ZemX

I assume you mean damage auras, which is what's being discussed here. They DO taunt as well but that's because Tanker/Brute. The armor powersets for Tankers and Brutes all have at least one aura that is mainly there to taunt enemies. Usually uses about half the endurance of a damage aura and often does other useful things (like Against all Odds buffing damage or Beta Decay buffing recharge). Most (but not all) taunt auras are auto-hit as well, meaning they can often be run with nothing but the default enhancement slot. I think that is mostly perception. A key thing to remember is that damage auras are doing damage WHILE you are doing damage with your active attacks. It's not like comparing the damage output of IG to, say, Atom Smasher really makes sense when you can do both of them at the same time. Damage auras are better thought of the same way you think of +dam% buffs. More is always better. Though it does come at an endurance cost, this is also often over-stated. Toggles get to be a problem only when you're running 8-10 of them. Individually, they use a fraction of what your attack chain is eating. Even damage procs shouldn't be too quickly dismissed here. A single 3.5ppm damage proc in IG, for example, accounts for maybe another +75% average damage per second on top of the base for that power. Still pretty good for one slot cost. Like anything in your build, of course, it has to be compared to whatever else you might use that slot for though. But it's good to be clear what it can buy you in a damage aura.

I usually like to tell people that three tankers on a team means we are contractually obligated by the Tanker's Union to do our best to pull the entire map down on top of ourselves. Usually. But Posi 1 tho.... yeah. No. Level 8-15 and even people exemping down from 50 are dealing with half their toys at best. Low level CoT are a lesson (the painful kind) in the effectiveness of stacking buffs/debuffs. They have +def bubbles, earthquakes, and a withering hail of -toHit. And that last mission... somebody on the Live team was having a bad week or something when they chose to make that door ambush permanently aggro on anyone who even dips a toe in the map, even after they died, left, and returned. Yikes!

Let's all be honest here. None of us ever makes it much past the "So I started a Posi 1..." part of your posts. You shouldn't lead with that.

I am not defending the tank in your specific example. I am saying even when a tanker is doing it right, the team can still screw it up by following the tanker before finishing the fight. As a tanker you have two competing goals (1) Keep the team safe, (2) Run point and thus, lead the team quickly and efficiently through the mission. That means not standing there drooling over the corpse of a Freak Tank wondering if it will stand up. Because while you're doing that, the DPS squirrels are already nuking the next spawn and potentially making a mess there. So mess here or mess there. You pick. What SHOULD work, if everyone plays along nicely, is the tanker can leave the last fight a handful of seconds early just to get enough time to put one or two good AoEs or toss a Taunt to make sure everything at the next fight is good and mad at them before the bombs start dropping. But the team has to play along. If they blindly follow the tanker for a reason as stupid as "durr... he's the tanker tho!" then you have to slow it all down. And if they want to die in front of me rather than behind me... that's at least more easily blamed on them than on me. Stilll, I wouldn't trade it for a 54 Incarnate team running normal content where it literally doesn't matter how anyone plays because it might as well be eight people soloing together. Dealing with the way each team wants to operate in the middle levels is at least interesting, even when it goes a little (or a lot) wrong.

Frankly people will bitch at you even if it IS just 1 or 2 leftovers. Nevermind it's the whole team who left those same couple half dead bosses to kill a lone blaster. It'll still be the tanker's (unpaid) job to have fully wiped their ass for them. Best thing to do here is adjust. If the team can't be trusted to finish off a couple half dead bosses then don't trust them. If they wanna go slow. Go slow. It would be better if you could tee up the next spawn a few seconds early, but if the team isn't cooperating, you can't make them. And talking it over never goes well because people get all into their "you can't tell me what to do!" feels about it.

