Let Tankers be Tankers: Remove the Agro Cap

I used to farm the Storm Palace for arcane salvage on my DM/DA, but that was while I was getting her filled up with IOs, and I never took on more than two bosses...and of course, DA vs. psi damage, etc.

I haven't given the +4 bosses a try due to one hit taking like 80% of my hit points.

Getting aggro initially and holding aggro on 30 enemies are two different things entirely. When you are talking that many mobs eventually many of them would be out of PBAoE and taunt aura range. Taunt can only pick up so many. I'm thinking(obviously speculation) that it wouldn't be hard for a strong AoE character to take some or a lot of that aggro.

You need to learn how to read kid. He didn't say RWZ challenge. He said challenges. You fail(and judging by your choice in avatar, you fail at a lot more than just this thread).

I can get behind a 34 mob agro cap. At least it would be more ... heroic ... looking then what we currently have.

I really don't believe in the Tanker stacking issue (as stated previously) so I don't think raising the agro cap (or getting rid of it) is something that will better/worsen this. However if I were to make the debate, having two Tankers pulling a 34 cap limit with a third Tanker on "wrangling" duty for strays would be pretty uber looking

Sorciere: Yes and no. Back in the I1 days of herding, my group routinely pulled 80+ mobs and did CoT portal farms (don't know what the mob count was but the room was wall to wall Behemoths ... literally) and we didn't have much of a problem with performance (no more then we do now with double packs in a full group that is).

However having said that, that was before they upgraded their graphics engine with the PhysX rule set, so I don't know how that would work now. I do know that CoH previously had an 80 entity clipping limit so that while you could pull over 80 mobs you would only actually see 80 mobs (minus the number of players in the group and wandering mobs nearby) and watch new ones materialize as others were defeated.

Simply increasing the cap lets tankers do things solo I doubt the devs want. Of course, increasing it at all, even my teamed mechanic, probably allows tankers to do things that might be frowned upon.

Immediately to this comment I have only one thought. At a moment such as this, its not what I wish I could do that matters, its what I should of done.

I don't put myself in perception range or try to aggro more than 17 in any given team and I don't like to fight groups too close to other enemy groups unless I know that I can get away with congalining or something, so as some are defeated, more come, and as they do I am making sure they find me. To aggro cap and have others fight close enough to other groups is asking for problems. As a tank I have to think. Do I want everyone fighting in that small room? Do I need to offer blasters range here? What does 50ft of perception range look like? How have others been playing and how best do I compensate for their suicidal tendencies?

Some people in the team may create or cause problems and that generally is something that they and other people might learn from on their own or one can just say.

I get jealous of other peoples health bars moving but I don't think the game should be made any easier. I hate it when things go wrong but I love the fact that things can.

Like beauty, this must be in the eye of the beholder. I jump into mobs with my Tanks and take alphas with no worries, something I can't say for any other AT I have, including Brutes and Scrappers. In WoW, teams wipe facing the amount of mobs a single tank can handle at the aggro cap. I sure feel heroic with my Tanker, standing there facing that.

And then there are AVs. Last night, Numina's evil counterpart, Diabolique, was damaging squishier teammates that got too close to her, but didn't do too much to me. At one point, a Defender got KB'd back through a portal (this was an Oranbega map). Hilarious, but it sure made me feel tough to stand there and take all that when they couldn't. Tanks are tough, tanks are heroic. 17 mobs is already a ridiculous amount to have focused on you to the exclusion of everyone else on your team, if you think about it. Anything more really does approach the stupidity of mobs crowding in to be burned to defeat in some crates.

Again, if tanks need something, it's NOT at the aggro cap. It's with their other abilities, and maybe where they are infringed upon by other ATs.

Well don't make us guess ... things like what would be frowned upon?

I can jump into the middle of a pack of 7 with literally any of my Controllers, Blasters, Scrappers, Brutes, Corruptors and MMs.

Dunno who you team with, but that's plain silly.

In Chess, a Knight can move two spaces over and once space to either side. What on earth does that have to do with the price of tea in China?!

If seven mobs makes you feel heroic, wouldn't it stand to reason 30 mobs would make you feel SUPER-heroic?



And I can solo Diabolique on a Scrapper ... something I'm willing to bet you can't do on your tank from the way you describe your playing habits.

That's the whole point ... easy fix and it seperates us from Scrappers that much more.

I have a feeling people hear the word "herding" and all of the MMO morally righteous (is that the most useless crowd of all or what?!) crowd get their hackles up about the "purity" of the game and the integrity of the fight and heaven forbid this might lead to farming, or power levelling or some other such evil and morally reprehensible act ()

The bottom line is you could still run around and marvel at your 7 mob herd all you like. This change would not change that in the least. It just might make the game a little more interesting for people who aren't satisfied with online Tic-Tac-Toe.

The only thing I can think of with just increasing it (not getting rid of it completely, which introduces the whole 'herd the map' thing again) is this:

It allows other people to really maximize their AoE potential. Right now, with only 17 mobs around the Tanker reliably (I know that you can get more, especially if you've very good, but I'm assuming a 'normal' Tanker in this situation), if you miss two enemies with an AoE, you only have 15 hit.

With 34 enemies around the Tanker, the likelihood of missing 19 enemies and not maximizing the AoE is very slim, unless you're well under the level of the enemy.

Remember that AoEs will continue to check against every enemy in range of the AoE until either it 1) runs out of enemies to check against, or 2) hits the target cap.



I'm not saying it's a great argument against it, just a potential one.

