My Theory on the state of the Tanks.

[gabarooni]

I've decided that the dev's at Swtor started designing the tanks in this game around the end of the BC era or the begining of the WoTLK era of WoW. When tanking Nich's were still the norm and holding aggro was still considered to be the major focus of Tanking along with also being "Fun"

 

I think MMO's have come along way since then and personally speaking as a Tank of almost 10 years I think Swtor Tanks need alot of improvment. It's my honest opinion that holding aggro is Not Fun. All of my toons are tanks and as I said before i've played as a Tank for a very long time.For me the fun of being a tank is in the survivability I do not enjoy fighting the mobs AND fighting my group for aggro. I think that Swtor has to do what most modern MMO's are doing and increase threat across the board by about 500% for all tanks.

 

I also feel like in terms of aggro Swtor needs to move away from having certain tanks only be good at certain types of threat gen. This is an old method of tanking and imho not very fun. All tanks should have Great single target and AoE threat gen. There are plenty of ways to make the Tanking classes unique unto themselves w/o making one worse then another when it comes to holding threat. (Im looking at you JK -,- )

 

As a last not I've leveled a JK and a Shadow to 50 and only dabbled with my Trooper but I feel like Tanks defensive stats need to be tied more deeply into there Stats to give them more survivability. The shadow isn't bad seeing as their self heal scales with their health but I feel like the JK needs alot of work, their blade barrier should scale directly with their str or stam for instance.

 

Oh well thats my 2 cents that I came up with real quick while drinking my coffee what do you guys think?

[TheBBP]

I think that Swtor has to do what most modern MMO's are doing and increase threat across the board by about 500% for all tanks.

 

So, you want an easy mode where the tank is the wall and the healer only needs to concentrate on the tank? I agree that there needs to be more threat gen, but c'mon man.

[pure_laced]

500% is a little overboard, but there does need to be more threat gen as a whole and Taunt is not the answer. Even though I can see why they put taunt the way it is because BW sure likes tank swap fights. Nightmare Pilgrim, Zorn/Toth, Stormcaller/Firebrand, Kephess.

 

As DPS gains better gear, their threat generation skyrockets. As tanks get better gear, their defensive stats go up, but threat gen is only very slightly increased. It is a disparity and needs to be addressed by adding in more "High Threat" mechanics. Powertechs get one, Grapple. Cannot be used on bosses. Pointless.

[GalacticKegger]

Great read OP. In every MMO that employs the trinity system, the first character I've always rolled is a tank. I love the action. Tanks & healers are like pitchers and catchers in baseball. Regardless of how slow the game gets they are doing something on every pitch.

 

I'm an old school tank and I agree with your assessment that tanking in this game is reminiscent of vanilla WoW, where tanks had to really work at getting (then holding) aggro & keeping the party clean. But that's what I enjoy about tanking. Having a button available to match every kind of situation is too automated for me and takes all the fun out of it. Give me 1 taunt, 1 aggro bomb, 1 dot, 1 stun release & 1 interrupt and I'll learn to be creative with everything else.

 

When I lose aggro, I enjoy having to slap scattered mobs around to keep their attention while simultaneously holding a boss & moving to intercept breakaways that are making a beeline for the healer. I enjoy scanning the field before the fight ever starts to find places that give my character a tactical advantage. I look for boulders or pillars or control consoles or walls I can back up to to mitigate knockbacks. High-speed chess (a game that has but 6 different "ability" pieces to play) appeals to me. I personally like my tanking raw.

 

What I have also noticed about this game is the functional balance between tank, heals & dps. Both tanks and healers have to work at being efficient and proficient. That simply means DPS must be disciplined and periodically cool their jets to let the tank both establish initial aggro, as well as reestablish threat when they lose it. Progressing through advanced content in this game takes genuine old school situational awareness & teamwork - as much art as it is science.

Edited May 21, 2012 by GalacticKegger

[RDeanOU]

I don't want threat generation to be trivial. It could stand to be increased, but I should still have to be playing well to hold aggro.

[vojinsa]

edit for double posting ; ; Edited May 21, 2012 by vojinsa

[vojinsa]

i think the threat mechanics are fine but the knowledge of tanking is lacking. i had a similar talk about how the first ten levels should be focused on group play. each npc can provide a glimpse of what other classes have to deal with when in a group. ex:

 

levels 1-4 can show you how (thru high lvl npc) tanks need to build threat.

levels 4-6 can show you how not to stand in fire or interrupt.

levels 7-10 can show how healing works and working with your healer (med packs/def cd provided before the quest starts).

