Taunts should be tied to tanking stance

[vsalcedo]

LOL you're awful, man. Try having a group of P-tech/VG's and Assassins/shadows and or Guardians/Juggs and always have 2-3 of them together. Each has a targeted taunt (short cooldown) and an AoE taunt (45s cooldown IIRC, I'm at work). Watch what happens when you normally put up 400-500k damage when you're in a warzone where you're perma-taunted - you're lucky if you can break 200k significantly. Also, the damage reduction (for anyone in expertise gear) comes out to be more than 30% - I have a feeling that taunts are reducing the base damage of your abilitie before expertise is applied (thus, expertise is giving you a less significant increase) - I notice that my marauder's damage outputs is ~45-55% of normal when a taunt is on me (depends on the base damage of the ability I'm using).

Assassins/Shadows are the deadliest pack-runners due to their burst dps and both can taunt the target (so neither is vulnerable to full damage) and if they happen to be tank-specced, they can stack 5% damage debuffs (x2) with the taunt damage debuff - yeah it gets significant. Every good player is AoE taunting every CD and target-taunting a big dpser every CD. Has a HUGE impact on games - particularly when they're DPS specced (Guardians/Juggs though not bad at dps as dps specs, I just find they tend to take back-seats to DPS p-techs/VG's, and assassins/shadows of all specs - except rage specs in WZ's with clustering).

 

And your talking out of yer *** beacause not all wz are filled with just tank and heals. I do see lots of nub dps though.

[Steele_dk]

I'm not against it. I'm all for making tanks more effective, but I feel they are far too squishy. I actually started off PvP as an Immortal Jugg and I loved it -- but I quickly realized that outside of carrying the Huttball, i really wasn't as effective as a DPS taking my spot in a WZ. You can't put pressure on a target, due to lack of damage, and you're just far too squishy against too many damage types. As a tank, i felt like what i really did was harass the other team, without being a crucial part of victory. Admittedly, a tank with decent healing has the unkillable feel they should have, but i find "decent healing" to be far too rare. Perhaps that's just me, however.

 

Same with my jugger m8, i levelled as immortal and went into pvp with that aswell but quickly realised that the dmg was so weak that people would just leave you alone and ignore your dmg. At best you could just annoy some enemy dps with stunning and interupting their dmg but felt like i wasnt really making a difference. Now i am dps specced i switch to tanking stance when its needed and taunt when i can take the dmg.

 

And to OP, trust me dps tanks do not survive long with taunting all the time. If i do my aoe taunt in a group of dps on my healer i usually die before him.

 

Taunts is fine.

[alcek]

But then it will be wayyyy harder for us to use the Tank/Healer with guard + aoe taunt 80% mitigation super healer tricks anymore...

Mara/sent master strike more often?

[Bazzoong]

I have a full tank set for my Powertech, and i've tanked... everything he says is true... you're slightly harder to kill, But that's it...

 

I'll use an example.

 

Take a DPS/Healer, and take a Tank/healer.. and have them fight.. I bet you 100% of the time the DPS/Healer win.

 

In this scenario taunt is meaningless because the healers will just dispel it every time if they are worth anything.

[kitsinni]

If you see someone throwing a taunt on you and they are not tank specced you should be able to attack them and kill them pretty easy since you are attacking someone in DPS gear and stance.

[ComeAndSee]

Too tired to start big debates or arguments so I'll dump my 2 cents.

 

1. More forms of damage can be mitigated as of Patch 1.2 most noticeably from Marauders and Guardians.

2. Defensive stats do work quite effectively against most attacks. My Vanguard is Tank Spec and has quadruple my Sage's survivability. Some classes (fire Pyrotechs and Ops) can still basically completely ignore your defensive stats.

3. If you balance offense : defense stats you can do same damage / out dps most DPSers. I have 75% surge, 34% crit chance, about 188 power with 22k HP, 10% defense, 41% shield chance, and 46% absorb.

4. Tanks perform a very powerful role -- protecting healers -- defending points, reducing damage taken with taunts, and performing DPS roles. They are necessary if you want to counter the zerg rush. One of my favorite strategies is keeping a low profile and waiting for everyone die at a point and then jumping in, blowing my cooldowns, and holding them off long enough for reinforcements to arrive. Works great on Voidstar.

5. Tanks are great ball carriers in Huttball.

 

This is my experience as a Shield Vanguard. Always bringing the DPS and the protection when needed. Most people are surprised when I tell them I'm Tank spec.

