Can we please get aggro management back?

[Melichoir]

I really don't care how much damage tanks/healers can do so long as they're actually still doing their job/role. I don't get why it even needs to be said, but tanks/healers that fixate on doing damage to the point they forget what role they're actually playing and let people die because of it were/are a problem, not something to be encouraged.

Because everyone wants to do the deeps. Being flippant aside, Damage is gonna be an aspect of tanks no matter how you cut it. You can tweak the numbers all you want, make it so tanks only do 100 DPS, and youll still have people trying to maximize that number.

The learning curve should be Get Aggro>Hold Aggro>Use Proper CDs>Maximize damage. Problem you are describing is people are playing tanks like DPS and jumping to the last step. Those are bad tanks. Let game mechanics punish them severely, or people should start kicking bad tanks who dont hold aggro.

The problem with the Tank stance issue and threat in general is that people had the wrong idea about it in general. In casual content where tank dps is all but irrelevant, you had a lot of players get it stuck in their head that "Oh, if the strats in Savage are to drop tank stance and rely on dps and the like to keep threat, so thats what I should do". This is the wrong approach for that content. In a dungeon, or regular trials, there was no reason to drop tank stance. Maybe if you did and you had no problem with keeping aggro you cleared the entire dungeon maybe a minute or two faster. Big deal. If you could do this and didnt have a problem, go for it. But most players couldnt and you had a lot of people insist tank stance wasnt necessary. This was exacerbated by the simple fact that tank stance not only reduced damage taken by a good margin, but it also reduced dps dealt. In the eyes of players, that 20% was significant. So to fix it you need to change the perception while still making threat management important, where they dont feel like they have to get out of tank stance immediately for the big numbers.

If they want to bring back threat management (which I agree with), you need to take what we got currently and just add a bit more nuance.

Lets take Dark, for example -

- Leave tank mitigation trait.
- Modify aggro Generation Tables so that while you are in Grit, you still get an aggro boost BUT it's not guaranteed. You will lose aggro unless you hit Power slash every so often.
- While Grit is active, Siphon Strike and Soul eater becomes Spinning slash and Power Slash respectively (This is also a bit of a crowd pleaser for a few people who liked those animations too)
- Threat Gen is way higher for these skills but will have lower potencies than their counterparts. Possibly add a combo finisher trait that reduces the CD of TBN by a second or 2.
- Change Grit Recast time to be lower.

Now Give DPS and Healers back their threat dump skills.

Now you have a simple Threat management system where in high end content where you can voke/shirk and doing maximum damage is a thing, you can now balance out how often you use Powerslash while still maintaining aggro. For non savage content, you can sit in Grit and just powerslash all day. You will do less damage but only on your primary combo. Bloodspiller and all other DPS sources for your kit wont be affected, so youre not gonna be 'suffering'. If you got overgeared dps or healers that make tanking a struggle, they will have aggro dumpers to press.

As a side thought - Yes I think it would be a lot more interesting for tanks in general if tank skills were modified by whether or not you were in tank stance. You had this with warrior but you could toy with this a bit more so that itd be more interesting. Perhaps youd have changes where Blood Spiller does a smidge less damage but applies a stacking dot while in Grit. Stuff like that. Possibly make it so that it stacks 2 or 3 times, and every subsequent BS after that just refreshes the duration when youre in tank stance. So youd pop into tank stance to get the dot applied, drop out of it to do maximum BS damage with Delirium spam or something. But I digress.

[Fynlar]

But tanks or healers that do that without trying to adjust from their mistake are simply bad players, has little to do with the play style itself but more so the player. Yes people will die when a tank or healer pushes their limits, and pushing ones comfort zone should be encouraged because that is how we learn to move past those limitation and become a better player overall.

Not understanding your own limits (and subsequently, overestimating them) is something I would find understandable in pre-50 dungeons. It gets a little tiresome in things like expert roulette, though. By this point players really should know better.

As for the comfort zone point, I really don't think there is any "one size fits all" good way to deal with that. Many people have been pushed out of various roles (usually healer) due to other people feeling their comfort zones should be pushed. I believe that for some people, their comfort zone exists where it does for a good reason and it ought not to be pushed.

I get it you do not like playing with bad players, don't we all. I hate playing with melee only rdms but I do not think SE should streamline their melee skills to the point where it becomes a non factor to rdm play style.

That's a really bad false equivalence. Tanks who didn't know how to hold hate pre-SB2 (or simply felt like they couldn't be bothered, because ohmagawd mah deeps or whatever) were everywhere, whereas I can count the number of Riposte-spamming RDMs I've run into in the DF on one finger.

