Sarrate

Taunt is the strongest threat generation tool. Damage is an important part of threat generation, but the other factor is taunt duration. The basic gist (assuming equal debuffs, range, AI Mods, etc) is Damage * RemainingTauntDuration. If you deal double damage, you deal double threat. Likewise, if you have a taunt effect twice as long you will generate twice as much threat.

Gauntlet (both Tanker and the single target Brute version) maxes out at 13.5s at lvl50 while Taunt lasts 41s (some sets have a 30ish sec Taunt). The taunt duration is more than double duration, so it's stronger. It also lingers for a long time, amplifying your threat for extended periods of time. One last thing - it is auto hit against AVs/GMs while Guantlet requires a tohit check.

In a group with just one taunt capable character (Tanker/Brute), Gauntlet should be strong enough by itself. However, when in groups with multiple taunt capable characters, it simply isn't enough I can hold aggro off of them on my WP Tank using Taunt, while I've seen other Tanks with stronger threat generating primaries fail by not using it.

Taunt + Footstomp produces far more threat than either in isolation.

The problem Fireheart stated isn't durability - it's offense.

*) Shadow Punch's slotting is okay, but could be better.
*) You completely skipped Smite (which is the 2nd best DPA of the set) and *) Shadow Maul (which is an incredible attack against groups).
*) Boxing is a pretty bad attack made worse by only having 4 slots in it.
*) Midnight's Grasp's slotting, like Shadow Punch, is very "meh." (Why slot for Positional defense when you could get Kin Combat Instead? Kin Combat x4 and the Mako triple/quad would be my goto if you wanted mitigation.)
*) Then you have Siphon Life. (Not slotted as an attack, which isn't a bad thing, I'd franken-slot it too. I'm just saying it doesn't help the other inadequacies listed above.)


[edit: Okay, Fireheart mentioned defense too, but that's along the same lines as what I said in Midnight's Grasp.]

While that may be acceptable for certain sets (like Invuln), I think it screws the results for Ice, since it's a T9 with a high reuse rate (it can be used every 2 minutes). Still, that would be a bear to try to compute, since it's not just the regen, but up to 30s of complete immunity as well.

It's not just AVs, though, any "spike rich" encounter could do that. Even the Romans on the ITF can crit for around 500 to 700 damage. That's 1/3 to 1/2 an hp capped Tanker's health from just two hitting at the same time. That's the problem with defense, anytime attacks are around that can kill you, your life is riding on each dice roll. On average, you're correct, you'll be fine, but it's not a guarantee - it's still heavily based on luck.

Something I thought about when reading this: I'm guessing the first table doesn't include +maxhp. While it doesn't increase "mitigation," and it's already factored in for regen, it doesn't measure how resilient a set is to burst damage. There is a significant difference between what an Invuln with DP up can take compared to when it's down.


Well, that would be nice, but unecessary. They're already up 2/3 the time out of the box. Even with only moderate IO investment you can bump that up to 80% of the time.

When you say "without increasing the healing," you mean decrease the recharge but lower the heal amount so it averages out to be the same over time?

Disclaimer: The following is just my opinion/preference, not a slam on people who enjoy Stone Armor / Granite.

At this point in the game, I don't think I'd play Stone Armor even if it made you completely impervious to damage. Sure, you have the best survivability in the game, but you almost never get a chance to use all of it as it is. Not only that, but you have to trade even more offense/flexibility for that overkill survivability. That makes the character far too one dimentional to me. I'd much rather still be a "mortal" Tank and be able to perform well in a wide variety of situations than be locked into a single role.

The last time I can remember dying? A few days ago soloing a +1/x6 Rularuu mission. I only died because two spawns saw me and I was trying to ironman it without inspirations. (If I played a hair smarter / used inspirations, I could've pulled it off.) Before that? I can't even remember. Might've been fighting the patron AVs in RV under the new PvP rules.


(Considering the discussion I was in about Brutes vs Tankers in the ArcheType & Power forum, the irony of what I just wrote isn't lost on me. )

Gotcha. It's been a while since I've played my Ice/SS and my WP was in SOs, but I personally felt that WP was tougher than Ice. I think it may be that the WP has very few "RNG hates me" deaths, which is what usually gets my Ice Tank.

