Vanguard DPS (AS) Threat

[Twelve]

I'm having some pretty serious threat issues of late. Now I know I can't exactly lead off with my full burst rotation, but i'm still pulling threat several rounds into the fight and it's got me a bit flustered. My gear is good but not maxed, and my DPS is very good...but I'm leading fights with Rapid Shots (auto-attack), and only easing into my rotation after 3 or 4 GCDs.

 

Later in the fight, I'm often a bit afraid to Adrenal bomb, because a string of some good crits can turn a boss on me quick.

 

It's not the tank. Please, if you're going to blame the tank, don't bother responding. This isn't a single tank, it's happened with several, all well geared, and very well skilled. And I'm not an idiot that starts full DPS on engage. It's really causing my DPS to suffer. Here I am, min-maxing my gear, augments, etc...only to step into a fight and have to hold back.

 

Any thoughts? Anyone else experience this? Is this me? I have a lot of crit/surge, maybe I should back off and work more on sustained DPS (power) to avoid crit bombs?

Edited May 10, 2012 by Twelve

[Hethroin]

Have you tried breaking melee range, and only coming in to SS?

[_gideon]

Are the tanks exploiting the unusual (bugged?) SWTOR taunt mechanics?

[Twelve]

Not regularly...though a few times I've shied back a bit wondering if there was some additional proximity threat.

 

Someone in a raid mentioned that ranged actually had an additional modifier for threat - or did I hear that backwards?

[Twelve]

Are the tanks exploiting the unusual (bugged?) SWTOR taunt mechanics?

 

Expand on that please.

[Mozivicus]

No offense intended, but are you running ion cell?

[exphryl]

Expand on that please.

 

I wouldn't say it's a bugged mechanic, and the tank swaps in EC make it hard to keep up. But the way Taunts work they aren't temporary threat, they are additive to what you have. For example (these are just rough numbers to illustrate how it works)

 

You are at 100 Threat on a target. Nobody is attacking it. You taunt it, it adds 50% Threat. You are now at 150 Threat.

use your AOE Taunt and now you are at 275 Threat. (50% of 150 for those unable to follow).

 

So forth down the road. Your tank that keeps his taunt off cooldown should never lose threat. Ever. No matter what. Long as they can time the swaps on First/Second boss in EC they can do that there too.

 

It's not like other games where taunts or focus abilities temporarily put you to the top of the threat table to build up your threat a bit.

Edited May 10, 2012 by exphryl

[Twelve]

No offense intended, but are you running ion cell?

 

None taken. Nope, I'm running Plasma Cell.

 

I'm not sure on the tanks taunt rotations, but I'll make a point to chat with one of the tanks sometime and see if we can find ways to coordinate. There might be some wisdom in me going in, adrenal bomb, go full bore, and have them taunt - because that should give them a good lead.

[ATango]

I used to tank in PvE in a previous MMO and my rule of a raid group is that the dps do dps and the tank keeps the boss from killing the dps while the healer just keeps everyone alive. It's pretty simple logic.

 

You're running the right cell. I think your tank is slightly under-geared or badly modded. Some tanks go all out for mitigation and compromise threat generation in the process. All abilities are not hitting or abilities are hitting weak.

 

The tank may have to guard you rather than a healer. I think guarded target generates less threat but for the guard to be effective you need to stay 15m from the tank and do your thing.

 

I have not done any tanking in this game. It's just my past experience with another game.

[Sporticus]

I'd say you are doing everything right. As a tank and dps, I can tell you that the worst dps to have in a group is one that either doesn't understand or doesn't care about managing his threat and thinks that it is the tank's sole job to keep aggro and the healer's sole job to keep him alive.

 

Another suggestion that I haven't seen here is to have yourself guarded. I know traditional theory suggests that the healer should always be guarded, and I don't really know how high heal threat is in this game, but I do know that guard lowers the guarded player's threat generation.

[_gideon]

TLDR: Due to a non-obvious design feature, tank threat on tanknspank bosses increases exponentially and may as well be infinite after nearly two minutes of combat. DPS threat increases linearly and becomes irrelevent after that point.

