Buff Provoke

[Vanden]

Back before shutdown I had a Mastermind who used Challenge from the Presence pool to keep boss aggro on him and off the pets. I've now tried this strategy again for the first time since Homecoming launched, and oops, Challenge is gone now, and Provoke is the only option. Unfortunately, Provoke sucks for this, because its duration is way lower than Challenge's was*. It's not even a permanent taunt on even-level enemies out of the box. Under Article 1 Heading 4 Subsection 3 of the Cottage Rule, this constitutes a loss of functionality caused by the change of Challenge to Pacify.

 

I propose this be rectified by doubling the duration of the taunt from Provoke on the primary target, while the duration of the taunt on additional targets in the AoE be unchanged.

 

*or its recharge is way longer? can't remember

Edited March 27, 2023 by Vanden

[Rudra]

Article 1 Heading 4 Subsection 3 of the Cottage Rule. I like that.

Anyways, I'm actually for the OP. I use Provoke on a few of my characters too. If it had better duration, that would be nice.

[Psyonico]

You've got my vote.

[Major_Decoy]

2 hours ago, Vanden said:

Provoke sucks

Provoke used to be "mandatory" for tanks. At launch Taunt was single target so if you wanted to get everyone's attention, you grabbed provoke, because it was AoE.

 

There was a big movement that a power pool pick shouldn't be required to do your job and that a secondary power shouldn't be weaker than a pool power.

 

So Taunt was changed to an AoE and Provoke was changed to require a to-hit roll in PVE.

 

Since then a lot of changes have been made to the game and Taunt in particular. Taunt now has a range debuff.

 

I think it'd be within reason to change Provoke to be identical to Taunt except without the range debuff.

[TheZag]

Seeing how i was churning and bubbling a presence pool rework but still havent gotten around to suggesting it,  yes,  i would like provoke to suck less.  I hate the fact that a click power is weaker than an inherent as well.  I made a sentinel tank (tankinel) and even if i click provoke first,  as soon as the tank or brute land a punch,  i have no agro at all.  I play tanks alot and i even think that a click power (provoke) should be more powerful than an auto ability (gauntlet) for the duration.

 

 

[honoroit]

i want the pbaoe fear 'inspire panic' to be available as a second choice... not to have to take placate. or a single target fear along with provoke.  scrappers gotta tank.

[SwitchFade]

Ironically, by asking for a buff to provoke you are attempting to provoke a buff...

[Uun]

The elimination of Challenge (it was replaced with Pacify) was part of I24 and was done by Paragon Studios, not the HC team.

[Luminara]

Critter AI has to be fixed before anything done to Provoke would matter.

[El D]

Agreed. Taunting from the Presence pool got pretty narrowed in scope so as to not to tread on the 'We're the aggro management/herding ATs' niche that Brutes and Tanks are promoted to occupy (and sometimes Scrappers, maybe). Which means it became that much less effective for any other AT who'd actually benefit from taking it and for Brutes and Tanks. It kind of seems like a highlight of the conceptual misalignment of power pools, which seems to have only become more exacerbated as the game has gone on. It's good that Homecoming made many of them more broadly applicable and useful overall and I understand the idea behind not wanting them to eclipse abilities from Primary or Secondary sets, but the powers themselves still need to be good enough to be worth picking up in the first place. With the advent of IOs, set bonuses, and Incarnate powers, if some Controller wants to have a Tanker taunt... Why not? The whole 'there's no set trinity of required options, play what you like' aspect of CoH should be something that power pools enhance, rather than backtrack on via underwhelming imitation.