Hello,

 

Lvl 21 now, done my fair share of flashpoints and HC quests. The tank ALWAYS seems to lose their aggro, resulting in me, a healer getting attacked. I've almost got all the points for aggro reduce, and still, the tank always seems to lose aggro.

 

What is the problem in this? Are all the tanks just generally stupid or do they need a buff?

Are you sure they are tanks? There are only three tanks for Empire/Republic:

1) Sith Warrior (Juggernaut - Immortal) / Jedi Knight (Guardian - Defense): tank

2) Sith Inquisitor (Assassin - Darkness) / Jedi Consular (Shadow - Kinetic Combat): tank

3) Bounty Hunter (Powertech - Shield Tech) / Trooper (Vanguard - Shield Specialist): ranged tank

I've played with all 3 the tanks, all of them lose aggro.

As a tank, I can say that some skill is involved in keeping the hate up with the mobs, especially in group pulls. But I believe that some adjustment should be taken to aggro generation for tanks. I used to tank dungeons and raids in WoW (before they made the adjustment to threat that made tanking cake) so I've some experience with trying to maintain aggro with pulls of multiple elites.

 

Here in SWTOR I have a L40 juggernaut and have had some trouble keeping mobs on me especially in larger pulls. I have a single target taunt and an area taunt and several CC abilities, but they don't always seem to fit the bill. I know I need some more practice with SWTOR juggernaut tanking, but I hope the devs do look at the threat generation for tanks.

Thought i would drop this in here as well:

 

As a tank I have 1 high threat ability but it has a 1 min cooldown. If you are lucky and have talents for it you can drop it to 45 seconds.

 

Now i would like to ask people to check their 'tank' companions. They have a high threat ability that has 9-12 sec cooldown.

 

If you put a tank vs a companion tank and you put both in tank stance (same gear) and you just let them fight for agro for attacks without taunting you'll lose to your companion because he has such a quick recovery on his high threat ability.

 

Why they didnt give tanks a high threat ability with lower cooldown just like companions have i still dont understand. Admitted they would have to tune down the damage of that skill but it would make maintaining threat easier.

Yeah to be honest tanks should be balanced more, more threat!

 

It's getting annoying though, constantly getting attacks from mobs. Sometimes the tank is the only guy not getting attacked.

 

No offense to tank players though!

Threat is bugged.

This isnt true. I have a Jugg and if you know what your doing you can aggro flashpoints and keep aggro on multiple enemies, even before you got your AoE taunt.

 

You just have to be smart with your single target taunt and who you are DPSing, as well as making sure you hit aoe spawns with your aoe to ensure threat.

 

The problem is half the idiots out there arent even in their tanking stance and only stick to a single target, then wonder why they don't have any threat.

Tanking for dummies (aka dpsers).

 

See the ones with silver things? those get tanked or CC'd.

 

See the ones with gold things? those get tanked or CC'd.

 

See the ones with NO things? those get focused by the dps, tank doesnt need to worry about em.

 

 

There nubs, now all you gotta do is bossfights.

I don't know about the other tanks, but Jedi Guardians had their first flashpoint well before they even received their single taunt. There has been times with me tanking 1 vs 1 and I find myself losing aggro too easily. I grab the aggro, get hit once, and lose it again just that fast. Our abilities that have threat don't exactly recharge fast either. Keep in mind that I'm only in mid 20's.

 

I don't think anything is broke. However, I do feel some 'very slight' tweaking is needed. Nothing drastic though....

 

 

On a side note, why would they give us access to our first flashpoint without any taunt abilities? Someone missed this.....

Threat is bugged.

 

Threat is not bugged. It is just that at that level, there are not many threat producing abilities. I know the assassin has Dark Charge and a taunt and I imagine other classes have similar threat producing abilities. I am not sure when an Assassin gets lacerate, but that helps with AoE threat. Otherwise they don't have much threat generation. It does get better later though, believe me .

On a side note, why would they give us access to our first flashpoint without any taunt abilities? Someone missed this.....

 

because it's so easy it doesn't need a "proper" tank?

I have two tanks, one is specced for tanking (sith juggernaut) and one is not (jedi shadow) but I have tanked a lot on both.