Originally Posted by PapaSlade Rangle's right....this is fun.

Have you tried? Because that's not how the aggro cap works. If you see a team-mate in trouble, you can taunt his aggro even if you are at the cap. This guy will turn to you, and the guy that you have not touched the longest will ignore you and go for the next guy in his aggro list.

Yes, its possible the next target is the same blaster you trying to save, but in my experience WHEN this happens the ones I loose go to the nearby scrapper when I'm trying to save the faraway debuffing defender.

This is just an argument to lower the brute/scrapper/whatever aggro caps, not increasing tanks. This would have a dangerous side effect of making the game a bit too easy for those ATs, though, because suddenly they just have to worry about only 7 or so foes ever aggroing them.

Taunt alone won't do the trick, you need to deal damage in order to peel mobs off. I've noticed this every time I tested the aggro cap. Go to monkey island in PI and herd up 17 mobs and try to Taunt more - they will not come to you. Use a low damage ranged attack (like the crumby origin attack) and they'll suddenly be able to aggro onto you. (This is also when you'll lose one that was previously on you.) My suspicion is this is to prevent aggro capping youself (to say minions) then attacking a much harder target (EB/AV) without them being able to attack back.

Now, on a team it's possible that a mob dies and the fresh mob you Taunted will come to you, but it's not a guarantee (if mobs are taking a while to be put down or whatever).

Given that I like a certain amount of realism. Great comment!

Except for rains and aoe patches, I thought all other AOE have either a 5 or 10 target max.

Agro cap doesn't work like that... if you're at the cap any other mobs you Taunt will ignore you until the mobs that are agroed to you either lose agro or die.

But you *can* run on over and Footstomp them (Tremor, Fault, Hand Clap, Ice Patch, etc ...) which is the usual way I take care of Tanking over the agro cap.

I personally don't like the idea of having different agro caps for different ATs. There's enough AT specific mechanics in the game as it is (and the point of raising the agro cap is to introduce a new level of challenge, both for the team and the Tanker(s)).

Stand corrected on that one, but you still have the ability to get that aggro off your team mate by doing some damage to the target. Epics are ideal for this but you can always just go there.

Not really. Just as 200 zombies aren't necessarily more frightening than a single zombie. Or, as the saying goes, one death is a tragedy; a thousand deaths are a statistic.

When you deal with really large numbers of something, this something loses individuality and significance.

As a matter of fact, I'd actually prefer for spawns in the game to be smaller: this whole "defeating critters by the dozen" is something I associate more with Tolkienesque fantasy and less with superheroes: superheroes tend to be superheroes because they deal with superhuman threats, not because they can dispatch masses of nameless minions with ease.

Most all targeted AE attacks (not cones) affect up to 16 targets. Defender, corrupter and blaster PBAEs are capped at 16, too. Without commenting on rains or patches, which I really can't recall offhand, fireball is the only tanker attack that hits more than 10, but ranged attackers aren't quite so limited.

Thats because Fireball is a ranged AoE.

the rule of thumb is:

Ranged AoE: 16 max
Ranged Cone: 10 max

Melee AoE: 10 max
Melee Cone: 5 max

Actual exceptions are things like Crowd Control, that can hit 10 foes being a melee cone and the new Dominator's Psichic Shockwave that is melee and can hit 16 foes.

Fiery Melee Breath of Fire and Ice Melee's Frost are considered ranged (take ranged aoe IOs and are enhanceable for range) and therefore can hit 10 foes each even if they use melee modifiers.

Defender's Radiation's Irradiate is PBAoE but is considered ranged (ranged mods) and so is capped at 16 foes.

There are other exceptions but those are the ones that come off the top of my head.

Kruunch... for all of your talk about morally righteous, uptight people, you sure go on the attack when someone disagrees with you: just like those theoretical people would.

Why did you keep saying SEVEN mobs? That's not the aggro cap, which I referred to in my post. The aggro cap is SEVENTEEN, which is quite large, as my other post said. If that's too easy or makes Tanks not strong enough, then maybe mobs need to be made stronger, or other balance points should be looked at. As it is, 17 is generally an eight-man mob and change. A tank should be able to handle enough of 2 mobs that his teammates can survive the bit of aggro they get. If they pick up more than that, than the Tanker and the REST OF THE TEAM (something that gets left out of these discussions about aggro far too often) need to play smarter.

17 can feel plenty heroic (not sure how it's online tic-tac-toe), and given it's 1+ mobs on an eight-man team, WHY does it need to be bigger? You're acting like 17 just isn't enough, like any other number over 17 wouldn't just be arbitrarily larger, and/or get into grabbing more foes than the devs want. Like it or not, that's pretty much been decided by the devs. It's not that arbitrary, either. Taking on 17 guys in super-powered armor isn't enough for you? I think this idea has more with your need to compensate for something than anything else (I'm saying that in jest). I like being able to take on more mobs than I could in WoW (MUCH more, as noted earlier), but if you take that too far, then the game gets far too easy, and a bit laughable at how stupid your opponents are. "Come along, sheep! Let me lead you to your slaughter as you have no brain!"

I think getting a little more perspective from other games, comics themselves, and from this game, and have fun with what we can fight.

Again, if tanks need a little more oomph to make them unique, there are better options than raising the aggro cap. I've liked the idea of Gauntlet 2.0 and Johnny's idea more than this. What tankers need isn't something so gamewide affecting as raising the aggro cap. I'm not shooting you down for wanting to make tanks better, I just think another approach would be better.