please fix tauntFollow

Why are you not using your combat abilities also? For example the bellow line of abilities add agro ..... taunt pluss that you should not be having so many issues.

Aren't desert giants in PoStorms? PoV has those big golem thingies...

Um. But in any case. You need to know what taunt does and how agro works. Agro is short for "aggression". It's a measure of how pissed of a mob is towards any given person. It's a cumulative value that's constantly updated. Every action you take against a mob will increase it's agro towards you. The person with the highest agro at any given moment will be who the mob attacks.

In order to ensure that you and only you are the one the mob attacks, you need to both get yourself the most agro on a mob *and* keep the most agro. This means being able to get to that top spot, and also maintaining a constant agro generation that will keep others from catching up.


Taunt is a very specific skill. Yes. I'm aware that some folks will use the terms "taunt" and "taunting" to mean any method to gain agro, but taunt is a specific skill. All it does is increase your agro level to one point higher then the highest current persons agro level. If you are already the highest, it doesn't really do anything. Taunt does a great job of getting you to the top of the agro list (when it works). It doesn't do much at all about keeping you there. If you taunt, and then a second later the rogue hits the mob for enough agro to overtake you, then he'll get agro.

It's generally best to use taunt only when you've lost agro and want to get it back. Spamming it everytime the button comes up probably isn't doing much.


Honestly though, as a paladin, taunt is probably the least important tool for getting and keeping agro. Use your spells. Stuns are great for generating agro. With taunt, you can never get more then a point ahead of the next highest person. With stuns, you can generate such a great agro lead that no one can pull the mob off you from that point on. I usually find I only need to drop 2 or 3 stuns max at the beginning of a fight and I can keep agro for the whole fight.

If someone's agroing off you while you are casting stuns, then they are doing something wrong. Yes. Paladins can *usually* win in an agro contest, but that's counterproductive. During normal group operations, someone who's managing their agro and mana should simply not pull a mob off a paladin who's tanking.


Warriors already got a ton of combat abilities that help them get and hold agro. Taunt does not need to be fixed. Sure. It's about a 50/50 thing. But that's ok. If it worked 100% of the time, then there would be no need for agro management by anyone in a group. It's really not broken. It's just one part of a good players toolset.

Actually, at the moment, taunt is a bit messed up. I've /bugged and /feedbacked about it as well.

Playing my Warrior (lvl 54, Taunt skill roughly 210+) I've noticed that even on a sucessful taunt, I do not gain aggro about 50% of the time, if that. This has been around since a patch a few weeks to a month ago. It goes without saying that this is getting to be a bit annoying. Using CHoS main-handed with the 50pt fire proc from Nro, and SotBS in secondary with 75pt poison proc from EC,(have also swapped these and didn't see much of a difference) with dex buffed generally between 225 and 255, haste (spell + 31% Item (soulscream belt)), using provoke (all that's available till 55?) and maxed out skills. I still fail to regain aggro on a successful taunt. Also, there seems to be about a 50-75% fail rate on taunt to begin with, so this makes it even worse.

If this wasn't so common, I'd chalk it up to bad timing on the taunt (say, I use it when mob pings to the cleric, I hit taunt a split second before the wizard lands a 5k crit nuke and it pongs to the wizard), but that hasn't been the case. Lately it's been *very* hard to hold aggro at all without an overly long hate building period before everyone else engages.

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Pallies have been the favored tank while on my enc, for the pure purposes of holding aggro from the beginning. Landing Tash + Slow on these mobs on inc is possible with a good pally landing a stun or 2, but not with a warrior. Of course, a warrior will generally (not all the time) have better mitigation, hps, and AC (close though), so they are likely to live longer and require less healing. Also of note, neither Pallies nor SKs receive the Bellow line of abilities. They are given to Warriors only. (Knights get enough spell-type things to get aggro, they don't need more :p).

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Asking for taunt to be no-fail beyond 200 is a bit much. There should always be a chance for any skill to fail, no matter the skill level. Even a master of a trade can flub up occasionally. Again, this was pretty much ok until a patch a month or so ago. (Pre Dx9 patch...I'm thinking around the GoD release.)

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One last thing, there comes a point that you are doing everything you can to keep your max hate up (Provoke, low delay weapons with stun procs, proximity, kicking, making faces, etc) and you still lose aggro. At this point, the group members getting aggro need to lower their amount of generated hate. Using special skills, abilities, spells, cycling attack, and increasing the distance are all ways to lower your hate. There may be more, but I'm rarely ever trying to reduce my hate ;).

Edited, Tue Apr 13 02:01:12 2004 by cafeenoftheazurestorm

Speaking from experience, it generally comes for the Stun (sometimes Snare, but not enough) line of disciplines we have. It seems to **** them off pretty good. I guess which is why we have the agro-reducing line of disc's. That, and high DPS. We can hit like a warrior almost at the spead of a monk. My zerk uses this as his weapon: https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=428

LMMFAO

Anyway, yeah. The Leg Strike comes pretty low. Level 6 or 8, I think. The Head Strike doesn't come till 16, if I'm not mistaken. Whether I'm tanking or not, I use HS everytime it comes up. To me, stun is stun...take it where you can get it. To be honest, I only really notice HS adding to agro stealing when my Frenzy is doing a lot of double/triples. If you got a good enough group going on, you stealing agro shouldn't be much of an issue. @ 24 you get Derisive (sp?) Strike, which is the first in agro-reducing.

I still think the Zerks are HIGHLY underrated. Then again, I think it's also the people that PL their toons are the ones saying they don't like them (well duh, you got a 50-somthing gimp there dumbass). Anyone who spends any real time developing them truly appreciates their skills.