That's just team buffing... with money. 🤪

Moving doesn't really prevent or even reduce the chance of an enemy targeting you. If you manage to make it to the top of their aggro list, they will know your position and try to attack you no matter how you are moving. You can combat teleport around the battlefield and they will never lose sight of you. It might help avoid melee attackers a little by, essentially, kiting them around until someone else grabs them... but that's about it. Your advice about staying away from melee attackers if you are primarily ranged yourself, covers this. I would add that something I see often on teams when I am tanking is people are off away from the main fight with one difficult enemy and they are dying. It might be all the way down some long hall. Maybe a Freak who rezzed from the last fight or a runner from the current fight. Folks... there is no law you gotta fight an enemy where THEY want! If the team has moved up, bring that rezzer/runner/left-over with you to the team. Drag it across a buddy's tar patch / Ice slick / Bonfire or near a Tanker's taunt aura. I sometimes see people complain about being "left behind" to "clean up the mess". Except nobody is making you stay behind but you. Move up and bring that stuff with you! It's not any one person's "job" to clean the map. That's the team's job. In general, teams should try to stick together. If nobody designates a point person, it usually falls to whatever the toughest melee toon on the team is. Assuming the team even needs that. Not every team does. Low to mid-level teams it is more common (though never required in all cases). Higher level teams are rarely challenged in that respect. But... if you'd like someone else to lead the team along, say so. Otherwise PuG teams will default to the above. It's not a bad idea to hash this out before the mission starts or if there are new members. Takes just a line or two of chat and then you're off to the races.

Most people use inspirations in emergencies. They are about to run out of endurance or health. They got mezzed. They got defeated. Etc. As such they pile up and people forget they even have an insp tray until something goes wrong. I'm sure it's more optimal to keep converting and at least chewing reds like farmers do. But it's extra work. And farmers are in a controlled environment where they aren't worried about surprises. Missions team players should keep an array of different insps to use in different situations. As for gifting inspirations, I only do this when I see someone using them a lot. Good example is a team with a low-level Tanker or Brute getting a lot of the aggro and struggling with it. Pass them Luck or Sturdy, depending on what Primary armor set they are playing. Or you're playing someone with great endurance, recovery, and drain resistance... and you're in a Freaks mission. You can see everyone's endurance bars in the team window. Look who is having trouble and hand over blues. They are probably eating them like candy and should have open tray spots.

I'll be using the Bulgaria reaction only when it is appropriate!

Not the one!

They never made it out of that hospital in Night Ward either. It's not looking good this time!

A.K.A. The "Dinner Bell". Come and get some, losers! That one is hard to beat. Battle Axe without a shield is cool too, but I almost never see it because I am too busy to let it play tossing that Axe back and forth from hand to hand.

Me too. I'd remind that the post of mine you're quoting is about WHEN to take Taunt, not IF. I don't consider the question of taking Taunt pre-20 so I have it in Posi TF vs. something more like level 22 or 24 where I have it in pretty much every other piece of content I choose to run from then on... to be all that earth-shattering a decision that it needs so much discussion. I suppose someone else who just loves running and re-running Posi 1&2 might have a different opinion and that's fine. But to me it's just not that big a deal for a few low-level TFs where nobody really has all the powers they'd like to have anyway. As I said, I have Tanks that take it pre-20 and others that don't. It's really just about weighing each power choice at each level and deciding which I'd prefer. Battle Axe, for example, has three single-target attacks for it's first three tiers. Who needs three? On top of which, that gives me nothing until Pendulum comes along at 20 to help punch-voke larger groups. Just the ST pokes that taunt 5 around the target. Staff, on the other hand, has one of two ST attacks I am forced to take at creation but then very nice wide AoE cone that assists punch-voke in controlling mobs, does decent damage, and adds defense. Then a 15ft radius PBAoE at 16. I don't skip those in the first 20 levels so I can fit in Taunt. There are other powers I could move to squeeze in Taunt in that level range but... why do I care? I am running Posi 1&2 once and that's that. I don't love it. Nor do I love running with half or less of my powers available. But the point is, whether I've taken it or not, that one Posi 1&2 and anything else I choose to run at that level goes just fine. It's not a terribly challenging stretch of levels to begin with. Nor does it last long.

Nah, it works fine. Controlling aggro without Taunt is possible. It's just more effort. You have to hustle around more to melee taunt stuff instead of being able to stay put and just yell at it. It's perfectly possible to do though in the lowest level TFs/Trials, particularly when I am not going to be running that content more than once on a given toon. And sometimes I can fit Taunt in before 20. Sometimes not. Depends what powers are available. Some sets have some powers I consider much more valuable in the low levels. Others don't. If you see Tanks not controlling aggro well, it's more than likely not their power selection that's the problem. It's their play. They're just not making aggro control a priority. They might be getting tunnel-vision on a few mobs in front of them and not "keeping their head on a swivel" as they say so they can intervene to cut off aggro that might be heading over to eviscerate a Blaster, for example.