 

you will be shocked how many ppl just dont know they are doing something wrong and why not put in learning quest in place of kill x amount of worms. adding a 500% threat increase like wow does not help teach ppl how to play but it just creates "easy mode" and more "why cant you hold threat even though i started the pull and blew all my off cd/relics in the first 5 sec mentality" from the dps.

 

 

edit as a dps i dont start attacking a boss til i see the tank turn him/her.

Edited May 21, 2012 by vojinsa

[Kaonis]

I only tank presently when our other tanks can't come to an ops, so I'll respec and toss on my tank set, and honestly with being a rusty tank I've yet to have issues holding threat outside trash mobs where Juggernauts just have no aoe to do anything with. And honestly those trash fights agro isn't much of an issue since half the time you just aoe down most the mobs. The only other time I've noticed some threat issues was in the first 15-30 sec of a boss fight, if DPS spam their best attacks. Even then by my second taunt the boss is back on me again for the rest of the fight.

 

If your having such huge issues on boss threat your doing something wrong, threat (outside aoe trash/adds) isn't an issue. I honestly have far more of an issue with survivability in this game more than anything. I find it far less fun to play a game of "will I die from being punched?", I hardly feel like a tank and more like a scapegoat for the boss to beat on because everyone said I was the one who stole his ice cream.

[Prossy]

Threat gen is suppose to be apart of the tank's job instead of sneezing on things and magically mobs stick to you no matter what like in WoW. as a tank that doesn't have a luxury of having a leap type ability in a raid of gun-ho jedi knight muppets i can tell that to eliminate the worry of threat in a boss fight the golden first 10 secs of fight combined with a solid rotation is key, once you have that down pat then all you need to worry about is CD's and boss mechanic's

[Kihra]

It's really just threat generation on the pull that is very frustrating. I tank EC Hard Modes wearing an on-use Power trinket, and I end up popping a Power Adrenal and that trinket on the pull just to try to stay ahead of DPS. Even doing all of that, I still have to pre-emptively chain taunts in order to avoid rips on the pull. People who say "threat is fine" probably don't have really well-geared ilvl 146 DPS going all-out on the pull.

 

On fights like Toth and Zorn where you are taunt-constrained because you have to save your taunt for the swap, rips are a very real concern. Telling DPS to throttle isn't fun for them or the tank.

 

Similarly, with the current state of threat, incorporating global threat drops into fights is no fun either. The red circle phase of Kephess is a great example. The global threat drops there aren't fun for anybody. Threat dropping on just one tank, e.g., Breath of the Masters, is fine, but the global threat drops that in effect kill both of the tanks' threat lead and create a "pull situation" all over again need to be re-evaluated. They're no fun for anyone.

 

What bothers me the most about current threat generation is that your most effective threat move is to taunt off yourself. This is counter-intuitive and makes no sense. It's essentially a "hidden game mechanic" that you'd only know about from reading theorycrafting forums, etc.

 

The fact that AOE taunt is used as a single target threat move shows how broken taunting off yourself is. Even if they nerfed taunting off yourself to not boost your threat (and to just apply the fixate), you'd still see people playing taunt ping-pong games using the other tank or using DPS with taunts. Therefore taunt in general just needs to be fixed to match the primary target's aggro and not exceed it.

 

We even play silly games sometimes like having a DPS deliberately taunt so that the tank can taunt back, since we know that creates a nice big threat boost. The fact that taunting from range is a 30% boost vs. a 10% boost when taunting from melee means tanks who know better always make sure to taunt from range. This is all just very counter-intuitive and silly. It leads to situations like taunting Zorn or Toth from range or holding Karagga taunts until the fire oil goes down and you've backed up and he hasn't come forward yet.

 

Here are some suggestions for the devs. You don't need to do all of these things. These are just some ideas:

 

(1) Up the baseline threat modifier slightly. I would suggest raising it to 75%.

 

(2) Nerf taunts so that they just put you at 100% and not 110% (melee) / 130% (range). Although this is a fun little meta-game for those in the know, it's just too obscure for normal tanks who won't know any better.

 

(3) Consider adding Misdirect or Tricks capabilities to certain classes to redirect that person's DPS threat to the tank. WoW gave this ability to two different classes (hunters and rogues). I think reasonable recipients for these abilities would be DPS Scoundrels/Operatives and DPS Vanguards/Powertechs.