 

I don't lose threat to healers unless the healer is a combat medic spamming high damage abilities. It can be a pain holding onto multi target threat but the healer is never the one that gets attacked unless the healer is, as I said, spamming high damage abilities OR the healer aggroed something I haven't picked up yet.

 

I would say that you are running with bad tanks. I see them out there all the time. There are a lot of staggeringly bad players in this game. Just look at the threads complaining about the difficulty of space missions or Hammer Station. These are the people that chose to play this game.

Tanking for dummies (aka dpsers).

 

See the ones with silver things? those get tanked or CC'd.

 

See the ones with gold things? those get tanked or CC'd.

 

See the ones with NO things? those get focused by the dps, tank doesnt need to worry about em.

 

 

There nubs, now all you gotta do is bossfights.

 

This is what you should do. If no weak, go silver. You'll survive them too.

 

As a Juggernaut tank the mutliple target pulls are quite hard to manage when the group goes bonkers with AOE one second after you get off Smash. If its all ranged mobs the DPS gotta wait till I smack em all for initial threat before they go on the kill target.

 

It takes time to build aggro since its basically derived from the damage the tank does to the mob (Stance modifier and one other ability).

 

Basically, its vanilla WOW all over again so please wait a tick before going on a rampage if its a multiple gold pull.

What is the problem in this?

Game mechanics.

 

Are all the tanks just generally stupid or do they need a buff?

A set of buffs to various threat generation tools would be appreciated.

I do ok on threat, but I believe tanks could use some help in general.

 

If I leap into a group of enemies and get cc'ed off the bat, which alot of elites in groups open up with, it is near impossible to get control of the pull. These enemies that cc should either be balanced to not use it right off the bat, or do use it on a target that isn't on top of their threat meter.

 

I think tanks aggro generation should be bumped up about 10%, but its not awful, and doesnt need a huge tweek.

I can only speak for Jedi Guardian threat, but I know their AoE threat is pretty awful. As far as I know they only have 1 AoE ability, and it's on a cooldown. That's pretty unacceptable.

Threat is bugged.

 

Not at all. It is just generated mostly through damage at this point. I've noticed if I spork my rotation up more than just a little every once in awhile I find myself having to taunt the boss back to me. For me its just a spec issue and easily solved. I do agree with an above poster that said we should get at least 1 good threat generating ability on a shortish cool down. Taunt is nice n all but I like saving it for oh poop moments. Maybe adding threat to some abilities already in existence?

 

Edit - Like the top tier shield specialist tree for the vanguards. 1 energy and some dinky damage on a 15 second cool down? Did ya'll miss something or just waiting to see if we noticed?

Edited January 3, 2012 by Gertbeefrobe

I can only speak for Jedi Guardian threat, but I know their AoE threat is pretty awful. As far as I know they only have 1 AoE ability, and it's on a cooldown. That's pretty unacceptable.

 

My first MMO tank was a warrior tank in the late days of vanilla / early days of TBC World of Warcraft.

 

Know how many AOE tanking abilities we had? A big fat ZERO. We had NONE. And we were still the best tanks, the only tanks.

The main "problem" with tank threat is most people are too used to faceroll threat in WoW. And come from that with that experience so rather than killing the easier/none elite mobs, or focusing the target the tank is focusing keeping threat on, they just herpderp and pull all kind of threat.

 

Or the mob has an aggro wipe.

 

True healers can still take threat, but with a few taunts and such that isnt too much of a problem.

 

For those asking for added threat on abilities - For trooper add it Stockstrike (while using Ion cell/make it something we can put points in to in talents) or to Ion pulse as its basically signature Vanguard ability other than Ion cell, just generate moderate threat rather than high.

- 46 Trooper Vanguard.

Edited January 3, 2012 by KovuTalli

My first MMO tank was a warrior tank in the late days of vanilla / early days of TBC World of Warcraft.

 

Know how many AOE tanking abilities we had? A big fat ZERO. We had NONE. And we were still the best tanks, the only tanks.

 

 

Tab-spam, don't ever leave me.

lvl 50 juggernaut here no problems with aggro hold tbh requires skill yes but it isn't to bad to loose a mob every now and then most people in the group can take a few hits and you pull em off em simple as that youll get more aoe skills and threat gain when you get higher

IMO its all about skill and tactics. I group with 4 friends allmost all the time and aggroing 3+3+1+1+1=9 enemies only to attack me is basic, if there is more than that then aoe taunt is needed and in best case its 12 mobs more. So i can keep aggro of 21 enemies so i dont see any point in buffing anything.

