What AT is best for tanking multiple groups? 'cause "Tank" ain't it.

[Seed22]

26 minutes ago, Snarky said:

reading for comprehension is important. 

 

see i read your sentence "huh..? you are willing to bet your fire/fire blaster will blow doors off any toon i gots...and you can clean a few hundred faster than what, a tank..?"

 

and i says to myself, he did not understand reading my message "unless you also have a fire fire blaster.  even then, against..." because he says "faster than wat, a tank"

 

now, i have quoted 3 conversations.  and i am fairly sure you did not follow at least two of them first read.  i do encourage you to keep trying.  i hold out little hope however.

 

Would you mind posting this fire blaster’s build? I mean, I’m not interested in copying it I already have mine and its solid for HM 4 but this is too funny.

 

Let’s see this amazing fire blaster

[kryori]

3 hours ago, Sovera said:

 

Based on our conversation I think you'd like to play a Plant whatever. Controller if you want further buffing the team, Dominator if you want to do damage instead. All because Plant has an absurdly OP power in Seeds of Confusion that can be made to recharge in 15-20 seconds and that basically CCs a whole group. AND it's available at level 8 😛

 

I'll have to give this one some thought - my primary corrupter is rad/kin and my primary dominator is plant/psy so I've played the sets individually, but both my Ice/Kin controller and my Fire/Kin controller got shelved shortly after 50 for being boring to play and "win more" sorts of characters - they don't feel like they can make a bad team viable the way rad/kin or plant/psy can.  Getting all of the non-boss spawns entirely off the agro table while letting the team crutch SB + Fulcrum for end/damage might be enough to make a Controller feel worthwhile, though, especially if I can get some damage in the epic pool.

[Snarky]

22 minutes ago, Seed22 said:

Would you mind posting this fire blaster’s build? I mean, I’m not interested in copying it I already have mine and its solid for HM 4 but this is too funny.

 

Let’s see this amazing fire blaster

 

Blaster (Fire Blast - Fire Manipulation) 2024 v 2.01.mbd

[Sovera]

20 minutes ago, kryori said:

 

I'll have to give this one some thought - my primary corrupter is rad/kin and my primary dominator is plant/psy so I've played the sets individually, but both my Ice/Kin controller and my Fire/Kin controller got shelved shortly after 50 for being boring to play and "win more" sorts of characters - they don't feel like they can make a bad team viable the way rad/kin or plant/psy can.  Getting all of the non-boss spawns entirely off the agro table while letting the team crutch SB + Fulcrum for end/damage might be enough to make a Controller feel worthwhile, though, especially if I can get some damage in the epic pool.

 

I can't stand Controllers myself even when I teamed which I don't anymore. Plant has nice things but mainly lives and dies by Seeds. And since Seeds is always available and a whole spawn is neutered by a single click you can just focus on the busy Kin with buffing and debuffing. Plus Seeds will make coming close to FS much safer.

[twozerofoxtrot]

4 hours ago, Sovera said:

You can extend this by an extra 5 with Taunt, which, apparently, ignores the limit (so I hear, I never pick it so I can't chime in).

 

Not quite, but it's easy to see why someone might tell you this. I've been doing a taunt cap dance for years farming on my main.

 

Taunt puts the (up to) 5 targets hit at the top of your threat roster or whatever the technical term is. So if you're tanking 4/8, sitting in a pile of 17 enemies you're crushing in melee, and a patrol walks by and you taunt 5 of them, they'll bump 5 melee enemies off your cap.

 

Now, those 5 in melee don't just walk away. Within a second they'll be taunted again by your auras. So they'll juggle their place in your threat roster with some other enemies. Meanwhile those 5 you taunted had their range debufffed so they're closing in.

 

In the pre-pg5 threat changes, the mobs would sort of stutter for a second and do nothing. Since then, they'll stay put and try to use whatever ranged attack they have. Either way, you're probably reducing them to exp dust so fast you don't even notice.

