How agro works(?) and possible changes (from my experience)

[LordoftheMeme]

Threat needs to include healing, otherwise dungeons become a cakewalk when the healer can just sit in a corner and be at zero risk.

In case you didn’t know, using taunt sets your threat to be a percentage higher than anyone else currently is for enemies in range. So never engage with a taunt, because the healer will immediately pull aggro. If you have SnS 20, you can have some pretty good uptime on your Defiant Stance.

You mention not using carnelian gems - I’m sorry, but you need a gem slot to be a tank. You can get a low level taunt sword from Amrine expedition I believe (The Space Between or something). A more effective option is to buy one from your faction shop, it guarantees a gem slot.

[Axt0ndalh]

so what you’re saying is that playing a tank or bruiser, even before level 60 is gated by needing to have a carnelian gems? that’s a little ridiculous I’m sorry. a playstyle in PVE shouldn’t require a specific gem in order to play as there’s a bunch of other gems which could be better.

threat should include healing output? a healer is the players lifeline in dungeons and elite zones same as health potions (which that’s another problem in it of itself, they dont heal as much as I would kind of expect in my opinion (about 1600 I think on powerful heal pots)) so they shouldn’t take agro just from 1 spell because they have 200+ FOC, and heal ridiculously quickly that it out heals the dps’s damage in combat, as the players/groups lifeline they shouldn’t generate as much threat from healing, again enemies should prioritize the person in their face not the backlines, I could understand ranged targets targeting them, but melee units should focus the person up in their face not the people in the back.

as for taunt, I figured that does something similar, I thought more on the lines of how it possibly works in league and forces enemies to attack the player who taunted, so that is about par for the course

as for the guaranteed gem slot weapons from faction or otherwise, Amrine weapon GS is way too low as I have like 480-495 GS, I’m at cabalist in my faction (syndicate) so 470 isn’t too far off, but it would be better to wait until I get to alchemist as I’m 3/4s of the way through 57 and then grind to get the 525 GS sword and shield as they can be used at level 58, but with merger’s happening in a couple days it’s kind of hard especially with my work schedule as I’m on when everyone else is asleep for the most part, as if I try to the play in the day, my lag is worse than at night as I’m playing at 650+ ping on satellite internet, between 5:30 pm and 10 pm the game is practically unplayable as I spike up to 9k+ ping

[M_Frog]

I don’t understand what you mean by “gated”. You just need a carnelian slotted, which can be done at a pretty low level.

Unless you have a carnelian gem slotted, you don’t taunt. Your threat will be based on your damage and healing, and compete with everyone else damaging and healing.

It’s one of the sacrifices tanks make. Give up damage to get guaranteed aggro. Some even go further and use weapon perks with “hated” on them. Secondary weapons too.

And don’t forget that your stats will drop when you swap to your other weapon! Tanks get all the goodness.

[Axt0ndalh]

“gated” as in “you must have this otherwise you can’t do what you want to do here”

there’s the problem I don’t just want to be a wall, I want to deal damage and be the wall, that’s what bruisers are, I’ve always been like that since I joined like a week after launch (due to that being the first opportunity I had to play)

as for the “hated” perk I can see grabbing that for a bit extra threat generation but as I said in the original post, my mage friend has all 3 accessories with carnelian gems with (again I assume) a collective 36% less threat generate and he still takes agro from me, as he at one point was clocking 3k or more damage on heavy crit (I didn’t say crit before but I think even with light armor that’s what it would take) meanwhile you can see my current damage numbers up above and I’m in heavy armor, and my healer friend (who is also in heavy armor as he doesn’t want to be 1 tapped, nor do I) can match my damage, and in fact dealing even more than I can (probably from higher GS weapons as he power grinded to level 60 and has been grinding to get 600 GS weapons before they swapped how the high watermark system worked to the new expertise system)

[M_Frog]

Well, I’m not saying I like the system, but that’s how it works for now.

I’ve been tanking since low level (as soon as I got a sword with a slot) grouped with a mage/healer and a squishy high dps melee guy and I’m stuck with using a carnelian on every weapon.