In the scenario I was talking about I am the only person attacking. Enchanter, Cleric, SK. We get an add and the enchanter mezzes and debuffs it. When I finish the mob I'm on I go to the mezzed one and taunt it. No failure message, nobody else attacking it, and yet I am not at the top of it's aggro list (assist shows mob still on enchanter) until I break mezz with a spear or dot, and not always then.


And if you as a ranger have super haste and 10/17 weapons then you are going top have to work to lose aggro over a tank who has to rely on taunt and procs. Changing weapons might be a better option for that group.

It is definitely a job not gaining aggro with fast weaps, 3 procs and doing snares. I use a Sword of the Bloodsworm main hand and a Stained Axe of the Scion offhand. The SotB is auged with a lifetap proc from BB. Fortunately, I can run through hard dungeons and not get hit more than 3-4 times in the entire thing. Sometimes it's because we have a kick *** tank working for us, sometimes it's because I know my **** and can make a horrible tank look good. :)

Heheh Psycojester my zker uses the same weapon however what i have done to keep agro to the main tank was basically us the diversive strike (it gets avoided sometimes which i hate)

However i am using the same weapon as well hitting 300 a pop at lvl 52 it sure is nice...

What really pisses a mob off is this is a high double hit and a high triple frenzy then throw in the stun hammer( ill guantee a zkr keeps agro) what i mean by high dmg is this double for 300 and have an average triple of 70x3 can we say ouch frenzy can cause problems too especially that high burst dmg

I don't think this is taunt being bugged. Agro in general has been "screwy" since the DX9 patch. We've had lots of casters get summoned for no apparent reason (ie: They walk into proximity of a mob after a whole raid force has been beating on it for 30 seconds or more and they get summoned). So far, this hasn't been a big deal since the mob seems to "figure it out" a half second later. Usually the person getting summoned doesn't even get hit...


You've also got to remember that there are two types of agro:

Straight agro points. How much damage you've done to the mob. Different types of damage and effects generate different amounts of agro, but this is all just points.

Agro multiplier/added effects. There are certain things that act like multipliers to agro. Distance acts like a multiplier. The closer you are the more significant your accumulated points are to the mob. A *very* key factor is sitting. Sitting multiplies your current agro level by a certain amount (mob dependant). Other factors like relative level and relative wimpiness (AC/HP) have a minor multiplier effect as well.


The key point is that not all effects are counted as base "agro" generated. I have a suspicion (ie: I haven't done extensive testing on this) that taunt only puts your agro numerically higher then anyone elses. If someone else has a multiplier effect that makes their lower agro end up being higher to the mob, it'll still have agro.


Example: The chanter generates 100 agro points mezzing a mob. You run up to the mob and taunt it, giving you 101 agro points. However, the chanter is sitting relatively close to the mob which multiplies his agro by 1.1 giving him a total adjusted agro of 110. You break mez thinking that the successful taunt was all you needed, and the mob makes a beeline for the chanter.


I have been seeing this effect recently. I know for a fact that on several occasions, I've taunted a mob only to have it decide to beat on the robe wearer that just sat down. This is the only explanation I can come up with for the behavior.


Check to see if that caster is sitting when you taunt. That may be the whole problem right there. The solution is to always follow up a taunt with something else that generates agro. I use taunt first, then drop a stun on the mezed mob, then I whack the mob. This is generally sufficient to keep agro on me and off anyone else. YMMV.

Why on earth would you use a combo like this when you are not MA?

This is just designed to make the tank's aggro management problem more difficult.

A War Marshall's Bladed Staff will give you the same DPS and a fraction of the aggro management problems for the group.

Not from me it's not. As I stated, I am very good at maintaining my lack of aggro. It's a VERY fine line that I walk, but I walk it well. :)


I have a WMBS sitting in my bag for when nothing else works. I do use it when I am with a tank I can't give aggro to. I am not sure about the equal DPS though. Granted, I haven't run a parse in a while, but now that my skill in 1H & 2H are about = again, I will have to re-check.

From the horse's mouth;

Quote from Alan VanCouvering during a long discussion about the melee and weapon upgrades Sept-Oct/01:

"Taunt has come up a lot with players in regard to this. It is not the warrior's job to control all the aggro of the group. It is the group's job to control the aggro of the group. I'm certainly misunderstanding what I'm reading, but I get the impression from the comments that have come in on this issue that warriors want to be able to ensure that the NPC(s) in question never decide to attack anyone but the warrior. Obviously that would make for a silly and boring combat.

We'll watch these changes play out on Test. We'll see how things go. But right now we have no intention of changing the way that aggro and taunt work now. Think about what we've changed... we've given a few classes the ability to do more damage, but none of them have surpassed any of the existing damage dealing abilities of other classes. Aggro management may be a little more complicated after these changes, but it shouldn't be any more or less possible than before."

Italics are mine.

Subsequent to this the caster spell system and mob resistance changes did in fact make taunt non viable as a warrior's only tool and we have had the introduction of the new skills and disciplines.

Nevertheless, I think that Alan makes the SOE designers view of combat strategy pretty clear.

PS If I were a Palladin or SK I would be keeping me mouth firmly shut and head down.



Edited, Thu Apr 15 00:20:34 2004 by Iluien

Stunning just because you happen to have it available and have nothing better to do at the time isn't really an intelligent way to approach it. Aggro management is EVERYONE'S job. It's not the MT's job to keep aggro off you REGARDLESS of what you happen to do. It's your job to make sure you keep your aggro low so that the mob doesn't go after you. Stunning everytime the option pops up just because it's there is NOT a good example of a non tank doing aggro management.