Let me qualify the following statements by saying that this is my first time playing a tank, i normally play a healer or dps.

i find tanking in SWTOR pretty easy, as long as you're communicating with your group there's very little that concerns me. taunt and guard are your friends, guard a healer, taunt the mob you're NOT hitting whenever you can (your damage should be enough to keep aggro if you're in the proper stance as a knight), and above all, if you feel you can't keep aggro on a group of mobs:

get your allies to put enemies out of the fight! sages have a lift ability, troopers have a grenade, shadows have a mind trick thingy, all of which put a mob out of the fight for an entire minute, and if you haven't managed to get control of the fight in that time, then you should probably just give up.

the only real challenges come in when specific boss mobs don't obay the aggro rules, or are immune to CC, but even those can be worked around with a little thinking and communication.

I was facepalming hard reading your post, it makes no sense outside of your head.

 

"Furthermore, no threat meter means the rest of the raid has to be conscious of the fight. The damage dealers dont just lock onto their threat % and smash away at their keyboard. They would have to pay attention to the fight, their damage output, the tanks aggro, and the fight mechanics. "

 

How can a dps pay attention to their damage output and the tanks aggro, if they have no way of reading what their damage is compared to the tank, 1.5x damage to threat in SWTOR, and since we have no dps meters or aggro meters there is no way to tell how close you are to becoming #1 on the mobs threat table.

 

"ood tanks can judge threat based on damage output of their raid, their cooldowns, their damage, and the healing done by the healers.

 

How can you judge your threat vs dps threat if there is no way to see what each individual players aggro is at. Either A) tank threat is so high after the first 2-3 hits vs a DPS that threat is a non issue, which is not fun for either tanks or dps, or B) Tank threat is so close to dps that a tank must have comparable gear to a dps in order to maintain threat, this is fun because it means that you must take gear into consideration, it also means that if a raid is wiping due to enrages, then you have no idea what dps are not holding there own. aka Who is asleep at the keyboard vs who is trying hard to min max. Not having aggro meters on boss fights is stupid, we need to be able to see how close we are to a tanks threat, so we can properly manage our cooldowns.

If you are a dps, you can judge the tanks aggro based on abilities he has used. if the mob has any debuffs from the tank. Example: In WoW you can check initially if he has stacks of sunder armor up etc... or in FFXI the group can judge aggro based on the tanks mana (specifically PLD). Did he use any cures? Did he use provoke and flash? Is he using his TP at the right times?

If you are a dps, you can gauge your dps and the groups dps by how fast the mob is dying. You can also gauge it by your cooldowns and if you are getting lucky procs/crits. Good players get a feel for their aggro. It isnt terribly difficult. In wow, mages who got really fast crits too early in the fight would easily pull aggro. In FFXI a DRK could rip aggro off a tank any time he wanted for the first 2/3 of the fight by blowing souleater too early etc...

For a tank to judge his aggro he has to have a feel for his class. balance your own cooldowns and see how fast the mob is dying. if your group is steamrolling the boss then start using more of your aggro gaining buttons. Tanks dont do much damage in fights, most of their aggro is through abilities. WoW had sunder armor among others (most bosses were immune to taunt). FFXI had provoke which generated spike enmity and flash, combine those with self cures and he could hold aggro better than anyone (without help).

Honestly, if you think threat meters are required you are most likely one of the braindead few who become reliant on pointless mods because you are unable to multitask. Any person in our raid who complained that our MT wasnt using a threatmeter got booted. And some of you may find it stupid but our core group of raiders refused to use threat meters. When I stopped tanking and focused on my mage I never used Omen or any other threat meter. I was usually top 3 in damage done during the fight, typically losing to the rogue. This was in vanilla/TBC.

Also for the record, as raidleaders we did not use DBM either. Cleared TK/SSC and chunks of T6.

TL;DR. Stop being a bad player. Learn to play your class and get some thinking ability. Do you think people in FFXI or EQ used threat meters initially? Probably not, and those were significantly more difficult games than WoW or SWTOR

Why do tanks need a threat meter? The DPS need the threat meter. Is the mob attacking the tank? Then the tank has threat. Is the DPS pulling off the tank, how would the tank fix that? The DPS need to be aware, the tank just needs to do his thing.

If you have a bad tank, a threat meter isn't going to do anything.

But there is a threat indicator! Its a itty bitty circle underneath the mob, if you have aggro its red. But you may not have seen it if the mob was normal-large sized....or you were paying attention to the fight...or you have normal human vision.....

Yeah, threat meter please.

Threat meters are bad for various reasons, but as a tank I've found the main ones are:

The DPS always compete to come 2nd on the hate list.

The DPS always compete to come 2nd on the hate list.

and

The DPS always compete to come 2nd on the hate list.

I like SWTOR as is. If the tank isn't tanking it then something is wrong.

Threat meters are bad for various reasons, but as a tank I've found the main ones are:

 

The DPS always compete to come 2nd on the hate list.

The DPS always compete to come 2nd on the hate list.

and

The DPS always compete to come 2nd on the hate list.

 

I like SWTOR as is. If the tank isn't tanking it then something is wrong.

Much the same way that damage meters ensure your dps classes will compete against each other instead of using CC abilities and/or debuffs and generally working as a team.

They do not ever need to add a threat meter. It is a tool that makes the game easier for everyone. Good tanks can judge threat based on damage output of their raid, their cooldowns, their damage, and the healing done by the healers. Adding a threat meter will only make tanking braindead easy and incredibly boring. Any thought, skill, or interactivity will be removed.

