Are we likely to see taunt get fixed in the near future?

[Meknomancer]

2 tf's as a tank, 3 single attacks-hit taunt and repeat vs av's. On both tf's the av's barely noticed me and decided the /elec scrap was a better option to hit. 2 different tanks. Dark/fire and elec/dark, its not like they don't have taunt auras in death shroud and lightning field. Chuck taunt in the attack chain and still get ignored. I think one of the av's actually spun round once to hit me but i'm sure that was after a built up attack chain and purely due to some dps and nothing to do with me actually taunting.

 

So we know it got broke some time back. Over 2 years i think it is now when posts were made. Are we going to see taunt get fixed?

Edited February 27, 2023 by Meknomancer
spelling

[Snarky]

Taunt is broken?  I use it on my Brutes, just because its funny.

 

My only significant Taunt story was a 2star new ITF about 3-4 months ago.  I was on my Dark/Invul Brute.  Just Bruting, we had a Tank.  Everything was great.  Until the final fight.  ROM just kept pounding that Tank into the ground.  Some sad shit.

 

So.... I jumped into the job.  Dark/Invul (Thank you Hyperstrike!) is one of the toughest all around Brutes out there.  I was able to Taunt and keep agro.  I did need one squishy (it was a Def or Corr) to help keep me up.  ROM is a nasty bit in a 2 Star.  But I was able lead the guy where the team wanted me to.  like pulling a bull by a nose ring. 

 

So.... Taunt is broken?  Hmmmm.  News to me.

 

Now I Brute/Tank on my Dark/Dark Corr.  Lean into a spawn with a mag 4 stun, tar patch, soul drain, nuke, Fear, and any that are still alive couldnt hit a wall with a machine gun.

[SeraphimKensai]

17 minutes ago, Snarky said:

Dark/Invul (Thank you Hyperstrike!) is one of the toughest all around Brutes out there.  I was able to Taunt and keep agro.  I did need one squishy (it was a Def or Corr) to help keep me up.

They make a little blue pill for that these days.

 

But if taunt is broken I guess I haven't really noticed it. I'm not opposed to taunt having a mag 5 taunt for PvE. Currently taunt, confront, and provoke all have a mag 4 taunt effect. By giving the taunt power an extra mag, it would help it with threat generation and agro control imo. That said I wouldn't change the mag in PvP as that's already balanced around the mag 4 effect.

[SwitchFade]

2 hours ago, Meknomancer said:

2 tf's as a tank, 3 single attacks-hit taunt and repeat vs av's. On both tf's the av's barely noticed me and decided the /elec scrap was a better option to hit. 2 different tanks. Dark/fire and elec/dark, its not like they don't have taunt auras in death shroud and lightning field. Chuck taunt in the attack chain and still get ignored. I think one of the av's actually spun round once to hit me but i'm sure that was after a built up attack chain and purely due to some dps and nothing to do with me actually taunting.

 

So we know it got broke some time back. Over 2 years i think it is now when posts were made. Are we going to see taunt get fixed?

Well, I do think threat was reworked, but on an invuln tank I rarely ever lose aggro to anything ..

 

I'll test tonight a bit.

[Veracor]

I haven't noticed anything wrong with threat since the fixes years ago and I do a lot of tanking.

 

Do you have your Taunt slotted?  Taunt needs to be slotted if you want it to reliably win over auras/gauntlet/damage, especially if you're fighting anything that is using the level 50 Praetorian entity classes such as iTrial mobs and "hard mode" AVs.  Also, some AVs do have at least a few attacks that disregard threat and target random people; don't confuse that with losing aggro.

 

Aura-wise, some sets like Ice Armor and Super Reflexes will pull extraordinary amount of aggro over other sets.  Others will inherently pull a bit more aggro than others such as Invuln and Willpower.  A few Scrapper sets have taunt auras as well, but their mags are lower so it's much harder for them to peel off of Tankers and Brutes unless they're spamming Confront and had aggro to begin with (to gain aggro, your combined threat must become twice the amount of the current target's threat).

[InvaderStych]

6 hours ago, Meknomancer said:

So we know it got broke some time back.

 

We do? If something broke it after early 2020, I don't recall hearing about it.

 

Can I get a link or a reference here?

 

The weirdest Taunt/Threat thing I've seen was on a 2* ITF where neither of the tanks on the team could not stop Rommy from deciding to chase my /SD scrapper every time I peeled off to take out a shield squid.

 

I think that was more because the two of them couldn't agree on where to pull Rommy to in the first place, and kept Taunt-dragging him back and forth between two spots until one of them got frustrated and quit.