Every swing with a carnelian-slotted weapon gets more aggro. You can get a head start on aggro with a big AOE on a bunch of mobs. Don’t forget to carnelianize your axe or hammer…

[LordoftheMeme]

Hi OP, I found the Dev Post that explains threat generation

PvE Agro / taunting needs improving

Hi everyone, Lots of great follow up discussion! Here’s some extra info on target selection based on some of the questions you’ve asked; • Healing generates threat equal to a percentage of the amount of health that is healed by the spell. If you cast Sacred Ground but no one stands in the AoE, no threat will be generated. But if you heal a damaged player for 100 health, you will generate 20 threat towards every AI already in combat in the area who is aware of you. Different healing spells gene…

You can probably find a sword with a gem socket for less than 10g, and either gem cut or ask someone to give you a low tier cut carnelian - even a Flawed Gem will activate your weapon taunts. Doing a single dungeon run will more than compensate your gold.

Also, the shield type matters too - tower shields are the best for tanking.

Lucky New World doesn’t really have dedicated pure CON tank fights, so you are able to go hybrid bruiser. I really liked Spear as my secondary weapon for applying crowd control.

Unfortunately if you don’t like the idea of using a specific gem to enable taunts, then you won’t be able to tank.

[Axt0ndalh]

Sorry this took so long I had to go to work when yall responded

So I can’t go bruiser playtime unless I have gems or “hated” perk gear to hold agro and tank damage? Thats stupid im sorry but it is

If my healer friend generated 20 agro every 100 hp healed, by full healing (about 7k is the example over discord he gave me) he generated more agro than the dps in 1 spell

Let me also clarify that the silver enemy we faced in ebonscale at skysong temple took like 20 mins or longer and after about 5 mins the silver enemy agro’d my healer and no matter how much me and the mage dps hit the enemy, we couldn’t take agro and I was stunning him every opportunity I could (why I say agro should reset on stun) no matter what we do we couldn’t take agro needing a gem or the gear is so stupid if I want to be the target and tank damage, he also said he had calming 4, the calming effects must not be taking affect as there is no way they should be taking all the agro from me this is why I say healing shouldn’t be taken into account in late game a healer can nearly full heal and take agro and it doesn’t drop unless you have to have the carnelian gems which means being a tank is gated beyond what it should be.

Also another note what if I dont want to use a carnelian gem? What if I want to use one of the elemental ones instead or one that increases my flat damage, I guess it doesn’t generate more agro than the healer. Again being a tank is gated by forcing you to get a gem slot weapon and a carnelian gem, healers mages rangers, they all have easy access to their play style but not tanks and bruisers, this is hard when trying to get better gear to raise your GS for higher drops before you hit the expertise system

when I get home (as im about to leave work) ill send pictures of my gear stats and skills and anything else that may be needed

[Axt0ndalh]

sword

shield

honing stone that was mentioned

skills spec’d into

how much health I have at the moment (as if even healed half way agro get’s taken away (8,849 if the picture doesn’t load right))
Uploading: 2021-12-19 04_04_26-New World.png…

didn’t take a picture of the stats as they’re all over the place right now as I’ve just been equiping armor which boosts my GS and not focusing on stats like I was on earlier levels

[aeonra]

Well if you really want to tank and you have a good healer on your side, you cannot pass on a slotted carnelian on your weapon. Even with a high carnelian slotted, some enemies still run off initially to the healer until they turn around and face you as tank.

You could try to get more aggro by having perks for aggro instead of a carnelian, but it might still not be enough and it could be that getting gear with those perks is way worse than getting a weapon with a gem slot.

I was playing Hatchet and S&S as both have taunt mechanics but from the first dungeon on I had to slot carnelian to get the Aggro consistenly off of my team of DPS and the healer.

[Axt0ndalh]

but that’s the thing I dont just want to tank I want to deal damage as well, which means I’ll want to use other gems and if I absolutely have to use carnelian gems, that get’s rid of any chances of dealing the damage I want, not to mention I’d probably have to grab multiple of the same weapons, all with gem slots so I can slot all sorts of elemental gems so I can deal the most damage possible, without wasting the materials to switch the gems each and every time

and again I’ll point out that the calming buff that the carnelians give on armor, hasn’t done anything to lessen the amount of agro they generate, both my friend could run all they want, I can get all the hits in as I can, and nothing, I cannot take the agro back, which is why I say it should be changed, or if anything melee damage should be buffed a bit as now my mage friend just messaged me a little bit ago saying he’s at 332 INT which means he’s going to be doing lots more damage than I can, considering like 10 levels ago or so he was clocking 3k+ on a heavy crit with the fire staff or ice gauntlet, meanwhile I’m at a pitiful 1600 on a heavy crit. or again another possible change, stuns/cc reset the agro to who dealt the stun/cc, that way I have an easier way of grabbing it back so they dont get attacked

