The Need for a War

That is incorrect. Your nukers are agroing them off tank, mobs don't agro them.

The reason why groups lose agro has to deal with misunderstanding of fine details of casting range and agro bubble, and for failing to take lag into consideration.

Casting range is slightly larger than agro bubble. If you select a target, and use the precious meteor shower, it will first move you into agro range, and only then start casting. If you move manually, you can start casting just outside of agro range. This can be easily tested on pvp island dummies.

Second thing has to do with lag. This is online game, and as such, data takes time to travel. When tank first agros mobs, melee tend to overshoot the tank, running towards backline. This is due to movement prediction algorithms. The trick is, for the rest of the group to not panic over this, but let mobs home in on tank.

AI also works in cycles. They don't recalculate targets every frame. They update their targets based on several factors, and person dealing damage will attract their attention much more than someone just standing in their agro bubble. Mobs only recalculate targets every so many times per second, or even less.

Casters, especially in DoA, must follow this: Move just outside of agro bubble range, but close enough to cast, without having any mobs in your agro bubble. Cast your spell. Immediately after casting, move back. By the time your cast does damage to the target, its agro bubble will not have attacker in it, and when mob tries to change targets, it has to decide between tank or caster. But since caster is too far, it returns to attacking the tank.

Last thing to note is the change in AI. If you have more than 3 melee on a tank, every one above will break agro when they get low on health. In doing so, it will also try to find a new target, preferably an easy kill. This is why agro breaks towards the end. Since casters are perceived as easy kills, they get homed on by weakened mobs.

All of this is extremly easy to run in practice, as long as you keep your eye on the radar.

Tank has no innate skill to hold agro apart from body blocking. This is why group must cooperate. That's the most important lesson here.

WINNER WINNER CHICKEN DINNER!!!

Taunt comes from Kender in the Dragonlance series, but it worked in a VERY specific way. The kender would taunt ONE target with VERY offensive comments about anything ranging from his mother, to his looks, to his manhood. The target would become enraged and charge the kender..who would then hop around and be basically impossible to catch. It's since been b*st*rdized to what other's consider taunt so that they can kill things easier.

Surely, if you had a very large, heavily armoured guy swearing at you, and another wimpy guy trying to nuke you, you'd kill the wimpy guy first, thats how it is with the AI. personally i find it alot more fun, i hated being the guy who sat there and got attacked, mindlessly clicking stances/shouts etc. I love it now, i can finally do something that involves moving, body blocking etc. when a caster is being chased (in both PvE and PvP) i try to put myself in the way, since they usually don't realise and it gives them time to escape, and in PvE the enemy will usually attack me too, saving a caster, and stopping an enemy. Sure, stuff ain't as easy anymore, i love a challenge, clicking 'Watch Yourself' 'Dolyak Signet' 'Shield/Defensive Stance' and some others was boring.

Remember when they changed how that worked? Had they not, it would've rendered an entire new mechanic useless...

edit: My post is a little too concise
My point is that, in a discussion about AI and aggro, it's worth mentioning that the book trick wasn't "nerfed" because of perceived exploitation. Rather because of the introduction of the Ritualist profession and it's mechanic of item spells. I think this also proves that there never will be a "taunt" skill (aggro-management skill like in other mmo's) because the item skills would function in this fashion had they left "the book trick" intact.

Warriors adapt. Its one of our great skills.

I've found that using speed skills + cripling skills/knockdowns and interupts my war can make a big differance in pve battles.

As to the damage output, its all in the skills. A war can dish out a huge amout of damage if you know what skills to use and how to use them best.

Keep in mind that your team build will help indicate what kind of build your war should be running. If you don't mesh with the team then your of little use in the battles.

You'll likely never find one single warrior build that works on every map, but will need to change to face each new threat with a custom build.

p.s. while im not opposed to a pve only skill I really dont think agro management is the sole responciblity of a warrior and its offten enough that the warrior draws agro and absorbs the first spike attack they use. This gives the rest of the team time to locate and kill priority targets while your monk only needs to worry about that first big hit on the warrior. Just make sure the team is ready before you charge in, or the monk will yell 'NOOB....!" and just let you die.