I'm not quite THAT strict 🙂. Level 8-16 TFs and Trials aren't a great judge of anyone's build. You've got anywhere from 6 to 12 powers total depending what level you are when running it, so those are all difficult choices. Prioritizing survival over a ranged Taunt isn't necessarily a bad choice. Taunt auras and attacks together can do more to control aggro than Taunt at such a low level while also contributing some damage to the team. You just won't have that nice ranged grab ability for strays. I might have Taunt pre-20 but often I don't. I'll have it for everything after the lowest level TFs and Trials, which suits me fine because I prefer to do those only once for the badge. Don't enjoy having so few powers and the content isn't all that interesting either so I have little reason to revisit those later. I think where people get in trouble with aura taunts is forgetting they pulse rather slowly. Like once a second or even once every 2 seconds. So running through a group of enemies really only taunts some of them with the aura. The others are just aggroed and can easily be pulled away by anyone else attacking. This means you can't just dash out with CT or CJ and aura taunt something quickly. Depending on powerset it can be 1-2 seconds just to get the taunt to land once you're standing next to them. Might be quicker even to use an AoE, though many of those can be just as slow. What auras are really best at is keeping stuff you have collected around you glued to you. That's done by layering attacks on them while they are taunted by the aura. That builds threat very quickly and frees up Taunt to be always ready for a ranged grab.

Kidding aside... I would. Travel time isn't any sort of meaningful game balance thing. It just takes up your time. The other stuff is the meat and potatoes of an old-school run. I tried this a while back for a little bit. I got into the 20s as I recall. That was enough.

You used to have to take it as a power pick though right? I would say you need the two picks in Teleport Pool and then take something like Team Teleport as a stand-in for LRT. Then you can use the prestige LRT. *bangs gavel*

I don't think this is true. Everything has a time cost. Per CoD, Combat Teleport is just slightly under 1 second ArcanaTime. That's fast, to be sure, but BAMFing out, doing something to taunt those enemies, and then zipping back will still cost you at least 3 seconds, if not more. It might feel fast, but it isn't nearly as fast as activating a single 2 sec animation power. There's also nothing else you have access to that's as powerful a taunt. Punch-voke and auras are ~14-15 sec duration. Taunt is 41 sec. And with taunt effects, weirdly, duration also affects how strongly the taunt magnifies your threat for that mob. A single pulse of a taunt aura is relatively weak if you don't follow it up with attacks. Re: the 5 target cap: While obviously a larger target cap is always better, I've rarely had a case where it mattered in practice. The aggro limit is 17. I typically open with whatever largest AoE I have available aimed at the largest concentration of enemies in a spawn that I can hit at once. After that, there usually aren't more than a handful of enemies I can add to the total and the odds they will all be conveniently bunched together some distance away such that a 10 cap or 16 cap Taunt could hit them all at once is even less likely. Loose arrangements of mobs such as you have in Praetorian lab/underground maps can't be solved by Taunt OR by CT really. You can run around aggroing mobs but those particular mob types (Clockwork, Resistance, and Police) have so many long range attacks even Taunt doesn't convince them to close the distance with you. Fold Space or herding to a corner is about the only option there if you want a nice tidy bunched up group. And few teams have the patience for herding anymore. I would encourage you to take Taunt on a test drive. We can natter on at you extolling its virtues from our own tanking experience, but judging for yourself is always best. It is most definitely not a need, but it does have value. Whether that value exceeds another choice (e.g. Tactics in your case, it sounds like) is not something anyone else can tell you. And respecs are cheap and plentiful. The key here is you're not giving up CT or using your AoEs to taunt either. You do all that stuff same as before. Taunt is just one more tool in the toolbox to be used when the situation calls for it. I often find it useful for grabbing stray enemies running around on the outskirts of the fight. Ranged attacks are good for that too, don't forget. They just aren't as reliable since they don't autohit and they don't range debuff. But I've even used Nemesis Staff if I have multiple runners on different sides of a fight. Taunt one. Nem Staff the other. On a tanker, even a single target attack is a 10ft radius, 5 target taunt around the main target. One of my tankers has laser beam eyes. A very mediocre ranged attack but I love the visual and it communicates to the team that I am aware of the strays and trying to control them. Obviously teleporting all over the battlefield does that too, so if you're not overly concerned with the time that is taking or with the mobs that might be chasing you around, then yeah, you might never use Taunt.

