems their though and never payed much attention to that. As i said, its rare that mages steal agro, maybe thats because seekers rarely use the magic buff over the physical one

Joe is much more end game, he does almost 20% more dmg than i and has a higher crit rate as well. I doubt he ever sees a caster steal agro at all. And probably hasnt got much issues with the LAs either.

Well on Raging Tides (from what I have seen anyways), seekers are to casters (Wiz and Psy) in the new dungeons, what demon HF BM's are to APS Sins in TT (and nirvana). It is always SS timed to caster's triple spark and even the BM tries to HF to their sparks.

I am still few billion coins away from endgame, but I think on RT I am if not first, then at least top 3 DD barbs because the others who out gear me (to my knowledge) are full vitality statted now. I don't have an issue with people stealing my agro even if I run with DD's of the same gear but that's because they control their DD on bosses. There are a handful of endgame that don't know how to control their DD but they can tank toad anyway so it's just easier and faster to let them do it.

Colum - Raging Tide

Switching forms is a feature that exists so no, a demon str barb does not have to be in human form at all times to gain advantage vs sages.

Even in ream spam... demon is faster.

KeepMeAIive - Raging Tide

Colum - Raging Tide wrote: »

Switching forms is a feature that exists so no, a demon str barb does not have to be in human form at all times to gain advantage vs sages.

Even in ream spam... demon is faster.

My point was based on DD not agro skills.

The advantage demon barbs have over sage barbs in terms of DD-ing (specially in this case over bosses so not talking about armageddon having 10% extra dmg) is the extra crit rate no? And that comes from human form skills :O?

WannaBM - Archosaur

Ye i dont really know what exactly either of your point is, but swiching shape while tanking except for emergencies is not really feasible. You could in theory stand up to use onslaught and then get down to use ream, but really that just doesnt work fast enough.

On top of that its not only about this shape changing. Tigerform skills are slower to cast than human form skills. Therefore the damage output in tiger is lower even without that onslaught bonus. More importantly, in human form you make more chi, with help from the genie, and apoth you can stay perma sparked for about 4-5 sparks. That is enough to finish the boss usually.

So ye its pretty much either or. If you have high end gear on a strength buil, you stand up 100% because you make more agro like that. (certainly for demon, but i think also for sages)
If your gear is lesser or you have a vit build you stay in tiger unless the squad is weak and you can do with less agro, then you stand up so you deal some more damage.

Tanking in human form is much more relaxed also. You can easilly use a macro and just focus on the chi and sparking after which you restart the macro again. In tiger macro doesnt work so well.

Crones - Heavens Tear

my barb is sage has flesh ream roar devour alpha male and stomp of the king. I keep agro pretty easily on toad for being 1 RA and hes got like 27.5k hp if I recall. Stomp of the king helps so much on toad I don't think I could keep agro without it.

KeepMeAIive - Raging Tide

WannaBM - Archosaur wrote: »

Ye i dont really know what exactly either of your point is, but swiching shape while tanking except for emergencies is not really feasible. You could in theory stand up to use onslaught and then get down to use ream, but really that just doesnt work fast enough.

On top of that its not only about this shape changing. Tigerform skills are slower to cast than human form skills. Therefore the damage output in tiger is lower even without that onslaught bonus. More importantly, in human form you make more chi, with help from the genie, and apoth you can stay perma sparked for about 4-5 sparks. That is enough to finish the boss usually.

So ye its pretty much either or. If you have high end gear on a strength buil, you stand up 100% because you make more agro like that. (certainly for demon, but i think also for sages)
If your gear is lesser or you have a vit build you stay in tiger unless the squad is weak and you can do with less agro, then you stand up so you deal some more damage.

Tanking in human form is much more relaxed also. You can easilly use a macro and just focus on the chi and sparking after which you restart the macro again. In tiger macro doesnt work so well.

I 100% agree with you that it's 1 or the other. Stick to human or tiger form don't switch in between.

However my point about this whole topic was, even a full deity full str r9r2 +12 barb with drakestones and good cards can't hold agro over SAME GEAR DD class. You MIGHT get agro every now and then with flesh ream if you're staying in tiger, or depending on who attacks and sparks first and how many zerk crits you get lucky with, but ultimately you will lose agro. Now introduce HF and seeker debuffs timed usually to the DD rather than the barb and at this point you can throw in the towel b:victory

Joe - Morai

KeepMeAIive - Raging Tide wrote: »

I 100% agree with you that it's 1 or the other. Stick to human or tiger form don't switch in between.

