The aggro system, or lack thereof

Don't get me wrong I love my warrior (over 3 thousand hours on him to prove it) but if I want damage I bring one of my casters. Tests are never done in real world situations. There are so many anti warrior skills it is kind of a joke for anyone to say wars do most damage. Pve and Pvp both target casters and monks first. Why do you think that is? Common sense ftw. Same people that spout wars do best damage scream how great vamp is. I will take a possible furious strike over degening while blind any day of the week. Before you say switch weapons ... why exactly did I bring that vamp then? Numbers always look great on paper but seldom live up in the real world.

It's not about warrior haters it's about adjustment. A good warrior adjusts, we all had or have to do. It doesn't matter if it's a warrior or a monk or whatever. The world changes, software changes, the AI changes. The chaos you talk about is no chaos at all, it's organised AI play. It's annoying because you can't manage it yet.

I switched from warrior to monk just because playing a warrior became too boring to me back then. If I still had my warrior it would have been great now, a free card to try offensive strats and whatnot. I never had the chance because people wanted braindeath tanks, except in pvp play where my hammer skills were much appreciated back in those days.

These are my sentiments exactly, with a warrior as my main character I was annoyed by the fact that everyone thought you HAD to have several stances and damage reduction skills instead of attack skills. As a result I never PuG'd because it was just too BORING to stand there doing practically nothing.

I welcome the new AI with open arms as it has breathed new life into the Warrior profession. Making the AI more PvP like was the best thing Anet has done for the game. PvE went from being able to leave and let my 7 henchmen win battles to actually having to play.

There should never be any form of "agro management" or "taunt" skills in Guild Wars

That's where we totally disagree. You know, there are quite a few people who do not like PvP and do NOT appreciate the PvP game style forced down their throat. And yes, I am one of them.

If you like PvP, you have a huge part of game at your disposal, specially designed for PvP. The PvE-minded people do not venture there. Why do you want to make ALL the game look like the PvP you like? I do not ask to make PvP like PvE, do I?

If you like PvP, go and play PvP. Do not make *me* to play PvP where I've always had PvE.

I didn't say the AI was exactly like PvP now did I?

I just said it is more akin to PvP than it originally was, the two styles of play are still completely and utterly different.

PvE was and still is, very easy and any increase in difficulty should be welcomed.

It's a bit weak to focus on the word PvP and make a drama out of it to support your argument. 99,99 % of my playtime last year has been dedicated to PvE and I don't support your view. I'm not that fond off PvP too since my warrior days but I can't be against an AI that's smarter, uses more focus and is organised, shows more 'human' like behaviour instead of playing itself to death on a tank.

This is also quite debatable. People play games with very different purposes; for many, it's 1-3 hours after work to relax and to get rid of the stress. The level of difficulty, at which the game stops to be a challenging fun and becomes an annoying chore, is very personal.

I daresay I am dissatisfied with the current AI and the ensuing mess on the battlefield (and quite angry with the Anet's decision to make such a radical change in the AI 2 days before releasing Nightfall -- effectively, I got a very different game from what I thought I bought). Apologies that my earlier post looked too aggressive; it's just a very sore topic for me. The people who were bored with the game got a new incentive, but people who, like I, were quite perfectly happy with the game as it was, got robbed of a favourite pastime.

Back to the topic, I would like to see the aggro control back.

I do understand where you're coming from and you're right about the difficulty being subjective. The first days after the update with the new Ai I felt very disapointed too to be honest. I think at one point you may feel different towards the current AI, just like I experienced it. Anyway, I already made enough posts in here, gonna farm some more skulls and get drunk.

Why do people still think that the AI goes for the casters to eliminate the damage dealers? They go after the casters because they're more vunerable to attacks.

The reason why the Warrior isn't targetted first in PvP is because it's the most heavily armoured target. You don't go for the Monk first either, because all you're doing is eliminating the healing to the healers while the other classes on the opposing team are kicking you're ass. You attack a support caster, such as that annoying Mesmer or that ward Ele that's giving your monks a hard time at keeping your bar up from the Warriors or preventing your own Warriors from dealing damage.

The AI seems to have the same mentality, to take out the support caster rather than the Monk or heavily armoured Warrior. Because it's stupid to sit there trying to kill something whose armour is reducing your damage while the prot and heal Monk are having an easy time and sipping tea to keep your target alive.

