The equally important part is that healers should not constantly heal during the pulling phase or adds far away and those that spawn from elevators etc.. will go to the healer and at least get their alpha strike in, which can rarely be lethal or worse, have the healer start healing himself and forget about the tank who just pulled them right back to him, resulting in a dead tank. Kolto shell is fine, spamming heals on a tank at full health while pulling is not fine, kolto missle/ revivification is situational but usually ok as well.

Best example for this type of mistakes is the pack with 5 dogs before the dog boss in mandolorian, 4 dogs jumping to healer = healer usually dead or healing himself and not tank who just aoe taunted.

Overheating causes no threat, so healing anyone with full health will not have any effect like what you describe.

I'm still waiting for Grimmsblood to acknowledge the fact that on most bosses his sentinel should not be in melee range for the purposes of threat since most bosses have hit boxes which are larger than a 4m radius from the dead center of the boss, and that because of this he has to exceed a given tank's threat by 30% in order to pull.

 

Based on that I'd like to see his numbers which make him think pulling threat is an inevitability and not merely a possibility.

 

If I recall from KBN's post he'd have to be generating something like an average of 9500 TPS in order for that to happen on pretty much everything but the tentacles on TFB phase 1 and Styrak. Olok too I suppse?

Sorry I didn't respond to everything for you. I had honestly given up trying to talk sense into some individuals.

First off, I am a little confuse as to why you pick on my sentinel....I have not raided on her since NiM EC progression, but whatever. My sentinel usually resides at the edge of the boss's hitbox, So that is how far she would be from a given boss, unless it was a mobile one and my strafing put me closer.

I can only assume that you were meaning to say my Gunslinger (Since I was using him for the numbers). In which case, I am usually inside the hitbox of the larger boss's due to having to roll. Part of the whole rolling things involves a nice little maneuver that causes me to roll in place. The Scatter Bombs get dropped behind me. So, I must be inside the hitbox so the bombs actually hit the target. TL;DR, Gunslinger has to be inside the hitbox.... only need 110% threat to pull.

Furthermore, I am highly skeptical of where this melee vs range threat point starts. If it was from the center of the boss outward, wouldn't it be possible for a melee class to pull threat just by walking forward 3 steps? Wouldn't we see that happen some of the time? I mean let's say the melee class is very good and the tank is average. The melee class is doing 120% threat. The melee class takes 2 steps forward and is within range. Would the melee class pull without having to attack?

Oh yeah, I almost forget............9.5k TPS on everything BUT P1 TFB and Styrak!? Da-***!?...................since when did P1 TFB and Styrak get special threat treatment? You are out of your mind. Not only that, Since when is a tank able to generate 6650 TPS? (Start reading at post #35) Even using KBN's inflated numbers he doesn't reach that in his "perfect" opener.

Go troll somewhere else.

For tanks: Pulling with (reusable) power adrenal plus aggro-rotation followed by (AoE)-Taunt should allow any tank to keep aggro no matter what (equally or even a little higher geared) dps are doing. If not, the tank's aggro-rotation is not optimized.

If you're still having trouble, have the tank announce "damage Go" after his first three of four attacks and only then dps are allowed to attack. Those 3 or 4 GCDs usually don't get the boss enraged, but losing aggro and wasting taunts will either wipe you or put so much strain on your healers' resources you'll hit enrage anyway (due to dps dying and having to be rezzed or dps needing to save themselves by stopping their damage).

Sorry I didn't respond to everything for you. I had honestly given up trying to talk sense into some individuals.

 

First off, I am a little confuse as to why you pick on my sentinel....I have not raided on her since NiM EC progression, but whatever. My sentinel usually resides at the edge of the boss's hitbox, So that is how far she would be from a given boss, unless it was a mobile one and my strafing put me closer.

