Taunt Aura

[aethereal]

1 hour ago, biostem said:

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...

 

It's not really "many" aura powers -- it's one aura power per set for Brutes/Tanks, none for Stalkers/Sentinels, and the six sets mentioned above for Scrappers have one taunt aura each as well.

 

The general mechanics of threat seem to be something like this:

 

• As long as you are within an enemy's perception range, you get an escalating amount of threat
• Targeting them or their spawn-mates with powers adds some threat as well, and the amount of threat depends on the damage or debuff caused

And then:

• Taunt multiplies that threat
• And probably how far you are from them also multiplies the threat
• And your AT has an inherent threat multiplier

If they don't currently have a target, they target the person with the highest modified threat.  If they do have a target, there might be some level of resistance to changing target.

 

But what we don't have is much in the way of a sense of the magnitude of these factors.  People anecdotally feel like debuffs generate a lot of threat, but we don't know how you generate a number from either damage or debuffs, we don't know what the multipliers are, and I'm not even sure if we know how the magnitude of taunts plays in.  As a result, we only really have some basic impressions of how it all works.  My impression is:  Taunt is strong.  Taunted enemies very reliably change to target the taunter, albeit not necessarily for the entire duration of the taunt.  In general, my impression is that if you're peeling aggro off a taunter, it's more likely that they have not recently hit the target with a taunt, than that you overcame the taunt (unless you have a taunt of your own).

 

But I can't quantify that, and neither can anyone else.

[Maelwys]

2 hours ago, Wavicle said:

 

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.

Taunt (the effect; not the power) works much the same as any other mez effect: if the Magnitude of the mez effect exceeds the target's inherent status protection then they become affected by it until the effect duration expires. Whenever you affect a target with the "Taunt" mez effect, your entry on their threat list gets set to an incredibly high score... so high that no amount of regular damage dealing will come anywhere close to reaching it. So for all intents and purposes you can think of the Taunt effect as a very straightforward "this person is now my main target" setting which persists for its duration.

There were multiple exhaustive tests of this done back on Live; and I've seen nothing to suggest that it works any different on HC.

A slightly different interaction does come into play whenever a target is subjected to multiple Taunt effects; but in most cases this is also very straightforward: the Taunt effect with the longest duration always wins (not the effect with the longest REMAINING duration; but the one with the longest TOTAL duration regardless of how much of that duration has currently elapsed!). As an example: if two Scrappers both use Confront on the same target; but one of them has a Threat Duration IO slotted in it and the other one doesn't... then the Scrapper with the longer Confront will almost always always hold rock solid aggro unless their Confront effect fully wears off, regardless of what attacks are used by either Scrapper in the interim. This is because the spike of Threat from the initial application of each Taunt effect is weighted very strongly by its duration and also factors in any previous threat score you might have prior to Taunting. Your Maximum Threat Score is also determined by the longest duration Taunt effect you're throwing out. Basically: if your Taunt has a considerably longer duration than anyone else's then you will likely win aggro and keep it.

The REMAINING DURATION of a Taunt effect only really comes into play whenever you're comparing two Taunt effects from different sources with similar total durations (e.g. Scrapper A and Scrapper B; both with unslotted Confront). Technically your Threat score on a target gets determined by multiplying your damage dealt to that target by Debuff Mod * AT Mod * AI Mod * Range Mod * (TauntDurationRemaining * 1,000) ... but a target can only have one active Taunt effect at a time. And their "active" Taunt effect will only be overwritten if either (i) the new Taunt effect is coming from the same source (e.g. you're overwriting your own Taunt) or (ii) if the new Taunt effect has a total duration of at least twice the remaining duration of the currently active Taunt effect (e.g. your Taunt is wearing off but someone else on the team also has a Taunt). This can occasionally result in aggro pingponging around if two people on the same team have Taunt effects with similar durations; unless one of them possesses multiple sources of Taunt (like a Brute's Punchvoke) that lets that person refresh their own Taunt effect more often. In short: someone else will only be able to "pull" aggro from you if your Taunt effect's Remaining Duration ever drops lower than 50% of their Taunt effect's Total Duration.

"Taunt Auras" typically have a very small-radius, a limited-target cap and a rather short duration (especially versus higher level foes); so whilst they are a good way for a soloing Scrapper to prevent runners; they run afoul of the above "competing similar total duration taunt effects" issue and it's also unfortunately rather common for a few enemies in a full spawn to be unaffected and peel off the Scrapper to stab the squishies. So they are definitely not a foolproof method of keeping aggro solidly locked down on teams. Careful positioning plus Slows/Knockdowns/etc can all help mitigate this; alongside simply killing everything faster.
 

Edited April 22 by Maelwys

[aethereal]

1 hour ago, Maelwys said:

"Taunt Auras" typically have a very small-radius, a limited-target cap and a rather short duration (especially versus higher level foes); so whilst they are a good way for a soloing Scrapper to prevent runners; they run afoul of the above "competing similar total duration taunt effects" issue and it's also unfortunately rather common for a few enemies in a full spawn to be unaffected and peel off the Scrapper to stab the squishies. So they are definitely not a foolproof method of keeping aggro solidly locked down on teams. Careful positioning plus Slows/Knockdowns/etc can all help mitigate this; alongside simply killing everything faster.