If you feel it is too hard to comprehend as a support caster that standing there to continue casting while a group of 5 mobs are training up to you, then go play some other game which requires your level to be high in order to win. You can say that it's turning into PvP orientated, but this is how the game always was. It is based on pure stratigic and tactical effort put in by the entire team, a threat/aggro system ruins that concept entirely.

I am only arguing that the premise of the original argument is horribly flawed. The original author complains about the AI being random and you 'needing to exploit it' to win, but his suggestion is to make the AI *more easily exploited*. He also proposes that a game where the AI is more easily exploited, and where AI exploitation is a key gameplay mechanic, requires *more skill* than a game without such AI exploitation. This would imply that a game where aggro management is *harder*, such as Guild Wars, is *easier* and requires *less skill* because it is *harder*.

This argument is self-contradicting on too many levels for me to not laugh at it.

Moving on.


In most MMOs, Warriors are extremely low value targets with mediocre to poor damage outputs. They are brought to 'tank' (I.E., mitigate damage via A.I. exploitation) and are often given skills to help them achieve that goal.


Compare how a typical PvP Warrior is built to how a PvE Warrior is built - especially how PvE Warriors *used* to be built when the game's aggro system was much more readily exploited - and report back on the difference in their threat levels.


Great, so let's make monster AI better, while their damage dealers rush past player Warriors to beat on the squishies in the back, other monsters in the mob spam blind, weakness, shutdown hexes, and the like on your Warriors.


I'm not really arguing, just pointing out that the pretenses of your argument are moronic.


In MMOs that place a very high value upon poor AI and exploiting said AI, absolutely.


Well I'll explain it to you better when you learn a little bit about game design, until then you're in way too deep over your head for it to be worth me trying.


Monsters that live in a world in which magic is an integral part would have certainly been conditioned to recognize the source of dangerous magic. Predatory animals in the real world, which I think it is safe to assume most monsters you would be hunting are, have adapted fairly quickly to recognize new threats and threat patterns from human beings - I see no reason to assume they wouldn't act the same way in a hypothetical fantasy world.


Meaning, a way to make monsters attack the heavily armored character that you want them to attack instead of the squishy targets that you don't want them to attack?


Man, why did knights wear heavy armor in the real world, when all the good generals were developing flanking maneuvers to get to opposing archers in the backlines? They could have waded in naked!

Here's a clue - melee combatants wore heavy armor so that they could get into range to use their melee weapons, and survive once they were there. What would be an appropriate analogue in Guild Wars?


It works in every other game because they've come to embrace AI-exploitation as the keystone of MMO gameplay, and none of them have the balls to break people's expectations about How Things Should Work.

It most definitely does not create a need for thinking and strategy. Quite the opposite - it is alleviating the need for thinking and strategy, by building the same tired solution into the gameplay for braindead players to repeat ad nauseum.

To make the obvious steps for you - what if a game's aggro management is so hard, that players simply cannot do it? What if you *can't* make aggro stick to the tank? What sort of strategies and tactics does that require you to fall back on?

Apparently, for many people, the strategy is to complain on forums that the one strategy they know doesn't work, or to play a different game.


Yes, actually, they are. That whole article/rant of mine was written after weeks of experimenting with non-physical offenses. The result? You couldn't kill a goddamn thing without 321spike. There was no way to apply any sort of pressure without melee. A year and two sets later, we have one option - Searing Flames - that can apply non-physical pressure, and that's it. Everything else is merely a supplement or enhancement to physical pressure.


Because casters have 60 armor, and Warriors have 100 armor.


Monks are the only players on the other team that really want to run away from you. Whenever they are running away from you, they are preventing damage without spending any energy. For someone with the job of 'keeping everyone alive', this is awesome. In a perfect world they could run the entire other team in circles while their teammates inflicted damage on their opponents.

Offensive casters are just as squishy as Monks, but they need to stand and cast to be effective. They can turn and run, but if they do they are no longer doing their jobs. Hence either you get to rock a caster's face to pull energy out of their Monks, or you shut down their caster offense, simply by swinging a weapon.

---

Aggro control makes games easy. That is the point of it, really, and you know what, there's nothing wrong with that. Not everyone plays a game for a challenge, a lot of people play MMORPGs to relax and gamble and see progress for their time. For them, an ideal game is one where they are tipping over impressive looking cows, which explode in a pile of shiny objects afterwards. It's an excellent business model for a game company, and it's a behavior much more addictive than slot machines. If that's what someone wants, I will not try to persuade him that his position is wrong, because it isn't. It's popular for a reason.

