Taunt functionality?

[Ultimo]

So, I was in a conversation online last night about Taunt.  I have a character who I designed around a concept... he's a flier (like Angel, or any other similar winged hero, or perhaps many speedsters).  The idea with the character is to fly in using Flight (without Hover) with an attack queued.  The attack will fire as I fly by, and with Flight, the momentum will carry me away from the enemies.  I would then gain altitude and stay out of reach while they try to get to me.  Or, I would fly over and hit the group with Taunt, and then stay out of reach.  While their attention was on me, my teammates would take them out.

 

I seemed to be working, but I noticed a lot of enemies were ignoring me and going after my teammates, despite Taunt.  Calling up the info pane, it said it only affects FIVE targets, and only in a 15 foot radius.  That's pretty wimpy.  I commented in chat, and someone said they thought those numbers were different for Tankers... but they weren't sure.  So, I thought I'd come here and ask about it.

 

Does Taunt work differently for Tankers?  I mean, I sure did see a lot of enemies ignoring me during Positron...

[tidge]

3 hours ago, Ultimo said:

Does Taunt work differently for Tankers?  I mean, I sure did see a lot of enemies ignoring me during Positron...

 

Taunt doesn't work differently for the ATs that have it, but it does have differences from Confront and Provoke.

 

Tankers typically increase the amount of enemies they have "Taunted" by relying on their attacks (via "Punchvoke") and any enemy-affecting auras they may have. The strategy you describe is "working as intended"... as it isn't doing that much to gain their attention. You can of course shift targets and spam Taunt to try to increase the number of enemies affected.

[ZemX]

To understand taunt (the effect) you need to think in terms of another thing called "threat".  Threat is like a counter (or a list of counters) on each NPC enemy.  It's their "enemies list" and it has everybody on your team, their pets, etc.  Anything that has attacked them.  We all get ranked by most to least threatening.  The NPC will attack whoever is at the top of their "most threatening" list.

 

Taunt is NOT an override to this list.  It does not jump you to the top of the list automatically and keep you there for the duration of the taunt.  What it does instead is, first, apply a nice helping of threat to your own counter for that enemy.  This alone often jumps you to the top of the list.  The second thing it does is leave a taunt effect on that enemy for a certain duration.  Every time you AGAIN attack that same enemy after taunting it, your attacks receive a very high multiplier to their threat.  Meaning you can follow up your taunt with a Brawl and probably ring up more threat on that enemy than a Blaster with their best Snipe.  The more you keep attacking that enemy, the more you count up threat.  

THIS is what keeps their attention.  Not the taunt duration, but how high your threat counter gets on each enemy such that nobody else on your team can beat you for "most threatening" no matter how much more damage they do than you.  A single Taunt power activation does a very nice amount of threat, but your teammates will quickly surpass that if they sustain fire on that same enemy for just a bit while you don't do anything else to them.  And because it only hits five, you sort of have to use it multiple times.

 

If you want this theme of yours to work better, you need to add ranged attacks.  As a Tanker, any single target attack taunts the target and up to five enemies around your target.  Any AoE taunts every target it hits.   Claws would probably be your best choice for attack powerset since it has a couple ranged attacks that you can imagine are like Angel's wing feather darts or something.  Shockwave and Focus.  More ranged attacks can be found in pools and epics.  Point is, if you want to taunt from range like that, you need to be cycling through attacks AND taunting and you need to spread it around to the group of enemies.   

 

What's making your idea less effective at keeping aggro than a traditional tanker who is "in the soup" is that you're getting no benefit from the taunt aura or from PBAoE attacks.  A Tanker is taunting everybody around them for a 12ft radius constantly with the taunt aura on.  So you can use ranged taunts and attacks to draw in stray aggro outside your little bubble of hate more easily.  And PBAoE attacks can keep hammering those close to you.

 

The one benefit to taunting at range is that enemy AoEs aimed at you aren't hitting your melee comrades.  I do traditional tanking, but sometimes jump away from my team to range taunt enemies that are bombarding the team, like Nemesis troops with Storm Rifles.

[Ultimo]

Perhaps what I need then, is more recharge to make the taunt more available... if I want to keep the concept of the character as it is.

 

Thanks for the input.

[ZemX]

13 minutes ago, Ultimo said:

Perhaps what I need then, is more recharge to make the taunt more available... if I want to keep the concept of the character as it is.

 

Thanks for the input.

 

It won't do the job by itself.  Even with decent recharge, it will take too long to cover every enemy in a full team-sized group of mobs and be difficult to keep aggro without attacking.  You need not just good recharge but also to be attacking.  Without being close enough to taunt with the aura or PBAoE attacks, you will be even more dependent on ranged and ranged AoE attacks to get and keep aggro than a traditional melee tanker.