The most effective henchmen team I have ever found consists of
1 Ranger
1 Paragon
2 Monks (One prot hero and mhenlo)
1 warrior (Devona, who is not a "real" tank because shes hammer )
1 mesmer
1 ele
and myself.

I beat all of the later nightfall missions with this team, including the final two missions. I managed to get masters time in the last mission
Heck, I even ascended with my heros (Paragon, Ranger, Prot monk) and Stefan and Alesia.

You don't need two tanks by any means, I wouldn't bring a warrior if it weren't for their consistant melee damage.

I love how he doesn't even bother to read the wiki notes.

A group with a large ammount of pets would benefit from this skill (Unless it was a group like IWAY)

It is NOT a PvE skill.

And all those that bring up the Nightfall pve skills seem to forget that anyone can use them, not just one class...

dervs have paper armor?

really messed up there.

Out of sheer curiosity, what did this "book trick" consist of?

I use two tanks because i like the damage output of warriors and is very hard interupt them...
>>Paragorn is my wildcard, you can increase the damage output to warriors and rangers<< and increase heal in the party at same time, very usefull...
I use a mesmer/necro or necro/mesmer build very usefull...
Everybody love rangers
Everygood player take a nuker in the party
I use two healing monks, with 7 cheap skills and with fast cast time... twin healers
I carry a MM necro in 80% of time, i take of the MM in the end missions and areas because is hard to find bodys and still the minions alive...

And about Devona...
"Idiot, meet hammer. Hammer, idiot."

Also add:

"Ball Up for Searing Flames!" - All foes run to target foe's location, and stay there for X...Y seconds.
"Buggy Terrain FTW!" - Create an invisible wall at target ally's location. No foes are able to pass that location for X...Y seconds.
"We're Farming Cattle!" - Disable all monster AI for X...Y seconds.

See this is where the misconception comes in. A Tank in MMO terms means a warrior designed to absorb as much damage as possible. A Warrior, just because they can take damage does not mean they are automatically a Tank.

I prefer a protection monk over a second healer. I'd rather something there to stop massive damage being dealt than have monks spend energy trying to heal it and failing because their target died too quickly.

Not everyone loves Rangers unfortunately and tbh, I can take an assassin over a nuker. That caster in the enemy backline can sometimes be much more of a pain to deal with than the melee mobs in our face. Sure a Mesmer could shut it down, but the best kind of shut down is permanent. A dagger in the back and face down in the dirt. We can deal with the melee later.

Not to say a nuker isn't useful, just that it isn't a neccesary part of the team.

Back before Factions was released, we had minion masters able to raise 30+ minions at a time, horribly imbalanced. To top it all off, they could be all fiends because none of them needed to tank, a nice stream of amazing damage output. That warrior holding the gear, would take all aggro because the AI went out of their way to attack anything holding an item. All they needed was a bar full of stances and shouts and the Monk could just put up Arcane Echo + Healing Hands for invincibility. All the while the minions would clatter away and nuker, or SS necro would throw out some massive aoe DPS to kill that huge ass mob in seconds to be more fodder for the mm's growing army.

Yes it was fun for a while seeing all those numbers, but really, all you needed was a mm, a stance tank, a monk with healing hands and a nuker or ss necro to beat anything in pve. Didn't need any skill or experience with the builds and you could literally mop the floor with anything that got in your way using one hand while reading a newspaper and having some coffee.

Oh I dunno I could think of some amusing attention grabbing shouts

"I fart in your general direction!"
"Your mother was a hamster!"
"Your father smelt of elderberries!"

"Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time!"

hehe some will recognise them

"ToF" Paragon Tank >>>>>>>>>> Warrior Tank.

It's a shame that I'm the only person who sees that...

I know the difference, thanks though. The hench and hero AI does not and is a known bug (amoung many others) that Gaile has forwarded to the Devs.