Edited May 29, 2012 by ComeAndSee

[SinnedWill]

And your talking out of yer *** beacause not all wz are filled with just tank and heals. I do see lots of nub dps though.

 

No, I'm not talking out of my *** - they're not all tank-specced (in fact it's very rare that they are). It's not uncommon for me to face a group of pubs on my server composed of 2 shadows (any spec - though middle tree specs are the most common followed by tank spec, only 1 good balance specced shadow), 2 Vanguards (pyro mirror specced), 1 guardian (hybrid spec in tank stance - yeah, his dps is laughable compared to the others), with 3 healers (if sage, they're likely heal/kinetic specced for bubble-mez and AoE root). The taunting + dps from the shadows and vanguard (and though the guardian's dps is laughable solo, he fills his role by tying targets up for the shadows and vanguards to focus down effectively, peels attackers that are focusing a healer, and of course also throws in his own taunts).

[Rashne]

Spamming taunts, you really won't prevent much actual damage total, without guarding as well. 30% for 6 seconds is nice if timed properly, but look at the total damage they actually protect for after the warzone. I would actually like guard to be available to DPS stances as well; if I want to sacrifice myself, let me!

 

Spamming taunts is different from using them to gain a tactical advantage. Don't waste AoE taunts on single attackers, hit your aoe taunt if several people are heading to your healer or someone guarding a node. Don't waste a taunt on a person about to die, hit the guy who just joined the fight and popped his cooldowns.

 

30% adds up over the course of the match. A dps player with high protection is using his taunts wisely.

[SinnedWill]

Too tired to start big debates or arguments so I'll dump my 2 cents.

 

1. More forms of damage can be mitigated as of Patch 1.2 most noticeably from Marauders and Guardians.

2. Defensive stats do work quite effectively against most attacks. My Vanguard is Tank Spec and has quadruple my Sage's survivability. Some classes (fire Pyrotechs and Ops) can still basically completely ignore your defensive stats.

3. If you balance offense : defense stats you can do same damage / out dps most DPSers. I have 75% surge, 34% crit chance, about 188 power with 22k HP, 10% defense, 41% shield chance, and 46% absorb.

4. Tanks perform a very powerful role -- protecting healers -- defending points, reducing damage taken with taunts, and performing DPS roles. They are necessary if you want to counter the zerg rush.

5. Tanks are great ball carriers in Huttball.

 

This is my experience as a Shield Vanguard. Always bringing the DPS and the protection when needed. Most people are surprised when I tell them I'm Tank spec.

 

The issue many have with taunts isn't necessarily coming from tank specs - yes, tank specs can dish out enough DPS eventually to kill targets, but their dps is easily ignored by most classes (well, it's best to throw Internal/Elemental damage at them - typically DoT's while you focus on the squishier raw dps classes and/or healers) until they're the last man standing - even with taunts, usually - exception being tankassin/shadows - who can dish out much more significant DPS compared to other tank-spec'ed classes. Issues occur when the dps specced classes travel in packs and still throw taunts like crazy while still having some of the highest DPS in the game - their staggered targeted taunts and AoE taunting causes all of them to have a HUGE dps advantage (as if their own raw dps wasn't enough) - it really comes down to the dps they can dish out while reducing incoming damage for each other with a good taunt rotation.

[SinnedWill]

If you see someone throwing a taunt on you and they are not tank specced you should be able to attack them and kill them pretty easy since you are attacking someone in DPS gear and stance.

 

Not when there is more than one. Taunts don't overwrite each other, so 2+ taunters gets a bit crazy (and since there's no way to tell whose taunt is active on you, it gets hectic to find the taunter when the enemy group has 3 or more taunt-tossing classes in the same area). But, I do agree - if there's only one DPS specced taunt-tosser, they do die quickly when they're throwing taunts up (but this is rarely the case lately in my experiences).

[SinnedWill]

If you have 2-3 PT's in your Warfront, it's not Taunt that's killing your damage, it's the fact they're steam rolling over you.

 

We run 4 Man PT Pyro tech groups in the guild I'm in.... lets just say you don't need healers when you have that.

 

Precisely - though it never hurts to have a healer (ops/scound healers are best IMO for taunt-heavy groups). But yes, the sheer DPS and naturally high armor mitigation Pyros have causes them to survive effectively via staggering taunts and dishing out great DPS even without a healer.

[SinnedWill]

Dont talk me fairy tales and dont troll me.

