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Damaging taunt auras inflict damage which causes a mob to continue to have aggro on you after the actual taunt component has expired - if and only if you have inflicted the most damage to that mob. Since none of the damaging auras do much damage, this is rather unlikely in a teaming scenario.
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Sorry I don't buy that. Unless it has been changed since i6.
the reason I say this is because me and my fire-tank friend did a little experiment;
Could I pull agro with my katana/regen away from the tank if she had her fiery aura on. The answer was a resounding no.
I would strike. the mob would turn to me.
The aura would puff and the mob would, before hitting me, turn back to the tank. I find both fiery aura and mudputs to be extremely effective. Can't comment on the others.
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Please read what I wrote again. This part edited to stress the part you're missing:-
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Damaging taunt auras inflict damage which causes a mob to continue to have aggro on you after the actual taunt component has expired - if and only if you have inflicted the most damage to that mob.
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Blazing Aura ("Fiery Aura" is the name of the powerset, not that power) pulses with fire roughly every second. That pulse - if it hits - inflicts small damage plus a short-duration taunt effect. In your experiment above, it was the new pulse of taunt that pulled the aggro back onto your friend, not the damage.
Aggro and taunt work like this:-
If two blasters both hit a target, the target will aggro onto the one who has done it the most damage overall (effects such as slows and immobilises also cause aggro, but we'll leave that aside for now).
Say a Fire Tank's Blazing Aura inflicts 10 Fire Damage, and a Katana Scrapper's Gambler's Cut inflicts 50. A single hit from both - or even two hits from the Aura - is not enough to hold aggro based on damage alone. The aggro should go to the Scrapper, but it doesn't because the Blazing Aura isn't just damage, it also has a secondary Taunt component.
Taunt is an "effect", like a slow or an immobilise or a disorient, that can either be the primary effect of a power (e.g. the power Taunt itself) or a secondary effect (such as on Blazing Aura). Whichever it is, it has a duration (which is effected by level modifiers and resistances like other effects are, although very little resists Taunt). For that duration, it will put the Taunter to the top of the target's aggro list.
Importantly - after the Taunt expires, all the additional aggro it generated vanishes completely. I was making the point that damaging auras definitely aren't better in holding aggro in a team situation, since they miss in ways that non-damaging auras do not, and the damage they do is not usually significant enough on it's own to hold aggro in a team.
It's really quite a straightforward effect, but a lot of players seem to misunderstand how Taunt works.
[Just to confuse matters, there does seem to be "strengths" of the Taunt effect, although seemingly not related to "magnitude" as such, but any level of the Taunt effect seems to override any amount of damage when it comes to grabbing aggro. I've noticed that Dwarf Antagonise is not strong enough to override any Tanker taunting effect, but a Tanker taunt will override a Tanker Gauntlet effect.]
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[Just to confuse matters, there does seem to be "strengths" of the Taunt effect, although seemingly not related to "magnitude" as such, but any level of the Taunt effect seems to override any amount of damage when it comes to grabbing aggro. I've noticed that Dwarf Antagonise is not strong enough to override any Tanker taunting effect, but a Tanker taunt will override a Tanker Gauntlet effect.]
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Yes, any 'taunt' effect will overide aggro caused by damage for the duration of the taunt.
The mechanics of multiple taunts from different characters are a little more complex, and I only have a basic grasp of them. The essence of it is that if character 'A' taunts an opponent, then character 'B' taunts the same target, B will not get the aggro until the remaining duration of B's taunt is twice the remaining duration of A's taunt.
I can only say this post really shouldnt reach out to me since i, when in a mish/team that needs some REAL taunting always use both mudpots and have taunt on auto so all i have to do when a teamm8 is crying for help is select the name in the teamlist and the attacker goes after me.. and that gives them summat to do for a while.. :P
@EU Brimmy - Union and Exalted servers
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The mechanics of multiple taunts from different characters are a little more complex, and I only have a basic grasp of them. The essence of it is that if character 'A' taunts an opponent, then character 'B' taunts the same target, B will not get the aggro until the remaining duration of B's taunt is twice the remaining duration of A's taunt.
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Thanks, that's very useful information, and might explain why Dwarf Antagonise may be so weak compared to Tanker Taunts (as it should be IMO).
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Importantly - after the Taunt expires, all the additional aggro it generated vanishes completely. I was making the point that damaging auras definitely aren't better in holding aggro in a team situation, since they miss in ways that non-damaging auras do not,
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Up until here you haven't said anything too contentious, but is this, specifically, true?
Of course the damage component of Blazing Aura can miss, and the other damaging taunt auras either can or will be able to miss. But can the Taunt component miss? If not, Blazing Aura's marginally better than Invincibility; the enemy gets Taunted either way, and if by some chance no-one else has hit them when the Taunt wears off, they've still been damaged by the tanker.