the way healing factors into agro is why my healing friend is playing a paladin basically, because if he’s generating as much agro as a tank should just through healing, why would he want to be in light armor and be 1 tapped, when he can easily just switch to sword and shield, or another weapon to use for tanking, he has almost no bonus STR and is clocking the same damage if not more than the damage I’m dealing even when I have the added 6% (which doesn’t come out to 6% when I gave the numbers from what I was hitting with before)

tanking or being a bruiser shouldn’t force you into taking a carnelian gem to be the tank, you’re in their face, you are the biggest threat, not the backline, this would mean the melee dps would need all carnelians in their armor to counteract the fact they’re also up close and personal as well, however as stated above the carnelians calming buff isn’t doing anything on them to lower the agro

also as another note, I messed up unless the values were changed on the calming buff, I thought that it was higher than before, my mage friend should have (at max) 30% less threat generated, and idk how many my healer friend has but the point above still stands

[LordoftheMeme]

Sadly, you can’t be good at protecting healers and still have high damage output.

You will need to carry different sets of gear depending on what you want to fight - if you are clearing trash enemies, wear a damage set. If you are getting into hard hitting enemies that 2 shot your healer, you need to be using carnelians.

I understand what you are saying, that it’s not fair that you can’t generate enough threat through dealing damage. As well as the post I linked before, getting hit reduces your threat level. So if you did manage to have high damage and survive the boss, it would turn anyway. You need carnelians to force aggro, it’s much more reliable than DPS.

[aeonra]

So you basicly want to be best in two worlds, being a tank and a DPS. And that is basicly the same as wanting to be a Tank and a Healer.

You have to decide what you want to be, you cant be best in both.
You can be mediocre in both maybe, but this wont work against high level enemies and surely it wont work if you have a pure healer on your side.

The reason why healers pull so much aggro is because the group fights should be more dynamic. It cant be, that mages just sit at a corner and just cast. Same goes for tanks you cant just equip taunt and you are good to go and just sit in front of the enemy. This is somewhat different from older MORPGS, which are super boring to watch as everyone is just static standing and the only challenge is to keep an eye on the cooldowns.

You have two weapons you can equip, and you have the possibility to respec / equip other stuff with different buffs/debuffs/gems.

As a pure tank with 300 con I surely wish also to deal more damage as the system is broken for what is counted as contribution atm. And sure I also wish I could make use of other damages than having to spec carnelian only on my weapons. However I never tried to be DPS and Tank. If I want to go DPS I have to let go of some Tank specific things, my tankiness or/and the aggro I pull.

[M_Frog]

It’s not a great system.

It seems like a skill with taunt shouldn’t NEED a carnelian, but of course it does. Even if it didn’t, it’s very hard–if even possible–to keep a taunt “debuff” on everything always anyway, so gently tapping everything with a carnelian is the job.

Shields don’t have gem slots (that I’ve seen) and if they did, I wouldn’t count on them working.

[Axt0ndalh]

so this is where theory crafting is a beautiful thing, for those saying that I can’t be good at tanking and dealing damage, well consider this for a second

if I sink 95-100 points from level up into STR and 90-95 into CON that’s a fairly even split yes? well if I was to get just about god tier luck and hope that I can either craft (bit more reliable as I can apply the crafting mod when crafting, just questionable on the GS) or get drops on equipment which are mostly CON/STR or STR/CON (first is primary stat, second is secondary stat, so weapons and armor [of the barbarian]) my friend has said I could come out with ~ 200-250 in both STR and CON

now onto the gems, if I wasn’t forced into taking carnelians on my weapons I would need 1 weapon with a ruby, topaz, sapphire, and amber (1 of each for the elemental stats that give the biggest bonus to each enemy type minus beasts) if not one of those 4, I could also go jasper, malachite, or opal for flat damage increases, thats already needing 5 of a single weapon each and I switch between 4, so instead of 20 different weapons, that is now 24 not to mention if I want to swap to one of the other 8 weapons for the mastery. as for armor gems, for equal amounts I can go a 4-4 split (5 armor pieces and 3 accessories) of onyx/opals or diamonds/malachite gems for the increase in armor and elemental resist

now I know this isn’t perfect, but it is plausible, considering my healer friend in the ptr was testing like the cap on stats and if you maxed 1 stat you’d have ~ 407 is what he sent me in a picture and he had all dex armor and weapons, and let me say he was clocking 10k on bow crit, or 6k on a musket

