Aggro/Threat mechanics don't work in PvX

How about this:

• a tank has an "aggro stance"
• it's an aura with a somewhat small aoe
• as long as there's an enemy (mob or flagged person) within that aoe - the aura works
• aura has 4 stages (indicated by a colored (blue, green, yellow, red) circle around the tank)
  1. if the tank has not received a threshold of dmg (say, 1k after all reductions) within the last 5 secs - the aura moves to stage 2
  2. tank's allies have a "reduce incoming dmg" buff. if the tank hasn't received enough dmg (say, 2k now) - stage 3
  3. tank is now redirecting dmg from allies to himself, with an additional reduction on the incoming dmg. if the tank hasn't received direct incoming dmg (say, 4k) - stage 4
  4. tank gets timer of 3 seconds. This timer can be removed if the tank gets hit with 3 different debuffs. After those 3 seconds the tank will "explode", dealing x2 of the dmg he absorbed in the previous stage in the aura's aoe. Aura's stage gets reset.
• each stage's duration can be balanced however Intrepid wants
• if the tank receives enough dmg the stage go down one step

This would prevent the tank from just running away from attackers, while also encouraging dodge builds or high skill dodging/kiting gameplay. And this would make enemies pay attention to the tank, which will help his allies do their own stuff easier.

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This might only work if we're talking about 2 melee parties fighting. Otherwise it's some form of kiting around, where aoes just might not hit the tank enough to go over the threshold (well, that is if the aoes do not take up the entire damn screen).

But otherwise I definitely agree. I'm used to "the tank forces you to target him" and deeper gameplay based on that would be great. I'm not sure how that would work with the action side of combat, but I do like the "amount of threat = the amount of dmg to remove the forced targeting" idea.

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You're on a roll today huh...

Overwatch and MOBAs actually have very precisely tuned Tank mechanics that depend on so many other things that it's hardly comparable.

In case anyone didn't know...

I'll write up some entire essays if people/Intrepid want, but suffice it to say that we should not be expecting anything approaching the Tank type play from those games in Ashes.

Forced Targeting is the easy fix for a Fantasy MMO. If you try anything else you are going to build something really interesting but not what players probably came to their Fantasy MMO for.

(you don't need to respond to this, Mag, I'm just 'on duty' today).

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If you're gonna be this childish about it why did you even bump the post , dude?

Seriously...

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You outlined your entire concept though.

"Do a taunt, and instead of having that Taunt make the player focus on the Tank, make it a buff for other effects that disable the player."

Isn't this what you said?

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My claim in this thread is that the 'just' is extremely hard to do in a Fantasy MMO, particularly one that involves 'cannot CC NonCombatant players + body blocking + Diminishing returns on CC'. This is just mechanical and balance related, not even touching on whether or not it would be fun.

And that for very complicated reasons, MOBAs are a poor source of inspiration for the skill types that fit into that type of Fantasy MMO, which as far as I understand is the type we're discussing.

If Intrepid desires to build a 'Tank' class that works even remotely similar to most MOBA/Battle Arena Tanks, I'd actually be 100% happy about it, but I definitely would think it would lose a lot of the 'historically accepted' principles of a Fantasy MMO.

(Mostly I've avoided this topic because I'm working on my 'not writing fullscreen posts').

This is, in fact, my current 'topic of study' since Predecessor went into Early Access, revisiting Paladins/Overwatch/League as well.

The problem with all the suggested things is that these are normally abilities given directly (and in more powerful forms) to other archetypes, except maybe the interrupt/disable which is where the mechanical issues happen.

Basically I'm asking, does anyone have anything other than 'CC or stuff other classes do' that fits in at all with the 'standard' Tanking flow of a Tab-Target-acceptable MMO? Because the MOBA options, while fun, would have the opposite issue. Most MOBA tanking 'skills' are 'PvP only' and don't work properly in PvE (or create horribly unbalanced situations when they do).

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Fine, please name one...

I'll call in my Warcraft experts in case you get outside my zone.

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But the distinction between a Tank and a 'Fighter' is specifically that the Tank is built to take hits and damage. That's what I am talking about in general.

You can absolutely always build a Tank to be a 'CC and debuff menace'. The problem is that you then don't need to make a Tank, you could make a Fighter that does this, and honestly most players would be happier. Nor will the person who tanks in PvE by drawing the attention of the mob and taking hits, actually do any of that.

