Tanks and GW/GW2

Oh that's a form of aggro management indeed. Snares too. However, unlike other MMOs, you can't force a target to attack you with skills.

That's because you don't need it in GW. A single foe on GW probably won't kill you if you play it smart.. well depending of the circumstances. A single boss, yeah, after all it's overpowered compared to you (take some of the rit bosses.... 400+dmg). Unless you go with a solo build, well GL.

But how many SINGLE enemies are there in GW? Actually not a whole lot, and most are, AFAIK, in lower-level areas. Most are in mobs (as in groups of enemies).

In other MMOs, chances that everything - or almost - IS a "mob" on its own (as in mobile unit). It's generally not linked to 2, 3, 5 other enemies like in GW.

Judging from that, you'd think that GW needs aggro management and other MMOs don't. After all, you're faced with multiple enemies while in other MMOs, you have one. Which would be, IMO, a flaw... because the mobs in typical MMOs are more or less OP'ed, but when you come down to bosses... oh yeah, you need tanks and you need aggro management 'cause it's not as easy to manage the whole party. If that one boss takes down your main damagers or your tank, GG. The boss is gonna kill the whole party and you're gonna have to restart your instance or walk all the way to the freaking boss again, unless you've got res available.

Outside of farming and such, AFAIK, the chances you're currently facing 8+ enemies at the same time in a typical MMO are pretty low. In GW, it's normal.

So do you need aggro management in GW? No. IMO stuff like snares and KD are doing just fine. I don't need to focus a certain enemy's attacks on a certain target in 99% of the cases. Kiting is your friend.

Anyways that's what I gather... I could be wrong with a couple things...

(Oh and I like the GW aggro system more than other MMOs...)

The ability to (or lack of) keep things alive is not the only incentive to having a decent tank. As long as strong AoE damage exists aggro control and grouping foes together will always be an important part of the game.

This doesn't seem like a dead or dying team role to me.

If you think about if, GW kind of has something like this only with a GW theme. "Save yourselves" esentually reduces the whole partys damage to nill while the one who used it still does not have the armor buff. Still what you said is intreasting, the only thing is, unless they do some major changes in GW2 what you are suggesting would most likly be a hex of some sort. And warriors in GW have none of those.

"Taunt" - 8 adrenalin
Shout. For 4...6 seconds, nearby opponents focus their attacks on you.

Pointless in pvp, great crowd control in pve. Make it happen.

"Bad Boy!" - 8 adrenaline
Shout. For 4...6 seconds, nearby opponents roll over and play dead.

Pointless in pvp, great crowd control in pve. Make it happen.

Proactive "agro managment" like weakness, curses, and protection prayers, are a large part of what makes GW interesting.

Tank/Nuke/Heal is borring.

In fairness, AoE weakness/hex spam is pretty boring too. Might be less so if mobs had removal.

So unrealistic, so boring and so on. Please no tanks in gw2.

tanking happens because of bad ai. i would like to see better ai, not worse. if ai played more like players (ups you can't tank players can you?) pve would be more fun.

1) Never meant for this to be about pvp. The class that could be the tank would have a more damage oriented role in PvP of course.

2) I don't mean pure skills like "Target foe now targets you forever" But skills that affect a threat bar of sorts. For example if there was a spellcaster spamming powerful spells, then the threat for them would increase and to a point where the tank's aggro gaining skills have no effect. This would require teamwork and not just spammy spammy spammy. Rangers could have threat decreasing skills since they are kinda all about evasion in my mind. And of course, every time a monk heals or prots, their threat level would increase making it ahrder for the tank to keep aggro.

I suggest things from other games because I like the aspect of it and would like to see the next generation improved upon it. We all understand GW is unique, but it doesn't mean it can't learn a few things from other games

Granted there ARE games like Fiesta, that their tanks just spam sweeping kick and low and behold, they are the ones taking damage nto the rest of the party. And this one skill that makes you the only target no matter what DOES make tanking seem easy, brainless, boring, but I did not mean for my suggestion to be just a simple aggro gaining skill that 100% works all the time no matter what.