so with all this information it seems like melee damage is just weaker unless someone can tell me what melee dps’s are clocking at full STR how much damage they clock consistently, because from what I’ve seen they can’t match the damage which means that in order to be the focus in combat, they force you to take carnelian gems in order to hold agro which means you lose out on damage unless you have your second weapon for all damage, but we shouldn’t be forced to do that, we already have to switch weapons (the three melee damage types) or the gems you have in order to deal the most damage as possible, and they took out how people could run 2 of the same weapons so it can’t run for example 2 swords, 1 for carnelian gems, and 1 other gem sword for the highest damage against your target

also on a side note to aeonra, my healer friend is going paladin (tank healer), always has been since the beta, the problem is, I have to hear how I can’t hold agro each and every time we play together, he pulls it with 1 spell and is going to have to swap to a sword and shield, why we were grinding together, and he already has 300 FOC and some extra into CON, you should be able to be pretty decent at both and hold your stuff comparably to those who go full one way or the other, also in heavy armor, no gem, from just healing he’s generating as much agro as a tank WITH gems, why would he want to run light armor for increased healing, increased agro gen and be 1 tapped, and as said before once he gets the agro even if he runs around neither I or the mage friend can’t pull it off of him, even when he stops healing why he switched to sword and shield

all of this is why I’m saying they need to change it in some how, and I’ve already suggested a few reworks above, holding agro is gated by using carnelians and locks out at least 2 playstyles because of this, why I was giving feedback about it in the first place

[Axt0ndalh]

let me also just put this out there as someone mentioned getting hit reduces threat level, this doesn’t appear to be true, again going back to skysong temple, there is a named enemy there which I swear was gold but looking at one of the interactive maps it appears to be silver, I know it starts with a V and that’s about it, but point is, my healer friend got the agro after healing me up as I had agro before, it didn’t stop until he was dead, the enemy then went and tagged the mage and dropped him, I had to go hide behind a wall (it didn’t move thankfully) before running and going to stun it so I could get the healer or the mage up to go get the other while I was still holding agro, we eventually finished it off, but we almost had to go back through the entire place again to get to it agro doesn’t drop when you get hit, in fact getting hit my enemies drops attack inputs and skill inputs, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been running solo and I die because enemies gang up and I can’t hit them (may partially be because of lag as well, but mainly when they hit me) and skills wont go off either, and I eventually drop, and then forced back to settlement or a camp nearby

[M_Frog]

I don’t think getting hit reduces aggro.

Perhaps what was mentioned was referring to how if you taunt a mob who is in the process of doing a move on someone else, the mob will finish its attack and only then will turn to you. So, yeah, once it hits its victim it’ll go to the taunter (and thus that person loses aggro after being hit).

[Axt0ndalh]

ok fair point, that’s probably what was ment to be said, and not what I was thinking which was “as you get hit, your threat goes down”

but this does loop back to the agro system being wonky as can be, as if I was to taunt (should I go carnelians) the enemy shouldn’t keep going and then come after me, it should turn right back around to me, not keep going, tag someone else, and then come back to me

let me also go back to a previous point I made with how every other play style has easy access but the tank and bruiser play styles are gated by the carnelian gems

for a ranger (ranged dps) all you need to really do is equip a bow or musket and go mostly DEX build. Mage? mostly or all INT and fire staff, ice gauntlet, or void gauntlet. healer? mostly or all FOC and a life staff or void gauntlet. melee dps? any melee weapon and mostly or all STR or DEX, whichever the weapons scaled off of more.

but tank or bruiser? for tank you need mostly CON and are forced to get the carnelian gems for holding agro. for bruiser you can take a tad bit of a hit to CON for more STR or DEX (melee weapon dependent), but still run into the problem of forced to get a carnelian gem on 1 weapon at least to hold the agro. how about paladin? mostly FOC or CON which ever you want, a life staff, and a melee weapon you want to off tank with, but… you dont need a carnelian gem here, as you can easily just heal and boom there’s the threat you need for about the remainder of the fight as again like I’ve said at least 3 times now, no matter how much my mage friend or myself attack the enemy, we can’t pull the agro off, well after the healing output stopped. agro only changed once my healer friend went into basically, what I like to call (because I’m used to it), “fight for your life” (borderlands reference minus the being able to move and attack) and he had to wait to be picked up

There has to be some way that the agro system can be changed to make playing any sort of class you want to play easier, and not force you to get specific things in order to play how you want. make it based on distance, max HP, agro resets on stuns, or something, I can’t think of anything else, but there has to be something either the community or the dev team (if they see this post) can think of to change how it works, I get that healers shouldn’t be agro free, but if the average healing output of my healer friend in heavy armor is 7k, and you generate 20 threat per 100 hp healed, that’s 1400 threat right there right there, how much damage needs to be done to have more threat than a healer like that, even considering that AGS has nerfed them into the ground and want’s to try and force them into light armor and generate even more agro with their heals.