 

Taunt is in two parts for PVE. 1) Fixates the mob on the taunter for 6 seconds. 2) Changes the taunter's threat to 110% of current maximum threat holder if taunted from "melee range" or 130% if taunted from outside "melee range" (see note at end to understand reason for quotation marks).

 

The big difference between this system and WoW (where a lot of SWTOR tanks earned their spurs) is that the %s in item 2 are bigger than 100% and they definitely apply even if the taunter is already the current maximum threat holder. You can snowball your threat by including taunt in your rotation. Each cast increasing your current threat by 30%. The effect is pronounced enough that you can stop using any other ability after the first minute or two (I forget the actual time) of a bossfight.

 

That is what I was referring to before.

 

Also, the thing you mentioned about aggro working differently depending on whether you are ranged or melee is straightforward. Mobs don't instantly switch target to the person with the most threat. If not currently fixated they'll switch to anyone in melee range who has 110%+ of their current target and they'll switch to anyone outside of melee range who has 130%+ of their current target. Basically you have a higher threat ceiling if you are further away. Ranged DPS riding close to the 130% ceiling are in for a nasty shock if the boss gets dragged into melee range.

 

Lastly, there's a slight quirk with this ranged vs melee distance calculation. For attacks it's taken as the distance from the edge of one hitbox to another. For aggro it seems to be from the centre of one hitbox to another. This means that on big targets (bosses mainly) you are often still treated as being at range (130% ceiling etc) while being able to use melee abilities and have the boss melee you.

Edited May 11, 2012 by _gideon

[ATango]

I do partially agree with the fact that dps should manage their own threat but I would find it hard for a dps that is doing their job to tone down their dps when 1)there is no threat meter, and 2) I'm sure there are bosses with enrage timers.

[dcgregorya]

It's not the tank. Please, if you're going to blame the tank, don't bother responding.

 

I hate to say it but it most likely is the tank. Tanks try to play this game like WoW...SWTOR is not WoW - threat works very differently. An opening rotation should be harpoon, DPS, taunt after 4-5 seconds, then keep taunt on CD for the first 2 minutes of the fight or so. This is what I do and no one in our guild regardless of how epic their DPS can pull aggro off me.

 

Barring that, make sure you're not standing inside the mobs model. Stand only close enough to hit them with stock strike. Melee pull range is 4m from dead center of mob, which is 110% pull instead of 130%. If you stand in the right spot you'll require 130% to pull. If you consistently pull your tank is doing something wrong. Especially more than one minute into the fight. Sorry but I don't think your DPS is higher than the burst of our DPS with adrenals/relics/etc and they can't pull off me midfight even if I AFK.

[dcgregorya]

Another suggestion that I haven't seen here is to have yourself guarded. I know traditional theory suggests that the healer should always be guarded, and I don't really know how high heal threat is in this game, but I do know that guard lowers the guarded player's threat generation.

 

Healer should never be guarded because healer will 99% of the time be out of range. Always guard the highest melee DPS. In our case its usually sentinels.

[CitizenFry]

TLDR: Due to a non-obvious design feature, tank threat on tanknspank bosses increases exponentially and may as well be infinite after nearly two minutes of combat. DPS threat increases linearly and becomes irrelevent after that point.

 

Taunt is in two parts for PVE. 1) Fixates the mob on the taunter for 6 seconds. 2) Changes the taunter's threat to 110% of current maximum threat holder if taunted from "melee range" or 130% if taunted from outside "melee range" (see note at end to understand reason for quotation marks).

 

The big difference between this system and WoW (where a lot of SWTOR tanks earned their spurs) is that the %s in item 2 are bigger than 100% and they definitely apply even if the taunter is already the current maximum threat holder. You can snowball your threat by including taunt in your rotation. Each cast increasing your current threat by 30%. The effect is pronounced enough that you can stop using any other ability after the first minute or two (I forget the actual time) of a bossfight.

 

That is what I was referring to before.

 

Also, the thing you mentioned about aggro working differently depending on whether you are ranged or melee is straightforward. Mobs don't instantly switch target to the person with the most threat. If not currently fixated they'll switch to anyone in melee range who has 110%+ of their current target and they'll switch to anyone outside of melee range who has 130%+ of their current target. Basically you have a higher threat ceiling if you are further away. Ranged DPS riding close to the 130% ceiling are in for a nasty shock if the boss gets dragged into melee range.