This will be the case no matter how you grab aggro. Exceeding the limit can cause other mobs to fall off you and attack someone else. If you leave the pack to go punch-voke or aura taunt some other group, you may lose some of the ones you had already. Taunt is going to cost you just under 2 seconds to range taunt up to 5 mobs, autohit, in a 22.5 ft radius AoE. And it will be ready to do that again in another 3-4 seconds probably with a single recharge IO and your global recharge and needing no other slotting at all. I would honestly give up a travel power before I gave up Taunt on my tanks, but that's me. It's certainly possible to control aggro without it. Just less well. In my experience, there is always loose aggro running around and grabbing it is faster, easier, and more reliable with Taunt than leaving a nicely packed bunch of enemies you are already showing the AoE love to try and corral all that wandering stuff up close and personal. It's also a heck of a lot nicer when your friendly neighborhood controller and unhelfully glued all the enemies to the floor such that they CAN'T reach you. Two seconds out of some attack rotation I am doing to refresh a ranged taunt is a lot less lost DPS than me hopping or BAMFing around refreshing shorter duration aura/punch-voke taunts.

Hahahaha! Snarky you're such a... no wait... I've done that too. Nevermind.

I seriously did. I just think you're being ridiculous about mission teams. Nobody gives a shit about the end of arc rewards. I've been on plenty of mission teams in that level range. Most common ones are MJ and Tina Mac in Peregrine but you could run any of them there or in RWZ and probably fill a team easy. People will come and go. They won't be with you the entire arc, most likely. It'll basically be just like your soloing binges, just with people around you. You'll be 50 in no time just doing that with 2xp on.

Generally all Stalker AoEs, including ones from pool powers, have a 50% chance to crit from Hide. There are a few exceptions like Lightning Rod and Shield Charge which, because of how they are implemented, don't crit at all... but also don't break Hide. Dual Blade combo finishers do not crit. Neither do other sets that feature combo builder/finisher type bonus damage. Each attack in the combo can crit in or out of Hide based on the Stalker AT's normal mechanics, but the finisher itself is not a separate attack. It's just a bonus power effect that does some stuff, like damage or other effects. If you're unsure and want to find out for yourself, City of Data is the best resource. For example, look up Stakler->Dual Blades->Ablating Strike. You can see in the effects list where it checks if you have the right combo level and then executes the sweep bonus if you do. That sweep bonus does damage but does not do additional damage if the Stalker is Hidden. Ablating Strike itself can stealth crit though, as can any of the other powers in the combo chain leading up to it.

I didn't say that but you're welcome anyway, buddy! You say there's no content but this is only because apparently you've decided you want to run only task forces and then only ones that DON'T go up to 50. So yeah, given those parameters, there's nothing for you to do. Can I have your stuff?

Possibly, though I'd expect any SG to have at minimum all the teleporters and NPCs in a base. But there's always one of the publicly available SG base codes one could use, I suppose.

The most common missions teams are PI radios and nobody is getting arc rewards for that. It's not something many people really care about. Contact mission teams are less common, but people do run them. Admittedly, almost never redside and just about literally never goldside. But blueside you will see people run them. Just not as often as radios. For TFs, I don't get the problem. There's a number you can run at max 40 and you get XP for them just fine if you are above that. Nice thing about them is nobody can whine at you about passing the star to a 50. You'll have the best luck with Numina probably since people run it for Task Force Commander. Less so with Sutter, which is a shame. I really like that TF. Kal seems to get run a lot but probably because it's so quick. Ice Mistral less so but has a nice last mission if you can get everyone to agree to a "kill through" instead of speeding to the bottom of the cavern.