The only thing I won't abide by is people arguing in favor of a slot machine model as though it were anything other than that. Slot machines do not offer challenges, or more dynamic gameplay, or anything of the sort. They are easy, they are reliable, and they do not require excessive thinking. If that is what you want from Guild Wars, say so and ask for it. Just don't make arguments about slot machine gameplay that conflict with reality.

Peace,
-CxE

The point is that the AI is too chaotic/random and ultimately unsatisfying. A threat system would add depth to the battles.

This doesn't mean taunt skills, which I agree shouldn't be added to the game.

I mean, imagine an elite area like DoA where you don't rely on cheap stuff like body blocking to keep that group of 10 margonites off your casters. Everyone needs to manage their own threat levels correctly or risk wiping the party. I believe it would add quite a bit of depth to PvE battles.

i agree 100% i dont like pvp either and prefer gw the way it used to be. if i wanted pvp i would play pvp, dont make pve into pvp with monsters

What the hell you need agro for? Why...In the 50's you couldn't agro mobs in guildwars.

Ensign, let me start off by saying that your arguments would look a lot better if there weren't hidden insults and snide remarks in every paragraph. This goes for other posters in this thread as well, but you were especially eager to put down people and people's arguments. There's only a need for the latter.

I suppose we simply disagree on the core of the issue. You think an aggro system makes a game too easy by default (without anyone having even mentioned exactly how it'd work), and I think it would make it more interesting and give it more depth. I don't like how it is currently: instead of acting and influencing the game through your actions, you react to pre-determined AI that almost always behaves the same way. The enemies will almost always run in a straight line for your casters unless you're lucky (they occasionally don't) or use things like body blocking. The fact that monsters automatically hits the weakest target in sight also makes a tremendous amount of skills and otherwise reasonable builds useless.

This is not, and has never been, a question of realism. I think we can all agree that realism and common sense were not on the top of ANet's list when they created the game. It seems that when I gave two examples to prove that realism wasn't part of the problem, people somehow misunderstood and saw the exact opposite. I'm talking about playability and making combat more interesting and skill-demanding rather than pre-determined and one-sided.

I don't see how you can argue that an aggro system will make it more repetitious and mindless than what we have now. Is there a big difference in plain functionality between always having a tank being attacked (an aggro system does not mean the one with the tank role will always be tanking, that's just how it is when you succeed), and always having a caster running in circles? It's not like GW is a game that calls for a great deal of different strategies, you can complete the entire game without changing your build a single time (although it can be a good idea to do that). When I say that an aggro system will add more depth and make it more interesting, I don't mean because the thought alone of having warriors being attacked amuses me, but because knowing and understanding how to hold or avoid aggro requires a lot more than learning how to run in circles, or how to snare an enemy so that you can repeatedly stab it in the ass while it relentlessly chases your <insert 60AL character here> until it dies. As a large number of posters in this thread, including me, have said: we don't want some auto-aggro taunt button that allows us to play the game with one finger. Aggro should require skill and thinking. The current system doesn't, it requires your character to be able to survive a situation where the game's AI has decided from the very beginning how it'll act. Your actions, beyond dealing high damage and healing your characters enough to survive, have very little influence on what happens. This is the core of my point.

The only reason the current aggro system even works is because the game is for the most part easy enough that you can survive despite the fact that the tanks are actually the ones least suitable for that role. Once we get to places that actually pose a challenge, such as DoA or similar areas, you see people using either excessively gimmicky builds where everyone in the group needs certain skills (and gets kicked and name-called if they don't), or you see people abusing game mechanics to create a situation that mimics what I'm suggesting, i.e body-blocking or corner-sticking. Yes, there are exceptions, but I think that's a pretty good description of how it works almost everywhere in the game.

wow you are soooo wrong that i pity you and you overinflated sense of importance

1 - going in solo for that quest is fine being a level 20 warrior, the fault is in ai that prefers to turn the game into a game of tag rather than a fighting game which this is

2 - didnt prepare? dont be a pompous prick how do you prepare for a quest you have never done before smartass