Perhaps there is some obvious reason to know it works one way or the other which I am unaware of. However, if not, I ought to be able to carry out some testing.
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I was making the point that damaging auras definitely aren't better in holding aggro in a team situation, since they miss in ways that non-damaging auras do not,
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Up until here you haven't said anything too contentious, but is this, specifically, true?
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All my testing and experience so far suggests so. I'm perfectly happy to have it proved otherwise, but I've not seen that to be the case. If it is, we should make it known (and I might change my slotting on Blazing Aura).
The difficulty in testing is that you want a situation where a significant number of enemies are present in melee range, but have a low chance of being hit, and yet aren't significantly higher level than the tanker involved such that the taunt duration remains reasonable. 3 slots of taunt in the auras would help with this.
Oh, and a teammate with Aim to shoot the target.
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All my testing and experience so far suggests so.
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What _is_ your testing, so far?
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The difficulty in testing is that you want a situation where a significant number of enemies are present in melee range, but have a low chance of being hit,
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Easier than that. Group of greys in Atlas. Pulse the Blazing Aura once. Everyone hit by the damage component falls over. Your friend immediately does select-nearest-target and boinks them with Power Thrust or Force Bolt or some other minimal-damage attack (or the friend is much lower level). See if they go after the friend or not. Should work, no? Even without Taunt enhancers in the Aura, the duration will still be respectable on a -lots minion...
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Importantly - after the Taunt expires, all the additional aggro it generated vanishes completely. I was making the point that damaging auras definitely aren't better in holding aggro in a team situation, since they miss in ways that non-damaging auras do not,
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Up until here you haven't said anything too contentious, but is this, specifically, true?
Of course the damage component of Blazing Aura can miss, and the other damaging taunt auras either can or will be able to miss. But can the Taunt component miss? If not, Blazing Aura's marginally better than Invincibility; the enemy gets Taunted either way, and if by some chance no-one else has hit them when the Taunt wears off, they've still been damaged by the tanker.
Perhaps there is some obvious reason to know it works one way or the other which I am unaware of. However, if not, I ought to be able to carry out some testing.
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I believe that Blazing Aura and Icicles only apply a Taunt if they hit. The other Tanker 'auras' apply the Taunt every time they 'pulse' (I think some 'pulse' at different rates).
(I'm not sure about this, so please don't take it as gospel.)
As far as i know, true, the ice and fire tanks i have talked with ingame keep saying that they need to slot acc enhances in the aura powers to have it keeping aggro, and i will just take their word for it, as a stone tank using mudpots i have never needed to slot any acc in it, sure it doesnt hit for damage at every pulse but it still keeps the aggro on me. that together with taunt and gauntlet makes it a great at for taking the hits, assuming you slot GA for the highlvl enemies and av's
@EU Brimmy - Union and Exalted servers
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All my testing and experience so far suggests so.
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What _is_ your testing, so far?
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Walk into group of mobs (-2s or so). Hit them all with single pulse of aura. Immediately have blaster hit them with a fireball. See who they attack. Wait 5 seconds. See who they attack.
A few repetitions of that made it pretty clear how the system worked.
That and genuinely playing a Fire Tanker to 50 over 14 months or so, mostly in genuine team scenarios. I abhor powerleveling.
I've played an Ice Tanker, my gf has an Ice Tanker, and I've played a Stone Tanker too. From all this experience, I am much more impressed with Mud Pots and especially Chilling Embrace as a taunt aura, than Blazing Aura. A Fire Tanker has to pause to make sure ticks hit bad guys as he moves near them to grab aggro - an Ice Tanker certainly doesn't (very fast ticks, at the very least).
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Easier than that. Group of greys in Atlas. Pulse the Blazing Aura once. Everyone hit by the damage component falls over. Your friend immediately does select-nearest-target and boinks them with Power Thrust or Force Bolt or some other minimal-damage attack (or the friend is much lower level). See if they go after the friend or not. Should work, no? Even without Taunt enhancers in the Aura, the duration will still be respectable on a -lots minion...
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That would also work. Let me know how it goes?
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Walk into group of mobs (-2s or so). Hit them all with single pulse of aura. Immediately have blaster hit them with a fireball. See who they attack. Wait 5 seconds. See who they attack.
