Taunt. Why not?

Now the discussion is turning in an interesting direction. The reason I started this thread was I was mildly perturbed that some Tankers seemed to be wanting to play Brutes, and I needed a Tanker with taunt.

Here it is pointed out that soon Brutes will be going blue. How will tanks adjust? When I play a blaster I really would prefer to run with a tank that taunts. But I would prefer to run with a brute rather than a tank if no taunt was involved.

Heh, there are some differences between a Brute and a Scrapper. A Brute will gladly chance taking an alpha, even one it's not sure to survive, on the sheer chance of getting all that great agro.

Sailboat, it comes down to two things. First is threat level. When a Tank is not taunting the threat level can drop below what a Blaster has going, or what a Brute can agro. I know alll about damage auruas. Those are meant to hold the group around the tank while the Tank taunts those that seem to be on the fence about who they should wail on.

But primarily it is deeply personal I guess. I have played Tanks, and I have a couple of them at 50. I have played lots of Brutes, and I got multiple 50s of those (some with the exact same build....don't ask.) Now I am starting to seriously run Blasters, having 50d my main one a week ago. I say this not to show how many 50s I have, but just to let you know I have thought about it, and understand Tanks and Brutes.
I feel like tankers who don't take taunt either do not understand the role Tanks were designed for on a team, or understand that but are trying to push the build into a different archtype. Either way, not an individual that I want to count on for tanking. I would prefer a world-wise brute that knows they don't have taunt, and tries to compensate for it with playstyle. Much better that than a Tank who is unhappy with playing the build.

K Sarrate. Good point. My problem is last night I was on a team with 3 tanks. One was a 4 billion build (saw the bonuses myself.) Now, I do not know what powers they were using, but 2 at least had taunt in their builds. When I asked them later they said they were not using taunt, that they were doing damage, and that I was playing like a tank.

We engaged one mob of 15 or so. By we, I mean they. I hung back with my AR blaster. After 10 seconds everyone looked interested in the tanks. I lined up my cones (from mid range) and layed into the mob. Not one, not two, but three critters peeled away from the tanks and waxed my blaster.

Now, you seem to have good math, great research. I have a face planted blaster I thought I was playing cautiously. Who is right?

Too many variables to even begin guessing what happened. What level were the mobs? What kind of mobs were they? Did they prefer melee or range? Were the Tanks standing on top of one another? Were the Tankers running their taunt aura? Heck, which auras were they? (If it was WP, it basically doesn't count. :P) Etc.

I said that Tankers can hold aggro under normal circumstances without Taunt, not that all of them can. Likewise, a Tanker can have Taunt but use it poorly (ie: only using Taunt on their target, not spreading it around, etc) and still lose aggro. Taunt itself doesn't simply guarantee holding aggro - that's good play.

Yeah, I am slightly embarrassed to say, but it was an AE PUG team. It was a Samurai farm, and it was cranked to a serious level difference. And I may have only waited 5 seconds, but seriously, everyone looked engaged, and it does take me a while to line up that narrow Full Auto cone for best effect.

I am just amazed that even 3 poorly run tanks cannot hold the agro for one group. Especially after hearing everyone sing the praises of tauntless tanks. Even the 3 on the team were like "We dont need to taunt." sigh.

What is really frustrating is that the people who seem to know what they are talking about tactically run whatever they are given pretty good. Give them a 1st level tank with no taunt and they will still try to make the most of it. Give someone with no game experience or a stubborn streak a 4 billlion 50 and they can be of little use on a team. And you cannot say anything to them that seems to help. It just makes it worse somehow.

Sigh, I guess to finish my AR experiment I will solo the last 15 levels like I did with my Fire/Mental/Fire blaster. I found a wonderful AE mish with 5 res bubblers/5 def bubblers. You just sit in the sweet spot and kill. But it does get old after an hour or two, or three, or four. On the other hand being insulated from AE PUG teams has its own rewards.

I can understand people and teams not needing a Tanker let alone one with taunt who is making it so the team can shoot fish in a barrel.

