Could Provoke be a little bit Fell Cleave proof?

[Archaell]

Hey there, today I would like to ask what you think about the current state of the Provoke ability.

Personally I think it's fine... until you have to tank swap right at the moment when your warrior offtank hits double fell cleave in berserk... RIP enmity Q_Q

I think it could use a little bit of love. Something. Anything. To have a way to fix the problems like I described above.

Maybe some extra enmity on the skill itself? Reduction for the second target in the list? Enmity generation buff for few seconds? Two stacks on one CD? Or something like freezing the enmity of the rest of the group for few seconds? Something to make the life a little bit easier than the skill at its current state provides.

I have to admit that I feel a little bit emotional when it comes to enmity issues, but really I would appreciate a little bit more of breathing space.

[Freyyy]

Or they could just make it work like taunts work in most other MMOs, where it basically forces the enemy's target on you for like 5-6 seconds regardless of who has aggro, on top of giving you the top threat +1. Making it like this would prevent this kind of issue and 5-6 seconds is enough to secure hate on you. This could also be used in PvP to force an enemy to target you and make him unable to switch targets for the duration of it. Some games have this too.

Edit: I'll just add that I find it unnecessary anyway since you should prepare your tank swap by preparing a 3rd stage threat combo beforehand (like doing Hard Slash - Spinning Slash before voking, and Power Slash right after voke, which you can ani-cancel with an oGCD to get the damage and threat ASAP), which is enough to keep aggro, even to a Zerk'd crit Fell Cleave.

[Khalithar]

Or they could just make it work like taunts work in most other MMOs, where it basically forces the enemy's target on you for like 5-6 seconds regardless of who has aggro, on top of giving you the top threat +1. Making it like this would prevent this kind of issue and 5-6 seconds is enough to secure hate on you. This could also be used in PvP to force an enemy to target you and make him unable to switch targets for the duration of it. Some games have this too.

This, it should have been like this from the beginning.

[Archaell]

Edit: I'll just add that I find it unnecessary anyway since you should prepare your tank swap by preparing a 3rd stage threat combo beforehand (like doing Hard Slash - Spinning Slash before voking, and Power Slash right after voke, which you can ani-cancel with an oGCD to get the damage and threat ASAP), which is enough to keep aggro, even to a Zerk'd crit Fell Cleave.

7x Rage of Halone and several Shield Lobs before I got it back. Tbh. I was on verge of crying... had I any idea how deep the sh*t was I would have used halone combo instead - but derp the enmity bar is pitiful tool.

[Shurrikhan]

Like Freyyy said, while it hardly seems necessary with your ~3.5k enmity-potency from a Rage of Halone vs. his less than 1k potency Deliverance-Maim-Berserk-Fell Cleave, having a taunt last for a few seconds would probably alleviate this issue (and with it, most of the urgency and set up involved in tank swapping). That is, unless you used Provoke right after you finished a combo (Hard Slash next) and/or right before his first Zerk FC.

Sidenote: Here's looking forward to unique tank taunt options, maybe, eventually?

[Lyth]

Fell Cleave generates 500 enmity potency on its own, and 750 under berserk.

Using a combo'd Spinning Slash, you generate 770 enmity potency. A follow-up Power Slash generates 1650 enmity potency (these numbers are if you stay out of Grit; you can swap into Grit if you really need to consolidate your lead). On PLD, it's a similar story, except that SB is 700 enmity potency and RoH is 1300. Either way, you're generating significantly more enmity over two GCDs than the double FC under berserk (although I'm not really sure why you would time Berserk to be active just before you were due to hand over aggro in a tank swap).

It's actually not Fell Cleave that messes up tank swaps. It's Butcher's Block. What typically happens in these cases is you see the FC go off, but it then gets followed up by a 1540 enmity potency BB (for that sweet extra 20 potency over the SE combo). The swap failure then gets misattributed to that sick crit hit on the FC. It's not your WAR's incredible dps. It's the 5.5x enmity modifier tacked on their dps combo.

Tank swaps are a bit like passing the baton in a relay. There's a shared responsibility on both tanks to make sure that the transfer occurs smoothly. If your co-tank starts sprinting off with the baton instead of handing it off, that's a problem on their end.

[Aurius]

That's not swapping properly. If you use the second hit of your combo chain for enmity it will give you enough hate lead to land the third hit of your enmity combo for a solid hate lead. When I swap I do fast blade, provoke, savage blade, rage of halone in sword oath and it hasn't failed (though now I main drk) your warrior should not be double cleaving during a swap either so he needs to change it up. As far as potencies, fell cleave actually does more potency in some cases than an enmity combo from other tanks, and here's why.

Maim increases damage by 20%, storms eye increases damage by roughly 11%. So with berserk, maim, and storms eye, fell cleave is around 1000 potency, being in deliverance with 5 stacks (and internal release) increases crit chance by 20%. So it's very likely fell cleave will crit. This (if we use the standard 50% extra damage) makes fell cleave potentially 1500 potency, followed by another (again if it crits) 1500 potency attack. Your warrior needs to change up, this is once again only a chance if it crits, but that's a difficult hurdle to jump.

[Archaell]

It wasn't the best swap as I tried to swap a little bit too quickly, but it was the most frustrating one so I used it as an example of the pain it can cause.

Thanks for the info, I might need to do some math when it comes to warrior's enmity under the berserk to react better if it happens again.

[Freyyy]

It's actually not Fell Cleave that messes up tank swaps. It's Butcher's Block. What typically happens in these cases is you see the FC go off, but it then gets followed up by a 1540 enmity potency BB (for that sweet extra 20 potency over the SE combo)

Using even one BB combo during a triple FC zerk window is actually a DPS loss since by doing so, because of the 3 FCs, the Fracture, and the pacification, you'll drop the SE debuff before being able to re-apply it, which makes you lose 27 potency on the next SE while reducing at least one of your AA's damage, on top of reducing the damage from the other tank and your NIN if you have one, so it outweights the 20 potency gain from BB combo. There is no reason to use BB during a 3 FC zerk so this kind of tank swapping fail shouldn't even happen.

[Aurius]

I apologize if I sounded like a jerk, lack of coffee. But the info still stands on swapping, I actually wrote an article about it in our servers news letter The Moogle Post. Best of luck!