I hear ya on the villain market. It's actually a pretty big disincentive for me to make villains atm. Even if I design the best build ever in MIDs, the chances I'd ever finish it the way things are currently are slim to none. Without the ability to get critical sets like that, WP will definitely "suffer." (It's funny, a friend of mine made a WP Brute and designed him to take a beating with softcapped def, but was still a bit disappointed. Then again, he was mostly testing it in the ITF..)

Compared to a softcapped Shield Scrapper (Parry is hax!), I can see why you'd consider Shield to be superior.

Hah! I hear, on good authority, that the Theft of Essence: +End proc is worth its weight in gold in Dark Regen.

That looks more like what I'd expect. Ice looks like it has a higher weight than I expected, but its sustainability seems about where I'd expect it. (Not sure if the weight counts CE and the weight/sustainability counts Hibernation.)


Nah, I don't think you need to start a whole new thread about it, especially if you're working on a whole new method of measuring performance and will be deprecating the spreadsheets. I just wanted to know what they actually *meant* rather than using the numbers as a relative ranking. So thanks for giving me the skinny

This statement perplexes me a bit. On initial read it makes sense, but the more I analyze it, the more I furrow my brow.

For example, in your list, you give Ice a sustainability of "02,500%" (Is that 2,500 or 2.5?) compared to a naked Tank being "00,135%". That implies it can sustain ~18.5 times as much incoming fire before buckling. However, if the RNG doesn't play nice, it die a lot faster than that. It implies the tables above don't measure "how much they can take without ever dying."

I bring this up because when I switched from Regen to Invuln, I noticed a significant decrease in my "how fast I will die" time, even if it was a decrease in my ability to sustain myself for long periods without aid. If I can survive a nasty burst of damage, then I can live long enough to act/retreat. Afterall, if I have the possibility of dying real fast, I may not be able to react at all!


As strong as defense can be in the game, I still like having some form of resistance behind them to give some stability.

I should have asked you the same question I asked Starsman, just the set alone, or does this include the effects of things like Tough/Weave?

I'd say that the top three survivalists with an IO heavy build is Granite, Invuln, and WP. I don't doubt that Shield would be plenty survivable, but it's not Invuln/WP tough.

A WP Tank and a WP Brute are completely different ball games because:

*) MaxHP - With equal +maxhp in the build, a Brute has ~2570hp compared to a Tanker with 3212. That's ~25% more hp/sec regenerated as well as ~25% more health. (A Scrapper would have ~2292 hp. Tanker has 40% higher regen and health.)
*) Higher res numbers - This is the difference between ~70% s/l res and 52.65%. (Tanker takes ~63% the damage that the Brute does.) It is also the difference between 90% s/l with SoW and 81.9%. (Tanker takes 55% the damage of a Brute.) (A Scrapper would be capped at 75%, the Tanker takes 40% the damage.)
*) Higher def numbers - This makes it much easier to stack large amounts of defense, even softcap everything everything except psi at the most extreme cases.

Combine all those together and WP on a Tanker is in a completely different league than what you experienced. It's one of the sets that loses a lot more than the 1.0 -> 0.75 defense mod would initially imply.

(On second thought, you probably know all of that, anyways. I blame this post on a slow work day before the holidays. )

Okay, that's what I figured it would be. If that included extra outside mitigation, then I would've figured that something was up.

I will say that your assumed slotting for Dark Regen is suspect. (I can't say from firsthand experience, but I've teamed/talked with a prolific DA player friend enough to get the basics.) First, the power needs to hit in order to heal you, yet you slotted absolutely no accuracy? Any form of tohit debuff / def buff from enemies will completely screw you. (Don't forget the streakbreaker uses your lowest tohit value, too. So you'd be allowing yourself a larger streak of misses to boot.) Not only that, but Dark Regen saturates really fast. With just 3 targets it's a full heal of your base hp. The only time slotting DR would be helpful is against a solo boss. I'd probably assume something more along the lines of 2 acc/2-3 end/1-2 rech/0-1 heal.

I think the best option is to have both. The base performance can show the sets in isolation, while the one with "casual min/maxing" illustrates how well they'll scale up.

