Forums » Pantheon Classes

Damage dealer's threat management

    • 2752 posts
    April 29, 2017 4:26 PM PDT

    kellindil said:

    The issue there though is that you may not always have that class available. Making a whole sub set of classes completely dependant on one other class is a bad idea. Interdependance is great, but there are limits to that as well. People really do need their own aggro dropping abilities. It shouldn't be a complete get out of jail free card, but you can't basically set it up so that a class MUST have another specific class available to perform their role at least decently.

    I'm not saying they need those classes, just that the non DPS that do the aggro drops are a boon. You never needed an enchanter or bard in your group in EQ, but they sure made things a lot better for everyone. Without having one in this case would mean the DPS classes have to be more aware of their threat and use a few more low aggro attacks in their strings. 

    • 1921 posts
    April 29, 2017 4:54 PM PDT

    Regarding Wizard threat, take a look at the latest video/stream:

    https://youtu.be/xYVDrfR6ZsM?t=1590

    and watch until 27:00.  Note the log in the bottom right for Zynxs (the wizard/Sierra).

    It's interesting, because her biggest nuke took about 10% of the mobs health.  She had a ~343 dmg, a ~188 dmg and the 38dmg/AOE root/freeze spell (2 sec duration).

    26:33 186 dmg
    26:37 343 dmg
    26:42 no dmg (but the spell effect lands, and it runs at her)
    26:50 188 dmg

    From this, it appears the current design goal is the resists cause just as much if not more hate than normal damage.  Not a fan of that, but it's interesting to see their current goals in action.  It seems like, yet again, Wizards may be forced to wait up to half the fight before they can start casting to avoid a three hit death. :)  And this is just at level 25.  (yes yes, i know, pre-alpha)


    This post was edited by vjek at April 29, 2017 4:55 PM PDT
  • April 29, 2017 7:28 PM PDT

    vjek said:

    Regarding Wizard threat, take a look at the latest video/stream:

    https://youtu.be/xYVDrfR6ZsM?t=1590

    and watch until 27:00.  Note the log in the bottom right for Zynxs (the wizard/Sierra).

    It's interesting, because her biggest nuke took about 10% of the mobs health.  She had a ~343 dmg, a ~188 dmg and the 38dmg/AOE root/freeze spell (2 sec duration).

    26:33 186 dmg
    26:37 343 dmg
    26:42 no dmg (but the spell effect lands, and it runs at her)
    26:50 188 dmg

    From this, it appears the current design goal is the resists cause just as much if not more hate than normal damage.  Not a fan of that, but it's interesting to see their current goals in action.  It seems like, yet again, Wizards may be forced to wait up to half the fight before they can start casting to avoid a three hit death. :)  And this is just at level 25.  (yes yes, i know, pre-alpha)

    You are pretty accurate.  I can give some insight from what I was experiencing but obviously know things may change and I can't speak to what those changes may be. Some notes - I do primarily pick healing roles, but DPS is my second choice.  I also have only had a few hours, cumulatively of play on this class and Pantheon in general as I am a new member of the team.  But I have a lot of experience otherwise. 

     I'd argue I knew what I was doing but there's some things that do impact what was happening, too.

    When you see me standing to the side sometimes, if we have CC'd mobs sometimes the effects of Kilsin's Smoke & Mirrors (CC ability) was visually overwriting my root spell at times, Magical Bonds.  Yet they both stacked. I was watching a mob that was not always super apparent, those times when I was CCing I was having to focus on that.  If we had 2+ mobs, I usually tried to watch one. Sometimes he didn't know and we wound up double CCing and I'd refocus.  But with questions/ect and everyone talking sometimes it was hard for us to communicate that effectively.  He experienced the same thing with not being able to DPS the same while CCing, but he had a little more ability to at least auto-attack for a few seconds, If I did anything but manage my CC'd mob it might take too much of my mana (Magical Bonds) or possibly ruin my timing on the root and let it free.

    As far as threat goes: If I had a successful cast, resisted or otherwise, it caused a fair amount of threat. It did sometimes feel like it caused more, but I honestly didn't watch the numbers as closely as I could have.  Threat for me was tweaked between my last play time and the day of the stream, so I was adjusting throughout the stream to what had changed.   If I fizzled, it just made me have to wait a sec before recasting, no threat, some minor mana loss.  My biggest nuke was doing a very considerable amount of damage, I was also debuffing the mob pretty much every time.  The debuff also causes a fair amount of threat.  So you may see me cast, wait, then nuke.. It wasn't just my DPS that was impacting my threat.  Yes, there were times I was holding back from engaging, mostly because I was also about as durable as wet paper.

    I would cast my debuff a few seconds into the fight after Machail taunted and everyone had hit it already and my debuff would hit, giving me the 'ring' sound that made me aware my threat was high because the debuffs cause a lot of threat right now, I would wait a few more seconds then start nuking.  Sometimes the noise would chime but I already overshot because of how much threat I created with whatever I just cast... then I felt the pain.