Side stepping even an inch out of an AoE will often cause the AI to break off and follow.

That's all besides the point though and the topic of course is giving warriors a more imporatant role vs a "herder", snarer or knock over-er... heh, I think we have new "silly words" to use now.

?!!

Where in that quote do you see my saying "Kiting is a bug"? I was saying that the players are not able to kite because of the AI with the heroes and henchies. They follow right away, and there's the bug I'm refering too. You can't move even out of a AoE most of the time because they will break off. This causes them to choose different targets other than the ones called (another bug reported in the AI threads and sent to the devs by Gaile) or sends the AI into Benny Hill mode (and another bug sent in by Gaile).
Benny Hill bug is not kiting, it's when the perma aggro bug starts up against a hero or hench that is kiting though, and then we get to watch them run in circles like the video linked.

This has been dragged off target by a misunderstanding though. I know what kiting is, and frankly pretty good at it with my monk when not (I repeat "Not") when playing with henchies or heroes.

... and now back to the topic, please.

And why not both?
Ew, don't associate warrior with the word tank.. keep them separate.

GW doesn't belive in aggro. itts the monks job to tank the damage. The monk is now on the receiveing and mitigating end of dmg in guild wars. by religated all the responibility to one class it makes the game alot easier.

GW doesn't belive in aggro. itts the monks job to tank the damage. The monk is now on the receiveing and mitigating end of dmg in guild wars. by religated all the responibility to one class it makes the game alot easier.

OK, look: "Tank" is a job description, just like "Healer" and "Nuker". All tanks are not warriors, and all warriors are not tanks, but they are the most common. Not all monks are healers, and not all Eles are nukers.

There is also the issue of what Tanking involves. It's not just absorbing damage, and in fact, some tanks might not absorb damage at all, but Block and Evade or cause Blindness/Weakness, etc. I'd say the job of a tank is to gather aggro and distract the brunt of the enemies' attacks so that the more squishy and less defensive characters can do their jobs, like nuking and healing.

The warrior is a natural tank because of the armor level and shield, so it's very easy to simply point at a warrior when the need for a tank arises. Of course this is also backed up by the warrior's skills that give more health, armor, and defensive stances. Guess what: Eles have all sorts of AoE spells, Monks have all sorts of Healing spells, thus solidifying all their roles. It's not a misconception, it's how the game was designed.

I tank all the time, all you gotta do is make sure you go in first, far enough ahead the aggro is devoted to you but not so far monks cant get there in time

No, it's not.

Even in Domain of Anguish, the hardest and insanely damaging part of the game, a "good Warrior tank" is what holds the aggro most of the time.
In almost every single party we did DoA with, the best aggro-holding has been the Warrior. (Except in Gloom)

Unfortunately, from reading this thread, it seems that a lot of tanks don't know how to hold aggro, and other teammates don't know how to stay out of aggro.

They go straight for your monks first?
You know why?
Because that monk, was in range of their aggro when they approached the tank, that's why.
Tank needs to grab aggro MUCH further away than what most people are aware of. Tank moves in, gets aggro. THEN everyone else crawls up, and proceed to nuke/hex/heal etc. You need to be an extra full aggro circle away when tank gains aggro. Almost two aggro circles away, to be safe. Make sure to step back out of the aggro as soon as you're done casting.

If your tank can't survive those few seconds, then he's not worthy to be playing a tank. Make sure you do buff him up, before you sent him off, of course. Protective Spirit, Life Bond, Barrier, Life Sheath, Weapon of Warding, yadayada. Whatever you happen to have as protection.


I figured this was basics of PvE, but alas, a lot of people are not aware of it, it seems...

Warriors are the single best damaging class in the game. Relegating them to the role of a tank is pathetic, and leads to poor play by the rest of the team because no one learns how to kite or heal different players. Stacking monsters on a tank and nuking them to death is a system for other games, not Guild Wars.

