Exactly, once you HOLD a life staff you are doomed. Switching to a different weapon is the only effective method which means we can’t really heal hard dungeons at all.
Playing a SS tank from day one and in Beta We are suppose to be “The Tank” Little to no offence and all defense. Currently sitting at 570GS running Max hate Gem +14% on Sword and Shield for a total of +328% threat. even burning shield bash, defiant stance and a full light attack chain which with talents increases threat you can still struggle to hold aggro sometimes.
One of the ways I found to help circumvent the terrible aggro Mechanics of the game as a Paladin tank is to slot my LS with a Carnelian gem and use it on pull. Typically casting Orb and or Beacon on incoming so the initial damage wave will give me extra threat. Trash mob aggro is not a issue. However when fighting massive waves of adds or bosses as the OP stated before the tank cannot come out of a defensive position to attack to hold aggro and the cooldowns for taunts are on extremely long so it can make aggro management impossible sometimes and make your healer a perma target.
Many tanks are Not Buff stacking Pally tanks. I use my LS to toss Things like orb and buffs and it helps build threat along with normal tank mechanics. Other tanks not running LS only have pure damage mechanics and even tanks with high Str doing 2-3x my damage seem like they struggle for aggro against me in places like Myrk and invasions and im running 50 str 130 foc. Healing pulls a lot of aggro.
To give and example. During invasions im typically assigned a gate to tank. When Brutes, Bears and Sprigs spawn everyone goes ham with range while I sit plinking the Mob on incoming with weak hits from my LS. With the Taunt Gem and little 450-550 damage hits from my LS I can pull aggro on the Mob in a few hits. This should not be possible even with the Gem. It has to be some form of default mechanic added to the LS that adds massive aggro.
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I like it hard
FWIW if the Devs ever pick up on this, I came to see if I was the only one. As a healer, this game is just ridiculous. Take Reek runs with a Zerg. I have 6 Calming IV on Yet I draw more threats than 20 other players. I throw out a heal and 4 enemies just chase me, leaving the mob to smash their Boss. Its just awful, are gems bugged and although saying 10% less threat giving 100% more threat?
Please notice us Senpai Devs and acknowledge that you have broken healers, might as well just don a Great axe and Hammer and respec to DPS.
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Healers got way more threat the same patch that nerfed healing. It’s a joke they thought healers would switch to light armor while making everything focus them lol those archers and ranged mobs in genesis go straight for the healer.
After that nerf patch I still wear heavy orich armor with 100 constitution, life staff has blessed and refreshing move, 350+ focus, plus the heavy attack perk that stacks 3x for 30% bonus healing. Also use i-frames.
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Not only do these gems seem to be causing threat instead of reducing it, but all of the crafting mods that reduce threat (Beloved, Kind, Evasive) also don’t seem to work, and you can’t even select them when crafting.
So, since Carnelian seems to have a negative effect, or at the very least are useless, I go to swap over to Onyx. Guess what else is bugged? Onyx gems. You cannot craft Onyx jewelry using timeless shards.
Healer kite mobs into Narnia 
, I can only agree with that as I see it all the time as a tank. And after they die 50m away they say don’t you have agro? I mean, come on, give me a break. Jeez. Range of defiant stance is not that much and you need to be able to run to the Narnia and back in order to pick up agro of the rest mobs.
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Bump. Great topic.
Constantly talking about these pain points when doing expeditions and elite pois
Sometimes things work flawlessly when our main tank is able to pull all trash together, cycling Warhammer taunts with SnS CDs
But for example, the Lazarus stand-on-summoning stone-glyphs before the first boss is gauranteed to have mobs running all over when the tank is literally smacking them all meanwhile healer constantly dragging heal agro mobs back to tank.
I really don’t think calming gems are working or hatred perk +threat generation for tanks is correct for small mobs. However, boss threat works fine.
P.s. @calgriss I’m going to tell our tank to pickup life staff for more threat generation… Great idea lmao
Honestly if your doing runs just wear pearls on luck gear. You will get more benefit than the non existing threat reduction
As a healer myself I don’t see any problems with healing threat.