 

I can only assume that you were meaning to say my Gunslinger (Since I was using him for the numbers). In which case, I am usually inside the hitbox of the larger boss's due to having to roll. Part of the whole rolling things involves a nice little maneuver that causes me to roll in place. The Scatter Bombs get dropped behind me. So, I must be inside the hitbox so the bombs actually hit the target. TL;DR, Gunslinger has to be inside the hitbox.... only need 110% threat to pull.

 

 

Furthermore, I am highly skeptical of where this melee vs range threat point starts. If it was from the center of the boss outward, wouldn't it be possible for a melee class to pull threat just by walking forward 3 steps? Wouldn't we see that happen some of the time? I mean let's say the melee class is very good and the tank is average. The melee class is doing 120% threat. The melee class takes 2 steps forward and is within range. Would the melee class pull without having to attack?

 

 

Oh yeah, I almost forget............9.5k TPS on everything BUT P1 TFB and Styrak!? Da-***!?...................since when did P1 TFB and Styrak get special threat treatment? You are out of your mind. Not only that, Since when is a tank able to generate 6650 TPS? (Start reading at post #35) Even using KBN's inflated numbers he doesn't reach that in his "perfect" opener.

 

Go troll somewhere else.

I mention your sentinel since you seemed to keep using that earlier, but going back through the thread it seems was mistaken. Either way, the one that really drew my attention was this:

You give that 130% number which is misleading. That is if I am standing at range. If I move within 4 meters it goes to 110%. In every situation tanks can not stand greater then 4 meters from the boss. What happens when you throw in a mdps spiking as high (Combat, Infiltration)? Dread Guards, Kephess, Dash'roode, Thrasher, Warlords and Styrak (6/12) fights you will not be able to generate that extra threat from standing out. In the other 6, what happens if a Guardian is the tank of choice?

Which ignored the fact that for threat generation purposes, on many bosses, tanks are standing at range despite being 4m from the hitbox. Several people pointed out this error, KBN only being the first, and you have yet to acknowledge it, yet keep talking as if you only need 110% of the tank's threatt to pull.

The range thing has been noted for a long time since logs showed taunts granting more threat than it seemed they should, until people realized that they were getting expected values if they were being put at the top of the threat table from range instead of melee.

Since the bigger bosses have such huge hit boxes, it is also not guaranteed that just because you're slinger is inside the hitbox that automatically means they are in melee range, but without seeing how close you actually are I'm not prepared to comment further except to say that in the case of something like thrasher you'd have to be darn near completely obscured to actually be in melee range for the purposes of threat generation.

Your point of skepticism isn't honestly that big a worry. Most top tier DPS are not in fact going to be riding at 120% of the tank's threat in anything but the opening seconds of a fight anyway. Since you yourself already have it worked out with your raid that you (or another high DPS) inevitably pull early and then are immediately taunted off of, the "melee at120% who steps within the 4m from center threshold and pulls without doing anything" is unlikely to have appeared as aberrant behavior, after that tank threat should be so high that you simply can't pull off, a fact you yourself acknowledge earlier in the thread. It's only in the opening seconds of a fight where pulling threat is a real risk with even half competent tanks which I assume Severity has. Additionally the actual time that a good DPS would be doing absolutely nothing is also very rare (if you're wasting a fraction of a GCD doing nothing your threat probably isn't enough to pull anyway), so if the scenario you're describing happens it's very unlikely that it would be recognized for what it is (i.e. a DPS with more than 110% of the tank's threat but less than 130% who gets within 4m of the center of the boss and then immediately pulls threat).

The 9.5k number was me going off of memory because I didn't wanna dig back through the thread to find an exact number. But it's back from post 41, and KBN was talking about threat threshold you would need to achieve in order to pull if guarded. The actual quote is:

Note that if you're guarded, it's insanely easy-mode: 9236.41 DPS over 13.5 seconds, or 8389.18 DPS over 30 seconds. I really, really don't think those are achievable thresholds given current gear levels, regardless of spec or skill.