 

There is no time for taunts in PVP fight - there is no bosses, and no aggro, and only 6-sec duraction of -30% damage causes one around can do only 1-2 strikes for only 1-3 enemies around (because they run fast for that 6 sec) - and any crit rating much more important in that case.

 

I dont see any effect of taunts in PVP, I play my guardian a lot. There is not theorycraft like you write - there is practice.

 

So, you are just theorytroll

 

Yep, I'm theory trolling when I can get ~100k protection with Tankassin and Pyro P-tech without ever using guard and dedicating most of my time to dishing out DPS and focusing on objective. Yep, it's all theory-crafted when I'm speaking from personal experience. Wow. You really don't understand how effective taunts can be when thrown upon high dps classes, do you? Taunts EASILY turn the tide in warzones if used effectively (particularly when the taunter can dish out heavy dps) - and taunts have even more significant impact when you have multiple people tossing them out (staggered, usually). Yes, AoE mezzes can certainly help with countering them (if none of your group are silly enough to damage the mezzed enemies) so that everyone can open up with full potential. Try throwing your taunts more, man - use your targeted taunt on high DPS classes (maras/sents, snipers/slingers, pyro p-techs/vg's, assassin/shadows) without using guard for a single match - watch how much protection you can get from this alone (very easy to get 10k protection in 1 life from taunts alone if you taunt a DPS character when they're ready to open up on someone, and AoE taunt every time you happen to be able to catch multiple enemies with it).

[kaya]

Nah,

Dps not having taunts will make the game less interesting, less fun and will decrease the TTK in pvp.

None are good changes.

Dps Guardian are probably the most balanced spec in the game so dont need a nerf.

Dps Shadows are weak and dont need a nerf.

Dps Vanguards are overtuned but its not their taunt that makes them so.

 

 

There isn't a single good reason to implement this change.

[TonyDragonflame]

Yep, I'm theory trolling when I can get ~100k protection with Tankassin and Pyro P-tech without ever using guard and dedicating most of my time to dishing out DPS and focusing on objective. Yep, it's all theory-crafted when I'm speaking from personal experience. Wow. You really don't understand how effective taunts can be when thrown upon high dps classes, do you? Taunts EASILY turn the tide in warzones if used effectively (particularly when the taunter can dish out heavy dps) - and taunts have even more significant impact when you have multiple people tossing them out (staggered, usually). Yes, AoE mezzes can certainly help with countering them (if none of your group are silly enough to damage the mezzed enemies) so that everyone can open up with full potential. Try throwing your taunts more, man - use your targeted taunt on high DPS classes (maras/sents, snipers/slingers, pyro p-techs/vg's, assassin/shadows) without using guard for a single match - watch how much protection you can get from this alone (very easy to get 10k protection in 1 life from taunts alone if you taunt a DPS character when they're ready to open up on someone, and AoE taunt every time you happen to be able to catch multiple enemies with it).

 

 

You got your comms for protection of Guard - and yes, Guard very useful in PVP, I agree.

 

But I repeat my point: there is in PVP no boss for keep his attention all-time with taunts (and the main purpose of taunt -keep attention, not damage reduction!), keep his attention and rage of his hits out of dps and healers of group, there is in PVP various players with every various targets an each player. There dont attention you when you taunt them - they will do their fight to their targets.

And you very hard in same time fight against player in front of you, and the same time target to others players and taunt them - its not hard, its impossible! Only mass taunt left.

 

But mass taunt will be useful in PVP only in one case - if it will be duration at least 10-12 sec versus current 6 sec, and if it will reduce damage significally more - for -50% versus -30% now.

 

Then I say, tanks and their taunts will be really useful in PVP for team. This is my point of view.

Edited May 29, 2012 by TonyDragonflame

[kitsinni]

I have a really hard time believing you are routinely preventing 100k damage while spending most of your time dishing out DPS. While this might be possible it is more than I have ever seen from a DPS spec in any WZ I have ever been in. Even if this was the case that is like 1/3 of one persons damage .. not the end of the world. Edited May 29, 2012 by kitsinni

[SinnedWill]

You got your comms for protection of Guard - and yes, Guard very useful in PVP, I agree.

 

But I repeat my point: there is in PVP no boss for keep his attention all-time with taunts (and the main purpose of taunt -keep attention, not damage reduction!), keep his attention and rage of his hits out of dps and healers of group, there is in PVP various players with every various targets an each player. There dont attention you when you taunt them - they will do their fight to their targets.

And you very hard in same time fight against player in front of you, and the same time target to others players and taunt them - its not hard, its impossible! Only mass taunt left.