 

How this matters is that if you're mobile, you can potentially lose the enemies who fell off your roster when you taunt, because your auras aren't threatening them anymore and they go into a sort of "wait" mode until you've killed enough that you're not at cap. Once they actually can get on your threat roster again and presuming you're not out of their perception range, they'll come charging back at you.

 

All of this changes slightly though if you have teammates that are pulling threat from those mobs that dropped off your threat roster when you taunted. Then the facade of "raising your agro cap" completely fades since the AI has something else it can orient on and run through its options with.

 

 

Edited May 11 by twozerofoxtrot

[Songseven]

1 hour ago, Snarky said:

and i am fairly sure you did not follow at least two of them first read

 

nope, wrong...

 

i haven't followed any of the conversations, because i have no clue what you are trying to say,

 

 drop the attitude, and the petty insults, articulate yourself a little more intelligently and with some respect.

 

 you're coming off like an asshole, and its just kinda sad,

 

i have no idea why you are talking about fire/fire blasters...lol

[Neiska]

I am surprised I have not seen any mention of a different answer. For those unaware, pets also have their own aggro tables. So if you are referring to who can actively engage the most enemies at a time, its a Mastermind, or other pet class. I even made an entire post about MM "en masse" style of farming. The TLDR is that each pet can aggro "around" 6 mobs each. This is in addition to the 12 mobs the mastermind themselves can engage. So, 6 pets at 6 enemies each, that's 36 mobs. Plus the 12 for the mastermind, is 48 mobs. In theory. I 3 box Masterminds and farm using this principle. And what actually happens is I engage all the enemies capable of being rendered at the time. And I know this because I see different groups of mobs being rendered on my different MMs. (One MM will see a pack where the other two will not, and they will both see other packs the first will not, and so on.) Essentially, 3 masterminds can fight more mobs than the game can place in front of you at a time. When some die off, more suddenly appear where there were not any before. But hey, self-pulling mobs I consider a pleasant surprise.

 

Now, my damage per mob is nowhere near a brutes, but I engage so much more of the map at once that its still a fast farm. Simply because where the brute is fighting 12, I am fighting 40+. I quite regularly pull nearly the entire moon map at once, save for 3-4 straggler groups. It takes me longer to hunt down stragglers and chip away at running EB's than it does to bulldoze the map. So, even if I am doing only 1/4th of the damage the brute is, I am "still" ahead, when considering the map as a whole.

 

So, you want to fight the most mobs at a time? Try a Mastermind. The question then becomes, how do you and the pets survive it?

Edited May 11 by Neiska

[kryori]

10 minutes ago, Neiska said:

The TLDR is that each pet can aggro "around" 6 mobs each. This is in addition to the 12 mobs the mastermind themselves can engage. So, 6 pets at 6 enemies each, that's 36 mobs. Plus the 12 for the mastermind, is 48 mobs. In theory.

 

Okay, and that sounds excellent, but in testing with my Bot/Time and Demon/Dark MMs, it seems damn near impossible to get them to do anything as far as controlling targets when a player so much as brushes past the thing they're hitting with a damage aura running or grazes them with a rain of fire/water/etc.  Is there a way to cause your minions to consistently draw agro off other players, or does this only work in a solo AE farming environment?

[Neiska]

1 minute ago, kryori said:

 

Okay, and that sounds excellent, but in testing with my Bot/Time and Demon/Dark MMs, it seems damn near impossible to get them to do anything as far as controlling targets when a player so much as brushes past the thing they're hitting with a damage aura running or grazes them with a rain of fire/water/etc.  Is there a way to cause your minions to consistently draw agro off other players, or does this only work in a solo AE farming environment?