Edited February 28, 2023 by InvaderStych

[TygerDarkstorm]

12 hours ago, Veracor said:

Aura-wise, some sets like Ice Armor and Super Reflexes will pull extraordinary amount of aggro over other sets. 

Ice's level of aggro-snagging is so crazy. I'm leveling a baby Ice/Claws Tanker and happened to be in a farm last night door-sitting (not my normal jam, but I need to make sure she's at a certain level for the theme team this weekend) and a stray mob came running through. I decided to see if I could take on this level 54 purple (to me) boss. The 50+ tank running the farm came back around to get this mob I could not effing hit off of me, and for the love of God I could not get this stupid Council dude to aggro back over to the actual level 50 tank from my level 17 Ice tank, lol. I'm like "I can't even hit you and this dude is pounding you and actually level 50 can't take my aggro!!!" xD xD xD

 

Edit: I forgot to mention that the level 50+ tank in this situation was a SR tanker.

 

Regarding the rest of the topic at hand... I had no idea taunt was broken? Other than some niche cases others have pointed out, taunt seems as if it's been working as intended.

Edited February 28, 2023 by TygerDarkstorm
Forgot something

[twozerofoxtrot]

4 hours ago, Veracor said:

Aura-wise, some sets like Ice Armor and Super Reflexes

 

I didn't know this about SR, is it documented why this is the case somewhere?

 

It's puzzling from a theoretical standpoint since it only gets the Gauntlet aura in Elude, as opposed to Ice (and Bio) which get Gauntlet/Fury Auras in two toggles.

[Veracor]

4 minutes ago, twozerofoxtrot said:

I didn't know this about SR, is it documented why this is the case somewhere?

 

It's puzzling from a theoretical standpoint since it only gets the Gauntlet aura in Elude, as opposed to Ice (and Bio) which get Gauntlet/Fury Auras in two toggles.

 

I'm not certain, but I believe the defense self-buff to the Tanker that Evasion provides is being considered a debuff on the enemy when the combat routine calculates the threat that is being applied.  Otherwise I have no idea why SR seems to be so sticky.  I believe this is also the case for Invuln but nowhere near as extreme.

 

Unfortunately SR Tankers are very rare to see in content so I haven't had much chance to compare aggro with them.  Super Reflexes might actually generate more threat than Ice Armor.

 

Also, Bio being a sticky armor set is a bit of a misconception.  Bio has a damage aura and a taunt aura, but the damage aura generates almost no threat (like most damage auras, actually, which is why Dark, Fiery, and Elec don't hold aggro by themselves very well) and the taunt aura's debuffs aren't considered particularly threatening to the AI.  What Bio having two auras does is grab the initial aggro up to twice as fast which is why people think it's a sticky set akin to Ice, but speaking from experience, the single-aura sets like Radiation, Shield, and Willpower that have other effects on their taunt auras will inherently generate more aggro than Bio (as will Invuln due to the aforementioned feature/bug).

[twozerofoxtrot]

That's really interesting @Veracor I appreciate the insights. It begs the question if something is going on that CoD isn't able to present for analysis.

 

As someone who used to do a lot of tanking on Invul before the threat changes came through I definitely noticed a change in how the set holds agro after but never thought it outperformed other sets. It was night and day really, but I attributed it all to SS's ability to generate threat rather than Invul. I'll have to play with that a bit.

 

As well as close the gap to 50 with my SR/SM tanker. Very curious if I can out taunt on the Aura alone (especially since I skipped Taunt to get to Unrelenting).

Edited February 28, 2023 by twozerofoxtrot

[Snarky]

8 hours ago, Veracor said:

Aura-wise, some sets like Ice Armor and Super Reflexes will pull extraordinary amount of aggro over other sets.  

I ran an Ice/Ice Tanker for a week or two in the Winter Holidays.  All the way through every TF/SF (in level order) and then Incarnate.  

 

INSANE ability to hold a room.  It's not a Tank!  It's a Controller with armor and health.  The thing can make every mob around it do one thing.  Attack the Tank.  Mind control.

[lemming]

Come to think of it, my Ice/Ice tanker holds agro like someone triple dogged dared the mobs to lick her.

 

I might need to check my SR tanker for agro checks.

[Luminara]

7 minutes ago, lemming said:

Come to think of it, my Ice/Ice tanker holds agro like someone triple dogged dared the mobs to lick her.

 

Narrator: @lemming created a slight breach of etiquette by skipping the triple dare and going right for the throat.

[Meknomancer]

8 hours ago, InvaderStych said:

 

We do? If something broke it after early 2020, I don't recall hearing about it.

 

Can I get a link or a reference here?

