Taunt Aura

[hakurr]

witch scrapper secondary power sets contain a taunt aura?

[Championess]

Bio has a real strong taunt aggro control between a few of those powers.  There's a few others like Shield, mostly the offensive defense sets.  There's a huge difference in passive taunt from Bio compared to all the other scrapper armors that have taunt.  If you're aiming for top aggro control while also being the best armor then Bio is your boo.

Edited Thursday at 11:55 PM by Championess

[hakurr]

thanks i mainly solo and wanted a scrapper that will possibly not have to chase everything all over the place

[SomeGuy]

Invincibility

Radiation Armor

Shield Defense

Bio Armor

Energy Aura (weak, but it is there)

Willpower

 

Am I forgetting any? Now I'm wondering if Dark Armor and Ice Armor have one. I can't remember.

Edited Friday at 04:56 AM by SomeGuy

[Wavicle]

23 minutes ago, SomeGuy said:

Am I forgetting any? Now I'm wondering if Dark Armor and Ice Armor have one. I can't remember.

No, you named them all.

[aethereal]

6 hours ago, Championess said:

Bio has a real strong taunt aggro control between a few of those powers.  There's a few others like Shield, mostly the offensive defense sets.  There's a huge difference in passive taunt from Bio compared to all the other scrapper armors that have taunt.  If you're aiming for top aggro control while also being the best armor then Bio is your boo.

Nope!

 

Bio, Invulnerability, Radiation, and Shield all provide the same level of taunt (13.6 seconds base pulsed every one second).

 

Energy Aura and Willpower provide a lower level of taunt (energy does 2.5 seconds of base taunt pulsed every 2 seconds, willpower does 1.25 seconds of taunt pulsed every second.  Both might provide gaps in taunting against higher level opponents if their taunt is not enhanced).

 

All scrapper taunt auras are mag 3.

Edited Friday at 06:37 AM by aethereal

[UltraAlt]

10 hours ago, hakurr said:

witch scrapper secondary power sets contain a taunt aura?

 

Any scrapper can get the presence power pool. https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Presence#Provoke

It isn't an aura, but it basically works like a tanker taunt without the threat magnitude of a tanker taunt.

 

[tidge]

5 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

 

Any scrapper can get the presence power pool. https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Presence#Provoke

It isn't an aura, but it basically works like a tanker taunt without the threat magnitude of a tanker taunt.

 

 

It's not precisely like a Tanker's Taunt, as the Presence pool powers are not auto-hits. Pacify might stop runners (also not auto-hit) like Placate will, but I haven't tested it... there are some small differences between those pool powers and the Primary/Secondary powers.

 

The best method for dealing with runners is IMO an Epic/Patron Snipe.

[Championess]

10 hours ago, aethereal said:

Nope!

 

Bio, Invulnerability, Radiation, and Shield all provide the same level of taunt (13.6 seconds base pulsed every one second).

 

Energy Aura and Willpower provide a lower level of taunt (energy does 2.5 seconds of base taunt pulsed every 2 seconds, willpower does 1.25 seconds of taunt pulsed every second.  Both might provide gaps in taunting against higher level opponents if their taunt is not enhanced).

 

All scrapper taunt auras are mag 3.

 

Yes in theory but in practice the rest of the armors cant hold a candle to it.  Why is it my Bio scrapper passively holds such better aggro than my Shield scrapper?  I've used both as the main tank on 4 stars and Bio holds the aggro without even having to taunt so much better than what I can come up with my Shield scrapper that constantly has to taunt with playstyles being similar.

 

There's obviously more going on under the hood of Bio scrappers than just that one taunt field a lot of other sets also get. 

Edited Friday at 04:47 PM by Championess

[Wavicle]

5 hours ago, Championess said:

 

Yes in theory but in practice the rest of the armors cant hold a candle to it.  Why is it my Bio scrapper passively holds such better aggro than my Shield scrapper?  I've used both as the main tank on 4 stars and Bio holds the aggro without even having to taunt so much better than what I can come up with my Shield scrapper that constantly has to taunt with playstyles being similar.

