IDEA for tanking in PvP

What if taunting players made them do slightly increased damage to the tank and substantially less damage to others for the duration. Instead of forcing players to attack the tank rather, allow the players the opportunity to "mess up" or try and "burst down" the tank. I think freedom is always the best option because it allows people to reward and/or punish themselves

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Chonkers1

Engage abilities
defensive buffs and de-buffs
CC
sustained damage
good area of effect
mitigation when focused or holding a point
variates with build

Zehlan

Dark Age of Camelot had an ability called intercept for tanks, you could target one person in your party and as long as you stayed within melee range of one another the tank took the damage.

SirChancelot

Taerrik wrote: »

This is very near what SWTOR tanks do. Instead of forced targetting or forced movement, tank taunts in PVP caused the enemy to do reduced damage to anyone except the tank.

The tank could also throw a guard (similar to FF14 cover) on a ally, and reduce damage that ally took by redirecting it to the tank... who would then use defensive cooldowns to further reduce damage to itself.

SWTOR pvp was one of the best games I enjoyed pvp in because of this actually. The only games that topped it for me was Wildstar (rest in peace forever my favorite game), and Tera. Gods I miss my wildstar Engineer.

The end result though, was that enemy players still had agency to keep attacking what they were attacking if they wanted to do reduced damage to it, or they could save their resources until the taunt wore off, or they could dump them into the tank and hope for the best, it was great.

I miss my wild Star engineer too. And I don't think I've ever had as much fun in an MMO PVP setting as I did with hutball. You're making me want to go play my sith juggernaut right now. I'm all for getting something like that tethered shield mechanic again, it was very useful in PVP settings.

Enigmatic Sage

If you think about what a taunt is vs a fixation effect or a distraction, you can come up with some unique options for integral gameplay that doesn't force players to be treated like NPC's in PvP regardless of temporarily impairment durations.

ArnasPanika

Taunt/Agro ability changes enemies target (from someone else in your group to you and the enemy needs to retarget (reclick) that initial player's name to focus on him again, but tank can take agro on himself again. Give tanks hammer stuns/shield stuns,agro/taunt mechanics and some form of pulls. Best and most fun tank pvp role.

Nova_terra

ArnasPanika wrote: »

Taunt/Agro ability changes enemies target (from someone else in your group to you and the enemy needs to retarget (reclick) that initial player's name to focus on him again, but tank can take agro on himself again. Give tanks hammer stuns/shield stuns,agro/taunt mechanics and some form of pulls. Best and most fun tank pvp role.

I am typically not a fan of forced targetting in PvP. I am also one of the people that really loved the taunt/guard mechanic from SWTOR that reduced and redirected damage so it more was a choice of was attacking the tank worth it over attempting to burn down their guard target or force them to switch to unprotected members of their group.

Depraved

i really like forced targetting in pvp ;3

Nova_terra

I should also clarify, I dislike forced targeting because in most cases it really don't derail me when i am taunted because re-targeting isn't usually too hard so it ends up being something where my down time is minimal vs. damage reduction where it affects me for the duration of the taunt (4 secs or whatever).

ArnasPanika

Nova_terra wrote: »

I should also clarify, I dislike forced targeting because in most cases it really don't derail me when i am taunted because re-targeting isn't usually too hard so it ends up being something where my down time is minimal vs. damage reduction where it affects me for the duration of the taunt (4 secs or whatever).

When the caster is spamming firebolts at the dagger who is running to him to 1shot him with a blow or a backstab there is a high chance of a dagger dying before he can even reach the caster. If tank is constantly taunting the caster in this scenario there is much bigger chance for the dagger to reach that caster, because 4/10 of casts will jump on tank just because he was annoyingly changing caster's target. In massive world pvp it's huge and it cannot be compared to anything like wow or other western games.

Nova_terra

ArnasPanika wrote: »

Nova_terra wrote: »

I should also clarify, I dislike forced targeting because in most cases it really don't derail me when i am taunted because re-targeting isn't usually too hard so it ends up being something where my down time is minimal vs. damage reduction where it affects me for the duration of the taunt (4 secs or whatever).

When the caster is spamming firebolts at the dagger who is running to him to 1shot him with a blow or a backstab there is a high chance of a dagger dying before he can even reach the caster. If tank is constantly taunting the caster in this scenario there is much bigger chance for the dagger to reach that caster, because 4/10 of casts will jump on tank just because he was annoyingly changing caster's target. In massive world pvp it's huge and it cannot be compared to anything like wow or other western games.

Happy to disagree with you there. If you are measuring effectiveness because of an eastern MMO or BDO style MMO in forcing a re-target then I just don't see enough similarities to all the content I have seen/played for Ashes to make any sort of comparison in this case. Sure if you can taunt 5 times in 5 seconds to keep forcing the target to change, but with the speed of this game I really don't see it having nearly the same effect.

With that said, A2 will make many things clear and I am more than happy to eat my shoes if I am wrong but based on the content we are being given I think a forced target spell wouldn't even make it on my tank hotbar if given other choices.

Edit: Again, for context thinking through what you are talking about. If I force taunt a ranger who is mid powershot I will switch target and eat that spell which feels like a good use of it but any player of minor skill will just re-target and then my spell is on cooldown again for X seconds. Unless the force target locks them onto me for X seconds or is on a GCD/sub 1 second CD (then we are talking about what I feel is an Agency problem) it just doesn't really read well into the game as it looks now.

ArnasPanika

I think I was more refering to eastern mmo like Lineage2, nothing new school like BDO. Because in L2 it was the case and it worked perfectly. Not 5 times in 5 seconds, but if bard (buffer) gives 30% physical attack speed buff (which influence the cooldown of your physical skills) then in theory and in past experience there really could be 2 nice taunts in 5 seconds.

You are right about A2 clarifications, but this is why we can speculate right now based on previous experiences and in this case if as Steven said Ashes pvp is 95% as L2 pvp was then it should be the case. And in this case there wouldn't be an extra "forced target spell" for pvp, it would be the same your normal agro/taunt skill that you use on bosses in pve.

If you're 3 vs 3 someone then yes, retargeting is not an issue (even tho you could spend that time somewhere else rather than being able to mouse click on players name who's running around all over the place on your screen), but in the normal ashes PvP which would be from 8 vs 8 to 200 vs 200 it would be another story "quickly retargeting".

And yeah you're right, it would be a nonsense if agro would lock your enemies target on you for X seconds.

Mag7spy

Talked about this awhile back as there is multiple things you can do besides simply lowering damage. Taunt can be a debuff that increases the tanks effectiveness of their skills allowing them to CC a target more often, lowering movement speed, attack speed, etc. With the debuff only being removed upon hitting the tank, which leads to a natural change of camera within player control than forcing janky and clunky gameplay with forced targeting. Something that does not work in action combat and is very disorienting.

They have a skill in the game already that makes it so dmg done to team members is applied to the tank, that skill could be further augmented to make it so their team takes reduced dmg when they obtain their full class. Making it so if players attacked the tank first they would be killing the group faster, over trying to kill 5 other members that are now really tanky. Again naturally creating situations where you feel threat is higher towards the tank considering killing him / disabling him first or at very least second to the healer.

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