Quote Originally Posted by Dhex View Post
Hate redirection was & is a /really/ fun role to fill and it adds another layer of player cooperation and synergy to combat rather than the current direct "competition" between tank and party members for threat control. Both WAR and PLD would greatly benefit from a way to funnel the enmity of other members back towards themselves.
I was quite surprised that they decided to make a game with a non-trivial threat metagame without any kind of complex threat mechanisms. One of the best/most interesting things for a "support" role DPS would be threat redirection and a "support" healer could have a targeted threat drop (or an ability that has different effects depending upon the target's role: tank gets enmity on all target increased by 20%; DPS and heals get enmity on all targets reduced by 20%). While I don't believe that "support" should exist as an explicit role, there's a lot more "support" that could be tacked on to various jobs.

Provoke is a good tool to jump to the top of the list in a single target emergency - but we can only tank when we're allowed the time to generate the needed enmity base on single targets or group targets.
Honestly, Provoke doesn't really do all that much, even in an emergency. The only times that anyone should be pulling threat off of a tank is early on in a fight, when the finishing move of a Butcher's Block or Halone combo would still be more than enough to get the tank back to the top (not to mention providing more than Provoke did anyways). The only time you should need or even *want* Provoke is when you're the MT, you die, you get rezzed, and the OT can't take over MT for whatever reason. At that point, you *need* Provoke because it's the only way to get back to anywhere near the top of the enmity meters because you're starting at 0 while everyone else is in the 4-5 digit range. Of course, this is predicated on it not just being a wipe because the MT died or the OT not being able to pick up after you.

To be really useful, Provoke would need to provide either a time where the enemy is *forced* to attack you (so that you can rebuild a threat cushion) or a fair deal more "bonus" enmity than just max+1.

Also, interesting note, Provoke only generates aggro based upon the highest threat of your current party. It does nothing for ripping threat off of someone that isn't grouped with you (like FATE tanking).