 

But mass taunt will be useful in PVP only in one case - if it will be duration at least 10-12 sec versus current 6 sec, and if it will reduce damage significally more - for -50% versus -30% now.

 

Then I say, tanks and their taunts will be really useful in PVP for team. This is my point of view.

 

Pretty sure you're the only person claiming taunts to be useless in pvp - and I'm willing to waiger that you either don't pvp much or haven't used them effectively. I said I can get ~100k protection from using TAUNTS ALONE - not using guard at all. The damage reduction from taunts (in lv. 50 warzones) is more than 30% reduction in my experience involving BM/WH geared players in warzones since it seems to be reducing the base damage of abilities before expertise damage bonus is factored in (thus, expertise is modifying a weaker value). Targeted taunts are most effective when applied to heavy DPS classes that are starting their big dps cycles (using a targeted taunt on one of these after your teammate has already been dropped below 40% is usually a no-no, but the damage reduction from this MIGHT still save them, particularly if your taunt is applied to a class that might rely on a "finisher" ability). Yes, the duration is 6 seconds, but if you pvp a lot you know when most classes are ready to pop their biggest burst damage (thus, 6 seconds can turn the 4 GCD's they might normally use to deal 10k+ damage all the way down to ~5k - and then you can use an AoE taunt to tack on another 6s, but this should be used typically to maximize the numbers of targets affected).

The durations are fine (the cooldown is quick for targeted taunt - 15s, and the AoE taunt CD is 45s - which is also pretty quick when you consider how significant its impact can be - used correctly, you can get ~15k protection with a single application).

Timing (and knowing opponent classes/specs and how/when they dish out their burst damage) is key to using taunts effectively -i.e. carnage marauder jumps on your healer and gets a gore proc - if they follow with ravage + force scream (provided that you tossed a taunt on them the moment you noticed the gore proc on their buff bar), you'll likely gain ~5k+ protection - and if they happened to have popped relic/adrenal you'd be close to 10k protection (all within 6 seconds of taunt debuff duration - this is the closest I'll come to "theorycrafting" to prove my point on how effective taunts can be, since it's pretty rare for a carnage marauder with relic/adrenal to have a gore procced ravage go full cycle without getting stunned, knocked back, or accuracy debuffed, but it DOES happen and the damage reduction from a taunt in this particular instance is pretty close to accurate for the values I mentioned).

[kitsinni]

How exactly do you watch all the DPS classes close enough to know exactly when their highest damage attacks on your healer are going to take place and know exactly when to taunt while focusing on doing a ton of DPS and doing the objectives all at the same time?

[Astarica]

You're not going to come anywhere close to 100K protection without using Guard. I know this because I taunt the whole game and rarely die but I very rarely Guard anyone. Single target taunt at best mitigates 12% of a single person's DPS over time (30% damage 40% of the time). That means even if the enemy team for some reason had exactly 1 person attacking at any given time, they'd have to do 1.2 million damage total for you to even prevent 100K, and there are actually quite a lot of WZ that ends without either side doing anywhere close to 1.2 million damage (Huttball in general, any decisive victory for NC/Alderran). AE taunt is more powerful but it is severely limited by cooldown.

 

Usually taunt/AE taunt gets you 20-30K protection at best unless you've a particularly drawn out WZ (Voidstar, or extended fight at a node).

[SinnedWill]

I have a really hard time believing you are routinely preventing 100k damage while spending most of your time dishing out DPS. While this might be possible it is more than I have ever seen from a DPS spec in any WZ I have ever been in. Even if this was the case that is like 1/3 of one persons damage .. not the end of the world.

 

Usually happens when I'm grouped with (on ventrilo typically, but some people I've pvp'd with enough that we can do it without ventrilo) another player that can toss out taunts + dps. My tankassin is technically a tank-spec (31/2/8), but it can dish out significant enough damage if I proc often. It's much easier to gain protection points when I'm on my pyro p-tech (7/3/31) via AoE taunting (possibly more effective) due to the nature in which it applies, and I tend to be less likely to take damage while taunt is up (teammates get hit more often because of this) since I will LoS more often (particularly when I'm nearly overheated) - my assassin has to rely on melee attacks to get his best damage procs and is almost always exposed (unless I force cloak and/or force shroud - shroud definitely helps cause certain classes/specs to switch off of me for its duration, though, so I'll typically use this after an AoE taunt - and it's also amazing to use following guarding a ball-carrier in hutt-ball that happens to be a ball-hog... then again I'm usually the ball-hog in huttball).

