Immortal Juggernaut Threat - Terrible and Scaling Even Worse

[obdigore]

It might be cool to add in something that makes it so when you avoid an attack you get 20% of the damage it would have done to you as threat on that boss, and if you shield an attack you get the shielded damage added as threat?

Just an idle thought of how it could be nifty, and it would scale with boss difficulty, and not punish tanks for stacking reduction stats, like what happened to warriors rage at certain portions of wow. (Or DK's and... Runic Blade? I don't even recall, the ability that was only activated after you avoided an attack and was the only high threat ability DK's had...)

And no, Dannyl. Normal Threat is 100%. Healers are specced down to what, 50-75% threat, and tanks are specced up to 150% threat. So each point of damage a tank does provides 1.5 points of threat.

[Deleted]

It might be cool to add in something that makes it so when you avoid an attack you get 20% of the damage it would have done to you as threat on that boss, and if you shield an attack you get the shielded damage added as threat?

It's a neat idea but seems like it would be difficult to control since avoidance is by nature unpredictable, and you generally want a firm control of threat, to use it when it matters.

Just an idle thought of how it could be nifty, and it would scale with boss difficulty, and not punish tanks for stacking reduction stats, like what happened to warriors rage at certain portions of wow. (Or DK's and... Runic Blade? I don't even recall, the ability that was only activated after you avoided an attack and was the only high threat ability DK's had...)

Think it was runic strike. Warriors had revenge that worked the same way and we have the exact same thing in Swtor. For sith warriors it's retaliation. One solution could be to make retaliation a high threat ability, since it activates fairly frequently.

And no, Dannyl. Normal Threat is 100%. Healers are specced down to what, 50-75% threat, and tanks are specced up to 150% threat. So each point of damage a tank does provides 1.5 points of threat.

Aye, so in others words the buff that we get (which he mentions) is 50%. Just in the wording though, that threw me a little off. That and haven't had coffee lately...

[obdigore]

It's a neat idea but seems like it would be difficult to control since avoidance is by nature unpredictable, and you generally want a firm control of threat, to use it when it matters.

Aye but it would make up for the rage lost when not being struck and the lack of retaliation.

Think it was runic strike. Warriors had revenge that worked the same way and we have the exact same thing in Swtor. For sith warriors it's retaliation. One solution could be to make retaliation a high threat ability, since it activates fairly frequently.

Yup, Runic Strike. And yes, the rage starvation was the issue I was trying to address

Aye, so in others words the buff that we get (which he mentions) is 50%. Just in the wording though, that threw me a little off. That and haven't had coffee lately...

Yea, I have seen lots of posters saying tanks get 50% threat. They don't say extra or that the threat is at 150%. Was starting to bug me a bit as it was unclear.

[gualdhar]

You mean 50% right?

Yes, I meant +50%. I misread the tooltip for Combat Technique and saw the +150% Armor buff instead of the +50% threat mod.

Has any mmo actually tried this before? Looking at wow's history, most of the methods you described have already been tried by Blizzard, with varying degrees of success. For instance, from WoW we already know that a static X% buff is likely not to work because of the damage scaling between tank and dps gear is so big. Blizzard managed it largely by adding all sorts of convoluted threat modifiers to various abilities but as they admitted, the balancing act was pretty rough and extremely difficult to get it right. Not just that but it requires constant tweaking between tiers of content.

Blizzard solved it eventually in Cata with Vengeance, although it blew the whole thing out of proportion. A stat might be a more subtle solution, something that tanks can accumulate when needed, which would also negate the need for tanks to spec and even gear into dps. Swtor even has a nice way to put it in; mods. Current raiding gear isn't moddable ofc but Bioware has already said they are working on fixing that. So when a tank feels threat is a bit low, swap a couple of mods and compensate. If there's more than enough tanks can always pull back. It would also take some of the tweaking pressure off Bioware and put it in the hands of the players.

I'm not sure if another MMO has done it before or not, my tanking and endgame experience outside TOR and WoW is limited. The beauty of tying it to a tank's primary stat though is that as they get new gear the primary stat is guaranteed to increase. Every piece of Rakata gear has more than Columi, and Columi more than Tionese, etc (except for weapons, but they're just odd). So tank threat modifier would scale with each upgrade.

The only drawback I see with it is if/when Bioware does make endgame gear fully modable, you could see tanks going for multiple tokens for each piece, so they can grab their tank piece and a dps one, take the high primary/low endurance armoring out of the dps set and stick it in the tank set, which would increase their threat gen a little. I remember there being something like a 15 point swing in primary stat per artifact 23 armoring piece, so it could mean 100 or more extra primary stat for a tank that did this. That could be enough to blow scaling out of the water for a tank and make holding threat too easy again. Bioware could always make the exact percentage subject to diminishing returns like other secondary stats, but that makes for even more balancing issues, and so on. It's a vicious cycle and I'm not sure Bioware would want to play ball.