 

There's obviously more going on under the hood of Bio scrappers than just that one taunt field a lot of other sets also get. 

 

It's probably because, of the sets in question, Bio is the only one that gets both a Taunt Aura AND a Damage Aura.

Edited Friday at 10:10 PM by Wavicle

[Championess]

6 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

 

It's probably because of the sets in question Bio is the only one that gets both a Taunt Aura AND a Damage Aura.

Bingo

[Wavicle]

I like to think of it as growing tentacles that hold onto your enemies.

[Championess]

8 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

I like to think of it as growing tentacles that hold onto your enemies.

Someone doing some ERPing on Everlasting eh?  😛

[Wavicle]

2 minutes ago, Championess said:

Someone doing some ERPing on Everlasting eh?  😛

 

LMAO no, but maybe I should...

[FFTMime]

but is a taunt aura DESIRABLE on a scrapper?

I see people really only go do things once teams are fully packed, and a scrapper getting the attention of an 8 man group all at once sounds special. Or maybe I'm too used to regen being stinky. 

[Maelwys]

4 hours ago, FFTMime said:

but is a taunt aura DESIRABLE on a scrapper?

 

If you're only walloping one Target at a time and don't overly care about runners/scatter then it's irrelevant. If you're trying to leverage AoEs (including farming) and/or in a team with squishier teammates; it's very useful.

 

I've never personally encountered a situation where having a Taunt Aura was a detriment... other than when stealthing/speedrunning, in which case it just gets temporarily detoggled.

[aethereal]

20 hours ago, Championess said:

 

Yes in theory but in practice the rest of the armors cant hold a candle to it.  Why is it my Bio scrapper passively holds such better aggro than my Shield scrapper?  I've used both as the main tank on 4 stars and Bio holds the aggro without even having to taunt so much better than what I can come up with my Shield scrapper that constantly has to taunt with playstyles being similar.

 

There's obviously more going on under the hood of Bio scrappers than just that one taunt field a lot of other sets also get. 

 

I mean, what's "obviously" going on is probably that you just have developed an incorrect impression.  People develop anecdotal impressions that are incorrect all the time.

 

Did you actually hold everything constant besides the scrapper armor?  Maybe the rest of the team in the case of your Shield scrapper was just better at generating threat!  Maybe they did a variety of things that took aggro from you before those enemies closed into the (short!) range of your taunt aura, so the enemies were never taunted.  Maybe you did it yourself: to the extent that shield charge knocks down a bunch of enemies, that gives them a window of time in which they aren't getting close to you and thus aren't taunted.  Maybe the Shield scrapper's group was less good at immediately winnowing a group down to 10 or fewer enemies, which is the target cap for the taunt aura.  Maybe some members of the Shield scrapper's group generated taunt themselves.

 

Brutes and Tanks generate actual taunt with every attack, so when they jump in with their AoEs, they continuously taunt enemies repeatedly and heavily push them to get into the range of their taunt auras.  Scrappers do not, and an 8' range 10 target cap taunt aura is a fragile way to tank.

 

City of Data means that we can see "under the hood" what is going on with powers with a high degree of fidelity.  There is no taunt in Bio besides the 8' range, 10 target cap aura.  Does the damage aura make a difference?  I don't think it is very likely to make a serious difference: it just generates threat, not taunt, and it won't generate a particularly overwhelming amount of threat, and it will overwhelmingly only generate threat on people who are already being taunted by your taunt aura.  Bio does of course have two wide-area AoEs (DNA Siphon and Parasitic Aura), that can help generate initial threat, but again it's threat, not taunt -- it'll be relatively easy to peel enemies off of you if they don't get in close and get taunted by your aura.

[tidge]

9 hours ago, FFTMime said:

but is a taunt aura DESIRABLE on a scrapper?

I see people really only go do things once teams are fully packed, and a scrapper getting the attention of an 8 man group all at once sounds special. Or maybe I'm too used to regen being stinky. 

