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Tank agro


G-Girl

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As a healer, it's not possible for me to do my job properly when I am taking damage, and since I can't seem to get a group ever in SWTOR where the tank can reliably hold agro I have to ask, is this because:

 

!) The game mechanics make it impossible for a tank to hold agro reliably.

 

2) None of the tanks I've played with know how to do their job properly.

 

It just seems like a weird game mechanic, when a mob is ignoring the guy whaling on them with a lightsaber or two in favour of shooting at someone on the other side of the room who has never even looked at them funny.

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It's the tanks IMO. In my guild, the tanks are able to draw other attackers from the healers just fine. If you're pulling threat with heals even after respecing into talents that reduce your threat, then the quality of tank you're working with is sub-par. Edited by ShiningKnights
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You're just having a really bad string of luck with player tanks. There could also be a few aspects of your own play that is causing the problem. Let's start with my second comment.

 

You don't want to open up with your big heals, that creates more aggro. Stick to smaller heals and/or HoTs during the beginning of a fight, keeping your tank at around 80% health until they can establish some solid aggro. Mix up your heals as well; throw a smaller, faster heal before hitting up a larger one. If you do pull aggro and cannot CC the mob that is coming after you always run towards your tank, never away.

 

Now, as far as the player tanking, they are not doing their job properly. If they are trying to tank an entire group of mobs without using any CC they had better be generating threat on every mob. That means switching targets frequently, even if they are using aoe abilities. Even a Guardian or Juggernaut can reliably aoe tank, it just requires a heck of a lot more work and probably even skill.

 

Your tank should have Guard on you if you are pulling aggro, and if you are still pulling aggro even when Guarded you just have a bad tank. If there is no Guard out on someone, the tank is not in the proper stance.

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To be honest, I think a lot of the time it's just there aren't enough tanks to go around, and I'm trying to keep up with three DPSers with no taunt, but there does seem to be a high percentage of people who have never played a MMO before and have no idea what the taunt button is for.

 

Sometimes I get so fed up, I go on a DPS alt, but then I just find that any group I get not only has no tank, it doesn't have a healer either.

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To be honest, I think a lot of the time it's just there aren't enough tanks to go around, and I'm trying to keep up with three DPSers with no taunt, but there does seem to be a high percentage of people who have never played a MMO before and have no idea what the taunt button is for.

 

Sometimes I get so fed up, I go on a DPS alt, but then I just find that any group I get not only has no tank, it doesn't have a healer either.

 

You should come to my server, there's more tanks than dps even!

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You're just having a really bad string of luck with player tanks. There could also be a few aspects of your own play that is causing the problem. Let's start with my second comment.

 

You don't want to open up with your big heals, that creates more aggro. Stick to smaller heals and/or HoTs during the beginning of a fight, keeping your tank at around 80% health until they can establish some solid aggro. Mix up your heals as well; throw a smaller, faster heal before hitting up a larger one. If you do pull aggro and cannot CC the mob that is coming after you always run towards your tank, never away.

 

Now, as far as the player tanking, they are not doing their job properly. If they are trying to tank an entire group of mobs without using any CC they had better be generating threat on every mob. That means switching targets frequently, even if they are using aoe abilities. Even a Guardian or Juggernaut can reliably aoe tank, it just requires a heck of a lot more work and probably even skill.

 

Your tank should have Guard on you if you are pulling aggro, and if you are still pulling aggro even when Guarded you just have a bad tank. If there is no Guard out on someone, the tank is not in the proper stance.

 

I'm lucky if the group will even let me cc anything before rushing in. And I don't even want to think about that one tank that made a beeline for whatever mob was cced.

 

Good thought about the small heals. I'll keep an eye on that, though I try not to open up until the tank has had a chance to get their attention.

 

As for Guard, I'm not sure I've ever seen that in use.

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Sorcerer.

 

Ew, ok we could use more dead Sorcs so no more helping!

 

Just kidding, rely on your shield more and the smaller heals. I've only got a low level Sage so I don't know about the higher level abilities as much. Definitely use your four second stun when something runs to you, I forget what the Inquisitor version is but for Consulars it's Force Stun and you should be able to get a Whirlwind on it.