3 - well that 'superior opponent' got a sever case of death when i managed to shepherd him into a corner as did 40 or so of his superior friends

your final sentence really did point out how smugly ignorant you are, when a warrior wants to quickly solo a low level area to get through as they HAVE to so they can get to the main island then no they cant be a mix of all 7 classes can they. pvp elitist idiots commenting on pve ftl

No offense, but that warrior is not attacked because he is not a threat by himself. Only takes one on the other team to pack anti warrior to shut him down. Yeah I know he has a monk helping with that ... then again the other team has a warrior on that monk don't they. Has little to do with the armor .. any half ass mesmer can own a warrior. Supplement? Uh the warrior is saving that adrenaline to be PART of a spike. You make it sound like the rest of the team is only there to support the warrior. Apply pressure and a true damage threat are two different things to me. I am sure we can continue to disagree

Why is it that a lot of people want GW to be a copy of other MMO's?

If you enjoy the (in my opinion lame) "aggro generation" that other games have why not just play them - it does not in any way fit in the GW game mechanics.

Sorry the current aggro system doesn't suit you.

In my opinion the current system requires player skill if you don't want the monsters to charge the squishies. A good system that I love.

Excuse you? I've read the whole thread and he is right. You are doing it SOLO, when you solo the Ai is different then when you have more on your team. And so you can't take a mix of 7 classes (which you can for 60% of the starter island btw), still leaves you with 3 slots in the party you could've used.

No, I am simply stating that giving players *more* control over monster AI *inherently* makes the game easier.


How would your new theoretical aggro system be any different? AI is always pre-determined. You have to code it to react to situations in particular ways, players get more or less control over the AI depending on how well they can control those situations. You can add a RNG to the equation but that's about the extent of it, and that doesn't seem like what you want either.


A more readily controlled AI similarly makes a tremendous number of skills and builds useless, a higher number I would submit. The only characters that are useless under uncontrolled AI are those that are pure self-defense, the 'tank' bars that people are so in love with. All of that defense needs to be distributed and flexible instead. The more AI is readily controlled, the less robust and flexible characters (and players) need to be, in favor of more simplistic builds and strategies.

Put another way - the only time players and builds are taxed is when aggro breaks and people need to clean up the mess on the spot. As you make aggro more controllable, those situations become less common, and...how does this lead to more complicated gameplay?


What we have right now could, perhaps, be seen as a worst case scenario under any sort of aggro system: what happens when aggro management completely fails. In order for aggro management to make any sense, managing aggro has to make things easier and/or faster than not managing aggro, otherwise you wouldn't bother.

How does giving players more control over monster behavior, more control over their target selection and positioning, make the game any more challenging than what we have now?


Isn't that a textbook definition of a difficult, skill-intensive aggro system?

Wouldn't any theoretical new aggro system be an easier to execute, easier to clean up (you get a second chance!) version of body-blocking?

Peace,
-CxE

I went back and read it all, thats why I added the bit about making enemies target high dmg and healers.

But the way in which you want tanking to be made possible would effect everyone in the team. As I mention, your talking about having the creatures target the team in a set way. To give priority to certain professions because they either heal, yeild high dmg or tank, etc etc etc.

Thats great if your a warrior, as I mentioned. You have the armor, the health and the stance to withstand that kind of force.

A monk, or an elemental, or a necro wouldnt stand a chance if they were to become the most frequently attacked members of a team.

The system wouldnt be able to tell if an elemental was a dmg dealer or a ward protector. It would just assume the ele was a dmg dealer and target them as the high risk.

It would assume all necros are degen and all monks are healers. So regardless of their actual build, they would targetted with a certain amount of priority.

With me being an elemental, I cant say I like that idea. Why?

Because as I also mentioned, most creatures in GWs now interupt. If they all focused their attacks 100% on me when they first hit, I wouldnt stand a chance of getting a spell off. Yes you can use skills to prevent interupt, but that doesnt protect against melee knock downs which id endure.

Your saying you want a system that lets you "tank properly". I dont understand how the current system doesnt allow for this?

Surely a randomised system is more realistic then a predictable one. If you knew who they were going to attack first, or who was the most likely target for them, you could predict their movement and killing them would be nothing more then a set of repeatable actions.

If all you want to do is be the tank, and protect the rest of the team from agro, then do that. Just get up front and attack the creature and agro them into attacking you.



Your suggesting that if this system was in place, you would need to use more tactics to protect the more high risk players such as eles, healer and necros etc etc.