Well, I can't view the spreadsheet from work (firewall has googledocs blocked as "inappropriate" for "personal storage"), this is pretty much exactly what I expected. Invuln is just one of those sets that gains a great deal from powergaming. Having a significant amount of both forms of non-linearly scaling mitigation will do that.

(I do wish I knew more about what the chart represented, though. Right now, the numbers displayed are completely abstract. I can't even translate that into something meaningful like 'sustainable dps'.)

It is just using their normal damage modifier. For example, Brute ET is set to cause them to take 3.75 self damage. That is 0.75 (their damage mod) * 55.61 (base damage for a dmg mod of 1) * 3.75 (damage scale on ET)= 156.4. City of Data agrees.

Tanker: 0.8 (dmg mod) * 55.61 (base damage) * 3.75 (ET damage scale) = 166.83

Stalker: 1 (dmg mod) * 55.61 (base damage) * 3 (ET damage scale) = 166.83

Or did you mean something different by that?

Scrappers and Stalkers would indeed deal more damage than a Tank. However, they would be taking more damage as well as having less health - a double penalty. Even if they took the same damage as a Tank, their survivability hit would be greater. A Tanker with 1875 hp taking 100 damage is much less significant than a Scrapper with 1338 hp taking 100. Now a consider a Scrapper with 1338 hp taking 140 damage. Double survivability hit.

To compound that, Brutes would take less self damage than the other three, have more health than all but Tankers, and deal equal (with the potential to deal more) damage than the other three. How is that at all fair?

If the self damage is adjusted, it should be normalized (everyone takes the same survivability hit, ie: 5% base hp) or equal intent (damage dealers take more self damage, Brutes included).

Ahh, the fun of calculating Brute dps. On the forums we always just assume that Brutes have x% Fury and crunch it from there, but there another element I alluded to earlier. For example, using Brawl lowers the dps you're doing, but also increases your Fury generation. Is that a net gain (Fury increasing the damage of all your attacks by more than the damage you lost by using Brawl) or vice versa (using Brawl lowered the damage output of your chain by more than the damage boost Fury gave you).

Using Brawl once every 10s is consuming ~10% of your attack time, once every 5s is consuming ~20% of your attack time.

I'm not well versed in Fury mechanics (how much Fury do you get per attack? how fast do decay ticks occur? how big is each tick?), so I couldn't crunch out the numbers, even if I had the free time to do so.

As you cite, a Brute would take ~41.7 self damage from using ET. Now, if you compare that to a Scrapper, they would take ~62.61 self damage from ET. It would be 1 scale damage to both, but the Scrappers higher damage mod inadvertently makes it more danagerous to them. Consider the implications of that:

1) Not only is the Scrapper taking more damage, but they have a lower hp pool / cap than a Brute. A Scrapper with base hp would suffer ~4.67% (62.56 / 1338) self damage per use, while a Brute would take 2.78% (41.7 / 1500). If you compare that at their respective hp caps (I acknowledge Brutes hitting the cap is rare), it would be Scrappers suffering ~2.6% (62.56 / 2400) and Brutes suffering ~1.3% (41.7 / 3212).

2) Since the Brute's strength is stacked damage buffs versus high damage mod, they'd be dealing far more damage than they'd be recieving. To illustrate, a Scrapper would deal ~285 base damage (556 slotted). That's 4.55 damage per point self inflicted (8.88 slotted). A Brute would deal ~190.2 base damage (~561 slotted with 50% Fury). That's 4.56 damage per pint self inflicted (~13.45 slotted with 50% Fury).

Quick chart:

If you notice, they purposefully lowered self damage Stalkers take, presumably for the same reason. If they took the same self damage as the other ATs, it would be a whooping 208.5 points, 17% of their base health. If they made a special case for Stalkers/Scrappers to recieve less self damage due to the damage mods, well, the ratio of bonus damage to self damage would no longer be 1:1.

I'm not saying that the self damage may need adjustment, mind you. The ratios given above aren't entirely fair now, but they aren't explicitly set to be a 1:1 ratio to be 'fair' or 'equal' to all, either.