 

Mostly, I think you're just having a really bad run of luck with some bad players. Don't be afraid to drop a bad group, though. You're a healer and always in some sort of demand.

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Yea, you've had bad tanks. The only ones with agro issues are the JK/SW's, and that's only AoE. With our guard (and the tank paying attention), you should not be pulling aggro off of us.

 

Good to know. It' been happening so often I was beginning to think it must be the way the game works.

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Good to know. It' been happening so often I was beginning to think it must be the way the game works.

 

To a degree, it is. If you're using WoW as your reference point, SWTOR just isn't set up to have a tank like a Paladin holding down 12 mobs at once. That the tank does not have full control over everything in a pull is a frustration that's led some people I know personally who have always played tanks in MMO's to choose a different role in the SWToR paradigm.

 

You're also not necessarily supposed to keep everyone at 100% health over an entire encounter. Alive, certainly, but for practical purposes 1% HP is the same as 100% as long as the party member remains alive. You'll probably feel this even more directly after the 1.2 patch, as healers have had their resource efficiency toned down a bit.

Edited by Ronamo
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The tank aggro management is really poor in this game. My Commando and BH create more aggro than two tanks combined. I recently made a thread about this same issue but got lectured on how poor my knowledge on MMO's is. Yeah, keep defending each piss poor design decision BioWare made. The "Tanks" in this game can't pull or herd ****.
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If you're talking flashpoint trash: to be honest, I mostly don't even bother aggroing some of the outlying stuff that isn't at least a strong... it's going to die so fast that it doesn't matter if it hits someone else for a second or 2. I just mostly put aggro on the biggest clump and any strongs/elites.

 

My Commando and BH create more aggro than two tanks combined.
Yeah, that's not bad design. That's bad player who can't throttle his dps to keep from pulling aggro.

 

Bad design would be if you could just go balls to wall on dps regardless of the tank.

Edited by ferroz
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As others have said, it looks like more of a tank problem than anything you're doing. This game can be annoying on some pulls, where the tank has to take agro on several mobs and others join as soon as you pull. Some mobs also stun/knockback when you pull so that doesn't really help.

 

It's not really a tank-friendly game but it can be worked around. The tanks should be tanking any strongs and elites most of the time. Weak mobs should be the priority for DPS classes and when I tank, I usually put 1-2 hits on weak mobs to keep them off the healer and they should be dead before you get enough healing agro to pull them.

 

Some DPS seem to focus on elites and strongs before weak mobs and this makes it a lot more difficult on the tank, who then has 2-3 elites/strongs and several weak mobs to control (which can usually be killed in a few hits by any DPS). Telling DPS to kill weak mobs first makes things a lot easier on everyone, since they usually do the same damage as an elite but with significantly less health. It also gives the tank a few seconds to get more threat on the elites, which means DPS can then go all-out on them.

Edited by Ezion
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I play a PT tank and I've never had much of an issue with tanking multiple mobs. It is a little tricky early on, before you get all the bells and whistles to really help out, but it can be done. You've probably just gotten shafted on the quality of tanks you've had the misfortune to run with. With that being said, JK/SW are at a disadvantage when it comes to tanking multiple mobs. PT/Troopers and even Shadow/Assassin tanks make much better AOE tanks.

 

Still, as one poster mentioned before me, this isn't exactly like WoW as far as tanking is concerned. Most of the 'non-elite' mobs here can be burned thru without the dps taking any real dmg or breaking a sweat. If the tank is having a rough time gathering every mob up, he should just concentrate on the elites and let the dps nuke the smaller guys. Some of the dps are still learning this as well, because every MMO before this programmed them to 'attack what tank attacks'. It just takes a little bit of adjustment.

 

PS: Guard works much better on a high dps then it ever does on a healer. By end game healz draw so little aggro its better to have it on the maurader, arsenal merc, or lightning sorc.

