Threat Generation?

paradox · August 2020

If a single female Orion can produce -9.1% threat generation, while a single Klingon can produce +10% threat generation how much would an away team of 4 female Orions and one Klingon produce? Would the npcs focus on the Klingon and ignore the Orions? Also how does threat generation work on ships?

spiritborn · August 2020

Well the threat a player or NPC generates depends on the amount of damage you deal. To use the example if you gave an fem Orion would generate "damage-(damage*0.091)" while the Klingon would generate "damage+(damage*0.1)", obviously you have other modifiers as well but that's how that part works. For both ground and space as far as I know the threat generation is the same "damage+modifers".

Someone who has built their character as a tank might be able to explain the details better.

darkbladejk · August 2020

What spiritborn said is partly correct as damage is a part of threat generation, but it doesn't give you the full picture. When you fire a weapon or ability the damage it does will deal a certain amount of threat/aggro in addition to the actual damage it deals. Threat is how a NPCs determine who they are going to attack on average. This is not always a sure thing as not all NPCs have an aggro table, though most do. This also doesn't account for mechanic changes that force a target switch, but you get the idea.

The actual formula for generating threat is different, but for sake of discussion to make it easier for you to understand, let's assume 1 point of DPS is equal to 1 point of threat generated. If you have a guy doing 5k dps, 10k, 15k, 20k, and 25k DPS, then assuming no other threat multipliers are active, the person with the 25k DPS will be the one with the most threat by virtue of their damage. Now let's suppose we wanted the guy at 15k DPS to be able to tank, there's 4 different methods that can be utilized by him and the team to accomplish this task.

Threat reduction abilities: An easy way to get the guy to the guy at 15k to tank position is for his teammates to run 1-2 threat reducing consoles/abilities on their build. This is probably the most cumbersome way as it effects the entire team, but would reduce their threat output proportional to the reductions they have on the build. Think something like embassy threat reducing consoles. Aside from the major DPS benefits they used to grant, the threat modifications +/- was another reason embassy consoles were so popular for a long time.

Threat increasing abilities: Increasing the threat multiplier for your abilities is one of the least cumbersome ways to increase threat generation. If the goal is threat generation and tanking, generally you won't be at the top of the leaderboards for damage, so to keep threat you must make up for this in other ways. For our hypothetical guy at 15k DPS, if we assume he took the Threat Control unlock in his skill tree, and turns on threatening stance, he's now turned on a 3x threat multiplier and will be doing 3x that mount of threat on average the rest of the team will be doing. Although he's still doing 15k DPS, the NPCs see him putting out the same amount of threat as someone doing 45k DPS, thus he will be able to keep threat from the rest of the team. This is the second easiest way to increase threat output. Multiple threat multipliers will stack on top of each other for increased effect. In my case I run an average multiplier of 1000% in space, which equates to a 10x increase. If I am doing 100k DPS, the game sees me as being a threat of around 1m DPS.

Zero distance abilities: it may sound foolish but in some instances distance is a factor for how much threat an ability generates. A zero distance ability basically means this: you could be at the edge of weapons range when you fire the ability, however as far as the enemy is concerned you're right on top of them since the thing doing the damage to them is at a distance of zero from them. Hence where the name comes from. This is why science builds in space tend to have more threat issues than more traditional weapons based DPS builds, most of their powers are zero distance powers. Incorporating a couple of those into your build can also increase threat output dramatically. Far as the enemy is concerned you're in their face being very aggressive.

DPS: I saved this one for last as it's the easiest way to increase threat generation with threat multipliers being right behind it. Damage isn't the only way you can increase threat generation despite what the "damage is everything" crowd will tell you, it's simply the easiest. You do need to do damage in order to generate threat as damage is a major component of it, but it's not the only component. Think of your DPS as being like Goku's base form in Dragon Ball, and threat modifiers being like the Super Saiyan forms. The Super Saiyan forms are just multipliers themselves and are not the only thing that matters. Getting a higher level of multiplier will help you certainly, but there comes a point in time where you will benefit more from increasing your base than relying on the multiplier alone. As you increase your base damage, the multipliers become more effective as they have a higher number to multiply starting out.

The race of boff doesn't matter as much as the abilities and threat multipliers etc that they're loaded with. Some boffs and abilities will work better for certain builds than others. Take myself and spiritborn as examples. Assuming he plays as a purely dps type of toon for sake of discussion, a threat boost wouldn't be as useful to someone like him as it would me as a tank. Likewise a threat reducer from something like covert phasers would be counter to what I want to do, but would be good for someone like him if he wanted to do phasers. Doesn't mean those abilities are bad, they just don't work for every build. Hope all this has made some sense to you. If there are specific questions I can try to answer by all means let me know.

Threat Generation?

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