Aggro Mechanics in Vanguard?

I haven't played Vanguard since Beta. I was wondering if the aggro abilities in this game deal more with generating aggro/hate over time being used with every cooldown or if the aggro/hate abilities are saved for when somebody else tops the aggro chart and the general dps abilities are supposed to be used to sustaining aggro/hate till then?

Vanguard has several parts to the hate mechanic. Tanking classes get a hate modifier in their defense stance that adds somewhere netween 35-50% on all attacks. They also get the ability to force a target to attack them for a few seconds or number of hits/attacks. The force then makes the target not able to be forced for about 30 seconds. Finally they have some direct and over-time hate abilities, that may have damage components to them. No one part will be enough to hold harder encounters and your group will fold if the tank is not doing their job.

I have also heard a long time ago that each archtype has a hidden hate modifier to help them, like healers get a better energy(mana) regen. This modifier is not hugh, but is suppose to add into the game experience. I believe this hidden set was discussed on the original forums, before our last forums.

Also remember that the group will also fold if the DPS and Healers overdo in their fields of work and the tank may not be able to save them or keep the target after the force wears off and is prevented from another force. DPS/Healers have deagro abilities also and a few classes have the ability the raise or lower another players hate level.

I hope this helps you in your quest to make VG feel like a home.

Vanguard Aggro 101:

Aggro control is the responsibility of the entire group, not just the tank. If everyone plays like that, your group will have a fruitful experience. If they ignore that, playing the healer will be a nightmare, or if your a healer like me, you will be standing over a lot of Sorc bodies pointing and laughing.

You should spam hate abilities. Half of my encounter looks like taunt, block. Does less damage than pure offense, but your damage is practically nothing anyway. Then for the most part, everyone else should be making an effort to stay under your hate. I rescue my healers, healing doesn't pull, but spam healing does, and sometimes they have to do that and it happens. Dps'ers I might rescue, but when I see someone pulling repeatedly, I quit fighting them for hate and they can have it. That's the basic, but eventually you will find encounters where it will switch and randomize anyway. Your job is to be in control, and the damage from raw melee won't uphold that.

Actually to simplify it, that's why I've not found a shaman's bear to be a good tank. It can take a hellacious beating and not even flinch, and it has a force target ability, but: if someone pulls aggro off the bear, their hate generation has climbed way up, and so the bear can force the mob back, but just for those two or three hits, until the mob goes back at the player, never to return, because the bear did not induce any hate.

To break this down a little, you will always want to be generating hate in Vanguard as a tank. You can do this multiple ways, and usually all at the same time. There is no guaranteed snap aggro instant top of the hate list ability you can use.

Back in Everquest, the taunt ability that tanks (and rangers, hah) got, not only added hate, but had a good chance of instantly placing you at the top of the hatelist, no matter where you were before. There is no ability like this in Vanguard, so you must generate your hate at all times if you don't want it ripped from you.
Before people argue that force-targets work this way, that is incorrect. Some people call them force taunts, I call them force targets, because that's really all they are. You force the monster to hit you for a period of time, but you don't actually build any more hate with it, so unless you manage to change the hate list within that time, the monster is going to flip right back to whoever you were trying to save. Great for saving squishy and buying time to get yourself back to the top, but doesn't actually do the job of getting you back to the top.

So, you should be generating hate at all times. But do not make the mistake of focusing only on abilities that specifically increase hate. Taunts and aggro chains are fine, but you won't have good aggro if those are all you use. Use everything, DO DAMAGE. This is something I think many people do not fully grasp early. How much damage you do directly translates into how much hate you have; use that hate modifier on your stance. I'm not saying gear like a dps class, or don't use taunt/hate abilities, but don't neglect your damage. Beat the crap out of the mob and use all the tools available to you, and your group will be able to push much harder without ripping it.

Edit: I should add that I think tanks, of all the classes, grow the most into their power as they level. They actually start out kind of weak by comparison and not really all that tanky when it comes to generating hate. You'll have dps and healers ripping aggro from you a lot. Just keep at it. A well geared and skilled end game tank is a beast.

What Dirkin said--exactly! If you are not beating the ever-loving (c r a p) out of the mob, you will have problems!

Dirk knows what hes talking about! I like grouping with tanks like dirk, bc I can just go dps crazy (as long as im doing my own de-aggro stuffs) and not peel mobs off him.

Yes, didn't mean to imply that damage was irrelevant, just not to skip the taunting. Now, a warrior has a 10m ae shout taunt, whereas the dk one is a 5m ae hate-adding melee attack. Obviously the warrior has more of a "come to me" button. Damage dealt will flow mostly from a good weapon, beyond that, you get into an intricate debate over how much a dk should spec in int for spell damage, and things like that. In general, given a choice, I would choose armor pieces for their defense value rather than offense. But if I was going to put money or a lot of questing into something, it would be a weapon before an armor piece.

