Gauntlet 2.0

As I understand it, in the case of AoE and cone attacks, Gauntlet only applies it's taunt effect to the targets that were affected by the AoE or cone attack. I would assume the same would apply to any Gauntlet effect that is applied to Taunt.

The question is does Gauntlet get applied when using Taunt and does it stack?

If I use Taunt on a group of mobs across the street does Gauntlet increase the magnitude of the original Taunt?


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I admit, it's a neat toy.
...I hate it.

Having played a Tanker and a Mastermind (one with status protection, no less), Tankers have nothing to fear from Masterminds. They have nothing inherently to hold aggro, Provoke sucks, they're vulnerable to AoEs (pets take splash damage and BG damage), most don't have mez protection, and their pets can be completely hosed by things like burn patches, caltrops, etc.

They can take the alpha and won't fold like tissue paper, sure; but I don't consider them to be tanks.

(Bullets numbered for ease of reference.)

1) When I say this, keep in mind that I have a pet peeve with inherents that don't help when solo. Yes, it does nothing solo, yes it's annoying. However, I look at it this way - they could have given us the same mitigation numbers as Brutes/Scrappers but with a meter that builds up increasing its effectiveness while fighting. Sounds great, huh? Well, except you need to be fighting to build it up, so you don't always have your defenses. (Ex: Starting an AV fight cold turkey would make you weak at the beginning, and as tough as you are now in the middle.) I'm just giving you this example as something that "helps solo" but is weaker than you have now.

2) I just thought of something - Gauntlet's radius isn't standard, it varies - usually higher damage attacks have a larger radius. So while a power like Total Focus is slow, it has a wider radius (17ft) than something like Jab (3ft - good luck hitting more than 2 mobs with it). Then there are enigmas like ET that deals more damage than TF, but only has an 11ft radius, while MG deals less but still retains a 17ft radius. Worst of all, all of these are disconnected from animation time - so some slow attacks (TF) will be more useful for Gauntlet than others. (I wonder if Castle has a formula for radius, or if it's just eyeballed...) Faster chains may be better, but not necessarily. Seems like it would depend on circumstance.

4) The theme of Tankers isn't just to survive, but to take hits as well. What good is extra survivability if you're not using it?

5) Keep in mind duration scales with level, so Gauntlet at low levels is incredibly weak. It doesn't function at all until lvl5. At lvl5, it still only lasts 4.5s base (before the purple patch, etc). Now, auras / Taunt can get you into trouble, but Gauntlet? Not so much.

6) Depends on your point of view. Hitting someone hard enough (no tangent here, please) to cause them to drop what they're doing and pay attention to me feels pretty good to me.

7) My main counter point - if your group is killing spawns fast, then you have to move faster. In other words, if it takes the spawn 15s to die, you may want to move on halfway into the battle. Mobs are still taunted to you while you're moving ahead and you get extra time to gather aggro from the next spawn / clump them together. This is what I usually do, and adjust when I move to the next group based on how well / fast the group is doing. Also, if spawns are dying that fast, then your inherent likely isn't the only thing that is "wasted." Imagine needing 2 bombs to destroy a building, but dropping 5-10 on it instead. Completely unnecessary, but that's what happens in some group makeups in CoX.

9) Kind of. Pool powers have the single target taunt, but lacks the AoE portion of Gauntlet. (Pools don't taunt for Brutes at all.) For Veteran Rewards, afaik they don't respond to any inherent power - with a possible exception of Vigilance.


Keep in mind I'm not saying Gauntlet is perfect by any means. It has problems (mostly that the unique, AoE portion is easily swamped by other Tanker abilities), but I can see flaws in some of the statements you made above.

The information we've been given by Castle is that durations don't stack (the longer one is used for threat modification by damage/debuffs/AI preferences/etc), but MAG does. In other words, let's say there is a 40s taunt on a target and I hit them with an attack. My damage/etc will be modified by the 40s taunt, but now instead of just MAG4 taunt being on the target, there would now be MAG8. The difference between MAG4 and MAG8 usually doesn't matter - it determines whether a mob is effected by the taunt or not. Since most mobs don't have any form of taunt protection, MAG4 is fine for 99% of the situations out there.

That being said, I think there is one perk for Gauntlet, when the taunt is applied to the target, it should generate additional threat. (Taunts being applied add phantom threat, even in the absence of damage.) I've never tested that, and I'm not even sure how to test that, though.

Having said that, Gauntlet is a pittance compared to Taunt (power), auras, and AoEs (higher target cap, damage/debuffs/etc for more threat) all trump it. If nothing else, I wish I knew which targets it hit. Having same graphical effect (no sound) as Taunt, for example, would be a nice QoL feature.

Agreed! Pity that the graphical effects Gauntlet bug on test was a bug, eh?


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The funny thing is Gauntlet being weak at low levels is an annoyance to some players - they want it working better, sooner. It's not an issue that means much to me, I don't group a lot at low levels anyways. What I find more annoying is that Tanker survivability doesn't really start to feel impressive until SOs at 22... but that's a whole different can of worms!

While I agree Tankers could use a bit of work on end efficiency, I would say that's a general Tanker issue rather than one with Gauntlet. In other words, although Gauntlet could be used as a mechanism for alleviate end issues, it's not a problem that Gauntlet doesn't.

Sadly, I never got to see this on Test. I can think of a few tests I would've loved to conduct with a visual indicator of who Gauntlet was hitting. Rats!

Fair enough but adding an endurance transfer effect to Gauntlet still seems like an elegant fix to both the tanker endurance issues and the utility of Gauntlet at all levels.


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In that context, it would certainly inspire Tankers to take a more offensive approach early on. Given I have Dedicitis (I have basically one character that I play on ALL THE TIME), but when I occasionally try my hand at designing a new Tanker in Mids' (and play for about 3 hours before I lose interest) I give survivability optimum priority, sometimes relying on the Tier 1 attack well past level 10 (thank goodness for brawl and vet powers).

Your perspective and design philosophy may vary, but the reason I do this is because adding more attacks at those levels for better-sustained attack chains seems pointless since the fairly unnoticed benefit of Training enhancements for Endurance Reduction (or anything for that matter) and the lack of Stamina make for some serious downtime and drawn-out battles unless one of your power sets has an endurance management tool built in.

Again, not a critical problem but just trying to underline the possible benefits of Gauntlet as an endurance tool.

Another possible benefit is making multiple tankers on the same team more attractive by stacking the endurance drain.


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Good point, I hadn't thought of that.