I admit I quickly skimmed posts in the thread...

After playing thousands of hours as a Warrior in GW and then over the last few months playing a melee class several hours in another game my viewpoint right now is that I pray for GW2 to be extremely similar to GW in combat. (to include the style of healing/protection classes and absence of potions and foods. That's a different topic though)

At times in HM I wished for a taunt skill, but I see now that proper positioning and group coordination can be as effective. Games without body blocking bug me, seriously. It's like fighting a ghost every battle - not very realistic. With the months of experience in proper positioning of myself, cheerios and/or party members I took some pride in that. Then I try another game only to watch as the foes run through me and I'm stuck trying to use taunt skills that sometimes work and sometimes don't. If the trade-off for taunts and other aggro-gaining skills is the elimination of body blocking, then no thanks. I'd have no issue with the availability of a couple of those skills if everything else were the same.

I usually HATE tanking in other games, but I actually enjoy the warrior class in Guild Wars. I didn't play the class for about 2 years because my experience with the warrior class has always been the definition of 'tank' and I just found that so desperately boring.

As the game stands at the moment there is something in each class that can appeal to almost every kind of player, therefor I'd really like to see the ideas behind the characters stay the same.

No tanks please. If I want to tank I'll play Barbarian when D3 comes out.

Tank..tank?...Do you mean those obsi farming fellahs?
I likes warriors to kill things...not this tank stuff everyone is talking about.

You can have that without skills that directly affect the aggro metre. An offensive skill or a heal should have a chance of attracting a mob's attention. On the other hand, if the mob finds that you're hard to damage - through having a high block chance, kiting faster than it can chase, or just plain high armour, for instance - or if it hurts itself or its friends on trying to attack you, there should be a chance of it deciding to go and find something squishier. This would also cover your Rangers, as popping up Whirling Defense is a fairly strong incentive to stop attacking the Ranger until it wears off.

In short, though, anything that causes a mob to increase or decrease they're likelihood of attacking you... should be something that would also cause a player whose character has the same abilities as the mob to change their target priority. Managing aggro may be one thing, but it should be in the background - skills that do nothing but attract or divert aggro are a no-no.

I LOVE standing around doing nothing while the rest of the team kills everyone. Best idea evar!

There should be no tanks. I have played my warrior a lot for a long time (over two years) and I about gave up on him because for the longest time the "hard" missions that is what people wanted of me, go in there and tank while I bond you and everyone else kills everything. When I found a pug and the leader asked me what my build was and I said the usual tank build and he asked me to get rid of that crap and bring skills to kill things I about cried tears of joy.

Though I do think they need to take the power of the monks down a few notches. The teams dependence on them is out of whack and because they are so good at protecting and healing enemies and enemy bosses have to hit for a lot of damage, almost to the point of insta kill if you are not ready and that is not fun. That is why I am so stoked for Diablo 3 where they are limiting potions because with potions they had to set up bosses that could hit for super high damage because you had almost infinite life.

I prefer the exchange of front line members. It makes for a more diverse and challenging game! Isn't that what everyone wants? More challenge?

This...

12 chars.

Nah, clearly with all the Ursan supporters, people want the game as dumb down as possible.

Luckly, A.net (eventually) ignored those people. Sotra.

GW needs tanks just as much as it needs sub machine guns, jedi, and battlecruisers.

I much prefer GW's method of tanking, though in 4-6 person parties it can be tough I imagine: warriors get out in front at some bottleneck and body block the enemy while laying into them. Most of the games that have a 'tank' role don't allow body blocking so there's not much else to do I imagine.

Guild Wars doesn't let monsters walk right through you to the guy behind you like some other games.