 

Entirely solo. I have soloed missions and TFs before, but it was entirely all me where I could control the flow. I have never multiboxed MMs in a pug/other player environment that was not an AE situation. Other people have jumped in and helped, but honestly its just one giant ball of enemies taking damage that who actually has aggro on which mob is largely irrelevant, so long as everyone involved (enemies and allies alike) are clustered togeather in range of buffs/debuffs/heals. And pets have the same caps as tankers do - can still softcap defenses, and get 90% resistance. So the question of if a pet has the aggro, or the tanker does, really doesn't matter anyway.

 

I do wish to add that I would consider multiboxing MMs in a pug environment a bit of a Faux Pas. Even when controlling the flow by myself, it's difficult and challenging to do, without other people also doing their thing. Not to mention it would likely frighten most pulling so many at a time. Most people simply do not play that way. But I play on Everlasting if you wish to see it in action sometime.

[kryori]

Well I'm glad that's working out for you, but it doesn't help much to have a greater ability to tank for nobody.  If you're solo literally anything will keep all the agro off your team.

[Songseven]

3 hours ago, Seed22 said:

Let’s see this amazing fire blaster

 

it sure is ummm something, quick glance gave me a good chuckle..

[lemming]

3 hours ago, Snarky said:

 

Blaster (Fire Blast - Fire Manipulation) 2024 v 2.01.mbd 43.23 kB · 11 downloads

Hey, my fire/fire/fire blaster has a few powers slotted exactly the same!   (Mostly different)  I need to run her thru some other content some more. 

[Songseven]

48 minutes ago, lemming said:

has a few powers slotted exactly the same!  

 

its an interesting build, no FS/FSC, yet woah! many offensives, multiple 6slotted that achieve nada...no gaussians, sheild wall/reactive/unbreakable guard/absorb proc,

 

..actually took Stealth pool which has a far superior and easier alternative,

 

not impressed at all Snark, you surviving off foodstamps or something lol

[Snarky]

1 hour ago, lemming said:

Hey, my fire/fire/fire blaster has a few powers slotted exactly the same!   (Mostly different)  I need to run her thru some other content some more. 

I mostly run it for lulz with a couple Supergrouos I discord with.  It is a solid damage dealer, of course.  I play a lot of “standard” 50 content but not a ton of started content.  If I remember correctly this one has been in 1 star LGTF and both 1 and 2 star ITF.  It is a shock and awe damage dealer that I play aggressively and dont over rely on ROTP. But it is great to have lol. Most of my Blasters are built for range.  But this one is built for damage.  Incarnate picks are Alpha Musculature +45%, Interface Reactive 75% chance damage, and Hybrid Assault with the double strike for immediate energy damage. It is all about making the first punch be the last punch. 

[Snarky]

5 minutes ago, Songseven said:

 

its an interesting build, no FS/FSC, yet woah! many offensives, multiple 6slotted that achieve nada...no gaussians, sheild wall/reactive/unbreakable guard/absorb proc,

 

..actually took Stealth pool which has a far superior and easier alternative,

 

not impressed at all Snark, you surviving off foodstamps or something lol

Easy solution. Do not play it.  Get yourself one with all that armor. Enjoy

[Songseven]

32 minutes ago, Snarky said:

Easy solution. Do not play it.  Get yourself one with all that armor. Enjoy

 

now, now...just offering some constructive feedback, if you would like to improve on it, just message me in game sometime..👺

[Snarky]

14 minutes ago, Songseven said:

 

now, now...just offering some constructive feedback, if you would like to improve on it, just message me in game sometime..👺

I am unfamiliar with you.  You alternate between not understanding me (or pretending not to) pivoting to advising me on gentlemen like behavior pivoting to dislike of my Fire Blaster build.  Simply put, in the short time I have come to know you I have found absolutely nothing amusing. 
 

What in the name of all the gods makes you think I would 1) want to have an in game discussion with you 2) would want your “secret understanding” of how to build a Fire Blaster?   
 

I do enjoy seeing someone with such a big ego however. 