[M_Frog]

The game isn’t designed to let you tank while doing large DPS and that’s a pretty traditional MMO design. I don’t expect that to change.

To tank you just need (at minimum) a particular gem slotted in any weapon. To heal you need a whole weapon. Maybe tanks have it easy! But seriously, while tanking could use an overhaul, adding damage to tanks is probably not gonna happen. It shouldn’t. Who would play anything else?

[Axt0ndalh]

well… let me ask this, have you ever played league of legends or dota 2? if you have, have you ever noticed how some champions or heroes have a good bit of HP and can deal a ton of damage? lets take darius for example from legaue of legends, he’s a wall, and hits like truck, but he can still easily get taken out should the enemy marksman (ranger basically) builds a tiny bit of armor pen, and stand as far back as possible, what about someone like chogath or maphite (also both league) mage bruisers (scales off of what in new world would be INT) same way to take them out

now take this logic to new world, I want to be a bruiser, a wall and someone who hits like a truck, if I was to go into PVP, all the enemy would need is a bit of armor pen/bypass, something AGS would need to add, could easily do it when dual daggers get added. but in PVE you face enemies who go up to I think 6 levels above our current cap, have like a million hp, and need a whole group to face all with the right gear, and if you “dont deal damage” you dont get anything when the enemy dies, my healer friend has run into the contribution problem in fights even against corrupted (life staff has an arcane damage on top of the nature he does 1200 average on hit) and guess what, they can hit like trucks as well, they dont just absorb damage, they dish it out as well.

what I basically want to do is the same thing as my healer friend, off tank, but I need to be able to hold agro first. and to answer the question “who would play anything else?” there are plenty of play styles available which can cater to what everyone want’s to play, bruisers would be strong but there are counters, just like in any moba (which new world apparently was basically before the community asked for PVE [let me clarify, from what I was told it was an mmo, with no PVE and all PVP, so you grind resources from the wild, and increase your skills off of that, there was no PVE at all, and at the moment it’s kind of still PVP focused, and not PVE or both, they’re focused on the PVP which is why there are so many nerfs and buffs]) it would just take implementation

[Zentaragi]

I would like to think a clearer indicator of aggro is not too much to ask for.

There are instances where the aggro does not make sense even with the devs explanation.

• Tank initiated a mob, the mob was triggered but directly ignored tank and went for me (healer)
• In Ebon, a named enemy locked onto me and stayed aggroed to me with a dps and tank hitting it until they killed it.
• Mobs spawn, they will mass blitz me no matter who was closer.

If a healer can generate aggro equal to a tank with carmel gems, I don’t quite agree with that. However, I’m not for the idea of healers having 0 aggro or the least aggro either. I simply want an eventual better system or indication of aggro. I can understand if a player b-lines a healer in PvP, but an AI is not a player, for the 600+ hours of playing, it sure seems like the AI favors attacking healers. I have ran Calming IV on gear before it never made a difference in my opinion. There are of course instances where a tank can maintain aggro so it ultimately I digress it falls on skill & gear. I accept the aggro bonus without carmel Calming IV and rather run diamond gems and heavy armor. The 30% healing bonus is just not enough of an incentive to be in light. It hasn’t effected as much as the nerfs in some parts of the kit. It works for me, I can still heal incredibly high & fulfill my role as healer. (just means a little more work And nudge dodging)

In regards to his case of bruiser: Realistically yes, traditional mmos don’t really give tanks the power to deal insufferable amounts of damage which in new world is probably better that they don’t because it seems like PvP and PvE are too close to one another.

In PvE I think there can be leeway on the role without breaking the tradition. “Gated” I suppose is referring to the Requirement that you must have a carmel gem to be recognized as Tank. I think that limits the ability to build a playstyle that is tailored to you but I also like the challenge of denying the requirement.

I also think Axt’s attempt to be a (Bruiser) can be done but there will be compromises in terms of Raw Dps / Health. It will never have the true both worlds, but it makes the game more fun in my opinion to figure out a way anyhow.