On the other hand, playing a game with little to no detailed information is no fun either. Believe it or not, back around release, City of Heroes was extremely secretive with any kind of detailed information. I'm not talking about cryptic behind the scenes stuff like taunt mechanics, but basic information like how much damage a power deals. All we had to go on was power descriptions like "high damage." Wait, was "superior damage" more or less than "extreme damage"? Why is a Blaster "medium damage" attack dealing as much as my "heavy damage"?

The premise was that the devs didn't want to bog down the player with numbers - none of that theory crafting nonsense. Just pick up the game, pick powers that sounded cool and go. You wouldn't believe how much confusion the lack of good information caused; it was very frustrating. What did people do? Try to figure out what was going on.

Having access to numbers and theorycrafting is very helpful. Someone is having end issues but is only slotting toggles for end reduc? We can show how to brind end under control and why slotting attacks for end reduc is better than slotting toggles. Someone wants to make an AV soloing Tanker, but currently can't out damage their regen? We can calculate dps well enough to help them achieve their goals. In this case, we can explain the nuances of taunt mechanics and explain why Tankers have problems holding aggro off, say a Shield Scrapper. (One of the harder feats for a Tanker to do, imo.)

That's not to say I don't think theorycrafting can go too far, it can. In CoH, I think it's at a pretty happy medium. If you want to know the nitty gritty about how something works, you can get some pretty in depth details. However, if you have no interest in it, it isn't thrust upon you like it is in other MMOs. Personally, I don't have much use for attack chains for AV soloing, etc. So, for the most part I ignore it. I do keep the information in the back of my mind if we're ever in a situation where I want to deal as much damage as possible. (Say, against Reichsman on the Khan TF.)


It's much easier to ignore numbers in this game than others, and people are generally respectful of that if you let them know upfront.


(Btw, while it's obvious you have no interest in it, some people actually find it very interesting/fun. I suspect you can guess which side of the fence I'm on. )

(Wow, this was a lot longer than I originally intended. Oops..)

Well, one potential concern is it might make end management too easy. Since player recovery is static (discounting things like Transference) if end consumption drops below that, it is infinite. So, normalizing end costs to their damage mod (55% cost for Defenders) would be a huge boost. Someone consuming 2 eps attacking would be shaving 0.9 eps off that. That's equal to 54% extra recovery. Someone using 3 eps attacking would shave off 1.35 eps from the discount, or 81% recovery.

That said, I do think Defenders (and Tankers) consume too much end for their damage dealt. If their DPE was somehow raised, it would have to be done carefully, almost certainly not point for point.


(Not specifically your idea, Uber, but another reason not to link end costs to DPE: Brutes. They have an extremely low modifier, but deal a lot of damage. Imagine if they had an end discount on top of already dealing above average DPE.)

You make some valid points.

Okay, you singled out a Kin as a character the team would notice if it didn't have. Do you think a Brute, who is playing solely to deal damage with no aggro management duties, would be noticeable, esp if the team has a Kin? I'm not so sure. I'm almost positive I've been on teams where I don't notice a Scrapper going afk (who, for all intents and purposes, deal roughly equivalent damage). If the answer to the above is "no," then the team isn't losing anything by having a Tanker. The Brute's damage is already unnoticeable.

I do understand your point, trust me, I do. I fully understand that a competent Brute with either a well balanced/played group of a billion inf build can play the role of a Tank. I've seen it done. I guess what I question is how often all everything comes together for that to happen. For forum goes like yourself, I have no doubt you can accomplish the entire game with a Brute leading. The non-forumites or those still leveling in non-optimized groups / builds? Not so much. Heck, I know I've been on teams where Tankers have problems in the same situations.

For a moment, suppose I agree with you that Brutes are always better to have than Tankers. In my mind, that means Brutes are too strong, not that Tankers are too weak.

At any rate, I think Tankers are reasonably balanced. I think Brutes were given access to two things they should have never had in the first place: the 90% res cap, and taunt capabilities that are, for all intents and purposes, equal to that of a Tanker.

I never said that a Brute at the damage cap didn't deal a lot of damage. I also never said that Tankers out damage Brutes, please don't put words into my mouth. I said that your statement, "Brutes at the damage cap deal 1,000 points with t1 powers" (paraphrased) was.