Try this out in PvE:
Triple Chop/Dismember/Penetrating Chop/Penetrating Blow/Critical Chop/Cyclone Axe/Flail/Res Sig. You'll be amazed how fast things die. Now add another 4 warriors running similar bars, and maybe an orders necro, and you'll tear through mobs faster than you could ever imagine. No more of this waiting around for meteor shower to recharge.

After testing your aggro theory, I've found that I can pull a Kournan Guard towards me after he breaks aggro by using Bulls Strike (or any KD really, except for hammer ones). Just some interesting trivia to break up the flaming.

resume flaming

Haha flame away. It was an interesting question that I came up (or thought so), but an aggro control skill for a warrior would of course change gameplay greatly, but wtf? For anyone who plays PvE and most especially to anyone who plays a warrior, the points Avarre made should be well known. Run in take the blunt of the aggro; let monks heal; pummel monsters with as much dmg as you can (and if you're like me who doesn't trust most of the monks out there carry some defensive shout or another). I always did resent the name "tank", since before the ai change W/Mo was the prof combo that said "tank" and meant "oh im a warrior that can heal myself take me". Heal sig anyone? With the new ai, it takes the whole team to control aggro so they dont get flanked out by too much aggro, allowing the monks to do their jobs wtihout getting seizures



I say warriors are doing paper damage because in instances like RoF chain islands, you're doing from 10-20 dmg with your attacks, and 40-60 dmg with attack skills. As a ranger, I'm doing more dmg with just barrage, and eles are eles (the nukkas, no not nigga i meant nuker =]) Warrior is my favorite profession, and with the new elite Soldier's Stance, I've gotten masters on a few missions with that and heroway. Well the thread was to see where warriors stand in PvE at the moment, of course the flaming makes it hard to read the posts with THOUGHT, but maybe I had a bad opening post and title. To that I changed the title to warrior, sorry for inconvenience caused by a stupid abbreviation.

warriors can still hold aggro as long as they know what they are doing and the other member's are careful not to interrupt it

10-20 damage per hit on a standard hit is pretty damn good considering that's every 1.33 seconds, even faster if you have an attack stance, 10-20 damage every .9s.

People assume Warriors do paper damage because they don't see those amazing 90-150 damage numbers popping up. People, including you don't seem to realise how often those big numbers pop up as compared to how often those 10-20 damage numbers pop up when playing a Warrior.

Not true, a monk going out with AI can in fact grab aggro three bubbles away (less now as it's been tweaked); but it still happens. This happens when using the flags to direct the AI to attack. The mobs will engage for a second or two then make a dash towards the player (I've had this happen playing a monk or an ele).

This is yet another reported bug with the AI. Insta-monk aggro is what I had seen it called and adapted the name myself.

Back on topic: A skill for a warrior to force a target switch to themselves would in no way make PvE easy as some people are assuming. Those that are saying that are thinking far too simply. As we all know, mobs still use player skills vs using "racial" abilities. Therefore if a taunt was put in, we can bet the mobs would have it as well. It would also be very simple to make as well. If you are taunted and attacking, you could not be able to switch targets for X seconds.

Mobs would then be able to protect it's back line rather than the "rush the back line and leave itself exposed" like we have now. This would add a whole new dynamic to the game in both PvE and PvP and make warriors more than what has been suggested they be.

The only players I can imagine not wanting this kind of improvement in PvE are those unwilling to adapt to such a new challenge (and mechanic) or the hard core PvPer who doesnt want their sure fire winning methods challenged.

First of all.. lets talk about tanks. Tanks are (in the context of this and many other MMOs), a character that goes to soak up damage. These characters are very important in certain areas of the game, like Domain of Anguish for example. However, warriors by themselves, fall short at tanking to things like earth eles or monks. Then, you go for damage. An ele might use searing flames to do 119 damage every 2 seconds, but, within about 5 or 6 constantt casts of SF, you're out of energy, so your damage stops (remember, no gg, just SF), warriors go in there, they do about 20 damge every second and after maybe 6 seconds, deep wound. BOOM, 20% of your health gone. but the warrior is far from done, he can just sit there and autoattack and continue to deal his 20 damage per second over minutes or he can use his adren skills to deal higher armor-ignoring damage. Meanwhile our searing flames ele has switched to his high set after about 15 seconds and now waits for 40 seconds for his 4 pips to refill that 80 energy he blew. in that 40 seconds, the warrior does 20*40=80 damage by not even using skills plus the extra damage from his adrenal skills. Now, searing flames is a very overpowered ele skill, but just a reaffirmation of some numbers.

