Cloud Mind works!

[Daellia]

So, I had a post out here on the topic of threat mechanics, but apparently posting the same or similar posts on multiple sub-forums (here, General, and the tanking forum) is considered "spamming", so they removed two of them and just left the one in the tanking forum. (Edit: they've since moved it back to General for visibility, thanks moderators!)

 

Anyway, moral of the story is, my original testing on Cloud Mind (that determined it was only reducing threat by 0.25%) was based on a faulty assumption as to the mechanics of the "melee" category of the threat threshold. It's since been demonstrated that Cloud Mind does in fact work as expected (-25% threat), and that Extrication (and Intercede and Force Camo) are actually 2500% threat drops (boils down to simply setting the target's threat to 0). Resume using Cloud Mind in your rotations!

 

Here's the thread with more information, including some interesting info about taunt mechanics (for those of you with alts or tanky friends):

 

Edit: Apparently I'm also not supposed to link to that thread. /sigh. Well, its in the General section, and it's by me (the only one), if you want to hunt it down and check out further information on the topic.

 

Lets hope the forum moderates have mercy on this thread and leave it up here, so ye Sorcs can actually see this (this thread is specific to Sorcs! See? It should be left here!)

Edited March 4, 2012 by Daellia

[landdon]

It's the last skill I believe I bought from my trainer. That and Tumult. I have purchased, and will try it. Tumult I have found to be a great way to break the ww. It will do a huge amount of damage.

[Daellia]

The best part about Cloud Mind is that it doesn't cost anything and is off the GCD. At only a 45 second cooldown, it's an amazing way to keep your threat down (not that that should be necessary, given what we know about taunts now!).

[imraziel]

Cloud mind is only useful when there is a tank with you. All else it may cause a weak character to fight someone else, but that almost never happens to me when there is no tank.

 

Tumult however, does not work for me. I have tried it PVP, WZ, group, solo, strong& weak enemies, even to animals and it does nothing. I have respeced several times and tried every stun/cc ability and it doesn't work. I even tried different keys... Nothing.

[Veriu]

The best part about Cloud Mind is that it doesn't cost anything and is off the GCD. At only a 45 second cooldown, it's an amazing way to keep your threat down (not that that should be necessary, given what we know about taunts now!).

 

We learned something new about taunts?

 

Don't they behave virtually exactly the same as they did in wow? put you on the top of the agro list + a fixate

 

Is there something else they do as well, or did you not know that taunts moved you to the top of the agro list until recently?

 

edit: I just found your post on taunts...that's freaking weird. And if that is actually how it works, I think it's a bug.

Edited March 4, 2012 by Veriu

[Daellia]

We learned something new about taunts?

 

Don't they behave virtually exactly the same as they did in wow? put you on the top of the agro list + a fixate

 

Is there something else they do as well, or did you not know that taunts moved you to the top of the agro list until recently?

 

edit: I just found your post on taunts...that's freaking weird. And if that is actually how it works, I think it's a bug.

 

Bug or not, that's how they work in SWTOR. For those confused, here's a snippet from my other post (I think I feel safe linking it now. Ish. Here)

 

Another interesting mechanic we discovered was with taunts. They set the tank's threat to how much would be necessary for the tank to pull of the current aggro target (based on his current position relative to the taunted target), even if the current aggro target is said tank! For example, if a tank (standing at max melee range, so 130% threat threshold) generates 10000 threat, then while the mob is still attacking him he taunts it, his threat would be set to 13000 threat, even though the mob was attacking him the entire time. Thus using taunts in a tanking rotation can be a massive source of threat generation, particularly late in the fight.

 

Think about it this way. If you're halfway through a 2 million HP boss, and you've done say 15% of the damage, you've done 150000 damage, and thus generated (roughly) 225000 threat. Now, while standing at max range on the boss, you stop attacking and instead just cast nothing but Taunt on cooldown (every 15 seconds). For first taunt would generate 225000*0.3 = 67500 threat (4500 tps), 87750 threat the second cast (5850 tps), 114075 threat the third (7605 tps), and so on, and that's casting nothing but taunt on CD. Basically, unless there's a tank swap coming up, or it's early in the fight (where a dps might be pulling off you), casting Taunt on cooldown is your single highest TPS ability, and it's off the GCD!

[verfallen]

Makes no sense tough. Would mean that with intercede, on a long fight, a jug could dump the threat of everyone in the party? (intercede is on a 20 sec cd x3)

 

Thats nearly saying on a 250k health mob, for exemple, as soon as 175k damage is done or so, you can just pull this, go on coffee break and you won't lose the threat for the rest of the fight.

 

At all rate, means the tooltip would be wrong by identifying a moderate threat reduction.

 

 

I'm fairly curious what test were made to get such results. It sounds very unplausible.

 

Why would they even do 2500% threat dumping when 100%, if it was so the wish, is all you need?

[Daellia]

Why would they even do 2500% threat dumping when 100%, if it was so the wish, is all you need?

 

Given the label on the game files, and the other threat drops, I suspect it's a data entry error. Cloud Mind, for example, has a ModifyThreat -> AmountPercent of -0.25, which we suspected for a long time meant it dropped threat by 0.25%. However, this has proven incorrect, so that field is already in decimal notation for the percentage, and -0.25 is a 25% threat reduction. However, Intercede, Extrication, and Force Camo have a ModifyThreat -> AmountPercent of -25, resulting in a 2500% threat drop. It's likely intended that all 3 of these effects were supposed to be 25% threat drops, but someone missed the memo on the units for that field and input it wrong. Simple fix really, and I suspect it'll end up getting added to 1.2 now that the information is fairly wide-spread.

[Daellia]

Bumping this for visibility.