To do this, your suggesting they would need to keep back from the fight, out of agro range.

What if they dont do long range attacks and need to be up close in the fight?

What if they dont have a tank or a warrior?

You would end up with a case where people refused to play the high priority target professions. People would refuse to play monks because they would more then likely become primary targets and be wiped out within the first few seconds.

Eles would drop because they would no doubt be the second primary target.

Again I say the system is fine, because its more realistic. Otherwise we end up with a predictable system that lets you plan for the attack and you end up just using the same technique each time. And you alienate professions by making them high priority targets.

The attack technique would be nothing more then; warriors run in first, take the agro while everyone else with low armor stands out of range and watches.

With randomness we dont know who will get agroed most, or first. So we have to keep on our feet. It takes more skill to attack a random foe the it does a predictable one.


/not signed at making creatures attack according to risk of profession/player.

Hey everyone. Has it already been said in this topic that enemy AI should be different depending on the species?

A big dumb crab is not going to have the attack incentives as a humanoid enemy. One is going to attack willy nilly, or go for the weakest looking target, the other is going to take down what it perceives to be the group's keystone.
It makes sense that different types of enemies have different attack/defense strategies.

Maybe they already do, and it all seems random when glanced at. I don't know.

After playing WoW for the 1st year of its release and gw since that time (lots of time spent in both games...),
I can say that asking for an aggro skill where certain skill can modify this aggro directly is easy mode. that is dumbing down the game mechanic to the old tired formula of tank going in, gaining aggro, and holding aggro as long as he spams his "taunt" or other aggro-gaining skill. Everyone else just needs to make sure not to hit their high aggro spells too often .

You, the player, should not be able to "directly" determine/manipulate who the AI hits. Currently, the system is setup so you can give "hints" to the AI as who to hit if you understand the system.

The system is not as random as you think. The code is not setup so the AI picks a random target every few seconds... The AI does a decent job of determing who best to hit.

The aggro/threat system described is not needed because the AI already does a great job choosing targets (that annoy you so much that you have to post on this forum and complain :P). There's no need to add extra complications to the gameplay mechanics where it is not needed.

the developers know this:
Do not add extra complication to the gameplay where it is not needed.

It's already a nightmare I bet to balance everything, do we really need another psuedo pve gameplay layer for the developers to develop/balance?
There more important things for them to work on such as an Auction House!

Yeah, maybe AI tweaking can wait.
It hasn't broken my enjoyment of the game, but an Auction House would be so very neat! Yaaaaah, Auction House!

Well, the allready poor Aggro Control was taken out of the game intentionally. So i highly doubt that any update will bring some sort of Aggro Management.

95% of my playing time is as a warrior in PvE. I've noticed that since I started playing 4 months or so ago, the AI has gotten "better". In other words, it's harder for me to do what it is I want to do. The bad guys don't cooperate.

They try to get past me and at our monks and elementalists. They keep moving around. Their monks and ele's run away from me. In other words, they do what my party would do, in the same situation. I don't think the system is broken.

The great thing about Guild Wars is that every single first or last target in any group of any size, can be your primary target. Not a single person in any group can be deemed the most important based on class. Not even the monk.

So to say the AI should 'tactically' be aware of its primary target is rediculous, since it's the player behind the character that 99% of the time ends up getting that character killed - not the fact that she/he is a monk or an ele.

Please don't bring the days of the 'cog' or 'book' trick back to Guild Wars by implementing a skill or line of skills devoted to doing absolutely the opposite of what's intended by this franchise. It would bore me to no end.

In essence, learn to control your aggro, and pick your targets wisely. The monk isn't always your worst threat you know.

I've read this topic all the way till page two and I'm just gonna start posting.

IMO, this aggro system is flawed to begin with. First of all, with the new aggro system in place and with DoA already running, you can already see how messed up it is to 'maintain aggro' in today's terms of playing higher lvl of PvE GW.

Sure by, "getting a team of one-two tanks, two-three nukers, two-three monks, and a battery necro and letting the highly intelligent lvl 28 monsters 'maintain aggro' on a tank by getting them stuck against a wall while the nukers pummel them with meteor shower", you can practice the correct way of maintaining aggro and can allow you to finish DoA and get awesome prizes.