However my point about this whole topic was, even a full deity full str r9r2 +12 barb with drakestones and good cards can't hold agro over SAME GEAR DD class. You MIGHT get agro every now and then with flesh ream if you're staying in tiger, or depending on who attacks and sparks first and how many zerk crits you get lucky with, but ultimately you will lose agro. Now introduce HF and seeker debuffs timed usually to the DD rather than the barb and at this point you can throw in the towel b:victory

Lol. That is not true. I am not even full deity and nothing on my server gets the aggro away from me and if they do they are full deity sins. No other class gets even close in getting aggro from me. Not even pure STR here xD

If you really want to jold aggro as a barb these days skip the tiger form ****. Useless. All you gotta do is spam your human form skills (especially penetrate armor) while you try to constantly Spark + keep Blood rush stacked all the time. Ijs...on full debuffs 3m each hit is not a rarity on my barb. Sure..other classes can do that too...but nowhere near as fast as barbs can spam their skills.

With the right gears you could only lose the aggro shortly this way if you got some mean psys/wizards whose team up with a seeker so that they can hit into Soul Shatter right away. That is with lvl11 SS tho. Lvl 12 is not a problem.

It is a pitty tho. The meant-for-aggro skills are totally useless these days. Still only deity sins can pull away the aggro constantly from STR built barbs and that is mostly because they can triple spark all the time. A full deity/full str barb will keep the aggro as long as he's triple sparked. Against everything.

KeepMeAIive - Raging Tide

Joe - Morai wrote: »

Lol. That is not true. I am not even full deity and nothing on my server gets the aggro away from me and if they do they are full deity sins. No other class gets even close in getting aggro from me. Not even pure STR here xD

If you really want to jold aggro as a barb these days skip the tiger form ****. Useless. All you gotta do is spam your human form skills (especially penetrate armor) while you try to constantly Spark + keep Blood rush stacked all the time. Ijs...on full debuffs 3m each hit is not a rarity on my barb. Sure..other classes can do that too...but nowhere near as fast as barbs can spam their skills.

With the right gears you could only lose the aggro shortly this way if you got some mean psys/wizards whose team up with a seeker so that they can hit into Soul Shatter right away. That is with lvl11 SS tho. Lvl 12 is not a problem.

It is a pitty tho. The meant-for-aggro skills are totally useless these days. Still only deity sins can pull away the aggro constantly from STR built barbs and that is mostly because they can triple spark all the time. A full deity/full str barb will keep the aggro as long as he's triple sparked. Against everything.

You seem to have no problem making videos. Find a DD on par with your gear (including OP cards) and get it on video. Solve the mystery once and for all b:cute

Joe - Morai

KeepMeAIive - Raging Tide wrote: »

You seem to have no problem making videos. Find a DD on par with your gear (including OP cards) and get it on video. Solve the mystery once and for all b:cute

The cards dont make that much of a dif in PvE. They don't even compensate myself not being full STR so it's ok. Anyone with a +12 weap and full STR built can have a phys attack of ~45k buffed as a barb And thus should have no problem in holding aggro against any class (cept maybe for sins). As I am just full vitstones I can't even compare to deity sins and still can hold the aggro quite good against them (like I said...as long as I am triple sparked xD).

Finding people for stuff like that isnt that easy as I'm isially a solo player xD so I let the numbers speak.

Triple sparked wirh stacked Blood Rush grants me an attack stat of ~65k-87k (can't give exact numbers atm...might be a bit more or less). Combine that with a nearly constant crit rate of 84% due to demon Bestial Onslaught and 140 Attack Level it is crystal clear that holding aggro against any other class is a piece of cake.

Again this only applies to STR-Built Barb which spam skills in human form while using Chi-pots and stuff to maintain the triple spark for a while (2 times triple spark in a row is usually enough to keep the aggro intact throughout the whole fight cause you can take all debuffs for yourself as well during that time). If you wanna further increase your Dmg output you could also use a fire Attack pot (mam this pushes dmg to new hights with Soul shatter on). A constant, high pdef debuff also helps alot.

But I guess its no use. You need to be endgame to pull that off...so it wont apply to that many people. Sadly. They could just improve the aggro skills...but oh well. They dont care. (They being PWCN)

Colum - Raging Tide

WannaBM - Archosaur wrote: »

Ye i dont really know what exactly either of your point is, but swiching shape while tanking except for emergencies is not really feasible. You could in theory stand up to use onslaught and then get down to use ream, but really that just doesnt work fast enough.

