"You are bad at using Provoke"

[Souljacker]

Nothing you said contradicted my original point, so I'm not sure what you are trying to say. Provoke doesn't work as a taunt, it works as a niche ability in very specific circumstances that may or may not be present in every single fight. A true taunt is something that is useful in every single fight.

All of these issues would be corrected by the implementation of proper abilities, such as Holmgang being a "real" gap closer (and paladin getting one as well - maybe some kind of heroic leap) and taunt actually forcing the enemy to attack you instead of continue its path toward whomever it was already after, then *maybe* turning back around if the other player isn't still mashing his 123 on it.

[Giantbane]

Nothing you said contradicted my original point, so I'm not sure what you are trying to say. Provoke doesn't work as a taunt, it works as a niche ability in very specific circumstances that may or may not be present in every single fight. A true taunt is something that is useful in every single fight.

All of these issues would be corrected by the implementation of proper abilities, such as Holmgang being a "real" gap closer (and paladin getting one as well - maybe some kind of heroic leap) and taunt actually forcing the enemy to attack you instead of continue its path toward whomever it was already after, then *maybe* turning back around if the other player isn't still mashing his 123 on it.

I'm saying that provoke can be an immediate pull because of how attacks can work. If you provoke that monster attacking a bard, it can start to run to you if it triggers an attack against you. It doesn't matter if the bard immediately pulls agro afterwards, it can still come after you until it has executed its attack. This gives you a little extra time (maybe 1s) for your GCD to complete and you can execute a normal attack to secure agro. In practice this can function somewhat similar to what you were asking for.

Obviously it's not perfect, but it does make the ability more interesting to some degree because it's not a simple as the monster being locked on to you for the next X seconds. It requires a little more nuance to either time the provoke against his attacks or against your own GCD to ensure you are able to secure threat after the provoke. I find it's quite effective for what it's intended to do. Of all the things that could use some adjustment in this game, provoke is pretty low on that list.

However, the 6y range on holmgang (and I guess you can dispel it in pvp too?) limits its usefulness quite a bit.

[Viridiana]

I'm saying that provoke can be an immediate pull because of how attacks can work. If you provoke that monster attacking a bard, it can start to run to you if it triggers an attack against you. It doesn't matter if the bard immediately pulls agro afterwards, it can still come after you until it has executed its attack.

On the opposite end, you could hit provoke after it queues an attack on the BRD, at which point it will continue chasing the BRD until it can hit him. If the BRD is kiting. . .well, good luck and have fun chasing him down. . .

[Souljacker]

Yes, let's all just watch and make sure that the enemy hasn't queued up another attack while it's half a screen away (or even behind us, let's not forget our playstation friends who may not have the luxury of camera distance that pc players have) because we have SO MUCH TIME... instead of hitting our snap threat ability that *could* work like a normal taunt in a normal game.

I'm telling you that it doesn't work. How on earth are you supposed to predict whether it's queued up another attack or not on a character who has full enmity on it? Of COURSE it's queued up another attack. I'm not even sure why you are still defending this position that provoke is fine as it is.


It just doesn't work, and I don't care how many walls of text you write explaining about how a monster queues an attack against this one or that one - you obviously have never played a game that has tank classes designed to actually tank on their own and not have to depend on the rest of the people in the party to delay doing their jobs for 15 seconds while you gather\establish.

[Charisma]

it's mostly SE fault for not giving enough information on the tooltip of the skill, even if it's technically correct.

Not even WoW states it "right".. because its obvious, also i am supposed to tell someone how provoke works, that didnt even figured it out himself, after gaining 28 levels?

[Giantbane]

Yes, let's all just watch and make sure that the enemy hasn't queued up another attack while it's half a screen away (or even behind us, let's not forget our playstation friends who may not have the luxury of camera distance that pc players have) because we have SO MUCH TIME... instead of hitting our snap threat ability that *could* work like a normal taunt in a normal game.

I'm telling you that it doesn't work. How on earth are you supposed to predict whether it's queued up another attack or not on a character who has full enmity on it? Of COURSE it's queued up another attack. I'm not even sure why you are still defending this position that provoke is fine as it is.