The point is, an ele is a tank. An ele is a damage dealer.However, an ele is NOT both a tank and a damage dealer. (yea, crystal wave, gg... where'd my energy go?) Warriors on the other hand can survive the brunt of battle for a long time and yet dish out crazy damage.

Please don't mix heroway with tanking. AI is stupid. It doesn't know how to tank, and no ammount of flags will help. And yet, Devona alone does a better job than apparently most players do.

You cannot grab agro from 3 bubbles away. The only exceptions where this occurs is with special patrols that are designed to agro based on bubble touching a certain spot, rather than mobs itself.

The agro behaviour changes once you engage the mobs. If you retreat, certain mobs will extend their agro range to entire radar range or even a bit further.

Same rules still apply. They scan their agro range (4-8x now of agro bubble) and find most suitable target. But on initial agro they will always have the same mechanics.

Also, they go for you since you're not running enough health. The only time they zone in in this way is when you have the least health in group, or ideal ratio of low AL/health.

With the changes in AI, running 500+ health in PvE makes things much much easier. But still, this mostly again applies to pure hench teams, or mostly hench teams.

But never mix tanking issues between henchies and player groups, since they operate completely differently. The greatest complaints about most common issues come from players who played exclusively with heroes, and then found themself in a player group. Rules are completely different. Despite that, most of the time, full heroway group will work in harmony, since they understand at least the basics of positioning and consistently behave with respect to their role. This often makes them a much better choice than unsychronized player groups.

But the most important thing about playing a monk with respect to agro management is to have lots of health. This way, some other hero/hench will get bulk of agro, but you'll be safe to prot them and keep them alive.

For me, a tank is someone tanking, it can be a warrior, a monk, an ele, etc. With the correct skills, anyone can tank. It's a role, not a profession. Tank != warrior.

A healer is also a role, not a profession. If someone asks for a healer, I presume that is what they want. I will not join with my prot monk, boon prot, bonder, zb prot, or smiter. A ritualist can be a healer. Healer != monk.

I also presume nuker to mean someone using fire magic. If someone asks for a nuker I would not join with a water elementalist, or a fast casting Me/E using air magic.

I have seen some very strange behaviour from the AI that leads me to believe this isn't true, unless it was fixed.

Examples in this post.

Please don't make unfounded assumptions on what I said nor attempt to twist the post into nonsence. There are warrior heroes and henchies that would benefit from a taunt just as players would. In fact, dismissing the AI heroes and henchies for possible improvements (a major selling point for many in GW) is silly. The fact that they do not know how to tank can be worked with, with the addition of a taunt skill.

So, since you've not seen this well noted bug it's not real? Typical... this bug was mentioned over a month ago multiple times in verious forums and often in GWOnline "More AI Wierdness". Catch up with the times then get back with me.

Nope, again, you need to catch up on the known bugs. Some of what you are claiming are things being worked on by the devs. Gaile has said these issues are and have been forwarded to the devs. Some mobs will have an initial out of range charge or run. Mostly monks who then find it entertaining to run behind you group then stand there. Kornains are the worst noted for doing this. The rest of the group however will stand there doing nothing since they are not in aggro range.

Not true. Again, one of the latest fixes for the AI was a slight reworking on how the aggro will now favor things within the aggro circle. This was a tweak on stopping the 3 aggro circle away race to the monks and eles. It had nothing to do with health and was tested by many people. Some warriors even claimed going in with no armor or skill would result in them still being ignored. Others claimed going in with full sup runes resulting in about 100 health or so in noob armor would still get them ignored.