Healing is almost exclusively area effect healing. Non-tanks need to help generate threat on loose enemies that the tanks can’t pickup. Most adds are easily body tanked by medium and heavy armored DPS with minimal healing. The tank can only really hold aggro on a few mobs at a time and even then the tanking mechanic of stamina and blocking attacks to mitigate them makes it nearly impossible to heal a tank who can’t be mobile dodging and blocking. So splitting damage around the group plays to the healers AE heals. Doing this mitigates the threat being applied to targets around the room.
The only threat mechanic that I have an issue with are scenarios where healing causes threat through walls. I have a supsicion this caused by the same mechanic that lets me cast a healing spell perfectly on a target through a wall that I can’t see. Neither the heal nor the threat should work if I can’t see the target and/or the mob can’t see me.
Usually that’s not an issue when you play with your mates - you know they can either survive it or they will bring the mobs over. Usually teammates are good enough and well geared so they can take a few hits and/or use enough CC to get away. Paladin healers with the warhammer can take care of the mobs on their own pretty well, they just do not heal while doing it - so you need coordination. When my healer has problems and says it, i will survive as a tank way longer - because i know that there is no incoming heal to be expected anytime soon.
I am at a point where I don’t want to heal while doing elite runs … because when I do I know I am going to get agro. It’s taken all the fun out of it. Run to the tank some say? well…I often cannot get more than a few steps before the AI range all fire at me at once. I’ve also generated agro while sacred ground is on and mobs spawn in, they b-line for me.
I must be playing with good tanks because I almost never get aggro. I heal just fine in the back line and when I get aggro I just run to the tank and they pull it back. It’s an action combat system, don’t just expect to stand there and live. The AI is doing just like we do in PvP, run after the healer.
I just ran with a 20 player elite run … pulled agro after every AOE heal. Died before I could run to a tank. Happens all the time. Couldn’t loot 3 chests because I had agro and no one could take it off me/ran off to the next chest. Thinking about loosing focus and perks to reduce healing effectiveness to heal for 400 a tick instead of 800+. Gems make 0 difference…or just not heal as it would save on repair costs.
Recently 60, I am trying to gather a good healer set while leveling crafting, so I took note of Browneye’s post but what is i-frames and what does it do?
Also, what would be considered a good healer set?
Quote: “After that nerf patch I still wear heavy orich armor with 100 constitution, life staff has blessed and refreshing move, 350+ focus, plus the heavy attack perk that stacks 3x for 30% bonus healing. Also use i-frames.”
Has nothing to do with a healer.
Threat in this game is buggy. I started out as a tank S&S with carnelian gems/hatred in my shield and sword. Swapped to dps role with spear and Musket. Haven’t touched S&S since week 3 of this game.
I can be standing there, looking in my inventory, someone shoots the mobs and they ALWAYS come running to me, unless it was the tank that pulled with a taunt or the initial pull did a lot of damage.
I’m convinced my character is bugged because mobs always aggro onto me even if the healer pulls.
But trying to narrow down the root cause, are these healers that pull aggro wearing heavy by chance? I’m full heavy dps.
People wonder why healers wear heavy armor as if they don’t end up off tanking all the time.
An i-frame is an “immune frame”. A frame where your character is immune due to performing a well timed roll. It’s a pretty easy skill tbh, it’s just very basic timing. Practise dodge timing and you will see, you can immune damage and CC.
Depends on the content you’re doing, look for gear perks that buff the healing abilities you use. Blessed is a great weapon perk, resilience is great to have on armour (as well as your healer specific perks). If you go to the Trading Post, look up the top right and you’ll see “No perks selected” or something similar, click on this then scroll through (the list is alphabetical) until you reach “Cleric armour perks” or “cleric weapon perks”. Select the relevant perk (whether you’re buying a staff or armour) then hit search again.
I’ve leveled every weapon… Finishing now with healing vg/life staff.
I have around 30% threat reduction. I ran a zerg (world tour) in light gear. I’d throughout an orb of protection and the entirety of sirens would agro me. Fucking mobs came to attack me a level up or down running across bridges… How? Can a dev explain how a fucking baby heal agros 5+ mobs from people not even in my group… by the way my life staff is only level 10 and I have no blessed percs so my heals are shit and I still agro absolutely fucking everything…
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This is me also, but only with the best tank in my company. Without him I am running to the tank a lot. Lmao