In order for a T1 Brute attack to deal that much damage, you'd need to be at the damage cap with over 100% worth of res debuffs on the target, as an even con with no resists. Anything higher than that, and the requirements increase. It is possible, but it is so far out of the normal realm of gameplay that it's just a "this happened once" type story - not something you can say is difinitively.

With that kind of buff/debuff saturation, Tanker Barrage would be dealing 508 damage. Yes, that's half what a Brute would be dealing. However, if I was boasting Tanker Barrage was doing 500 damage, you'd be right in calling me a loon if I tried to say "Tankers at the damage cap deal 500 damage with t1 attacks." It's a "look what happened this one time" story, nothing more.

I challenge you to damage cap yourself on inspirations, and hit an even con Rikti with Bash (t1 attack) harder than, say, 531 damage. (That's high because Drones have a 50% res debuff to smashing.) With Pulverize (t2 attack, 64% more base damage than the t1s you boasted) you won't hit harder than ~872 dmg. (Again, high because Drones have a 50% res debuff to smashing.) Against normal Rikti, you won't hit harder than ~355 / ~580 respectively.

It would take 5-10 minutes to do. Prove me wrong.

You made some pretty unlucky choices for Scrappers and Tankers. The powers I highlighted have higher than usual DPE from most attacks. In the case of the Fire Melee attacks (Scorch / Fire Sword) get an extra dot as their flavor effect instead of, say, knockdown. If you want to look at raw DPE the powers were balanced around, you'd need to drop the dot.

The special of Claws is that its powers recharge faster and cost less endurance than they should. Claws powers are additionally complicated because the damage of the powers are scaled based on the speed of the attack. The faster the attack, the power takes a damage hit, while slower attacks get a damage boost. I'd pretty much steer clear of Claws, I don't even remember how they were calculated.

Yes. I try to make the distinction clear by capitalizing Taunt the power, but leave taunt the mechanic lower case.

Honestly, Gauntlet (specifically the AoE portion, since Brutes already get single target Gauntlet) is a pretty weak inherent. The bonus AoE threat it generates is dwarfed by the effects aggro auras, aoes, and Taunt. Gauntlet may add a little threat here or there, but it's largely negligable, imo.

Extremely simplified version, taunt is a gigantic threat modifier. The damage done is amplified by remaining taunt duration * 1000. Have a 10 second taunt on a mob? You're dealing 10,000x normal threat. Have a 41 second taunt on a mob? That's 41,000x normal threat. (There are further amplifications / penalties, such as AI mods, range to target, debuffs, etc.)

This means taunt duration is everything. If a Brute played like a Tank, and took/used it to hold aggro, a Tanker would have no way of compensating. The Brute would have the same threat mod (4), the same taunt duration, and more damage. I have yet to ever meet a Brute that plays like that, though.

Having said that, I still think that is an utter failure of design that it's even possible - Tankers should be the absolute best at aggro generation. (To be fair, noone knew how taunt mechanics worked until well after Brutes were designed. (I found Castle's post, dated Nov 26, 2007. Issue 11 was released on Nov 28, 2007.)

I've seen this happen, too. Brutes are exceptionally buffable, and thus a powergamer's dream. It does not, however, guarantee that they'll automatically be team stealing badasses. The forum-going population has a much higher concentration of people who can exploit this fact, there are far more people who don't.

I still think it's funny that people talk about defensive saturation and never discuss offensive saturation. I constantly see complaints of how people corpse blast with powers because they die in seconds. I've been on teams where mobs simply disintigrate, even without the entire team in one place. How many times have you been on a team where someone had to go AFK and isn't even missed?

I don't really fathom how a Tanker's 'low damage' is so crippling to a team.

Those numbers were at the damage cap - it is the absolute maximum +dmg a Brute can be effected by, regardless of source. It could be a mix of damage enhancers, fury, set bonuses, inspirations, buffs, etc. Once you hit +750% max damage (100% base damage + 750% damage buffs), more +dmg won't increase how hard you hit.

To be blunt, ridiculous hyperbole.