[Awha]

Not understanding your own limits (and subsequently, overestimating them) is something I would find understandable in pre-50 dungeons. It gets a little tiresome in things like expert roulette, though. By this point players really should know better.

As for the comfort zone point, I really don't think there is any "one size fits all" good way to deal with that. Many people have been pushed out of various roles (usually healer) due to other people feeling their comfort zones should be pushed. I believe that for some people, their comfort zone exists where it does for a good reason and it ought not to be pushed.


That's a really bad false equivalence. Tanks who didn't know how to hold hate pre-SB2 (or simply felt like they couldn't be bothered, because ohmagawd mah deeps or whatever) were everywhere, whereas I can count the number of Riposte-spamming RDMs I've run into in the DF on one finger.

If people feel their comfort zone does not match with the group then they are free to try and speak up regarding if, try to remove the element, or leave. It is not a one size fits all approach but communication is key. Also it is not a false equivalence, I have ran into far more melee only rdm then I have tanks that straight disregarded aggro for the sake of damage. It may not be the case for you, and I do not deny you ran into tanks like that. I personally did not run into them very often. I ran into more tank stance only tanks personally which lead me to pick up the tanking role myself.

Can only speak for myself but pre 50 content and even some 50 content really did not prepare me for mass pulling while maintaining aggro and uptime on damage. Going from ARR stuff to HW content was a large jump for me personally in terms of damage out put from both a healing and tanking perspective. So during that learning curve I have let people die and got shit for it, but I took it in stride and just learned from mistakes and accepted the bashing. It was a fun learning experience at the very least for me, and when I finally got the hang of it and ended a run with top damage while still preforming my role it felt nice. Tanking now for me feels somewhat hallow, though I am glad others enjoy it. Just as ast which use to be my favorite healer feels shallow to me.



Idk man just seems like you have this personal grudge against dps centric meta. Which is fine, everyone is free to feel how they want. Just from view it seems like you simply hate playing with bad players, and less to do with the play style itself.

[Fynlar]

Because everyone wants to do the deeps. Being flippant aside, Damage is gonna be an aspect of tanks no matter how you cut it. You can tweak the numbers all you want, make it so tanks only do 100 DPS, and youll still have people trying to maximize that number.

The learning curve should be Get Aggro>Hold Aggro>Use Proper CDs>Maximize damage. Problem you are describing is people are playing tanks like DPS and jumping to the last step. Those are bad tanks. Let game mechanics punish them severely, or people should start kicking bad tanks who dont hold aggro.

That's just it though; they don't get punished severely. Their party members do. (Then the tank usually has the gall to say something like "use quelling next time")

And as I've pointed out above, if things went back to pre-SB2 and I was expected to just kick every tank I ran into like this, I wouldn't even be able to because of the vote dismiss cooldown. That's how commonplace this was. And even then, so what if they're kicked? They will have no problem getting another group, because even though they're playing "DPS" they still have that coveted blue icon.

[Melichoir]

That's just it though; they don't get punished severely. Their party members do. (Then the tank usually has the gall to say something like "use quelling next time")

And as I've pointed out above, if things went back to pre-SB2 and I was expected to just kick every tank I ran into like this, I wouldn't even be able to because of the vote dismiss cooldown. That's how commonplace this was. And even then, so what if they're kicked? They will have no problem getting another group, because even though they're playing "DPS" they still have that coveted blue icon.

The solution would be a mix of two things. 1, it would require hte player base to be more proactive, and 2, it would require a change to the vote kick system.

The first thing is yeah, you need people to start kicking players from party if theyre failing to do their job. Low damage, Bad tanking, terrible healing, dont matter. People need to start learning to kick people from dungeons and just do it.

The second thing though is a change to the system. You need 3 changes to fix the system.

The first is when a vote kick is initiated, whomever initiates it must pick from a list of reasons why beyond the current ones. The reasoning may change based on the role being voted on. For example - Vote Kick tank would have reasons such as "Not Holding Threat", "Insufficient Equipment", "Not avoiding Damage Mechanics", etc, along with a small "write down" section if you want to add notes. If the vote is passed, players is removed from the dungeon. Upon loading back to wherever they were, a Confirmation window will pop up telling the player why they were kicked along with any notes left by players. They have to confirm to close the window and do things.

Keep in mind if you write disparaging comments in the notes, you can be reported for harassment. Doesnt matter how troll-y the tank is, if you write garbage and they report, thats on you.

The second thing is that said kicked player can requeue again if they want. There will be no penalty. HOwever, if theyre kicked a subsequent time by the new group, they will be put on a 30 minute re queue CD. There is little likely hood that a player will get kicked twice in a row for the same reason and it not be their fault in some capacity.

