[Guide] Paladin Tanking Compendium 2.0

[PiedPiper]

Mmm.. I totally disagree with this. In co-tanking and hate swapping I never gain on threat in similar stances as my co-tank. The only reason for it would be gear disparity (we are pretty close), weapon disparity (we are both same relic level), or Sword Oath/Dropped defiance + DPS balls to the walls. Its pretty easy to see on ADS, since you are swapping constantly. All I have to wait for is my co-tank to get off Halone combo, and then I can Halone combo right behind without worry of pulling hate. I do this usually with my own Riot combo, then move to Halone, just to be sure I don't get a few crits to offset the balance.

I have observed this for quite some time and done some looking into it. My sepcific theory is that the tank with lower enmity earns a bonus based on the disparity between their threat and the lead tanks, thus the closer the two enmity points the less that bonus (potentially down to no bonus at all).

I think turn 2 is a poor example because hate is never very heavily separated owing to the constnat switching. More over, turn 2 would just seem to confirm my statements about it apparently being based on the threat difference. You are always close to them on turn 2, so it should recive little/no bonus. Unfortunately, this example does not offer evidence either way to my specific theory. (Namely that when one tank's threat is substantially different than the others, a bonus seems to be applied to the lower tank based on the % of difference).

For reference, my cotank and I are very close in gear, both with +1 curtana. We are also both the same race. Regardless of which one of us starts with the hate lead, the other is able to chase them down, more it can be done with both of us in shield oath, or just one of us in shield and one in sword. For example, on the final dread in turn 4, a mob which I engage for a very short time, I consistently get to 80-90%% or more hate by the time it dies. Even if i was critting 100% of the time and he 0%, I should still not chase it down quite that quickly (as it has been alive for quite some time at this point, long enough to finish off dread 2, kill all associated adds in the final wave, and then for me to run acccross the room to get there). I really doubt it is just crit rates. Since we can both catch up to the other, I highly doubt it is owing to any skill difference between us (if one of us really was that much better at comboing, the other wouldn't be able to catch up). Similarly, this rules out any gear difference (again, we are quite close, within 1 piece of each other). Also, since our gear is so close, our crit rate is nearly the same as well, so even if it was crits, it shouldn't happen every time. We should, over time, balance out, yet I observe this every time. Be it me chasing him, or him chasing me.

CD's should not be a factor. Using a cd between combo steps does not delay your combo unless you are stacking several, but there are few/if any situations where this is needed and I already accounted for that in trials against Twin. More, in the phase of twin I am discussing, there is no call for the tank use cool downs anyway. Also, we should both be maintaining maximum uptime on FoF, so it should be the same bonus for both of us.

[Traek]

I have observed this for quite some time and done some looking into it. My sepcific theory is that the tank with lower enmity earns a bonus based on the disparity between their threat and the lead tanks, thus the closer the two enmity points the less that bonus (potentially down to no bonus at all).

Well it is certainly possible, I'd be interested in any tests to show it. Will be hard to prove without a proper threat meter though, IMO. Even on methods like yours described, I don't see it happening on my end. We use the kite method on Caduceus for instance (I usually MT boss, and switch to kited split upon mine dying), and I never catch up to my co-tank the whole time kited-till death. I didn't think to note my exact threat upon its death this week though, something I'll try to remember next week.

Would be such a silly thing to implement if you ask me. I guess it'd be a sort of similar fashion of decaying threat.

[Pixelshader]

@Traek and @PiedPiper, judging by the mechanics I want to say there are 2 enmity tables one that is everyone and one that only includes tanks. This would allow for encounters to not have an aggro reset and have more "team play". Of course this is all coming from a programming standpoint, I do not have any evidence to back this up other than I have not seen an encounter that has a true aggro reset.

[PiedPiper]

Well it is certainly possible, I'd be interested in any tests to show it. Will be hard to prove without a proper threat meter though, IMO. Even on methods like yours described, I don't see it happening on my end. We use the kite method on Caduceus for instance (I usually MT boss, and switch to kited split upon mine dying), and I never catch up to my co-tank the whole time kited-till death. I didn't think to note my exact threat upon its death this week though, something I'll try to remember next week.

Would be such a silly thing to implement if you ask me. I guess it'd be a sort of similar fashion of decaying threat.

That's sort of why I brought it here, I can't really puzzle out a concrete way to test it. Not to continue hounding you, but I would think the kite method on cad woudl still be a poor place to test it just because its not two tanks standing still firing through the rotation with a clear 10-20 gcd head start for one of them. Unfortunately SE has a hard on for maint during our raid time, so our time on turn 5 (probably the easeist place to see this) has been hamstringed.