 

My typical experience has been that Taunt auras (for Taunting) aren't that great, and (more commonly) are not used well for actual aggro management. Many folks play like they don't know that such auras actually tick, and that when they do they may not always affect nearby critters.

 

Now, having written that: If the aura doesn't have a terrible base accuracy, high endurance cost, AND provides another effect... why not take it? FWIW, I usually delay "damage auras" because they typically require an investment in slots. For a LOT of content, especially if enemies are not above +2, many scrapper secondaries perform as well as tanker primaries.

 

About Bio in particular, from memory, the last 4 powers are all PBAoE, and between them they are doing debuffs and damage (%damage) beyond just the "Taunt"... so with some rapid cycling where possible, I can believe that a /Bio Scrapper is holding attention, and with whatever the primary is they are probably defeating enemies before those critters decide to run away.

 

 

[Uun]

12 hours ago, FFTMime said:

but is a taunt aura DESIRABLE on a scrapper?

 

I see people really only go do things once teams are fully packed, and a scrapper getting the attention of an 8 man group all at once sounds special. Or maybe I'm too used to regen being stinky. 

 

I currently have lvl 50 Invulnerability, Radiation, Shield and SR scrappers. I prefer scrappers with taunt auras. I don't have to worry about runners or grouping foes for my AoEs. (The SR, which doesn't have a taunt aura, was a result of the 2023 slot machine challenge.) For the most part I have no issue handling the attention of an 8-man group, although I would think twice before taking on an 8-man spawn of Banished Pantheon with Radiation Armor (which is weak to cold damage). To me, scrappers without taunt auras feel like stalkers.

 

3 hours ago, tidge said:

Now, having written that: If the aura doesn't have a terrible base accuracy, high endurance cost, AND provides another effect... why not take it?

All the scrapper taunt auras are autohit. For the most part they're baked into some key defensive power and really aren't skippable.

[SomeGuy]

23 hours ago, Wavicle said:

I like to think of it as growing tentacles that hold onto your enemies.

 

 

This person Hentais.

[Championess]

On 4/19/2025 at 5:41 AM, aethereal said:

 

I mean, what's "obviously" going on is probably that you just have developed an incorrect impression.  People develop anecdotal impressions that are incorrect all the time.

 

Did you actually hold everything constant besides the scrapper armor?  Maybe the rest of the team in the case of your Shield scrapper was just better at generating threat!  Maybe they did a variety of things that took aggro from you before those enemies closed into the (short!) range of your taunt aura, so the enemies were never taunted.  Maybe you did it yourself: to the extent that shield charge knocks down a bunch of enemies, that gives them a window of time in which they aren't getting close to you and thus aren't taunted.  Maybe the Shield scrapper's group was less good at immediately winnowing a group down to 10 or fewer enemies, which is the target cap for the taunt aura.  Maybe some members of the Shield scrapper's group generated taunt themselves.

 

Brutes and Tanks generate actual taunt with every attack, so when they jump in with their AoEs, they continuously taunt enemies repeatedly and heavily push them to get into the range of their taunt auras.  Scrappers do not, and an 8' range 10 target cap taunt aura is a fragile way to tank.

 

City of Data means that we can see "under the hood" what is going on with powers with a high degree of fidelity.  There is no taunt in Bio besides the 8' range, 10 target cap aura.  Does the damage aura make a difference?  I don't think it is very likely to make a serious difference: it just generates threat, not taunt, and it won't generate a particularly overwhelming amount of threat, and it will overwhelmingly only generate threat on people who are already being taunted by your taunt aura.  Bio does of course have two wide-area AoEs (DNA Siphon and Parasitic Aura), that can help generate initial threat, but again it's threat, not taunt -- it'll be relatively easy to peel enemies off of you if they don't get in close and get taunted by your aura.

 

No I didn't develop anything wrong here.  Yes any scrapper secondary with a taunt aura most all have the same taunt value.  