[Ultimo]

1 hour ago, ZemX said:

 

It won't do the job by itself.  Even with decent recharge, it will take too long to cover every enemy in a full team-sized group of mobs and be difficult to keep aggro without attacking.  You need not just good recharge but also to be attacking.  Without being close enough to taunt with the aura or PBAoE attacks, you will be even more dependent on ranged and ranged AoE attacks to get and keep aggro than a traditional melee tanker.

Oh, I realize that.  The idea is for the character to drop down and make melee attacks (preferably AOEs), then zoom out of range.  Of course, he could still land and engage normally, when appropriate.

[dukedukes]

Taunting and flying away is generally a bad idea. If the mobs decide to run at you they are going to run away from your teammates, making it more difficult for your team to fight them. They will jump on top of light posts and climb up buildings if it's an option. Flying mobs will obviously fly after you. When I taunt mobs they always aggro to me and no one else (except other tank AT's), but I don't put myself in an out of reach location. From a basic test the mobs appear to try for a while (not the full taunt duration) to reach the taunter then seem to give up and run away, maybe they'll attack someone else in some cases but I see them eventually run away. It seems like you should place yourself within range of being attacked, otherwise they will eventually give up, but there is a time window where they will try to chase you.

 

The strong purpose of Taunt is for the -range it applies to the enemies, it makes ranged mobs run closer to you which is very effective for grouping mobs. Most tankers don't seem to prioritize this but it's actually the best thing a tanker can do. Good use of taunt is what separates the men from the boys so to speak, holding aggro is only a small benefit compared to the -range.

 

If you try to fly up in the sky as a tank and cause mobs to run around everywhere your team will probably think you're trolling. I've hover tanked before but I always stayed close to the ground to stop mobs from doing stupid things.

[Ultimo]

1 hour ago, dukedukes said:

Taunting and flying away is generally a bad idea. If the mobs decide to run at you they are going to run away from your teammates, making it more difficult for your team to fight them. They will jump on top of light posts and climb up buildings if it's an option. Flying mobs will obviously fly after you. When I taunt mobs they always aggro to me and no one else (except other tank AT's), but I don't put myself in an out of reach location. From a basic test the mobs appear to try for a while (not the full taunt duration) to reach the taunter then seem to give up and run away, maybe they'll attack someone else in some cases but I see them eventually run away. It seems like you should place yourself within range of being attacked, otherwise they will eventually give up, but there is a time window where they will try to chase you.

 

The strong purpose of Taunt is for the -range it applies to the enemies, it makes ranged mobs run closer to you which is very effective for grouping mobs. Most tankers don't seem to prioritize this but it's actually the best thing a tanker can do. Good use of taunt is what separates the men from the boys so to speak, holding aggro is only a small benefit compared to the -range.

 

If you try to fly up in the sky as a tank and cause mobs to run around everywhere your team will probably think you're trolling. I've hover tanked before but I always stayed close to the ground to stop mobs from doing stupid things.

Ya, the point is to get their attention on me, then stay directly above them.  My thinking is that they would all bunch up directly under me, allowing the team to lay out the AOE and wipe out the bad guys.  It did work that way, when the groups were smaller... but larger groups... they weren't all taunted, and so ran after the squishies, which is why I was puzzled.  I just thought Taunt affected a larger area and more enemies.  If it's just 5 guys, that's not much help.  Granted, Tankers have Gauntlet, but what if I'm on a Brute or Scrapper?  Not much help there.

 

I think the confusion is that I'm not flying far up into the sky, I'm flying just out of reach.

[dukedukes]

11 minutes ago, Ultimo said:

Ya, the point is to get their attention on me, then stay directly above them.  My thinking is that they would all bunch up directly under me, allowing the team to lay out the AOE and wipe out the bad guys.  It did work that way, when the groups were smaller... but larger groups... they weren't all taunted, and so ran after the squishies, which is why I was puzzled.  I just thought Taunt affected a larger area and more enemies.  If it's just 5 guys, that's not much help.  Granted, Tankers have Gauntlet, but what if I'm on a Brute or Scrapper?  Not much help there.

 

I think the confusion is that I'm not flying far up into the sky, I'm flying just out of reach.

Ah, okay. You'd need to rely on punchvoke and have your aoe attacks pull their attention. You'd still have the AI issues I mentioned: flyers, running away eventually, some immediate movement depending on obstacles around you like higher surfaces than what the mobs are standing on. If you're fine with dipping in and out of melee range to reapply your taunt aura you could use a combat tp macro to make the process simpler like:

/macro down "powexec_location down:20 Combat Teleport"

/macro up "powexec_location up:20 Combat Teleport"

 

You could machine gun taunt between Provoke and Taunt to keep the enemies attention but you'll be changing targets a lot to be optimal which might be too annoying. If you only use ranged attacks you may have some spare cycles to do this while you wait for cooldowns.