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To a degree, it is. If you're using WoW as your reference point, SWTOR just isn't set up to have a tank like a Paladin holding down 12 mobs at once. That the tank does not have full control over everything in a pull is a frustration that's led some people I know personally who have always played tanks in MMO's to choose a different role in the SWToR paradigm.

 

You're also not necessarily supposed to keep everyone at 100% health over an entire encounter. Alive, certainly, but for practical purposes 1% HP is the same as 100% as long as the party member remains alive. You'll probably feel this even more directly after the 1.2 patch, as healers have had their resource efficiency toned down a bit.

 

Ouch. I already find myself running out of force before a fight is over if there's more than one champion/elite. Especially if (as often happens) the DPS are taking damage as well as the tank.

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Funny how many people just pass it on to the tanks being bad...

 

You people don't know jack apparently. The tanks can't hold aggro against the DDs if there's more then one mob, period! A Sniper who casts orbital strike or a Merc casting death from above will easily pull the aggro from the tank in trash-mob-groups.

 

And yes, I play it all... Assassin-Tank, Sniper DD, and Merc healer. I knwo all of the mechanics and they're totally bollocks.

 

Look at your aggro-reset for example. The Aggro-reset doesn't work, due to BW having coded it to only reduce 0.25% of your aggro instead of 25%.

Then there's the mechanic that melee-range needs 110% damage to steal aggro and range 130% from the tank. The tanks simply can't built up that much aggro due to their DPS lacking. The tank-form should've 100% more aggro instead of only 50% due to this issue. Try pulling the aggro from a well equipped tank-companion... companions have 100% aggro-increase and you'll notice this heavily.

 

Boss-tanking is no problem, if you spot the boss every damn 15 seconds, but everything else is not doable. The Powertech-tanks do better than Assassins and Juggers with AoE-aggro, but even they'll loose aggro fast to a Sniper or Merc spamming their AoE-damage.

 

So yeah OP, you'll see alot of aggro as a healer, especially if you're a Merc-healer applying the Kolto Shell before the tank pulls the trash, you'll have instant aggro in that case.

 

The only way to solve the issue with aggro is to CC everything possible and have the smallest amount of mobs the tank needs to deal with.

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The tank aggro management is really poor in this game. My Commando and BH create more aggro than two tanks combined. I recently made a thread about this same issue but got lectured on how poor my knowledge on MMO's is. Yeah, keep defending each piss poor design decision BioWare made. The "Tanks" in this game can't pull or herd ****.

 

 

I don't think it's bad design. Most of the time I see these mistakes from DPS'ers:

 

-They don't throttle back their DPS, not allowing tanks to build aggro in a given time.

 

-They don't spec into threat reducing abilities.

 

-They use aggro dumps sparingly (or none at all).

 

-They FF on the one mob that the tank is not attacking. With 1.2 hopefully Target of Target should help with some of this.

 

My guild (Expelled on Wall of Light; we're 5/5 on both 16 man and 8 man Nightmare Ops so we've seen it all) has Vanguards, Shadows, and Jedi Guardian tanks. Every one of them is able to hold threat well. Guardians have a little more trouble with AOE threat, but nothing that would suggest bad game design.

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Funny how many people just pass it on to the tanks being bad...

 

You people don't know jack apparently. The tanks can't hold aggro against the DDs if there's more then one mob, period! A Sniper who casts orbital strike or a Merc casting death from above will easily pull the aggro from the tank in trash-mob-groups.

 

And yes, I play it all... Assassin-Tank, Sniper DD, and Merc healer. I knwo all of the mechanics and they're totally bollocks.

 

Look at your aggro-reset for example. The Aggro-reset doesn't work, due to BW having coded it to only reduce 0.25% of your aggro instead of 25%.

Then there's the mechanic that melee-range needs 110% damage to steal aggro and range 130% from the tank. The tanks simply can't built up that much aggro due to their DPS lacking. The tank-form should've 100% more aggro instead of only 50% due to this issue. Try pulling the aggro from a well equipped tank-companion... companions have 100% aggro-increase and you'll notice this heavily.