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The damage ticks of blazing aura and mudpots are at about 2 second intervals, the taunt effect is slightly less on both. playing all types of tankers i find enemies stick more like glue on invincible and chilling embrace but i'd have to say from experience without clinical testing that i think chilling embrace is ftw but like i say tests arent clinical. Either way if you move to gauntlet an enemy of a team mate, your aura and taunt effect wont last too long on the foes you may of had to move away from no matter what type of tank.
my stonetank will definately have taunt and every amount of taunt possible, i struggle more on recoveries (reherding from knockbacks etc, herding from preemptive team members, quelling ambushes) with rooted on (cant always take it off) and once granite -recharges me aswell i will most certainly need 3 rec,3 taunt in taunt and have hurl boulder ftw and i dont want to be like some other stonetanks i have seen (lame without a kinetic) and taking 10% of the spawn
He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.
with my fire tank, for taking the aggro of the alhpastrike, i make a "division" (assuming tha fact that there is about 15 mob)
i go left and use combustion, i go right (at the opposite of my first combustion for 1-2s with blazing aura;
with this i don't really need to use taunt cos i take the alpha strike, but:
1- a blast shoot a mob how i can took the aggro again without move (and breaking my actual control aggro on the mob troop)
2- another mob troop came in fight, how i can took the aggro cos i've already a band of mob???
the only answer is taunt, there is no other solution
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with my fire tank, for taking the aggro of the alhpastrike, i make a "division" (assuming tha fact that there is about 15 mob)
i go left and use combustion, i go right (at the opposite of my first combustion for 1-2s with blazing aura;
with this i don't really need to use taunt cos i take the alpha strike, but:
1- a blast shoot a mob how i can took the aggro again without move (and breaking my actual control aggro on the mob troop)
2- another mob troop came in fight, how i can took the aggro cos i've already a band of mob???
the only answer is taunt, there is no other solution
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Well there is also hurl. If you have it but that aint much of an answer because when -recharged, -accuracy or - end taunt also helps alot better, fireball has a 15ft aoe 32 second recharge unhasted moderate gauntlet effect, hurl has 8 second recharge guantlet sized aoe (i must find out what that is but i suspect 8ft diameter) and slightly more gauntlet duration but slightly longer action time and half the endurance cost. But for taunt duration the taunt has the highest. The more towards even level you face the less the necessity of taunt but the higher level you face (say +4s) the more you need it as taunt duration is lowered. With lower taunt effectiveness the rest of the team are more likely to have to fend for themselves and teamwipes are even more likely to happen. Keeping the tanker alive against all of a +4 mob is alot easier than trying to keep everyone alive from my empath defenders perspective whose lvl 50 so imo taunt adds survivability to the whole team.
When faced with having more foes than you can taunt at a single time all thats left is gaining aggro from the team members targets, what the the team havent targeted should still be after you if you have aggrod them already despite being untaunted for a bit.
He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.
Incidentally, I think the assertion I made that it's best to have damage filtered through a tanker's defence or S/L resistance is not true without loss of generality.
Manifestly the effectiveness of (Pb)AoE heals scales with the number of damaged targets affected and as such, ideally, you might prefer a situation where people close to the AoE effect are taking modest amounts of damage and the tanker is taking the rest. This would be especially true with Kinetics/Transfusion, which can be easily dropped into a dangerous melee without endangering the defender, and with defender sets which have only AoE heals.
Of course in practice you can't fine-tune aggro like that and will prefer the tanker to taunt everything if possible, especially as in practice the other team members will manage to find themselves some aggro no matter what the tanker does.
I must addmit that I'm a bit new to this tanking lark, but i do have taunt, and even at my lvl I'm not afride to use it. However id do find that those orange, purple and green smarties are my best friends 
You got me thinking now - i must go and ask every different type of defender how and when their powers are most effective to work out how i should tank as far as my postion in mobs is concerned atm i like to be opposite side of the mob directing fire my way and facing the team to see whats goin on.
He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.
What I'm saying is more of a theoretical exercise in maximising the amount of green generated by a given expenditure of blue - I don't think it's directly relevant to tanking, since once AoE enemy attacks become commonplace defenders won't often be healing you with PbAoE heals anyway.
I think the only thing really to get from it is that, when teamed with a Kineticist, all the melee types should stay close together. But that's not really remarkable.
... The other thing about Kinetics is that letting the occasional unaggroed minion leak towards the squishies isn't an altogether awful thing.
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... The other thing about Kinetics is that letting the occasional unaggroed minion leak towards the squishies isn't an altogether awful thing.
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I'm not sure about that one. When I play as a kin I am in front of the ( more sensible ) squishies and behind the tank, this hopefully means I have myself in my Heal Aura and ( more importantly ) my End Aura. Anyone getting damaged who isn't in the heal zone is a pain to heal because I can't see them so it requires me to hope that his target is close to him or find him and click a nearby enemy. Also a loose minion quickly becomes prime target for the teams energy blaster ( most teams have one ) who promptly fires him out of range of the heal.
@Unthing ... Mostly on Union.