 

Taunt durations (and magnitudes):

 

Scrapper Aura (Willpower): 1.25 seconds, mag 3

Scrapper Aura (Energy): 2.5 seconds, mag 3

Scrapper Auras (Invul, Rad, Bio, Shield):  13.6 seconds, mag 3

Brute: Inherent punchvoke & Auras (all, I think): 13.6 seconds, mag 4

Tanker: Inherent punchchvoke & Auras (all, I think):  14.96 seconds, mag 4

Scrapper Confront: 26.6 seconds, mag 4

Brute/Tank Taunt: 41 seconds, mag 4

 

Provoke from the Presence pool seems like it has a different duration per AT.

[Maelwys]

6 hours ago, aethereal said:

Scrapper Auras (Invul, Rad, Bio, Shield):  13.6 seconds, mag 3

Brute: Inherent punchvoke & Auras (all, I think): 13.6 seconds, mag 4

Tanker: Inherent punchchvoke & Auras (all, I think):  14.96 seconds, mag 4

Scrapper Confront: 26.6 seconds, mag 4

Brute/Tank Taunt: 41 seconds, mag 4

Yeah, so here's a few more examples:

Two Scrappers, both possessing unslotted Taunt Auras, vs a regular +3 LT mob. Providing they both stand right next to it, then whoever's Taunt effect kicks in first will claim aggro and keep it until several seconds after that mob moves out of range of the claimer's Taunt Aura. This is because Taunt Auras typically refresh every 1 second + so the 'active' Taunt effect will never be able to decay to less than half its total duration before it refreshes (0.65*13.6 = 8.84s total duration on a +3 mob; half of which is 4.42s). However if the mob is ever outside of the 'active' Taunt aura for >3.42s then the second 'inactive' Taunt aura will start getting a chance to kick in - so at that point it will becomes a competition to see whose Taunt effect actually "ticks" first. If one of those Scrappers was a Brute then the Taunt effect from "Punchvoke" would be constantly trying to kick in as well; which would give them extra chances to be the first to claim aggro (both initially as well as after that >3.42s duration elapses...) and if they were a Tanker they'd only need a window of >2.978s outside the Taunt Aura to pull aggro off the Scrapper.

Now consider a Scrapper with Confront and a Tanker with Taunt, vs a regular +3 LT mob. Scrapper Confront will inflict 0.65*26.6=17.29s duration; whilst the Tanker Taunt will inflict 0.65*41=26.65s duration. So the Scrapper will only be capable of holding aggro if they're spamming Confront at least every <4 seconds; however the Tanker will keep aggro until >18 seconds after their last Taunt (and that's if the Tanker isn't leveraging Gauntlet/Auras). So whilst it's possible for a Scrapper to hold aggro over a Tanker on a single target via spamming Confront, it takes a fair bit of work and/or Taunt Duration slotting.

 

Edited April 22 by Maelwys

[tidge]

I hope that some folks will leverage this thread to understand why they may think their characters are "keeping aggro" based on solo play, but really are not "managing aggro" when teamed. In particular, when teamed "running past a spawn (and waking them up)" is not the same as "controlling aggro".

[aethereal]

Does the boss Mag 3 status protection that they get to most status effects also affect taunts?  Not a huge deal if it does -- the Scrapper taunt auras will pulse twice and quickly overcome the status protection, and everything else is mag 4 -- but it might mean Scrapper Energy Aura and Willpower have a lot of difficulty taunting bosses at all, especially if they're purple-patched.

 

Do purple triangles affect taunt?  I don't think they do -- I've never noticed tanks/brutes losing aggro on AVs when the purple triangles come up. (EDIT: Wiki suggests it does not).

 

Does AV resistance affect taunt duration?  (EDIT: Wiki suggests it does not).

Edited April 22 by aethereal

[Championess]

Yes damage dealt is a factor into enemies aggroing to a certain individual. 

 

Let's say on a team you don't have an actual tank and just a shield scrapper with their Against All Odds taunt aura but they didn't take Confront.  When you're fighting an AV you'll sometimes see the AV aggro over to the Fire blaster if they are pumping out huge chunks of damage.  With no true taunt on the team the AV's look to be coded to eliminate the highest threat so whomever is dealing absurd damage that may overcome one lower value taunt aura you'd find on scrappers that don't also get punchvoke like tanks. 

 

Bio's damage aura and debuff aura look to factor heavily in keeping threat locked in on them.

Edited April 22 by Championess

[Maelwys]

Certain mobs are coded to either resist Taunt effects or ignore aggro (flagged as "relentless" within the code) and/or focus on a particular target over all the others ("primaryTarget" + "primaryTargetFactor", "neverForgetMe", etc.) and some things have particularly weird AI (like Clockwork who really loathe whoever attacked them last)

Taunt (the effect) is usually the deciding thing because tauntFactor is worth an order of magnitude more than the other factors.
tauntFactor = 10 * (1 + status->taunt.duration - ABS_TIME_SINCE(status->taunt.begin));
distanceFactor = 0.1 + 0.9 * (100.0 - distFromMe) / 100.0;
damage.toMe += -amount * 0.1;
damageFactor = 1 + status->damage.toMe

However there is technically an "aggro ceiling" (which is pretty much reliant upon your longest duration Taunt effect) and Threat level decays quite quickly. If someone is "tanking" by not actually dealing much/any damage but just relying on a Taunt Aura that is not slotted for duration... then yes, a teammate who deals high damage to their target and that target's allies might briefly trump their Taunt effect. But running a Damage Aura won't influence things anywhere near as much as spamming regular attacks.