The last thing is change how the vote kick CD works. You wont be able to kick a player for a Role issue at least for 10 minutes or until a check point is reached (death first boss, as an example). Once you reach that, you can keep kicking people all you want. For non role issues, like griefing or what not, you can vote dismiss instantly, but everyone in party will incur a 15 minute CD on the next kick, regardless of reason. A backend change they would also need to implement for Role Kicking is that every time you kick someone for that reason, you get shoved further down the queue for a replacement. Again, to discourage system abuse. You do it enough itll take you forever to get a new tank. So dont be super picky.

Atleast with a system like this, you can get rid of griefers immediately, but you run some risks with doing so (as to discourage abuse of this system). The likelihood your gonna get two griefers in a row is low, even in this game. With the role kick reasoning, you can get rid of tanks or healers or whatever and they will be notified as to why they were removed. If they get kicked a second time for the very same role reasons, they have to wait out the CD and fix their problems (hopefully).

Its gonna require people be willing to kick players, but also require the player base to be semi responsible and actually help educate players or try to. If someone doesnt want to be receptive, then sucks for them. They get kicked.

[TyrTry]

Its gonna require people be willing to kick players, but also require the player base to be semi responsible and actually help educate players or try to. If someone doesnt want to be receptive, then sucks for them. They get kicked.

I'm not sure what kind of punishments people are looking for exactly.

Bad tanks are going to be bad tanks. And what I mean by "bad" tanks is not learning tanks, but those who actively REFUSE to take any advice, heed to pleas they are given from their teammates , or downright CHOOSE to remain ignorant to the tooltips for their own selfish reasons.
The system we have in place is currently enough to deal with these "bad" tanks. Adding more time as punishment just means they got to wait longer to get back and do it all over again. Adding a reason to why would simply be ignored; the same reasoning applies to longer wait times. They will just do it again.

I can see adding all this would be less beneficial to the players who are actively trying to learn vs the players who just don't give a flying fart.


And I hope you understand that I'm not trying to berate or come off as antagonistic. Even with multiple increases in penalty time or new rules be given to vote kicking, it wouldn't be long before a group of players abuses it and before you know it, people come begging for another change in the system.

[Ramura_Sono]

"Aggro management"?

You mean letting the healers and DPS die, and then yell at them for not using their tools (even when they do) because you can't be bothered to do an extra aggro combo, right? That aggro management?

You can have aggro management back when it is solely a tank responsibility, and the optimal play for tank DPS becomes walking the line of losing aggro. Anything else is just gonna result in the same mess we had in SB, with people not geared/skilled enough blaming everyone but themselves. No thanks. Tanks can be diva enough as it is without the additional mess of "MUH DPS".

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

"Aggro management"?

You mean letting the healers and DPS die, and then yell at them for not using their tools (even when they do) because you can't be bothered to do an extra aggro combo, right? That aggro management?

You can have aggro management back when it is solely a tank responsibility, and the optimal play for tank DPS becomes walking the line of losing aggro. Anything else is just gonna result in the same mess we had in SB, with people not geared/skilled enough blaming everyone but themselves. No thanks. Tanks can be diva enough as it is without the additional mess of "MUH DPS".

I think this Solidifies why the current system is better

[Awha]

"Aggro management"?

You mean letting the healers and DPS die, and then yell at them for not using their tools (even when they do) because you can't be bothered to do an extra aggro combo, right? That aggro management?

You can have aggro management back when it is solely a tank responsibility, and the optimal play for tank DPS becomes walking the line of losing aggro. Anything else is just gonna result in the same mess we had in SB, with people not geared/skilled enough blaming everyone but themselves. No thanks. Tanks can be diva enough as it is without the additional mess of "MUH DPS".

Those were bad players though. Run into a bad player that refuses to take responsibility for their action kick them or leave. Though as a dps I also do miss aggro management it felt like I contributed to the party outside my dps. Granted I play "selfish dps" so that might just me wanting a little extra in terms of party contributions.

[LaylaTsarra]

"Aggro management"?

You mean letting the healers and DPS die, and then yell at them for not using their tools (even when they do) because you can't be bothered to do an extra aggro combo, right? That aggro management?

You can have aggro management back when it is solely a tank responsibility, and the optimal play for tank DPS becomes walking the line of losing aggro. Anything else is just gonna result in the same mess we had in SB, with people not geared/skilled enough blaming everyone but themselves. No thanks. Tanks can be diva enough as it is without the additional mess of "MUH DPS".

Shame I can only give this one like.