 

The weirdest Taunt/Threat thing I've seen was on a 2* ITF where neither of the tanks on the team could not stop Rommy from deciding to chase my /SD scrapper every time I peeled off to take out a shield squid.

 

I think that was more because the two of them couldn't agree on where to pull Rommy to in the first place, and kept Taunt-dragging him back and forth between two spots until one of them got frustrated and quit.

 

 

I mained a icex3 tanker on live. Hop in the mob, click taunt on anything, mob aggroed and everything thrown at me and that was it. Same icex3 on here can't hold an av if there's a high dps toon on it. I forgot where the original post was fortunately @Luminaraput in a post here and that reminded of their thread from way back when:

 

 

 

 

The only tank i haven't had an issue with so far has been an ancient bio/axe that runs a full set of mocking in taunt but seriously, how may of you actually slot taunt sets in taunt now? I looked through the forums theres not a single build that had anything except the chance for psi damage and about 80% of them skipped taunt altogether. I hear all sorts of stories of how 'I never had a problem on my invul tank holding aggro'. All i can say is it wasn't when i was playing my rad/sd scrap in the early days of HC and having to tank every av teams came across because the av would totally ignore the tank and pummel me instead. I miss the old days of having to do very little but hop into the mobs centre and click 1 button to hold all the aggro and not have to worry that the blaster pumping out dps from the back was going to pull it all off me. It seems like you have to work hard to hold that aggro now regardless of powersets. And yes, i have tried them all and the ones that work best aren't those i expected. Its the ones putting out massive damage which reminds me of Champions Online version of threat rather than CoH.

Edited February 28, 2023 by Meknomancer

[Uun]

Ice makes sense to me, since it's effectively got 2 taunt auras with Chilling Embrace and Icicles and also debuffs. Can't explain SR, since it has no powers that effect foes other than the taunt aura in Evasion. I've got a fully T4ed SR tank and while it doesn't have difficulty holding aggro, it doesn't seem to attract more aggro than my Dark or Fire tanks. 

[TygerDarkstorm]

7 hours ago, Veracor said:

 

I'm not certain, but I believe the defense self-buff to the Tanker that Evasion provides is being considered a debuff on the enemy when the combat routine calculates the threat that is being applied.  Otherwise I have no idea why SR seems to be so sticky.  I believe this is also the case for Invuln but nowhere near as extreme.

 

Unfortunately SR Tankers are very rare to see in content so I haven't had much chance to compare aggro with them.  Super Reflexes might actually generate more threat than Ice Armor.

Erm, as mentioned in my post, a kitted out level 50+ SR/ tank couldn't out-aggro my level 17 side-kicked Ice/ Tank

Edit: I realize I failed to mention what the 50 tank was and have since picked it in my first post.

Edited February 28, 2023 by TygerDarkstorm

[Arbegla]

Ice Armor also has debuffs with -rech and slow, which makes peeling mobs off them even harder, because the slows just well.. slow things down so much.

[ZemX]

So... Gauntlet does look pretty weird in City of Data:

 

Top level, this looks okay:

Grants the gauntlet proc power, adds the AoE radius, arc buffs, and then revokes the gauntlet proc (presumably after it's executed once?

 

But drilling into Inherents.Gauntlet_Proc, you see this:

CoD interprets the entire inherent taunt effects as "PVP Only" here.  (The black and white icon looking like a person).   Looking at the raw data though reveals the parent effect here is indeed tagged PVP_ONLY but the child is tagged "EITHER".   Does the game still execute the child effect?  The programmer in me says it shouldn't, but who knows how the game client works?  Anyway, the main effect here is a single taunt of the main target and the child effect taunts up to five more targets in a 10ft radius.  But if the main target is only taunted in PvP... then there's no punch-voke on the main target in PvE.

 

Would have to test this against someone doing more damage.  One attack each from say a Tanker and a Scrapper on a single target.  Does the scrapper end up with aggro?  Both would have to turn off any taunt and/or damage auras and the scrapper should use a heavier attack to overcome the Tanker's higher base threat level.

 

I have to say, the one place I've ever noticed punch-voke not seeming to work is during a DFB at low level.  But that could be because the gauntlet taunt duration is like 2 seconds at that level.  It's almost not there.  I could swear I was still seeing the AoE taunt visual effect go off (little white sparkle on the head of each affected enemy) when I punched something.  So it sure seems like it is working.  

Edited February 28, 2023 by ZemX

[Captain Fabulous]

1 hour ago, ZemX said:

So... Gauntlet does look pretty weird in City of Data:

 

Top level, this looks okay:

Grants the gauntlet proc power, adds the AoE radius, arc buffs, and then revokes the gauntlet proc (presumably after it's executed once?