Aggro was therefore obvisously not set by health and armor but by class of the player.. or it was just bugged beyond belief.

Fixing one aspect of one playstyle negates the rest of the player base. Some play with heroes and henchies others do not. You can not expect Anet to ignore the AI just because some people do not like it.
You also have to consider that fact that untill the mobs no longer use player skills that any skills added have the potential to be used against you by the AI. So the AI and all changes must be considered. Not just players or PvP. All aspects.

Ignoring heroes and henchies as needed updates is like ignoring PvP for all new updates. People enjoy them and want them to be better, just as in PvP. I prefer heroes and henchies since I may have to step away at a moments notice and don't like to leave people hanging. Other times, PuGs are just too annoying to put up with or guilides are off playing other online games where the AI isn't trying to act like a circus clown in an arena. So, no, I would say fixing the AI with the players skills... and adding a taunt based skill is a good plan of action.

Enough said on that though. I've said what I will. Last word is all yours. Agree or not, matters little.

enjoy wintersday all!

Exactly so. People really need to understand that Taunt style aggro mechanic's whole purpose to to provide Artificial Stupidity instead of Artificial Intelligence.

Any game that uses Taunt style aggro mechanics is doomed to be remedial. You know why there is no AI to speak of in games like WoW? Because Taunt style aggro is specifically designed to override AI. Those games are not about you being smarter than the AI, they are about you overriding the AI by pressing a button. So they never even bother writing any real AI. After all what is the point? Talk about an "I-Win" button.

Any general worth his salt will tell you that once you control the flow of a battle/fight you have essentially won.

Mylon is right, the prevalence of taunt mechanics just shows how mediocre most MMORPGs really are.

The problem is until recent AI changes, it was possible for one character to hold most of the aggro. The way the game was made hard was through unfair advantages to the AI, like higher levels, natural regen, better armour, monster-only skills and an advantage of numbers (more of them than of you). That was where the challenge came from.

Only now, they are also smarter. Somewhere like the Southern Shiverpeaks where there are groups of 5 Axe Wielders, 3 Stone Summit Heretics, 3 Dolyak Riders, 10 Melandru's Rangers etc used to be a challenge, but now it is 10x harder than it used to be because you can't get 1 character to take most of the damage, and you can't break off aggro and Rebirth your allies. It's fight to the death where you are outnumbered 3 to 1 by level 28s. Then after killing maybe 1 Dolyak Rider, you have to go back and do it again with 15% DP.

I've found with my sin using echo shadow form + mimicry off a 2nd sin (or another player who brought shadow form for that reason), that in DoA, as long as I stand still the melee enemies will stick with me and not break aggro. Its the casters and rangers, that will switch targets. Just my experience, but keeping 3-4 melee's from bashing on your casters doesn't seem like to bad a thing, hell I can even bring 3 attack skills and run an attack chain.

Not saying that sins are necessarily better for tanking if run this way... alot can still go wrong if you mis-time. But maybe a warrior tank could do this? Maybe you guys already do and this is nothing new.

Double post. Sorry.

The recent AI changes are why I don't understand why people are even discussing adding a taunt. No way ANet is going to do this. If they were going to do that, why would they have changed the AI's aggro in the first place?

This is why you should always take a MM with you. Ten minions are always better than any human tank you can take with you and are wonderful for keeping enemies out of your backline. Minion masters - never leave home without one.

What eles you play with? Ive never waited for a full refill in-battle. I just cast as I can, using low energy spells, not casting to often(only as needed/seems needed)m and wanding so I dont use up too much energy.

Are you sure you read my post? That's exactly what I said. I was simply saying that the 'most common tanks are warriors' because of the skillset, armor, and shield.

I disagree with nuker meaning fire magic. You are aware that Smiting Monks, Channeling Rits, and AoE Dervishes can nuke, right? IMO, a nuke is an AoE or PBAoE spell. Not to mention there are Fire Magic spells that don't nuke.

Decapitate with a customised +15% +20% vs. demons axe.