I don't like things too tidy neither. Thats why I tank drunk but I don't like things done in a way that for certain people things become a waste of time. I also prefer sparing an extra 2 secs for nice consolidation than the alternative.

Taunt was never all about aggro control aka redirection of fire it was also there for damage mitigation purposes. You can dictate to AVs what attacks they are and are not allowed to use, make them your B, etc. Have AoEs land away from team (although in all likelhood you just prevent AoE), make AVs use attacks that your Tank can handle rather than all the ones your tank can't handle.

In a tanking competition the tauntless ones will end up dead. I be doing AVs with Scrappers anyway, so Brutes don't have to.

New dawn, I had to read your post three times to understand it. lol. I think I got the gist of most of it.

One thing that I want to know more about... How does taunt dictate what attacks an AV or anyone else uses?

Heh, I know what you mean about fragility. Longtime brute player. But the ability to do more damage is just too good to pass up. To deal with the best half a toon in the game (best attacks.../nothing else) all you have is a lot of experience and hopefully good guesswork at how the combat flow will happen. My main blaster is a new 50 Fire/Mental/Fire He has a great amount of power, but it has to be used cleverly. He needs close contact for an AoE End/Health boost/attack. A couple of his biggest attacks are short range / PBAoE. So, manuevering to the right level range to lay out the pain is everything. And of course mistakes are always made. Therefore Rise of the Pheonix from the Fire Epic is very appreciated.

I'll use my experiences on my DP/EM PUG teaming as an example, as they're the most recent

Helping out with some BMing, we had two slightly lower level Stone Tanks with us. Both had Granite, both had Mud Pots, and both had Taunt. They would both Teleport into a mob, one on each side, and go to work (One was /Fire, can't remember the other...). I'd wait three seconds, Build Up, and use Bullet Rain. As BR finished animating, I'd start a Range Boosted Empty Clips, and suddenly be eating 1/3rd of my health arrows from various corners of the mob.

I face-planted nearly every other mob. With two Tanks. Both with Mud Pots and Taunt, but neither using said Taunt.

Another example is a friend of mine running his first Tanker, a Fire/Fire. He had Blazing Aura and Taunt. He would leap into a group of demons, and immediately go into a "Miss miss miss miss hit miss miss" attack chain. The one enemy he would focus on would eventually get hit, and he drew a little attention with his aura. All the enemies outside his aura? Turned around and started beating the snot out of everyone else on the team. These being CoT demons, they could simply sit back and Flare/Fire Bolt squishies to death.

The above examples are more a lesson in bad Tanking than in Taunting. A Tank is a mitigation meatshield. Your existence is mob control through whatever means necessary, and you have the survivability to do it. Whether that be through damage, auras, or Taunt. If you can hit with your attacks and micromanage, Gauntlet works fine. If your aura can hit, it'll keep everything close to you ticked off.

Taunt is just another tool. But it's an auto-hit, -75% range debuff tool.

Play how you want to play.

I keep seeing Ice tanks champion the lack of a need for taunt. I think Ice tanks are a special exception. Between Chilling Embrace and Icicles, you really do get a lot of aggro, and the Chilling Embrace slow effect really helps.

If you don't take taunt, then you either need a lot of AOE's, or the damage auras, or both, in order to meaningfully protect your teammates.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blue_Centurion Does anyone have a thoughtfuul reason tanks do not need taunt?

This hasn't been mentioned yet, and so I feel it must be:

Reason #7: The taunt animations for Mace and Axe are silly looking.

Stylistically, I can't stand taking them. They just bug me too much, so I try my best to work around them, or find a way not to need them, or at least take them as late as I can get away with.

You know, with the incredibly poor damage tanks do, something I've found in single player is that you can boost your total DPS quite a lot if you just take Taunt and slot the Perfect Zinger Psi Damage proc to it. It's only 20% likely to affect any one target it hits, but if you're surrounded by a whole bunch of enemies, you'll probably manage to damage at least one of them just about every time you fire your taunt off.

That might make it valuable to scrankers. I don't know. Maybe still not valuable enough?