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Is there some sort of Assassin tanking build?


reuterrat

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I roled Jugg and enjoy tanking for the most part, but everytime I have an assassin in my group, they are ALWAYS pulling aggro... ON PURPOSE! I see that little "taunt" animation over and over and am always struggling to pull in all the straggling mobs and blowing my taunt pulling aggro back from them.

 

 

At first I thought I was just with some bad players, but it seems to happen EVERY time. What is the deal with this and is their some assassin role I'm missing?

 

 

Also,is the concept of focus fire not important in this game? Cause this is another struggle I have with members of my FP parties.

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Meh... I now see that there is. Kind of annoying honestly, because I thought I was rolling one of the pure tanking classes and come to find out it is outshined by a class that doesn't seem to make sense as a tank. Would have been nice to know before rolling.... Oh well.
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Yes, the Shadow Kinetic tree is a tanking tree - I'd suggest asking if the shadows you group with are tank spec or not in the future to avoid confusion

 

As for focus fire - its important but many multiple mob fights don't necessarily need it right from the start. Tank picks up the biggest one or two mobs just as any CC you have in the group lands (wait a second longer for those that can only be applied out of combat, like the shadow's one). Then dps burns down non-tanked mobs asap, starting with weak/normal, then strong, then elites before turning the ones being tanked, then everyone moves to CCed mobs one at a time.

 

Until everyone is on the elites, focus fire is not really important - it'll help marginally but isn't worth worrying about tbh. Once you are at elites - and its possible a dps may have to off-tank an elite if you don't have enough CC - then focus them down in the order set when you created the group based on the markers assigned. My gunnery commando 'off-tanks' regularly as any half-way competent healer can keep her going against an elite while still healing the tank with 2 or 3 mobs on him. DPS Guardians are great at this too.

 

The key to all this is preparing - ask what roles people fit, don't assume every shadow is dps, every guardian is tank or every sage is heals. Select a marker for each CC capable player, set your kill order and mark targets so everyone knows what is going on.

 

E.g. I use lightning bolt for my CC, the purple cog if group has a second CC, kill order is usually red-yellow-white-blue(shield)-purple-lightning. Since my CC can be re-applied in combat mine is usually the last to be killed.

 

After the first pull or two people get into a flow - I mark the targets, hit Z to unholster my assault cannon to show I'm ready and start my CC activation, the tank leaps/pulls as timer is almost complete and we go to town.

 

Some simple prep and communication early makes FPs a lot easier and a lot more fun.

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Well I make it fairly clear that I'm taking the tank roll, but I just assumed that Assassins fell into dps rolls only. Had no idea they could tank, thought they were pure light armor and squishy.

 

And the focus fire bit is mainly about elites. I've just had quite a few wipes where it seems like everyone is just dpsing their own mobs. Once again, I feel like Assassins do this all too often. I guess maybe because they are trying to tank an extra elite, but I just don't see that as necessary in a 4 man, low level FP. I think maybe I'm just getting overly frustrated because I'm still unclear of all the various class roles having only played Merc and Jugg.

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Meh... I now see that there is. Kind of annoying honestly, because I thought I was rolling one of the pure tanking classes and come to find out it is outshined by a class that doesn't seem to make sense as a tank. Would have been nice to know before rolling.... Oh well.

 

Well.. you're not necessarily being 'outshined' by him. Since taunt effects will always pull aggro and put the taunter at the top of the threat list in ToR... if they're using their taunts, then they will take aggro a lot. You may have built up a whole load of threat, then when he taunts he gains the benefit of all of that.... but your own taunts will do the same of course.

 

X

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Meh... I now see that there is. Kind of annoying honestly, because I thought I was rolling one of the pure tanking classes and come to find out it is outshined by a class that doesn't seem to make sense as a tank. Would have been nice to know before rolling.... Oh well.

 

lol... just, yeah.

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In a dps role he should not be taunting,

if he does , let him take aggro and when he dies you just tell him why

 

 

A much better approach would be to say beforehand that Taunting is your job and anyone else should only use Taunts in dire emergency (getting a Strong off the Healer, say), because taunting mobs the Tank has Aggro on just makes the party's job harder. Then you can get all hard-assed and macho about who you leave to die.

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A much better approach would be to say beforehand that Taunting is your job and anyone else should only use Taunts in dire emergency (getting a Strong off the Healer, say), because taunting mobs the Tank has Aggro on just makes the party's job harder. Then you can get all hard-assed and macho about who you leave to die.

 

I've tried being the nice guy and doing just that. Most people ina pug seem to get all upset and nerdrage yelling stop telling them how to DPS.

 

If it's any consolation, I don't laugh anymore when i let a DPS die because they taunt off me.

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Well.. you're not necessarily being 'outshined' by him. Since taunt effects will always pull aggro and put the taunter at the top of the threat list in ToR... if they're using their taunts, then they will take aggro a lot. You may have built up a whole load of threat, then when he taunts he gains the benefit of all of that.... but your own taunts will do the same of course.

