No to Taunt

I have been involved in several debates about the use of taunt and general use of aggro. While I have never been against it before I have always chosen a single target attack in my builds. I took a thugs/dark and a thugs/storm to 50 mostly solo and used dual wield the whole way. I have also tried many other builds and sets but got bored in the 20s and 30s.
Yesterday after some lively debate I decided to try Taunt out and see how I did. I rolled a bots/traps and 2boxed him to 8 then put in taunt and went out solo'ing. Frankly I found it to be a waste of space. It grabs the attention of foes for 1 attack only and then the bots attacks pulls them away from you. If you drop caltrops they simply ignore your tauntage and run away. If you just stand there taunting you may get lucky enough to grab the attention of 1 foe during the battle and take 1 attack but the constant pet attacks pretty much cancel you out.
Of course as you go on you can slot it up and make it recharge faster and be more effective but at the same time you will be getting more pets with more attacks that fight against your taunts.
So ok you can drop it to pull foes round corners but you can do the same thing with an attack and also add to the damage dealing.
I think it is far better to leave out taunt get an attack and concentrate on buffs/debuffs.

And you judge the usefulness of taunt based on a level 8 MM with no slots or SO's...

I think that it's a cunning trap. Some powers are way worse at low levels than later when they've got better slots in them and have perhaps scaled a bit. People get a power, say it sucks and never look at it again. Presence pool taunts are mickey mouse to the non power pool taunts but still on a MM it can be just about good enough.

I have not been unsatisfied without provoke, but then again, I have 2 veteran staffs, twilight grasp slotted with a bit of range, or envenom with a bit of range, or neurotoxic poison with range. On my stormies, I don't even try to hide. I teleport into position, gale them to a corner and hold them there with hurricane and freezing rain. My Thugs/dark I built to pounce on groups: fearsome stare and/or howling twilight, sending in my bruiser on attack/aggressive followed by multiple thug blasts. On bosses I throw in a gang war after the fearsome.

The taunt sets have some nice bonuses (for a bargain price), I don't mind slotting Challenge/Provoke with 4-6 slots.

I'm sure Challenge/Provoke is nice for any MM, but I do agree that sets that have otherwise good control effects (Dark, Traps, Storm, maybe TA) can keep henchmen alive without it. Those without those effects (Thermal, Pain) really benefit from it, especially since they have an easy self heal. Not sure where to put in FF. Maybe taking Presence on FF will keep the suicidal henchman (arsonist, medic) alive 20% longer.

I've got a Bots/FF mastermind and I love having Provoke. I use it all the time when soloing. I usually solo at 0/+4.

On teams, when we have no brute, the other players like that I can play a pseudo tank with my MM

In fact, last night I ran a the Strike Force in Caps and we had a low level brute who didn't have all the powers yet. He was kinda of squishy so I tanked along with him and we had mostly smooth sailing through the SF.

Provoke. I made sure I took the Tanker taunt equivalent . I still think that if you want to stay in BG mode it is better to take an attack. You aren't able to choose which foe or foes your pets attack and they generally choose different targets and negate your taunt aura. If you do more damage though you can hold the attention of the higher con foe.

Lvl 50 Bots/Traps MM here. Never needed taunt. I'm not saying anyone who's taken it is 'wrong'. But I know theres no over-riding need for it, and you're certainly not 'doing it wrong' if you dont take it either.
/2 inf

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Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

I had taunt on my L50 Bots/traps, but honestly I rarely used it. With traps you already have so much to do as it is and if you are doing it correctly then taunt is not needed at all imo. I dropped it and got Assault instead and I am much happier. When you get Assault bot and then the level 32 upgrade you really won't need anything else. I even dropped aid other and I don't even miss it, but it was very helpful when I was leveling to heal my Bots. It is just about the level. You get to L12 and it is game changing, you get to level 26 and it is game changing, you get to 32 and it is game changing.

I would suggest taunt on a Bots/FF though, I liked it a lot on that build. You make a nice team tanker.

I just don't get how people spare the powers for it. I can barely fit all the things I want into my builds. Besides that.... the whole tanker minding thing in general boggles me.

It probably has a lot to do with the power sets the person takes and what they think is fun. I love playing masterminds and most of them don't have taunt as I think it would be a waste.

The only one that I have taunt on is my Bots/FF and I love having it on that toon. Its come in handy many times and since /Force Field has no debuffs yet lots of buffs, I can handle a lot of incoming damage, more so than my bots. So I get all the aggro on me and let them pick em off. If I tried this with my ninja/posion MM, I'm sure I'd faceplant a lot.

One thing I love about taunt on that toon is when I'm taking on a Hero or AV, I put my bots at distance where they won't get hit by AoEs and have the Hero face me with the bots behind him. I taunt the Hero while they shoot em down.

There is no way in the world a MM single target attack can draw aggro off your pets, but taunt can and thats why you use it.

If you only need to get the initial aggro (IE: Take the alpha) then you don't need taunt, this may be because your pets are tough or you have debuff or whatever.

Some builds buff up the MM and thus the less damage the pets take the better, as is the case of my Bots/FF, if I took attacks instead of challenge/provoke there is no way I could hover up in the air and keep all the AoE's away from my bots for the entire fight.

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Originally Posted by _Klaw_ If you do more damage though you can hold the attention of the higher con foe.

Are you really saying that your MM does more damage than your pets? Because that is the only way your attacks will ever draw aggro away from the pets.

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Originally Posted by Aggelakis PrincessDarkstar: "RAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHH SOMEONE IS *WRONG* ON THE INTERNET!"

Yes. Your pets are 1-3 levels beneath you and in BG mode your pets generally spread their damage around all the foes.

While I find it hard to believe that you can do more damage than even a T1 pet does that mean you don't bother with the T2/T3 pets?

Cos provoke/challenge will rip aggro straight off those, no amount of attacking will.

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Originally Posted by Aggelakis PrincessDarkstar: "RAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHH SOMEONE IS *WRONG* ON THE INTERNET!"

With patron powers and pool attacks, a MM can string together a pretty hefty attack chain; people really undervalue the ability of MMs to do damage without pets. Even the base attacks aren't that poor, damage-wise. Their big problem is their DPE, not their DPA.

It depends on the primary, of course; it's probably easier for a Bots or Thugs to pull it off than a Ninja.

If your soloing something like a AV then it helps to be able to maintain aggro. Should an AV turn and knockout any pet individually or 2 or 3 pets collectively then your bodyguard mode is basically nearing worthlessness. It's better to taunt than to try and get pets out whilst you should keep buffs or debuffs going. Different MMs have different levels of several issues. Keeping pets away from me and any AoEs as I keep aggro and buff or debuff is an issue I have. It's not in my interest to hope my threat level is higher. I'd rather know it is. Generally on teams MMs can soak or mitigate alphas, taunt control is often unnecessary. It depends on what you want to do and however you have to do it to whether or not a taunt power is useful but I think MMs or Stalkers are pretty much the only ATs with which I might dip into the presence pool with.

Why would a stalker want to taunt, or are you going for the fear powers?