Furthermore, warzones with heavy clustering (i.e. voidstar, south objective of novare coast, middle objective of civil war, and middle controllers/clusters supporting ball-carriers in huttball) tend to be the most effective applications of AoE taunts - so this is typically where I get the bulk of my protection via taunts. Protection values (from taunts and guard) will also tend to be inflated when there are multiple healers on the team (due to less downtime for both teams, and damage values get inflated).

[Smashbrother]

If you remove taunts from dps specs, why would anyone bring a dps specced tank over a pure dps class?

[Smashbrother]

Charge+Push+Charge for isolating - squishier than a rage mara, yes, but with proper execution of intercede and charge-push-charge you have great escape options - you can also guarantee more shockwave stacks against players like sorcerers/sages that would normally just purge force crush by using charge-push-charge (furthermore, push causing charge to reset grants more viability for guaranteed smash crits). You lack the bubble and cloak of pain which maras have over you (though you gain endure pain, which is typically better in small skirmish situations over undying rage - but Undying Rage will take the cake in group pvp - if the enemy team actually lets a marauder use undying rage before they focus him dead, that is - which doesn't happen ever anymore when I pvp) and furthermore (though I'm not entirely certain 1.2 addressed this, I haven't specced rage on my marauder for a while), but Jugg/Guardians could get more smash damage bonus from talents compared to rage maras (toss in improved charge/leap effects that would guarantee a smash to land before an enemey escapes - also not sure if this was changed with 1.2).

 

Lols. You claim focus guardians are better than focus sents, yet you aren't even sure of the 1.2 changes regarding them. So much fail.

[HurricaneXXIV]

You can heal, taunt or healing debuff. All classes get one of those. Why is this an issue?

[tiguelinus]

Anybody else getting tired of seeing a dps specced/dps stance throwing taunts at everything in site,Tanks should only be able to taunt,the damage reduction from taunt is very big,like 30% isn't it?Guards require the tanking stance,taunts should too.

 

This is what you complain about?, seriously?. Many things need fixing including Ilum and this is what bothers you?. No wonder this game is going to the drain with people like you complaning for meaningless things.

[SinnedWill]

You're not going to come anywhere close to 100K protection without using Guard. I know this because I taunt the whole game and rarely die but I very rarely Guard anyone. Single target taunt at best mitigates 12% of a single person's DPS over time (30% damage 40% of the time). That means even if the enemy team for some reason had exactly 1 person attacking at any given time, they'd have to do 1.2 million damage total for you to even prevent 100K, and there are actually quite a lot of WZ that ends without either side doing anywhere close to 1.2 million damage (Huttball in general, any decisive victory for NC/Alderran). AE taunt is more powerful but it is severely limited by cooldown.

 

Usually taunt/AE taunt gets you 20-30K protection at best unless you've a particularly drawn out WZ (Voidstar, or extended fight at a node).

I was referring to WZ's that have gone full time.

Targeted taunt CD is 15s (can net you ~10k if used against a relic/adrenaled DPS opponent or more if they're ops/scound or sniper/slingers that just used their AoE on your clustered teammates - only time I've actually gotten 10k protection in one life medal from one use of the targeted taunt was when I taunted a gunslinger doing this and he also used his big dps openers on a healer teammate). Enemy class composition and timing are key for targeted taunt. AoE taunts net you significant protection values and they certainly can net you 20k+ protection when used optimally (i.e. enemy attacking team decides to overload one side at the beginning of voidstar and they've all used relics/adrenals - common occurance lately - unfortunately group composition is also a big factor - mixeture of melees + ranged dps tends to cause me to only catch one group or the other with it - so I tend to drop it on the group I think has more dps - also harder to catch the ranged group if they've spread out) - and 45s cooldown on AoE taunt isn't THAT BAD - though it certainly doesn't get used immediately every CD every time for me since I always try to use it when it's most effective.

[SinnedWill]

If you remove taunts from dps specs, why would anyone bring a dps specced tank over a pure dps class?

 

Other than guard, increased survivability (to weapon-based attacks only), increased utility, and CC at the cost of a lot of DPS, why even bother rolling as a tank-spec for pvp (excluding assassin/shadow, mind you) when you can have a more significant impact as a DPS spec? Survivability for your teammates increases (in the long-run) just as much (if not moreso) when your enemies die much more quickly compared to supplying guard and buying more time via CC (rendered useless once resolve is filled).