Edited May 11 by Snarky

[Maelwys]

6 hours ago, twozerofoxtrot said:

Taunt puts the (up to) 5 targets hit at the top of your threat roster or whatever the technical term is. So if you're tanking 4/8, sitting in a pile of 17 enemies you're crushing in melee, and a patrol walks by and you taunt 5 of them, they'll bump 5 melee enemies off your cap.

 

Now, those 5 in melee don't just walk away. Within a second they'll be taunted again by your auras. So they'll juggle their place in your threat roster with some other enemies. Meanwhile those 5 you taunted had their range debufffed so they're closing in.

I remember a series of tests being done a very long time ago on taunt/aggro mechanics on the original live UK forums.

The short version is that back then taunt was considered a binary on/off switch - either something was taunted or it wasn't - but these tests flipped that to show that in fact Taunt worked as an extremely high Mag "mez"; and the duration of a taunt effect dictated who actually ended up at the top of the foe's threat list. If multiple tanks were taunting the same enemy then the longest duration taunt effect won.

The aggro cap was part of these tests, and from what I recall "Taunt Duration" won out once again - mobs possessing the longest duration taunt you've inflicted would always sit at the top of the (capped) list of things aggroed on you. This meant that someone at the aggro cap could still continue to inflict taunt effects on as many enemies as they like; but foes beyond the cap will ignore the existence of these taunt effects until the inflicter dropped below the aggro cap again. Therefore there was/is some benefit to slotting for taunt duration and continuing to pummel away at enemies as fast as possible - since any foes that die and drop off your aggro cap will "free up space" - allowing any extra mobs that possess taunt effects that you've previously inflicted to be drawn back to you again (potentially suddenly ignoring the presence of squishies in the process). In practice these days that might make a bit of a difference if a team attacks several groups at the same time and whittles down the minions/lts quickly - if the bosses/EBs are still affected by a lingering-but-previously-ignored taunt effect then they'll snap back to the tanker without the tanker actually having to manually provoke them again.
 

[Songseven]

12 hours ago, Snarky said:

My Fire Fire Blaster will blow the doors off any toon you got, unless you also have a fire fire blaster.  even then, against large spawns, i bet I could clean a few hundred faster.  

3 hours ago, Snarky said:

I do enjoy seeing someone with such a big ego however. 

[Sanguinesun]

17 hours ago, kryori said:

I'm curious to see what sorts of solutions people have come up with for handling multiple packs and which ATs work best for dealing with agro cap problems.

 

I'm returning after 5ish years, and it looks to me like the threat cap has been clamped way down on Homecoming.  This keeps a tank from holding threat on more than 16 targets, taunts or no taunts.  In an 8 player TF/SF this means it only takes one extra pack to have problems a tank can't solve with agro on the healer, on anyone who used a rain power, etc.

 

That makes my tanks feel about as useful as a brute or scrapper in most situations- if you're just there to get your face smashed by the EB/AV during the period where they can't be controlled, you don't need the overkill levels of defense and resistance that tanks trade damage for.

 

I'm not sure how best to handle this as an individual who wants to defuse alpha strikes and manage agro as a primary role in a team.  It seems like the best plan is to eschew something like a Invuln/SS Tank for a Spines/Fire Brute, because burning down all the minions gives you more space in your agro cap to actually tank the boss/lt mobs and occasional EBs.

 

I've also been eyeing Mastermind sets and considering soaking the alpha in bodyguard mode, then letting agro fall where it may and hoping that 6 extra bodies are enough to soak up stray attention while I focus on support.

 

The best option seems to be relying on Confuse, which avoids the agro cap by having enemies agro one another rather than a tank, but reliable AOE Confuse powers seem limited to Plant, Mind, and maybe Arsenal control sets.  That means playing a Dom or Controller, which can't soak an alpha strike themselves - you get a 'sleep it first' playstyle that feels awful in group content.  If I could get a solid AOE confuse on a MM that would be ideal but I don't see a way to do that.

 

Has anyone had success in keeping all the fire off the squishies?  What approach, and what AT, worked best for you?