 

Since the topic was asking about scrappers with a taunt aura I read further into the 'why' they would look to be holding aggro with a scrapper.  I chose not to give a host of information of all the various armors with the same higher taunt value auras which I figured a little searchfu by the original poster would have shown them the statistics you detailed. 

 

Instead I gave played experience of a bunch of those armors.  If the spirit of the topic was to find a scrapper that holds aggro well and from my experience they dont do it very well in relation to tanks except for Bio because it also has a separate damage aura also helping hold aggro as @Wavicle alluded to.

Edited Monday at 04:35 PM by Championess

[Maelwys]

By that logic RadArmor should win hands down due to having a Taunt Aura plus two regular large radius AoEs with big target caps.

 

All a damage aura does is inflict damage. Without a additional taunt component they won't help with aggro control and in practice can actually be detrimental to it (because of the PVE mob AI favouring "scatter" as they get focused upon and their health decreases).

 

I've played all the armors too. And whilst Bio is generally a good choice it's not because of any additional aggro control, but because it inflicts -res and -regen and has multiple layers of defenses plus practically infinite endurance. DNA Siphon does not have a Taunt Component on a Scrapper regardless of what its short description claims.

[aethereal]

4 hours ago, Championess said:

Instead I gave played experience of a bunch of those armors.  If the spirit of the topic was to find a scrapper that holds aggro well and from my experience they dont do it very well in relation to tanks except for Bio because it also has a separate damage aura also helping hold aggro as @Wavicle alluded to.

 

I don't think anyone really categorically understands how threat works on a mathematical level, so it's hard to say for sure.  Based on my understanding, the damage aura will in fact enhance the stickiness of enemies that are already in the taunt aura -- but for that to matter, you have to be in a situation in which they were in danger of being peeled off in the first place.

 

Is that a realistic concern?  A wiki page claims that an active taunt multiplies the threat of the originating character by 1,000 times the duration of the taunt, which seems like, uh, a lot (but is it?  How much do threat levels ordinarily vary?  As far as I can tell, nobody really knows).  I generally do not see people peeling actively taunted enemies off the taunter.  I could believe that in the case of multiple competing taunts (like, the Bio scrapper is on a team with a Brute or certainly another taunt-aura Scrapper), the Bio scrapper was meaningfully more sticky.

 

But without competing taunts, it seems to me that the most likely way that a taunt-aura scrapper loses aggro is not "someone peels off an enemy who is within the taunt aura," but rather, "someone peels off an enemy who is not taunted at all, due to being more than 8' away or in excess of the target cap of the aura," in which case the damage aura is not going to help either, because it has the same radius and target cap as the taunt aura.

[biostem]

IIRC, damage, in isolation, does factor into where you are placed on an enemy's threat list/queue, but many "aura" powers, (at least for the armor sets), also include an additional threat mechanic, (now whether this just "adds" to you placing with the aforementioned threat list/queue I cannot say), but my point is that powers that directly apply a taunt do so in addition to whatever threat those powers/abilities would have done, otherwise...

[Wavicle]

3 hours ago, Maelwys said:

By that logic RadArmor should win hands down due to having a Taunt Aura plus two regular large radius AoEs with big target caps.

 

All a damage aura does is inflict damage. Without a additional taunt component they won't help with aggro control and in practice can actually be detrimental to it (because of the PVE mob AI favouring "scatter" as they get focused upon and their health decreases).

 

I've played all the armors too. And whilst Bio is generally a good choice it's not because of any additional aggro control, but because it inflicts -res and -regen and has multiple layers of defenses plus practically infinite endurance. DNA Siphon does not have a Taunt Component on a Scrapper regardless of what its short description claims.

 

Taunt is a multiplier. It multiplies threat. Since the damage aura causes threat and the taunt aura is likely to hit many if not all of the same mobs the two work together. The AoEs in Radiation armor aren't up all the time. The damage aura that Bio has is. I'm sure the debuffs from Bio are also helping, since they add threat as well.

Edited Monday at 11:12 PM by Wavicle