 

Lastly, there's a slight quirk with this ranged vs melee distance calculation. For attacks it's taken as the distance from the edge of one hitbox to another. For aggro it seems to be from the centre of one hitbox to another. This means that on big targets (bosses mainly) you are often still treated as being at range (130% ceiling etc) while being able to use melee abilities and have the boss melee you.

If the above is all correct, I wish there was a sticky covering that info, because it's very non-obvious.

 

This is my first MMO, and I just started tanking ops, but I haven't had problems with my DPS pulling off me, even without using taunts very often. The only times I've had an issue with a boss switching to DPS was when I tanked storymode Jarg+Sorno for a group that had just finished EC (so obviously very well geared). I solved that problem by guarding the one DPS that managed to pull off me.

 

I guess the above would explain why doing my ranged AOE taunt on Foreman Crusher's adds as soon as they show up wasn't great at holding their attention (noone had any aggro yet, so the taunt did almost nothing). Guess I need to be firing Mortar Volley first, THEN the AOE taunt.

Edited May 11, 2012 by CitizenFry

[icegreentea]

I bought up this very same topic in another thread. I didn't have this problem till end game with patch 1.2. Especially with all the tank swapping that is required for bosses in the new ops. There are times when I pull aggro without popping a single adrenal or relic. I'm simply going through my rotation. A lot of people won't see this problem until they do fights that require a lot of tank swapping (Basically all the new bosses).

 

The class needs an aggro reduction/drop ability very bad. I believe every other class gets one, even Guardians. The best you can do for now is have a sage in your raid pull you once in awhile as that will reduce your aggro by half. Also, have one of the tanks guard you. Those are basically all the options until they give us an aggro reduction ability like they did with Guardians in a patch.

[MatticusFinch]

I will simply agree and regurgitate the advice that has been given as it basically covers the issues here. Maintaining aggro on the tank is a two-way street and both the tank, moreso, and DPS are responsible for it.

 

1) Due to the lack of an aggro dump, vanguard DPS must be guarded. This makes a huge difference because our DPS is really high at this point and we basically have to be in melee range.

2) Allow the tank to finish their highest damage rotation first (beginning of fight ~10 seconds), then do yours unabated. If you pull aggro, that's the tanks fault. (there are some exceptions to this 10 second rule, of course, like Heavy Fabricator)

3) All tanks have two taunts: area and single target. The cooldowns are vastly different for these and should be used accordingly to accomodate the boss mechanics in the tank rotation (i.e. random aggro drop, knockbacks, boss switches, etc.)

 

Once these mechanics are mastered by both sides (again, moreso for the tank), it will never be a problem.

[TheOpf]

As an Advanced Prototype Powertech, I will tell you that threat will always be an issue. I run with two Assassin Rakata geared tanks. I am 3 piece Rakata, if they don't have me guarded or they don't use taunt. I pull off them about 3 rotations into the fight. Because PT/VG's rely on 6 seconds of burst followed by periods of less damage our threat is spikey. My guild knows this about me, and in HM Flashpoints I routinely stand around waiting for 6-10 seconds before starting a boss fight. In Ops both HM and Normal, the tanks have me guarded at all times. They used to laugh when our healer would say guard me, but now it's automatic.

 

In a recent HM KP pug run, I pulled the first 3 bosses off the tanks. The raid leader kept going *** the bosses love Anam. My guild mate who was tanking finally put guard on me on the 2nd boss than forgot on the third boss. I learned to kite the bosses til the tank taunted back.

 

Here are the tips I have learned as an AP PT.

 

1. Have guard on you at all times. Only a Marauder should get Guard over you.

2. Tanks need to have taunt on cd at all times. A tank who doesn't have taunt in his rotation is setting up for failure.

3. Count to 5 before beginning your main rotation in Flashpoints.

4. Save your Relics, Adrenals, and Damage boosts until you are in your 2nd rotation.

5. Do your best to stand at max melee range. 4m for Tactics, 10m for Pyro.

 

You may still have fights where you pull threat, but if you follow these you will be fine unless you overgear your tank. At which point, you will have to spend your time running.