Is there a threat display that I'm not aware of?

[Saurakk]

It's not good or bad to have, its optional and not necessary is what some of us are pointing out based on the posts that thinks these are required.

 

And I am curious how you can tell who is "elite" or not by the message boards and how one can get this "elite" title?

[Vitellius]

It's not good or bad to have, its optional and not necessary is what some of us are pointing out based on the posts that thinks these are required.

 

And I am curious how you can tell who is "elite" or not by the message boards and how one can get this "elite" title?

 

It can't be optional. Either everyone will need it, or no one will need it. Devs would have to re-tune fights to account for the fact that players will know well in advance if aggro will break. For example, maybe the boss will hit the healer or DPS much harder as an offset for the fact they have a tool to almost ensure the boss never gets to them. If a fight is tailored in that way, then whoever ISN'T paying attention to the damage meter could cause a major screw up or even a wipe.

[Qoojo]

Pro tip: If you are getting hit, then you have aggro. A good indicator is that the mob is facing you all the time.

[Chromiie]

Pro tip: If you are getting hit, then you have aggro. A good indicator is that the mob is facing you all the time.

 

I'd rather have something that tells me I'm about to pull aggro be it a sound, screen blinks red, a number on top of the portrait etc. In a guild run it doesn't matter much but when I find a random group it would help a lot since people don't seem to wanna communicate in this game for some reason.

[brianquad]

Being entirely bored working and read through this thread and a few dozen others like it I would like cover a few influencing factors which I have not seen brought forth that are very important.

 

As this conversation specificly revolves around a threat meter I will focus there.

 

The first thing that must be considered is that current operational content is the simplest and easiest of any content that will be released in SWTOR. Regardless of your stance on this issue, the game must progress both in difficulty and complexity. To say that threat metrics are not currently required is completely valid. The question lays in what the future holds.

 

One of the largest influences in the development of threat is actually itemization. As content becomes more difficult it will have not only added complexity, but the opponents will just plain hit harder. Tanking members gear will obviously become more and more specialized toward avoidance/mitigation/capacity. More and more of gear's itemization budget will go towards these factors. While there are systems to avoid this stat deviation, they are not used in SWTOR. Now comes the threat part. As 'tanking stats' become more and more specialized to deal with the harder and harder hitting opponents, the threat output of the tank scales dramatically slower than that of a dps member who focuses on gear with the vast majority of it's itemization budget swung in that direction.

 

This first point basicly boils down to the longer the game goes on, the tighter that the current gap between tank and dps threat becomes. How tight this becomes will depend entirely upon how SWTOR approaches itemization and operational concepts. While it's current trajectory suggests these will delta quickly and steeply, it is early yet.

 

The second factor I have seen largely ignored is the much higher propensity for ranged damage from opponents. This has a close cousin of needing a Target of Target. This has two issues. First is with a ranged mob the amount of time you have between recognizing the change in targeting and the delivery of pain to the new target is dropped to just about zero. While this is minorly mitigated by the fact that in this situation the mob will remain stationary and easy for you to use your abilities to fix the situation, so many abilities in this game keep going once started until broken/stunned/finished that even instant responsiveness may be too late.

 

The second issue with this factor is rapid recognition. Yes, in many situations there will be the dead giveaway of the target turning 180 degrees. Yes, big red lasers going off into the distance is a big clue. What one must remember is that while these are indicators, they are nowhere near 100% reliable. The biggest reason they are not so is that pinnacle bosses have a trend toward being significantly LARGER than other opponents and players. This gives many tanks the glory that is the 'Dragon Crotch' view. Not exactly the most informative. More importantly, larger model mobs have larger interaction footprints, targeting ranges, and interaction ranges for it's own abilities. In a disturbing number of these cases these ranges are matched very poorly and cause 'Boss Dancing'. In other MMO's the glaring dominance of bosses wanting to be in melee with their threat target made it pretty easy to distinguish dancing from target changing. Since we have ranged tanks it is pretty obvious we will have ranged bosses, this is no longer something we can count on.

 

Also pursuant to mob facing is the very forgiving targeting arc. While the standard is 'face the boss away from the group', this will not be possible at all times and will actively be discouraged at others. In conjunction with the above points, there could be zero indication of target changing until such time was someone is getting plastered. Remember, in the very near future a single ability from a boss will be devastating to anyone not tailored to take it.

 

Now in the current operational environment none of this is a big concern. Please consider that we are living in the easy times. This is the introductory level. This is where you get to form your group and learn how to work together. Encounters must increase in difficulty and complexity. There is a line where metrics like threat meters and damage meters become requirements become required for success. It is the choice of the developers to decide where they want to take this to. If they choose to not implement or allow threat meters, damage meters, and other such tools then just be aware that this becomes a concious decision to limit the level of difficulty and complexity they can use.

[DreamMorpheus]

After you die a couple times you should have a good idea of what it takes to take threat of the tank without the screen telling you.

 

Skilled players learn to understand aggro, noobs need the screen to tell them.

 

Skilled players want to maximize their dps and not have to worry about pulling off the tank. Doing so much damage the tank is struggling to keep threat? Well, that's what skilled DPS does. It's also a good way of separating the good tanks from the great tanks, in how much the DPS can unload freely.

 

Skilled players will always want to be doing the absolute maximum dps possible. We also want to be able to do that without turning a boss and having him 1 shot cleave all the melee.

 

It's information that just shouldn't be under the table, it needs to be available to the players. It has *always* irked me that we required UI mods just to track threat. Honestly, it's more important to me than knowing the bosses health or seeing my damage pop up. (usually I turn outgoing damage text off during raids.)