Not to worry, my post was more of a general psa than replying to anyone. I was not implying anyone else was wrong or anything.

Absolutely agree with your points on gearing. A tank should gear to do their job, and try to get a good weapon or weapons as well.

I will however put forth that the warrior AE taunt is not really all that impactful by itself. It certainly helps, and is quite useful in conjunction with our other AE stuff, but it adds a mediocre amount of hate and has a long refresh time. There's nothing in the game that's really a "come to me" button. As long as I can get newer tanks understanding that force targets don't actually change the hate list on their own, and they have to be actively engaged in the fight the whole time to hold aggro, then I'm happy.

I see...haven't played warrior as much as dk, the observation came from a recent group where the dps had a main warrior, we needed to fight a group of pathers, they seemed to see my dk as not pulling and holding aggro, I saw it as why are they hitting everything, and it was since they assumed the dk had the instant ranged taunt. Agree with the last statement that target force is sort of a last resort. Especially since you force for just a few seconds, then it goes back to the healer or whoever and is immune to another force.

Just had to make a comparison. DK blackwind does have a 10m range, but only to targets in front of you. At level 55, it adds 564 hate. On a 42 warrior, the ae taunt, not limited to those in front, adds 1693 hate.

Indeed, you are correct. I am at work currently and cannot post exact numbers from memory, but Black Wind also does damage, which must be factored in. It also does not have a significant refresh time, though it does have a very high endurance cost, like most DK abilities. If Ravaging Darkness is used Black Wind can be used several times rapidly I believe. Pretty decent balance, really, considering the strengths/weaknesses of each class.

But regardless, I was simply pointing out that neither is a form of guaranteed aggro or fits the "come to me" description. They are both useful tools in AE situations. The warrior does have a slightly more expansive AE toolbox than a DK does, giving them an edge in those situations.

In the situation you described above, were you talking about fighting multiple mobs at once in your group, and the dps player was AEing? Or did they just burn right from the pull and not give you time? Both are good ways to not let your tank do his job properly. All of the tanks need time to establish their hate. The better geared and experienced you are and the more familiar your group mates are with and to you, the less time you will need. But, if the group is not working harmoniously together, and the dps is just burning like the don't care, there will most likely be problems no matter what you do.

I was thinking black wind had a 5m range, because, it is still a melee attack, so you have to hit someone within 5m in order to get a 10m frontal hate spray. True, it also does minor damage. I have no clue how damage and hate are related numerically.

Yes, dk has some endurance regens, usually used with the scythe of doom life tap. This hits up to something like 6 targets at once and does healing, so, was suggested to me it's a better ae aggro method. Personally, I just use either black wind or the hate-building melee crit at the beginning of the fight. Further in, scythe and dps.

In that specific example, it was a pug and nothing was either considered beforehand or legitimately discussed, just some flying accusations. But I could tell from the way one person was used to playing a warrior, they assumed other tanks had the same ability and it was like some kind of insurance policy. With my warrior, I've usually opened with, stinging shot I think it's called, followed by an appropriate taunt. I've seen dk's recently using a bow to pull. We don't have a stinging shot and the bow does almost no damage.

For the dps classes, when I do that, I don't. I have *never* opened damage full throttle; come close on some raid bosses, that's it. For example, on the Hillsbury Hound, sure when you hit it with a few red hot toons, it's gone in seconds. If you go in with some who are newer, it takes a lot longer. On that, I've pulled aggro several times using low, slow dps. There again, suggests the tank was just trying to damage it. Tanks, in sleep mode my dps'ers throwing out four times what you do.

It's tricky but this is why I like Vanguard, there are few guarantees, feign death and invisibility can fail just as forcing and taunting may not be enough to actually tank something. What we do is give it our best try finding ways that work in the majority of cases.

When in defensive stance, Melee damage X 1.5 + any added hate features = Hate generated. Spell damage has a 1.0 multiplier regardless of stance.

In offensive stance, Melee also gets a 1.0 multiplier for hate generated.

And BTW, Scythe only makes aggro from the damage done. It gets ZERO additional hate from healing done. Nada. Zilch. Black Wind is far better for aggro production.

Ah, that's something to mull over. Are you saying that defensive stance is a 1.5 modifier in addition to the added hate of the stance?

I wasn't really thinking of the healing based portion of scythe. It was more for the ae. The healing was just for its own sake. Scythe is kind of a wimpy attack, around 400 or so, but with bonuses and modifiers it would seem to come out ahead of 564, and I'm guessing it's very rare that you would be hitting any more than 6 targets that were only in front of you. Also seems to say the warrior's level 42 taunt is worth three dk melee ae's.

Then likewise for spells, no base modifier, but will the hate bonus of the stance affect it?

Clarify that. The Black wind also does regular damage so that adds to its hate. One to one way better than scythe, but not necessarily better than a scythe burst. On its own, it does about the same as a regular spam melee attack (Malice?) just on multiple targets.