You don't need to hit the Tank because they're a menace, unless they are the biggest menace. If they are the biggest menace then what you need is more Tanks.

If you have some reason/method to counter the menace of 'Many tanks' we'll be back in the loop. This is precisely the problem that MOBAs have been working on for years. There's nothing 'ineffective' about what you're suggesting, it's that the gameplay doesn't actually work out this way.

Honestly I feel this is half the reason we got all that homogenization in games and discarding the Trinity in class design to begin with. MOBA Tank design is almost nothing like this, it goes right back to the 'Let's make CC Bruisers and call them Tanks', and it's only recently that most games built any true Tanks (again, from the Perspective that you actually need to kill them instead of just treating them as another source of CC that you really need to avoid).

Again, if you're saying 'well that's fine just make them CC Bruisers that's close enough' then I have no problems with this at all, but to me, until the Tank has a reason in PvP to use their personal damage reduction skill and expect it to actually not get ignored, they're not a Tank.

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Ok I can handle Tusk and Omni 'by myself'.

I'll repeat the same 'answer' from what I said to Killon.

"Until the Tank has a reason in PvP to use their personal damage reduction skill and expect it to actually not get ignored, they're not a Tank."

Within the context of a Fantasy MMO, that is. And if you check most DOTA resources, they don't even have a concept of 'Tank', which is part of the reason Omni is even counted as Support.

If your response to 'Tank using their heavy mitigation skill' is 'do something else and attempt to move around them' and the Tank's job at that point is to CC you, then I'm just saying you'd have been better off with a Bruiser that had a CC skill. We did start to move a little toward the idea of 'Tanks being so much harder to kill than Bruisers that we got to call them that' in around 2015 and then Overwatch kinda took up the rest with their various game modes that enforce Tanking as an option...

But if we felt the Overwatch style mode was a Tanking Option no one would care about this conversation.

People who want Taunts to redirect aggro are asking for a way to make it so that their personal defenses matter in combat which is the easy answer to 'making it equal to PvE'.

We have proper Tanks in MOBAs/Arenas now, even if only a few of them, but the way they work is a pain to get into an MMORPG.

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Sure but the nitty gritty of that is still not 'MMO Trinity Tanking', it's just debuffing. If you're okay with that, and Intrepid is okay with that, fine. People will just build Tanks with 'PvP set' focused on CCs and 'PvE set' focused on personal mitigation.

Tanking is:
1. I, by existing, am blocking you from achieving an objective.
2. I, by using defensive abilities or build, am soaking up the damage you want to do
3. Your best option for whatever reason is to keep actually doing the damage to me even though I'm definitely mitigating it.

Most MOBA characters achieve #1 without even being tanks, the Objective is usually behind them.
Most MMO Tanks are given skills to achieve #2.
Nearly nothing actually achieves #3. Technically not even 'Taunt Retarget' actually does this, that's why it is sort of the 'easy solution', I'm not saying it was the good one.

Again, my only point here is 'MOBAs do this really differently than MMORPGs and if you use the MOBA methods you either won't get a Fantasy MMO or you won't get 'Tanking''.

If we redefine Tanking as not needing #3, then you can do whatever you want, but if other classes have enough CC, people will still try to not bother building Tanks (that mitigate damage) for PvP (that isn't almost entirely focused around a positional objective).

The entire idea of the MMO Tank in the Trinity is that they are 'shrugging off your hits' or 'untouchably skilled with all their parries and whatever' but your best option is to keep attacking them, even using up your energy to do so. Otherwise we'll get a shoehorned 'CC Heavy' class that has wildly fluctuating effectiveness based on opposing CC resistance and low damage for no specific reason other than 'don't give them CC and big damage too'.

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I would also advocate for fixing both problems at once, but I come from a game with only one Taunt as my primary game and it doesn't even guarantee the mob will turn.

So for me, PvE is already closer to PvP there.

A Fantasy MMO trying to resolve this 'problem' is taking on a huge challenge, though. How do you get the Big Fire Dragon to not just incinerate the Mage immediately upon recognizing they are the Mage, and wouldn't players just immediately spec their Mages for defense?

I am absolutely in the market for solutions to this problem for my own design space, but by the nature of that position, I gotta argue against all the things that don't really solve it. My current method shows promise but it has too many abuse points for an MMO still.