So that's guarded, and since of course you can't have every DPS guarded, if more than three DPS are achieving your numbers in your raid then we have to revert to 130% of his current threat generation which is, quoting from the same post:

Which is to say, I can keep threat off of you in the first 13.5 seconds if you're pulling a DPS of 6927.31 (average, not instant spike), and 6291.88131 in the first 30 seconds (again, average).

The exceptions made for Styrak and P1 TFB tentacles comes purely from the fact that you are much more likely to be standing within 4m from their actual centers and so the threat threshold is indeed lower on those bosses purely by virtue of their smaller hit boxes. Those two, and Oolok are the only bosses off the top of my head where this would come up since, while the dread guard has small humanoid hit boxes, by the time you get to one that's actually tankable the tanks in question should have so much threat that it's impossible to pull anyway. Kephess of course is a good exception too, but is somewhat outside the realm of discussion of whether or not tanks can hold threat through huge DPS openings.

For the record, I'm not trolling. This issue was brought up by KBN way back on page 5, you ignored it, was brought up later by grallmate, to which you responded in post 67 with:

Where is the fallacious part? All I need is 110% of the tanks threat to pull off of him (standing in melee range, like I would) or 130%( standing at range) at most.

Which once again ignored that for threat generation purposes even standing in "melee" range (i.e. 4m from the edge of the hitbox) is often still a more than a serviceable amount away from the actual 4m from the center of the boss. When you only need 110% of the tank's threat to pull, the likelihood of actually doing so obviously goes up appreciably, and your earlier recommendation of pull -> taunt -> drop is almost certainly the right course with DPS that can consistently exceed the tank's threat by 10% in the opening stages. When you will almost always need 130% of the tank's threat to pull the likelihood of actually pulling obviously goes down since exceeding the tank's threat by 30% is a much harder proposition unless they miss, and if it's a rare enough occurrence then KBN's suggestion of burning a taunt as a bid to keep that pull from ever happening seems to me the much wiser course since obviously it's better that the DPS simply never pull at all.

The reason I'm waiting for you to acknowledge and address this point is that until you do your earlier claim loses a lot of validity because it comes across like you either don't really know what you're talking about (not knowing the melee trip threshold is measured from the center of the box instead of distance from the hitbox), or it looks like you're deliberately ignoring something that would disprove your claim that tanks cannot be relied upon to hold threat against high burst openings from DPS. I don't say that's what is happening, but something like that can happen to the best of us, and at this point I'm much more inclined to believe KBN's claim that a really good tank should always be able to hold threat though that initial high burst phase over your own where it might be that your tanks have simply grown used to your proposed method and aren't actively trying to hold threat through your initial burst phase.

If you and KBN get around to his little proposal and you show you can pull from him with regularity of course that would be something else entirely and I have a long and proud history on these forums of admitting I was dead wrong.

On the other hand if all you wanna do is stroke your own e-peen that there isn't a tank born that can hold threat through YOUR DPS, and are fine with ignoring counterpoints which may show you aren't the infallible all knowing master of all TOR knowledge that your posts seem to want to present yourself as, that's also your right, but then at that point which one of us is the troll?

/sigh

The whole melee scenario was a general one and not specific to my guild. Until I can be provided with hard data concerning the range for taunts starting @ the edge of the hitbox or the center I will ignore this argument. Furthermore, you call me out for not testing with him and a whole e-peen thing. You really should not troll so much. All I have to do is pull off of KBN one (1) time for my point to be valid. Maybe one of these days we will get around to it. Maybe we won't. In either event, it is definetly possible to do if one follows the "perfect rotation" for a tank. That is kinda the whole point here. That a dps can exceeded a tanks threat and a tank can do nothing about it if they are following the "perfect" rotation. Therefor, the only solution that is left is to use the previously mentioned pull --> taunt --> drop mechanism to manage the initial pull.