 

Boss-tanking is no problem, if you spot the boss every damn 15 seconds, but everything else is not doable. The Powertech-tanks do better than Assassins and Juggers with AoE-aggro, but even they'll loose aggro fast to a Sniper or Merc spamming their AoE-damage.

 

So yeah OP, you'll see alot of aggro as a healer, especially if you're a Merc-healer applying the Kolto Shell before the tank pulls the trash, you'll have instant aggro in that case.

 

The only way to solve the issue with aggro is to CC everything possible and have the smallest amount of mobs the tank needs to deal with.

 

Um, don't use orbital strike/ death from above as your first attack. As others have said, what you discribe is bad DPS. This isn't WoW, I'm not a paladin who can hold 12 mobs wile DPS goes balls to the wall. I'm a juggernought, I'll hold the strong/elite wile DPS focuses (single target) weak, then strongs, and finaly elites/champs.

 

At your healing aggro, don't pre-heal the tank. I don't play healers, but for the 7 years I've been MMOing, everything I've read sais that's a big no-no.

 

P.S. Yes, guard is better on a high DPS, but the op said she was pulling aggro, so in that case I'd put it on her. I can live without a DPS, I can't with out a healer.

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I am a jugg tank, and when there is a group of mobs spread out, it is hard to control aggro. I am not saying it cannot be done, but it requires a lot of work.

A group of mods that are closer together is easy, just wait till the jugg tank smash them once, to at least gain that little bit of lead on aggro gain.

 

spread out mob, try to CC first, if not, jugg tank only have 1x aoe taunt and 1x single target taunt. 1x "high" treat ability (backhand) and 1x threat reducer on ally (intercede) and if you have aggro, like above said, run towards the tank, so he can either taunt or get a few hits on the target to get the aggro back.

 

While it is possible to single tank thru all the HM FP and OP, i find the fight much more easier if there is a OT who can take a few more hits than a pure dps class.

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p.s. Yes, guard is better on a high dps, but the op said she was pulling aggro, so in that case i'd put it on her. I can live without a dps, i can't with out a healer.

 

Best thing I've read all day!

 

:D

Edited by pzljug
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Funny how many people just pass it on to the tanks being bad...

 

You people don't know jack apparently. The tanks can't hold aggro against the DDs if there's more then one mob, period! A Sniper who casts orbital strike or a Merc casting death from above will easily pull the aggro from the tank in trash-mob-groups.

 

And yes, I play it all... Assassin-Tank, Sniper DD, and Merc healer. I knwo all of the mechanics and they're totally bollocks.

 

Look at your aggro-reset for example. The Aggro-reset doesn't work, due to BW having coded it to only reduce 0.25% of your aggro instead of 25%.

Then there's the mechanic that melee-range needs 110% damage to steal aggro and range 130% from the tank. The tanks simply can't built up that much aggro due to their DPS lacking. The tank-form should've 100% more aggro instead of only 50% due to this issue. Try pulling the aggro from a well equipped tank-companion... companions have 100% aggro-increase and you'll notice this heavily.

 

Boss-tanking is no problem, if you spot the boss every damn 15 seconds, but everything else is not doable. The Powertech-tanks do better than Assassins and Juggers with AoE-aggro, but even they'll loose aggro fast to a Sniper or Merc spamming their AoE-damage.

 

So yeah OP, you'll see alot of aggro as a healer, especially if you're a Merc-healer applying the Kolto Shell before the tank pulls the trash, you'll have instant aggro in that case.

 

The only way to solve the issue with aggro is to CC everything possible and have the smallest amount of mobs the tank needs to deal with.

 

That's absolutely 100% garbage. A good tank will adjust no matter what the mechanics, no matter what the bugs, no matter what the coefficients and Taunt when they have to. This fact even happens in games where there are no bugs or problems with aggro resets and DPS scales higher than threat generation due to gear.

 

If a tank cannot hold aggro on an entire group of mobs then CC has to be used, that's just how a good tank operates. If a healer cannot keep a group alive against a pack of trash mobs then the tank calls for CC, that's just how a good tank operates.

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