@ Pixel: I've kind of been wondering if that's whats at play. It just seems so bizarre. Even tanks who I know can't matchme for threat generation (for example, doing turn 2 together, if they pull first the dds always catch up quickly, if I pull they never catch up) are able to chase down on long engagements in turn 4 / 5. Hell, In turn 1 i have been able to stand off the boss, wait for the first spawn, dps it, kite it to the boss, and then pull cad off the first tank before split. Granted I had a pretty large gear lead, but tha'ts only 4-5 combos to catch up.

The thing that gets me is i don't see a value in this system. They already gave us provoke, and to use it for controleld hate passes you'd have to slow down total hate generation so much to let the other person cleanly pass.... it just seems odd. If anything, its only real purpose seems to be to limit the off tank's dps since the OT can't indefinitely stand and deliver on a mob without risking hate pulls.

[MisenPlace]

My sepcific theory is that the tank with lower enmity earns a bonus based on the disparity between their threat and the lead tanks, thus the closer the two enmity points the less that bonus (potentially down to no bonus at all).

Is this based on watching the threat bars? I have a theory on this.

Note: all numbers are pulled from my ass, and only used to illustrate my theory.

Lets say tank1 has been attacking a mob and has built up 500 threat.
Tank 2 is at 0 threat.
Tank1 has a full threat bar, tank2 has an empty threat bar.

Tank2 starts attacking the same mob and acquires threat at the same rate as tank1.
Time passes, now tank1 is at 1000 threat and tank2 is at 500 threat.
Tank1 has full threat bar, tank2 has 50% threat bar.

Time passes, now tank1 is at 2000 threat and tank2 is at 1500 threat.
Tank1 has full threat bar, tank2 has 75% threat bar.

From the bars, it appears that tank2 is catching up, but he consistently remains 500 threat behind.

This is just a theory, I have no idea if the threat bars work that way.

[Traek]

Is this based on watching the threat bars? I have a theory on this.

Note: all numbers are pulled from my ass, and only used to illustrate my theory.

Lets say tank1 has been attacking a mob and has built up 500 threat.
Tank 2 is at 0 threat.
Tank1 has a full threat bar, tank2 has an empty threat bar.

Tank2 starts attacking the same mob and acquires threat at the same rate as tank1.
Time passes, now tank1 is at 1000 threat and tank2 is at 500 threat.
Tank1 has full threat bar, tank2 has 50% threat bar.

Time passes, now tank1 is at 2000 threat and tank2 is at 1500 threat.
Tank1 has full threat bar, tank2 has 75% threat bar.

From the bars, it appears that tank2 is catching up, but he consistently remains 500 threat behind.

This is just a theory, I have no idea if the threat bars work that way.

This is exactly what I witness happening each time, and figured they were seeing as well. The threat is relative, so of course you'll see the bars filling up based off the % of overall threat that has been generated.

I paid attention to Cad tanking during our kite phase today. I still don't see it. It might not seem relevant but I almost never miss a Halone combo when following Cad, so seeming as the kite tank is never generating threat, theoretically if I was receiving some form of boost to threat, I'd catch up before the end of kite phase. Seeming as they split at the same % health, he has had as much time to threat gen on his mob, as it'd take to kill a 65% health split add. There is always some tolerances for error, but I'm just not seeing the threat *handicap* being described. I'm still very interested in any tests to prove its existence however. I still believe its based off of CD usage, and lucky crits/sword oath if you see any gains.

I'll try to pay attention today in Turn 4 as well. Maybe I'll notice something there..?

[PiedPiper]

SNIP.

I assume/have assumed this is how the threat bars work. So yes, the percentage would continue to increase, but there should, in theory, always be a gap.

Here's the rub: I am consistently able to overtake the other tank (as in actually pull threat). If it were as simple as maintaining a fixed gap, and the gap just becoming less of the total threat, you should only ever approach 100% asymptotically. Unfortunately, the only place in the game for me to test this now seems to be then end of turn 4, but as the weeks go by the fight is shortening so I don't really have much time on target to mess with it, and we've changed to the single tank method in turn 5.

I may be insane, but as I said, I am looking for an explanation as to why we are both able to overtake each other (again, this seems to exclude the possibility of a skill gap being the cause). To troll, I did this on Ifrit the other day, granted there was a huge gear gap between myself and the random baby pally that was duty findering iffy, but I waited until the very last 25% of the fight to start using combos and just shot right past him.