 

X

 

I didn't mean it like that. Just meant that from what I've read around these forums, Assassin tanks seem to be > Juggs for endgame tanking. Seems odd and coming in to the game without doing the research ahead of time that is not something you would figure to be the case. I guess it's kinda cool that every class can fill so many roles, but just kicking myself for not looking into it more in depth from the beginning.

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I didn't mean it like that. Just meant that from what I've read around these forums, Assassin tanks seem to be > Juggs for endgame tanking. Seems odd and coming in to the game without doing the research ahead of time that is not something you would figure to be the case. I guess it's kinda cool that every class can fill so many roles, but just kicking myself for not looking into it more in depth from the beginning.

 

All the tanks are about equal, really, when it comes to end game damage soaking. If one class is getting owned and the others aren't, it is typically because the guy playing that one class geared poorly, failing to focus enough on mitigation/avoidance stats. For example, I've had multiple of my guild's healers comment on how much damage PTs take. Not the fault of the class though, but rather, the PT in my guild who hasn't fixed the crappy mods that come stock in his Columi armor.

 

Aggro-wise, Juggs do have some threat issues, especially AoE threat, which has more to do with the area their AoEs cover than the threat they generate on what they do hit, but, in my experience when it comes to AoEs, it doesn't matter what you are, your only hope of keeping an AoE pull off my pyro merc is AoE taunt. I've got plenty of AoEs, including a spammable one, and mine do significantly more damage than the tank ones, plus I can position mine better, not being in the center of a pack of mobs.

 

Anyway, I'd expect there to be a few aggro related tweaks to Juggs in 1.2. And if you have played enough MMOs, you know that today's top dog will be the bottom tomorrow. And that the gaps in viability are rarely as large as people make it out to be, usually only really mattering at the highest/toughest levels of content.

 

Anyway, as to assassin's pulling aggro off you, if they are truly DPS and taunting, well, that's just stupid. They gain nothing from being beat on, unlike the Jugg who wants the mob's love to help him generate more rage. Sounds like you've got PvPers though, hitting taunt out of habit, as PvE DPS assassins aren't darkness.

Edited by Battilea
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Meh... I now see that there is. Kind of annoying honestly, because I thought I was rolling one of the pure tanking classes and come to find out it is outshined by a class that doesn't seem to make sense as a tank. Would have been nice to know before rolling.... Oh well.

 

There is no "pure" tanking class. You're not automatically assumed to be a tank by your class. You need to be clear about it.

 

If fact, they were probably there to tank too - so I expect they were pretty displeased as well.

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There is no "pure" tanking class. You're not automatically assumed to be a tank by your class. You need to be clear about it.

 

If fact, they were probably there to tank too - so I expect they were pretty displeased as well.

Well I tend to assume when a group is "LF Tank" that they don't already have a tank in the group...

 

I think it's pretty clear at this point I was making false assumptions about class roles though.

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I've had a fair few inexperienced players, who have taunted mobs away from me as a tank, thinking they were 'helping out'. In some cases that can in fact work - but you need to agree the tactics behind that and the healer, in particular, needs to know what's going on.

 

In general, I find that people expect the tank to take control of groups - especially PuGs. So you should probably try to establish everybody's roles before going into battle (who will tank? who has which CC? who will heal? who will secondary heal? who will bubble? etc). That's as much for their clarity on the matter as it is for yours. :)

 

X

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flashpoints right now are all about focus fire and CC. You wont get very far without them. As far as assassins/shadows taunting, it sounds like they just really want to tank, or dont know that the taunt is in fact a taunt cuz they didnt read past "it does some ****** DAMAGE"
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maybe the assassin player wasn't familir with the function of taunt in PvE. in pvp taunt doesn't force the target to attack you but rather reduces the damage the target deals to other players, do taunting someone who is attacking your teammate is actually helpful.

 

perhaps the guy just wanted to help but didn't understand that taunts have a different effect on mobs

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flashpoints right now are all about focus fire and CC. You wont get very far without them. As far as assassins/shadows taunting, it sounds like they just really want to tank, or dont know that the taunt is in fact a taunt cuz they didnt read past "it does some ****** DAMAGE"

 

Most flashpoints I do, I don't bother to CC much. There's a couple of fights, but not many.

 

And as to focus fire, the opposite is normally the case. As the tank, I aggro a bunch of stuff, but rely upon the DPS to quickly mop up the rest, ideally keeping it off the healer as well. Since the usual kill order is lowest hp to most hp, there's usually not much need to focus fire. A dps can chew through a silver pretty quickly. And that gives the tanks enough time to build up hate on the golds. There's obviously exceptions, like the triple bosses at the end of BP and Kaon, plus certain mobs you want dead fast, like mercs in Kaon, but generally, don't really care what the DPS beats on as long as stuff that isn't in my sphere of influence dies first.

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