So some random dude runs through an outdoor campsite filled with Mobs - they all are decently horny as he looks quite handsome and decide to follow him for an “interesting” party.
Now it happens that i am (by far less handsome i want to add) am in the area just at this moment and this dude runs pass me. How in earth do his “wannabelovers” suddenly start to think oh wow lets take this ugly bloke over there instead…
I mean this happens a lot - some guy trains a bunch of mobs - runs pass another player and the mobs simply aggro the new playrt then ---- whats the rule behind this?
I do, I have 3 class II Carnelian with 6% reduction each and 2 class III with 8% reduction, but understand this 34% calming seems to not work that well compared to what feels like threat generation of 1000%. The Calming affect of those gems don’t seem to provide the required amount of actual threat reduction needed to prevent the enemies in the dungeons from targeting the healer. I can see when the tank used a taunting shield bash, but as soon as I send a heal his way, it immediately pulls threat and the boss or adds begin targeting the healer. Either the Gems need to have the calming affect increased by a considerable amount, say equal to the increase in threat/taunt increase when put into a weapon, or the aggro system needs to be tweaked considerably.
Can there be changes to make fire staff not pull so much threat when casting spells? I notice I usually pull aggro of mobs, after the tank taunt drops, when I do a quick burst rotation. However, it’s not pulling bosses as much (sometimes does).
This should not be the case, a healer isn’t a threat directly. If you want to keep this mechanic then it should either be reduced because it’s far too aggressive and ranks the healer far too highly. Healers have a tough time trying to avoid the agro because it’s treating them as a bigger threat than the dps that is standing right next to them or even the dps that’s attacking the enemy…
Or the Pristine Carnelians should have a bigger effect, if I have them in all of my armour pieces, I am sacrificing some of my survivability to get less agro… in reality the enemies should never agro me when there are teammates around especially if the enemy runs past a teammate, it should switch agro from the healer to the other person.
As a healer, I got rid of the carnelians recently because they’re useless. I now use defensive gems in my armour and it works exactly the same just now I am tankier. I get the same amount of agro as before.
I can understand why this was added, but I don’t agree with it. If a tank has agro then the agro should stay on him. It shouldn’t suddenly attack a low threat player randomly.
That’s what “group attacks” are for, for example the jump shockwaves for the end boss in Starstone dungeon. That wave effects everyone equally. You want to keep the ranged players on their toes do more things like this or do more things like with the dogs getting out of the cages in the Dynasty dungeon. It’s then the ranged players have to dodge/move or position themselves safer
Thank you for the detailed reply!
Below is an example of what I’m specifically trying to outline. I am not sure if this case aligns with what you’ve explained or if this behavior is working as intended.
This is the biggest issue in the game for me personally. I am a hardcore “tank” player in whatever MMO I play. I am going to be swapping to a DPS build for the foreseeable future with this game.
The fundamental issue with taunting, threat, and tanking is the way mob abilities are queued vs. the length of taunts and how they work.
An example of what I mean via theoretical Mob ability timeline:
Mob: “Move to player X and attack”
Me: “Applies taunt debuff on Mob (note importantly applies debuff, does not generate ANY threat)”
Mob: “Finishing chase to player X. Recognizes it has debuff, begins to spin around to chase tank”
Because some time has passed running around the taunt debuff now runs out before the mob has come close enough to hit, maybe you got one attack off (not enough in a group setting)
Mob: “Taunt debuff expires. Threat is now recalculated. Highest threat is still Player X because effectively the threat table has not changed”
Mob: “Attack player X”
Tank: ???
You can replace the chasing a player with doing a long animation, being stunned, knocked back, whatever else you’d like. But because taunts applies zero threat this will forever be an issue because of how PVE mob abilities are queued.
I could go on about carnelian gems in weapons being an abysmal design choice and knock down, knockback on tanks in heavy armor being dumb. But the above, your clip, is the WORST and biggest issue with tanking.
Easy fix tho, just have taunts apply a ton of threat instantly and cause any mob with the debuff applied to instantly recalculate threat and targets accordingly. Only way it should work.
In your case specifically the mobs are activating their grit attack (charging animation attack) and completing that attack at Player X in your party. You can see the second the attack animation finishes your taunt debuff expires just before this. Because the threat is recalculated right when the attack animation ends, your taunt is effectively useless.
In your defense. Taunts need to last longer or apply threat percisely because of situations like yours. You had no prior indicator those mobs were about to start a grit attack but because the attack lasts as long as your debuff you get screwed. Its just poor design for “tanking” imo
I mean that is one perspective yeah- on my end I could have waited and spent more time moving to where they were going as opposed to animation locking myself in spot which decreases the time i have to generate aggro. That’s just how i’m going to play it going forward. What’s important to me is that there IS a solution I can use, therefore I will use it!
The most frustrating thing for me as a tank is running into a group to attempt to build aggro and seeing archers in the back shooting the healer. I attempt to get to these archers but I am constantly being knocked back or staggered by the melee targets I do have aggro on because Tanks for whatever reason do not have any Grit generating abilities. If I keep my shield up to prevent staggers I am super slow and takes forever to reach the archers/ranged. Then there is the model clipping, so many times I attempt to shift and pick up a target but I’m sandwiched in an NPC triangle that I cannot move out of while my healer is being destroyed by range and my taunt is down.