If a Brute is at their damage cap, then they're operating at 850% base damage. In order for an attack to exceed 1,000 damage, it would need to deal ~117.6 base damage (1000 / 8.5). That is far above a t1 attack. The hardest hitting t1 attack is Barrage, which deals 55.04 base damage (467.84 at the cap). The hardest hitting attack Axe has access to, Cleave, only deals 115.11 base damage (~2.5 dmg short). In fact, the only powers in the Brute arsenal that can break the 1,000 damage barrier on the damage cap alone are Clobber (holy crap, I didn't realize the buff made it that strong), Greater Fire Sword (2 or more dot ticks), KO Blow, Seismic Smash, Total Focus, and Energy Transfer. A grand total of 6 powers; that's it.

Keep in mind, the above is for even level mobs with no extraneous resistance. A +2 mob with 26% resistance would drop everything but Energy Transfer off the list. A +3 mob with 9% resistance would do the same.


[edit: In order for Barrage to deal over 1,000 damage to an even level, unresisting mob, it would need to be under the influence of ~113.7% worth of res debuffs, about 5 Enervating Fields worth.]

I have to disagree with your assesment of Taunt vs Gauntlet, for holding aggro, Taunt is much more potent. What your above calculations aren't considering is that the "taunt duration" is the "remaining taunt on the target," not "taunt duration of the power." In other words, if you taunt, then immediately use Jab (for ease of calculations, I'm using 0s activation for Taunt/Jab):

30.25 * 4 * 1 * 41 * 1000 = 4,961,000 threat

That is base, as well. Compare that to ED softcapping taunt enhancement for both Jab and Taunt:

Jab Alone
30.25 * 4 * 1 * 26.325 * 1000 = 3,185,325 threat

Taunt + Jab
30.25 * 4 * 1 * 79.95 * 1000 = 9,673,950 threat

Now consider that the difference between those two doesn't factor in damage enhancement (widen the gap) and it is an extremely low damage attack. A heavy hitting attack, such as KO Blow, would have a much wider gap. Since Taunt's duration is so long you benefit from the heightened threat generation for a long time from a single application.

If you absolutely must hold aggro on something, Taunt has no peer.

I've played Tankers with exceptionally potent aggro management out of the box (Ice/SS) and extremely poor (WP/Fire), and in neither case would taunt enhancement in AoEs significantly add anything, imo.

Gauntlet is a little bit tricky. The way Gauntlet works is all attacks are entered as AoEs, but specific aspects of the powers (basically everything except the taunt) are set to have a radius of 0, or only the targetted mob. For example:

Power A
Radius - 5ft
Taunt (Gauntlet)
Damage - 0ft radius
Knockdown - 0ft radius

When Power A is used, it has a tohit check not only on the primary target, but all targets within the radius (up to the cap of 5). So Gauntlet is not autohit.

Further, there is another check made. Is the target a normal mob (minion, lieutenant, etc) or a 'raid' mob (AV, GM, etc)? If a normal mob, the taunt is applied. If it is a raid mob, it has a second accuracy check.

Gauntlet is actually pretty disappointing. There are two cases where it fails: AVs/GMs and competing taunt effects. The first case is problematic for obvious reasons, especially against uplevel AVs such as those found in the STF. If you don't have Taunt, they'll stop looking at you very quick.

The second involves other Tankers, Brutes, and Scrappers with taunt auras (Invuln / Shield). I have out aggroed many, many Tanks with my DM/Invuln Scrapper. Since both ATs deal more damage, the only way a Tanker is going to hold aggro over them (Brutes + taunt aura Scrappers) is by sheer taunt duration superiority - which Gauntlet doesn't provide.

Not only that, but your aggro aura is doing the majority of the work for holding aggro anyways. If a non-AV mob is under the influence of your aura, then a non-taunting teammate will essentially never pull aggro from it.

This is a hard question to answer because it depends on the situation:

*) Don't need it at all - Doing simple missions with a team that doesn't include a taunt-aura Scrapper. Your taunt aura + AoEs will likely be enough.

*) Need it occaisionally - A map with some quirks. Ambushes, multiple mobs that are close by, ranged mobs (using Taunts -range debuff), etc.

*) Use it all the time - You're teamed with Brutes/taunt-aura Scrappers, fighting AVs, or you're WP.