That is plain ridiculous. Ya, I play mid-level PvE, a lot more of PvP, and no 'higher lvl of PvE' such as DoA/elite missions because I refuse to do something that seems so retarded like this. It's like the designers of DoA wants you to play these missions by transforming warriors into mindless boulders and take advantage of the fact that indoing so, the 'intelligent' monsters are too stupid to realize that their aggro is being 'maintained' and cannot step back and switch targets to castors. O right, the people who actually did finish DoA can pat themselves on the back and say that they are the best hi-lvl pve players because they took advantage of bodyblocking stupid monsters against a freaking wall.

But hey, if the monsters actually did have the intelligence to step back and atk castors, then the whole team would fall apart, and there will be no more high-lvl PvE elite missions.

Imho, GW needs to introduce a new way of combat rather then setting the team strategy up in this bodyblock fashion. I was thinking about making the aggro simpler. For example:
"Monsters who first see tanks will atk tanks. Then they realize that they are getting pummeled by the elementalists using MS so the castor monsters use shouts and you can see [Go for their eles] above their heads. Then the Elementalists would have to use kiting skills to kite as the monsters start going for them.This applies for Monks also because when they see [Go for their Monks] then they'd have to start kiting too." This introduces realistic elements of hit and kite in castors but also reintroduces the actual use of sprint skills for melee because they'd have to catch up/do damage on the monsters and retrain their aggro on them.

Imo, this is how a battle should be. Not getting Mindless Tanks to Tank intelligent lvl 28 monsters against a wall and letting MS eles clear out. I hope you guys agree, seems that I've written an essay again.

Since you don't play DoA, you don't know, that this is exactly how it works. Before commenting, at least read up on the DoA tanking strategies that explain exactly that.

- Tank agros by having no other party member within their agro bubble.
- Mobs attack
- As soon as they take some damage, no more than 3 will stick to the tank
- All mobs above 3 will start to retreat, or search for new targets
- If there's casters in range, they'll zone into that, around the warrior wall

This is why MS and spike trap are used. Trap KDs the creatures, MS keeps them down, if possible helped by earthbind. Then the entire team hopes, that 3-6 MS will kill the group before it has the chance to run away, and destroy the backline. If a few mobs do escape, each backline caster must either kite, or kill straggles.

Groups in DoA attempting single tank strategy fail for these reasons:
- Backline moves in within agro bubble of the tank, mobs see them, no longer care about tank, and go straight for backline
- Group doesn't have enough power to kill the mobs while they are shutdown by MS, entire group breaks off tank to heal, or find new targets
- A single straggler survives the MS strike, and goes for backline. Nobody kites. Group wipes
- A single straggler survives, goes for backline, entire backline starts mindlesly running around, not killing the mob, straggler kills backline one by one. Only person attacked should be kiting, the rest should be killing the straggler.

It may look mindless, but only because mobs don't learn. This is the difference between pvp and pve. And that cannot change.

But your proposed AI system is exactly what current AI is now.

gw actually has a very predictable and manageable aggro system. the melee enemy ai looks for the target in range with (a) the lowest health and (b) the lowest AL. when they get into attack range of their chosen target, they recheck their threat bubble and go for the target that best matches the aforementioned criteria.

ranged ai with conditions or hexes tend to just spread it around on anyone. there's few options for keeping mesmer ai on the "tank" but it can be be done for most of any given fight.

a couple other factors affect aggro...
let's take a scenario where the group uses the traditional "tank" technique. the warrior runs up alone (all buffed up or whatever) and everyone stays out of threat-bubble range until the warrior has solid agro. there's a few things i've noticed which seem to break that agro: (a) monks healing the tank, (b) the tank moving and (c) aoe damage (especially if there's more than 1 burst of aoe damage in something like 3 seconds or so which generally makes the ai run away and straightup break aggro). if there's melee on the tank that the tank isn't attacking who takes damage from another group member, that melee ai might break aggro and attack it's attacker.

i'm sure there's other things i haven't noticed but the ai isn't some string of disgruntled code that "takes it out on players". ai is a set of rules of behavior that is consistant and predictable.

not random.

that being said, a family of "taunt" moves for warriors would be nice; definitely for pugs...those aren't usually organized enough to pull off decent tanking.

you used to be able to "wipe aggro off" on warriors by running a tight circle around the warrior. i've still been able to do that after the ai changes but it's noticebly harder.

Edit: just noticed the post before me said much the same thing...oops.