 

 

From reading your initial post here and as well the other posts from you in the thread, I think, over all, your wants do not match the reality of the dev/player council wants for the game as it stands.   Yes. aggro is capped. Yes control is limited and limited within specific power sets etc.  It is intentional that everything isnt to be focused centrally on the tank or capable of being locked down wholly either.  Years ago on HC when they changed the AI of the mobs in addition to the aggro cap considerations to where anything more than 16 will  start targeting others in a group and some other AI things they were changed to do in these regards.

 

Only other thing that others havent mentioned is opting to go into the hybrid  incarnate Control Radial Embodiment for its application of an immobilze fear and if both already on a target a 100% chance to disorient when you're using most damaging attacks.  This still though isnt going to handle everything and certainly this would only help post 50 level toons too of course(meaning most of the group dynmaics of teams leveling up would not have this applicable.) and of course this would also perhaps not match with other goals for a tanking toon.

 

All in all, I understand your frustrations on this but Homecoming(as opposed to say some other  non current licensed CoH servers) has a pretty specific view on all of this in the name of challenge as they feel it should be.

[Uun]

17 hours ago, kryori said:

I'm returning after 5ish years, and it looks to me like the threat cap has been clamped way down on Homecoming.  This keeps a tank from holding threat on more than 16 targets, taunts or no taunts. 

The aggro cap was set at 17 in Issue 6 (2005). It hasn't been changed by HC.

[Sanguinesun]

2 minutes ago, Uun said:

The aggro cap was set at 17 in Issue 6 (2005). It hasn't been changed by HC.

 

What was changed as the way the AI handles the cap vs how it previously was done once cap was reached.  That was impemented by HC servers 2 going on 3 years ago. Additionally at the time, power ability radius was changed for some powers for tanks, damage increased, brute's nerfing etc all at the same time.

 

Edited May 11 by Sanguinesun

[Ukase]

This is just anecdotal experience. 
Yes, there's a taunt cap of 16. But...the game doesn't care which 16. 
If the blaster on your team, or defender or whatever is in over their heads from a boss tank smacking them on the noggin, you simply taunt that tank. If the teammate in question isn't firing at them, they will turn around and come to you, allowing your teammate to back up, maybe use an insp and get "balanced' or "reset"- - whatever term folks are using now to be ready for battle. Yes, by doing that, you've lost aggro from at least one other npc. Don't worry, they'll die soon enough. 

I mean, for me, that's it really. Just a faster recharge on taunt. As a blaster, there's nothing better than teaming with a tank. I don't need the heals or the buffs if there's a tank. They really don't even have to do anything, as long as I can just run by them as I'm running for my life from the +4 boss or lieut. (on those occasions that I can't just dispatch them myself for whatever reason)

I understand the desire for efficiency in aggroing multiple groups. With the AoE some teams have, it's usually a non-issue. Some teams however will struggle. And, as stated, this is how they learn. It's how I learned. 

[Scarlet Shocker]

14 hours ago, Snarky said:

I love Hyperbole.  But once we get into the "do you think I am stupid" range it starts to get up on my nerve.

 

I've always found Hyperbole very underwhelming. In fact on many toons I usually skip it, since it almost always fails to do what I want it to. It promises so much, and delivers so little, especially on the ATs that do damage.

[Ironblade]

15 hours ago, kryori said:

For what it's worth, I'm not saying that tanks can't manage agro.  I'm saying that they can't manage agro any better than an AT with better damage.

I think we need to clarify what you mean by "manage aggro".

You can't control more than 16 targets at once.  That's just how the game is designed.

 

HOWEVER, you absolutely can have complete control over one or a small number of elite bosses, archvillains, giant monsters, whatever.  When I'm tanking, I can keep the AV or whatever from even looking at anyone else.  Can I control every minion in the area?  No, and I don't care and I don't need to.  Any team should be able to handle some minions.  The tank's job is to manage the enemies that can one-shot people or throw an AoE that devastates half the team.