Yo I think an epic fix for this (I’m sure i’ve stated it like 9 times before while streaming etc and should have made a post earlier) is to give Defiant Stance(for example) grit like how Berserk for hatchets does, cause this is a big problem as well. While the problem could be solved with other weapons/skill and what not etc- it is one I run into often. I welcome the challenge but also think Defiant should give “more”.
Another thing is enemy hitboxes, There are various enemies in the game from which long sword, for example- simply will not reach. I’ve adapted to using spear when fighting them but I believe some of the hitboxes will need a pass over in PvE. Specifically the large demonic bosses. I’ll make a note to capture a clip of it tonight when I stream so that I can post it back to this channel, just bringing it up for now.
In my experience, it does not.
I use Sword and Shield Main and Hatchet with Beserk offhand.
Reason being is that Beserk is a 17 second AOE taunt compared to the Sword and Shield 45 second AOE taunt.
I often use beserk to gather the mobs together for the party, line of sight, then when we get stabilized and grouped, I use the Sword and Shield taunt.
This also works with the Great Hammer stun ability too.
I’d argue it makes more sense for healers to generate more base aggro. I’ll bring ‘realism’ into the game knowing full well it’s a fantasy make believe game, but in pvp I go for the healers. It makes sense for me for the ai to feel smarter going after the healer in most cases. But I do agree that the taunts in pve should work better especially with gems. Tanks with carnellians seem to lose aggro fairly easy.
As a healer, I can also confirm that threat seems entirely broken.
Sometimes in the openworld when running solo, I will pull mobs from other players, without being grouped or healing them, their mobs just run to me.
another thing I notice is if a player and a mob is close to eachother, but not engaged in combat,
and I open with a ranged attack on said mob, it will for some reason, go and attack the closest player, that never even was in combat with said mob - How does this even happen?
does proximity give 10000% threat in the open world?
I have tried to describe this issue an a few different posts already, thank you so much for create a clip of it!
It appears that once enemies start ‘casting an ability’ / ‘enter an animation loop’ / ‘take their turn’ a taunt will NOT cause those enemies to redirect that action towards the taunting player. Currently, as @Chardis suggested, it will only bump your threat slightly above whatever the highest threat was on those targets at the time. Do notice that once the enemies resolved their abilities the nameplates showed you gained aggro on both of them.
It does feel a bit clunky to press taunt and for the enemies to go: ‘Hang on a second mate, I’ll be with you in a moment’. I initially assumed this was a bug, but I’m getting the distinct impression that this is working as intended.
side note: It is great to see an actual reply from Amazon. I was starting to wonder if they even read any of these posts!
Ya ive noticed this. enemy will choose a ability to use on let say a Healer. even if I have aggro on his bar if he chose to use it before I had aggro he will use the ability and charge the healer then turn and come to me instead of just coming to me when aggro is gained.
An example of what I mean via theoretical Mob ability timeline:
Mob: “Move to player X and attack”
Me: “Applies taunt debuff on Mob (note importantly applies debuff, does not generate ANY threat)”
Mob: “Finishing chase to player X. Recognizes it has debuff, begins to spin around to chase tank”
This sum up pretty much what my Tank friend said to me. Mob will first finish his action before reacting to the taunt.
And yeah, as a healer, every mob with a bow keeps aggro on me all the time. This is weird.
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 generate threat at different percentages, but healing done doesn’t generate threat at a one to one ratio equivalent to healing output.
• Socketing a Carnelian Gem into a weapon both enables Taunts AND increases the base threat you generate with attacks. The threat increase percentage depends on the tier of Carnelian that is socketed into your weapon.
• When you have aggro on an AI, that AI’s nameplate will have a bright red highlight around it. If that AI has aggro on someone else, the nameplate will appear as if the AI wasn’t targeting you.
• Each AI has their own threat table. This means that if you are fighting two Skeletal Warriors and a Skeletal Archer who is lurking in the back, the tank needs to make sure they’re hitting and Taunting the Archer! If they ignore the Archer, they could find that this AI targets someone else who has more threat.
• Weapon swapping has no impact on threat. It does not increase nor does it decrease your threat.
• Dodging has no impact on threat. It does not increase nor does it decrease your threat.
• Taunt sets your threat a fixed percentage above the current highest threat-holder. So, if you use Taunt to initiate a fight, your initial threat will be rather low. I highly recommend initiating with other abilities or light and heavy attacks, and then use a taunt a few seconds into the fight.
I also appreciate the bugs you’ve brought up! I do have notes on a few of them:
• The carnelian socketed into the amulet is indeed a bug. Carnelians that enable Taunt should exclusively be found in weapons, so I’ve notified our team about that item.
• The Taunt status effect icon doesn’t match the duration of the Taunts. What you see on the ability tooltip is indeed correct. Thanks to your reports we’re aware of this and investigating it!
• We’re investigating the reports of AI running towards non-engaged players when you’ve already aggroed them.
I hope this gives you a bit more insight into the target selection system. We’re always keeping a close eye on our AI and looking for areas that could be fleshed out or improved in the future. I appreciate all of the feedback you’ve given! As always, I hope to see you all in Aeternum!