Sorry punkin but my reply was actually valid. Instead of trying to explain how you disagree you go for the oh so mature roffle. GG

I've read every post made here and not once has anyone actually posted a "solution" to the problem. All I've seen is complaining and bickering about the problem. I agree that there is a problem with the warriors and their in-ability to be tanks/meatshields with the current AI system and it should be addressed. Yes there are multiple ways you can play a warrior and at times I WANT to be a meatshield. I should at least have the skillset as a warrior to be that. Most of the time I'm set up for pure offence (Warrior damage is pathetic) because nobody cares to hit me until last.

Here's my solution:

Leave the AI alone. I think it's fine, but annoying. Instead make 2 new skills, one regular skill and the other an Elite. Of course there will need to be modifications to the skill idea's I've just created but this will help a warrior be a "tank/meatshield" if they chose to be one.

Skill Name: Taunt
Type: Skill
Attribute: Tactics
Casting cost: 10 energy (making it harder for warriors to spam)
Cast time: Instant
Recharge time: 5 seconds
Description: For 1.....10 seconds target creature focuses all their attacks on you.


Skill Name: "You're All Mine"
Type: Elite Shout
Attribute: Tactics
Casting Cost: 5 addrenaline
Description: For 1.....6 seconds 1....4 creatures within earshot focus all their attacks on you.

Q: What about PVP? How will that work against players?
A: Simple, if a warrior taunt's you, your target is locked to that enemy for all offencive attacks for x seconds. You won't be able to switch targets unless it's to an Ally. You would still be able to cast enchantments, heal, etc... to your Allies, you just won't be able to attack anyone except the enemy that taunted you.

Q: What about players in mid-cast when you "Taunt" them?
A: The spell the player was casting will still hit it's original target, but spells after that will target the taunter.


In all reality though, just exactly how much of a beating can a warrior take all at once and have the monks keep up the heals? Well, if you are in the high end, not much at all. 2 spikes from an ele, 1 warrior w/ hundred blades, and a necro w/ weaken armor will destroy that warrior. 6 seconds of that w/o a prot monk and your toast.

In my opinion the Taunt skill is a little weak but it would be effective w/o being overpowering. Since it has a 10 energy cost it will be hard for a warrior to spam that to keep all the agro off the group. SInce it can't be spammed the player would be required to use it appropriatly. If one of my casters is getting pounded on by 3 enemies, I'll Taunt one of them off then depending on how much energy I have after the 5 second recharge I'll try to taunt another one off. That still leaves 5 seconds of 2 enemies pounding on a caster. which still may be more than enough to kill them. You mis-manage your energy and you won't be as effective.

I think the Elite Shout is a little too powerfull in the description I've created but that's also why it's an "Elite" skill. But there are already counters out there for the Elite Shout for those of you who think this would be too powerfull, How about the necro "Well of Silence"? Cast that around a warrior and the warrior can't use shouts, shutting down their ability to do AoE Taunts.

stupid sounds like incoming... bad ideas.. should not be present in PvP

Why dont we make a skill called I can win? The skill would nuke all creatures killing them instantly and also clears the entire map, then the party can walk around opening chest. Do we realy need a skill that makes nightfall easier to manage, is the game that hard for people?

Yes it does sound like incomming but the difference is the monks only need to focus heals on 1 person for that time instead of the whole party.

Yeah and while your at it why not create a god mode where you can one hit kill anything with your bare hands wearing no armor at all while dancing picking your nose? Seriously what's your solution then? If you can come up with a better solution I'd be more than willing to listen to it. Until then anything you say means nothing? I've at least offered a solution.

All I'm asking for is a way that as a warrior you can manage "some" of the agro, not ALL of it.

Are you stupid enough to focus all your attacks on a rock that does nothing while the monsters rip you to shreds? No? Then why should the AI be?

Are you stupid enough to cast spells when you are dazed? No? What other option do you have? Just stand there and do nothing right? You're FORCED not to cast a spell.

Are you stupid enough to cast with Backfire on? No? But you do it anyway don't you?

Are you stupid enough to have your movement slowed down and get plugged from long range by rangers? No? But you have no choice because you are forced to.

Same goes with taunt agro. Use the skill and that enemy is FORCED to obey the skill.


Again, if you can't come up with viable solutions to combat my suggestions don't bother posting. If all you want to do is critisize, go somewhere else.

PETA has called about the abuse of dead horses.
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