It just doesn't work, and I don't care how many walls of text you write explaining about how a monster queues an attack against this one or that one - you obviously have never played a game that has tank classes designed to actually tank on their own and not have to depend on the rest of the people in the party to delay doing their jobs for 15 seconds while you gather\establish.

After 2.1 and all the threat buffs, as long as you're within 20 ilvl of whoever you're playing with, you shouldn't have any issue at all holding threat if you're playing your job even remotely correctly. There's absolutely no reason why any tank should need a 15s lead in time unless they're wearing sub ilvl 45 gear vs. players in i110.

Only possible exception is a PLD at a gear disadvantage trying to hold AoE threat against a BLM with a BRDs requiem active. And even then you shouldn't really have any issues as long as you start with a full mana bar.

Threat is not quite as faceroll easy as some *other* MMOs. But it's pretty easy.

I was actually a little disappointed with the threat changes in 2.1 since I always thought it was more fun to have threat be something the whole group needed to be concerned about instead of just the tank (watching threat meters, proper use of de-agro abilities, etc). But I guess the changes are more pug friendly, so whatever.

In terms of provoke, the attack queue is most useful for enemies that just spawn. In terms of pulling agro back from an overzealous BRD, it *can* work similarly to what you asked for, but not always. Either way, the BRD has a threat meter he should pay attention to, and he should run back to the tank. That's on him for A) pulling threat by not paying attention and probably not using quelling and B) for not running the mob back to the tank when he got threat.

Provoke functions quite well enough for what it does, I have never had a problem with it either on PC, PS3 or PS4.

[MythToken]

You should always follow provoke with a tomahawk if you are trying to pull something off from a distance. But the absolute best way to provoke is to have a butcher block queued up, provoke followed by BB and it will most def snap to you and stay on you.

I think people who are complaining about provoke either

A. don't like the way it works (entitled to your opinion of course)
B. are not using it properly

If you don't gain threat as fast as you can after using it, then even if the game shows you having threat, it might actually be pulling onto someone else for a split second while you are trying to gain threat.
The icon won't change color for this, but the monster will run back and forth between the two people. So it is always best to at least have Skull Sunder queued up, but preferably BB before using provoke.

I will also note that while this does not work like taunts in other games, it does work extremely well if you use it how it was intended to be used.
And it is absolutely essential to any tank.

[Souljacker]

That's the problem though - I don't think that SE had a clear vision for how they expected a taunt to be used. That's evidenced by the fact that it's
a. a skill on only one one tank class, at level 22
b. very strange in the way that it works

Yes, ideally, you want to have abilities queued up to chain along so that you can get aggro back again... But that also begs the question what's the point of provoke? Why not just run up to the mob (which you mostly have to do anyway) and use your chain abilities? Gap closers are essential when parties are spread out, and provoke doesn't function well as such a closer. Tomahawk doesn't generate enough enmity to get the mob's attention unless the player in question stops whatever they are doing, and in the case of healers sometimes that's just not possible. So then your choices are leave the mob there, or take all your other mobs for a ride.

It's not as prevalent as an issue because there isn't much cleaving in this game, but if they ever start designing dungeon content where we have to be a lot more careful about positioning and not running mobs all over the place we'll see more "wtf" posts about how this particular ability functions and why can't we just get a proper taunt.

[Nyalia]

I found a really fun use or Provoke outside of dungeons that works because of how Provoke works. Chocobos can't be directly commanded to attack (unless they can and I'm a moron). They attack a target once you use a skill on them. When doing Beast Tribe quests where I need to interact with things, a single monster aggroing on me will make it a pain to do unless I kill the monster. To get around that, I use Provoke on the monster. This triggers the choco to attack it, and since Provoke created no aggro, the choco's first hit pulls it off me so I can do the interaction without having to waste time killing the monster.

So, basically, I taunt an enemy so it won't attack me. Yup, makes sense!

[ZeratoTyrael]

Loving how people were saying it works nothing like WoW's Provoke and Taunt abilities lol. They're both the exact same mechanic and work the same way (match highest aggro +1). WoW's just has a fixate attached for a few seconds so you can secure aggro without having to pop a blood vessel trying to get an attack off right after you provoke. I don't mind the challenge when I do tank swaps, but it is sometimes hard to recover for the tanks and healers when a screw up happens.