[Deleted]

The only drawback I see with it is if/when Bioware does make endgame gear fully modable, you could see tanks going for multiple tokens for each piece, so they can grab their tank piece and a dps one, take the high primary/low endurance armoring out of the dps set and stick it in the tank set, which would increase their threat gen a little. I remember there being something like a 15 point swing in primary stat per artifact 23 armoring piece, so it could mean 100 or more extra primary stat for a tank that did this. That could be enough to blow scaling out of the water for a tank and make holding threat too easy again. Bioware could always make the exact percentage subject to diminishing returns like other secondary stats, but that makes for even more balancing issues, and so on. It's a vicious cycle and I'm not sure Bioware would want to play ball.

I'm not really sure if what you describe would be such a bad thing. The first simple fact that we have to accept is that it is neigh impossible to get just right. Further more, Bioware has to look at the big picture and realize they have players of different level. Many don't like that fact but not all players play equally and the system needs to somehow accommodate them. So it might be better to steer it a degree towards being easy, rather than too hard because otherwise you will see a massive lack of tanks in the game.

It can still be challenging, rather than facerolling but making it too hard is not going to be good for the game, unless Bioware wants to run a niche mmo with couple hundred thousand players, which they clearly don't. Thirdly, the game will most likely evolve into more complex forms of encounters, which will compensate for threat being slightly less of an issue. Last but not least, excess amount of threat isn't really going to do you any good. Any min/maxer is (at least once we can measure our threat) going to only stack as much threat as they naturally need. The rest will ofc go into survivability.

[gualdhar]

At this point, there is already a strong argument against stacking endurance as much as high-end gear does right now. It's quite easy to exchange endurance for primary stat, or vice versa, with the armoring slot (think changing guardian armoring to might armoring), without touching mitigation stats (which are all secondary stats). Keep in mind, stacking tons of endurance doesn't help an endgame tank outside of surviving one-hit KOs (since endurance doesn't decrease damage taken, which eases the healing throughput required), which aren't happening to tanks even in Nightmare mode ops. My point was if you tie the threat mod to how much tanks have in their primary stat right now, then tanks suddenly get 100 or more of their primary stat when end game gear becomes modable, you could be hitting the same issue WoW had when they made it piss easy for tanks to hold threat.

[jearle]

S
Except none of that content matters in the long run because nothing lives long enough outside of raid/operation encounters to ever be a serious issue (and if it is, tank threat is the absolute least of your group's worries).

Welcome to common sense; population: not enough.

You must be so pro.

So you are saying that nothing outside of raids/operations matters?
What about the large % of people who do not run raids/operations and like group content?
What about someone who wants to enjoy tanking while leveling?

You are being a bit self centered thinking that the way that you play the game is the way everyone else does.

I am not looking for cake-sauce 500% threat modifiers.

However using chain taunts and raid wide coordinated DPS threat CDs to start off a fight seems like a terrible design to me.

Can you make the current system work in raids? Of course and tons of people are doing so and clearing stuff.
Does that mean that it is a good system? Absolutely not, the idea of ignore everything but the results of raids is terrible and alienates an entire population.
If WoW taught anything it is that in MMOs today "raiding" is experienced generally by a small population (pre LFR).

---------- Post added 2012-02-01 at 10:26 AM ----------

Perhaps we need to consider another WoW angle. If the tank isn't dying from the mobs (other than enrage timers) then have the tank change out gear augments (or even take 2 piece dps set) so the tank's survivability drops slightly, but then the tank is doing more threat from more damage stat, plus the boss is taking more damage so it is easier to make the enrage timer.

Or, for a quicker change to test the concept, use a might stim instead of an end/def stim. Or, since you have Biochem anyways, make the reusable Rakata attack adrenal (565 power for 15 sec) and use that on every boss pull.

I have changed out some gear and went with DPS items and the might stim and a dps relic.

However the increase of my damage was not incredibly noticeable and threat change was not at all noticeable.

The gearing idea doesn't do very much because of the terribad 50% threat modifier on Soresu form.

Making Soresu a 100% threat modifier would be a great start and is an extremely easy fix.
The other options for changing tanking would be a great deal harder to implement, but hopefully they do something fun with it in the future.

[Viertel]

You must be so pro.

So you are saying that nothing outside of raids/operations matters?
What about the large % of people who do not run raids/operations and like group content?
What about someone who wants to enjoy tanking while leveling?

You are being a bit self centered thinking that the way that you play the game is the way everyone else does.

And you're trying to sound intelligent and simply come off as a whiney child that attempts to be witty and falls flat.

Newflash: if you aren't raiding then whatever you are fighting does not life long enough to become a problem.

Got that into your head yet? No, let me repeat it again:

If you are not doing operations then whatever you are fighting doesn't hit hard enough to be an issue nor does it live long enough for any threat issues to make an ultimate difference. This isn't "being pro" or "self centered" as you so foolishly like to claim: it's called common sense and logic. It was this way in Everquest, it was this way in FFXI, it was this way in WoW, it was this way in Rift, it was this way in all previous MMOs and will be this way in all future MMOs because low manned content (that's your crowd by the way in case you're having problems following) doesn't require full on raid mechanics even if it's tuned tightly.

If you can't wrap that simple concept around your head it's because you're sticking your head in the sands and purposely ignoring the truth slapping you in the face.

That ISN'T to say that Jugg threat is all fine and dandy: it isn't.

Keep the personal attacks out of your posts. You may be frustrated by another user but that doesn't call for personal insults. - Cula