You're beyond my knowledge there. My energy blaster is en/en, generally restrains her enthusiasm for melee just long enough to let the tanker get stuck in first, and prefers punching people down into the floor with the Bone Smasher. :-)
Actually, while I'm at it - part of my raging altoholism is produced by a desire to see how the other half lives. So, blasters, what powersets are good for producing a blaster who actually does their thing at range?
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Actually, while I'm at it - part of my raging altoholism is produced by a desire to see how the other half lives. So, blasters, what powersets are good for producing a blaster who actually does their thing at range?
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Anything with Devices secondary... With no decent melee moves you stay back at range.
@Unthing ... Mostly on Union.
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I'm not sure about that one. When I play as a kin I am in front of the ( more sensible ) squishies and behind the tank,
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behind the tank? squishies behind the tank too? omg no! tank could jump behind the mob and turn around so all cones are in his/her direction only. I'm sure u can cusp the aura across the mob to reach the tank and having the team fighting within the aura yourside of the mob too. When it comes to the likes of jaegers i like defenders to shoot in aura shoot out.
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Actually, while I'm at it - part of my raging altoholism is produced by a desire to see how the other half lives.
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best way to grow as a player imo.
He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.
All this talk of slotting auras for taunt.. does anybody know what the effects are anyway? What's the ratio of taunted time vs. untaunted time by default?
Assuming Burning Aura and autohit here, can 100% taunt time be achieved via any slotting?
Otherwise, I think I'll stick to pure damage, and just buy and slot 3 taunts if going in with a large team. Can't see the point in doing otherwise without numbers.
While I'm thinking about it... does Ice Patch aggro?
[i]If they get there first they'll make our dreams come true.
If we get there first we can stop them.[/i]
After testing this with a friend I am fairly confident that it is correct that the taunt component of a damaging aura can miss along with the damage.
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I'm not sure about that one. When I play as a kin I am in front of the ( more sensible ) squishies and behind the tank,
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behind the tank? squishies behind the tank too? omg no! tank could jump behind the mob and turn around so all cones are in his/her direction only. I'm sure u can cusp the aura across the mob to reach the tank and having the team fighting within the aura yourside of the mob too. When it comes to the likes of jaegers i like defenders to shoot in aura shoot out.
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Behind the tank from my point of view. Yes, ideally the tank should be facing me with enemies in front of him. Also the Kinetic aura is centred around an enemy so the tank ALWAYS gets hit and I can heal them safely, however I sometimes want the healing and the end so I place myself at risk quite a lot. Similarly I would place myslef so that the most people get Fulcrum Shift. For Nemesis I would probably heal from afar.
@Unthing ... Mostly on Union.
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How much aggro is 'all necessary aggro', half a spawn? The whole spawn? Can you hold all necessary aggro in all sensible circumstances? Can you hold all necessary aggro against all enemy type.
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Nope, as an Inv Tanker, versus a mob consisting of largely Elemental/Energy and of fairly high-level my Defense is rendered useless, I'm currently sitting with ~25%-ish nrg/ele resistances. I'm not saying I'm face-planting constantly but I definetly do feel the sting from those types of damage.
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I think you missed my point ( or I put it badly ). I wasn't on about damage types I was more on about the mix of ranged/melee and mobility/AI of enemies and the ability to keep/hold aggro on them, rather than the ability to not die. After all defences and survivability can be improved by defenders but aggro holding ability can't.
I'd be interested in how much aggro you think is 'all necessary aggro', personally I'd say >75% of the spawn or 45% each if there are 2 tanks.
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As long as they ain't dealing Nrg/Ele in loads I just dive in. I'm sure I can be a better tank, but it works for me ... and so far the team as well.
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Diving in works wonders in most cases but when you are fighting Nemesis at a cross roads there is a good chance that by diving in you can aggro 2-4 groups and they won't run to attack you. A pull is really helps here and IMO the tank is the best person to do it.
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Truth told my Tanker hasn't faced Nemesis yet. So I'll guess that will be something I'll experience for myself. If I suddenly discover I absolutely must have Taunt I'll remember who gave me the heads up.
But then again, Taunt is at a 5 target cap, you won't get a whole mob on it. And since Invinc is useless at range, I would probably still try to dive in first.
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Taunt taunts 5 enemy in a spawn, but if you are the first person to be seen by a spawn, you will be the default aggro target. So by taunting a spawn you get aggro of the whole group until other people start.
By taunting and hiding ( if your team will let you ) you gain the advantage that a whole spawn will run to your hiding place so all of the spawn can be in melee range and so you maximise the effect of invincibility. Now a ranged attack could be used for the same trick but that isn't something that tanks have easy access to ( only in the epics ).
The other major use of taunt is to help a squishy who is being attacked, the only way to do this as an aura/punchvoke tanker is to run and hit the offending enemy, thus risking losing aggro on some of your currently occupied enemies.
@Unthing ... Mostly on Union.