On top of that its not only about this shape changing. Tigerform skills are slower to cast than human form skills. Therefore the damage output in tiger is lower even without that onslaught bonus. More importantly, in human form you make more chi, with help from the genie, and apoth you can stay perma sparked for about 4-5 sparks. That is enough to finish the boss usually.

So ye its pretty much either or. If you have high end gear on a strength buil, you stand up 100% because you make more agro like that. (certainly for demon, but i think also for sages)
If your gear is lesser or you have a vit build you stay in tiger unless the squad is weak and you can do with less agro, then you stand up so you deal some more damage.

Tanking in human form is much more relaxed also. You can easilly use a macro and just focus on the chi and sparking after which you restart the macro again. In tiger macro doesnt work so well.

Mainly meant that opening with stomp of the king and then switching to human to DD is also an option. b:chuckle

As for staying in human form to tank, I agree. It seems that people are underestimating the DD power demon strength barbs get.

ballenato

Only problems i have are Seekers/Archers most of the times ...

With my friend archer, i usually put expel on her after some ****s (she's r9s3+12 full dot)... and it does help lol...

In-G wife uses skill and stops with intervals, so she doesnt take it (maxed seeker)....

Besides that, other classes / lower gear ppl dont take agro

overcomem

Don't fool yourself guys barbs. Even you're end game gear and being full str demon still can't compare to the other classes like Sin debate on equal well gears. If you talk about Crit from BO. It still can't compare with base cri of sin 80-85% cri + horrible primal sin skill.

WannaBM - Archosaur

overcomem wrote: »

Don't fool yourself guys barbs. Even you're end game gear and being full str demon still can't compare to the other classes like Sin debate on equal well gears. If you talk about Crit from BO. It still can't compare with base cri of sin 80-85% cri + horrible primal sin skill.

I think comparing maxed out crit with almost maxed out crit is not that bad. Barbs get up to 85% or so sins 95%. That is well within the you can compare range b:laugh
Dont fool yourself you know much about barbs.

But ye as i said, the LA classes are an issue
Not primarily because of the crit rate but because of elimination and life hunter. Horrible indeed.
The extra bit of crit and chill of the deep are nice, but lets say that is to offset the crappy dagger damage. Before these snew kills were available, sins were one of the weaker classes in skill spam damage output. And that was just wrong of course, so i guess they needed a bit of an update. A bit overdone though....

Joe - Morai

WannaBM - Archosaur wrote: »

I think comparing maxed out crit with almost maxed out crit is not that bad. Barbs get up to 85% or so sins 95%. That is well within the you can compare range b:laugh
Dont fool yourself you know much about barbs.

But ye as i said, the LA classes are an issue
Not primarily because of the crit rate but because of elimination and life hunter. Horrible indeed.
The extra bit of crit and chill of the deep are nice, but lets say that is to offset the crappy dagger damage. Before these snew kills were available, sins were one of the weaker classes in skill spam damage output. And that was just wrong of course, so i guess they needed a bit of an update. A bit overdone though....

Equal gears mean same refine on weapon and equal shards. No deity sin takes aggro away from a deity barb and no non-deity sin take aggro away from a non-deity barb. HEck, Blood Rush stack + Triple spark is around 70% higher base dmg compared to the sin. Add the minor crit dif. to that (demon barb ofc) you get the idea why barbs are far superior in dealing dmg.

Sins only have an advantage if the fights last quite a bit due to there neverending chi gain and sparkability. As long as Blood Rush is on and you can keep the triple spark up (~30 seconds on the sparks with white tea) you got the aggro. From any class as a STR built demon barb with comparable gears.

pachwenko

I find that in human form you cant constantly spam skills, there always end up a 1 second pause for skills to reset where you can cast Swell if you like, or firestorm, or just auto attack once. Really sad for no macro, if anyone has a sugguestion I will try it!

But as for aggro war, I have found that archers do just as much damage in fsp as a sin untill the boss gets up close, I just let the boss sit next to them after that b:chuckle Never found a sin with same gear as me though in fsp and when its very similar I end up switching to tiger for devour and ream when I get to that 1 second pause and tend to keep aggro after that.

To be more on topic, you will always be having aggro wars especially if you devour when nobody else debuffs in like warsongs, and should make sure to get stomp of the king and use it as much as possible. Of course things change when you get really good gear, but I am assuming this discussion is about undergeared toons. Hey Barbs! Not sure why pwi still doesn't fix the forum avatars, but this is me.