 

Like I mentioned I have done hover tanking where you hover juuust above the mobs heads and the AI issues doing this are not too bad, plus you can still be in range for all your melee attacks. Flyers will still go airborne, some melee teammates may not like that, but they're not that high from the ground if you're not. This position is actually decent for tanking because your character collision is above the enemies, so enemies are able to go directly beneath you, letting the mobs pack together just a little better. Cones are surprisingly decent in this position too. If you're close like this a taunt aura would still be doing its job as well. Maybe you can find a sweet spot where you're off the ground, out of melee range, but your taunt aura still hits a few enemies. You could use combat tp to move exactly to this height from the ground if the sweet spot is really tight.

[Maelwys]

10 hours ago, Ultimo said:

I just thought Taunt affected a larger area and more enemies.  If it's just 5 guys, that's not much help.  Granted, Tankers have Gauntlet, but what if I'm on a Brute or Scrapper? 

 

That sort of playstyle works just fine vs tough single targets (AVs) that can't fly. But to make it work against larger spawns of enemies you'll need specific AoEs from the Epic/Patron pools. Web Envelope from Mace Mastery (AoE Immobilize/Slow) or Darkest Night from Soul Mastery (rock solid ranged aggro control) are the easiest to work with on a Tanker or Brute.

 

Scrappers can't apply a ranged taunt to multiple foes without the Presence pool (and even that's low duration and requires a ToHit check).

 

Edited Thursday at 07:22 AM by Maelwys

[Warboss]

I find that Fireball works well. With the recharge on that and Taunt, you can keep a lot of focus on yourself. Other Epic Ranged AoEs work as well (I just like fire), also dropping a PBAoE (or two) (once you're in the middle) helps keep the focus on you. 

[JediDave]

If you had a secondary with a solid ranged attack like claws or spines, this would work well to keep bosses specifically on you, but as you've found, this isn't viable to hold the whole group's aggro. The niche this is good for is against AVs who can't fly and have minimal ranged attacks. I've seen a few use web nades and a 2nd character's immob on Recluse in MLTF to some degree of success, but if you try this in a normal mission, it is going to look like you're trolling the team a bit.

[WuTang]

I didn't see a point in Taunt, then I did, and now I don't again. For me, Taunt is only good after a pull to bring in the range stragglers that are too smart to run blindly into melee. I also think the meager 5 target limit is far too small to really make it affective. I do like the negative range it applies, but that's about it. I have an easier time using an epic ranged AOE to pull or just face pulling. I do still have taunt on what Tankers I have, but like I said, only use it on range baddies OR if a teammate has pulled aggro from somewhere.

[tidge]

The utility of Taunt varies by content and context. Solo: nobody really needs a Taunt, since eventually enemies will be focused on the solo character.

 

In team play, if no one on the team is in risk of being defeated by damage a Taunt is not really needed.

 

I always take Taunt on Tanks, because there is enough team content where the number of enemies is great enough, team survivability isn't guaranteeing complete survival, and team damage isn't productive enough to insta-wipe enemies, 

 

The only thought process I see as coming to the wrong conclusion about Taunt is when players think "This (Tank) character doesn't need a Taunt because of aura/punchvoke/AoE"... because there will be team situations when a Taunt improves team performance. I'd rather such players simply think "I skipped Taunt because I didn't want to take it, and I can generate a smaller amount of threat with ____". The classic example I think of is on something like a Positron when the Tank says "we won't need Taunt because I have an aura", but the aura isn't keeping (or getting) aggro for the capped number of enemies... which can be an issue for all the other characters on a low-level TF, even if the Tank might survive.

[dukedukes]

49 minutes ago, tidge said:

In team play, if no one on the team is in risk of being defeated by damage a Taunt is not really needed.

A good taunt user, in situations where there's no risk, does not care about threat. They care about forcing distant enemies closer with the -range component. Sure it's not mandatory but attacking is optional too. Taunting a distant mob effectively kills it by getting them into the aoe range of your team.

[tidge]

39 minutes ago, dukedukes said:

A good taunt user, in situations where there's no risk, does not care about threat. They care about forcing distant enemies closer with the -range component. Sure it's not mandatory but attacking is optional too. Taunting a distant mob effectively kills it by getting them into the aoe range of your team.

 

Nothing wrong with this statement, but it doesn't really tell the whole story. For example, some enemies have really long ranges and may already be in relatively confined spaces... such enemies don't immediately move just because they have been hit by a Taunt. Another example: some enemies use AoE (at range) so grabbing the threat and moving away from teammates can be the best move.