    Shatter the Ice, which is a AOE root/DD could be enough for me to back away while Machail regained aggro.  Sometimes they resisted, and sometimes it got me anyway. 

    As for needing a threat meter..  I think a skilled player will be able to tell.  I danced with danger more than I should have, in part because Joppa tweaked the aggro on a few things before the stream and also because I had an itchy trigger finger and was trying to help us burn through so we could keep moving.  But considering how aware I was when I was flirting with the mob, I didn't feel I would need it.  Though, again.. I am coming from a perspective of years of playing without that sort of thing. 

     


    This post was edited by Deleted Member at April 29, 2017 7:29 PM PDT
    • 1921 posts
    April 29, 2017 8:17 PM PDT

    Great insight, Zynxs, thanks for the additional details.

    • 1860 posts
    May 2, 2017 8:48 AM PDT

    Zynxs said:

     giving me the 'ring' sound that made me aware my threat was high

     

    I'm going to have to pay more attention to that sound.  I think I remember hearing it (from Coh's pov) but not knowing what it was.

    Can you comment on the ring sound and give more info on when it happened please Zynxs?

    ~When does it happen exactly?

       When you were on the top of the hate list and you were the mobs target?  Or when there was a large aggro increase due to whatever you were doing, but you weren't actually being targeted by the mob?  Maybe it happens when you become second on the list?...because you would usually know if you were 1st on the list without a bell... 

       Did it happen only through spells/abillities?  What about sitting aggro?

     

    Thank you in advance for any more info you can provide.

    • 432 posts
    May 12, 2017 7:46 AM PDT

    I really enjoyed the stance idea. But in torn between ideas. I want DPS to care about threat and i know i dont want the WAY they care about threat is to simply stop playing. On the other hand i dont want to give them so many buttons they, like what was said before, become too busy. But when you think about it. Giving them more buttons to press wont affect this.

    There are a finite number of ability slots. You can add a ton of abilities to the game and thats a good thing. Because it all comes down to your loadout. If a dpser chooses to put low lvl abilities on his or her bar which do less damage and have less aggro, that might be the answer.

     

    Good thread.

     

    -sent via mobile

    -Todd

     


    This post was edited by tehtawd at May 12, 2017 12:13 PM PDT
    • 945 posts
    March 7, 2018 12:26 PM PST

    In EQ2 I played the coercer and was able to assign threat from one target to another... this was absolutely essential if there was a geared wizard hitting for 10 million damage (on the low end) since absolutely no amount of "stop damage for a little while" could compete with million, or even billion damage hits.  Wizards couldn't "actively" play without someone to change the threat for them because they would just have to wait until the mob got to a certain health % and then start playing... or just one shot trash mobs, because they would otherwise be one shot by difficult encounters.  Highest recorded max hit on EQ2 was well over 4 billion (4,000,000,000,000) as of like 2 years ago when the cap was like level 100.  I hope the threat system takes future content into consideration.  For me, it added too much strain requiring me to babysit and pay attention to someo wizard who is going to be casting a nuke so that you can save them (and potentially the raid), while taking care of your charm, mezes, debuffs and feeding mana to the healers too.

    A lot may disagree, but I'm not scUred to voice my opionin :)  I enjoyed being able to "see" when an enemy was getting angry at me, or losing interest in me if I was tanking.  I'm not a fan of having to rely on others to babysit you if you happen to hit like a truck but the tank is undergeared.  (This is the part most will disagree with me on)  The most efficient system I saw for this was Tidy Plates.  If this was something that could be toggled in the UI for those that were concerned with their own threat, or even for classes that needed to control others' threat, it could very easily be disabled for those that feel it ruins their immersion or makes the game too easy... some people don't even like nameplates on players and NPCs.  For those unfamiliar with this particular script, the names of the NPCs would change color depending on your threat level (which was invaluable as a tank trying to hold AoE threat when the rogue is not assisting you, or that threat building cleave missed one of the targets that you would otherwise have no idea missed until it peeled off and went after the healers that were strategically positioned).   It would also help as DPS to identify if you were about to pull threat from the tank... perhaps because the tank was unaware that his threat attack missed, you are doing AoE damage and the tank does not have this feature enabled.  The different colors meant different things depending on if you were a tank or DPS or a backup tank.  But it would obviously be important having it as a feature that can be chosen to be used.  

    I honestly feel this would be a much funner way to "play" the game for all involved instead of guessing what people's threat potential is (as in the case with the undergeared tank, or overgeared DPS... both of which would frustrate everyone else in the group and create a potentially ostresizing environment).  

    Just my opinion. :)

     

    *edit:  4,849,297,734,933 dmg hit:  https://u.eq2wire.com/lb/listing/max_magic_hit/all/


    This post was edited by Darch at March 7, 2018 12:41 PM PST