Forums » Pantheon Classes

Threat as a resource

    • 411 posts
    September 20, 2017 10:00 PM PDT

    How would you feel about tanks using their threat (or aggro/hate) as a resource? Defensive cooldowns (not all, but some) reducing your current threat or reducing the rate of threat generation might open up some interesting gameplay choices and coordination. I think it would be nice to see a situation where a tank had to trade threat for survivability to buy time for the healers to catch up. This would put the damage dealers at risk, but that's something that could be communicated. Off tanks who don't need maximum threat generation could spend that resource for more/better defensive capabilities.

    Have other games already done this?

    • 17 posts
    September 20, 2017 11:08 PM PDT

    Well for me I think I would find it more annoying than anything on aesthetic alone. If I was losing threat on a raid boss because I hit my *stone wall* ability or some such that say reduces damage taken by 80% for 5 seconds, next thing I know the healers get cleaved. It would drive me crazy that this enraged or very angry boss was pounding against me trying to kill me. Hell he even got me low enough forcing me against the wall having to pop my most prized cool downs then does a 180 and is suddenly board with trying to kill me. If anything not being able to kill me or having me in a tight spot would make him even more angry or determined to kill me. 

     
    So maybe tie in aggro, or a part of it to defensive abilities in order to increase hate towards you instead of decreasing it. Also tie in a bonus to Aggro based on % of health missing when active. Popping Stone Wall while running into the fight at 100% health may make in the bosses think, "haha, your that scared of me, you die first." Pop Stone Wall at 20% Health Boss thinks "DIE DIE DIE" and so on to justify the amount of hate gained. 
     
     It is an interesting idea and my main concern which can be soothed would be so long as the hate can increase with gear just as the damage-rs increase their dps with gear
    • 411 posts
    September 21, 2017 6:12 AM PDT

    Hah, I think it's great that you came at it from a different angle than I would have. Where you see defensive cooldowns as an indicator that the enemy has you on the ropes and so should finish off the job, I had thought of it as the opposite. If the angry raid boss has forced the tower of brawn and fury (the tank) to cower under his shield, why should said boss not move along to smush the squishies as his reward? Two sides of the same coin I think.

    As far as the mechanics of loss of aggro that you describe - you are coming at it from the standpoint of being on the razor's edge of threat and the defensive cooldown pushes you under when you otherwise would not. If you know that you're barely staying afloat on threat with your current group, then you may want to spec out of your defensive cooldown(s) that reduce threat and bring something else instead. I actually think it's great that someone could make a mistake like the one you describe. Spending your threat as a tank would be a risk you could take when you expect that you'll be ahead of the game. If you can't make a mistake, then choices made are not really impactful.

    Let's say you're 3-4 levels above your group or you have a new weapon that produces awesome threat, now you can leverage your advantage by slotting the better defensive cooldowns into your kit instead of the regular ones that don't cost threat. If instead you're 3-4 levels below your group then you may even want to forego some of your regular defensive cooldowns in favor of an increased threat generation kit.

    I would like to see a game where players make choices depending on their group and the situation (as I'm sure many of us do). Can you sneak in that extra bit of damage without getting stomped or should you play it safe with a low threat generation attack? Can you pop your big defensive cooldown without losing the interest of the raid boss or should you make the healer pick up the slack? Of course these aren't the only choices that could be made in battle. There's a wealth of interesting things to be done in combat even if you don't have to worry about threat, but I think that threat is an awesome additional layer in games that use it.

    I see this concept as a way for players to achieve threat balance by themselves so the developers don't have to spend as much time dialing in the threat balance for all scenarios. Maybe it works that way, or maybe it doesn't, but that was my rationale.


    This post was edited by Ainadak at September 21, 2017 6:23 AM PDT
    • 17 posts
    September 21, 2017 8:49 AM PDT

    Ya it is a interesting idea, what ever system gets made I just hope they get the math right. 

    You do not see this often at low level content but once you get into raid or top tier raiding the issues comes around. As the DPS get their high gear they out Threat the Tank, even with his taunts. We all know if you look at the damage charts and if the tank is above some of the dps then something is wrong ha-ha. It is also the argument how much damage do I take vs how much mitigation, per boss or encounter. Then we get into having different builds, but lets stay away from that topic for the moment. I have raided with some people who would base the value of their damage on how fast or if they could pull off me. 

     

    It all comes down to pure math, unless every DPS has the option to take a Aggro dump having the tank lose aggro when using his abilities to keep alive seems doomed once DPS get better gear. I think what you brought up is interesting and has some value. I am just worried about the math because all most none of the mmos get it right at launch. Down the road they throw extra aggro patch in, which just does not feel fully right.