KBNs rotation would work with yours Grimsblood.

you said it yourself you'd be pulling before he taunts just watch for it as a tank and taunt 1-2GCD's sooner

as a DPS the more Damage you do before/between the Single Target Taunt and the AOE Taunt the better

just be careful to make sure the tank can AOE taunt in the current fight

if you see his 2nd taunt you'll want to take a breath (use your Aggro reduce) because in 6 Seconds your tank is helpless for 5sec if he has placed his taunts back to back.

-> burst all you can you are just helping your tank to keep Aggro with it

that said, I usually don't bother with Taunt pushing in the beginning but do watch for the boss to change his mind and taunt then works just as well with the low ping I have most of the time, but both tactics work equally well.

I'm always happy if DD's play nice, makes live easier as a tank but play nice doesn't mean don't burst just dont burst after the 2nd taunt

(that's at soonest ~ 9sec into the fight if the tank has to taunt right after the pull)

vanguard Pull should be similar to shadow Pull in therms of thread generated?

so really only Guardiens have a bit of a Problem... if they don't use Sabre Reflect

my opinion use SR it's even more amazing as an Aggro tool then as an DD/DR tool so use it in the beginning, your Heals will be able to deal with it, Vanguards survive too after all.

To the OP's original question, it comes down to the tanks needing to up their game. Either they use the method of improving their rotations so that they can hold aggro (as mentioned by KBN and Grall) OR the tanks need to taunt faster after the DD pulls aggro.

If you're not pushing for records, asking your DDs to start slower is also a viable method of ensuring that the tanks don't lose threat. Since you're here asking for advise, I would assume that you are more interested in just beating the dern boss rather than setting fastest-kill records.

My tanks allow me to open with adrenal, relic and inspiration (I have a combat sentinel in my group), along with a pre-casted flyby and aimed shot (plus trickshot, if I'm sharpshooter).

Out of curiosity, why would you open this way? If your end goal is to kill the boss as fast as possible, wouldn't you be better positioned to achieve this goal by waiting for DoTs before popping inspiration? And for that matter, wouldn't you be better off waiting on your DoTs to pop your adrenal/relic as well?

I'm not trying to be snide here, I'm just honestly curious.

[regarding tanks using DPS gear]Yeah about that...............why would you even mention that? That is something someone would say that doesn't know any better.

It depends on your goals, I suppose. Again, it appears that your guild's goals are to down the boss in record times. If your healers can keep your tanks alive while they run power/str over endurance (i.e. by switching out crystals and armorings), wouldn't that help you to achieve your goal?

Out of curiosity, why would you open this way? If your end goal is to kill the boss as fast as possible, wouldn't you be better positioned to achieve this goal by waiting for DoTs before popping inspiration? And for that matter, wouldn't you be better off waiting on your DoTs to pop your adrenal/relic as well?

 

I'm not trying to be snide here, I'm just honestly curious.

No problem. The real reason is simply that there are 3 other dps in the group. Personally, I'd probably get the biggest opener as DF/hybrid from going flyby-dots (inspiration+buffs on the last dot as flyby hits for the first time)-rest of my rotation, but this means at least the sentinel, and depending on the other 2 classes the other dps as well, are delaying their opener until 5-7 seconds into the fight. At least for the combat sentinel, this means he's just sitting at 30 stacks of centering essentially doing nothing but building focus. Opening with an inspiration is more damage for the group as a whole.

KBNs rotation would work with yours Grimsblood.

you said it yourself you'd be pulling before he taunts just watch for it as a tank and taunt 1-2GCD's sooner

as a DPS the more Damage you do before/between the Single Target Taunt and the AOE Taunt the better

just be careful to make sure the tank can AOE taunt in the current fight

if you see his 2nd taunt you'll want to take a breath (use your Aggro reduce) because in 6 Seconds your tank is helpless for 5sec if he has placed his taunts back to back.

 

-> burst all you can you are just helping your tank to keep Aggro with it

 

that said, I usually don't bother with Taunt pushing in the beginning but do watch for the boss to change his mind and taunt then works just as well with the low ping I have most of the time, but both tactics work equally well.