Even in the last category, I'd hesitate to say "everytime it's up," because sometimes you know something is coming up that you want to save it for. For example, you see NPC text for an incoming ambush. If you just spam it, it may be down when the ambush hits, so holding off temporarily would be wise.

Also, knowing when you'll need to use it proactively (Brutes/taunt-aura Scrappers) is much better than using it after you lose it. In order to take aggro from someone, you need to generate double the threat of the current aggro holder. So, if you have 1,000 threat, someone stealing aggro from you would need 2,000. In order to take it back from them, you'd need 4,000, quadruple what you currently have. This also means that if you're the first person in a spawn, you'll have an easier time holding aggro than if you come in in the middle of a fight.

The reason I don't think this was the intent (at lease in Julius's case) because of this:

He is talking specifically about the taunt measurement in specific powers, rather than their global threat modifier. (Deus may have been thinking more along your lines of thought. However, I still think he is talking about the X% taunt in powers, if nothing else because I've never heard of the threat mod described in that way.)

Note: Radiation Emission debuffs res via Enervating Field. Radiation Blast debuffs defense, not resistance.

Note: Blues aren't always the answer. Blues provide more end allow you to sustain your current level of activity over a longer period of time. If you cannot out damage the mobs regen/heal, more blues are not the answer. Consider stacking reds, instead. This does several things. First, it allows you to deal more damage in the same period of time and over power their heal. It also shortens the fight, allowing you use more inspirations per period of time than if it was a marathon fight. By dealing more damage, it also increases your DPE.

Examples
Assume a mob can heal/regen 50 hp/sec.

Scenario 1a: Assume you can deal 45 dps. No matter how long you fight, you'll never win.

Scenario 1b: You still deal 45 dps, but bring reds. Eating two reds would bring your dps up to ~56.5 dps. Now you have enough damage to actually make headway.

Scenario 2a: Assume you can deal 55 dps. Now you're making headway of 5 dps. You will be able to win after (MobMaxHp / 5) seconds. A mob with 2,000 health would take 400s (6m 40s) to kill. If you run out of blues, you won't win.

Scenario 2b: You still deal 55 dps. Instead of using blues, you eat reds. Eating two reds will increase that figure to ~69 dps. Now you'rea making 19 dps headway. You will win that same fight (2,000 hp mob) in ~105s (1m 45s). (This is a 4 red investment.)

Scenario 2c: You still deal 55 dps. Instead of using blues, you eat reds. Eating four reds will increase that figure to ~83dps. Now you'rea making 33 dps headway. You will win that same fight (2,000 hp mob) in ~60.5s. (This is a 4 red investment as well, just a different strategy for using them.)


The above are just examples with made up numbers, but you can apply the same principle to many long fights. Reds can be amazing at shortening hard fights.


[edit: Good grief, Sarrate. Can you be any more redundant with your phrases? *sigh*]

Just a heads up, that 400% taunt you see viewing the in game 'real numbers' is a bit nonsensical. No AT has a "X% taunt." That's the 'real numbers' system misinterpretting a field. There are only two taunt attributes I"m aware of, MAG and duration.

A taunt's MAG determines whether a mob is taunted or not. Think of it like a hold, that when the enemy's MAG is overcome, they're taunted. The catch is, most mobs have no form of taunt protection, so higher a MAG really doesn't mean too much. (This is where 'real numbers' is getting 400%. It's taking "MAG 4", a "4" in a spreadsheet, to be "400%".)

The second attribute to taunts is their duration. This is where you really see a difference in effectiveness. Basically, the longer the taunt, the more weight it has on the AI. It applies more threat when placed on the target, and it amplifies incoming damage/debuffs/etc more on a factor of 1000*remaining duration. It just so happens that both Tankers and Brutes (and all ATs) have the same InherentTaunt modifier, as well as the same scale taunt on their attacks / Taunt powers. (This, btw, is another mistake in my opinion. A Brutes' taunt durations should be lower.)

Sorry for the tangent.

I've heard that Brute Taunt only applies the -range debuff on its target, while Tanker Taunt applies it to all 5 targets. That does make Tankers a bit better at clumping up mobs. (I use Taunt for the -range all the time.)