 

"OMG BUT YOU STILL HAVE TO DO THINGS LIKE TURN THE MOB AWAY FROM THE RAID AND THEN PICK UP THE ADD"

 

Yes, but any sense of urgency is lost. Any sense of judgement will be removed and placed with "If my threat is below % then _ will happen oh no smash buttons".

 

 

I have tanked in vanilla WoW and progressed through a majority of the content originally. I would tank multiple mobs without the AoE skills that are now present in the game. I would also be able to judge my aggro. It is what made tanking fun; maximizing your damage, minimizing your downtime and damage taken while holding aggro to let your dps do more damage.

 

Furthermore, no threat meter means the rest of the raid has to be conscious of the fight. The damage dealers dont just lock onto their threat % and smash away at their keyboard. They would have to pay attention to the fight, their damage output, the tanks aggro, and the fight mechanics.

 

Adding a threat meter would reduce the quality of the endgame (and leveling) content. Group composition, raid IQ, and the ability to breathe and think at the same time are all things that make raids more fun.

So true! Been saying this forever, having knowledge handed to you is boring, figure stuff out and pay attention to make adjustments on the fly, makes things much more exciting and fun

Instead of a threat meter can we just get a target of target. I hope I'm just not retarded and can't find it in the options.

They ate adding customization to the yo soon they were saying so Prob will add it in.

I don't see why people think having a tool that gauges your threat output is easy mode. It just makes it better to see how much room dps have. There is a half-moon bar on your portrait where you could easily put a threat meter there. Have it be full of red if you have aggro, and have it at orange and building up if you're a dps. You don't need a threat meter with numbers per say, but one that shows how much room you have would be nice. It's not easy mode it's just knowledge that would be nice to know. Tanks who don't want a threat meter are just terrible players who don't want to see how terrible they really are. You can throw anything you want at me, but the truth is... I've tanked in EQ, EQ2, LotR, Beta WoW->Cataclysm (was even a Main Tank for a top 100 US guild), and this game. Stop talking about how it makes the game better when it doesn't.

/facepalm.

I don't see why people think having a tool that gauges your threat output is easy mode. It just makes it better to see how much room dps have. There is a half-moon bar on your portrait where you could easily put a threat meter there. Have it be full of red if you have aggro, and have it at orange and building up if you're a dps. You don't need a threat meter with numbers per say, but one that shows how much room you have would be nice. It's not easy mode it's just knowledge that would be nice to know. Tanks who don't want a threat meter are just terrible players who don't want to see how terrible they really are. You can throw anything you want at me, but the truth is... I've tanked in EQ, EQ2, LotR, Beta WoW->Cataclysm (was even a Main Tank for a top 100 US guild), and this game. Stop talking about how it makes the game better when it doesn't.

 

/facepalm.

Any addon that is not strictly UI related is intended to make the game easier... If it doesn't HELP you, then why would you use the addon?

There is also another reason to have threat meters in the game, that no one seemed to touch on:

Currently there is a huge threat disparency between the tanking classes, most notably Guardian vs the others. It is more of a limitation of the Guardian Defense spec being worse than the Vigilence tree for damage mitigation, so abilities like Hilt Strike are never talented, etc.

It would really show what is going on so BW can alter/fix threat modifiers of the classes and bring them in line with each other.

Why do you need a threatmeter? All you need is a targets-target frame too see who has agro and adapt. ATM u gotta look for some dps starting to loose health, but the game is so trivial that's all it takes.

Threatmeters are not needed.

Threat meter right now is not really necessary, but they should up the threat potential of the tanks. most healers and better geared dps classes will right now easily steal aggro from the tank -- The threat generation of tanks should be upped.

A healer will not steal agro from the tank. The only mobs that will head toward the healer are the ones no one is hitting. That's why the dps should start with the weaks and wipe them out fast while the tank holds the strongest on him. If the dps focuses on the weaks first there should be no way they can rip agro off a decent tank once they start helping burn down the ones he's holding.

A healer will not steal agro from the tank. The only mobs that will head toward the healer are the ones no one is hitting. That's why the dps should start with the weaks and wipe them out fast while the tank holds the strongest on him. If the dps focuses on the weaks first there should be no way they can rip agro off a decent tank once they start helping burn down the ones he's holding.

You do know that this post is over a year old right? And that comment was made back when tank threat was horrible and yes, it was really easy to pull threat off of a tank.

You do know that this post is over a year old right? And that comment was made back when tank threat was horrible and yes, it was really easy to pull threat off of a tank.

didn't look close enough at that date, my bad for that, but the healers have never been able to pull off a tank just by healin. Only mobs that are not being hit by someone will agro the healer. Been that way since game started. Only tank that ever really had agro problems were the Guardians but that's been remedied and even when it was a problem no healer was able to pull agro off a tank by healing.

didn't look close enough at that date, my bad for that, but the healers have never been able to pull off a tank just by healin. Only mobs that are not being hit by someone will agro the healer. Been that way since game started. Only tank that ever really had agro problems were the Guardians but that's been remedied and even when it was a problem no healer was able to pull agro off a tank by healing.

I was a tank guardian from back then, most of us came from WoW where threat management worked differently in comparison to SWTOR. Due to the similarities between WoW and this game I assumed threat works pretty much the same as well, that's one thing. The other is that for quite a while Tank threat management was seriously low for guardans and it was difficult to tank if you are not properly geared.

No thanks. I want to play with my judgement, not with my calculator.

I feel same way abotu spell checks.

but no, we don't need threat addon/calculator/meter. It's all good in a hood.L20 is not a tank, untill L 30 nothing is a tank. tank stance doesn't make a tank.