 

(4) Improve Guardian/Juggernaut DPS so that it is more in line with Shadows/Assassins and Vanguards/Powertechs. Right now the DPS #s for Shadows and Vanguards are IMO where tanks should be baseline, but Guardians are lagging behind. Be careful about linking too much of a tank's threat to reactive moves. Since you have a habit of creating bosses that spend most of their time not hitting the tank with avoidable stuff (e.g., Zorn, Stormcaller), you want to make sure you aren't hurting one tank's TPS as a result of that decision.

[CitizenFry]

I think you still get the threat boost from Harpoon/Grapple even if the boss can't be pulled in. I usually open with Harpoon followed by Storm and don't usually have a problem holding aggro. Juicy Stockstrike crits don't hurt, either.

[vojinsa]

just here to say Kihra has a cool guild page.

[Vortuus]

For all the tanks who are having threat problems, what is your first 20 seconds looking like? I see that tanks are getting some kind of threat boost soon. Threat is even a problem for the other tanks I run with.

 

I set the benchmark for first 20 seconds ending with 40k threat. Anytime a tank is under 30k (or maybe only slightly above it) they're losing aggro. Pulling 2k TPS for the first 20 seconds is difficult, but I'm doing it without wearing anything besides a dps trinket... no adrenal/etc. So if you're having threat problems, you're probably looking at similar numbers to my fellow in guild tanks... who run 1200-1500 TPS at the start of fights pretty consistently.

[Kihra]

For all the tanks who are having threat problems, what is your first 20 seconds looking like? I see that tanks are getting some kind of threat boost soon. Threat is even a problem for the other tanks I run with.

 

I set the benchmark for first 20 seconds ending with 40k threat. Anytime a tank is under 30k (or maybe only slightly above it) they're losing aggro. Pulling 2k TPS for the first 20 seconds is difficult, but I'm doing it without wearing anything besides a dps trinket... no adrenal/etc. So if you're having threat problems, you're probably looking at similar numbers to my fellow in guild tanks... who run 1200-1500 TPS at the start of fights pretty consistently.

 

Yeah, I agree with your numbers. In my experience as long as DPS don't go completely crazy, if you can do 30k+ TPS in the first 20 seconds, you tend to be fine. If they do go completely crazy, you need to do more like 40k+ TPS.

 

What's annoying about pulling 2k TPS is that it involves doing things that a tank just shouldn't have to do. Just as an example, you already mentioned having to wear a DPS trinket. On top of that tanks can feel compelled to pop DPS adrenals and DPS stims. 2k TPS also typically involves at least one taunt boost in those first 20 seconds. I know I taunt boost on Toth for example if I start on him.

 

You're also encouraged to do things that compromise your survivability. In the case of an Assassin tank, for example, you might end up not wasting force on Discharge or Dark Ward so that you can focus more on building maximum threat. It's frustrating that a tank should feel like he has to compromise his optimal survivability rotation for the sake of burst TPS on the pull, and yet that's what is happening now.

 

Juggernauts/Guardians lag well behind the other two classes as far as DPS/TPS also (especially on ones they can't avoid like Zorn/Stormcaller), and so that needs to be addressed.

[Razdek]

Threat gen does need a big boost in this game... However the biggest problem i find on my PT is that mobs are so spread out and are all ranged with very few ways to get them into my "circle of agro". Every mob is a turret that is spread out. The other problem i am having is holding agro over more geared players. The same problem happened in wow and they fixed it with the vengence mechanic.

 

SWTOR tanking needs a massive overhaul. Right now i feel like i am fighting my own party instead of the mobs. Tanks need a much larger pool of threat generation talents (even a boost to threat on our 'auto attack" spells would be great.

[Vortuus]

Threat gen does need a big boost in this game... However the biggest problem i find on my PT is that mobs are so spread out and are all ranged with very few ways to get them into my "circle of agro". Every mob is a turret that is spread out. The other problem i am having is holding agro over more geared players. The same problem happened in wow and they fixed it with the vengence mechanic.

 

SWTOR tanking needs a massive overhaul. Right now i feel like i am fighting my own party instead of the mobs. Tanks need a much larger pool of threat generation talents (even a boost to threat on our 'auto attack" spells would be great.

 

As posted above, if you are having threat problems, you might post a log link or what your TPS looks like. Especially over the first 20 seconds.

 

Simply saying you can not hold threat does not mean threat is broken. Saying that someone dies does not mean healing is broken. Saying that you can not hit enrage timers does not mean DPS is broken.