 

Hole point for tank is to jump in, sweep etc all enemies before other part of group attacks anyone, then 2 dps should focus SAME AGGROED mob from left to right or right to left, healer throws heal and then join dpsing with 2 other. More stronger the mob, more later it will be nuked. If aggroing fails, i have noticed that its commonly dps:s or healers fault for tarketing wrong enemies or attacking before tank engages.

 

Besically im trying to say that if tank is retard, others focus their own targets and soloing whatever there is, it all comes to conclusion that mobs aggro is f'd up.

 

Oh and Jedi guardians should allways use ability: guard on healer as it lesses the aggro created by healer.

 

Its all about skill of your hole group and its EVERY individual.

Yeah i completely agree lets make it like wow that all you need to do as a tank is charge, rend, thunderclap go afk for abit and let auto attack hold threat....

 

Or we could leave it the way it is and make tanks actually work for threat and dps actually use thier brain...

I have a lvl 41 Juggernaut tank right now on the Nadd PvP server. At first, I was very frustrated with the lack of a 'cleave' skill early on and little to no AoE threat generating skills until you get into the higher tiers of the Juggernaut tanking tree.

A primary reason for my aggravation was from my experience of being a successful Warrior tank in end-game raiding where you can charge in, set up armor debuffs (quickly) and pretty much spam AoE high-threat generating abilities with little to no consequence to your rage pool. Just stand there and cycle through a few skills and occasionally have to run out and pick up a runner from time to time, but it was extremely easy to get threat back.

That was EZ-Mode tanking and I was unaware of this at the time.

The other day, I was lvl 37 and got invited to tank a Foundry run with a 46 and a 47 friend of mine so that they could see the amazing story in there. I was a little apprehensive going into it because of the seemingly broken threat gen and the fact that they would be producing quite a bit more threat than I was normally used to contending with.

It went smoothly.

I did notice on more than one occasion that the normal strain of tanking with a Juggernaut seemed a bit enhanced, but my trick was to mark a target for FF and to keep moving and marking. It's amazing how much marking a target and constantly moving (not just TAB-targeting) will make you a more successful tank. Mark, charge, AoE, single-target threat, TAB, charge second AoE/Stun/Interrupt, back to marked, remark second target, charge, single-target high-threat ability...wash rinse and repeat.

I think the BH in my group pulled off me a couple times while doing the second boss fight (no spoilers as to whom that may be) but overall it was a very fun and tiring run.

Tanking in SWtOR is exhausting right now, but rewarding. It seems that the FPs are very generous with tank drops, so you do have that going for you.

Remember this:

Move

Mark

Move some more

always have high-threat abilities on CD

be smart with AoE taunts

don't be afraid to ask for a couple seconds to establish aggro

keep moving

get used to keybinds if you don't use them already

practice practice practice

 

We all get stuck standing there from time to time with no rage/other resource as well. Times like that, you have a split second to get it back. Learn a 'rotation' that can sustain itself of a 1/2 rage bar and keep that replenishing and only use your big GIMME MY RAGE NOW skill when you need to pull some magic out of your ***.

'Oh-****' buttons are just that - reserves! Keep those as far away from your standard rotation/skill set as you can. I myself throw those on my Alt-binds to keep them on the other side of my ctrl-binds and shift-binds so I don't accidentally use them.

Those will save you. You have some trouble getting aggro off a trigger-happy DPS who doesn't know to run towards the tank when he pulls aggro, use them. The healer is over-healing you a bit too much, use them. DPS got overhealed and boss is about to make a grease spot out of you, use them. Not only will they give you a couple secs to re-orient yourself, they will put you in a position to be able to generate a nice surge of threat normally or give you that invincible edge when it's you and a DPS shaving that last 2% of life off a boss.

Fun time...

Anyhow, take it for what it is. This is not the MMO that most of us have grown accustomed to tanking. You actually have to play your tank to be successful right now in SWtOR.

 

I hope I didn't ramble, but I sure do enjoy tanking Heroics and Flashpoints; and I seriously hope that anyone having troubles right now will look at it for what it is and be willing to relearn tanking all together.

 

See you in-game!