Let Tankers be Tankers: Remove the Agro Cap

Overall, I don't have any big issues with your suggestion.

The tanks that think they can herd an entire map will learn quickly that the game isn't designed to let you do that anymore. I'm sure there are exceptions, but almost everybody will fail. Even if a tank can herd an entire map, keeping all that aggro once the AoEs start will be another matter entirely. Gauntlet and taunt auras have a limited range, so once you get 50(random number) or so enemies on you some of them will be out of aura and gauntlet range and people will be able to pull them off. Taunt can only help so much with this when dealing with massive amounts of enemies. So maintaining aggro might be impossible with mobs that large.

I don't think herding will make a big comeback because most people seem to find it boring(IME). Plus it's just not very efficient. Sure some tanks will still insist on it, but they will be laughed off of good(IMO) teams.

I agree with you completely Kruunch. I miss those days of being able to see just how many mobs I can grab and pull at once. By myself.

When playing in groups, and this was back before the aggro cap, it was damn rare for us to pull the whole floor unless the mobs were spread out so unevenly and annoyingly it took longer to just run through. Why is this? In the groups I ran with herding was unnecessary and took longer. But on some missions, it was easier for the tanks, and yes I said tanks, plural, to split and grab up all the mobs. Even better, when I was with a bunch of obnoxious nooblets, I could intentionally kill them off by dumping a ton of mobs on em when they weren't looking.

I didn't herd for the sake of farming back then, I farmed for the sake of herding, because ******* was it fun to pull that whole map and kill them all. It was fun leveling up my inv/fire tank to run around crey's grabbing as many freak as I can, then LoSing them into a corner and bashing their skulls in.

What drew me to this game was a love of comic books, and being able to be a SUPERHERO. The Tankers in comic books didn't fight 17 mobs, some fought hundreds at a time.

The most fun I have had grinding recently, 53 boss farm, team of 8, my WP tanker is herding groups to the rest of the team while they are killing them. I was pulling as many as I could get to follow, dumping them on the group whether they were ready or not. It was intense. People died, people pushed themselves harder than they were used to. At the end of the mission, when most people dipped, everyone asked if I was staying because that was more fun than they had had in ages.

But at the end of the day, Kruunch is right, there are scrappers out there that pretty much make tanks unnecessary for anything BUT farming. Personally, I think they should hardcap scrapper defense and lower their resistances caps, but somehow, I don't think that would go over too well.

A total lift on the aggro cap may not be the fix, but damn, at the very least double it. It would far from ruin the game. And as far as herding goes, people never stopped herding. They just stopped herding as much.

Here's what I've always thought.

The aggro cap is annoying. 17 was a random number that I never liked. I understand it, but I've never liked it. I also didn't like dropping Taunt to five target max. I understand it, but I've never liked it. It doesn't make "sense." It was a quick fix to having people who herded up entire maps and killed everything real quick, and PLed the piss out of everyone. That wasn't how the game was intended to be. And you know, it's ok for the Devs to say, "That's not what we want to see." "But we're paying for it! It should be what WE want to see!" Not really. I think there should be room for compromise, and when we get new Issues that give us stuff like new content, power customization and the like, they ARE making compromises and giving us things we WANT.

But the fix for herding and grabbing up entire maps and having 200+ spawn deathfests? I've always thought the aggro cap should either be higher (25-50), but they could remove it entirely, and make the "Taunt Cap" a half-life issue. Every time a Tank taunts, it has an automatic 100% hit rate on 5 foes, and then half-life hits where the next 5 foes have 50% chance to be taunted, the next 5 have 25%, next 5 12.5%, and so on, until every foe outside of however many it has in range (Taunt would then be a PBAoE, in effect) has a 1% chance to be taunted. Theoretically, if you toss out Taunt enough, and have the taunt from auras going, you could potentially Taunt every foe in PBAoE range, but it then keeps things from going back to the "Hit Taunt once, and every foe on the map is taunted and there is no longer any danger to the rest of the team."

There is no reason to remove the aggro cap and go back to how things were. What there is, though, is room for discussion to try and improve things. It was boring as hell for anyone who wasn't a Tank on teams where "Let the Tank do his/her job, then we'll have our five minutes of fun." Yes, when I was Tanking, it was fun, and the rest of my team sat around talking and whatever, going for drinks, heading to pee, and then would come back for the five minute deathfest. We would have multiple Tanks and trade off, or whatever, but it wasn't "fun for all," except during the deathfest.

Look beyond "What was fun for me, and some of the rest of the Tanks," and maybe look past that and find how we can take parts of that, and make it so that it allows for more Tanks for a reason, and makes it more active for the rest of the team, too. Taunt with a half-life? I've always liked that idea. Every foe can potentially be taunted, but isn't likely to be. You could potentially implement that on attack powers, too, instead of having max targets as a hard number. But it still has to be discussed and brought up with the realization that, even though "We pay for this!", it's not up to us, and we have to try and balance our wants with what the Devs are trying to create. We don't write their checks, we play in, and enjoy the world they have created, but they still have desires to see what they want become reality, and all that.

Blah blah, blah blah, blah.

Don't go back to how it used to be. Just try to bring some of that spirit and ability back in a better way.

I may be in the minority here, but I loved CoH at launch. I mean, really loved. So, you can imagine that I quickly lost interest in CoH after the GDN and ED were implemented.

That being said, I am incredibly happy with the direction that CoH is taking, in reversing a lot of those poor business decisions. I fully support the removal of the aggro cap and the aoe cap. Sultry Susan wants her old Flash back!

People have problem with the agro cap? I just ignore and grab 1...2...3..4 groups. Toss a taunt here and there, footstomp here and there, Nemmy staff here and there...no problem taking over the cap. Isn't ignoring numbers and just playing the game fun

Don't let the door hit ya... Everyone plays this game for the same reason. To have fun. That differs for EVERYONE. People that can't understand that, tend to complain about other peoples fun. People wanna cry about stuff pushing people away, yet, people are STILL here despite all the changes. Hmm.

I don't understand the statement that herding is only phun for tanks. Tanks aren't the ones killing the mobs it pulls. The TEAM does. How, you might ask??? Ummm, by using THEIR POWERS. Weird, huh.

I think the aggro cap is a bit artificial. If I were a dev and decide to remove the cap, I would make sure that 17 mobs could defeat a tanker no matter how well equipped or buffed the character is.

My ONLY problem with the aggro cap is that it can be broken through normal play. If I'm playing on an 8 man team, and 2 spawns are a little to close together it can mean death to the team if we don't have an off tank.

The thing is, removing the aggro cap doesn't actually make tanks more desirable. It doesn't make them superior to Brutes in holding aggro in 95% of situations, and in order to take advantage of it you'd have to go out of your way to aggro multiple spawns, thus gathering more enemies than can effectively be AoE'd anyway and slowing the team down. And it doesn't do anything to address the damage differential which you point at as the drawback of Tanks on teams.

The two obvious approaches to this problem would be 1. to bring Tanker damage up to parity with Brutes and Scrappers, which would then obviate Brutes and Scrappers (why take the AT with the same damage and lower mitigation multipliers?)... or 2. to bring Scrapper and Brute aggro caps down to below the AoE cap, thus making Tankers the only AT capable of singlehandedly handling aggro for a full team. Neither of these look very attractive, but they're both more relevant to the problems you cite than the meaningless gesture of raising the aggro cap.