I'm always happy if DD's play nice, makes live easier as a tank but play nice doesn't mean don't burst just dont burst after the 2nd taunt

(that's at soonest ~ 9sec into the fight if the tank has to taunt right after the pull)

vanguard Pull should be similar to shadow Pull in therms of thread generated?

so really only Guardiens have a bit of a Problem... if they don't use Sabre Reflect

my opinion use SR it's even more amazing as an Aggro tool then as an DD/DR tool so use it in the beginning, your Heals will be able to deal with it, Vanguards survive too after all.

No. His point is, "if a tank looses threat at any point in time he is not doing his job". I was highlighting that even following his "perfect" rotation, it is possible to pull without the tank being able to do anything about it. I do not believe either of us were arguing that after the pull, things would be easily fixed.

Also, a minor point; if the taunts go out before the dps pulls....the tank will have threat, but the dps that can really push numbers will get threat soon as the taunt debuff wears off. So, the tank may have threat for a max of 12 seconds, but after that the DPS's threat will have been so high that they will have aggro on the boss. The tank won't have a Taunt ready and the group would be screwed. If you pull taunts out of a tanks abilities, they can not generate more threat then a dps (assuming both are playing at the peak of their class). Taunts are there to either boost the tanks threat on himself or "steal" someone elses threat putting him on top. TL;DR Exactly WHEN a taunt is used is directly related to how much threat a tank will have.

/sigh

 

 

The whole melee scenario was a general one and not specific to my guild. Until I can be provided with hard data concerning the range for taunts starting @ the edge of the hitbox or the center I will ignore this argument. Furthermore, you call me out for not testing with him and a whole e-peen thing. You really should not troll so much. All I have to do is pull off of KBN one (1) time for my point to be valid. Maybe one of these days we will get around to it. Maybe we won't. In either event, it is definetly possible to do if one follows the "perfect rotation" for a tank. That is kinda the whole point here. That a dps can exceeded a tanks threat and a tank can do nothing about it if they are following the "perfect" rotation. Therefor, the only solution that is left is to use the previously mentioned pull --> taunt --> drop mechanism to manage the initial pull.

Here is the math for you.

http://mmo-mechanics.com/swtor/forums/thread-786-post-21688.html#pid21688

Here is a wonderful thread that hashed this out over a year and a half ago.

http://mmo-mechanics.com/swtor/forums/thread-786.html

(gets good @ page 7)

So what the other poster was saying is spot on. Any mele class SHOULD, as a courtesy, stand 2.76 - 4m away from the center of the boss's hit box so they require 130% threat to pull aggro.

The whole argument that "DPS can out threat a tank" is hogwash. Any and all who say such things obviously do not have a basic grasp on how threat works, and/or how to apply such information to the game.

Here is a nifty chart showing two tanks in a 2 min parse.

One tank is just DPS'n and the other is using their taunts.

Both are generating 1000tps.

http://mmo-mechanics.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Threattaunts.png

(full thread for the pic can be found here...http://mmo-mechanics.com/news.php?article=kors-laboratory-threat)

After 2min the tank that is using taunts on CD has 3.5x the threat of the other tank.

I could go on and on...

ALL this information is well over a year old and has been out there if you simply go looking for it.

The GOOD tanks take the time to learn this information, figure out how to apply it to their class, and threat is a non-issue to them as they always have it.

The BAD tanks just blame the game and say things like "DPS can out threat a tank no matter what the tank does" which is utter rubbish.

 

The whole argument that "DPS can out threat a tank" is hogwash. Any and all who say such things obviously do not have a basic grasp on how threat works, and/or how to apply such information to the game.

 

First off, thanks for those posts. Clears things up a tad (vs just hearsay).

I agree that later on in a fight, a dps can not outclass a tank unless the tank is bad. However, we are discussing the initial pull here. If you assume that the tank is not taunting off the dps and taking their threat in the beginning (since according to KBN, a good tank will never have the ToT switch off of him), the tank can and in about half the cases be helpless to the dps pulling off of him.