I remember when there was just prophecies and ele's were the primary source of damage. There wasn't a whole lot of options for a warrior to do majorly high dps and I thought it was fun to tank mobs.

With new skills and changes to mob reactions, over the years I've found it to be more fun to just beat the crap out of mobs.

Having the warrior the option to tank is always valid. Some of us like to be monster piñatas. Some don't. I don't.

But,skills like L2's "Agression" (that provoke mobs to attack the user) would be a great adition to a tanking PVE build. It could be a PVE only.

But I get really upset on games where heavy armor have no other choice but get spanked.

Basically this is just another I want GW to become WoW thread.

GTFO.

WTB "Taunt"

For 10-30 seconds all mobs wack only on you.

Such roles and skills really restrict player options and make the game a tad boring imo.Necessity for tanking is generally bad in terms of creating diverse game play in my experience.

I've played the MMO's where tanking and aggro/crowd control is used to a greater extent than in GW and personally I've usually hated the fact players are pigeon-holed into such roles.

On the flip-side it can often allow players to specialize and does create the feeling of true team contribution and defined purpose.City of Heroes was pretty cool for this and implemented the team structure and role of the tank well.I also found it assisted in improving player skill as all the roles were symbiotic and if any component of your team was bad the whole team fell apart.

Much of GW is a cake walk as long as people can c-space and you have a good monk or two.

In conclusion I'd prefer the mechanic to be left out of GW for the most part.Other games already do it and it seems like yet another request to turn GW into what other games already offer while at the same time removing a game play component that makes GW unique and fun to play.

Hah this just proves my point.

I think I'd like them to play the same role as their playing now. If not with a few buffs or tweaks.

I would like a true mmorpg that guildwars 2 will be to have players where they can use skills to "tank/ aggro stuff". I think that the more possibilities the better. Not every character has to be the main tank, they could choose to instead focus on more damage or whatever.

It's kind of like saying their should be no nukers or mages because then all anyone will want is a mage class to do all the damage.

As long as it isn't specifically a tank class (as in pretty much that's all they can do is absorb damage) it should be fine.

This is an advantage that GW has over every single other mmo out there. The old tank and spank is so incredibly over done its pathetic. I'm glad it's not here it makes the game work differently, and better imo. If i wanted tank n spank I'd play one of the other 7 million mmo's that employ it.

A real warrior wears armor and swings a big metal weapon. They do moderate dmg and receive dmg well. Any halfway intelligent 'mob' that is trying to take down your group would NOT go for the hardest to kill member regardless of what obsenities he/she is spewing... thats how it should be.

7 mobs beating on one warrior while the nukers and healer(s) stand back and eat chips and hit a hotkey or 2 is pretty crappy. I bet the warrior is eating chips too, how exciting.

Again we get back to my main argument:

Would you expect a player to respond to such skills?

If a player wouldn't respond to them, why should any supposedly intelligent monster?

And why would a non-intelligent monster care when it can't understand the insults in the first place? (To be fair, that non-intelligent monster may not make the connection between the hairless ape waiving their hands and the wounds on their target closing, but that's best represented by modifying the base mechanic than through a goading mechanic.)

Insults may be annoying, but when push comes to shove, I'd much rather attack the target that's actually hurting me, and that I actually have a hope in bringing down.

At best, it would be:

Taunt (0 energy, 1 adrenaline) Enemies in the area are fractionally more likely to choose to attack you over another target of roughly equal priority.

This represents the chance that real people may be more likely to decide to bring down the guy who was throwing insults over somebody equally dangerous that is fighting honorably. But only if it wasn't obviously a stupid thing to do in the first place... which beating on the 'tank' of a tank-and-spank build invariably is.

Whole concept of dedicated tank was imported from other games by immigrants who came from them to GW and could not think beyond "tank prots itself, healer makes red bar go up, nuker nukes.".

Tanking is basically about making bad (easy, predicable & designed to be abused) ai and turning it to game mechanic.