 

But drilling into Inherents.Gauntlet_Proc, you see this:

CoD interprets the entire inherent taunt effects as "PVP Only" here.  (The black and white icon looking like a person).   Looking at the raw data though reveals the parent effect here is indeed tagged PVP_ONLY but the child is tagged "EITHER".   Does the game still execute the child effect?  The programmer in me says it shouldn't, but who knows how the game client works?  Anyway, the main effect here is a single taunt of the main target and the child effect taunts up to five more targets in a 10ft radius.  But if the main target is only taunted in PvP... then there's no punch-voke on the main target in PvE.

 

Would have to test this against someone doing more damage.  One attack each from say a Tanker and a Scrapper on a single target.  Does the scrapper end up with aggro?  Both would have to turn off any taunt and/or damage auras and the scrapper should use a heavier attack to overcome the Tanker's higher base threat level.

 

I have to say, the one place I've ever noticed punch-voke not seeming to work is during a DFB at low level.  But that could be because the gauntlet taunt duration is like 2 seconds at that level.  It's almost not there.  I could swear I was still seeing the AoE taunt visual effect go off (little white sparkle on the head of each affected enemy) when I punched something.  So it sure seems like it is working.  

I believe this is one of the rare cases where CoD doesn't correctly parse server data. This was explained in a recent post 

 

[ZemX]

31 minutes ago, Captain Fabulous said:

I believe this is one of the rare cases where CoD doesn't correctly parse server data. This was explained in a recent post 

 

Thanks for the link!  It's good to know this and it means one should not turn off PvP data in CoD.

 

I figured Gauntlet was working because it sure seems to in game.  It can sometimes be hard to tell in melee if one is also running a taunt aura whether you have aggro because of that or because of punch-voke or... both.  More obvious if you have a ranged attack.  Heck, I've even peeled aggro off people with Nem Staff. 

[RCU7115]

7 hours ago, Luminara said:

 

Narrator: @lemming created a slight breach of etiquette by skipping the triple dare and going right for the throat.

I think you meant to say "straight to the pole ."

[Luminara]

6 hours ago, Meknomancer said:

I mained a icex3 tanker on live. Hop in the mob, click taunt on anything, mob aggroed and everything thrown at me and that was it. Same icex3 on here can't hold an av if there's a high dps toon on it. I forgot where the original post was fortunately @Luminaraput in a post here and that reminded of their thread from way back when:

 

Oh, good, I don't have to excavate that myself.

For the record, I don't believe Taunts are the problem.  Critter scripting/AI is the problem.  Something changed on the original servers, and I commented on it as far back as Issue 16.  It wasn't the Threat calculation or factoring, because if it had been that, critters would've run as soon as they were Taunted.  Nor was it a change to the Taunt mechanic itself, I can't find any evidence of that ever being adjusted.  That only leaves scripting/AI.  At some point, Paragon did something to the scripts/AI which caused a massive change in critter behavior.  That's when the running away and strolling back at a leisurely pace shit started, and when Taunting stopped being reliable.

[Luminara]

1 hour ago, RCU7115 said:

I think you meant to say "straight to the pole ."

 

 

 

[Scarlet Shocker]

I don't really understand the central premise of the OP's post. He said taunt got broken without providing any evidence or even specifying what is actually wrong with taunt.

 

I'm new to tanks but I seem able to grab aggro ad maintain it. I don't have an issue unless the mob is exceptionally big or I move around too fast, which I think is pretty well as it should be. The idea that a tank could taunt a room, or worse still an entire map and let the rest of the team wail on the mobs was pretty borked in itself. I'm able to get the mob I'm interested in to want to slap me down (sometimes they even manage it) and let my team follow on and sort them out. I was once asked by a brute on a Lambda to stop taunting because he was keeping the Avi occupied and my taunt was preventing that.

 

I'm suggesting there's no significant issue with taunt currently.

[Meknomancer]

I'm saying its broke based on the last 3 years of play but your correct i don't have empirical evidence i can provide just the time spent on HC playing every day. Its not every single instance it just happened twice on the last 2 tf's when i happened to be running a tank and that was annoying enough, but for the first year playing i was running a lot of melee toons/toons that play in melee and any that put out significant dps (elec/kin corr, rad/sd scrap and a ton of others) would grab aggro off a lot of tanks in the teams i was in. Perhaps it is the critter ai and if they aren't within a specific distance of the taunter they simply aggro to whatevers next to it.

 

Too much experience of tanking and watching scrappers pull av aggro when i'm standing next to them taunting regardless of the sets i run tells me something isn't working the way it is supposed to.