The simple fix if to have your taunt ready and use it at that point (Hence the Pull --> Taunt --> Drop method I put forth in the beginning). The point of this is that following a "max threat" rotation for a tank on a pull will not guarantee they never loose threat. The safer and more consistent method is Pull --> Taunt --> Drop.

This method is the method the OP needs to employ. He should employ it for the simple fact that he has to come here to ask for help (Not enough experience in troubleshooting scenarios). Instead of giving him a "this will work 50% or 75% of the time" answer I chose to give him the most reliable one (Upon which, the tanks in my guild were called out on being bad; when in fact our initial dps is just too good for the game mechanics).

The whole argument that "DPS can out threat a tank" is hogwash. Any and all who say such things obviously do not have a basic grasp on how threat works, and/or how to apply such information to the game.

I don't think anyone would disagree with you in regards to that if we are talking about a tank who is using a taunt boost. Using raw threat alone (before any taunt starts inflating the threat numbers) are where a lot of these arguments spring from. I think it has been shown that even with an optimized opener, a guarded sentinel can out threat a shadow who doesn't use taunt (using KBN's comparison).

Then we move on to whether or not dps should be taking steps to avoid that (giving the tank a gcd lead, not using relics/adrenals/class buffs on the pull, strategic threat drops). The easier option is for the tank to swallow their pride and use a taunt boost.

...

 

This method is the method the OP needs to employ. He should employ it for the simple fact that he has to come here to ask for help (Not enough experience in troubleshooting scenarios). Instead of giving him a "this will work 50% or 75% of the time" answer I chose to give him the most reliable one (Upon which, the tanks in my guild were called out on being bad; when in fact our initial dps is just too good for the game mechanics).

Honestly, I think this is the very best point that can be made.

So let's just say that it's true that a perfectly played tank could never lose aggro, even in the beginning of the pull. You'll note that this requires a perfectly played tank.

I'm a good tank. Not a perfect one. Perhaps if I dialed in my understand of my class better, organized my gear better, know the opening bursts of all the classes I raid with, and really worked out exactly how to handle each one, perhaps I could indeed become a tank that nobody could ever pull off of.

But you know, I'm just not that good. HOWEVER, I am good enough to see the Sentinel pull off of me right at the beginning and immediately take it back. I'm good enough to keep aggro throughout the rest of the fight. I'm good enough to position the bosses as needed and to handle instance mechanics. And I'm good enough to tank all the current HM Ops in the game.

Now, if there were a fight where the enrage timer was SO TIGHT that every single dps had to bring 2900+ for the whole duration, opening with the biggest possible burst they could, and if I lost aggro in the first 15 seconds for even a moment it would wipe the group, then I suppose I wouldn't be a good enough tank.

Since there aren't fights like that in this game, it seems a bit heavy handed to give the OP advice that essentially says: "You have to become so perfect as a tank that it's completely impossible to pull off you"

That's not really what he needs to succeed in this game, is it?

That's not really what he needs to succeed in this game, is it?

No, it's not. But a spirited argument like this thread brings forward a lot of fruitful information and viewpoints about tanking mechanics. The more they fight, the more our collective knowledge of tanking increases. It doesn't even really matter who is right and who is wrong. Readers benefit, as long as they know what to look for. Yay for internet arguments.

Thanks to all who kept going at it (and may you continue to do so).

No, it's not. But a spirited argument like this thread brings forward a lot of fruitful information and viewpoints about tanking mechanics. The more they fight, the more our collective knowledge of tanking increases. It doesn't even really matter who is right and who is wrong. Readers benefit, as long as they know what to look for. Yay for internet arguments.

 

Thanks to all who kept going at it (and may you continue to do so).

Are you..................telling...................................................us..............................................................................to..............................................................................................................................TROLL HARDER!