[dukedukes]

3 minutes ago, tidge said:

 

Nothing wrong with this statement, but it doesn't really tell the whole story. For example, some enemies have really long ranges and may already be in relatively confined spaces... such enemies don't immediately move just because they have been hit by a Taunt. Another example: some enemies use AoE (at range) so grabbing the threat and moving away from teammates can be the best move.

 

Yeah strategy changes depending on the mobs. Line of sight or a bit of movement is needed to pull some mob types in, assuming that's possible. I use provoke on some of my (tanky) trollers and have a good amount of success even without the -range component, but it's more situational. Regardless it's an effective strategy that is underutilized by most people, I always love to get on a team with a tank that uses it well.

[Warboss]

Many different ways to do it, but basically keeping the attention on yourself (the Tank) and harm away from your teammates is the name of the game. Start with a Taunt to the front of the mob, jump (Hover, T-port, etc..) to the back of the mob, PBAoE, Taunt or Ranged AoE to the front (one remaining) and for mobs standing away from the group and Taunt or Ranged AoE, change positioning as needed so the goons face you not your team. Once they start whittling them down, Taunt or Ranged attack, head to the next group. If the team understands the concept, start moving two mobs together.  They should defeat the ones closest to them first as you move the rest of the mob towards the next... Thus the steamroll begins... 

 

Forgot to mention, throw a ST in there against the bosses and above.

 

In regards the OPs initial tactic, try your tactic, but move more towards the back of the mob if you've been hovering above and see if that helps. Also add a Ranged AoE Attack to the build if you can.

Edited Friday at 01:59 PM by Warboss

[tidge]

2 minutes ago, dukedukes said:

Yeah strategy changes depending on the mobs. Line of sight or a bit of movement is needed to pull some mob types in, assuming that's possible. 

 

I don't want to be unfairly critical of the OP, but the idea behind the strategy (grab all aggro, stay out of range, profit!) is really simplistic given how the game actually works. When the game launched, I had some crazy ideas for "power combos for guaranteed success!" and none of them panned out. Disclosure: I didn't play Fire Tanks against DE Swarms, which was the original 'no effort for rewards' mechanic.

[Ultimo]

7 minutes ago, tidge said:

 

I don't want to be unfairly critical of the OP, but the idea behind the strategy (grab all aggro, stay out of range, profit!) is really simplistic given how the game actually works. When the game launched, I had some crazy ideas for "power combos for guaranteed success!" and none of them panned out. Disclosure: I didn't play Fire Tanks against DE Swarms, which was the original 'no effort for rewards' mechanic.

It's something of a concept character.  I looked at the way characters in the comics worked.  I noticed that in the old, original X-Men comics, the Angel spent his time flying around above the enemy, who would try (and fail) to shoot him down, while his teammates got into position to take them out.  I thought I would try to emulate that.  I also noticed speedster characters did the same kind of thing (see Quicksilver in the Avengers, when they were taking on the Exemplars... I don't recall the issue number).  It seemed like a neat idea, and it doesn't work BADLY, but it's not as effective as just hanging around among the enemies.

[Warboss]

That's because you're missing the Aggro Aura doing it's thing. You're too far away from the mobs for it to do it's thing (which is to apply more Taunt/Aggro). Your angel concept could still work, but you're going to need more solutions. AoEs (Mu Mastery Epic) would help, slot with at least one Taunt. Or choose the Ranged AoE that fits best with the concept and slot for Acc/Rech/Taunt. Or mix up your tactics. Do your ranged thing, then jump in.

[Maelwys]

1 hour ago, Warboss said:

That's because you're missing the Aggro Aura doing it's thing. You're too far away from the mobs for it to do it's thing (which is to apply more Taunt/Aggro). Your angel concept could still work, but you're going to need more solutions. AoEs (Mu Mastery Epic) would help, slot with at least one Taunt. Or choose the Ranged AoE that fits best with the concept and slot for Acc/Rech/Taunt. Or mix up your tactics. Do your ranged thing, then jump in.

Darkest Night from Soul Mastery is a ranged toggle that applies Debuff ticks every 0.5 seconds to 10 foes in a 15ft radius around an anchor target.
Each enemy debuffed triggers Gauntlet; so procs a 10ft AoE Taunt effect that can affect another 5 targets.

Combined with Taunt (the power) it'll hold extremely reliable aggro at range.

It's worth pointing out though that the one and only time I've ever found "hover taunting" to be worthwhile is whenever my old INV Tanker used to cheese the STF by slotting Web Envelope and Taunt with Range Enhancements and flying ~81ft directly above Ghost Widow.

[Thraxen]

Holy heck people are actually saying how good taunt is in this game. I might have a stroke.