If you mean the 1.5 because the dk stance is a 50% bonus, then that basically says that hate = damage points, which makes me wonder how I could ever hold from some of the high dps crits. On the 42 warrior the stance is showing 45% hate bonus.

The 1.5 modifier is to cover the additional 50% hate in defensive stance--not in addition to that mod. Although it says 'per attack' it only includes melee attacks. Spells just do 1 to 1 hate to damage regardless of stance. I am no expert on 'behind the scenes' stuff, but that has always been the accepted explanation. As far as I know, there is no way to parse actual hate numbers in-game.

Black Wind is a melee attack with an added hate component, so you get 1.5x your melee damage in hate, plus the hate component, on every target you hit. Black Wind does melee damage + 149 to each target, (+564 straight hate) so your damage from it is dependent on your weapon too. So using Schiller's numbers as an example:
Black Wind = melee dmg (324 to 487) + 149 = (473 to 636) x (1.5 for defensive stance) + 564 = hate generated per target. (1273.5 to 1518 hate)
Scythe = (417 to 441) x (1.5 for defensive stance) + 0 hate from healing received = (625.5 to 661.5 hate)

Now I know these are just the base numbers, but all damage mods (Str, any flat damage etc.) will apply equally to both, as both are melee attacks, so while the numbers will be way higher, the relationship will still be the same. For example, Schiller's Scythe usually hits for well over 3k on each target, but BW will hit for 1-2k more per target. Of course melee numbers will vary by target, based on target's mitigation etc, but both will still be affected the same.

Both BW and Scythe are way too expensive of endurance, but BW does cost a little less (bw-46, scythe-48) and with the better hate from BW, I only use Scythe if I really need the healing.

Actually, BW should have the endurance cost reduced. It should be possible to use it 3 times from a full endurance bar (with a little natural regen), so it should cost about 35-38 endurance, as it is our only really good AoE aggro tool. I can see why Scythe costs so much--if it was too low, DKs would become Disciplesque-solo-machines, but Black Wind badly needs a reduction in endurance costs.

As far as holding aggro, we tanks do that because the DPS allow us to--and want us to!-- Some of the sorcs, monks, and rangers I have played with through the years could rip aggro anytime they wanted, if that was what they were trying to do. DPS using aggro-reducing skills and pacing themselves is what keeps us on top of the aggro list.

Yes, but BW won't burst; for some healing, you do 3-6 scythes, which would be more damage/hate. Of course, the more mobs there are, the less scythes you need for healing, but for the ae aggro, it's still giving you more. On exactly four mobs, you could probably use a spell on each and then harrow, but not much more to pluck from the ae toolbox. It's very situational.

The way this is reading, hate = damage + hate mods. I can see how hate mods might keep up with very basic dps, but when those people start to crit for 50k, 80k, 120k, 300k, (insert outrageous number here), how would we ever catch up to that? And what to speak of non-damaging debuffs? This is why I thought hate would be some complex formula applied on the damage. Even at a 50k hit followed by a -3k hate reducer, that would be way beyond some 2k hit with a 1k hate add.

I see the same results: tanks mostly hold aggro when they fight for hate and dps paces itself and reduces its hate. Without a parse or actual number, it would be hard to accept the same explanation though. I had the rare experience tonight of losing aggro a lot, thinking the person was less used to grouping and was blasting their hardest stuff constantly, however rescuing them for the most part stuck it back on me, slightly contradicting what we were talking about earlier in the thread. Although they were a little "happy" in their dps'ing, if the hate was their damage, I don't see how I could have tanked any of it. On this, I can only judge by the results, and when someone dies a few times while gaining millions of experience, it's not too serious. If strong dps sits there and blames the tank, or, the tank's not using hate and deserves the blame, those would be the issues I guess. Everything else is the act of making your group work together more smoothly.

I'm pretty sure there's a more complex hate formula churning in the background, because other actions do generate hate, and yes sometimes the straight up hate numbers don't exactly match up. The damage x mod + hate formula works as a pretty decent guideline though. In most situations where your dps characters in a group are hitting for that hard, the tank is hitting pretty damn hard themselves.

For a DK, if you open a fight with QJ and Hatred Incarnate and your big hits, you'll land upwards of 50k hits. Granted some of those are spell damage and whatnot, but it's not insignificant damage, A Paladin gets 60s worth of double damage, among other tools, on top of QJ. I've known paladins to get in some hits over 80k. Of all the tanks, the warrior will hit the softest in terms of max hit, but we can do higher damage more consistently. I know I regularly hit for over 20k on my warrior.

Of course, these are all from raid geared tanks, which is a significant power boost over a non-raiding character. But the principal still applies. Unless you have a raid geared sorcs blasting away in a pug group with a non-raid tank, then you might have some issues.